For a long time, people have lived in the hope that Linux will overtake Linux in desktop environments. However, although it is the king in the field of servers, this operating system has never been able to stand up to its rival in personal computers. Although it has only gotten better, Linux is only installed on 2.5% of home computers. And it is that, despite the fact that it increasingly seeks to be more accessible, it continues to bring users many more problems than those brought by macOS and, above all, Windows.
The first of the problems that we are going to encounter when installing a Linux system is choosing which one to choose. And it is that there is an increasing variety of distributions, almost all the same, which do nothing more than disintegrate the experience of this system. We can always resort to the best known, such as Ubuntu or Mint, if we want something simple, or Arch or Manjaro if we want something more “pure” as well as complicated. But that does not mean that there are other distros, such as MakuluLinux or openEuler, which are only known and used by their developers.
Another of the problems that can worry us the most is the fact of not being able to use many of the programs that, surely, we are already used to. We can’t use Microsoft Office, nor can we use Adobe programs like Premiere or Photoshop. Even in the field of programming, which could be one of its strengths, the best IDEs, such as those from JetBrains, are only available for Windows and macOS. It is true that there are alternatives for everything, such as LibreOffice, GIMP or OpenSHot. But, to be honest, it’s a want and I can’t. What if I install them with Wine? We’ll just get even more complicated.
Of course, we can also forget about playing. The number of games available for Linux is very small, and almost no major developers compile for this system for many reasons. Even though Valve is working on technologies like Proton, which makes it possible to play Linux games on Windows, the experience is still not the same as on Microsoft’s system. And not to mention the drivers, which leave much to be desired in terms of performance compared to Windows.
Anything you want to change in Linux is going to take time. And we will always run the risk that something stops working for whatever reason. A dependency? An incompatible configuration? If we are going to use Linux, we must not only already have a certain level of knowledge, but also the desire to spend time correcting any problem.
So, what can interest me about Linux?
But it’s not all problems, even if it seems like it. And it is that Linux also has some advantages that can make it attractive in certain scenarios. For example, we can find distributions that consume very few resources, which makes them ideal for less powerful computers. We can also find versions for 32-bit computers, something that is no longer found when we look inside Windows 11.
Another interesting use of Linux systems is development and programming. And it is that these systems usually give fewer problems when compiling than those that usually occur in Windows. Of course, since the arrival of WSL on Windows 10 and Windows 11, this positive aspect has lost its only attraction.
In addition, we cannot forget about telemetry. Or, rather, we can forget about it. And it is that, if we are paranoid about privacy, Linux is a much more private and anonymous system than Windows, and it does not collect information about everything we do with the OS.