Photo Management

In short it provides you with the tools to do what you want, with all the options and power you are likely to need.

It gets even better;

With Debian (or Debian derived in the case of familiar) I can have a uniformity throughout the equipment I own and must manage.  All the utilities that I need to maintain these systems are there, are the same, are accessible in one place and are always available to me, wherever I am.

Linux provides decent feedback in its error logs so I can find and deal with any problems that might arise out of complex situations (rather than simply re-installing the OS…). Better still I can see and act on things before they become a problem. Windows seems to like hiding things, presumably not to confuse the user, but there are times where seeing what is actually happening is rather important.

Performance

Top

Preformance Monitor

But it’s more than just the security and feedback, its also the fact that Linux is consistently more responsive on all the hardware I run it on than Windows is (although Windows wouldn’t run at all on much of it – specifically the routers and servers).

Windows on a 500mhz dell is a nightmare, Linux is functional. Windows on a 1.5Ghz Thinkpad with 1.5G of RAM is good, Linux is much better. Boot times are slower (I’ll admit that, and I won’t claim that having that I have a mass of servers starting up at boot time, I don’t) but then I don’t boot all that often, in fact I realised yesterday that my laptop had an uptime of 27 days (ed: not any more, apparently it doesn’t like hot-chocolate ).

Package Management

This, as I hinted at earlier, is why Linux (and other OS’s that offer it) is king. No more updating Office, then the OS, then X application and Y application. No nagging reminder that Xcorps tiny clipboard application needs to update, reboot the system do something else, reboot again and wipe out your settings in the process.

Synaptic Package Management

No more reboots between almost all upgrades and installs either (kernel upgrades are about all that need it). Everything in one central place and updates can be automated and larger upgrades carried out simply in one place (With the usual diligence in testing before taking the plunge of course.)

There is something really nice about logging in, deciding you need to edit some music for the first time, installing a tool to do it (or upgrading one that is already installed) and just getting on with it. 5 minutes from no audio editing application to a fully working one, no logging out, no rebooting. Wonderful.

Scratchin’ Itches

This is another key attribute that I see as a massive benefit, of course not

Quick edits in kate.

everyone will feel the same way, but it’s nice that it is possible. If I need to do something complex or unique I can. Whether I write myself something quickly to deal with something or adapt something that exists already, or even just fix an annoyance in an application I am using (I’m looking at you kontact…) I can.

In fact I have more scripts lying around than I know what to do with, as well as several hundred C/C++ source files and random binaries (usually called works.bin…) which I have no idea what they do anymore… each one representing a time when I needed to do something quickly and I could.

In fact one of the things that is getting annoying now that Linux is getting more popular and releasing fixes upgrades and patches faster and faster, is that often a fix I will write myself will have been dealt with (in a far nicer fashion) with the next point release, Debian unstable that seems to be every other day…

So that’s why…

Project Looking Glass

I have tried OpenSolaris (and I thought Project LookingGlass was interesting…), FreeBSD etc…  and I like them (well except GNU/Hurd, but that may have been my own fault),  I settled for Linux, or specifically Debian partly because of the huge number of packages available the great stability it provides and the sheer fact that it is better than all the rest for me to do what I need.

If Linux disappeared tomorrow, or had never existed, I would probably be using one of the alternatives I just listed, I would put these all in roughly the same category and they have many of the same advantages as Linux and none of disadvantages of Windows.

So I use Linux because for me (and frankly it is probably the same for most people) it is better. Not because it is free (open source would be enough, I’d pay if I had to) not because it is geeky, or because I have some bizarre requirement that no one else has. It is quite simply better.

What about Windows

Blue Screen Of Death

So what about Windows? Honestly, unless it is entrenched (so you are a business with 200,000 existing windows boxes and they are doing their job properly), I see no reason to use Windows. Games are better on consoles anyway, (although that is an opinion, maybe you need Windows for games, but then I’d use Linux for everything else…). It’s quite simple, windows is, less capable, expensive, resource heavy, susceptible to viral nastiness, failure prone, lack’s quite a few bits of decent software I have come to rely on (and has no real alternatives) and is prone to degrade over time.

So frankly you can keep your windows…

Lastly, if anyone is confused as to how I managed to make it through a whole article without talking in depth about free-software, any specific desktop environment or whether I prefer emacs or vi.  I’m sorry.  I will get on to these and other rarely discussed topics as soon as I can (I figured 2000 words was enough…)

Image attribution:

Jonathan Zander – WRT54 Router.