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April 18, 2007
Fessin' up about Linux
I have realised lately that I have become a raving fan-boy for Linux (particularly Kubuntu) snorting with smug contempt every time someone reported problems with Windows or Mac OS X.
So sorry!
The fact is that Linux is hard - sort of.
When everything works (as most things do now 'out of the box') its great - the experience we have all come to know and love from Windows XP (the first Microsoft Distro that has had decent driver support in my experience) or even Mac OS X (ask me about Logic Express for the G5 - here's a hint this release notification is lying)
If you don't mind scratching your head and learning new things (and unfortunately learning that some things aren't possible) then Linux might be for you.
A lot of people balk at the fact that there coul be a lot of command line typing involved. Some people don't like that, but, it is in fact one of the strongest elements of Linux.
I find myself getting peeved having to use KDE control panels - why can't I just edit the file with vim? Command line editing is often quicker than GUI.
Other things are light years ahead of the windows way when you work through the command line. For instance, installing packages - ok, the packages have to be in the Ubuntu repositories in the first place - is FAST and EASY and you are automatically informed of updates. Frickin Sweet!
Compared to scratching around a site looking for the latest version of some third-party software, then downloading it, saving it somewhere safe, installing it, blah,blah on Windows. In Linux (again assuming that the package is, well ... packaged) it is as easy as:
apt-cache search packagename
sudo apt-get install packagename
That's it - apart from having to type in your root password and press return to assure the system that you DO want to install the package its done. The package manager will also pop-up a reminder that the package has been updated, or some library that the package depends on (think DLL's in windows) has been udpated. Frickin sweet!
Having said that, there can be hardward issues. My new laptop rocks with Kubuntu 6.10 - but the sound chip is not fully supported so I can't get a VOIP softphone running. I can use Skype, play music through the incomparable Amarok and watch and listen to videos on YouTube, play DVD's - whatever.
I can run all the important applications I used on Windows (Macromedia Fireworks and Flash, Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape, Scribus, OpenOffice, Skype, OpenSSH, MySQL, Ruby on Rails). I never used much Microsoft software anyway so that part of the swap for me was pretty painless - I still remote desktop (using rdesktop) into my WIndows Development Server (running as a virtual machine in VMWare on my home Ubuntu Server) to do ASP.NET development which fortunately / unfortunately will be paying the bills around here for the next while.
Its been a long road to get here and I have tried more than a few times to swap to Linux successfully, but as I have mentioned before Microsoft finally forced the swap on me. With the impending takeover of the strict-father Vista, I am very happy to be sitting back watching the view form Linux land.
Jump in - the water is hot at first but damn it's better than the boiling oil that the inquisition has reserved for certain other operating systems.
Posted by dottie at April 18, 2007 11:41 AM
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