Why Do You Use Linux?

Somebody on Quora asked:

Why do people use Linux on their PCs?

I answered:

I’ll give you my reasons:

  • Productivity: I’m much more productive on my Ubuntu 20.04 + LXDE rig that I am on a Widows machine. The system is so lightweight that it doesn’t get in the way of what I want to do. When I use Windows, one of the first things I notice is how bloated the OS is: how much unnecessary graphics effects and popups there are.
  • Customization: With Linux, I can customize literally every single aspect of the OS. I have my own custom keybindings set, my own scripts that run after booting into the system, and my own maintenance cron jobs — mostly backing up key files regularly to cloud storage.
  • Education: Linux has taught me so much about computers. I work, these days, as a technical marketing writer. I draw almost daily upon knowledge that being a long term Linux user has taught me. Linux is often the ‘in’ that gets me past the frequent initial “are you able to understand technology?” question when clients pose it.
  • Warm feelings: It may sound weird to say that Linux instills warms feeling in me but truly it does. Linux has never taken money from me. But it has taught me so much. I try to give back to the open source ecosystem however and wherever I can: documenting projects that I think might be interesting to others, helping newbies with questions, etc. I love that: perpetuating knowledge. Yes, there are some jerks — but for the most part the community is awesome and very willing to help one another out whenever it’s needed.

Without addressing any of the specific problems in the context link (hardware support is always improving, most problems with Linux have solutions), those are the reasons why I have been using Linux as my day to day OS for more than 10 years at this point.