Zack Bartel

The other day I was sitting in a marketing lecture when for some reason the professor got on the topic of operating systems. In a nutshell, he was saying that people that use Linux are “rebels” and if Linux gets adopted into the mainstream desktop environment then us Linux users would go find a different OS. This is the first time I have ever heard of such an idea but maybe in some cases it is true. The professor in question Dr? Elton, likes to take class poles. First he asked how many of us use Windows. Of course 90% of the class raised their hands. Then he asked how many used Mac OS X; 10 or so (including myself) raised their hands. Next he asked if there was anyone who used Linux. Now there is 200+ people in this class and guess who was the lone soul who raised his hand. Needless to say I drew the attention of a majority of the class. He then proceeded to call me out in front of everyone… “Why do you use Linux?”. Now the first thing I wanted to blurt out was something to the effect of “Because Windows sucks, Linux is a hackers paradise, all the tools I need are on Linux, I develop software for Linux…”. Thankfully I caught myself. If I had said something like that I think it would have put a small dent in the reputation of Linux in these people’s minds.
This event made me want to share why I use Linux. Not from a developer/CS major/Linux hacker stand point but from a user’s stand point. The following is why I use Linux for personal use.

Free and Open Source Software
Linux is free and 99% of software that anyone would really need is free. It is now trivial to find and install FOSS software to meet all of my needs (apt-get). Picture this, most of the computer users in America pay $500 for Microsoft Office and another $100 or so for Windows itself (which I heard is “really good price for an OS”). Now think about if you could have all that functioanlity and more for no cost at all. The FOSS project OpenOffice.org is completely free and does most of what Office does. The functioanlity not yet implemented in OpenOffice is, in my humble opinion, stuff that no one really needs.

Virus free
Anyone out there sick of spyware hounding your comupter, virus’ corrupting your harddrive, constantly trying to stay up to date with vius definitions for fear that your machine will be rendered useless if you mess up? I don’t want to say Linux is immune to viruses but I have never had one. I have seen proof-of-concept code that suggests it is possible but honestly, what self respecting virus writer is going to waste his/her time writing a virus for Linux Most of the time these virii exploit a security hole to gain root access to your machine and start causing some sort of chaos. Under Linux there are often new security breeches but using a simple command to update your system 99.999% of the time it won’t be a problem. I have used Linux since I was 12 (MkLinux baby!) and never had a security issue with it.

Customizeable
Since the OS uses X11 it is very easy (and encouraged) to select a window manager of your own. If you don’t like one way things look and feel you can simply change it! Not only can you select from a list of window managers themselves but you can also customize them.

Open!
No matter what the situation a monopoly lock on a market is NEVER good. Microsoft has exploited its control over desktop computing ever since they came into existence and it does nothing but bad things for the public. In fact, Microsoft was one of the originators of the idea of commercial software for the average user*.
The Linux and Open Source community/lifestyle revolves around freedom. Freedom to obtain, change, reditribute and contribute to software for no cost and of no legal reprocussion. In my opinion this leads to higher quality, more secure, leading edge software (guess what was the first OS to support 64bit architecture).

Fun and challenging to learn
There is just so much… “stuff” … you can do with a Unix based system that it makes everyday a learning experience. The more cool tricks and cool stuff I learn how to do (on a daily basis) makes it fun to use. I love learning how to solve everyday problems in new and creative way.
Example: I just got a new laptop. I use a minimal window manager called ion which did not have a battery status thing built in. A quick trip to the ion website and I found a battery status “plugin” script that would show the percentage of battery remaining. Perfect! Then I though it would be cool to have a little status symbol that would indicate if my laptop was plugged into the wall or not. The script was easy enough to modify that in about 15 minutes I had a + or a - sign in my status bar that showed if my laptop was plugged in and I had my first experience with the scripting language lua. What a cool feeling, I just needed something, found something that did almost what I needed but not quite, modified it to fit my needs and it works! I made it. Welcome to the world of Open Source. Now if this had been a cool new feature the “community” thing to do would be to share this script**.

I realize that I kind of skewed away from a desktop user’s perspective. I don’t expect my grandma to hack lua code (no offense grandma I love you ) but that’s just the thing. Linux users tend to become more tech savvy by choice and for the most part have fun doing it.

By the way in class I wound up bringing up the free, no virus part and then the monopoly lock thing because we had been going over market structure the week before. I think he got a kick out of it.

I hope to get some feedback on this subject as I want to hear a Windows user’s opinions. I’d also like to know if said users have put much time learning Linux. I hate it when people say things like “Macs suck, they’re so hard to use” and have put maybe 10 minutes into learning. It is hard to go from a Civic to a Lexus.

Anyway that’s enough out of me. I don’t plan on editting this, or even rereading it for that matter, so if anyone has lost respect for my writing abilities I don’t blame you. Let me know what you think!

* The idea of paying for the medium on which the software was delivered was common though
** On my second trip to the same website I found a script almost identical to the one I had written