Why Should You Use Linux?

31 Jan 2008 20:56 (Edited: 31 Jan 2008 20:56)

It's a question that most people wouldn't give a second thought, and why should they? It's a completely different operating system that we see advertising for, that we see installed on every computer at major stores and that we find compatible software for in those same stores.

The reason for this is simple: Linux, and much of the software that runs on Linux, is free (as in, it costs you no money). There are over 350 different web sites one can go to to download a disc image, they can then burn that image to a CD or DVD and install it on their computer - all for the cost of the CD and some bandwidth. Linux has also changed the process of installing software that you want to run from going to the store and browsing shelves to clicking "Applications > Add/Remove Software" and browsing a list on your desktop.

Let me clarify one thing before we go any further though: There is indeed a difference in the required knowledge of the operating system of someone who wants to install Linux on their PC compared to someone who buys a Linux pre-loaded computer. This is the same for any operating system though. When you buy your big-brand-name computer loaded with that "other operating system", someone has already done such things as partition your drives, install drivers (the software that makes your hardware work) and tested the components to make sure everything worked. If you were to build a PC from scratch, you'd have to do the same no matter what operating system you chose.

Linux comes in over 350 different flavors. Each of these flavors is a collection of a Linux kernel along with some software to run on it. In this, I'm going to refer to the Fedora operating system running the default Gnome environment. Some people like the KDE desktop more than Gnome, to those I say, this article isn't exactly for you as you already know enough about Linux to have made that decision... and that I happen to think Gnome is better than KDE hands down. Isn't Linux great in how it gives us all a choice to run the software we personally like best?

This article merely scratches the surface of what you can do with Linux, and it's geared toward desktop use. Linux can is also used in practically every server, network monitoring, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention role that there is. This is due specifically to the security, stability and expandability of Linux systems.

One reason you might want to switch to Linux may be poor system stability and security of another operating system. Linux has a great reputation for system security and stability. Many would argue that the only reason there isn't as much malware for Linux as there is for other operating systems is because Linux isn't as popular. Regardless of why it is, the fact remains that Linux doesn't have as much malware targeted for it and malware written for other platforms simply doesn't run on Linux, flawed theories of popularity notwithstanding.

If we're really paranoid about the security of our system, we can take this a step further. Linux includes with its kernel an enterprise-grade firewall and Fedora includes an easy to understand graphical interface for setting this up (System > Preferences > System > Firewall & SELinux). If you'd like even more control over your on-system firewall, you can go to iptables.org, bask in the wealth of information residing there (not for the faint of heart) and end up with your own, custom written firewall.

This is the way of quite a few things in Fedora, for novice users, there are simple and easy to understand graphical tools and graphical functionality that can completely keep you off the command line. If you want to do more, do things more efficiently or just learn more about your system, you always have access to the command line where you can change pretty much anything having to do with the way your system runs.

All of that out of the way, let's take a look at some of the things you can actually do with a Linux desktop computer.

Browse the internet
Fedora comes with Firefox as the default browser. If you've never used Firefox, you can download it for practically any platform at mozilla.com. Under Linux, most of the extensions work (those specifically developed for other operating systems won't) and most common plugins, such as Flash and Java, will work. Many plugin developers don't yet create a 64 bit version, but this has been dealt with by the open source community in two different ways: You can have a plugin wrapper installed that allows your 64-bit browser to use 32-bit plugins, or you can launch Firefox in 32-bit mode.

Read Email
Fedora's email client is Evolution. While this is a great application that encompasses personal task management tools, calendars, and other such niceness, I'm partial to the Thunderbird email client which includes better organization (in my humble opinion) of multiple email accounts, as well as junk mail controls and security features such as identifying phishing mail, blocking javascript from running within email and blocking remote images from loading in your email client. While you can download this for just about any platform from mozilla.com, under Fedora, all you need do is go to Applications > Add/Remove Software > Graphical Internet, select it from the list, and then click "Apply". Hey, what do you know; you just went through the entire software installation process for Fedora! That's right, no "Load CD #1", no "Enter License Key", just select it and hit "Apply".

Instant Messaging
Fedora comes with a multi-protocol internet messenger called Pidgin. What this means to you is that you browse to Applications > Internet > Internet Messenger and enter your credentials for AIM, YIM, MSNM and ICQ and you'll be logged in to all of them at the same time, through a single client. Pidgin supports chat rooms, sharing files, web cams and microphones, just like you'd expect from any internet messenger.

Internet Chat
Many people are familiar with internet chat. What most aren't familiar with is the ability to open a chat client and connect to hundreds of different servers serving thousands of different chat rooms. Just fire up Xchat, select a server and you're on your way. In addition to common interest rooms, this is a great way to get instant help with your new Linux desktop.

Organize Photos
There are tons of photo organizers and viewers for Linux. Part of your installation includes gThumb, which allows you to perform image corrections such as enhance, red-eye removal, rotate, crop, resize and tons of other options (of course, you can also rotate and resize images directly from your file browser by right-clicking an image). Some other photo managers/viewers for Linux include Google's Picasa, F-Spot and KPhotoAlbum.

Listen to Music
Linux is capable of playing all common music file formats including MP3's and music CDs. The two most popular players, Rhythmbox and Amarok, both support sorting music by song title, band name or genre as well as connecting to internet radio stations.

Watch Movies
Linux offers several movie players, all capable of playing a plethora of different types of videos including wmv's, avi's, mpeg, divx and, of course, DVDs.

Write a Book
Well, if we all only had the time... Still, Linux includes packages such as Scribus for desktop publishing. For those shorter works, OpenOffice.org provides a complete office suite including word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation editor, database manager and more - all of it compatible with other common office suites. Personally, I use mainly Gnome-specific tools for this, such as Abiword, Gnumeric, Glom, GnuCash, Planner and a few others as I find these Gnome-native applications run better than cross-platform solutions when running under Gnome.

Play Games
Yes, that's right. Contrary to what many people think about Linux and games, Linux actually does quite well with them. What's more, the games on Linux are largely free, though there are commercial games that you can purchase from the internet. Many games (a couple hundred) exist in the package manager (Applications > Add/Remove Software) of most major distributions and there are tons of sites dedicated to gaming on Linux which can point you to even more. A lot of the games for Linux are also networked, meaning you can play games with your friends on both private networks and public servers, often for free as well.

Write Code
For those of us who have to use our computer for more than playing games, Linux offers a huge selection of development tools ranging from Devhelp, a desktop help application that offers assistance on various application programing topics, to simple, and not so simple raw code editors like Geany and Eclipse, to interface design tools like Glade and QT Designer. Further, if you're developing for open source, you have access to all of the code libraries used to create the distribution you're running, including everything from the kernel source to Gnome widgets.

Run a Web Server
If you do write code for a living, you might want to set up a development server where you can work on things without having to connect to any remote machine. Under Fedora, the command "yum install httpd php php-mysql" will give you a complete Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) environment. Your DocumentRoot is under /var/www/html and your logs are under /var/log/httpd. That's it, there's nothing more you need to do except start putting content in your DocumentRoot. If you want it to be accessible from other machines, don't forget to open port 80 on your on-system firewall and if you want these services to start when your computer boots, you can find that under System > Administration > Server Settings > Services.

Get Free Software Updates
That's right, in addition to giving you a plethora of free software, when new or new versions of software come out, it goes right into your software repository. All you have to do is hit your "Update" button when you log in to bring your system completely up to date. When you do hit "Update", you're not brought to any web sites, you're not asked to verify whether or not your Linux distribution is really Linux, the updates simply download and install themselves. There's no need for a reboot unless the actual kernel (the core of the system) has been updated. Rather, the next time you open an updated application, you'll be greeted by the completely new version. It's like that when you install completely new software too: After you hit "Apply" in your package manager and the software automatically downloads and installs, your new applications become immediately available in your menus.

Forget About Defrag
Linux systems don't require constant attention. The idea is that you want to use your computer for whatever tasks you want, not for constant administration of your system. This idea leads to things like filesystems that don't require you to defrag them every so often, though Linux will perform automated checks on them every so often.

Use Linux On Old Hardware
While this is entirely possible to accomplish, one must understand that by choosing to do this, for whatever reason, you choose to contend with everything involved in building your own computer from scratch, minus actually installing the hardware, in addition to finding every possible way to tweak your system for the best performance possible. Lots of people complain that they couldn't do a point and click install of a major distribution on their Pentium 100 with 64MB of RAM. I tell you here and now that's to be expected. Modern distributions are targeted to modern hardware. If you must go this route, I would strongly suggest you use Gentoo (gentoo.org). While this can take as long as a week (yes, I said a week) to get up and fully functional on older hardware, the result will be a rock-solid, fast operating system that still allows you to do everything you'd want (within reason, of course). The Gentoo web site contains the most extensive step by step instructions for accomplishing anything under Gentoo (or arguably any other distribution of Linux, for that matter), so all you have to know is how to follow directions.

Back to the original question: Why should you use Linux? The short answer might be because it allows you to do the things you want to do with your computer in a secure and stable manner without requiring you to constantly prove you didn't steal it.

User comments

by varnull @ 04 Feb 2008 1:20

And it just looks so much better too
by varnull @ 04 Feb 2008 1:22

Please note.. I found this article somewhere or other a while back, and because my browser was playing up kept the text to read at my leisure.. I think it's worthy of being read by others, and I'm pretty sure the original author won't mind me spreading his message.
Thanks for a great read whoever you are..
by ktulu14 @ 08 Feb 2008 20:05

Without your support over the past 12 months i would never had ,made the move to *nix. I know know what "real" computing is rather than just point and click.

I can even advise others with the limited knowledge i have, tweak my system the way I want it, make it look the way I want it.

Long live Open Source software!!!

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