Goldy.exe

Should you switch to Linux NOW?

Sep 20 2024

DELETE MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND INSTALL LINUX, THE YEAR OF LINUX IS APPROACHING US! WAKE UP AND RISE UP! RISEEEE UPPPPPP!

...is what I would say if the 🐧Linux demons ascended deeper into my head.

I daily drive Linux... You can confirm that because I had to straight up tell you I daily drive Linux... Yes I use the penguin 🐧, also Arch btw but that's besides the point of this blog article.

I am here today to hopefully answer your question of "Should I switch to Linux?". Yes, IT'S MY TURN!

If I didn't strip my bias away I would say YES FUCKING INSTALL LINUX NOW, RIGHT THIS INSTANCE, RIGHT THIS SECOND but this article is where I try my best to rm that bias away and approach this question from a genuine and non biased enough standpoint BUT do keep in mind, I am quiet a technical person, or should I say computer power user, so naturally I have already approached Linux as a none standard user. But here's my viewpoint and story anyways!

Key words

I'm just gonna list down some keywords you'll see me mentioning very often in this article.

What is the penguin? 🐧

my_set_up Linux is an open-source operating system kernel originally developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Yes not particularly an OS (Operating System) but a kernel, I'll get to that later in this article. It's the foundation various Linux distributions (aka distros) like Ubuntu and Arch Linux are built on. Unlike proprietary operating systems (e.g. Windows and MacOS), Linux is free to use, free to modify and free to distribute. Linux is known for its stability, security and flexibility, making it popular not only among nerd 🤓 circles but also in enterprise environments. (actually 🤓☝️ it's mostly used in enterprise and is literally what powers the world with web servers and embedded systems... 🤓)

As of June 2021, 92.4% of the world's top 1 million servers run on Linux. ~ gitnux

So it's no joke, but alright Jassim why the hell tell me about servers when I'm simply on a desktop. Uhhhh... I kind of just wanted to flex to be honest... 💪 but let's move on now.

The year of Linux Desktop!!! 😳

year_of_linux

You may have heard a quote like "This is the year of Linux Desktop" or some iteration similar to that by another Linux user. This long standing joke refers to the idea that Linux will finally surpass proprietary operating systems and achieve widespread adoption. This is funny because each year it's said and it's never been reality, sadly Microsoft just keeps maintaining that crown.

BUT THIS YEAR (2024) US LINUX USERS HAVE BEEN ON THE GRADUAL RISE!!!!!

linux_on_the_rise

The exact cause of this rise is up for debate, but I think several factors likely contribute. Like more tech-savvy users discovering the beautify (benefits) of Linux and the importance of open-source adoption, while at the same time Linux distributions improving and becoming more user-friendly for the average Andy. I'll delve more into this later.

I also feel it's safe to say that Valve's Steam Deck has played a significant role in this increase. Whether the Steam Deck is counted under desktop market share or not, it's popularity has definitely brought more attention to Linux in the gaming circle. What we do know is that Linux has actually been on the rise recently.

Why should you use Linux?

There's no specific default reason to use Linux. Every person uses Linux for a different reason, which you could say is why there are hundreds of distributions.

Which is why I'm going to tell you my reason. Everything from this point is my opinion and experience.

Why do I use Linux?

I use Linux for two core reasons:

Control as in control of my hardware, if I want to shutdown my system, I want to shutdown my fucking system; no update or system restart BECAUSE OF AN UPDATE should stop me. Windows doesn't even let me do that so I choose to not run it on my hardware. Like this is literally my system, I built this system with each and every component, no multi millionaire company should own this system because I DO and I paid for it.

Hardware is my main concern but software is also an issue; in 2022 I joined a course on computer networking, cyber security, blah blah blah... it had a really long name. Anyways during that course we would assemble real hardware level networks and hook up real machines to it, we also virtualized and monitored many operating systems. It was this course that really opened my eye much wider to the shear amount of shenanigans that would occur under windows operating systems. We would install vanilla copies of Windows 10 and watch the shear amount of network activity and data harvesting location grabbing bullshit going on, compare that with an older Microsoft OS Windows 7 and see a significant decrease. Idk about y'all but in my eyes each fucking OS after the other Windows is just filling up with more and more bloat. Bloat aside this course had taught me to be more aware of what is happening on my system, so I thought to myself why can't I have an operating system that just doesn't do this, I don't care about security, I don't care about privacy I just want a system that runs well and does what I want it to do and nothing else.

I know 80% of the processes running on my Linux system and can decipher what 70% of those processes are doing currently. On Windows 💀 like wtf is system doing to my disk drive on boot up, yeah I totally understand what svchost.exe is doing on my system using 20% of my CPU. These days when something like this happens on my Linux system I literally take my magnifying glass and inspect the operating system to find the cause and reason why this is happening, I don't like when software uses unnecessary amounts of usage of my hardware, remember my HARDWARE. There's many processes on Windows that I cannot decipher why they are running and if you try and tinker with them they'll just say I'm a critical system system process. 🗿 There's so much more I could mention here, the list goes on but I wanna keep the yap short. All I call for is awareness, I want to know more about my system, I want to know what it is doing at any day or time. Windows is a black box that we just happen to give the keys to our luxurious hyper car.

This might come as a surprise to some of y'all but I'm not much of a privacy person, I don't particularly use Linux for that reason but as a software dev I do respect the people who do and fight for it. ✊

I use Linux because I want control over my hardware, I want to know more about my operating system and what it is doing at any given time and I want to vote with my hardware to tell Microsoft and competitors what we as users want / respect and don't want / don't respect.

Competition is IMPORTANT! Or else we'd all be buying overpriced shit and using the most fucked up shit.

That's my view on things, I hope this comes across to you well.

I don't want to switch to Linux because {x}...

import random

list_of_reasons = [
    "linux is hard", 
    "linux doesn't support my favourite software", 
    "linux isn't good for gaming"
]

reason = random.choice(list_of_reasons)

print(f"I don't want to switch to Linux because {reason}.")

Linux is hard?

Linux is not hard, my parents could use it and they don't even know how to connect the WiFi. 🥁 ba dum tss

A common misconception is that if you use linux you have to open a terminal every few minutes, that is very untrue. Although it can be true but hold on let me fucking cook.

my_terminal

We live in 2024 (unless you are reading this from a later year, hewwo future), Linux has come a long way. Modern, beginner-friendly distributions typically won't have you opening terminal windows left, right and center. Many distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint are designed with ease of use in mind. They come with intuitive GUIs that allow users to perform the majority of tasks without ever touching the terminal. Whether it's installing software, managing system settings or updating your system that can all be done through graphical applications just like Windows.

my_software_discover

You can get though your entire day without touching the Linux terminal but will you touch it at some point? YES.

Whether you like it or not you may need to open a terminal at some point, typically you may need it for troubleshooting and configuring advanced settings. You will most likely come across situations or troubleshooting guides that will ask you to crack open a terminal... but so what? yes really so what? Just ask a Linux friend for help, maybe learn to use the internet to find your answers or ask for help on internet forums. As we switch to a cyber utopia or fucking WALL.E, the skill of troubleshooting via the internet will become more and more important to you. If you're not capable of that, ask someone who is. Back on track here, for day-to-day tasks you won't need to touch the terminal; for reference I'm a terminal freak, I love using the terminal for everything I can but it's 11:24pm rn and I've never used the terminal for anything today.

All I'm saying is to be aware that you may need it rather than not, so in the meantime maybe get your feat wet and get at least a little comfortable with it. You cannot escape problems and troubleshooting whatever operating system you are on.

Linux doesn't support my favourite software.

vegas_pro

It is true Linux might not officially support your favourite software and a lot of beginners get put off by that fact. I have to agree, this is one of the hardest barriers to break; there is software that people just cannot stop using or find a viable replacement for. From now on I'm gonna talk about my experience.

Around February or March of 2023 I had my last straw with Windows and attempted to daily drive Fedora Linux 38. Using Linux was really odd for me because most of my workflow was covered with Linux (e.g web browser, code editor, discord and etc) but some was not. It was when I needed to produce media, things began to not look as bright.

The thing is, the issue is not "OMG my favourite applications are not supported in Linux", the issue is "I SPENT 7 YEARS BUILDING UP MY SKILLS IN THESE PROGRAMS AND MY WORKFLOW IS SOO SMOOTH OMFG THIS CAN'T BE RUINED". I'm not kidding, you wouldn't understand the amount of prefixes, effects and plugins I had in Vegas Pro 15, I thought I was set for life, now on Linux there was no chance running such a complex windows program. With Photoshop CS6 I got close being able to run it under WINE but it was very very unstable (it would crash randomly every few actions in).

Fast forward to today, I'm both video and photo editing on Linux no problem and my workflow is catching up to my Photoshop and Vegas Pro workflow. I am using Kdenlive for video editing as it was the closest editor to Vegas Pro 15 I could find and also it's Open Source ; then GIMP for photo manipulation with a skin that makes it look similar to Photoshop (shout-out to PhotoGIMP).

If you wanna switch to Linux, you're going to have to make sacrifices in your choice of software.

I found it incredibly difficult to leave Vegas Pro 15, dropping 7 years of experience was a hard choice to make. GIMP is missing a couple of features I use from Photoshop and it's algorithms just isn't as cutting edge as even Photoshop CS6 but we must make sacrifices. Alternately my choices GIMP and Kdenlive are consistently maintained and from experience using open-source software, I know that well maintained FOSS only keeps getting better and better from there on. Like GIMP is working on a third major version (v3) and it already has some of my wanted photoshop features present. The open-source community is continuously moving, growing and improving each day.

Switching to Linux means you’ll eventually need to let go of some software. This is what makes Linux a hard switch for many people, especially if you've spent years perfecting that workflow, but here's the silver lining: open-source alternatives can be difficult to get used to but it will often even exceed your needs. So do me a favour and try out open-source alternatives of your favourite applications; you can install them on your current operating system now. If you plan to switch to Linux by the time you do, you won't be dropping any applications or workflows since open-source software is more than likely always supported here in Linux land.

What you should avoid is to try and make software / tools you had on Windows or MacOS, run on Linux when they previously were not designed to, this is a one way ticket to "I hate linux!".

Anyways now my entire media creation stack is FOSS.

Linux isn't good for Gaming?

supertuxkart_screenshot Linux is actually good at gaming, sometimes better than Windows. Yes I really said that. Now are you intrigued?

Before you think I'm being biased, let's take it back a little. Linux can actually game! Nearly every somewhat popular steam game will run on Linux. If you asked that penguin 🐧 3 years ago if it could game it would respond with "squawk... kinda", if you asked it 5 years ago, "uhhh, yeahh I can play SuperTuxKart", today you can play 10s of thousands of steam games and more will most likely run. We have Value and the Windows to Linux translation layer "WINE" to thank for this. More on what WINE 🍷 is in the next section.

steam_proton_games

WTF is 🍷WINE?

No not that wine 🍷, the Linux "WINE". WINE stands for Wine Is Not An Emulator and IT IS NOT A FUCKING EMULATOR OKAY??? Anyways, WINE is a freaking amazing tool that allows Windows applications to run under Linux by translating the API calls Windows apps make to API calls your linux system can understand in REALTIME. It's this wizardry that makes most games on steam run on the 🐧 penguin; although you'll quickly notice Steam's version is called Proton, this is just a fork of WINE that Valve maintains.

Let the game devs fucking cook.

osu_screenshot If you stuck with my theory that open-source software is nearly always supported on Linux, then you will soon discover open-source games like Osu! yes the clicking circles game is natively supported on Linux, meaning that the game was natively built to run on Linux; yes no Windows translation layer (WINE) is needed because it's not a windows game

and it runs beautifully!

It's like the open-source AMD drives (yes, linux runs different AMD drives to Windows) have given my Radeon RX 570 GPU a new life as Osu! Lazer, a native game, is running SOOO MUCH smoother on Linux than it was on Windows. I think that really says something, perhaps the openGL implementations are better with these open-source drives, perhaps there's less operating system and desktop environment bloat, who knows but games when actually designed to run on Linux, perform fucking beautifully, making it a heaven for older hardware like mine.

Keep in mind, this is my experience we're talking about. You may not experience such performance gains.

beamng

BeamNG Drive, an ultra realistic complex af car simulation game, for the longest time since it's initial release in 2013 has only had a native windows build. However since more than a year ago their devs despite the lack of Linux users, have released very very experimental Linux builds that can be natively run under Linux. They haven't even completed the Linux port, YET the VULKAN IMPLEMENTATION of the game, and upon testing by me and some other users on the forum, dispute all the bugs currently, the game is already getting more frames per second here on Linux than running the game natively on Windows where it was originally designed to run. 💀 just putting that out there

but okay so where's the bad news? (anti-cheats)

Games do run on Linux but you know what sometimes doesn't work... kernel level anticheats... 💀

although a sub-set of people don't tell you the full story. Yes kernel level anti-cheats are a huge problem in Linux but some of them do actually run and a lot of the time it's not the anti-cheat at fault but the game developers for not enabling them to run under Linux.

Valve maintains the Steam Linux Runtime, which when combined with Proton provides a support layer allowing anti-cheats such as Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye to run on Linux in user-space. This is why we can play anti-cheat games like Apex Legends, Overwatch, War Thunder and Rogue Company (just examples), some even going as far as natively supporting Linux like Counter-Strike 2 and Split-gate; so if you play these AC games you're pretty much vibing.

anti_cheat_list

How about if you don't play these anti-cheat games? Welll... you're kinda fucked... as some game developers out right refuse their anti-cheat games to run in Linux.

anti_cheat_anti_list

Their reasoning always seems to fall into one of these:

Valorant Vanguard developer

valorant_vanguard_dev_message_1

Roblox insider

roblox_anticheat_1

So while the bad news is kernel-level anti-cheats can be a hit or miss on Linux, the good news is Valve and game developers are starting to see the potential of supporting Linux gamers like I stated in the previous section.

Hopefully they'll be a bright light at the end of the tunnel but this is the current ongoing situation. Although if you're favourite game does not have an invasive type of anti-cheat such as a kernel-level AC, maybe have a little bit more hope.

genshin_impact_on_linux

[Image Source]

among_us_1


Should you switch to Linux? No, are YOU ready to switch?

kde_desktop_1

The real question isn't "Should you switch to Linux?" but rather, "Are YOU ready to switch?". Most people aren't, but are you? 🫵

Switching to Linux today is more accessible than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. If you're a normie just looking to browse the web and watch Netflix, Linux can handle that all day. But in my opinion, if you're anywhere near a power-user such as an video editor, an artist or someone reliant on specific tools, you’ll find Linux a little hard to adopt but in the end IT REALLY DEPENDS ON YOU; your dedication (sacrifice software), your appreciation (FOSS is truly free, free as in freedom), your patience (open-source developers don't get paid you know).

Want freedom? Want software truly for the users? Want full control over your system, without being locked into what giant corporations decide for you? Want a truly lightweight and fast system? Want total transparency over what’s running on your machine? Want to customize your desktop environment to reflect you? AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH, THE LINUX DEMONS ASCENDED DEEPER INTO MY HEAD!!!!

Try Linux! Today!

If you're willing to embrace the challenge...

hyprland_rice_1

[Credit]

You don't even have to install it, because many distros support something called a live disc environment; in layman terms, it allows you to try Linux directly from your USB without actually installing it onto your system.

"but.. but.. but... what linux distro should I use? THERE'S SOOO MANY!"

Simple, if you're new to Linux (and hardcore linux may hate me for this) just stick with these:

"but.. but.. which one???"

ANY BITCH!

you can try each one of them, then decide which you wanna actually install or keep testing out in a live environment.

I'm not gonna explain why these specifically, and I'm not gonna list down any more in this blog, as that will cause me to yap and I don't wanna drag this for any longer; if you're new to Linux just STICK WITH THOSE. Distro's are pretty much just starting points, you can make one distribution look exactly like another, so just choose one and get going.

I trust you to do your own research on how to get them installed onto a USB; that will be your first task.

Now it's your turn. Good luck!

did this blog post turn into a linux salesman's reference, maybe...