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

[holyschist]

I exclusively ran Linux (on a Mac!) most of my freshman year of college. 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). Plus I'm sort of hooked on ridiculous time management games. Hey, if I ran exclusively Linux, I'd probably waste less time!

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.

[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 :)

[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.

[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.

[holyschist]

they are often so much less convenient there.

I'm not terribly surprised.

[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.

[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.

[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 :)

[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.)