I use Linux, but am not a computer person, why? What's my experience?
In my first proper article I will try to explain why I've switched to Linux, and give my thoughts, experiences and review after 6 months of using it.
Hello, In my first substack article, I want to talk about my experience so far with using Linux, what distro I’ve chosen, and why I even chose to run Linux as my main operating system when I’m not even a computer nerd or even that tech savvy in computing.
By now, I have been using Kubuntu daily for both personal use and school use. I have a Surface Laptop 3, i5, 256 GB, 8GB RAM. (I know the irony of using a Microsoft laptop, but not using the Microsoft OS) Anyway, so far, it’s been great, most of the apps I use are available on Linux and I’ve even found & discovered new entirely free apps! (Krita, Okular, and Kdenlive are the best free programs I’ve come across!) My Wacom tablet literally works out of the box, something that can’t be said for Windows, my printer just works with no additional setup, and finally, finding apps is super easy, you just open the app store (Discover, on KDE) and everything you want is there. (Something that can’t be said for the Microsoft Store). Also, the boot speed and the speed to open apps are so snappy, for example, it takes like 2 minutes for Windows to start up compared to less than 30 seconds with Linux.
Now, moving on to some of the issues I’ve had, my touch screen just does not work out of the box. I know the linux-surface project exists, but honestly, I’m fine without a touchscreen. I had some trouble setting up Mozc as I study Japanese, but once it’s working it’s been great. And finally, the big one, Microsoft Office & Adobe Acrobat DC are not on linux. Now, I’m fine without Adobe Acrobat because Okular and LibreOffice Draw do enough of what I want out of a PDF program. As for school, we rely on the Microsoft Office Suite, but, since I saved all my work to OneDrive, and I use Teams, Outlook, and OneNote on the web (mainly on Edge signed in to my organisation account), moving across hasn’t been that bad of an issue. Edge is available on Linux, so the my cloud-synced Edge Workspaces work and if I need to write a document or make a presentation LibreOffice is fine for what I need to do. So in conclusion, my experience has been great and the things that I thought would be a hindrance really haven’t mattered.
So, as said, I’m running Kubuntu, why did I choose Kubuntu? When researching and watching YouTube, I came across this video by The Linux Experiment basically saying beginners should choose their preferred desktop, then the distro. This helped me look at all the Desktop Environment’s out there and choose KDE. I chose KDE because I wanted something modern, windows like and customisable and KDE just fit that spot. Personally, Ubuntu & Unity’s desktops looked ugly, and with gnome in general I just couldn’t get behind the multiple workspaces thing initially, not having a minimise button, and not being able to right click anywhere and being able to customise or change one small detail that bothers me, And, as for the distro I chose Ubuntu as I’ve heard of Ubuntu all the time when hearing about Linux, and naturally I thought Ubuntu has the most support and community out there. I also tried out Debian KDE for a few weeks when Debian 12 came out just to see what the craze was about.
Finally, I’m not a ‘tech-savvy’ person and knew nothing about the command line before I came to Linux, so why did I install it? Well, really, I wanted my boot time and app opening times and stability of my OS to increase, I was getting tired of sitting around for a minute or two just to wait for my computer to warm up. Edge even opens faster than File Explorer. And I also just wanted to be able to customise my desktop just a bit further and try to use virtual desktops that aren’t buggy. I didn’t really move to Linux because of privacy reasons, but just having a little less data collected about me while using an operating system is nice to have.
So, in conclusion, that’s why I’ve switched to Linux, and I think finally, I’m ready to fully uninstall my Windows Partition and use Kubuntu as my main operating system from now on.