Something I find appealing is that Linux is not used by the majority of the population and this means less viruses (similar to Macs but good for me because they aren’t Macs.) I’m not going to say there are none, just less. Much less.

Linux is also great for people who just enjoy learning in general. I have a friend who wasn’t that interested in computers but did like to learn. He liked Linux because of how much learning could be involved in the use of the system. He started on Ubuntu and now has a desktop built himself. It may seem geeky but it can be fun to learn.

Another thing, on the topic of desktops you build yourself, is intimate knowledge of your own computer. When you build your own desktop from scratch, you learn your computer like the back of your hand, and can usually assess most problems that may come up.

That’s all I can think of, but I am sure there are tons more.

Great points I converted about 6 months ago to linux. I really like the customization of the system the most. That and I can take and backup client data without infecting my machine with viruses. Great post title I followed you here from the comment you left on my site, and the Problogger Killer title contest.

I’d say more important than user base size for Linux’s security is the different design and culture. The idea of restricting privileges is just now reaching the Windows crowd, while on Linux if a user infects themselves, they risk losing their own data, but the odds they’ll hurt the base system or other users is tiny. This is, of course, reinforced by the number of developers thats search for bugs, but also by the Unix philosophies.

There is also how users deal with needing new software. On Windows, users go to Google when they need a program that they don’t want to pay for or pirate, and they download whatever program they find — as admin. The fraction of these with malware is high enough that most Windows users I know have had many run-ins. On Linux, a user will search portage/apt/urpmi/whatever and find software recommended and reviewed by many people who are generally trustworthy. Thus, the program you find will do only what it says it does.

Still tryin’ to choose my distro. It’s not easy, there are so many to choose from! I tried Ubuntu HH 8.04 but didn’t really like the feel of it for some reason.

I’ve tried Slackware, Arch, Debian, Mint, DSL and Mandriva.

Not sure what I’ll eventually settle on. I’m looking for longevity here and don’t want to pick a distro which will die in a year or 2 after having gotten used to it and fond of it.

I use linux as much as I possibly can, I find it is much easier to focus on tasks like homework on linux then on windows (never used mac, never plan to). I like to play videogames, and in fact linux through wine plays the majority I like, but I have the ability to be much more organized with workspaces, and with being able to customize my desktop to such a point where I am very familiar with it, its keyboard shortcuts so on and so forth I find I am much more productive and willing to start doing something serious, whereas on windows having things clutter up quickly, or having to do something very repetitive that could easily be done through the CLI/bash, just makes me not want to work.

I get off on the learning experience too. I have grown up on windows 95/98, and therefore have spent a lot of time with XP too, leading me to be very familiar with it. However switching over to linux after I built my first computer and got a big harddrive (1TB external esata), I got a whole different environment to work in, and I did enjoy the few hitches I encountered, challenges as you say, they definitely seemed fun to me, because it was stuff I didnt know, but by the time I was done I was much more familiar with the interface.

I recommend it to many people, normally Ubuntu, because its a very sturdy beginner distro in my eyes. Usually few to no problems with the setup, and a lot of gui, so you can take the CLI at your own pace, and synaptic beats the heck out of windows.

In your case Hazel, I am wondering why you recommend Gentoo. Compiling from source is one thing I find to be a pain. It can be interesting for sure, and occasionally I do use Gentoo because you can tailor your installation however you like, but I really enjoy how easy it is to update distros like debian and ubuntu.

Anyways, one thing that made me change was how easy you can customize your desktop. I am an artist by nature, not so by profession. So I make quite a bit of art through photoshop and have always loved tinkering with settings and the look of things, and with windows it is much much harder to do (I did it, but it took a lot of work). Whereas it is very simple to have very different desktop experiences with linux, with little change to the actual system. For example you could have no task bars, menus, startbars whatever you’d like to call them, and use a right click menu to access apps etc.

I also love me some source code. I’m going into computer science at university next year, and have programmed in various languages for a while now (C++, Perl, Java, Bash), so I love opening up the code and looking around, if the comments are good (some arent, haha), its nice to get a grasp on an actual program, rather then just some exercise a teacher has made up. Its also great to see how others have solved problems you may have. And the community, at least for ubuntu, is amazing! the IRC channel is where its at for help, and the forums are pretty dang good too.

So I use linux because its free, its a great learning experience, its customizable, and its cool. I also love being treated as someone who knows a lot about computers because I run linux (it has a certain air of wisdom to it… ‘ooh he runs linux, he must be really good’, not that I am not really good with computers, its just an interesting effect, lol)

If you ever get the chance, I’d recommend using qemu or virtual box or whatever you like from a usb drive with your favorite distro on it. It makes it very easy to show it off to friends. I personally use a stripped down Xubuntu using fluxbox with my own personal theme.

Another fun thing a few people have been doing is hijacking store computers. Just burn a few discs of your favorite distro, sneak into a store, pop it in the cd tray of a display computer and get it up and running, then walk away. Of course have instructions on the CD saying what it is, and that they have to just remove the cd and reboot etc., but it shows people another option, and is something fun to do if you have the time.

Long post, but worth it I think. Nice article.

You can have your mates call you a geeky twat.

I use linux as my primary OS for about a year and I don’t really like it. There’s always something wrong with it. In any given point in time it wasn’t fully functional. Ever! And I don’t mean functions I wish it had - no. I mean functions it claims to have. Like sound. You see - sound is pretty basic function for me. I’m used to the system with working sound (yes - Windows spoils you). Then flash in a browser, browser itself (I know - it works, but… it’s so slow…). Those aren’t very complex features at all! Yet they don’t work. And I don’t really care why it doesn’t work properly. They make the system so they should make it work instead of whining about Adobe or some other nasty company that makes it’s money on ignoring linux users.

Then come applications. When you read about linux you usually find claims that it has like 20,000 free, easy to install applications. Great, but most of them are useless. The majority of the rest should be labeled BETA. Finding working application for a given task isn’t that easy.

I think that the problem of the linux is that it’s developers constantly add new features. There is no design, no plan, no idea behind it. Just a guy that codes whatever comes to his mind. They should stop. Stop, look at what they’ve done and make it work. It isn’t that much fun, but it’s much more important. Why do I have to edit my xorg.conf in a text editor? Why there isn’t any GUI for this? Why UIs aren’t designed with usability in mind? Why nobody cares to write any documentation? I tell you why - because they prefer making some useless compiz effects and plasmoid clones of aero interface. And users aren’t better…. when I look at some discussions about new Ubuntu 8.10 what do I find? People talking about default desktop. Great. I mean it will make a huge difference if the default theme will be brown or not. Forget about the sound, wi-fi, and other broken stuff - make the desktop pretty!

The obvious question is - why do I use linux if I “like” it so much. For some time I was hoping it will get better. I fixed stuff, I tweaked stuff, I tried various applications and waited for new versions. But they weren’t any better (or the progress was to slow?). So right now I’m looking for some other OS that really works out of the box and has documentation. I want to install it and forget about it. It should just work without me constantly taking care of it.

And I know that you learn a lot when you try to make linux work. But should you? Should it be necessary for all drivers to know how car engine works? I’m not proud to be a linux user (it’s funny that most linux users are proud of it). Actually I’m ashamed that I wasted so much time with it while I could do something useful.

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Explain to me how can that be a feature. I use linux for 3 years now, but I never considered “difficulty to install hardware” a feature. Nobody sane does.

I used Ubuntu HH since it came out, now I’m back to Windows. I have problems with both OS’s, but in the end I just needed something that worked for me with the least amount of fuss. I didn’t like having to kill Pulseaudio just to listen to music after watching a YouTube video, I got tired of editing fstab only to find that the mounts I wanted didn’t work if I accidentally had a USB key in, and I finally gave up when all the icons and folders on my desktop disappeared for no reason each time I booted (I just didn’t have time to find out why). There were other issues too, with performance (FF felt wonky and crashed a lot) and while I miss some amazing Linux features, and still hate Windows, I just need something more stable.