Linux users! Why Linux?

[newgeneral10]

On 7/3/2018 at 8:00 PM, trag1c said:

Not once have I had my linux Desktop or Server crash on me.

You just aren't trying hard enough

[newgeneral10]

On 7/4/2018 at 12:26 AM, pinksnowbirdie said:

but these were old versions of Fedora

Fedora has gotten a lot easier to install. Especially with Fedora 28, since they've loosened up on the whole DRM thing

[Ashleyyyy]

3 hours ago, newgeneral10 said:

Fedora has gotten a lot easier to install. Especially with Fedora 28, since they've loosened up on the whole DRM thing

i've had Fedora brick on me, to the point where i couldn't install software. that happened after running updates. whenever i tried installing stuff i would get errors. 

 

i expect bricking after updating from Windows, not Linux. 

[Ithanul]

Well, going into my fourth year using Linux as my daily.  Basically the reasons I use it, it pretty much works and only updates when I tell it to update.  Also, I just like the Mate desktop, nice and simple.  Since I don't really game much anymore, the Linux OS works pretty darn well for me (though surprisingly the games I play the once and a while work in it - except for Civ 5...it likes to be a pain in the rear).  Also, another reason, I have to work on an off-shoot RHEL Linux at work, so becoming more familiar with how certain branches of Linux work translates very well over to my job (along with the fact I have to mess with other devices that run flavors of Linux OSes).

 

4 hours ago, newgeneral10 said:

You just aren't trying hard enough

No kidding.

I seen a SUSE in a VM break to where it was not booting up correctly.  Lucky enough, out of all the chaps there, I figured out how to fix it (most of the others barely touch Linux distros).  Don't help that the server stack is mostly built with scripts the programmers do up and the documentation is crap for troubleshooting.

[nanaki]

On 7/3/2018 at 7:55 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. 

Oh i don't know about that least not in my case. I my self have a windows system and a linux one. I like windows for gaming 3d art and the like and linux for the ability to customize and make it my os. I log in to my laptop and it is my laptop through and through it is EXACTLY how i want it not how apple or MS wants it. Is there any thing wrong with a company wanting to keep their os the same configuration more or less on every machine? Nope nothing wrong with that at all. They have to support that os after all. The closer the OS is to stock the better for them when it comes to support. Some times they go over board and take so much control of the os that it just feels clunky or obtuse. 

[nanaki]

On 7/3/2018 at 8:00 PM, trag1c said:

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. 

Oh no doubt hell now it is sudo apt install you can leave off get

Now lets go a step further 

lets say your installing linux on new machines say 10 or 20 of them you can make a small bash script with apt install and apt remove commands strung together to install the same software on each machine and remove stuff you wont need fro each all automated. 

[AngryBeaver]

On 7/5/2018 at 9:29 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

Quote

You can develop on it, game on it, and hack with it(looking at you Kali fans).

You can with any other OS too. Otherwise they wouldn't be useable 

This isn't exactly true. When it comes to hacking Linux is the only real choice. Windows has too many limiters and safe gaurds built in mostly in the way of trying to optimize network traffic that make it useless for some pen-testing functions.

 

That is why linux is often used in those scenarios and why things like Kali exist. You can just toss it on a USB and boot it up to give'em hell.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

This isn't exactly true. When it comes to hacking Linux is the only real choice. Windows has too many limiters and safe gaurds built in mostly in the way of trying to optimize network traffic that make it useless for some pen-testing functions.

 

That is why linux is often used in those scenarios and why things like Kali exist. You can just toss it on a USB and boot it up to give'em hell.

The last part sure. But saying "you can develop on it, game on it" like it's special is egregious in and of itself.

[AngryBeaver]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The last part sure. But saying "you can develop on it, game on it" like it's special is egregious in and of itself.

Ya, but he didn't say you can't do those things on windows. So I didn't really take much note. I mean we all know gaming on linux is possible, but the performance and game support of it still isn't the best.

 

I personally only use linux for a handful of things. Servers and pentesting. Outside of those 2 things it holds little to no value to me... I just prefer Microsoft. Heck, truth be known I prefer Microsoft server offerings too, but if I am just trying to spin up a tiny VPS or want to run a ton of VM's on a machine with limited resources... then I can do that easier with linux instead of fighting with windows core (to which I just don't do enough to be efficient at)

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Ya, but he didn't say you can't do those things on windows. So I didn't really take much note. I mean we all know gaming on linux is possible, but the performance and game support of it still isn't the best.

 

I personally only use linux for a handful of things. Servers and pentesting. Outside of those 2 things it holds little to no value to me... I just prefer Microsoft. Heck, truth be known I prefer Microsoft server offerings too, but if I am just trying to spin up a tiny VPS or want to run a ton of VM's on a machine with limited resources... then I can do that easier with linux instead of fighting with windows core (to which I just don't do enough to be efficient at)

Which I would agree there, it's easier to do things in one OS over the other. But I'm at a point in my life where if say configuring an OS is a month-long project, it's a waste of my time.

[AngryBeaver]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Which I would agree there, it's easier to do things in one OS over the other. But I'm at a point in my life where if say configuring an OS is a month-long project, it's a waste of my time.

Month-long? I am at the point if it is going to take me more than a few days I am done with it.

[Mira Yurizaki]

46 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Month-long? I am at the point if it is going to take me more than a few days I am done with it.

I'm giving an example.

[vorticalbox]

So seeing as my first reply that docker doesn't run well in windows got deleted I guess I'll expand a bit more.

Where I work we create a financial CRM most of these services run in AWS fargate AKA dockers. Now docker under windows is slow.  A 2 min build time on my Linux laptop will take colleges 10 + to build on the same laptop. I got to the point where development was being slowed to a crawl waiting for it to build and all windows users now ssh into a Linux server to build docker images.

I have since expanded my docker knowledge so now we use pm2 and volumes to restart the process inside docker when we make changes to the source.

 

Another reason I use Linux is that I can install things from the terminal I have created a setup script that installs all our development tools so I can set up a laptop ready for use faster than a windows machine.

Using the terminal all the time also helps when you need to exec into a running container to debug what is going on.

[linuxgod]

On 24/07/2018 at 12:11 AM, M.Yurizaki said:

Which I would agree there, it's easier to do things in one OS over the other. But I'm at a point in my life where if say configuring an OS is a month-long project, it's a waste of my time.

Install Debian (with XFCE or LDXE) or Lubuntu and no OS configuration outside of personal preferences are required and then backup /etc/ and your ~/.config folder and you will be able to transfer your setup anywhere.

 

Now to why I used Linux, for me it's security, privacy and usability. Security and privacy are good features, all operating systems that use the Linux Kernel provide the source code for their userland and packages and it all is audited be the community so you as the user can know malicious code is not being out onto your computer (I've always said windows is a virus). Linux at its base is much more secure due to simplification and has a lot of options to be made more secure through hardened kernels, compiling of packages, containers and other various things. It's a good feeling to be able to use a OS and the only information that leaves is the infor I want to leave.

 

Now the usability part, believe it or not outside of a few scenarios (games and movie development) two things I am not interested in except for playing old games like thief and Deus ex. Linux is much more easy to use, file management with wildcards allow me to only delete .jpg with "rm *.jpg" or "rm 2018-*.jpg" if I want all my 2018 photos deleted. Everything is a file, configuration of anything is through a text file so instead of using a GUI I can just "sudo vim /etc/resolv.conf' and add a DNS server. Command piping is useful, I can convert a file to base64, compress it and send it to a server in al one command. "base64 file.txt | tar -zcvf | netcat 234.55.67.248 34" and then receive the file on the other end "netcat -l 34 | tar -zcvf | base64 -d > file.txt

 

There are 1000 other things I can list but if you are not playing the latest titles or developing videos then Linux is the more easy and logical choice.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

What a question.

 

Faster in operation, i.e loading of applications

No spyware; telemetry, analytic

No force applications; I ran script removed the windows store etc.. and the time date was linked to the Microsoft account WTF

No drive locking for dual boot; the default fast lock all drives to read only to any other OS in windows

True customization, Icons, themes, desktop environments, scripts to create night mode etc...

Any app can be installed one click through a package manager

Runs on little memory, Arch Cinnamon is 512 to 750mb, Windows is 1.6GB minimum

Free stuff..  literally I recreated my windows OS not Gaming with free applications, the open source applications have caught up.  E.g. LibreOffice is as good as Office now

[Ashleyyyy]

13 hours ago, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

LibreOffice is as good as Office now

i don't think that's true. i still have some issues with it when exporting .docx documents. 

[nanaki]

On 7/19/2018 at 3:42 PM, newgeneral10 said:

You just aren't trying hard enough

I speak from experience here if you try hard enough you will crash linux allot lol

 

I would say that yeh it is harder to crash it than windows by a bit. But any usable os will crash and any usable os will lack security in some area or to some degree.

Windows can have the pass word nuked by a boot cd and give access in most cases and apple can have it made to think it is a new computer and never been set up other than the fact it has and has data on it. 1 rm command (remove) to remove a file that basically says set up done and apple comps will let you re make the pass word for the users and create another user with admin rights. There are ways to do similar to linux. I like the look of mac os lets face it folks it is gorgeous. But i hate how it works on a mac book etc. Now on a pc aka hackintosh i can stand to use it . I use to have my windows machine set up to look like osx forget the sub ver now but i loved how it looked even though t was not friendly on resource use lol. 

 

Why do i prefer linux again simple i can make the os mine and mine alone 

 

I just got eve online running silky smooth on linux mint 19 using the lutris program etc mentioned on linus channel Im loving it performance is at least as good as on windows 10 maybe a bit smoother. 

[nanaki]

18 hours ago, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

What a question.

 

1 Faster in operation, i.e loading of applications

2 No spyware; telemetry, analytic

3 No force applications; I ran script removed the windows store etc.. and the time date was linked to the Microsoft account WTF

No drive locking for dual boot; the default fast lock all drives to read only to any other OS in windows

4 True customization, Icons, themes, desktop environments, scripts to create night mode etc...

5 Any app can be installed one click through a package manager

6 Runs on little memory, Arch Cinnamon is 512 to 750mb, Windows is 1.6GB minimum

Free stuff..  literally I recreated my windows OS not Gaming with free applications, the open source applications have caught up.  E.g. LibreOffice is as good as Office now

1 Mostly true when all things are equal. EG open office on windows v open office on linux gimp windows gimp linux etc

2 again mostly true. the old and easy to remove/ kill fbi warning virus is 100% cross platform. It infects linux ios android windows mac osx etc all. It does so in different ways in windows it can infect browsers and change start page and lock it there or replace your windows gui with its bogus warning. On android it runs as a app that can not be closed and must be nuked in safe mode. OSX ios and also android as well as previously mentioned windows it infects browsers. Viruses have existed for linux for many years decades in fact. let us not forget code red a worm from 2ks. Also many targeted viruses have been made for linux these are targets with regards to targeting a person and their computer. Shell shock heart bleed and others in recent history leveraging flaws decades old.More proepr to say this..

 

Way less effected by spyware viruses etc.

4 agree 100% if your DE or WM does not do what you want change that sucker 1 of the many 100s out there will work for you.

5 most aps are 1 click or command but some require a bit more work. Nothing even a new user will have serious trouble figuring out how to get to work though.

6 mostly true some DEs ca be mem hungry bastards lol

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

9 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

i don't think that's true. i still have some issues with it when exporting .docx documents. 

What do you mean by exporting?   You created in linux use the the docx xml format and had issues or you brought a Windows created document and had issues? 

[nanaki]

18 hours ago, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

What do you mean by exporting?   You created in linux use the the docx xml format and had issues or you brought a Windows created document and had issues? 

I have heard of docx issues before between ms office and open office/libre office in the past and it has been one way or the other. Most just work around it by exporting to a different format both can use and thats it. 

[Dat Guy]

On 25.7.2018 at 8:53 PM, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

No spyware; telemetry, analytic

 

The FSF disagrees.

[DimasRMDO]

I've tried some Linux distros...

Spoiler

• Ubuntu (Personal Favorite)
• Linux Mint
• Debian
• Fedora
• Arch
• BackTrack
• Tails
• Kali
• openSUSE
• CentOS

---

• You have more control (but you can mess up more severely though, root privilege is very powerful).
• Free, saves cost (for PC that's used mainly for watching videos, typing, or just plain server.) & open-source.
• More choices (like Fedora if you want bleeding edge OS or Debian if you want stable but more outdated OS).

On 7/4/2018 at 7:05 AM, t4ils said:

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.

5. More customization than Windows.

Basically these, though in Windows you can use Ninite to update "some" software at once. It's nothing like Linux

---

I've got to admit, sometimes it can be a hassle to use Linux, when something just doesn't work properly. You've got to solve your own problem or browse the web to aid you with troubleshooting. Some distros like Arch comes with nothing but terminal command (just to install the OS), Gentoo even makes you compile source code.

[linuxgod]

On 26/07/2018 at 11:29 PM, nanaki said:

1 Mostly true when all things are equal. EG open office on windows v open office on linux gimp windows gimp linux etc

2 again mostly true. the old and easy to remove/ kill fbi warning virus is 100% cross platform. It infects linux ios android windows mac osx etc all. It does so in different ways in windows it can infect browsers and change start page and lock it there or replace your windows gui with its bogus warning. On android it runs as a app that can not be closed and must be nuked in safe mode. OSX ios and also android as well as previously mentioned windows it infects browsers. Viruses have existed for linux for many years decades in fact. let us not forget code red a worm from 2ks. Also many targeted viruses have been made for linux these are targets with regards to targeting a person and their computer. Shell shock heart bleed and others in recent history leveraging flaws decades old.More proepr to say this..

 

Way less effected by spyware viruses etc.

4 agree 100% if your DE or WM does not do what you want change that sucker 1 of the many 100s out there will work for you.

5 most aps are 1 click or command but some require a bit more work. Nothing even a new user will have serious trouble figuring out how to get to work though.

6 mostly true some DEs ca be mem hungry bastards lol

In regard to the virus issue, yes it has been targeted but you can make your Linux installed as insecure or secure as you want. Alpine Linux was never affected by shellshock because it used busybox and not bash.

 

Linux is a kernel and there have been very few rare exoloits for the kernel it's normally software in the userland which the administrator or user can choose how much security to give up for convince but if you want super security even Linux isn't the best. OpenBSD is the best OS you can use for security.

[nanaki]

2 hours ago, linuxgod said:

In regard to the virus issue, yes it has been targeted but you can make your Linux installed as insecure or secure as you want. Alpine Linux was never affected by shellshock because it used busybox and not bash.

 

Linux is a kernel and there have been very few rare exoloits for the kernel it's normally software in the userland which the administrator or user can choose how much security to give up for convince but if you want super security even Linux isn't the best. OpenBSD is the best OS you can use for security.

Actually there have been 2 i know of found and both were in very very old code. Saying that linux has no issues like this is a bad way to hype linux as a good or great os. The second you do and some one searches out it comes. They use to say that there was 10 000 eyes looking over the linux code and that tended to get bugs found but in reality it is 10 k eyes and hands working with the code and inserting their code good or bad. There was as shown by some of these sec bugs ones that were likely horded for future use when it was a big enough target. And there are likely many more sitting in that code. 

 

In a major for profit software company if something like this happened the bosses would say we need to do a full audit of our code base for this this and this to see what else is hiding. This don't happen in linux as much. There are to many variants. The same thing that makes it atractive to many which is those variants also makes it impossible to find ever major sec flaw.

 

As linux becomes less obscure it will become less secure. But in linux it is also far far easier even for the novice user to mitigate those flaws until a patch is available and that patch will come faster. 

[Xkape]

Personally I use linux for most of my servers as they tend to be extremely lightweight. For gaming, you can't beat Windows, so I don't even try. Unless you have a super beefy system and and can handle a gaming vm of windows on linux.