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Tech Gurus Still Don't "Get" Linux
Datamation ^ | 7 April 2014 | Matt Hartley

Posted on 04/09/2014 7:48:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce

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1 posted on 04/09/2014 7:48:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce
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To: rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; JosephW; Only1choice____Freedom; amigatec; Still Thinking; ...

2 posted on 04/09/2014 7:48:24 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

Will be going to Linux for my desktop..not going to pay Winblows for upgrade.


3 posted on 04/09/2014 7:53:02 AM PDT by Paul46360
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To: Paul46360

While it is different, Linux is no more difficult than any other OS.


4 posted on 04/09/2014 7:54:18 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

** those in the tech media continue to get it wrong**

Mainly because those doing the writing are old farts that quit learning years ago.

Linux works as well or better than any windows distro to date, at a far less cost per seat.

For 99% of what laptop and desktop users do, Linux works better than anything from microsoft.

No, it is not the same, and a newbie may take a couple of weeks to get fully up to speed, but it is well worth going to school on the minor differences.

How is it anyone ever figured out Android phones or Ipads? They are nothing like windows, yet millions are sold and put into use every month.


5 posted on 04/09/2014 7:59:40 AM PDT by wrench
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To: ShadowAce

I’m using Zorin OS 8 on this laptop and it installed like windows . Unlike windows ,when it updates it updates all software installed on this laptop , D’oh


6 posted on 04/09/2014 8:13:25 AM PDT by molson209 (Hillary Clinton)
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To: molson209

How do yo like Zorin so far? I’ve heard some good things about it.


7 posted on 04/09/2014 8:18:10 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: wrench

I have a question for anyone really knowledgeable on Linux...which distribution would you recommend for a Linux beginner? In my case, I have a system that I got in the early days of Vista, and it is barely capable of running Vista. I would like to switch to a leaner operating system that could actually work effectively with my limited hardware.


8 posted on 04/09/2014 8:21:15 AM PDT by Texan Tory
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To: ShadowAce

very Windows 7 like


9 posted on 04/09/2014 8:25:58 AM PDT by molson209 (Hillary Clinton)
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To: Texan Tory
There are at least three that should work to your specifications: Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, and Zorin OS.

There's also a list of LiveCD distros that may be able to help you make a decision--try out a LiveCD before you install a distro on your hard drive.

10 posted on 04/09/2014 8:26:11 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce
While it is different, Linux is no more difficult than any other OS.

I'll disagree with that; it also depends on what you're purpose for using it is:

  1. (general) the commandline UI is utterly unintuitive and the help-system is terrible (man).
  2. (web-hosting) the file-ownership / file-permissions are incredibly brittle and fragile.
  3. (development) dependance on archaic and/or inefficient and/or fragile tools [make, ./configure, automake] drag development down.
  4. (development) dependance on text1 as the lingua franca for programming is very deeply ingrained; even moreso than other OSes due to Linux's love afair with piping between utils an scripting.
  5. (general) the perceptions that it is more secure than other systems (e.g. windows) can/does lead some to rather insecure practices.
For general-use the command-line for VMS is supposed to be vastly superior, as it is for security (I don't have a VAX, Alpha, or Itanium; so I haven't really been able to test).
For development, Windows is slightly better — but its incredibly hampered by the requirements of some SW packages for POSIX (unix-like environment) depending on the aforementioned ./configure, make et al.


1 — Text is not a bad form for reading, but it is terrible for storage and computation of programs as it essentially surrenders all syntactic and semantic knowledge (which then have to be recomputed), and they can be accessed/modified by anyone/anything at any time, meaning that a perfectly compilable file may not be compilable in any subsequent compiling (and this is unknowable, again forcing the recalculation [compilation] previously mentioned).

11 posted on 04/09/2014 8:30:00 AM PDT by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: Texan Tory

You do need adequate physical memory for a happy experience. I have a 10 year old laptop running Ubuntu with 500 megs physical memory. It does fine normally, but would be better with twice the memory.

I am thinking of switching to Mint or Lubuntu because of the age of the hardware. I have had this system up and running for 2 years now.


12 posted on 04/09/2014 8:30:57 AM PDT by wrench
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To: OneWingedShark
There is a difference between "difficulty" and "my opinion of usefulness/superiority/etc".

That is why I chose that word.

13 posted on 04/09/2014 8:35:08 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

** There’s also a list of LiveCD distros that may be able to help you make a decision—try out a LiveCD before you install a distro on your hard drive.**

These are self contained disc systems that will run linux without any change to or use of your hard drive. You just pop th disc in your disc drive and “boot from disc” and you are up and running.

It is slower than an installed version because cd/dvd reads are slow compared to HD reads.


14 posted on 04/09/2014 8:36:56 AM PDT by wrench
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To: ShadowAce

One aspect of Linux I love over Windows is that the support community is not confined to TechNet or other Microsoft-supported entities. You can find Linux adherents all over the world who run their own little Wikis.


15 posted on 04/09/2014 8:37:56 AM PDT by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: rarestia

Yup—When I do need some assistance on whatever it is I’m working on, I find the answer in little/local/unofficial sites about half the time.


16 posted on 04/09/2014 8:39:14 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

While windows is the dominant home computer brand, out in the data centers making up all the servers we all interact with when we go online are tons and tons of Linux computers. While I use windows for my home computer so I can play games, I would not want to be stuck with one to do any software programming (unless I were designing an application specifically for windows, which is not the kind of programming I do).


17 posted on 04/09/2014 8:40:15 AM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: ShadowAce
There is a difference between "difficulty" and "my opinion of usefulness/superiority/etc".

Right.

That is why I chose that word.

Except that its command-line / help really is more difficult. At the very basic end of things you can get to the help-system in VMS (or even DOS) with help — this is vastly easier than having to know/guess that the word you're looking for is manual, shortened to man.

The help-systems are also quite different, the old DOS help is much better than man simply due to being self-hyperlinked and allowing navigation (mouse or keyboard) to related articles.

In that sense I'm confident in saying that linux is more difficult to get started on than old MS-DOS.

18 posted on 04/09/2014 8:45:21 AM PDT by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: ShadowAce

ROTFLOL!

This article ends up making a compelling case about why “tech writers” are absolutely correct as to why Linux is completely unsuitable for the average home PC user, 99.9% of whom don’t even know what a folder is, much less what UEFI or a driver is.


19 posted on 04/09/2014 8:45:47 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: ShadowAce

As I used to tell people "If it was any better I wouldn't give it to you, If it was any worse, you wouldn't drink it"

20 posted on 04/09/2014 8:45:58 AM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie (zerogottago)
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