On Why Linux is Better than Windows

reply to post by autowrench

Linux never gets a Virus!

The number of malicious programs — including viruses, Trojans, and other threats — specifically written for Linux has been on the increase in recent years and more than doubled during 2005 from 422 to 863

Source

So not actually true. As far as I am concerned Windows never gets a virus either although I know that to be untrue but I have not have a virus in - well more than 10 years - in fact I can't remember when I did. I think possibly back in the days of Windows 98.

@b3l13v3:

All operating systems are flawed. This is why GNU/Linux-based OS are constantly being updated.

Correct, but you cannot preach to the converted

reply to post by PuterMan


Well, like I said, 90% of the PCs I get in here have some kind of Trojan on them. If you have went 10 years without your PC getting sick one time, then my hat is off to you. Same computer? Must have a big hard drive, or is it full of temp files and cookies yet? I worked on one a few days ago, 5 years old, and it has over 3000 cookies on the drive.

so since im not to computer savvy and just got a macbook pro, doesnt that not get viruses either?

reply to post by krazyiven


OSX is just as susceptible to viruses as any other operating system.

It is however, not a high priority target considering 90% of the market share is owned by Microsoft.

reply to post by autowrench


...

If you take a document written in M$ Office and open it in Open Office, it may not look completely correct.

That is because the two programs have discrepancies with different formatting techniques.

I'm quite astonished you are a computer repairmen.

I'm quite astonished you are a computer repairmen.

Why the astonishment? In these days and time, one has to to everything in their power to keep food on the table, and that is what I do. I repair at least 3 per week, sometimes more, and I am about to accept a contract to me an computer network administrator for our local library. Before that, I repaired cars for 38 years.

reply to post by krazyiven


I really could not answer that question, never owned a Mac, too expensive and I don't think I would like the OS.

reply to post by autowrench


Well, just stay proactive.

IT changes a lot quicker than cars do.

I wouldn't say that at all. Cars have changed, dramatically since 1980. Now day a "Technician" wears a white coat and attaches a computer to the car for diagnosis. In my day, I was the best diagnostic tech in my area. I really miss those days. I have owned over 500 cars and trucks, and repaired and built more that 1000, including drag racers, stock cars, street rods, and full custom jobs.

Originally posted by metaldemon2000
What distribution would you recommend for a first time user of Linux? ?

Linux Mint.

reply to post by NoRegretsEver

A Linux distro. sounds perfect for you, except perhaps with games. I'm not a player, so I have no experience with that. To me, it sounds like the best option for you is to download a distro of your choice (my recommendation is Linux Mint 9,Gnome since it is the long term support version ) and burn the .iso image to a CD. You can then boot the computer using the live CD and practice using Linux without effecting your current system.

If you then choose to keep it, you have the option of a full installation (wiping WIndows completely) or a dual boot installation (installing Linux beside Windows) on your computer. That choice is yours to make. There is no downside to downloading the .iso and burning it to a CD and using it for as long as you want before committing, so start there.

As an aside, many will promote Ubuntu as a beginner Linux distro. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but IMHO, more polished and less obnoxious, but the nice thing about burning .iso to CD is that you can choose many different distros and try them all out before committing to any of them. You will find one that appeals to you more than the others, no doubt. Here is a place to start:

www.linuxmint.com...

www.ubuntu.com...

www.pclinuxos.com...

ETA: you will need a Windows program to create an .iso image (can't remember if Win 7 has it internally or not, but XP does not) so a suggestion or two, here:

www.softpedia.com...

www.softpedia.com...

reply to post by autowrench

Scalability - Systems implemented under Linux can be cloned limitless times without paying additional software licensing fees - With Windows, you pay for each installation/workstation/server/cpu.

I thought "scalability" had a different meaning, that looks more like freedom to make copies than scalability.

Reliability - The architecture of Linux is superior to Windows because critical operation system functions are implemented in such a way that buggy programs can't cause the computer to become unstable and crash. In fairness, though not quite as robust as Linux, Windows 2000 and Windows XP are much improved over Windows 9x and Windows Millenium Edition.

As I have said in other occasions, the biggest problem I find with articles like this is that they, apparently, are not updated. What happened to Windows Vista and 7?

Advanced Capabilities - In addition to the system utility tools from the Unix world, Linux usually comes with the Apache Webserver, an email server, router/firewall capabilities and SQL databases. These are extras costing up to thousands of dollars on Windows. There IS free software to do these jobs on Windows, but it has mostly been adapted from Linux and loses some functionality when ported to Windows.

Not really true, Windows comes with a Web Server (I don't remember if it also has an email server, but there are several free ones), and those extras cost nothing, even if we don't find Windows firewall good enough (and it isn't as good as the best Linux firewalls) we can find free versions. Microsoft also has a free version of SQL Server, limited to 4GB databases, but enough for most cases.

Support - For persons not familiar with the Open Source Community, the quality of free technical support on the internet may come as a shock. Sometimes knowing enough to ask the right questions can be a problem, but overall the best and the brightest are there to assist you at no charge when you run into problems that can't be solved by reading the documentation included with Linux. With Windows or other commercial software, your manufacturer support is only free for a limited time and is often of little value anyways.

Free support also exists from the millions of Windows users, and from what I have seen of Ubuntu support, it's not that good. Also, some Linux distros have paid support for some reason.

And I agree with most people, Ubuntu 11 is not as friendly as Ubuntu 10 was, and I had to revert back to Ubuntu 10 to be able to use ISIS (a suite of programs to work with images from space missions), it was faster than trying to sort everything to get it back working and having to use that strange interface.

Hi. Tried the Linux route. It was nice because it's the system I used at work. Tried Ubuntu and
OpenSUSE. Both are OK.... was happy with them for a while. The install-programs were very
thoughtful and easy to use. i.e. They did not wipe out my Windows installation.

While Windows definitely has it's own, serious faults... there are three-four things
that bother me about Linux....

-Installation of Linux is easy, but having it play videos and music afterwards can be a problem.
The codecs necessary to do so were available during one installation, or actually in the downloads
after the install... but when I re-installed the same version of Linux using the same CD (after
resizing my partitions), these codecs were not available. And there was no message saying so...
I had to hunt through the linux forum to find the missing pieces. I found out that 'they are not
legal to include with the install any longer'. Annoying and somewhat disturbing.

-Some codecs are on a quasi-legal repository. I could be wrong, but they seem like they are
hacked. I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling downloading stuff from that repository- to make my
computer work.

-The Linux Update (a feature similar to Windows Update) facility is automated. This can be
either a good or a bad thing. One time after an update, the connections to the internet broke.
I never did restore that system after that.

-There is a lack of urgency to fix program bugs in the Linux world.... Most of the developers do
it for free, and thus you get what you pay for.

-There is not a common development as far as I know, or even a GUI IDE available for
Linux (it's all done via command-line commands). Every distribution has it's own program
development and downloading process for users. This my friends, should not be.
Speaking of that, it breaks down even more as per definition. If each distro has a different
'download program' process, then this means that the programs used in each distro are incompatible
with other Linux distros. Again, this my friends, should not be. It's called Divide and Conquer,
unfortunately.

-The man pages are in need of serious update. Most of them are 15-20 years old, and do not
account for much of the new technology used today. For example, many commands that work in an Ext4 system do not work with NTFS partitions. Man pages exclude this little but important piece of
compatability information.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems I found with Windows:

-MS does not sell older versions. I should be able to pick up any version of Windows I want today,
supported or not. I understand that there may not be support for Win98, Win2000, etc. now, but MS
should still make it available to buy anyways. Some of us don't need the latest and greatest
(read: largest and most bloated) at every possible minute.

-They should not have taken away the ability to copy music files without even letting me know that
they were doing that. The ability was disguised as a 'Windows security update'... Ya, right. Why
should I not be able to copy and back up my songs from the CDs I bought... i.e. why am I punished
because other unscrupulous people pirate music?

Originally posted by MarkJS
-They should not have taken away the ability to copy music files without even letting me know that
they were doing that.

Could you please explain this? As I never copy music (I am happy with a radio ) I don't know what you're talking about.

Thanks in advance.

reply to post by ArMaP


Sure... on Windows 7- Copying a .wav file from one location to another in the computer is fine. But trying to copy a .CDA file from a CD Will Copy, but the copied file is only 44bytes in size. If you try to play it, the file is corrupt.

reply to post by MarkJS


And that worked on previous versions? I didn't know that.

I guess they want us to use the "Rip CD" (or whatever its name on the original version, I only have here the Portuguese version) option on Windows Media Player.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by PuterMan

 

Well, like I said, 90% of the PCs I get in here have some kind of Trojan on them. If you have went 10 years without your PC getting sick one time, then my hat is off to you. Same computer? Must have a big hard drive, or is it full of temp files and cookies yet? I worked on one a few days ago, 5 years old, and it has over 3000 cookies on the drive.

Stuff like this happens because users don't know how to perform routine maintenance on their computers. A computers age has nothing to do with how many cookies it will have on it, provided routine cleanups are done. Same situation with viruses, it's not difficult to avoid getting a virus if you even have the slightest clue of what you are doing on a computer. The majority of problems come from people who have no idea how to operate the machine.

As for Windows having a much larger problem with viruses. This solely has to do with how large of a consumer base Windows has in the market. 90% of computers run Windows operating systems. So the majority of hackers design viruses specifically made to exploit windows faults and the uninformed computer user. Linux is by no means "more" secure than windows. It's just that at this time there isn't really any advantage to hacking Linux systems.

I am a Technician myself, I fix computers everyday, and I have used several types of Operating Systems, from Mac, to several versions of Windows, and several versions of Linux. All have their Pros and Cons, but in the end it comes down to what suits the user best. I myself prefer Windows OS's, but that is because I understand the mechanics of the system and how not to become vulnerable.

Originally posted by MarkJS
reply to post by ArMaP

 

Sure... on Windows 7- Copying a .wav file from one location to another in the computer is fine. But trying to copy a .CDA file from a CD Will Copy, but the copied file is only 44bytes in size. If you try to play it, the file is corrupt.

edit on 30/11/2011 by MarkJS because: clarification, hopefully

Why would you try to copy a .cda? Windows Media Player rips all songs (or .cda files) from a CD into MP3 format and puts in your Music folder on your computer, which you can then do whatever you like with.

Many other programs do this, but Windows Media Player is built into Windows and has always and still does do this.

I'm sure there will be a point where Linux is more user friendly, at that point I'm jumping the Microsoft ship.

I loved my 4 months using Mint exclusively but setting up some stuff like PDR and other windows programs didn't work so well even with wine.

Can't wait for the day Linux grows a little, doubt it will be long.

Originally posted by Hektik1

Originally posted by MarkJS
reply to post by ArMaP

 

Sure... on Windows 7- Copying a .wav file from one location to another in the computer is fine. But trying to copy a .CDA file from a CD Will Copy, but the copied file is only 44bytes in size. If you try to play it, the file is corrupt.

edit on 30/11/2011 by MarkJS because: clarification, hopefully

Why would you try to copy a .cda? Windows Media Player rips all songs (or .cda files) from a CD into MP3 format and puts in your Music folder on your computer, which you can then do whatever you like with.

Many other programs do this, but Windows Media Player is built into Windows and has always and still does do this.

You are probably correct about this and Windows. I would say that it's not intuitive, however. For all other files, one can simply cut/copy and paste. Also, in OpenSUSE 11.3- which I have, but do not use too much these days: displaying the CD files using Nautilus (a program like Windows Explorer)- the files on the CD are displayed as .wav files. So maybe that's how I copied them originally.