I know it’s popular with professionals and scientists, and of course there’s MacOS, but I don’t know why. What makes it better or more preferable than something like Windows?
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You’re probably thinking of Linux not UNIX. One reason is that Linux lets you do whatever the fuck you want to. You’re the boss. Windows tries to keep you on the straight and narrow a lot more. That’s great if you are doing straight and narrow stuff. Using Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Chrome…
Computer people do a lot more weird things on their computers. If you’re working on networks, you can set up weird networky stuff on Linux. You can make your computer simulate a hundred computers. You can make your computer simulate the Internet. You can redirect your internet connection through your Linux computer and [turn all the pictures upside down](https://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html) – well you could do that 20 years ago, before everything was secure. If you’re working on big databases, you can group together your hard drives or split them. You can tune the hard drive caches, reserve memory for them, or limit the memory. You can use unusual kinds of formatting. If you’re working on operating systems, you can access a .iso file or a disk image file directly without burning it to a CD or a hard disk. You can jail a program inside the disk image file so it thinks the file is your real hard disk. All weird stuff you can’t really do on Windows, or only with difficulty.
Or if you just want to use a few apps, Linux is also popular because it’s free. Chrome works just fine on Linux so why spend another $139.99 with Microsoft? Word and Excel don’t, but light users can use LibreOffice. Even Steam works on Linux nowadays.
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