Linux Likes and Loathings

I was recently having a conversation with a friend who makes his
living as an IT support person for Microsoft systems. I casually mentioned that I use Linux at home and acknowledged that there are some trade-offs. The response was that, well, maybe Linux is O.K. if all I have to do is a little word processing and web surfing. I did not pursue the discussion, but it did cause me to reflect a little bit, particularly since this was a response from a person who has forgotten more about computers than I will ever know.

Linux meets all my basic computing needs: email, web surfing, downloads, word processing, a little basic spreadsheet use. But it goes far beyond that, offering for free an array of powerful software that I could never afford to buy in commercial versions. It's not even a question of my being cheap (which maybe I am), it is a question of come software simply being out of reach. With Linux, I get an array of databases, a web server, an email server, an ftp server, image and video editing tools, and programming tools, to name a few, that would be both difficult and expensive for me to obtain for Windows. All of these are tightly integrated into a highly flexible and customizable operating system. One of the great blessings of my Linux system is that I can get to all of my data, all of the time, anywhere there is an Intenet connection, without being required to store all of my data on someone else's giant server. And with Linux, while I know a problem may be difficult to fix, I also know that it is almost always fixable.

I do run Windows occasionally in a virtual machine (which comes free with Linux). I need Internet Explorer to connect remotely to my server at work and I use WordPerfect for work-related word processing. I also do have good Free Software quivalents for TurboTax or iTunes (for my iPhone). Otherwise, my home computer time is usually strictly Linux.

My first step in writing this piece was to compile some of my Likes and Dislikes about Linux in tabular form, which as a final step, I have listed as follows:

Likes	Dislikes
Infinitely Customizable	Requires Customization
Free as in beer	Less choice of applications
Free as in Freedom	Not the industry standard
Powerful software I can afford	Not always the most powerful software
Intellectually challenging	Learning curve
Stable	Occasional hardware limitations
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