Why I love Linux,.

[Induane]

1.) Choice.  I shop for linux distro\'s like shopping for a car, I can find one tailored to my needs instead of overgeneralized.

2.) Freedom.  I can do more, more easily with linux, and I have the freedom to use the software in any way I like.  

3.) I rarely have to sign any EULA\'s

4.) The EULA\'s I do have to agree to are designed to protect my rights, not the rights of a large company.

5.)  Power.  Power.   I can do all sorts of interesting things: ala:

6.) Peace.  I can freely use my linux distro  without fear of viruses malware or spyware.  I have no annoying messages in my system tray informing me of expired software, \'windows updates\", out of date virus protection, or even from programs I have no idea how they got there.  I never reboot.

7.) Value, under linux I can run many open source programs whose windows equivilants cost tons of money.  

Photoshop - The Gimp 2.2
3DSMax or Maya - Blender
Microsoft Office - OpenOffice
Dreamweaver - NVU
Visual Studio - EMACS
Easy CD Creator - K3B
 + Plus windows itself costs money.  Sure it comes bundled with machines but you still pay for it.  


I think OSX would be cool, but I can\'t afford a nice mac.

[Ralas]

Amen.  I also like the way it deals with hardware:  It is much easier to build a device driver into the kernel than it is to struggle with installing a garbagey windows driver.  And iwconfig is far easier to use than window\'s stupid wireless networking setup.  OSX is cool, I have it on my janky $50 mac that I upgraded from a 233 mhz G3 to a 500 mhz G4, along with a few other upgrades.  Still not linux, though.

[Robinmagus]

/me thinks about trying linux...but from past experience thinks that Mac is crap...well, we\'ll see...

[leuxast]

And mac is the coolest system...you can put it into code too...Shame about the price though, it is excessive at best

[Induane]

One of the things I have noticed with Macs is not that their software is bad but I think they have problems with inferior hardware - which is probily what is driving their shift to intel based machines.

I have a P4 1.8 Ghz with 256 ram - it is my crap machine.  It runs SuSE Linux.  I use wine to run iTunes with it.  My friend Chris has a Mac with dual G5 processors and 512 ram.  He has a 128 MB ATI card as well, my P4 only had a 32 meg Geforce2.  Despite that I was using wine to run iTunes and he was running it natively with dual processors, I could still encode the same audio file much faster.  My guess is that the IBM PPC line just couldn\'t keep up, and so they tried dual processors just to help things.  They looked good in paper but lagged in performance.  They even lost the edge that the macs used to have on video and graphics stuff.  Too bad, as they always were leaps and bounds ahead of windows as far as interface.

[Kiirani]

..... *starts wanting it*

[Induane]

....give into the temptation

[ramlambmoo]

Why i dont like linux:
1)  Driver support for everything is crap.  Not the fault of the people who make linux, but i cant get half my stuff to work with it.  My wireless card is not supported, and my ADSL modem is not supported either, so i cant get the internet.  Which pretty much instantly rules linux out.
2) Even drivers that are supported are a pain in the ass to get working. I had to update my BIOS to get my screen drivers to work.  Thank god i use a laptop and have a battery, theres no way in hell i would have updated my BIOS on my PC without a uniterruptable power supply.
3) Not optimal support for windows programs: i know its bad, but the majority of developers write stuff for windows, and so it works.  Wine is ok if you can get it to work but it dosnt support everything.
4) Everything you download is in source code and you have to compile it yourself.  Now, i program c++ so this isnt a huge problem but theres sometimes you just want to be able to download and run something without having to go through the friggen build process.  Half the time when i download something i find all these other dependencies that i then need to download (and build again) and it turns getting anything to work into a major hassle.
5) The supposed fact that linux never crashes and is error free is bull.  My windows XP almost never crashes (i think i\'ve had 3 blue screen of deaths in the past 18 months) and i have hardly any problems.  Of course you get errors sometimes like explorer freezes here and then but i get errors like that on linux as well- often when im just browsing my harddrive and error will come up and the window will close.
6) The fact that linux is \'safer\' and less prone to viruses is only really relevant if you\'re an idiot who opens email attachments without thinking and downloads dodgy software using peer to peer or off russian websites.  I have no anti virus software, no firewall (apart from the default windows one) and i havnt gotten a virus on this computer in 18 months.  Of course i use firefox, if you use IE then you\'ll probablly get a virus in 10 mintues.
7) Its free?  I paid what, $100 for my copy of windows.  $100 isnt that much people, stop being so god damn cheap. $100 for not having to download 3 dependencies and compile them to get anything to work, or for not having to update my BIOS at 3am in the morning to get my screen to work, i think its a pretty good comprimise.

Those are my gripes about linux.  I think i\'ve installed 8 different distros (red hat two different version, fendora, ubuntu, mandrake, others) and i\'m yet to find one i like.  Primarily because none support my wireless card and thus i have no internet, and a computer without internet is pointless.  Couldn\'t get NDisWrapper to compile either (its an app thats meant to use your windows drivers to run your wireless card on linux) so i havnt tried since.

[Ralas]

actually my wireless card is not supported either, so I\'m using ndiswrapper and it works fine for me.  dependencies aside, how hard is it to compile something?
./configure
make
make install

It\'s three lines of code.  Sure, you have to wait a while, but you get a piece of software that is compiled on, and is therefore optimized for your machine.  You can usually get binaries for linux, but why would you want to?  Unless your hardware is really, really new, it is supported in linux, and is easier to get working via kernel config than by messing with a bunch of dumb windows drivers that just don\'t want to get installed.  I don\'t know about the specifics of your hardware situation, but there is a whole linux community out there willing to help with almost any problem.  Sure, it\'s a pain to get started, but it is a far more stable, more free OS.  3 blue screens of death in 18 months?  I\'ve had . . . none!  no crahses whatsoever.  In many years as a linux user.

PS:  In gentoo linux, you just type emerge program, and it downloads the source to the program as well as all of its dependencies, and builds them.  Two words, dependencies handled.

[ramlambmoo]

./configure
make
make install  

Lol thank you, i am already familiar with how to build an application.  The big problem is

dependencies aside, how hard is it to compile something?  

Dependencies are never aside.  They are always there and always have to be figured.  The actual compiling obviously isnt that hard.

PS: In gentoo linux, you just type emerge program, and it downloads the source to the program as well as all of its dependencies, and builds them. Two words, dependencies handled.

Well i havnt tried gentoo linux.  Sounds brilliant.  Red hat linux also sounded brilliant and easy to Dual Boot until i realised it couldn\'t resize partitions and so i had to mess around with partition magic to get it to work.  Automatic driver configuration also sounded brilliant until i had to update by BIOS to get it to work.  Hell, even windows sounds brilliant when you view their little presentation thingy.  Im sure one day ill once again get pulled into my \"wow lets see if i can finally get linux to work properly\" phase, and ill try gentoo and see if is that simple.  Lets hope so.

3 blue screens of death in 18 months? I\'ve had . . . none! no crahses whatsoever. In many years as a linux user.

Gee, so in all your years of linus you havnt had a single error.  Not even one.  In what 4 years of computing you have never witness a dialog box with the error symbol come up?  I find that hard to believe.  I had 5 in the first few days of trying linux.  That not many- but i get hardly any on windows either.  On the whole, i dont get anywhere near enough errors to base my choice of OS on them.

[Leeloo]

Would you please stop complaining about compiling things under Linux is hard - it\'s even harder under Windows, just the step of getting hold of the source is way too hard, and then you need to buy the correct compiler and so on...

Which is of course why most people just download the binary installer under Windows, just like under Linux.

As for lack of hardware support - I bought a machine for running Linux, and everything works. You bought a machine \"built for Windows XP\", and everything works under Windows.

Now, lets try the other way around. I have a machine that runs Linux without problems (although a bit slow by current standards), although it was built to run Solaris. You have a Machine \"built for Windows XP\". So, let me try installing Linux on your machine, and you try installing Windows XP on mine, and see who has the best hardware support... Hint: You are not going to find Windows drivers for anything in that machine, except the harddrive (but not the controller).

In short: You can basically forget about installing Windows on anything without the \"Built for Windows XP\" sticker. Linux on the other hand will run on just about every machine on the planet newer than an Amiga 500, although not every card is supported. Usually because the manufacturer don\'t WANT it to be.

[ramlambmoo]

Would you please stop complaining about compiling things under Linux is hard - it\'s even harder under Windows, just the step of getting hold of the source is way too hard, and then you need to buy the correct compiler and so on...  

Compiling things under windows isn\'t hard.  You dont even have to buy a compiler.  Just use dev c++.  Or use the Windows Visual c++ compiler which is released free. However the point is i dont need to compile things under windows, i only do that out of interest.  Under linux i have to compile anything to get it to work, so one would expect it to be reasonably easy.

In short: You can basically forget about installing Windows on anything without the \"Built for Windows XP\" sticker.  

In short: you can forget about installing windows on anything with the Built for windows sticker? Hmmm? I can install windows easily on my \"Built for Windows XP\" computer.  You just contradicted yourself.

Linux on the other hand will run on just about every machine on the planet newer than an Amiga 500, although not every card is supported. Usually because the manufacturer don\'t WANT it to be.

I dont care if the manufacturer wants it to be or not- the point is it dosnt work.  If something dosnt work i dont say \"Oh well its the manufacturers and evil Window\'s fault that it dosnt, and in the perfect world it should so ill just use it anyway\", i say \"This dosnt work, im going to go use something that does.\"  

As for lack of hardware support - I bought a machine for running Linux, and everything works.

Yes, but comprimises will of had to be made to get everything to work on linux.  There is absolutly no chip in existence that i would prefer to my current setup that dosnt work on windows.  There are many chips i would like that dont run on linux.

[Androgos]

Originally posted by ramlambmoo
Compiling things under windows isn\'t hard.  You dont even have to buy a compiler.  Just use dev c++.  Or use the Windows Visual c++ compiler which is released free. However the point is i dont need to compile things under windows, i only do that out of interest.  Under linux i have to compile anything to get it to work, so one would expect it to be reasonably easy.

Not true, most projects offer binaries if you ask for them, either staticly linked or if any developer have the computer.
Oftenly sent the same day or the day after (From experience).

About linux hardware support, pfff. Just to prove it, i went around the house and booted knoppix on every single one. Guess what? Eveyrthing, EVERYTHING except a buetooth thingy who barly work in widnows worked, even our aiinctent printer.

Linux rocxkors the big one one one111!!!

[ramlambmoo]

Not true, most projects offer binaries if you ask for them, either staticly linked or if any developer have the computer.
Oftenly sent the same day or the day after (From experience).  

All well and good, i just dont consider having to ask developers to compile binaries and personally send them to me as a very viable long term prospect.  Plus, if i have a project that has 3 dependencies.. go figure.  Its not impossible, but its not exactly that easy or fun.

About linux hardware support, pfff. Just to prove it, i went around the house and booted knoppix on every single one. Guess what? Eveyrthing, EVERYTHING except a buetooth thingy who barly work in widnows worked, even our aiinctent printer.  

Im happy for you.  On my one computer that i tried the wireless card wasnt supported, the network card wasnt supported, modem wasnt supported and the screen wasnt detected.  Thats just my experience.

[lynx_lupo]

Be nice people. The only problem ramlambmoo has is hw support. Keep in mind that linux has high multiplatform aspirations and vast hw support, but it takes time. There will always be some new/rare hw that won\'t work or won\'t work fully. Too bad you have such a combo. New kernel, new drivers - give it a periodical try with some competent distro.

Now the compiling/binary stuff is just funny. All the distros you mentioned use binaries (red hat two different version, fendora, ubuntu, mandrake,) and have them available for most of the software out there. Sure, they can\'t handle dependencies that well, but there are others...

Of course there are errors, bugs and crashes. Now, linux itself never crashed for me, while windows did. It\'s a difference if your system crashes or just some overlaying application.

Compiling things under windows isn\'t hard.

haha, did you try to compile ps? The mingw people are the saddest cases that come for build help.