Linux: simply a novelty?

[jim ford]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

Linux a novelty?

Linux, as a flavour of Unix is a serious bit of kit - a Porsche an Aston Martin. MS Windows is a 'boy racer' - a standard small car, with fancy paint job, wire wheels, tinted windows, noisy exhaust and sound system. It looks pretty, but because of all the extras, doesn't perform well and keeps breaking down. Nah - Fisher-Price Windows is the novelty!

Forget the pretty and seductive graphical windowing systems on Windows and Linux - get in front of a Linux box and hit ctl+alt+F1 to get to a text terminal with a CLI and explore the traditional Unix utilities. The command shell bash, sed, vi, grep and the rest of the tiny utilities that 'do one job, and do it well' - that you can pipe the output of one to the input of another. They've been there for years for a reason - because they're an indipensable box of tools for anyone engaged in serious computing activities. There are also a whole host of scripting languages available from awk/gawk, through to perl and python, in addtion to compilers. The casual computer user - whether they be Windows or Linux, cannot begin to comprehend to power available to them using the traditional Unix tools! And I've not even mentioned the king of all utilities - emacs, which is a stunningly powerful tool on its own.

If I had to choose between Windows XP/2000/98/95 (and probably Vista), and a just a plain Unix/Linux text terminal with that magical bash prompt, there would be no competition - it'd be the text terminal!

If you want a toy - Windows. If you want a tool - Linux!

Jim Ford

[Segovia]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

I guess everyone's idea of "serious computing activities" varies, Jim. Nearly everything you mentioned is useless for anything that the vast majority of people use desktop computers for. My wife and I both use computers as an essential tool in our businesses. Not one thing we need can be accomplished from the "stunningly powerful" emacs, or a text terminal.

Ubuntu and it's variants are targeting the desktop - normal users. The same people who use Windows to tag/play their mp3s, write emails, edit the red eyes out of their personal photos, surf the web, download a movie from usenet/bittorrent, play some counterstrike. Yes, I guess you could say that is the "toy" aspect of computing. But how about the non-toy aspects? My wife needs: Quarke, Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign, PowerPoint for her job (she's a medical editor). I need ACDSee and QuickBooks at the bare minimum. Can you tell me again please how the "stunningly powerful" emacs and terminal can increase our productivity in our jobs?

Face it, 99% of computer users don't want a CLI and don't care about it. And I'm not talking about people who use computers as a nintendo. I'm talking about people who use computers to make a living, including myself and my wife. Don't you think that's a "serious computing task"?

Trying to convince people that a CLI is useful/needed is fruitless and only serves to further alienate people from Linux. They already know they don't need one.

[javierrivera]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

I need ACDSee

May I ask what is so useful about ACDSee?

Isn't it just another picture viewer?

Javier.

[Segovia]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

It has a viewer, of course. But mainly it's DAM (digital asset management), if you want to use a fancy term. Very useful for organizing large image collections.

[javierrivera]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

Ok. Thank you for replying I'll look into it.

Javier.

[jakykong]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

I've personally never had a windows install that didn't need to be reinstalled after a year to a year and a half. The laptop I'm currently running Kubuntu on was bought second hand (a year old) about a year and a half ago. I've used the recovery cd to completely reinstall the XP os three times so far, the last being about a month ago just before I installed Kubuntu as the bloody machine was taking 2 minutes to boot and about 15-20 seconds to open any folder.

In contrast I've had a debian install on a very low powered box running for about a year and a half now and it hasn't slowed at all, I see no reason why I would have to reinstall that box anytime in the next ? number of years.

Speaking of reinstalling windows. I haven't had to reinstall my desktop's windows XP o.s. since I got it. Now, that's probably because i just resized the partition and installed linux, and it's been in a box for 6 months. Strenuous circumstances :P.

[able421]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

Linux is not a novelty, which is why it's free and worthwhile. Most desktop software is now a commodity product, and the strategic software investments that are not commodities are more easily developed on the free tools available for Gnu/Linux.

The only reason the latest versions of Photoshop have not been ported is due to the relatively small size of the graphics professionals community, and their lack of Linux savvy. Installed base is no joke.

[jakykong]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

Linux is not a novelty, which is why it's free and worthwhile. Most desktop software is now a commodity product, and the strategic software investments that are not commodities are more easily developed on the free tools available for Gnu/Linux.

The only reason the latest versions of Photoshop have not been ported is due to the relatively small size of the graphics professionals community, and their lack of Linux savvy. Installed base is no joke.

IMO installed base is the only reason this could even come into question.
The http://www.linuxcounter.org/ website has over 130,000 people registered as linux users (i'm one!!!!), and over 150,000 computers.
I heard from somewhere that a 2001 (or was it 2002?) statistic puts linux on about 65% of all web servers on the internet. Can't say anything reliable there, a quick google search didn't turn up the source.
Many devices, everything from cell phones to PDAs and media centers, have linux installed.

If installed base is your measure, i think we can safely say that linux is *not* a novelty.
My os-on-a-floppy-sorta-*nix-more-like-dos is a novelty. It's a toy; doesn't do anything to speak of. Linux is not.


http://www.kegel.com/nt-linux-benchmarks.html this page marks some benchmarks on samba, quite interesting if you still find linux to be a novelty...


I would pose one other measure of linux's being a novelty, and that is versatility.
Windows really is limited to large computers (desktop sized; relatively large processing capacity). If the computer is too big (say a supercomputer), or too small (say a cell phone), windows can't run. They have a special "windows CE" to run on PDAs, and it isn't even the same OS, only some slightly reminiscent graphics.
Linux runs on everything windows doesn't, plus everything windows does. Linux runs on an Ipod. Try getting windows CE to run on an Ipod!
I find versatility a great way to define novelty. Because, really, a screwdriver has very little power. It hasn't got a honkin' big battery, 12v motor, and stuff, but it can be used in almost every situation. Linux doesn't have everything by default (remember, a full distribution is Gnu/Linux, not just 'linux' -- linux is only the kernel), in fact, it's tiny. But, you can use it as a swiss army knife -- almost anywhere.
That's no novelty.

[aysiu]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

130,000 is pretty conservative.

I'm not registered there, and I'm sure there are many other regular Linux desktop users who are also not registered.

[fleamailman]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

The real question for me is not why one should dump windows for linux, which unless the os is really out of date one need not do, no, leave the windows there and go for dual boot, get the best of both worlds. If for example one is bored with running scans for the latest malware on windows, one could stop and start using kubuntu for the internet; however, if you suddenly feels it's time to laid siege to London readying for a battle with their leader( the honourable gentleman, Tony Budoca)in Rometotalwar then XP is there, so what I have done is kept my xp installed as a game console while kubuntu handles the rest, ah but just remember to keep XP without updates and disconnected, you don't want to compromise your XP do you I mean what with vista's license being cracked now, microsoft is going to patch its WGA again(read: here you can download the patch for the update), btw the problem of DVD is outdated seeing that flv. streams sites....., so vista is also going for the burning of DVD videos too, not just the playing of them. Me, I stick my colours firmly to the seat of the fence.

[jakykong]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

130,000 is pretty conservative.

I'm not registered there, and I'm sure there are many other regular Linux desktop users who are also not registered.

The site estimates 24 million.
I'm pretty sure 130,000 is very conservative. However, it does get the point across -- linux isn't just a toy a few geeks use.

[jakykong]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

The real question for me is not why one should dump windows for linux, which unless the os is really out of date one need not do, no, leave the windows there and go for dual boot, get the best of both worlds. If for example one is bored with running scans for the latest malware on windows, one could stop and start using kubuntu for the internet; however, if you suddenly feels it's time to laid siege to London readying for a battle with their leader( the honourable gentleman, Tony Budoca)in Rometotalwar then XP is there, so what I have done is kept my xp installed as a game console while kubuntu handles the rest, ah but just remember to keep XP without updates and disconnected, you don't want to compromise your XP do you I mean what with vista's license being cracked now, microsoft is going to patch its WGA again(read: here you can download the patch for the update), btw the problem of DVD is outdated seeing that flv. streams sites....., so vista is also going for the burning of DVD videos too, not just the playing of them. Me, I stick my colours firmly to the seat of the fence.

Switching operating systems frequently is as bad for the computer as it is for the humans using it.
To do that requires knowledge of both systems {beyond the scope of many average user's skills, who really do need to choose one or the other and learn it well}, and you have to be pretty good at it: data isn't easily shared between the 2, unless you know what you're doing (esp. when sharing linux + windows)

Burning DVDs can be done in linux. Vista's cracked license means i'll buy parts and build my own systems rather than pay for vista -- because i, personally, value my freedom.

If you have a problem losing out on your games...
a) get a game console. XB360, WII and PS3 are available, among others
b) get Cedega and (most likely) run the same games in linux, from the same CD. Frankly, my experience has been that Cedega runs many games better than windows did. {can't say all of them}

If you really have to, you can run a virtual machine to get both running. VMWare is a nice choice to run windows within linux. The vice versa costs quite a lot more money, you have to buy from M$, and (not to mention) is against vista's license (unless you get the professional edition or whatever they're calling it now). Dual-booting is a pain in the neck, no matter how good windows is to you.

P.S. Wine is Cedega's little brother. If you are so inclined to fiddle {cedega is easier}, i've gotten Adobe Acrobat Reader, Finale PrintMusic 2003 (even MIDI), and Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 running in linux, among other things that I use quite frequently and runs just as well as in windows. Wine won't run as many things as Cedega, and only has limited DirectX support, but it does function for most (not intensively graphical) applications.

[jankushka]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

interesting thread.
i have never used windows in my life.
before linux i used to use unix.

i have this recent experience to report, despite my having used debian and not kubuntu...

laboratory work with 8 students.
started the lab's emc2 ax100 iscsi disk array.
installed 8 machines (384MB RAM) with debian (only basic configuration and kde-core).
upgraded the kernel to 2.6.18.
configured dual boot with previously installed kubuntu by sharing /boot.
rebooted.
installed open-iscsi (drivers and user space tools).
created a RAID 0 stripe on the disk array.
configured 8 virtual disks of 1gb each.
started iscsi on the clients and connected each one to one virtual disk.
created a partition on the resulting devices on the client systems.
created ext3 file systems on each partition.
mounted the file systems.
extended each virtual disk to 3gb.
extended the partitions and the ext3 file systems, accordingly.
remounted the file systems (although you could force the above operations even without unmounting the file systems at all).

net time to completion: 3 hours and 10 minutes
number of reboots: 1 (only because iscsi needs kernel >= 2.6.11 and debian ships with 2.6.8)

it'd be interesting to replicate all of the above with windows systems...

[jakykong]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

I've never tried installing SCSI of any kind in windows; but from the words of my colleagues, it's a pain in the arse. Once installed, You can't resize / reshape / move / whatever the partition windows is currently running on, and most of the time you need to have a SCSI driver installed during installation. At one point, i used knoppix to repartition a windows partition on a SCSI raid 0+1 setup just because windows wouldn't let anyone do it.

If you're talking about a network array (i mean, an array that is directly attached to a network, without an intermediate server), I think there would be little difference between windows and linux: the networked filesystems available don't depend on the hardware being used on either side. However, if you have an intermediate server, the above problems still apply on the server.

Personally, though, I wouldn't bother setting up a windows server (SCSI or otherwise): Linux is perfectly able to handle windows clients. And, linux won't cost you $1000 a pop to install it on your servers.

[Fintan]

Re: Linux: simply a novelty?

I don't think of linux as a novelty at all.

And this just underscored my feeling:
http://pcpitstop.com/news/rob/rcheng0704.asp

MS really cut the cake on this one.