We comes across Linux (Foss) in our day-to-day life. In fact we are surrounded by Foss technologies. The first thing that might come to the mind of ours is that why is Linux appraised so much even in Windows and Mac user Community.
What we answer to these question is Linux is free (in use), Open source (Free source-code provided), Secure, Virus-free, large device support, excellent user community, freedom of choice (from a number of distributions and desktop environment), stability, next generation desktop, an OS has all the application software needed from for a newbie to researcher, multi-user support, etc.
These are not incorrect, but definitely reason lies beyond this. We use Linux because we love to experiment, love the difficulty provided in installation and maintenance of Linux, to feel the server capability while working on desktop and most importantly we have a feeling of superiority over windows user (I have not mentioned Mac here, why? Hmmm it will be discussed later in the article). We are a kind of people who love to be differentiated, from the rest of the world. To be true we are a little selfish.
We use Linux in almost every kind of electronic device around us ranging from wrist watch, remote control, mobile, desktop, laptop, server, etc. Linux is so much powerful and flexible that it can run on almost all kind of machine and architecture with little or no modification. Can you imagine to install and run Windows as Live image from an Usb mass storage device? But you can boot and run Linux from an Usb mass storage device and then transfer the whole OS to RAM and continue running it from there.
If you own a box, running Linux, you will never be bored again, playing with a huge number of packages. No matter you belongs to which profession be it publisher, writer, programmer, engineer, doctor, student, gamer, hacker or Rocket-Scientist, there will always be plenty of stuffs to make your work done.
Linux has all the Foss programming languages either installed or in the repository to be installed from there like C, C++, Java, PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc. The software’s packages like Gimp, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Firefox, Document Viewer and a number of multimedia player/viewer, CD/DVD writing tools are available by default so who needs Photoshop, MS word, Internet Explorer, Safari, Nero and to be manually installed package system.
Linux is perfect, Linux is powerful yet Linux is compact. Linux don’t break nor does it have anything immatured like Registry. The total number of Linux distributions available would be several hundred times more than the combined number of OS’s released by Windows and Mac.
Ohhk… so let the topic ‘Mac‘ finish here. Mac is developed over an Unix like OS – BSD. So what Mac actually is a closed source eye candy OS moulded over BSD. Hence I personally feels that Mac should stay away from the discussion, ever and now.
Linux provides you several hundred distributions like Debian, Red Hat Enterprise, Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSuse, Mint, Ubuntu…. and a number of Desktop Environment like Gnome, Kde, xfce, etc. Each distribution has its own user-support-group, each distro is highly customisable according to user requirement, the console itself is as much powerful as X-System.
A single article or a single book is unable to explain the power, the utility, the usability and the ‘Art’ of Linux”. Linux can be extend to the extent of user’s need.
“We comes”… are you serious?
@ peter. this is a tecno article and hence these things doesn’t matter much.
Isn’t it pathetic how the vast majority of US English-speakers are too brain-dead to use Linux, and prefer to be M$ and Apple addicts? The future, apparently, belongs to foreign English-is-a-second-language. The WW2 generation is rolling over in their graves. Many are asking why they died for this.
@ Walter Heindl, u r not clear.
will you please tell us, what and whom exactly you are supporting?