A Normal Guy's Perspective on Linux

During a 1992 demo of the NeXTStep 3.0 operating system, Steve Jobs showed off an app that allowed users to run DOS programs inside an application window. He opened Lotus123 (one of the many early spreadsheet apps that Excel crushed out of existence) and manually typed in the command-line instructions to open a specific file. "Wonderful user interface" he sarcastically remarked. To Jobs, it was self-evident that regular people shouldn't have to use the command line; it had been replaced by the GUI the way that command-line interfaces like DOS had replaced entering commands in machine language.

If any PC users were watching that demo back in 1992, they probably disagreed with him. There's always been a class of people who thinks computers should be inherently difficult to use. In 1992, they used DOS. Today, they use Linux. Well, to be more specific they use Arch Linux. Because these days there are plenty of Linux distributions that are specifically designed to be so user friendly that users never have to open their Terminal app.

And since Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 as of September 2025, people who want to keep using their PCs but don't want Windows 11 are investigating Linux in ever-greater numbers. Not long ago it hit 5% of the desktop market share, about the same as MacOS in the mid-1990s when Apple was in deep trouble but the Mac was the only viable alternative to Windows.

Fedora 42 with the KDE Plasma desktop environment

So, is Linux really a viable Windows alternative? I've been using several distributions and desktop environments over the last few months and here's my take.

Like NeXTStep 35 years ago, Linux is a better, more stable and capable operating system than the market-leading Microsoft product. And depending on what desktop environment you're using, it's infinitely more customizable and beautiful than Windows. But like NeXTStep 35 years ago, Linux also suffers from lack of mainstream application support. There are open-source alternatives to just about any big software package you can name, and some of them, like LibreOffice, are pretty good. (Others--and here I'm thinking of the image editor GIMP--are comparable to their mainstream closed-source alternatives from 10 or 15 years ago.)

Basically, if everything you use your computer for happens in a web browser then Linux is fine. But if your life or workflow is entwined with one of the big commercial ecosystems from Microsoft or Apple, then Linux is the Go-Bot your clueless aunt would buy instead of the Transformer you actually wanted.