Pointer: blog post, "RANT: Is the Linux dream a myth?"
I came across this blog post in the openSUSE forums: RANT: Is the Linux dream a myth?
I've met a few characters that are living the Linux dream or at least claiming to. But here's the rub... is there anyone who's exclusively using it? I don't mean "I've got Linux installed on my USB stick" or "I dual boot". Is there anyone who is actually using Linux as there sole operating system. Booting into everyday to check their email, write their documents, develop their code, surf the web and yes.. play their games. I fear there is not.Having used Linux exclusively for almost a year, and knowing people who've been Linux-exclusive for longer than that, not to mention MAC USERS, the author seems naive or sheltered. Which surprises me, as he's a coder - apparently I'm prejudiced about coders :o)
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Anyways, I don't think anyone denies games/Linux are a problematic combination. I'm not a gamer, so I'm happily Linux-exclusive, but if I were a gamer, I doubt I could live without Windows, even if I only used it for gaming.
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It seems a lot easier to be an exclusive Mac user than an exclusive Linux user. But I guess it begs the question of what is most important to you when choosing an OS.
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I know. I'm saying exclusively-Linux users aren't using Windows at all, and presumably so aren't most Mac users.
Outside games, which I assume are more likely to be Mac-friendly than Linux-friendly (though I still assume there aren't anywhere near as many Mac-friendly games as there are Windows-only games? I'm not a gamer, so I admittedly know very little about this), I don't think that's true anymore. I can do everything I need to in Linux, including netbanking. And I can do nifty things with middle-click, which Mac users can't, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm better off :oD
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I should totes get around to making a bootable Ubuntu usb - will it take up the whole usb drive, or can I still use parts of it for storage? Or can you partition it and only install Ubuntu on parts of it?
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Tangent: Maybe it's just because I'm such a relatively new Linux convert, but I can't fathom why anyone would allow their business computers to run on Windows. I don't care if it's a bitch to find alternatives to business-related programs, I'd never allow my employees to work on something as unsafe as Windows, not to mention surf on IE - at my previous workplace, most employees were still running IE6, gahhhh!
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Live the dream!
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But yeah, as non-gamer, Linux works ton better for me - faster, safer, and way more customizable. I don't understand why my non-gamer friends insist on clinging to Windows so hard O_o
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But even though Linux is currently "dual boot" on my computer, I keep booting into Windows these days because of program compatibility issues like that, so yeah, I also understand not counting "dual boot" users. I'd really like to get off Windows entirely (at home, anyway, I know that's a pipedream at work, for sure), but haven't been able to as of yet. I may end up moving in the Mac direction, since, as
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Gimp is a very strong application these days!
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That said--there are a couple Windows-only scientific analysis programs that I need for my research that I'm currently having to borrow other people's computers to run (e.g. EcoSim). Fortunately, most of those types of programs are available for Linux/Mac as well, since Linux is pretty established in scientific computing--but not quite all. So even if I were going to use Linux exclusively, every now and then I'd probably run into something I needed that would only run on Windows. If I weren't involved in science, it might be a different matter--although I don't know of any good embroidery charting software for Linux, either. I think for most people it would be fairly easy to just run Linux, though.
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If you want to try out Linux again, I recommend Ubuntu - it seems to have a bad reputation in some Linux circles, because it caters to the masses, but fact is it's extremely user-friendly, and supports a wide range of hardware.
For people that mostly browse, write the odd text document, play solitaire, watch movies and listen to music, yeah, they'd be fine with Linux.
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Windows has a lot of drawbacks, like awful security, lots of usability issues, lack of transparency of internal workings/processes and so on, but if you want to play good games and want to be able to choose from a wide range of game types and genres, you really have no choice but to use Windows.
On the other hand, if you're a graphic designer who works professionally, then Mac is usually your best choice because of all the high-end graphic software, and I'm not only talking about Photoshop. The same goes for musicians, composers, and other music lovers. An exception is probably game designers because they design games for the windows market...
Linux is your best choice if you're a programmer, or a scientist who likes to write articles and reports with LaTeX. Some Linux distributions are also a good choice for people who don't know much about computers, don't know how to protect themselves from viruses & co. My mother uses it, and her problems have nothing to do with Linux, but her still-rudimentary computer skills. And it's perfect for everyone who likes to configure the computers settings, depending on their needs, preferences and moods.
Personally, I have dual-boot on my work computer, but I haven't booted Windows on that one in over a year (I'm not allowed to remove it...), and when I get the occasional "windows only" file format, well, then there's always the virtual machine :) At home I also have dual-boot, simply because I like to play games, but for everything else I use Linux. Windows is a royal pain in the ass, but, well, like I said, I like to play computer games...
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Especially with advances in modern game consoles and web browsers, I find PC-specific game software more and more superfluous.
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*deep breath* Okay, rant over.
So anyway, I'm now Linux-exclusive at home, but...
But there appear to be no solutions for three items that I really loved and paid money for and now miss:
Mostly, though, the transition has been smooth. I'm getting used to GIMP, I don't game, I'm not an iTunes aficionado, and I do most everything else in the cloud.
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In Denmark it's legal to break encryption if you have no other way of reading/playing a file - they specifically mention Linux systems \o/ ! This doesn't help you one bit, of course :o/
From Googling it, it looks like there is trouble with the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3650 - you can dl a driver from ATI, but again, people don't seem to have had luck with it. Ubuntu documention and installation guide, if you haven't already checked it.
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As for myself, I run solely Linux on both my desktop and my laptop. I do have a virtual machine for testing on IE, and to make occasional use of Visual Studio, because I'm a web developer (there is no way in hell that I would disgrace my Linux installs with the atrocity that is IE, especially in the rare case that I have to test on IE6, so IE stays locked in VMs, to fire up only when needed).
I consider myself somewhat of a gamer. I played World of Warcraft until about 6 weeks ago (and might pick it back up when the next expansion comes out), and it arguably ran better under Linux than it did under Windows (especially with OpenGL enabled). I've also had Diablo 2, Starcraft, Supreme Commander, and Sins of a Solar Empire running under Linux. The rest of the games I play are console games, so those are moot.
I've actually found Linux more convenient than Windows for a recent web server setup that I did through SSH. It's possible I did it the hard way, but it taught me a ton about terminal commands, and it was as simple as firing up a terminal window. No need for other software, like PuTTy, to get going. It was also nice that I happened to be running the same OS as the server, so a lot of stuff mapped to the same places and the naming schemes were all the same, so I didn't have to deal with remembering with file system scheme I was typing in for which half of the command.
I actually feel like I'm cheating on my current Grad school course. It's a web development course and the first assignment is to create a basic web page (to be built on through the course), to be done in a basic text editor. The school assumes you're running Windows, so they assume "basic text editor" equals "Notepad", but since I'm on Linux, "basic text editor" equals gedit, which means I still get the code highlighting that's part of the reason a real code editor isn't supposed to be used yet.
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:oD
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