New Linux users please read this: Linux is NOT Windows

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

This should be required reading for anyone that's thinking of moving from Windows to Linux It's a good read even for those of us who know what we're doing.

 

Nice article; the analogies are outstanding. This would be a good item to sticky.

 

Indeed. You wouldn't know how many times I've had to explain this to new users.

 

Pretty good article. It's definitely a good read for newbies wanting to try Linux but are unsure of what to expect...

 

Great article. I didn't exactly agree with everything in there, particularly the part about people not wanting Linux to make it big time, but overall it is a good read for new Linux users. One common misconception about Linux users that I think the article touched upon though was that not all Linux users hate Microsoft or Apple. I don't want Windows to die necessarily, as there must be a yin for every yang. I just want Microsoft to make it better and quit trying to be the only player in the game; that is, start thinking more about the consumer. I think there are a lot more Linux users these days that aren't FOSS zealots than people think.

 

Exactly. I don't necessarily hate Microsoft or want Microsoft to go away, but sometimes they seem to not care about the consumer at all. It is all about money and money. Some people paid for their software, so at least treat them better rather then worry about piracy, drm, etc. It's not like people want to use their software illegally so much.

And I am not all crazy about FOSS either. Sometimes things just have to work, because I need to get work done. Doesn't matter whether it is FOSS or commercial products, things need to get done. Linux or Windows, it doesn't matter, as long as things work so that other tasks can get done.

 

I agree with Guatam; every industry needs competition to keep the product fresh and under continuous improvement for the benefit of the consumer. Without any competition, Microsoft could theoretically keep selling the same OS for years.

 

Isn't that what they have been doing?

 

Yes, but so has everyone else in that vein. Mac OS X came out in 1999 (on servers, 2001 for desktop). The Linux 2.6 kernel came out in 2003. Ubuntu itself has stayed consistently the same since '04, with Dapper being the biggest overhaul that I can remember. But if you ask me, Windows is really the only OS that needs a major overhaul right now. Microsoft needs to come out of the stone age and revise the NT kernel to fit the modern desktop needs for multiple users instead of just patching it over and over again. In other words, they need to finish what they were supposed to do with Vista.

 

The 2.6 kernel may have come out in 2003, but it's had MAJOR changes internally. API changes, subsystem changes, ALSA, new schedulers, NUMA support, etc. All within the 2.6 branch. Even Vista barely comes to those levels of changes, and XP was released when, 2002? Which was a very minimal graphical refresh of Windows 2000? Things have changed much more in competing operating systems than between 2000->XP->Vista. FYI, every change from 2.6.1->2.6.2, etc., a "C" version change, has been a major change to the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Version_numbering]2.6 kernel[/URL]. Not just a minor revision.

 

Don't most people know that Linux is not Window's. Like the link though - thanks.

 

You should head over to OSNEWS and do a search for longhorn, there is some interesting stuff about the Longhorn ressurection project, where volunteer's are trying to finish with WinFS and all that...

Basically they are finishing what MS started

 

Most people "know" it, but they still try to treat Linux as a free version of Windows. It doesn't work like Windows, and when you try to run it like you ran Windows, it will not work "right", and it will generally be a pain. You need to learn some new concepts when switching to Linux, things that were either hidden, not applicable or just plain omitted from Windows. Hence, this article.

 

I think mattireland was being sarcastic.

 

Fooled me.

 

Interesting, but Microsoft has of course shut them down. It would be nice to see them come back, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

 

when i first used ubantu, i actually screwed up my computer . now the power supply wont turn off by its self after shut down... even with windows now. i learned my lesson, because i installed it 2 days before a paper was due, and typed the paper on linux. AHH! it wont save! it says it would go to my floppy but it didnt, it wont recognise my flash drive!!! internet wont work!!! printer wont work!!! linux is really cool, but i really dont think i will be coming back... if any one can persuade me to go back to the new ubantu on my new lappy, pm me.

 

Ahhh yes the reasons why I have tried Ubuntu so many times, but still switch back to XP

Dont hate though, I still use it for my "router". First was Gentoo on a old world mac, then ubuntu something on a computer that then blew up, now 6.06 LTS on a nice purpose built server.

For me I have no problem dealing with it as a console only system, but I cant stand it for a daily use primary machine. I could never get used to the KDE or Gnome structure, too many odd wacky programs with wildly varying layouts, and I'll be damned if the machine didnt want to murder me each time it powered up.

 

what did u guys do with your computer?!?!? .

Linux is faster, better and without merchandising problems...
Sorry windows users, but u have to be more intelligent to use linux.... No wizards, and next,next,next things... If u want something to work, and is not implemented, do it your self! Learn something, dont be foolish by ex-gates guys...
Oh and congratulations to your new OS... I test it and is really CRAP!.... Vista is very coll!! yeah...

To common mortals: ok, keep windows....
To people who want everything they want like they want: use linux and invest in some learning about unix systems...

To mac users: the travel to linux is not to drastic.... btw is a unix system already. things will be a lot easier to configure if u have a new intel hardware.

 

Again, trying to treat Linux like Windows. There's a reason for this article.

It will save to the floppy, but it won't write the data to it until you unmount the floppy drive. You can't just eject it like you do on Windows.
The flash drive? Same thing. Or maybe you had it formatted as NTFS, or it didn't auto-mount for some reason.
The Internet, that's rarely a problem... not sure what kind of weird configurations you have. Windows is more forgiving with bad data being fed to it by DHCP servers and such, since it only causes problems about 10% of the time. Linux actually adheres to standards. If you're talking wireless, you probably had a broadcom wireless card, which is just a piece of crap hardware, even under Windows. It's just cheap, which is why it's everywhere.
If you have a cheap, crappy printer, yeah, it won't work very well. That's because the drivers and your computer do all the work, rather than the printer. Linux's printing is much easier to set up if you have a properly supported printer (I have an HP I connect to over the network. Windows? 50MB of drivers and crapware, and it still works only marginally. Linux? Point it to the IP, and I'm done). You just can't treat it like Windows.

What I would suggest is downloading the 7.04 LiveCD for Ubuntu (it's not ubantu), and sticking it in your new lappy and seeing what happens. Some laptops with quality, supported hardware work quite well (cf, mine). Others will not work at all because they've abused so many standards and used crappy parts (look for info on ACPI and Linux in Google). You don't have to install it to try out Linux. If you like it, then you can install it, and even boot between it and Windows. If not, you've just used a little of your time and a blank CD. But if you want to use Linux, be prepared to throw out your "knowledge" of computers and start fresh, and use Google a lot.

 

agree agree... no comments so far.
ubantu... i see it just now ...

 

The biggest thing to learn when making the switch is that you can't assume anything. You'll have to make concessions as well. You have to give some things up while earning some other things in return.

For instance, you know have to do stuff like mount and unmount drives. You have to deal with hardware incompatibilities (which means you may have to buy better hardware), but in return, you get security, freedom, and efficiency. Also, some things like printing will just work immediately. It's a give and take relationship, but it seems that nobody wants to give anything.

 

I don't see a huge differ in learning about Linux vs Windows.

Windows is more of a ........ Use it first then Config/troubleshoot when things happen.
Linux is more of a .......Config/troubleshoot it first then Use it.

You are going to encounter Windows problems and Linux will be foreign at first. But either way you will have to ....Google about, Experiment, OR Ask somebody in a forum like NBR about Windows & Linux when situations arrive.

I doubt the people who complain about Linux has an extreme knowledge of how windows works.

 

I have personally come to find Linux much more comfortable than Windows. There are certainly things that I miss about Windows; the applications, the acceptance, the usability, the games. I also tend to cause a lot more problems in Linux, but most of them are caused by me, though I have gotten unlucky and gotten some bad updates and issues with kernel updates (likely due to the fact that I'm running an upgraded/modified 7.04 Herd 4). The difference is that I know how to get myself out of nearly every situation in Linux. Put me in front of Windows and ask me to troubleshoot/fix something... I'm lost.

 

Heh. I'm unfortunately very well versed in both of them I've manually cleaned out the blaster worms (before there were instructions... I just had to figure out why the Win98 machine kept horking up), broken services, all kinds of things.

There are a few things with Linux that take some getting used to... with Beryl running, X isn't quite stable for days on end. I think it's due to some memory bugs in the NVIDIA module. But there are nice surprises as well... I just stuck my Starcraft disc into my Linux desktop machine, double-clicked setup.exe, it installed, and I was playing just a few minutes later. Ran the latest patch, installed Broodwars, everything's even better than it ever was on Windows, because it's freakin' fast. Lets me appreciate how far things have come technologically

 

Yep

Really? It's totally opposite for me. I always botch up a Windows install by installing programs and uninstalling them, and eventually some random crap happens.

Totally right. Except that after years of Windows usage, I had eventually come to be able to figure things out.

 

Why I would not use linux as the main OS(unless there is no Windows that comes bundle with it) : fonts.

One can argue about usability forever but fonts in free linux are just too limited(or not up to the standard found in Windows/OS X).

I do run linux under Windows where I can have lots of very useful "UI less" daemons or tools that is hard to find or no equivalent in Windows.

And what is the rationale to switch to linux from Mac OS X ? It can run 95% of those application in linux as they are more alike.

 

You're complaining about fonts? Heck, if you want, just download and install the Microsoft/OS X fonts.

 

Huh ? other than the once free MS fonts, the newer one is not free. And those very nice MS fonts don't have the code page I need.

I have routinely copy fonts from Windows to linux but that is because I own a copy of Windows. What you are suggesting is copyright violation except for the ms free fonts.

Are there nice OS X fonts that is free(as in beer, i.e. no string attached like the mscorefonts) ?

 

Wow, fantastic article. They should include this with every linux distribution as a readme.

 

What is it you can't do exactly?

 

CJK web page.

 

Do you mean East Asian languages? If so, SCIM works perfectly on my Ubuntu machine.

 

I do not have needs for Japanese nor Korean but I do use Chinese. For seeing a Chinese web page on Ubuntu or Debian, installing the following packages should be enough:

ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp

It is true that without those packages, the default fonts don't look good. [Edit: I need to clarify, it is possible to see web pages in Chinese with the default Ubuntu and Debian installs but without those packages above, the fonts don't look good.]

If you want to input Chinese, you have to install scim.

In Ubuntu, pay a visit to system->administration->language support. There's a check box that you can check to add support for complex characters. I think this installs scim but I'm not sure because I tend to use wajig to install my stuff.

All of what I'm outlining here is enough for me to be able to work comfortably on translating the Da zhi du lun this summer.

 

I know there is the arphic font but that is not as good as MS ones.

I was not talking what can't be done, but specifically about the quality of the font which for long term usage is a very important aspect to me.

I know there are many free TTF(not necessary for CJK) but they are just not up to the standard found in Windows/Mac. The only font I found usable is the vera one by Adobe which unfortunately also don't have CJK.

Sure I can pay for those font too then I am looking at price that may not be on par with Windows but quite a portion of it.

Another area that linux used to lack behind(especially for notebook) is power management which fortunately is getting much better now.

 

Oh, I'm not saying that it never happened in Windows. It happened to me all the time in Windows, but since I didn't know how to really fix anything, I usually just ended up in a reformat. System restores, registry restores, all that crap didn't work for some of my problems (like my Add/Remove Applications applet suddenly quit populating the list ), so I was left with a reformat. The biggest difference is this:

If something goes wrong in Windows, you are likely to get little to no indication of what it is or why (like my Add/Remove Applications problem), but you still have a fairly usable system. If something bad goes wrong, it probably won't boot at all (FSCHK or whatever will typically stop the boot). Even Safe mode may not work if one of your system files gets corrupted/deleted (such as the pci.sys file on my old laptop).

In Linux, a minor error can cause your OS or GUI to crash, and send you back to a terminal, which is very annoying IMO. But even a major error will usually send you back to a terminal, where you can then try and fix the problem.

 

The reason you don't legally have the same fonts on Linux as Windows is the same reason as why you don't have legal free DVD players on Linux. Licensing the "intellectual property" there costs money. I've never seen any TTF's that can't be installed and used in Linux, though, and if you have a license for Windows (you probably do) or Adobe products, you can install and use them under Linux.

 

I am well aware of that. My comment was really about "If I have a bare machine, what OS would I use". And even though linux is mostly free, these tiny littles things are not unfortunately and they are very important for a GUI desktop.

If I already have a copy of Windows running, the incentive of not using it is not as high. I used to dual boot between linux and Windows and have the windows font directory symlink into ~/.fonts/. and just ran fc-cache to have them available under linux.

But that is not the point, the point is most linux distro lacks in this department, vera is good but lacks CJK.

 

This is what Kaiti looks like on my screen. Seems pretty good to me but then again I don't have the needs that someone who would want to desktop publishing or web design would require.

 

this seems to be the arphic font, which is a bit on the "thick side". And I also noticed that the fonts used by openoffice is also very "linux like"(that is not a complement) which is actually what I am talking about.

Putting the same app running on Windows, linux and OS X side by side and I believe anyone would notice the difference.

One of the problem of the "thick" arphic is that if you visit web pages like sina and the like where they like to jam as much things as possible into it, the result is very unpleasant.

font is a very personal thing so YMMV. Under linux, the only time I don't complain about the font is when I am in xterm(well that is over 70% of the time) and I am doing it anyway with putty into a headless linux.

 

Yeah, I know what you are saying, ftw.

This is why Gutsy's blueprints have a "Bulletproof-X" spec-sheet. It was something they were working on for Feisty, but it wasn't implemented. Basically, somehow make sure that X doesn't crash no matter how much you mess up config files, etc.

 

That's nice. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would probably still need access to the terminal, but you can access a terminal from within X just as easily as outside it.

 

Not to be a smartass, but that sounds a lot like XP -> Vista to me. Sure, we can argue about which one had the "most" or "biggest" changes (I don't know, haven't counted, and wouldn't know how to judge the "size" of a change), but we're still talking about under-the-hood stuff that the end user doesn't really see. In effect, there's nothing *really* new in either 2.4->2.6 or in XP->Vista. Not from a practical point of view, for the average user.

Sure, fans of each can (and do) rant on about all the marvelous improvements that each has implemented. The problem is just that they're not very visible. Vista still feels like XP, and the 2.6 kernel doesn't feel like anything new either.

In the Linux kernel's favor, though, the 2.6 kernel at least doesn't pretend to be a revolution in OS technology, the way Vista does. And second, the improvements in 2.6 are generally speaking, just that. They might not be directly noticeable under daily use, but they don't make things worse, the way some Vista features do.

I just thought it was funny your little speech I quoted sounds so much like what the Vista fanboys say...

Edit:
Bah, completely forgot to comment on the article.
Interesting read, in some ways stating the obvious, but also a bit biased, and subtly trying to pretend that problems with Linux aren't actually problems. ("It's not worse, it's just different". Sure, that's a handy answer, and in many cases it's true. But it certainly helps to gloss over the issues where it *is* actually worse. Or "Remember that Linux was designed with a different goal in mind" - Sure, that helps someone who just wants it to work. It might be true, but it's not very helpful.)

All in all, the article seems to be a good attempt at explaining some key differences between Linux and Windows, but it spends at least as much effort on glossing over the fact that Linux isn't perfect. Either by saying "You're just stupid for expecting this from Linux", or "We were here first, we decide what Linux is or isn't", or as said above, by "It's just different, not better or worse". And occasionally "Yeah, but this is actually a good thing, your little Windows brain just isn't capable of dealing with the possibilities it gives you" (good example of that is the part about why there are so many distro's. That's brushed off as "choice is good, if you can't deal with it, go back to Windows where you have none". What if I just think it's silly that there are 80 groups of skilled developers across the world, all trying to beat each others at doing the exact same thing? Would'nt it be more constructive, and offer more choice, if they decided to do *different* things? You wouldn't need much more than maybe 5 distros to cover all that's available today, and that would leave, say, 75 groups of former distro developers free to work on *new* stuff. True, this is a gross simplification, it just annoys me that the author of the article brushes the question off like that, instead of actually considering that not everything in the Linux world is perfect.
Same goes for the section on "user-friendly". True, he has a valid point, but using it to brush off *all* questions of user friendliness is a bit of a simplification. I think everyone can agree that there are more than a few Linux apps that could do with a bit more thought put into the user-friendliness of the interface. And that is one thing that might surprise a newcomer to Linux.

And of course, some points are just downright stupid...

I don't suppose the explanation could be that Word's focus lies on word processing, while Microsoft offers a different application for coding? Actually, naive as I am, I find that much more likely than "because Word is badly designed", which seems to be his conclusion. By that logic, isn't Linux badly designed for not having a default file explorer that doubles as internet browser?

Still, overall good read.

 

you know if you use a linux with KDE then Konqueror will double as a file explorer and internet browser

 

As stated by the previous poster, KDE has Konquerer which doubles as both the file manager and the web browser. In addition, Kaffeine makes it act as a media player in many cases.

Anyhow, while I agree with you in some respects, I have to respectfully disagree in some respects as well. While the Linux fanatics often rival Mac fanatics in their blind dedication to their way of doing things, there is still much more cooperation than with the other options. One example can be found in the Compiz/Beryl project. Some developers were unhappy with the way Compiz turned out, so they forked off to create Beryl. But now they are both coming back together because they realized it would be better for the community. Also, while there are countless distributions out there, many of them have their roots in a certain basis. For instance, many (such as Ubuntu) are based on Debian, while others are rpm-based distros like Red Hat. While you have many others that don't tie into these distributions (like Gentoo), most of the popular ones lie in that category. Beyond that point, you have a lot of distributions that are just there as specific flavors of other distributions, like Linux Mint (which is kind of analogous to Media Center edition to Windows XP since it is Ubuntu with media apps and codecs and installed).

But, there are pitfalls to Linux, and while I love FOSS, I can't stand behind the basis that all software should be FOSS. IMO, operating systems benefit the most from being open source, as it is the basis for everything related to the operating system. But there are some situations where I would just prefer the support and liability of using a commercial application. When something goes wrong with a commercial application, you have someone who's responsible at whom you can point the finger. Also, there is still too much dependence on the command line for a modern operating system. True, I use it, and there are a lot of times when I wish Windows had a little more command line integration so I didn't have to search through a GUI for ten minutes to change a setting. But at the same time, why do I have to know BASH commands to install an application (that isn't available from the repos) from the command line? I should be able to just click a file and input my password and install it. But this is where too much choice comes into play, because most applications are in source format. But you give a little and take a little.

 

"you know if you use a linux with KDE then Konqueror will double as a file explorer and internet browser"

Konqueror is one hell of a browser; it should be implemented into the GNOME UI.

 

If only it didn't rely on the KDE libraries.

 

Anything to replace Nautilus would be much appreciated. While it works well enough, it's getting pretty stagnant, and from what I understand, nobody wants to touch it since it's coded very sloppily.

 

What's wrong with the KDE libraries? The GTK+ libraries have lesser functionality, and Gnome isn't any faster or lighter than KDE since KDE v3, and KDE v4 is coming out soon which is even faster and lighter on memory.

 

I'm looking forward to KDE4. I still prefer the GNOME desktop, but I would be willing to switch because there are a lot of things I do like about KDE as well.

I think Lysander was referring more to the fact that Konquerer won't be included with the base GNOME packages because the GNOME team wouldn't include any of the KDE libraries. But that doesn't stop any distro from doing it; it just won't be "integrated" into the GNOME UI. It will still look like a KDE app, not a GTK app.