I'm Not a Programmer, but Here’s Why Linux Is My Daily Driver

Wait ... is there a perception (or reality?) that most Linux users are programmers?

I'm an introvert, but all programmers I know use v Windows (and badly in the sense they aren't power users).

I'm also not a programmer but here's why Linux is my daily driver:

I like it.

Linux, on the other hand, can easily boot up on a 10-year-old laptop with just 2GB of RAM, and work fine.

I'm not sure a modern day browser would be just fine with "only" 2GiB, unfortunately.

I feel like Linux would be easier to pick up and use for a non power user starting from scratch like my mother-in-law. It's so much easier to download programs with the package manager and settings are so much easier to navigate

I’m not sure if this is part of the “frequency illusion”, but I’ve noticed a lot more mainstream media talking about Linux as a viable alternative.

Stephen Fry the comedian/tv presenter is also a huge linux advocate. Specifically Ubuntu. He's been using it for decades at this point.

I can't program, but I only use Linux on both my laptop and desktop. All I really do on my computers is browse the web, light photo/video editing, print the occasional document, organize my photos, and play A LOT of video games. I was dual booting windows for a bit there for the games that won't work on Linux, but I soon discovered that those games weren't really worth dealing with the annoyances I had with windows for how often I actually wanted to play them... except CoD, but I have an Xbox so I just play that there. Deleting my windows partition was a great choice.

I don't even know how to write "hello world" in python but I use vanilla Arch XD

The most "programming" I can do is make a basic scratch project and print("Hello World!") in python, but linux is great

My wife has used Linux for over a decade. She primarily uses a web browser, office suite and a money management app.

Those have all been well-covered by Linux for years.

Why is it that people think Linux distros are for programmers or tech people only? This is the reason why we don't get many people on Linux distros.

Always love to see article of non programmer people using Linux or Emacs!

Linux used to be for nerds, programmers and tech people.

Now, it's probably easier to use Linux than Windows.

I'm a video producer and writer, I only use linux.

I dislike the paradigm that there are "techy people/programmers" and "tech illiterates/non programmers". Anyone can develop the skills to properly use unix interfaces given proper training; and I know that's true because the whole world used to run (mostly) unix on the desktop before corporate took over. Unix doesn't need to be windowsified/macosified to get people to move over; people need to unlearn the interfaces corporate has brainwashed them with for generations. There are so many more interesting user interfaces than just what Windows and MacOS provide; graphical or otherwise.

@petsoi Beautifully written perspective; the KDE Activities bit of that was my favorite! Multiple workspaces on a single monitor is probably one of my most advocated features. I'm telling someone about it at least once a week, even if it's just showin em how to use the cut-down one on their windows machine.

God I hate what the modern Internet does to my brain. I had to double check if that laptop is AI generated

I'm not a programmer and I've been dual booting for 25 years.

"Workflow". There it is.

I personally use windows (I play a lot of different games with friends, and setting all of them up in Linux is a lot of work) and I hate it.

However my mum only uses her laptop for browsing and zoom calls, so I installed Linux mint on that and it's been going great, there are soooo much less issues than with modern windows.

Why are so many Linux posts about "Why Linux" these days? We already use Linux. Isn't there news on Linux anymore or what?

2007 was YOTLD for me. Yours, dear Windows-using reader, is 2024, if you want it to be.

https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/FSF30-video/FSF_30_720p.webm

I started using Linux prior starting programming..

But knowing some programming languages will not help much maintaining a linux distribution, tho