Getting my feet wet.
You are probably not the least bit interested in yet another “I switched to Linux” article. Quite frankly, I can’t say that I blame you. I am however vainly interested in writing one, so tough tittie for you! Having said that, I didn’t actually switch. You couldn’t pay me enough to do that! Why then, writing? I thought it was time to see for myself about some claims that the growing community of Linux users keeps making on the Interwebz. Could they possibly be right? We’ll see!
When I first started working with Unix/Linux, X-Windows (that’s the generic name for the abundance of Windows style user interfaces for the abundance of Unix/Linux operating system flavors) was notoriously hard to get working right, or even install. I tried a few times, gave up and happily went back to good ole Microsoft Windows 3.1. I used Unix machines, but only when I absolutely had to! My co-workers all tried to get me to join the dark side, but I resisted. Probably a good thing! I am very happily working as the CTO (Chief Tech. Officer) for a small but steadily growing company while they (when I last checked anyway) were either, still fielding technical support calls or, spending their time in orange jumpsuits (no, I am NOT kidding).
To be fair to them, I have to admit that in those days (we are talking late 80’s, early 90’s here) Unix machines could do stuff that my stupid DOS 5/Windows 3.1 putter could only dream of one day doing. However, I didn’t really have a need to do any of those things they were talking about. And when I did try, I just had to write them off as way too hard to accomplish. While it is cool that you can run a web server off a 386SX (remember those?) with only 2 megs of RAM (try that on a Windows box…. NOT!) the truth is, or at least was, that the experience leaves a lot to be desired!
Fast forward to right about now. The Microsoft monkeys have all but caught up to the army of hackers that collectively code up the Linux world. Our data center sports 50+ machines that quite happily buzz with some version of Windows (the Microsoft variety). I can’t see that there is anything that can be done on a Linux machine that I could not also accomplish on a Microsoft box. Why then switch?
The answer is economics. Linux is free, Windows is NOT. Easy, right? You do the math…. 50 times the license fee for a Microsoft Windows install versus 50 times, well… NOTHING! If only it was that simple. If you ever worked with Oracle or Postgres (or even mySQL) databases, you will have to admit that you were wishing it was MS SQL Server all the while. But these darkside fanboys keep claiming that they can do more on less hardware. I hate getting out of my comfort-zone, but as a responsible geek, I have to investigate. If I can minimize cost of hardware and software, will that money pay for retraining my staff?
So I set out to do some snooping around. I am however, a notorious hoarder. As a result I do not own one single machine that I can stand to simply wipe clean and start over. Call me pack-rat, that’s me. So in order to install Linux I had to find a multi-boot solution, a virtual machine or…
Wubi! Someone really clever came up with the concept of being able to install Ubuntu Linux WITHOUT having to toss Windows or even reformat/repartition your hard drive. YAY!! Well that is where the fun ended. I downloaded the installer, it downloaded Ubuntu Linux, I rebooted… Nothing! Thanks to Wubi I could still reboot and get back to XP… After a day of reading I found out that Wubi can only do it’s work on a fairly unfragmented disk. Fair enough, I ran defrag…. NADA! Still no dice. A day later I find out that the standard MS-Windows defragger isn’t good enough for Wubi. I had to run JKDefrag! This is exactly my problem with the Linux community. The “yes it can be done but…” attitude. If you stuff is so much better, than how come I have to be pointed to the most obscure Windows tools to make it work? Oh yeah I forgot, Microsoft can’t be trusted to do anything right. You ALWAYS need a third party tool! So after 4 hours of defrag on a 40 Gb disk of which XP told me didn’t need any attention (I certainly didn’t notice any performance issues) I was on my way to installing Ubuntu. W00t!
After all my experiences in days long gone with trying to install some semblance of X-Windows on Unix/Linux machines I was happily surprised to see that my chosen flavor of Linux booted straight into an oddly familiar (if not somehwat clunky) version of a graphical user interface. Welcome to Xubuntu/Kcfe. My old laptop was back in Business. Ubuntu even, seemlessly, recognized my antiquated PCMCIA Wifi card, and within minutes I was online posting on twitter! I felt rather accomplished, although credit should not go to me, but instead the people that made all this so easy. Given the fact that this is all free stuff and all coded up by volunteers (mostly anyway) not a small feat.
Unfortunately, any flavor of Linux is still an operating system written by geeks for geeks. As such it is far more complicated to use than it has to be. Seeing how I didn’t uninstall Windows (thanks Wubi) why does Ubuntu not recognize the other 30 Gbytes that make up the disk it is installed on? Why does it not see the other (MS) machines on my network? Why do I need a “package manager” to install a simple Twitter client?
I wasn’t looking for an end-user experience though. What I need to know is whether the performance claims really are true. I am a techie, I can live with dorky stuff if the performance outweighs the user experience. Lo and behold, so far it does… I have software that I could not even run on this ole machine in a Microsoft environment, and it purrs away just ducky on the Linux side in one fourth of the space that MS Windows owns on this machine. And we are talking heavily outdated hardware… This machine actually uses duct tape as a feature! I have been running side by side comparisons and my old laptop converted to Linux out-performs my brand spanking new Windows machine EVERY TIME!
So will I switch? NO!! While Linux performance is stellar, the added complications of performing every day tasks makes me think twice. Sure it is nice that you can run complicated stuff on a machine that in the Microsoft world would be relegated to becoming a pocket-calculator, but… At the same time I can buy a new machine that is up to par with what Microsoft wants me to use for next to nothing. I can go to Wal-mart and buy a PC that runs Vista when I first turn it on. If the Linux fanboys want to corner the market They have got some catching up to do… While I will happily use an over-complicated OS to gain speed, Jane Doe, who just wants to check her email and play solitaire is not gonna put up with the nonsense that Linux will put her through. You can say a thousand times that Linux will play your DVD once you load the proper driver, my Microsoft machine does it right out of the box!