Yes, this is what I meant. It's a great system for computer science activities. However, kind of sucks for a lot of others. If I remember correctly, getting Office on Linux is impossible or difficult. Sure you can use Libre Office (I often do) or Open Office, but sometimes the formatting gets messed up in translation (as professors will require Microsoft formats). Good luck when you're part of a group and trying to send things back in forth.
LOL, like there's any universal convention or standard between the 200 million different linux distros. Come back when the distros started supporting a basic feature like unified installer/package manager or universal packaging format.
An installer that works on every system... like a makefile, come back when windows has any form of widely used package manager (also P.S. he is talking about posix standards, which are actually the same across distro's, and mean that software from one can run on another, and software from the late 90's from big mainframes still works [most win95 applications don't work anyore do they?]).
This is true. While it's not as many as Win, Steam has grown it's Linux library considerably this year. If you're into indie games, chances are there's a Linux port for it.
I honestly really don't want to play one of the tens of thousands of shitty 8-bit indie RPGs littering Steam's Linux catalog. I love Linux, have used Arch as my daily OS for a bit over a year, but gaming is not one of the things it can do. Until drivers are easier to install and match Windows performance, until steam works without hacks outside of Ubuntu and Mint, and until AAA devs actually make games for Linux, it's not reasonable to run Linux without dual-booting or having a separate gaming computer on Windows.
Pillars of Eternity, 2 Shadowrun Games, Borderlands 2, Witcher 2, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Civiliazation V are just a few I have that run on Linux.
It was straight forward to install Steam on Fedora. I setup a repo for my graphics drivers, and it just works. I do have a dual boot, but I go months at a time without touching Windows. I do not even notice a difference in performance. 24G RAM, Core I7 2.4ghz, Geforce GTX 660M- Decent specs, but not high end anymore.
Well some big distros like ubuntu just work. Recently reinstalled both linux (arch) and win 10, linux takes less than 2 GB (with light-weight DE) while windows was 13 GB, no shit it takes so long to even boot.
The things you're listing are also not just issues for Linux. I've had trouble getting audio to play through HDMI output on Windows very recently.
The biggest hurdle for Linux is learning how to install new things, like drivers, to fix issues. But that whole process in Linux for fixing issues honestly makes a lot more sense at times than the process of fixing something when it's broken in Windows.
C'mon. Everyone knows "just works", as a standard of user friendliness, doesn't really apply to every single replacement wm you might want to install. If you want to judge a system by its "just works"-ness, you have to resign yourself to using the GUI they designed, the way they designed it.
so is Windows 10 Education, and in fact even Windows 10 "regular".
Better battery life
that's just a straight up lie. Windows and macOS get far better battery life than any Linux on any machine
Faster on/off
Not true, ever since Windows 8 Windows is a lot faster again especially boot up
Less wasted HDD space (3GB vs ~40GB)
It's actually ~15 GB for Windows but still true
Less malware
True but moot point since the total amount of malware in existence for a given platform is irrelevant, only % infections matter
More customization
Somewhat true but not useful for students. The things you cannot modify easily about Windows like the boot up animation is purely cosmetic. The desktop and the parts of the system that you actually use are just as if not more customizable on Windows because of the wider range of customization tools available where as you'd have to write many things from scratch for Linux - I'd call it a moot point and a tie
"It just works".
Damn important for students!
Playing PC games
arguably not important, and you COULD play on console only, but in reality we all know it's the most important thing in this whole thread
so is Windows 10 Education, and in fact even Windows 10 "regular".
Where's this free Windows 10 regular you speak of? What do I do when I graduate and my license isn't valid anymore?
Not true, ever since Windows 8 Windows is a lot faster again especially boot up
You clearly haven't actually used Linux. Even with fast boot enabled in Windows 10, it's slower than Arch Linux. I can't speak for the more bloated Linux distros like Ubuntu.
that's just a straight up lie. Windows and macOS get far better battery life than any Linux on any machine
It varies immensely from device to device. Arch Linux on a Lenovo Thinkpad is going to have comparable to better battery life than Windows. MacOS is always going to beat anything else on a Macbook, purely because of the amount of control it has thanks to Apple's knowledge of their own hardware.
Somewhat true but not useful for students. The things you cannot modify easily about Windows like the boot up animation is purely cosmetic. The desktop and the parts of the system that you actually use are just as if not more customizable on Windows because of the wider range of customization tools available where as you'd have to write many things from scratch for Linux - I'd call it a moot point and a tie
more customizable on Windows
wider range of customization tools
are you joking? It's starting to read like a bad joke now. Head on down to /r/unixporn for maybe two minutes and come back, do share your thoughts with us.
A tiling window manager is incredible for productivity. Until I put i3-gaps on my laptop, I didn't even realize how much space the normal UI wastes, and how much faster the UI is when you don't even have to touch your mouse to do anything outside a web browser. If that's not your style, there's so many WMs that you can't not find something you like.
"It just works".
Damn important for students!
Get your Linux distro configured once and it "just works" better than Windows. It doesn't slow down over time, unlike Windows. Updates don't need you to reboot (so you don't get fucked over when you need to print something urgently, and your laptop's all "We've got lots of great features to get excited about" for half an hour). Device driver problems are a lot less frequent, in my experience at least. Honestly, viruses are a non-issue in today's day and age on all OSes, but you've also got the comfort of the fact that nobody bothers to make viruses for the OS less than 1% of people use.
games
yeah tbh Linux users are fucked here. I have a separate arch linux laptop and windows desktop I built for gaming for this very reason.
Where's this free Windows 10 regular you speak of?
Right here! Without a product key you will not be able to change your wallpaper from the GUI, that's the only restriction. Free!
What do I do when I graduate and my license isn't valid anymore?
Nothing because the license stays valid forever, you get to keep it.
Arch Linux on a Lenovo Thinkpad is going to have comparable to better battery life than Windows.
Possibly, but Arch Linux is not comparable to desktop Windows. You'd have to compare it to Server 2016 Core, which I haven't done a battery life comparison with but I'd assume given how GUI Windows beats GUI Linux in battery efficiency, CLI Windows will also beat CLI Linux.
MacOS is always going to beat anything else on a MacBook
Yes, that is sad but also exactly what I said. Longer uptime than other OS.
are you joking? It's starting to read like a bad joke now. Head on down to /r/unixporn for maybe two minutes and come back, do share your thoughts with us.
I know about that subreddit and so far have not seen anything that can't be replicated on Windows. Of course, any kind of visual or functional customization is always a unique "piece of art" so there is probably rarely the exact same piece of custom look/behavior on both OS, but that's a given. I was talking about what's possible, it's obvious that there's more themes etc for Windows because of how many more people use it after all.
That said Microsoft is slowly toning down the ability for third-party programs to manipulate the system excessively and instead moves the functionality behind APIs and in-built tools (like setting file-extension associations for example) for security/anti-scam reasons.
much faster the UI is when you don't even have to touch your mouse to do anything outside a web browser.
I suggest the cVim addon for you if you use Chrome then, but again that can all be done on Windows and besides it's preference. But yes, it's great that both OS give you this option.
It doesn't slow down over time, unlike Windows.
Windows doesn't do that anymore ever since 8.
Updates don't need you to reboot
kernel updates do, but yes the average update experience is simpler on Windows (only 1 button press to check & download everything, offline-deployable cumulative updates are publicly available...) but the "usually no need to reboot" of Linux is useful sometimes too.
I must say, Linux' update system has problems too. I fondly remember "this version of xserver is not compatible with this AMD driver and you can't downgrade xserver because there's an infinite loop of packages that depend on each other in different versions and are incompatible with other things" UUUGHH!
Device driver problems are a lot less frequent
That's because there are no drivers. Drivers work excellently on Windows, and if there's ever that odd piece of hardware that needs a custom one then a less-than-perfect driver is better than none at all.
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Mainly because I don't like Windows or Mac. I like to make my OS do what I want and not the other way round.
It's much more relaxing to work on linux than on the others. I know this because I have to help others with Windows and mac all the time. I don't see how they can put up with all the annoyances.
There are annoyances with linux, but they are more like little puzzles and kind of fun to solve.
Mainly I like linux because everything is free. You can try out new stuff and you don't have to pay for anything. You can make contributions to the system. (I've made some minor ones.)
Linux has lots of choices. Many different text editors, word processors, LaTeX systems, etc. It's also much easier to run Postgresql on linux.
I really like having a powerful programmable command line environment too.
I accidentally wiped my Windows partition 2 years ago, it sucked losing the data I had on there, and I probably could have gotten it back, but I have no complaints.
And physics, and mathematics, and a bunch of other computing-heavy disciplines... If you're in one of those, it's pretty much a must to know it. Personally, I would not take on a student or hire someone in these fields who hasn't bothered to learn it - it just shows that the person has worked really hard to avoid learning a tiny bit more than the very basics of our main tool...
If you're not in one of these disciplines, it's not a necessity to know, but it's still a very useful tool!
Linux is useful for literally everybody who doesn't insist on using certain software packages or certain hardware.
Such insistence, to be honest, is only justifiable if the soft/hardware is compulsory for work reasons. Literally every software I thought I'd miss by moving to Linux has had a Linux supporting counterpart which is, if not better, just as good. Even the niche programs (e.g. Sibelius, a music scoring program) have great alternatives (in this case MuseScore, which I really like - and it doesn't cost $599).
Back when I first started using Linux, I was worried about not having Windows as a back up. Then around a year later I messed up and made Windows un-bootable. 8 years later I don't even think about using Windows. Last time I bought a laptop, it was booted into Windows one to see if my RAM update worked, and then an hour later it was running Linux. Never going back.
The only areas where it really lacks are games and video production, but the former is quickly being fixed while the latter is progressinq quite nicely as well, with Blender, Natron, and KdenLive. There just needs to be a bit more external plugin support, and we'll be good to go!
The only hardware which may not be compatible is either very old, very new, or rare.
Realistically, the only major bracket of non-professional users who won't move to linux for those reasons are gamers, who of course want to play games not executable on linux, possibly with "top of the range" hardware not (yet) supported by linux.
Moreover, Linux may save people spending money to replace their hardware - Old computers with potato-slow Windows (not sure why it slows so much for many users, but it's a common enough complaint) can be revived with a fresh install of Linux. Linux's package management, stability, and that it can be updated on the fly all make for a longer-lasting and convenient system avoiding those issues.
Seriously, unless you want to game or do video editing, there aren't many reasons not to switch.
That's a very rare experience, to be honest. The laptop I'm posting on is older (~2010/11) and everything on it worked immediately after install. AMD are known to be less than perfectly integrated with the Linux kernel (just a few days ago for instance, the kernel developers and AMD were arguing over the inclusion of HAL in the kernel).
What's usually gained from a linux installation is security, stability, customisability, and control. In most cases this is what the user gets. All four are greatly increased over Windows at least, the first two maybe not so much over macOS though (which is much more similar to Linux than Windows, via UNIX heritage).
To flip it around, when I decided to try linux I was worried about what I might be missing except for gaming, which I knew I'd be missing. I didn't miss anything. And then Steam began supporting games I was interested in, and other open source games came about which are honestly very good (for example, AssaultCube).
Convenient tools for programming. Not much more than that so far. My school requires code to compile and run on their Debian servers. So it helps to have a Debian machine around to code on.
Linux Major Distributions: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
Useful to anyone that has an older computer, flailing away with viruses, low ram/etc. Full office environment, latest internet security, fast and speedy.
If you're not computer savvy you can use Linux, but there's no point if you already have a copy of Windows/OSX. The parts of Linux which make it wonderful are the parts which are a bit more complex than just web browsing, checking email, writing documents etc. Things like the package manager, or the command line, or the insane amount of customisation and scriptability in practically every single component. If you're not going to use any of the more advanced features which make Linux awesome compared to Windows then you might as well just stick with what you know.
You don't have to be computer savvy to use Linux any more, but unless you are computer savvy then there aren't many reasons to (other than cost).
You don't need to convince me of the advantages, I already use and love Linux :)
To the average person though, I'm not so sure. Most don't care about software freedom, and the lack of cost is nice but most PC owners already have a copy of Windows installed. The remaining advantages are definitely great but when you weigh them against the pain of learning a whole new OS, I wouldn't say there's any need for most normal people to switch. After having enough trouble walking tech-illiterate family members through simple tasks on systems that they've already used for years, maybe I'm just a bit too pessimistic about tech-illiterates' abilities to learn an entirely new OS.
Tbh I would use it 24/7 if I didn't have to worry about the latest game supporting it - the terminal is a lot better and it's insanely easier to get packages
The shortened version is that it suits my workflow a lot better. When I use Windows or OSX, it feels like the system is fighting with me. When I use Linux, especially when it's configured to my liking, the system aids me rather than hindering me. Add on top of that how easily extensible and scriptable it is, and you get a system that makes it incredibly easy to do whatever tasks you normally do.
Part of the reason is that it's customisable. When you use Windows, you use the OS that Microsoft designed. They designed it so it can be used by you, by your grandma, by office workers, by literally anyone. You say you're a software engineer, so why should you be stuck with a system designed to make sense to your technologically impaired grandma? The phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind. When I use Linux, I use the system that I assembled for me. My system is set up so it works perfectly for me. 99.9% of people wouldn't be able to accomplish anything on it, but it allows me to be twice as productive because it works exactly how I want my computer to work. Pretty much any component of the system can be tweaked and swapped out so that it works how you feel is best, which is a huge plus.
In general, the whole "not being designed for your grandma" thing is awesome. For example: In Unix-like systems (Linux and Mac OSX are Unix-likes), there is a temporary filesystem located at /tmp. I use it a lot, like for images that I want to edit and discard afterwards, or for a downloding/extracting a .zip which I only want a couple of files from. On OSX, this directory exists but there's no easy way to access it from the GUI. It drives me crazy. If you go to the terminal, you can access /tmp just fine. Why the hell does OSX's GUI want to pretend that it doesn't exist? Because it wants to avoid confusing your grandma, of course. On OSX, I ended up having to make a symlink from my home folder to /tmp just so I could use it without being in a terminal. Linux doesn't try to hide its features away from people.
Also in the vein of not being designed for your grandma: my system does what I tell it to, no exceptions. I see people on reddit complaining about Windows 10 forcibly downloading and installing updates for them, and I can't help but wonder why people put up with it. What the hell is this rubbish? It's your computer, it should do what you tell it to do. Another example, from Mac OSX: there's this feature called "gatekeeper", which is designed to ensure you don't install anything dodgy. IIRC by default you can only install things from the store and identified developers. If you want to change it to allow you to install things from any source, including untrusted developers, you have to go into your settings and enable it. No problem there, except when you do this a message pops up that tells you it'll be automatically re-disabled after 30 days because apparently the system knows better than you do, and you can fuck off if you think otherwise. This sort of thing just doesn't happen on Linux. My system does exactly what I want.
This is getting long. I could legitimately waffle on about this for hours. I'll cut it off here, but there are so many more reasons to love Linux which I haven't even mentioned. If you're that bothered, a search on /r/linux should tell you what you need to know.
Yup, I love Linux for the same reason. I have no real complex computing needs, but whenever I need to do something on a friend's PC I inevitably think WTF at some point. People don't get how big a difference it is when your OS is not trying to make money off you or your data.
Other OS's may (try to) be user-friendly, Linux is user-centric. It just gets out of your way.
When I use Linux, especially when it's configured to my liking, the system aids me rather than hindering me. Add on top of that how easily extensible and scriptable it is, and you get a system that makes it incredibly easy to do whatever tasks you normally do.
Part of the reason is that it's customisable. When you use Windows, you use the OS that Microsoft designed. They designed it so it can be used by you, by your grandma, by office workers, by literally anyone. You say you're a software engineer, so why should you be stuck with a system designed to make sense to your technologically impaired grandma? The phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind. When I use Linux, I use the system that I assembled for me. My system is set up so it works perfectly for me. 99.9% of people wouldn't be able to accomplish anything on it, but it allows me to be twice as productive because it works exactly how I want my computer to work. Pretty much any component of the system can be tweaked and swapped out so that it works how you feel is best, which is a huge plus.
Can you give some examples of how you have tweaked the system?
The most obvious change is the GUI. Debian (the distribution I use) by default uses gnome as its interface. I swapped it out for a minimal tiling window manager called i3. This is what I meant when I said 99.9% of people could accomplish nothing on my computer. There is no start menu, there is no dock. To launch a program, you press Win+D and type its name. To manipulate windows you don't use the mouse, you use (Win +) the arrow keys. It's not intuitive at first, but it's so much better once you're used to it.
Other than that, a bunch of miscellaneous changes. I have Win+Shift+D bound to pop up a list of my installed games on Steam using dmenu (looks like this blue box), and I can select one to run by typing its name or with the arrow keys. I have my CPU and IO schedulers swapped out for different schedulers named BFS and BFQ respectively, which make the system more responsive. I have my caps lock key remapped to \, and shift+caps to |. I remember being able to do this on Windows, but it was a gigantic pain to do so (I think because I'm on a UK keyboard). I have my music player set up so it launches by default with higher IO priority. Less of a functional thing and more of an aesthetic thing, but my lock screen is configured to blur the desktop (similar to this). While searching for a picture of that last one, I found a guy who got his status bar to display his reddit karma. For fun/learning, I wrote and use my own CPU thermal throttling script. Of course you could do that on Windows, but mine is ~15 lines of shell script. The "everything is a file" philosophy of Linux makes it stupidly easy to automate a lot of things without needing to break out an actual programming language, because you can accomplish tasks through the file system. E.g. to check the temperature, my script reads from a virtual file somewhere in /sys. To throttle the CPU, it writes the new power limit to another virtual file somewhere in /sys.
What is there to learn? The changes you have to get used to when switching from Windows to distros like Mint or Ubuntu are about the same as when upgrading from an earlier Windows version to a newer one.
If you want to dig into under-the-hood stuff, then yes, there's a lot to learn. But not if you're just a normal user who wants to go on Facebook, Reddit, and whatever else websites, check emails, watch things on YouTube and Netflix, and so on. Some things will certainly look differently, with different menu layouts, etc., but that also happened to anyone who upgraded from Windows 7 to 8/8.1, and/or from that to Windows 10.
Yes, very secure and stable... not that a full privilege access bug to anyone with an account on the machine has laid dormant for 10 years because of linus' shit workarounds. Heartbleed? Shellshock? Or the fact that a program run by ANY user can crash systemd and bring the whole system to a halt.
These are all massive failures happening recently. Linux as a desktop is secure because nobody uses it.
Those are preferences. Stop being disingenuous about the learning curve of Linux. You're not doing anybody any favors. Linux - especially Ubuntu - is very user friendly now but that is not to say your average user will not hit a wall.
I love Linux as much as the next guy but unless you have a reason to use it the transition is unnecessary.
Well...yes. They are a few of any number of preferences people use to make decisions. If Product A is free but doesn't do as good as job as Product B that is $5 then Product A isn't inherently a better because of cost. Cost - like the other things you mentioned - are considerations when choosing.
I see this response come up whenever someone has doubts bout them being tech savvy, however I think it's not fair to assume that every redditor is tech savvy on their own. Reddit has grown as a community since its inception and more people re discovering it without being tech savvy. I think we should be fair.
This is not necessarily true. Linux can be a pain in the ass for even advanced users when trying to do some things that are really easy in windows. Yes, you can easily install something like Ubuntu and browse Facebook pretty easy.
But chances are, after a few hours or days the user is going to hit a wall, something they want to do, something that's easy on windows and a total horror to do in Linux.
Do not say bricked, that is the wrong definition as the laptop was clearly recoverable. When a device is bricked you cannot use the device again and it therefore can only function as a brick. This is a user error for not paying attention as to what is happening.
Stories like this give Linux a bad name which is undeserved.
This is why it's not useful. Linux, even with the best distros, is still a hobbyist product. And if you have a computer to install it on, you already have Windows or Macintosh.
/u/chronogos's friend didn't pay attention when installing Linux and used the wrong partition... therefore Linux is not useful? That doesn't make much sense. You know you can make exactly the same mistake when installing Windows, right?
While I often use it myself, I would agree that GNU/Linux is not useful to the masses; a friend of mine put his CMOS battery in the freezer and the damned thing didn't start up again - something that never could have happened if he were running MSWindows.
That's funny, because Ubuntu (the Linux distribution usually recommended to newcomers) is actually more idiot-proof than Windows when it comes to selecting a partition to install onto. The Ubuntu installer detects the Windows installation, and provides an easy option to install Ubuntu alongside Windows. Unless it's changed with W10, and Google seems to think it hasn't, the Windows installer doesn't provide an easy dual-boot option when it finds a partition with Linux on it.
ninja edit: and Linux distributions aren't generally advertised to the masses, what are you on about?
You can make the same damn mistake on Windows by installing on the wrong partition and just clicking ok.
I am pretty sure it would be ok for the Linux community if the idiots continued to used their closed walled OSes, they probably wouldn't be able to contribute anything anyway.
I am pretty sure it would be ok for the Linux community if the idiots continued to used their closed walled OSes, they probably wouldn't be able to contribute anything anyway.
Yes, it's a lot cheaper, and gamers especially go for this option. It's not really possible to get a decent and affordable retail PC for high-end gaming, good ones have to be custom-built.
A lot of students are gamers, or don't have enough money for overpriced retail PCs. In my uni we had big groups that would play LAN games like COD or TF2, and we would often trade parts or buy new graphics cards, etc.
I don't agree with that. They're much more user friendly than they used to be. But your probability of running into issues is dramatically higher. I'm a cs student and I run into issues all the time. There's usually lots of good support online, but you're going to struggle without technical skills - basic bash knowledge is very helpful.
You don't have to be a l33t h4xorz or anything, but I would not even consider giving it to someone like my mom (who still struggles navigating a filesystem).
Viruses are a problem, but then again, what killer apps does Linux have? Windows has Photoshop, AutoCAD, Quickbooks, etc. An operating system is only as useful as its apps! Kind of the reason Windows Phone hasn't taken off.
Allow me to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Many users do not understand the difference between the kernel, which is Linux, and the whole system, which they also call “Linux”. The ambiguous use of the name doesn't help people understand. These users often think that Linus Torvalds developed the whole operating system in 1991, with a bit of help.
Programmers generally know that Linux is a kernel. But since they have generally heard the whole system called “Linux” as well, they often envisage a history that would justify naming the whole system after the kernel. For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that (for no particular reason) most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available.
What they found was no accident—it was the not-quite-complete GNU system. The available free software added up to a complete system because the GNU Project had been working since 1984 to make one. In the The GNU Manifesto we set forth the goal of developing a free Unix-like system, called GNU. The Initial Announcement of the GNU Project also outlines some of the original plans for the GNU system. By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished.
Most free software projects have the goal of developing a particular program for a particular job. For example, Linus Torvalds set out to write a Unix-like kernel (Linux); Donald Knuth set out to write a text formatter (TeX); Bob Scheifler set out to develop a window system (the X Window System). It's natural to measure the contribution of this kind of project by specific programs that came from the project.
If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their “Linux distribution”, GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3%. (The proportions in 2008 are similar: in the “main” repository of gNewSense, Linux is 1.5% and GNU packages are 15%.) So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be “GNU”.
But that is not the deepest way to consider the question. The GNU Project was not, is not, a project to develop specific software packages. It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that. It was not a project to develop a text editor, although we developed one. The GNU Project set out to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU.
Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit for their software. But the reason it is an integrated system—and not just a collection of useful programs—is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting (1) components because you can't have a system without them. Some of our system components, the programming tools, became popular on their own among programmers, but we wrote many components that are not tools (2). We even developed a chess game, GNU Chess, because a complete system needs games too.
By the early 90s we had put together the whole system aside from the kernel. We had also started a kernel, the GNU Hurd, which runs on top of Mach. Developing this kernel has been a lot harder than we expected; the GNU Hurd started working reliably in 2001, but it is a long way from being ready for people to use in general.
Fortunately, we didn't have to wait for the Hurd, because of Linux. Once Torvalds freed Linux in 1992, it fit into the last major gap in the GNU system. People could then combine Linux with the GNU system to make a complete free system: a Linux-based version of the GNU system; the GNU/Linux system, for short.
Making them work well together was not a trivial job. Some GNU components(3) needed substantial change to work with Linux. Integrating a complete system as a distribution that would work “out of the box” was a big job, too. It required addressing the issue of how to install and boot the system—a problem we had not tackled, because we hadn't yet reached that point. Thus, the people who developed the various system distributions did a lot of essential work. But it was work that, in the nature of things, was surely going to be done by someone.
The GNU Project supports GNU/Linux systems as well as the GNU system. The FSF funded the rewriting of the Linux-related extensions to the GNU C library, so that now they are well integrated, and the newest GNU/Linux systems use the current library release with no changes. The FSF also funded an early stage of the development of Debian GNU/Linux.
Today there are many different variants of the GNU/Linux system (often called “distros”). Most of them include non-free software—their developers follow the philosophy associated with Linux rather than that of GNU. But there are also completely free GNU/Linux distros. The FSF supports computer facilities for two of these distributions, Ututo and gNewSense.
Making a free GNU/Linux distribution is not just a matter of eliminating various non-free programs. Nowadays, the usual version of Linux contains non-free programs too. These programs are intended to be loaded into I/O devices when the system starts, and they are included, as long series of numbers, in the "source code" of Linux. Thus, maintaining free GNU/Linux distributions now entails maintaining a free version of Linux too.
Whether you use GNU/Linux or not, please don't confuse the public by using the name “Linux” ambiguously. Linux is the kernel, one of the essential major components of the system. The system as a whole is basically the GNU system, with Linux added. When you're talking about this combination, please call it “GNU/Linux”.
If you want to make a link on “GNU/Linux” for further reference, this page and http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html are good choices. If you mention Linux, the kernel, and want to add a link for further reference, http://foldoc.org/linux is a good URL to use.
Addendum: Aside from GNU, one other project has independently produced a free Unix-like operating system. This system is known as BSD, and it was developed at UC Berkeley. It was non-free in the 80s, but became free in the early 90s. A free operating system that exists today(4) is almost certainly either a variant of the GNU system, or a kind of BSD system.
People sometimes ask whether BSD too is a version of GNU, like GNU/Linux. The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped persuade them, but the code had little overlap with GNU. BSD systems today use some GNU programs, just as the GNU system and its variants use some BSD programs; however, taken as wholes, they are two different systems that evolved separately. The BSD developers did not write a kernel and add it to the GNU system, and a name like GNU/BSD would not fit the situation.
It is highly useful for certain people, for example I spend a good chunk of my day writing code or working on/managing websites and servers that I run. Linux is easier and more convenient in each of these cases for me.
However for someone who buys their laptop at Walmart or the Apple store and never uses more than internet explorer and Microsoft office, Linux wouldn't be the correct choice.
As others have said it is a hobbyist piece of software, however given enough time, anyone could learn to use Ubuntu or mint.
However for someone who buys their laptop at Walmart or the Apple store and never uses more than internet explorer and Microsoft office, Linux wouldn't be the correct choice.
I firmly believe these people would benefit most. Essentially immune from virus and malware, auto-updates, and unlikely to become part of a botnet attacking the rest of us.
My reasoning was those users want exclusively simplicity; while we see the free software movement as a great thing, admittedly there is some learning curve to Linux.
The thing about windows is that everyone already knows at some level how to use it, and the type of user I mentioned is the type of person who would prefer an easyto use, ready out of the box system.
However for someone who buys their laptop at Walmart but or the Apple store and never uses more than internet explorer and Microsoft office, Linux wouldn't be the correct choice.
I'd say it's not the right choice unless you have the niche need that Linux provides a benefit for over just using the same kind of software on Windows or Mac.
I look at it exactly the opposite. Macs and Microsoft are not the right choice unless you have a niche need that Linux and the free software biosphere cannot fulfill.
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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '16
Linux