10 Reasons to Use Linux Instead of Windows
GNU/Linux, or as most people call it Linux, is an operating system that was born in 1991. This post lists 10 reasons why you should use Linux instead of Windows. If you don’t like the direction Window is going, you should definitely give Linux a try.
#10 Linux is Free
If you do a clean install, then Windows 10 Home edition costs $119.99. Windows 10 Pro version will be around $199. And why upgrading from Home to Pro costs $99?
In comparison, Linux is totally free of charge. It’s free to download, free to install, and free to use. You can install Linux on as many computers as you want. You don’t need to pay a single dime and never have to worry about license or copyright, that kind of stuff. You are actually encouraged to share your OS with other people.
Not only the OS is free, but most applications written for Linux are also free. For instance,
- You can use the free LibreOffice to edit Word documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files.
- You can use GIMP, which is also free, to edit photos instead of using expensive Photoshop.
- For video editing, you can use the free and feature-rich Kdenlive video editor.
What cost a fortune on Windows is free on Linux.
#9 Linux is Secure
Most Linux users don’t install anti-virus software since the OS is very secure out of the box. All that trojan horse virus, worm, etc that targets Windows system have no effect on Linux. Some Linux users do install anti-virus on Linux, but that’s mostly used for checking viruses on Windows partitions or USB drives.
Read the following article to learn more about Linux security.
#8 Linux is Lightweight and Fast
The minimum hardware requirements of Windows 10 are as follows:
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
- 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
- 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
Now let’s look at the hardware requirements of Ubuntu, which is probably the most heavyweight Linux distribution out there.
- 700 MHz processor
- 512 MiB RAM (system memory)
- 5 GB of hard-drive space
You can see that Ubuntu can run on low-end hardware, not to mention that there are so many Linux distributions that are more lightweight than Ubuntu. Don’t throw away your old computer, bring it to life with Linux! You can run your computer with Linux for 5 years and it will be just as fast as when it was first installed.
#7 Linux is Efficient and Robust
Many people say you get what you pay for. But that’s clearly not true when it comes to Linux.
99% of the time, Linux doesn’t require you to reboot the computer to update software, edit system settings, or something like that. In comparison, every time you install updates on Windows or edit the registry table, or install device drivers, you have to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.
The Linux command line is a very efficient tool once you get the hang of it and it’s not that hard to learn the command line. You can do things very quickly in the terminal window. For example, enter lscpu command will output much useful information about your CPU. The sudo apt upgrade command will update all software for you. You can install a bunch of software with just a simple line of command.
Linux is a robust operating system. It can run continuously for many years and doesn’t have a problem. You can install Linux on a hard drive of your computer, then move the hard drive to another computer and boot it without a problem. Linux is a true multi-user operating system which means you can have many users logged into Linux and use it at the same time.
#6 Linux is Open Source
This is the beauty of Linux. Open source means everyone can download the source code, have a look at it or modify it. This also means you have full control of Linux and there’s no backdoor or spying software on Linux. There are no mandatory updates in Linux. You update your software when you want to. When you are using a Microsoft product, you are not in control of your computer and you don’t how much spyware is in your OS.
Open-source gives the control back to the user. If you don’t like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Microsoft email services, you can build your own email server, so you will have full control of your emails.
#5 Linux is Very Customizable
You can customize Linux to do whatever you want to do and let it behave however you want it to behave. If you don’t like a desktop environment, you can always install another one. If you don’t like a Linux distribution, you can always install another distribution. There are more than 300 actively maintained Linux distributions to choose from such as Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Elementary OS.
It’s fun and cool to tweak it to your liking. You can even legally build your own version of Linux and distribute it to the world.
#4 Linux is Clean and Clutter-free
On Linux, you don’t see advertisements pop out. software on Linux isn’t adware. When you install software on Linux, you don’t have to worry about installing third-party toolbar, plugin, or that kind of stuff. Linux desktop environments such as Unity, Gnome, and KDE are designed in a clean way.
#3 Linux is Easier than You Think
You may think that Window is easy to use and Linux is hard to use. But that’s a misconception. Because Windows is widely used and people are already familiar with it, so they think it’s easy and they don’t want to change the status quo by trying a new operating system.
Studies have found that many people who have never used a computer before think Ubuntu, which is a user-friendly Linux distribution, is easier than Windows after they are provided with a Ubuntu computer and a Windows computer.
#2 Linux Enables Booting from USB Even if BIOS doesn’t support it.
Some old computer may only be booted from CD drive or hard drive but doesn’t support booting from USB. In this situation, you can download plop Linux, burn it into a CD, then boot your computer from the CD, and finally plop Linux can enable your computer to boot from USB drive.
#1 The Linux Community Provides Plenty of Support
Linux is a community-driven project. When you don’t understand something, you can always go online, ask questions in forums, or search your question in Google. Most of the time, your question has already been asked by other people and got an answer.
Missing Software on Windows?
If you can’t live without a piece of software on Windows, you can run a Windows virtual machine on Linux with Virtualbox, or set up dual booting.
Try Linux today! As always, if you found this post useful, subscribe to our free newsletter or follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page.
Good post and a great set of reasons that have been highlighted.
Hi, thanks for visiting.
One reason to use Windows instead of Linux:
You can still play games. I can’t even play Mario Kart on Ubuntu. I’m forced to concentrate on another hobby because I simply can’t play decent games on Linux.
You can play games on Linux with Steam.
Every year or so for 5 years I have tried Linux Mint.
This year is the first when I have finally been able to do 99% of my work within Linux.
But it was a headache. I had to:
– futz getting my printer to work. drivers for linux are not as well supported.
– wifi did not work out of the box.
– nor bluetooth
– Linux has begun to crash around once a week and I don’t know why.
– I have had to get help for around a dozen issues and I still have compromises – like I cannot use trash can on non OS partitions, automounting partitions is a pain as the auto mount feature just doesn’t work reliably, and fstab should not have to be messed with by users, the backup program is essentially useless for scheduling data backups, installing software is still a convoluted mystery for noobs, login keyring will not disappear no matter how many times I disable it with seahorse, Nemo file manager occasionally doesn’t show folders on google drive.
The system still has serious barriers to even savvy windows users. Linux geeks unfortunately cannot comprehend that 99% of people doing real work on computers don’t want to mess with the command line.
However, Mint is a lot better in 2017 than in 2012….and the only reason I am rebooting into windows (dual boot system) is to mess with complex xls or do photo editing in software I am more familiar with than GIMP.
I finally need to say, I am through with Windows. I am absolutely disgusted with their corporate ethics and product dev’t. The main reason I have persisted with Linux is because I never want to buy another Microsoft product again in my life. I am fast developing similar disdain for Google, however their products on the whole are much better. IT companies just seem to be populated by narcissistic self absorbed lying greedy asswipes.
I agree 100% to all you said here.
-I hate Microsoft Windows AFTER win10, XP was the peak of Windows, win7 was easy to use even if it started to decline heavy in some parts. Win10 is a pain in the ass, and so are most of the newer windows software.
-Apple OS is ok, BUT they just want your integrity AND money, so it’s a big NONO, so are the iPhones.
-Problem with Linux IS: Nothing works without tweaking PERIOD!
It’s simply not made for people that don’t want to mess with the computer. Everything looks and feels great, but simple tasks are just to geeky to accomplish for “normal” users out there.
Or maybe I just don’t like computers? Huh! -With computers we can solve problems that we didn’t had before….
it sounds very good, as I don’t need to use the computer as much as I use too, having to retire due to ill health. I don’t want to increase to windows 10 which means I have to buy a new computer as I don’t have the capability, now I can if I change to this system.
So I will give it a go and see how I get on.
Thanks
One of my main gripes is Windows10 has a mind of its own – even if I schedule it to perform updates at a certain time sometimes it doesn’t, it does it when it likes, and on top of that Windows restarts whenever it likes after updates. You can’t keep files that you just started working on that’s unsaved, it will take everything with it. Windows is malicious.