We tell people we use Linux because it's secure.
Or
because it's free,
Or
because it's customizable,
Or
because it's free (the other meaning),
Or
because it has excellent community support...

But all of that is just marketing . We tell that to non-Linuxers because they wouldn't understand the real reason. And when we say those false reasons enough, we might even start to believe them ourselves.
But deep underneath, the real reason remains.

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J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

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.

Let me say that again. It's fun to use the command line.

No wonder non-Linuxers wouldn't understand.

The point with us Linux fans is - we use Linux for its own sake. Sure, we like to get work done. Sure, we like to be secure from viruses. Sure, we like to save money. But those are only the side-effects. What we really like is playing with the system, poking around, and discovering completely pointless yet fascinating facts about the OS.

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J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

There are three main reasons Linux is so much fun:

1. Linux gives you complete control

Ever tried stopping a process in Windows and the OS wouldn't let you? Ever tried deleting a file - and you couldn't? Even though you had admin rights?

Linux lets you do anything. That's the great benefit of usually logging in as user. If you login as the root, the OS assumes you know what you're doing. Once you become root, everything is allowed.

__________________
J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

2. Linux isn't widely used

This is a paradox. We often complain Linux isn't more widely used. But that's one of the reasons we use it. It gives us a feeling of being a special clique. Like we're better than "those ignorant masses".

If Linux becomes widely used, we'll probably switch to something else. Or at least develop an obscure distro that only we will use. Because, let's face it, we want to feel special.

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J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

3. Linux is free (as-in-speech)

We can get the source code for all our applications. If we want to know how a certain part of the OS works, we can.
This lets us tweak and play with our systems. And we absolutely loo-o-o-ve tweaking our system.

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J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks

An other thing is, that once you get used to the linux-way,
doing something under windows feels like pain.

Cheers

So true for myself, too, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that's the case for all of the linux users.

What's the best thing about Linux distros like Ubuntu is the fact that some people develop the software and OS components for others. It's not so much about the fact that the consumer, doesn't have to pay, rather I see it as the developers don't want or need to get paid for their work. It's a form of modern charity I am happy to experience.

And besides, there ARE some more concrete key differences between linux and windows that make me choose the former. Windows requires some behind-the-scenes maintenance. What I mean by this, it's considered and marketed as an idiot proof OS but it does require cleaning the registry, defragmenting, administering the users with their rights, taking care of the network settings to make it work, things like that. The access to these functions has been somewhat hidden and I claim that most of the everyday windows users don't know what on earth is an IP address, for example.

To compare to how things are in linux I have iptables and ifconfig to do the job. No, they don't have the "automagically make things work" button, which is just what makes them a lot better. What windows users do is they try clicking the magic button and if it doesn't work they have to take their PC somewhere to repair it or call a hotline, simply because they feel like they couldn't learn how to do the simplest things themselves.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

This is the reason that I used to use Linux, and back then I thought that most other Linux users felt the same way. I don't think it's the reason why anymore. I think a sizeable proportion of today's Linux users (I hesitate to say the majority, but it may not be far off) do not think that using the command line is fun. They'd rather die than use it.

This attitude is plain to see, in discussion boards and forums (where people heap criticism on anything that requires use of the command line, where people try to install a new distro of linux to check it out and then break down into tears when it doesn't have a graphical installer) or from distro use statistics - the most popular Linux distro around these days is Ubuntu, which is geared toward hiding the command line and giving you choices and tinkering abilities.

Don't get me wrong, of course you still can tinker and fiddle in Ubuntu and other popular distros, but it is not required or encouraged like it used to be in the earlier days of Linux. A lot of people just don't want it or enjoy it.

You can also see this when you read a Linux user's review of a *BSD - they tend to complain about how hard the installation was , some of them even assume that X is broken simply because it isn't started automatically on boot up. They complain about having to use something as difficult as a pkg_add command to install software. It's quite sad, really.

Enjoy linux

I couldn't imagine putting it in better words. On Compiz alone I spend hours customising and playing with various effects. GNU/Linux all the way.

__________________
J Suresh Kumar
Google Hacks