I think it is a cliché, but a fair comparison. System76 is the Apple of Linux, they make both hardware and software. I don't have their hardware yet, but unlike Apple I can easily get their software for free, and everything has been easy and smooth so far.
I wanted to switch to Linux for a long time. I was using Windows mainly because some SAP software have to run on Windows. I haven't actually needed to use those software for a long time already. Everything that I could do I did run on WSL because Linux is just better for development, it is more comfortable, or maybe I am just more used to it..
WSL is a "native" virtual machine with Linux inside Windows, it gives me the terminal, filesystem, packages and permissions of a Linux distro of my choice. But if I was using WSL with Linux for everything, why not install Linux itself? So I just did it.
I hopped through a few distros. On my WSL inside Windows (primary disk) I tried Ubuntu and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. On my hardware, from a a secondary disk (bare metal!), I tried Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch, all of them had some issues here and there.
I ended up with Pop OS because they seemed to have good drivers out of the box. I just installed and everything simply worked. Because it is based on Ubuntu/Debian it has the ease of use of .deb packages.
So far I could run everything I wanted, hope I won't need to switch. I am having fun and stuff is working right out of the box. Pop OS even has automatic full disk encryption by default when you install.
I had some files I needed that were on my Windows disk (my primary, for now) but I was not booted on it. I was booted inside my secondary disk, using Pop OS. Windows does not encrypt anything and don't even require Windows to turn on, login nor provide a password to allow me to access the data it has!
I could simply navigate into my windows disk from the Linux file explorer and simply copy what I needed, as if it was just a simple USB drive, that is ridiculous!
If you read this and think it is all fun and games, it isn't. Obviously if your computer did not come with Linux preinstalled you may face some issues, mainly with drivers, so try searching for what people with the same hardware as you are using.
If you do try Linux maybe the first distros you try happen to have problems, some easy to fix, some not. It is worth trying a few before choosing one, that is what I did and that is how I found Pop OS to be the best one (in terms of "just working" without any manual intervention) for my laptop.
I have used Linux for a long time in the past, then used Mac for 1 ore 2 years. Mac, from Apple, works very similarly to any Linux or BSD system (I did try BSD, but too hard, harder than Arch Linux), so it was comfortable using both.
The main reason I am comfortable with Linux is that I need to run some servers. My main server, and the one I take care of the most, is the server that runs my Hive witness node on this blockchain! It runs Linux, so I learned a lot about Linux by being a witness.
Now is the time to ask for a vote:
