Why do people switch to Linux?
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| tadelste Sep 27, 2005 1:29 PM UTC |
I tried Linux a number of times before I got it to work and started using it. That was in the 1990's BTW. I wanted to learn so bad, but the jargon got in my way in the beginning. I bought a brand new (end of life) DEC box at an auction for $50 and decided to just install Linux on it and try it until I got more familiar with it. The first challenge was getting on the Internet. Ooooo what a challenge. At the time, no one had a dialer. I wound up on a web site trying to understand PPP and serial ports, etc. It took a week but I got connected. By then, I knew a lot about Linux. I downloaded an unsupported netscape browser and it worked. From that day forward I was using Linux. But why? I just remember feeling stuck with Windows and I headed up a practice section of a MS Solution Provider. Prior to that, I was the hands-on Senior admin for a large NT network and prior to that I was assistant admin on a IBM Lan Server network managing OS/2 workstations at a Cigna HMO. When I started using Linux, I felt excited about IT again. I remember feeling that way years before, but some how, I felt my power going away. Linux gave me back a sense of making a difference. In 1999, people complained about a lack of Linux support - that was - they couldn't make a service call. So, I got an 800# and started a Linux call center. I expected hundreds of calls, but we only got a few a week at first. They were mostly ISPs and Novell shops that were using Red Hat 4.2 for Internet mail. So, again, why did I switch? I guess I had a lot of reasons. I think that I caught the excitement that Linus, Larry Augustine, John maddog Hall, Dave Whitinger and others brought. I also like the fact that Linux gave me something on which to work and it gave me a sense of being able to contribute. I didn't dislike Microsoft at first. But when it became obvious they wanted to kill Linux, I got pretty mad about it. I never liked bully types even when they didn't pick on me. But when they picked on me ... I'd appreciate you sharing your story or at least a portion of it. Maybe, we can combine the posts and make it an article. |
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| cjcox Sep 27, 2005 3:19 PM UTC |
Well.. for me it was simple. x86 stinks.... M$ stinks... I was never a Windows user, nor a user of crappy x86 architecture. I owned an Amiga (a hardware marvel that still has not been repeated even today). Before that, I was z80 with CP/M. I told myself I would NEVER, EVER, no NEVER own an x86 machine... until.... I was at work one day and one of the sys admins said, dial out to my box at home. I did and was greeted by something that smelled a lot like System V (unlike BSD at the time... which of course was in a state of legal/political turmoil.. that was in the early nineties). "What is it?", I asked, expecting that he had gotten hold of "free" copy of UnixWare or something (which was probably about $1500-2000 at the time). He said, "It's Linux." Well.. that was it for me. I did the unthinkable in 1994 and ordered a Pentium 90 clone from a consultant who did Linux builds on the side. It ran Yggdrasil's Plug and Play Linux... had a 500M HD, 8M memory and a ATI Graphics Ultra Pro (mach32). I had a high resolution 14" CRT that could do 1024x768 and even 1280x1024 (though only at 60Hz) and I ran Xfree at 8bits. Btw, I gave that machine way about 4 years ago to a friend who works with me that had held to a anti-x86 position even longer than I. That box box was on par if not better than all of the commercial Unix workstations at the time. At home, I know have a Dual 3.2Ghz Xeon, a Dual AMD 246 Opteron, a Dell D600 laptop, a Dell Precision M70 laptop and my old Toshiba 3000... all with SUSE Linux. Both my wife and I use Linux as our primary desktop. She uses VMware occasionally to run a few applications that the school (she's a teacher) requires (her's is the D600 btw.. and the Dual Xeon is her workstation... which she doesn't use much anymore). I use Linux for the normal productivity stuff as well as for gaming (which is unusual in the Linux community). Contracting wise, I specialize in Linux and Windows integrated solutions (that's moonlighting outside of my 9 hour/day job). At work, our *ix infrastructure is all Linux based, but we support just about any commercial Unix platform as well. Unix since 1983 (originally it said 1987.. my typo)... Linux since 1994. Windows since about 1996. |
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| phsolide Sep 27, 2005 3:50 PM UTC |
I converted to Linux (from NetBSD) because of two factors: 1. Price - I got a 1 GHz Duron PC from Walmart for $300 in 2002. 2. All the cool software - User mode linux, Reiserfs, although NetBSD is pretty posix-compliant. Like cjcox, I never owned a Windows/x86 PC: 1. Radio Shack Color Computer III, running OS9 level 2 2. AT&T 3b2 (a.k.a. Convergent Safari), M68010, SysV 3. NeXT color slab, running NeXTStep 4. DEC UDB Alpha running RedHat 3.0 and 4.0 5. SPARC IPC running NetBSD 0.9 - 1.1 6. SPARCStation 10 running NetBSD 1.3 - 1.6 I had very little trouble moving to Linux from NetBSD - I still use the PPP "chat" script I used under NetBSD, all my config files (.vimrc, .xinitrc, .Xresources, etc) came right over. |
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| salparadise Sep 27, 2005 5:19 PM UTC |
6 years ago I was the warehouse/transport manager for a small manufacturing company, I used a pc, but only to input stock and raise orders - I was clueless. I got my first computer in 1999, a Pentium 35 with 16MB of RAM and Windows 95. I knew nothing about computers and had no internet connection and no job at the time so I just explored and explored till I'd looked in every folder, opened every ini file and double clicked every exe just to see what would happen. Then I stripped all the internet stuff out to see what would happen. At some point I got hooked. Next up was an AMD 350 again with Win95, and then 98 once I'd started on a computer course. We were taught by an ex Paratrooper and my goodness we learned (he was about 6' 7" and weighed about 20 stone (280lb)), to strip them down and build them up etc etc etc. The thing that got me in the end was that if I wanted to do anything with the computer I was either stuck with shareware or had to use pirate software. And everything I created with that software was ruined for me because I knew it was built on crappy foundations, so to speak - because the software was stolen. I suppose I vaguely hoped there was an alternative but didn't hold out much hope. How wrong could I have been? And then I discovered Linux - RedHat 6.2, I must have installed it about 20 times thinking I was doing something wrong, because all I got was a black screen after the first boot - no net connection meant no support. I knew no one who used Linux to ask for help so I got a friend in Sweden to download the RedHat 7.3 disks for me, which worked first time, then RH8 and so on and so on. I spent a very happy 18 months with Mandrake. Then Ubuntu came along. Recently (in the last couple of weeks) I've discovered Debian. I like Debian. A lot. Think I might finally have found somewhere to stay. Now running: an Evesham AMD1900 with Debian and Ubuntu, a Viglen AMD2500 with Ubuntu, at work I have the same again plus an Acer AMD64 monster box of uselessness running Ubuntu and Fedora Core 4. I also have a Zaurus 5500 running Open Zaurus 3.5 and access to assorted laptops running Blag, Ubuntu, Debian etc. All the boxes have NVIDIA 5600 or better. I like NVIDIA cards. I now work on an OS Project as a circuit rider as well as being responsible for installing and configuring etc. I know enough about computers now to know that I don't know very much about computers but I'm learning all the time. Got some employer sponsored training coming soon. LPI stuff! My wife abhors computers, won't use them, won't touch them, won't learn. "The internet is rubbish." Not even with the added factor of open source/software freedom and the potential anti-capitalism angle - being the old hippy that she is. |
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| mvermeer Sep 27, 2005 6:06 PM UTC |
I too started with OS9, but on a Dragon, level I (i.e., no memory management, 64 kB max for code and data). Dynastar word processor, Dynacalc spreadsheet, P-system Pascal. Green screen terminal (Nokia) attached to the serial port. "Hard disk" was a 720 kB diskette drive. Worked remarkably well after I re-wrote part of its driver :-) My first computer (not personal though, I did my dissertation on it) was a PDP-11 running RT-11. Fortran IV. Those were nice boxes. Wonder why anybody would need more than 32 kilo-words? We had in Helsinki a bulletin board system running OS9 on a Dragon 64 with one external serial port added. Two people could log in, one over a 300 bps modem, the other over a 2400 bps. Then they could chat together :-) All that came to an end; Dragon went bust and I moved on (at work) to Vaxes and SunOS boxes. It wasn't until 1994 that my wife and I again bought a personal computer, an i386 running Windows 3.11 and Word 6.0 (or as my wife has it, Windows 6.0 :) Actually quite a nice system. DOS has gone downhill from there. 1996 I asked for Christmas and got a CD set with several Linux distributions, from which I installed Red Hat 4.0 on a partition. I suppose it happened that late because I was thoroughly disgusted with the state of computing at that time, had seen what happened to Dragon OS9 and Unix in general, and was once burned twice shy. But I never stopped being a Unix amateur -- Tanenbaum's book on the shelf and all. Homecoming. - Martin |
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| richo123 Sep 28, 2005 12:08 AM UTC |
1) Univac in 1975. (Learnt unix there) 2) Solaris; SGI IRIX; Cray XMP/YMP 1982-1999 (Numerical modeling with Fortran) 3) Windows 3.1-98 1994-1999 (Basic desktop stuff) 4) 1999-present: Linux for everything, science, desktop, games, you name it. I like Linux because it's unix, it's cheap and for a scientist it's a pleasure to use on the desktop. I have two P4s 3Ghz with Ubuntu and RH8 a Pentium M laptop running Ubuntu plus a dedicated 24 cpu opteron cluster running RHEL3. Numerical modellers nirvana really....Still mainly use Fortran and my C is slowly (very slowly) improving ;-) |
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| Tsela Sep 28, 2005 3:16 AM UTC |
I first touched a computer when I was 6 (and that was 23 years ago, when the PC 1512 was still a new thing!). My primary school was the first in France to give computer classes to pupils. We learned a dialect of BASIC and some LOGO on Thomson MO5, MO6, TO7 and T09 computers, set up in an internal network with a 1512 with DOS as server ;) . I guess that set my interest for computers, although I eventually didn't go for a carrier in the IT world ;) . Next was quite similar to cjcox. The first computer I bought (or rather that my parents bought me) was an Amstrad CPC 6128 [HYPERLINK@amstrad.cpc.free.fr] . The processor was a Z80, in ROM was the BASIC interpreter and prompt (OS). The CP/M+ OS came with it, but on a floppy (3 inch ;) ). I learned real programming (BASIC and Assembler) on it. Even wrote a text editor completely in BASIC (and it wasn't even slow!). However, the platform was eventually abandoned by Amstrad so I bought later an Amiga 1200, indeed a hardware marvel (I remember fun things I did programming in Amos :) ). I used it mostly as a game platform though. Workbench was the first graphical OS I ever saw, and it's still miles ahead what Windows offers ;) . The computer's still in my parents' home, well stored and protected against dust. I bet it would still start up ;) . When I took up high scientific studies, I came in a university-like school with a computer network handled by the students (and for the students only. The teachers and researchers had a separate network). The computers we used were Windows (95 and 98), but the network itself was handled by a Linux server. I first heard of Linux because I became romantically involved with one of the maintainers of the network ;) . He was a Debian fan (Debian was used for the server there) and communicated his attitude to me. I am still a Debian fan (although we broke up long ago ;) ). I learned more about GNU/Linux on Internet, and the ideals of Free Software, and they immediately made sense to me. I was hooked. Then four years ago I got my first job, just fresh out of University. I moved to the Netherlands, and got the possibility to buy a computer, partly paid by my employer. I didn't have that big a choice though if I wanted to use that program, so I settled for a Dell computer with Windows ME on. I thought I could always install GNU/Linux on it myself. It took me a while (mostly because Real Life(TM) prevented me to get much free time, because I wanted to get a bit more hard drive space and a DVD rewriter first, and because I patiently waited for Debian Sarge's release ;) ), but I finally did it last summer. I am still dual-booting with ME because my partner still doesn't want to switch, but I myself have been using GNU/Linux exclusively ever since. And when this computer dies (it's 4 years old. That's above 100 in IT years ;) ), the next one I'll buy won't have anything to do with Microsoft anymore (I promised myself Windows ME would be the first and last Microsoft OS to ever touch my computer ;) ). All in all, I feel I have been naturally evolving towards GNU/Linux, and that it is just the right thing for me :) . |
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| MESMERIC Sep 28, 2005 5:03 AM UTC |
people switch to Linux for various reasons: - the challenge to try and alternative (and sticking with it) - had enough off computers troubles (but hey let's try that Red Hat Linux CD out of curiosity) - forced up by a Linux enthusiast (husband, wife, brother, etc) and after years got too accustomed to it - comes from a strong UNIX background - financial reasons, cutting budget, etc - moral reasons (rare) - governmental reasons or desktop at workplace I chose Linux simply because I thought the mascot looked cute enough. |
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| AnonymousCoward Sep 28, 2005 5:09 AM UTC |
Cut my teeth on an Alpha Micro AM-100 (PDP-11 clone(ish)) at the University Computer Club at the University of Western Australia in 1980 running AMOS. Also got to play on Curtin University's (then Western Australian Institute of Technology) DECsystem-10 running STOP-10 (sorry, TOPS-10) and assorted PDP-11s mostly running RSTS. First work was programming an Alpha Micro in their BASIC dialect. Then a friend (the late and much-missed Dean Elsner) bought himself a 4MHz CP/M-80 machine (twin 8" floppies, 64k RAM), and a copy of the BSD C compiler and suddenly I could write simple programs which were speed-limited by the terminal, not the language. The feeling of power was addictive. (-: I worked for a computer shop, got some exposure to other kinds of OS including the UCSD P-System on Apple /// and to graphics (Hitachi Peach, Apple ][+, //e, //c, even the horrid character graphics on the Osborne 1). I also got some exposure to RSX-11-M-PLUS, which featured a real filesystem (ODS-1), timesharing, and real system tools (the DECUS C compiler plus the native tools like TKB and PIP, from which the PIP.COM CP/M implementation obviously denegerated). This exposure to real system tools spoiled me, and I began to find the "appliance" style systems very frustrating. The only real exposure I'd had to Unix of any sort was -- irony! -- Microsoft Xenix on a Tandy 68k, which sucked and included only the absolute minimum toolset. So the first computer I actually owned was a 486DX33 with 2x160MB IDE drives, a Gravis UltraSound AKA "GUS", and 16MB of RAM (at a time when 2MB or 4MB was the norm) running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on DR-DOS 6. Yes, I got bitten by the encrypted crash code that MS put into Win311. DR-DOS's utilities were much better than MS-DOS's; e.g. DISKCOPY would copy a disk into a file or vice versa. During its lifetime, this machine trashed its own hard drives four times. Not happy, Jan. Then I got to play with -- more irony! -- a SCO box running CDE. Whoah! Graphics and Lego-like toys! Even if half of them were named scoXXX instead of their normal name and ran through the /etc/ directory. Then I was given an old laptop (2M RAM, 200MB HDD) and managed to load Slackware onto it from floppies. It wasn't a very exciting machine, and 2MB of RAM was barely enough to get the graphics to stagger into life, but it did have all of the toys. What I learned on it was enough to get me some work sorting out Linux servers (Red Hat 5.0, I think) and other Unices. When MS-Windows gutted its filesystem again, I tried installing Debian, but at that point the installer was still pretty cryptic, so I reverted to Red Hat (I think 6.0 by this time), then when Mandrake's obviously slicker distro happened along, switched to that and have never looked back. Linux gives me the pretty (and convenient) graphics plus all of the tools I can eat. My Mrs is terrified of computers (any computers) yet is pleased that hers never crashes, never gets viruses or spyware. Ever. She does, however, lament the collection of educational software she's built up but which we cannot run. I'm looking forward to the installer-related improvements in WINE over the next few months, which should enable us to start using a lot of that software. |
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| dinotrac Sep 28, 2005 9:00 AM UTC |
I first used Linux on the job, where a small skunk-works group was using Linux on a Samba server that also served as a CVS repository for their work in creating an ERP CASE tool used to generate a product that could run on multiple Unix platforms. I was new to Unix, having spent most of my career on mainframes with a little bit of DOS and Windows work. My friend helped me to put together a 66 mhz 486 box from spare parts and odds 'n ends from the computer show to run Debian 1.3. I was not unhappy with Microsoft or Windows, but I was motivated to learn more about Unix. I worked in a Unix shop and I paid attention to Microsoft marketing. One thing always struck me: It seems like Microsoft never failed to mention the high cost of Unix talent. They made cheaper people a key selling point for NT. I don't know about you, but my professional goals do not include being cheap. Cost effective, yes, but I've always wanted to justify heaps of cash. It was not an easy go at first, but it sure did help me out being able to tinker with Unix(like) at home. Before long, I had upgraded the box to a mighty 233 mhz K6 with 16 mb of ram and installed Hamm. I made a network with our Windows 95 box, and began playing with X. When the first betas of KDE came out, I installed it. From that point, I began spending more time on the Linux box -- especially after StarOffice was made gratis -- and less on the Windows PC. As I went on, I began trying things that I couldn't do with Windows. I added boxes to the network, I started doing graphics with the Gimp. I experimented with apache and postgresql, all manner of things. One note: Being able to do something means more than technology. I didn't have money for Photoshop. I didn't have money for heavyweight computers or multiple licenses of anything. When the company I worked for went bankrupt, I was able to get a little bit of work doing web development for Unix sites because I could pre-run the code on my Linux machine. Ironically, Linux and free software have done for me what Microsoft, DOS and Windows, and Lotus did for a bunch of others when I was working in mainframes. At that time, we were losing a lot of work to people who discovered that a pc with Lotus 1-2-3 could be purchased under a manager's signature limit and turned over to the department gearhead to do things for which we would charge a lot of money and take six months to complete. At home, we bought an XT clone that my wife used to set up a little word-processing business and I used to explore the potential of PC software. We bought a seond-hand copy of Word 2.0 and upgraded immediately to 3.0. I bought Turbo Pascal for $40 and we were off to the races. Now, Linux is my primary platform. We have one Windows XP notebook because my wife needs a couple of specialized applications that don't run on Linux and I am not a WINE hack. XP doesn't seem all that bad to me, but I am more comfortable with KDE and Linux. I can still do things on Linux that I couldn't do on Windows because of my budget, but the list has grown to include video and audio editing/production tasks. Besides, I've been running in 64 bit mode on an Athlon 64. Even if could afford to buy software for all of the things that I do on my Linux box, 64 bit offerings in Windows land are pretty thin. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. |
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| Koriel Sep 28, 2005 11:20 AM UTC |
I just wanted to try something different back in 1996, got an install of Slackware 2.0 from Lasermoon in the UK came on about 25+ floppies, bought a copy of Dr.Linux from them as well and of i went. OMG, I really didn't know what i was letting myself in for, had only used Dos, and Windows up to this point. This is in the days before internet really hit the UK, so got no help from that quarter, so there i was in my bedroom with a bunch of floppies (please no jokes) and the biggest book i had ever seen. I think i emerged 3 months later with the perfect Linux install :) |
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| richo123 Sep 28, 2005 12:14 PM UTC |
Floppies in a bedroom! The mind boggles.... Sorry could not resist it! | ||
| dinotrac Sep 28, 2005 12:23 PM UTC |
richo --- Shame on you!! Besides, there's help for that now. |
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| tadelste Sep 28, 2005 4:06 PM UTC |
This is great material. I'd appreciate your continuing to share your story or at least a portion of it. I think we can combine the posts and make it into a stellar article. |
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| number6x Sep 29, 2005 9:06 AM UTC |
1977 High School IMSAI-8080 CP/M Basic After that it wax Vax in college, an Apple II, an Apple IIgs, then around 1993 I got an IBM pc clone for about $2300.00. The pc had windows 3.1, and was ok. First linux install was on that machine in December of 1996. I got X working in January of 1997. I've been a Linux user ever since. |
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| tadelste Sep 30, 2005 3:18 PM UTC |
OK. With the thousands of reader than visit every day, we have to have more stories people can share. Whose next? | ||
| phsolide Sep 30, 2005 5:22 PM UTC |
I think some of the MSFT shill user IDs should share their "reasons" for "switching" to Linux. Buehler? Anyone? Buehler? Hey, Wagg-Ed created ([HYPERLINK@news.com.com]) a "switcher" from Mac to Windows, maybe they can create a Windows-to-Linux switcher. Bring it on! |
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| br3n Oct 01, 2005 8:46 AM UTC |
I bought a commodore 64 then a commodore 128,never got online with them tho. In 1998 I bought an acer pc with win95 on it and it had the win 98 upgrade with it.took me a year to figure that i needed to use the upgrade. As an artist ,I traded artwork a lot and was constantly getting viri.it seemed like all i did was reformat. In 2001 i heard about linux but didnt understand what they were telling me.after having 3 classes to teach online in one week ,and dealing with reformating 4 times in the same time period,i decided there had to be something better out there. i have had no computer training ,so it took me 6 months to even decide which distro.I chose mandrake 8.2 because the support channel on irc was really good.In other words they didnt tell everyone to RTFM.as long as I put forth effort to read and try to understand ,they would answer my questions.sometimes this only required a keyword to help point me in the right direction.another great irc channel #kde on efnet directed me in proper security. It hasnt been easy and right now i have a broken distro in some programs.but i have no microsoft products on my box and it took only 1 year of using linux to be able to wipe ms off I have sought for days for answers for ms problems and discovered reformat was only way to fix. but with linux it might take longer to find the answer ,but usually it is out there if i can just find the right terminology to search for. Major benefit for me=clicking on email and feeling comfortable that something bad isnt going to d/l to my computer without my permission. BTW ,there has only been 2 reformats since i started linux,they were once my fault and the other was something about the age of my monitor and not knowing enough to change the settings to compensate but reinstalling helped because i could make different choices to avoid the problem . very satisfied linux user. br3n |
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| ubuntu4all Oct 01, 2005 11:07 AM UTC |
"A third key?! But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders." [HYPERLINK@www.heise.de] "The European Parliament reports have sparked Continent-wide anger. Questions have been raised by officials in Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Holland, while the Swedish government has launched an investigation into whether Swedish companies have been victims of covert NSA surveillance. In Italy, a Rome deputy district attorney has opened an inquiry to determine whether NSA activities violate Italian privacy law. More important, perhaps, the reports encouraged France and Germany to lift their restrictions on the use and sale of strong encryption software, which Washington has been trying to limit." [HYPERLINK@www.chiark.greenend.org.uk] "Germany's Bundiswehr is banning Microsoft software (and presumably other major American software packages) from use in critical environments due to concern over "back doors" suspected to have been placed for the use of U.S. spy agencies, particularly the NSA (National Security Agency). China, last year, declared Linux, particularly the home grown Red Flag Linux, the official operating system for Chinese government and commerce due to similar security fears." [HYPERLINK@www.aaxnet.com] |
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| Koriel Oct 01, 2005 12:14 PM UTC |
Sort of an expansion on my previous post, more a pre-linux history also known as my teen childhood. Bought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, marketed in the US as the Timex, learnt ZX Basic, that wasn't good enough for me so i learnt Z80 assembly, my first Z80 assembly based program was a sound sampling utility for the ZX Spectrum, next up was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 +2, where i decided to write a Forth language interpreter for it, this to my suprise actually worked although a bit ropey hey im self taught so if their was a short cut i would take it :) Went to uni and did Electronic Engineering, left uni, went off the rails for a wee while, wine women and song not necessarily in that order, got back on the rails ditched the electronics switched to software, Z80, 8051, X86, Forth, C, VB, for various companies got fed up of Dos, Win 3.1 and decided that for a laugh or a sort of self imposed challenge would try this new fangled OS call linux and this leads up to my previous post :) PS. I still have both of my ZX Spectrums in full working order! |
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| hkwint Oct 02, 2005 10:50 AM UTC |
Ok, here's my (very short since I'm only 21 years old) story: I got my first own PC 3 years ago, before used win98 on my parents computer. Always used Windows at first (thought anything else would be too difficult), but my best friend was OpenBSD/Linux fan. So we installed OpenBSD (took a few nights to get things right), but I was new to Unix, so couldn't get anything working. Then I tried NetBSD, but there was a bug in it, that made it impossible to boot if I used offsets for mounting FAT-partitions or something like that, so I was unable to access my mp3's from NetBSD. Following that, I tried FreeBSD, which was much simpler. I even get Opera working, and after 2 days or so, I got the OpenOffice port working (compiled form source, had to go to the Sun-site for Java-licenses etc...) I also made my first dual boot with XP/FreeBSD. Then, because my best friend was a Gentoo-fan, he set up Gentoo for me. First I didn't like it, because everything just worked as it should in only one day (compare that to OpenBSD!) But when I got to know portage I was convinced I would be using this from now on. It (Gentoo) was also ideal for studying for my LPIC level 1. Finally, because I'm unemployed at the moment, I didn't need my dual-boot anymore and throw Win away. At the moment, 'rare' things I have include LVM, 256bit AES-encryption (/home and /tmp), wine running some programs like Euroglot translation, NTP setting my clock, hardened kernel, a separate browser account, DNS-caching server, forwarded my router for GTK-gnutella, automounting for my mp3-player, much keyboard shortcuts, AMSN... And all works very well. |
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| tadelste Oct 04, 2005 12:29 PM UTC |
I forgot one thing about my story. One of the motivations: I realy dislike Windows. Running a Windows enterprise was like working in the emergency room of Cook County Memorial. Working on Linux was like being a Maytag repair man. | ||
| dinotrac Oct 04, 2005 1:35 PM UTC |
Tom - I've had at least two instances of a problem that doesn't happen with Windows - and an embarrassment that actually pleases clients so long as you keep a rescue disk handy. The problem: Having a box -- most often a samba server without internet connectivity -- just run so well so long that you've forgotten the root level password. Sigh. |
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| mvermeer Oct 05, 2005 4:23 PM UTC |
Dean -- I was about to suggest you should attach one of those yellow sticky notes to the side of the screen... but then I realized that they too dry up and drop like dry leaves in the time between Linux server reboots... Sigh indeed. |
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| tadelste Oct 05, 2005 6:57 PM UTC |
Any former Microsoft developers doing pure Linux around here? | ||
| varahan Oct 06, 2005 12:52 PM UTC |
Hi All! I am a non-techie and bought my first ever PC ( which till today I use) - a P III 500 MHz- 128 MB RAM . I got Windows installed and learned how to use a computer . slowly I learned about internet but was fed up with frequent crashing of my system due either to virus or some buggy software. I had to re-format my disk more than thrice and install everything right from the scratch. Luckily I came across an IT magazine named Linux For You and subscribed to it. With its every issue, I got a CD with the image of a linux distro and tried to install one. Fortunately I became a member of the local linux user group - a group mostly of IT students and software professionals, and at first I was bewildered by the technical jargons they used. But it showed me how much I am at dark. Slowly I started learning linux and now I have tested the major four distros - namely slackware, debian, Red Hat and Mandrake. In fact it is Mandrake which made me completely forget Windows and make linux as my primary OS. Now I am confidently trying various distros- Knoppix, Libranet, Vector Linux, Slax, PC Linux OS - all of them successfully. Time and the ever brimming linux fraternity have made me an ardent fan of linux. |
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| tadelste Oct 06, 2005 1:00 PM UTC |
varahan: That's a good story. It seems to contradict some of the propaganda that people can't switch to Linux from Windows. You say you're a non-techie, but if you use Linux, don't you become a techie almost by associatuon? |
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| Abe Oct 06, 2005 3:12 PM UTC |
"don't you become a techie almost by associatuon?" I don't thing so, not any more. Linux today is easier than Windows. Easier to install, very similar user interface, apps are just as easy to use if not better, etc...You know what I mean. My son who is not a techie (14 yrs) was able to install Linux (Suse) without any probelms. Sure I helped a little. I explained some technical details for his benefit, got him familiar and up to speed on differences (remember, it is not that easy to rid of bad habbits). The perception of "You have to be a techie to use Linux" is no longer true or valid. With easy Linux OS installation and tools like Synaptics for applications, any grand parent or kid should be able install Linux and apps without major issues. How non-techies do you who can install Windows from scrach? Why do OEMs still pre-install Windows if it was easy to do? Let see how many non-techies would buy a PC without an OS? |
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| tadelste Oct 06, 2005 3:32 PM UTC |
Abe: I see your point. Yes, you're absolutely correct. I was just thinking about how much better at computing even Linux newbies wind up. I have mentioned my wife on numerous occasions. She left the work force in 1995 where she was a heavy computer terminal user. Her work consisted of using medical systems on the floor of hospitals and in some admin capacities. She had a life threatening challenge in 2000. In early 2004, she was still having difficulty with coordination. So, Sam Hiser, Andy Oram and I invited her to do some editing on our book about JDS Linux. She learned to use a word processor, spreadsheet , do research on the web, IM, etc., etc. Here's another Linux miracle - everything came back neurologically. Hand eye coordination, quick verbal response, etc. While she was visiting my dad in the hospital, one of the staff asked her to apply for position. She got it and everyone thinks she's a computer wizard. One manager asked her to apply for a position as a systems analyst - they would train her. I really don't believe she would be as good as she is now if she would have learned on Windows XP. We even tried a Mac OS X and that didn't help. But she understands the command-line, troubleshoots her own computer, finds deleted items, etc. So, she isn't a techie, but she's a much better computer user than otherwise. That's what I meant. |
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| br3n Oct 15, 2005 9:24 PM UTC |
learning about linux is rewarding,because you can accomplish things and feel like you earned a pat on the back. being non tech doesnt hold anyone back with regard to linux. an ability to read is the real requirement and time. all a newbie needs is the occasional keyword help so that they learn which direction to search for the answer. br3n |
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| tadelste Oct 25, 2005 12:20 AM UTC |
I like this thread. But, it seemed to just stop. I'm still not sure I know why people switch to Linux. I'm missing the common core. I don't think it's simply because people want to get away from Microsoft. Actually, I think having an alternative provides a small part of the answer. But, when I started using Linux, I really liked it. That may seem strange because I remember installing Red Hat 5.0 and thinking it was really pretty cool. Given what the media and many analysts say, I shouldn't have liked Linux more than Windows because it did not have all the stuff they say is important. I mean, fvwm wasn't a great GUI desktop. Lots of hardware didn't work. In fact, I had to hunt for older video cards to get X Windows to work. So, something else went on with me when I switched. I didn't even have much disdain for Microsoft at the time. I wish I could articulate it in a sound byte or two. |
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| bstadil Oct 25, 2005 2:56 AM UTC |
I changed to Linux because of the Fiddle factor. I like computers not only for what they can do but I like them intrinsically. I have build my own computers since forever and mostly one sub-system at a time. I never build a new computer with all the components. I upgrade each items when I feel that enough performance is available for that sub-system relative to what I have and always at the sweet-spot of price – performance curve. It is a hobby. I try to wring as much performance out of what I have. It has nothing to do with bragging right but just a fun challenge to myself. . I have even developed my own algorithms for optimizing replacement strategies. . (Did you know that the optimal replacement size of a disk drive is e = 2.7 times what you have?) Linux fits this perfectly. You can fiddle to your hearts content and there is a constant flow of new stuff and improvements to try out. I used to compile every kernel release when we had a development tree. Stable trees are for wussies. You get to learn about the OS as you fiddle and you get to appreciate some of the beauty of *nix along the way. |
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| mvermeer Oct 25, 2005 2:57 AM UTC |
> I wish I could articulate it in a sound byte or two. Driving pleasure? The wind in your hair? I know what you're after... |
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| jimf Oct 25, 2005 3:22 AM UTC |
I can only tell you why I switched to Linux... I really haven't a clue as to why others do it :). I don't have any hatred of MS... Maybe a strong dislike. I quite happily ran W2K since Beta testing NT5, but, about two years ago, I started looking at my future options. I really didn't like XP or the direction that seemed to be going and I certainly didn't like the look of what Longhorn was promising. OS/2 was dead as a doornail, so, where did that leave me? I'd tinkered with various Linux Distros for a couple of years, and though interesting, none of them seemed to offer a desktop with all the features I had with W2K. I need a working system and not a hobby. Additionally, I found that the Linux structure and operation is very differently than Windows. It was going to take me More than a bit to learn all the intricacies. I was about ready to give up when some suggested that I try a new Debian derived Distro called Mepis. Mepis looked more promising than anything else I had tried and showed me some of the potential of what a Debian build could do. It took me about a year to switch from W2K to Linux. The timing in the development of all of the Desktop elements has obviously been critical. If I'd tried any sooner, the whole thing would never have come together. Improved hardware support and equivalent apps have been a big part of the successful transition, and, I owe thanks to many in the Linux community for making that happen at an astounding rate and giving me my functional Desktop OS. Gradually, I found that I was preferring to boot into Linux rather than W2K, and, I'm now at the point where it's been about 6 months since I booted Windows at all. I really have all of the functionality I need with a lot better performance. Here is a little more on where that has taken me: [HYPERLINK@jimf-linux.blogspot.com] |
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| ffreeloader Oct 25, 2005 9:54 AM UTC |
Why did I switch? I first tried Linux out of curiousity mainly. But after I'd tried it I was fascinated. Yeah, woody was much harder to install than Windows, but I didn't feel isolated/insulated from my computer any more. I welcomed the opportunity to learn. I wasn't confined by the wizards that MS uses to "help" you work on your computer. I could play with the kernel. (Something I'd been wanting to do for a long time.) I could modify, customize, and learn to my hearts content. Linux was what I had always expected computing to be. |
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| TxtEdMacs Oct 25, 2005 12:28 PM UTC |
bstadil -
How did you calculate that? I am assuming you included price, cache size, raw disc speed (rpm), supposed read/write arms disc location speeds and disc type but was there anything else? My last disc upgrade was much more seat of the pants type where I only consider the Seagate brand due the longer warranty, higher quality and a rebate that appears. I wanted to load a second independent Linux distribution and to keep the net price about $100 USD, thus, I ended up with a nominal 200 G IDE drive. I would have preferred a SATA drive but my mb does have any support, despite it being purchased about a little over a year ago. That brings me to the second issue, if I upgrade the next logical step would be a new cpu and mb combination, with many of the internal components being passed down to another machine. This might be a point to upgrade memory and later a drive to SATA, because the cable is much less of a barrier to internal wind circulation than even the rounded IDE cables I use. Here is a case, where I saw my son move to a completely new machine instead of an upgrade. He assembled a low cost high performance unit, which included a new box that even with shipping was less than the low ball Dell. [Some of the components: 64 AMD 3000+ with mb combination, 512 DDR2 RAM Dual Channel (not supported on this mb), 160G Seagate, Writable DVD drive, box with large power supply. (There might have been another item, though I cannot remember any.)] We did, however, have our sweating session when we found the pins on the cpu were bent in shipment, but the company had a policy of refusing returns of user damaged cpu's. More he than I took turns to straighten rows of bent pins, despite our efforts I thought it was a loss. He was able to rotate the cpu where all the pins went in and it is running quite nicely. [We suggest you also invest in some thermal transfer agent to optimized the cpu cooling.] As a last note, the mother board cpu combination was slightly cheaper than the best cpu price alone at that time. Though the board was adequate it lacked some more advanced features. If anyone goes this route get assurance in advance the cpu is well packaged (that is its pins are protected) and upon examination call immediately if the unit is amiss. Hint his cpu arrived in a small, clear plastic container with absolutely no padding! |
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| bstadil Oct 26, 2005 12:51 AM UTC |
TxtEdMacs You asked about how I figured out the optimal size of a new disk drive? You don't need to worry about cache size and the like. At any given time the disk drives performance is within a very narrow band. Without going into details it is because at the less performant end you can not substitute slowness for sufficient cost savings .It has been tried a few times but with little success. At the high performance end the component cost rises dramatically and the cost of drivers accordingly leaving this to various niches. The disk market is performance wise very homogeneous. This leaves the size of your new disk as the only real decision parameter you have. Furthermore cost / GB is almost constant over the range of the sizes. If you think otherwise look at Pricewatch.com at check yourselves. Here comes the complex part. Think about your investment in a disk drive as a cycle that keeps repeating. Your drive gets full and you need to buy a new one. The only decision parameter you have is what size,. namely S Each cycle is identical because I assumed that the storage growth rate is equal to the technology driven price decline of storage. (Moores law etc) This is an excellent assumption if you think it through, and you can look at historical trends etc. What I mean by thinking it through is that most of the increase in storage needs is outside driven as we discussed. (This goes for companies and institutions as well) You start to encode mp3's at higher bitrate as storage prices falls, Video etc. Most importantly for this assumption to hold is that there is a feedback loop. If storage cost gets ahead of the curve ie being cheaper than expected we change our behavior. Same if it falls behind. With storage cost decline = storage requirement growth, the drive St (t is any given time) will always cost the same. The one you buy next time at optimum size S will always be the same dollar amount as the one you bought last time. The increase in S is offset by the decline of C, Both S and C should have a little subscript t like this St and Ct. Obvious if the assumption does not hold and storage increases higher or lower than prices declines this shifts the optimal S = e, but not very dramatic and you can adjust for it but the math gets quite complicated. An obvious thing to understand and articulate is the two forces that pulls in opposite the directions thereby creating a cost minimum. For the disk drives it is the cost of unused space and the decline of cost of storage plus scrapping of drive. Very large drive and the cost of unused space is very high, very small drive and the cost of ditching the drive is high as you amortize the cost over a short period. Here is the Math: ** s = Renewal size relative to current capacity g = storage growth / time unit c = cost / storage unit n = Life of unit How many time periods n does it take before your new drive of s is full? s = (1 + g) ^ n ==> n = ln(s) / ln ( 1 + g) I omitted the size of the initial drive on both sides of initial equation., but you can put a 1 or 100. We do not know what the cost is but we need to optimize by finding s so we have minimal cost per time period Cost / Time Unit = ( s * c ) / n Substitute n from above and find the local minimum Minimize { (s * c) * ln( 1+g)} / ln (s) ==> K * s/ln(s) K= Constant and disappears, presto Minimize s/ln(s) ==> s = e Presto Disk drive should be 2.7 times the one you have at the point where you want to replace it. It is a little hard to read as I can't use math notation here, but hope you got the gist of it. |
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| Tsela Oct 26, 2005 3:01 AM UTC |
bstadil: It's funny. When I wanted to buy a new hard drive for my computer, after weeks of indecision I eventually settled for a 120GB hard drive, exactly 3 times as big as my previous one (40GB thus). The decision wasn't backed on maths, but seemed like the optimal choice between price, currently needed size, and an unformed feeling about the needed size in the future. And although I've kept my older hard drive as a second drive, I haven't used it at all lately. It's funny to see how my decision, based on hunch and feeling, seems to be backed by mathematics ;) . |
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| michaelcole Oct 26, 2005 3:05 AM UTC |
Started with Vic 20 - 1983? then dos on a 286 then windows 3.1 on 286 what a nightmare.... Saw QNX and wanted it for years.... Windows 95 .. ok but lacked the ability i had on the VIC 20 Lotus Notes / Domino Programmer on Windows and Unix. Still wanted QNX.. Came across a CD from a friend Lyrocis... BANG "Head ringing" I'm in love love.... Tried Red hat yuck.. Mandrake.. Oh nice and European.(US and M$ look like the same to me.. after 2001 where they were saying what negative perceptions do the rest of the world have of us?...) Found LTSP, for networks.. Addicted to everything... Scripts and more scripts what cant i do.. C, C++, Perl, Python, KDE... OH this love affair is not going away soon.. The TCO is of no use to a end user it is the experience the love to work in the application provided.. As an IT Manager the TCO is the savings of the sanity of the IT staff.. They dont have to chase those pesky hidden bugs in M$... |
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| michaelcole Oct 26, 2005 3:11 AM UTC |
Just read this comment above it backs up what i have seen... Running a Windows enterprise was like working in the emergency room of Cook County Memorial. Working on Linux was like being a Maytag repair man. Keep the sanity of the employees and bosses... I am sure everyone has heard this comment in the M$ circles, I just happens that way we cannot change it.. Whereas in the *nix community it is so how should it work?.. OK we will look at it... |
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| avenger Oct 27, 2005 5:35 PM UTC |
OK. I switched but don't use Linux extensively. I use some of the GNU utilities on Windows. But I am trying Linux because I need to get a handle on Apache. I'm a contract programmer and I run into opportunities that require Linux skills and Apache skills. So, I need to learn Linux. I tried Linux several years ago but it wasn't really a finished product. Today, I can see that it has all the things one needs to just install and go. I'm starting with SUSE because Novell owns it and I trust Novell. I'm not unhappy with Microsoft **at all**. I just think that in the future people will need to know Linux if they want to keep up. |
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| Bob_Robertson Oct 27, 2005 5:48 PM UTC |
At the beginning of 1995, a co-worker mentioned he had found a stable, well supported UNIX, called Linux. At the time, I was using SunOS at two different jobs (it was the beginning of the .COM boom after all) and wanted to be able to use the same systems at home. I never could get Solaris86 to work, but Debian installed from 14 1.44MB floppies and proceeded to run for the next 7 years without a crash. When Win95 finally crapped out on me in late 2000, I changed to Linux "on the desktop" and that was, as they say, that. |
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| Abe Oct 27, 2005 7:07 PM UTC |
"I'm not unhappy with Microsoft **at all**." You must be a very content person and that is a blessing. I take it you didn't have to deal with server or network administration and management. Windows has improved over the years thanks to the competition of FOSS. But the issues it has are becoming more severe and are not easy to get rid off. As a matter of fact, MS developers recommendation to Bill gates and in their own words plainly said that Windows has to be rewritten. They realized that Windows started to break down under it own wait. Windows is treated as a single program, OS and all, and now, after MS hiring many FOSS developers and establishing a Linux lab internal to MS, they discovered FOSS's strength and Windows weaknesses. Now they realize they better use many of FOSS technologies otherwise MS will have very hard time competing with FOSS. FOSS is highly modularized and much more efficient and easier to scale and maintain. It is getting to be almost impossible for Windows to stay stable and keep up with FOSS expansion. When you get deep into Linux and FOSS in general, I am sure you are going to say "How did I put up with Windows before". Give yourself sometime and let us know. Many users assume that the issues they encounter with Windows is the norm and would happen with any OS, that is not the case. |
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| theBeez Oct 28, 2005 7:54 AM UTC |
Well, I had reluctantly switched to Win 3.1 in the nineties. DOS wasn't quite user friendly, but it was understandable and when it worked, it worked. Crashing usually didn't do much harm, just a reset and within a minute one was up and running. Win 3.1 was different. A small configuration change could leave you with an unusable Win 3.1 desktop. The only thing one could do was to restore a backup. I did this many times. There was a good reason why I didn't trust those nice, friendly Win 3.1 backup programs. But a rebooted Win 3.1 system was usually fine..! Win 95 was worse: reboots could leave your disk corrupted (like Win NT) AND it was as feeble as Win 3.1; not my choice for a desktop. I put my heels in the ground and stayed with my DOS/Win 3.1 desktop until late 1999. I had always had a (Unix) Coherent desktop in dual boot configuration. I liked it although I could do very little with it, except use it for development and playing around a bit. So I decided that my new desktop should be a mix of DOS, Linux and Win NT. DOS for the heritage, Win NT for real work and Linux to play around a little bit. Then I read a German magazine called PC-Praxis. It showed me you could do real work with Linux. So I gave it a try; I dropped the Win NT and made a dual boot system. I installed the DOS/Win 3.1 part in December 1999 and the Linux part in February 2000. Within two days I had 80% of my functionality running under Linux. The final 20% took me two years. Note that included a lot of DOS/Win 3.1 emulation, like DOSEmu, Wine, VMWare. Not principal, everyday stuff. I made some changes myself too, like converting from WordPerfect to OpenOffice and LyX. Also, it included buying and installing a new scanner (no worry, my old one broke down)! In 2004 I needed a new computer. After having added serial terminals and other goodies I had never known under Windows (3.1), Windows was not even an option anymore. All those programs were as alien to me as Linux had been to me once. I didn't even consider Windows anymore, I installed Linux right away, no dual booting (why???). Linux gave me my computer back. It is simple, understandable and fixable. It is quite fast, perfect response times. Such a difference from my computer at work (WNT)!! My 2.8 GHz, 1 GB mem machine feels a lot bigger and faster than an equivalent Windows machine. I do some work exclusively at home, because my productivity is boosted with at least 50%. Have I never used Windows again? No, I installed it anyway. In a little (32 MB) QEMU box, using the -snapshot option. I use it to run those old CD-ROMs. Windows, a relic from the past. As far as I am concerned at least.. ;-) |
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| quique Oct 28, 2005 10:21 AM UTC |
About 1998 I wan given an account on a GNU/Linux server, which I used for e-mail and FTPing my personal web pages. Then I heard about telnet and ssh, and learned a few Unix shell commands. In 1999 I got a new job and had to work on Windows. At the time I was a Macintosh guy, who believed the PC was a loosy architecture: I couldn't tell the difference between the OS and the machine. Finally I was told about the Free Software philosophy and that GNU/Linux could run on just about any PC, so I decided to try it on the desktop. I ordered a bunch of CD's to the U.S. (the brand new Debian Slink, Slackware 4.0 and a few others). I already enjoyed working with computers, but it was then that I started to learn real computing! The first steps were quite hard, but I had real fun wrestling with my Debian installation, the network setup, etc. I've been a Free Software proponent ever since. I keep learning every day, currently with FreeBSD. |
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| JohnLloydJones Oct 28, 2005 12:24 PM UTC |
I have been running Debian for about a year; previously I used W2k. I switched because W2K was becoming increasing difficult to maintain and less stable for each security patch that I had to install. XP was never considered; it's a buggier and dumbed down version of W2K. The deciding factor for moving to Linux was the availability of the key applications that I need to use daily; Browser (Firefox / Opera), email (Thunderbird), development IDE (Eclipse), Apache / Tomcat. OO.org word processing is OK, but still struggling with details (I must get around to installing 2.0, of course). As a bonus GIMP + DCRAW is *way* better that the digital processing software supplied with my camera. There is a Photoshop plugin that also good, but for my use I could not justify upgrading to the newest Photoshop just to use it. Printing and networking are more stable -- but a little less convenient to configure. Almost all of my problems with Debian have boiled down to wrong file permissions; a hassle, but ultimately solvable. Almost all of my W2K problems were mysterious crashes (BSoD) that never had a clear resolution. Life with Linux has reduced the amount of time I spend wrangling with OS when I really need to get work done. |
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| mherres2 Oct 28, 2005 12:25 PM UTC |
In 95 I did RPC and socket work on NT 4.0 at a client's site. I could "lock up" the NT box in seconds if I loaded it up with too many socket clients. RPC never did work robustly. When I came back off of that contract (96) I spent a mere 20 hours on Linux rewriting some old socket libraries I had written. I could load up Linux with dozens of socket clients and, although the box would slow down to a crawl, I couldn't break it. That's when I decided that I would always tell clients that I would "never flat rate a Windows project". Windows was just too fragiile. Before 97, after a big crash with NTFS that cost me $$$$ in lost time not billing to a client, I told myself that I would use Linux for the desktop if I could get 1) RealAudio Player 2) Java compiler and some other features running on Linux. In 97 Linux had advanced to meet those conditions and I gutted my NT installation and moved to the Linux desktop. Since then VMWare has helped run those few apps that need Windows and where I had to test Java apps and applets on a Windows client. I have to say that my Linux desktop has been very stable even after most upgrades. It's not a hate thing with Windows. It's about stability. |
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| cjcox Oct 28, 2005 1:03 PM UTC |
Slashdotted... cool.. more stories are being posted there! |
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| GrueMaster Oct 28, 2005 1:25 PM UTC |
I grew up with an Atari 800 at first. It came with Atari Basic, and I was able to teach myself to program it, writting my first program (a text adventure system) a full 3 weeks befoer I had a tape drive to save it with (system stayed on the whole time). I also purchased a few other languages very affordably (Pilot, Logo, Assembly). Later, in High School, I bought an Atari ST computer, which also came with basic. I then got a hold of other languages (GFA Basic, Dtack Basic, Megamax C, Assempro), again very affordable. In the early '90's, I took a course in business accounting, then received certification for several Dos/Windows based accounting packages. I went into the consulting business with this knowledge, and for a time, did quite well. But I started hitting snags, when customers wanted customized applications. Just getting the software necessary to develop these would cost me over $500 apiece (Foxpro, Visual C, Sage Flagship Accounting, etc), and my customers didn't have that kind of budget to sustain my development costs. When the computing market crashed along with the Canadian Exchange rate (I worked in a heavy border economy), I closed shop and moved to Oregon. My first big corporate job was phone support for a motherboard manufacturer. I helped one customer on the phone, giving some of the system register information for one of our products, and during the course of the conversation, he explained that he was using Linux, and recoding part of the kernel to work with a particular new feature on our system. Intrigued, I picked up a book on Linux after work, and it had a copy of Slackware (4.0 I think). After installing it on my 486, I became excited to find a lot of development tools, and all the source code, right there. In '99, I was working in a different part of the company, and we were having major issues with NT 4.0 droping TCP connections, so I worked to develop a Linux image based on Redhat 5, including a driver for our in house test equipment. It worked flawlessly, and the basis of that work was distributed to other sites in the corporation. Recently, my youngest son (14) wanted to learn about game development. All of the books on the subject for Windows based development had limited usage software, and required Visual C/C++ (not a cheap package). There were a couple of Linux based books, and they came with open source applications that could be updated freely on the internet. He has since started teaching himself C, and also used Blender to do some rather interesting programs (He's even started sending me email messages encrypted in C source code for me to compile and read). To sum up, the main reasons for my switch to Linux was mainly as an economical platform for software development and learning programming. I currently have 4 systems running Linux, and I can collaborate with my son (he's boarding with my syster while he goes to school in a different town). |
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| glyphobet Oct 28, 2005 1:39 PM UTC |
I defected from Macintosh System 7.5 to Linux back in 1997. (I have never used any version of Windows on any of my own computers, because I was weaned on a Mac and then became a Linux fan). I defected primarily for price -- compare $500 in hardware for a upgradeable, middle-of-the-road x86 machine in 1997 against $2000 for a new Macintosh + the latest MacOS. (If the mini had existed then, well, I'd probably still be on MacOS.) I also had three linux using housemates at the time, who were willing to help me install it. Now that I'm no longer a starving student, price has not remained the guiding factor in my choice of operating system. I've stuck with Linux, however, because of its versatility and configurability. I have the choice of thirty or so different window managers (including crazy ones like Ion), three or four desktop environments, or none at all, five or six web browsers, five or six file managers, three or four vector graphics programs, seven or eight word processors, hundreds of text editors, tens of different command line shells, and so on, and it's all free. I can have three, ten, or twenty, virtual desktops or eschew X11 altogether and use the console. I can configure my window manager's keybindings, I can change the contents of pop-up menus in my desktop environment. Pretty much everything is configurable. And I can mix and match ten year old hardware with brand new hardware and it just works, without having to buy a whole new widget just to use the latest version of the OS. So, despite MacOS's Unix under the hood, I haven't gone back to MacOS because it lacks the choice, configurabilty, versatility, and hardware compatibilty that I have under Linux. |
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| cycloneous Oct 28, 2005 1:58 PM UTC |
Picture this. . . .skinny inky-dinky history major taking computer science classes because he was board with boring history and discovered the C programming language. Shortly thereafter, I met a few friends who installed Linux ala RedHat. Our lab was a mix breed, SUNOS on all the main workstations except this 486 Gateway with no X-Windows. I was on the vax at the time and found Linux just as good as UNIX and vax. Finally, my friend Mark gave me an on account on Lamport(linux machine name) and off I went to discover the world Linux. This is right around the time of MS Windows 95's release. Some three years later, I finally bought my own PC, an AMD K-6 233 Mhz Compaq with a 3.3 gig drive. I was in Heaven, I thought who needs Linux now, I got my own PC! Now I look back, I think to myself, man what was I thinking!!! Now mind you, I liked MS Windows 95 because it was easy. It did most of the stuff for me, in particular help and installing the software. But by than I was into coding and putting extreme demands on my PC. Little by little my PC would freeze up or blue screen me. I did everything, disk defragmentation, reinstall the system, patch and still the same result. I was VERY, VERY reluctant to make the switch because I afraid of the software I would be needing, in particular Photoshop, Visual C++, Java, MS Word, etc. Than one of my professors asked me how happy I was with my PC and I told him it hasn't been all good. I told him my problem and concerns and all he could say was, "Oh it has that too, have you tried RedHat lately?" That was the beginning. . . . .that was 1998 or so. . . .Keep in mind that I was also using UNIX and Vax at the time. Since 1998 I have not looked back. My system is stable, I got the software I need, I can do alot more with my system, for example, compile my kernel to my likings, and I've done this quite often. I've had two kernel panics and that was because I was swapping drives and forgot to hook up the ATA cable. Secondly, I am able to install/configure software the way I want it, third, security. I have not had a virus since 1998 or a break in. Since I put boot loader on a floppy, no one can get at my PC unless you know what you're doing. Third, the software. How can you beat free, as in free beer? Software updates are done when they're ready and don't kill your system because of some DLL conflict. I do not have a problem paying for software, people have to eat and put a house over their heads. So these folks that make open source software deserve any donation we can give them. They believe in what they doing, and I belive in what they are doing. In summary: Flexible system to configure Cost Security Software Tools Stability - as in the OS |
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| tminton Oct 28, 2005 2:15 PM UTC |
I'll leave out most of the stuff about starting with a Commadore64 and moving to PC with DOS 3.3, etc. But, needless to say I've been a MS guy for a long time. Started playing with Linux a couple a years ago. The more I played, the better I liked what I saw. I may still be a MS guy during the 9-5 thing, but at home I'm almost pure Linux and other projects I'm doing I'm moving to it as fast as I can. The reasons? Much the same as others, security, stability and the ability to more, with less.. |
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| rajeshm Oct 28, 2005 2:31 PM UTC |
I had always used DOS/windows right from the beginning. When I was introduced to Linux few years ago, I was relectant to switch. Flexibility comes with great responsibility. There were millions of ways to mess up the system and not able to get it back to the original state. However, I decided to play with the kernel and get aquainted to the weird vi editor (ask any notepad user, he will tell you how weird vi is). It only took few days to know the wonders of vi. Now I have a linux simulator on windows so that I can use vi. Thats only one of the million reasons I fell in love with Linux. | ||
| ewe2 Oct 28, 2005 2:33 PM UTC |
About a year after I got my first computer, in 1994, and had learnt the ways of DOS and Windows, I began to hear about this Linux and how you actually see the source code and build stuff. I grabbed an InfoMagic CD (I had a new-fangled 486 with a CD-ROM drive!) which had a Slackware distribution on it and fell in love. Linux taught me C, taught me HTML, it was a very different world to the DOS/Windows world, and although we kept in touch, LInux became for me what real computing meant. Linux meant the Internet to me, and it's been years since I really paid attention to Office and all the other must-haves of the Microsoft world. I like the choice between a full-blown GUI and a standard command-line terminal. I like that i can write my own email filters that do exactly what I need. I like being able to write programs and scripts, either in a nice IDE or just a quickie via cat. I can't do without multiple desktops and dual monitors and gkrellm's from all over my network, forwarded to my machine. I don't hate Windows or Mac, I even use them. Just not for anything day-to-day, they aren't home for me. I switched to Linux because it taught me everything I needed to know and then some. And Linux still teaches me. |
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| lunarcloud_88 Oct 28, 2005 2:36 PM UTC |
I switched not 6 months ago when my computer was finally introduced to the internet. I had to install all these anti-death programs that slowed me down considerably. I could barely do a thing on my 846Mhz. That was annoying. Also, I kept installing these programs to make windows look nicer. I liked to customize and change constantly, but it slowed me down even more. I remembered that there was a free operating system that I could use and asked around. I did try Red Hat, but I was still confused about many things (namely what these things called "packages" were, and how did I install stuff?). I did not care for GNOME. I asked another friend. My friend in English class happened to have his slackware 10.1 discs 1 & 2 at the ready. I put it on my 15 Gb hard drive and fell in love with KDE and its customizability. Having a linux expert at the ready, I learned many things. Slowly, I started to wean away from my windows partition. Now my Linux partition is the one on the 160 Gb and I need only cedega to have fun. Now I'm called the linux kid by many of my friends and its a great feeling. It surprises me how many people would switch if their parents allowed them as much freedom with computers as my father did. I would constantly thank the community and my friends. |
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| shovelcat Oct 28, 2005 2:58 PM UTC |
My dad repaire electonics stuff like tv tapedeck radio and stuff like that... he was t he guy who repair arcade machines for the arcade machines provider in our region. So we got a lot of arcade machine in our house... i play t hem all !! My dad also used to change a lot of board and joystick for old arcade box replacing old game with a new one. He didn't like the kind of frenzy i got for games... So he wait a long time before he buy a ps/2 286... and ..just tried to get more than 605k to play games in DOS ... EMS and XMS stuff... it was funny... I was a kid and i didn't like win 3.11 Win95 came out and i used to made my mind about using Windows but i was expecting to see a OS like DOS with more command and more support for games from another compagny. I was angry when i learn that MS have the idea to release someday Windows without DOS. A friend was working with slackware and tell me a little bit about linux... but when i ask him about playing with monkey island on linux he said no. So for a long time i just close my eyes to linux. After few years my knowledge about computers was stuck... i don't want to be a coder but i want to learn more about internal process and customize stuff on my PC so i got redhat 7. after Slackware... Gentoo and Ubuntu Windows is like living into an appartment... You pay for thing that you don't have rights for customize beside the skins of the wall... and you cant really stop people in the same building disturbing you or enter with cheap tool into the app or give you disease and the owner can access whenever he want to see if thing is rights for him of get informations about you. |
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| bloovis Oct 28, 2005 3:31 PM UTC |
I've never really liked MS operating systems very much, and have always preferred Unix-type systems. So for me, switching to Linux was more like switching *back* to something I liked. In the late 70s I came across the manuals for AT&T Unix V6. I never got to play with a real Unix system then, but I studied those manuals closely and admired the elegance and power of the system they described. Ten years later the company I worked for replaced VMS with 4.1BSD on their VAX. I was in heaven at last. Then I got a job at a Windows dev tools company, in the early 90s. Using Win 3.x felt like trying to play the piano with one hand tied behind my back. Then we got OS/2 and that seemed like a big improvment. I used it for about three years and it served me well. In 1995 I became aware of Linux, through the Slackware distribution, and experimented with using it as an alternative to the expensive Sun workstations we were using at work. Once again I was in heaven. This was the operating system I'd been waiting for. I replaced OS/2 with Linux on my personal machines, never touched the Sun machines at work again, and have been using Linux as my primary OS ever since. It was a bit of a struggle to get employers to take Linux seriously back in the mid 90s, but fortunately the resistance didn't last long. Occasionally I'm forced to use Windows XP, and it always baffles me why this system is thought of as "intuitive" or "simple" or "easy". I tried to help my son get his XP laptop to connect with my network printer, and the configuration GUI in XP was so un-helpful that neither of us could figure it out without resorting to a Google search. By contrast, doing the same thing in Mandrake 9.1 was trivial. Maybe that's just my bias and experience showing, but I think that merely proves the point that what people think of as "intuitive" is more likely just "familiar." |
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| cgracelink Oct 28, 2005 5:35 PM UTC |
I switched to Linux from Mac OS X. I started with Mac OS 9 on a G4 and I had Microsoft Office for Mac 2001. I also had photoshop and a bunch of typical Mac software. I decided to try YellowDog Linux and it installed right away. But, the distribution was behind. My Mac started acting up, so I sold it on Ebay, bought a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz with 512 MB and an 80GB drive. I wound up with SUSE SLES9 because it recognized my apple keyboard and my studio monitor. I just upgraded to SuSE 10. I really love it. I'm not a technical person just a regular computer user who reads email, logs on to my system at work, research medical information on the Internet (my job). I appreciate tuxchick because I'm a woman and she helps women who have to use technology in their jobs. My medical work is highly technical but our computer systems aren't. They're getting an upgrade. Linux is great for people who want to communicate about anything. |
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| nutria Oct 28, 2005 6:04 PM UTC |
Because I've used OpenVMS for 15 years, and I thus like powerful "text mode" operating systems. NT4 just annoyed the heck out of me in that regard. That it doesn't get viruses is another plus. |
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| phred Oct 28, 2005 6:05 PM UTC |
I switched to Linux (Slackware, I don't remember which release) from MS-DOS 6.22, because I was looking for a Unix for my 486 and Unixware was too expensive. At the time I was a college student, and all the campus labs I used to get my assignments done ran either HP/UX, Ultrix or Irix, and Unix had become my environment of choice. Since that time, I've tried several different distributions, and along the way I've also tried Windows NT, 2000 and XP, OS/2 and Mac OS X. I always keep coming back to either Linux or FreeBSD, though, because they do everything I want and they do it in the way I expect it to be done. My current systems are running FreeBSD 6 (release candidate), SimplyMEPIS 3.3 and Mac OS X. |
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| tuxrox Oct 28, 2005 6:39 PM UTC |
In 1997 I was working as a Trek Leader, taking a small (usually 8-12) group of Europeans around North America on adventure camping tours. On one tour, I had a Dutch passenger who was into computers. I had always been into computers as well, so one day it came into the conversation. For this trip I had only two passengers, so he and I had a lot of time to talk about computers while driving long stretches across the Utah desert. I can not recall his name at the moment, but I remember how adamant he was about something called Linux. I would extol the virtues of Windows 95 and he would tell me that Linux was much more stable and powerful. I thought, if you can't play games, it is worthless. That winter, while shopping for a new game to play, I came across a box of Red Hat 5.2. I looked at the screenshots on the back and decided to buy it. Two years later I was working at Penguin Computing in San Francisco and was the lead developer of the world's first commercial Linux gaming system. The year after that I earned my RHCE. I look back in amazement at all that has happened over these short years. Now I work for the Intel Corporation as a systems administrator, and I am learning how to administrate Windows 2003 servers. :-) --Garrett Mickelson |
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| novabeatnik Oct 28, 2005 6:54 PM UTC |
I came upon an old thinkpad with no cd drive put a tiny debian distro on an usb flash drive (I did need a floppy boot disk which was super easy to make) started the machine up choose the right video setting(guessed really) put an unknown wireless card that I dont even remeber purchasing and there i was online. no drivers no insert win9x disk no looking for cab files and so on just heres is the internet thanks to the penguin . | ||
| uberjohn Oct 28, 2005 7:41 PM UTC |
My PC background started off with a TI-99 back in the 80’s, the things you could do with a little memory, built in BASIC and a tape drive kept me at the little keyboard/box for hours. Ever since my last Commodore died though I had really grown distant from my PC’s. That is until a handful of years ago, a friend who used Linux kindly gave me a couple of CD’s with Mandrake written on them. I tried to install the system, it didn’t like my hardware, so I went back to Windows. Strangely though I wanted to know what Mandrake was, and what made it an OS my friend thought was so special. So I kept trying with different distros as I had free time to install them. Success came a couple of years ago with a new box and Fedora Core 3 (apparently no-name, dirt cheap motherboards aren’t necessarily supported by anyone but the guys in Redmond), and now I’m hooked. I took a class on UNIX to learn how to operate the shell, my box now boots seven different operating systems (FC4, Kubuntu, Slackware, Free-DOS, Free BSD, Solaris 10, and XP) all specialized for different tasks, and now that I have tools with real teeth I’ve learned to fall in love with PC computing again. | ||
| macb Oct 28, 2005 8:00 PM UTC |
I probably don't have much new to add here, but maybe a slightly different perspective as an old-timer. What I've noticed over the years is that most people who really like Windows have simply never used anything else. This means that even if better things come along, they will be adopted only very slowly, and in that span of time, Microsoft has the opportunity to adjust Windows to slow and eventually stop such migration. They are in the cat-bird seat, and they know it, and furthermore I'm sure that Gates and his colleagues planned to be where they are. I give them credit for that. Gates may even believe that he has high minded principles and wants only to advance computing and he may think that an almost invincible Microsoft serves this purpose, this seems to be the image he tries to project publicly. I don't quite hate Microsoft, but I do hate this concept, in general, that one company can have so much control over a single industry and that we are all better for it. I started as a mainframe programmer at the systems level, so I learned a lot about both systems software and the hardware it ran on. I've always had an interest in the details of the hardware architecture even when it no longer had much impact on my job function. I remember being disappointed that Intel was selected as the CPU for the IBM PC. I had a book that gave hardware details of a dozen or so CPUs of the day and the Intel. I wasn't that impressed with the Intel instruction set, and as the architecture evolved I was even less impressed that the improvements were always tempered by the "need" for binary compatibility with the past. I thought that the operating system and the use of higher level languages were supposed to mask the details of the hardware architecture. Intel seemed to be evolving as though everything was coded in assembler language (or worse, that all source code had been lost). I was actually a FAN of Windows at first. Version prior to 3 were of course only "demos" as far as I was concerned, not really fit for any production use and writings from Gates and others pointed to a true general purpose operating system with fully documented APIs, and it sounded a lot at the time like the structure I was used to on the mainframe. keep in mind that both in college and with several employers I was able to get source code for the IBM operating systems with a signed one page letter indicating that I needed it. I could modify that code, and distribute the modifications to others. The practice was commonplace. People who compare what Microsoft does with its code today to IBM simply don't know what they are talking about. My dissatisfaction with Windows, and subsequently Microsoft grew slowly, and as best I can recall from just a few factors: (1) There were reports that the APIs were not in fact fully documented. While this didn't affect me directly I could see in comparing IBM documentation to Microsoft's that there was a tremendous drop in quality. Where were message codes? I couldn't believe that the thousands of message that might come from Windows were listed in alphabetical order with hundreds of message at the front of the list simply because they started with the word "A". Their was no structure to this at all, and I began to suspect there was not much design to it. "Lets code some stuff and write a document when we are done" seemed to be the approach and I knew that this was not the way I or my colleagues wrote operating system code. I figured these "kids" at Microsoft would eventually grow up and learn to do it the right way. I gave the the benefit of doubt. In fact when IBM and Microsoft collaborated on OS/2 things DID improve. I could freely download internals documentation on OS/2 the likes of which I suspect have never existed for Windows. Both IBM and Microsoft were touting this as the PC operating system of the future. I believed it. I upgraded my hardware as much as I could afford at the time so that I could begin using it immediately. I continued using OS/2 long after the collaboration ended, and I worked in a government organization that used and loved OS/2 as well. But eventually, like the VHS/Beta wars, marketing triumphed over technology. I was forced to used Windows, as was the agency for which I worked, not because we wanted to, but because Microsoft marketing had sold to someone higher up in the organization. I even learned to like Windows for a while. It wasn't the best, I rationalized, but it was good enough. That was in the Windows NT 3.51 days. I had barely heard of Linux at the time although I had obtained a Slackware disk for a few dollars and played with it. Never got out of character mode and didn't know that you COULD get out of character mode. I didn't appreciate some of the virtues of Unix at the time, so to me this just seemed to be trading one undocumented set of commands for another. Then things changed. With OS/2 all but dead, Microsoft wanted to simplify its offerings. I considered NT 3.51 to be a product for professionals, while Windows 95/98 were for playing games, kids stuff. Microsoft wanted to merge those capabilities. That was the beginning of their serious decline in my mind. Furthermore, NT ran on several hardware architectures at the time. I had seen it run on a PowerPC laptop and wanted badly to have $6000 to buy one. But instead Microsoft began to withdraw support of all hardware other than Intel. To me these seemed like just the opposite of what you would want to do with what many claimed would be the only OS we would use in the future. I can only say that I have never ceased to think that the decisions made by Microsoft at this time were idiotic. I don't know what individual's name to tag them to, but I lost total respect for the company and its leaders. They WERE kids, and they have never grown up. They want to turn their plaything game computing system into something that will run the largest mainframes. Not only was their execution of this bad, the very goals were moronic. Nothing that has resulted, the viruses, spyware, bloat, and bugginess has taken me by surprise. How could it be any different? Fortunately as Windows was making a slum out of my chosen field of Computer Science my career moved me out of the trenches of having to deal with all its problems. But at home, I was still the system administrator, and I helped a lot of my friends and family with their computers. I had started to read more and more about Linux, and remembering my early Slackware experience decided to give it another try. It actually turned into several other tries, separated by months during which I pondered my willingness to try again. Red Hat, Suse, Red Hat again, Debian, Lindows. I wasn't quite happy with the results of any of them, but I'd never given them more than a week or two to prove themselves and finally I decided that the problem might be me, and my lack of knowledge about Unix. I could tell that the underlying system was robust. I never had crashes, just things that didn't work as I expected. I had seen enough to know that what I needed was in there somewhere, I just needed to spend the time to find it all. I finally decided that though the installation process was a bit trickier, for long-term maintenance I preferred Debian to the others. So about 3 or 4 years ago (how time flies) I installed it in a dual boot fashion on my home computer and decided to force myself to use it and only boot Windows as a last resort. This turned out to be easier than I had expected, to the point where I also installed Linux on my laptop, which I used at work every day. It was a "Windows only" shop, but if they could tell I was using Linux they never gave me any grief about it. I could sit there and work away while others were being slowed down by various viral outbreaks, by using OpenOffice I could open Word files that were "broken" to their owners and by re-saving them often save the day. While several people in the group had PCs capable of burning CDs about half the ones they burned were not usable, while mine always were, so I ended up being the "answer man" for a lot of problems not in my job description. We were the central office for a world-wide organization and many server systems came into our lab to figure out what was wrong with them. On more than one occasion systems had gotten so messed up that we were fairly sure the hardware had gone bad. On of my co-workers who had started to get interested in Linux too decided to try installing Red Hat on one of these. It worked fine, better than fine actually. Somehow the successful Linux install had "fixed" it and we (regretfully) redeployed the system with Windows Server on it. When I left though, things had advanced to the point where there were several, "non-official" Linux systems in the lab at all times. I doubt the organization will dump Windows any time soon, but the seed has been planted, and these people are brutalized by the Microsoft marketing organization as well as the product on a regular basis. They no longer think of Microsoft as an ally, but as just another vendor, to be kept at arms length, until some jumping off opportunity presents itself. While I work at home on mostly non-technical projects I no longer need Windows at all. I use Linux and OS X in about equal proportions. I don't have a long-term trust in Apple either, and while I like OS X, I'm prepared at any moment to switch to Linux rather than continue with the almost annual update cycle that Apple tries to force on me. I've installed Debian Linux on the Apple hardware and short of not running Realplayer or Flash I'm fine with it (in fact it's quite a bit faster than OS X). I'm not thrilled with Apple's switch to Intel, so if I don't get a high-end PowerPC from Apple next I'll probably go with a 64-bit AMD system. I'm hoping that some other hardware vendor will keep the PowerPC in popular circulation, although the new game consoles may end up serving the same purpose. With Microsoft porting something that looks a lot like Windows to the PowerPC Cell processor at the same time that Apple is porting to Intel, chaos is upon us. The one thing that we can count on is that Linux will run on ALL of these systems, even if some soldering may be required. Furthermore, for much of the world, complete dependence on Microsoft is an undesirable thing (of course it's undesirable here in the States too, many people just don't realize it yet). I think there is a certain inevitability for a general purpose hardware-agnostic operating system that can be easily customized for local needs. Microsoft can't or at least won't provide that any time soon. Maybe one day the company will "grow up". I've stopped holding my breath waiting for that though. |
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| MESMERIC Oct 28, 2005 10:04 PM UTC |
wahheeey I was quoted! thank you!! [HYPERLINK@www.oreillynet.com] |
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| kb9aln Oct 29, 2005 2:15 AM UTC |
Like most of the people here, I have a story to tell. The very first computer I had in my hands was a borrowed Radio Shack MC-10. Had a stunning 8K of memory, but it was enough to hook me good. After I gave it back to its rightful owner, a vow was made to acquire one of these little gems to play with. Not to play games with, to write programs with. I am a tinkerer (and an electronics technician). Since then, it has been a Commodore 64, a couple of 8088s, a couple of 386s on up to my Pentium III. I started with Mini-Linux in about 1997 (kernel 1.09) ran through Caldera Open Linux Lite, Red Hat 5.2, 6.0, 7.3 and am now running Vector Linux 5.0. Heavily customized, and using AfterStep as a real live window manager, without Gnome or KDE. Isn't it fantastic to have so much choice, and to have the ability to customize things to be _exactly_ the way you want them? After this history, I should tell you that I run Linux because: 1) It works reliably, which is completely counter to any Windows experience that I have had (and I have needed to repair my friends' Windows machines a lot). When I need to use the computer, it just works, and works very well. My friends with their Windows boxes can't always say that. 2) I can change things without having to support the Microsoft Book Store. If I get the urge to tinker, I can do so without having to spend a ton of money on books or their "operating system". 3) I can learn as much or as little as I wish to learn. I am not forced to become an anti-virus expert, but can spend time making tiny changes to a program and recompiling it. That is not something a person can do cheaply with Windows. 4) Some of the best minds in the world have written the best software in the world and have been generous enough to distribute them for free. I really enjoy using these programs. Most all of them work well, and do what I want them to do without annoying me (like that insipid grammar checker in Microsoft Word. Had to use it once and nearly had a stroke out of frustration). 5) People who use Linux are generally some of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met or read. And they are willing to share this knowledge. Which makes them also some of the nicest people, too. 6) I do not have to do business with Microsoft, which in my belief, does business in an unethical manner. In fact, in my world, Microsoft is inconsequential. I do not need any of their programs, nor their operating system. So there ya have it. Yeah, I do have an anti-Microsoft bias. But my real motivation is that I wanted something that works, works well, and I don't mind telling you that Free as in speech is just as valuable to me as Free as in Beer. Great survey, and I really enjoy LXer! And your posting preview has a spell checker! Awesome! |
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| 221175l3226 Oct 29, 2005 3:50 AM UTC |
Why did I switch to Linux? Well it wasn't a switch and as long as there are several good systems out there, I'll have to use at least a couple of them. So I continue to use WinXP, 2000 and different flavours of Linux / BSD and our webserver at the university runs under true64 (there is still some "emergency notebook" that runs win98). At first I did'nt like to pay for software. As my dad is a very law-abiding citizen, I had to. Up to today I mostly wait 2-3 years before playing a game, because they cost 10 Euros only then. I believe that if people had to really buy all the software they use, many more were using free (as in beer) software. Besides this 'for free'-idea, Linux gave me the opportunity to learn about my machine. Computer had always intrigued me, because you couldn't understand them simply by unscrewing the case. If anybody said, that linux was complicated, I told them that I had to run a triple-boot-system under DOS6.2 an Win3.1, depending on which game I wanted to play. In times win98 and 2K I had to reinstall my system every 6-8 months or so. In windows you had to install all the different tools seperately and to set up a new machine took 1-2 DAYS. With Linux, you had all the tools at hand. You could install everything at once (depending on your harddisc) and never worry about installation again. From the security-conscious perspective Linux has always been far superior and thus more appropriate for a paranoid like myself. Try to patch a windows system - you will need to visit every software-vendor's website for individual updates. Even Microsoft for a long time didn't manage to tell you about office-updates while you were updating windows! Why don't they build something like apt-sources into their software??? Finally - I never liked neither Microsoft, nor their products and last but not least I grew up to not to like their vision. Nowadays I'd rather search for another job before accepting an offer from THEM. They are the "dark side of the force" but in reality there are many other dark (or at least dull grey) sides besides them. A little personal Linux-User history: -first try with Caldera in '96, only worked in text-mode so I hardly used it at all -SuSE from 5.0 to version 8 I think -tried Debian in all kinds of stability-flavours since for 3 years -switched to gentoo as primary system and have been happy ever since PS: I really like the spellchecker - cooooool |
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| bebop Oct 29, 2005 3:55 PM UTC |
Well, I first read an article on Wired magazine about Linus Torvalds and the Linux "kernel." Prior to that, I'd never heard "kernel." Sick and tired of Windows 95, and feeling adventurous, I split a Conectiva box with a friend. After much sweat and tears, we installed Linux on our laptops (a Toshiba and a Texas Instruments). It just felt great. I was an Apple ][ and C64 kid. When M$ came, they took the *fun* out of computers. They were just for applications, like Word. No more programming. I was raised on the philosophy that you might wanna roll your own stuff (of course, my stuff is so much more complicated today...) Then I moved to Debian. Now Ubuntu. I stick to Linux because I must, I would rather run a BSD. I prefer the way BSDs are developed, but I need Linux because of Java and mathematical packages (Maple, for now, maybe in the future others, like Mathematica) - I had little time, the Ubuntu installer was kind if like a bully, but quick, so I ditched BSD until the end of the year. Also, my occupation requires Unix-like systems (bioinformatics, mathematics, programming, and scientific computing.) Free Software Unixes like Linux and the BSDs are open systems, and that is very important in the scientific arena, where you must always check and recheck things for yourself. In Science, everything must be open, by necessity. Besides, Unixes always were used in scientific computing. Even commercial systems cater to Unix users in the scientific area, because thy know Microsoft in not the only player there (in clusters and supercomputers, there's no Microsoft). M$ is not used at all at home, except for a very old computer that has some Forth stuff in it. Also, at home, my wife has an account ( ;-)), and the Ubuntu GNOME desktop presents no problem for her. In fact, I think using Linux at home and Windows at her college is turning her into a more flexible computer user, which is a nice side effect. |
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| rmoliva Oct 30, 2005 1:20 AM UTC |
The choice for me to move from Windows to Linux was an easy one. I never had much luck with using Windows or products from MS, but oh the irony of it all, because I support many Windows customers. I purchased my first computer from Radio Shack and although the 4K of memory at that time was plenty, it was the ability to "tinker" and continually move beyond the norm to that of being completely insane. I began using CP/M and then DOS appeared on the landscape (version 3.3). Then along came DOS 4.0 and it trashed my system. Drivers for printers no longer worked, etc. , so it was time to move to DR-DOS .. surprise everything worked. To make a long story short, I just got tired of things falling apart and not working. Linux 0.91 had lots of floppies but it was worth it. Not many drivers, but hey I began to really enjoy computing for the first time in a very long time. Today, I am using Fedora Core 4 but I have tried Ubuntu, SuSe, Red Hat, Slackware, etc. Still I have a very big smile on my face and I enjoy reading about all the nice and wonderful things that have happened to Linux in the past few years. Here is to an excellent computing platform that will not go away ... Thanks Tux and thanks Linux for bringing fun back. |
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| mckyj57 Oct 30, 2005 10:39 AM UTC |
I started using computers before DOS, and believe it or not my first interactive computer use was Microsoft Xenix on a Z8000 processor. But I bought one of the first IBM clones (a Columbia) and was a DOS user for years. My disgust with Windows began when WordPerfect for Windows came out. It would frequently hang the computer while printing. In the meantime I continued my UNIX use and brought our company onto the WWW with Solaris in 1993 -- we were in the first wave of corporate web sites, and had the first comprehensive sets of online product manuals I know of. I downloaded the first Slackware distribution -- I think it was 1993 -- and put it on an old 386SX with 16MB. It was not ideal, but X windows was a great method of having multiple Xterms into our Solaris Web server. I was still not a Linux convert. When I went into business for myself building ecommerce sites, I needed a billing and accounting package. The only options were on Windows, so I tried to make Windows 95 my workstation. I used some telnet package to shell in to web servers and do my work. The problem I ran into with Windows was reliability -- Windows would often decide to crash no matter what I was doing. It also might have some application take over the keyboard for minutes at a time with no chance to interrupt and kill the app. As I was operating ecommerce servers that could not be off line for minutes waiting for me to reboot, it was a killer to have random BSOD events, and could even cause a system problem that would take hours to fix. I switched to Red Hat Linux 3.1 and have never looked back, and never seriously considered using Windows again. The problems of virus and spyware have never affected my company, and we were well positioned as the switch from Solaris to Linux came on web servers. My entire family uses Unix -- my wife (a professor at Miami University) uses Linux both in her home office and on the laptop she uses at school. My daughter is well versed in Linux, though she is actually right now using OS/X on a Mac I bought for an aborted project. We have never had a single virus or spyware event, and downtime means bad hardware. It has not been without problems -- printing is a pain in the butt sometimes, and laptop power management is kind of poor on Linux. But except for my daughter wanting games that are not available, we don't feel any sort of lack. I also have put a K12ltsp lab in one of our local schools, and they are the most trouble-free computers in the place. |
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| RWNiessen Oct |