Posted on 08/28/2015 6:41:30 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Linux is a very functional operating system. It "led to the collapse of the infrastructure decision debates of many IT shops," said Guy Smith, chief strategist for Silicon Strategies Marketing. "Before Linux, long-term choices concerning the OS, database, development language, and more divided IT shops -- and the resulting incompatibilities led to dysfunctional applications."
Happy Birthday, Linux Project -- this week you turned 24.
The Linux OS has grown up everywhere. Its code and the open source model are found worldwide. People often use linux without knowing it -- when they search on Google, buy metro tickets or surf the Web. Linux powers all of that infrastructure.
Linux travels worldwide on airplanes, and it's embedded in many of the smart devices that bring ultra convenience to our homes and cars. It runs our WiFi routers and our Android phones and tablets.
Linux drives our HDTV sets and set-top boxes. Linux now is regarded as the de facto operating system of choice by manufacturers of electronics toys, video and telephone equipment, and remote controls.
For big enterprises and small entrepreneurial startups alike, Linux has been game-changing. So in honor of Linux's two dozen years of giving, LinuxInsider brings some gifts of praise to the party.
"Throughout earlier, challenging times, I maintained that life was good. With Linode and by extension, Linux, life is sublime," said Keith Craig, public relations manager for Linode.
Linux has been nothing short of transformational for Craig. Without the existence of Linux and its open source mantra, he never would have stumbled on the perfect balance.
That's because when Linode CEO Christopher Aker founded his cloud-hosting business 12 years ago, he built it on the back of Linux. Simply, if he had lacked the foresight to choose Linux as the backbone operating system for server virtualization, the company would not exist today, according to Craig.
"That's where the transformative aspect of Linux affects me," he told LinuxInsider. "Today, working for Linode is the most satisfying and rewarding career move I have made -- and I am not alone in that assessment. We probably should hold daily sacraments to Linux."
Linux gives consumer product manufacturers a stable operating system with no royalties to pay and no ownership hassles. Not having to cater to a controlling corporate entity gives manufacturers a tremendous marketing advantage.
Linux has become the first OS choice in the manufacturing and database industries, and that can be credited in large part to its solid reliability and its ability to scale and innovate. Linux is a very functional operating system.
"Linux led to the collapse of the infrastructure decision debates of many IT shops. Before Linux, long-term choices concerning the OS, database, development language, and more divided IT shops -- and the resulting incompatibilities led to dysfunctional applications," said Guy Smith, chief strategist for Silicon Strategies Marketing.
Linux and its close followers, such as MySQL, PHP and Apache, took attention away from infrastructure, shifting the focus to applications and interoperability.
"Without Linux, this may still have happened, but it would have taken decades longer. I'm glad I had a hand in convincing CxOs that going with Linux was the right strategic choice," Smith told LinuxInsider.
The Linux OS for desktop and laptop computers has a growing user base scattered around more than 600 Linux distributions. While some lament the lack of a bigger OS takeover, steadfast Linux OS users cling to it passionately.
"I converted my entire business to Linux after a major equipment failure rather than upgrade to MS Windows Vista and haven't looked back! Linux has made computing fun again," Wisdom Seekers President Jeffery Sullivan told LinuxInsider.
For some diehards, putting Linux on just any used-to-be Windows box just is not good enough, and an increasing number of hardware makers now cater to them. Take, for instance, Purism and its Librem laptop line that runs PureOS, a Linux-based operating system with Ubuntu, Debian and Trisquel heritage.
"Linux, like swallowing a red pill, made me realize at a very young age that the world of proprietary non-free software handcuffed my abilities, creativity and innovation," said Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism Computer.
The Librem has the potential to increase the market share of Linux-based open source software and make it simpler to use and more accessible to consumers, he told LinuxInsider.
"Linux liberated people and businesses from Microsoft lock-in," observed Pierre Fricke, vice president of product marketing for EnterpriseDB.
Before Linux there was no open choice. You had lock-in even with Unix. People simply used what was put in front of them, and it was expensive," he told LinuxInsider.
With Linux, people have learned to question and make demands for better software and user experiences. Linux also helped drive down the cost of personal computing, Fricke said. "It has made computing accessible to people all over the world."
For some business and IT pros, Linux is a lifestyle.
John Turnbull, general manager of Thunderstone Software, first started using Linux in 1992 -- the 0.9x versions. It took him days to download it with a modem and then compile it from source.
It was inspiring to see what one person, or a small team could achieve, he told LinuxInsider, and it gave him the confidence to tackle big projects.
The adoption of Linux led to a dramatic decline in different Unix variations to support. It also provided a much more consistent development environment, which "allowed for the creation of more complex and useful software," said Turnbull.
Three other reasons make Linux the choice of product makers and software developers: Linux is cheaper to run; it is less costly to modularize; and it is easier to secure.
"GNU/Linux has made my life better. It was my first significant exposure to free software and really opened my eyes to FLOSS in general," said Marcus Hildum, lead security engineer at DreamHost.
"It's what I do for a living, and it has empowered me to make positive changes for the Internet as a whole," he told LinuxInsider.
A couple of years ago, a huge question was on a lot of minds: How did a group of Russian crooks steal millions of customer credit card numbers from a Fortune 500 company?
One of Greg Scott's tech specialties is IT security -- now a senior technical account manager at Red Hat, he had built Linux-based open source firewalls for more than 15 years.
"That was before North Korea took down a major American movie studio and the Chinese invaded the U.S. government," he told LinuxInsider.
"The same question was on my mind, so I did a bunch of research into it. Turned out that nobody would talk about details on any of the major breaches we have all read about," Scott said.
So, he spent the next 16 months writing and publishing a book to explain it all -- and Linux is a big part of the story line. That is how Bullseye Breach was born. It's an educational book disguised as an international thriller, about a large Minneapolis retailer -- Bullseye Stores -- that loses millions of customer credit card numbers to a group of Russians.
"The book tells a great story," said Scott, "but one of the best parts is how an ad hoc team comes together and uses open source tools to fight back. So Linux has had a huge effect on my life, which will hopefully continue." 
Of course, now it’s more like the fifth or sixth vote while I was editing the post. :-/
The problem with Linux is it prides itself on being geeky. Microsoft sells because of a more user friendly look and terminology and massive advertising.
Linux Mint as an example is better then Microsoft (IMHO) but until Linux has an Office program that works well with others using Microsoft Office and can also support the Windows programs out there easily they will still be in the basement.
For me the documentation is pretty good as seen here: http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
If only the major pc suppliers would switch or are they blocked?
#8 Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/25/stallman_windows_and_mac_are_malware/
Good to hear from you Johnny.
One word, Stability.
Stallman is a riot. It's good of him to hold down the loony-left end of the techno-political spectrum.
Of course, strictly speaking, he's absolutely correct about the OSes, and the smart TVs and all that. What he says -- insofar as he's describing the actual devices and software -- is essentially accurate.
OTOH, his prescriptions for what to do about it are nonsense in a practical, real world.
Idealism comes at a steep price. The rest of us gotta get stuff done and we accept the flaws of our tools.
He deserves our thanks for the great technical work he's done for many decades.
But I wish he would STFU about the politics.
I use LibreOffice, and I've never had a problem opening, writing, and sharing MS Office files with Office users. Supposedly incompatibilities exist, but in however many years of everyday use, I've never encountered a problem.
In fact, at my previous job I used LibreOffice to create the MS Office templates for standard company documents (letterhead, invoices, etc.) because it was far easier to create consistent layouts. (By contrast, Excel still employed some weird, subjective column-width calculation at the time that involved numbers of characters in the default font).
Office can now read and save to OpenOffice/LibreOffice's file formats, which means Microsoft expects that a good number of their users have to share documents with OO/LO users.
Mint or Ubuntu I guess
Using WINE and PlayOnLinux allows a some Windows programs to be used on Linux
These days, it's a no-brainer. If you need a webserver, you install a LAMP stack. Whenever a group asks to install something on IIS, we know there are going to be issues and headaches that you just don't have to deal with in the Linux world, because it generally means you have an app from a vendor that is married to microsoft in a faggy kind of way.
Nice article. I’ve seen quite a few people save their XP machines with a Linux OS distro. Researching what distro fits your hardware makeup of your computer is the first thing I do. I’ve got mine down to Ubuntu first, then ZorinOS and Mint. For lighter hardware computers, Zorin Lite, Lubuntu, and Peppermint.
I’ve been using Linux OS’s for about 5 years now and really not too many problems. For everyday computing, I can do just about anything in Linux that I could do in MS Windows. I dual-boot Linux and Windows on one machine but I rarely have to use the Windows side of things.
CGato
As long as DistroWatch exists Linux will continue to be a Back Room / Infrastructure tool and a Hobbyist desktop.
Nothing wrong with that of course.
Every time I see your handle on a new post, it makes me happy to know you’re still with us.
I hope to stay happy for this for a long time to come.
I guess it will come done to how the Word or Excel files were formatted. The simpler the better. I got my copy of Office 2013 for about $30 as the company I worked at qualified me for the big discount. I tried WordPerfect http://www.wordperfect.com/us/ but creating a Word doc with a table as an example did not open with the table in the same position or size in Word 2013.
Now that the Mate desktop runs on Ubuntu as well as Mint, I prefer the latest Ubuntu.
I know I'll get chided for this but I actually like Ubuntu. (Using it right now as I write this post...)
Two responses:
1. Libre Office.
2. WINE.
I just downloaded LibreOffice and tried it out. I had used OpenOffice before and that is where there were problems.
I created a couple of tables and some text of different fonts and size as a Word 2003 .doc and Word 2013 .docx file and it opens in Word 2013 looking like it does in LibreOffice. I made changes in Word and saved then opened it in LibreOffice. It looked the same as in Word.
So for Word I would defiantly use LibreOffice as Word can be a pain.... The program seemed more responsive too.
Why Microsoft Word must Die
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html
I printed the docx one from both programs and they look identical so I am sold on LibreOffice. I also like the small print box that comes up in front of the page instead of Words way of completely taking you out of the screen so you lose focus.
I also like when you use the LibreOffice shortcut it shows your documents as thumbnails plus has links to all the other Office programs.
I do not use Excel much so others would have to post about the Calc Spreadsheet vs Excel version.
I see LibreOffice needs an email program. (I use Thunderbird email program)
Also check out this link for extensions and templates for LibreOffice: http://extensions.libreoffice.org
Linux all day every day for me. If I need a windoze app it’s on a VM of one sort or another. Libreoffice is fine for simple things but for industry use MS apps are the gold standard and then I use a VM and life is good.
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