Anyone using Linux?

[nowwhat]

I've been playing both TF2 and Metro 2033 Redux natively the past 2 weeks or so. They run perfectly on my Gentoo box.

EDIT: I used the Steam binary installer, instead of Portage/Overlay, and it was fast, easy and worked flawlessly.

 

[nowwhat]

Agreed. I have reported him. We all avoid being petty, childish and divisive here. Care to join, FutureSelf?

 

[The Penguin]

Agreed. I have reported him. We all avoid being petty, childish and divisive here. Care to join, FutureSelf?

I can support the idea. From seeing all the comments written, I find it getting a little out of hand.

 

[Jono]

Agreed. I have reported him. We all avoid being petty, childish and divisive here. Care to join, FutureSelf?

Is that why his reply to me is not here, has it been deleted? I was going to reply to him.

I've had arguments with him before on WP about whether Linux on the desktop would ever have significant market share or not but I don't generally have problems with people disagreeing with me.

 

[wyverary]

Is that why his reply to me is not here, has it been deleted? I was going to reply to him.

I've had arguments with him before on WP about whether Linux on the desktop would ever have significant market share or not but I don't generally have problems with people disagreeing with me.

It seems he deleted his own posts. I suggest we stop arguing and resume our regularly scheduled programming.

 

[Jono]

I used to use Ubuntu Linux. Now I've got a Mac but I haven't really used Windows for important stuff in years. The last version of Windows that I used was Windows XP, I've never used the later versions of Windows. Instead it was either Linux or Mac OS.

 

[nowwhat]

I messed about with Mandrake, Suse, RedHat (this was pretty far back), but never really "got" it until Slackware. Initscripts were pretty much plain english, packages were all conservative and stable. No patched .rpm. I learned so much downloading source, Resolving dependencies manually, editing makefiles, then ./configure, make, make install! Gentoo has suited my needs very well since then.

 

[Licorice]

Recently converted to Linux. Faster and more intuitive. Currently posting from Fedora 21.

I had to leave my word processors behind, but I found FocusWriter for creative writing and I guess I'll use LibreOffice for everything else for now.

 

[StephF]

I've been using Linux for about 20 yrs now. I love being in control of my system, none of this "You can't do that" rubbish.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility.

Then theres the fact that any hacker worth their salt uses Linux. Only script kiddies runs Windoze.

 

[Neramo]

Use Linux for my old laptops. Much better with Linux on'em, instead of having Windows slowing them down. And like playing around with Linux, when i got time for it. Prefer Debian atm, but like Slackware too.

For my main computer, i use Windows because of gaming, but hope to be able to switch to SteamOS one day

 

[ancusmitis]

I've been using Linuxmint pretty faithfully since I first tried it. Of course, before that I had already gotten started with Fedora, which takes a little bit more work to get going the way I want it to. Mint does everything I need right away, which to be fair isn't much, but I still had to install things that weren't supported in Fedora, and which kept getting buggier as newer Fedoras came out.

 

[23andaspie]

I have a MacBook Air as my laptop but it has its very real limits in hardware, unless you want to pay for a $1800 i7 Air with 8 GB of RAM? No Thanks. So earlier this year I invested in a Lenovo ThinkServer for only $250 (new), maxed the RAM to 32 GB, stuck in a solid-state hard drive, and eventually upgraded the stock i3 processor to an i7. I absolutely love this machine. It's running Linux Mint but because of the ample hardware resources I can run Virtual Machines of Windows 10 simultaneously with VirtualBox for those many software areas that just don't have good Linux options. I personally use also it as a home server, and it hosts a few sites I'd been playing around with like justnorthofnormal.com.

I absolutely love it, and some chunk of that comes from a liking of Mint and Linux. I love Linux because once you get cozy with using the command-line, it becomes your best friend. From my undergrad and in my working experience I've gotten to play to some other different Linux distributions too as well: Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat. But yeah, customizability I would say far exceeds what one can do with the little themeing options in Windows and the paid software you have to buy to make that happen on Mac.

 

[cherryq]

I switch between Ubuntu and Windows, though I'm trying to become less associated with Windows and focus instead on learning about various Linux distributions. I've also messed with Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi along with Kali Linux and SANS SIFT Workstation. Essentially, all of the Linux I've ever used has been based off of Debian.

 

[geekbitman]

Ubuntu 15.04 dual-booted with Windows 10.

 

[TheITAspie]

Kali Linux(Based on Debian) with GNOME enviroment

 

[wanderer03]

Linux and BSD are both the best things to happen to the computing world! I'm fascinated by OpenBSD's commitment to secure computing - especially given that we live in an ever intrusive world. I'm also a rabid CentOS fan - it's just a well put together operating system that can run rings around Windows. So, if it's UNIX-like, it's got my interest.

 

[wanderer03]

Guess this might be good thread to ask something semi-related.

Why Linux? What advantage does it have, besides in general not being Windows? I don't think I should switch to Linux, but perhaps people can convince me to give it a try.

Linux really gives you an understanding of how your computer works and what it's doing at any given time. It also has a security and privilege separation model that's been time tested so it is more secure than Windows. For me, Linux and *BSD have put the joy back in computing. When you set up your own DNS, web, email, and FTP servers you also learn a great deal about the glue that holds the internet together. All of the original protocols for the Internet were written in C for UNIX and UNIX-like environments. It's a tinkerer's dream!

 

[King_Oni]

Linux really gives you an understanding of how your computer works and what it's doing at any given time. It also has a security and privilege separation model that's been time tested so it is more secure than Windows. For me, Linux and *BSD have put the joy back in computing. When you set up your own DNS, web, email, and FTP servers you also learn a great deal about the glue that holds the internet together. All of the original protocols for the Internet were written in C for UNIX and UNIX-like environments. It's a tinkerer's dream!

Fair points, but I have no interest in all that. I just want to turn the darn thing on and it should run photoshop, my recording software and run a game here and there. At times I'm already irked how an xbox should be even more userfriendly, lol

But if you're into all that network stuff, I guess it's a great thing

 

[wanderer03]

Linux at home is really for the tinkerer. Linux in the workplace is for servers that need raw horsepower, reliability, and security. I can understand folks wanting the computer to just work.

 

[ancusmitis]

Guess this might be good thread to ask something semi-related.

Why Linux? What advantage does it have, besides in general not being Windows? I don't think I should switch to Linux, but perhaps people can convince me to give it a try.

Personally, I like it because it's free. I was intimidated at first, because it really doesn't have a reputation for being user-friendly, but the number of things I had to learn in order to use Mint effectively really weren't anything to write home about, and the things I had to learn in order to install it were also very minor. It comes with Libreoffice, Firefox, and GIMP preinstalled, which is pretty much all of my productivity that involves a computer. Most distributions also come with more than one kind of media player software. Right now I'm using Banshee. I can also keep my background programs to a minimum, which is important because I don't like to just throw computer components away, and the kinds of things that get going on Windows really eat up a lot of memory. For some people with newer and more expensive hardware, that might not be an issue.

I also like the fact that I can update it, or install new hardware, or do other major changes without having to restart. I especially hated getting updates forced on me, and then the computer would restart whether I wanted it to or not. And if I was working on something using the paid office software that doesn't come with the operating system, I usually didn't get an auto-save like I have with Libre-office.

There are many different forms of Linux, however, so asking why "people" use it is a nonsensical question. More hardcore users would probably laugh at the things that I use it for.