For my readers: The time has come to write the book that has gestated in the back of my mind for a year or more. As you know, I am no part of a Linux salesman. The whole point is to offer an alternative to Windows for those who might need it. More to the point, they might need it without all the fanboy hype. I don’t want to hear from the fanboys any more than you do.
So I’ve backed up my Win7 system in case I need to restore it later and I’m running Kubuntu 14.04 32-bit on my system. Nothing is bug-free and this is no exception. I’ll be offering advice on handling the gotchas. For now, here is the draft of the first chapter…
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01 — Why Linux versus Windows
If you like Windows well enough, there is no reason to change.
The most tiresome thing I experience in reading about Linux is the mindless enthusiasm of those utterly lacking in empathy and a sense of proportion. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. The itch to tinker and explore is essential to how Linux in particular, and Open Source software in general, came into existence. But that doesn’t justify ignoring very real human needs. For most of humanity, computers are merely machines that save us time and make possible blessings not available any other way.
This book is for folks who simply need to get work done on a computer and something about Windows just doesn’t quite cut it. At the same time, there is no need for shocking the user with dramatic changes, especially changes simply for the sake of change.
Here are some possible reasons you might have for switching from Windows to Linux:
1. Licensing — Unless you are willing to take the risk of using pirated software, playing by the rules and laws that favor corporate software makers can be very expensive. Linux is free and the licensing generally affects only those who modify the software itself. You might have to pay for packaging, and there are some companies making software for Linux that isn’t free, but virtually anything you need can be downloaded for free. You can make all the copies you like and use it on as many machines as you please.
2. Control — Linux is very much a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) system. While you may not understand all the stuff running in the background necessary for it to work, the information is freely available as to what it is and why it’s needed. There is no cult of secrecy based on high-paid training and expensive access to the obscure details of the system. You can have all that if you need it, but it’s not required. Indeed, the Linux user community at large is usually quite eager to help you understand. The main point is that there is no secret agreement between other parties forcing you to accept something not in your best interest just so they can make a profit at your expense. The Linux community as a whole is intensely anti-snooping.
3. Security — The Linux community is also intensely pro-security, so it is generally harder to crack. Not impervious, just far less likely to suffer from external threats. Criminal hackers tend to like using Linux themselves because of the built-in safety factors, and background noise of clandestine chatter between computer criminals indicates they aren’t eager to face the challenge. Perhaps it’s partly due to much smaller numbers against the difficulty, so that there isn’t that much profit from all the work of attacking Linux systems, but we are unlikely to ever know. Even if you and all your friends switch to Linux, it will probably ever remain a rather low proportion of personal computers connected to the Internet. (Servers are a different story.) At any rate, once you get used to how Linux stuff works, it’s okay to relax and not worry as much about random attacks to your system. Most of them will simply not work on Linux.
4. Bloat — You can easily find a user-friendly Linux OS that is up-to-date and runs just fine on older hardware. So your old XP machine that can’t really handle Win7 will run a current version of Linux just fine, and for quite a few years to come. This wasn’t always true in the history of Linux, but in the past decade or so, Windows has begun demanding a lot more power than Linux does for the same work.
The primary reason you won’t switch from Windows to Linux is lack of convenience. Never mind all the political and philosophical hullabaloo from Linux advocates, some hardware doesn’t work, or doesn’t work very well, under Linux. You can’t just pick up any old piece of hardware at the electronics store and expect it work as advertised if you run Linux. You have to be somewhat more discriminating. On the other hand, I’m not the only computer user who found some Linux drivers much better than the Windows version.
Some activities are very complicated compared to Windows, such as home networking and sharing printers. Those things can be done, but it takes more work. And let’s face it: Compatibility between Linux versions of software with the Windows version is hit-and-miss. For a writer, the best you can get for free under Linux still does not compare very well with even Word 2000. Grammar checking in Linux remains primitive and almost useless. (But you can easily make MS Office 2000 run on Linux, as well as other popular Windows stuff, as we shall see later.)
Don’t stumble into this blindly. There are problems with any choices you make. The next chapter examines the underlying reasons why this is so.
