There are more than a billion PCs in use and, according to StatCounter, only 71 percent of them run Windows. Among the rest, about 4 percent run Linux. That’s tens of millions of people with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc as their desktop operating system. I envy them.
Windows 11 has become more annoying lately as it shoves ads for XBox Game Pass in my face, pushes AI features no one asked for and demands that I reconsider the choices I made during installation on a regular basis. Plus, it just isn’t that attractive.
I’m ready to try joining that industrious four percent and installing Linux on my computers to use as my main OS, at least for a week. I’ll blog about the experience here.
It’s hard to give up Windows forever because so many applications only run in Microsoft’s OS. For example, the peripheral software that runs with many keyboards and mice isn’t available for Linux. Lots of games will not run under Linux. So I think it’s likely I’ll be using Windows again, at least some of the time, after this week is through.
However, for now, I’m going to give Linux a very serious audition and document the experience.
I dont think the criticism of installing apps is valid. Windows also has many ways of installing things. He criticizes the app center as if you can install everything from the microsoft store. On windows you still install stuff from a website, and you can use a package manager too it just isn’t a requirement.
How to install software on Windows (that I know of):
There’s not sandboxed applications like Flatpaks or Snaps though, which provide an extra layer of security. Which would be great in Windows, honestly.
The difference I think is in windows basically everything is just download the installer and click it, it’s very easy and people are used to that. And most apps have their own update system that takes care of things after install.
It would be nice though if the app stores were more complete on Linux, and showed all the available packages. I run into this on Fedora where the app store (discover) won’t show a package but I can install it with DNF on the CLI. And if it had a way to add external sources like a github release that auto-updated, like Obtanium does on Android that would make it a substantial step up from the windows experience.