Is Linux right for you?

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Gone are the days when the operating system used to be the primary component of your computing. Today, the browser has taken center stage and is the gateway to the highway of information. Whether you are shopping from Amazon.com, connecting with friends through social networking, dealing with clients over email or VoIP, managing your time through calendars, collaborating with teams on Google Docs, listening to your favorite music or watching the latest blockbuster, you pretty much live inside a browser.

 

Building the case for Linux

 

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of our files have moved to the cloud and most of our applications have become services. Gone are the days when people listen to music on Windows Media Player; today we listen to Pandora and Spotify. Gone are the days when watch MPEG movies in WMP; now we stream them from Netflix and HBO Now.

 

You don't need Microsoft Office to work on documents, presentations or spreadsheets; Google Docs takes care of almost all of it. You don't need to save all of your files on the 'Desktop' or on the 'C' drive, which you struggle to save every time your Windows crashes; almost all of our data resides on Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

 

The point is, you don't need desktop applications anymore to do serious work or have serious fun. Which also means you don’t need the OS on which those applications run. Any OS that can connect you to the Internet and enable you to use such services will do just fine.

 

If you are already using these services as part of your digital life, you are halfway there. You don’t need Windows anymore; you will be better off with Linux.

 

But what if I still need applications?

 

Depending upon your needs and concerns for privacy you may not want to fully move to the cloud. No worries, Linux has you covered. There are open source alternatives for almost all proprietary software, some of which are actually better than their proprietary counterparts.

 

Amarok and Clementine are among the greatest music players and have more features than iTunes or WMP. VLC is the best video player there is, even better than Quicktime or WMP.

 

All major browsers, including Firefox, Chrome and Opera, are available for Linux; and there are many more.

 

If you are not content with Google Docs, you have LibreOffice. But that's not all. You also have Calligra, AbiWord and many more.

 

Want to work on images? There are neat online image editing tools like Pixler or Sumo Paint. If you are not satisfied with what these have to offer, there are GIMP and Krita. GIMP is a great image editing tool for the average PC user; Krita is one of the best tool for artists and designers.

 

That said, you don't have to cut yourself off the cloud grid. All major services, with the exception of Google Drive, are available for Linux including Copy and Dropbox. And then there are pure open source cloud solutions like Seafile and ownCloud.

 

In addition to these, there are many tools for power users that even Mac or Windows users can't enjoy........

 

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