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Linux Life

I’ve been entirely in the world of Linux for the past five years. My homelab, desktop, laptop, and even my living room TV all use some flavor of Linux. The only exception is I have a Macbook Air M2 that collects dust for most of the year until I encounter something that requires physical hardware running MacOS or Windows via Bootcamp such as the Comptia or Microsoft online certificate tests.

As for Windows, the only time that I interact with it is work as I support enterprise environments that are heavily dependent on Windows and Windows Server. At least, for end users. Developers and the applications that developers create typically reside on Linux rather than Windows. But, core infrastructure, in most environments rely on AD DS, GPO (Or CSP if you use Intune/Entra),and certificate authority server. All things that are exclusively Windows Server roles.

But, other than work, I don’t touch Windows. Despite being a power user, Windows feels like a constant battle of dealing with issues that you’ll never win. It doesn’t matter how much of an expert you become, you will never control Windows, you just manage it.

Eventually managing that becomes comfortable and you begin to not even process how overly complicated and unstable that it can be. Especially as you install 3rd party programs, accumulate Windows updates, and update drivers, the operating system will slowly become unstable.

But there’s another option, Linux Desktop! mostly….

If you do professional work in Windows that relies on software from the companies Adobe, Autodesk, or another company with aggressive anti-piracy features…. Linux will most likely not work for you. These software either do not work at all or the amount of tinkering required to get it working is not worth it.

One of the biggest issues with moving from Windows to MacOS or Linux is software compatibility. Imagine switching to a completely new Operating System and having to learn multiple different pieces of software. But thankfully, since 2018 or so, this is not an issue for most software on windows with the exception of Adobe or Autodesk products as previously mentioned. You can load up Linux and install Notepad++ with a click if you want.

Seriously…

It’s really that easy. A program can have zero official Linux support and still work unless it’s explicitly designed to block itself from running on Linux. I used Notepad++ as an example because it’s a wellknown Windows app that leans heavily on the Win32 API. That’s also why, even after 20 years, it still hasn’t been ported to other platforms.

This small miracle is made possible thanks to thousands of contributors to the Wine project, and of course, Valve, who built Proton on top of Wine to make Windows games (and software) work on Linux with minimal effort.

So, that old complaint about Linux being a nightmare for installing software? Largely solved. Awesome. But now comes the real question:

What’s the actual benefit of using Linux Desktop?

Because let’s be honest—if you’re just going to use all the same software, why switch at all?

Well… Linux Desktop has a staggering number of benefits.

Benefits of Linux

There are way more benefits than I can list here, but these are some of the biggest ones that apply to most people, regardless of use case.

Ease of Use

Let’s start with ease of use—probably the most common criticism of Linux Desktop, especially from people who last tried it 7+ years ago (or never tried it at all and are just repeating what they’ve heard). But nothing stays the same forever, not even you, and Linux has come a long way. As more non-technical users look for alternatives to Windows, usability has drastically improved to meet them.

App Store

Unlike Windows, but very similar to your phone, Linux Desktop typically includes a built-in app store. macOS does too, but it’s… inconsistent. Sometimes apps are on the App Store, sometimes you have to grab them from a website, and occasionally you’re forced into using the command line with something like Homebrew.

On Linux, everything comes from repositories that your app store directly interfaces with. This means installing software is simple and centralized. Even better, updates for those apps are managed in one place, so everything stays up-to-date (as long as you haven’t disabled automatic updates or ignored them forever).

Driver Management

Another huge win for ease of use: driver support. Thanks to the Linux kernel (and GNU), the system is shockingly good at recognizing and supporting all kinds of hardware out of the box. You can pick up some random $20 Wi-Fi adapter from Walmart, plug it in, and there’s a good chance it’ll just work. No hunting for drivers or clicking through shady installers.

That said, there are exceptions. NVIDIA GPUs are a big one. You sometimes still need to perform manual driver installation, just like on Windows. Another exception I personally had was to manually install DisplayLink drivers for my Lenovo docking station. Whereas on Windows those drivers are automatically retrieved for you.

But this varies heavily by distribution. Distros aimed at gaming usually include Nvidia support out of the box and work flawlessly. Ubuntu, for example, will automatically handle DisplayLink if you allow it to install proprietary drivers during setup.

File-Based Operating System

This benefit might not matter much if you’re a casual user. You’ll probably never leave your home folder (Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc.). But for more advanced users, it’s a big deal.

One reason I switched is that GNU/Linux is file-based, unlike Windows, which relies heavily on APIs like Win32. In Linux, everything is a file—whether it’s in system memory, storage, or related to your drivers, it’s all readable, inspectable, and transparent. There are no black boxes.

This openness means you naturally start to understand how the system works over time. In contrast, troubleshooting in Windows often ends in a frustrating, “I don’t know why, but now it works” moment. On Linux, you can usually find the why.

Freedom

This one’s both a blessing and a curse: Linux is free. And I don’t just mean “free as in price”. I mean free as in freedom. That means there are so many derivatives of Linux Desktop and Linux Software out there that it can honestly feel overwhelming at first.

Distributions

For many newcomers, this is the most confusing, and sometimes intimidating, part of Linux Desktop. There are tons of distributions (“distros”) to choose from, and figuring out where to start can feel like a massive hurdle. But it really doesn’t need to be.

I’ll cover how to pick a distro in a simple way later, but first, let’s demystify the concept.

A “distro” isn’t like choosing between Windows and macOS. Linux Desktop is a collection of thousands of pieces of free and open-source software. A distro is simply a curated set of those components, assembled and configured in a way that the creators think makes sense—for themselves and for you, if you choose to use it. Once it’s installed, you change or do whatever you want.

Think about what you do when you boot up a fresh install of Windows. First, you spend a few hours hunting down your preferred programs, drivers, and tools. Then you go through all the settings: change your desktop colors, your wallpaper, and turn off annoying defaults like Sticky Keys. And if Windows came pre-installed, you probably also have to fight off a bunch of bloatware.

A Linux distro is just someone doing all of that for you in advance.

So, instead of spending hours tweaking a fresh install, you can simply pick a distro made by people who share your values—whether that’s minimalism, gaming, privacy, stability, or bleeding-edge tech—and get straight to work (or play). No ongoing battle with unwanted features or surprise “updates”.

Desktop Environments

One of my favorite things about Linux is the sheer number of desktop environments available.

There are so many to choose from: GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Sway, Cinnamon, and the latest one, COSMIC, just to name a few.

You can pick a desktop environment based on what you’re already familiar with. If you’re coming from macOS, GNOME might feel the most natural. If you’re used to Windows, Cinnamon is basically a one-to-one match in terms of layout and behavior.

Personally? The correct answer is always KDE and KDE software. But hey, it’s great that all these options exist. There’s room for them all.

FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)

This one’s a bit of a mixed bag, but I was genuinely surprised at how far open source software has come in recent years. You’ll sometimes see people online boldly claiming that free software like GIMP is just as good as Adobe’s suite.

It’s not. (Sorry.)

But it’s a lot closer than you might think. I’m not under any illusion that a free, community-driven tool is going to beat out one of the flagship products of a massive corporation—but for most people, it doesn’t need to. If you’re not working in a creative field professionally, you might find Adobe-level tools to be total overkill.

These days, a lot of FOSS is genuinely excellent and easily good enough for daily use. My personal favorite collection lives in KDE’s application gallery. It’s full of clean, user-friendly tools that get out of your way and let you focus on what you’re doing. Which is way more important to me than cutting-edge features I’ll never touch.

Depending on your interests, you might already recognize a few. For example, Krita has become a go-to for digital artists and illustrators. Tools like Kdenlive for video editing or Okular for PDFs show just how capable open source can be.

Point is, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars or subscribe to anything just to get quality software. Most of what you need is already out there—free, open, and just a few clicks away.

Security

Linux also wins in terms of security. So long as you have common sense. There’s absolutely malicious software targeted towards Linux. But the way Linux Desktop (and GNU/Linux itself for that manner) handles software management makes it much safer naturally than something like Windows and MacOS.

Repository-based

This ties into what I mentioned earlier with the app store, but it’s worth calling out on its own. Because your Linux Desktop almost always pulls software and updates from official repositories, the risk of installing something malicious is drastically lower.

These repositories are maintained by the distro’s developers or trusted package maintainers. People who generally know what they’re doing and have no interest in letting sketchy software slip through. That means you’re not out there downloading random installers from third-party websites and hoping for the best.

It’s a nice shift: you offload a lot of that responsibility to your distro’s maintainers so you can just relax and focus on whatever it is you’re actually trying to get done.

Containerization

This is a concept that’s became more common in Linux Desktop in recent years. Package managers like AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap allow you to run software in a sand boxed container.

So, what does that mean? Think about the last time you downloaded a program on Windows or macOS, only to be hit with a message saying you’re missing some dependencies, like Java or .NET, before the program can even run. Now, contrast that with your experience on iOS or Android—where apps just work, no extra installations or dependencies needed.

That’s because mobile apps are sand boxed. When you install them, they bring everything they need along with them, and they stay isolated from the rest of the system. Many modern Linux distributions have adopted this same approach, using repositories to provide software within these self-contained environments.

The benefits go beyond convenience, though. This sand-boxing is also a security improvement. Since the software has everything it needs within its container, it can’t reach outside of it or interact with the rest of your system without explicit permission. This helps with privacy, too—software can’t access your files or perform unwanted actions like auto-starting without your consent.

Flatpak, in particular, takes this further by ensuring that each app only has access to the resources it absolutely needs to function. This gives you better control, peace of mind, and a more secure environment to work in.

Performance

And lastly you have performance benefits. Which really only matters for gaming but if you have old hardware, this can be useful to read as well

Hardware utilization

I believe most people are fully aware of this, but Linux is incredibly fast. The hardware utilization varies from distro to distro, but even the most intensive setups like GNOME or KDE desktops rarely go above 2 GBs. Often times it can breath life back into old hardware when you move it to Linux due to how lightweight it is.

Vulkan

This performance increase is almost entirely only beneficial to gamers, but due to the work of several different projects such as Wine, DXVK, and Proton, you get a pretty substantial performance increase. This is very much a case-by-case basis on if something will work better or worse, but Linux runs Windows programs through it by passing software instructions that are designed for Windows through Linux compatible equivalents. For gaming, this is largely Microsoft’s DirectX Graphics API library. It takes the API calls and converts them to Vulkan, which is known for providing substantial performance increase in games that support it.

Well, with Valve’s Proton, all your games now run through Vulkan! I find this interesting considering that the task of translating all tasks to Vulkan in applications like games where milliseconds of computation are important, but, in my use cases, the benefits of Vulkan performance increase almost always outweighs the performance impact of translating DirectX to Vulkan.

Actually getting into Linux Desktop

So… with all my self proclaimed benefits of Linux. How do you actually get into Linux Desktop? Well, for general use or developers, you can go with just about any of the most popular distributions like Ubuntu or Fedora and do okay. But the steps below are what I recommend for the least amount of pain and ensuring that you’re good to go before making the jump.

Step 1: (Optional) Steam compatibility

For those of you who play games on your PC, it’s very easy to check what works and what doesn’t without needing to switch OSs.

You can use ProtonDB to import your Steam profile (or manually look up your favorite games) and get a break down of all games in your library that work on Linux and the level of compatibility.

Platinum and Gold is the sweet spot. In fact, Platinum rating usually also comes with a performance boost. Gold works out of the box, but, if you really want to, you can probably tweak it to get an even better experience.

Silver works but typically requires you to do something unusual to get it working correctly.

Don’t bother with Bronze or Borked. While I’ve personally gotten games to run even in these ratings, it’s typically complicated enough that you shouldn’t bother.

If you don’t play games on your PC or you don’t see any games in the bottom tier ratings that are a deal breaker, then move on to step 2!

Step 2: Skim through app repositories listed online

Unfortunately, there’s no way to quickly tell a website what software you use. So, you’ll need to do a little digging. Go to any of the links listed below (I recommend Flat pack because it’s the most common repository you’ll have on Linux Desktop) and search up common apps you use.

You’ll most likely find your apps, especially if they’re popular. If you did not find a certain app listed in any of these repositories, that does not mean that Linux can’t run it. It just means that it won’t be as easy as downloading an app on your phone.

As long as the program is not actively hostile towards running on Linux due to anti-piracy measures or some other reason, it’s probably possible and someone has most likely already done it. A quick google search will usually send you right to a solution. Though, on a lot of the extremely beginner friendly distros, you can just double click the Windows executable.

Step 3: Choose a distro

This step can be one of two methods (or both). The first one, the quiz method, assumes you have no idea anything about the different distros that there are. The other is if you have looked into Linux Desktop in the past and know a few of the popular ones, but aren’t sure which one is best for you.

A good piece of advice for Linux Desktop Distributions is to find the one that aligns as closely as possible to what you value. There’s nothing that’s exclusive between each particular distro. So, all that is important is that whatever you pick gets you as close to 100% ready to go as you can out-of-the-box.

Quiz Method

In order to deal with the overwhelming feeling when it comes to choose your first distribution, there is a site called Distro Chooser that takes less than 5 minutes.

Complete the test and it’ll give you a large list of distros to choose from. Which one you choose from the list

Search Method

The other method that can be done separately or after you have a list of options from the above quiz, is to simply search the website of the Linux Distribution.

For example, if we go to the Ubuntu website, we can get a good feel of who this is marketed towards. Words like Enterprise, Engineer, Professional appear multiple times on the front page at the time of writing this. Even if you navigate to the desktop page, the same words still appear.

While Ubuntu is great, unless you’re someone who fits into the roles, use case, or environment mentioned, it might not be the best fit. Especially for casual use as Ubuntu uses a modified version of GNOME that will feel unfamiliar to you regardless of if you are a MacOS or Windows user.

Another example, one that the Distro Choose quiz probably recommended to you if you said you are a windows-centric user, is Linux Mint. Following the same process, the most common words mentioned are friendly, fun, easy. You’ll also notice that the tasks mentioned are daily casual tasks of a PC. Web browsing, multimedia and productivity are things mentioned right on the front. So, if you’re just wanting an OS to casually use without having to deal with any fuss, this will probably work for you. They also mention gaming out of the box, which is great, because gamers typically have to deal with gathering drivers from multiple different sources to get their system setup on Windows. Taking care of that for them means that gamers will never have to worry about that again.

But even if a distro mentions your use case, the goal is to find a distro that’s as close to 100% ready to go out-of-the-box for your use case. So while Linux Mint does mention supporting gaming, if you are a gamer, you could run into something like Bazzite. Which mentions the words Game, Games, and Gaming a whopping 91 times. So while Mint might work for Gaming, if that is what you’re mostly into, Bazzite is going to make everything you can possibly think of for gaming smooth as butter. Stuff like OBS, game controllers, and RGB setup will be a breeze.

Step 4: Install (or try) Linux

Once you’ve picked a Distro, all you need is a USB drive and 15-30 minutes. How-To-Geek has an easy to follow tutorial. It even includes details on issues you might run into, depending on how new your hardware is. Since Secure Boot will attempt to block you from running an Operating System that’s not Windows.

You can also try Linux prior to install via the tutorial mentioned or check out DistroSea to try out all the different distros of Linux right from your browser. It’s especially useful if you lack the technical knowledge to setup a virtual machine or just can’t be bothered to go through the hassle.

But other than that, there really isn’t much else to worry about. You don’t need to learn how to use the command line. You don’t need to build anything from source.