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IBM, Brazilian Government Launch Linux Effort
chriscooper1470 writes "Here is an update to the Brazilian Government Continues Push for Free Software. Brazil has become the latest country this week to show its support for Linux. Following moves by the UK and Russia, the government of Brazil announced Friday that it has signed a letter of intent with IBM pledging to develop initiatives that will promote the use of Linux in the Latin American country."
One of the biggest wails heard by the most vocal and fanatical zealots in the Linux community is that Windows and most of the programs that run on it are bloated and slow, while screaming about how fast and "un-bloated" Linux is. Where this myth started I do not know, but it is obvious that it is a deliberate effort by Linux fanatics to tarnish the good name of Microsoft and Windows and to lure Linux newbies and those curious about the OS into making the fatal mistake of installing it on their computer. The fact that this alleged truth seems to go unquestioned shows how reluctant most Linux advocates are to admit that their once lightweight OS has degenerated into nothing more than piles and piles of spaghetti code and a huge mess of cheesy, mostly unused apps that is characteristic of most Linux distributions these days.
Now to dispel the myths:
Myth 1.) Linux is good for old computers.
This Linux Lie is often perpetrated when a newbie wants to try out Linux, but is reluctant to install it on his or her main computer (with good reason) Others replying to his question will say that it is fine to erase the hard drive of his old Pentium 166 with Windows 98 SE to prepare it for the Linux revolution, but the fact is that Linux performs horribly on slow computers in comparison to Windows. Sure, Linux may turn an older computer into a feeble server or a router, but try running things that you could run fairly quickly under Windows such as anything GUI, particularly an office app or a web browser, and Linux crawls, stutters, grinds the hard drive for 10 minutes, and generally eats up all the RAM in your poor machine's system like an obese glutton.
Myth 2.) Linux is lightweight
Once, yes, but now it couldn't be further from the truth. Linux has quickly snowballed into a gargantuan assortment of apps and bloated libraries that have been stitched together by the slaves of Tux. No amount of RAM will satisfy Linux, it will eat it all until there is nothing left to do but start swapping. Many Linux purists will say that is not true, but since they choose to only use the command line or maybe blackbox or windowmaker they have no say. The very fact that they would be torturing themselves with such rubbish just goes to show that they find straining their eyes and wrists on the geeky command prompt or configuring their blackbox using text files less torturous than suffering through the unbelievably slow load times and bloated programs found in KDE and GNOME.
Myth 3.) Windows is bloated
This absurd statement is the most fictitious, and is spouted over and over again by the Linux faithful in the hopes that they will brainwash themselves into believing this most grievous of the Linux Lies. My computer, an Athlon 1600+ w/ 256 mb RAM running Windows XP, takes merely seconds to start, the whole system taking about as much time to load as KDE by itself takes to start up in Linux. Even on my old 166 Mhz IBM Aptiva Windows 98 SE runs very well, is quite snappy, and is just as featureful as KDE, even considering that Windows 98 is a four-year-old OS. None of this speed or functionality was even remotely matched by any Linux GUI I ran on it. The lie spouted by many Linux users that Windows 9x is an unusable crap OS is something that perplexes me, as I had far more stability/mysterious problems on RedHat 7.2 and KDE than I've ever had in Windows 9x (for instance, one time konqueror started freezing for 5 seconds every time I started it or clicked on a directory, and this went on for a week until the problem mysteriously disappeared) Linux users often compare uptimes like penis size, but unless you are running a server or like wasting energy to keep your box on 24/7 this is irrelevant. I should note, however, that on my computer Linux locked up every 5 minutes after starting GNOME, which I found out the problem was due to a four-year-old bug in the Linux kernel (so much for open source fixing bugs quickly) that caused it to corrupt memory and lock up X windows on my nvidia card. I managed to ge
Most people use Windows because for the time being its the best all around choice. There is nothing on Linux that can do the things that I need to do on a day to day bassis. When I need UNIX I use it, I have sevearl Sun and SGI systems around my apartment and have Linux and BSD running in VMWare in addition to my MacOS X system (least used of the bunch I fear). However bottom line is that Windows lets me get work done that would be far harder to do on the other platforms.
You may give up productivity for your OS ideals. Thats fine. Just dont expect the rest of us to go along with it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"