If you used Windows before, why did you switch or now use Linux more 5089

Adam McCarthy

To be pedantic for a minute, open-source versus closed source doesn't automatically mean Windows versus Linux: there's plenty of OSS available to run on windows, such as OpenOffice and Firefox to name but two.

To answer your question though I have different reasons for using Linux more now.

1) At home I was running win98 and found that Linux was more stable in day-to-day use. Specifically I found the HP printer drivers in windows used to crash often requiring a reboot, plus there were other seemingly random BSOD after running windows for any length of time. I'm also fed up with using newer versions of MS software to find bugs-annoyances in the previous versions still being present.

Cost: being a student at the time I couldn't afford to keep upgrading the OS and Office suite at MS's timescale, but by doing so ended up unsupported out-of-date software.

Also, having discovered OpenOffice in Linux I liked it so much I replaced my MS office in windows, which I only use sparingly now.

Security: clearly with all the trojans, viruses, spyware, etc out there attacking windows and IE I felt much safer in the knowledge that Linux is intrinsically more secure when surfing the web.

2) At Work I used to use Silicon Graphics machines for my scientific solutions as the hardware and support is much cheaper and more readily available. However, when we had our SGs we still needed a Windows machine to compile reports and presentations, but now in Linux it's all possible without resorting to a different machine. Now life is much easier than before with all my documents and data residing on the same machine and not having to deal with copying files to other machines and keeping data up-to-date on all the machines.

HTH and good luck with your report, Chris.