Software Benefits of Linux for Desktop?

[GGWP]

I messed around with Linux a bit on some spare laptops with Manjaro, Linux Mint and Ubuntu, and I don't see the appeal.
Windows just works, you plug it in you play, whereas Linux you spend 10 years configuring variables and facepalming because your distro's package manager decides that it doesn't want to download the dependencies for your open source PDF viewer.

I know that ricing is a big thing on Linux, people love to customize their stuff, but I think you can get a good deal of sovereignty back over your device with hardened Windows. Plus Linux doesn't have the Windows Media Player Legacy skins which is a hard blow to Linux customization fans because these puppies are cool as heck!



So what I want to know is whether there are actually any solid benefits to using Linux as a daily driver on your Desktop. I know that there are certain distros great for privacy like Qubes or Tails but I'll be honest it's overkill for my purposes, and Arch-based systems seem like they're built for masochists. I know that coders love Linux due to a neater file system but I'm coping fine on Windows honestly. I wanna know why you guys choose Linux because it seems to be popular among fringe communities on the net especially.

 

[Maid]

I've always recommended that people use whatever they're most comfortable with. Honestly, if you're not someone who likes fixing problems or troubleshooting, a lightweight Linux distro is fine. I'm the same way, I like both windows and linux for different reasons. Most people will bring up privacy and all that, but unless you're doing sketchy stuff or browsing pharma markets for some late night pickups, I don't really see a strong reason to use linux as your main OS unless you already have some experience with it. Niche communities are more likely to run linux distros because of minimalism, ease of access, and the “brownie points” you get for not using a mainstream OS. Gaming is kind of hit or miss depending on what you play. My advice is to mess around with linux in a virtual machine first, then try a live USB or install it on a secondary drive before considering a full switch. Linux does have its benefits, but if you're not taking advantage of them, you're probably not going to notice much of a difference in your day to day use.

 

[xaxs]

Some people just want more customization, I guess, but I can't be arsed with all that. Windows is better for 99% of people anyway. Also, I never really got the privacy obsession. I mean, for the average person, no one cares what you're doing on your computer.

 

[GGWP]

I've always recommended that people use whatever they're most comfortable with. Honestly, if you're not someone who likes fixing problems or troubleshooting, a lightweight Linux distro is fine. I'm the same way, I like both windows and linux for different reasons. Most people will bring up privacy and all that, but unless you're doing sketchy stuff or browsing pharma markets for some late night pickups, I don't really see a strong reason to use linux as your main OS unless you already have some experience with it. Niche communities are more likely to run linux distros because of minimalism, ease of access, and the “brownie points” you get for not using a mainstream OS. Gaming is kind of hit or miss depending on what you play. My advice is to mess around with linux in a virtual machine first, then try a live USB or install it on a secondary drive before considering a full switch. Linux does have its benefits, but if you're not taking advantage of them, you're probably not going to notice much of a difference in your day to day use.

Great answer!

 

[Whitespace]

I dualboot for this reason. Linux is really fun to mess around with but Windows has rly good compatibility. Even Wine and Proton aren't really good enough for Adobe products or FL Studio. Using both is really fun.

 

[Foidkiller]

Normies can't understand ig that linux was made for the free software movement. It was the final component that the gnu project lacked to run as a fullblown unix replacement at the time for students who didn't want to get a loicense.
Back then the monopolies were really bad and we were nearing a point where taking a piece of code, changing it up and releasing it or let alone selling it would have been completely impossible and unheard of due to draconic copyright enforcement. It pretty much was! to those who weren't in the know, for example majority of newer generation students at MIT and what have you, at the time. That's where hackers (the original meaning, not crackers as the media began to conflate them soon enough) started finally writing programs without licensing cancer so you could actually run an operating system on your computer not a black box for the first time since a really long time.
Now, the free software movement is dead because the newer generations grew up reaping all it's fruits and they already had a mindset change to where nobody takes copyright laws that seriously anymore, they no longer have much power over programmers if any at all and all the young people starting to write programs today are just thinking about the code they're writing, not the licensing, as how it should be. Originally it was like this before corporations saw computing was profitable and got too much control, I mean.
Richard Stallman was one of the hackers in universities relentlessy writing programs to liberate your computer today, so you should thank him. Of course, the issue is, and the only one, is that, he thought just writing unencumbered by copyright code would not be enough, so he introduced the concept of copyleft which is copyright that acts against itself essentially. But it's cancerous, and now to this day pesters many programmers who just want to code. That's the reason why BSD's philosophy is superior, and due to it the codebase is generally much more cleaner and nice.

tl;dr freedom - THAT is the reason for linux usage. Not anything else whatsoever. If you missed this, you're just a poser larping to seem like you're some patrician found some 'niche' operating system