Why Linux?

Why Linux?

Tell me why would you prefer Linux over other Operating Systems?

There are many little things and many big things. Use it you will know.

Linux and all other Unix-like operating systems is just fascinating. A never ending story for explorers, researchers and the scientific community.

I've recently started using Linux. For me it works much quicker than Windows and I feel more in control of what I am doing.

If you can, get hold of a live disc which you can get for free with a Linux magazine or download an image for free from a Linux website. This way you can try it out without installing anything on your computer as it will run from the c.d..

Originally posted by harrytheman:

I've recently started using Linux. For me it works much quicker than Windows and I feel more in control of what I am doing.

I found that as well. I've have people tell me that it's not possible, but on War of Warcraft, I get better frame rate out of Linux than Windows. In some cases, substantially better.

More secure than certain other os … I like the idea of open source an I don't know if I wolud be here when Mozilla wouldn't drive crazy …

Nocheiner

Indeed, Windows, is the bad neighborhood of operating systems. Everytime you go there, you risk your car windows being smashed, being mugged, etc.

As a developer, the shell is the IDE. Freedom. GNU/Linux comes with multi-dimensional freedoms; freedoms that I have yet to see sufficiently described.

because *mix gives me the sense of freedom. i like the well thought design. because WINNT uses a not so good file-system and seems designed without security being paramount.
Cheers.

There are several reasons or plus points for Linux.

1. Software center + Open source. Since the most softwares are open source, their source code can be checked and modified to suit OS.
Adding to it, Software center has it's own repository, so one can install software from the distro's server (which may be tweaked to suit that distro or OS). Since the distro developer will never want his system to be unstable and prone to viruses, he will make sure that his softwares are virus-free. This is easy for him, since the source code is available). This avoids risk of downloading softwares from other 3rd party sites, even from the main site of software developer.

2. Linux is rock solid and you do not login as root (admin) as a default. This makes you safe incase something goes wrong. Terminal is very powerful and one can troubleshoot using it.

3. Fast troubleshooting and bug-fix due to open-source nature.

4. Old kernal images are available on boot loader. Just incase the newer kernal has some iissues like kernal 3.0.4 having iissues with nvidia graphic cards. One can safely uninstall it and roll-back to older version.

5. Live-Cd. Check for compatibilty with drivers and wifi connection without installing OS.

6. GUIs are not integrated into kernal. If GUI (called as desktop environment - DE) crashes. OS does not crash and you do not see an infamous blue screen of death as in case of windows XP

7. Offers more than one DE. Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE. Alternatively you can install more than one DE. Live CD can help you to get the feel of DE, before installing. It only takes some Mbs to download distro with another DE. (most developers offer multiple ISO files of same distro with different DE like ubunut, Mint, PClinuxOS)

8. Be mentally free of no piracy

9. Out-of-the-box OS complete with office suit, mediaplayer, CD/DVD burner, photo viewer and editor, pdf viewer, mail client, instant messenger, internet browser and more.

10. Great community and support. Popular distros like ubuntu, mint, bodhi, pinguy, PClinuxOS have great forums, where users volunteer to help others.

11. Offer more flexibility and is highly customizable and modular by nature.

12. Free security updates for limited period.

13. Centralized safe auto-update of softwares through software center or synaptic. Repair or install broken packages (software) through synaptic package manager. Generally advanced users use synaptic.

14. Finally, no virus trouble. No OS is bullet-proof to viruses. Linux is designed to be more stable. Downloading software from repos help reduce virus. Nothing installs without password prompt. On the other hand, there are very few viruses as compared to tons for windows.

15. There is no registry, a centralized place to store sensitive info about system and softwares installed. Each Software files are stored in separate folders. So in case if the software crashes. OS does not crash.

16. No need to install additional drivers after OS installation, as in case of windows. Drivers are preinstalled and if any hardware is changed, Linux, re-configures and updates the drivers. This saves times during installation. To add to it many distros give out-of-the-box OS. After after fresh installation, which takes 10 - 15 minutes, a full fledged system is ready for use.

17. Thousands of additional softwares are available in repos, (found in software center / synaptic package manager).

18. Distros designed for specific purpose: Taking advantage of Linux's open source nature, freedom of flexibility and high level of customization, there are forks and re-mastered versions of very popular distros with are designed for a specific purpose. e.g. some distros are designed keeping in mind old hardware. They offer excellent support for old hardware, have latest softwares with latest kernel with light weight applications (softwares) and light weight DE like LXDE and window managers (WM). To know the difference between DE and WM read robins excellent info

E.g Lubuntu, an Ubuntu derivative has LXDE which only consumes 128mb RAM. Users lightweight window manager PCManFM (instead of Thunar for XFCE and Nautilus for Gnome) and lighter word processor and spreadsheet app. To make OD less resource intensive, develops use only window manager with no DE. e.g. Open box is used as exclusively as windows manager and DE. Some e.g. are PCLinux OS Openbox version, Pippermint OS, Puppy Linux. Some even use E17 - Enlightenment distos like Ubuntu derivative Bodhi Linux. The concept is to make maximum RAM available for resource intensive apps. DE's should not eat up RAM.

There are distros which can be run entirely on RAM and do not need to be installed on hard disk. They help in data recovery and are like portable OS. popular ones are puppy linux (90 Mb) and macpup (puppy linux derivative - 160 Mb ISO file)

The main reason I use Linux (Ubuntu) is because it was free. Haha. Nonetheless, I still really appreciate it. I definitely prefer the speed and UI of it over Windows or Mac OS. It's just easier, for me personally, to use. The customization of it is a major plus as well.

I like Ubuntu because it loads much faster than Windows Vista, and faster than XP.
It is easier to update and getting (free) new programs.
I wish I could list 18 points like sujalu. That means I have lots to learn about Linux.
I can see the benefits of Linux, but on the other hand I have done so much work in Windows ...

Way more secure (you normally use the system as a normal user and not as root).
It just works The Right Way - see Windows fdisk for an example of how not to do it.
Has a terminal that is usable (I spend a lot of my time in a terminal).
KDE has the option to not have uncommanded raising of windows just because you clicked on them.
Control over updates and installation (Debian Apt/Aptitude).
Control over device mounting.
Logical layout of the directory tree. None of this C: madness.
Wide selection of supported filesystems.
No braindead single-point-of-failure registry to go wrong.
Config files are text files - simple to edit and backup.
Easy peasy to move to a new disk. cp -a will do the trick. Try that with Windoze
Ditto making backups of the whole system (tarballs).
Better quality programs. Better file support - no pimping one's own proprietary file types.
Support of international standards.
Bugs are fixed quickly
Choice of DEs
No grovelling to BG, or whoever, to ask if it's ok to use your own computer.
Can run it from live CDs or install to a UFD.

And probably many other reasons I've forgotten over the years.

I'm not giving B. Gates my money. More control, but more work. Does educate through doing.

In general, Linux is harder to manage than something like Windows, but offers more flexibility and configuration options.

I recently installed it on a spare nachine and the thing that is so provocative is that when you consider the cost of upgrading from one Windows to another and even worse a complete install cost and yet here is one perfectly easy to use and costs nothing? The fact that I am Scots is an addition!

Aside from the increased performance I get from Linux (over other OSs) and the longer life-cycles I get from my hardware, before I have to upgrade, there are two fundamental advantages I get from being a Linux user:

1) Innovation: There are features and functions that appear in the Linux OS (and it's associated applications) long before you'd ever see them in Windows or Apple OSs. Because of the openness of Linux, developers are not limited as to how they can push the envelope of desktop computing. They are free to experiment and gain feedback/contributions from software users or other developers. If you want to see the cutting edge of desktop (and even server/cloud) computing, you need to be using Linux or other such open source operating systems. Much of what is done here is later adopted by the commercial OSs months - or even years - later.

2) Direct communication with software developers - It's the nature of open source software development to communicate and collaborate with others in the community. Many of the applications that are developed for the Linux OS include information on how to communicate with those who are writing the software, as feedback and bug-reporting is fundamental to a successful project. I take full advantage of this when I can. Here's an example:

This is the "About" window for the KDE application, DigiKam. Right there, for everyone to see, is information on how to contact the developers of the program. With this information, you can submit your ideas, comments, or even your own improvements right to those who are capable of acting upon your submissions to make the product better. You won't get this opportunity when using software from Microsoft or other big corporations.

Originally posted by virtualsky:

This is the "About" window for the KDE application, DigiKam. Right there, for everyone to see, is information on how to contact the developers of the program. With this information, you can submit your ideas, comments, or even your own improvements right to those who are capable of acting upon your submissions to make the product better. You won't get this opportunity when using software from Microsoft or other big corporation

I think it used to be something like that on old Mac OS (pre-X).

I mainly used it because I wanted to try something new and linux just was the next best thing. My favoirite distro though is fedora 15 though I'm currently using pc linux.

I am a power surfer. I regularly have over ten tabs open in my browser, sometimes over twenty, and rarely over thirty. My current browser of choice is Firefox due to its speed, customization options, it being open source, and the organization behind it. I have over ten add-ons installed. I have a pretty decent machine. Firefox is my most used application (don't worry, Opera isn't far behind).

In spite of all this and after extended use, Firefox tends to lag or slow down when switching tabs and the like. I do not quite understand why this happens considering the hardware I am running on but if I can run games just fine, why should a mere web browser not run just as smoothly? I have since concluded that the operating system is at fault as this tends to happen a lot more in Windows 7 than in Ubuntu 11.10. I don't even recall any instances of this happening in Ubuntu 11.10 actually.

In short, Linux is less resource intensive. It runs better i.e. more efficiently. If my most used applications (excluding games) run better, then why not Linux?

Originally posted by Phriend:

In spite of all this and after extended use, Firefox tends to lag or slow down when switching tabs and the like. I do not quite understand why this happens considering the hardware I am running on but if I can run games just fine, why should a mere web browser not run just as smoothly? I have since concluded that the operating system is at fault as this tends to happen a lot more in Windows 7 than in Ubuntu 11.10. I don't even recall any instances of this happening in Ubuntu 11.10 actually.

You could try putting the cache on a RAM drive. I know, you shouldn't have to, but alas.

Originally posted by Phriend:

In short, Linux is less resource intensive. It runs better i.e. more efficiently. If my most used applications (excluding games) run better, then why not Linux?

Hell yeah. On my netbook I've got both Windows 7 (came with it) and Ubuntu. Unity's hardly the lightest environment or anything, but Windows 7 is always a sluggish experience, even if all I've really done with it is UNinstall some of the bloatware that came with it.

Windows always lies when it gives time while transferring files

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by Phriend:

In spite of all this and after extended use, Firefox tends to lag or slow down when switching tabs and the like. I do not quite understand why this happens considering the hardware I am running on but if I can run games just fine, why should a mere web browser not run just as smoothly? I have since concluded that the operating system is at fault as this tends to happen a lot more in Windows 7 than in Ubuntu 11.10. I don't even recall any instances of this happening in Ubuntu 11.10 actually.

You could try putting the cache on a RAM drive. I know, you shouldn't have to, but alas.

I have to confess that I wouldn't know how even if I wanted to.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by Phriend:

In short, Linux is less resource intensive. It runs better i.e. more efficiently. If my most used applications (excluding games) run better, then why not Linux?

Hell yeah. On my netbook I've got both Windows 7 (came with it) and Ubuntu. Unity's hardly the lightest environment or anything, but Windows 7 is always a sluggish experience, even if all I've really done with it is UNinstall some of the bloatware that came with it.

On the subject of netbooks, my best friend is on a Dell netbook which came with Windows XP and his main reason not to use Ubuntu is that the screen goes weird. Everything is slightly stretched and it just isn't nice. We've tried everything we could think of but to no avail. He's coming over this weekend and I intend to make him try Xubuntu and Mint LXDE in the hope of those two not having an issue with the screen being stretched. They are also far more lightweight so I am hoping for a win situation across the board.

@ Phriend

May i also suggest you try Puppy Linux ?. I'm using Lupu version 5.2.8 v4 to be specific.

I use it because it's the most stable version of Linux (even Puppy, Or any other OS for that matter) i have used.
And this particular version of Puppy (Lupu 5.2.8 v4) comes with the most (useful) software i have ever seen in a
128mb distro. Also, To put the icing on the cake, You can use ubuntu repositories as a source to install software
as this version is compatible with .deb files.

Oh, And to the topic title (Why Linux ?), I enjoy the freedom, It's MY operating system.

Originally posted by Phriend:

On the subject of netbooks, my best friend is on a Dell netbook which came with Windows XP and his main reason not to use Ubuntu is that the screen goes weird. Everything is slightly stretched and it just isn't nice. We've tried everything we could think of but to no avail. He's coming over this weekend and I intend to make him try Xubuntu and Mint LXDE in the hope of those two not having an issue with the screen being stretched. They are also far more lightweight so I am hoping for a win situation across the board.

Did you check the display properties? (top right, second from top) If that doesn't help you should be able to fix it using a custom xorg.conf, but that shouldn't be necessary just to get a normal configuration working. Depending on the GPU it might also be worthwhile to install e.g. the proprietary nVidia drivers. For that purpose, use the "additional drivers" dialog.

Also, Ubuntu/Xubuntu/etc.buntu 12 will be released in a couple of days. The beta has been doing fine on my netbook the past couple of weeks.

Originally posted by telecomgyaan:

Tell me why would you prefer Linux over other Operating Systems?

Because I regularly fall asleep while waiting on windows to get a usable desktop.
Okay, I don't fall asleep but I get enraged having a desktop displayed and not being able to work on it for minutes.
A SSD is simply not needed, as on other systems you can start working right when you got your desktop.

Further, more control over the System,
and finally, sympathy for the underdog.

As a note, I'd like to try BSD, but i don't have enough time at the moment, so I have to stick with my current setup.

I prefer some aspects of "linux' interface" (there are many different interfaces/customization choices, I use openbox; there's some windows nearly-equivalents but I don't recal the names, they're "shell replacemnets" on windows jargon), and some applications, such as konqueror, as a file manager - it is/can be somewhat similar to windows explorer with a few plugins, but AFAIK more flexible, you can open dozens of tabs, panes, command-line thingies, see the disk usage as graphs, there are righ click menus with "copy to", "move to", each one with submenus for recently used locations, and many other stuff I haven't yet seen in any other file manager.

I also like how the software upgrades are handled. Instead of each individual application coming with a pop up and saying, "hey, there's a new version, click here to update/go there and download the new version and then install", there's in most distros a "centralized manager" for upgrades, not that unlike some of MS Windows' own security fixes, but where you upgrade (or install anew) almost everything. Sort of as if download.com had checkboxes that you went checking and then clicked "apply" and everything would be downloaded and installed at once, no questions asked (most of the time).

I also like symbolik links, hard links, having a RAM filesystem to use for temporary files, and I think that on linux you usually can do much more with scripts in bash or whatever, even not actually being a programmer.

I never really had many problems with viruses or stability on windows, but with linux these are things that almost never cross my mind.



It's not all shiny and wonderful in linuxland though. I miss better hardware drivers/compatibility, and some proprietary software without really equivalent alternatives. And the extant proprietary software sometimes does not work as well as the windows' version. Windows' firefox reportedly once performed better than linux' native version even when running from linux' "emulator" (actually, "not an emulator"). The X server (the engines of linux' graphic interface) is also said to have some compromise in terms of performance, in exchange for some sort of "transparency" that I don't know exactly what it is - not "visual" transparency of any sort, something like applications being able to "know what's happening" I guess.



I never really used other thing than windows and linux, besides DOS and MSX basic. I've played with some OS X version for half an hour or a few hours, and I found the whole thing of the window buttons in the left side, and being unable to change, quite annoying.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by virtualsky:

This is the "About" window for the KDE application, DigiKam. Right there, for everyone to see, is information on how to contact the developers of the program. With this information, you can submit your ideas, comments, or even your own improvements right to those who are capable of acting upon your submissions to make the product better. You won't get this opportunity when using software from Microsoft or other big corporation

I think it used to be something like that on old Mac OS (pre-X).

That would be a little bit surprising, given that little-girl-crying incident, whose suggestions were returned without being read, in order to avoid lawsuits.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/04/14/apple_calls_meeting_after_making_little_girl_cry.html

Originally posted by the-dsc:

That would be a little bit surprising, given that little-girl-crying incident, whose suggestions were returned without being read, in order to avoid lawsuits.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/04/14/apple_calls_meeting_after_making_little_girl_cry.html

Mac OS X is (appropriately?) 10 years old, so I don't think that really says anything one way or another. But I haven't seen an old Mac since the '90s or possibly early 2000s and it's not like I ever owned one, so I couldn't really clarify. It may not have had individual contact info, but I'm pretty sure you could see who did what in any case.

Having contact information is not unusual for a small project, especially freeware or shareware. Ever look at Irfanview in Windows? (Come to think of it, shareware had better have contact info if they want you to send them money ...)

Can you imagine listing all the developers and contributors on Firefox? Probably fill 20 screens.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Can you imagine listing all the developers and contributors on Firefox? Probably fill 20 screens.

http://www.mozilla.org/credits/

And, I see a few of my colleagues in there!

Or type about:credits in Firefox or SeaMonkey. I notice a coupe of people I've met in there.

I guess you could sum it up as "Linux lets me do things the way I want to do them".

I don't have to have any of this "desktop environment" business getting in the way. I can get rid of all that stuff, or just not install it in the first place. All I need is the facility to launch xterms, then I can do everything from within them, on the command line - and there is no difficulty installing and configuring Linux so that that is all I get. No waste of resources running a full desktop environment which I'm not using... and certainly none of this business of only being able to use it via the GUI (I am still scarred by the horror of using an original Mac). I can do everything with the command line, and only use graphical tools for purposes where such an interface is actually appropriate (picture editing and other media work, web browsing, and that's it).

I have an excellent set of development tools available for more or less any language, and they are all right there as standard. And I have the source code for everything, too. If I want some functionality which is not available as standard I have everything I need on hand to modify some existing package or to code it from scratch. And coding it from scratch is so much easier when you can use a command line interface and don't have to include ten times as much boilerplate to talk to the GUI as you have code for the actual job.

I can sort things out. With Windows if you have a problem you can maybe google a "solution" to it, but it never is a real solution - it just tells you to do what you would have done anyway - ie. try successive choices from: (1) switch it off and on again, (2) reinstall the software, (3) reinstall Windows, (4) wipe the whole hard disk and reinstall Windows, all software and all data; (5) wish plagues of frogs on Bill Gates. And then do the same again when the same problem reappears a couple of weeks later. With Linux, if something goes wrong, I can track it down, fix it, make sure it doesn't happen again - and tell people who maintain the code what I've done so that it can not go wrong for anyone else either, if it's that sort of problem.

I can add or modify functionality only as much as I need. If I want some new facility that requires a particular package to be upgraded, I don't have to upgrade everything else as well, waste time doing that, then waste more time putting hundreds of things that have changed as a side-effect back the way they used to be, and still not really have it working right. I can upgrade just the one package that I need to. If the version I want isn't compatible with the state of my system I can backport it, or selectively install the minimum required to support it without changing anything else, or some combination of the two.

I can use all my computers indistinguishably and with equal ease. It makes no difference whether the bash session in a particular xterm is on the same machine the keyboard is connected to, on a machine on the other side of the room, or on a machine on the other side of the world. They all respond exactly the same, I don't have to do anything special just because something is on a remote machine.

I don't have to worry about spyware and rootkits installed by software from supposedly reputable sources (eg. that Sony rootkit fiasco). Open source software doesn't have things like that, because people would know...

I can use my data the way I want to, too. I don't have to be restricted to using it according to the limited ideas of whoever wrote the software that handles that sort of data. If I want to watch a streaming video and have only a slow and crappy internet connection that keeps stalling and dropping out, or the common problem of the flash plugin trying to use twice as much CPU as I actually have, I don't have to put up with jerky sequences of stills and broken sound, because I don't have to stream it... I can simply download it and play it locally in decent quality. (And before anyone objects that you can do this with Windows too... for one thing it's more difficult, and for another, RTMP capture on Windows exists because it's been ported from Linux. And it might not even be so advanced on Linux if I hadn't released a rubbish capture tool which inspired people to make better ones.)

Linux makes it easier to get hardware cheap or free, because it runs just fine on old machines. It doesn't clobber the resources running loads of stuff I neither want nor need, and nor is there a problem with drivers no longer being available for old stuff.

Linux is freedom... my computer, my software, my data, my methods of working, nobody else's nose in it and nobody's fingers in my wallet.

the reasons : stability, security and it's free.

Originally posted by azertyh:

the reasons : stability, security and it's free.

And truly portable, As in, Bootable from USB sitcks, Memorycards, Keychains etc. Works on a lot of different architectures and can be cloud based if need be.

Originally posted by telecomgyaan:

Tell me why would you prefer Linux over other Operating Systems?

Freedom. I can do whatever I want with it. I can customize the Kernel by removing things that I do not have on my hardware. I can add any window manager and/or any desktop I want and customize it and much more.

Originally posted by sujalu:

15. There is no registry, a centralized place to store sensitive info about system and softwares installed. Each Software files are stored in separate folders. So in case if the software crashes. OS does not crash.

There is a registry and the os does crash

Originally posted by optimalsupreme:

There is a registry and the os does crash

There's a kind of registry in Gnome and perhaps in KDE, but that isn't intrinsic. Also he didn't say the OS doesn't crash, but that it's less likely to crash if an application crashes. Perhaps you disagree with that, but it's a completely different claim.

You could also consider your system's package manager as a sort of registry - the part where it knows what programs are installed anyway.

If you could say Linux had a registry, it would be /etc.

Thank you Franzie and sgunhouse for the info