Why I Use Linux
A lot of people seem to be writing these kinds of posts so why not little ol' me? Although the reason I use Linux is not all that exciting or noble!
I first used Linux (Ubuntu specifically) around 2010 / 2011 when I dual booted it on my Windows laptop just to see what it was all about. Seemed cool but the first time I installed it the WiFi didn't work. No big deal, I just continued to use Windows for another six months. After installing the next release of Ubuntu (11.10 maybe?) everything including the WiFi worked so I was off to the (FLOSS) races!
I used Ubuntu releases and enjoyed freshly installing each release every six months until last year when I switched to (the still Ubuntu based) Pop!_OS. This was because of Pop's great support for Nvidia graphics cards. Currently I am running Pop!_OS 20.04 on a Dell XPS 15 9560 laptop and everything works great!
The main reason I still use Linux is that everything works for me and inertia from using it for so long. I'd prefer not to go back to a proprietary OS as well, but if forced to it wouldn't be the end of the world if I'm honest. As far as issues go the only one I can think of is the need to install some extra packages to get videos on the web to work whenever I do a fresh install. There isn't really anything I miss out on due to not using Windows as I don't play games on my laptop. I would kind of like to use the MusicBee program or at least try it out again because I really used to like it on Windows. However Rhythmbox works great as well. With the exception of flaky syncing with Android.
Programs that I use:
- (Doom) Emacs – programming
- Rhythmbox – music library
- LibreOffice Writer – sometimes used for writing
- KeePassXC – password management
- Firefox – web browsing (but would like to switch to Nyxt Browser as that improves)
- Deja Dup – backups
- Glimpse – image editing
- Calibre – converting e-books
- HandBrake – video conversion
So all in all I enjoy my time using Linux. Although I usually use the defaults these days and don't think the effort of installing a tiling window manager and customizing everything would be worth it for me. But hey, the defaults these days are pretty good!
This is my day 11 post for #100daystooffload
This work by Thomas Lloyd is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
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