I think people use gnu/linux for four reasons:
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They have been using some flavor of UNIX and/or gnu-linux almost exclusively for over thirty years and can’t imagine using anything else. Such is the case with myself.
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They want or need to learn the *nix ecosystem for their career aspirations or even just for the sake of learning.
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It’s free as in “free beer”. They don’t want to pay for software.
4 It’s free as in “freedom”, which I think is a REALLY good reason to use gnu-linux. Although is does require a bit of skill, it is a real luxury to be able to modify source to fix bugs or tweak a package to one’s liking. Customizing source is not something I do often, which speaks to the quality of what is available, but I do maintain a small number of personally customized packages.
That said, I am no longer willing to recommend or advocate the use of gnu/linux for personal use. Although I don’t think this was true a decade ago, Microsoft and Apple both provide a much better user experience for most people.
The quality of gnu/linux has improved dramatically over the last decade and the feature set has expanded as well. However, I think the experience of using gnu/linux for personal computing has actually degraded.
Gnome was much more user friendly a decade ago than it is today. Ironically, it seems like virtually everything done to make Gnome more user friendly has the opposite effect. I think Gnome development has the right idea, but is proceeding in the wrong manner. Perhaps the eleven people running Gnome on their phones would disagree.
I could provide a rather long list of very specific examples, some simple, some more complicated. But I won’t! I’m just not willing to take the time.