Why do you use Linux?

MouseMat2004 said:
Linux has come a long way in terms of being user friendly, theres still quite a lot of stuff I feel you just wouldnt have a clue about until you used guides on the net :) a lot of it isnt as easy as installing x package.

Problem is, there's so many good programs available for windows (Even ones that have Linux 'ports' or similar style programs are generally a lot harder to use in Linux), most wont run through Wine and VMware is kinda defeating the purpose of going 'M$ free'

If pushed I reckon I could go Linux only, but with Windows sitting a reboot away, I find myself sticking in windows.
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A lot depends on what software you use. In my case anything I need to do in Windows [bar gaming/photoshop] can be done [better] in Linux. Especially programming. I use my laptop for Photoshop.

Unfortunately I need to go back to Windows to game. Although I don't often game so it is becoming less of an issue.
 
eXor said:
Arch Linux

1. Complete control over what is and is not installed.
2. Full disk encryption.
3. Full system update with a single command.
4. Does not gradually grind to a near halt as you add software.
5. No hidden and undocumented "features".
6. Free from all malware that target the Windows platform.
7. Quick patches for discovered vulnerabilities.
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Dont suppose you know any decent guides/tutorials covering disk encryption for arch do you?
 
Sp!ke said:
Gooooood point :D Although it is possible to run OSX on an x86 with a modicum of hacking about.
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yeah, but I only use Linux at work - I'm not sure how happy they'd be if I was magically running OSX on their computers without a legal explanation!

I've not used Windows for anything other than gaming for about 3 years, but I went back to it when I started here and found that I couldn't do anything!
 
Sic said:
yeah, but I only use Linux at work - I'm not sure how happy they'd be if I was magically running OSX on their computers without a legal explanation!

I've not used Windows for anything other than gaming for about 3 years, but I went back to it when I started here and found that I couldn't do anything!
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Tell me about it :(

Tempted to stick Arch or Gentoo on my work T60 lappy, but I'm sure it'll all blow up in my face when I am on a customer site or something (some vital piece of software not having a Linux equivelant or similar), so will have to stick with XP for work purposes :(

Luckily my job entails hacking around in *nix 90% of the time :D
 
use linux mainly for server os. windows just aint upto the job. dont really use it as a desktop and on the 3 servers i have none have a gui installed even the dual xeon its just wasteless as i only ssh into it.

i've thought about using linux on the desktop and prob will on my laptop, i think i'm going to use gentoo but i have been thinking of installing one of the less popular distro's and give a little help with some coding of new features etc.

my 2 main pcs i use xp (and i wont use vista ever if i can help it), only reason i use xp is because 1 is built for gaming, so obviously need a windows os and the other i need particular utils that arent available to linux e.g. certain burning software. However im upgrading my new pc with a quad core after xmas (my current cpu is damaged) and will prolly run linux + bsd under vmware.
 
I used linux on my main pc for a while. as windows broke, i didnt want to mess around fixing it, and reckoned now was a good time to used a different os for some experience.
Linux was great, however i needed that pc to be able to play some games that didnt run on linux so had to switch it back to xp.
I have a vista laptop here, 1 gig of ram, very slow, gets used for playing media to my tv, looking on forums, goign on msn.
I only have vista on it since i needed to used visual studio but now that I have dropped out of my uni course I will be thinking about changing it to ubuntu (loved it on my main comp)
 
I'm blessed at my workplace. We are all anti-MS evangelists, despite most of our applications having been developed in VB6 and using SQL server. Perhaps that's why they all hate MS.. :p
 
Why do people like Gentoo?!? Why, why, why, why...
"love ever clock cycle"? Sure but you're happy to waste hours compiling but recompiling packages for that couple of extra % time save. Tell me I'm not being completely dense here, but you're never going to make up that extra time.
The Gentoo repository also focusses on features over and above stability, always aiming to get the latest bleeding edge versions into use as fast as possible, with a token gesture towards stability demonstrated.

I suppose the main thing good about Gentoo is that folks on it provide quite a few bugtrak reports which makes those of us who use release schedule based distros get more stable packages.



Anyway enough of that and back to the original question.

I have a love / hate relationship with Ubuntu, mainly based on some of the strange choices they make at times (e.g. symlinking /bin/sh to dash and not bas, despite half the init.d scripts I use regularly needing the abilities of bash that aren't in dash, and all just because dash is marginally faster. Like I reboot my workstation or servers often enough that 1 or 2 seconds gained on the starting of a package is that important).
For the most part it does exactly what I need, and the repository is large enough that I rarely have to go off and compile stuff by hand. Plus the size of the community means its easy to get extra support.

I use Linux because I can, because its free, because I understand it better than windows, and because it does everything I need without unnecessary bloat.
It also helps that I work with it (Unix SysAdmin), and my workstation runs Ubuntu. I can always drop down to the command line to do stuff with the higher degree of flexibility that affords me that just isn't possible through GUIs; e.g. on my test server I wrote a quick script so that it automatically adds IP addresses to iptables of those who have failed to log in correctly to FTP or SSH more than a dozen times (with explicit allow rules for me.. just in case I'm fat fingering), which utilises a few tools and chains their outputs together to achieve their goal; something you can't do with a GUI.
 
I like both Ubuntu and M$ XP but i prefer Ubuntu and Gnome as my OS of choice.
If i could take certain aspects from both i'd be happier but c'est la vie.

Gnome has the user friendlyness and linux is Open source which is good.
XP has more hardware support and a few apps i like
 
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I easily make up time in Gentoo compared to other distro's, even other "hardcore" platforms like Debian or Slackware. I only compile stuff every few weeks or even months. The only applications that take the mythical "ages" are X11 and Gnome/KDE. Fluxbox or Enlightenment take only 10mins (which is a blink of an eye in comparison) and every other application I've ever used never takes longer than 2 mins.

Besides which, emerge -vuD world gets done overnight, so no time is lost at all. :)

Small (i.e. no) price to pay for the control and power Gentoo affords. If you sit there watching it compile.. more fool you, do you sit and watch windows update or redhat's up2date ? :p
 
I have been using computers for a wile, hang on WTF am I saying. The first OS I bought was DOS 5, still have good memory's of using that OS. My point is I have never thought that the "only" OS was MS-Windows. Win95 was better than what went before it but bugie as hell. As MS became the dominant OS during the 90's to the point most users don't know that there is a choose.

Linux has become my OS of chose for everything but gaming. Althow I have had some very good games of ET:QW under ubuntu. Also I have my Valve back catolog running under Steam using wine-doors. Half Life:2 runs a little better I think.

Given that a lot of my online time is spent playing fps games with my clan m8's I have to keep Windows around.

So like a lot of people here, Linux for all normal stuff and Windows XP for fps gaming.
 
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