If you used Windows before, why did you switch or now use Linux more 5085

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:59:12 -0400

Because Linux better does what I want to do, not only in the base functional sense (gcc is a damn good compiler, Perl scripts work better on *nix systems than on Windows, bash and zsh scripting becomes a serious option only on *nix machines, etc.) but in that FLOSS (Free-Libre-Open-Source Software) solutions aren't crippled by a company that puts profit before functionality.

Linux doesn't contain software that pops up windows at me begging me to buy services or additional software. The software that comes with the distros I buy (currently, Fedora Core 4 and Slackware 10.0) isn't trialware or demoware or otherwise part of a bait-and-switch scam. MPlayer isn't crippled by DVD regioning or encryption. Emacs is a first-rate development environment yet to be matched---let alone surpbutted---by any commercial IDE, and it also works as a great newsreader (Gnus) and Lisp system (Slime). The command-line is a superior way of working that allows pervasive scripting and toolsmithing that is usually unavailable under Windows.

Aside from all that, Linux is comprehensible and configurable. There is no registry and there are very few, if any, opaque binary data files. Everything essential to the function of the OS and its key software resides in text files that can be edited by any text-manipulation software I can get my hands on. (Not just editors: sed and awk and Perl scripts come to mind as well.) There is a widely-disseminated document,From Power Up to Bash Prompt-, that details what happens in a Linux PC from the initial powerup to the point where the user is presented with a command-line interface. It is available online:

The Linux GUI is decades more advanced than the Macintosh or Windows graphical environments. It was not only built from the ground up on a network protocol, allowing people to run graphical programs on a remote machine, but it allows the same pervasive configurability that marks everything else in Linux.

Finally, of course, there is the security model. I have never once been hit with a single worm, trojan, or virus in a computing history that goes all the way back to the Tandy 1000. This is partly due to my own comprehension of security issues, but it is in a large part due to the fact that by the time Internet-spread worms were a serious issue I was running Linux as my primary OS. It is said that a poor craftsman blames his tools. This is because agoodcraftsman refuses to use poor tools. In this case, Windows is simply a poor tool.

Icouldbuild a lot of these things on top of Windows. The Cygwin package goes a long way to giving a usable command line on top of Windows systems, Perl and Emacs can both be installed and will work at least acceptably, and I could even install an X server to gain the graphical environment of my choice. However, the security model really would not port, I would still be dependent on an outside party forallof my OS needs, and I would be saddled with an incomprehensible, willfully opaque OS underlying all of my additional software. It is simply easier, less expensive, and more reasonable to install Linux.

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