The popular YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, better-known as “PewDiePie”, posted a video on April 27th, 2025 with the title “I installed Linux (so should you)”, emphasising it as a replacement for Microsoft Windows and its increasing abuse of user freedom, and having a lot of fun with desktop customisation. With 110 million subscribers, this video has increased the Internet’s interest in switching to GNU/Linux operating systems, especially timely with Windows 10 no longer being supported after October 2025, and onerous modern hardware requirements for Windows 11.
We think it’s a great video, and urge both curious newbies and seasoned pros to give it a watch, even if PewDiePie and YouTube culture are not normally your cup of tea. It’s entertaining and accurate, and does a great job on focussing on some of the most important reasons people might have to replace Windows.
We wanted to mention the video here to let everyone in the Manawatū-Whanganui region know that we’re still out there, and meeting once a month to discuss GNU/Linux and free and open-source software in general. Some of us are professionals, some of us are dabblers, but we’re all enthusiastic about user freedom in one way or another, and we love how GNU/Linux and other free software gives us that freedom. We always welcome new members, and many of the things PewDiePie talks about in his video are our bread and butter.
Whether you’re interested in switching to a GNU/Linux operating system—whether PewDiePie’s choice of Mint, or others like Debian or Fedora—please consider getting to know your local Linux User Group (LUG)! We meet on the second Wednesday of each month, February through November, at 7:00pm, at the Milson Community Centre in Palmerston North. We usually have at least two relaxed and friendly technical talks at various skill levels, and always have a whole lot of good conversation and exchanging ideas. If interest is sufficient, we’re considering hosting an introduction session to the operating system—if this is something you’d like, please let us know!
You can contact the secretary at secretary@plug.org.nz, or comment on this post below. We also have a reasonably active Discord server. More social media links are on the sidebar of the homepage.