As a user of Linux and of Windows, I feel that I should explain a bit more about them and how both are very powerful operating systems in the right light. This is not to put down Macintosh, but seeing as I’ve never owned one, nor plan to, I don’t plan on including it. This is also meant to help people decide between the operating systems that heard me naming them off.
Let me start by saying my personal favourite operating systems are the ones where you could tweak and modify it to as far or as little as you may wish. To a lot of people, that’s a very daunting task to modify an operating system, but the truth of the matter is, it can be very easy if you don’t feel there’s much to add. Many people find that Windows’ standard way of working is the normal way: a taskbar on the bottom, a button on the left to run a single menu that can be adapted to many things, and a showing of all the active tasks in the bottom left. For me, that’s rather bland, and have adapted a beta shell to control my Windows 7 laptop. Under my desktop, on the other hand, I’ve customized very little, because for me, Linux has very little I want to change, even though it can be modified all over.
Under Linux, it’s not majorly different from what most people are used to with Windows. You can still click around, you can still explore the world of the internet, you still have your taskbar, your active tasks in your traybar, you still have your menu bars and everything. However, Linux differs greatly on the commands used to do things, as well as it’s background and it’s future. GNU/Linux, as it should actually be called (since Linux is the kernel and GNU is the kernel-less operating system), was founded as a community project, much unlike Microsoft and is one of the few operating system built by, supported by, and enjoyed by a community. Windows, on the other hand, was made by a corporation, for everyone, and supported by many. But they both have a lot that you can look at for support. I’m just going to cover the basics on this comparison, and if you’d like to know anything more, you are free to sign up to the forum here and ask me any questions, or post anything you’d like to know on this blog.
Linux, for anyone used to Windows, is quite different from it in how the underlying system works. Instead of programs whom hog resources and that can’t seem to play fair, are forced to share resources. If you have used Windows Vista, you know how bad this seems, to have each process using it’s own share, without sharing the resources. It’s a memory hog, and because of this, the operating system feels slower and sluggish, just because it is running several instances of a single program. This also can lead to system instability because with all the processes running at once, it doesn’t take long for one of them have a memory leak and easily take up more RAM and CPU cycles then expected. Those that have used Firefox and Flash… they can agree with this easily. In Linux, processes are forced to co-operate and share the resources, making the system lighter and more stable. I’m pretty sure a lot of people, if using even Xubuntu for the first time off the LiveCD might be shocked to see how much lighter it is then their Windows operating system!
But the major truth of the matter, with Linux, is that it stops what I was talking about before, the SAS/SUS that causes us to be infected. With Linux, we have a User/Root based system, or in the case of Ubuntu and it’s clones, a User/SuperUser mode. It is designed, unlike Windows and Macintosh, to have liberal use of the keyboard, though these days, a lot more can be resolved by the mouse then when I first started with Linux, three years ago. If you’re just starting out with Linux, you have a lot of choices to make. Which is why, if you’re in that position, I would recommend looking at DistroWatch and choosing not on looks but by the amount of support given on their official forums, and if it suits your needs. If you just want a generic recommendation, Xubuntu is what I would recommend. It is lightweight, based on Ubuntu (and supported by Canonical as well). If you really can’t be bothered to learn and demand everything to be installed on your first go, then Linux Mint is your best option… but be warned that if you do go with Linux Mint, you won’t be learning anywhere near as much. I hope this made a bit more sense then previous, and I’ll be posting more on Linux in the future, hopefully with pictures. If you need any exact help, feel free to ask away.
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