Recently, while helping my senior sister with sequence alignment, I discovered that the software I used to use frequently, MEGA X (10), now has a Linux GUI version. This made me feel that the world is indeed changing.
I remember installing my first Linux distribution for fun in my third year of university. At that time, I chose Ubuntu. The interface and effects were very cool, and it was much smoother on my old computer compared to Windows. However, after a while, the interface became boring, and various problems started popping up: poor Chinese support, lack of commonly used software, frequent system updates (involving kernel or major version changes), and little documentation for beginners. I can’t even remember all the small issues I encountered. At that time, Deepin was based on Ubuntu and focused on optimizing the user experience for Chinese users. So, within half a month, I switched from Ubuntu to Deepin. Although it improved Chinese support and system updates compared to the original Ubuntu, the lack of commonly used software (such as office and communication tools) made it almost impossible to use this system in an environment where everyone uses Windows. After about two months, I gave up because of assignments and gaming (essentially gaming…).
Later, when I installed a Linux distribution again during my second semester of graduate school, my initial intention was to reduce gaming time and focus on studying. At that time, smartphones had already become widely available, so basic communication could be done using phones, and there were even Linux versions of WPS for writing documents and presentations (although the playback format still needed adjustment). For academic purposes, I used R for statistics and Ugene for sequence analysis. Writing scripts was much easier on Linux than on Windows (one command in Linux versus multiple installations and configurations in Windows), so I smoothly transitioned to a pure Linux environment.
Then, I switched to Manjaro based on Arch due to some incorrect installation methods, but I never gave up. G胖’s efforts to promote the Linux gaming ecosystem made me feel like being dominated… From then on, I could use Linux as my primary operating system for daily life without major issues.
Of course, this is partly because of the development of Linux GUIs and other factors that have resolved past problems. For example, communication software still hasn’t been fully resolved (WeChat, QQ, Taobao旺旺 don’t have native clients), but due to the rise of smartphones, we often no longer need to use computers for instant messaging. Another example is Flash and HTML5; although Linux support for Flash was poor, many websites required it, making them unusable without a virtual machine. However, Flash eventually fell out of favor and was replaced by HTML5…
I hope one day in my lifetime, the market share of Windows will really decrease, allowing us to be free from being limited to a single system platform.
