Note: This is the first part of an entire series on Linux and how to comfortably move to it, as well as things I have not been told when first moving to Linux.

I've been using Windows for my whole life, and so have my parents, and my brothers, and my friends, and my family. Literally everyone uses Windows, and while this is not particularly a bad thing, it's a little bit of a pity...

Windows is a "good" operating system and all, but it always had some issues that will never get fixed because Microsoft's goals are not targeted at such issues. Especially in the recent times, people have been complaining about Windows 11 causing performance issues on their old hardware, about having to pay for the Windows license or pirate it (both are annoying tasks for most), and more!
And with Windows 10's End Of Life coming closer, people have been looking for an alternative that can run on their old hardware!

The only other two options are MacOS and Linux, and for most people who don't want to get a new PC or want a free solution, Linux is the answer.

Now, when it comes to Linux, many people have doubts because they haven't ever used or seen it before. Most think that Linux would probably be a messy terminal window that can only be controlled through commands!

While this is far from the truth, especially considering that there is no one "Linux", I'm here to introduce the power of Linux to developers, so now that you understand the context behind this series, let's dive in:

"Which distro should I use?"

This is a question that I see stump many people due to the vast number of options, but before we ask that question, we should first focus on today's question: "Is Linux even for me?"

Linux "distros", or distributions, are simply different builds (with their own UI, desktop environment, shell tools, etc) of the same Linux kernel. Think of distros like hundreds of books in a giant library, everyone has a book in there that suits them!

Linux Mint is supposed to resemble Windows a lot, while Ubuntu resembles MacOS but can very easily be customized to look like Windows too... There are many options, but overall, any Linux distro has many reasons for you to use them instead of your current OS...

Performance

After specific customizations depending on your distro, Linux is much more performant than Windows and MacOS, especially when it comes to development (specific benchmarks and statistics will be in the fifth article of the series).

FOSS

Linux is "Free and Open-Source Software", there is no price tag on anything that you need to use Linux!

Customizability

Linux is much more customizable than Windows and MacOS combined. From the fact that there's a distro for every need to the fact that you can easily change your system boot scripts, Windows and MacOS have never reached the level of customization that Linux has with so much accessibility!

If there's anything in your Linux distro that feels — "odd" — because it's dramatically different from what you have in your current OS, there's always (and I mean always) a way to change it.

Package sizes

While Windows and MacOS come preinstalled with all the low-level binaries you could imagine even if no one ever uses them, most Linux distros only come with the "dependencies" that just give you a good experience, if any application or script needs any more binaries it can just use them as dependencies and they will be installed just for this specific script. This leads to smaller disk space taken after you install a fresh installation of a Linux distro, and mostly smaller space needed for a specific program to install (This largely depends on the distro of course, but this is true for most distros after you customize them to boost their experience, which is going to be explained in the third article of this series)

Bloat-free

Windows is full of bloatware, a simple example is when your PC is freezing and the top bar of apps (as well as the alt+tab UI) switch to the Windows 7 UI, can anyone tell me what this thing is doing there?

Linux is relatively clean of bloat, there are no huge useless chunks of code or code from older versions on most Linux distros. MacOS has done a little better job at decreasing bloatware than Windows, but it's not lightweight by any means.

Summary

Windows is fine for most people, but for people who want a truly free experience with full control over their computers, Linux is the better choice.
Even though Windows occupies more than 70% of the OS market, Linux still has good support for the services you need!
Linux is free, open source, lightweight, performant, and customizable. Which means you'll most likely find a Linux distribution that fits your needs and wants.

Even though Linux technically has less support than that of Windows and MacOS, the only way more support and products will be brought to it is if more people use it, which means more companies and projects would need to put Linux into account!

And that's it for today everyone, next article will be about which distro you should choose based on your needs.

And as always, Happy Hacking!