Liked the feel - almost like a return to yesteryear
Quote:
Originally Posted by ions
This is the ONLY 'Why did you choose Linux?' on the forum now. Post here the myriad of reasons why you chose Linux. Whether it was to be 1337, licencing, or whatever reason, (cough)Windows sucks(/cough) share why here! :D
This is a popular topic and in the interest of providing info as clearly as possible on the topic we think one cetral thread is a good idea. So, all new threads that should have been posted in this thread will be locked from now on.
Way back when I started using computers in 1973, there was such a thing as a microprocessor, but microcomputers had not yet become common.
By the time I was nearing the end of my undergraduate university studies in the late seventies, microprocessors were beginning to come out in computers that were sold. Apple and Franklin computers were two of the popular ones. DEC also put its PDP-11 minicomputer on a chip and I got to use one in a Heathkit H-11 computer in one of my computer labs. That gave me more of an itch than the stuff I had used before, clunky teletypes with minicomputers, card readers with mainframes, and low speed acoustic couplers attached to green cathode ray tubes, remotely connected to some distant computer lab that I could not touch.
I wanted more.
By 1981, IBM saw the success of Franklin and Apple and wanted a bite for themselves. IBM took a research project to Boca Raton, Florida, way out of their usual New York and North Carolina digs, picked up a rebadged renegade operating system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from a small software company who had experience with BASIC interpreters, a young, entreprenurial company called Microsoft, which rebadged this system as MS/DOS. IBM did not have cheap microprocessors, they had expensive, high end stuff, so they bought into another technology from a company bleeding red ink, an unknown called Intel. IBM put BOTH companies on the map for good.
In 1982, I was working at General Motors, and I had just stopped working for the telecommunications arm of the company and had joined an hourly personnel systems group. I did COBOL maintenance programming for eight months, then decided I'd had enough.
I found a cool position in a small R&D group, who were assessing the client/server model of computing, using minicomputers and microcomputers (now known as PCs). The PCs mostly ran MS/DOS, though some of the latest ones also ran XENIX - what people today know as SCO UNIX - XENIX was Microsoft UNIX, if you can believe it!
I liked the feel of the PCs but I liked the flexibility and performance of the minicomputers more, particularly those running a system I had been introduced to in a lab at Michigan Tech - the UNIX operating system.
I did not like the usability factor of UNIX - seemed powerful but clumsy. I did not like the lack of features and flexibility with MS/DOS, which was very limited in the early days - few applications, very weak scripting language, no multitasking, no hierarchical directories. Nah, I'd go with UNIX and work on improving the interfaces.
I ended up being the designer of some of the early gateways that connected UNIX Email systems to those of other systems. (I did not invent Sendmail, but when it finally came out, it sure helped my cause, as did the emerging popularity of TCP/IP networks, which put UUCP networks to bed in a hurry).
I was still looking for something better.
After nearly twenty years in the business, I came across it in 1995, a few years after it had first emerged - the Linux distribution of the Linux kernel, a collection of GNU utilities, and various other programs. The first Linux system I tried was familiar - Slackware, because it had packaging elements very similar to the BSD UNIX systems that I tended to use most often.
I loved it. At last a computer was useful enough that I would consider getting one for home use, something I had avoided for many years. Now I take it for granted.
Linux had the feel of the PC with the stability and features of UNIX. Out of the box, it was definitely a geek tool but I saw the potential. I decided to go to graduate school - twenty years after entering software - and started to expound upon the virtues of developing openly shared operating system kernels and utilities so that more interesting tools and components could be built upon them.
Nearly fifteen years later, the vision is STILL not fully realized. I'd like to see a whole new generation of computer appliances with a cheap, free, commodity kernel beneath, layers of efficient system interfaces tightly coupled on top of that, with interfaces to a full range of electronic devices - phones, cameras, radios, televisions, computers, heating and cooling, refrigerators and stoves, and whatever else can be dreamed up to be computer controlled, accessed, and monitored in controlled ways. Home security?
Of course, we STILL have to solve issues of SYSTEM security. Current systems have not been designed from the ground up with security in mind. Mainframe systems come closer. By default, you can't access anything on the mainframe; you need explicit permission. Computers and networks of the future need a reasonable compromise between that and wide open access.
Linux comes closer that Microsoft, though both have gotten better.
SELinux starts to implement the kind of access control that IBM mainframes running MVS (or whatever the current name of their general purpose multitasking mainframe OS is called), OpenVMS, with its multi-node clusters of tightly coupled systems with Access Control Lists and tightly threaded process management, or even the descendants of MULTICS - the "castrated" UNIX or the evolved Linux, which is probably getting closer to the original ideas that were in MULTICS than the early UNIX kernels were ever able to achieve.
So for me, Linux puts me on a course that is the closest I've seen to the model of computing I have always envisioned. I am not smart enough to BUILD it myself, but I am smart enough to have a vision of what it might become.
Meanwhile, desktop Linux is simply the most usable environment I can get at any price. It is more flexible than a Mac, even if only now approaching its sex appeal. It is more stable, flexible, and extensible, not to mention more secure, than any Windows OS, including Vista. It is much cheaper than UNIX systems and arguably just as flexible. Hardware vendors have resisted having Linux get too good, fearing loss of their cash cows. However, even high end features are creeping into Linux. IF the hardware vendors won't put the features there, others will and have done so. Linux runs some of the fastest supercomputer clusters in the world, used for weather prediction and oil exploration.
Linux runs on some of the smallest systems, including a futuristic "Dick Tracy-like" watch-computer, and certainly in miniature cell phone and PDA devices.
Linux runs well on desktop systems.
Linux runs well on server systems.
I envision Linux systems being the glue that allow us to connect all these different kinds of things together. That's why I use it - I like it very much, but I also see a future for it that we are only beginning to imagine - an environment that will scale WAY past anything Microsoft can do with their crippled QDOS, even if it HAS been rewritten.
Not QUITE right but almost
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parcival
Umm, no. Unix (simply put) is the big father that started it all.
Actually, in the interactive, hierarchical, ASCII, evolved to UNICODE space, it was MULTICS, not UNIX, that started things off. UNIX is a castrated version of MULTICS. Modern Linux kernels actually have more of the features found in the original MULTICS kernel in terms of dynamic shared libraries, advanced virtual memory techniques, and job scheduling algorithms, than the original UNIX system did, but Linux is playing catchup with today's high end hardware because hardware vendors want to maintain their own cash cows for as long as they can do so.
But give credit to MULTICS for the vast majority of really cool innovations that were actually invented in the sixties by the MIT, AT&T, and GE joint research project. XEROX and IBM each had their own important contributions, too. Unfortunate that NONE of those companies knew what to do with them!
At least IBM is around to benefit somewhat, and has hopefully learned the value of the great work. Actually, of all of those companies, IBM has the best ratio of stuff that actually goes into products. They are great with memory, processor, and disk hardware innovations that actually become real products. Their virtual machine idea is what everyone uses for "virtualization" today - IBM had it years ago with VM/CMS, and they could run their monster OS on top of it. Today, they can run 1,000 instances of Linux in these monsters!
Wasnt sure where to put this, but thought it was funny
Converting one person at a time
Its a hard job, but eventually M$ screws themselves with their own stupidity.
My chiropractor is not a computer savvy person. He knows how to surf the web, and read his emails, and a few months ago his XP Home system was grinding down to a halt, infected with spyware, malware and other garbage that was just making working impssible. So I backed up his data, re-installed his computer , restored his stuff and gave him a clean copy XP, that was pure like mountain spring water. After a few months of use, he called me asking me to check his computer. Same scenario, spyware, malware, trojans. I've scanned his system and there was 78 instances of some kind of malicious software.
I suggested he goes with Ubuntu. Not knowing anything about it, he OKed the decision. I've installed Feisty Fawn on his desktop, migrated all his data and now he's happy, and free of the BS that most computer users have to deal with. He loves linux and I've given him a bunch of PDFs about linux and ubuntu. He's now learning about computers! Something he didn't want to do cause he was affraid messing his XP, which he did anyway...
So why did HE choose Linux? He'll never need to worry about spware, malware, trojans or any of the nonsense windows users have to deal with.