Linux 2025 After One Month
After 4 weeks, it's time for a brief initial assessment. How is the system performing, what programs do I have set up, and what am I missing?
If you're wondering whether switching is worth it financially, I'll try to answer that question as well.
System Stability and Performance
As expected, Linux Mint (Cinnamon) runs stably and without any performance issues. It feels like the system is faster than Windows 11.
However, this is purely a subjective impression—apart from hard drive benchmarks, I haven’t performed any other verifiable measurements.
The hard drive benchmark, including transfers to the NAS and external SSDs, was slightly higher than the results I got on Windows.
My NVIDIA card runs quickly and smoothly with the proprietary drivers provided.
What will replace my beloved ON1
Over the past few weeks, I've come to appreciate Darktable more and more. I was already familiar with Darktable, but I had never used it extensively before.
Thanks to these really good English-language tutorials, getting back into it was quite easy.
Check out the tutorials—in my opinion, they’re among the best guides available, especially when it comes to landscape photography.
What are the biggest benefits of Darktable for me?
- It's open source and it costs nothing—except for the time it takes to learn it. In my opinion, the learning curve isn't as steep as is often described. At least not if you already have experience with other programs of this kind.
- Darktable feels like it runs faster than ON1 and Lightroom.
- The mask system is simply brilliant
And what about the downsides?
- You won't find the effects that ON1 offers in Darktable; for that, you'll need the G'Mic filters in GIMP, for example. I found that easier in Photo Raw, since I didn't have to leave the program there.
- The wide variety of modules offered by Darktable can be confusing at first—so here's a reminder about the tutorials mentioned above.
Of course, the pros and cons could be listed in even greater detail. But these are the points that stood out to me the most.
Other Programs
There are a few other programs that I use regularly. Here is a short list of the programs I use every day:
- GIMP and Photoline (via Wine) for image and graphics editing
- Darktable
- Softmaker Office and LibreOffice
- Thunderbird and Vivaldi for Email and the Internet
- Various other helpers (the list would be too long to include here)
Is the switch worth it financially?
The answer should really be “it depends.” Whether this can even be calculated in euros is another question.
In principle, Linux can be used productively and effectively at no cost whatsoever.
However, if I factor in the time needed to learn the system as a cost, the calculation looks a little different. You should definitely set aside a little time to familiarize yourself with a new system.
On top of that, there may be additional paid programs. For me, for example, these include Photoline, Softmaker Office, and Turboprint.
But since I no longer have to pay for any other subscriptions or ongoing costs for software updates to the “old” Windows programs, Linux is significantly cheaper for me. It really adds up if you’re always buying the latest versions.
If you’ve already been using open-source software on Windows, then the financial savings will be close to zero.
And yes, all the programs I mainly use on Linux are also available in Windows versions. But I really did want to move away from Windows.
If you're interested in more articles about Linux, you can find them here.
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