Linux users! Why Linux?

[Pavilion]

This is a question for Linux users? Why do you like to use Linux? What's making it a unique operating system? I know you can run it on low hardware with no issues, but I mean for everyday use why?

 

I tried to use it, but I had some issues, for example when I want to update some of my devices or gadgets I find that Linux is not suitable at all even mac sometimes ( My Hp printer once needed software upgrade I couldn't do it only in Windows)

 

Thanks

[DrMacintosh]

They do it mostly because they don't want to pay for Windows and don't like how Windows essentially takes away more user control than a certain other consumer OS on the market *cough* 

 

Rarely the point of "compatibility" comes up for programmers who don't want a Mac for one reason or another. Since a Mac can run all the major operating systems (macOS, Windows, and Linux) it would logically be the best platform to develop on, however cost makes most go with Linux. 

[Rainbow Dash]

I was forced to use Linux for programming.

[trag1c]

Once you learn the distro you want you can do tasks at a much faster rate while having an easier time doing so than any other OS out there. Stability is also a big plus. Not once have I had my linux Desktop or Server crash on me.  And being able to download and install an application that has the correct binaries for your processor architecture in one line is pretty f***ing awesome.  Example for Debian based.

sudo apt-get install

Basically the biggest the draw to linux for me is the terminal. It makes life so much easier and makes my workflow much more efficient. 

[STRMfrmXMN]

I had to stop using it as the primary OS on my XPS13 because my school just required too much Windows-only software, however I have an Ubuntu VM I use to do homework if I really need to rid myself of all distractions. I don't even have Google Chrome installed on it cuz I could sign in and a ton of my internet stuff would get in the way of my work.

[t4ils]

1. Package management. Updating literally everything on my computer at once is pretty nice.

2. (Specific for certain distros like Arch Linux) Installing only what I need.

3. Lower resource usage from background tasks/processes.

4. More stable FPS on Valve games (from my experience).

5. More customization than Windows.

[LienusLateTips]

apt-get 

[Egg-Roll]

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M 

 

Plus it loads faster than windows, and weirdly at times run windows better than a physical computer can via VM... (I've played windows only games via VM in Ubuntu, where WINE fails)

[emosun]

i tried linux with an open mind but the community drove me away from trying it any further

As with many things in the world , it's the people that make it bad and not the thing itself.

I've never met a more hateful and terrible community than the resident "linux experts" who we are so fortunate to have graced in our presence. For we are mere peasants for doing literally the same things they do by clicking buttons instead of typing in a command line like it's 1979 all over again. How lucky we are to share a planet with such superior gods...

[Crunchy Dragon]

I like basically all main 3 operating systems. macOS, Windows, Linux.

 

I don't use Linux too often, but I'm working on reviving an Athlon 64 system with it.

[PlayStation 2]

40 minutes ago, t4ils said:

3. Lower resource usage from background tasks/processes.

4. More stable FPS on Valve games (from my experience).

These two I can attest to specifically.

For me, Team Fortress 2 especially seemed to run a little worse but with a significantly smaller range of FPS values there. Most maps on Windows bounce me around from ~50ish to up to 150ish, while from what I remember, Lubuntu shortened that gap a lot.

[handymanshandle]

I'd like to use Linux more but for me, I always find myself having trouble getting steam to work in Ubuntu. I might wanna try Fedora or Debian, I think I had better luck getting it installed there but these were old versions of Fedora and Debian like we're talking Fedora 21 or something like that.

[Linus_torvalds]

On 7/3/2018 at 6:55 PM, DrMacintosh said:

They do it mostly because they don't want to pay for Windows and don't like how Windows essentially takes away more user control than a certain other consumer OS on the market *cough* 

 

Rarely the point of "compatibility" comes up for programmers who don't want a Mac for one reason or another. Since a Mac can run all the major operating systems (macOS, Windows, and Linux) it would logically be the best platform to develop on, however cost makes most go with Linux. 

<removed>

 

<removed> I use linux for 8 years now and i can say that it's much better then any other OSs. It's much more stable, fast, safe, usefull, light, customizable, interesting and so on.

 

Currently i have arch + i3-gaps. It's so light uses only 185 MB RAM on fresh start. It starts up in 10 seconds from power button push to desktop. i3 manages windows so efficently that i use most of the space on my 14" thinkpad. I do not have to manage window sizes myself.

mac with same specs costs 2x more. Also my laptop is business class, it has fingerprint sensor, smart card reader, 3 USB ports, display port, VGA port, Docking port, 2 batteries and 2 M.2 SSD slots + standard 2.5" slot for HDD or SSD. It's still 1.56 KG and slim. If you buy all these dongles for mac, you still would not have storage as much as i can, you will go 3x the price of this laptop and performance will be even worse! Because macOS is much slower then my setup, arch + i3-gaps. Many linux setups can be much faster then macOS or windows.

Edited July 5, 2018 by SansVarnic

[aakopa]

On 7/4/2018 at 2:49 AM, mate_mate91 said:

<removed>

 

<removed>I use linux for 8 years now and i can say that it's much better then any other OSs. It's much more stable, fast, safe, usefull, light, customizable, interesting and so on.

 

Currently i have arch + i3-gaps. It's so light uses only 185 MB RAM on fresh start. It starts up in 10 seconds from power button push to desktop. i3 manages windows so efficently that i use most of the space on my 14" thinkpad. I do not have to manage window sizes myself.

mac with same specs costs 2x more. Also my laptop is business class, it has fingerprint sensor, smart card reader, 3 USB ports, display port, VGA port, Docking port, 2 batteries and 2 M.2 SSD slots + standard 2.5" slot for HDD or SSD. It's still 1.56 KG and slim. If you buy all these dongles for mac, you still would not have storage as much as i can, you will go 3x the price of this laptop and performance will be even worse! Because macOS is much slower then my setup, arch + i3-gaps. Many linux setups can be much faster then macOS or windows.

It's not like thinkpads are any more reasonably priced than macbooks. Nicely specced T480s costs almost as much as macbook pro 13" with similar specs at least here in Finland.

Edited July 5, 2018 by SansVarnic

[AskTJ]

Either programming, debugging hardware or getting files off of drives that may not be working.

[jde3]

10 hours ago, Pavilion said:

This is a question for Linux users? Why do you like to use Linux? What's making it a unique operating system? I know you can run it on low hardware with no issues, but I mean for everyday use why?

 

I tried to use it, but I had some issues, for example when I want to update some of my devices or gadgets I find that Linux is not suitable at all even mac sometimes ( My Hp printer once needed software upgrade I couldn't do it only in Windows)

 

Thanks

The reason why is choice. I "switched" to Linux as my primary desktop before Windows 98 was released.

 

If you REALLY want to use your computer and you really want to make your own custom environment that works the way you want it to then Linux (or FreeBSD) are your only options. There is probably upwards of 50 different desktops to choose from in total. You can control every program you run. You don't like the way this logging daemon runs, change it. You can control every system your computer talks to. You can control the compile time flags for every program for exactly your processor, no one size fits all builds.

 

If you want that power and you want to learn Linux then it's quite easy to do. I recommend the full plunge challenge for people as opposed to dual boot because it's the fastest way. If you dual boot you'll run home to mama when you have a problem and boot the other OS, but if you take the full plunge you'll have to solve it and you'll learn by solving it. So take 30 days, Install Ubuntu and try to survive.. by the end you might just end up liking it.

 

The only other thing I can say is if your learning.. expect everything to be different. Don't get frustrated when something is not "the way you know it should be" because sometimes people have to change things to make them better and the concepts you brought with you from another OS might be whats actually wrong.

 

[Wild Penquin]

Well, it works for what I want to do with my computer best.

 

That is: I like to tinker and sometimes get more in-depth information about how the OS works. There is no limits on how deep you can dwell into the intrernals of the OS; the source is there (and most of it, if not all, is documented once you know how to look for the documentation).

 

Other reasons are simplicity or less labour-intensive software upgrades (i.e., package managers and repositories!). Granted, sometimes getting this or that piece of hardware (or software) can be more bothersome in the beginning, but once everything is set up correctly, upgrading / updating is quite effortless compared to some other OS which does not have central repositories.

 

The few use cases I've needed server-like functionality are handled better by Linux than any other OS for consumers on the market (file storage, remote connection to my home for whatever reason, DTV recording).

 

The reasons above are purely user-experience reasons (I do mostly tinkering / beginner level programming, some casual gaming, and office work on my home computer). But there are other reasons too; I can be nearly 100% sure the OS does not "phone home" behind my back (in other words: better privacy), and it is free. The latter should be read as in it does not cost money, but also as a synonym for software which is licensed with a free license - i.e. open sourced. I can and want to support that software movement, but of course, some users might not want to (or do not see the point).

[Wild Penquin]

14 hours ago, emosun said:

I've never met a more hateful and terrible community than the resident "linux experts" who we are so fortunate to have graced in our presence. For we are mere peasants for doing literally the same things they do by clicking buttons instead of typing in a command line like it's 1979 all over again. How lucky we are to share a planet with such superior gods...

This is not my experience at all. I think the community is quite friendly most of the time (there certainly are some exceptions; see below for one example!).

 

However, there are a few quite large straw men in your reply. First, as a user, you are no ones peasant. You can not possibly benefit anyone by just using something (that you did not pay for). Second, command line is not outdated "like it's 1979 all over again". It is a very good UI - better than GUI in some situation - and these two should not be mutually exclusive but complementing each other. Some kind of command line UI should always be available (and, thankfully, usually is), since it is more failure resistant (i.e. does not require such a complex background system). Computers (software and / or hardware) do break and things are easier to fix from a lower-level interface. Also, command line is always similar (and / or identical on a similar OS) despite a different desktop environment, which is another good reason to prefer it to some other way of doing things; especially when giving instructions how to solve some problem.

 

Software on Linux, including desktop environments, are often developed (for a large part) by volunteers and people on their free time. Also, there is a lot of heterogenity on Linux and desktop interfaces (Kernel and the whole stack in between it and the GUI/DE). This means that not all things can be done as easily as on competing OSes, which are more homogenic and have paid developers that try to make the user experience as fluent as possible for paying customers (I don't mean there are no paid developers on Linux, but none are getting paid/revenue from average home users). All this means: Linux is not for everyone; it is what it is (partly because of reasons above). I'd steer away if you can not use Google, read documentation and use the command line (but: I'd keep my computer-illiterate family members computers running Linux hands down than having them run any other OS, if I need to maintain their computers!).

 

Sometimes the "rudeness" of the community might be because the user is asking something is very basic, already answered in some FAQ or frequently on the forum in question (and it seems that the user is unwilling of unable to use the search). It can be frustrating to answer the same question again and again - but even then it should be remembered to be polite. Also, I've seen some policies I don't agree on - for example, Arch Forums lock "old" threads way too often IMHO (it happens even though the discussion is still relevant, forcing people to begin new threads, and they follow their "time limit", whatever that was again, quite intensively; I can understand the rationale on rolling-release distributions, but sometimes there could be some slack on a case-by-case consideration).

[Mira Yurizaki]

For me, Linux has a few features that's annoying to setup on Windows. It's mostly networking and server related. Granted you can still do these things on Windows, but it's not as user friendly. In other use cases, I threw it on potato hardware to get something decent out of it.

 

Otherwise, the whole philosophy behind Linux is you want to get away from proprietary software as much as possible and make it your own OS so to speak. But making an OS your own takes a lot of know-how.

 

EDIT: I did run into a Tom's Hardware article today about one of their editor's experience: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/switching-from-windows-to-linux,37406.html

[jde3]

2 hours ago, emosun said:

Yeah kinda like that. That perfect balance of superiority complex mixed with condescending tones and lightly hinting that people who know how to use android , ios , mac os , windows , even dos... somehow are too dumb to use linux.

It's a fine craft that only years and years of typing things into a command line can hone in

Sometimes it's easier just to tell a computer what you want it to do without navigating a menu.

 

Consider starting a service:

typing "service apache start"

or

Navigating a gui and several menus to find it in a list, right clicking on it and selecting start? With CLI you'd be done before your mouse got to the startbar.

 

Or maybe formatting a disk:

zpool create tank /devpath

or

again navigating several menus?

 

This isn't even talking about the flexibility | of | pipes.

 

Microsoft knows this as well that is why they finally made powershell. And there are Windows experts out there and they deserve respect because.. that shit is fucking hard. (And that is coming from someone with over 20 years of Unix experience)

[twistedapple89]

21 hours ago, jde3 said:

The reason why is choice. I "switched" to Linux as my primary desktop before Windows 98 was released.

 

If you REALLY want to use your computer and you really want to make your own custom environment that works the way you want it to then Linux (or FreeBSD) are your only options. There is probably upwards of 50 different desktops to choose from in total. You can control every program you run. You don't like the way this logging daemon runs, change it. You can control every system your computer talks to. You can control the compile time flags for every program for exactly your processor, no one size fits all builds.

 

If you want that power and you want to learn Linux then it's quite easy to do. I recommend the full plunge challenge for people as opposed to dual boot because it's the fastest way. If you dual boot you'll run home to mama when you have a problem and boot the other OS, but if you take the full plunge you'll have to solve it and you'll learn by solving it. So take 30 days, Install Ubuntu and try to survive.. by the end you might just end up liking it.

 

The only other thing I can say is if your learning.. expect everything to be different. Don't get frustrated when something is not "the way you know it should be" because sometimes people have to change things to make them better and the concepts you brought with you from another OS might be whats actually wrong.

 

This right here, a thousand times yes. I applaud your driving force to a rather skepitcal user going over to a new OS, you are the kind of person I would ask certain questions about the OS and it's deeper functions if no answer could be found or for only a teaching moment. 

[SansVarnic]

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I have removed the derailing commentary and the personal insults.

This is not the place to get into petty arguments. 

Continuation of said derailing comments will result in disciplinary action against those involved.

Quote

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[Giganthrax]

I've been told Tails OS and some other Linux distros are a great way to stay anonymous on the internet.

 

I don't really do anything online that would require me to stay anonymous, of course, but it's nice to know I have the option and the know-how to do it if I wanted.

 

EDIT: I'm also guessing Linux is the better/lighter OS for people who don't play games and only really need a media machine to watch movies, surf the net, listen to music, etc. 

[SansVarnic]

SInce I have been invovled with pcs 'in the way back' I have always seen OS's to be like this;

 

DOS: CLean and user friendly for the time.

Windows: The common user friendly interface. (continues to be today)

Linux (and distro's): The "programmers" and server OS.

Apple and now Mac OS: the serious media and sound "power user" interface. But this seems to be changing oer the last 5-10 years with improved windows features and programs designed for it. But i cannot say from experience.

Windows Server: never really used it but the more feature rich server interface.

Chrome OS: not worth mentioning other than saying this.

Android: ok at first with potential then google ruined it and slowly is now fairly decent.

 

Now I am not saying this as fact but this how I have perceived them over the years.

[wasab]

Because Microsoft wants to sell your soul to Satan and Apple wants to turn its users into mindless zombies. 

 

Linux means total control and ABLSOUTE POWAH!!!! You can develop on it, game on it, and hack with it(looking at you Kali fans).