Why would you want to try Linux?

Why? It's the most prevalent question in the human language as I see it, if you disagree you've probably never had a 2-4 year old child. Adults still ask the question too. Why are gas prices so high? Why are we fighting half the world? Why are there footprints on the ceiling? Why should I want to try Linux? I hear this question all the time now.To answer that properly lets try to understand what Linux is and is not.

Our friends at wikipedia tell us "The name "Linux" comes from the Linux kernel, started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds." Following the previous links will take you to more in depth info but to make a long story short Linus needed/wanted/desired to have a terminal emulator on a 80386, so he wrote one and that was the birth of the Linux kernel. In case you're wondering a kernel is the core of an OS, any OS. Linux has a kernel, Windows has a kernel etc. While they may not refer to it as such they most still conceptually have one. A good way to conceptualize a kernel is as a software traffic cop in the middle of an intersection of hardware, software, and peripherals and their drivers.

OK, so Linux started as one mans project, and has since been released under the GNU GPL. This release and the free and open nature of Linux spawned a great deal of interest and quite a few developers. One additional motivator for converts to Linux is the distaste some people have for competing operating systems and/or their commercial nature. One of the strengths of Linux is its diversity, since the source code is out there for all to see, there is a lesser likelihood of bugs and security holes to go unnoticed. That is also what has led to the plethora of specialized Distributions of Linux also referred to to as distros. A quick glance at distrowatch will show you the top 100 distros and more. Resources like distro watch can help you to choose which distro may be right for you, which may lead you to wonder, what is right for me?

What do you do on the computer? What would you like to do? Are you looking to build an uber-fast desktop using cutting edge hardware? Are you using an old 80486 with 64meg ram? Are you looking for something rock stable? Are you looking for something with a large user base and friendly community where you can have open discussions about what you're doing or trying to do? All of these factors will contribute to your selection. Don't let this become a daunting task though, if you're not sure what to pick browsing the information at distrowatch any of the top 10 might be a good place to start on modern hardware purchased in the last 5 years. A few distros even offer a 'livecd', this is a CD image you download and burn to CD that you place in your CD-ROM and reboot your system. The CD will then (if your machine is configured properly) boot into a compact Linux system of the distribution you choose which can give you a chance to get the 'feel' of what you're getting into without installing one bit of software to your computer. Just keep in mind running in this mode, that things will be much slower due to the nature of how you have launched Linux. Two distros that do a exceptional job in this meme are PCLinuxOS, and Knoppix. They have excellent compatibility across a wide variety of hardware and offer a great selection of applications for you to try.

So now the why, I could go with the old California reply of why not? But that's not really a reason. Sick of updating? Well even with Linux there are updates to be done. Want something totally secure, well again Linux is much more secure out of the box so to speak but its still not perfect either. So why then? Well there are less spyware and fewer viruses targeted at Linux. A lot of the same software some of you are used to runs on Linux like Firefox, Mozilla etc. For those who have one or two windows apps that are simply must haves, there is Wine which is a emulator that allows you to run most windows applications. If you must have windows then you can always run software like Vbox to run windows inside of a X window in Linux.

Do you burn CD's? Got you covered there with applications like K3b, or Brasero. Do you need office apps? Gotcha covered, there is Open Office, and a plethora of other smaller individual specialized apps like Abiword. Of course you're going to want to run these in a windows like environment, got you covered there too. There is Gnome, KDE, Xfce just to name a few popular ones. These all run on X windows. Whats that mean? X Windows is kind of neat because the connection between two machines can be transparent. For example, I had an ssh connection from my laptop to my desktop the other day, and found that in order to do something I wanted to do, I needed to install and additional package(program) from our repository (also known as a repo, think of it as a program library) so in the ssh session I typed the command 'synaptic', in my local x-windows the synaptic program window opened, I choose the packages I needed hit apply and they installed on the remote machine. It was exactly as if I was running synaptic on the other machines desktop. I thought it was way cool.

In the end, your computer is a tool. You use it do do stuff. Does it matter to you what color your screwdrivers are? Does it matter to you what OS you use as long as you can accomplish what you want? If the answer is no, save yourself a little money and try Linux, you might be surprised to see what you've been missing.