I’ve had many people reach out to me to ask about how to get started in using Linux as your default operating system for your laptops/desktops. Some of them are just curious as to why I keep only using Linux (Fedora actually and for the last 20 years and 33 years counting from SLS) as my main driver as well as all of the systems that I need to run – my virtual machines, my servers, my VMs at hosting sites etc. All of my servers run Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Debian.

Since about 2001, every new year, the tech press would run stories that headline something like “This is the year of Linux” or “This is the year of Linux on the Desktop” or some variation of that.

Those statements assume that people would just switch enmass and that will be it.

The reality is that, just as Linux started at the edge (print servers, file servers) in the mid to late 1990s, before taking over the data centre when the “cloud” became a thing, that was probably over a decade and a half’s worth of slow, considered adoption with zero marketing being done. It was adopted because it empowered people to inspect, check and see if it worked and was found to be reliable and dependable and just plain fun.

Running systems in the cloud or if you are a cloud service provider, there is no other way to offer the service that to run it using Linux. The manageability, scalability, cost, reliability, efficiency that access to the source code and the ecosystem of developers and users cannot be beat. Even the sworn “Open Source is Cancer” opponents from Redmond had to concede that in order to run their cloud business, they had to ensure that it runs using Linux.

Then we have the phenomenon of the mobile phone.

Whatever the percentages are today, the vast majority of mobile phone users are running Linux, rebranded as Android. The power of innovation that Linux (and open source) brings is tremendous and as this study by the Harvard Business Review about the Value of Open Source Software in 2024 reveals, that without open source software along with the code creation ecosystems, firms would had to pay an estimated 3.5 times more to build the systems, software and platforms to run their businesses, which comes up to roughly US$8.8 trillion.

Yes, that’s US$8.8 TRILLION more, but did not.

Do spend some time reading the report above and even though it is a year old, the numbers are still valid.

Having said all that, there are still people (and some really large number of clueless CIOs) who insist that they will never ever run Linux anywhere even though they are running in it their cloud deployments, webservers, email systems, security & network devices and don’t know enough to care about it.

To all of them, while I am happy to spend time to show and tell and then have you take the dive in, I’d encourage everyone to explore this: https://distrosea.com/. It has a whole lot of Linux distributions online for you to test drive.

Yes, you will be faced with the tyranny of choice.

To guide you, I’d suggest starting with Fedora and then Debian. Do explore that rest and once you think you have a good sense of what’s possible and that which ever distribution you pick does pretty much what you need, you can then take the next step of installing it on your system.

You don’t have to, but then again, you can and do have the option to install and use.

I know a lot of people are being forced to “upgrade” their windows systems because the vendor says so. And then they are told that their hardware “can’t install” the latest incarnation.

Don’t fret. Don’t let the crutch of “familiarity” hold you back. Don’t be just driven by logos of applications “for familarity”. Lack of familiarity never held you or your child or your grandchild from learning to walk. Enjoy the journey of discovery and learning. If the brain hurts, it is the clearest sign that you are learning and it is joyful.

Linux distributions are one click away from giving you and your systems a renewed sense of purpose and long years of productivity with full on security and privacy.