As was actually rare at the time i was born into a household which had a personal computer. As long as I remember, computers fascinated me. They still do. But that fascination came with an increasingly adverserial relationship with Windows and distrust of Apple. That changed in 2025, my first full year living with Linux as my primary OS and booting no Windows machines. I’m excited about computing again. I am more dedicated to FOSS than ever. Here are some of MY takeaways in listicle format for no reason:
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Working on Linux is VERY good. Office suites are great. I’m partial to
OpenOnly Office. Developing is a joy because everything feels like its made to work with a few commands. This is in strong contrast to whatever Office/“Copilot” is and my experience developing on Windows. -
I work in an IT-ish field and I’ve become a lot more knowledgeable about sysadmin and netadmin type stuff. Not an expert but enough to have more confidence when something does comes up. A lot of this comes from being in terminal more. I understand Windows is going in that direction too, but it won’t push users there. Some is from self-hosting.
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Multimedia is a mixed bag. Krita, Blender, and Godot are incredible tools but if you are a professional who relies on software for your job, some of the FOSS alternatives don’t fit a majority of users. I personally don’t think Darktable is reliable enough to replace Lightroom because I’ve had too many crashes on too many machines with it. Despite that, I’m still looking to get rid of Adobe.
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gaming on Linux is “good” to “great”, but not perfect. In some cases, Proton beats Windows, yes. In most cases, games just work on Steam. I think for the amount of tinkering I put in, I could run a barebones W11for gaming and get better overall performance than my CachyOS. I don’t because I can live with less than perfect and kernel level anti cheat can pound sand.
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I dodge an unknown but substantial amount of anguish from not having ads, ai, and surprise updates forced on me. I am sensitive to ads and am upset every time I see one. I’m always shocked to see them on other people’s computers. My work computers (Mac) have forced updates and forced restarts which are jarring. My computers feel like my own.
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I find and (hopefully) fix all kinds of problems. My discord muted itself randomly because of a Wayland bug a few times. There’s an open issue about dxvk getting framerate drops after about an hour of gameplay. That one sucks. One of my door sensors stopped working with homeassistant despite it being prefect in mqtt2z; it’s a confirmed bug as of 3 weeks ago. This stuff is annoying but I take it as the cost of not trusting black boxes with my hardware.
To wrap it up, I think Linux is better than ever, more accessible than ever, and probably better than Windows for most people. To me, I would recommend it to my mom who only uses basic office tools and a browser and have recommended it to my tech savvy friend who got tired of windows update ruining his super custo1. m W11 setup… but would obviously caution my DOTA-addicted DM or my dad who runs part of his business on Access ( cringe, I know). It feels human, empowering and is good because of the way it is today not just because of its ideals.
I hope this made you reflect on your Linux experience and maybe on how you can contribute to or help the community.
Edit: OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice Edit2: WHY did I post on memes?!? Someone take away my late night/early morning posting privileges
Congrats.
Yes, desktop Linux is generally very usable for the majority of users these days. This was already claimed to be the case in the late 1990s, which is probably why many non-IT-professionals had a bad first expression with desktop Linux. But this has changed since (very roughly) about 10 years ago or so, and for gaming in particular it has changed since very roughly about 5 years ago. This is also the reason why desktop Linux was at like ~1% market share all the time but has suddenly grown to ~6% within the last couple of years already. And with higher popularity comes more developer interest and support. Furthermore, Windows is becoming worse over time because Nadella is more interested in milking his user base instead of nurturing it, and many want more independence from US-based proprietary software due to the current political situation, and so it’s very likely that desktop Linux is going to keep snowballing upwards. The trend is looking very positively for desktop Linux, it will probably reach MacOS market share within the next couple of years. For gaming specifically, it’s already #2.
The most important thing about the Linux ecosystem is of course that most of it (at least the core components) is free/open source software and this is necessary to have digital sovereignty.
Other users interested in making the switch can make their transition easier by doing it in 2 steps: first, replace all important applications you’re using on Windows with Linux-compatible applications (for example, no MS Office, no Adobe), then adjust to the changed workflows while still using Windows. Only after that, install Linux as the primary OS (or set up dual-boot, but it has disadvantages. Best is to physically disconnect your disk containing Windows (so you still have a backup in case you desperately need it) and use another disk for Linux). That way, the culture shock is a bit mitigated because you’ll have at least some familiarity (the applications you need) inside an otherwise unfamiliar new OS environment. That way, the change will feel less overwhelming.
If there are still dependencies which can’t be worked around, there’s also the emergency solution of using either wine or a Windows VM on Linux. In the latter case it’s probably best these days to use winboat, which allows running Windows-only applications which then run inside a specific Windows VM or container on Linux. Or you just use a full regular Windows VM on Linux, with a shared folder between both systems for exchanging files.