Last October I decided to uninstall Windows 10 on my laptop and install Garuda Linux as my daily driver. At first of course I was hesitant so I installed Garuda on a different partition which gave me a sense of security that I can go back to Windows if I don’t like using Garuda. So how did it go?
Well, I couldn’t be happier. The amount of control you get on a Linux-based distro is incomparable to anything else. You cannot have this amount of control on Windows or Apple OS, and that is the reason why I made the switch.
I wanted more control over what was going on inside my system. I never liked Windows 10. It has too much telemetry going on in the background, ohh! by telemetry I meant spyware. It keeps pinging different services for no good reason.
Microsoft wants to collect as much data about you as they can. Like for example if you use the Edge browser all your website history is sent to Microsoft. Like why?! why would you want to know which websites I visit? I’m sure it even has a keylogger built-in that tracks every key you press and sends it to Microsoft.
Also don’t get me started on the updates, Windows likes to keep its users in a constant state of fear by telling them that their system needs to be kept updated for security purposes. And that would’ve been fine as well if not for the updates taking a ridiculous amount of time to install or starting the install process when you’re trying to shut down your PC.
On top of that, I was using Windows 10 after stripping down as much telemetry and useless stuff as I could. making it as bare bones system as possible at the expense of losing some functionality, which was fine by me.
And that’s all it was, just “Okay” not “amazing”, which made me want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to find something better, and I did.
I’ve used Zorin OS in the past for like 2 months when I decided to make a switch from Windows 7 but, I was using my PC with a hard drive, and as hard drives perform pretty badly, my experience was not great either. I couldn’t see any speed benefits compared to Windows 7 and that was the end of that.
I bought a SSD and installed Windows 10 hoping for a better experience, and now you know how that went. Which is why here I’m on a new Linux system. I made a switch from Garuda to CachyOS. They both are pretty similar, Cachy being a bit smaller than Garuda as there are fewer packages pre-installed in the system.
I can use the same softwares that I could use on Windows if I want but without all the spying and stupid updates. I can update my system when I want, how I want. The great thing is that the update takes like 5 mins, which is awesome. And it updates everything, all the apps that have updates, etc.
The level of customization Linux offers is next level. You can make your machine look and feel the way you want. Which drove me into unixporn community, unixporn is all about Linux customization. You can find it here on Reddit. Here are some all time favorites.
Using Linux also made me more aware of what is going on in my system, which was never the case in Windows. Now I’m so much more in tune with what is going on inside my system and what I should do about it. Yep! I’ve become a bigger nerd than I was after installing Linux and it’s for the better.
Even though I’m a noob when it comes to coding, I’m still happier that I can understand the terminology of what’s going on. I also feel comfortable using the terminal now, this was never the case with Windows. It feels like I learned something amazing.
So Linux gave me more freedom with my security, gave me better functionality or should I say similar functionality by using fewer resources, and also made me care about computer science. All of this could not have happened if I was still using the same old Windows system. And frankly, I never want to go back to it again.
You’re not interacting with your computer, You’re interacting with a commercial entity known as Microsoft