Although I don't currently use Linux, I have worked with it several years ago for multiple years. Of the various distributions or flavors I've had the pleasure of working with, I found Ubuntu to be my favorite. In fact, the web server that I used to administer was a console-only version of Ubuntu.
I used to have fun to see what all services I could get to run on my server. Not only was I running the web server, but I also got a file server, print server, IRC chat server, and a Shoutcast (web radio) server running.
Another thing I really liked about Linux was that you can run Linux on a USB thumb drive. I discovered this while in the midst of drafting a business plan on an old Acer laptop and the hard drive just died while I was typing, shutting off the laptop. In desperation, I tried installing Linux onto the same USB drive I was installing from, and it worked! It was really neat being able to carry my entire computer in my pocket.
I currently dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 11 so I use it occasionally. I can't fully switch over to Linux since some programs I use are only compatible on Windows and since I dual boot currently there's no reason to install Wine to get the ones that aren't compatible with Linux to work.
I swapped entirely over to Linux recently. I was having an issue where Windows built in software was bricking the entire installation in unrecoverable ways due to some strange incompatibility with my hardware. Figured if it screwed my entire hard drive twice in such a way that reformating was the only option, I might as well try something else this time.
The fact that it got me away from a bunch of bloat and spyware and AI nonsense was ... a happy accident.
Eventually, I'll make the switch over to Linux again. Rumor has it Windows 12 will be a full on monthly subscription model. Screw that. Nobody be remote-bricking my computer!
Mint is known as the beginner friendly/stable OS because it uses a LTS release model and a UI familiar to Windows users. Fedora is sort of the standard power user version of Linux. And then there's stuff like Arch which is for people who don't care about their OS being easy to use and want to heavily customize it to their own needs instead. I think those are the three big popular ones right now?
Zorin OS seems to be a pretty popular Linux distro as of late. I've watched a video of this guy who installed the operating system on his wife's old Mac that was slowing down due to age.
So I just recently started to dabble in Linux actually, mostly because I just wanted to see what I could actually learn Command Line wise, and two I was tired of my computer being bogged down by Windows bloat, and what not. I didn't fully dive into it though, as I just made a flash stick with Linux Mint. I did notice it was performing better almost right away hovering around at a steady 26% CPU, which is a big improvement!
So far, I dig it. I might look into putting it onto something better then a USB though, do HDDs/SSDs perform well for this sort of thing? (I only saw a bit about putting it onto those, and I never dug into it deeper afterwards.)
It's worth noting that Linux live environments are actually designed to run off of USB, though they also don't save things--they're more for testing purposes / installing the OS.
But yes! It works good on HDD/ SSD. The one thing to be concerned about is dual booting. Windows does not play nice with Linux and this can corrupt the bootloader. Probably fixable, but will render the computer unusable until it's fixed.
