Do I have to run GNU?

If you've made the decision to start AJATT, you might be curious about why it suggests upgrading to the GNU operating system. The answer is quite simple. The GNU system and Libre/free software, by their nature, are inherently more constructive and extensible. GNU is better than proprietary systems. That's why we decided to recommend it to our readers.

User-Friendliness. We prefer GNU/Linux because it just makes everything easier. It's more user-friendly, which is great for beginners. It's easy to set up, and all the documentation is readily available. Beginners don't have to spend hours figuring out how basic functions work. This means you won't have to jump through all the hoops like people do on Windows. With more simple and convenient software, you can carry out your everyday tasks swiftly and efficiently. For instance, in i3wm, you can set up key bindings to perform any task with just a few keypresses. Most of the time, you won't even need a mouse. I have a binding that lets me add an image to an Anki card with just one keypress, or extract text from a manga page with another keypress.

Abundance of Software. You can find everything you need in the repositories of your GNU distribution. All programs are free and respect the users' freedom. There's also more software for Japanese available on GNU. Some tools like impd, transformers_ocr, and gd-tools, which are covered in our Japanese guide, only work on GNU. While Windows offers a wide range of software, much of it is either useless or comes with malicious features.

Community Control. All programs are managed by the community rather than corporations. If there's a bug in a program, you can easily fix it yourself or ask a friend for help. If a program stops being maintained, others can take over and continue its development (as happened with Cropro or Rikaitan, for example).

At AJATT, we believe that proprietary software and games should not exist and should not be used if you want to have freedom. Sacrificing your freedom to run such programs gives their creators power over you, allowing them to execute any commands on your computer. Experience shows that nearly all proprietary software is malicious. For instance, Windows has security vulnerabilities, backdoors, and surveillance right out of the box. You can read more about this here.

If you're debating whether installing the GNU operating system is worth it, consider that it only takes about 20 minutes to do so. Mastering a foreign language will take years, so this is a good investment. In return, you'll save hours each week on various tasks.

Tags: faq