While you all must be surprised about my sudden disappearance from the blogging zone recently, the reason you did not see me around was because I got lost into the Linux world and you have no idea how hard it is to make out of this virtual world safe and sound. But very amazingly I managed to do so without much effort.
Linux Ubuntu is one of my new ultimate operating system choice and trust me it is not for the faint of heart. Though I have not left Windows XP completely (I usually have to switch to it to play games and do some work) but after much determination and struggle I have managed to adapt myself in the Linux environment and it is very cool and challenging.
For those of you who think that Linux is terrible and Windows rocks, here is my say on why Ubuntu is better than Windows.
- No Viruses - Thats true! as Linux does not recognize Win32 Executables so the possibility of having a virus on-board is absolutely 0%
- Open Source - Unlike Windows, Linux distributions are open source and the source code can be edited and modified to the most to suit your needs.
- Better Learning - While Windows just teaches you how to install and run a program, Linux helps you do that using a Terminal. So if you fall in a situation where you don’t have a GUI, you can operate things well.
- Free Software - Every application and software on Linux is free and open source. You don’t need to worry about licenses anymore and you can always find a better and free Linux alternative to a Windows application.
- Easy to Use - This point may seem ironic but is true to a lot of extent. Linux Ubuntu is one of the most user-friendly and easy to use Linux distribution which even beats Windows XP and Vista in usability and ease of use.
- Ubuntu Community Help - Ubuntu has a very active support and help community where you can get answer to your questions and problems in minutes.
- Cool Desktop Effects - For those who think Aero in Windows Vista is damn cool! wait till you experience Compiz on Ubuntu which provides better 3D desktop effects with less resource usage.
- Easy Upgrade - You can upgrade Linux Ubuntu through the package manager and all applications can be installed/updated through it. There is no need to Google for freewares as the package manager helps you find all of them.
- Highly Customizable - If you like customizing your operating system without a billion registry and software hacks then Ubuntu is your ultimate choice.
- Experience Live - Linux Ubuntu CDs come with a pre-installed OS environment which allows you to run the OS without even installing it. Carry your Ubuntu Live CD with you and use it on any PC anywhere around the world.
This may not be all but still these are some of the strong points that tell you how powerful Linux Ubuntu is. It definitely has some bugs and issues but as long as you don’t mingle with commands and updates too much, there shouldn’t be a problem using it.
Wow good post Dj.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few months, and I love it.
With every other release, there’s a lot of development happening and it’s really good to see Ubuntu evolving!
I too love the desktop effects and I think they’re really better, and customizable than that on Vista.
Yes…indeed! agreed bro!
Well done Dj Flush, nice post and it’s not all about nice, all words written here are true.
By the way I think that Ubuntu have 1 good thing more, and that is Ubuntu Brainstorm where you can give your idea about what should be change or added in Ubuntu, and also vote for ideas which been added from some Ubuntu users.
I totally agree with all of this, but you haven’t even touched on the fact that you can see and modify any source code! I suppose it’s only useful for developers, but it is truly awesome. Also, noticed that everyone seems to call it Linux Ubuntu. Linux is obviously the noun, while the distro should be an adjective, so it would either be Ubuntu or Ubuntu Linux. There is no Ubuntu BSD or Ubuntu Windows so that would make the most sense.
alifaan, you gave me an inspiration.
Yes, brainstorm is a great idea and I strongly suspect it will help Ubuntu change for the better. But brainstorm is just one example of why Linux and Open Source is different from proprietary software from Microsoft and others. Open Source is totally accessible to the end user. We are involved in its development. Its only reason to change and evolve is to make it better for us, not to raise the stock price or grab more market share.
don’t say windows is bad! most of us use that and we can’t ignore that.
Linux can be better only when it can streamline the user interface. Someone should try giving linux a windows look and see how it works out. If everything goes GUI in linux most of the common people will be able to workout on it.
@Pranjal…you’re kidding right? It’s that kind of attitude that keeps so many people in the dark. You obviously have either “a” never tried linux, or “b” haven’t tried it in the past 4 years. Linux, and ubuntu especially has made leaps and bounds in the field of OS’s and user-friendliness. I’m installing ubuntu on my grandma’s first computer today because I am convinced that it is easier and more intuitive then windows. And there are tons of themes that make ubuntu or any other distro really look like windows, and yet it still operates better. There is a reason people say windows is bad, and that still holds true whether or not you are using it or not. It’s a faulty OS, a corrupt company, and a buggy environment. Go to ubuntu.com, download a live cd, and give it a try, I promise you’ll find it easy to use!
I am so tired of seeing people say that there are no viruses for Linux. This is a total misnomer, as there are viruses and exploits for Linux, but not on the scale that affect Windows or Mac (yes, even Mac is vulnerable).
And to say that win32 executable viruses don’t impact Linux is another misnomer. As an experiment, I loaded Wine on my Linux box, and then executed a file that I knew to have a virus in it. Yes, my Linux became infected, but not like a Windows box. While the virus only affected Win32 executables, and not Linux files, the box was infected none the less.
By making such a statement, you are giving people a false sense of security. Ask yourself this, if Linux is impervious to viruses, why are their anti-virus products for Linux?
@Emory
Well, Linux might be good by its certainly not better than windows. If you say that its better than windows then you probably:
a. Hate Windows and Mr Gates
b. You are a die hard Linux fan
And well jus think about the software compatability dude. Without Windows we are almost handicaps! Linux ain’t bad but it needs a little more time to getter better.
If it weren’t for my EVDO wireless internet card that I use always, I’d have been on Ubuntu full time. I need only a browser and mail client, after all.
I don’t mean to be so inflammatory but don’t be such an idiot. You’re writing about stuff that you’re clearly not qualified to.
My proof for that statement?
It’s just another programmable platform - of course it can (and does) have viruses written for it. Exploits too.
Some of the other points are a little flakey too. If you want a full critique, be prepared to feel special because I decided to blog it.
thats the basic problem with Linux! not ever hardware manufacturer make drivers for it.
Great post buddy! And welcome to the Ubuntu World
@Pranjal @Emory @Joel
Well, i think no OS is good or bad. You cannot say that you cannot live without windows.. you can..just try it..being that you have all the sources and you know what you are doing with your linux installation. There are thousands and thousands of softwares available free of cost for ubuntu. All the servers and VPSs run on linux distros. Games are the only thing where linux presently lacks… and that that too will be going all well in the future.
If you say that you love windows and would not even touch ubuntu… i will be glad that i at least told you about the opportunities but you may have to repent later.
What I think is that you should try every OS, look at the advantages and disadvantages, enjoy the advantages and at least try to improve upon the disadvantages and not just fight over My OS is good and your’s is bad
And by the way who says that everything is not GUI-fied in Ubuntu?
Almost forgot - dugg.
DJ, I just found this post as one of the duplicates while submitting this post on Digg:
http://underheavenz.blogspot.com/2008/03/10-reasons-why-linux-ubuntu-is-better.html
It contains same content, though the image isn’t present. Its a scraper, and that post was submitted before yours. I’m reporting the post to Digg as duplicate - you should do it too.
Regarding Joel’s and Pranjal’s comments, as well as a few things in the original article:
I see a lot of this kind of objection to Linux, and it boils down to Linux Is Not Windows. Which, of course, is true. But people expect to be able to jump from Windows to Linux without a learning curve or any technical barriers, and that’s just unrealistic. How long did it take you to learn the ins and outs of Windows? It took some time, right? Well, Linux also requires some time and learning commitment, so it’s unfair to condemn Linux because your existing Windows skill set doesn’t make you an instant Linux expert.
When I first started playing with Linux I just wanted to learn; I never thought I would be switching away from Windows. And the first couple of months were a challenge. Where is Control Panel? Where is the Program Files directory? Where is the registry? Where is the D drive? At first it seemed like Linux was needlessly complicated to learn. But I worked to keep in mind that just because it was unfamiliar doesn’t mean it is wrong. And gradually I got accustomed to the differences and began to see the reasons for them. By the time Vista came out, I was a complete Linux convert.
This part is specifically for Joel: once you get really familiar with Linux, the issues that seem to be impediments turn out not to be, and that can make you a die hard Linux fan - not just for no reason, but because you really see WHY it’s better. And that in turn can turn you against Microsoft, because once you’re no longer tied to that platform it’s frustrating to see a technically inferior product still pretty much own the market. It’s not that people like Linux because they hate MS; it’s that Linux people grow to scorn MS because they’ve experienced better.
I also don’t know why people get so down on Linux because you can’t run every piece of Windows software on it. I don’t see people ragging Windows because you can’t run Mac software on it. I don’t see people ragging Mac OS because you can’t run Linux software on it. Why is Linux singled out for special criticism for not being able to run software designed for a different platform - especially since Linux’s Wine project has made greater steps in that direction than any of the competing OSes have? I run DVDFab HD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, IrfanView, and QuickBooks regularly on my Linux boxes, and I have seen WoW, MS-Office, and even Internet Explorer successfully installed on Linux, just to name a few. Can Windows run that much Linux software? Of course not, so why is this considered a failing? And in terms of interoperability, again the Linux open source applications have the edge. OpenOffice can read and write MS-Office proprietary file formats; MS-Office can’t do the same for OpenOffice’s formats, even though they are free and open standards. And yet people somehow conclude that this makes MS-Office superior. Why? I can’t imagine.
Anyway. Linux Is Not Windows. And that’s a good thing, because if it were, there’d be no advantage to it. But it isn’t, and there is, and if you’d give it the same chance you gave Windows, it would be more apparent.
@Sumesh
Thanks for the heads up. Looks like the guy has been copying all of my posts lol. I have reported him through Google Adsense as a case of copyright infringement.
Great points buddy.Even though Linux is good, we just cant remove Windows from our daily work. Anyways, i will be trying Linux when my college ends and you will help me set up.
Security is the main reason I will only use Ubuntu livecd to surf the internet. I disconnect the hard drive, install firestarter (firewall) and my computer is now practically impenetrable. If I have to download something, I just use my 4 GB flash card.
Great post, I feel the same with your points. I have been using Linux Ubuntu for 2 years as my daily working system. No viruses is the biggest advantage especially for the computer technicians as they have to deal with so many virus cases. If I am using Windows OS as my work station and use it to troubleshoot my customers’ PCs, then I will probably need to format and reinstall my Windows every week. It is true that hardware compatibility is a problem in Linux, but as a computer consultant, I get to advice and pick the hardware for my clients so I can just pick the those that will run on Linux.
I’ve been living without Windows for one and one-half years.
Windows is dead to me and as a web developer I have found everything I would need provided by Ubuntu.
While Windows is not going anywhere for the moment, I agree with a lot of comments here about open source and the way it will play a bigger part in our futures. I have been using Ubuntu since its early days as my main distro and all I can say is that it keeps getting better. As for Brainstorm, well that is one example of how open source works, if you have an idea you just submit it, can you imagine MS with this kind of input…
Na, me neither, lol.
If you have a programming bent, then you can download the source code, modify or add bits and then submit it back (under the rules of the GPL (I think)). Again, can you imagine if you were allowed to modify or improve Windows…
Sorry, hurt my self laughing too much with that one
I for one can’t even comprehend why the average user wouldn’t want to use a Linux distribution instead of Windows at this point, for the simple fact that it, along with all the open source applications are provided to the end user free of cost. An equivalent Windows setup to my Ubuntu setup would cost me over a thousand U.S. dollars. The Ubuntu community provided it to me free of cost. This is on top of all the other wonderful benefits the Linux community offers. Windows fanboys should really get a clue.
I have been a dedicated Ubuntu user for two years and have never even felt like going back to windows. Mostly for the reasons you cite in your article. I do agree that the security issue is not black and white. Yes there are vulnerabilities in any OS, but Linux is genuinely more secure than Windows XP and at least as good as Vista. I find the “Linux way” - the way things work and the general approach to software design - to be way more user-friendly than the MS (or OSX way). It would be a great pity, IMO, if the core of Linux made too many concessions to Windows users. There are plenty of distros, Ubuntu included, that give users a lot of hand-holding and simple gui tools. People should try Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS if they feel that Ubuntu doesn’t suit.
Nice article.
very very true, linux is always better than windows the best of linux over windows is that its FREE
thank’s that for information.
I think Ubuntu is very good and has a good diplaying.
Especially in that compiz, and by using Ubuntu we can find virus from our flash disk or from our hard disk and we can delete it.
But in windows, we can’t do it…
I stopped reading at #1 because that’s possibly the dumbest statement I’ve read on the net this month.
What’s the minimum requirements for running Ubuntu?
@Ahmed
I don’t know the exact PC requirements to run Ubuntu but lets just say that if your PC can smoothly run XP then its definitely going to rock Ubuntu.
IMO, the best part of Ubuntu is that they have been successful in creating a Linux distro that is newbie-friendly. Nice set of points man.
check out this Why Linux is Better
Linux vs Windows
What i can say is that everyone is entitled to their opinion. What suits you better is what you will use. Windows has its flaws, so does Linux. I am still new to Ubuntu & i must say i am impressed. It needs a little bit of improvement, but so does windows. Let the companies compete, why don’t we chose which one meets our needs. But then again criticism is motivation in disguise.
I must add something about viruses: indeed there is a number of Linux viruses, but they need root access to do their spread out, which in most cases do not have, and even more, in Ubuntu the root account is disabled - no one has root privileges, not even the system administrator (and can be enabled, if you really need it).
And why there are antivirus programs for Linux? Mainly, such programs are not installed and used on Linux workstations, but on Linux servers, for (guess what) Windows systems that are connected to the Linux servers. And sorry for the unwanted typo mistakes that I made, as I am not from an English-speaking country.
Welcome to the convenient and safe life. I use ubuntu myself and can’t imagine returning to the expensive, unsafe and slow experience I have left behind. Unfortunately, having spent money on softwares like Dreamweaver (for example) which have no real alternative, I have ended up keeping the Windows as well as a rarely used optional boot.
All good points.
There are viri that can affect Linux, but they’re few and far between. A virus has a tough time with Linux mainly because:
1). The user doesn’t generally run as administrator.
2). Most Linux distributions are different enough that it’s difficult to write one virus that will infect them all.
Rootkits are more of a threat to Linux boxes, but bugs that allow exploits are generally closed up sooner and more efficiently with Linux than Windows, especially in distributions that use a package manager such as apt, where core and add on vulnerabilities are fixed during the same update procedure.
I think the main difference between Windows and Linux or Mac has very little to do with software.
Microsoft is a behemoth, an absolute financial giant. Microsoft is not in the business of creating a quality product. Microsoft is in the business of making money.
Open source projects such as most Linux distros are in the business of making a quality product, not for making money. People tend to equate money to a superior product, but it’s really time and dedication.
Ubuntu, Linux and open source will always be better than proprietary, financially driven products because of the end goal of each side, the final product or money.
As a side note, one of the many reasons the open source model is better is becoming clear to many who don’t know or don’t care. Microsoft has announced they will be pulling Windows XP from retailers and hardware distributors, causing somewhat of an uproar. Many users feel as if XP is great and do not want to switch.
If Windows XP was open source, it could be community developed and supported for as long as there was a demand. Because it’s not, the users are at the mercy of Microsoft.
For those of you upset that he said no viruses, get over it! I have been running ubuntu for about a year and a half while dual-booting XP. In that time, I have never once seen my system crash, slow down, or have any sign of viruses whatsoever. As for spyware, Firefox with adblock and noscript and safe internet practices followed by frequent cache and cookie cleanings, and a good firewall should keep 99.9% of the spyware off your ubuntu partition, which is about 50 times better than what I can say for windows.
Yeah, you could run an infected exe in wine and mess up wine’s libraries, but why would you do that? Also, by nature, unix systems are harder to infect since the libraries are randomized and only root has full access to system files. I have installed everything I need to using the add/remove programs feature, and while some more specialized peices of software might force someone to use terminal there is really little need to leave the gui.
The gui really isn’t THAT much different from windows, and in my honest opinion the differences that do exist far surpass what windows has to offer. People who claim linux gui needs major improvement probably have not tried it for themselves.
Seriously, unless you are a corporation that has windows specific business software you have already spent a fortune on or you are a super high-end pc gamer, ubuntu is fine for anyone. The filesystem itself is more stable, no lengthy disk-defragmenting required, and overall it utilizes disk space much more efficiently.
I been using ubuntu since it first came out. I just upgraded to the latest version of ubuntu 8.4 and it rocks! I will never ever go back to windows, because of their poor security.
I wrote my own compilation of 5 Reasons I Like Linux (And 5 Why I Dislike It) here:
http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/04/20/5-reasons-i-like-linux-and-5-why-i-dislike-it.html
@ Bill - How is it? Linux has no viruses in the wild. Every OS has its vulnerabilities and weak points, but due to the design of Linux and the wonderful permissions system, a virus is the least effective way to exploit these, as they can’t spread (or even touch system files) without root priviledges.
Linux having no viruses is not realated to not recognising w32 executables.
—
The reason that we have not seen a real Linux virus epidemic in the wild is simply that none of the existing Linux viruses can thrive in the hostile environment that Linux provides. The Linux viruses that exist today are nothing more than technical curiosities; the reality is that there is no viable Linux virus.
http://librenix.com/?inode=21
etc
There is a difference between a typical virus and malware.
Linux is not immune to exploits etc