I feel like starting an argument here, cos I have no doubt that is what will result from this post. Time and time again, I hear the rantings of zealots who keep claiming Linux is so much better than Windows. Now, I have only played around with Linux a couple of times and here are my observations:-

1. Linux is slower on the same hardware as Windows. I compared using Windows 2000 on the same machine, and the responsiveness and speeds were worlds apart.
2. Playing games that were included in a distrobution twice caused the whole system to lock up in Redhat. This to me does not indicate stability on Linux's part.
3. Windows has a far superior range of applications, whether or not they are free. Yes, you may have Staroffice and Gimp, but Windows has MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. OK, they may not be free, but you almost certainly get what you pay for - much better products. Don't even get me started about games.
4. On the face of it the Linux "Window managers" are pretty, but I have found them to be cumbersome to use. Once I tired of the pretty face, I would probably just get sick. Anyway, with a little effort, Windows can look quite nice too, but then I would pose the question who actually wants to sit there and stare at the icons anyway?
5. I know a couple of Linux zealots, and they both have Windows on their systems also. Now if Linux was so damn good, why do they still need Windows on their systems? Probably because its not all its cracked up to be. In fact one bloke, spends so much time preaching how great it is, and 10 minutes later telling you how pissed off he is because it f***ed up again, and how he had to reinstall it.

I absolutley guarantee that if I was to set about the same task as a colleague, me using Windows and him using his beloved Mandrake, I would run rings around him, he would still be struggling on long after I had disappeared to the pub to get pissed.

All of these people have one thing in common, that is, a universal dislike of Microsoft. Grow up. They are a company, a business, and it is their job to be succesful, and yet as a race, us humans are almost always jealous of anything or anyone succesful and that is certainly the case here. If Linux (or MacOS for that matter) includes certain new features, then they are innovative. If Microsoft try and do the same, they are either copying, or being anti-competitive. The very fact that Microsoft is succesful is because they are masters of innovation, capitalising on areas that others have missed out on - that is making top quality software that is easy to use. That is why they are where they are.

I can see the comments now - I will either be labelled a Microsoft zealot or people will say I work for them. Well I dont, and I am not a zealot. I couldnt care less what I use, as long as it gets the job done. I dont want to be faffing around struggling with something just because some zealot with too much time on their hands says I should. I feel it is the epitome of arrogance from such people that they should choose something because it is more complicated and it gives them a feeling of power knowing something that someone else doesnt.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, I just dont get it. Just had to get that off my chest

No, i dont think yer a MS zealot.

1. Well, the responses you're gonna get are going to be pointing out that you are comparing the default install of a bloated distro and GUI of Linux to Windows.

2. XFree isnt remarkably stable, but it isnt linux. Its an addon to linux. ALl you would have had to do if you were unable to Ctrl-Shift-F1 to the console was to login to your box from another computer and restart X. In most cases, its pretty hard for a game to take down the linux kernel itself. Xfree isnt the most spectacular X Window system out there. I think there is a a $80 option thats many times more stable. Perhaps the linux gurus can help me out with that one.

Its also worth pointing out that if you hard lock the GUI in win2k, i dont think theres anyway to avoid a reboot.

3. I'm not sure, but isnt Photoshop available for UNIX/Linux?

4. In that case you can ditch KDE and run Windowmaker or Blackbox. Both are much faster and more efficient than KDE, although they dont look as nice.

5. There are a lot or poseurs out there like you mentioned who like to jump on the open source bandwagon simply because "it roolz and winblows sucks!", but there are also a lot of intelligent people on the linux wagon as well. The reason to keep windows around is the same reason why win2k/98 or win2k/ME dual boots are common. For that rare app that you absolutely need to use that doesnt work in linux(win2k), you can run in windows(win98/ME).

[QUOTE]3. I'm not sure, but isnt Photoshop available for UNIX/Linux? [QUOTE]

No, it's not. The Gimp, a free Photoshop clone is available, but it certainly isn't Photoshop.

Anyway, I'm sure that this topic will degrade into yet another "M$ Windoze sux, Linux roolze!" or "Lin-sux, Windows rox!" thread. They always do...

If i would have wasted my time actually reading your post, i would have come to the same conclusion. It all depends on your NEEDS>.... Windows users need compatability. Linux(unix) users write their OWN drivers. blah blah.... I could go on and on, but to make it short, to run Linux or any type of unix, you need intelligence, and that my friend, you lack, as pointed out by the stupidity of your post. You like windows? great! you don't like linux? wooohoo! who cares? use what you want, pay however much your huge wallet wants to M$, and go on with your life.

i just installed mandrake, and yeah i noticed its slow response compared to win2k
How can i tweak it?

1. It's slow-responding because all linux GUI's I know of use X windows. X windows is a GUI server doohickey, really meant for networking. It's extremely flexible, but as you can see, it sucks(X, that is, not linux).

2. Linux is stable, if you're running stable code. Games involve dozens upon dozens of pieces of highly unstable code. Anything that deals with X is instantly less stable, and 3d games involve all kinds of clever hacks of questionable stability in the best of times.

3. Yeah, well, I hate staroffice too. GIMP is almost as good as photoshop. Surprisingly good. Certainly good enough for serious artists. Far better than any other Photoshop competitor(like there are any )

Well, that's enough of that. What it comes down to is that Linux makes a lousy desktop OS. It doesn't do anything at all that I need it to. It's for cheap-ass servers, and only cheap servers, since it doesn't scale well (with 2 processors, you lose tons of efficiency, lets not talk about four. In contrast, most flavors of Unix can scale into the 64-processor range...)

As for our hatred for microsoft, well, that's not jealousy. Microsoft is STRANGLING corporate America. The republican party calls itself pro-business, but telecom de-regulation and a quiet order to the DoJ makes it clear that pro-business doesn't mean "good for business" so much as "good for campaign donors". Prices on Microsoft products, vindictive policies, and their ever-growing set of monopolies hurt the user, sure, but the real pain is in IT/data processing/computing services departments across the nation. It's not like their products do the job well; they're dreadfully unstable and riddled with security holes. Every version is more expensive, requires better hardware, and is less effective.

One day, we'll pay hundreds of dollars per client every day, upgrade every weekend, and never actually get the machines to boot.

I am new to this but if you are right and Linux sucks, then why are huge companies like IBM pouring tons of money into it and constantly singing its praises. I'm sorry you don't like it, but you must face the facts, Linux is the fastest growing os in the history of the world!

Oh, and I run RH 7.1!

Just my .02

First off let me start off by saying that Linux is not made to play games, and it is not made to do high end graphics work. Linux is a "user friendly" permutation of Unix, the networking language. If you expect it to be like, and perform as Windows then you are mistaken. It is not made for the same purposes. Hardware is slower on it because hardward drivers are designed to run off of the windows kernal. Either linux emulates these drivers, which slows them down, or the drivers team throws together some drivers which are far worse than their windows counterparts. Some hardware manufacturers does in fact write good drivers for hardware however not many. As far as stability goes.. Linux is far better than Windows. Now I myself use win2k so I know a thing or two about stabilty. I only restart when I install something and have to. If you use Linux the right way, by using the software written for it, then it is more stable than you could imagine. The kernal is very error proof. While we're on the subject of software... Sun Microsystems produces an application called Star Office. I have found it to provide all the functionability of ms office, and its free. Now as far as games go, I will agree that games..those that do run on linux, do not perform as well. But like I said linux is not made for gaming. I am in the process of building another computer. Once I do I will use it as my main machine, and use my current machine a PIII@669 to run linux, and it will run my dsl modem and host some ftp for me. That is what it is meant to be used for.

I forgot to add. Some of you mentioned how terrible Star Office is. Well yes it did use to be pretty bad, but they released a new version less than a week ago. It is pretty impressive indeed.

Coming out and saying that Linux sucks and has no uses shows how narrow focused you are. You arguements are at best against linux as a desktop os. I agree that Linux is not the best desktop solution for most users. I personally do use Linux as my desktop os for a number of reasons.

1. I like the ability to customize that I have with linux.

2. I am a student and often times I have to use machines in labs on campus and such and linux allows me to run ssh servers and ftp servers so that I can get files from my computer when I am away, without drastically reducing system performance.

3. I do a TON of C coding, all which must be run, compiled and tested on a unix machine. Using linux allows me to test it on my own machine, though I always test it on the Solaris grading machine before turning it in as well.

4. I don't have time to play tons of games, so that is irrelivent to my desktop needs.

However, there are many other reasons to use linux then just the desktop. The major segments I see it in are imbedded and small server.

Linux is very portable (though it isn't the only portable OS). It runs well on PPC's of many shapes and sizes (from 50Mhz. PPC860's to G4's), it runs on dragonballs, x86's, and many more. With very little memory and processing power you can create small devices that are capable of doing a number of things. The company I co-op for happens to be very good at these types of solutions and our customers are always very happy with the finished products.

As far as servers go, I know many people that have small servers running linux, including a server on campus that I run. If you want to talk about stability, I haven't needed to reboot the server since sometime in early 2000 when I replaced a harddrive. I have upgraded things like apache but that only required restarting that one service. It will probably see its first reboot this year when I go to the 2.4.x kernel series and add a 3ware IDE-RAID card sometime soon. To give an example of what it is capable of, the machine is a P5, 166Mhz with 32MB of RAM and easily handles 3 mailing lists, 65 e-mail addresses, two PHP websites (one uses SSL), and a Samba PDC for about 35 computers. The web sites get very few hits but the machine does get a decent amount of mail traffic, as most of us are EE/CompE or CS students.

While Windows 2000 can do all of these server functions it will not even run on a machine with such lower power and memory. I also have not gotten a single virus or been hacked once since I took over admin and to my knowledge this server has never had that happen since its creation in 1998 (it has been linux since then). The same cannot be said for the Windows servers around campus as many were knocked out during recent virus attacks from Code Red or Nimda.

If the question is "Is Linux Better then Windows?" then you are asking the wrong question. It all depends on the circumstances. There are definitly cases where Windows is a better choice then linux, and conversly linux is better then windows. However, you can't forget there are also other great OS's out there like BSD and MacOSX that are great at many things as well.

I return to my original post with interest and feel I must reply to some of these posts:

Quote (Superbob): "Anyway, I'm sure that this topic will degrade into yet another "M$ Windoze sux, Linux roolze!" or "Lin-sux, Windows rox!" thread. They always do... "

I hope not. I realised at the start that this was bound to provoke reaction, but my main intention was, because I genuinely don't know that much about Linux, was to find out if people on this board really did rate it above Windows, and why.

Quote (bIOHZRd): "I could go on and on, but to make it short, to run Linux or any type of unix, you need intelligence, and that my friend, you lack, as pointed out by the stupidity of your post. You like windows? great! you don't like linux? wooohoo! who cares? use what you want, pay however much your huge wallet wants to M$, and go on with your life"

You obviously don't know me that well, if you think I lack intelligence or have a huge wallet. I repeat, I was after some constructive debate as to what the advantages of Linux are, because all I ever hear is that Linux is great and M$ sucks (or vice versa). Now I am very experienced with Windows but not so much with Linux which is why I was asking why people thought it was better, instead of the usual crap I hear. And who said anything about buying M$ software

Quote (Hateslife): "Well, that's enough of that. What it comes down to is that Linux makes a lousy desktop OS. It doesn't do anything at all that I need it to. It's for cheap-ass servers, and only cheap servers, since it doesn't scale well (with 2 processors, you lose tons of efficiency, lets not talk about four. In contrast, most flavors of Unix can scale into the 64-processor range...)"

This confirms what I have thought all along that in fact Linux is not particularly good as a desktop OS. However I didn't mention servers, and in this area, I am not denying their ability. We run a Linux server at work, and also a Windows NT server. However, the Linux/Unix system is far harder to administer than the NT server. However, the NT systems stability has yet to be proven seeing as it is less than 2 months old.

Quote (Hateslife): "As for our hatred for microsoft, well, that's not jealousy. Microsoft is STRANGLING corporate America. The republican party calls itself pro-business, but telecom de-regulation and a quiet order to the DoJ makes it clear that pro-business doesn't mean "good for business" so much as "good for campaign donors". Prices on Microsoft products, vindictive policies, and their ever-growing set of monopolies hurt the user, sure, but the real pain is in IT/data processing/computing services departments across the nation. It's not like their products do the job well; they're dreadfully unstable and riddled with security holes. Every version is more expensive, requires better hardware, and is less effective."

I dont see where this "monopoly" hurts the user. After all, all of you Linux users have a choice, and indeed, have taken advantage of the choice in the form of Linux (or other operating systems). It does not hurt me, at the end, I said I wasn't bothered what system I used if it gets the job done. I cannot however, speak for their vindictive policies, as indeed they have pulled off some dirty tricks. That I cannot deny. I rebuke the statement about them being unstable though, I have found NT based operating systems, most commonly used in the corporations to be very stable indeed. The 9x based range is very poor though I must admit. Yes, they do have quite a few security holes, but then Microsoft offer fixes also. If you live on the bleeding edge the you are vulnerable. Anyway, all of the problems they have keep people like me in a job I cannot deny the increasingly high system requirements though, but isnt that the case with all new operating systems?

Quote (drpepperisgood): "I am new to this but if you are right and Linux sucks, then why are huge companies like IBM pouring tons of money into it and constantly singing its praises. I'm sorry you don't like it, but you must face the facts, Linux is the fastest growing os in the history of the world!
Oh, and I run RH 7.1!"

I don't think that is true actually. Windows would not be where it is today if it wasn't the fastest growing, most succesful OS in history. I remember a colleague telling me 2 years ago that we would all be using Linux in some form in 2 years. That is still not the case.

Quote (jtshaw): "Coming out and saying that Linux sucks and has no uses shows how narrow focused you are. You arguements are at best against linux as a desktop os. I agree that Linux is not the best desktop solution for most users. I personally do use Linux as my desktop os for a number of reasons."

I do not ever remember using the statement "Linux sucks". I merely pointed out my observations based on a relatively short experience with it. I am not narrow minded either, in fact the point of the thread was for me to find out why people preffered it, which you get round to saying later in your post. Now I can claim to know a little more about why people use it. If I was narrow minded, I would not have accepted other peoples version, but buy veering towards a more aggressive tone I was sure to provoke a better response from people (I thought). I'm not sure about MacOSX though. A lot of MacOSX "fans" are even more zealous than most. A review @ www.arstechnica.com says its not so good after all, with serious performance and stability issues, as well as a lack of software. However, I do not wish to open up another can of worms.

However, I am grateful for the responses received.

To give you a little perspective on why some believe a monopoly hurts users...

Microsoft has felt the need to improve there software because of competition. They felt if they didn't they would lose marketshare and that would hurt them as a company. That is why Windows seams to always get a new user interface around the time MacOS does. If they monopolize the industry they will end up killing there competition and it will no longer mean they have to make large improvements.

The whole subscription way of doing things they are trying to envoke will force companies (and ultimatly maybe even home users) to upgrade on a strict schedule. The problem is if there is no competition for Microsoft in the software business anymore the quality of the upgrades will get lower and lower, until you are paying for software that really doesn't buy you much at all.

I feel you can make the broad statement that a lack of competition in the future will cause a lack of innovation as well. Why re-invent when you can keep selling the same thing over and over with little changes?

I do realize that a software monopoly does one possitive thing, it means all software would run on pretty much all machines. However, using Open Standards would accomplish this without the monopolies other problems.

OK, so you got the response you were looking for. You still know nothing about linux. And you're not about to try and learn. I'd like to see you make a detailed response to the points you tried to make in your first post, instead of picking everyone else's post apart, but you've wasted five minutes of my time, and that's all you're getting.

jtshaw: I understand, appreciate, and agree with what you say about that, but IMO I dont believe Microsoft will ever have a total monopoly on the market, as there are enough people out there who would make sure of that. Also, their main competitor is an OS not written by any company, but by users for users - Linux.

My original point/question was what people thought was better about it. I admit its not for me, but I just tire of hearing claims without foundation and wished to hear another side, which I have heard. Although its not for me, Linux is obviously a good thing - while it exists, Microsoft will not be allowed to go too far. If and when they do, people will abandon them and they will go down like a sack of shit.

Oh yeah, to that last user, who's name I cant remember, I would go in to more detail, but I doubt anyone can be bothered considering the point has already been made. Thats all of my time you are getting off me mate!

quote:Originally posted by Superbob:
"Lin-sux, Windows rox!"

that's right.

I just have one thing to say, which is that linux is a lot better for everything but gaming You want games, you run windows, you want stability for word processing, servers, shit like that you go with linux

and ye... linux is a lot more fun to play around with.

quote:Originally posted by Hateslife:
3. Yeah, well, I hate staroffice too. GIMP is almost as good as photoshop. Surprisingly good. Certainly good enough for serious artists. Far better than any other Photoshop competitor(like there are any )

Actually, I found Paint Shop Pro to be pretty good...

quote:Originally posted by badass_anthony:

i just installed mandrake, and yeah i noticed its slow response compared to win2k
How can i tweak it?

Make sure the debugging is desabled "no exceptions" option disabled when your install KDE - if not KDE will run at half speed checking the libraries for errors (don't ask me how to check your current KDE configure, nor how to disable debugging - I don't know, but heard this is a problem with many distros (the defualt install is slow due to enabling error correction)) - go to a newsgroups and ask for help on this one.

Also trim your bloated kernal (which the defualt install tnd toward). Pear-off modules/drivers that you don't need, and recompile the kernal to support only what you have!

Those steps will speed up Linux to win-95 speeds, with similar hardware requirments.

Liunx slower/bloater than win-2000 is criminal!!!!!!!!

quote:Originally posted by jester22c:
and it is not made to do high end graphics work

wrong - lightwave, alias-maya, houdini, blender. all ported to linux. SGI's now are ported to linux, and Irix is fastly dieing.

things change. games? no, highend graphics? you bet your butt ;-)

forgot Softimage.

ya - I like PaintShopPro too, it's better than Photobloat (since its not bloat!). I like PPP and GIMP - never like Photobloat - the early versions had no undo and even version 2 for windows was superbloat. That app is as bad as M$'s bloat and StarOffice bloat.

I have issues - bloatware is one of them - even with a workstation class chip, I find bloat offensive and gluttonous and obscene ;-( Americana at its worst Wal-Mart way ;-(

lean - lean - lean is the only way to go ;-)

i dont think you have used the word bloat so many times in one post, i think it may be a forum record

Just for those who rule out graphics and rendering on Linux....

Large portions of todays movies are rendered in Linux, Shrek being an example. Industrial Light and Magic has built linux rendering farms. I have seen pictures of there SGI Renderfarms vs. the Linux farms that can outperform them. The linux farm consisted of maybe two racks full of 1U rackmount computers vs an entire room full of SGI machines. Apparently linux is quite capable at being used for rendering graphics.

As far as games go, SDL is making good progress under linux (the API that allows Loki to do lots of what they do) and there are supposively even going to be some PS2 games in the future that use linux and SDL.

quote:Originally posted by jester22c:
it is not made to do high end graphics work.

Uh... your quite mistaken here bud.. any more mistaken assumptions you wanna give us?

From Computer Graphics World: http://cgw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Articles& Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=118664

quote:Shrek was the first major motion picture created primarily using Linux. It won't be the last. Linux is rapidly becoming the professional animator's operating system (OS) of choice, not just at DreamWorks SKG, which produced Shrek, but at top production studios in Hollywood, the Bay Area, and London.

quote:Film animators are now using Linux versions of Alias|Wavefront's Maya, No thing Real's Shake, Side Effects' Houdini, and Pixar's RenderMan-the leading commercial applications for animation, compositing, special effects, and rendering. Internally, the studios have ported millions of lines of proprietary code to Linux and are writing more.

quote: Studios are at various stages of adopting Linux. DreamWorks SKG is the furthest along in deploying Linux systems for animation production. It has more than 200 Linux desktop systems in use by animators and 400 Linux servers. PDI/DreamWorks in Palo Alto uses mostly its own proprietary applications, and in producing Shrek on Linux systems, didn't have to wait for the popular commercial tools becoming available now. DreamWorks studio in Glendale, which produced The Road to El Dorado and Prince of Egypt, is using Linux for its current production of Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, due for release in the summer of 2002. DreamWorks has followed three paths to Linux: porting, new development, and encouraging third-party vendors to port popular commercial applications such as Maya and Shake. DreamWorks maintains about three million lines of code itself-almost all of it now ported to Linux.

Pixar Animation Studios. Vice president of research and development Darwyn Peachey says, "This is the platform that will replace SGI in the CG industry. There's been a lot of progress made since last year. Nobody is wondering 'if' anymore."

quote:Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is still porting its code and will begin using Linux on its next movie after Star Wars, Episode II (release date May 2002).

quote:It isn't just American studios making the transition to Linux. Double Negative, a division of Universal based in London, has film credits that include Bridget Jones's Diary, The Nutty Professor II, Pitch Black, and Mission Impossible II. Last year Double Negative was called on to create a squadron of Nazi Stuka dive bombers for two motion pictures in simultaneous production: Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Enemy at the Gates.

"There are no flying Stukas. The planes were made 50 years ago, and you can't get parts."

The Stukas were computer generated by animators using Maya for Linux. For compositing, adding effects such as practical explosions and plates, they used Shake running on Linux.

quote:Smaller post-production companies are also moving to Linux. Located in Studio City, California, Hammerhead Productions' credits include Showgirls, Dr. Doolittle II, The Fast and the Furious, X-Men, and Deep Blue Sea.

quote: Silicon Grail in Hollywood is known for its Chalice compositing tool used on movies such as Men in Black, Prince of Egypt, and Deep Blue Sea. Rayz, its latest compositing tool, was designed for Linux from its inception.

quote:Elsewhere, RPS Data Imaging, a startup in London, is embarking on a high-resolution video-to-film transfer for an [v]entire feature film using its Linux-based software.[/b]

quote:Linux is bringing a new level of openness and cooperation to an industry known for its secrecy. Studios are sharing some code back as open source. Being able to support yourself and leverage the work of others is what Linux is all about and it is what is enabling it to take the film industry by storm.

I said what I said about linux not being used for graphics because out of the many people that I know that do graphics (professionaly) non of them use linux. I know a few people who do graphics for companies and a guy who does 3d animation (he has helped produce a few games) and none of them use linux. I just wasn't aware that some corporations are using it, thanks for the info. I wasn't making assumptions so you don't have to get smart with me.

quote:Originally posted by bIOHZRd:
If i would have wasted my time actually reading your post, i would have come to the same conclusion.

to run Linux or any type of unix, you need intelligence, and that my friend, you lack, as pointed out by the stupidity of your post.

Hilarious how you respond to a post that you "didn't read", then you go on to call the guy stupid.... maybe you should take a step back and take a look at who you are calling stupid....
Thraner

I don't really know anything about linux, just that it's an open source OS for the hardcore. It seems pretty interesting though, I play a lot of games so I don't think Linux is for me, but I am thinking about getting it and just screwing around with it, for the hell of it. I'm not into to hardcore programming, but I love tweaking and optimizing everything. What is the best version of Linux?

So, Linux is for people who are into hardcore, eh? No wonder so many porn sites use it as a web server!

quote:Originally posted by Idiot356:
I don't really know anything about linux, just that it's an open source OS for the hardcore. It seems pretty interesting though, I play a lot of games so I don't think Linux is for me, but I am thinking about getting it and just screwing around with it, for the hell of it. I'm not into to hardcore programming, but I love tweaking and optimizing everything. What is the best version of Linux?

4 months ago, i would I have agreed pbirkett. But I set up a system using Mandrake 8.0, hopefully soon to be 8.1.

I find it rock solid for running an http server and an ftp server. Its been running pretty much nonstop for the last 3 months now.

Yes, my win2k machine runs faster, but my win2k machine has a Ghz Tbird and 512megs of RAM, my linux pc has a 433 celery and 320 megs of RAM.

Linux is NOT a gaming OS. If you solely play games, they by all means, stick with win2k. Linux is a networking OS designed to host services, and in that regard it will spank win2k's arse all over the internet.

Windows has a mindboggling amount of free software, very true. 90% of it is junk. Its the same way with linux. There are tons of free software on the net and on the retail CDs. StarOffice is not the greatest office app either, its comparable to MS Office in terms of bloatware. There are better Office suites for linux. I am not a graphics person, so I have not played with The Gimp much at at all, but I have seen the images created with it and they rival anything I have see from Photoshop or Paint Shop. I do use Paint Shop Pro on my win2k machine.

Gnome is very bloated and ain't worth the time to install it, IMO. I use KDE on my mandrake machine mainly because it justs sits in the corner and chugs along. I should find the time to play with Windowmaker and the others.

Many linux users run a windows OS as well, there are some things that windows can do better than linux. Gaming for instance.

As for the MS being a business comments, you are entirely correct. Microsoft is a business, they need to make a profit, they need to sell their products.

I feel that linux is good for what it is. It is a middle of the road operating system. It is close enough to windows, to where power users can switch to linux without any training or certification. Once you switch to linux you learn the art of a real OS. Routing and NAT that works at the kernel level, an operating system that is stable, and the fact that it can be nativly ran on the command line (for those ssh admins out there ;-) ). This is what it is all about. (at least for servers.) Once you use linux for a while you realize that Unix (FreeBSD) is even better. But like the move from windows to linux, you realize that BSD is moer stable, but harder to use. (any relation?). This is where the real stuff happens. With FreeBSD there are even more parts, which is characteristic of a unix. I read an article in Wired a few weeks ago, it said that Linux lost the desktop war. Linux users had to re-invent the wheel (as far as drivers and imitation software). Now that people are realizing that Linux is a good alternative to Win2k and NT in the server market, it has lost a good 2 years of development in that area. As someone mention earlier in the post, it cannot scale past 4 cpu's, and it also has shotty raid support etc.

What I am trying to say is, if you want to learn how admin a network that is based on Unix, start with linux. Setup a firewall/router for yourself. If you like that then setup a web server, then a mail server. (using dyndns.org) Once you do that, reformat and do it all with FreeBSD, then when you are done with that, do it all on Solaris, then when you turn 18, or 19, you will have quite a bit of experience under your belt, and you can impress all of the comp sci students, and get a job while you are going to college.

Unix is for people that want to learn... and dare to question...
and dare to recompile....
later,
OC-Beta (over clocking beta tester)