When comes to personal computing most of us will prefer Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Windows is ruling the world of personal computing as it holds more than 90% of the market share. Although we don’t know why we are using Windows, we rather think of it using for personal computing. Since most of the Laptops are shipped with windows or our colleagues and friends will be using it. We need to revisit our personal computing habits. Well, Windows is equipped with lots of functionalities and an amazing user experience and frequent updates. I must admit it. But every Operating System has its own pros and cons. Also, we have an alternate operating system to watch out. Linux Operating System Linux is an open source operating system which available at free of cost. It is lightweight when compared to Windows. You don't need to spend an additional penny on some anti-virus program to safeguard your PC, you just need to depend on some security updates to stay safe. But working with OS needs some learning curve. If you are getting familiar with it, you can sense your increase. Linux productivity Which Linux? Next, the one big question, which Linux distros should I choose? Well, it depends. Based on your needs it will vary. Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distro for personal computing as of now. But there are other distros also you could use Fedora, CentOS, openSUSE. If you’re serious windows users, you can prefer ChaletOS or Linux Mint. I have also found this interesting site that can suggest you a Linux distro based on your preferences — . https://distrochooser.de/en Linux Alternatives to Windows Apps Let’s think about productivity, we rely on some applications on daily basis. Does that achievable with Linux? Why not, even you can improve your productivity. Let me walk through it. Office Suite Any sort of computer-based work is incomplete without an Office Suite. is an alternative to Microsoft Office. It is compatible with almost all MS Office files formats. Available for free of cost. LibreOffice Other Software like WPS Office, Apache Open Office, AbiWord is some of its alternatives. Email Client is an email client alternative to Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail. It has stunning features to manage your emails. Mozilla Thunderbird Graphics and Image Processing We have some alternatives to Adobe products for graphics. is a fully featured image processing software alternative to Adobe Photoshop. GIMP is a professional vector graphics editor alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape and are alternatives to MS Paint. Tux Paint Kolor Paint Media Players and editors The media player is the popular option for a media player. VLC If you are looking for video editing tool, then is a video editing tool will be an alternative to Windows Movie Maker. For editing audio, you can pick . OpenShot Audacity Text Editors and IDE If you are a developer you will definitely rely on Text Editors and IDE. is an alternative to Notepad++. All Other popular text editors like Sublime, VSCode, Atom, Brackets are also available in Linux Platform. You can also try some of the best Linux based editor like VIM, Nano, Gedit. Notepadqq As far as IDE is concerned, all major IDE is available for Linux. You have Linux support for IntelliJ, Pycharm, Netbeans, Eclipse, Android Studio, RStudio. Browsers Almost all modern web browsers will be available in Linux. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera. Readers are some of the popular picks. Adobe Reader is also available for Linux platform. Okular, Evience I have suggested some of the famous alternatives. If you are looking for a specific alternative, I recommend you to have a look into this site. . It has crowdsourced alternative software recommendations. https://alternativeto.net Opensource technologies are evolving at a rapid rate in today's world. Also, Linux is gaining more and more community support to keep you updated and safe. Keep an eye over it, It will save lots of money and improves your productivity.
