Every now and then I make a personal acquaintance with somebody who's never seen Linux, but has heard of it. They want to know what it's like and should they try it. I always find myself making the same speech, and I figure lots of other Linux users do too. So here is my canonical About Linux speech. Feel free to clip and save so you have it all in one place for you to point to:
First off, even as a die-hard Technology Freedom paladin, I always tell people that Linux is not for everyone. Specifically, if all you use a computer for is to surf the web and play games - in other words, if a computer is nothing to you but an entertainment device - , Linux won't make much of a difference to you and in the case of games may be a headache; and in fact I should wonder why you bother to own a computer at all when a nice gaming console and a cell phone will provide all the functionality, none of the headache, and be less expensive.
You will most likely have difficulty with Linux if you are below the age of 25 or so (as of 2007). This is "Generation Microsoft" Ω, which was born and raised under the monopoly and has known nothing else. If you've never used anything but Microsoft, you're going to come to a computer with a bunch of preconceived falsehoods that are going to get in your way. And the truth is that Microsoft actually came very late to the operating system game; they were originally a programming language company who kind of scoffed at the idea of a graphical user interface and selling an operating system as a product. Apple, Unix, IBM, Xerox, Commodore/Amiga, and countless others were already well established in computers and doing nicely before Bill Gates even showed up on the scene.
Linux is based on Unix, and so it behaves like Unix. If you had exposure to computers before your first copy of Microsoft Windows, you will find it easier to understand Unix systems. Unix, as time and experience has shown, is really the right way for a computer to function. Different from Microsoft, Apple's OS X system runs a Unix implementation under the surface, Sun's Solaris is a Unix variant, BSD is another Unix variant (and currently exactly twice Linux's age!), and in fact Linux and other Unix variants have become standard in every computer device, from servers to cell phones. The only exception is the home and cubicle-office desktop machine. We already knew what we were doing before some uppity millionaire came along and tried to take over the market. So, all of your complaints about how Unix isn't "just like Windows" will be a waste of time. Unix is Unix for very good reasons. It is Microsoft which is the nonconformist.
To get into Linux, your very best option is to obtain a bootable live CD. You can download them free all day and burn them to CD, or get them from the back of a book about Linux, or have a friend share one with you. A live CD treats your CD-ROM drive (and RAM memory) as if it were the whole computer, and so you can boot Linux and run it as if it were installed, without touching your hard drive and without disturbing your current system and its files. The beauty of this is that you can run risk-free! You can boot up the CD and play around with it at your leisure, without any pressure to learn it all right away.
Probably your biggest difficulty will be getting to grips with the huge variety of GNU/Linux software. If you feel overwhelmed in a Linux environment, it is because you have ten times as much operating system as what you're used to. It is, after all, free, and licensed to the public so that anybody can rewrite it, update it, put their personal stamp on it, re-release it, and port it to other platforms. There is no such thing as abandonware in the Linux world, there are just projects currently lacking an active developer. This has a side benefit: learn a core Unix program today, and forty years from now it will still be relevant. The Linux learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
Today's Linux systems have evolved through the free software process into the most sophisticated software around. The day is gone when Linux was "for geeks only" - today there are beginner distros which go to great lengths to hide ugly command lines and system driver tweaking from your notice, contrary to what some FUD-sayers would have you believe. If at all possible, find a nearby person (as opposed to somebody you know through the Internet), to sit down and tutor you through a lesson or two about the system. It's amazing how much one-on-one experience helps in learning a system.
Another thing that you will need to get used to: GNU, Linux, BSD, and other free systems are based on the ideal of absolute computing liberty. So the system is designed not just to be used, but to be molded by anybody. Compilers and interpreters are everywhere; there's a programming language every two feet. Configurations are done in plain text files, source code is open and generously documented, and there are buttons and switches all over of which you will only have the faintest idea how to use.
The system is open for you to explore endlessly, like a car with the engine exposed. So remember that even though it isn't geek-required, it is very, very geek-friendly. This also means that if you have a problem, the chances are good that somebody, somewhere else has had the same problem and already found a solution. You don't have to be a programmer to run Linux, but you will find yourself rubbing elbows with a lot of programmers in the Linux community. This is the effect of the idea of technology freedom, erasing the line between user and developer, between owner and customer, and between newbie and engineer. Try to not see this as being intimidating, but rather as complimenting your intelligence instead of insulting it.
Lastly, give yourself a chance. I can't count the number of people I've met who have said that they were computer-illiterate, until they had a chance to explore computers and discovered that they really weren't dumb about technology after all! So take your time, explore the system, sample a few different flavors of Linux, and read as much as you can about it. There's no way you can learn it over night; and there's no reason you - the average person - cannot learn it. The Big Secret that proprietary software monopolies don't want you to know is that computers are actually very simple. All they are made from is circuits with electricity going through them, set up in logic gates. The software is just what we run through the circuits to try to make them do something useful.
This is the new way that we, the free people, can handle our technology. And whether by GNU, Linux, BSD, Solaris, or tomorrow's Next Big Thing, it will be the way of the future.
Ω: As a couple of comments have pointed out, the age-limit thing is an arbitrary guess on my part. I say it's likely, but it isn't always true. Grade-school-aged children, for instance, also have zero trouble picking up Linux. My kids have Linux at home and get exposed to Microsoft and Apple at school. To them, they're all just different computer systems, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm still groping with the root causes. The generation thing is just the closest thing to a pattern I've seen.
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They surf the web, play music CD's, manage photos from their digital cameras and burn them onto DVD, use Skype, IRC, word processing, spreadsheets, produce CD/DVD labels, play games etc., all with little help and some they've discovered on their own.
Try getting even 50 year old guys schooled in mainframes and SPARC systems to use a Linux box, on a PC, Windows is all they can manage.
Just one small quibble: people under 25 are the /best/ people to try Linux: Not only are they the future (so we have to get them onboard if Linux is to move forward) they're also the most adaptable group. Half the battle is simply remembering the mantra that "Microsoft is not the be-all and end-all of computing".
Yeah, I might have been off on that one. But it is easier to remember that Microsoft isn't the be-all, end-all of computing if, for instance, you remember the first time you saw Windows and your first response was "Look! They're trying to copy the MacIntosh!"
Like the menus on Suse 10.2, it says ' Word processor ' in big letters and Open office writer in small, ' Web browser ' big - Konqueror small. You get the idea.
I liked most of your article, but young people are the most adaptive ones so they're actually the best at learning Linux, if they only want to.
I've been trying to install linux, on average once or twice a year, since about 1999. Every time, I've given up in frustration, because it seems that I have to do things like muck around in textfiles to get my monitor to work correctly, actually interact with messageboards (instead of being able to figure it out on my own unless I actually want to read ALL of the manpages straight through in the hopes that one of those weirdly-named things will do what I want, assuming I can understand what's being told to me), and in so doing, make sure that I have a completely separate, working computer just to get onto the net to make these inquiries. Supposedly Google is my friend, but usually I just end up with a lot of gibberish results, or, at best, other people asking the same questions.
Often, I don't even know how to phrase the inquiry. For example, on one memorable occasion I was trying to figure out how to get a directory listing to pause. Okay, well, under MS-DOS, you'd type "dir /p." So I figured "ls" would have some similar switch. Nope. After several HOURS of searching, I discovered that instead, you "pipe" the output of "ls" through "more." Which is definitely a cool way of doing things, but I'd only have known this if it had, for some reason, occurred to me to read the man pages for "more." As it so happens, I stumbled across the answer by accident. This is a better way of doing things?
I'm in my thirties and I've been using computers quite heavily since about 1985. I find linux (well, unix generally) to be obviously very powerful, but also obviously anachronistic. I mean, I once spent an entire weekend trying to figure out partitioning. Is there some real need to have /var and /opt or /wtf on a separate partition? Is there a good reason I can't just split off a swap partition and make everything else one other partition? These things make no obvious sense.
I really want to use linux. But I want to get my work done more. I really haven't had much pleasure interacting with linux users, either - I usually get breathtakingly smug remarks about how inferior Windows is and how inferior I must be for using it, which tends to be somewhat discouraging. And yeah, the philosophy behind unix is good, but again, I have stuff I need to accomplish, and really, I don't want to spend another weekend flinging increasingly-weird search strings into Google only to discover that the Magical Weirdly-Named Command to do what I need is indeed a beautiful solution, but also a completely nonobvious one.
I can't speak for anyone else, but that's why I always eventually give up.
First off, I'd like to thank you for your *very* fair and non-judgmental assessment of Linux. At least you're being cool about it, instead of storming at the community.
In your case and with what you describe, I'll say that maybe (that's a very small 'maybe') you and Linux just aren't cut out for each other. That doesn't say that there's anything wrong with you or Linux, nor that I'm even right about that, I'm just putting a suggestion there. I don't think even the most hardcore zealot would insist that it's the perfect solution for everybody. Some people are just too busy, with too much work/family responsibility, for instance.
That said: I'm a big, fat pot calling a kettle black if I'm going to lay it on other people for running down Windows, But I'm sorry to hear that people imply that it's your fault for being stuck with it. The next time that happens, try firing back, "Well, Microsoft is a monopoly, as convicted by the government, and I just found out about Linux - what was I supposed to do?"
Now with your "dir /p" example, try to imagine it from the other direction: if you came to DOS from Bash (the most common shell in Linux), you'd be in Windows forums asking "how do I do 'ls | less' in Windows?" and being just as frustrated. Me, I almost forget about that, because (a) most directories in my home directory aren't that big, since I split them up into neatly categorized subfolders, and (b) I'm usually using a terminal, so I just mouse-scroll up when the content blows by on the screen.
As for the partition scheme, there *is* no reason why everything but boot and swap can't be on one partition. Here's my Slackware setup:
/dev/hda1 * 1 9 72261 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 10 140 1052257+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 141 1550 11325825 83 Linux
"boot" (/dev/hda1) needs it's own partition because that's the boot partition that computers have to read from. "swap" (/dev/hda2) needs it's own partition because it's just back-up memory, like RAM. The rest, home and all, can be chucked right on a main "/" (/dev/hda3) partition. But I've seen systems like Mandriva split it up into half a dozen partitions. There is no Earthly reason that I can fathom for doing that. But if you want to dual-boot Windows and Linux from the same disk, that's a whole other kind of Hell. I would just install two hard drives in that case. Let Linux run from /dev/hdb1..2..3 , leave Windows happy and unknowing, and be done with it.
NOTE: Well, OK, there is a reason. but it's a very tiny, geeky, perfectionist reason. I'm sure if you're an Uber-Geek, it will drive you bonkers to know that the folder with the shortest-lived files, /var, will be sharing a partition with the longest-lived files like /bin. Go ahead and partition everything separate if you will lose sleep at night worrying about that 0.0003 microsecond efficiency hit. But for new people and normal use, there's no real reason not to keep everything on one root blob.
My advice: grab a beginner-friendly live CD. Knoppix, Mepis, Damn Small Linux, and Ubuntu all fit in this category. Don't worry about installing Linux until you've had time to become more comfortable with it. Just run the live CD, and if you need to save a file copy it to floppy or thumb drive. This way you still can have Windows on your machine and learn Linux at your own pace.
Second idea: get a nice, fat book. Google only gets you so far; my first Linux was Rad Hat 5, and I got it by checking the "Red Hat Linux Bible" book out of the library and it came with the install disks.
Finally, check through my documentation guide. Yes, Unix is its own language, and a damn foreign one at that! To this day, I'm a little cranky about the non-standard docs. It would be so much easier if all the documentation was in ONE PLACE - right there, instead of it being all "man ls" and "info whatis" and "Lispdoc.pdf" something else. But anyway, that will (hopefully) help a little.
By the way, I've been into free software almost since day one (even used it in my Windows days), and just this month discovered "lshw", a program that lists your whole hardware setup - useful for diagnosing hardware issues by making the computer tell you everything it knows about every device. And it's not installed in every system, so sometimes you have to go get it. My response upon stumbling on it: "Why didn't somebody tell me about this and why isn't it more discoverable!?!" Just an example: we're all still learning!
One more thing, I know it's a cliche, but a good source for these jargon terms we all throw around is The Jargon File. Whenever you hear one of us slinging around a word like "tarball", as if the whole world knew what it meant, check for its definition there (in fact, the Jargon file makes for some entertaining reading!)
Finally, our book-of-the-month club selection (heh!) Neal Stephenson's novel-essay. This talks about the whole wide world (at time of writing) of computers, Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS and all, and has some deep Zen which may help explain Linux culture a little. In fact, this essay will make you a better computer user no matter what system you use.
Good luck! Drop by and ask if you get stuck with something.
I guess to some extent, I see that linux documentation tends to be geared either toward extreme beginners ("this is a keyboard..." or people who already know what they're doing and are just looking for a few pointers on the details ("and select this setting when you recompile your kernel..."), with very little in between. (There are books, I guess, but those aren't so easily searchable.) And of course, there is no such thing as a group that doesn't have jerks in it, but being unlucky in happening across them can run one's enthusiasm pretty quickly.
I really am impressed with the way linux does things, y'see. I also get frustrated when I know something ought to work but I can't figure out how.
And by the way, I did bookmark your documentation guide for future perusal - I've looked at Windows Vista and concluded that I'd honestly rather use a typewriter, so I'm going to give linux another shot (I've recently acquired the latest version of Ubuntu). So I expect that'll be useful. (I originally found your site at the very-helpful article explaining that the spaces in my file names are going to cause me a major headache if I don't correct them - which is nice to know ahead of time for once!)
Also, yours is the first straight answer I've encountered about partitioning. Thank you!
I hope some of my remarks may help shed light on why there may be some reluctance by at least some individuals to adopt linux or to move away from Windows. I honestly think a lot of it is that many people just don't care about freedom - they've been trained not to in so many other areas of their lives, and in the meantime they (as I keep harping, for which I apologize) have stuff they need to do.
Even with the vast security holes, insulting "genuine advantage" nonsense, pervasive spyware, horrible resource overhead, and breathtakingly ugly UI, Windows is (I think) perceived as the path of least resistance. Not just because it comes on the computer, but also because hey, mostly stuff can be made to work just by clicking on things. I tried Solaris once, and was quite simply unable to get it to recognize my USB flash media, for example, whereas I can just stick it into a Windows box and it shows up with no further input. On the other hand, I actually destroyed a USB flash stick trying to repartition it to get rid of some stupid preinstalled software that came on it, because Windows just won't do it and doesn't much care, either (it's even a recognized limitation, as it turns out!). But if you never encounter a need that can't be met by clicking on an icon, you'll never see that learning about such elegant and powerful ideas as "pipes" have any advantage at all.
I'm babbling. Sorry.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to me. And thanks for being a reminder that most linux users aren't jerks, and that I've probably just been unlucky in who I've met in the past. And for posting those guides...
Perhaps as you go along, you could start a blog yourself. I always say, "When somebody teaches it to you, you only learn it halfway. When you teach it to somebody else, you learn it all the way."
Besides, a blog is a great place to yell for help from when you get stuck. Some of the most valuable gems I know, came from others submitting comments here. If you decide to, let me know here so I can add you to the blog roll to the right.
And don't worry about the jerks. I'm spanking a group of them right now.
Sadly, I used to have a blog. However... freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of speaking. And, as many have found out the hard way (I try to learn from others' mistakes if possible), sometimes it is one's best interests not to have a public profile of that sort. Even if all one says are objectively verifiable things (which is unlikely at the best of times), not all employers appreciate this. My employer was okay with it, but I don't work in a technical field anymore, and I can easily see a future employer doing a Google search and saying, "ooo, do we want someone with actual opinions on our staff?"
Douglas Adams once wrote that discretion is the better part of valor, and cowardice is the better part of discretion. This is not the beautiful future I was promised, but hey, I'm not the first person to observe that flying cars have not yet experienced much in the way of market penetration. Sigh.
I do appreciate your offer. I'm scheduling my next attempted installation for a couple of weekends from now (I'm planning ahead and coughing up the money for a completely separate hard drive to impose an absolute limit on how much I can screw myself up)... and I'd be happy to keep a journal of how it goes, if such a thing might be of perhaps forensic interest to you. If a better mind than mine could make use of my problems to help others make this conversion (or, being selfish, help me...), I'd be happy to contribute them.
Again, thank you. Seriously, I lack the words to express how much better you've made me feel about this project...
