Linux vs Windows

[DaleCooper]

A while ago there was a thread discussing Windows 10 in which I said I was thinking of trying Linux instead. Last week I took the plunge, bought a laptop and installed Ubuntu (a Linux OS). These are my thoughts so far as to how it compares with Windows 7.

Fingers crossed it seems to be ok.

The appearance of the desktop is different but no worse than going from Windows XP to Windows 7 until I got used to it.

When browsing with Firefox, which is what I’ll be using it for mostly, there is really no difference that I can detect.

I’m actually finding that getting used to the laptop’s keyboard, smaller screen and new mouse is more of a problem than using Ubuntu.

I don’t like the file manager at the moment but that’s probably because I’m so used to Windows explorer

I’m still finding my way round but hopefully it will go well and I’ll no longer be at the mercy of Microsoft, at the moment I still find it easier to use my desktop pc but that’s because of the keyboard etc. as mentioned above and nothing to do with Windows 7 and if everything works out the desktop pc will be converted to Ubuntu as well.

 

[SS4]

Ubuntu is a good choice of distro (short for distribution - what the OP calls Linux OS) - you can install it right out of the box with pretty much everything you need and it favours stability over the very latest release.

I've been using various distros for about a decade in total now (currently arch) - there is no real difference for tasks like playing music, video and surfing the web. Linux is generally better for coding and has an outstanding command line, installing software and on old computers. However, it's worse when it comes to gaming or certain programs designed for windows (cough itunes cough)

How are you finding the software repositories? It surprised me at first but it's so much better knowing I have a secure place I can get almost everything from. Also, if you ever put Linux onto your desktop look into using SSH to remotely log in

I'm not interested in evangelising but I would recommend everyone at least try it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

While I'm using a Mac at the moment (which is essentially a BSD UNIX machine) the thing that would put me off switching to Linux is the lack[1] of Microsoft Office. Libre/Open/Staroffice (choose your preference) is nowhere near as fully featured and is very bloated and slow.

[1] You can run it on WINE but it's messy.

 

[tsr]

While I'm using a Mac at the moment (which is essentially a BSD UNIX machine) the thing that would put me off switching to Linux is the lack[1] of Microsoft Office. Libre/Open/Staroffice (choose your preference) is nowhere near as fully featured and is very bloated and slow.

[1] You can run it on WINE but it's messy.

I last used what I believe was a recently updated version of WINE a couple of months ago, and was pleasantly surprised as it seemed to work faster and more uniformly with some quite intensive and also limited-distribution software (a very good flight simulator, and a model railway track planner! And no, I'm not 14, not that there's anything wrong with that, mind). I still wouldn't use it for commercial productivity requirements unless I really had to, though. I concur, the free office suites and the virtual environment running of MS Office simply do not offer the fullest benefits of MS Office or indeed the better versions of Pages etc. I used to get terribly frustrated at all sorts of things with WINE, and also the likes of Sun VirtualBox - so much so that I used to borrow friends' laptops for hours at a time, when theirs ran Windows and mine didn't!

This experience now means that for my limited use of laptops running Ubuntu (and, for obvious reasons, ChromeOS) I will tend to use Google's suite of web-based software, such as Docs. Although limited in some features, I generally find this is quicker than faffing around with the quirks of stuff such as LibreOffice. In fact, I find that for light word-processing and web app productivity needs, a Unix-based laptop running modern software is just as good as many Windows machines with Office and all the bells and whistles, and some of my highest output has probably come from my Chromebook. My Windows laptop, whilst only a year or so old, is as much a backup device as anything, but still has legacy features like a VGA connector and DVD drive; these can be surprisingly useful for community events which I am involved in, where not everybody has the latest tech products to hand!

(Sent from Chrome on my iMac... )

 

[mikeg]

I use GNU/Linux and have done since way before it was fashionable. I still use Windows, I find myself coming back to using Windows more now and then but at the moment I use GNU/Linux about 90% of the time. My distro of choice is Arch, though I can see the attraction of Ubuntu and have used it in the past and will likely use it in the future. First distro I used at all was a modified version of Slackware, but I found it difficult to get anything done, never really liked it. First one I used properly was Red Hat 5.2, with Afterstep (aaah those were the days!). It required a lot of manual setting up, particularly to get graphics but was worth it. It ran on a non-networked machine with 40MB RAM and a Pentium 120Mhz CPU. At the time I was dissatisfied with Windows, but there were few alternatives, buying a Mac wasn't an option and Mac was an inferior system to even Windows in so many ways (no memory protection, cooperative multitasking back then - one app crashed, the entire system would almost always follow). Whilst not overly convenient I found Red Hat to work a lot more reliably, though getting certain things to work at all in the first place was a pain. Printers posed a particular challenge - to some extent they still do, but we didn't even have the Common UNIX Print System in most distros back then.

The main reason I've stayed attracted has to be the level of freedom, something which is increasingly lacking in so many other systems. It's my computer, I'm free to do what I want with it, to configure it how I want and to make it work most effectively for me. This is something which will become more relevant in the world of closed 'app stores', already we're seeing Microsoft, Apple and even Google decide what we can and can't do with technology and information we own. The Universal App Platform on Windows is making vendor lock-in worse than ever and gives Microsoft an unfair advantage with its own software, putting any third party development on Microsoft's own terms. Apple is worse with iOS and the new rootless authentication in El Capitan has proven itself to be just as insecure as existing systems, with the downside that many system utilities now can't work without Apple's say-so. Modify a file in /usr or /bin? Forget it... In fact quite how OS X continues to be certified UNIX is beyond me, you can access the UNIX bits with some trying, but it's an afterthought.

Windows had great potential and the NT system isn't fundamentally bad, I'd never liked 95/98/Me, but have been using Windows NT since NT4. I think things have been going wrong since 8, Windows 10 is an improvement but I don't like the telemetry. It really isn't necessary at all. Nowadays I only use Windows for stuff I can't do on Arch. In theory that's pretty much nothing at all, but in practice there's the odd proprietary program for which no Linux support has been released. This isn't the fault of the operating system itself though, it's just the way things have worked commercially.

Is there an ideal operating system? Probably. Is there one out at the moment? Probably not. There's things I dislike about both the GNU and Windows approach, in particular that the average GNU/Linux distribution is a collection of rather outdated software. Arch is one exception but requires a fair bit of setting up (though nothing like Red Hat 5.2 did!).

If I had to take sides, then I'd say GNU/Linux is actually the better system, though that depends on specifics. Windows is okay, but I'd only bother with it if I had software that I needed to run not available on GNU/Linux and in any event there's usually an alternative that works just as well. The one area where I find Windows beating Linux is gaming, but that's largely an issue of support. Well, actually X11 doesn't help either.

 

[AM9]

I've been using Windows and Linux side-by-side for years. I agree with mikeg about an increasing lock-in with applications and interference from Microsoft.
The major area that Windows is used over Linux is for video editing. Unless one is wanting to create a large distributed setup, there isn't much choice outside Windows, (I'm not interested in the expensive controlled world of Apple). The hardware from my last editing workstation is now running Kubuntu and I've even found a way of getting the firewire interface to work, but even using Kdenlive or Cinelerra as editors, it's still a bit clunky (probably much of that is unfamiliarity).
As far a general computing tasks go, Linux is as good as Windows for browsing, .pdf viewing, word processing (including .pdf generation), spreadsheet work, presentation generation (in .ppt formats) etc.. Some of the more obscure tasks of Microsoft Office aren't yet in Libre Office but I can't see many home users ever missing those.
Where Linux excels is for both audio and photo work. Audacity is a very good general sound editor and there is a very large range of music-centred applications that are well used and supported by the music industry. GIMP is a full-featured photo manipulation editor and pretty-well as good as Photoshop being well supported by camera-format specific add-ons.
Of course the big attraction is that almost everything on Linux is free to install, run and copy, and contrary to the usual addage that anything is worth what you pay for it, the large expert user-base of the OS's and applications ensure that bugs are quickly flushed-out in updates.
For me, the only downside with Linux is that my wife can't see how it can replace basic Windows roles because it looks different.

 

[Puffing Devil]

My wife has Linux Mint on an ebay sourced Dell Optiplex with a 80Gb SSD. Runs like the wind, provides all she needs - Chrome, WP and Spreadsheets. Occasionally locks up and needs a reboot, otherwise very cheap computing for over a year now.

 

[krus_aragon]

I've been using Linux exclusively for a decade, having started dabbling with it in the late 90s.
The last incarnation I had any regular experience of was XP. My wife got a Mac six years ago, and while it is configured to dual-boot XP for the very occasional piece of Windows-only software, we're fundamentally Microsoft-free in this household.

As a graduate in Computer Systems Engineering, perhaps it isn't much of a surprise that I choose Linux. I find it suits my personal attitude of wanting to be able to poke around and fix things myself when needed (e.g. stripping and servicing pedal bikes, repairing household electricals). I also agree with the philosophical arguments of free software: open source code for better security, freedom to adapt software for your purposes, and control over what your software is doing. The recent privacy issues in Windows 10 have reinforced my choice of OS.

Edit to add:
My distribution of choice is Slackware Linux, as it's bog-standard basic and lets you set up your system exactly as you want. I dabbled with Red Hat many moons ago, in the age when you'd buy a book or magazine to get a bundled CD of a Linux Distro (as downloading hundreds of megabytes over a 56k modem wasn't practical). I've got a few Raspberry Pis running Arch Linux too, for ease of installation/updating remotely.

 

[AM9]

I've been using Linux exclusively for a decade, having started dabbling with it in the late 90s.
The last incarnation I had any regular experience of was XP. My wife got a Mac six years ago, and while it is configured to dual-boot XP for the very occasional piece of Windows-only software, we're fundamentally Microsoft-free in this household.

As a graduate in Computer Systems Engineering, perhaps it isn't much of a surprise that I choose Linux. I find it suits my personal attitude of wanting to be able to poke around and fix things myself when needed (e.g. stripping and servicing pedal bikes, repairing household electricals). I also agree with the philosophical arguments of free software: open source code for better security, freedom to adapt software for your purposes, and control over what your software is doing. The recent privacy issues in Windows 10 have reinforced my choice of OS.

Edit to add:
My distribution of choice is Slackware Linux, as it's bog-standard basic and lets you set up your system exactly as you want. I dabbled with Red Hat many moons ago, in the age when you'd buy a book or magazine to get a bundled CD of a Linux Distro (as downloading hundreds of megabytes over a 56k modem wasn't practical). I've got a few Raspberry Pis running Arch Linux too, for ease of installation/updating remotely.

Interesting that you mentioned Raspberry pis. I've got three and they all run fine. I can't imaging how they would stagger under the excess baggage of Windows. Most people don't realise that the majority of household devices with processor controllers run one flavour of Linux or another.