Windows Why Don't You Use Linux?

My box boots to a working desktop in about a minute. Hardly an agonising wait. And anyway, boot time is less important on a linux box because you dont have to reboot everytime you install something as minor as a text editor...

Sam

 

Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing.

Keeping that in mind, my time isn't really worth all that much at the moment, so I'm more than willing to fiddle around.

 

Very true---but then again I haven't spent any meaningful time maintaining my box for months. I think the most time consuming maintanance job I did recently was typing:

#emerge sync && emerge -uD system

Ooh, the hardship

Look, don't get me wrong---I'm starting to come across as a fanboy when I really am anything but. It just annoys me when people say things that are blatantly not true...GRRRRR!!!!!

Sam

 

haven't needed to reboot the shuttle for 3 weeks.. it's been torrenting happily over night.. gaming during the day and now and again comes out to do some uni work

 

Yeah, I agree. I spent ~2 hours setting up Slack on my webserver, and haven't touched it since, with the exception of patching. Only had to reboot it once, cause I forgot the root pw.

 

well those reasons are good enough i suppose. but i had a bad experience of using linux, i had to do so much just to get asp server to link to a mysql db server on the same box on apache...

another thing is you get that uncomfortable feeling of being a noob all over again...

 

you dont need o reboot linux. it is capable of months and years of uptime.

 

yeh so is windows xp though... so what

the whole 'i have to reboot my pc all the time' thing went out like 5 years ago...

and most of the time its crappy apps these days that wreck your system to the point of needing a restart, not the os...

and lord knows theres a load of crappy buggy unfinished programs for linux, just as there is for windows.

also can anyone suggest to me which is the best version of linux for staying up to date automatically? last time i messed with linux, a few years ago, redhat was on top of the game...

 

Everytime I upgrade Zonealarm or my virus definitions on XP I have to restart. It's a total PITA.

Probably Gentoo or Debian unstable.

Sam

 

Linux will forever be playing the catchup game, why wait when you can have it now.

I plug my cam in and it works

I plug my iPod in and it works

I plug my mouse in and it works

I plug my wifi in and it works

anyone who thinks Linux will become a mainstream desktop is deluded, why change something that works, Linux will always be a hobby OS.

 

Sam

 

For all the people complaining abour Linux not running games, there's always Cedega. Fully capable of running new games like Need for Speed Most Wanted.

The only snag with this is that fact of it not being free. I was just throwing it in so people know it's there.

I use Debian on my sever back home but not on my main computer mainly due to the fact of not having been able it run the latest Macromedia suite, I'm sure I'd find out how to get it working with Google but it's just a case of finding the time to do so.

 

That's why Linux will never be mainstream. It's like back in the days of MSDOS or CP/M, you need to know the magic words.

 

ah yes but windows is free...

and fuzzyone even though id want to agree with you about linux being a hobby os (because most home users just are nerds for the sake of a hobby etc) thats not really what linux is about... id dare say linux is a more 'professional' os than windows ever is/was (im talking about serious companies, 'not uncle bobs discounts tires' excel worksheets lolol)

im gonna give linux another shot ill download debian people seem to mention that more frequently than any other version nowadays, who knows maybe theyve FINISHED it... i doubt it though... when im done installing that ill probably UPGRADE to windows 3.11 (for workgroups of course)

 

Yes, because the 5 minutes spent reading TFM to learn those commands was just too taxing...

Regardless, for those people too lazy to bother spending a little time reading the Gentoo handbook, they could always just go for a less "hands on" distro like Xandros for some point and click goodness!

Seriously. Installing programs on Gentoo is, in 99% of cases, easier than installing them on windows. And Windows is yet to have a magic command that will upgrade *all* your software to the latest versions.

Sam

 

Dont' get me wrong, Im not implying Linux is anything but pro, But to Uncle Bob its waste of his time and its a waste of Uncle Bobs nephew explaining why he cannot open his past 10yr excel tax return files.

Us nerds don't get to decide what will be mainstream, it'll be uncle bob.

Why should people read the manual, for example, my wife who's used a PC maybe once or twice before we got togther, we got her a laptop, I have not helped her ONCE, she has never used windows help, and she does not have the foggiest what google is other than I get a cheque from'em every month.

Yet she managed to print photos, hookup a webcam, trace her family history, download music etc etc, without my help, I bet if she booted my Ubuntu partition she would not have a clue what to do.

It's not the upgrading people care about, its finding what they want in the first place rather than trawling thru 50 diffrent versions of desktop eyes.

 

I agree with FuzzyOne, i came across as totally bashing Linux before which was mostly has i'd just had a Linux workshop at Uni (always annoys me!) I know its strong points, i see the point in open source and i enjoy the challenge of getting things to work.

BUT (and its a big one) my girlfriend doesnt, my mum doesnt, my grandad doesnt. Until the Linux command line is completly unused for any task a nomral user has to carry out, until installing some software is putting a CD in the drive and clicking next, until the desktop is set up for the average user from the very beginning with no hint of how the pc works then linux will not be mainstream.

On windows i can leave me girlfriend installing drivers, and shes not a computer genius, shes never read the manual, never needed to, she gets by, they all do. Us windows know it alls know a few shortcuts and tricks and where more obscure settings are but on the whole we cant accomplish much more with windows than my mum. In linux the pros can doing anything and normal people are left confused

 

Ubuntu install got delayed by another weekend, partially due to me leaving on a business trip.

I still intend to install it and document what we find; maybe it can help prove / disprove some of the back and forth rhetoric on this topic.

 

DAMN YOU UNCLE BOB, DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

great. now im hyperventilating...

 

except it doesnt play WOW. last time I checked it didnt play HL2 either.
I like running linux when it works but when it doesnt its much easyer to just reforma the drive.