Why Linux?
It’s a simple question, but doesn’t have a simple answer.
Most of my opinions on Linux over Windows are from experience for years, so it will probably be biased.
1. Privacy
Trying to get the maximum privacy on a Windows box is hard, especially patches/tools that aren’t power user-friendly.
Linux, however, has privacy in your own hands/paws, whatever you choose has a mixed capability of privacy, most importantly,
Linux and (almost all of) its software are open-source, meaning anyone has the ability to read its code & what it does, that also means people can contribute to its code or make their own versions of it to increase features or more importantly, privacy.
Windows completely lacks this as it is a proprietary operating system, with mostly proprietary software (since it’s easier to do so)
2. Performance
Mainly, the latest version of Windows (Right now, 11) is a very bloated piece of shit, it “requires” high-end software and even then, computers that meet the requirement suffer from the OS’ use of resources, I also believe Windows services (like Update) are a waste of time.
Linux offers more of a choice of your balance of a lightweight system, or a heavy (but beautiful) look. With many choices of a desktop environment like:
- XFCE (Popular and lightweight)
- GNOME (Kind of in the middle)
- KDE (Great looks, lots of GPU power)
3. Virtualization
We all know virtualization is quite an important part of testing application development, we all know of VirtualBox & VMWare workstation, in my opinion they’re all quite shit. See https://swee.codes/archive/5.html
KVM is a great hypervisor for Linux, there’s no denying. It’s fast, it’s free, and it fully supports Linux. My recommended alternative for KVM on Windows would be Hyper-V.
What distro do I use?
Last year, I’ve been using Debian Testing for more up-to-date packages. In 2025 I decided to try Alpine Linux.
Why Alpine?
Alpine Linux is a linux distribution that uses an alternative suite of programs/services than other distributions like Debian or the 10 billion Red Hat Linuxes (no offense lol).
- Regular Linux distros use systemd, Alpine (and Gentoo) uses OpenRC
- Regularly, Linux distros today have the GNU Coreutils, Alpine (and other minimal distros) still use BusyBox.
- Almost all Linux distros use GNU C Library (glibc) while Alpine uses the more recent musl libc, which can ruin compatibility though.
But Alpine is for containers!
Shut up, Alpine is just as good as a desktop distribution. It has the latest KDE 6 and its suite. While Debian Testing does have KDE 6, it still has components that are stuck in version 5. Plus, I find Alpine more snappier than Debian-based distributions with the same DE. I also love the OpenRC init system, it makes my boot speed way faster.
Conclusion
I love using Linux on all of my machines, it’s fast, private, and easy to develop with. I really love Alpine for its more lightweight approach in a system suite. despite Alpine being popular for containers (especially docker), it’s just as good for desktops.
Though I am aware Linux is more friendly for geeks, but IMO, Linux seems to be evolving a lot when it comes to user friendliness, and will probably be ready for power users in the coming years.