Why Linux?

Software & Operating Systems Linux
,
1

Switched to Linux a few months ago mostly for fun/education. Having a hard time find a reason to stay on Linux now that I am over the steepest part of the learning curve. what are legitimate reasons to stay on Linux as a Desktop operating system? I am wanting to become a software developer still working on learning programming, I switched thinking that learning Linux would somehow make me a better programmer or would give me projects to work on. I enjoy the OS, but find it hard to explain to others why I choose it over Windows and feel like other than the free aspect and privacy it is pretty much the same. I am having a hard time justifying using it on my desktop over windows (I play a decent amount of vidya games).

In no way am I dropping Linux, just looking for reasons to use it more and make it my main OS I do not think I will drop windows anytime soon just because of gaming.

1 Like
2

Well, as a beginner programmer, to start off, all low-level languages(C, C++, etc...) are 1000x better to program and compile because you dont need to use either microsoft's visual C++ compiler or use a linux subsystem in windows to compile C. There's also the aesthetics qhich you can prett ymuch customize anyway you want, you can automate any of your tasks using stuff like BASH and other shells, etc... Im not the most 3L1T3 linux guy but for everything other than gaming Linux is the way to go.

9 Likes
3

Not a programmer, but I'd imagine it's easier to work with software stuff when you actually know how the tools you work with work, like in any job.
Imagine you worked at a car manufactory, where your task is to build whatever for cars. You know that by doing this your tool does that, but you had no idea how the tools actually work.
The quirk here is that in IT basically everything is software.

1 Like
4

This 1000x. Windows is absolutely trash when it comes to toolchains and programming languages.

7 Likes
5

Did not know that, know the Syntax to C++, but no idea how it works behind the scenes. Other than it is compiled.

Yeah that is a good point, but the options I am still picking a windows manager/desktop environment. i3 for a while, now want to use touch screen on laptop so gnome, but miss i3 ugh what to do.

need to learn how to do stuff like this, but to be honest I am not sure what to automate.

This was my though when switching originally, but I do not feel I understand programming well enough to benefit quite yet. Maybe I need to dive deeper into programming on Linux and learn more about compilers and how the languages work.

Alright. So Programming low level lang is just better all around on Linux?

1 Like
6

Better is very subjective. In my opinion, everything is better in Linux, but that's just not true objectively, so take my linux advice with a grain of salt.

It's definitely good, definitely takes less to get going. for example, to set up C++ development on Ubuntu it's apt-get install build-essential vim and you're done.

On windows, you need to install cygwin, download all the packages and tools, then you need to set up eclipse to work properly with everything.

7

Depending on what hardware you're running, you can run a windows VM whenever you need windows programs. You can even boot the windows VM off of a physical disk rather than a disk image. If you're running a Windows 7 VM you can pass whatever program window you're running straight through to the Linux DE.

That's on top of everything everyone else has said. Also, my two cents above means if you've got a moral objection to Microsoft's behavior with Windows 10, you can use their stuff without having to rely on them for your main OS platform. You can be truly OS-agnostic. So that's a thing.

Though strictly speaking, it's a lot more complicated a story than I've made it out to be.

3 Likes
8

It's not all that black-and-white, there's loads of talented programmers who still have no idea how computers work, which to me is pretty ironic.
And no, using linux won't automatically make your life easier as a programmer.
But, if you know how software works, instead of how the tools work, there's a whole new world to conquer.

I like to divide knowledge in 3 tiers:
1: 'Knowing': = yeah I know this exists and it works kinda like this.
2: 'Can use' = yeah I know how to use this tool and the expected outcome should be that
3: 'Master' = yeah give me whatever I'll do whatever

5 Likes
9

everyone uses Linux for different reasons.
if they are paranoid, tell them there is no telemetry.
if they like to be organized or customize everything, tell they its infinitely customizable.
if they are old and they use it as a Facebook machine, install it without telling them and they will never notice and they will be happy they finally got rid if that ask toolbar that keeps coming back.

3 Likes
10

Aye, and that's what I think about linux as a desktop OS, it's good for basic users and 'hardcore' users.
But for the intermediate it might give trouble.

2 Likes
11

Which is kinda ironic really. But I do agree with that.

1 Like
12

One side to notice is that since android devel has pushed the nex-gen OS stuff to another level, there's a shift atm to be seen in desktop OS'es and how they work as well in the near future. (Basically a simple platform with a million containers with the apps, written in whatever language)
And when that shift takes over despite of marketing and lobbying efforts, it should push linux to the desktop truely (not take over, because reasons).
If the traditional desktop is a thing then, however. Samsung seems to finally have made the phone docking thing work well enough this time (I still call it Beta tho).

13

Man, use what you want.

2 Likes
14

I can't give you a generic list of ten generic reasons to stay here in linux, but I can tell you why I'm in linux and maybe you can see some similarities to what you're looking to get out of the whole experience.

Personally, for me, I just like it more. It runs better on the hardware I have . It poses a level of difficulty all the time that I enjoy. If something breaks it gives me the opportunity to learn WHY it broke, rather than forcing me to have to reinstall completely. It gives me a lot of expandability in exchange for wanting to learn more and more about how a system works. Since one of my favorite things to do is break other peoples code, I get a lot of ways to do that here. It makes it all very fun for me.

Past all of that crap, I don't like the total outdatedness of windows. Yeah whatever directX is always updated and oh look at these shiny lights! Personally, If I was concerned only with gaming then it wouldn't be a problem, but I worry about the update system on windows breaking, I worry about NTFS freaking out and bricking my hard drives (which has happened before), and I hate (HATE) the windows DE. I like the idea of choice in FS and appse. Don't like NTFS? Too slow? Literally go as fast as your processor can write a string with XFS and don't worry about it. Don't like Explorer.EXE? Thats ok. You have Dolphin, and Thunar, or you can just use your CLI, or any of the 5 million other file managers out there. Or make your own! Past that its easy to run stuff straight off of code in linux. Like super easy. If you wanted you could make all your apps just python scripts and have 38k of files on a USB and no matter what linux you use you have all your apps you made. Can't easily do that on windows with the amount of apps you have to install just to live interpret a script. Linux doesn't care.

Next, I like openGL. Why? Ran better than DirectX on my ATi 9600 pro on my P4 desktop I had and WAY better on the FireGL T2 in my laptop. I'm already angled to use it instead. And yeah I can use it in windows, but its so damn fiddly there versus an environment that its BUILT for. Not to mention using something like wine and studying how OpenGL handles directX syscalls and, in some cases, runs a game BETTER than the windows native version (thinking of league of legends, it ran at double the FPS in linux than it did in windows on my 250X until RIOT broke their game engine).

So ok, being able to just run whatever, openGL, FS stuff, what about workflow? Yeah great. So windows has a broken workflow. A lot of people will be confused by that, but hear me out. Alt tabbing can cause apps to just die. Theres no workspaces that properly work (or at least the work space tech in 10 never worked for me, nvidia nview was the closest to linux workspaces).... The most of the windows workflow is driven by a mouse and thats SO SLOW. In any linux DE you can set key combos. For everything. Any app you wanted as a key combo, a terminal command, a workspace, everything. Its all right there at your hands you just have to whack it in the right order and bam.

Not to mention DE's. Don't like the traditional windows desktop? Don't use KDE then, use XFCE, or Mate, or Unity. Don't want anything with buttons and bars and ew? Xmonad, Hark, PWM, Ratpoison, Awesome, AmiWM. You have so many choices it almost isn't funny. But even then, you have so many choices on how to use your PC that it probably IS funny. You want to use your phone as a touchpad? Ok, use KDE and KDEConnect. You have it all right there. Theres so many options.

Lastly, Package managers. The most important thing that my PC can have is a good package manager. I like arch for the documentation, the AUR, and Pacman. Its why I use it. With the AUR, I can get the apps I need when its convenient and build them/update them completely separately from my normal packages. Don't want to update vivaldi yet? Then don't, big woop. The negative is when something like Discord-Canary gets a major update ad you have to wait for the maintainer to update it. Wait two days, tada. Then Pacman. It can build shit on the fly similar to Emerge in Gentoo minus the fiddly flags and crap. Its fast. I like that. Broke an install of something? Archwiki has literally everything. You'll figure it out.

Oh, and drivers are BUILT INTO THE KERNEL. No having 80 tabs open in a browser to get drivers and crap, or waiting 2 hours for shit to download in 3DPChip. They're baked in. AMDGPU is GOD. Because of that, I can use my 580 and my wireless card at the same time, which according to windows, is impossible. Also, you know, the whole thing where I have to take a whole day to set up a windows box because I have to get 300 apps from all over the net to get my shit done and I'm still missing stuff like kdenlive and sublime text.

I've been in linux for 9 or 10 years now. XP was the last windows I really liked. Windows is dead to me at this point. It really cannot fit my speed or workflow anymore and I'm surprised people put up with it (editing registries to get basic functionality? Are you fucking serious?). So, those are my reasons. I dunno if they are good ones, but in 10 years of use I think I'm validated.

6 Likes
15

Why Linux

Pros:
Computing, simplicity, open source, less bloatware, more powerful

Cons:
No DirectX, less updated, can break, driver support and performance

16

This ^^^^^^^^ not to mention all the cool kids run Linux... lol

1 Like
17

Huh? Some distros get updates daily.

Specifically with GPUs, but when it comes to generic devices, it's a situation where it either works perfectly, or you can't get it to work without standing on your head while typing the commands while balancing a coffee on your foot.

3 Likes
18

My biggest reason is that I feel like it's mine. I am in control of it. It is truly and absolutely my machine when I'm on Linux. Every time I'm on Windows, even though no one can take it away from me, and I use it for gaming, I still feel like it's not truly mine. I can't manipulate it how I'd like, I can't turn off everything that I would want, change anything I want. It's a very closed of and limiting experience.

I'M A LINUX SNOWFLAKE AND LINUX IS MY SAFE SPACE!

That should be a shirt @wendell

6 Likes
19

I Tried Linux:
- very nice for coding in C/C++
- okay for basic work (office tasks)
- meh for desktop publishing and content creation
- sucks for long time shortcut warriors like me

Reason to stay:
- Face everything and rise

Reason to leave:
- If my go-to software is not available, the replacement takes more guide reading and tutorial watching than hours in a day to get started with, and the final product looks mediocre: Discard changes and revert to default.

[Edit] The long story in a "short" rant:

Went over to Ryzen. As I had to work out the USB driver issue to install Win7, I went ahead and installed Linux (I think Arch or Fedora25).
As I wanted to give Linux as a whole a shot, I set aside a long week end (4 days). Tried to do my default creativity work consisting of basic photo editing, advanced photo manipulation, digital drawing, desktop publishing, CAD work, audio creation and editing and finaly the mastery trade: Video editing.
Finding software was semi easy to do. The appstore-esk application to get software from was easy to use. But after downloading two of the most antiquated pieces of software I have seen since Win95, I discarded that approach and went online. I ended up with Blender, Krita, Gimp (shuders) and something so terrible I forgot to note the name for later research.
Gimp feels ancient. The layout is clunky to use and there are menues-o-plenty.
Krita was a pleasent surprise. Modern feel to it and very similar in layout and basic functions of my go-to drawing software "Serif DrawPlus 8" and "Affinity Designer". (After the L1T video, I picked Krita back up and put lots of time into it. Very well thought out program, a few rough spots arround the edges :wink: )
Blender... OH BOY! The 3D creation part works like a charm. And then someone bolted on video editing?! Might just be that a whole day to get started with cropping and cutting a clip was not enough time, but what the heck is this thing? Coming from Vegas and DaVinci Resolve, this felt like a kick in the nuts. Nothing even shares simularity in form or function. Somehow I got my clip cropped. Then the exporting part. Took 2 hours of tutorial videos to get to the "fill your harddrive with PNGs"-stage. Then got frustrated and gave up on editing videos with Blender.
Desktop publishing is just plain impossible. Could probably do an half-assed job using Krita.

TL;DR Linux lacks severly in the creativity sector.
1 Like
20

I found that only two fields are severely lacking in Linux. Media production (adobe products) and games.

Games are getting there and there are some non-linear editors that are making waves on the platform.

TL;DR: 2017 is the year of the linux desktop.

1 Like