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Linux has its strengths and weaknesses

anybody who tells you it has all of one or the other is just pushing an agenda to put out fear uncertainty and doubt. Window users are comfortable with years of Window's use, same as for Apple users, and Linux too. We learn and use it as it comes, and have growing pains switching to others outright.

I've been using Windows since 3.1 days, have found it to have improved and stabilized over the years and versions, and have had no business connections to introduce the competition of the day (Apple) into our work trends. For our business, we went with the solution that offered the software and/or platform to build software solutions that worked.

Linux for some, offers the freedom to see what is going on under the hood and affect it more directly than Windows would (for a non-developer). It too has grown more stable and functional over the years, depending on the distro(s) followed. There are many, and that is a blessing and hindrance (too many choices often leads to not making a choice amongst them). People can sometimes see just Apple and Microsoft, target 1 or 2, and most are 'comfortable' with MS due to work and/or home computing status quo.

Linux for me (a non-developer), is great for its freedoms but just so-so for what else I would accomplish. Not enough games run natively, and to build or 'borrow' libraries/directories from a Windows installation means Wine doesn't completely live up to the need and potential for running Windows centric software on a particular distro, especially if the software in question is already quirky. And Tux Racer may be such a rage to play, but if I won't the latest games, I'd have to question the Direct X to OpenGL support questions, down to the hardware to low level system calls coupled with poor disc protection schemes screwing with runtimes.

For e-mail, web surfing and light media, you can pretty much go from out of the installation. If you've got DRM media to watch, you might have to scour the forums and search engines to figure out getting 3rd party support up and running on some distros that fear the infringement/licensing reaper and leave MP3, DVD, and WMA support out in the cold. Darn I never got my tv tuner card working right in my second Dell, before I gave up on it and left it as Windows only.

Just some of the issues that means for some of us that Linux doesn't do everything our Window's installation does.

On the other hand, security is Linux from the start, with few concerns over getting OWNED if placed on the Internet within minutes of a connection (though some of the firewalls are cryptic in help and guidance).

There is also a generous amount of software apps for Linux (though some of the names of them leave you lost to their purpose - darn developer naming conventions). In Fedora, you could spend half an hour just scrolling through the available packages reading to find out that the program that sounds like a media player is actually some network diagnostic or tape archival system. Well at least they are there, easily added these days and easily removed (unlike most Windows bundled software - eg Outlook folder, Internet Explorer, Netmeeting).

If somebodies content with their Linux, Windows, Apple or even Solaris, . . fine, we should use what we want to and that's our choice. We make separate decisions in our individual lives, and unless somebody is parenting a person, nobody else should have any more sway on our choices than what we choose. I'll use Linux in part to learn a different system (and to hedge my fear that some crazy will destroy Windows and try to leave me/us high and dry to further their agenda), I'll use Windows primary because it's where I started to enjoy computing and does more than a enough right for me to use it daily. If somebody loaned or gave me a Mac, I'd learn and use it as well (even classic Mac not borrowing from the BSD to get a more favorable world view). Heck, did up the recently dead OS/2 or even, goodness forbid, Solaris. Computing is the language you can learn just one native tongue or many, but if it's just a tool, many people learn and use the one. Real life.

Peace.

Posted by: Boot_Agnostic   Posted on: 08/28/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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