There’s a quiet rebellion going on in my study. After years of living with Microsoft Windows — tolerating its telemetry and the occasional blue screen of death — I’ve moved to Linux. Entirely. Even for gaming. And I doubt I’ll go back.
For the uninitiated, Linux is a family of open-source operating systems that power everything from supercomputers to Android smartphones. It’s been the choice of many geeks for years (decades, even).
My early adventures in Linux-land involved Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu, more than 20 years ago. Shuttleworth’s company, Canonical, is still actively developing Ubuntu, though other “distributions” of Linux today have become more popular.
In those days, Linux was a bit of a chore. Linux today is refined, fast and surprisingly forgiving to new users. But the reason I came back to it wasn’t convenience; it was the control it gave me.
Windows and macOS are pre-packaged worlds: you get what Microsoft or Apple decides you should have — their interface, their defaults, their app stores. Linux, by contrast, hands you the keys and says: ‘Build whatever the heck you want.’ That’s appealing.
I run Arch Linux, a famously bare-bones distribution that gives you a skeleton and trusts you to add the muscle yourself. It’s the opposite of Windows. You assemble your system bit by bit — the display server, the desktop environment, the drivers, the packages — until it reflects exactly how you work. It’s also a great teacher about how your computer really works.
At home — on personal machines, in studios, among developers and geeks — the calculus is rapidly changing
Arch’s rolling-release model means I always have the latest software without reinstalling anything. And it’s not dialling back to Microsoft all the time, telling the mothership what I’m doing with my computer.
If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d be playing Microsoft Flight Simulator on Linux (a complex simulation game built for Windows), I’d have laughed. Flight Simulator is a monument to Microsoft’s own ecosystem, an advertisement for Azure’s cloud and Bing’s maps. And yet, here I am, taking off from Lanseria in my trusty Cessna 172 Skyhawk on a fully open-source system — smooth, high frame rates, no hacks required.
That’s a revolution few saw coming: Linux gaming now just works. I’ll exclude the technical details for this column, but thanks largely to Steam developer Valve’s Proton “compatibility layer”, thousands of Windows games run seamlessly on Linux (only games with advanced anti-cheat software still run into problems).
Then there’s Hyprland, a window manager that feels like a glimpse into the future. It’s not ready for prime time (yet) and has a steep learning curve, but Hyprland rethinks the concept of a computer desktop. You script your workflow, you set the rules, and the system bends around you. It’s the sort of innovation you don’t — and won’t — see from Microsoft and Apple.
There are plenty of other window managers, including ones like KDE Plasma, that closely follow the design principles behind a more traditional PC operating system such as Windows or macOS, making them easier to learn.
Windows isn’t going anywhere, of course. Corporate IT departments will keep renewing their Microsoft contracts, bundling Windows with Office software and OneDrive/Azure credits. It’s safe, predictable and backed by a support number.
This is the same logic that kept IBM mainframes humming long after the PC revolution began: no-one gets fired today for buying Microsoft. The enterprise ecosystem is enormous, and most workers don’t get to choose their tools anyway. Microsoft is well entrenched there and will remain so.
But at home — on personal machines, in studios, among developers and geeks — the calculus is rapidly changing. Every forced Windows 11 update, every bit of bloatware and telemetry, every shift towards subscriptions and advertising pushes more users to look elsewhere.
Something subtler is happening too. Younger technologists grew up on open-source tools — Python, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, Android. They’re used to communities building things together in public. This is an ethos that maps naturally onto Linux and open-source software.
Meanwhile, the old walls between “power users” and casual users are crumbling. The average teenager who customises their Android phone launcher, themes their Discord client and mods their games is already halfway to the Linux mindset. They want to own their tech, not rent it from a mega-corporation like Microsoft.
Linux won’t overtake Windows on the desktop overnight. But every year, more users cross over — developers, gamers, creators, the simply curious. The tipping point may arrive quietly: not when the old system collapses, but when the new one becomes easier and better to live with.
Honestly, it feels like Linux is already there.
McLeod is editor of TechCentral
