Why I Migrated from Windows to Linux

Written on 10/10/2020

I have been a Windows user for a very long time, from childhood to my third year of university. As I was learning more about computers and programming for the first time during university, I became increasingly curious about Linux and decided to explore it. A few moments later, I have completely switched to being a Linux user. Here are some reasons why.

Windows has bloat

Bloatware is unused software, apps, or programs that unecessarily slows down your computer's performance. Windows has a lot of them, and some of the time you can't even remove it! When you go on Remove a Program on a fresh install of Windows, how many programs do you actually use? I know I definitely don't need the Xbox app companion. Do you use Microsoft Edge? According to the Web Browser Market Share, only 2.61% of users use Microsoft Edge. Most people would use Google Chrome or Firefox. However, you can't uninstall Microsoft Edge! It just remains there ... on your computer, and taking up space.

So how does Linux compare? Linux users have complete freedom in what apps they want to install or uninstall. They can keep the minimum selection of apps they would need for their day-to-day basis. This optimises speed, memory and storage for your computer.

Windows is a controlled environment

Windows is owned by Microsoft, so they have the power to do what they want with the operating system. At any time, they could release an update that adds a new program into your computer without you knowing. One example is the unremovable ads that show up on the Windows Menu.

Meanwhile, Linux is open-source. You have control over the environment, and can do whatever you want with it.

Windows is not free

If you didn't purchase a computer with Windows pre-installed, you will need to purchase Windows OS to use it. However, you can also download the free version provided by Microsoft with limited functionalities.

On the other hand, Linux distros are all free!

Windows is not programming-friendly

This may not apply to the majority of the users, but anybody who has done a bit of programming may have had their set of struggles. I definitely did. The biggest pet-peeve was not having access to a terminal with the basic UNIX commands. If you tried to use their recommended Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), you would quickly realise that it is just a worse version than what you can get from a Mac OS or Linux OS. It also makes setting up the development environment for projects a pain because sometimes they have to be configured under WSL and not the main Windows environment. I remember when I was working with TensorFlow in WSL, I didn't have access to my GPU, and had to do an annoying workaround.

So...

What do you want to get from this short article? I just wanted to spread a bit of awareness that Linux is an option that many users neglect because they most likely started using Windows and became overly-familiar with it - because that was me as well. Windows still has its benefits, such as gaming, being extremely easy to use, and access to commonly-used applications such as Word and Excel.