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The political and personal case for Linux
You probably use a computer — in fact, you’re probably reading this column on a computer.
For 72% of you, that computer is the ubiquitous “standard” Windows PC or laptop. For 20% of you, it’s a Mac. The other 8% of you oddballs mostly use Linux or (Linux-based) ChromeOS.
I know the 92% of you who use Windows or macOS get tired of the cool kids telling you this, but it should be the other way around. Almost everyone should be using Linux almost all the time.
Instead of leading off with the technical reasons why, though, I want to hit you with the political, and personal financial, reasons for making the switch.
I’m going to start from the assumption that, like most people most of the time, you’ve had your “daily driver” computer — the one you use at home to browse the Web, check email, stream YouTube videos and maybe take a Zoom meeting every now and then — for at least a couple of years and you’re starting to feel like it’s a little slow and you might need a new one (if you just unboxed that brand new PC and got it set up, feel free to bookmark this article and come back to it in two years).
You may have noticed that new computers are suddenly getting more expensive every day. Not just top-of-the-line machines, either. I bought the “cheap” Raspberry Pi 5 kit I’m writing this column on less than a month ago. I paid $229 for it. As of this morning, the going price is $299.
There are “market” reasons for this sudden price rise trend — cryptocurrency miners have been buying up graphics cards as fast as they can be made for years, and artificial intelligence companies are now doing the same thing with RAM and storage devices.