As was actually rare at the time i was born into a household which had a personal computer. As long as I remember, computers fascinated me. They still do. But that fascination came with an increasingly adverserial relationship with Windows and distrust of Apple. That changed in 2025, my first full year living with Linux as my primary OS and booting no Windows machines. I'm excited about computing again. I am more dedicated to FOSS than ever. Here are some of MY takeaways in listicle format for no reason:
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Working on Linux is VERY good. Office suites are great. I'm partial to ~~Open~~Only Office. Developing is a joy because everything feels like its made to work with a few commands. This is in strong contrast to whatever Office/"Copilot" is and my experience developing on Windows.
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I work in an IT-ish field and I've become a lot more knowledgeable about sysadmin and netadmin type stuff. Not an expert but enough to have more confidence when something does comes up. A lot of this comes from being in terminal more. I understand Windows is going in that direction too, but it won't push users there. Some is from self-hosting.
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Multimedia is a mixed bag. Krita, Blender, and Godot are incredible tools but if you are a professional who relies on software for your job, some of the FOSS alternatives don't fit a majority of users. I personally don't think Darktable is reliable enough to replace Lightroom because I've had too many crashes on too many machines with it. Despite that, I'm still looking to get rid of Adobe.
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gaming on Linux is "good" to "great", but not perfect. In some cases, Proton beats Windows, yes. In most cases, games just work on Steam. I think for the amount of tinkering I put in, I could run a barebones W11for gaming and get better overall performance than my CachyOS. I don't because I can live with less than perfect and kernel level anti cheat can pound sand.
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I dodge an unknown but substantial amount of anguish from not having ads, ai, and surprise updates forced on me. I am sensitive to ads and am upset every time I see one. I'm always shocked to see them on other people's computers. My work computers (Mac) have forced updates and forced restarts which are jarring. My computers feel like my own.
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I find and (hopefully) fix all kinds of problems. My discord muted itself randomly because of a Wayland bug a few times. There's an open issue about dxvk getting framerate drops after about an hour of gameplay. That one sucks. One of my door sensors stopped working with homeassistant despite it being prefect in mqtt2z; it's a confirmed bug as of 3 weeks ago. This stuff is annoying but I take it as the cost of not trusting black boxes with my hardware.
To wrap it up, I think Linux is better than ever, more accessible than ever, and probably better than Windows for most people. To me, I would recommend it to my mom who only uses basic office tools and a browser and have recommended it to my tech savvy friend who got tired of windows update ruining his super custo1. m W11 setup... but would obviously caution my DOTA-addicted DM or my dad who runs part of his business on Access ( cringe, I know). It feels human, empowering and is good because of the way it is today not just because of its ideals.
I hope this made you reflect on your Linux experience and maybe on how you can contribute to or help the community.
Edit: OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice Edit2: WHY did I post on memes?!? Someone take away my late night/early morning posting privileges
This is something I learned the hard way.
Consumer hardware is limited by multiple factors when it comes to PCIe connectivity.
Your graphics card might be a 16 lane card (referred to as "x16"), but sometimes, not all of them are used. Aforementioned 5060ti - I believe only uses x8. Some devices like graphics cards can use a physically smaller slot with an adapter for a loss in performance (a few frames in game play performance)
Similarly, your motherboard might have a x16 slot and another x16 at the bottom. That second slot might only function as x8 or even x4. Does this matter? Sort of. Inta-card communication aka peer to peer communication can affect affect performance and that can compound with multiple cards.
Even worse, some motherboards may have all sorts of connectivity but may have limitations like only 2 out of the bottom 4 slots, PCIe and m.2, can work at a time. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.
Your CPU controls PCIe. It has a hard cap in how many PCIe devices it can handle and what speed. AMD tends to be better here.
Enterprise gear suffers from none of this bs. Enterprise CPUs have a ton of PCIe lanes and enterprise motherboards usually match the physical size of their PCIe slots to their capacity and support full bifurcation*
PCIe lanes are used up by and consumable by m.2, MCIO, and occulink to name a few. That means that you can connect a graphics card to either one is those of you can figure out the wires and power**
Bifurcation is a motherboard feature that lets you split PCIe capacity, so a 16x slot can support two x8 devices. My motherboard lets me do this on just the main slot and in a strange x8x4x4 configuration. I have an MCIO adapter (google it) which plugs into the PCIe and gives me 3 PCIe adapters with those corresponding speeds.
it also has 2 m.2 slots which connect to the CPU. One is them, I use for a nvme ssd like a normal person. The other is an m.2 to PCIe adapter which gives me an x4 PCIe slot. For those keeping track, that's 24 PCIe lanes so far. That's the maximum my processor Intel 265k can handle
But wait! The motherboard also has a kind of PCIe router and that thing can handle 8 more lanes! So I use the bottom 2 PCIe lanes on my motherboard for 2 cards at x4 each. The thing that kills me is that there are more m.2 ports. But the mobo will not be able to use any more than 2 devices at once. AND even though that bottom PCIe slot is sized at x16, electrically, its x4.
Do your research (level1techs is great) and read the manuals to really understand this stuff before you buy
My mobo for reference ASUS: TUF GAMING Z890-PRO WIFI