Pointer: blog post, "RANT: Is the Linux dream a myth?"

[blnchflr]

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)

Comments

[blnchflr]

I don't know how Windows 7 is working out for people, but my Ubuntu installation is tons better than the Vista horror was - don't miss it one bit!

[blnchflr]

The operative word is "exclusive" - if you use emacs, even irregularly, then you're not an exclusive vim user. You say yourself you "want to occasionally play The Sims 3", so again, I can understand not counting dualboots when assessing exclusive Linux users, *gets into fight over it* :oP

[yvi]

On the other side of that, I absolutely could not do my kind of science on a Windows computer. I do stuff via bash scripting :)

[blnchflr]

I've thought about going back, but I don't have anyone to talk me through installation this time (granted, I'm not sure I'd go for Gentoo again--it was still pretty buggy with things like, say, sound card functioning when I ran it, and frustrating to troubleshoot).
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.

I think for most people it would be fairly easy to just run Linux, though.
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.

[blnchflr]

Really? That seems....odd.
Sorry, my brain apparently made that up, you can still get it for Linux.

There is no reason for Windows, which is the thing that M$ does not want anyone to find out.
Reminds me of trying to convince my brother to try out Firefox when he was using IE6 - he told me if it wasn't the best browser in the world, so many people wouldn't be using it. There was just no arguing with him (he's still convinced Windows/IE is the best of the best in computing).

[snakeling]

I don't know of any good embroidery charting software for Linux
Kstitch, though admittedly I've only used it once, and I don't know how it compares to the alternatives :)

[jana]

This is a pretty meaningless debate, IMO. Linux, Windows, Mac - these are just operative systems and they're good at some things and not so good at others. I don't use just one browser exclusively either - my favorite is Opera, but sometimes I have to switch to Firefox because some web applications don't always work like they're supposed to, and sometimes I use Konqueror because neither Firefox nor Opera get the job done. It's pretty much the same with Linux, Windows, or Mac.

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...

[kareila]

My husband runs X11 on his Mac, which gives him middle-click stuff. :)

When I look for computer games for my son, about half are PC only and half are Mac/PC.

[kareila]

Yes, this what I meant when I said "it begs the question of what is most important to you when choosing an OS."

Especially with advances in modern game consoles and web browsers, I find PC-specific game software more and more superfluous.

[baggyeyes]

I must the odd one out. When I want to play games, I boot up Linux. Tux Racer, Shisen Sho, KPoker, and Maelstrom. I tried the Maelstrom for Mac OSX but it was lousy.

[holyschist]

Oooh! That actually looks pretty good. Most of the embroidery software out there is...not actually great, since it's often focused heavily on cross-stitch and doesn't really allow easy blackwork charting. Or it's super-expensive.

(It wouldn't solve the problem of charting for embroidery machines, but that's a lower priority for me anyway.)

[holyschist]

Yeah, I've heard that about Ubuntu. I'll have to see what happens--my laptop has weird and distressing hardware problems, so I'm not going to make any big computing decisions until I have those fixed or can afford a new computer.

[holyschist]

I thought bash had been ported to Windows?

There is a huge range of stuff out there! Chances are there's some nice command-line alternative to EcoSim and I just haven't bothered to look.

[blnchflr]

This is a pretty meaningless debate
The debated point of the linked article (and my post) is whether it's possible to get by with just Linux, not which OS is best.

[darkemeralds]

I was dual-boot for a couple of weeks on my brand-spankin' new Dell Studio whoop-ass laptop with everything. Vista got buggy and insecure really fast, so I thought I'd try Ubuntu. Loved it. Two weeks later, Vista died altogether ("NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND!!! DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!") and the only thing I could do was stick my shiny new Ubuntu boot disk in and follow instructions, because I'd be damned if I was going to pay money to upgrade to Windows 7 when Vista was such a piece of crap.

*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:

• Audible.com audiobooks (them wot loves DRM does not love opensource)
• BluRay player support (ditto)
• My ATI Radeon Mobility HD3650 graphics accelerator - sad! Ubuntu does not seem to know it's there.

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.

[jana]

Just to be clear, when I said "this is a pretty meaningless debate" I didn't mean it was 'meaningless' to bring this topic up for discussion here. What I meant was is that this guy's question is rather pointless, because he claims in his rant that you're not a 'real' Linux user as long as you're using windows (or mac os x) on the side, for whatever reasons. But in what way does it make you a lesser Linux user just because you boot windows every now and then, or because you also own a Mac? His rant and his question also imply that if you're happy with Linux, you shouldn't be using or needing another one, which basically means that Linux really isn't as good as so many people claim it to be. So, yes, in some way this article is about which OS is best.

[kirana]

That would be casper-rw, sorry. ^^' I call it the persistence file because, well, it creates persistence and allows me to make and saves changes to the OS! ^^ And, also, because I had to figure out why it wasn't showing up on my drive (apparently, Ubuntu 9.04 had a bug in its USB startup disk creator that failed to create the casper-rw file over a certain size).

[yvi]

That was more an example of the kind of thing I do :) It's also a convenience thing - I have tried programming and other things under Windows and they are often so much less convenient there.

[kerravonsen]

Unfortunately, it can be a case of chasing the money: that is, having to use MS-Windows because one's potential customers use MS-Windows.
Curse you Microsoft, and your monopoly!

[kerravonsen]

I suppose it helps that I'm not a gamer. Not for action-games, at least. I prefer puzzle-games, card games, board games... and there's lots of those for Linux.

I've been using Linux since about 1995, dual-boot, and then I realized that I simply wasn't booting into MS-Windows, so I took it off. The last version of MS-Windows I used was Win98.

[kerravonsen]

Gimp is a very strong application these days!
True, but if one is used to Photoshop, one can find Gimp really irritating, because it doesn't do things the same way. Not that I've ever used Photoshop, but I expect I would find Photoshop irritating for the same reason: not what I'm used to.

Macs are supposed to be very good for graphic design.

[blnchflr]

Getting a computer with Vista on it was the reason I got serious about trying out Linux (had run a couple of livecds prior, but my old computer was ooold, with not much hd space or RAM, and having never installed an OS/partitioned before, I was too chicken to try it) - it would crash for realz every 1-2 days, and it took me forever to figure out and download the fix. And even with 2GB RAM, Vista was slow, gahhh. Yeah, don't miss it.

Audible.com audiobooks (them wot loves DRM does not love opensource)
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.

[dragonwolf]

You must not have played with the new Magic Mouse. They said screw the confines of buttons (save the usual, whole-mouse-is-a-button) in general and went with multi-touch with it. It's actually really cool.

[dragonwolf]

There was just no arguing with him (he's still convinced Windows/IE is the best of the best in computing).

*Facepalm* I'm sorry... Have you tried showing him the lawsuits the US leveled at M$ for the anti-competitive behavior that got IE6 even in the market to begin with? Probably won't work, but might be worth a shot... *shrug*

[dragonwolf]

As a Photoshop (from 7 to CS3) to Gimp convert, I somewhat disagree (other people's experience may vary, of course). I actually found Gimp a ton easier to use and more adaptable (and found Photoshop CS3 clunky and bloated in comparison). The biggest issue I've run into is Gimp's lack of layer folders, which can cause issues when getting a complicated PSD from a graphic designer, since all the layers are visible in Gimp.