Why do people switch to Linux 13497

On Saturday 29 October 2005 21:41, winnotlin stood up and spoke the following words to the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.advocacy...:

This is an unfair statement, as it is based upon your view of an operating system as only being used on an office and home desktop machine.

GNU-Linux *is* complicated, yes. I won't say that it isn't. Yet if you consider its nature as a portable, scalable and versatile operating system, you will acknowledge that a system this powerful warrants some complexity.

Try looking at it from the *nix point of view for a change. GNU-Linux - toolbox. Some tools are fairly easy to use, others are more specialized and are therefore harder to use. Yet by using those tools, you can do things more efficiently - from the technical point of view, that is.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't expect to be able to fly a Space Shuttle (or an F-14 fighter) just because you have a driver's license.

If you stick to the average home and office desktop work, then GNU-Linux is not really that different from Microsoft Windows. You have a graphical user interface, you've got office applications, etc.

If you're planning on doing some really high-tech stuff, you'll have to know how to dig in deeper into the system. The good news is that virtually every command in the system comes with amanpage - granted, it's not written in an all too pleasant prosaic style, but it does give you a clear view on what you can do with said command and how to do that.

Windows users are often biased, and I don't mean MS-biased. I mean biased in respect to their Windows-way of doing things. They are accustomed to it and they have a hard time conceiving that there are other (and better) ways to do things, or that there are other and more powerful uses for a computer system - think IBM S-390, for instance.

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (Registered GNU-Linux user #223157)