When you\'re used to one operating system, it can be easy to look at
other operating systems almost as if they were apps. If you use one OS
on your desktop, you might think of another OS as the app that people
use to run servers, and another OS as the app that plays games, and so
on. We sometimes forget that an operating system is the part of a
computer that manages a countless number of tasks (millions per second,
technically), and they\'re usually designed to be capable of a diverse
set of tasks. When people ask me what Linux *does*, I usually ask what
they *want* it to do. There\'s no single answer, so here are 5
surprising things I do with Linux.
## 1. Laser cutting
At the nearest makerspace, there\'s a big industrial machine, about the
size of a sofa, that slices through all kinds of materials according to
a simple line-drawing design file. It\'s a powerful laser cutter, and I
the first time I used it I was surprised to find that it just connected
to my Linux laptop with a USB cable. In fact, in many ways, it was
easier to connect to this laser cutter than it is to connect with many
desktop printers, many of which require over-complicated and bloated
drivers.
Using Inkscape and \[a simple
plugin\](
https://github.com/JTechPhotonics/J-Tech-Photonics-Laser-Tool/releases/tag/v1.0-beta_ink0.9),
you can design cut lines for industrial laser cutters. Design a case for
your Raspberry Pi laptop, use these Creative Commons design plans to
build \[a dice
tower\](
https://msraynsford.blogspot.com/2016/05/working-dice-tower-with-plans.html)
for your tabletop games, cut out a sign for your shopfront, or whatever
it is you have in mind. And do it using an entirely open source stack.
## 2. Gaming
Open source has \[always had
games\](
https://opensource.com/article/20/5/open-source-fps-games), and
there have been some high profile Linux games in the recent past. The
first gaming PC I built was a Linux PC, and I don\'t think any of the
people I had over for friendly couch co-op games really realized they
were using Linux by playing. It\'s a smooth and seamless experience, and
the sky\'s the limit, depending on how much you want to spend on
hardware.
What\'s more is that it\'s not just the games that have been coming to
Linux, but the platform too. Valve\'s recent Steam Deck is a popular
handheld gaming console that runs Linux. Better still, many open source
software titles have been publishing releases on Steam, including
[Blender](
http://blender.org) and [Krita](
http://krita.org), as ways to
encourage wider adoption.
## 3. Office work
Linux, like life, isn\'t always necessarily exciting. Sometimes, you
need a computer to do ordinary things, like when you pay bills, make a
budget, or write a paper for school or a report for work. Regardless of
the task, Linux is also normal, everyday desktop computer. You can use
it to
## 4. Music production
## 5. Retro computing
## Bonus: Servers
It can be easy to think of an operating system as something that\'s a
single-serving.
I remember the first time I met someone who\'d grown up using Linux. It
never seemed to happen for most of the time I\'ve been a Linux user, but
lately it\'s relatively common. I think the most surprising encounter
was with a young woman, toddler in tow, who saw whatever geeky t-shirt I
was wearing at the time and casually mentioned that she also used Linux,
because she\'d grown up with it. It actually made me a little jealous,
but then I remembered that Unix on a desktop computer simply *didn\'t
exist* when I was growing up. Still, it\'s fun to think about how casual
Linux has become over the past few decades.
I\'m a Linux user, and I appreciate that it\'s built to handle complex
tasks on a large scale.
