Re: Why?!

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

Let me give you a quick run down of why I use linux rather than
windows 95/98.


1. At its core, Linux is a far superior, higher quality operating
system than windows.

The Linux operating system hardly ever crashes (well actually, has never
crashed in my personal experience - the worst that has happened is that
a couple of times X has frozen up so that the only way to fix things
was to rlogin to my machine from another machine on the network.)  In
comparison, windows 95/98 seems to crash on a regular basis.

The linux operating system is far better designed and coded than
windows.  It does multitasking much better.  It handles multiple
users.  It does file protection much better.  It does networking
better.  It has a superior filesystem structure.  It is more efficient
in its use of resources.  It allows far more personal configuration.  All
in all it is miles better from a technical perspective.

The only area you could argue that Windows does better is in its user
interface and ease of use.  There are a number of things I could say
to this.  Firstly, linux may be more difficult to understand and
configure etc, but as a result, you learn a lot more about how things
work and gain far more control over your own system.  Secondly, having
windows do everything for you is sometimes a pain, because it
automatically does things for you that you don't want done.  It is
easy so long as you go along with what it wants, but if you ever want
to do something different, windows makes life very difficult, or even
impossible.  Thirdly, linux is quickly becoming more user friendly.
There are a number of projects under development to give linux a nicer
user interface and make it easier to configure and manage.  This will
mean linux users will have a choice: either they can stick to a
windows-like easy interface, or they can get "under the hood" and
configure things by hand -- the best of both worlds.  Linux hasn't
reached this point yet, but give it a few years and I think it will.


2. Linux is much cheaper.

I can get most of the software I want for free.  This saves me a huge
amount of money.  Yes you have to pay for internet access, or for a CD
or two, but it still works out much cheaper.  If internet downloads
cost too much, just get a $5 CD.  Sure, if you want to get the
absolute latest in software all the time then it might cost a bit, but
the same is true on a much grander scale with windows, and besides,
it's very rare that you need the absolute latest version of
everything.

Yes there are still a couple of commercial software packages which are
useful to have for linux, but even these tend to be much cheaper than
their windows counterparts - some of them are even free.

It is true that there is some shareware stuff for windows, but in my
experience it is generally far inferior to linux stuff.


3. It is far easier to get bugs fixed in linux.

In Windows, if a program has a bug in it, you are generally at the
mercy of the software company to get it fixed.  You can't fix it
yourself, nor can anyone else on the internet.  You have to hope that
they will get on to it quickly.

With linux, the source code is open which means you can debug the code
yourself (which I have done on a few occasions with success).  But
more often than not, someone else on the net does this for you -- only
possible because the source code is open.  In general, bug fixing happens
much more quickly with open source development.


4. You learn a lot more with linux.

Linux is more of a learning curve than windows, but in many ways
that's good.  I have a much better understanding of a whole range of
areas of computing as a result of switching to linux.


5. Linux is good for the world.

Everyone will be much better off if an open software operating system,
such as linux, becomes the standard.  Having a company like Microsoft
control the dominant operating system and manipulate the market
through this is bad for computing.  I want to support an operating
system which, if widely accepted, will result in a tremendous advance for
computing worldwide.  I believe it will be as significant as IBM's
decision to introduce the PC.




As for your comments about difficulties compiling things and
installing debian packages etc, I can't concur with your experience.
Yes I have had problems from time to time, but mostly I have had very
few problems.  And when I have had problems, there are lots of avenues
I can try in order to fix them.  And debian-user provides lots of
assistence.  In contrast, problems in windows seem much hard to fix,
and require you to spend lots of money on phone calls to microsoft --
and even then, they can't always fix your problem.


If you want to go to Windows 95/98 then feel free to do so, but I
think you'll find it was a retrograde step.

Cheers,

Mark.



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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"