Linux. Do it your way!

Unixmen ^ | 10 April 2012 | Chris Jones

[Darth Reardon]

I just put the disc in the drive

I wonder if I even have a working CD/DVD drive around somewhere. Installs and upgrades are all PXE or editing grub to boot the install image. So much faster (or it was, don't know what media speeds are these days).

[ShadowAce]

PXE booting is quite nice. Much faster as well.

[for-q-clinton]

Must be a Linux proxy causing it :-)

[ShadowAce]

LOL! Actually, this is a Windows-centric environment, so I doubt it.

Notice I did not blame Windows for this

[TexasRepublic]

“I haven’t had to recompile a kernel or driver in at least five years. It’s well past time to retire that cliche.”

Indeed. I come from a MS-DOS and Windows background. I got so tired of Micro$nots shabby treatment of customers that I desperately wanted to ditch them. Beside that, Windows is a virus magnet. I tried half a dozen distros until I settled for Ubuntu and Mint. I don’t know Unix and have never had to compile anything. All most people use is Office applications and Internet browsing — for those, Linux is a no-brainer.

[cothrige]

I'd love to explore a world that's not windows-dominated. But you want me to read all this and it's just about installing it? Daunting, indeed.

I wonder why so many people think Linux is hard to install? I have been using it for almost fifteen years now and have installed one or another flavor probably fifty times or more. And during that time I have run into real problems maybe two or three times total. Most distro installers out there are just fantastic. Boot, click and use. Easy as that. Windows, at least up to XP, was the opposite. The few times I have tried to actually reinstall that operating system it was like pulling teeth. The installer design was simply terrible, and there always seemed to be major and mysterious problems. At least twice I couldn't get a successful result of any kind and ended up just putting Linux on as a sole OS. Daunting does not do it justice.

[Moonman62]

The usability on Linux is just as great, if not greater, than anything Windows can provide.

That may be true in your particular case but if that were true in general, Linux would have put Windows out of business by now.

It is fully compatible, if you know what you are doing.

That is true if you have a lot of time to waste, are willing to buy new hardware that is compatible, and are really loose with the definition of compatible.

[Moonman62]

The problem with Linux is the community's poor attitude toward users. bang! Snotty-assed-geek alert. I did in-home repair and instruction for a while, too, and absolutely love when a 75 year realizes that he can use information technology because Apple Computer designs for normal people.

OTOH, look at Ubuntu. They changed the desktop without concern for the user and now Mint is beating them on Distrowatch 2 to 1.

[re_nortex]

I think a case can be made that Linux is the operating system of choice for Conservatives. Sure, there are a lot of smelly, commie, atheistic hippie types involved with GNU including their leader, Richard Stallman, shown here.

Of course, Linus Torvalds hails from a socialist country but he seems largely apolitical. And there are some good guys involved in Linux and free software like Perl's Larry Wall who appears to be a Christian and there's self-proclaimed gun nut Eric Raymond who really gets liberty afforded by the Second Amendment.

In spite of some of its slimier baggage, I find the self-reliance of Linux in harmony with my Conservative principles. For me at least, it instills a sense of responsibility for my actions. There's nothing like an errant rm -rf * command to realize that! In contrast, those using Windows (and even some of the more recent Linux distributions) are protected from the consequences of their actions with an invasive, nanny-like, "Are you sure?" prompt at every turn.

[ShadowAce]

OTOH, look at Ubuntu. They changed the desktop without concern for the user and now Mint is beating them on Distrowatch 2 to 1.

Yup. One Linux vendor messed up. Now users are exercising their choice to move to a different vendor.

Try that with Windows.

[Moonman62]

Yup. One Linux vendor messed up. Now users are exercising their choice to move to a different vendor. Try that with Windows.

I imagine a some of them switched to Windows.

[righttackle44]

LOL.