Linux? Mac? Windows?

Why Do You Use Linux?

When I purchased my current laptop companion, I was working as a developer in Australia, and since I didn’t have a laptop at home, I always took the company MacBook home after work to use as a YouTube machine and for personal projects. Then I felt uncomfortable using the company MacBook for personal projects, and as the number of languages I wanted to install increased, I decided to purchase a personal laptop. So I was looking into “Should I buy Windows or Mac?” when suddenly, I wanted to try the Linux operating system. At that time, I knew about Linux but had never used it as an operating system, so I searched and looked up all related content, and finally decided to buy a ThinkPad.

DISTRO…

As soon as the laptop arrived and showed the Windows first screen, I immediately wiped Windows and looked for a Linux distro to install.

DISTRO. It means distribution. At the time, there were many famous distributions, but the main three were Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch, and Reddit recommended Ubuntu for beginners. After using Ubuntu for a few days, I tried Fedora, and after another few days, I settled on Arch Linux. This period was only 2 weeks. So why did I try so many distros…

First 6 Weeks

It was a month since I started with Arch Linux. If I add up the time going through various distributions, I couldn’t do anything for 6-7 weeks. Why? The reality was harsh. I thought I was someone who had used Linux while using a MacBook, but I just became a stupid person. The first thing that made it difficult for me after installation was “fonts and input methods”. After searching and looking on the internet and somehow succeeding with fonts, next was “installation”. Going through this process, was it because I misconfigured? Many trials and errors occurred, such as cases where not only Korean but also English itself didn’t appear, cases where I got confused by wrong installations, etc., so with the thought “Let’s just wipe it and reinstall!”, I switched around here and there and came to Arch.

Definitely, the Arch Linux + Hyprland combination is not recommended for beginners.

No, I don’t recommend Hyprland for beginners. The reason will be visible from the first screen.

• You just see the screen and mouse. (Literally no top (or bottom) bar.)
• There’s no right-click function itself.
• You need to know commands, and you have to create everything with your own hands.

Actually, I was flustered as soon as I turned it on for the first time. It’s no exaggeration to say I spent a month on settings, commands, and customization. After getting off work, I did this stuff like Hyprland settings, command searching, customization, etc., until 2-4 AM for a month. At that time, I thought “Did I choose this for no reason?”, but I’ve come this far thinking “Nothing is easily obtained, and this will all help later”. When I think about it, there wasn’t a single useless thing. Going through that process, I learned by chewing and tearing Linux itself, and I think I stayed up until dawn because the process itself was fun.

Now, of course, I’m using it much better than the first month. Of course, if there’s a command or path I don’t remember, I look it up with AI or Google, but I think I’ve become more familiar with it than before.

So Why Make This Post?

If you ask “You already wrote about why you use Linux, so what’s this post?”

While watching YouTube recently, I witnessed the comment section burning with confrontations like iPhone vs Android or Windows vs Mac. But strangely, most were talking about reasons for choosing Mac, not reasons to buy Windows, and among those comments, there were some that made me question, so I decided to make a post to bring a few examples and share my thoughts as a current Linux user who has tried all operating systems.

• “MacBook is Unix-based, so it’s good for using Linux commands” If you bought it thinking this or “MacBook is better for development than Windows”, please learn more than just basic things like ls and cd, find things you can’t do on Windows, and get familiar with computers. Because buying it for this reason and only using things like ls and cd is just an excuse because you want to buy a MacBook but need a reason. Reasons like “because the design is pretty” or “just because I want to use it” can be much more convincing reasons.

• “MacBook is good because once you buy it, you use it for a long time” If you really think so, I hope you use it for 3-5 years once you buy a MacBook. That means if you bought an M1, are you still using the M1 product? If you don’t say that and sell it every 1-2 years saying the newly released M chip is legendary and buy again, this is also no different from wanting to buy but needing a reason. There will actually be people who buy once and use it for more than 5 years, but the target I’m talking about is people who don’t even use it for 3 years and immediately buy another MacBook.

• “These days, what you can do on Windows, you can do on MacBook” This is definitely true. However, to be more accurate, “These days, you can do Windows work on MacBook”. If you’re going to say what you can do on Windows you can do on MacBook, it should be under the condition of not using VM. Running Windows with VM is doing Windows work on MacBook, isn’t it? If you’re a developer, it’s more convincing to mention reasons you can’t do on Windows (iOS and macOS builds).

Who Are You?

There will be people who say this, but I didn’t write this to criticize people who say such things. I hope they look back at themselves once more.

I too, when I used MacBook before, used it for over 7 years, and there was a time when I thought “For development, Mac is better than Windows!” or “Once you buy it, you use it for a long time, so I should buy one with high storage!”. Looking back now, there’s just some environment setup and annoying work, but Windows, Mac, and Linux are all just the same development tools and OSes in different environments, so there’s no need to think about which is good and which is not.