Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.


Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.


I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.

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