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Honestly the fear of using Linux is mostly due to people not trying it and people being used to Windows already. If you look at it objectively, and look at the built-in parts and not the obvious availability discrepancy of third party software on the more popularly used platform, I think Linux might come out ahead. The prime example I can think of is printers. In Windows, my dad now learned how to reinstall a printer since, in our experience, most computers need to reinstall the printer every single time you want to print because it'll show the printer as offline but find it when it searches for it. In Linux this just works, I add it once and it just talks to its IP address, no problem. My girlfriend (Windows) will ask me (Linux) to print something via USB because it just works. Printer support in Linux has turned around somewhere about 5-10 years ago. Things like tabs in explorer or multiple workspaces is something we've had for decades but Windows is just getting around to it. Installing software from a "market" or "store"? That has been a thing for decades as well, it's called repositories and the packages are customized to work with other software in your OS version. Works great, but in Windows developers have to repack all the dependencies they need for every piece of software. Not to mention that, after installing 50 programs, you also have 50 updaters pinging and downloading away when you're in the train on a mobile connection. (Nowadays metered connections mitigate that mostly, and people also have larger data plans, but the software all has to individually build support for it.) Everything is third-party and you have to hope that you clicked the real download link and not an ad. The unified software and update management is something I found hard to believe (as a former Windows user) before seeing it in action. How could a niche volunteer project be doing better than this OS that I just paid 130 euros for? (As student, that was a lot of money. I'm still not sure why I didn't just pirate the crap, in the years ahead I paid for enough Windows licenses that came forced down your throat with laptop hardware, not to mention the Microsoft tax on Android devices...) Windows has been trying to catch up but with every step forwards, you also hear of things like "ads in your OS" which just sounds entirely backwards. |
You still don't get ads in WordPad so there's still way to go.