Why Do People Switch To Linux? 746
tadelste writes "During the last month, Lxer.com conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. They asked readers why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Linux stands on its own merits. Anti-Microsoft sentiment comes from Microsoft's paranoia, which results in quotes like the one that had Bill Gates saying he'd put Linux in the Computer museum like he has other competitors." A respondent quote from the article: "It took me about a year to switch from W2K to Linux. The timing in the development of all of the Desktop elements has obviously been critical. If I'd tried any sooner, the whole thing would never have come together. Improved hardware support and equivalent apps have been a big part of the successful transition, and, I owe thanks to many in the Linux community for making that happen at an astounding rate and giving me my functional Desktop OS." Why do you think folks switch?
LaTeX (Score:4, Informative)
Re:LaTeX (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly this isn't the case for everyone, but Linux/Unix just clicked with me, all the way to make config changes the applications and the underlying architecture. And this is not to expound upon the fun I have tinkering which just isn't available in the windows platform.
~Anders
Me too! (Score:3, Interesting)
LaTeX on win32 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LaTeX (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LaTeX (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.lyx.org/ [lyx.org]
"LyX is what?!
LyX is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software.
LyX was originally a Unix application, but now runs natively on Windows and Mac OS X as well, thanks largely to the cross-platform Qt toolkit.
LyX produces high qu
Double standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
LaTeX is not limited to Linux. LaTeX is NOT a reason to switch.
So... wanting to use Latex is not a good reason to switch to Linux because similar applications are available for Windows...
...but wanting to use Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer is a good reason to stick with Windows even though similar applications exist for Linux?
Double-standards anyone?
Re:Double standards? (Score:3, Informative)
LaTeX is available for Windows. That's what MikTeX is, if I remember correctly. It works 100% fine. It's not a convincing reason to switch because exactly the same software is available for Windows, not a similar package.
Re:Double standards? (Score:4, Funny)
There's nothing anywhere near the standard of IE for Linux. Thankfully.
Simple answer... (Score:3, Funny)
I kid, I kid!
Re:Simple answer... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/xp [formetopoopon.com]
I always wondered (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I always wondered (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I always wondered (Score:2)
BTW, anyone have a good recovery utility for a fubar'd EXT3 drive?
-nB
Re:I always wondered (Score:3, Funny)
You need to get out more.
For freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
Jeff
Re:For freedom (Score:3)
<a**hole> Right, then you're just at the whim of bulletin boards, lack of documentation, lack of drivers, lack of vendor support... </a**hole>
I don't mean to sound like an ass, but freedom I think is probaby the least of it. At this point, servers are moved to Linux for the software offerings and stability. Desktop users switch for curiosity and the freedom to dabble. I think that "freedom to mo
My story. (Score:5, Interesting)
This week I just installed Open SuSe 10.0. Why again? Because I really wanted to run Asterisk. I'm a total Linux moron, but it only took me a day or so to install the OS and compile and configured Asterisk. A few hours later, I had a full featured PBX system working and soon to be rolled into production for my small business, for free.
I was amazed at how easy both the OS and Asterisk were to install and configure. I really think that the usability of modern distros has improved dramatically. That isn't really what's keeping adoption down. In my case, and I suspect many others, it was internia. I didn't really want to use Linux until I found something it did that Windows didn't do, Asterisk.
I think it's time that many OSS developers stop trying to play catchup with MS; you're already there. If you don't set the bar any higher than trying to reinvent the functionality already present in Windows, the masses will never take notice. There seems to be this idea that people hate MS and/or Windows and are looking for any excuse to move to OSS (Lindows is a perfect example of this mentality). I don't think this is the case. I'm not looking for a reason to abandon Windows, I need a reason to move to Linux. And the best way to get my interest is offering me things that Windows can't.
Re:It's the applications that make the difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's the applications that make the difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My story. (Score:2)
Exactly. The only line of Linux advocacy that's less convincing than "It's not worse than Windows any more!" is "You have the source code so you can fix things yourself!" Sane computer users choose the software they want, not the software
Re:My story. (Score:3, Interesting)
You have the source code so you can fix things yourself!
It may not be a great way to advocate Linux, but I'd say that statement sums up my primary reason for liking it. I think many programmers find it a very convincing argument, particularly after they've gotten used to working in an environment where they have control over and visibility into every aspect of their computing environment. For me, going back to Windows, or even OS X, feels like slipping into a straightjacket.
Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow!
So I set up debian on an old box, and proceeded to duplicate all of features I used in our medical practice. I was sold, and although I use Slackware now, could never go back to "I need $functionality, so I'll need to go spend more money to get it".
If I use software at work, I support the people who wrote it, too. Applications sell the OS, which has worked in Microsoft's favor for years. Increasingly, this is working for Linux
Re:My story. (Score:3, Informative)
I stopped using Li
Re:My story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but nobody actually *is* trying to play catch-up with MS - at least not as far as most of the high-profile projects I've looked into (such as the Linux kernel itself, KDE, Mozilla etc.) are concerned. I don't think I've ever seen anyone saying "Windows does this and that, we have to, too" on lkml, for example, with the possible exception of noobs who just got Linux yesterday and subscribed to the list today, and even those are few and far between. Generally, the focus is not on being better than anything else; the focus is just on being *good*. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why Linux is actually successful, but MS still doesn't understand it.
Re:My story. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why switch? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why switch? (Score:2)
(I am just kidding, No distro wars please.)
Switch to Linux? (Score:2)
Aesthetic preferences (Score:2)
Why use Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
We do alot of heavy duty database servers and the windows servers have a tendancy to start locking up anytime you patch something to close a security hole. The linux servers have no daemons running except for the database and ssh, there are times we go 6-12 months without needing a hotfix or patch. Even when they need patched it doesnt require a reboot, it doesn't take the machine down, and it doesn't change the day to day operation of the machine with new errors and new crashes. We use linux because it works.
End of story (I'm sure BSD would work as well, but our familiarity with a company is much stronger on the linux side of things.)
I call BS (Score:4, Insightful)
There will ALWAYS be flaws in a complex system. It's just part of the game. However, the goal is to minimize the downtime due to those flaws. Windows "flaws" tend to be easy to fix because so many people use Windows and you can do a quick search to find 8 million other people who've had the same problem. Linux has a lot of that, too, but you have to know where to go to get the right answers sometimes. What makes Linux nice is that it comes free with a plethora of debugging aids and the source code as well.
I'm tired of seeing the "Linux works flawlessly" argument. NONE of the major OS's run without a problem. OpenBSD has only had 1 remote vulnerability, but then again, it comes out of the box with basically NO services running. The more services you introduce into the system, the more flaws you expose.
Im probably going to switch because (Score:3, Interesting)
Why I switched.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why I switched.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wintel is not a hospitable place for people who are neither rich nor unethical.
Re:Why I switched.. (Score:3, Interesting)
this is easy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this is easy (Score:3, Informative)
This is kind of amusing, since Tetravex was actually developed by Microsoft [wikipedia.org] originally.
I don't think I'd call that a survey... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do I start (Score:2)
There wer
What a stupid survey. (Score:2, Interesting)
Non-random surveys are just junk.
A better use of their readers and our time would be to ask why they didn't look at other alternatives to Linux, like Apple or even better, why they chose one paticular flavor of linux over another.
Why do my customers switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
When asked can I do blah with Linux, the answer's pretty much yes out of the box. With Windows the answer's yes if you buy X, Y and Z.
I like Pain (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not a huge fan though. I cant play half the videos I download, wireless in suse sucks. Fedora stoped loading KDE completely one day for no apparent reason.
IMO, linux is still 10 years behind microsoft.
Many Small Pieces Loosely Joined (Score:3, Interesting)
My story... (Score:2)
two important respects (Score:5, Funny)
Real reason I (partially) switched (Score:2)
Seriously, I still need XP for games and contract development work, although my back-end is entirely Linux based.
Didn't want to be tied down to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Didn't want to be tied down to... (Score:3, Insightful)
1.a.) Why are you using access for a database for anything but the simplest information?
1.b.) No one is holding a gun to your head and making you buy a new copy of office. You like what you've got? Keep using it.
2.) Get windows XP SP2, and stop downloading spyware. Plus, it's only the power users that notice it. Most of my clients when I was consulting had their origional install of windows XP and it was running slightly slower than it used to, but they didn't really care. Also: try using linux as a de
Re:Didn't want to be tied down to... (Score:3, Informative)
I've done that and it doesn't. Why on earth would it get slower? In fact in my experience it tends to get quicker and more optimised over time. Which is what you'd expect. I'm running a new install now because I updated my machine, before that I'd been running Linux on a
They largely don't. (Score:2, Insightful)
My Reason For TRYING Linux (Score:2)
I didn't have enough time to really get into it and didn't make the complete switch, but I will probably give it a shot later on.
Cost and more (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2)
1. Chronic Nerdyness.
2. Windows BSODS.
3. They think that just because something is free it also costs nothing, or next to nothing, to operate it.
4. They are developing an embedded system and want complete freedom to recode the OS.
5. They have sat down, done the math and found out it makes sound business sense to do so.
N. Masochism?
a quote from Intel (Score:2)
"In the world without walls noone needs Windows or Gates."
Overheard at lxer.com HQ... (Score:5, Funny)
El Guapo> How many answers?
Jefe> Many answers, many!
El Guapo> Jefe, would you say we have a plethora of answers?
Jefe> Yes, El Guapo. You have a plethora.
El Guapo> Jefe, what is a plethora?
So they say (Score:2)
it's not windows they hate (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there's Linux, then there's Knoppix. (Score:2)
Personally, I've helped many people kick Windows for Knoppix because once you walk them past the perceived limitations of a read-only OS, they get to a point and a light goes off and they're like --bling! Oh yeah, why do I want my personal files mixed in with all that OS crap anyway? It's not like you can't save files. You just don't have to worry about someone else's files screwing with your system. It's
I Switched and Switched Back (Score:5, Interesting)
I used Linux because it was more convenient. I was writing a lot of code that had to run on UNIX systems, and it was nice to be able to write and compile it on my home computer. I also had better connectivity; the Windows terminal programs I had at the time were quite lacking. I did use Windows for a while in the summer of 2000, when I had a job writing code for Windows and Macintosh.
Qualifying the reason I switched back is harder. I had an interview with Microsoft in 2001, and although I didn't accept their offer, I was quite impressed by the people I met while interviewing. So after I got frustrated with the distribution I had been trying in 2002, I decided to give Windows a try again. Windows certainly isn't perfect, but overall it has been a much less frustrating experience than Linux was. A big part of that is Cygwin, which has helped smooth out a lot of the rough edges that Windows has. My regular environment now includes the Windows port of Vim, Cygwin/X, and VNC, but I still find that Windows is more convenient than Linux is.
I no longer have Linux installed on either of my home computers, but I still use Linux almost every day at school. The biggest reason is that rebooting annoys me, so since I completed the switch back to Windows, I've rarely used Linux at home. I miss it at times, not so much since the connectivity of Windows to Linux is good, but there are still a few things I can do better with Linux. For example, gcc on Linux is more compatible with gcc on Linux than gcc on Cygwin. I'd really like a low cost virtualization option so that I could run Linux without rebooting.
Re:I Switched and Switched Back (Score:3, Informative)
VMWare has a free beta "player" now, and you should be able to download various VM images here and there...they offer a "browser appliance" VM from their site, and I was able to boot it to a KNOPPIX CD instead and reformat the virtual partition. I was trying to install Win2k3 but failed, but I don't expect there would've been a problem running debootstrap or another Linux installer using that VM with the free playe
Solid Servers (Score:2)
Quotes from the Article less than "Insightful" (Score:2)
Ok, curiousity, check
Ok, crammed down throat, check
Ok, nerd factor (this would be my factor too mostly I guess), check
Ok, this is a how not a why.
Curiosity, check-check
Why Do People Switch To Linux? (Score:2)
I switched because of all the 'tang I knew I'd score being a Linux stud. Is there another reason?
Trollish Quote (Score:2)
Linux is for people who hate Microsoft... BSD is for people who love Unix.
What I would find more interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's more interesting looking BACK at Windows (Score:2)
Why I switched or why the company I work is? (Score:2)
User friendly (Score:2, Interesting)
Why I haven't switched to Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I think this brings up a general problem in that Windows is generally supported first by software and a lot of hardware where Linux is either an afterthought or it is supported soley by the community and therefore there is a lag time for getting the functionality I want.
Maybe it has been a while since I used Linux for "consumer" activities. Maybe it has improved enough to use. The fact is that most customers don't want to write device drivers or software for the problem that isn't yet solved.
Re:Why I haven't switched to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I did too -- until Intuit disabled my version's online features to force an upgrade.
That was the day I moved to Gnucash and never looked back. I may not have my online features, but I'll be damned if I'll let some app vendor remotely shut off some functionality on me again for no good reason (and before anyone pipes in that Intuit may have had security reasons -- no, they didn't. I packet-traced what was going on at the time when I was figuring it out. Even when I downloaded my transactions from my bank's website directly and tried to import it to Quicken after disconnecting from my bank, Quicken would "phone home" to Intuit before processing it.)
Don't assume people started with Windows. Or a GUI (Score:3, Interesting)
Myself, I never saw a GUI as something useful beyond desktop work. For remote servers I find Windows cumbersome, bandwidth-hogging and prone to popping up some mandatory modal pop-up upon reboot before my remote control software kicks in- leaving me 5000 miles away with no access.
Servers, IMHO, don't need a GUI.
For my desktop, sure, I use Windows, because that's what my company supplied by default and that's what my games run on at home. But my desktop doesn't matter - it isn't where the real work is done.
I "switched" to Linux - for the stuff that mattered - because it was the most comfortable, familiar server OS that fitted with my commandline heritage and ran on hardware I could afford. I could have quite easily been a *BSD chap too.
Anti-Microsoft? Not a reason (Score:5, Informative)
It's the apps and the freedom, that's why people switch.
Reasons for my switch (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried Linux off and on the past few years, finally moving to Linux full-time a year ago. First with Mandrake 10.1, now with SUSE 9.3 (probably upgrade to OpenSUSE 10 in the near future).
I switched for three reasons. First and foremost, I got tired of spending more time dealing with spyware and viruses than actually working. Second, I'm developing a Java3d-based web game, and wanted to ensure cross-platform compatability. And, third, the free-as-in-beer software eliminates the guilt due to pirated software (Office and Photoshop are frigging expensive).
About the only thing I miss is game compatability. If a native Linux client ever comes out for Civ3, Civ4, BF2 or GTA:SA, I'm screwed productivity-wise.
Open Office & after (Score:5, Interesting)
After I was comfortable with it and had moved over all of my many, many forms and other documents needed to run my office, I moved the rest of the way to linux. I chose Mandriva with a Gnome desktop. Though I have not found an open source counterpart for every proprietary application I used before, with Open Office I could make it work.
Why move to a linux desktop? Lots of reasons, but, at the top, I guess it felt to me that every time I turned around, another sales rep was billing me for another upgrade or another license.
If it wasn't that type of bill, it was a bill from technical support to fix a problem that did not exist before I made some vendor-mandated change to my office system. My old documents don't open any more. The formatted is messed up. That feature I need so much has been moved. Etc.
I'm embarrassed by how much money I spent for a technical support providers that ended up talking on the phone with the technical support provider of another vendor. To my mind, that's a ridiculous situation that is largely remedied by the open source approach.
It has been a long, steep hill to be sure. I am never going to look back though.
There is a lot more to say on this subject, but these reasons are at the top of my list.
Unix-like (Score:5, Interesting)
But Linux was, however barebones it was. Unlike DOS, there was no 640K limit on the early release 80386 machine with 2.5MB of RAM I bought cheap from a mail order house selling surplus computers (this was the early 80386, complete with bugs). Instead of all the nastiness of DOS/Windows 3.0, it was a nice, smooth flat memory model. With a proper VMM. Demand page loading. Etc. In January 1992, you had a boot floppy and a root floppy. To install this "distro", after making your hard drive partition, you just did a cp -a from the root floppy to the root of the hard drive. Then you used a hex editor to modify a couple of bytes on the boot floppy to tell it the root device was the hard disk. There was no LILO - it couldn't actually completely boot strap from a hard disk, you still needed to put the kernel on a floppy!
But it was a real *nix like system on my PC with many of the limitations of DOS gone. Very quickly it gained LILO, a proper init/getty/login and a TCP/IP stack (before Microsoft even had heard of the Internet). The NET1 TCP/IP stack was *extremely* basic - it could only work on a
I learned C on that machine. In 1993, when I upgraded to a '486 with a whopping 80MB drive, I could install X as well - and learned all about Xlib. I wrote a media player on that 486 for playing Amiga MODs (basically a pure Xlib based playlist editor, complete with a VU meter for visualisation!) Wish I still had the source. In 1993, a 486 with 16MB of RAM could compile the kernel _under X_ without touching swap. I used that machine to learn about sockets, C++, NFS and all sorts of things that would have cost me thousands I didn't have in the proprietary world. My humble 486 was better than the Solbourne S4000 (Sun compatible) workstations at university that cost an order of magnitude more money!
I have had Linux on my PCs ever since because I like it. I've usually also had a Windows partition too, but a couple of years ago, I realised that I was only booting Windows once every three months and decided to blow it away when I got the then new Fedora Core 2.
Currently, my home is home to three architectures and three operating systems. I have a 333MHz UltraSPARC system running OpenBSD, a PowerBook running OS X and an Intel PC running Fedora Core. Linux still gives me the freedom to tinker - that's why I like it.
Why I switched (Score:4, Interesting)
However, as I grew up I also realised the importance of Freedoms 1 and 3. In the 8-bit days I had dabbled with BASIC and machine code. The 16-bit years seemed somehow as though something was missing. I had this wonderful spanky new machine and yet I couldn't make it do exactly what I wanted it to do! I was all ready to pull out my old BBC model B from the loft, when it hit me. I wasn't hurting the software industry one iota by illegally copying their products -- I was just as dependent upon them as any paying customer. I needed Freedoms 1 and 3, and that meant I needed the source code. In the Beeb days, it was enough to disassemble a machine code game to make silly changes, like changing the keys or adding extra lives or disabling collision detection {with 32K of ram, and a framebuffer eating 20K of that and the OS eating another K or so for itself, the game was very hackable}. Or, of course, there would be listings printed in magazines, to be typed in over the course of several days; and these often could be improved upon. I realised I was missing Freedom 1 in a big way.
I had used VAX/VMS and UNIX at university, some years before. Though I actually preferred the former, because it used words instead of symbols, the latter was the direction in which all things were going {and VMS even had a "unix emulator" -- append
When a friend of mine gave Linux a serious try, I decided that it must be worth a go. In the end I set up an old machine running Linux -- Debian slink; or it might have been potato, I think -- as a "modem sharer" so that my Windows 95 box and any machine I borrowed could both use my single, 56K dial-up line. When my ISP of the day introduced individual cgi-bin directories, I set up apache and perl on my "modem sharer" so it could be used as a testing environment for my scripts.
And when I bought an Athlon XP 2000+, I knew I had to make a serious decision. Would I dual-boot Linux and Windows, or single-boot Linux? The Windows 98 SE installer disc answered that for me. It didn't believe there was such a thing as a whole gigabyte of memory on one motherboard, and barfed. I ended up installing Mandrake 8.2, got for me by a broadband-enabled "warez n pr0n d00d".
And I never looked back. One day I picked up my e-mail using kMail. There was a message from my erstwhile ISP asking if I knew anybody who wanted a job doing a bit of programming and system maintenance. I said "yes, me!", and got the job.
Surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't find this surprising at all. You don't run a business on emotion -- you run it on what works. Linux works. And well. And I can do things with it I can't do with MS.
Linux proponents do themselves a huge disservice by posting "M$ sux" posts everywhere. The whole '[they] doth protest too much' thing comes to mind.
I choose Linux for Linux, not as a slap in the face to Mr. Gates.
Cron and pipes! (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the day that I realized I could use my computer to record my weekly radio show, encode it, and move the whole thing to my iPod before I came home-- automatically! I was just totally floored. Now I'm building a system to monitor the temperature of my homebrew in my fermenters.
Sure, Windows has pipes. But most programs can't take input on stdin and require user interaction. Useless to me!
(And for clarification... I don't actually use Linux... I use BSD. But for most uses, they are essentially the same.)
Common thread (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Common thread (Score:3, Interesting)
The big question is, how many of the remaining 99.5% are using Linux, and if so, why did they switch.
My parents computers and my girlfriend's father's computer are running Debian or Ubuntu. When I originally set up my parents computers I installed Windows 2000 on them. This was about 4 years ago. Since I was 1500 miles away, I thought it would be more useful to have a system that other people nearby could easily support. Boy, was that a mistake.
They mostly surf the web and take pictures. I have h
I switched to Linux because... (Score:3, Funny)
My Story (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I stay with Linux because of the power I have over the system. It does my bidding, not Microsoft's, Apple's, Sun's, or anyone else. I can find out every process that is running on my system nearly instantly, and I can kill almost any errant program (The only exception is if it hangs while waiting on the kernel which is hung waiting on a device driver). It hasn't crashed since April, and that was my bad. I can do everything I do with a computer (browse; e-mail; IM; rip, stream, and listen to music; watch, transcode, and master video; edit images; wordprocess; work on spreadsheets; balance my accounts; and sync data between devices. And let's not forget that I can program in practically any language used by more than 50 people.
The only thing still lacking is a large selection of video games (The kind I like anyway), but I'm so busy with other projects that I haven't even had time to re-install Windows 2000 (WinXP has never touched my hardware) on my games partition since I upgraded the guts of my workstation back in June.
Let me count the ways: (Score:3, Informative)
(2) Work. Linux lets me be as smart as I always was; Windows forces me to be slow and stupid. Linux comes out of the box with more tools (tools, I say. Not frou-frou doodads and games!) than you could buy for Windows if you had Bill Gates' bank account. Yes, I tried MS-Visual-Basic and Visual-C++. Say what you will. Say you love it. That's your opinion. My opinion is, they're retarded. My apologies to any retarded people offended by this.
(3) Innovation. Let me second the idea put forth by several others in this thread: the stupidest thing you can do with Linux is follow in Window's footsteps in the interest of getting more people to switch from Windows. Forget trying to make "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Windows(TM)". Continue to blaze Linux's own trail as it has always been, and let everybody else catch up if they can.
So: innovation: Live CDs. Linux that can run from floppies, USBs, old computers, everywhere. A true multi-tasking system (new to me, anyway) able to compile in one desktop, render 3D images in a second, download in a third, and let me play a game in the fourth without a bit of lag - it's like being four people on four computers! The variety of having my choice of 1000 different distros, so I can have it my way, and choice of different desktops (Fluxbox is my favorite, and I had a chance to shop around for a while to get there).
(4) Free! Free forever! Hundreds and hundreds of distros to download free! All the software for it free! Read the source code for free! Roll your own for free! Release your own for free! Even the games are starting to improve - every time I find a Supertux, an ArmegaTron, a Tower Toppler, or a Metal Blob Solid, I'm doubly happy with it because I didn't have to pay $10-70 dollars for it.
PS Save the standard, flaming, aggravated responses this time, willyah? If you can't tolerate reading other people's opinions, you're at the wrong website. If you love Windows and hate Linux, good for you! But we're asking me.
Windows XP activation did it for me (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll freely admit, I pirated as much software as anyone (and I've never met any long-term computer user who hasn't), but it started to bug me after a while. First, on a practical level, trying to find a crack/serial for the latest version of something was a pain. But mostly, I just started to realize this is NOT something that I wanted to do. Especially as I was moving more and more towards an IT-heavy career. I went on a personal crusade, only to use free software if at all possible, and buy what I needed otherwise. School gave me the free student copies of Windows/Office, and the free software movement was rapidly filling in the holes. I could set up many machines entirely guilt-free, and importantly, HASSLE free. Eventually, I assumed that OEM copies of Windows and/or more income would provide the replacements for free Windows CDs.
Then, Product Activation happened. It initially annoyed the hell out of me on principle, but I did it. After all, it's just an extra step in an install. Then I started reading the horror stories. Calls to Microsoft when you've changed more than 2 pieces of hardware. Begging to be "allowed" to re-install your OS. Booting up a second computer built from spare parts and not being allowed to put an OS on it. Granted, in 2001 you wouldn't exactly use a 5 year old PC to run XP, but the writing was on the wall. I looked to the future and realized I most definitely did NOT want to be trapped this way. So early in 2003, I switched.
What was funny was, most of my complaints/issues with Linux had gone away by about RH8. Installs were a breeze, apps aplenty, it seemed like Linux had matured enough for me. So I spent the next 2 years always trying the latest and greatest, and every time it's been amazing what "just works".
Meanwhile, every few months I get asked to work on someone's Windows box. And every time it just feels older and older. XP has had no significant updates in 4 years now, that I'd notice when actually using it. Half the hardware you have to download drivers for. It can take hours to patch, reboot, patch again (because the first patch had to be installed separately), reboot, etc, etc, etc just to get a working system. Yes, you can spend the time building your own slipstreamed discs - or you can just download the latest Linux distro, all up to date. And updates happen ALL AT ONCE. For all software.
The last straw was the other day. For fun, I tried to get 2000 back on a spare box. Fully legal disc.
Windows Update wouldn't work unless I installed their "genuine Windows advantage" software. Sure, I can manually download dozens of patches and apply them manually. Or, I can take the chance that Microsoft might think I'm a criminal, and then have to beg my way to forgiveness.
Screw it. Linux is far easier to use for me. That's why I switched, and stay switched.
A few less common ones (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Free-ness. Free as in beer, free as in food, free as in do-whatever-the-heck you want with it free.
2. Package management. I prefer gentoo for this, and there is something poignantly beautiful to me about the concept of 'emerge sync' & 'emerge world'. Windows update somehow makes me want to grab a weapon and get medieval (though to be fair, so does/did the red hat update network, but see the next reason).
3. Choice. If there's some software application I need, it probably can be found on sourceforge or via my package manager of choice. The biggest difficulty is choosing which of the many alternatives to use.
4. Community. I read slashdot mostly because I find opinions of people like me whose opinions don't match mine. Nerdly as it may sound, I use Linux because Linux 'gets' me, it works for me in most of the ways that Windows drives me insane. Linux users by choice form a club, and I find that generally, the people in that club are the kind of people I like to hang with, or at least can hold a coherent conversation with. Amusingly, this doesn't hold for me and the Mac, but that's a post for another day.
I don't switch... (Score:3, Insightful)
I still have not totally switched (Score:5, Interesting)
What usually makes people adopt an OS (I'm NOT talking me in particular)
1)The Killer Application - an application that runs on YOUR OS that runs NOWHERE else. Honestly, for at least 2-3 of the transitions I've seen, it was (at least partly) the "Next great spreadsheet" - Apple II - VisiCalc - IBM PC - Lotus 123 - Windows - Excel/Wingz/Word for Windows
2)The OS does something itself that the competition does NOT - In the case of Linux, It's generally things like firewalls/stability etc - THIS "something" generally has to be a bigger "something" than #1 - or it leads to slow adoption
3)Cost - and I'm NOT talking $$$ or even TCO as measured in studies, although they are certainly PART of the "Cost" I'm talking about, and in fact, in a corp environment, TCO aproximates the "Cost" I'm talking about. In my case, talking about individuals, it's more $$ and effort combined. For a person just starting in computers, there is little "cost" in moving to Linux - but to the person who has spent a lot of years learning to use Windows and it's applications, there is a "Mental" cost of re-learning how to do things. For us geeks, this is fun, and the cost can be negative (hey, we LIKE playing with new stuff), but to most people, any skill set change is real, and a bother. Why do you thing the average PC doesn't get patched/have it's anti virus updated - too much bother. They run the PC until it breaks, and then get someone to "fix it" - and in fact, often the "fix" is to buy another computer!! I've seen perfectly good PCs thrown out, because the owner doesn't want to bother - they spend the $500 or $1000 on a new PC, move their data, and get a new toy, and have fixed their problem. Doesn't seem to make much sense, until you figure that for a LOT of people, if you figure in their time as money, it's actually cheaper to do this - let's face it - if you earn even $10/hr, if you save 50 hours over the life of the PC by NOT updating, etc, you have paid for a new PC!! (which has all the NEW toys...)
It comes down to - we are not normal users (thank goodness)
Re:Simple answer (Score:2)
That would be a very boring, though expected answer to "Why did penguins cross the road?"
Re:Simple answer (Score:2)
Because they were designed to do so [worldnetdaily.com].
Mod up (Score:2, Interesting)
The few people who do 'convert' to Linux, imho, often do so because they want to run Unixy applications, not because they prefer it as a desktop environment.
beg to differ (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mod up (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I admit it is (or it was) true. But as soon as person buys PS2 or other game console, the only reason for windows to exist on desktop dissapears. 99% of dual booting is just to play games.
I really don't see the use for personal desktop in Windows. What can it do? (and no, viruses I don't need. If I get virus better that I got it by sex, while spyware position is already taken by my annoying neighboors. All other jobs are much better performed with
Re:Bloat (Score:2, Insightful)
And why do you need a bloated X server at all if you only need mutt and pork ?
Re:Tired of pirating? (Score:2)
Unfortunately we may be in the minority though....
Re:simple reasons... (Score:5, Funny)
But then again, I've never been good at making decisions.
Re:I'm surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Actions speak louder than words (Score:3, Insightful)
I *use* Linux because I want to use Linux.
I don't advocate Linux unless someone asks me.
I don't bash WinXX unless someone asks me.
I *bash* WinXX because people are always calling me asking: "Can you fix this?" "I've got a problem with my computer..." "My PC crashed..." "I opened this email and now my PC is so slow..." "My Internet is..." "I can't
So, while fixing, or more frequently of late telling them to get someone else to fix it, I bash. If they ask for advi
Re:Actions speak louder than words (Score:3, Insightful)
I advocate Linux because if Linux is more popular, not only will *everyone* benefit from reduced malware and vendor lock-in, but I will benefit from having my platform supported by hardware and software manufacturers. I don't bash WinXX unless someone asks me.
If I see someone drowning, I try to help whether they are shouting for help or not. A few of them are amazing swimmers who want to spend several minutes floating face-down, but most of them could use
Re:Actions speak louder than words (Score:3, Insightful)