A follow-up to this comment.
You get to use it, instead of it using you. A Linux system immediately snaps to attention and does your bidding, with no hassle at all. Even when you tell it to do something impossible, it tries to make you happy and only reports back to you upon failure. If you're tired of the computer popping up an "Are you sure?" dialog box in your face, you'll love Linux. Stop and think about it: when the computer makes you tell it everything three and four times before you've convinced it that what you're trying to do is a good idea, isn't the computer really just arguing with you???
It trusts you. Never enter a serial number or an authentication code again! Because the software's free in the first place, it isn't full of booby traps to keep anybody from stealing it. Tired of feeling like a cop is watching you over your shoulder with every mouse click? A Linux system takes it for gospel that it is your computer to do whatever you please, and leaves the police work to the police.
You can have any kind of desktop you want! Go for a familiar interface with KDE, Gnome, and Xfce. Or get Enlightenment and gaze in awe at just how cool it looks. Or go for a performance desktop with a minimalist Blackbox or IceWM. Rid yourself of mouse-dependency with RatPoison, or be 'leet with the Spartan TWM. Get a flexible desktop designed to emulate almost anything with FVWM or go for the cutting edge of graphics capabilities with XGL. With over 50 window managers and desktop environments to choose from, there's a Linux experience that's just right for you.
If you liked tabbed browsing in Firefox, you'll love virtual desktops. Have you ever gotten tired of maximizing one window, doing something, minimizing it, and hunting for the button on the taskbar to bring the next window up? In Linux, you open a program on desktop one, maximize it, and hit a key to go to desktop two and keep another program maximized there, and so on - as many desktops as you want. Never settle for anything less than full screen. And as if that weren't enough, you can also hit another key combo to bring up the console - your desktops are still there, undisturbed - while you can flick back and forth between multiple consoles as well.
Linux gets the job done today! People are always shocked at my low hardware requirements - especially when they find out I work on the computer for a living. It is true that Linux will install and run on just about any kind of toaster you give it, and at that it runs at top efficiency. There is simply no comparison in speed. I can have Firefox with five tabs on desktop one, a word processor open on two, a graphics program on three, a manual open on console two, an Emacs buffer open for notes on console three, and a media player playing a CD on desktop four, and get the whole webpage designed in the time it takes other systems to finish opening a web page. Ram? 256MB. Processor? An AMD Athlon in a K-7 motherboard. Graphics card? Well, as long as I'm not running an OpenGL game like Tux Racer, who says I need one? No lag at all. This is what we mean when we say "a true multi-task system".
Linux is less work. It's really true! Anything is possible from a single mouse-click or a single key-press, if that's what you need. Even the most convoluted set of operations can be done from a typed-in command line, and if it can be done from a command, it can be done from a shell script, and if it can be scripted, the script can be called from a menu item. Everywhere in a Linux system, the effort is there to save you as much motion as possible. Custom key-bindings are everywhere. Menus and interfaces are easily changed. Single-clicks are favored over double-clicks. Even the mouse is programmable. If you're typing, you can hit the tab key in many places and it will complete the command for you. Or hit the up-arrow in a console to recall a previous command, so you don't have to type it again. And for the ultimate labor-free operation, you can tell the cron demon to automatically perform a job at any time you specify, even once an hour, once a week, or once a year on your birthday.
Linux never crashes. Currently, my uptime is 10 days, 4 hours. When I checked that, I had to think: what happened ten days ago? Oh, yes, a big storm here in Iowa which knocked out power. That is one of the only two ways Linux goes down: either a power outage or a hardware failure. The rest of the time, it keeps running no matter what. Even a program freezing isn't enough to take it down; just select 'kill' from the menu and the system will force it to close. Even the X desktop hanging doesn't crash Linux, just hit Ctrl-Alt-backspace to kill the desktop and be in a console, where you can fix the problem.
Package Management is the best way to install new software. If you go with a distro with a sophisticated packaging setup, installing new software is one of the easiest tasks you'll ever do. For instance, in synaptic you can tell it to search for 'editor' and it will pull up every package with 'editor' in the description. Read the package descriptions until you find one that you want to try and click the button next to it. When you're done, tell it to apply the changes and it will automatically find the package online for you, install it, automatically handle all the dependencies, and even enter it into the menu for you. No fuss, no hassle, and it doesn't expect you to pay for it.
Linux compliments your intelligence instead of insulting it. Linux has left behind the "geek-required" attribute years ago; your grandma can run Linux now with only a few pointers. But it will always be "geek-friendly". If you check under the hood, you'll find languages, engines, and tools just waiting to tinker with, and extensive documentation available. Not just worthless documentation on "click the 'save' button to save the file" that explains what you already know as if you were a complete idiot, but enlightening documentation that explains the nuts and bolts of how computers run. A Linux system is a college education in computer science every day you run it.
Comments:
I had to help a friend burn a CD on his Windows XP system recently and the experience really made me appreciate Linux.
But you are right about having more control. I do hate it when I have an app that crashes in Windows and I can't get the system to kill it. kill -9 in Linux works great, and I like having control.
See, this is just what I mean when I say "asstroturfing". To deal with the second paragraph first, the "qualifying statement" is always present: parenthetically claiming Linux usage, and even paying it some half-praise. This is to avoid being accused of an outright troll.
Note that this is appended specifically to a post cheering the merits of Linux which has gotten a lot of links. Asstroturf appended to a post no one will see isn't good trolling practice.
Other FUD elements which are staples of asstroturf comments:
"the outright falsehood" - compiling a program from source is easier on a FOSS system than any other, period, bar none. Even a notoriously tool-poor distro has more to go on than Windows out of the box. I don't know where it's "something you never have to do on Windows"... surely, they don't sell MSVC++ for ornamental purposes? Does the software for other platforms grow on trees?
"the low blow" - configuring a wireless card is only hard on Linux because hardware manufacturers do not release their specs to the open-source community. In many cases Microsoft urges them not to. Attacking Linux for a hardware piece going unsupported is a guaranteed hit.
"the unqualified half-truth" - Yes, KDE and Gnome apps do sometimes fail - when they're brand new released. As subsequent releases work out the final kinks, the apps stabilize. Consider that the class of "KDE and Gnome apps" encompasses hundreds of programs - on average one of which on a given distro is unstable.
"the generalized statement" - installing software on *any* platform can be a pain, and it's been so since the dawn of computers. These statements are often made to sound like this is a problem specific to Linux.
I have thought that it can't always be the case that asstroturfers are hired directly by Microsoft. There are also those with a share of Microsoft stock in their portfolio or 401K plan, there are those who base their livelihood on the Windows platform such as MSCEs. However, it has been proven in court that Microsoft does indeed hire people to pose as impartial parties and post in forums, which is the classic Jargon-file reference definition.
PS: Bonus points if you Google the user-name and check out the comment history. Note the Ubuntu forum postings (like: "Linux on the desktop sucks. Windows is definitely more repairable...") and the IDs on Digg (lots of anti-Linux flames) and Slashdot (pro-Right Wing, discrediting global warming), with many more comments of an inflammatory nature.
Of course, one could always use an alias and post comments to blogs like mine where anonymity is cherished, but that cheats the professional asstroturfer out of payment for that post (how else do they prove it's them?).
I thought I was the only one in the world doing this kind of stuff.
Penguin Pete for President!
Installing software can be easy but when it's not (which happens), it's a pain.
./configure
./make
./make install
....yeah its horrible ;)
