The default is good enough in Linux

I was one of the majority of computer users who lived in a Windows ecosystem back then. As a Windows user, at least from my personal experience and what I’ve observed in laptops obtained out-of-the-box from computer sellers in my local area, it seems like an unspoken rule that the default option never sticks in Windows. More precisely, what I mean by ‘default’ here is whatever that comes pre-installed in the operating system.

Whether it’s web browsers, PDF readers or video players, we tend to replace the default with other third-party software. Internet Explorer (pre-Windows 10) or Microsoft Edge (post-Windows 10) gets replaced with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, installing Adobe Acrobat Reader¹ to open PDF files, switching to Media Player Classic for watching videos, you get the drill.

This phenomenon is even more prominent when it comes to text editors. Almost no one uses Notepad by default. Coders switch to options like Notepad++, whereas less tech-savvy people turn to office suites for writing purposes.

However, in Linux, it’s a different story. In many cases, the default is good enough in Linux.

Using text editors again as an example…

• Linux Mint uses Xed as the default.
• Pop!_OS uses gedit as the default.
• KDE uses Kate as the default.

In each of the distributions above, they all support useful features like automatic indentation, syntax highlighting and line numbering, all of which are absent in Windows Notepad. Thus, I’d gladly use them without having to install something else (unless I’m in the mood to).

However, as we can see in recent versions of Notepad, what did Microsoft do instead? Shoving in AI features after AI features that no one asks for.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Seems like at least in the near future, switching promptly to third-party software as the new default will remain a norm for Windows users.