Why use Linux?
I have been using computers since the early 80s and bought an XT as my first ‘real’ computer. It used Microsoft and as with many other people I enjoyed the highs and lows of new releases. I still have nightmares about Windows ME.
I think that they should have issued a t-shirt for the survivors of that millennium disaster. I should be grateful to Bill though as that experience set me on the path to find something better as I began to realize that rebooting the thing every time I moved the mouse was not doing my sanity any good.
I had heard about this Linux upstart in various magazines, most of which often included a Linux version on a disk for people to try. So I did. I started with Red Hat and couldn’t get the screen to work, at all. Found a version of Debian on another disk and gave that a go. Success, the screen was up and covered in loads of stuff, most of which I didn’t understand. As with most things I try my leaning curve suddenly became epic, but I was driven and fascinated.
Once I began to understand the philosophy and workings of Linux things became a lot easier. I tried things, broke things, fixed it and got stuff to work. Through a few different distributions (Distros – variations of Linux to suit your own wants and needs) I settled on SUSE around the 9.1 release. It has has morphed a few times and is now openSUSE, but has been my primary (95%) operating system for 14 years.
Why? That was the original question.
It’s free: Head over to DistroWatch and there is list of the top 100 Linux distros, for whatever you need them to do all free for download.
It’s safer: There are arguments that this is more about market share but I disagree.
The source code is freely available for anyone to look at and the Linux community is fast and nimble at fixing anything that may be an issue. Also it is much harder to infect a Linux system simply because how it works.
It’s stable: I don’t even have to reboot to do updates. I have a LINUX server that has been running constantly for about 30 months and it has never missed a beat.
Possibilities: There are Linux equivalents for almost every Windows application and, with very few exceptions, they are free as well.
I could continue this list for another few pages but in the end it comes down to ‘because it is better’. Linux does everything I want, when I want without fuss or breakdowns. Which is exactly what I want so I can concentrate on what I enjoy, which is my writing.
Thinking of changing to a better operating system? I am happy to try and help. The least I can do is point you in the right direction.
