Why Use Linux?
- Thread starter Guitarman0
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Soldato
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Compatibility? Hardware - Far better than Windows. Pretty much everything works out of the box, if you plan ahead, but it's always best to check first anyway. Software - Pretty much everything you could ever imagine has an open source equivalent, that's before you take Wine into account...
Drivers - odds are the only thing that'l need drivers is the graphics card, and then it depends really. nVidia used to be really good but personally i've found the quality of their Linux drivers to have dropped a bit lately. I'm currently using an open source ATI driver and it does the job well, but it really depends on your graphics card and what driver you choose what it's like compared to Windows.
Games - depends which games. Tons of Windows games work well in Wine, and there's a fair few decent Open Source games to try.
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I use freebsd because it pulls girls. I just tell girls i run freebsd and it is done deal.
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Personally, i switched from Vista To Mint, then Ubuntu because:
1. I was sick of vista being...well. Vista and going wrong all the time.
2. Further to [1]: Vista idles at 1.5GB, ubuntu idles at 365MB
3. Ubuntu runs faster on my PC than Vista
4. On windows, i'd need to install Anti-Malware, anti-virus, firewall, and still be at risk, on Ubuntu that risk is vastly reduced. Security in obscurity has a lot going for it.
5. The centralised updates in Linux are amazingly useful. Updating the OS & apps on a windows install was a pain in the arse at the least.
6. The /home partition is a life-saver. A windows reinstall would mean you'd have to reconfigure everything all over again.
1. I was sick of vista being...well. Vista and going wrong all the time.
2. Further to [1]: Vista idles at 1.5GB, ubuntu idles at 365MB
3. Ubuntu runs faster on my PC than Vista
4. On windows, i'd need to install Anti-Malware, anti-virus, firewall, and still be at risk, on Ubuntu that risk is vastly reduced. Security in obscurity has a lot going for it.
5. The centralised updates in Linux are amazingly useful. Updating the OS & apps on a windows install was a pain in the arse at the least.
6. The /home partition is a life-saver. A windows reinstall would mean you'd have to reconfigure everything all over again.
Ref point 2 Helloindustries. Why are you so worried about how much ram an OS uses? Surely you will want to use as much of your ram as possible to make the OS run faster. Vista AND W7 cache ram memory very well, a bit like *NIX when you leave it on for a while. 
6: I can do that on Windows too.
6: I can do that on Windows too.
Soldato
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Will not listen to a guy who thinks London is in CanadaRef point 2 Helloindustries. Why are you so worried about how much ram an OS uses? Surely you will want to use as much of your ram as possible to make the OS run faster. Vista AND W7 cache ram memory very well, a bit like *NIX when you leave it on for a while.
6: I can do that on Windows too.
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@JonRohan
Well, cached in Windows or not, apps loaded slowly. In Linux; They load at least no slower, and often a little faster.
I like having RAM free for other uses; Blender, for one.
Well, cached in Windows or not, apps loaded slowly. In Linux; They load at least no slower, and often a little faster.
I like having RAM free for other uses; Blender, for one.
Will not listen to a guy who thinks London is in Canada
haha.
Can't say I have a problem with apps loading slowly in W7, not with 2gb+ ram anyway. W7 runs like poop with under 2gb. Either way, W7 and Linux now use similar caching. We're going off topic.
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I use linux because it does everything I need. Simple as that.
One of the best reasons for using linux is to bring out of date computers back to life. Linux will run very well on older machines.
On modern enthusiast machines (ie i7 with an ssd) windows 7 runs much much faster. This is from my experience, sorry if it offends anyone.
On modern enthusiast machines (ie i7 with an ssd) windows 7 runs much much faster. This is from my experience, sorry if it offends anyone.
I've found the opposite, my 980x + SSD runs noticeably better on Linux than it does the Windows 7 dual boot. Although boot time is slower.
It might be because you have to put in a lot of work in to get SSD working at the correct performance levels (i.e aligning disk byte boundaries) which Windows does all for you.
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Agreed - but for most people linux is "good enough". Hopefully with Wayland on the horizon things should improve soon. It is perfectly possible to get artifact and tear-free effects and video in a lot of configurations.
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Get your Windows desktop to do this ....... then you'll impress me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxbQJqcBKrY
Get your Windows desktop to do this ....... then you'll impress me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxbQJqcBKrY
Not an equal comparison.
Production-grade software versus a couple pre-release/preview/beta OSS projects with limited support that were shoehorned to play together.
I'm sure Microsoft has some internal proof-of-concepts that do similar things too. There is certainly no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the Windows desktop compositor is more than capable of doing those things. It is after all built upon DirectX and pixel shaders.
Get your Windows desktop to do this ....... then you'll impress me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxbQJqcBKrY
I wouldn't want it to do that.
Soldato
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Proof of concepts that the end user can actually try out? Besides, stuff like compiz, emerald, beryl etc. don't prove any concept. They just aim to improve the end users experience.
Oh, and could you point out the advantages that DirectX actually has over OpenGL? Because as far as i can tell it's only used in games because developers get subsidised to do so.
That said, i'm not a huge fan of desktop effects myself, at least not with this computer, but i can see the appeal...
Yes but you wouldn't want to run them day-to-day. I doubt they're feature complete and they have a high probability of just crashing and taking your desktop session with it.
I don't think this is relevant. The two are pretty much identical. Yes it is often said DirectX has a slight on edge on OGL in terms of bleeding edge featureset. But who cares really? We are talking about desktop composition here. And I think we both know that that isn't really a demanding task for either of these 3D libraries.
Me too, but we're talking about the technical aspects here really.