Linux isn’t necessarily “harder” than Windows, it’s just different. Just like visiting another country, you need to adapt to the laws of the land. While a lot of your experiences with Windows translate well into the world of Linux, if you don’t shake these habits your data, and even your whole system, could end up in a very bad spot.
Which is why I want to highlight four key differences between Windows and Linux that could get you in trouble if you ignore them.
Pulling USB drives without ejecting
Credit: Joe Robinson / How-To Geek
It’s a good idea to safely eject removable drives on any operating system before you remove them, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve yanked drives plenty of times on your Windows computers with no apparent issues.
On Linux, thanks to relatively aggressive write-caching and the assumption that a drive will remain mounted until you manually unmount it, your data may not actually be on the drive yet at the point you pull it. Even if the copy operation says that it’s done. That’s a recipe for data loss and corruption. Now, you can disable write caching for your external drives, but that will reduce performance for that drive significantly, and there’s a good chance you’ll have to reapply that setting to each drive every time you mount it again.
So, it’s much better to simply get in the habit of actually ejecting and unmounting your drive before removing it. Generally all you have to do is right click on the drive icon and choose to safely remove it.
Running random commands from the internet
Credit:
Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek
Most Windows users rarely have to use the Command Prompt or PowerShell, so when the time comes it’s usually easier to simply copy and paste a command or scripts you find online. Now I know that sounds a little rich coming from someone who writes articles where people come to copy and paste commands, but at least we test them all first!
The thing is, Windows has more guardrails in place compared to Linux. You’ll be warned, prompted, or asked to elevate commands to confirm that you really want to do what you’ve put in that command.
Linux? Once you put the magic word (sudo) at the start of a command, Linux assumes that you really mean what you said and will do it without question. This is awesome for power users who know what they’re doing, but if the command or script you just pasted into the terminal is greek to you, well the consequences can be dire!
The answer, of course, is to understand in precise detail exactly what the command you’re looking at does. I undertstand this isn’t fast and convenient, but it will always be faster and more convenient than losing all the data on your drive, or having to spend a day restoring your computer.
Changing file permissions casually
Credit: FlintHills.photos/Shutterstock.com
How much time do you spend thinking about file permissions in Windows? I’d wager the answer is “none at all” and, honestly, in three decades of Windows use it’s rarely been something I’ve had to struggle with.
In Linux, file permissions are way more granular, and much more important. Which is a problem because you can make sweeping, recursive changes to file permissions with just a few commands that will absolutely wreck your computer. Apps suddenly can’t open their own files, some important services will refuse to start, or you could suddenly expose files to every user and app on that system without realizing it.
Fixing silly file permission changes, especially far-reaching ones, is often not worth the trouble, so you just end up restoring the whole system anyway. It’s that serious.
Interrupting updates or system operations
Credit: Jordan Gloor / How-To Geek
When Windows is running an update or doing some other sort of system maintenance it tells you to refrain from restarting the computer, but in my experience if you do accidentally (or deliberately) interrupt an update or other system maintenance job, things are usually fine. There’s some grumbling and a bunch of recovery prompts that can appear, but it sorts itself out.
Package managers can modify live system components: kernels, drivers, libraries, bootloaders, etc. Rebooting, closing the terminal, or powering off mid-operation can leave your system partially updated, and sometimes completely unbootable.
Linux doesn’t always warn you when an operation is dangerous. It assumes you know. If the system is installing packages, updating firmware, or rebuilding caches—let it finish! Walking away for five minutes is cheaper than reinstalling your OS, after all.
8/10
Operating System
Kubuntu 24.04 LTS
CPU
Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7GHz up to 5.4GHz)
GPU
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (dGPU), Intel Graphics (iGPU)
RAM
32GB Dual-Channel DDR5 262-pin SODIMM (5600MHz)
