Linux - how few know of it

[miriam_e]

When I meet people and discussion falls to computers, as it often does, I've often been surprised at how few people know of Linux. They generally think that putting up with Microsoft Windows is their only option. When told that Linux is a free operating system that can either replace, or co-exist with Microsoft Windows they tend to be either surprised or skeptical. This astounds me. How did Microsoft manage to so impoverish the computing world? Not only have they retarded computing technology by a decade or more, but they have blinded many people to even the possibility of advancement -- a very sad state of affairs.

Thank heavens it is slowly changing. Years ago Linux was something only computer geeks used. Now I know a broad range (but still a tiny minority) of people who have dropped Microsoft Windows, preferring the safety and lower cost of Linux... and in the case of Puppy Linux, the ease of use, speed, tiny size, and ability to revive old computers making them usable again. I think part of the change is coming simply from word of mouth, but also from live CDs, where people can try Linux before installing it on their machines.

On that last point, I've noticed an annoying number of computers recently that have their BIOS set up to prevent booting from a CD. It is easy to change, but most people don't even know what a BIOS is, let alone how to go into their SETUP to change the boot-device order. [sigh]

A ray of hope: lately Linux users seem to outnumber Apple Mac users on the net. (Thank heavens Apple didn't win the war for the desktop -- computer use would be even further retarded than with Microsoft. Apple are masters of propaganda.)

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with my computers... actually more hate than love. :) I am continually amazed at how little computing has progressed in the past few decades. Usability should have advanced much further than it has. Thankfully the OpenSource movement has started to pull us out of stagnation, though I'm concerned at the tendency for Linux now to look and act more like MSWindows in order to chase after mainstream acceptance. We should be running away from Microsoft's mistakes.

The best thing about Linux is that it is perfectly suited to most people who do the things you mentioned. Puppy Linux for instance, comes with wordprocessor, webpage editor, spreadsheet editor, database, diary, (online) dictionary, easy internet connectivity, web browser, email program, chat, torrent, ftp, web server(!), a (primitive) paint program, vector graphics editor, music players/recorders/converters that can use most sound formats, a movie player that can immediately play almost any video format without needing to download and install extra codecs, and hundreds of smaller utilities. All this in a tiny operating system (less than 100MB -- that's less than a 6th of a CD) that you can boot from a CD or flash drive.

I don't play games either, and games have always been Microsoft's great attraction, but even that is starting to change with increasing numbers of games available for Linux (for example FlightGear, which is used for research and to teach people how to fly a plane... oh, and it is free).

Age? I feel like I'm in my early twenties, but unfortunately am more than twice that. I know saying I feel that young sounds clichéd, but it is true -- I really feel that age... perhaps because I'm quite blind to time. I wonder if anybody ever really grows up... and if they do, what it would feel like.

It is encouraging to hear that people in your part of the world are more acquainted with Linux. Sadly one of the things that prompted me to write the above post was that I volunteered for the Leukaemia Foundation doorknock appeal for donations and at one of the houses I met a guy (would have been late teens, early twenties) who was using his computer and when I asked if he used Linux he looked puzzled and asked me where you buy it. :(

[sharpblonde.livejournal.com]

Oh well. Perhaps it is the crowd I hang out with that skews my view. I mostly hang out with slightly geeky people with post-secondary education. Maybe that's why they know?

Also, I don't see anything wrong with copying the aesthetics of Windows and some of the functionality as long as opensoure programmers don't start making the mistake of having 5 billion things run in the background... and at least try to correct some of the other bugs. I'm running on Debian (I'd have to find the boot cd, if you are curious exactly which Debian), and one of the things I love about it is that you download pretty much only the core system. The boot cd, though, includes hundreds of apps you can choose to download afterwards. Don't play card games? You don't have them! Don't use flash card programs? You don't have them! And etc., but many little apps like that are available for quick install from the boot cd if you do use them! It's really advantage in terms of memory, too, especially if you are running a laptop since it means so few things you don't use take up room on your computer.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Debian is certainly one of the best Linuxes. I keep a version installed on one of my drives, because of the astonishing amount of software that is available to it. I still really like it because it is a very "pure" Linux that doesn't have any closed source stuff in it. Interesting bit of trivia: the name comes from the couple who started it -- Deb and Ian (Debra Lynn and Ian Murdock). [Huh... a quick search on the net to verify my memory was correct led to this (http://pix.321.hu/cindy_margolis_uses_debian.jpg) surprising photo... Debian girlie pinups???? Who'd have thought?]

Puppy is mostly compatible with Slackware and Debian. I've often installed Debian and Slackware packages in Puppy... and occasionally Fedora packages. The first Puppy was built from Fedora, but later used a Slackware kernel. Now it is really its own beast, compiled from scratch.

Ubuntu is built upon Debian, but I think they've relaxed the rules about open vs closed source. A pity.

I used to enjoy using Mandrake, but lost track of it since it became Mandriva.

Red Hat/Fedora was always too corporate for my liking.

Years ago I bought and installed a full disk-set of SuSE, but they're being lured into Microsoft's poisonous embrace, so I steer clear of them now.

Gentoo, Corel Linux, Caldera, Vector, Knoppix, DamnSmallLinux, and many, many more... Heavens, there are oodles of them now! And that's before you consider all the one-off specials, like 64Studio -- a multimedia variant of Debian specifically for artists, and NaNoWriMo Puppy just for writers (lots of Puppy variants here (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux/Puplets)). And then there are devices that are devoted to Linux, like the Zaurus handheld, and the Nokia n900, and to some extent Google's Nexus 1 (built on a combination of Linux and BSD).

You can download an amazing, enormous diagram of the history of Linux distributions at http://futurist.se/gldt/ where they record 270 different distros!!! Wow! It really becomes clear from that diagram just how incredibly important Debian is. It has parented much of the scene.

The times are a-changing (slowly).