Linux and me...

Linux - Archaic complex console...

Windows XP - User friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface)

SuSE 8.0 Linux - User friendly GUI :)

KMail - KDE mail client

Konqueror - KDE file manager

Konqueror - KDE web browser

XMMS (X MultiMedia System) - MP3 Player

The much debated question - which operating system should you use - Windows or Linux? Or Apple Macintosh? Or BeOS? Or ...? Truth is, there are so many different operating systems out there it can be quite confusing to get a grasp of all their capabilities. I will only focus in this article on Windows and Linux however.

I guess most people reading this page will never have used Linux, maybe not even have heard about it. My friend asked his wife what she thought of Linux after he showed it to her recently, and her response was that it was a nice program... She was under the impression that it was a small Windows program! I think it can be ascribed to the fact that most PC's comes shipped with some flavour of Windows, whether you like it or not. Only recently have some vendors started to ship Linux with their new PC's.

Now for the big question - why do I even bother to look (or even use!) another operating system than Microsoft Windows? It works, is easy to use and has very good support. Put on top of that the archaic Unix based console normally assosiated with Linux and in general any flavour of Unix to be seen in the picture on the top left hand side of this page, compared to that of the nice GUI of Windows just beneath it?

Many technically able people claim that Linux (and in general Unix) is only good for servers, whereas Windows and the Apple Macintosh is designed for the desktop PC. They use arguments like these against Linux on the desktop:

• Linux is difficult to learn and quite different to the way Windows works
• To configure and use Linux, one needs to learn all the console based commands as can be seen in the top left hand side picture.
• There are not many applications available for Linux
• There is no support for Linux
• We have lots of existing Microsoft Office documents and will hence not be able to use/open them in Linux
• My hardware will not be supported because Linux is known to be picky about the hardware it supports

I will confess. Since the beginning of April 2002 I have officially switched from using Windows XP as my main desktop operating system to Linux. I was used to the way Windows works and that is why I stayed so long on that platform. I slowly started to realize there were several things that bothered me with Windows and the way it works. Please do not get me wrong - I do not want to advocate one operating system above another. I merely want to express my own personal opinion. Therefore, I am not trying to convince anybody to Linux or to Windows, I merely want to explain what I have found in Linux.

In the beginning I used RedHat 6.0 a bit (about three years ago I think). It did not have great hardware support and was in general a bit of a pain to get configured and set up for use with my desktop PC. I really liked the server side of Linux though and knew that if I ever wanted to erect a server on the internet, it would run Linux as operating system. Also, the productivity applications that shipped at that time for Linux was a bit dissapointing (for me). But I guess one did no have a reason to complain as Linux and the GNU system was free software.

Maybe now is a good time to quickly correct some common misunderstandings about Linux. Firstly, Linux was created by Linus Torvalds in the early 90's. Linux is a kernel of the GNU operating system. GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix. GNU is a complete Unix-like operating system that is free software. There is a big difference between a kernel and an operating system. A kernel is that piece of software in an operating system that provides memory management, time slicing, I/O support, multithreading, process creation and management, hardware drivers etc. An operating system on the other hand is the kernel and all the support software. Examples of support software are file system utilities, command interpreters, X windows, window managers etc. You may also have noticed I said "Linux is a kernel of the GNU operating system". That is because one can use many different kernels with GNU, like Darwin and the Hurd. The most common one is Linux though, and therefore many people just say Linux when they mean GNU/Linux. Lastly, Linux and GNU are both free software, which means you may copy and redistribute it according to the GNU GPL license. But this does not imply the software is not supported or of poor quality!

In April 2002 I installed RedHat Linux 7.2 on my notebook (Dell Latitude C800) as the main operating system (I used to run it as a secondary operating system). The following were some concerns I had in order to have Linux fully replace Windows:

• Get all my hardware working under Linux
• Get replacement software for:
• - Wordprocessor and Spreadsheet
• - Mail Agent
• - Address Book
• - ASCII Text Editor
• - PGP Encryption
• - Web browser
• - MSN Messenger
• - Winamp MP3 Player
• - Various other software like C++ compiler, Java etc.
• Learn how to do housekeeping things in Linux like managing the print queue
• Learn how to administrate Linux for network and security related issues

I am glad to say I managed to do all that and so much more. As you can see in the image third from the top left hand side, my Linux desktop now looks quite stunning. By the way, I changed to SuSE 8.0 a while ago and found it much nicer than RedHat. Maybe a word or two on Linux distributions would clarify terms like RedHat and SuSE. Because the GNU/Linux operating system is free software, and not owned by anyone, it exists as a bunch of isolated applications and needs skillful people to combine it into an integrated operating system. Imagine if Windows existed as a Microsoft Office application which you can download from http://www.somewhere.office.org/, then a Windows kernel downloadable from http://www.windowskernel.org/, then a Windows Explorer downloadable from http://www.wdesktop.org/explorer/, then ... You can easily see that it will be a tremendous effort you need to invest in order to install your operating system. Fortunately several people saw this lack of overall coordination in the GNU/Linux operating system and decided to start up a company that would package all the components together and distribute it as a single integrated operating system on some media. They only ask a fee to cover their media costs - they cannot and will not charge you for the operating system. This is evident from the fact that you can download the whole operating system for free from any vendor's web site. Obviously this got rather competitive as several people saw this opportunity and currently there exists a rather large amount of Linux flavours, each with their pro's and con's. It is important to remember that in the end all the different flavours of Linux are still just GNU/Linux, nothing more and nothing less. It is the way the different components are integrated that differs, the extra software bundled, ease of installation, management utilities, quality of manuals etc. And this can make a huge difference for the casual user! Some common distributions are:

• SuSE Linux
• RedHat Linux
• Debian Linux
• Mandrake Linux

And a not-so-common distribution, but VERY nice, is:

• Gentoo Linux

If you ask me why I switched to Linux and what the benefits are, I would answer as follows:

• Windows got horribly slow after about 4 months of usage, mainly because of a large registry I guess and lots of remnant files from previous installations
• After a clean boot of Windows XP, about 120MB of my memory was consumed
• Windows is propriety software, meaning no one will ever know what exactly the code does - it could violate my privacy without me ever knowing it
• Windows is getting ridiculously priced. In South Africa, Windows XP Professional retails for about R4999. That is more than half of an average person's monthly income!
• In the Windows world you do not have that great choice, you have to use what you get. And now I am not talking about an office suite or mail client, I am talking about things like the file system (NTFS), kernel, system services etc.
• Windows only runs on the Intel family of processors
• The interdependency between applications in Windows is too high - as an example, I wanted to install Microsoft Money and then had to upgrade my Windows Internet Explorer to version 5.5 I think. This is due to common COM components that is shared between the applications, but what if I did not want to upgrade my web browser but wanted to install Money?
• Remote management of a Windows machine is terrible, as RDP over a slow modem connection is not something I would like to do regularly. The principle mistake here is that Windows NT is so tightly integrated with the GUI that one cannot separate them, hence all administration tasks need the heavy load of the graphical subsystem. And sending graphics over the internet is not appealing to me
• Linux does not get slow with time as everything is modular and self contained, there is no single place where configuration data gets stored and it is easy to remove all of an application.
• After a clean boot of Linux, about 50MB of memory was consumed for the same functionality than the Windows XP machine.
• GNU/Linux is free software, and open source. You (anyone for that matter) can easily download the source code (you can even modify it!) and review it. No back doors can exist in the GNU/Linux operating system as people will spot it
• Again, GNU/Linux is free software
• In Linux, you can even change your kernel! Everything is customizable. If you do not like the default ext2 file system, use ReiserFS, XFS or JFS! If you so not like the GNOME desktop, use KDE or WindowMaker or Afterstep or ...
• GNU/Linux runs on many, many different platforms
• There are interdependencies between GNU based applications, but they can easily be resolved by just adding the new components, you do not have to update whole applications
• Remote management of GNU/Linux is a dream, as the Linux kernel is completely independent from any graphical subsystem. Therefore, everything can be configured via a text based console which although a bit more difficult than the GUI counterpart, is extremenly fast and practical especially over slow connections. And for those who cannot work with the console, most configuration options you can just as well configure using graphical tools and a remote X desktop

Just before I conclude this discussion, I think it is only fair to mention some caveats when switching to GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux is not as user friendly as Windows. Some things, if they go wrong, is difficult to fix. You may need some technical knowledge to resolve the issue, though this rarely happens. Also, it is different than Windows. People tend to avoid things that are different. Do not let this stop you. Hardware support is not yet as good as Windows' hardware support. This is mainly because third party hardware vendors are either slow to write Linux drivers for their products, or they do not want to disclose the internal workings of their devices to the public, having only Windows drivers for their products. Usually they then have some exclusivity agreement with Microsoft I guess. An example is my Canon N650U USB flatbed scanner. Canon did not publish the specs of the scanner's interface because of a NDA (I think), so Linux does not support it. Same with the so called Winmodems, which are basically a DSP-less modem which needs (Windows) drivers to make them work. They are a disgrace to the word "modem" as they leave all the hard work for the CPU and driver. There is nothing technically stopping someone from developing drivers for them (and there are some drivers available), it is just that the vendors choose not to disclose the protocols.

If you decide to try GNU/Linux, you will definately be in for interesting times, sometimes called frustration. But I promise you in the end you will not be disappointed.

[Note] It always amazes me how things change. When I wrote this article somewhere in 2002, I would never have had envisioned myself on any other OS than either Windows or Linux. Well, I am now a converted Mac-addict :) Therefore I have added this piece.