Linux Questions

I recently setup Ubuntu Linux (not such an easy thing to get working decently LOL I'm glad I feel comfortable typing stuff @ a command line / terminal window )
There are some questions I do have (that I was gonna ask about on another forum/site), but need to look at some stuff 1st / then figure out what to say/ask LOL

 

Here's my question: why would anyone use Linux? I don't understand why anyone would use it as their main OS. Then again, Linux holds less than 1% of the market share.

 

Some of my reasons:

• Historically better security. Part of this, of course, is due to low numbers of users. But Microsoft made bad decisions, like letting users run in root/Administrator mode all the time.
• No licensing headaches
• The price cannot be beat
• There is more flexibility to configure the system to do what I want
• I am not interested in supporting Microsoft, which was a monopoly. That situation may be changing now with the drift towards phone/tablets...but they still have too much of the desktop market for my comfort.

 

In GNU/Linux communities, the question I'm used to is "why on Earth would anyone use Windows". So I'll answer that one first so you know I'm not just talking out of personal bias. I'm a developer, and as a developer, I strive to be OS agnostic. My fave OS is the one I built like legos

Windows machines work as soon as you plug them in the way they're expected to by everyone on Earth. You don't have to teach people how to use a Windows computer. So if you're setting up a generic workstation computer, you'd be dumb not to use windows. We're talking no configuration, no downloading anything, no installing anything, just plug it in and it works, and it works with all your hardware. And maybe you have some network configuration, but you know what? Once you configure a single computer, you can just copy that config in to the rest.

So why use Linux? Windows computers don't do anything basically. What I mean is, yes they finally offer development tools for free. They never used to. But mostly, they're geared for what most people do with computers - browsing the internet, checking your e-mail, listening to your pandora, etc.

Okay here's some jargon sorry.

The development environment is optimized for Windows. If you want to develop for something that isn't windows, the traditional choices are eclipse + Java, cygwin, and mingw/msys. Or you could limit yourself to a scripting language like python or perl and try very hard to keep your code cross platform. If you're writing desktop application code, you're going to have to learn something like autotools so your code works everywhere. If you're using Java, you have to put up with basically everything being in a sandbox and not being able to make any assumptions about the host outside the VM. And if you're like me and you like making your own hardware, it's way way easier to write drivers if you have access to the kernel source. I've only been able even to test plain RS-232 serial stuff (e.g. Bluetooth) work on Windows through cygwin (or high level libraries that make a lot of assumptions through VC++) since Windows doesn't give me any pseudo-terminals and tty terminals... well I guess there's PuTTY but then what about the pty. Most of the stuff you'll find on Windows is "enterprise" development, which means it A) costs money, and B) restricts you to the enterprise sub-os as far as their way of doing things, and most annoying, C) requires you to learn the enterprise development environment in ADDITION to the language you're learning. In fact, item C) is actually harmful to you as a developer, since when you're learning the language, you're learning it in terms of the environment, meaning you can't use what you know outside the enterprise environment.

The difference with Linux is obvious immediately. Everything is configurable. If you're computer is doing something, it's because you told it to, it gives you a full report, and you can change the way it does it. Period. Everything. If you didn't give it permission in advance, it just doesn't happen. All your development tools are free, and any tool can be used to change the way your computer works. You don't have huge monolithic enterprise environments you have to re-learn every time your boss buys a new one. You have billions of tiny tools that do on thing and one thing only, most of them have existed in the same form with only stability and security updates since the '70s, and you just pick and choose the ones you're comfortable with.

So basically, your OS adapts to you, rather than you adapting to your OS. And if hardware does work in Linux, you get to see the guts and exactly HOW it works. Even if there's a rare proprietary driver that wins over the free stuff, the free stuff is still there and still educational. In a nutshell, you can sit down at any linux computer in the world, and it's already set up and personalized to you.

And the cloud? Nerd listen. POSIX has had "the cloud" since before our parents were in diapers. Some of the technology names have been changed - secure shell replaced telnet for instance. But if you've configured your workstation properly and use some version control in your projects, everything you do on any workstation is going to be on every computer you own, always. The difference? YOU own the cloud. Dropbox is basically crude stone age tools.

Couple that with the fact that Linux will run on computers older than I am just fine, and basically, you can smash a linux computer with a hammer and never ever lose anything of value, hardware or software side.

So tl;dr, what I mean by "windows doesn't do anything" is really "the things that windows does out of the box for no more money than what you paid for your computer already the same way on every computer, aren't all that useful to developers"

Or tl;dr, tl;dr, windows doesn't do anything.

Except on tablets. I've got to say I'm a huge fan of the way Windows 8 has a full fledged, load up your development tools OS on a tablet. Kinda sad that Android OS is so kiosk honestly.

Why do I use linux? Because between 1985 and 1999 the only languages I knew how to use proficiently were BASIC, Python, and Visual C++ using MFC. If my computer didn't do something I wanted it to do, I bought a new program.

Now? Now I have a decent shot at writing anything, anywhere, and if my computer doesn't do something I want it to, I write a quick script and it does now.

 

I see these as pretty lame reasons. Please explain these "licensing headaches." Also, I wouldn't go as far as say Linux has better security, it doesn't. It just has a very small market share in the same way Mac has very little market share.

Microsoft just has better support in every way.

 

You know actually I have a question.

I'm trying to get into virtualization because I'm tired of dual booting. Forever ago I used coLinux. I know most people nowadays use VirtualBox or VMWare.

I was wondering if anyone had any success using qemu or xen. Any distro except SUSE.

Also, since windows is tying more security stuff into the bios, are there any computers I could buy in a brick-and-mortar store that I should avoid if I want linux as my "bare metal" OS?

 

Virtualbox is working pretty great, it's just that it was kind of a pain when I wanted to make windows my guest last time I tried. I think I had to use a tool from VMware and even then I had to muck with the registry because Windows complained it wasn't on the same hard disk any more. I'm using windows as my top level right now.

Ideally I guess I'd like to just be able to swap out my OS like any other part. Which leads into the second question, which you got.

 

I am a casual Ubuntu user. It has everything I need except Netflix and Spotify It has everything I need, I like the interface and having 4 desktops is immensely useful. I have to admit that I need to look at tutorials if I want anything done because although I'm interested in the tech world I'm a bit baffled by it. I'm glad you made this thread because I feel awkward asking help on unknown fora, now there's a place I can turn to when in need of help.

 

I can't comment on xen, never used it. However I am using qemu with kvm support, it's really great I am yet to have a guest OS act of all funky like they have done so with Virtualbox and all the guests have been compatible with the virtualised hardware. Most distributions should be compatible right out of the box with qemu and better yet qemu with kvm support, where the kernel becomes the hypervisor. Qemu doesn't include a GUI, that you'd need to go third-party for. I can't comment on any of the GUIs because I prefer to launch it from CLI.

For your viewing pleasure:

Code:

----------@------------ ~ $ uname -a
Linux -------------- 3.9.4 #1 SMP Sat May 25 09:04:31 EST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I am running a vanilla kernel on Gentoo.

 

Well hey thanks Pret and Someguy!

Someguy, as far as networking qemu using a tap and a tunnel, a) how hard is that and b) any good web sources?

 

Sorry! Didn't mean to derail your intentions.

I'll go now and crawl back under my rock...

 

I build my 4 year old a computer using a Linux distro called Kimo. It was designed with kids in mind. It has a lot of educational stuff on it. I put it on a SUPER old computer and it runs like a champ.

Things like that are impossible with Windows. It would have cost a lot to put together a computer for him, but because Linux is free and it runs well on older computers, he is a 4 year old with his own computer.

edit: Sorry. I responded before I saw that you didn't want to debate.

---------- Post added 25th May 2013 at 10:54 PM ----------

I am a new Linux lover. I would love to be able to personalize my own OS. I am not sure where to start.

I have dabbled in programming. Objective-C ( I have a mac ) and Java mostly. I am going to start working on Python.

In our home we have Win8, Win7, Linux, & Mac

Where should I start?

 

Well hey, since you've used Objective C, you know MVC (Model-View-Controller). That's gonna help you everywhere as a developer.

You can go really far with Java these days, and it's a c-style language, so you can apply what you learn in Java to a lot of things.

Sorry gonna get jargony but just this paragraph. The only thing that holds it back is, functions aren't 1st class objects. But you can work around that with anonymous inner classes. Also you have single inheritance working against you, but you have interfaces for that. And most frameworks like the Android SDK work around Java's limitations anyway, so you can do message-passing style programming even in Java.

You did things the right way though. Objective C and Python really teach you how to code, and once you know how, you can apply what you know in Java pretty much everywhere.

If you wanna personalize your OS itself though you might also want to learn GTK+ or QT. Those are frameworks your window manager in Linux will use. Think of those as the "view" part of MVC. Or to put it another way, if you design the look and feel of something in XCode, then all the non-code layout stuff, you can do in GTK+ or QT.

And if you want a good "model" you should learn a database. SQLite is good for programmers, and MySQL is good if you wanna make money coding for the web.

Controller wise, in addition to python, you might want to pick up PHP or Perl, again, so you can make money web designing.

And if you already know Linux, Mysql, and PHP, then you can make the big bucks and install an apache server or lighttpd. That combination is called the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and lamp stack developers get good paying jobs with no college education.

 

Awesome. I started looking at MySQL a few years back. I need to reacquaint myself. Learning the LAMP stack sounds exactly what I am looking for.

Do you have any suggestions for resources? Learning tools? I am a self learning so books are great.

Thank you!