The year of the Linux desktop?

Linux is celebrating its 35th birthday, and commentators are once again asking if 2026 will finally be the "year of the Linux desktop". For the broader industry, that phrase has been a running joke for decades. But for me, the answer is much simpler: Linux has been the right environment for my work for years, and I have never really looked back.

My own journey with Linux began in 1999, when I set out to build an open source development environment. That was a decision driven by my professional work. In those early days, I was focused on development tools and machine performance. I tuned kernels, adjusted desktop settings, and stripped systems down to maximise the performance of my modest hardware.

I moved between RPM- and DEB-based distributions, and I even spent a rewarding period on FreeBSD. It was a good learning experience, and it was fun. That sense of fun is often overlooked, but it matters. As a developer, having access to a broad range of command-line tools and open source programming languages enriched my work and expanded my skill set. Linux gave me room to experiment, to learn, and to become more capable at what I did.

Over time, I grew to trust it. It supports me, and it gives me the freedom to work in a way that feels natural. That trust became especially clear when I tried a shiny new MacBook. I was pleased to find many of the same tools available, but the experience did not last long. By then, Linux had shown me the value of choice: I did not want Apple or Microsoft telling me how my workflow should work or how I should approach upgrades.

Linux satisfied my needs as a developer, and it made the transition into system administration much easier. It adapted to my requirements and helped me grow. In the later years of my career, I mentored and trained bright new cohorts in our company. Again, Linux proved flexible enough to support my needs while I built and refined my practice. I maintained a personal wiki to record ideas, solutions, and lessons from the professional challenges I faced. Its close adherence to standards, mature development processes, and extensive documentation gave me the foundation to keep learning and improving.

Now, in retirement, I still enjoy the freedom that Linux provides. I can tinker, experiment, and work in the way I want to work. My base system is stable and managed by automation tools that keep my machines consistent and synchronised to the latest packages, without sacrificing my personalisations or essential applications.

I spend less time managing my system and more time enjoying it. The functionality keeps expanding, and importantly, I have never felt that I was missing something important enough to force me onto another. Linux just works, and it has been doing so for a very long time.

So, thank you to the open source community. Thank you, Linus Torvalds. You gave me the freedom to grow, to be productive, and to enjoy the tools I use every day. That is why Linux has never felt like a compromise to me; it has always felt like the right environment for the work I wanted to do.

Happy birthday, Linux!