Why Linux?

I have been asked the question thousands of times, “Why are you bothering with Linux in the first place”?

Everyone from my brother who wants me to play the newest games with him (i wouldnt play LoL anyway), tech advisors, half the people I show my computer too, they all ask “why bother?”

I personally despise Windows for a myriad of reasons, the stupid fking AI stuff, the lack of any real automation (Task Scheduler sucks and the only way to automate a variety of tasks is with AutoHotKey, which while good, is prone to so much breakage), etc etc.

The primary reason, I think, is just how freeing it is to be able to make something for yourself.

Of course, something like bash scripting is relatively difficult, and people are fair to not want to try it. I personally find it easy, but I am NOT going to be a hypocrite and downplay that anxiety.

Even without making your own scripts, tools, etc, there is so much more taping things together than you can do in Windows. Many hobbyist tools are developed for Linux exclusively due to that freedom (and CMake on windows being so difficult to get going.)

SO many little things I use, like Conky (desktop widget), remind (a nice simple calendar app), and nvim (hey thats what im writing in!) are less available on the platform. The developer of XScreensaver even outright REFUSES to make a Windows port.

Bash scripting, and the commandline, is also insanely useful, even with no coding knowledge. If you wanted to have a certain task run at a time, you just need to add the commandline to your crontab, and boom. In windows, you’d have to deal with Task Scheduler, make your own solution, or pray that the program has its own scheduler.

In short, linux is quite fun to customize, make your own, and I would never leave it.