Whats so Good about Linux

For the first time I am using a computer that operated on linux and cant say any good about it .I always used windows, Every time i dowload something You have to type alot of things in root.Can someone tell me whats so good about it and what advantages it has over windows.

 

more stable,free,customizable,x windows system is amazing,free software,more free software,stable software,good support in forums,flexible,fun.

You should get a desktop running let gnome or kde if you want something like windows. I like the blackbox window manager with no full desktop.

 

do you have a problem downloading thing.Everything i download something it does not work.Is it my computer or linux.Even when i insert cd's just shows images.How to fix this??

 

Here's a good thread to look at:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=124918

 

It is an interesting article but I don't think it covers the problems that many new linux users face when trying to understand the how, what and why of installing linux software.

 

I think for someone who is dependent on a GUI, the main advantage of Linux is that with Linux you are not at the mercy of companies who depend on continuously sucking money out of your wallet for their livelihood.

If you have enough know-how to write scripts, then there is no comparison. Everything is wide open in Linux and all the tools for automation are there.

Case in point. I'm a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies. Part of my fellowship is covered by working as a teaching assistant. 2 semesters ago, the mid term for a class I was teaching consisted of 2 take-home essays. The students were required to submit them as electronic documents (most of them chose Word). I did the entire grading in Linux. OpenOffice did not handle the Word documents like I wanted so I ran Windows XP inside Linux in a virtual machine (qemu). I kept all the grades in OOCalc (the OpenOffice equivalent of Excel).

Now, the normal method for grading this is to either print everything and handwrite comments and grades and return hard-copies to the students. That's time consuming... not to mention error-prone. Or, the assistant can keep everything electronic but then has to write one email per student to return all the essays with comments and grades. Not as bad as handwriting but still very time consuming.

What did I do? I exported my grades from OOCalc to a CSV file. Then I wrote a script in python that would create one email per student. The email would contain the students grade for essay 1 essay 2 and the final grade and would automatically attach the student's essay with my comments to the email. I then wrote another script to automatically send those generated emails to the students. (I could have had one script do everything in one shot but that's risky. I wanted to have a chance to look at the generated emails before they were sent.)

I was able to do that by using readily available tools and I never ever had to reverse engineer anything or struggle with obscure APIs. On Windows, I would have to seek 3rd party tools from here and there to be able to do that. (Yes, python is available for free but not all the tools I used.) Cygwin might be able to give me most of what I need but each time I've used Cygwin in the past, it was a pain in the ass to make it work nicely.

The thing is that I do this kind of thing day-in-day-out. Why? Because nobody on the Linux side is trying to hide specs. Sometimes the documentation on the Linux side is bad but that's not on purpose. On the other hand, Microsoft and their cohorts will purposely obfuscate things because they consider that to be a way to protect their revenue stream.

Anyway, I don't think Linux is just for programmers or tech-heads but it is certainly not for everyone. You need to look at your needs and see whether Windows, OSX or a good Linux distribution would serve your needs better. The choice of Linux distribution is very important because some of them are definitely geared towards tech-heads but a distribution like Ubuntu can be used by anyone.

 

why dont you start off with ubuntu. Ive been told it is user friendly. I personally use FreeBSD 6.2. After you get x windows and the internet setup, finding solutions to problems is easy(google). And the port system is nice. Installing applications is just finding the port directory and typing in 'make install clean'.

As for cds, you need to mount them. Type 'man mount' in the console, should give you information on how to do it. Not sure the exact procedure under linux. Try this site: http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie4_2_2.htm

 

They need to read the documentation that comes with their distribution. If they think that going from Windows to Linux is going to be a no-effort proposition, they are quite mistaken. Moving from one OS to another is never a no-effort affair.

I've used Linux since before the 1.0 release of the kernel. I've used Gnome since the beginning and tried KDE (but never used it really). I've also used Windows since Windows 1.0. And I've used Mac OS waaaay before OS X. And I've used GUI's you've never heard of. I think I've been around the block enough to know my way around an OS. Recently, a friend of mine lent me a MacBook with OS X on it. Was I instantaneously productive on it?? Heck, no! I had to learn where everything was.

 

i have ubuntu 7.04

 

I run Ubuntu 6.10 and I really have never had to "type alot of things in root" to install anything I have downloaded. It's has a pretty nice GUI, and it's easy to get around. I would try to help you out with your problems, but it seems to me you made this post as more of an attempt at starting a flame war than for requesting actual help. The support at www.ubuntu.com is damn good and if you cant find it there, try www.ubuntuforums.com or www.google.com Otherwise, I would recommend switching back to Windows if you don't want to spend the time to figure out what you are doing.

 

i just want to know what advatage it has over windows because I am always having a problem downloading things like limewire and in order to download limewire you need java and its hard to install.

 

I'm a long-time linux user, I've probably forgotten what it's like to be faced with a vastly unfamiliar system.

linux is NOT windows. It won't run windows software (unless you know what you're doing). The "windows way" of doing things isn't the linux way (by default at least).

NinjaArt1, try reading this forum topic:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=124918

It may help you set your expectations of linux. There is a learning curve to using it,but as others have pointed out, there are a great many advantages to linux.

 

"I personally use FreeBSD 6.2. After you get x windows and the internet setup, finding solutions to problems is easy(google). And the port system is nice. Installing applications is just finding the port directory and typing in 'make install clean'."

Ugh. To the starter of this thread, don't even think about trying to install FreeBSD; it's not for beginners. You have to customize the OS in every aspect, and it doesn't even come installed with a GUI.

 

Er, what did I say? Did you write the article? I am sorry if you were offended, but I still think the article could be improved to include a high-level comparison between the typical software installation experience between Windows and Linux.

I have fond memories of my first job working as an assembler programmer on an IBM 9020d mainframe (360 architecture) - it didn't have a GUI though and I don't think linux had been invented.

 

I'm not offended and no, I did not write the article. Unless I'm mistaken, from your perspective, the article is incomplete. I implicitly agreed, saying that new Linux users need to read the documentation that comes with their distribution. The root problem with many would-be switchers is that they expect to put Linux on their computer and be ready to go. That's what I was pointing out. The article aims to get that point across and I think it does it pretty well. In my opinion as long as prospective new Linux users do not get the point that Linux is not a drop-in replacement for Windows, then no amount of hand-holding is going to accomplish anything.

I'm younger than you are then! Just to clarify in case my intent was misunderstood. My goal was not to start a contest as to whom has the most experience on ancient systems (you would win) but to point out that even experienced people moving from system to system need to learn new habits. That's par for the course, should not come as a surprise and is certainly not sign of a problem with the OS being tried. My trying OS X was to see whether I'd want to switch to Mac. After all, I heard a lot of good things about it. In the end I decided against it not because I had to learn new habits (which would be a poor reason) but because I did not see anything and OS X system would give me and that I *need* that I don't get with Ubuntu. NinjaArt1 may well decide against Ubuntu after trying it and as far as I'm concerned that's fine.

 

has anyone been successful in installing lime wire or any other filer sharing program.I tried to but said I need java.Can anyone help me out on that.

 

NinjaArt1,

Select the menu item: Applications -> Add/Remove...

The "Add/Remove Applications" utility will start. At the top right of the window, you will see a combo box that says "Show". You want it to be set to show "All available applications". Then select the item labeled "Internet" on the left. The on the right you will see a list of Internet applications. Go down the list until you find "Sun Java 6 Web Start". Check the little check box on the left of it. The click apply at the bottom of the window. Java should install.

This is all off the top of my head but I think the main steps are there.

 

You'll need the Java Runtime Environment. It's really simple, and it's available from the Ubuntu repositories. All you need to do is go into the Add/Remove Applications programs, do search for Java, and click to install the Java Runtime Environment 5.0. It's really simple. Have you read any Ubuntu documentation yet?

 

this is what i get

: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

 

Hmm... did you actually install Ubuntu or are you running it from the CD??? Please be sure of your answer before answering.

 

Be careful saying things like that. When you make statements like that, it means you can't read and infer obvious information. If my system says I need Java, I should probably figure out how to install Java on my system, and then do the relevant Google search and start reading. Linux users/gurus rarely like holding hands... they love giving pointers and helping, though. The problems come when people say "How do I do X without having to think?", because it basically offends the 'hacker' mentality. If you want support like that, pay for it. If you really want to learn, we'd love nothing more than to help

 

i installed it.The cd is not in if thats what you mean

 

Pitabred is right. My initial reaction is RTFA and then "Google is your friend"...

 

Looks like something went terribly wrong at some point.

 

i just did it maually through the terminal.Thanks guy for the help

 

Except for price I don’t see any other advantage.

People (mostly Linux users) say it is more secured, most probably it is; but security of Windows hasn’t been an issue for me . As long as you know how to take proper precautions, Windows is as secure as linux.

Ok before you guys come down on me, This is my personal opinion. I have read many articles about architectural differences and comparisons between the two. So there is nothing you guys can say in favor of Linux that I haven’t already heard.

 

I'd say the best thing about Linux is that it's so bloody pretty! The other two mainstream OSes can't match it in the beauty department.

 

For me it's about choice. I like being able to choose what I do with my computer, and I think Microsoft limits that a lot. They try to lock you in to their proprietary formats a lot, and I'm just not a fan of that. Besides, I think it's better for security reasons to have a multiple-OS society. If all attention is focused on one OS, it's going to be easy to hack it no matter how secure it is; but if you have several OS' in use (i.e. using Windows, BSD, Linux, Solaris, OS X, etc), things become much harder and take more time and more resources.

 

My Ford Pinto's fine, too. It's just that no one has rear-ended me yet. Just because it isn't an issue for you doesn't mean that it's not an issue at all, and a lot of people like Linux because it's the right way to do things. Designed by engineers who want to make elegant things work, rather than by marketers who want to sell more, even if what they want added is a Bad Idea(R) (See: ActiveX, Internet Explorer "integration", video drivers running in kernel mode causing bluescreens to make them a little faster...)

There's a good reason people like Linux... it's elegant, highly scalable, high performance, configurable and hackable. If you don't care about any of those, stay with Windows. No skin off my back... but I don't want to hear you whine when Windows breaks or gets hacked

 

Microsoft is all about locking you into approved software, Mac is all about locking you into approved hardware. Linux isn't doing either, it is simply giving you the choice to use what you want, how you want and with whoever you want.

The problem with total freedom of choice is that it requires accepting a certain level of responsibility and willingness to do a little more work.

Sort of like the difference between a multiple choice test and an essay test.

 

Yes, a little bit. I thought the OP was struggling with software installation. That article doesn't really say anything on the big differences between linux and windows with respect to getting applications that the user might wish to run. On Windows, users are used to looking on lots of web sites until they find the software that the they want to install. They check that it's compatible with their Windows version (W2K, XP, etc), download it, hopefully run a virus scanner, and then double-click on the downloaded file. When it comes to linux there are a bewildering number of choices, and many times the users will be frustrated because they download something from say SourceForge, then discover that they can't install it, the binary RPM isn't compatible with their libraries or it complains of missing dependencies or they follow the INSTALL instructions but it won't compile. They are understandably stuggling, because they didn't know (because they aren't expecting it) that each distro usually has pre-compiled binaries for lots of applications, to make it easier than having to compile from source. With Windows a binary installation file only comes in a few versions, on linux downloading and installing binaries from outside your own distro can be frustrating and unless you are sure it is best to stick to the distros own packages.

You really know how to flatter someone The mainframe had been in the company for 17 years before I started working there, so I might possibly be younger than you think?

I'll admit I really didn't understand why you were mentioning all that early linux experience. I do now, thanks.

 

Need anyone say else?