How Is Linux Good?

Post Reply New Topic

What makes Linux allegedly better than all other OS's? What's so special about it?

I know it's open source, but I have loose grasp as to what that means. What language is used in open source, etc. ?

I ask because I plan on building a computer some time this Summer or Fall (depends on overall cost), and am considering using Linux as an OS. It'd also be nice to have a list of compatible hardware.

I like that it is free and that is great because I am unemployed and can't afford $200 for winblows. It is also more secure, stable, and generally faster than most other OSes (especially windoze). Not only is the OS itself like that, but also almost all the software that runs on it. On windows you expect to use proprietary software which either costs money or has ads and spyware built in. On Linux, you can run software for almost any task imaginable and the software is free and free of ads and spy crap.

So for me the choice isn't a hard one to make. The only real downside is that most games are not linux compatible, but there is a way around even that with Wine.

I prefer Linux for numerous reasons:

Its a great OS for tinkerers - theres always something to mess about with/upgrade/learn. Because the bones of the system are visible and accessible, it gives you an understanding of how the whole thing works, which is great for me as I love systems.

GNU/Linux is open-source, free software - which means free as in freely available, not necessarily gratis (although most of it is. This is great for me as like Psychlone I'm not currently working). Anyone can edit, base new programs upon, debug or distribute it providing that they make the source code available and make it clear which bits you have changed. This is obviously a fundamentally diferent approach to software/OS design than the model used by M$ etc - I like the collaborative philosophy a lot better than the proprietory producer-consumer model.

Put simply, I'm having a lot of fun with Linux, and the best bit is I don't have to give M******** any more of my money.

Basically because Linux is:

1. Open source (well, some distributions anyway), so you can go play with the programming
without fear of a lawsuit.
2. It's both free and stable - 2 things you don't find often with cheap software.
3. And the most obvious reason being that it's not made by m$.

Any more needed?

EDIT: There is a nice regularly updated database of compatible hardware located at http://www.linuxcompatible.org/compatibility.html

It's better and everything ... I mean ... it can run off a CD!! !

It's fun. For people like me, daily upgrades are pure, well, sex. And upgrade means better, not more overengineered bloatware to paper over the cracks of the mistakes you paid too much for in the first place.

But I dig the politics underneath it all too...

I won't bore you with it all, partly because it's all there on the web: all that stuff about the printing press, bibles in English, radiology, the free exchange of ideas for the benefit of humanity, and so on.

(Have you seen the list of organisations making the switch? It's got to tell you something.)

In the past, Linux used to be cool because it was a lot more stable than any of the DOS based versions of Windows. plus the fact that you didn't have to worry about viruses, trojans, worms and stuff like that.
Nowadays, the NT based versions of Windows, are a lot more stable, but you still have to worry about crap like viruses and spyware. Linux as well as several BSD variants are cool due to the fact for the most part, they are essentially free for the taking.

That being said, If you like to do A/V editing(as I do) you won't find much for apps that really compares to stuff available for mac/windows. Also, I have some REAL beefs when it comes to using GIMP, which is the default image editor that ships with nearly all Linux Distros.--But then again, it's fairly easy to run Photoshop and other windows apps with Linux. Oh yeah, Font rendering on linux STILL sucks, but not as bad as it used to.

http://www.ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54

But seriously, I really like the flexibility of Linux. Stability was probably a major reason why I used it as well, though these days that is quite standard in any OS (probably partly as a result of the existence of Linux since it has forced M$ to smarten up their act).

Though these days, I'm mainly using OSX. Still I miss things like iptables which provided much greater flexibility than the packet filtering built into Darwin.

Btw frogman I assume you would have checked out all available solutions, though this does look quite interesting:
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Maybe it doesn't stack up to Mac/Windows programs. I don't know because I haven't done any video editing at all.

I unerstand that Linux is open souce, but what languages do you need to know? All I know is HTML.

You don't really have to know any programming language to install, use and run a linux system. Though what does help is to learn how to use the command line, namely bash (a shell). This carries through to other operating systems as well, for example if you open the terminal on Mac OS X you get a bash shell. The other useful thing to learn is vi/vim. Then generally you just want to know your way around the system. If you get a good book and have time to follow it, then that's a good way to get started (I had a copy of Using Linux by Tackett & Burnett, 4th Ed. 1999).

From here it's really up to your level of interest. If you want to be a sys admin you'd want to at least learn shell scripting and perl, possibly even a little c. If you want to modify or write desktop apps then you'll need to know c++.

Personally I've never really written any major software. Though I can do a bit of shell scripting, perl and a tiny bit of c.

Firstly, HTML isnt a programming language, its simply a mark-up language.

Secondly, you dont need to know any programming languages to just use Linux, and programs for it can be written in any language. The kernel is written in C, but theres C++, PERL, Python, Lua, Tcl/Tk etc etc etc and you can learn whichever best suits your purposes....



Compatable hardware is anything someone has bothered to write a driver for. Most things work under Linux now, but there are still companies that like to keep their driver specifications private, meaning making the drivers for Linux is hard or impossible.

I'm too lazy to read all the posts, but I've the read the first few posts and they were
all pro Linux and contra Windows. I would like to say a few good things about Windows.
First of all, it's easy to install. I tried installing Debian, Red Hat, Gentoo, SuSE, ... And
after hours and hours of trying, all I end up having was a f*cked up hard disk drive.
Windows is safe too. If you install WinXP SP2, Norton AntiVirus, a firewall, spyware
removal tools, ... it's pretty safe. Even without running those programs, I only got 1 or
2 viri the 8 years I've been using DOS/Windows. It just depends on what you do with
your computer and how smart you are (if you click every banner, run every exe
people mail you, ... then you're just asking for problems).
Windows is easy to use and easy to maintain. I never have to do much trouble to keep
my software up-to-date. Since I'm lazy, this is a major plus.
Furthermore, people are so fond of Linux being open-source. They don't know C(++),
they never change anything in the source (they don't even compile the software, they
just download pre-compiled packages), they never even look at the source. Yet,
they are so excited that they have the source, filling up precious disk space.
Windows software isn't free. Linux software is. Well, not all Linux software is free.
Many software companies write their software for both Linux as Windows, and they
do not make release Linux version for free. Besides, look at those 10GB of
illegally downloaded mp3's and movies. If you download that many music/movies,
why don't you download your software? So don't come telling me you're not paying
Microsoft anymore money, since you never paid them in the first place (and you're
not Microsoft for every program you buy).
Linux is complex. It always was complex and always will be. Windows has a nice
"my computer" icon which reveals all your drives. Take a look at your /dev folder
in Linux. It has 20 links to floppy drives, 20 links to consoles, 30 to hard disk drives,
... Yet I don't even have a floppy drive in my pc!
Linux is good. I'm a computer programmer, and gcc, ld, make, ... are all very handy
utilities. Programming is made easy under Linux. But most of those programs are
ported to Windows, so I don't need Linux for it.

To end, I've used gentoo for about 6 months, I used to have Debian running on an
old 486 for a few months, and I'll probably end up installing Debian again on my
computers sooner or later. Linux is nice, so is Windows.

Someone (i'm too lazy to look back and see who) said that linuix has a "bash" or a command line. Is this like the DOS command line?

I am thinking about buying a used notebook and installing linuix/firefox on it. Is this a good idea?

Yeah, Bash is the "Bourne Again SHell" and, along with various alternative shells such as ksh or whatever, is similar to a DOS command-line I suppose, though A LOT more powerful....

The point isnt necessarily to be able to edit the code yourself, though its a nice bonus. It is more a principle, that software should be open so everyone can see how it works if they desire, so even if you dont look at the code yourself you can be sure hundreds of other people have and have fixed any errors they've found, and also that software should be free (as in speech, rather than beer, although the latter is often true as well).

There's no way that installing Linux could do physical damage to your hard drive. It may leave you with partitions that Windows can't erase though. Well in that case, that is the fault if Microsoft's installer/utilities. You could always remove the partitions with a Linux rescue disk.

As for how hard the install is, that'll depend on the distro. Debian's installer is notoriously known for being the worst, still after several installs you get the hang of it. Ubuntu is a Debian derivative that is supposed to have an easy installer. Mandrake spent a lot of effort on making their installer fairly seamless as well.



This is a lot of messing around.



Though you'd be crazy to run windows without an virus scanner. You never know when an MSIE vulnerability could catch you.



Nothing like apt-get in Debian. I don't believe anything could provide a more seamless upgrade path. I've got some Debian systems that would be getting onto five years since the initial install, yet they're still 100% up-to-date and very clean.



Yes, open-source software does actually have benefits for non-programmer users. For one, it means many eyes looking over the same piece of code. This may not mean your own eyes, but it generally results in greater stability and security. It also encourages programmers to write code to a higher standard because of the prospect of being scrutinised by other people. On the other hand, companies get away with writing sloppy code because it isn't up for public scrutiny.

And no, it isn't filling up precious disk space, if you use a binary distribution such as Debian.



If you want something simple, then go out and buy a Mac. It has a nice clean user interface that is easy enough that even your grandmother could use, yet it is built on a UNIX operating system. The interface is far smoother than Windows, yet it's almost as robust as Linux (I'll reiterate that the only thing I particularly miss is iptables). It even provides an environment that'll run pretty much all *nix software natively.



This is like comparing apples to oranges. "My computer" is a UI, while /dev isn't. A better comparison would be comparing the /mnt directory with an appropriate automounter system in place, to "my computer". Otherwise you could compare Konqueror in KDE to "my computer" though it does kind of suck how you have to teach users to unmount before they take a disk out. Yet Apple seem to have this worked out extremely well, for a *nix based OS.

Troll much?

At least you were honest. I'll give you that. Thanks for playing.