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Why Linux?
From Grey on 07 May 1998
Answer Guy,
I am trying to understand why there is so much interest in Linux. What does
it offer, in this world of Macs and Win95 PCs, that makes it ....attractive
and useful?
My first stunned impression on reading this question was:
- Is this a shill? How did this guy manage to
find my column in LG without knowing a variety
of answers to this question?
But that was a quick uncharitable moment.
Are there any good 'What is Linux?' type articles I can look at. I am always
tempted to purchase the Linux packages to try and determine what it is but I
would not mind knowing before.
Thanks,
RL
The fact that you are "tempted" (curious) is why you should play
with Linux. It's your computer, and you should be able to "play"
with it --- and you should have choices about how it operates.
You computer should work in a way that suits your preferences and
style --- you shouldn't have to adopt the style
that's dictated by the trade press, the mass media,
Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs,
Xerox PARC,
or anyone else.
(I'm presuming you are a home user in this case --- but my
argument applies equally to whole institutions --- they should
have the choice to use and run software that suits their
needs and preferences --- even such preferences as they dictate
to their employees or userbase).
So, what is great about Linux? Choice.
You asked for some URL's to read testimonials about this: here's
one that I'm reading right now:
- John Kirch's "NT 4.0 vs. Unix"
- http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html
(This isn't Linux specific --- but it does go into great detail
and mentions Linux frequently in its analysis).
I found the link to that site from one of the LDP (Linux
Documentation Project) mirrors. These LDP mirrors are the
definitive place to get info about Linux. The "master" site
is at:
- Sunsite (U. of North Carolina):
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/
... which is also the master repository for Linux software
(just as ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/
is the master repository for FSF GNUware). The LDP mirror I
usually visit is at:
- SSC's Linux Resources Pages:
- http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/
A couple of other great sources of Linux information are:
- Linux Weekly News:
- http://www.lwn.net/
- Slashdot (Daily) News for Nerds:
- http://www.slashdot.org/
... and, of course Linux Gazette
(http://www.linuxgazette.net/)
which was the first "webazine" to cover the topic and is still
100% volunteer.
Now, before I babble a bit about some of the other advantages
to Linux let me digress to make two observations:
I can talk about features of
Linux,
Win
'95, NT,
MacOS,
BeOS and
many other operating systems
and packages until my fingers are worn to nubs and you
justifiably have no reason to care what I've said.
In order to discuss the possible benefits
of Linux to you I'd have to know more
about you --- your requirements, preferences, and
constraints. I'd have to engage in a process of
requirements analysis --- and the first step of that is
to identify the involved parties (particularly
the customer).
Modern mass marketing and advertising does not meet this
need. It focuses on features rather than
benefits because features can be touted
with no understanding of a specific user's needs. For any
given feature it may be of
benefit to a given user, or it may be
irrelevant or even detrimental to them.
That said, the other observation is that Linux is not quite
yet appropriate for just anyone. To paraphrase a popular
signature from USENET: "Linux is 'user-friendly'; it's just
particular about who its friends are"
At the moment Linux is not the system I would provide to my
mother for her first computer. She was interested in two things
--- playing Mah Jongg and surfing the 'net. I got her a Mac
Performa.
By the end of this year I might have a different view ---
the
KDE,
Gnome, and
GNUStep projects, among
others, along with incremental improvements to the package
management and management of products like
Debian,
Red Hat, and
S.u.S.E. (among
many others) may get us (the Linux community) to
the point where shipping Linux systems to complete novices will
make good business sense.
(Note: a number one priority advance that would help
with this would be a multi-media "Welcome to Linux"
interactive video system --- that would be run off
a CD or (if they're supported by then) DVD disc).
I think it is already to the point that "normal" users can
productively use Linux. Customers can go to
VAResearch,
Telenet,
Apache Digital,
PromoX,
SWT, and other hardware
vendors to get a system with Linux pre-installed. They can
use these systems as easily as they could a similarly
configured Win '95 box (and somewhat more easily than using
an NT system).
We are now past due for Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, Zeos,
IBM or some other upper tier hardware vendor to offer Linux
pre-installed on their "BTO" (Build to Order) price lists.
Soon I also hope to see Apple and UMAX offer mkLinux and
LinuxPPC options on their PowerMac clones. I think this will
happen before the end of this year (for at least one of them).
I hope that either this will happen, or one of
the Linux hardware vendors will move into the same volume of sales
and production currently enjoyed by one of these. Every reader of
Linux Gazette,
Linux Weekly News,
Slashdot,
Linux Journal,
and all of the comp.os.linux.*
and linux-* newsgroups and
mailing
lists can help make that happen by calling their
vendor and just saying: "NO! I will not pay for
a copy of Win '95 or NT that I plan to immediately and permanently
replace with Linux!" (and taking their business elsewhere).
Now, "Grey", back to your question.
What is "great" about Linux?
The first thing I like about Linux is that I don't have to
use any GUI. I don't like graphical screens. I often spend
twelve hours at a stretch in front of my monitor and my eyes
just can take any GUI for that long. My supporting a full
range of applications from it's multiple text consoles Linux
allows me to focus on one task at a time, giving it my full
screen. At the same time I can be logged into a dozen or
more session, as one or more users, to have all the benefits
of multi-tasking. In addition I have options to use keyboard
or mouse driven "cut and paste" between my applications.
I can use this same suite of applications on my old 386 and
my Pentium 166 and on my Pentium II. I can use any
application on any system on my network regardless of which
machine is sitting in front of me (using telnet,
ssh, or rlogin for text mode apps, and the
communications protocols that are native to the X Windows System
when I need a GUI).
I can sit in a coffee house a few miles away, dial into one of my
machines (the 386 is the one with the modem) and use everything
from my Ricochet equipped laptop that I could use if I was
sitting at home in front of the machine myself.
That same modem (the one on the 386) is used to get all my
mail and netnews (uucp) and was used as the dial-on-demand
PPP link for my entire LAN for months (before I got the
ISDN router that I currently use). When the ISDN goes out,
I can switch back to using the 386 gateway in a couple of minutes.
That same modem is also used for dial out BBS and shell mode
access by any system on my LAN (given that the user has the
appropriate level of access).
That same modem is also use as the outgoing and incoming fax
gateway.
So, I can use one modem for dial and out shell, networking, and
fax for an entire network of systems --- and
none of these functions "trip" over the others
or conflict with any of the others.
Meanwhile one of my house guests might be using that same
386 to read mail or news, from a serial terminal line I
keep in the living room, and my wife might be at the console
(as she is now).
That 386, Antares, is over ten years old now. It has 32Mb
of RAM, a 2Mb video card (yes, it can run X --- though it is
a bit slow --- almost as slow as MS Windows used to be on it)
about 6 Gig of disk space, a tape drive, a magneto optical drive
and a few other toys. It ran Linux just fine with 16Mb of
RAM and a 200Mb IDE disk drive (and still would, though I'd
never fit my personal mail archives on that tiny drive).
(Incidentally, the the Caviar 200Mb drive in question is sitting
in Canopus --- where it's not even in use. I have some
purely archival files on it).
While MS Windows users were essentially forced to upgrade their
systems to 486's and Pentiums in order to keep upgraded one their
OS and major, critical software, I've been able to continue using
my old system.
It wasn't until mid last year that I finally moved my home
directory over to one of the Pentiums (Gnus, a newsreader for
Emacs, just got to be too slow when I wanted to
read a few thousand messages in a mailing list archive --- it would
take two hours threading through them in the background before
I could read them --- that same process take about 2 minutes
on Canopus, the P166).
So, one advantage of Linux is its support for older equipment
and unfashionable modes of use. Text mode is still widely used
--- but every time I hear an "old-timer" say so it's amazing
the looks it generates among "hip, savvy, modern users."
A byproduct of this support is that Linux is very friendly to
blind and other physically
challenged users. A friend of mine
was hit with a stroke a couple of years ago. He has yet to
regain significant use of one of his arms. Linux and MacOS are
the easiest environments for him to use. It is trivial to
enable "sticky" shift (Ctrl, Alt, and Shift) keys --- so that
the user never has to co-ordinate the operation of two keys
simultaneously (an action which the vast majority of us
take completely for granted).
Once you reconfigure you keyboard under Linux all
of the console applications use the new bindings. I've never seen
a conflict. You can also configure similar features in X Windows
(XFree86). Thus you can, with changes to the configuration of two
subsystems, make every application on the system behave in a way
that's compatible with a user's needs.
(It is also simple to associate these changes with a particular
user -- so that other users of that system will not normally
be affected by them).
I could go on and on. However, it would make sense for you
to look at some of the other sites on the web that talk
about Linux. Obviously you'll be completely overwhelmed if
you do a Yahoo! search on just "Linux" (they are up to
13 categories and almost 600 sites --- compared to 17/1900
for "Unix" and about 19/660 for "Microsoft Windows" and
2/16 for MacOS)
- (Granted that this is an incredibly simplistic
metric. It is nonetheless amusing. Incidentally
Alta Vista gives about 2 million hits with "Linux"
and about 21 million with "Microsoft Windows" and
HotBot only gives 1.3 million to Linux and 1.2 million
to "Microsoft Windows")
My point is that there are too many of these to explore in
a reasonable amount of time (I supposed you could surf the
Yahoo! listed Linux sites in about 10 hours if you averaged
only one minute per page --- and didn't follow any of them
to anywhere else).
Obviously the Linux Gazette is one place to find out more,
and the Linux Weekly News (http://www.lwn.net/) (formerly at
http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/ is pretty good too
(and comes out four times as often). If you
start at SSC's Linux Resources Page
(http://www.linux.resources.com/) and follow all
links there you should get your fill of unabashed Linux advocacy.
Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 29 June 1998
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