Today an article I wrote for Imperial College London’s student newspaper, Felix, was published as part of a debate about operating systems. As you may have guessed, I wrote about Linux. The original article is on their website [PDF]. Here is the full, unedited article:

There are many reasons to use Linux rather than Windows or Mac OS, and not just that it is completely free.
First, I must explain that Linux is actually just the most basic part of an OS, the Kernel. What you actually install is a Linux distribution, like Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE or any of a very long list of others. These distributions are just the Linux kernel bundled with a load of programs which you’ll probably want to have installed (things like free office tools, web browsers, music players, etc. – not the crapware that you get with a new Windows PC).
One of the best things about Linux is that all major distributions have a package manager. This lets you to search for and download free software from the internet. Installing a program in Windows would involve starting a web browser, searching for the installer, downloading it, running it, and at the end of the process you still have an installer sitting in your downloads folder. But in Linux you would just start the package manager, search for the program, and press install.
The package manager also makes updating your system much easier: you can update every part of your system with it at the same time, not just the OS itself but all of your programs as well! No more popup dialogs from random programs telling you to update them, just one subtle notification telling you that there are updates if you want to download them. Another advantage is the fact that with Linux you don’t need to restart your system after every update, only when you’ve updated critical components.
Security is taken very seriously in Linux. Every time you install/upgrade packages you must enter a password, this ensures that no system-wide changes can be made without your consent. This is part of the reason that viruses are not a problem for Linux, any programs you download cannot take over the whole system. In fact, nothing you download is executable until you set it to be, so a virus would have to convince you to run it voluntarily!
Installing Linux (depending on your choice of distribution) can be very streamlined. The most difficult part is sorting out which disk drive/partition to install it onto. You can easily install it on any part of your hard drive that you’re willing to format, or put it on a USB drive. You can even use Wubi to install Ubuntu onto a Windows disk. The rest of the process is usually just picking your time zone, user name, password, etc. If you choose a distribution which has a Live CD, you can try it out by just starting the CD, and even go online while you install it. Once it has installed, you will get a list of operating systems to choose from whenever you turn on your computer, so you can switch between Linux and another OS.
If you are looking for Hardware Support, Linux can be a good choice. There are official drivers from NVidia and AMD/ATI for their respective graphics cards, and several more open source graphics card drivers. It’s hard to keep up with hardware advances when you’re not the most popular OS around, so there might be some drivers missing. However, Linux handles a lot of hardware very well (in particular, support for older hardware is good). It is usually a good idea to try the Live CD before you install it, so that you can make sure everything works beforehand.
The way that the OS is developed is part of the reason for this hardware support: anyone can join the community and help write the software if they are willing and able. That is the real meaning of “Open Source” or “Free” software, not just that it costs nothing to download (although the vast majority of programs do cost nothing).
Because it is open source, Linux is extremely customizable, which makes it a great OS if you work with computers. It provides a command line console where you can give it lower level commands, which is occasionally very useful, but not as user-friendly as a graphical desktop.
The desktop on Linux is also extremely customizable. There are many choices you can make, for example you can choose between several Desktop Environments, which provide your workspace and some applications. The most popular of these are KDE’s Plasma Desktop and GNOME (Ubuntu chooses GNOME for you, if you want Plasma Desktop you might like Kubuntu). In whichever desktop environment you choose, you can customize the theme and color scheme of your windows and desktop as much as you like (even down to things like the placement of buttons in window title-bars), and you can add desktop widgets to them (built-in ones in Plasma Desktop, or using gDesklets in GNOME). If you use Plasma Desktop or a program called Compiz, there are also desktop effects which can do things like the exposé effect from Mac OS.
Another very useful feature of these Desktop Environments is virtual desktops. This lets you set up multiple desktops which can each contain different windows, and then move your windows around them however you like. This gives you much more space to deal with windows, so you could have GIMP’s windows arranged nicely on one desktop, Inkscape open on another and then Firefox/Chrome on a third. Then you can simply use the pager or keyboard shortcuts to switch between them.
With regards to Gaming, it is true that most games don’t have Linux versions. However there are a few that do (such as Minecraft and Doom 3) and for others you can try to use a program called WINE to get them to work. Of course, Flash games will work fine in your browser, and there are the standard card and puzzle games that you get with most distributions.
Overall, Linux is a very useful desktop operating system. It can handle most of the things you want it to, and many that others cannot.