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A Linux Computer

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bennett's picture
Posted by bennett
2/25/12 10:32am

It is getting to the point (or perhaps it has always been the case, and I'm just now noticing) where the software you put on your desktop is worth more than the hardware itself. One can spend a couple hundred on an operating system, another hundred on a document editing suite, a photo editor and – whoops! - that was twice as much as the computer cost itself. Specialized software has always been super-expensive, I know that. But when the vast majority of time on computers involves a browser, perhaps it's time to look into some new software to deal with the day-to-day activity.

My choice of operating system should be obvious. Don't pirate! That's bad! Get Linux; it's good. And, in addition to being good, it can handle all those daily activities with ease (and without cost). One of the document editing softwares rising in popularity is Open Office. Right now, I'm using Open Office's Writer to write this article. I have used Open Office's Impress to create sleek looking presentations for work. Every week I use Open Office's Calc to work over spreadsheets. What a beautiful thing, freedom is.

It seems like the only thing an operating system has to do nowadays is connect to the Internet. And it's no surprise that Linux supports Firefox and Chrome with ease. With anything open source, there might be short delays in updating or functionality, but someone will find a workaround. And while it's not always the case, Unix operating systems tend to be less susceptible to attacks (I've always assumed because of the lower market share).

There is Talk of Linux

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bennett's picture
Posted by bennett
2/11/12 2:25pm

My first experience with Linux was in the summer of '05. While attending a friend's LAN party, I woke up to discover my computer had booted into Linux. On that day, I only had a small glimpse into the wonders of Linux: the default OS games are fun. In many ways, having fun games is the framework of a good operating system (just kidding). After learning that my hard drive hadn't actually been overwritten and Linux was just booted from disc, I slowly let the nightmarish thoughts of Linux scurry into the far corners of my brain.

Then I went to college. Every college seems to have their preferred OS; the image folk have their Macs, the engineers have their Windows, and the Computer Scientists have their Linux. It wasn't until my second semester that I finally got to delve into the wonders of Ubuntu. But really, all I did was open up a terminal and hack away.

And that, I think, is one of the reasons Linux has stayed around. You don't have to buy a Mac; you don't have to use PuTTY; you just boot it up and throw around some code.

Oh, and it's free. Did I mention that yet? You get free updates for life. You download it for free. You install it for free. There aren't annoying advertisements everywhere, even though it's free. Free. It's clean, it's cool, it's Linux.

But Linux is not perfect. Commercial software developers still build for Mac and Windows, and it might always be that way. But Linux will be there, too.

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