Posted on 08/25/2005 7:49:07 PM PDT by N3WBI3
INTRODUCTION:
linuximgDeveloped by Linus Torvalds in 1991, Linux is a free operating system which “belongs to the world” and today, it has millions of happy users worldwide. Its being free doesn’t mean its being meaner than other operating systems. On the contrary, the industry experts are most impressed by its power and richness and more and more users are embracing Linux. Changing operating systems is definitely a big labor but this one-time labor is nothing if compared to all that one does to tackle those terrible blue screens of death, frozen windows, system crashes, viruses, data loss and spy wares. We are not destined to spend a quarter of our lives installing, de-installing and re-installing anti-virus tools or restarting computers and those geeks and non-geeks, who realize this, close their Windows, migrate to Linux and live happily ever after. And, I’ll give you just some of the reasons why.
1. FREEDOM:
The number one reason why Linux is the choice of many is the freedom it gives. It “let’s you do everything you want to do” but this is not the only aspect of this freedom. Linux liberates you from the yoke of vendors who hurl unwanted updates your way, and frees you from the sight of the horrible blue screens of death and its likes. This precious freedom doesn’t cost you a penny. You can download a free distribution of Linux from the internet. Otherwise, you can get a CD from the market after spending a minimal amount of money and without worrying about the licensing fees or about violating the piracy laws because Linux is open source and it comes with GNU General Public License. This is its true beauty and the reason why Linus Torvalds and the whole Linux community, working to make things better, have many admirers.
2. STABILITY:
Linux_vs_Windows
With Linux, your computer doesn’t freeze or slow down because of memory leaks. It has a high performance level and can run for years without causing you trouble. This actually means complete control as you will not find yourself pushing Ctrl+Alt+Del keys in sheer desperation. Problems pop up only when any of the hardware fails. Its excellent stability is another reason which attracts users.
3. SECURITY:
No OS can beat Linux when it comes to security. It’s a long debated issue and something which bothers Microsoft so much so it started its own campaign to make people believe Linux is not any safer but Linux users are already aware of the vulnerabilities of Windows and know Linux differs when it comes to it and can easily be termed as the most secure operating system. The design of Linux is different from that of Windows. This doesn’t make it an easy target and even if half of the world switches to Linux, the attacks will not cause much damage even though the source code of Linux is available for every Tom, Dick and Harry. The availability of the source code only means advantage. Millions of programmers have contributed to beef up the security of Linux. Bugs are fixed just as soon as they are identified. Linux is getting better and better every passing day. For a comprehensive report on the security of Linux as compared to windows, click here.
4. EFFICIENT NETWORKING
One of the most talked about features of Linux is its efficient networking capabilities. Reviewed, tested and strengthened by many programmers on the internet, Linux networking is well renowned for its reliability. Since networking is amalgamated deeply in the Linux operating system, it can bear heavy loads and exhibit persistent high-performance and is highly appreciated for its robustness. Linux supports different networking protocols which include TCP/IP, ISPX/SPX, ISDN, PPP, SLIP, PLIP, Apple Talk Protocol Suite, etc.
5. EASY INSTALLATION
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Linux has many popular distributions (flavours), for example; Red Hat, Mandroke, SUSE, UBUNTU. You can chose any version you deem appropriate and the best thing is most of them come with easy installation procedures, which give you complete power as to decide what you want your PC to do.
6. FLEXIBILITY:
This is yet another wonderful feature of Linux. You can customize the system as much as you want to fit your needs giving your computer a personal touch in the true meaning of the word. You’ll come to love your PC finding it the way you want it to be. It doesn’t go without saying, “Linux lets you do everything you want to do”.
7. FREE UPGRADES:
Yes, free upgrades. There is whole big dedicated community, which works to extend the capabilities and power of Linux. This is the real essence of open source. With so many brains together, the result is always impressive. Both major and minor Linux upgrades are easily available for download on the internet. If the configuration is done correctly, software don’t need to be re-installed on Linux when you upgrade.
8. FULL USE OF HARD DISK:
Windows’ performance slows down when you use most of your hard disk and you get ‘low memory’ errors. This is not the case with Linux though. It lets you use every single space on your hard disk and runs smoothly all the while. You are alerted only when there isn’t any space left on your hard disk.
9. SUPERB TECHNICAL SUPPORT:
In 1997, InfoWorld awarded Linux the Product of the Year for Best Technical Support. Linux has an active community of users, developers and supporters who are always very willing to help. If you face any problem, all you have to do is just connect to the internet, search and see if your problem is answered anywhere. If it’s not, you can join a Linux forum and post it there to be scrutinized by the community members.
10. THE CHOICE OF THE GIANTS:
The popularity and power of Linux can be estimated from the fact that it’s the choice of the giants. Google, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Panasonic, Royal Dutch/Shell, U.S. Postal Service are only a few names who use Linux plus the government of Mexico City uses Linux for everything and the money it saves by doing so is spent on welfare services.
I can not mention all the reasons why once should switch to Linux, for they are so many and I have not even mentioned some really important ones like multi-tasking, scalability and easy remote administration. The choice is yours. Save money using a product liked by the experts or buy the one which they shun. Linux rules the heart of its users. This is enough a reason why one should embrace Linux.
Sun has already decided once that they were dropping x86 Solaris, the odds they will do it again depends on the cost of processors not their love for the architecture.
As for Redhat its cash flow positive and have a growing customer base. If redhat *and* novell went under tomorrow I could still get it from IBM..
Solaris also have much better docs and support that RH or Novell.
Available, yes for the cost no. I dont pay Redhat all that much and had an Engineer on the phone in 5 minutes yesterday.
Except that a HUGE number of servers on the Internet are Linux. It is as common in the data center as Windows servers.
Yet having worked in the data centers at many very large companies and seen everything under the sun running on the wild and wooly Internet, there are only two platforms that routinely get used like the village skank: Windows and PHP. I know, PHP is not an OS, but every single first-hand case was always through a PHP exploit. Which is why we never allowed PHP on our servers. That and I've seen Windows get exploited a dozen different ways over the years. Other than that, Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD boxes are pretty damn tight sans PHP. If Windows did not have a chronic problem with remote exploits and default configurations, it would not have the reputation it does.
HAHAHAHA ... is it just a coincidence that your "he'll" is spelled as "hell"? Freudian slip? =)
2) The Giants choosing some Linux, some Windows, and Some other *nix means they consider each to be viable but not perfect... is that what youre looking for?
BSD is a far more capable Operating system than Linux in just about every facet (at the OS level)..
BSD is cleaner, no doubt about it, but BSD has had a lot of serious problems scaling to big hardware.
Its running on everything from Mainframes to Toasters.. If your talking about bleeding edge video and sound cards, well yea Linux might do a little better but not much..
The difference probably boils down to how the different projects were managed.
Its more because of all the legal fights in the late 80's and early 90's..
A critical OS failure could result in losing information and most 'recovery disk' overwrite the Operating systems complete harddrive. With a second hardrive containing documents this is not going to kill you.
Software raid really hurts performance, Nobody has put one together that I don't see significant hits against..
Yeah. I just think whoever wrote the article spun that fact around a bit to look like they dumped all other OS's for Linux, which is usually not the case. I have rarely worked on a project for a good size company that only used one OS.
Actually, this policy is a good thing for Linux.
Its not just common kernel, its common gui's, common browsers.. Most distro's dont write any of their own code they just package it. The only ones who write any would be Redhat & Novell..
I've used BSD for for many, many years, including a number on FreeBSD which is the BSD equivalent of Linux.
There is no OSS BSD scales remotely as well on big hardware -- the kernels are not up to the task yet -- and commercial BSD has been abandoned for the most part (thankfully). While I genuinely love FreeBSD as a system, it kind of sucks for anything but your basic network serving type tasks compared to Linux 2.6. Linux does SMP much better and has become quite competent at NUMA architectures, whereas BSD is quite weak in that area. The BSD file system is pretty good, but not great. If I was depending on filesystem performance and scaling, I'd want to be looking for XFS.
FreeBSD is a cleaner architecture, but it cannot keep pace with the frantic development rate of Linux features, and is lagging further and further behind. If they come up with a FreeBSD version that genuinely knows how to schedule and do memory management on big AMD64 systems, I'll be back there in a heartbeat. But right now, it doesn't.
I did this the first time I installed Mandrake. Luckily when I re-installed it I changed it.
I'm not thinking datacenter, I'm thinking home use. I built a machine for Linux and have not noticed any loss of performance due onboard software mirroring. Hell, maybe my MB is better than I thought!!?
I was thinking of pulling out the drive that had the data I wanted and put it in another Windows computer as an alternate drive, where I pull off the data I want then partition it for Linux.
Thats not a terrible desktop config (because Linux is much more forgiving of a 99.99% full disk) but I always create a small partition (1.5GB) for nightly backups...
Then what exactly is the point of multiple distributions, besides their installers? I can just imagine a Windows user hearing about "that Windows Linux thing" and wanting to try it, and then trying to figure out what the heck is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu.
Yes but on the desktop the paper I finished last night will still be on hda2 so when I run the 'repair' disk that overwrites hda1 I still can recover the last two months of work I have been doing and maybe lose a few hours of work
I'm not thinking datacenter, I'm thinking home use
As am I, data center requires hardware raid and vvr to another box hopefully in another building. 15minutes data loss is about the most I will tolerate if my data center is hit by a meteor..
I built a machine for Linux and have not noticed any loss of performance due onboard software mirroring. Hell, maybe my MB is better than I thought!!?
Well Mirroring via software raid level 1 will give you as good if not better reading (depending on how your controllers are setup) but you'll take a write hit. I was more thinking of RAID 5, so maybe I was off topic with my initial assertion..
Consumer choice? Why does ford release so many models of cars when they are 99% the same thing?
Some people really like KDE, some Like Gnome, and some prefer more lightweight GUI's. Some people like RPM for package management, some like APT, and some like to build from code. The different distros are fine tuned for different people.
I can just imagine a Windows user hearing about "that Windows Linux thing" and wanting to try it, and then trying to figure out what the heck is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu.
Most Linux users stumble onto a distro and stick with it. I am a RedHat guy, Its what I use, probably because the person who really got me into Linux was a redhat user. Its what I cut my teeth on (RH7).
But truth be known it does not matter what distro a user stumbles onto because when they become comfortable enough with Linux they will want to try other distros... (Im playing with Novell's open Suse).
Good points all, and I hadn't considered those avenues, though I think Linux/BSD developers should look at how NeXT/Apple created OS X. They could probably learn what to do, and what not to do.
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