Look, Windows is basically a digital pacifier. Microsoft has spent decades optimizing for one thing: making sure you never have to think about what your computer actually does.
Click the shiny button, ignore what happens under the hood, repeat until obsolescence.
Here's the fundamental problem: Windows teaches learned helplessness. The other way you can state this is windows spoon feeds you.
Your computer is a general-purpose machine that can do literally anything computable. But Windows wraps everything in so many layers of abstraction and GUI bullshit that you never learn how files actually work, what processes are, how networking functions, or why your system is slow.
Something breaks? You're stuck Googling "why is my computer slow" and downloading sketchy RAM optimizers because you have zero mental model of what's happening.
Linux forces you to understand the machine. Not because it's harder, modern distros are stupid easy, but because it doesn't actively hide how things work.
You learn the filesystem isn't just "folders", it's a hierarchy with meaning. You learn that programs are packages with dependencies.
You learn your OS isn't some mysterious blob but a kernel + utilities you can actually comprehend and control.
The uncomfortable truth is if you're in tech and still on Windows, you're deliberately choosing ignorance for comfort.
You're trusting Microsoft to make decisions for you, about updates, telemetry, what software you can run, when your computer restarts. You've outsourced your agency to a corporation that views you as a data source.
And then people give excuses:
- "But muh games" - dual boot exists.
- "But it's hard" - skill issue, Linux Mint installs easier than Windows.
- "But I don't actually need to know how my OS works" - then you're not actually using your computer, it's using you.
Windows is fine if you want to be a consumer. Linux is for people who want to actually own their machine.