just by curiousity, why do you like linux?
I use os x, linux, xp and 2000 very often, but I prefer xp
I use os x, linux, xp and 2000 very often, but I prefer xp
I like OSX much better than Windows XP. Linux is ok but installing apps gets to be a pain sometimes. That and driver support is not quite up to Windows standards. But it's nice to have a choice in what you want to use.
linux's value is in the server market... not the desktop market. anyone who says it beats msft in the desktop realm is really showing nothing more than a bias.
besides, you can customize your desktop the same way on the BSD's. i don't see how linux has an overwhelming edge here.
GTaudiophile
Lifer
- Oct 24, 2000
- 29,767
- 33
- 81
I run Gentoo here at home. It's running SAMBA, SSHD, and Apache. SAMBA is all I really use on my local network as I don't have a static connection at home. If I did, I would use Apache and other related services much more often. As it is, it does what I want it to do. No, it's not difficult to install. Yes, you learn a lot in the process and know a lot more about how to debug problems.
Edit: I do not have X installed.
Edit: I do not have X installed.
hmmm... either, i assumed he was saying that the poster's comment was garbage... or i guess you're right... he does need to qualify his remark.
cause it's a collective way to give msft the finger?
honestly, i don't see any other reason it's pushed by an average admin or a power user over say BSD.
linux has become the institution used to vent against msft... that's why it's so popular.
this is IMHO of course.
honestly, i don't see any other reason it's pushed by an average admin or a power user over say BSD.
linux has become the institution used to vent against msft... that's why it's so popular.
this is IMHO of course.
Platypus
Lifer
- Apr 26, 2001
- 31,046
- 321
- 136
I like it because it's a nice free server (this includes all flavors of BSD) for running everything I need without having to spend any money on expensive server OS's or hardware to run them. I can put linux on a pentium 90 and have it run what I need without a problem. I also use it as a workstation for writing code
I started using Linux because WinNT was pissing me off with it's instability. I stay with it because it's simply a better way to use a computer for me. When I have to work on a Windows machine, I feel crippled .... crappy command line, need a gui for everything, no virtual desktops, no native remote desktops, etc.
im d/ling mandrake right now. and i just realised alltel updated my speeds to 1.5Mbit/s from 758 WAHOOO
MIKE
MIKE
If you are just playing with the GUI, you are not really impressed with what makes Linux different then Windows.
halik
Lifer
- Oct 10, 2000
- 25,696
- 1
- 81
Originally posted by: fivespeed5
Originally posted by: Ameesh
give me a fvckin break, youre just temporaily impressed with whatever different GUI it has compared to what you had. linux is garbage
linux is only garbage if you don't know how to use it properly. I assume you have no fscking clue how to.
owned...
<- runs gentoo/2.6.4 and xp pro on the main machine gentoo/2.6.4 on the laptop (i think i recompiled the last kernel...) gentoo/2.4.1 on my sparc64 machine and gentoo/2.6.4 at work.
I do like windows xp for gaming support (directx is a good set of apis) and itunes
I had to install it [Fedora] for some work I was doing. I was rather impressed. Yes, I did change most of the settings so it would behave like Windows. For the python and database programming I was doing, it was a great environment. But when I screwed it up, I screwed it up royally. I'm on my second install, dual-booting XP. Very convenient.
I like Windows. It plays my games. I like Linux, too - it behaves how I expect it to, the price is right, and I like the thought of having control over my system instead of the OS permitting me to use it. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
By the way, is anyone here familar with the Trusted Computering Platform Alliance? Anti-TCPA website I realize the website is intended to be biased and inflammatory, but they bring up some serious issues concerning the future of MS software development.
I like Windows. It plays my games. I like Linux, too - it behaves how I expect it to, the price is right, and I like the thought of having control over my system instead of the OS permitting me to use it. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
By the way, is anyone here familar with the Trusted Computering Platform Alliance? Anti-TCPA website I realize the website is intended to be biased and inflammatory, but they bring up some serious issues concerning the future of MS software development.
I've played with Mandrake, RH9.0, 9.1, and Fedora (first release). The only one that I didn't have to hunt-and-never-find drivers for everything was RH9.1 -I like an OS that I don't have to deal with drivers not existing for my hardware. Anyway, finding a suitable movie player was not fun. I never found one that was all that easy to install for a n00b. So until Linux becomes as easy to install/update/configure and has hardware compatability just as much as Windows, I think I'll stick with MS for my main boxes.
I use Debian woody on my main workstation, use it to run highend DCC apps like Maya and Shake. (Specifically, Maya and Shake.) Because it's my main workstation, it runs everything else, too - gAIM, XMMS, and plenty of xterms and NFS mounts. I also play a couple games of Quake3 or UT2004 now and then.
Here's my views on Windows, Linux/UNIX, and computing in general:
I've used Windows since version 3.0. I wouldn't call myself a normal user; I tend to use the hell out of every piece of software on my computer. I keep it (whatever it happens to be and whatever OS it happens to run) tuned up and running to the best of my abilities, and always fix it when it breaks. I had really good luck with Windows. When it crashed (and it did) it crashed HARD (blue screen and everything), but that wasn't as often as some people might lead you to believe. In fact, Windows 2000 has rarely crashed on me unless I did something that I would expect to crash it (like pull out a PCI Fibre Channel controller. While it was active. And had volumes mounted. The system volume. Oops.). Haven't used XP for more than a few minutes at a time (minor fixes to friends' computers), but I'd imagine it's not half bad.
To me, Windows is a relatively good, cheap, basic desktop OS. If you're new to computing and don't want to spend a lot of money, you buy a $299 Dell with Windows XP on it, and for the most part it works. That is, until you connect it to the internet without patching the security holes, but that's a whole other story. It has the widest selection of apps and games, a somewhat functional multiuser model (better on the separation of preferences than on the security thing...), and every computer guy you talk to will know at least a little bit about it.
If you have the extra money, and knew that it was better, you'd probably buy a Mac running OS X - it's the best, easiest, most balanced (and still powerful) desktop OS ever, but not so great for gaming. Runs DCC apps like Photoshop very well, and never crashes (except for hardware issues, which are rare - go Apple!) I had a Powerbook G4 for a while, and loved every minute of using it (and gaming wasn't a problem, because my favorite - Quake3 - runs on just about every platform anyway).
Linux is not Windows. Linux is to Windows as a IBM zSeries is to the earlier-mentioned $299 Dell. You can play all the games you want on Windows, but for real work, especially in a networked environment, it's time for Linux. Windows is fine for a little word processing and some web surfing, but when you start getting into the IO-intensive, load-average-at-8 type of work - CAD, digital content creation, visualization (and some of the 'lesser tasks' like software dev and server hosting), a Linux machine will be far more usable than a Windows machine. One thing that I always loved about Unix machines (not specifically Linux - it applies equally to IRIX and Solaris, both of which I also run at home) is that they won't fall apart under heavy loads. I can grind my Windows box to a halt by running a Maya render on it, while my Linux box (actually, the same machine, booted into Linux) churns away happily, rendering while playing songs in XMMS, running Seti on the odd spare CPU cycle, and letting me read ATOT without so much as a stutter on the audio output or a jerk of the mouse.
You may be able to run your highend apps on Windows (and may people do, but to each his own) but two areas where Windows will never come close to UNIX/Linux are networking and userland tools. Even a basic UNIX userland has fabulous scriptability and tools. Once you learn how to use it, you can glom and pipe commands together and use shell scripting to accomplish tasks much more quickly than the equivilient hunt-and-click under Windows. UNIX networking is also second to none. You can do things like share a directory so transparently across the network (and mount it in any location on your filesystem) - even the whole root filesystem - that no application will ever know the difference. Windows needs a full GUI redirection tool like Remote Desktop or VNC to do remote administration; everything you could possibly need to do on Linux can be done with ssh, and if you need to run a GUI app, ssh will encrypt and tunnel the display back to your local machine, popping it up like just another local application. (You can also do straight-up display forwarding without ssh, but it's more secure that way, and just as easy). Just as an example of how transparent the display forwarding is - I recently played Quake3 with the binary running on one machine and the display on another, tunneled through ssh on my local network (gigabit). I even got a playable framerate (at 1280x1024, I think it was 60 FPS).
Gaming on Linux is easier than it used to be, too. You download and install WineX, and - wow, look at that, just about every Windows game on the shelf is now fully playable. If you can put up with a few bugs here and there, you can try the latest and greatest games, but as a general rule, anything popular or that has been out for a month or so will have no issues (unless it's a newer Microsoft game, like Flight Simulator 2004 or Age of Mythology, which tend to have problems).
Basically, what it all boils down to: I use Windows to play games, and it's good at that. My parents use Windows - my mom surfs the net to read up on new theories in Physics (no kidding), and my dad manages an online business selling rare books (think Outlook, Word, Excel, Mozilla, UPS WorldShip, and a few custom DB apps). Windows 2000 works fine for both of them, and that's really what Windows was designed (in my opinion) for - the sort of basic, day-to-day stuff that used to be done by hand, on paper. Word processing, spreadsheets, databases (small ones, anyway), communications/email, and other general office tasks. It also makes a fine gaming platform (I may prefer OpenGL over DirectX, but I must give it credit where credit is due, making a consistent dev platform for all OS-dependent parts of the game). But if you use a UNIX system, you'll know in time what you've been missing - networking the way it should be, tools to make your life easier, and it'll only crash if you start ripping hardware out (been there, done that).
----
Sparknotes: Windows does well on small tasks and very well on games. Macs do better on the same small tasks, and some heavy ones (photoshop), not so well on games. Linux does everything except games (unless you use WineX - Windows games on Linux), and does it very, very well. Use Linux - I bet you'll like it. Eventually.
Here's my views on Windows, Linux/UNIX, and computing in general:
I've used Windows since version 3.0. I wouldn't call myself a normal user; I tend to use the hell out of every piece of software on my computer. I keep it (whatever it happens to be and whatever OS it happens to run) tuned up and running to the best of my abilities, and always fix it when it breaks. I had really good luck with Windows. When it crashed (and it did) it crashed HARD (blue screen and everything), but that wasn't as often as some people might lead you to believe. In fact, Windows 2000 has rarely crashed on me unless I did something that I would expect to crash it (like pull out a PCI Fibre Channel controller. While it was active. And had volumes mounted. The system volume. Oops.). Haven't used XP for more than a few minutes at a time (minor fixes to friends' computers), but I'd imagine it's not half bad.
To me, Windows is a relatively good, cheap, basic desktop OS. If you're new to computing and don't want to spend a lot of money, you buy a $299 Dell with Windows XP on it, and for the most part it works. That is, until you connect it to the internet without patching the security holes, but that's a whole other story. It has the widest selection of apps and games, a somewhat functional multiuser model (better on the separation of preferences than on the security thing...), and every computer guy you talk to will know at least a little bit about it.
If you have the extra money, and knew that it was better, you'd probably buy a Mac running OS X - it's the best, easiest, most balanced (and still powerful) desktop OS ever, but not so great for gaming. Runs DCC apps like Photoshop very well, and never crashes (except for hardware issues, which are rare - go Apple!) I had a Powerbook G4 for a while, and loved every minute of using it (and gaming wasn't a problem, because my favorite - Quake3 - runs on just about every platform anyway).
Linux is not Windows. Linux is to Windows as a IBM zSeries is to the earlier-mentioned $299 Dell. You can play all the games you want on Windows, but for real work, especially in a networked environment, it's time for Linux. Windows is fine for a little word processing and some web surfing, but when you start getting into the IO-intensive, load-average-at-8 type of work - CAD, digital content creation, visualization (and some of the 'lesser tasks' like software dev and server hosting), a Linux machine will be far more usable than a Windows machine. One thing that I always loved about Unix machines (not specifically Linux - it applies equally to IRIX and Solaris, both of which I also run at home) is that they won't fall apart under heavy loads. I can grind my Windows box to a halt by running a Maya render on it, while my Linux box (actually, the same machine, booted into Linux) churns away happily, rendering while playing songs in XMMS, running Seti on the odd spare CPU cycle, and letting me read ATOT without so much as a stutter on the audio output or a jerk of the mouse.
You may be able to run your highend apps on Windows (and may people do, but to each his own) but two areas where Windows will never come close to UNIX/Linux are networking and userland tools. Even a basic UNIX userland has fabulous scriptability and tools. Once you learn how to use it, you can glom and pipe commands together and use shell scripting to accomplish tasks much more quickly than the equivilient hunt-and-click under Windows. UNIX networking is also second to none. You can do things like share a directory so transparently across the network (and mount it in any location on your filesystem) - even the whole root filesystem - that no application will ever know the difference. Windows needs a full GUI redirection tool like Remote Desktop or VNC to do remote administration; everything you could possibly need to do on Linux can be done with ssh, and if you need to run a GUI app, ssh will encrypt and tunnel the display back to your local machine, popping it up like just another local application. (You can also do straight-up display forwarding without ssh, but it's more secure that way, and just as easy). Just as an example of how transparent the display forwarding is - I recently played Quake3 with the binary running on one machine and the display on another, tunneled through ssh on my local network (gigabit). I even got a playable framerate (at 1280x1024, I think it was 60 FPS).
Gaming on Linux is easier than it used to be, too. You download and install WineX, and - wow, look at that, just about every Windows game on the shelf is now fully playable. If you can put up with a few bugs here and there, you can try the latest and greatest games, but as a general rule, anything popular or that has been out for a month or so will have no issues (unless it's a newer Microsoft game, like Flight Simulator 2004 or Age of Mythology, which tend to have problems).
Basically, what it all boils down to: I use Windows to play games, and it's good at that. My parents use Windows - my mom surfs the net to read up on new theories in Physics (no kidding), and my dad manages an online business selling rare books (think Outlook, Word, Excel, Mozilla, UPS WorldShip, and a few custom DB apps). Windows 2000 works fine for both of them, and that's really what Windows was designed (in my opinion) for - the sort of basic, day-to-day stuff that used to be done by hand, on paper. Word processing, spreadsheets, databases (small ones, anyway), communications/email, and other general office tasks. It also makes a fine gaming platform (I may prefer OpenGL over DirectX, but I must give it credit where credit is due, making a consistent dev platform for all OS-dependent parts of the game). But if you use a UNIX system, you'll know in time what you've been missing - networking the way it should be, tools to make your life easier, and it'll only crash if you start ripping hardware out (been there, done that).
----
Sparknotes: Windows does well on small tasks and very well on games. Macs do better on the same small tasks, and some heavy ones (photoshop), not so well on games. Linux does everything except games (unless you use WineX - Windows games on Linux), and does it very, very well. Use Linux - I bet you'll like it. Eventually.
Originally posted by: Ameesh
give me a fvckin break, youre just temporaily impressed with whatever different GUI it has compared to what you had. linux is garbage
You show me a way to (using a Windows box):
Download e-mail from various POP3 servers
Filter it via Bayes filtering and RBL blacklists
Serve it via IMAP
And serve up said e-mail to WAP enabled phones
For under $10k and I'll FedEx same-day a cookie to you.
With Debian, I can do it for $0.
I'm all for other os's but can you (or anyone else) give a better reason? I would never use an old computer so that's not really an issue. I do like the whole code writing aspect of it (code warrior isn't too hot) but debugging is not very easy to do with gcc. I understand the whole server half, but I'm talking more for desktop use.
Thanks
Good reasons to use Linux on the desktop: Cheap.
That's about it.
Linux is an excellent server, and a better-than-average starting point for embedded systems. Excluding extraordinary circumstances, however, it is a subpar desktop.
Extraordinary circumstances almost exclusively refer to some sort of network trick that Linux can perform but Windows cannot. Running programs that execute on a different computer yet display on your monitor would be an excellent example.
Ok, that's pretty much what I've been told. The whole free thing is the only thing that's nice but that's really not an issue most of the time.
Thanks, I guess I'll stick with xp then
Well, when you get XP Pro for free from MS, there's really no reason for me to bother with Linux for what I do. I don't compile code, build programs (outside of VisualStudio.NET's VB every once in a while) or build sh|t in autoCAD. Oh well. 
I've only used linux (rh 7.2) on a server basis, using command line only. It worked great, though it does take some time to get started, doing things like reading man pages and asking on irc. I looked into transitioning to a free OS. Took a look at freebsd, debian, gentoo, and redhat. My favorite out of those was freebsd. But then, I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my computer.
1) play games
2) browse the net
3) play games again
All of a sudden, I had no reason whatsoever to use any of the above OSes. My win98 almost never crashed, and winXP seems to work even better. I'm always on top of my box's security. And I want to play the latest game without any hassle. So, it was a very easy choice. Windows XP.
Still, I think I would like to have a linux box, but I really don't want to have 2 machines or do dual boot. All I can do is hope they make win4lin for windows XP!
dfi
1) play games
2) browse the net
3) play games again
All of a sudden, I had no reason whatsoever to use any of the above OSes. My win98 almost never crashed, and winXP seems to work even better. I'm always on top of my box's security. And I want to play the latest game without any hassle. So, it was a very easy choice. Windows XP.
Still, I think I would like to have a linux box, but I really don't want to have 2 machines or do dual boot. All I can do is hope they make win4lin for windows XP!
dfi
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 23K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter