I wanted to share this with you guys. What do you love the most about Linux and freedom of the software?
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I wanted to share this with you guys. What do you love the most about Linux and freedom of the software?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Top comments (66)
I absolutely love Linux! The fact that there is a distro for every use case is amazing. If there isn't an option out there, you can create it yourself. Linux to me puts the "personal" back into PC. I own my hardware and I decide what software I want I'm there. I have full control over my workflow and it's not forced into me like how I personally experienced Windows.
I'm not putting Windows down though. If it works for you and it does what you need, use it! Use the right tools for the job and for me that happens to be a variety of Linux distros!
Here are my favorites:
The great thing about Linux, and this is largely why it got so popular in the first place, is its support from the hardware industry. Another great thing is ofcourse the kernel itself. However, compared to other modern-day Unix-like kernels (ie. the BSDs -- OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, MacOS X etc.), it's mediocre at best.
What's definitely not great about Linux though, is its distributions. What ought to have been one complete OS with one competent leadership and one coherent brand, is instead split into thousands of distributions with varying degrees of quality, with the overwhelming majority all including unnecessary and overly complicated stuff by default, such as systemd, bash, OpenSSL, or iptables/nftables.
In the words of a great friend of mine:
That's a very interesting take! I'll have a look and see what it's like, thank you for that comment!
Jij lijkt echt op iemand die ik ken, ben je familie van Andries?
Ja!
Wat een toeval haha ik heb met hem gewerkt een jaar geleden! jullie lijken echt op elkaar. Leuk om te weten dat er een dev in de familie zit!
Haha dat hoor ik vaker inderdaad! Ik heb hem ook al met het Linux virus aangestoken 😅
Lekker bezig, Linux for the win!
I use arch btw (I don't, I'm just always looking for opportunity to say this though).
I think Pop_OS! is dope
yeah it's not just customized ubuntu... it's optimised one🤘
The best part of Linux according to me is the alternatives are so much that it literally spoils you :P
Don't want to use KDE, you might like Gnome, Cinnamon or XFCE. Text Editors, loads of them! The amount of choice that we have and the customizability that it provides is truly amazing.
Another point that I think is great is the development experience that Linux provides. Bash/Zsh is an absolute beast and the utility it provides is awesome! Windows just launced a new CMD with features that were in Linux 1 years ago. The forceful updates and the baggage that comes with Windows is completely gone with Linux. I use a rolling release distro and the only thing that I have to do to update my system is
sudo pacman -Syyu.Also another advantage is building for CI. Building native modules and being able to test them is simply easy and you can match the CI environment as you're using the same native modules that the CI server uses i.e. Linux :)
Has anyone here considered installing a linux distro on their aging parents' computers to protect them from the exploit-happy Windows environment?
I was thinking about this recently for my dad who keeps getting "hacked" and only really uses his PC for a lightweight gaming client so he can play backgammon online (and an additional add-on utility that analyzes his gameplay).
He absolutely won't use anything that requires learning something new, but I could probably simulate his Windows experience with the gaming app in Wine, if the rest of the OS had a Windows-like interface.
What do y'all think?
LinuxMint is supposedly Windows like. It could be what your dad needs.
I completely agree with all the people writing here Linux is love 😍 ever since I started using Linux I have felt so freakin powerful. finally in years I have all the power I want over my computer. also AUR is amazing
my fav distros
1.Arch
2.Fedora
3.Opensuse
What is AUR?
ArchLinux User Repository I guess.
Its the Arch(Linux) User Repository. Similar to a PPA, users can upload their own PKGBUILDs (Basically a script that installs a package).
If I had to pick one feature, compared to Windows: the fact that you can (and should) install every software you want from package repositories, providing a unified update for the entire system; vs each soft having to phone home to check for updates and bother you with popups, or implementing autoupdating by themselves, or just let users down and they never update after the initial install, becoming vulnerable as security bugs are fixed in newer versions.
Things might have changed with the Windows Store and/or NuGet, but I'd bet it's still true for many Windows users, including tech-savvy ones.
I recently discovered the "scoop" package manager for Windows, and at very least for dev tools it works pretty well! It doesn't have a way to easily update-all, but it does let you install, uninstall, and update most dev tools entirely from the command line. Makes for a really quick setup of a new machine.
Actually, the command you are looking for is scoop update-all!
C:/> scoop update-all
result:
scoop: 'update-all' isn't a scoop command. See 'scoop help'.
I love Linux as a development environment, and I really like tools like Multipass or Docker that let you pop up a quick Ubuntu VM regardless of what OS I'm running.
I've created scripts to install all of my favorite programming languages and tools, so I can have a fresh Linux install up and running for development in about 20 minutes. Linux is great because it gets out of your way and lets you build great things.
The biggest downside for me is software support. There are so many amazing games that only run on Windows, and the best writing tools are either Mac or Windows. I've found myself dual-booting Linux/Windows on nearly all of my personal computers so that I can have the best of both worlds.
Problems running them on WINE? For example, brand new games or demanding games that WINE can't handle (yet). Or just not a WINE fan, and getting it set up for your game of choice?
My games are ancient, and run just fine in dosbox. But I'm a gamer grognard.
Yeah, WINE is very hit and miss with what it supports. For a lot of the software I use, WINE only supports a version that is years behind the latest version, if it supports it at all.
I've also thought about just using a VM, but that has other drawbacks like performance. Booting to Windows on a separate hard drive has worked well.
WSL: Linux Kernel/CLI when you need it, Windows otherwise. For anything I'd boot to Linux for, WSL has replaced that need to dual boot.
I'm using manjaro, but its too heavy, even heavy on my ryzen 7 16 gb ram and ssd, i have no clue why.
I've tried mx, kali, ubuntu.(distro jumperrr)
What do you'll use for web development? I'm thinking of pop os now.... Should i?
I'm just using ubuntu, and it works
fair enough
I graduated in the 1990 and since then I (almost) used only Linux. Main drawback at that time was the difficulty of having hardware (printers, modems, ...) working with Linux. Nowadays that is more or less a memory...
What I like about Linux is the feel of total control: I can even change the kernel if I want... Also most of the open source software works pretty well, sometimes even better than the corresponding proprietary software, maybe with less whistles and bells, but it does its job and reliably too! (and if it doesn't I can correct it... I did that in the past)
This is so cool!
You can add Opensource.com to that list of communities. We write a lot about Linux, and I especially love the stories people share about falling in love with Linux.
If you're interested in sharing your story, shoot me a message here or matt
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