Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

Say it like it is, you don't know the tools, not that they are missing.

> grep and sed are missing on Windows,

cinst grep sed dngrep ...

> "replace this line in all files in this folder"

Everything file search engine is beyond anything LInux has to offer.

> I use SSH, which isn't on Windows,

cist mls-software-openssh

Besides, Open SSH is now OTB in Windows

> use KDE Plasma 5 and find it amazing, having been a fan of KDE since 3.5. I like KDE Plasma overall much more than Windows Explorer,

All GUIs everywhere are equal SHIT. Its just your preference.

The same ads in search that were present on Ubuntu way before Windows ...

I have been using both Linux and Windows for the past 25 years having both Linux and Windows machine as my primary machine for varying lengths of time and for various reasons.

I currently use Linux as my primary machine on both my PC where I do remote work and on my Thinkpad which is serving as backup and mobile workspace.

The Windows is on a company-issued laptop that I do not use at all and in a VM which is dedicated solely for carrying the invasive stuff that monitors my every keystroke and executed application that my company thinks is good idea to have on my private machine to protect company interests. Hopefully, they never learn to figure out they are running this in a VM.

When I use Windows as my desktop I feel powerless. If something breaks, there is no recourse other than trying stuff I read on the Internet. On Linux I can automate pretty much everything and pretty much everything is open to me and the only thing that limits me is how much time I am comfortable spending on solving my issue.

I hate that Windows does things on my own machine that I am not able to stop or audit. Should I resign myself to giving away my privacy to another company? I think not.

I hate that I am absolutely unable to create an environment on Windows that will still work, without maintenance, in months or years. I do electronics design and embedded development in my free time and I just can't be spending time figuring out what changed in my environment every time I go back to modify code for some gadget I did a year or five ago. On Linux, I just create a VM for every single project, set up my toolchain, turn off any automated updates and then back up the entire image to unfreeze it when I need it.

I find it funny, that Linux had an app store with huge selection of free, powerful application, ready for immediate installation and use, and Microsoft required decades and Apple and Google to finally figure it out and still fail to make it usable. I like the fact that I can bring in seconds a piece of software to be immediately available to me without having to find the installation package, worry about custody of the source of the package or that it might be doing some malicious thing to my PC, worry about how it will pollute and slow down my machine even if it is installed, and so on. I do work on my PC, maintaining it is not my full time job.

I still work on Debian Unstable that I installed ca 2001 which I successfully maintained over the years. The first PC that it worked on had Duron 600 on it (does anybody still remember it?) and 20GB of disk space which was quite a lot at the time. If everything goes well it will see another AMD CPU next year when it becames available next year. I just can't imagine doing the same with Windows. All Windows desktops I had required full re-install after couple of years of use.

It was true in the past that you had to use Windows to use any serious tools. That is no longer the case, most of the time. You can even play games (Steam works though not all games are designed to play on Linux). The tools that don't work on Linux are no longer enough to force me to misery of working on a Windows desktop as my primary one.

Granted, Linux is not fun either. The Gnome is buggy as hell, has trouble with 2 4k monitors. The Nvidia drivers aren't nearly as stable as on Windows and Chrome experiences issues every time I wake up my machine from suspend. The machine sometimes locks and I did not have time to debug it and I just need to press reboot button. Still, beats Windows.

Personally I'm not a fan of gnome, but If you have a MacOs background Its understandable to prefer it on top of other Desktop-Environments. Do not forget to give a try to other D.E's thou, its always good to check new stuff, I always find delightful stuff effortlessly (: For a long time I tried to make my Linux desktop look similar to my old windows machine, until recently I understood that I was compromising my productivity, so I started to look for new looks for my desktop, its like shopping at a free mall haha, I love it.

Yep, I tried that one (along with pretty much every editor). None of them really meshed well with what I was used to doing with Camtasia (on Windows) or Resolve. They were all too limiting[0] in one way or another for the types of videos I create.

Resolve would be perfect if it worked with my set up. I hope one day it gets there.

[0]: I don't make cinema style movies. Mainly 1080p screencasts. So things like nice looking titles, simple animations, zooming / panning, adding overlays of various shapes and sizes, blurs, etc. are really important to me. Nothing I tried on Linux really comes close to how easy it is to do that stuff with Camtasia and make it look nice. Resolve is pretty close tho, after you put in enough time to build up your own custom libraries.