Use Linux, Windows is Rubbish!

Does any one here use Linux? And if not why not?

If you havnt heard of it check out this wiki.
en.wikipedia.org...

It's an excellent alternative to the rubbish and equally evil operating systems from Microsoft.

And for those of you who wont leave the house without your tin foil hat, its perfect. The software is open source which means the code is freely available for viewing and editing. so you shouldnt have to worry about any NSA back doors or secrete exploits being sold to government agencies.

There are however downsides and the biggest is the ability to play games, but thats what consoles were made for. Speaking of which even the PS3 will be running a derivative of Linux.

As for those of you that do use Linux which distro do you use? I personally cant get enough of Ubuntu and with the latest version Dapper having just come out its looking stronger with every release.

Heres a link to a page that'l explain all the reasons i cant be bothered to lol.
www.spotswood-computer.net...

[edit on 15/6/06 by theBman]

I would love to use Linux!! I have just been unable to download it do my slow dial-up. I plan on having my friend download it or order a cd. I am going to use Fedora Project.

hey fedora is great i played around with core to, but if you are just beggining get your hands on a knoppx which a cd os, and then try out mandrake linux, but all in all, i believe ubuntu is really great for alot of things, but it all depends on what you plan to do.

Speaking of which, what do ATS servers run on?

they might give that out but maybe not... most likely they have alot of this running on offsite servers for huge companies.... but maybe they would tell us..... it could be a security threat to do also....

how about to use mac, windows is rubbish!...well linux is a good alternative. a couple of years ago I tried to install "red hat" linux on my former windows machine. it never worked correctly. maybe I was too stupid to understand the install process. how about the new versions of linux?

[edit on 16-6-2006 by dacruz]

Linux makes a great server. On your laptop or desktop? Forget it. Huge pain in the a** to install software, hardware, useful stuff, whatever. Been there, done that. Learn to harden Windows like I have and don't worry about the garbage. I use Windows exclusively so I can get work done and I have no problems with security or breakdowns.

Fedora Core 4 powers all of my servers. Except the firewall, it's Smoothwall running a 2.4 kernel.

One more thing....If I had to guess, ATS is running on a LAMP stack...Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

[edit on 16-6-2006 by MrPenny]

Originally posted by theBman
Speaking of which, what do ATS servers run on?

From the HTTP header:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.2


Then not so accurate results from combination of netcraft.com and googling theplanet.com forums:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 3)
Apache 1.3
PHP 4.3.2
MySQL 3.23

I cant use linux because I am using 3d software that needs windows or mac.
Alternative is to get the new Macs which rock......they can run windows xp and
mac osx, they are also UNIX based, which is the core of linux. I also play games,
so i kinda need windows. I dont give a crap about back doors. I have nothing to
hide and I do all of my important stuff offline.....ala pencil and paper

I use both Linux and Windows.

Windows because it's smooth for daily work and games. Linux for servers, and programming.

Linux on desktop can become a pain, when a driver is missing you can spend days trying to recompile and getting lost in a maze of twisty little standards, all alike.

Under Windows, things are reacting differently depending on the phase of the moon, you don't know what is going on under the hood or what to expect, you just pray for the best. One day Windows is doing fine, the next day the same operation will break everything apart and eat your children.

Under Linux you exactly know what's going on under the hood, once you've discovered the inner workings, you know it will continue to function the same way the next day. You can see the source code and tweak it to your likeing. Lots of free advanced tools (i.e. networking, etc..) and you can automate repetitive tasks easily with shell scripting.

Originally posted by ufia
Under Windows, things are reacting differently depending on the phase of the moon, you don't know what is going on under the hood or what to expect, you just pray for the best. One day Windows is doing fine, the next day the same operation will break everything apart and eat your children.

One thing I learned is that the hardware you use has more impact on the good functioning of Windows than we could expect.

My record is only two BSODs in a year using Windows 2000 Server, with all the freeware and shareware and other stuff that I could get installed, and both BSODs appeared after an update of the graphics card drivers (a GeForce 2 MX400).

One of the reasons that home users may turn or have turned to linux is that during the mid - late 90s Microsoft served the bussiness market better then the home market. WIN 95 was pretty good , WIN 98 was a heap of crap I dont know why Microsoft struck with the FAT32 file system.

WIN NT 4.0 was a good OS in its hayday but it was of little use to home users due to the lack of PNP support and the under underlying architecture.

Mepis Linux, its based off ubuntu (dapper I think) with the KDE desktop

Yeah, Ubuntu is great. I'm switching to it from Gentoo on all my machines because of many reasons but mostly because It's so easy and simple. Games, Cad, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Premiere? No problemo, just dual/triple/quadruple boot. On my computer I currently have Windows XP 32bit, Windows XP 64bit and Ubuntu Dapper 64bit, using Dapper as my main OS of course. You can run Wine/Cedega/Crossover office and so on but from my experience they don't last all the way. Non user friendly/hard to use/understand??? No, no, no, most I've talked to who tried Ubuntu for a month or so find it easier than Windows. I use as much Windows as Dapper and find Dapper easier and of course more poweful. And for those who have dial-up... You can order the discs online for free, however it may take 4-5 weeks (boat?). Then we have the issue of hardware support. Sure generally hardware has better support in Windows, however with a GNU/Linux distrobution you have most if not all the drivers available included except proprietary drivers so you don't have to download separate drivers after every install. At present time all kinds of stuff is supported... bluetooth mouses, rare wlan chips, force feedback, IR, 7.1 sound cards, LED's, 3g/UMTS cell phones, external dvdrw drives, Xbox, Nintendo DS, PS2, PS3, watches, PDAs, game controller rumble, and so on. The biggest problems as I see it are lack of apps and games (fixed by dual boot), lockups (tons of users are experiencing hard lockups non related to hardware including me, very annoying) and driver quality/performance. But instead of that you get better security, better and more included drivers, a more "easy to use system", freedom of choosing tools, environment, kernel, window/desktop manager, access to the source code and no need to pay for the software, no need to upgrade computer when a new version arrives, more poweful commandline etc etc. You can of course install it on computers based on alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, ia64, mips, ppc, ppc64, s390, sparc, x86 or x86 fbs processors. Can you do that with Windows? Don't think so.

These lockups are very annoying. First if you have an ATI card and use their proprietary drivers you may be unlucky and be greeted by a total lockup during logout. And if your even more unlucky you may get random lockups even though you've checked your hardware like crazy and your Windows install is totally stable. That's why I'm leaning towards FreeBSD unfortunately. However DesktopBSD doesn't want to install .

And beware folks, GNU/Linux is addictive.

[edit on 2006-6-23 by bracke]

I will try Ubuntu one of this days, just to see what it is like.
That story about denying ignorance is not just a slogan to me.

Originally posted by bracke
But instead of that you get better security, better and more included drivers, a more "easy to use system", freedom of choosing tools, environment, kernel, window/desktop manager, access to the source code and no need to pay for the software, no need to upgrade computer when a new version arrives, more poweful commandline etc etc. You can of course install it on computers based on alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, ia64, mips, ppc, ppc64, s390, sparc, x86 or x86 fbs processors. Can you do that with Windows? Don't think so.

The security of my systems running Windows is as good as any Unix system, we only need to know what to do.

Freedom to choose tools, I have more tools than use for them with Windows, there is no lack of tools for Windows. Environment? I can make my own if I want or use any of the allready made ones. Desktop? The same as above. Kernel? I do not feel the need for a different one. Need to upgrade the computer? Are you kidding, I have a PII 400 in everyday use with Windows 2000 Server and my Athlon 1900+ is very capable of running Windows Vista Beta 2, I never had to upgrade my computer because of the operating system, only because of games. Access to the source code? Thanks but no, I am already tired of looking at code all the day, thats what I do for a living. Free software? Freeware and open source are not a Linux exlusive. Powerfull command line? I rarely use it, and what I think I need Unix/Linux does not have. Install it on computers based on other processors? Why, my hardware is what I have, why would I miss the possibility of installing an operating system on different hardware?

These lockups are very annoying. First if you have an ATI card and use their proprietary drivers you may be unlucky and be greeted by a total lockup during logout. And if your even more unlucky you may get random lockups even though you've checked your hardware like crazy and your Windows install is totally stable. That's why I'm leaning towards FreeBSD unfortunately. However DesktopBSD doesn't want to install

.

Funny, I do not have that problem, maybe my system is a more stable one?

And beware folks, GNU/Linux is addictive.

Not for me, today I am imune to that type of addiction.

There's really no sense in the general public using Linux, you need to have a modicum of computer programming skills to work with linux. I mucked around with red hat for a while, it just wasn't worth it.

I mean, whoever called them "tarballz" knew what he was talking about. Just trying to install a simple program was pointless task.

Pffft!!!

I can't program at all. Been using Linux quite sometime now. Never had a problem installing software. It's even easier today then it used to be! Just download whatever you want with synaptic or adept (whichever you prefer, I like synaptic). You can even install/uninstall directly from source code easily now all without touching the command line. Linux is easy to use, and imo better. Got sick of windows crashing all the time, hogging resources, needing reactivation every time it crashes so hard that I need to reinstall and having to redownload and reinstall a crap load of drivers. Everything just WORKS with linux. Don't have to touch anything. And try to find .rpm or .deb binaries for your distro. And use mepis!

If you are highly experienced with Windows, you will never crash, and never have any problems, and never deal with virus's nor spy-ware or anything else.

Hogging resources? My computer is so powerful, it can hog all the resources it wants, I can care less. Even then, windows xp can run smoothly on a 300 mhz processor with 128 mb ram, it doesn't hog resources unless you are a complete newbie when it comes to maintaining your computer. You know, a LOT of programs have a "run when windows starts" option that people seem to ignore upon installation. that is the #1 problem with a lot of people's computers these days. They just allow every program in the world to run in the background.

I have managed to eliminate crash's, virus's, hackers, and any and all "problems" that everyone claims are problems with Windows, just by gaining some skill and knowledge of the windows operating system.

there is no need for me to switch to any other OS. The only reason anyone would switch to linux, is because its free. And people think believe its more secure.

Even though, they dont realize the biggest insecurity of Linux is the fact it is open source. When every hacker in the world knows exactly how your operating system works, it makes it a lot easier for them to take control. With Windows, the source is hidden, and a big secret, that means most hackers only have limited ways and limited knowledge of how to take control of the computer.

I am not anti linux, however, I to am a multiple booter. Although in my opinion Windows is a LOT more useful than Linux. Usually Linux is just a waste of hard drive space, and it is rare i need to boot up with it.

I've got a fairly decent system, runs excellent with linux. When I had windows, even with nothing starting up at boot, it'd still hog abit of ram, as I ran programs through out the day, it'd get so slow and bogged down I'd have to reboot, that is if it didnt crash first. Can't say why exactly, ran spyware checks, antivirus scans everynight etc. I didn't switch to linux because it was free, I switched because I found it more stable. Actually took me awhile to take the full plunge into linux, mostly due to games. Now that I've found a bunch of decent game's I like, and can do everything else in linux just as easily as I could in windows, I don't really see the need to continue with windows.

Even though every hacker/cracker/script kiddy has access to the source code, I hardly ever hear about virus's for linux or any of that crap. Windows is riddled with security holes, I've even played with one a couple years ago! The whole phone home BS with windows is another turn off for me, and the activation crap is nonsense, especially when it doesn't even work. They still find ways around it, and yet I'm the one who has to effing call them everytime I have to reinstall thier POS OS.

Windows is the most targeted OS out there for hacker and virus writers, and yet it's not open source. Your right, they don't know much about it, and yet they still easily bring the damn OS to it's knees. They still can gain access no matter how many bugs they manage to fix. And now they're going to come out with vista which is a complete effing rip off and bigger resource hogger. I shouldn't have to upgrade my computer with every new version of the OS that comes out. Only when a kick butt game comes out

I have a desktop system running Windows XP sp2 with a persistent DSL connection and have no problems. I never have to reboot the computer unless forced to by power outages or the like. Why? Because I learned how to harden Windows and how to browse the Internet. Use Firefox.

I, don't have problems with my Windows computers.

Linux is a great server operating system. I use it for my file servers without problems.

Linux is a huge pain in the a** for everyday computer usage for the average user. Its a blast if you're interested in playing with configuration files, or using 'awk' in a shell. But if you want to get some work done, Windows.

Crackers will get into your linux system slicker than sh**. The source code is open source. You will truly never know if they've been there.

[edit on 23-6-2006 by MrPenny]