Linux Education

I often get baffled by people’s curiosity, suspicion and definitely the myth that Linux is harder than Windows in everything (In installation, usage and manageability). There exists certain amount of people who have heard about Linux, but never believed that Linux had advanced into better GUI than Windows long back. Long once they had tried Linux and were driven away from it with bad taste in their mouth because of its lifeless GUI and complex installations.

I have to swear at least 10 times to convince them that Linux has become a lot easier to use these days, in fact, managing a Linux box is of less worry and a lot easier than managing Windows. People never got convinced until I show my Laptop with Compiz and Beryl effects along with the wonderful default GUI my Linux box offers.

The second area where I catch people by surprises is the Antivirus section. I feel pity with people spend money on all that anti-virus software’s starting from Norton till Kaspersky to protect their PC and still live insecure while Linux offers maximum protection right out of box. Also, I get baffled by people saying that with right way of configuration, Windows is more secured than Linux. Here I am talking about protection right out of box without doing anything to it. Apart from that, Linux distributions have their own firewalls which I am sure much better than what their windows counterparts offer and then Application guard.

I dare any windows users to disable the anti-virus, firewall in their Windows box and put it connected to Internet for 48 hours and prove their windows is much better than my Linux box which is online for past 10 days non-stop without any firewall (I had to switch it off because of my need) or anti-virus. I am not saying Linux is completely out of virus attack, but definitely not as prone as Windows.

More importantly, people just don’t get that it’s not because of the popularity, but because of the architecture fault that Windows is much vulnerable than Linux. Also I get tickled by people’s validation that Vista is much secured because of few dialogs that pops up before you try installing anything. Frankly, I get annoyed with those dialogs getting popped up at least 10 times during my installation of same program. Linux (or a Mac in fact) does intelligent stuff in this regard which I am damn sure windows can never do that.

Next, I am amazed by one stop shop facility that Linux community offers regarding application installations. I just have to re-direct my Yast to the repositories maintained by the Vendor or 3^rd party and select the apps I need to get installed, the rest of the things will be done without me have to do anything about it. Adding to the existing application management, I have one personal request to RedHat that not to make RHX just for RedHat distributions or at least someone put effort to set up a online market place for Linux products (for all popular distributions) which can be downloaded and installed through package managers, for commercial (if commercial, unlike windows products, reasonable price appreciated) or not-paid.

Regarding painful installers in Linux: Don’t ***ing tell me Windows does not have too many installers. That’s because you never looked around to see the windows installers. Definitely Windows applications comes with all dependencies to avoid looking for the dependencies somewhere else, but I like the Linux way because it educates me to really know I am doing. I am sure 80% of the Windows users have no idea about libraries. You may argue that it’s none of your business, but then I have simple answer: Let god save you from yourself. Though complicated if you are new, I feel Linux way of installing applications are way better than windows because it don’t let anyone install apps by accident. You know for sure that you need that before installing in Linux.

Finally, against the complaint against too many distributions under linux; which version of Vista are you planning to buy buddy? At least I don’t get crippled versions of the same product under different names (Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, etc etc). We have only one product and we offer it just like that and the choices we have are real choices (openSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Linspire, etc) which are not crippled versions of same products, but full products in different ways by different vendors.

I hope I have educated you a little today.

Have great day. God Bless You.