PeterAn Amazing Mind, which subtitles itself as a psychology, self-improvement and Linux blog, has a very interesting post which talks about Linux, and people's motivations to use it.
We tell people we use Linux because it's secure. Or because it's free, because it's customizable, because it's free (the other meaning), because it has excellent community support......
But deep underneath, the real reason remains.
We use Linux because it's fun!
It's fun to tinker with your system. It's fun to change all the settings, break the system, then have to go to recovery mode to repair it. It's fun to have over a hundred distros to choose from. It's fun to use the command line.
For people like me and many other 'enthusiasts', this is probably a big part of the reason. The article doesn't make the important distinction, however, between these people and people/businesses who use Linux purely for functional reasons.
Let me extend myself as an example to this point. On my desktop PC, I use Linux largely for the fun aspect - whether that is playing around with new releases of software or operating systems or learning how to do something new.
I also run Linux on my server. In contrast, my motivation for using it there is mostly just for functional reasons. In that instance, Linux provides the best technical solution in my opinion for what I want to do with that machine. Of course, there still is that element of doing it for pleasure, or I wouldn't have a server that I run myself at all, but with the server it is weighted much more in the other direction.
In a corporate environment, you would also find the latter viewpoint. A business doesn't really care what it is using, providing it is doing the job well and is doing it cheaply. If Linux is fulfilling that, then they'll use Linux, if not they'll use something else.
Putting aside this important distinction however, I would generally agree. While in many ways Linux can be considered technically superior to other solutions, ultimately, people like you and me get into Linux, and keep using it, because it is fun. It is fun to be different, to explore something you at first know nothing about, and then keep exploring.
Why do you use Linux? Is it for fun or just purely for technical reasons? Share your thoughts in the comments.
