If you’ve ever purchased a new computer running Windows, you must know that it can be a very frustrating experience.
It all starts when you first turn it on: countless windows start to open, asking you to subscribe for services, the premium version of an antivirus, games you never asked for, productivity applications requiring you to create an account online, etc.
But it doesn’t stop there. Each time you boot your computer, all those pre-installed programs need to start in the background, and you have to wait longer and longer between the time you see your desktop appear on the screen and the time when it stops being much too slow to use because all those programs are starting up.
To add insult to injury, often times after you’ve owned your new computer for 30 days, new dialogs start to pop up, and you realize that some of these programs that you thought were free (for example, an antivirus) really aren’t, all you have is a free 30-day trial.
The thing is, most computer manufacturers believe this is a good thing. They are installing programs onto your computer before you purchase it, thinking they will improve your experience, because you get “more” for the same price, and they believe this can help differentiate them from the competitors, who may not offer as many “improvements” over the default system, or maybe not the same ones. For them, this is added value.
But for the user, this is mostly more pain, more waiting, more uninstalling unwanted programs, more money to pay if you decide you do need that not-so-free-after-all antivirus, and at the end of the day, a bloated and crippled computer. That’s why these programs have been given a not very polite name: “junkware”.
None of that with Linux. No program will nag you about subscribing, paying after a trial period ends, or just slow your computer down and make you wait some more while it starts, just when you thought it was ready to be used. Linux comes with everything that you need to start working right away, without the junkware.