How do you feel about Linux

[boneske]

I want to hear some opinions about the other OS that is in the run to take out Microsoft Windows out of the lead, you guessed it Linux.

I tried switching over from Windows on my x86 machine and we'll I find it impossible. First off you have to have a rocket science degree to figure out how to use the clipboard (It's 2003 you would think they would have fixed the problem by now). And then when it comes to having the latest and greatest hardware you wont be able to use it cause the hardware company doesnt make drivers for it and you wont see the Linux community creating drivers for it for a couple of years to come. Even if your hardware is detected, you still have a good chance that it doesnt work right

From my year of messing around with the different distro's of Linux.... I find that Apple has a better chance of competing with Microsoft than the "Freeware" nation of Linux.

_________
boneske
Running Windows 2000 with P4 1.8Ghz
Still trying to save my pennies up for my Mac

[Giaguara]

I like Linux. When I had a peecee it run Linux. It was nice. But I STILL fell in love with OS X and migrated to (only) Macs. So far the OS that is most what I want both by its behaviour and visuals is OS X. Linux is and was nice - now that I have only a Mac (I needed $ so I had to sell the old peecee) I don't feel the urge to play with Linuxes ... but the Linuxes are nice.
There are so many apps that are Win / Mac only - like all Adobe and Macromedia produts - even if GIMP is great it still has some bugs that make me still love Photoshop ... OS X seems to be the nicest UNIX using OS available. Linux is nice .... but I'm definitelly happier with OS X only right now.

[adambyte]

I think Linux is an OS that is still for geeks who know what they're doing... if we're talking about Linux taking over the Windows home market, that's not going to happen until the Linux geeks find a graceful and easy way to install and uninstall applications. Otherwise, though, it's a fine OS. If I were to get PC hardware for some strange reason, I'm find a nice Linux distro and learn more about compliling and all that...

But my sexy Mac and its sexy OS are fine with me for now.

[boneske]

I guess I looked at mostly the negitive when I tried switching over. It wasn't bad but it isnt like Windows or MacOS. I work with MacOS sometimes at work, and most of the problems I have with Linux I dont have OS X. True I never saw a crash but I never saw my extra hard drives on my RAID Array either.

[binaryDigit]

Well keep in mind that the area where Linux really is competing with Windoze is in the server space, where issues like you mentioned aren't really an issue (at least as not as big of an issue). No matter what any Linux nerd will tell you, it has a LOOOOONG way to go before it becomes viable as a general purpose desktop replacement. In that department it's main strength is also it's main weakness, it's open development.

[bluehz]

Linux is making inroads - but I believe you are correct - until they get AT LEAST the install process down to a user frienly experience, then its not going to be a very viable system. I don't even think its the process itself as much as there is a different process for each distro. You can't expect general acceptance if their are no standards that can be followed and understood by the general user.

Now in saying that - I also must say - as a server platform - Linux is fantastic!! I pulled and old PC out of a dumpster a couple of years ago and it sat in the closet for years. One Sunday I got bored and decided to pull it out and take it to the Goodwill. Instead I pulled it out and spent about an hour researching Linux which I had zero knowledge about. After a couple of hours - I had a working server running on our LAN. Over the next few months I piled a webserver, mailserver, proxy server, spam daemon, and piles of other stuff onto this once doomed PC. No matter what I did - it just kept ticking and serving... all on a PC with 100Mhz CPU and 48MHz of RAM.... hahaha!!! To this day that same server is an integral part of our LAN. So you might as - why not use OS X as a server. WHY? Because that would require me to "sacrifice" one of my valuable Macs to server duty. Using Linux - I can delegate a crappy, dumpster PC to the task.

What I discovered was that all the new Unix stuff I was learning in OS X - transcribed beautifully to Linux world.... so the more I tinkered the more I learned. I know have a fairly good understanding of Unix and shell scripting because of my time spent with OS X and Linux. Mind you - when I researched Linux, I chose one of the distros that is more server oriented with stability and security being high priroitys. So I personally use Slackware (just upgraded to 9.0) - but many consider Slack one of the more "geeky" distros. I don't run a GUI on the Linux box, don't even have a monitor hooked to it - instead I do everything via OS X and SSH connection.

If you just want to experiment with Linux - I might suggest trying it in VPC if you have that. Most Linux (at least I know Slackware does) installs quite nicely onto a VPC disk image. Great way to get a peek, play around, then throw it away when done.

[willmac]

I agree that Linux is still for geeks and has a way to go before it is a desktop OS for all but I think that the difficulties of working with it are often exagerated. I built a pc from old hardware at work and installed Redhat 8. So I not only had old hardware (266MHz Pentium chip - old motherboard etc) but a non standard set of components scavenged from machines made by several vendors. The OS installed with no problems. Everything was detected first time around.

I also installed Windows 98. Win98 couldn't find the sound card or the network card and chose a crappy driver for my monitor.

My favourite OS is still Mac OS X but Linux rocks as well

will

[Androo]

I dont like windows... red hat looks too much like windows 98, but that Connectiva Linux looks like a combination of Mac os x and Windoze xp....