I don’t deny it, I was a Windows user before, and of course, how couldn’t I be one? Here, when you bought a new computer, they sold it with a pirate copy of Windows 98 Plus SE. It was by the middle of 2000 when a friend gave me a copy of Knoppix 1.4. I was so excited with that. I went from frustration to love in that copy, each time I screwed something I learned something new and a whole new universe of possibilities was opened before me.
And yes, since then I started to use Linux. I used before distros such as SuSe, Mandriva, Slackware until I met Debian (and its derivatives) and I remained there. Since 2 years ago I’ve been using Ubuntu, the official image that comes with Gnome, and that’s just because I don’t like Unity.
Well, but why Linux? The code is free (as in freedom), and it allows me to do whatever I want. There is a huge community that leads to share the knowledge, without expending too much money (developers need money too) on learning something that belongs to the public domain; you can download a legal copy, redistribute it, copy it (nonprofit) and it doesn’t cost. I’m not saying with this that I don’t support the project, because I do, but actually every post or comment I do about Linux is actually a way of contributing to it.
Some days ago, I was tempted to change to Mac… same Unix base, everybody at the office have one, pretty hardware, and damn! The Retina display… simply amazing! I could foresee myself before one of those doing stuff. However I wasn’t totally convinced. I could notice that my teammates had to perform some tricks to get the machines working the way they intended to (in Linux you have to perform other tricks too, e.g. recompiling the Kernel every time I wanted to change the wallpaper 😒 just kidding); the other day a friend confessed me that he was doing a kind of jailbreak to some apps just to work with them, and I didn’t like the idea at all; re-learning the shortcuts on the keyboard, etc, etc, etc.
My boss told me: “Mesi, avoiding a change to Mac does mean you’re getting old”. I did understand his point: I was reluctant to the change. It was not like that, it’s not like trying new food though. I can’t afford buying a toy that does cost about $2,000 USD just to be unsatisfied later.
More than the fact of getting stale, I thought that in Linux I have the certainty and confidence that this kind of maintainer Decalogue, specifies, even, the convention of how a package should be named. That guarantees me that, whenever I want, I can write:
1$ sudo apt-get install something
Thus, my point is: use what does work for you! When you spend much time with certain technology, whatever it is, you know where is what you need, moreover, when you can not afford losing time. With this post I don’t pretend to telling everybody ‘hey just download an Ubuntu copy, install it and done!’ Time taught me that Linux ISN’T that easy. So for those who go over there telling people how wonderful and easy Linux is, please STOP! It’s easy to know where the things are and how they work when you have 10+ years using it, but pretending that someone gets Linux and the next morrow is working with spreadsheets in LibreOffice it’s excessive. One must tell just the truth, learning Linux is cool, but it demands time as everything else that you want master to, that’s all.
Well now, another topic that determined mi final choice was that Linux has the best hardware support I ever seen, more than Mac. My friends always say to me that under Mac everything works, and of course it HAS TO! If they have their own hardware and software it would be unheard if it doesn’t. Linux in the other hand, can be installed on multiple architectures; it gives support to projects such as the powered knee prosthesis, although it’s not the only one; and all the cool things you can say about the free software. Then, if I buy a scrappy computer, I’m sure it will run Linux.’