Linux : Should I Stay With It?

I just successfully downloaded and installed Red Hat Linux 9 on my extra hard drive. While I was tremendously impressed with myself for being able to do it (after some of the horror stories I’d heard) the rush only lasted about 12 hours or so.

I had expected a pehnominally different way of doing things and while the file systems and such ae all different, it just seems like a more colorful version of Windows. Added to that is the fact that not a lot of people are writing software for it makes it very limited for me. I can’t get any Instant Message siftware that will allow me to use the webcam which was a big thing for me since WinME seems to be buggy with Yahoo in that respect.

So, convince me … should I stick with Linux or just stick with Windows ME?

You could almost have put this in GD since you may start a holy war!

For me, the point you made about availability of software is the telling one. It makes for a good server, but I don’t think its time has come as a desktop OS. Of course, that is a chicken and an egg thing. If more people use it, more software will be written, if more were written, more would use it…

I did the exact same thing, install RH 9 on an extra HD. I also have no compelling reason to actually use it; I just wanted to see what it’s like.

Linux is a great OS, on a server.

For a desktop, ignoring stability as a factor (where Linux will win hands down) Windows is quite superior. Linux might be superior as far as the architecture goes, but for a desktop computer, it is a really hard sell. Linux makes getting software installed a lot more complicated too.

Even Windows is a bit behind in that respect. For comparisons sake, I use OS X, and almost all applications are installed by dragging them to the applications folder.

I had linux installed on my last PC, but then again, my reasons were because I wanted to learn the OS, and the only applications I actually needed where a web browser, e-mail, and chat clients.

I ended up removing it when I found out that my NIC (when I got cable) was incompatible, and I would have had to get another.

Since then, I’ve been running Macs w/ OS X.

I’d have to say, that OS X is like a best case combination between Windows and Linux.

You get the stability and server strength foundations like Linux,
Third party application support (which, AFAIK, Linux still doesn’t really have)
Plus a more intuitive interface than Windows (stuff like drag and drop installs, ad just dropping apps into the trash to uninstall them)

In your case, I’d probably just run a Windows and Linux partition, that is, if you feel like learning the OS on a more basic level.

Otherwise, I’d just reinstall Windows.

On a desktop computer, there is really nothing at all about linux that makes it worthy of use, except for the stability. While nice, it doesn’t make up for its other shortfalls.

For God’s sake, get away from winME. Go get Windows 2000, which is far better than ME. ME sucks hard.

I like Linux as my OS - but then I really only use it for internet/chat/email and the occasional word processing, using Open Office.org. My SO uses Linux much more extensively than I do, to the point where he only boots into Windows for a few games of school-specific programs than were coded for Windows only.

For most people’s day-to-day activities, I would say the Linux has everything you need and then some (and it certainly beats out WinME, but then so does Win95 IMHO! Can you tell I had problems with an ME computer?) For games or more specific applications, then Windows is probably the way to go, but I say you should keep Linux installed anyways. I know a bunch of people are hesitant to switch programs (for example, using OpenOffice.org rather than Word) not because the former is more difficult to use, but because it is designed differently enough that you have to relearn some functions and shortcuts. The buttons are different, but it still does everything you need it to, and in the cases when it doesnt, you can easily ASK the developers to consider adding certain features in their next releases.

I dual-boot Win89 and Debian Linux. My primary OS has become Linux, but I keep Windows arround for the odd school assignment. I recommend keeping Linux, but also keeping the other OS (well, actually, I recommend you change your windows OS, but thats just me!)

winME does indeed suck very hard. Definitely upgrade to winXP sp1 or win2k sp3.

Ew, Windows ME.

I personally would dual boot Linux and XP. No reason you can’t have it all.

I started using Linux at the beginning of last summer. Now I can’t STAND using Windows for very long, unless it’s on a very new machine that’s running very well. Yes, there are software issues sometimes, but I haven’t had a single REAL problem. I only boot into Windows when I have to do something like get pictures off of my digital camera, which has a proprietary storage format. It was more difficult for a long time to do what I want, but I’ve caught up. And I find I really KNOW what I’m doing to the system, rather than just knowing what to click.

I’d say just dual boot. Run Linux when what you want to do CAN be done under Linux. Really give it a try, even when it’d just be easier to switch to Windows, because that’s the only way you’ll learn the tricks that MAKE it easier. Boot to Windows when you have to.

How about that “Wine” thing? Can’t you run nearly all the Windows apps you want under Linux using Wine?

Bah, WINE Is Not an Emulator. :wink:

mnemosyne wrote

Here’s another opinion: OpenOffice sucks. It’s not even close to Office in any of it’s applications. It breaks all the time. It doesn’t have all the features. In theory, it can read and write Office formats, but it rarely does. (And this last is critical if you expect to work with anybody else in the world, all of whom will expect Office formats.) It’s come a long way, but it’s got a long long way to go. And this is from a big Linux fan. I tried for several months switching to Linux full time but couldn’t make it happen. I now regularly use two laptops, one Linux and one Windows. The Linux is for engineering things, and the Windows is for Desktop kinds of things.

Email is another similar example. There is a clone of Outlook for Linux called Evolution, and it’s similar and actually usable. But it has zero features beyond “usable.” Which made it unusable for me. So, I do email on Windows, and when I do email on Linux, it’s with Pine, which is an in the guts kinda thing, not really a desktop app. But again, strides are being made and sooner or later they’ll get it.

Euty, Linux is a phenomonal server. If you enjoy server things, it’s unbeatable. If you like digging in the guts of things, it’s very very cool. Desktops have improved on Linux dramatically in the last years. But… For a desktop, Linux is still not what Windows is. And as far as apps go, it’s all about Windows. You can use wine to run some Windows apps on linux, but typically it’s a big ugly mess to deal with.

Like I said, if you enjoy digging in the guts of things, it can be a great joy to make things work on Linux. But if ease is important, it’s just not there yet.

I use Linux and XP at home, Mac OS 9 and X at work. I like that Linux understands and plays with everyone for free.

Apart from games and proprietary software and hardware, Linux does everything. I use it as a router for my house between my wife’s computer, another Linux mp3 server and the cable modem. The mp3 server is an old PII 266 with a bunch of hard drive which I use to store ripped CDs (which I own thankyewverymuch) running Debian Linux. It runs apache and we can use a web or telnet based interface to put together which songs we want to hear. It has a homemade remote control and digital audio out, and was put together from spare parts with far under $100 of investment.

Beyond the general stuff that all OSs do pretty well, I find that people have one or two mission-critical things which determine which OS is right for them. At work, we use OS X because we are in an educational setting and much of the science software is designed around UNIX or MacOS. If you play games, Windows is great. For serious network stuff, you should probably go with Linux or Win2k. Since I use OS X at work, my wife uses XP, and I would like to talk easily between everyone (for free), I use Linux. I have unlimited communication between my work and home computers – NFS, X, telnet, and ftp servers, etc. Also, most new heavy-duty genomics tools are written for use on UNIX workstations.

Pick out your mission-critical functions (it sounds to me like that would be messanging with webcam), and pick your OS appropriately. Sounds like a job for XP to me. OS X versus XP versus Linux all have their niches and forcing a fit only causes aggravation. So pick one or two of them and don’t listen to what the fanatics say.

I would complain about OpenOffice as well, but I installed RH9.0 last week and the version that it came with worked really well for me last week (to my astonishment). The fonts looked like crap, but both complicated Excel and PowerPoint files were opened, modified, and saved without problems. In fact, I have had more problems going from Office X to Office XP and back, especially in PowerPoint (it screwed up all of my backgrounds, special characters weren’t preserved, animations were messed up, thanks Bill).

Windows ME? I would suggest that you upgrade to DOS, punchcards, or a bullet in the head. Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, that pile of memory-guzzling blew chunks the size of Deimos.

As for Linux… whattaya mean there’s no software to support it? I thought the idea of Linux was that all users write their own software…

I dual boot myself (XP/RH8.1), mainly for the following reasons:

  1. Linux has a better selection of (free) file-sharing and media software available to it
  2. Linux has a huge selection of great freeware games. Puzzles mainly.
  3. Tux is cool.
  4. Idiot repellent. Keeps people from messing with my baby :).

I still use Office XP instead of OpenOffice, mainly because I’ve been writing papers with itterations of Office since middle school.

Bill H., what engineering programs are you using with Linux and where’d you find 'em?

If you had asked if you should stick with linux as a server OS - I would proberly have said yes.

As a desktop OS, it is usable, especially if as you gain knowledge about how linux actually works and how you use it best.

I started using Linux around 1995 and I have a great deal of trouble finding my way around Windows if I have to use that today, so I use Linux as my desktop OS too - but for a new user, I think you’d have to be really motivated and willing to learn a lot of to benefit from it.

See http://home.intercity.dk/~brian/screen.jpg for how my desktop at work currently looks.

Win 98/RH Valhalla dualboot here.

I installed RH on a extra HD I had just to tinker around with it. So far I’m using it for basic surfing purposes and learning my way around. If it’s not taking up too much space I would leave it on there, everytime I use it I like it a little more.

Sorry to take so long getting back to this. The one thing that’s bugging me more about it right now is that you can’t use the same files for both Windows and Linux because of differring file systems. IIRC, Windows uses FAT and Linux uses ext2. So I have all of my website files stored locally, but I can only access them with one operating system. If I do transfer them over to the Linux system, I’m stuck with them there. Is there any workaround to this?