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[xczxc]

Why Linux is Better. All you need to know about the best OS explained effectively.

Noting that it's possible that information from www.whylinuxisbetter.net might not have a totally NPOV on the subject.

It's obviously biased. 

[malimbar04]

I use ubuntu personally, so a lot of the things I love are distro-specific.

The things I personally find the most awesome:
- integrated menus. My to-do list is made with their calender/email app, then I can check off to-do items with the time/date menu. I can pause/play music, chat on a half dozen different im clients, and so forth all from standardized menus

- installing common software is absurdly easy. Use the ubuntu software center, search for software, install software. A few applications (like Dwarf Fortress) are slightly more complicated, but most apps people use are easier than most OS's. I downloaded MySQL server for my current class, and I didn't have to go to their specific website like most people would.

-  included software is actually useful. On my moms new costco machine, it was installed with a lot of trial software that she just doesn't bother deleting. She then complains that she doesn't have Microsoft office, planning on buying a new license for who knows how much. Open office is included by default in Ubuntu (As well as others of course, it's pretty popular).

- easy updates. Whenever there is a security flaw found in any of my programs, a cute out-of-the-way notification tells me there are updates. One system governs all of the updates, unlike either MacOSX or Windows. I no longer get updates for chrome, itunes, microsoft, adobe, and virus-protection separately.

- fast updates. There is no standard day for patches - they come when they come. As soon as there is a patch, it is released, and the problem is fixed. They are generally open-source as well, so no secret shovelware like including safari in an update for quicktime, or some other shenanigans.

Those are the things I find awesome anyways.

[Phmcw]

Ubuntu is the shit if you want a windows replacement. But...

Misread that without the 'the'.  Well, I've already said I don't like how I didn't get on with the early Ubuntus (that I tried), so it's probably an error akin to being Freudian.

Yes, the few first versions were unimpressive to say the least, and I favored Debian at the time, but it really got better.

[Sir Finkus]

Ubuntu is the shit if you want a windows replacement. But...

Misread that without the 'the'.  Well, I've already said I don't like how I didn't get on with the early Ubuntus (that I tried), so it's probably an error akin to being Freudian.

Yes, the few first versions were unimpressive to say the least, and I favored Debian at the time, but it really got better.

I don't know about this new unity interface they're pushing with Natty.

[metime00]

The "Why Linux is Better" is the website that I went to that got me started with all this!

[ChairmanPoo]

I moved onto Ubuntu out of frustration with XP (which was to a good extent due to its outdatedness). Performance-wise I think both Windows and Linux are on more or less simmilar terms. I do think that some of linux' features make it worth considering.

I dont see myself moving back to windows anytime soon. At most I'd consider dual booting for some games, but that's about it. Of course, I'd think different if I absolutedly needed some specific windows only program, but as things are, I'm happy working with Ubuntu.

[Starver]

I moved onto Ubuntu out of frustration with XP (which was to a good extent due to its outdatedness).  Performance-wise I think both Windows and Linux are on more or less simmilar terms.  I do think that some of linux' features make it worth considering.

If you consider XP outdated and frustrating, I'm very much in a different camp from yourself.  Yes, it's two (or more like 1.5) generations of Windows old, but it's still perfectly functional for the kind of things I need .  For the same reason, the Linuxes that I most value are the streamlined ones that far outperform Windows (or do as well on far less resources than it) for the same functionality.

This is not an argument against your position, which I know is probably valid for your particular situation and preferences, just an indication that there's another side.  Although I'm determined to have another bash (NPI!) at Ubuntu to see if it's any less touchy-feely and (IMHO) awkward than I last found it.  And I may need to bone up on some more diverse linux skills, if some things change the way they might.

(Whatever, it's not going to be any worse than the Xandros dist for EeePC that I re-installed for someone, today.  Couldn't be bothered to change the isolinux.cfg to actually work (or find out why the isolinux.cfg that really should have worked wasn't being called on boot), so I just checked the contents on another machine and typed in the /boot/vmlinuz blah-de-blah blah stuff straight in at the "boot:" prompt instead.  To predictably find that, once it had installed fully, the interface was so much of an abstraction that if it hadn't been someone else's machine I would have put something more practical (by my standards) on there.  I've not much experience with Xandros, so I'm not sure if all their setups are equally as derivative.)

[Footkerchief]

I use Ubuntu on my work machine, a Macbook.  It is fucking awesome for development, not least because gedit (Ubuntu's default text editor which has syntax highlighting for everything) can save files through an SSH tunnel like it ain't no thang. 

[Starver]

I use Ubuntu on my work machine, a Macbook.  It is fucking awesome for development, not least because gedit (Ubuntu's default text editor which has syntax highlighting for everything) can save files through an SSH tunnel like it ain't no thang.

Sounds good, because gedit is my default editor on Fedora 8, but last time I tried Ubuntu I had a choice of some godawful "wordpad"-like package that defaulted to text formatting[1] and saved in something propriety or falling back upon either emacs or vi, both of which I'm ashamed to say I've almost totally forgotten how to use in the decades since I used them at Uni.

[1] That's as opposed to syntax highlighting that doesn't save.  Just like a lot of email programs/webinterfaces, these days, assume you want to send all email in HTML when it's supposed to be a 7-bit transport medium of unextended-ASCII upon or within which MIME or something like Uuencoding is used for anything else.  Boy, I really am sounding like a techno-Luddite, aren't I?

[Footkerchief]

Sounds good, because gedit is my default editor on Fedora 8, but last time I tried Ubuntu I had a choice of some godawful "wordpad"-like package that defaulted to text formatting[1] and saved in something propriety or falling back upon either emacs or vi, both of which I'm ashamed to say I've almost totally forgotten how to use in the decades since I used them at Uni.

Gross.  Yeah, every version of Ubuntu I've used has defaulted to gedit, but I only started using it in the last couple years (with version 9.04, I think).  Many of my coworkers swear by vim, but every time I watch them use it, it just looks clunky, esp. with regard to tabbing back and forth between multiple files.  Also I just really don't like the whole command mode thing.

[lordnincompoop]

Oh look another linux thread.

I dual boot 7 and Ubuntu on my desktop, and run Debian on my old laptop. Also have Puppy Linux and Backtrack live CDs. It's much faster, and I really enjoy the OS ('specially the workspaces), but there's a lot of programs I miss (Adobe's suite of software, Office, Visual Studio amongst others) and I still haven't fully mastered the terminal.

Maybe I'll try Arch next.

[GlyphGryph]

I use and prefer Mint Linux for a lot of reasons

1. I'm a developer, and linux has a powerful command line and nearly all distros support quite a variety of development options out of the box
2. I NEED to have my desktop EXACTLY the way I want it or it bugs the hell out of me. Linux (Mint anyways, haven't used many of the others) has an endlessly (and simply) configurable front end that meets my needs perfectly.
3. Linux is free
4. Linux is, generally, a lot slimmer than Windows/MacOS
5. There are less games for linux. Since I am amazing at wasting time playing games instead of doing the things I should be doing, this is good.
6. My favorite games still work fine on Linux when I want to play them. Either through DOSBox (X-com, Wolf, Hidden Agenda), or because they run directly (Wesnoth, LCS, DF, various flash games etc.).

- And a good deal of other reasons...

Its not for everyone, perhaps, but it suits my needs perfectly, and my technophobic parents have had no more difficult with it than they did with Windows, so it is in its present form perfectly serviceable for those who don't want to go super in depth but don't really use their comp for gaming.

Of course, it took them two weeks to notice when I installed it on their system, thanks to having previously convinced them to start using Firefox and OpenOffice (mostly by replacing Icons).

[Sowelu]

I saw an article on Slashdot a couple days back about how some distros of Linux are now vulnerable to autorun-based attacks because they keep wanting to be more usable...one of the vectors that Linux users used to always laugh at Windows because of...

[Tellemurius]

Linux on ps3 is cool, linux on hacked ps3 is awesome (haha computer games)

[ChairmanPoo]

I saw an article on Slashdot a couple days back about how some distros of Linux are now vulnerable to autorun-based attacks because they keep wanting to be more usable...one of the vectors that Linux users used to always laugh at Windows because of...

Link? (really, I find the prospect somewhat worrying. One of the reasons I'm sticking to Ubuntu is virus safety)

If you consider XP outdated and frustrating, I'm very much in a different camp from yourself.  Yes, it's two (or more like 1.5) generations of Windows old, but it's still perfectly functional for the kind of things I need .

It was not the OS functions in themselves. It was it's performance. I have an asus eee1000H that came with XP by default. Even at it's best, it worked far more sluggish than ubuntu 10.04/10 did/do. Moreover, every 2 months or so I had to restore the system to a previous version or else it slowed down to a crawl for no discernible reason, and every 6-7 months it did so terminally, and only a windows reinstall would help (I posted several threads in this forum and elsewhere on this topic, if anyone is curious).
The final straw was when I lost quite a bit of info last year's march due to a Virut infection that Avira refused to detect. At that point, and after spending a whole saturday reinstalling XP and all my stuff, I decided that as soon as I had some holidays I'd give a try to ubuntu. And the rest is history. As I said, I might be willing to keep a windows partition for games and other windows-exclusive stuff if I had a large enough hard drive (which I don't). But I'll stick to linux for my main stuff.

One thing that annoys me about Ubuntu: not being able to install debs on my home partition, instead of the system one.