Linux Brain Dump

I’d like to offer a few comments on the conclusions found in Is Linux Really Ready for Simple Users?, an interesting and in depth series of articles on a user making the switch from Windows to Linux. Kim Brebach is a pretty technical guy with a strong emphasis on Windows and he is like many people I think - ready to switch from Windows in order to avoid the train wreck that is Vista. This eight (!) part series follows his travels as he searches for the perfect Linux distro. His final conclusions are interesting and worth commenting on here. So go read it now and then come back. Go ahead, I’ll wait… Done? Okay, open up the last page of the article in another window/tab and let’s see how he does.

• Cost - While it is obvious that Linux is cheaper than Windows at first glance, this article makes the point that for many people, Windows is, in fact, free (or at least few shell out money directly). I for one have never paid for Windows, being a developer who gets them from Microsoft. So I am not sure how much of a Linux selling point it is.
• Security - This is a no brainer, especially given Vista’s amazingly complex, arcane, and annoying UAC.
• Performance - To be honest, I’ve never understood this fascination with fast boot times. Even now that I don’t leave my computers running 24/7, it is something that happens once a day, so complaining about or even noting a 1 minute vs. 2 minute boot time is pointless. Especially given that I boot Linux once and know it will stay up, while I usually have to boot my Windows system a couple times a day. But I do agree that there seems to be little to choose from once it is up and running.
• Optimization - No idea what he is talking about. Not sure what it means to say “My XP system is optimized for speed”, and the link in the paragraph points to an old house for sale. This is something I often read about from people coming to Linux after years of Windows experience. Kim does, at least, touch upon it in the article when he admits that he shouldn’t complain if getting proficient in Linux takes time, as getting proficient in Windows didn’t happen overnight either.
• Resources - Can’t say as I disagree here, although having the dedicated swap space (which is almost never used in a modern Linux with 1gb of RAM) is much nicer than the bloated page swap file in Windows. It is hard to really get worked up about 5gb of hard drive space these days.
• Dual Booting - well, you don’t have to defrag to resize a partition. It helps but isn’t a requirement. I still think most distros could do a better job of hard drive installation.
• Configuring hardware and Updating software - I’m lumping these two together because I only recently had my eyes opened on this. I have reinstalled Windows XP twice in he past month or so and have really missed the “one stop” updating of a good Linux distro. Applications and hardware drivers all work either out of the box and get updated via one interface. Tracking down the myriad hardware drivers to update Windows is much more of a drag than finding the correct video driver under Linux. And at least once you do it in Linux, there’s no more special checks needed. Oh, and he is incorrect in stating that OS X is based on a version of Linux. It’s actually FreeBSD at its core, with a bunch of Apple gunk layered on top.
• No need to reboot - another Windows annoyance I had forgotten about when I made the final move away from Windows in the fall of 2006. Everything you do, from system updates to new applications seems to require a reboot. It just doesn’t happen in Linux. You can always tell advice coming from hardcore Windows people when it comes with the request to reboot afterwards.
• Nothing’s lost when you do - again something I have no idea what he is talking about. Don’t see this on Windows myself.
• Re-installing the OS - another thing I certainly don’t miss from the Windows daze; oops, I mean days. Man, getting a Windows XP installation, even one that has SP2 already on it, takes forever, includes three or four reboots and is just so painful. I love being able to download the very latest in a distro, with minimal updates required.
• Applications - a double edged sword for someone like me, who just loves to dabble in new programs. Making it so easy to get all kinds of them means my hard drive is littered with little or never used applications!
• Windows apps on Linux - I have WINE installed, but have almost never used it. I’ve played a couple of simpler game demos on it, but in general, I just don’t need to run Windows apps any more.
• Migration - a great idea for other distros to follow
• Windows files on Linux - not sure which distros he is talking about, although I guess he did settle on Novell SUSE 10, which maybe comes pre-install with ntfs-3g? For me, I just don’t ever need it. I did install a huge FAT32 partition, but I really find I almost never need to share between dual boots. I only boot into Windows to play games, so almost nothing really needs to get shared.
• Freedom from bloatware - even installing my own Windows leaves me with so many things to uninstall, turn off or get rid of, never mind getting a pre-installed copy for Dell or someone, that even the short visit to Windows makes me crazy.

So his biggest problem was trying to get his Intel graphics card to work in widescreen mode. And he also complains about “too many package managers”, which isn’t a valid criticism in my book. Each distro has their own and there is no need to worry about what the others are doing, as long as it manages to keep things up to date. Get to know your distros package manager and be glad you don’t have to learn a bunch of different update managers!