How Is Linux Good?

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Knoppix is great. If you hardware is recognized by the livecd and if you like the distro, you can then install it quite easily.

Here is a cool link about linux livecds :
http://www.framasoft.net/rubrique277.html

(the content of the English version of the page is different).

Yes, I love Knoppix. Thanks for the link. Thats a good resource. I didn't know what some of the words meant, though (like amorçable).

amorçable=bootable

Alexandra

If there were so many users were completely ignoring commercial software, then the commercial Linux distros wouldn't have had such large user bases. It's all about how you behave towards the open source community. Companies like Red Hat who work with the people instead of against them do get trust, just as they would had they released all their source under a Open source license such as the GPL.

As for the comment about elitism, there's no right or wrong answer. Some things things that are supposed to be so easy that you shouldn't have to care much about it turn out to be a lot more difficult than expected, but something sifficult may also turn out to be easy.
I'm using Ubuntu, and so the package management through apt and Synaptic should be even easier than the "user friendlier" OSs such as Mac OS and that thing from Redmond. It was, for some programs, such as the Mono Runtime and MonoDevelop. But other, smaller applications, such as the wiki-like note-taking program Tomboy won't run. I just can't get the executable to run. Not that it's obvious which executable I should run, either.

The greatest pro for Linux, except the previously mentioned Open source, stable, free) is that it makes you so powerful. Even if you never touch the source of a single open source application or distro, you get the power. As far as I know, there's no way to completely remove the Graphical User Interface for Windows or Mac OS. In linux, you can do perfectly well without a gui. Even if most distros include it nowadays, and for the better for most users.

Speed would be the last argument I mentioned in favour of Windwos or Mac OS. Linux is known to be, and is, fast, and Linux drivers generally outperform their buddies in other OSs (thought there are more drivers for the other OSs).

And finally, there's the power of emulation and portability. You can run Linux on almost any platform, and you can make Linux act like almost any platform, too.

Well, I plan on upgrading soon. When I do, I'm putting Linux (Mandrake or Ubuntu) on my big hard drive, and Win2K(someone gave me a disk) on my smaller one. After that, I'm going to teach myself Phython and see what I can do to the GUI. When I first saw Linux, it looked like a mix of Windows and Mac.

The best part of linux to me is not linux itself at all but the whole concept of open source.

I've used linux and FreeBSD for servers and desktops at various points in time.
I've found that while Linux makes a good server and a good platform for doing programming and general experimentation it's not very good for less technical type tasks.

I've always found hardware support a problem. I did used to run linux on my desktop at one point, but i got sick of having to modify kernel source code and recompile it just to get unsupported hardware working. I had a sony clie PDA that I had to modify the usb mass storage driver in the kernel to be able to put MP3s on. Since i'm not a expert in driver programming it had bugs, like if you took it out of the cradle without hitting the disconnect button, the whole machine crashed.

At that point i went back to windows.

I just found linux didn't work for me and this is someone who has the programming skills to write and commit new drivers to the source base, but yet i still found it too difficult for day to day use.
As sure as i'm likely to be flamed for that, that was my experience with linux.

I do play around with stuff on another box and connect to it via X from my windows machine which lets me play with stuff like that if i want to without messing up my every day computer.

I do support the idea of open source software, but a UNIX clone isn't the kind of operating system i need. I'm presently looking over the source base of reactos (an open source clone of windows www.reactos.org) to familarise myself with it and see if i can help. To me the primary thing that's wrong with windows is the fact that it's closed source and the licensing terms. I would also like to be able to apply a few tweaks to the way the OS works without having to resort to disassembly and reverse engineering, which i can no longer do because of the automatic updates mechanisim.
For example the windows kernel has a behaviour of changing from LRU to MRU page replacement algorithms when running a direct X game when you start to run out of memory because this improves performance in a low physical memory tharshing situation (someone should impliment this in the linux kernel as it presently isn't there and performance would be better if it was), i want to be able to pick which programs that applies to and apply it to non direct X apps as well, since it would improve performance if i choose properly. That was just an example. But being able to tweak things like that would be cool.

The way open source software has been most useful to me though is sometimes I will just read the source to a project or part of a project to see how cirtain things have done, it's made me a better programmer and things like how memory is allocated or how virtual memory actually works are no longer a black art to me from looking at the linux/freebsd/reactos kernel sources.

Hopefully the dev lists will be nicer than some of the linux ones i've been on, where people assumed i had little or no programming experience because I was female. Some people even suggested i rejoin with a fake male name to be taken seriously. I ended up getting sick of it and never actually commited any of my changes.

~EG (maria)

I agree with that.



I like the new ubuntu linux. And I've found that some of the linux community was obnoxiously elitist to everyone who didn't know unix... There are some areas that are pretty kewl though.

I use SuSe 9.3....

I like linux because it's so versitile.

Take for instant, You have RPM, DEB and SRC based distro's

In windows you can only use .exe files, in linux you can use any, except.dmg(osx) and.exe(win32)

It's fast and everything aimed at linux is FREE.

And unlike windows, theres always a way around problems in linux.

and, last but damned importent, unlike windows, everything is in eyes view, nothing is hidden from you.


May I just clear one thing up here chaps and gals: "linux" is actually the kernel.

is was'nt untill developers stated building things around the kernel, these things named desktops.

example: "linux" is like the foundations of a house, the bricks and morter are the desktop and shell in for linux.

Hmmm, we run Windows ME on one machine at work which has a tendancy to crash every now and then, so it's NOT the computer. My guest computer is unable to go into standby using windows 98 though it is APM compliant, however it could go into standby under Linux (until i changed the case and installed windows 98 to it again for my guests). This computer I use now (coolblue) previously had a very new motherboard in it and windows 98 (until the DDR slots stopped working, followed by the board itself), it crashed every now and again, and had the same standby problem that my guest computer currently has. Now any computer i buy or build will have Linux installed on it (most likely Ubuntu as that is the only distro I happen to have right now), i find it stable, reliable, keeps a very good uptime, and can recover from small crashes whereas windows cannot, so basically you are lucky

I cant really understand all the hype about linux. If you just want a computer to run easily with minimum fuss you get windows, if you want to be creative with art or music you get a mac though windows is second best for this with being compliant to programs like cubase. What do you get linux for?

For not wanting to waste a $100 on Windows XP.

That's true. Bill Gates has more than enough money.

Last edited by eamonn on 10 Sep 2005, 2:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Linux is the operating system of the proletariat! That is why you should use it, eamonn

Anyone who uses proprietary software is a running dog!

It would help it become more popular if there was a user-friendly version of linux.

Which distros have you tried? I actually find some distros to be easier to install and use than windows in some ways. SuSe 10.0 is coming out soon and it looks like it will probably be the easiest distro of all.

I first tried Linux in like 1998 and couldn't use it at all... but it has come a long way since then.

Il probably look into it then once SuSe 10.0 comes out then, thanks.