[svlug] Why do you guys Linux so much ?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 06:11:49PM -0500, Tri Huynh wrote:
> I agree that Linux is best for
> software development, for bright people have brain or time or both. But for
> average Joe, it is hard to use. My wife can't use it. She wants YIM with
> voice/webcam so she can keep in touch with friends and relatives overseas. I
> can't do it except running VMWARE hosting Windows on Linux and run YIM
> inside it, but that's too much.

Well, like I said, I very quickly and easily put together a Linux system
for my father (Debian and KDE 3.5.0 at the time).  His only other computer
was a Mac running OS 7.5 that, when he first tried using it, lifted the
mouse up off of the desk. :)  He was 69 years old when I set up his Linux
box, and he chugged along happily with it for a few years, using it to
write letters, go online, book cruise reservations, etc.  That says a lot
about the ease-of-use of the Linux desktop these days, I think.

(I recently walked him through the installation of some software for Windows
on his more-recently-aquired system, and it was insanely confusing!)

My wife is a far more artsy type than I -- majored in linguistics
(a socialinguist, not a computational linguist), and can write and draw
circles around me (no pun intended).  She currently uses Kubuntu as her
desktop on her Thinkpad.  She does have the occasional annoyance... sound
doesn't work due to an ALSA bug, so I have her set up to boot an older kernel,
for example.

Of course, if she had a Windows box and it suddenly had sound problems,
I wouldn't even know where to _start_.  (The other thing I like about
Linux... despite the occasional flamewar, the user groups are all
full of helpful, friendly, knowledgable people.)


> I think Linux doesn't have much virus because of their own flaw. It is
> harder to  write a virus to run on all Linux platform because for different
> versions of Linux the libaddr is different.

I believe it's really more a matter of it being a more sane and secure
environment.  Remember, Windows is really just a bunch of GUI crap
tossed on top of MSDOS, for the most part.

(Hell, I remember using my Linux PDA to beam some file to a friend's
Windows CE PDA.  It saved it, by default, to the PDA's "C:\Windows\" folder.
This folder was chock full of DLLs, EXEs, BMPs, WAVs, and pretty much
everything else the operating system included... all in one big flat
folder.  This was the DEFAULT PLACE it was downloading IR-beamed files! WTF?!)

I think in the end, he couldn't even open it.  (It was an MP3 or JPG or
something... this was a few years ago now, admittedly.)  I was just shocked
to see the same crap I witnessed in Windows 3.1, but going on 10 years later!


Then there's OS X.  But... Jobs is a bit heavy handed on the DRM,
and I don't exactly have a pot of gold in my back yard to buy all their
hardware and OS.  Yikes, that stuff's expensive! :^(

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/