why choose linux

Like everybody else, I've started my computer experience with Windows, and from the beginning, I was also attracted to Linux. Two decades later, Linux based systems and applications are seeing worldwide and ever-increasing use by government agencies, universities, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, ecommerce sites, and many others. Almost incredibly, Linux has even stolen a small but growing desktop market share from mighty Microsoft! Let's have a look at the reasons why you should choose Linux over Windows:

 

 

Performance

 

Windows has a number of design flaws, resulting in it becoming slower and slower and not lasting very long. You've probably heard more than once someone say "My computer is getting sluggish, I'm gonna reinstall". Reinstalling Windows solves the problem... until next time.

 

You may think this is just how computers work: they're very new technology, and not really stable yet. Well, try Linux and you'll be surprised. Five years from now, your system will be just as fast and responsive as the day you installed it, not to mention that you won't have any viruses, adware, trojans, worms, etc., that would force you to reinstall anyway.

 

I have managed to convince many people to switch to Linux, while keeping Windows on their hard disk, because they needed to use some piece of software that Linux doesn't have (eg Autocad), so they use both systems. Since the day they switched, most of them have reinstalled Windows about once in a year or two; but Linux didn't let them down, and is still running perfectly well and is still snappy today.

 

Linux lets you spend more time working, less time reinstalling over and over again.

 

Stability

Well, I can assure you that Linux is a very stable operating system. I know that Windows can also be kept alive for days, but in time, it will not be so fast as it needs a defragmentation of the hard drive. Linux doesn't need any defragmentation due to the advanced filesystems it uses, so after months or years of usage, it is still as sharp and fast like it was when you first installed it.

Security

 

 

Most people use Microsoft Windows, and pirates want to do as much damage (or control) as possible: therefore, they target Windows. But that's not the only reason; the Apache web server (a web server is a program located on a remote computer that sends web pages to your browser when you ask for them), which is open source software, has the biggest market share (against Microsoft's IIS server), but it still suffers from much fewer attacks/flaws than the Microsoft one.

 

Linux uses smart authorization management. In Windows you (and any program you install) usually have the right to do pretty much anything to the system. If you feel like punishing your PC because it just let your precious work disappear, you can go inside the system folder and delete whatever you want: Windows won't complain. Of course, the next time you reboot, trouble begins. But imagine that if you can delete this system stuff, other programs can, too, or just mess it up. Linux doesn't allow that. Every time you request to do something that has to do with the system, an administrator password is required (and if you're not an administrator on this system, you simply can't do it). Viruses can't just go around and delete or modify what they want in the system; they don't have the authorization for that.

 

More eyes make fewer security flaws. Linux is Open source software, which means that any programmer in the world can have a look at the code (the "recipe" of any program), and help out, or just tell other developers "Hey, what if blah blah, isn't this a security flaw?".

 

Freedom

 

Linux and "Open Source" software are "free". This means their license is a "free license", and the most common is the GPL (General Public License). This license states that anyone is allowed to copy the software, see the source code (the "recipe"), modify it, and redistribute it as long as it remains licensed with the GPL.

 

So what do you care about freedom? Imagine that Microsoft disappears tomorrow (okay, that's not very likely, but what about in 5 years, 10 years?). Or imagine it suddenly triples the price for a Windows or Office license. If you're tied to Windows, there's nothing you can do. You (or your business) relies on this one company, on its software, and you can't possibly make things work without it (what good is a computer without an operating system?). Isn't that a serious problem? You're depending on one single company and trusting it wholeheartedly to let something so important nowadays as your computers work the way they should. If Microsoft decides to charge $1000 for the next version of Windows, there's nothing you can do about it (except switch to Linux, of course). If Windows has a bug that bothers you very much and Microsoft won't fix it, there's nothing you can do (and submitting bugs to Microsoft isn't that easy, see the "Report bugs" section).

 

With Open Source, if a particular project or support company dies, all the code remains open to the community and people can keep improving it. If this project is especially useful to you, you can even do this yourself. If a particular bug annoys you, you can submit it, talk with the developers, but even better, you can fix it yourself (or hire someone to do so), and send the changes back to the upstream developers so that everyone gets the improvement as well. You're free to do (nearly) whatever you want with the software.

 

 

 

Price

 

You're probably saying to yourself : "Oh, I didn't pay for Windows". Are you absolutely sure ? If your computer came with a copy of Windows, then you paid for it, even if the store didn't tell you about that. The price for a Windows license amounts to an average of one fourth of each new computer's price. So unless you obtained Windows illegally, you probably paid for it. Where do you think Microsoft gets its money from?

 

On the other hand, you can get Linux completely free of charge. That's right, all these guys all around the world worked very hard to make a neat, secure, efficient, good-looking system, and they are giving their work away for everybody to use freely (if you wonder why these guys do such things, drop me an email and I'll try to explain the best I can :) ). Of course, some companies are making good business by selling support, documentation, hotline, etc., for their own version of Linux, and this is certainly a good thing. But most of the time, you won't need to pay a cent.

 

The next generation of desktops

 

Pretty much all Windows users have the same desktop. You can still change your wallpaper, or the color of your windows decorations (default is blue), but basically you'll still end up with the usual Windows interface.

 

With Linux, choice has been brought back to you. You're no longer forced to accept the one-and-only way to manage multiple windows: you can choose among many programs, which are called "window managers". But don't worry, you won't need to worry about that, since you'll have a pretty good default window manager. The point is you can change it if you wish.

 

 

 

Workspaces is a feature I would never trade for anything else. You probably only have one screen, right? Try Linux, and you have four. Well, you can't actually look at the four of them at the same time, but this doesn't matter since your eyes can't look in two directions at once, right? On the first screen, lets put your word processor. On the second one, your instant messenger software. On the third one, your web browser. So when you're writing something in your word processor and you want to check out something on the web, no need to review all your windows to find your browser, stacked all the way behind the others. You just switch to your third screen and voilà, here it is.

 

Linux doesn't need separate drivers

 

New pieces of hardware, even the simplest kind, usually come with a CD. On the CD, a very small piece of software called a "driver". If you read the instructions manual, you'll know that the hardware won't work on a Windows computer until you install the driver. If you're like most people and do not read the manual, then you'll probably figure it out yourself when you see your new high-tech gizmo doesn't work out of the box.

 

Insert CD, click on installation wizard, wait, eject CD, reboot computer.

 

If you bought the hardware a while ago and are re-using it on another computer, you'll probably want to forget about the CD and fetch the latest version of the driver from the manufacturer's website. Which can take quite a bit of time, given how, huh, let's say strangely organized some manufacturers' web sites are.

 

Okay, now that's only one piece of hardware. Now imagine you want to install Windows on a whole new, untouched, computer. For each little piece of hardware you'll have to find the latest driver (or use a CD), install it, and reboot from time to time. Video card, sound card, keyboard, mouse, motherboard chipset, etc. (better do the video card driver first or you're stuck with your high-end screen showing a very low resolution mode). And that comes after an already rather long installation of Windows itself.

 

Linux doesn't need separate drivers. All the drivers are already included in the Linux kernel, the core of the system, and that comes with every single Linux installation. This means:

 

 

• A very fast and standalone installation process. Once you're done, you have everything you need to start working (including the software you'll be using, see "When the system has installed..." item on this website).
• Out-of-the-box ready peripherals.
• Less harm for the planet because all these CDs don't need to come with hardware any more (well, at least once Windows don't need them either...).

There are Linux systems made especially for old computers, like a Pentium 1 that runs at 200 Mhz. So, if you are wondering whether your computer is supported or not, I will tell you right now that it is and you'll definitely find a Linux system for you!

 

 

Software updates

 

Windows has a pretty convenient tool called "Windows update", which allows you to update your system with the latest updates available.

 

But what about all your non-Microsoft software? Adobe applications? ZIP compresser? Burning program? Non-Microsoft web browsers and email clients, etc.? You need to update all of them, one by one. And that takes time, since each one of them has its own (auto-)updating system.

 

Linux has a central place called the "Package manager", which takes care of everything installed on your system, but also every single piece of software your computer has. So if you want to keep everything up-to-date, the only thing you need to do is press the "Install Updates" button down there :

评论

2 楼 Roney_wei 2012-03-29  

我也觉得，要搞就搞个全英文的吗？至少你的系统不是英文的

1 楼 mlc880926 2012-03-26  

转载吗?怎么文字是英文,配的图有事中文的