Plz give me a reason to try LINUX...

[GasX]

I use my PC to bank, invest, surf and primarily play games. I have Windows 98SE running fine and only have stability problems when I screw with my CPU settings (FSB & clock speed). Apart from the fun of learning a new system, is there ANY reason for me to start messing with LINUX?

If I were to go down that road, should I buy another HD and install it there?

What say you, fellow anandtechers?

 

[squirrel dog]

build another pc and start there.It can be a very old cheap one.If you lose interest in linux,you will not have lost much.If you take to it,port it over to your primary box and deal with it.

 

[GasX]

Okay that's a seemingly wise HOW.

I also need a WHY.

 

[velvtelvis]

it's free?

 

[potz]

you have no reason to. i find linux to be a pain in the butt to configure and win2k can do everything with less hassle. if your 98 setup is working well for you then you don't need to change anything.

 

[Soybomb]

Many people learn things to better themselves and make themselves a more well-rounded person. Is learning a new OS enough for you?

If you have no interest in it then us trying to give you reasons is going to lead to a bad experience when you do try it, because if something doesn't work its just going to make you mad. If you're curious about it, and I suspect you are, then try it out. If you could careless then don't

 

[GasX]

Soybomb - you make an excellent point.

I have a pretty strong curiosity, I am just looking for that one reason to put me over the edge. My time is pretty stretched, so this would have to be justified somewhat...

 

[crohozen]

You shouldnt have to justify using LINUX to yourself. If you dont find yourself incredibly drawn to it then dont use it. I say that because LINUX takes a lot of time and patience so if you dont have the time it will give you more headaches than satisfaction. Besides dont use LINUX if Windows does everything you need. It sounds like you are a casual power user. Games on LINUX are just now starting to come around so I would wait until you have more time and LINUX has more games to start to use it then get a 200mhz box with about 32 megs of RAM and have at it. I dont want to discourage you at all, but sometimes people starts to use LINUX and they get a real ass whipping from LINUX and they get discouraged and quit. LINUX is truely a work of art and when you finally overcome the initial shock you will fall in love with it and there is no turning back you will be like "Wow!! I cant believe I have been using windows this long, LINUX is soo stable and powerful and I can make it do WHATEVER I WANT!" If that sounds like a way you want to feel then head over to Linuxnewbie.org read up on the newbie help files and then grab a copy of Red Hat or Mandrake (There are tons of different distros, but I would start off with one of these two because they are built for the newbie in mind) and repartition your hard drive and install the distro and experience the power. ~Note~ If you decide to use LINUX there are two rules that you must follow for YOUR protection.
1.) Never EVER EVER surf the internet as root. NEVER!
2.) Make a casual user account for yourself and save the root account for system admin. You can screw stuff up in LINUX easily. LINUX will let you delete EVERY file on the hard disk unlike Windows.

Good Luck and I hope you decide to use LINUX and if you ever have a problem let me know cause more often than not I Have done it or caused it.

 

[Suppafly]

one why reason is so that you can learn how to get around on unix and unix-workalike systems.

 

[Chatterjee]

windows xp will surely force people to at least try linux. Caldera OpenLinux is a very user-friendly distro....

-S

 

[SuperKen!]

Unless Mozilla has improved greatly in the past 2 month, you do not need to try Linux.
Why?
Because just regular internet surfing under Linux is a PAIN. Ive tried almost every browser out there, and dont like any of them, they either display pages wrong, unstable, slow, or a combination of all 3.

 

[goldboyd]

is this a good enough reason?

12:10am up 236 days, 14:46, 3 users, load average: 0.02, 0.13, 0.07

 

[najar]

Well, If you learn Linux/GNU really well, then there are many well-paying jobs waiting for you out there. In fact Linux SysAdmins make about $10,000 more than the Win2k SysAdmins.

 

[GasX]

$10k sounds nice, but $10k more than what?

 

[CPORonin]

Heheh saw the topic and thought: "Now you've done it!"
IMO Linux is a great learning OS and Server OS but for me it's just not done cooking enough for an everyday gaming/workstaion.

 

[crohozen]

To reply to the internet browser comment. Mozilla is getting really good the latest builds have been fast and stable. Another great browser is Konq, I think between these two browsers you can get your net fix You can also surf the net through vmware using internet explorer, If you dont know what vmware is head over to their website and read about it (vmware.com) but anyways in a nutshell its virtual machine software and you can install w2k,Windows 9x,NT and another LINUX distro and you might be able to install Be0s and a few others, oh and DOS and such if you feel so inclined, inside of LINUX. They also make a version to do the same thing on Windows boxes but I hear that its not as stable because of Windows's short comings. But I havent tried it myself.

 

[emir]

hmm, i've been using netscape 4.6x and opera under linux and i dont see any difference from ie or netscape under windows

 

[Soybomb]

emir: can you post here with opera under linux? I cant

 

[khorgath]

Just using linux, you get to know much more about the way an OS works. Linux admin-ing is a breeze once you get the hang of it (Its a comfort thing. I found it much easier and a lot more intuitive than W2K's hardware wizards); its almost always editing a test-file here- a text file there. No GUI dependency. SUPER SCRIPTABILITY . The oppurtunity to teach yourself admining concepts just looking at the samples and comments ( There are plenty).

And yes! Linux works much better than anything else on older hardware. Linux is pretty stable, a lot more secure than many other offerings around. And did I forget to mention growth? Tell me MS has _actually_ _improved_ their OS in the past 3-4 years? Its basically a mix-and-match scenario. Stability_or_performance_or_HWCompat.

And yes. Games! Game manufacturers aren't exactly ignoring Linux. I get 160+ fps on Q3 and UT on a standard GeFORCE256-32MBSDR/P3733(936)/CUSL2.

Visit freshmeat.net and check out apps there.
Visit slashdot.org and see people bickering there. Sure, it might be disgusting at first, but most of them do have points you know. Lurk around for a month, and post this again after you've tried Linux.

Eye Candy. Your desktop can look much better than you ever imagined. Funnily enough, though this seems like a trvial point, many people I know gave linux a try only after they saw Enlightenment. The transperent shell window is just too much. Can I saw mix that with Ganymade?

And oh yes, try Linux with enthusiasm, and you'll love it. Try it with suspicion, and you'll hate it. Linux is about choice. Linux aims to please. The choice is yours.

Ciao
-khorgath

 

[khorgath]

And yes. Games! Game manufacturers aren't exactly ignoring Linux. I get 160+ fps on Q3 and UT on a standard GeFORCE256-32MBSDR/P3733(936)/CUSL2.

When I said that, what I meant is that thats what I get on Day1 and thats what I get 2 months later after trying god knows how many diff kinds of SW. In W98, in 2 months, perf drops to almost half.
That is an important consideration.

Check out loki's site for info on other games.

Ciao
-khorgath

 

[NOX]

<< Plz give me a reason to try LINUX... >>

To educate yourself, and realize there is others things besides Windows.

 

[burnedout]

To me, the various Linux distro's are a pleasing alternative to Windoze.

I still use Win2K, Me and 98 at work, as well as at home. But when I have about an hour or two of down time, what I do is fire up the Linux partition. Currently toying with Mandrake 8.0. Have ran Mandrake 7.1 and 7.2. Also have Redhat 6.2 distro for both SPARC and x86. And SuSe for SPARC.

Saw the comment about Linux being great for older hardware. Yes it is. Have a pair of dual Ross 40 MHz SPARC CPUs. They won't run in Solaris 7 or 8. Have been successful running them in Redhat. Got an old Pentium 60 with a 1.2 GB SCSI that runs it quite well also.

My best advice to you would be to get your hands on an older PC. Maybe a Pentium 100 with 32 MB of memory and a 2 MB Matrox or ATI PCI video card. Install it and do some basics. Websurfing, word processing. Compile some kernels. Toy with linuxconf. Check out all the newsgroups and Linux sites.

Linux is free, with the exception of the cost of some blank CDs. And some ISP time, of course. Look at it as an extremely low cost alternative with tremendous potential. I do mean tremendous. From both cost and performance perspectives.

Learn the command line. It's like going back to the days of DOS. The GUIs (KDE and GNOME) are more than adequate. Just takes a little getting familiar with. Mandrake has some pretty cool little games on their distros.

Linux is an awesome operating system. Once more users work with it, the applications, games and utilities will come more quickly.

 

[Sunner]

Education.
Getting familiar with alternatives to windows.
Education.
Trying something new is allways fun.

Oh and did I mention education?

 

[Zach]

A good home use for Linux is as a DSL firewall/router. Think you want a little Linksys type router? Well well there's more features.

Make your Linux router a second computer for net surfing, stick in a living room or other room where your computer isn't.

Use a big HD and figure out Samba (or is it SAMBA?), and you have network file storage, handy if you use 2+ other computers regularly; give them a network public folder.

Stick on an old printer too, you can have the same functionality as ethernet print servers.

Learn how to host your own web pages, or share files on your web or ftp server.

If you chat with friends enough, you can me an IRC chat server.

And, best of all, you could host a porn site off the 56k modem! Hoowaa.

Edit: Stick it on a second hard drive; and if you are using Win2K it might be best to use Win2K's boot loader. Might..

 

[Chatterjee]

Linux is going to take off. It still needs to achieve critical mass but I think it's in a prime position to do so. I'm using Caldera OpenLinux and just configured it to run Apache with PHP and mySQL. All it took was following the recipe given in the PHP documentation. There wasn't the comfort of having a GUI interface to help me through it but that's a superficial characteristic that Microsoft has brainwashed us with. The fact is you learn a lot from using Linux by nature. Every command tells you a little bit about what is actually going while performing the task.

Helix Code (Ximian) has come a long way with Gnome and is now a very pleasing alternative to the Windows interface. The icons are smooth and the default applications are fantastic. Other that the little quirky differences between the two GUIs (like the direction of the pointing arrows, etc.), Gnome is much more configurable (although I have no clue how to have the taskbar autohide AND stay on top of applications).

Stability is becoming more and more important to users and while Windows 2000 is stable. Linux has always been and will continue to be by default. We can only speculate the direction Microsoft is heading in with the OS products. hardware-IDed OSes, call centers verifying your installation. All this garbage just thwarts productivity (I don't care how many companies are caught abusing their licenses). With a whole troop of coders/developers that are hobbyists by nature, there isn't any fear of Linux heading in the wrong direction because it's built by the majority of the users for the users.

Anyway, I'm rambling now so I'll stop.
-S