What exactly is so great about linux?

Question

What exactly is so great about linux?

Answer 1

you will not get virus in linux

Answer 2

1. You already mentioned customization; that is a huge part of it's appeal. In general, you're stuck with whatever UI Microsoft or Apple decide to give you; Linux allows you the freedom to make your machine a true "personal" computer.



2. Security. Linux is much more secure than a Windows system.



3. Performance. Windows runs okay when first installed, but over time as you add and remove programs or receive updates it tends to appreciably slow down. Add to this the large number of processes often running in the background without your knowledge, and the resource usage your anti-malware/anti-virus programs need, and even simple tasks like web browsing get frustrating.



4. Open source. Some people simply choose to support open source software, for philosophical and practical reasons.



A few distros for the novice, with the recommended desktop environment for each:



Ubuntu (Unity)

Linux Mint (any version but the Debian Edition)

Pinguy (Gnome)

Zorin (Gnome)

Bodhi (E17) <---very different than the rest

Mandriva (KDE)

PCLinuxOS (KDE)

Answer 3

As a non-power user you have little reason to use Linux. Also keep in mind that Ubuntu is a "toy" Linux. It is not for the serious user.



Linux is perfect for devices. For example, all DVR use Linux. Almost all smart phones use a from of Linux (Android, Apple IOS, etc).



Linux is the main OS used by businesses like banks, and web severs.

Answer 4

Customization- a wide variety or desktop environments, and choices and alternatives in some of the core systems (schedulers, file systems, networking and so on) to optimize performance for certain tasks.



Package management- there are thousands of programs available to install and all updates are handled by the package manager.



Stability, once you get past the initial set-up it requires very little maintenance, and tends to run quite well.



If you didn't like Ubuntu might I suggest Mint which is more geared to a desktop deployment.



Or perhaps a distro with the KDE desktop available like PCLinuxOS



Of Bohdi, which is an extremely lightweight distro, based on Ubuntu, using the enlightenment desktop, and with a web-based interface for the package manager available.

Answer 5

Linux is free

is more stable

it doesnt have as many threats from harmful web pages or viruses

you get more control over your operating system

More privacy as you dont have to report everything you do back to microsoft



www.linuxexplorers.com

Answer 6

Linux Features



multitasking: several programs running at the same time.

multiuser: several users on the same machine at the same time (and no two-user licenses!).

multiplatform: runs on many different CPUs, not just Intel.

multiprocessor: SMP support is available on the Intel and SPARC platforms (with work currently in progress on other platforms), and Linux is used in several loosely-coupled MP applications, including Beowulf systems (see http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux-web/beowulf/beowulf.html) and the Fujitsu AP1000+ SPARC-based supercomputer.

multithreading: has native kernel support for multiple independent threads of control within a single process memory space.

runs in protected mode on the 386.

has memory protection between processes, so that one program can't bring the whole system down.

demand loads executables: Linux only reads from disk those parts of a program that are actually used.

shared copy-on-write pages among executables. This means that multiple process can use the same memory to run in. When one tries to write to that memory, that page (4KB piece of memory) is copied somewhere else. Copy-on-write has two benefits: increasing speed and decreasing memory use.

virtual memory using paging (not swapping whole processes) to disk: to a separate partition or a file in the filesystem, or both, with the possibility of adding more swapping areas during runtime (yes, they're still called swapping areas). A total of 16 of these 128 MB (2GB in recent kernels) swapping areas can be used at the same time, for a theoretical total of 2 GB of useable swap space. It is simple to increase this if necessary, by changing a few lines of source code.

a unified memory pool for user programs and disk cache, so that all free memory can be used for caching, and the cache can be reduced when running large programs.

dynamically linked shared libraries (DLL's), and static libraries too, of course.

does core dumps for post-mortem analysis, allowing the use of a debugger on a program not only while it is running but also after it has crashed.

mostly compatible with POSIX, System V, and BSD at the source level.

through an iBCS2-compliant emulation module, mostly compatible with SCO, SVR3, and SVR4 at the binary level.

all source code is available, including the whole kernel and all drivers, the development tools and all user programs; also, all of it is freely distributable. Plenty of commercial programs are being provided for Linux without source, but everything that has been free, including the entire base operating system, is still free.

POSIX job control.

pseudoterminals (pty's).

387-emulation in the kernel so that programs don't need to do their own math emulation. Every computer running Linux appears to have a math coprocessor. Of course, if your computer already contains an FPU, it will be used instead of the emulation, and you can even compile your own kernel with math emulation removed, for a small memory gain.

support for many national or customized keyboards, and it is fairly easy to add new ones dynamically.

multiple virtual consoles: several independent login sessions through the console, you switch by pressing a hot-key combination (not dependent on video hardware). These are dynamically allocated; you can use up to 64.

Supports several common filesystems, including minix, Xenix, and all the common system V filesystems, and has an advanced filesystem of its own, which offers filesystems of up to 4 TB, and names up to 255 characters long.

transparent access to MS-DOS partitions (or OS/2 FAT partitions) via a special filesystem: you don't need any special commands to use the MS-DOS partition, it looks just like a normal Unix filesystem (except for funny restrictions on filenames, permissions, and so on). MS-DOS 6 compressed partitions do not work at this time without a patch (dmsdosfs). VFAT (WNT, Windows 95) support and FAT-32 is available in Linux 2.0

special filesystem called UMSDOS which allows Linux to be installed on a DOS filesystem.

read-only HPFS-2 support for OS/2 2.1

HFS (Macintosh) file system support is available separately as a module.

CD-ROM filesystem which reads all standard formats of CD-ROMs.

TCP/IP networking, including ftp, telnet, NFS, etc.

Appletalk server

Netware client and server

Lan Manager/Windows Native (SMB) client and server

Many networking protocols: the base protocols available in the latest development kernels include TCP, IPv4, IPv6, AX.25, X.25, IPX, DDP (Appletalk), Netrom, and others. Stable network protocols included in the stable kernels currently include TCP, IPv4, IPX, DDP, and AX.25.

Answer 7

I'm so glad you ask this question!

Well, linux is great from many points of view. I hope you take your time reading this, and I hope this will prove helpful to you! :D



1. The main one, which is definitely the best thing for an every-day user is the fact that Linux is virus-free. No antivirus, no problems at all with malwares or malicious software.



2. Open source. Open source doesn't mean ONLY that it's free. Aside of the fact that you have FREE licensed OS, there is a huge open source community, constantly working on your linux version (we call them distributions), fixing bugs, or dangerous leaks and making it better, and better every day. With linux, you will always benefit from the latest updates, which is great.



3. Great security. Having no viruses, being open source (constantly updated), with Linux you can be sure you're system is as secure as it can be. As for myself, I feel secure ONLY on Linux.



4. Optimal. Linux is, no doubt, optimal! It is very fast, even on slower computers. As an example, at the Informatics Olympiads in my country, they test the sources both on Windows and Linux, and Linux is faster all the times, sometimes even twice. Linux is faster because of it's relative simplicity, because of it doesn't have all those additional programs which Windows needs for pretty much everything to slow down your computer.



5. Support for all standard formats. With Linux, you are off to go from the moment you install it. It supports pretty much EVERY standard format there is. In windows, to emulate an .iso you need a program (in Linux you don't; of course you can install, if you want a nice user interface), In windows to unzip a .zip you need a program (in Linux, you don't) etc. etc.



6. Great control over your OS. In Linux you got the Terminal, which allows you to do EVERYTHING you want (including to screw up your computer, believe me :)) ). Basically, in Linux you control the system. In Windows it's different, Windows is a closed box, you can only see it's outside. You are forced to use what they give you, how they give it to you. In Linux you can use what you want, how you want. And that's nice.



7. Just like the OS, you benefit from a lot of open source software, which (some of them) are great! Like GIMP instead of Photoshop, Blender instead of... well instead of nothing because Blender is the best out there for 3D Modelling (IMO)..., Inkscape for vector graphics etc.



8. WINE. If you still need a certain program from Windows which doesn't have a version for Linux, there is WINE. WINE is basically a thing which lets you install and run Windows programs as your Linux would be Windows. You can very well install MSOffice, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, anything you want. Even games! Yes, you can play windows games on linux with WINE. For some of them, you may get even better performance than on Windows itself. With a little bit of learning it's ropes WINE will make you forget about windows.



9. Customization! That's another great thing of Linux. On Linux you can customize, tweak, modify anything at your pleasure, given that you know how to do it. Of course, some of the things you can customize easily, some of them harder, but there's always that feel of happiness when you make your system look like you want to. And when you know you did it!



At first, I would suggest you to use a dual boot: Windows 7 and Linux, so that you can switch to Windows whenever you need, until you get familiarized with linux. For this, it is necessary to install Windows first, and then Linux with it's bootloader so that it recognizes both Windows and Linux at boot.



Finally, as you requested, here are some versions (distributions, like I said, or shorter distros):

1. Ubuntu - it is great, user friendly. If you want full customization you should try older versions of Ubuntu, like 10.10 or 11.04. http://ubuntu.com/



2. Linux Mint 12 - the distro I'm using now. It's as great as Ubuntu, if not greater. It's interface is very very nice, and I love it. http://linuxmint.com/



Have a nice day, and good luck on learning the ropes to this great system, Linux!

I hope I helped!