Linux has surpassed 5% desktop market share in the US (5.03% in June 2025), per StatCounter, driven by privacy concerns, rising costs of Windows/macOS, and user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. Community celebrates amid gaming and enterprise boosts, though challenges like software gaps persist; analysts eye 7% by 2027.
I’m just bitching, but I had to put windows on one of my machines for the first time in just over 10 years (since I was a kid) and I absolutely fucking hate it. slow ass, bloated, clunky ass OS. garbage software.
Linux Mint runs so fast on my laptop that was struggling to boot into Windows 11. Also, no driver issues yet! Whew.
Use the IoT LTSC version and install it using Rufus. Zero bloat, very fast, no clunk.
Just a tip: If you installed Pro or better you can use Group Policies (gpedit.msc) to strip the OS bloat down slightly more than the Home versions. Education and Enterprise also have the telemetry spyware completely removed. But they have a few extra things you’ll probably never use and you’ll want to disable (like their terrible Remote Desktop stuff, Work Folders, etc.)
(I dual boot for gaming. So I know the pain.)
as soon as I’m done taking the cysa+ exam I’m going back to arch. I can not stand this. but thank you for the info! I’ll dig around and see what more I can do to make it a bit more bearable.
Oh, in that case, I assume they have you running Pro or Enterprise? If so, ignore what I said about disabling the Remote Desktop and Work Folder stuff. Work Folders especially though, they’re a complete pain (or were) and used pretty frequently. So you’ll probably be working with them a bit.