
Why Linux is better - akos
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/
======
nathell
Unfortunately, most of this is propaganda unbacked by facts; the correctness
of these statements depends on the particular conditions (what machine is
being used, under what conditions, etc.) Plus, it omits a whole slew of
problems unique to Linux, such as the fragmentation caused by abundance of
distributions.

~~~
pavanky
How is fragmentation hindering your usage ? This page is more for casual users
and they don't have to worry about fragmentation.

My company sells software on all platforms. Our linux installer has never been
a problem. Not only that Valve released their software just for one
distribution. Within hours you had people working out how to get it to work on
the distribution of their choice. So the fragmentation is not a problem, but
more of a benefit where users do the work for you.

~~~
jiggy2011
Fragmentation is a problem for casual users. Granted less than it used to be ,
since the casual user is probably on Ubuntu where there is likely a pre-
packaged version of most stuff they might want to install.

You still do run into problems with stuff that was packaged for only Ubuntu
10.10 and it doesn't install on 12.04 for example.

In the days before there was one dominant distro it was a nightmare installing
everything you wanted without browsing forums because you had Suse version X
and the website only offered you a package for RedHat version Y.

~~~
pavanky
Again, that is a problem from ages ago. Not now.

~~~
jiggy2011
It's still an issue for anybody who wants to ship software for more than one
distro. Not to mention WM fragmentation. It's also quite disingenuous to say
"Use Linux you get a choice of Distros!" and then say "stick to Ubuntu if you
want stuff to actually work".

~~~
zanny
> Our linux installer has never been a problem. Not only that Valve released
> their software just for one distribution. Within hours you had people
> working out how to get it to work on the distribution of their choice. So
> the fragmentation is not a problem, but more of a benefit where users do the
> work for you.

Direct quote from the guy you are in the thread with. If you put it on one
distro, the others will port it for you.

~~~
jiggy2011
Unless it's you know not open source or something.

Even with open source , you get version lag between distros.

~~~
pavanky
Steam is not open source.

~~~
jiggy2011
And they were lucky enough to have valve's blessing to redistribute it for
Arch.

If I release some small program for one distro I certainly cannot count on all
of the other distros bending over backwards to repackage it for me.

------
emeraldd
I've been a Gentoo user now for a good 7~8 years and every time I've tried
playing with Windows again the one thing that I immediately notice and
immediately get annoyed about is the lack of 'work spaces' (
[http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/virtual_desktops/index...](http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/virtual_desktops/index.php?lang=)
). I know there are implementations of this idea for Windows (Heck I even
built one when I was learn _shudder_ VB6 back in the day) but not a one I've
seen is worth the effort of finding it.

~~~
protospork
I'm primarily a Windows user, though I dip into Linux pretty often. The first
thing I do in any new install is to disable all but one or maybe two
workspaces. Multiple workspaces just strikes me as a hack to get around poor
panel design, or to facilitate running a modern PC on an ancient monitor.

If I leave >1 active I'm prone to losing windows on alternate workspaces; if
I'd upped the number to 12 like the person who wrote that page, I couldn't
even fill them all. You can see even he had trouble making them look "used" so
he could take a screenshot. I've been using this PC daily for the 24 or so
weeks it's been up, and I've only got 13 windows open.

~~~
emeraldd
I usually run eight desktops on my machine. Most of the time, half of them sit
empty until I need to switch tasks. In my previous day job, I'd keep email up
on one, a development set for my local machine (editor, logs, browser, etc.),
windows for references on another. I leave a full set of window up, positioned
exactly the way I want them, and move to a clean desktop to deal with
incidental, "could you take a look at X" tasks.

Being able to spread out what I'm working on without minimizing or overlapping
windows really helps segregate what's going on.

~~~
protospork
I do similar things with tab groups/stacks in Firefox and Opera (mainly to
keep fewer than 20 tabs visible at once). Guess it just doesn't feel "right"
to me to run my whole system that way.

------
jiggy2011
This is mostly the same vein of stupid as "Macs can't get viruses".

" The average period of time before a Windows PC (connected to the Internet
and with a default "Service Pack 2" installation) gets infected is 40 minutes
(and it sometimes takes as little time as 30 seconds)."

Ok, so let's plug a 10+ year old unpatched default Linux distro into the net
and see how long that lasts?

~~~
nodata
_Ok, so let's plug a 10+ year old unpatched default Linux distro into the net
and see how long that lasts?_

Yep true, but SELinux is 10 years old now, and with it enabled? I bet it would
do a lot better than an unpatched Windows box.

~~~
jiggy2011
One could probably say the same about a well hardened winXP box.

~~~
arnoooooo
One big difference is package management. You don't download stuff here and
there to execute.

~~~
jiggy2011
All you need is to install one malicious .deb or .rpm and it's game over.

------
Yuioup
Lately I have seen quite a few "Linux is better than Windoze" posts. Each and
every one of those posts woefully miss the mark. I include
whylinuxisbetter.net to this list.

Especially the penguin at the bottom with the flyswatter makes me dismiss the
whole post out of hand. Nobody in their right mind can take a site like that
seriously.

The problem is that these sorts of efforts have an exact opposite effect and
are more likely to drive people to Macs or back to Windows.

I have yet to see an article or video that explains the true virtues of Linux
over other operating systems: A stable feature rich ecosystem developed by a
diverse set of professional developers giving users free access to an
incredible range of software.

Instead we get these lame websites littered with crap ads and factually
incorrect statements.

------
phpnode
don't get me wrong, i love linux, but this is seriously dishonest, especially
the "Forget about drivers" section
[http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/drivers/index.php?lang...](http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/drivers/index.php?lang=)

~~~
davebees
The IM section was egregious too. How can they tout "Pidgin, the instant
messenger for Linux (it exists for Windows as well, and for Mac OS X)" as an
advantage of Linux?

~~~
alanctgardner2
They also say that an Office replacement "comes with" Linux. LibreOffice is
definitely cross platform...

------
jtanderson
Biased or not, the OS/platform arguments always need a context. I agree that
Linux/Unix is better _for me_ but I would not uninstall my mother's copy of
Windows 8 and slap Ubuntu on there. The stability, flexibility, etc. actually
feels like overhead when you don't _need_ it to be there. The same thing goes
for iOS vs. Android, in my opinion. It's not even a matter of saying "oh well
let's just dumb down the interface and call it friendly."

In my experience, the heuristic I use for any device is "how much obstacle is
there between me and what I want to get done?" If I want to run some
development VM's or do full-stack web programming, I would hands down choose
OSX or Linux because of their native support for that kind of stuff. If I
wanted to log in to a computer, get a quick survey of pending emails,
messages, and other generic consumer content, I have to say that Windows 8 did
a decent job of delivering that kind of experience.

Sure, there aren't many viruses for Linux or OSX but it's partly because the
writers of the viruses have a statistically better opportunity right now to
target Windows. There have been plenty of OSX and cross-platform exploits.
Most of the famous hacking stories are a person getting a rootkit to let the
ssh into a backdoor on some Linux webserver.

As in most things, context matters.

------
JimmaDaRustla
I laughed at the "No more Crapware" and thought of Ubuntu.

How bad is malware? I bought a Dell 3 years ago, and there was virtually no
crapware on it...just the Dell service software I believe...

~~~
JimmaDaRustla
Meant "How bad is CRAPware this day in age?".

------
revscat
While the author seems to be targeting Windows users I can't help but notice
that most of these points benefits can accurately be ascribed to OS X as well.

    
    
        alyosha ~ % uptime
        up 43 days, 15:31, 2 users, load averages: 1.26 0.61 0.31
    

Windows is indeed subpar, but a more interesting comparison would be between
Linux and OS X.

~~~
emeraldd
Apple's walled garden and restricted hardware choices bug the crap out of me.
If not for that, I might actually look at one.

------
speeder
I am happy that soon the hardcore gamer part will change too =D

~~~
jaredmcateer
I'm excited about it too but I don't think it's going to be "soon", There is
basically one AAA title on Steam right now and about 20-30 indie titles (and a
bunch of DLC to pad out the list.) It's a great start but I think it's going
to be a few more years yet before there will be enough of a library to lure
away the PC gamers full time.

~~~
speeder
Yay! I got flagged!

Well, I believe soon all Valve games will run fine on Linux, since they ported
the whole engine anyway.

Also there are a couple of AAA games already partially or completely ported,
and it is just a matter of putting them to work properly on Steam (sometimes
what lacks is legal stuff). For example Doom series, and some of Unreal games.

Of course, games using any of those "great engines" are easy to port too (ie:
any game using idTech and family or Unreal and family).

~~~
jiggy2011
Sadly there is no idTech5 or UT3 engine on Linux and AFAIK there are no plans
to port them.

~~~
speeder
Both have partial ports to Linux.

I don't know why UT3 stopped (and if you ask icculus, he will get mad at you).

idTech5 stopped because crap driver support, but now with Valve pushing ahead
to fix that, I think id can resume work on Linux idTech5 if they wish to.

EDIT: Actually UT3 engine DO work on Linux (and icculus that did it!)
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI1O...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI1ODE)

------
kamjam
Wow, the marketing department and designers really went to town on this one!
</sarc>

Who exactly is this aimed at? Because if it's for anyone with any technical
inclination then tell me something I don't know. If it for 'Joe Average' then
see above.

~~~
keithpeter
Er, yes. Canonical's design people could have made this look really nice. It
is difficult to work out who this is aimed at.

------
nicholassmith
Oh my. Why would you need to install things? Update all your software with a
single click! Mostly! Need new software? Linux searches the web for you! As
long as you know roughly what you want anyway. Too many workspaces?! Use
windows! No big mess in your start menu! Unless you've taken our advice and
let Linux install things for you. Use IM protocols in a single client! Linux
only!

Ridiculous.

------
blackhole
Well then it's certainly a shame how the only linux drivers I can get melt my
graphics card.

------
fixed_input
"Forget about viruses" - sounds like an Apple commercial. What an archaic way
of thinking.

------
vital
If you think now that Linux is great on your desktop, think again. Read this
article first -
[http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.de...](http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html)

~~~
zanny
A lot of those are valid points, but they boil down to three overarching
flaws:

1\. Hardware vendors don't provide Linux drivers, often requiring people in
their free time to create them from often nonexistent documentation.

2\. Nobody can agree on APIs and interfaces. Whenever someone disagrees on
something, they just fork it and make their own rather than compromise for a
standard.

3\. There are a lot of low level assumptions made 20 - 30 (or even up to the
age of Unix) assumptions (ttys, shell script, group privilege model, kernel
control and management of displays / network controllers / usb / devices) that
hamper greatly the usability of the GNULinux ecosystem as a drop in
replacement for Windows on the desktop. Android gets away with it by throwing
out most of that plumbing.

The first 2 are an inherent problem to the entire ecosystem being FOSS. The
userbase is the only group that can fix the second, by focusing and
standardizing on one way to do it in the most popular distros and hoping it
trickles down (pulseaudio, for example). Both are momentum problems.

The latter I just think ads a lot of unnecessary complexity, but you can work
around it. I type this on an Arch box running mostly KDE stuff, it can be
done.

------
obituary_latte
They forgot one:

Proper logging.

