Linux

[gaines_wright]

  Is anybody out there running Linux?

  I get the feeling that most of the people around here are WIMPs ( windows icon mouse pushers ). I used to be a ClUB ( command line user bigot ), but now I'm just LIMP ( Linux icon mouse pusher ). :<)>

  Shortly after MS pulled the plug on XP, I switched to Linux Mint and fell in love with it. It's free, comes with a ton of free software. You don't need a anti-virus program, a registry cleaner, a defragger, or any of that other junk that seems to be necessary to keep Windoze from either crashing or slowing down to a crawl.

Plus, there's a huge Linux community on the net. On those very rare occasions where I've had a problem, I've always found help, many times with a bash script I could copy and paste into a terminal to fix it.

[maratsade]

I run Linux on one of my laptops. I have Mint and love it.  

[gaines_wright]

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@maratsade wrote:

I run Linux on one of my laptops. I have Mint and love it.  

Linux will conquer the world!  :<)>

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      Hey that's an idea.   I'll end every post here with those words.  Sort of like Appius Claudius who ended all his speeches with :"and I think Carthage should be destroyed".

[debbie.jean.bro]

Well, Carthage eventually was destroyed, so Claudius' tactic worked, ha! Who was it who, much much later said, "The HRE is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."? Maybe another tag line could be, "MS OS is neither operating nor a system!" 😜

[MarkJFine]

It's one of those 'zen'-type questions:

If an operating environment absorbs the operating system, does that make it an operating system?

Microsoft DOS was a real operating system (stolen from DEC VAX, if I'm not mistaken - yeah, I'm old). Eventually Windows absorbed it. It's still there, just hidden.

[gaines_wright]

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@@@@MarkJFine wrote:
Microsoft DOS was a real operating system (stolen from DEC VAX, if I'm not mistaken - yeah, I'm old). Eventually Windows absorbed it. It's still there, just hidden.

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     Actually I think MS bought DOS  The story I heard, was that when IBM was looking for an OS for the IBM PC. they came to MS ( at the time their only product was BASIC ), and Gates sent them to see another guy who wasn't home, and whose wife balked at signing all the stuff IBM wanted her to sign

  So they went back to Gates, who got on the phone and bought what would become DOS for ten thousand dollars, and as they say "the rest is history".  Oh, to have bought MS stock in those days!

 BTW. I'm also old (71) and have used DEC machines  PDP-11-73s, Vaxs, and Alphas, running RSX and VMS. 

 The VMS  command to change directories was: "set def".  Not very DOS like,  I soon wrote a macro so I could use "cd" instead

You are right in some ways though. Apple stole ( reverse engineered ) their GUI from Xerox Palo Alto and  MS stole it  from Apple for Windoze.  The stupidity of Xerox is this case was incredible.  Their thinking was:  "We don't do software.  We're a document company "..

"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits."   Lazarus Long

[C0RR0SIVE]

Hrm...

PFSense (FreeBSD based) on my firewalls...
Pretty sure my HP 2848 switch is running some form of BSD or Nix
ESXi on two servers
Ubuntu LTS on three servers
6 instances of Windows Server 2012
3x Win10 desktops
7x Win7 laptops/desktops

2x Xboxes (Win10 based)
FreeNAS (FreeBSD based)

The list goes on... It's all about functionality and getting things to play together properly.

[debbie.jean.bro]

Hi gaines_wright!

I think there's quite a few Linux users on this forum. I myself haven't taken the plunge; I guess I'm a WIMP, lol! I've been lucky with Windows thus far; even Vista ran great for me. I'm not a tech expert like GabeU, BirdDog, GWalk900, Maratsade, El Dorado, et al., I've just had good luck. But my son, an MIT grad and programmer, swears by Linux and has had it for many years.
As far as browsers go, I just bought a new laptop and it's running Edge and the default search engine is, of course, Bing, which is awful. I'll be switching to Firefox and will make Google my default search engine.

[gaines_wright]

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@debbie.jean.bro wrote:
Hi gaines_wright!

I think there's quite a few Linux users on this forum. I myself haven't taken the plunge;
 
  It's not really that much of a  plunge.  You can actually install Linux on an existing Windoze machine and run both.  When you boot up your system runs "grub"   ( grand unified boot loader ( Love that Linux humor )) , and choose either OS

[MarkJFine]

I too swore off MS after xp was EOL'd. I went to Mac primarily because the hardware was built like a brick you-know-what and was Linux-based. Bottom line, I run Linux on it in two ways:
1. Not 100% technically pure Linux, but macOS is basically a Cocoa GUI on FreeBSD (Darwin 17.6.0 kernel), and all basic CLI ops are *nix. I also regularly update the Homebrew library sets that allow me to build and run gtk-based applications like Pan natively on a MacBook Plus. It also allows me to add and update the parts of Linux that Apple left out or did't particularly update properly (like php - go figure).

2. I also use Parallels, which allows me to run Fedora 28 (now that v13 is compatible with the latest kernel 4.17.x) in a virtual machine.

Parallels also allows me to run Win10 Home in a VM, but that's just for completeness, software compatibiltiy testing, and potentially for Xbox One-level games (still only have a 360)... Had originally wanted to get Arkham Knight and Assassin's Creed Origins but I see games are like 36GB to download now, so that's a non-starter. Other than that, not really a fan.

[gaines_wright]

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@MarkJFine wrote:

I too swore off MS after xp was EOL'd. I went to Mac primarily because the hardware was built like a brick you-know-what and was Linux-based. ,,,,,,,:

 Never wanted to spend that much money to buy a Mac.  A lot of people love them though.

 I had read that the Apple OS was basically Linux, also that most smart phones and super computers run a form of Linux.

[GabeU]

I've dabbled in Linux Mint on my desktop and my Rasperry Pi 3 B+ has Raspbian, which is a lite Linux distro.  I'm going to try Ubuntu MATE when I get another micro SD card.  

It takes a bit of getting used to (using the terminal), but I'm getting better at it.  

One thing is for sure, and that is that it is getting more user friendly, and the more user friendly it gets the more people will use it.  I don't know that it is going to threaten MS as much as everyone thinks or wishes, but it's definitely growning.  

I've tried Ubuntu in the past, including on a USB flash drive, but I liked Linux Mint much more.    

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

It takes a bit of getting used to (using the terminal), but I'm getting better at it.  

  Just think, you too could become a CLUB!  :>)>

  And, I think Windoze should be destroyed,