Greater Lansing Linux User Group

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By Caleb Cushing

Linux (pronounced lih-nucks) is an open source, free operating system that is used to run a variety of applications on a variety of hardware. 'Open source' means that if you want, you can view the source code of an application, which would also allow you to modify the application. Technically it is GNU/Linux (pronounced guh-nuu) Because for the most part, GNU is the tools and Linux is the Kernel. Linux is a multitasking, multi-user, operating system. This means that it has the capability of managing thousands of tasks, including allowing multiple users to access the system simultaneously, at the same time.

What do I mean by ‘Desktop Linux’?

A desktop computer is a single-user computer that is small enough to fit on a desk but is not portable, unlike a laptop. It also contains significantly less computing power than that of a workstation computer. However desktop Linux does not refer to just desktops it can also refer to laptops. Desktop Linux could be correctly defined as average home user Linux. This means that you wouldn’t have to be an IT professional to operate the system. It has been correctly said that every computer, regardless of operating system, requires an administrator to operate properly for extended periods of time.
What are the advantages of switching to Linux?

Increased Stability

Due to the nature of open source development, Linux is an extremely stable operating system. There are literally thousands of developers working on each Linux application to make it better. This results in bugs getting found and fixed faster. Viruses, worms, trojans, spyware and other various forms of malware are also next to non-existent on Linux. There are several reasons for this. One is open source, it is impossible to hide malicious source code inside of an open source application. Eventually if people are using the application, the source will be viewed and it will be found. The way the operating system is designed where no ‘user’ can have complete impact over the entire operating system, only their respective home directory. To the best of my knowledge, no spyware has yet been developed that will work on a Linux system. There are less than 100 known viruses for Linux. Compare this number to over 70,000 known viruses for windows. None of these viruses are currently potent, meaning that the security hole that they exploited no longer exists. When such threats do arise, a patch to fix them is typically released within hours instead of the days, weeks or months that it takes in the world of closed source, proprietary software.

Freedom

Linux is both free as in speech and free as in beer (doesn’t cost a dime). Also there is no vendor lock-in and unlimited choice, so freedom to choose and freedom to change.

The Myths

No Software exists for Linux

This is a myth, and an outrageous one at that. Gentoo Linux--which has one of the largest if not THE largest software repository of any Linux distribution--contains over 10,000 applications in its repository.

Office Software

There are two major office suites in Linux: OpenOffice and KOffice. OpenOffice is based on Sun Microsystems Star Office. Sun contributed the source code of Star Office and continues to help fund the project. KOffice is KDE’s solution to an office suite. I find that it is both faster, more stable, and more feature-rich than OpenOffice. Both of these suites contain Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Database, Flowcharting, and Math Formula software. KOffice also includes two different kinds of image editing software. Both of these suites will more than compensate the average user’s needs for basic office software.

Multimedia Software

Multimedia is no problem in Linux. I have never experienced a problem playing any kind of audio. There are numerous audio players which do as good of a job as I’ve seen in Windows. My favorite feature which I have not seen in Windows is searching my media library as I type. Video is also not a problem. I have actually experienced more problems with video in Windows than I have in Linux. MPlayer or Xine are the only real video solutions in Linux, although they both have quite a few front ends. I would like to see these front ends improved and be as feature-robust as the audio players are.

Video Games

If you're looking for games like solitaire, checkers and mahjong, they can be found aplenty in Linux. However if you're looking for the "blockbuster" video games, they can be a little harder to get working. A few of the blockbuster games have been released natively for Linux, such as Doom 3 and Neverwinter Nights. Many others, however, have been made to run through emulation. The open source program Cedega (formally known as WineX), by Transgaming, was designed for this purpose. In fact, it is one of the few open source programs that you actually have to pay for. It works quite well, but it isn’t perfect and sometimes it takes some alterations to make the game work.

Desktop Environments

It could be correctly stated that the majority of Linux window managers out there for Linux are not Windows user-friendly. This is because they were not designed for that. A window manager simply controls the look of the desktop and how it places programs and the opening of applications. It provides nothing else. The majority of window managers however are never seen by most people as they have encountered only the desktop environments. A desktop environment provides the window manager and software, including web browsers, file browsers, office software, games (basics only), and graphical system management utilities. Basically Linux with a desktop environment installed will give you all the things Windows has by default and then some. There are two main desktop environments to choose from, KDE and Gnome. Gnome is built using GTK which makes it look Windows 98ish, KDE is built with Qt which makes it look more like XP or even closer to the 2003 line of products. Both of these, if customized, can be made to look exactly like Windows. Their defaults are set up to imitate Windows without looking exactly like it however.

Drivers

Most of the time in Linux, hardware works right out of the box. In fact, I find it works out of the box and with less hassle than Windows. For example: I have a SATA hard drive. When installing Windows, it is not detected because it is RAID, I then have to go to some obscure site and download the drivers and then install them to make it work. Also, Linux has the advantage of not needing to rebooted just to install software or drivers. In fact, the only time it needs to be rebooted is if you are installing a new kernel, which is something that, although you can do it about once every month or two, the average user would really only need to do it once a year at most.

What needs to be done

Drivers

Although I have yet to fail to get hardware working, and most of the time it’s easy to do, I know that most of the time the drivers are not as complete as they are in Windows. Often times the hardware works properly overall but since the drivers were reverse engineered they are incomplete. The only solution to this problem is to make the user base of Linux bigger. Right now there is no incentive for corporations to develop Linux drivers, or at least complete ones, for their hardware, because the user base that is buying is much smaller.

Get more users

We need more users. If we can bring a big enough user base into play, the corporations will start developing games and drivers for Linux. Also, as the user base increases more developers will flock to our development teams and continue improving software at an accelerated rate. Dell, it seems, has taken an interest and has provided a Dimension series for Linux. However they don’t install Linux at this time because of the fact that there are too many distributions to choose from.

Why switch?

I’ve already purchased windows

That’s unfortunate to hear. So have I, three times. You’ll not only have to purchase Windows again when the next version (Vista) comes out but new hardware as well. Vista is going to require hardware that won’t be released until the end of 2006 to work properly. Linux, on the other hand, will work on machines going back as far as Windows 95. It will run better on those machines than Windows 95 did too.

I need program X

Have you checked to see if there is a program like it for Linux? You could try running it in emulation. Contrary to popular belief, emulation is not always slower than running natively. Do you really need it? If you find you can’t run it and there is no comparable software, and you must have it, you may be able to dual boot Linux and Windows and try only going to windows when you need to use that program.

I need my documents

With the exception of a few document types, Linux applications can read every kind of document you can on Windows, and then some. In fact, Linux is capable of reading more than twice as many file types as Windows can. This is because Linux has been designed to meet the user’s wants and needs. For example, OpenOffice is capable of reading almost any file created in Microsoft Office. It is capable of saving in Microsoft Office format, Star Office format, and Open Document format.

Conclusion

Currently there are several estimates of the number of Linux users in existence. Google’s statistical estimates guess about 1% or 5 million in 500 million computers. The official Linux Counter estimates about 29 million users total. Linux is also spreading to other devices besides computers. Examples include a series of Motorola smart phones and Sony’s Playstation 3. The Linux community also has many other corporate supporters including Sun Microsystems, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and many others. In short, Linux is ready for the desktop market and only requires a much larger user base to "fill in the holes."

©2006 Caleb Cushing