this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
24 points (87.5% liked)

Linux

65630 readers
409 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
 

and what if any do you miss from windows?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] suzucappo@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 hours ago

Pros:

  • Easy to manage firewall rules (UFW)
  • Different distros based on need
  • in conjunction with the above, it's also easier to customize the os (I would say this is depending on the distro) to do exactly what you need and nothing else.
  • Terminal usage to handle certain tasks can be much quicker than using the GUI under some circumstances.
  • Choice of DE (KDE, Gnome, etc)
  • Way less resource intensive with a stock build than a generic windows build (sans maybe an enterprise build but even then those still use more resources on average than most distros).

Cons:

  • Distro hopping for new users can be confusing due to different package managers and just overall differences in them. Pick one and stick with it for a little bit to get a feel for how Linux works (unless it is just absolutely not your thing) so you aren't getting confused/overwhelmed by how different they can be.
  • Certain tasks can be a bit more complicated for new users (mounting drives on boot, file shares over network)
  • Solidworks. I know there is freecad and blender and openscad and onshape, and they do work. But swapping over is painful. Onshape is super similar and browser based but you're also limited by their terms for free use.