“Configuring” Linux
I’ve been using Linux in various forms for the past 6 years, both at home and for my job at work. For the most part its great.
I admit it can (used to) take some work to get everything “configured” like graphics, audio, etc. At least it seems that’s the first thing people complain or whine about. It is the only excuse I’ve heard from Windows users about not switching, or saying they tried Linux but it was a “pain.”
Its too bad really because in reality, yes it can take a bit of some grunt “configuring” to get things all peachy, but once its set, its set, it works. I argue that the “configuring” of Linux is worth the frustration of maybe 3 reboots, a couple annoying dialogs, and a freeze or two in Windoz, and I know you all have to reboot, install crap, reboot more often than that, perhaps daily.
Once you have Linux “configured”
- you no longer have to reboot if you don’t want to
- you don’t have to click “OK” to confirm everything you already told the computer to do
- you don’t have to wonder why your computer is always installing something
- you won’t be asked to install something every time you click on a microsoft webpage, or better put, you don’t have to use exploder
- there are no viruses to worry about
- it boots faster
- you have two equivalent individually nifty and configurable graphics desktops to play with, and if you want 3D effects/windows etc… there’s that too..
- and finally you can run windoz crap under it if you absoluetly must
- oh and its free.
All this over time = lower blood pressure and a natural uplift in life.
At the time of this posting, the latest versions of Linux such as Ubuntu’s 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbons” release, openSUSE 10.3, and Fedora 8 are all so polished that little to no “configuring” is required.
I especially like and personally have been using Ubuntu. Dare I say everything worked out-of-the-box and comes with most anything one needs, audio suite, office suite, graphics apps etc… My computer is not an average case either, but rather a dual dual-core Xeon workstation with goodies.
The only “configuring” I had to do was an accelerated graphics driver. Beyond that I “shopped” for additional software I wanted to play with through the software manager and added applications like DVD players/editors, alternate audio players, rippers, iPod support, graphics and Blender 3D. All of these are a simple search-by-keyword and simple click, click, auto-install through the package manager.
And this leads me to the next topic…
“Lack of Software” in Linux
Another “myth” is the lack of software available on Linux. I’m sorry but that is a joke at this point…
- Photoshop? use GIMP.
- Illustrator? use Inkscape.
- MS Office? use OpenOffice.
- Using Exploder? Why? Use Firefox
- For AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and GoogleChat – Use Pidgin or whatever the heck it got renamed to.
- Use Banshee, Amarok, Rhythmbox, XMMS, or my favorite Listen as an audio player.
- Use GRIP for an audio ripper, use GTKPOD to manage your iPod.
- Use Blender for a decent free professional 3D creation application.
Many mainstream application vendors create Linux versions of their software, to name a few: Macromedia Flash plug-ins, Acrobat plug-ins, many games now have Linux clients, Windows Media codecs are available, Google Earth and Desktop etc…
If you absolutely must use a Windoz something or other, you can purchase CrossOver Office as an emulator on Linux that allows you to run most main Windoz apps like MS Office, iTunes and Exploder for example.
Ubuntu’s Gutsy Gibbons now by default comes with something called WINE, which also allows you to add Windoz based apps under Linux, or heck, you can run the whole Windoz OS under it if you want.
One thing I can think of that still causes me trouble on Linux is printing, the infrastructure, set up, sizing, and being able to change settings like “draft” quality on a printer still doesn’t work well.
Suspend and hibernation support is also weak… and part of my new role at work is to fix it 
-e
