Why do you use linux - Page 2

I started with it way back as an experiment. But now I've gotten so sick of Windows installs "wearing out" after a year, bogged down due to spyware, registry brush, viruses, and software that wants to do what IT wants to do instead of what *I* want it to do.

And Clippy and Rover the Search Dog were the absolute last straw. First I started using open-source apps on Win32...Firefox, Thunderbird, GAIM, etc. Since I was pretty much just using these anyway, I took a shot at a total switchover.

First SUSE, the Fedora, then Ubuntu. Fedora is my favorite, but Ubuntu works slightly better (Fedora's PalmOS support is broken). I just have to run Quicken (for my bank accounts) and Internet Explorer (for the ticketing system at work) and WinRAR (have to handle EXE Zips) under Wine/CrossoverOffice. I still have it set for dual boot, but Linux is the default. I only use Windows for games. Sometimes not even them...Linux has some really SWEET "diversion-level" games, like LBreakout, SuperTux, and LTris.

npaladin.

just a hint. you can install rar in linux (native) (apt-get install rar unrar)

linux also has a native finance application.

because we know better
because we do not like that bullcrap OS called winXP
because we are not M$'s toys


should i say more?

I'm aware of both; don't need the hint thanks.

But rar itself, and Linux's ZIp format libraries won't handle SFX Zips..the EXE ones. At all. So I need something that will, and WinRAR is the least offensive of the Windows compression programs.

As for GNUCash...pretty nice application. Just not nice and pretty under GNOME...they're still on GTK1 and not done creating a functional GTK2 port yet. I'm keeping an eye on that project so I can switch over at some point though.

@DimGR: let's be honest, WinXP is far from 'bullcrap'. The previous Win9x was...

Anyway, I still prefer Linux and now I'm on Ubuntu... I just like the fact that (almost) everything works out of the box, while still allowing me to choose everything the way I think is better, at no costs.

My complain? Not everything works "out of the box", but it's not difficult for me to do that. For a common Windows user, I realize that it may be difficult to configure everything, specially if you take into consideration that people hate to learn things, even if it is better. WPA support is just one thing that I missed when I installed...

ok then it is dogcrap

I used to use Unix and XWindows many years before Win3.1 was released, and later on switched to Win95 once it became somewhat stable and the standard in most organizations. Recently I acquired a Laptop with a Athlon64 and Linux was the only OS that allowed me to explore 64-bit computing. Since I have some time on my hand I set the Laptop up as a dual boot system with XP for regular business use, and Fedora to play around and update my long-forgotten Unix skills (its free after all, so all you need is time and about 8 GB of hard drive space). My assessment after about 5 months is that it takes a lot of effort and bandwidth to keep up with the updates and make sure that everything is running smoothly after a new kernel is released. In addition there are many things we take for granted in XP that are difficult or impossible to accomplish in 64bit Linux (e.g. finding a webcam driver). But its definitely fun if you like the aggravation of dealing with mysterious system issues.

Although I have not had a chance to try it, I heard Ubuntu is very stable and user friendly and almost a complete and free substitute for XP including many apps.

Ubuntu is great. Did you say 8GB for Fedora?? Wow, it's more bloated than ever before...

I think it's much smaller depending on what you all select to get installed with such as servers or development tools. Also, the frequent updates tend to accumulate (unless you clean out once in a while), and of course you also want some space for multimedia downloads etc. I partitioned my hardrive to have a third partition in FAT32 to be shared between Linux and XP where most of my user files eventually end up. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to move the darn "My Documents" to that partition .

Ah, ok... 8GB for things, not only for FC...

About the My Documents problem: I on Linux right now, so can't test it to see if it works (specially because I never tried), but check this page

I guess I'll throw in my reasons for switching. I've run dos/windows exclusively since 1988. Win95 was a HUGE disappointment for me as it never achieved good performance and stability so I was forced to use winNT4.0. NT had major compatibility issues so I had to run dual boots for many years. Win2000 solved many issues, although it was quirky. BSOD's were very common. WinXP is a decent upgrade to win2000, but virii and spyware and drm has made it completely unusable. I refuse to accept microsoft's adjenda to dictate how the market functions. The combination of windows vista and palladium is a frightening prospect. Knowing that is on the horizon I figured that now is a great time to finally switch to linux.

I've been toying with linux distro's since redhat7 and have only just now found a distro that I can use on my main machine. The distro is Ubuntu, simply because of the apt/synaptic package manager and strong community support.

Linux is easier than windows for simple tasks, MUCH harder for mid to slightly advanced tasks, and more robust for complex tasks. Windows application management is simple y atrocious. Windows desktop machines cannot run for an extended period of time without being rebooted. Finally, I have to reformat my heavily used windows machines every 4-6 months. That's finally become totally unacceptable.

I no longer have crashes, if an app is playing bad I just kill it, it never takes the whole system down. I used to think it was my laptop that cause some of the instability. Now I know that it was ENTIRELY windows.

I have alot more reason for switching, but those are the main ones. Fortunately, I took little to no hit in productivity in making the switch.

-BT

to the OP who said they like listening to music and web browsing and stuff like that, linux is better at it.

once you set it all up, thats it. no security updates, no viruses no nothing. and apps like amarok are much better for playing music than the windows apps. last.fm support built in, album covers, lyrics, wikipedia integration, smart playlists, audio streaming, pod casting, etc. etc. etc.

KDE also looks a hell of a lot better than xp too, and it is much easier to customize the UI.

as for the ctrl+alt+dlt thing, linux is much better at that. ctral+alt+bckspace restarts the x server, which generally means that 5 seconds later your computer is fully functional again. ctrl+alt+escape starts xkill, which turns your mouse cursor into a skull and crossbones which can be used to kill any running app just by clicking on it. and finally, ctrl+escape launches a windows-like process dialog that lets you kill whatever you want.

and to npaladin, there is also kmymoney if you dont like gnucash.

oh, did i mention that linux is more fun to use?

Actually, right after an install of most distros you are encouraged to download a bunch of patches. And, like windows, it's an ongoing process because no software is completely secure and completely bugless.

Fortunately, on linux the process is 100x better than windows because it doesn't require multiple reboots and all the software update come from the same source.

thats true, but those updates are ussually bug fixes or add features. but you are not at risk if you dont have them.

and like you said, they have almost no impact on whatever youre doing. with windows, doing windows update resluts in total network bandwidth cloggage during the download process and then total system resources cloggage during the install process and then its all topped off wit ha nice reboot.

Hey Spincricket,
Be sure to also look to ubuntuforums.org, and ubuntuguide.org and don't be scared, I too took the plunge and besides the guys (and gals) here and the ubuntu forums, I've had just about every question and/or problem answered or fixed. I am just about finished getting 5.10 the way I like it and all of these resources have helped tremendously.
Later

ubuntuforums is not that great. i mean, yeah they have a lot of good stuff, but when i posted 2 questions, both got ignored really bad.

that said, i used to use ubuntu, i used hoary and it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. however i had to ditch breezy, at least for now in favor of Mandrake. Now i know i was the one who many times said Suse, RH/FC, and Mandrake are stupid n00b distros, and they were last time i tried them (FC4, Suse 9.3 Pro, Mandrake 10.1). Right now i am using Mandrake 2006.1 and its pretty l33t after you un-ugly-fy the theme. I installed gnome 2.12 on it instead of kde 3.4 because kde plain sucks. Wireless did not work out of the box like it did with ubuntu, but that was pretty easy to configure thanks to some FAQ posted on the madwifi website. I still have problems installing ATI drivers because it uses Xorg 6.9 and ati really doesn't support anything above a 6.8.

Because it uses an i586 kernel (ubuntu uses i386), and because of a few other factors, mandrake is actually faster. my boot time is roughly 40 seconds on mandrake, something ubuntu can't touch.

I think ubuntu forums is amazing. The vast majority of questions I posted got a prompt reply. If I bump them I generally get a prompt reply.

As far as the speed issue is concerned, I did have to do a little extra work to fix that. Ubuntu suports several kernels so I'd go into synaptic and check out what's there. I use the K7 kernel. I also noticed a huge speed improvement after I got my ati fglrx drivers working correctly. Ubuntu's firefox is very slow so I don't recommend using that. It's easy enough to get a copy from mozilla's site.

Sadly, it seems hardware support is what makes or breaks a linux distro. Fortunately my laptop is well supported.

-BT

Do any of these Linux type O/S support the 64bit Intel processors? Also new to Linux and am thinking about learning it and since I have a 64bit processor on my laptop, might be nice trying it out.

yes, just about every distro that has a X86-64 aka AMD64 release will support the intel 64 bit cpus.

My laptop is AMD64 and I would NOT recommend using a 64 bit distro just yet. why? some hardware is more difficult to set up, and that is not recommended, especially by a new person. furthermore some packages like Flash Player and W32Codecs are not available and will not work on 64 bit systems. So knarlydavid....highly recommend you stick to something 32bit.