Linux advantages

M

Melissa

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I was just wondering what advantage does Linux really have? I converted from windows to Linux and can't see the point. I'd rather just stick to my Mac :p thanks!!
 


There are many advantages. Otherwise, there would not be so many Linux users. If you do not see advantages, you are not doing it right.

What Linux distro are you using?
 
Yeah, what distro are you using? It's also a choice of free and open source, scalable, and very customizable, or not.
 
Personally I didn't set it up myself so I have no idea what any of you are talking about lol. All I know is I'm using mint on my old dell. I find it slow and can't see any advantage at this point. Just wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions for add ons?
 
Sorry for my cluelessness but I've never used it before last week.
 
I'm usually on my Mac. I just wanted to speed up my dell and people were telling me Linux was better than windows so I decide tO give it a try.
 
I have to use Windows at work and am constantly annoyed and disgusted by it.

One very big annoyance is that keyboard focus seems to frequently get switched away from the window I'm typing in, so my keystrokes are lost until I notice and switch it back. For example, when outlook pops up a notice that I've received email, I often press ALT-TAB to switch look at the email. When I'm done I either press ALT-TAB once to go back one app, or ALT-ESC to put Outlook at the bottom of the stack. Either way, if I were on Linux, I would be right back where I was with my editor having the focus, ready-to-type. But Windows? Often I end up with NO WINDOW having the keyboard focus. What earthly good is that? When would I EVER want nothing to have the focus? Worthless.

Another annoyance is that Windows has the weakest command shell, CMD, on earth. I MUST install Cygwin to stay sane. But as a result, I work in a world with two different ways to specify the same filepath: C:\cygwin\home\ken\text\myfile.txt and ~/ken/text/myfile.txt. Cygwin has a cygpath executable that simplifies dealing with this, but that means I have to write little wrapper scripts to deal with all non-cygwin executables, and I still sometimes end up with confusion. If Windows had a decent shell, I wouldn't need Cygwin, but that's not going to happen.

Another is flexibility and freedom. Does Microsoft offer any way to grep its .doc files? On Linux (and Cygwin) I can use antiword to output just the text with no formatting crap and pipe it into grep to look for the name or word I'm searching for. I can even pipe that result into the clipboard on Linux or Cygwin and paste it into any app.

Windows doesn't even have grep. It has find (very different than GNU find), but it's a poor substitute. I can't get any work done without grep.
 
Personally I didn't set it up myself so I have no idea what any of you are talking about lol. All I know is I'm using mint on my old dell. I find it slow and can't see any advantage at this point. Just wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions for add ons?

If Mint is running slow on that computer, then I see two possible reasons.

1. The disk is still in the computer, so you are booting to the disk instead of the hard drive. If this is the case, there will be an icon on the desktop that says Install or something like that. Take the disk out and restart the computer.

2. You need a lighter distribution because the computer hardware is outdated. In this case, try Puppy Linux. Download the .iso file and burn it to a CD. Restart the computer with this disk in place.
 
...... *facepalm** OMG TY Bill....my disk was in my computer :S wow that was embarrassing lol
 
I think ill just go back in my shell now lol. @ ken I have to use windows at work too and it drives me nuts. Like I mentioned above I love my mac but my little Dell netbook looked lonely and since I hat windows I decided to give Linux a try :)
 
Thank you to all who replied....Noobie question was solved :D Hurray!!
 
I had this same conversation with a good friend of mine.

Linux is for people who like computer development activities.

Apple is for people who just like to work on software related activities, such as itunes, pictures, wordprocessing, playing videos to name a few.

The advantages of using Linux has to do with not paying money for software and specialized hardware.

With Linux you can install it on any computer.

With Mac you can only buy it from a Mac store, installing it is not really an option unless you do it by violating copyright laws.

It is totally cool if you find computer development boring, if that is the case, I personally recommend staying with Mac. I like Macs too.

Windows (in my opinion) has software that will not run on Linux.

For the most part software that runs on Windows has a version that runs on Macs and visa versa.

Macs are also expensive.

Linux is free and can be run on a custom built, inexpensive but powerful computer because it was custom built and the individual parts were purchased at a lower price.

Hope that helps. : )
 
I was just wondering what advantage does Linux really have? I converted from windows to Linux and can't see the point. I'd rather just stick to my Mac :p thanks!!

How did you convert?
Are you running your router through Linux?
 
Interesting post. This has been happening to me on my new computer, but I didn't really know what it was until now. Sometimes my when I'm typing I just don't see my cursor and I have to click a few times just to see it. This is really not good, especially when I can't make changes where I need to edit. Is this the same thing as keyboard focus?
 
Try this.

Use Puppy Linux. Not the latest Precise Puppy. Try Slacko Puppy because I know it works on my old laptop. The latest Precise Puppy is built on a new kernel. I haven't tried it yet so I won't know whether it will work with my old laptop.

If you are adventurous, install Ubuntu 10.04. Not the latest Ubuntu. Same reason as not using Precise Puppy. It may not work with old machines. I know it doesn't work with mine.

However Ubuntu 10.04 works with my old laptop. Then after you have installed Ubuntu 10.04, try installing the Lubuntu, Xubuntu and the KDE desktop environments to see which one you like best. The default is Gnome. KDE is the closest to Windows. Xubuntu and Lubuntu are both lightweight but Xubuntu is a bit lighter.

Have fun.
 

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