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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not many people are using unix but a lot of people do use linux, which tends to attract users with a slightly more technical bent that proprietary OSs.
One thing they like is that the operating system is free – they arent paying for a license on top of their hardware purchase.
Another thing that attracts people to it is that it is generally going to perform better on older hardware. Machines from, say, 10 years ago will run fine with it as long as they have enough RAM, whereas windows for example may be sluggish on the same hardware.
Its also much, *much* more configurable. So if you like to fine tune how a PC runs, theres a lot more flexibility in *nix OSs than for example OSx or Windows.
One example of this is there are about 8-10 different popular desktops available which will easily run on Linux. With windows AFAIK there is only one. Same with OSX. Having this kind of choice can seem quite advantageous if you want a higher degree of control over your use experience.
Linux also can be run very lean. PC geeks are highly averse to ‘bloat’ which is when there is more code than necessary, taking up space or getting in the way of performance, or whatever. Its possible to run very minimilistic or very specifically targeted Linux os’s to any particular use-case.
Also, privacy concerns with proprietary OSs. The FOSS community likes that they can see and check the code of whatever they install. This is not possible with proprietary systems, which are designed to be impenatrable in this respect (they are not ‘open’). FOSS enthusiasts feel safer running software they can see the builds of, rather than software that could be serving problematic interests.
There are a bunch more reasons I guess, but these are the first that come to mind. Hope this helps.
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