So, how do you really feel about Linux?

[Dapper Dan]

I love being part of a community that is always happy to help. And although I am no expert I too am able to make a contribution.

Hear, hear!

[MASONTX]

I love linux because it not only works, but it is free. I tinker with older hardware I pick up cheap or free, and with windows, I had to figure out what would work on the old stuff, then pay for a license to put it on. This usually meant that anything more than a few years old wasn't worth messing with. With linux I can find a distro that will work with a PIII 500 and 256 MB ram, and if it won't work with some old proprietary hardware, usually a different distro will. You don't have to constantly open your wallet to buy the latest OS because previous versions were discontinued, and all the software you might want to try is free also.

[jayd512]

Ya know... the price is a great bonus to me. But it's just that. A bonus.
If MicroSoft or Apple had the type of freedom* that Linux does, though... I'd probably look on them with a little less disdain than I do now. And I'd be willing to pay for it, too!
And the fact that it runs on older hardware is just the cherry on top of my sundae




* Read as freedom to change it if I wanna!

[Roxoff]

We had an interesting situation over the weekend that really illustrates why I like Linux over the major commercial rival. In our home we have a Windwos domain (running on my Samba PDC, of course, backed by my CentOS server), and we have desktop and laptops acquired over time. My wife is just starting a new venture in office outsourcing and she's not used her desktop (in the 'computer room' in the cellar) for over a year. We pulled it out, set it up in the dining room, and plugged in the wireless network connector (there's no physical wiring in her new 'office' - but I ran a temporary feed in to get started) and I set about bringing her computer up to date.

She had two installs, Fedora 13 and Windwos XP. They sit side by side - the Linux was for everything but games, the Windwos just for games - but now she needs MS-Office 'cos that's what the business sheep use. I started at about 9pm Friday, by about half ten or so I'd serviced the hardware and cleaned the crap and dust out of the box that prevented it powering on every time. By 3AM I'd got everything going on Linux - I'd even found out how to get the wireless to work - you just needed to install the wireless card chip-set package using yum, I'd upgraded to Fedora 14, was back on the domain and from then on I just tweaked the system so my desktop OS wasn't missing packages (I usually run on my own desktop, but logging in here also gives me all my files and my personal desktop).

Then I set up Windows. I started late morning on Saturday had installed and the wireless driver pack had been installed - and I still couldn't make it log-on to the domain. I resumed mucking about with it after a late lunchbreak and slowly fixed the problem. It turns out that the wireless driver has a package extension which replaces the zeroconf service in windows - so the driver only connects after you log on. And with domain logon, you can't log onto the domain unless you're already on the network... So with that fixed I did the 450MB download of the driver disk for our inkjet printer from HP (this is the printer that 'just worked' from cups in Linux with no additional drivers needed) and that too created a host of new problems. By about 10PM, I'd got everything installed (including MS-Office-XPensive) and I handed the computer over.

So in summary to bring the PC up to date with Linux took about 4 hours. On Windows it took about 12 hours. They'd both been unused for the same amount of time, and were in similar states. That's what I like about Linux - it costs me about 30% of the time to keep it running than the equivalent Windows system (it's actually less than 30% in day-to-day use, 'cos the Linux system never needs tweaking, only the occasional upgrade).

[rokytnji]

So in summary to bring the PC up to date with Linux took about 4 hours. On Windows it took about 12 hours.

I know what you mean Roxoff. Took me 2 days (16hrs at 8 hours a day) to Linux
near bottom of page. Had to clean it out also (m/c shop is dirty) and get IDE slave/master configured also for bigger hardrive plus secondary sdb hardrive (for Windows plus some extra storage) plus dvdrom/cdrw. Linux would have been in minutes instead of days. Lot's of updates (fresh install) and hunt and peck for drivers also.