Thoughts From a First-Time Linux User

Sorry for the long read I was just kicking tires and wanted to write this.

I wanted to share my experience with using Linux for the first time. I started using Linux in 2024 when I bought my first gaming laptop. I have loved it, so I want to share some of my pro's and con's about it.

I have an ASUS Rog Zephyrus G16 laptop. It has a Intel Core 9, RTX 4070M, and 16GB RAM.

I played games as a kid, but when I went to university I bought a slug so I was not tempted to play games all day. That laptop carried me until senior year when I got a gaming laptop because I needed better hardware to run Unity and Android Studio.

And hooooooly shit I would have rather walked 40 days and 40 nights in the desert than use Windows 11 anymore.

The ram usage is insane. From my previous experience gaming in my teens I figured 16 gigabytes of ram would be sufficient, but now it's like Palantir is running army drone simulations on it. The worst part is some of the basic software shoves the Windows Store down your throat. I couldn't even install Python without Bill Gates personally coming to my house to ask me if I had the proper security clearances and a Windows account. As a hail mary I installed Ubuntu.

Some pros:

Installing applications took some getting used to. I really am terminal-averse, but after practicing some installations I really found it quite easy. It really is nice to not have to go to multiple websites to download Steam or Discord.

It runs fast and it runs cool. My laptop runs ten degrees cooler than it does on Windows 11. I have no clue why. It runs all of the same applications as Windows but with less usage, less ram, and at lower temperatures.

I can configure anything. If I don't like my UI, or something is broken, I can fix it. I really don't think my switch would have been as smooth if it had not been for having a Claude subscription. I hate to say it, but I really think it helped with the out of box setup. For example, I had this super obscure bug where the brightness controller was not working. My specific machine would not respond to the existing brightness dial, so I had Claude take a look and it wrote a prefix into initramfs to select the correct driver for my HDR display. That would have taken me weeks to solve, especially because there were zero internet resources for it.

Some cons:

I hate to say it, but I really dislike certain Linux communities. A handful of them seem to believe that the harder a software is to use, the more genius it makes them. It drives me up a wall. If it doesn't have to be complicated, then it shouldn't be complicated! When it comes to getting help, the first primitive reflex some Linux users seem to have is to tell me to switch distros, and I totally hate it. If my problem is so bad that I literally have to switch entire operating systems to solve it, then I am better off getting a Mac. People wonder why nobody uses Linux, and I really think this is the crux of it. The people that should be your advocates have left the room. (Except for you, Reader. You're awesome! 😄).

Some things could be easier. Windows allows people to just download an installer and run it with full GUI. Now that I'm intermediately seasoned on Linux, I don't really need installs to be that easy, but if I was someone starting from zero it would be nice to have some modern flow to installations and removals of software like Windows has. Now fortunately, many distros have a Software Center you can use, it's just that those are limited to major softwares.

I can configure anything until it's broken. When I started using Ubuntu, I was setting up a KVM to run some games that were Windows-only compatible, and I bricked the entire OS a couple of times. I really don't think that this should change, but if I were giving advice to someone who just installed Linux I would definitely remind them to have their own thumb drive at all times haha.

As Linux users, what are your thoughts on the OS? Is there anything that you think Linux does better than Windows? Anything you'd