iEntry 10th Anniversary
LinuxHaxor
WH
MHOnce You Go Linux, You Never Go Back
Okay, maybe it didn’t rhyme the way I was hoping for…
But seriously, what’s with all the talks about windows 7 being a Linux Killer? A long time Linux user has very little to no reason to “switch” to Windows from Linux. Unless of course you are a recreational Linux user who occasionally tries out Linux in the form of virtual install or a separate partition. To understand why this is so, you have to understand why people use Linux.
It’s the ideology silly.
More than any other reasons, most Linux users use Linux out of their belief in the ideology that software should be free and open source. You just cannot replace it with a shiny release of Windows.
Linux is very cheap: $0.
Can Windows 7 match that price? Last time I checked Windows vista price ranged from $200 to $320. Even if you upgrade from a previous version of Windows you are still paying $100 – $200, depending on the “versions” of windows.
Linux helps you sleep at night…
… knowing that you are using one of the most secure OS in the world. Even NSA uses Linux.
Linux is Fast and stable.
Unless you are updating your kernel, you will almost never have to restart your computer. Unlike Windows, an update of web-browser (IE8), will not force you to restart your computer twice. While Windows 7 does have better performance over Vista, it is nowhere close to the speed performance of any two year old Linux-based distro. The minimum requirements of running any linux-based distro beats the hell out of running Windows 7.
If these are not enough reasons why a (real) Linux user will not switch to Windows 7, than you are not really a Linux user to begin with.
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Other reasons people use Linux are the flexibilities it gives that other operating systems don’t.
Some use Linux to fight the man too.
I am using both Windows and Ubuntu as dual boot. And I have almost never booted into windows for a while now.
Ubuntu is awesome.
I would love to use Linux full time but there are exactly 2 things that are not running on it…
1) Abit IP35-E – Just browse around internet and you will know why…
2) MMOGs – And NOOOO… Wine is not a perfect solution, especially for a games that need stability.
Anyway… I am avid linux user and every other pc beside main one is infected by that great system :)
A.
I will be a total Linux convert if:
- The stupid M$ exchange server allows me to use Thunderbird to retrieve emails in Linux
- I could access my company’s network thru VPN in Linux (tried all methods but to no avail)
- My favorite Digital Audio Workstation (Cubase/Wavelab) comes in Linux version
As much as I want to be a full fledged Linux user, I can’t. However, I still spend 75% of my time on PC with Linux.
Awesome OS.
Good post there, really. But this thing has been ringing in my mind ever since I read that first line of your post so I have to type it down, no matter how worse it sounds:
Once you go Tux, you never lose big bucks.
Ouch.
“most … use Linux out of their belief that software should be (FLOSS).”
I always knew I was different!
The reasons I use Linux are that:
1. it is “flexible”. Whereas Windows and OSX force me to work in only one (the GUI) way, Linux gives me the flexibility to use both a complex (and therefore powerful) scriptable CLI for many tasks while at the same time using a GUI for tasks that it is good for,
2. there is no (well, only a *tiny* bit, and none that I’ve ever seen) malware,
3. it’s powerful and efficient (how many home-user Windows people also run mail servers, web servers and Oracle on their desktop machines?),
4. it’s 64-bit kernel and 32-bit userland give me easy access to (dirt cheap) 8GB RAM and all the 32-bit binary apps that I’ve come to depend on,
5. there’s constant improvement (running Debian Sid, I constantly and automatically upgrade to the latest versions of apps like FF and OOo) alongside the ability to stay (like in Debian Stable) with known quantities while still getting security updates.
Bottom line: unless you need specific Windows-only app or hardware, I see no reason except inertia for any home user to need Windows.
The Command Line, man!
Not that Linux doesn have a nice friendly GUI. It has several, actually. The powerful Linux CLI doesn’t supplant the GUI, it supplements, complements, and enhances the GUI.
GUI vs. CLI is a phoney controversy. Which is better, a screwdriver or a hammer? A fork or a spoon? It’s not that one tool is better than anothertool ; it’s that two tools are better than one tool! You can eat your salad with a spoon, it’ll just take longer.
What makes Linux better is that it’s got two tools instead of one tool. Having a nice friendly GUI means that the CLI is lot easier to pick up because you don’t have to use it for everything. You can pick it up a little at a time, but there’s a huge amount of ignoranace and misunderstanding about this. It took me two years to start using the CLI, and then I made a significant beginning with it in about half an afternoon. I tell you without exaggeration, those couple of hours of study have saved me hundreds of hours of the most repative drudgery over the past four years, especially through the magic of elementary scripting.make a list of programs in a text file, and that’s called a script. You don’t even have to understand the commands to put them in a script and let the script run all by themselves while you sleep, go to work, take a shower or make love with your significant other. Windows has the command line to do this, it has the script concept– or so I’m told– but it really doesn’t have the applications.
Once you’ve gone GNU, your seeking is through!
In my case, desire to use the CLI was there from the beginning (since I use and love the scripting system of the legacy minicomputers at work), but the knowledge wasn’t there, since Unix/bash is so fundamentally different from OpenVMS & it cli DCL.
So, like you, I used the GUI as a crutch while learning bash and all the cli apps.
Yes, but I want to make it clear: For me, the command line is a desktop tool. I am all about the GUI.
The gui is good and useful (I am, after all, writing this from FF and GNOME), but the cli is where the power (and thus my main reason for using Linux instead of a locked-down Windows) is.
For example, I never use Nautilus (or mc, for that matter), and for my current task of ripping all my DVDs, I created a bash function to make it simple to pass parameters to mplayer, instead of a bunch of pointing and clicking.
But!!!! It would be supremely painful without mouse support and “copy on select”.
@Harsh: Go tux, save bux.
@Ron Johnson
What do you think about Windows power shell 2? It ships out of the box in Win7
@c
Since I don’t use 7 or Vista, I can’t intelligently answer that.
But Win admins have been using GUIs now for 20 years, so while *some* will switch to PS, the main question is “how many”?
I’m using dual boot, Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows.
Ubuntu si a great OS, still, facing some problems here and there, some applications (i.e.Eclipse) are using to much memory, not happy with an audio and video drivers, Open Office is not fully compatible with MS Office…
Anyway, the price, approach and philosophy is great. I’m trying to push it into the company with about 40 pc’s, and it is progressing, for now, a couple a desktops users have an Ubuntu.
I just tried installing it (Ubuntu) on the “family” computer, and *hated* it. H-A-T-E-D hated it. Too gooey.
So I installed Debian Sid with GNOME, Firefox and Thunderbird. They get a GUI environment to work in, and I get a CLI to manage it with.
I am using linux since a year and just have no reason to switch back i now feel more comfortable here.
I have been using Linux (specifically Ubuntu Hardy) for 6-7 months now.
I have totally loved it.
Never had any problem with the CLI because I have used DOS before I had Win95
FLOSS rocks :)
(any problems that i have faced, i have somehow or the other managed to fix them)
I run ubuntu.. But I am also forced to have windows because tons of software dont work on ubuntu. Corporate VPNs and loads of other software. This is the strength of M$ that I hope will die out eventually with cloud based apps via browser.
I have tried WINE and other apps but many programs just dont work!
Is there any other OS apart from Linux, Free to use, Free to distribute and Free to modify, what more could you want.
Seriously, i’ve being using Linux (PCLinuxOS) for a little while now, it is surprising how the mind relaxes using it,no security worries it’s the best move i ever made,
O.K i still have M$, but that is only for the odd games, so i guess i use Linux 95% of the time, M$ app’s i don’t use unless of cause they come with Linux.
I run ubuntu 8.04/8.10 in notebook and very old desktop respectively. no issues at all, WORK Great, very first time need to fix ALSA driver issue.
One more point I’d like to add for why I could never go back to windows?
The command line. It has become my third arm.
I got frustrated at a friend’s ubuntu computer just because I didn’t have the terminal on a convenient hotkey, I don’t think I could ever stand to compute solely in windows “you don’t need to see any command line” environment. Plus, the commandline is terrible when you actually use it.