Linux

[Black02Silverado]

Just was wondering how many out there are running Linux?

 

Opinions on it?

 

Just curious.

 

Cheers!

[tmf6902]

I have a copy of it, I used it for classes in college. I like it, if software manufactures made more compatible software I think it would take off. The web is much faster IMO, through linux and it's a hellava lot more secure then windows. You can download it for free from the net, you just won't get any documentation for it. I think I paid about 50 bucks for mine, back in the day. All and all I think its cool, and better than windows, but it's just not mainstream so I don't have any use for it right now.

It's also cool for all those old school computer languages, like LISP, and Prolog, one of my personal favorites. But I am an "Uber Geek".

Also I think it has a lot better controls than windows...you can basically change anything you want, which is good and bad, depending on how much you want to screw it up.

Try it out, download it, get a cheap hard drive, and dual boot your windows machine.

They have a crap load of cool games that come with it too, much better than the blah solitare and freecell that windows comes with.

[JonesNTN]

Good looking and different, but other than that it sucks.

 

I am using Red Hat 9 On a dual boot.

[Shadowfax]

Good idea for an OS but suffers from a poorly thought out distribution and development standpoint.

 

Although Linux is free it soley depends upon its community of users to use it and exploit and upgrade it/ or change things about the OS themselves. Thus development of it as a OS are not centralized as a core like MS or Apple's OS's and it becomes difficult to trace down problems with Linux. Although very stable and very efficient, just like any piece of software it can give you a migrane at times.

 

Its a challenging OS to tweak and play with but its never going to take off and garner a huge OS market share if somone cant get it centralized on the development side with an organized distribution technique for updated versions.

 

This IMHO is the biggest drawback that hurts Linux as a whole.

[endo]

I've been using it as my primary OS for the better part of about 8 years now. So needless to say, I like it. It's still not for everyone quite yet though. Most commercially-oriented Linux distributions are still targetting the server-side of things, as well as business workstations that are managed by a central IS department.

 

If you're interested in trying it out as a desktop replacement, I'd recommend taking a look at a distro like Xandros ($99). It's targeted much more at desktop/home user types.

 

I personally use RedHat's free distribution, "Fedora". The GUI is getting better and better but it's still not for everyone. With regard to Fedora, I wouldn't recommend the current version (1.0) of it to a new user because it's got some quirks that take some Linux knowledge to work around. The next version is due in April and should be better though.

 

The two biggest flaws right now with trying to use Linux are:

 

- installing new software

- installing new hardware

 

Both of these are still a pain in the rear. The troubles that Linux had in the past with regard to initial hardware detection when installing Linux itself have mostly been solved, but will bite new users occassionally if you have off-brand hardware.

 

The good news is that Linux businesses and developers are beginning to push very hard to correct Linux's deficiences on the desktop, so hopefully these problems will be a thing of the past in 1-2 years.

 

If you're primary concern is security but aren't quite ready to try Linux, I'd highly recommend using Mozilla instead of IE and ANY OTHER MAIL CLIENT than outlook/outlook express.

[cowboy02]

If you keep in mind what linux was originally designed for it works like a champ. I work for 1 of the big 3 Computer companies and all we work on is UNIX machines. Linux is very stable and we have boxes that have been up for over 2 years and never crashed. This is what Unix/Linux was designed to do, run Oracle data bases crunch numbers calculate things out and never go down. Linux is very robust and works great in a server environment were no X is required, and the only real aplications you need is perl/C++ Cobalt other programing languages.

 

However Linux has came a long way since it was developed in 1991. The first distro I ever used was slackware and if you've had the privlage of using it it makes Red Hat look like a breze to install.

 

So my distro of choice these days and the distro we use for all out IA-32 IA-64 machines is Debian. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of using a great Linux Distribution I recomend you run out and get Debian. The new package installer for Debian is great. Let me give you a example..

 

Say you want to install the latest version of perl.

 

#apt-get install perl

Walla it installs everything you need for perl and when it's done you have a running version of perl. It takes care of all the dependencies that you need in order to run perl and installs them. If you have to configure something it comes up and asks you the necessary questions to make it work. Plus the advantage is there is actually a committe/community that reviews and test a package before it's released to verify that it works on every platform they can test it on.

 

Not trying to push a product as I have nothing to gain from it being successful however Debian is the answer to Microsloth!!! Easy to install and configure and has a Windows simularity look and feel. Plus for all the Windows freaks out there that have to have Microsoft Office you can install Open Office and get all the functionality of the microsoft tools. If this is not good enough for you, you can buy VMWare and Install a Virtual Microsoft OS right on top of your Linux install and run windows in a terminal window and have all your friendly apps right at your finger tips.

 

I do have to agree with ENDO that adding hardware can be painfull for the begining user, but keep in mind that it wasn't easy to get off your stinky diaper and learn to walk either

 

So It's obvious that I use Linux everyday