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The REAL Reason We Use Linux
Vlad Dolezal writes "We tell people we use Linux because it's secure. Or because it's free, because it's customizable, because it has excellent community support... But all of that is just marketing BS. We tell that to non-Linux users because they wouldn't understand the REAL reason." The answer to his question probably won't surprise you.
- Automatic logout when left alone for more than x minutes
- Colored prompt, allowing me to spot the output between previous and next command fast
- Aliases like 'printcode' that calls a2ps with all the right options
- Fancy PROMPT_COMMAND variable that sets the xterm title just right
- Limiting the history
- Ignoring things like 'ls -l' in the history
- Expanding the tab-completion possibilities
And lots of more options, the list gets too long already8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I find Linux to be a congenial programming environment, where I can noodle together scripts and programs to get things done. It provides lots of sharp tools that make things easy.
It doesn't get in the way like certain other OSs I could mention. It doesn't squander system resources on non-essentials (ditto), and I can tune it to allocate resources where they are needed. Oh, and did I mention? It just plain works!
...laura
Because I can't exactly afford the latest and greatest in computer hardware just to run the latest version of Windows. I kinda got tired of looking at XP. It is a good OS and it suited my needs but after 7 years, it was time for an upgrade.Vista was totally out of the question and I have been tooling-around with various distros throughout the years.
I finally settled on Gentoo due to the fact that it can be as bloated or as light-weight as I wanted it to be. Also, I could run as little or as much **bling** as I wanted depending on the load on the CPU and GPU. Linux suits my needs as well as XP did and was quite a learning experience in the total switchover process.
The game.
Granted I'm a FreeBSD guy [insert comment about why BSD is dying here] but I think the arguments are basically the same as for Linux. I agree with most of TFA, but I enjoy using FreeBSD and other Free software for another important reason: the people.
Despite the fact commercial products can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, their technical support services nearly always suck: they're slow, obscure, vague, answered by people who don't know what they're talking about or are reading off a sheet of paper that assumes everyone they reply to is an idiot, or at the very worst you don't get an answer at all. Just speaking from my own experience.
Now granted there are plenty of jackarses on forums for Free software and the like, but on the whole I can post a question and generally get a useful response and in a fraction of the time. Plus if it's for a particular piece of ported software, generally I can either contact the port maintainer or the creator of the software directly and get helpful answers. I've NEVER got that from commercial software vendors. That's what makes the difference.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
Sure, it's fun, got an easy to customize UI, I can do tons of security and network tweaks, and it has a well integrated set of developer tools, but the real reason why I was never able to turn back is the package management. Package management issues were also the core reason I switched from slackware to debian in 2001, debian to gentoo in 2003, and gentoo to ubuntu in 2007.
It is ridiculous to me that even today, tools for Microsoft package management are completely archaic. Microsoft has MSI files, but still the difference in add/remove programs between windows 95 and vista is minimal. Imagine if they allowed users to import catalogues of software, and search for software within the add/remove programs interface (which most distros have been able to do in some sense for 10 years or so). Hell, they could even deal with licence subscriptions right in the interface. It would allow them to better integrate their software with third party vendors, while at the same time making sure effective QA is happening (they could threaten key revocation), and also protecting the users, making sure that all software that gets installed gets downloaded from reliable sources, and does not have the chance to get infected by malicious warez kiddies.
I can relate to this. Linux not being widely used.
Some years ago, I was in engineering and involved in 'fixing' a system built by our IT department. They had sunk about $300 million into a system that was just barely functional. We (engineering and manufacturing) were supposed to supply them with appropriate requirements so IT could start over (yet again) building another piece of crap.
We convinced our management that we should hammer out requirements by building a functioning prototype. As our IT department maintained a stranglehold over all things Windows, we chose to build on Linux and a few surplus Sun desktops with Perl, Apache and a few COTS packages. Keeping the IT dept. and Windows out of the picture allowed us to get a working demo of the shop floor interface up and running within a few weeks and half a dozen people completed the 'prototype' in about 6 months.
When our system was up and running, it actually outperformed the one running on the Windows backend. When management saw it, they just gave the order to pull the plug on the legacy Windows system and place ours into production.
Part of my job after the project completion (about 10% of my time) was to administrate 6 hosts that made up the new system. When our IT department made a pitch to management to take over administration, they quoted an recurring maintenance cost for their proposal of $50,000 per host per month. Management fell off their chairs laughing and I suggested that they pay me 6 * $50,000 per month.
Have gnu, will travel.
I agree.
I use Linux because:
It's powerful, stable, simple, configurable, inexpensive, open, accessible... in short, everything that Windows is not.
The ONLY reason I still use windows at all is because the workplace wont let me use Linux on my desktop and I run some windows only games at home.
Down with proprietary lock-in mechanisms!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Me too, at work anyway.
Which is why it irks me to no end, when I log in as administrator on a Windows-box and tell it to please terminate a given process, and it does not. Not until you've told it to do that three times and waited for minutes anyway.
Or I tell it to delete a file, and it tells me I "can't" do that, because the file is "open". I don't want to fiddle with that shit. I know what I'm doing, I want the OS to get out of my way and just bloody do what I tell it to do. Which Windows won't.
And yes, I am -fully- aware of the WHY. The underlying reason is a weakness in the "file" metaphor used on Windows, but that's not much of an excuse. (on unix a "file" is a chunk of bytes with zero-or-more names. On Windows a "file" is a chunk of bytes with -precisely- ONE name) (okay, that ignores character and block-devices and fifos, but don't be nitpicky here...)
I want to be able to install a update, yet NOT reboot anytime during the next 4 hours. Yes, I'm fully aware that program FOO may then fail to work properly until I finally do reboot, I STILL don't want to reboot now. And I'd much prefer if the OS could refrain from nagging every 15 minutes about that....
I use Linux because I prefer "free" and I trust it.
For the longest time I wouldn't leave Windows because of the Japanese language support. As I was (and always am) learning Japanese, I find it useful to have a good Japanese language user interface. And while there has been Japanese language support under Linux for a while, it didn't really start getting good until maybe 3 or so years ago. It was then that I went ahead to make the switch.
For the most part, using free software, I have little trouble doing the things I want or like to do, and rather like Mac users, if "it" is not available to me, I don't think about "it" too much and it's not much of a problem for me.
And since I actually start computing with TRS-80, Commodore and Apple II, I have never been afraid to learn something new or to even think in a different way. I've used everything from audio tape on up for program and data storage. I've used rare operating systems such as OS-9 along with others such as Orwell (which was a very long time ago and was used with Commodore CBMs) and a huge variety of things. Knowing the generalities of what goes on underneath the GUI gives me a more global understanding and comfort with just about anything. So choosing Linux over other things has more to do with trust than fun or just about anything else.
I don't trust Apple or Microsoft. I just don't. What I trust is software that I can compile myself and read the source code... not that I do -- I don't! I usually just install the binary packages and move on. But the fact is that in most cases I can and I know that others have and do frequently.
I left Microsoft because Linux was short on something I wanted to be able to do because it was important to me. If for some reason Japanese language support were to disappear (obviously hypothetical) I would probably move over to Mac or Microsoft but I wouldn't like it. Basic functionality does come first and foremost, but when I can get those basics covered in all of the choices I have available, then I choose based on other criteria... in this case, trust.
I call bullshit. That may be the reason he, and many slashdotters, use linux, but I don't think it is universal at all.
For instance, the main reason why I and many of my friends, relatives, etc, all use linux, is that it is plain simpler to install than Windows. Sure, Windows comes with many (most) PCs, so that's great. Once the HDs bit the dust, or Windows slows down to a crawl, or the PC is infected with viruses, or [insert any reason] and you need to rebuild a PC, it is infinitely faster and less painful to install Ubuntu than Windows -- especially now that only Vista is mostly available, and many peripherals don't work with it.
Windows used to have the advantage, but no more. I installed Ubuntu for relatives, friends, including people whose knowledge of CS is zero and they hate the command line. It is plain simpler. Takes about 20 minutes, then all just works -- printers, internet, openoffice, firefox -- most people's needs, if you take out gamers and the like (and they are a small percentage of real users) are pretty basic, really.
It is actually amazing how much the balance between Linux and Windows changed in the last couple of years -- in part thanks to Ubuntu, and in part thanks to Vista.
Speaking as a relative newb, I found that Linux (Fedora) was a bear to set up, but once I had help to get everything up and running it was really, really simple to maintain. Add/Remove Programs is like magic, and the built-in applications -- while often unpolished -- do what I want them to, with little fuss. If anything, Linux has spoiled me to the point where I don't like XP much anymore.
Linux definitely has its disadvantages, including lack of software and hardware support. But the migration of functionality to the Internet is helping to overcome the first barrier, and pre-installed Linux systems are overcoming the second.
Me? I'm hoping to switch to a Mac. It has been fun playing with Linux, and I'd rather set up a Linux PC for my less-savvy family members than try to help them with Windows. But it doesn't work with all of my hardware, and as long as I'm going to upgrade I might as well buy an awesome, shiny machine, that keeps most of its resale value. The fact that it comes with a stable, well-designed, UNIX-based OS with additional hardware and software support is a plus, and the fact that I can install Linux on a Mac means that I won't be tied into one vendor.
I too was a Unix user in college and when I got to the real world, I needed to get real world things done so I continued to use it (demanding it at first, because I got hired into a VMS shop, during that time I got a Unix workstation at home which made the situation more comfortable). Later on, when Microsoft Windows started becoming popular and my employers started trying to foist Microsoft Windows on me I was in a quandry. What to do, what to do?
Unfortunately, I have a bad back and I can definitively say that I am most productive at work when I am sitting, reclined with my feet resting on top of a Microsoft Windows box beneath my desk, while typing at a Linux/Unix workstation. Microsoft Windows is too painful and broken to actually use, but it makes a great therapeutic device. I'm in the unfortunate situation now that I got permission at work to install a real O/S on that device (RHEL) and the Sun Workstation I also have makes a most inappropriate footrest. Ah well, it was nice going back to KDE after dealing with the mild unpleasantness of CDE.
Back to the article and interestingly enough, I'm right in the middle of a fascinating shell/command line discussion on the Tokyo Linux Users Group mailing list.
I use Linux because it is the system I've dreamed about having for all my adult life and I enjoy most running software that I've had a hand in developing. MacOS X is passable, but not quite the same thing.
Irrational? Hardly!
The fact that I use Linux more or less exclusively makes people a lot less likely to ask for support on MS/MacOS related problems. Maybe that makes me asocial, but so what? Before I gave up on MS, my time did not belong to me, whereas now it does. If the phone calls in the middle of the night, it won't be one of my brothers having trouble installing a new sound card anymore. It'll be something that does actually matter in the middle of the night!
So I use other software that does the stuff I need, and my OS is also my hobby, and I'm not in the unpaid computer support business anymore - what's irrational about that?
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Some years ago, in the late 1980s if I remember right, someone explained something to me that I've remembered ever since: Everything on a computer, especially the programming languages, can be best understood as a video game. The way the game works is that when the computer does what you intended, you get a point. When it finds some way to misinterpret your command (or find it impossible for some internal, unexplained reason) and do something other than what you intended, the people who build the software get a point. A good programmer or an experienced user wins if they get more than half the points. When I first stumbled across unix systems, I found that I was winning overwhelmingly within only a few days of first cracking open "The C Programming Language". I'd never had that experience before, and I never have since on any non-unix computer system.
I heard this sometime after I'd been using unix systems for a few years, and it made a lot of sense. I could explain very simply why I preferred unix to all the other computer systems I'd ever used: On a unix systems, I usually won. When I told it to do something, it almost always did what I wanted it to do. Granted, there were occasional problems with running out of resources, and no OS can prevent that. But even then, it happened at a much later stage than on other systems, because unix tools were mostly small and sleek, and didn't hog resources.
Linux is just the current favorite in a long chain of unix-like system that let me win in both the programming and computer-user games.
I've used OSX a bunch, and in fact I'm typing this on a Mac Powerbook. I like to work on different computers occasionally, to keep up to date on what they do well or poorly. But I don't win nearly as often on OSX as I do on linux, for a lot of reasons. It's always doing something bizarre, and when I investigate, I usually find that the bizarreness was intentional in the design. And it's full of little time-wasting gotchas that aren't nearly as common in linux apps.
Of course, as with any system, you do have to learn its basic tools to get anything done. Most of the non-linux users I know use this as their excuse. They "know" Windows or Macs, and they aren't about to learn some other system. So they're stuck forever in a computer game that's designed to lower their score at every opportunity. When I watch over their shoulders, I have to keep my mouth shut about how painful it is to watch them laboriously fighting with their computer to do the simplest tasks. But I generally don't say anything unless they ask, because I don't want to insult them. And telling them how much easier it could be would be an insult, because I'd be telling them how much of their lives they've wasted on zillions of little time-wasting design snafus.
The only reason I'd even bother mentioning it here is to see the reaction of other linux (or solaris or whatever) users. How many of you have heard this video-game model applied to all computer use and programming? Does it really have the explanatory power that it seems to have, or do you really have some other basic motivation to use what you do?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
GUI's take inputs from point/click interfaces generally. This means a mouse click which carries a lot less information than the number of key presses which can be typed in the same period of time. Hence for your time, when you need to convey complex information *to* the computer, a CLI will always beat a GUI.
Of course for other tasks (where the information passed to the computer is small, but the information delivered by the computer is rich) a GUI is far better.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I hate Microsoft. I openly admit it. I have earned the right to hate them, having put up with their crap products, misleading advertising, outright lies, etc. In other words, I'm a formerMS-DOS and Win3x / Win9x user.
I use only linux and bsd professionally, 5 days aw week. Nothing from Microsoft. At home, its the same story.
My sister has an iMac. After a decade of futzing around with Microsoft's failures, she hates Microsoft as well.
As to why I use linux, it's not "because it's fun":
Since switching, I've saved tens of thousands of dollars on software, I also don't have to be as aggressive in updating hardware, for additional savings.
So yes, I hate Microsoft, and I despise Windows, and my use of linux has nothing to do with any "fun" factor. Continuing to use Windows just doesn't make sense, and the only thing keeping many users on it is inertia. Force them to switch to something else, show them the pretty icons, and they get used to it in a day. Then it grows on them. Sort of like dual monitors - so many people resist the idea, but force it on them, then try to take the second screen back a week later ... they'll do an Achmed the Dead Terrorist on you - "Silence - I KILL YOU!".
I tend to find things easier in Linux then in Windows, purely for the reason that you can actually go in and change things around. I have been using Linux solely for about a year and use Windows at work. While I experience more problems at work because I am in a helpdesk role for part of my job, I find when problems can't be solved by either restarting the application or computer, reinstalling the application or increasing permissions to certain files, then the problem often has no easy solution. While the above listed steps will fix 90% of problems, those last 10% are often more difficult to solve then many of my Linux related problems, including those that require command line action.
Realistically, I don't see a difficulty difference between the registry editor and the bash command line. Both require you to have some idea of where things are or what they are called before you can start (try using a command line if you don't know what cat is). Both often require searches before you work out how to do something you need to do, both can leave you confused as to why the key/command exists in the way it does and both often don't have a standard 'form' in placement or use.
I may have been lucky in my switch to Linux. Things worked, or worked well enough that I could always work out or find a way, to solve any problem I've run into so far. However, I will disagree completely with your comment on progress. I recently installed Kubuntu on my desktop computer, while I didn't agree with having to boot to a live environment to install*. It took me far less time to install and less steps overall to get everything working, even if you discount that it comes with Open Office. Kubuntu downloaded by graphics card driver and asked me whether I wanted to use that one or the free one. You don't get that service with Windows. I will point out that I have tried some Linux distros on this computer that just couldn't work out my config correctly (the same Debian installer either worked or had difficulty automatically detecting, depending on whether it was a basic or advanced install). For me, I love messing with my computer to try new things, but for now, I need a computer that just works. I am at uni while working and if my computer goes down, I can fall behind in schedule quite quickly. For that reason, I chose Kubuntu, lost some ability to mess with the computer (I can get that back though when I chose, for now though) and have a computer that hasn't given me a problem I didn't cause myself when I just couldn't help myself messing with things.
* if there is a way to install without booting to the live environment, it didn't jump out at me when I put the CD in.