It has been seen that most of the people use windows for common application that is- 1. Office applications (MS Office, Open Office or other alternatives 2. Brows the web 3. Read emails 4. Read news (RSS) 5. Chat 6. Listen to music 7. Review their pictures But to have these application we have to install windows itself and then we would be able to - * Read emails * Browse the web * Chat (Only on MSN) * Listen to music * Review pictures But inorder to enjoy you have to install and pay for windows and also you need to install antivirus also. You have to pay for MS Office installation too. One thing noticed about windows is that it is not good with Firewall. Now lets talk something Linux too. Its the booming software in PC market.To enjoy all the functionalities you just need to install Linux and you get them all, in one installation. You dont even have to install any antivirus or any firewall. Just forget them and enjoy the functionalities given by Linux. But as it is said that every coin has two sides Linux as it has all good functionalities at the same time it seen that, it is not much compatible with most of the latest games. But taken a deep look you will see that it is not linux that it is not supporting gaming softwares, it the game companies that are not making such games that are linux supportive.
Various Linux communities are focusing more on games. I mean you can pretty much play any game on Linux these days but you generally need greater or more compatible system specs. eg Nvidia over ATI etc. I use Linux alot, I enjoy it, its a great server environment or lite desktop environment but i still run windows on my desktop because linux doesnt support my graphics card properly and many applications i use done run correctly under wine. I know peoples answer is "there are linux alternatives" but these are generally tedious to install and configure and lack certain functionality(although i use openoffice for everything cept drawing things which i use visio). The only thing im wary of is that support is going to Debian Based Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a great graphical interface but it is based apon a debian based system which from a command line view of configuring files and changing the system, makes things quite hard compared to if you looked at the Red Hat linux system.
I don't get it.. the only reason ubuntu is so prominent is it has had millions spent on publicity. It doesn't mean it is actually any good (It doesn't support c-media soundcards for one thing, and you have to compile a kernel to load that particular module.. not newbie friendly) Debian is as easy to use as any linux, once you get your head around the "debian mission" But as to the original point.. I believe linux is easier to maintain and use than say windows or mac-os because it is all open to see.. which is why full time non commercial users tend to avoid the "proprietary" brands like suse and redhat.. because they tend to not be as open. For gaming you are usually ok, just so long as the games have ben coded properly and do not constantly make calls on the windows API and things like DirectX.. If they do you are screwed.. royally.. That is not any fault of linux, it rests purely with the game devs who can't (or won't) write proper standalone software. There are lots of great games out in the wild for linux/unix systems. Quake (for example) is completely open source.. all the games using the engine which are released for windows platforms are ports and skinning of an original open source engine. The catch 22 is this.. If there is a linux workround for a windows game there is no incentive for the game devs to get their fingers out and build linux binaries..same with everything else that is M$ only.. which is why certain of us deprecate wine.. it is a bodge, and a disincentive to further development of open source software. The ONLY thing I have to use wine for is Nokia phone software.. my LG phone pops up as just another storage device.. what is nokias' problem.. oh yeah.. they want to SELL ringtones, and as DRM only works with windows they don't want us making our own ringtones to put on our phones (heaven forbid we should get inventive and creative with SOMETHING WE OWN!!) there you have it.. Linux is simpla, clean, cheap fast and effective.. easy to maintain and keep up to date, with virtually no known malware and tweakable and configurable beyond belief.. Sometimes it isn't easy, but who ever said computers were supposed to be easy?.. ahh yes M$ the creators of the click, point and don't understand generation.... What would you do if you found some unsupported bit of hardware on a windows system.. with no drivers etc.. ever sen a soundcard come up as an "unknown device"?.. been able to solve the problem using windows when the device has no markings and no installer cd ?? Nope.. you can't even work out what it is most of the time, so you are screwed.. Linux solution is way easier.. a little command.. "lspci -v" and there you have a listing of all the plugged hardware..as somebody in the open source community has probably also seen the device at some time there is most likely a driver for it.. a quick use of google and you have a solution.. very different from the "closed and commercial" windows experience methinks Conclusion.. Linux isn't hard.. windows is hard, it is made to be hard. The only reason people say otherwise is because that is what they are used to.. New PC users tend to progress faster and achieve more in less time on linux systems. They don't have to "unlearn" all the bad habits they have picked up, and so it is just like anythng new.. a learning curve.. in the case of a first timer it is the same for linux as for windows.. without a lot of the stupidity of having to pay for everything, even if it doesn't work or do what they want..... So before coming with preconceptions about which linux is easier remember.. Redhat and suse are commercial products, just the same as windows.. debian and fedora (which IMHO sucks) are properly free and open, maintained and built on by the community of users who do it because they want stuff to work first and look pretty/be easy second. Open source has taken the lead for multimedia applications now..and is rapldly pulling ahead with other desktop uses. *nix has always been a better GUI environment.. mostly because it has been around for way longer than windows.. remember Minix? (looked very similar to mac-os in the beginning) All M$ did was copy what was probably running on the unix machines they were coding windows on. hehehehe It is a different philosophy, and one that gets a little getting used to.
Im not trying to promote Red Hat or even say its good, but im just saying things are slightly easier on it. I would not use red hat these days. Im yet to try fedora. Administering a debian based system (from a server perspective) is hard though. Something which may only be 1 file or folder in 1 Linux system will be 8 files or folders in a Debian system. (Ill try get some screens up). But I do admire debians security. I still maintain my Ubuntu desktop because of driver compatibility (and i do enjoy the debian apt-get program). But its mainly just used for hosting VMware machines. Things like Webmin has made maintaining Linux, from a server perspective, easier then windows. And webmin can live on most Linux platforms. But the easiest server maintainance (although it tends to have alot more faults and create alot more faults then webmin) is Suse servers yast2 (which many a times leaves things half completed to the unsuspecting victim).
We have a few Red Hat machines in Production at work, other than that my firm are very faddy when it comes to Linux, one year they go all out wanting everything moved from Solaris to Linux, the next they want nothing to do with Linux at all; bizarre, but at least us *nix guys are left alone to have a few Linux machines of our choice; these days i have 3 pc's for work, 1 XP machine which i use just for email (Outlook 2003 kills a P4 with a Gig of ram so it's hardly used for anything else). Thank goodness for my other 2 machines, which are currently Mandriva 2008.0 (it might be 2008.1, haven't checked for ages, it's been up for 118 days, it's just a workhorse) and TinyMe test release 7; i use those two for frequent dvd burning/checksumming of critical business data and all my other *nix work. The machines are old P3 and P4's but are solid workhorses, but back to the point of this thread, maintaining them is dead easy so i rarely mess with them, they're just tools to use to get work done; Every year or so i have a spring clean and blitz one of the machines with something new, but don't see a need this time around, they're working a treat; however should be getting a modern PC replacement for the XP machine soon, i'm going to push to have that as my main Linux box as it's the machine that's used for Production work, as i say, XP is only for Outlook so i'm buggered if i want a Dual Core machine wasted on Outlook when it could be put to better use in Linux. Even our 100's of Call Centre agents have Dual Core machines just for Internet Explorer (ugh!) while us back office bods get end of lifed ancient old P3 and P4's for XP and Linux. Ah well the bonus is that only one person is pushing for Vista, the rest of us have threatened mutiny of that bloatware if foisted on us. /rant over
