The Best Answer for "Why should we move to Linux"?

October 9th, 2008, 8:40 am

Hello,

Yesterday, one of my friends saw my free Ubuntu cd, which I get from Ubuntu site. Then he asking me, why should we going to linux? Actually, he is using piracy stuff.. even though I always said about linux is free, he always said that his xp also "free" and the stuff inside that also "free".. Has anyone has better answer? I only can amaze him by showing my compiz desktop only.. LOL..

October 9th, 2008, 9:13 am

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/whyuselinux
http://www.pcmech.com/article/why-use-linux/
http://www.linuxlinks.com/local/why.shtml

[joebert]

October 9th, 2008, 11:13 am

Don't waste your time trying to convert people who use pirated software because it's "free". It's not good for you or them. You will find yourself frustrated because they want to have their hand held through everything and they will get frustrated because they can't get their computer to run all that pirated software they love so much.

Linux is for people who actually want to learn how to use their computer. It's best to leave it on the table and allow people to take initiative and get into it themselves.

If you really want to switch someone over, just use your own computer to its' full potential. They'll get curious enough to try it on their own sooner or later.

October 9th, 2008, 11:47 am

joebert wrote:

You will find yourself frustrated because they want to have their hand held through everything and they will get frustrated because they can't get their computer to run all that pirated software they love so much.

True that. Except with my dad is was legally purchased stuff like MS office and stuff like that. But with my 9 year old cousin (now 11) who had virtually no computer experience, giving him a copy of ubuntu then walking him through the install over the phone was perfect, now he gets frustrated when he uses windows computers because he is use to linux with gnome.

[graphixboy]

October 10th, 2008, 10:37 am

Unfortunately cost, ease of use, stability, etc are never going to convince the world to switch if people can't use enough standard software to get daily work completed.

Take myself for example. As an interactive designer I use Photoshop, Cinema 4D, After Effects every day. None of those applications exist for linux. Now I know there are "similar" apps for most things for linux but lets face it the Gimp is not really competitive to all the abilities of photoshop and using Pov-ray or blender don't allow the same kind of interchangeability with my peers that I get from something like cinema 4d/Max.

Do I like windows? No but my choices are pretty limited to MS or OS X that really only runs well on expensive proprietary hardware.

Seems to me that unless an office suite and web browsing are your main uses for a computer its going to be relatively difficult to convince people to switch over...

October 10th, 2008, 10:55 am

graphixboy wrote:

Take myself for example. As an interactive designer I use Photoshop, Cinema 4D, After Effects every day. None of those applications exist for linux.

There are guys who have made them go with wine before, so if they can then so can you.

graphixboy wrote:

OS X that really only runs well on expensive proprietary hardware.

Neither expensive nor proprietary. If you look up the exact specs of the new intel mac laptops, they are exactly identical to sony vaio laptops and lots less cost. I found that when I was shopping for laptops and ended up going with the mac. And OS X can be run on non-Apple hardware, but it takes some tweaking and I've only ever seen one group of people on the internet who did it. There is even versions of solaris that run on an intel architecture, so any more these days you see less and less of the super proprietary stuff.

[graphixboy]

October 10th, 2008, 11:05 am

kc0tma wrote:

There are guys who have made them go with wine before, so if they can then so can you.

I wish that was the case, but when I'm using heavy duty apps like After Effects and C4D for multi frame animations emulators like wine just don't have the stability.

kc0tma wrote:

Neither expensive nor proprietary. If you look up the exact specs of the new intel mac laptops, they are exactly identical to sony vaio laptops and lots less cost. I found that when I was shopping for laptops and ended up going with the mac. And OS X can be run on non-Apple hardware, but it takes some tweaking and I've only ever seen one group of people on the internet who did it. There is even versions of solaris that run on an intel architecture, so any more these days you see less and less of the super proprietary stuff.

While I agree that the specs are the same on apple hardware the os does not run the same in other places. OS x86 is a cool idea but it actually breaks the apple license agreement, can't get updates, etc and thats really little better than pirating windows...

October 10th, 2008, 11:19 am

graphixboy wrote:

I wish that was the case, but when I'm using heavy duty apps like After Effects and C4D for multi frame animations emulators like wine just don't have the stability.

Wine Is Not an Emulator is what the acronym wine means. Just like GNU means GNU is Not Unix. But I will agree that when you're rendering effects you don't want your system to do any more excess work than is necessary, but if you are working with stuff that puts that much of a drain on your machine then you should think of investing in a coprocessor. I use to work at the local tv station, and we had Avid Express editors and used Boris Red, and with the Avid we had the external Adrenaline hardware. That stuff costs big bucks, but it makes a world of difference.

[graphixboy]

October 10th, 2008, 12:08 pm

Haha I'd love Adrenaline or Black Magic hardware. Since I'm an interactive designer (output to web) they don't think I need the same crazy hardware the broadcast boys get, but hey I'll keep asking.

I guess I'll start taking donations

[joebert]

October 10th, 2008, 12:43 pm

Wine for multimedia applications is just sad.

I run the same applications on the same hardware with the only difference being Ubuntu instead of Windows & the speed in which I'm able to do things with these applications takes an obvious hit. There's strange UI bugs that occur which destroy workflow as well.

One huge bug running Fireworks in Wine is that if I copy an image to the clipboard from any other application and then hit CTRL+N in Fireworks to create a new canvas the size of that image, the application crashes. That is a huge thorn in my side.

I have a much easier time with programming on Linux though.

[graphixboy]

October 11th, 2008, 10:04 am

I agree. If I was doing lots of development I'd switch in a moment, but I just can't afford to time impact on my work. You know its funny how multimedia creation in linux is such an issue yet playback with something like MythTV is so wonderfully smooth..

October 12th, 2008, 9:41 pm

Thanks for all reply.

Quote:

I have a much easier time with programming on Linux though.

Agree with you.. I also can installed online these packages without knowing the specific detail of the software. Whenever I want to install the applications, if I cannot remember the applications, I will use apt-cache search command.

For my notebook, the maximum version photoshop which is stable for distro is 7.. And from my opinion, and I already test it whether form linux or xp, I think, photoshop will load much quickly in ubuntu compared to xp. Same goes to office 2007.

But for my download manager, I can't use IDM (It really fast compared to flashget!) and I use flashget on my Ubuntu eventually.

October 20th, 2008, 6:40 am

I'd like to move over to Linus myself for my server but haven't done it yet due to the time involved I barely have enough time to adminsiter the sites I'm running so I'd usggest pushing your frined into it is not such a good idea. It does take time to switch over and if theres a problem you can gurantee he'll soon be coming to you blaming you for everything whether its Linux oriented or not you wil make yourself an easy target.

Let him make his own mind up

November 14th, 2008, 1:53 am

First of all Linux is more stable than windows then it is a free software and open source. What do we really concentrate on is being free so instead of paying around 700$ for windows Vista ultimate he will pay only 5$ for the disk of Linux and you can use it. The same way you used the windows plus most and not all viruses are made for windows or for Mac so no viruses so far for Linux and if you could adjust with it.

November 14th, 2008, 7:22 am

Actually there are viruses for linux, they just aren't quite as common windows viruses. Just think if you had a gun, there was a target 10 feet wide (windows operating system), a target 6 feet wide (mac os x) and a target 4 inches wide. Which would be easier to hit? The big one of course, so windows is the focus of virus writers because there are a boat load more windows machines out there than there are linux boxes.