Cognitive Cow

For the most part, I’ve switched to Ubuntu Linux and like so many other people out there, I’m going to tell you the ten reasons why I think Linux is far better than Windows. Fear not, in the future I will post an article about The Linux Bottom Ten about things I don’t like about Linux to balance it off.

1. Command Line!

   I love having the command line available to me. It’s an amazing way to interact with the operating system. Windows users know only one thing: GUI. As a linux user now, there are two ways to do everything: using the GUI, and then doing it from the command line. Getting over the learning curve of figuring out the command line could be a bit difficult but once I got over it, a new world was open. For example, now I know how to do something like this:

   $ curl "http://cognitivecow.com" | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z ]/ /g’ | tr ‘A-Z ‘ ‘a-z\n’ | grep ‘[a-z]‘ | sort -u | comm -23 - /usr/share/dict/cracklib-small

   which, in one line, spell checks a web page.

2. Home directories

   In windows land, user settings are a bit confusing. Sure, you have My Documents but what about things like a user’s font size, program settings, desktop settings, and everything else? Linux stores everything in the user’s home directory. backing up my home directory means backing up all of my settings as well as all of my files.

3. Gnome or KDE? Maybe even WindowMaker.

   Windows has one windows manager. You can customize it, like any but you live with what you have. Windows users may not even understand the concept of windows managers because you really are stuck with the one GUI you start with. Gnome and KDE are the leading contenders and everybody has their own preference. But you can also run a very lightweight windows manager for the slower computers or even not run a windows manager at all! (okay no window manager is kinda boring but I do it on my server )

4. Update everything at a single click

   Ubuntu:
   $ sudo apt-get update

   Gentoo:
   # emerge -Davu world

   In Ubuntu, that’s it! Everything that you’ve installed on your system will be updated. Windows is good about updating itself, in fact it’s quite transparent and not very bothersome at all but what Windows lacks is the ability to update everything installed on your computer. This feature really grew on me.

5. Open Source Alternatives!

   Everything I can do on a Windows PC I can do in Linux. Icons on the desktop function just as you would expect, browsing directories is the same. Checking email, browsing the web, writing, chatting online, watching movies, listening to music… It’s all there. In a very short period of time, anybody could get the basic desktop figured out because it’s the same as what we’re already used to.

   Oh but wait, you can’t play games! The way I see it, I could have one machine that does both games and desktop stuff but not so well (with Windows), or I can have a Linux machine and just buy an XBox 360 or Nintendo Wii. Also, Linux plays really well with dual booting so there’s always the option to boot into Windows when you want to play a specific game.

6. SCP, SFTP, and SSH

   Yes I know they’re all related but having remote access to all of your files and even your entire computer is a very nice feature. Windows has got it too… kinda. I’m sure we’ve all used Remote Desktop at one point or another and it’s not a terrible tool but Windows suffers from the problem of being too dependent on a GUI. With SSH, I can manage any of my Linux boxes from anywhere with an Internet connection.

   Being able to access all of my files on my Linux boxes extends my desktop to anywhere in the world.

7. Spyware? Never heard of it…

   As an experienced Windows user, I never get spyware or anything like that even when using Windows. This refers to the common user who may not know how to avoid this stuff. Don’t worry about it, Linux will take care of you.

8. Cool visual effects

   A lot of people think of Linux as bland and minimalistic. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. With the right hardware, Linux can actually look very cool. Beryl, the software responsible for this is, of course, free as well.

9. LAMP

   I love LAMP. For those of you that don’t know, it stands for Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP. It’s very easy to set up this kind of server and get a web site running in no time. Sure, this is possible in Windows but there’s something much more elegent and natural about running this on a Linux system. Setting up a wiki, bulliten board, or blog is rather simple once the server is set up.

10. Config files

    Config files and I have a love/hate relationship. Overall, I love this setup. Pretty much all configuration for any program is in the /etc folder somewhere in a text file. If you’re a geek like me, you will be eager to edit a text file to change settings. However, most users won’t be. The great thing is that for lots of applications, there are GUI bindings to change certain config files. Windows doesn’t have this luxury. While it’s nice to have a GUI to change configuration, Windows doesn’t have a good way to back up configuration files so it’s hard to back up settings and move them to other computers.