Open Sauce, July 2007
It’s just something like three and a half years since this was written, but these things just keep staying as important as ever. I’ll add a few more editorial comments in-line here, but slowly AND surely open source is taking over the key systems we use: things like telephones and web browsers and web servers and all the software that makes the web/Internet run are all increasingly being designed with open source software at their cores.
Not long ago, while leading my lavish CPU columnist lifestyle (up at noon, surfing the ‘net for a few hours before getting ready to party, etc etc), I read “Things I can do in Linux that I can’t do on Windows” on Dan Martin’s blog, as well as Prakash Advani’s list of “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows”, even if he lists only 36 reasons so far.
[Actually, Prakash now has 80 items in his list, as of the beginning of October 2010, and Dan's piece is still as compelling and succinct today as it was when I first read it.]
I’ve written before about things you can’t do with Windows but can with Linux, but it’s been a while. And the fact that I haven’t done anything with Windows for the past seven years or so means that there’s a whole universe of things I can’t do with Windows because I can’t do anything with Windows.
If I were really lazy (as opposed to just regular-lazy) I’d rehash items from Prakash and Dan’s lists for this month’s column and go back to watching unreleased Ren and Stimpy episodes on my 102 inch plasma TV [I did not own any such a thing as that; this sentence was pure sarcasm]. But because I’m truly conscientious I’ll add value for loyal CPU readers with my own top four list of what Linux gives me: resilience, maintainability, usability, and no/low-cost solutions.
Dan and Prakash go into the specifics, and give some good examples of applications that you can’t get on Windows. For example, Dan, a Web developer, likes having the ability to run different versions of Internet Explorer simultaneously using the IEs4Linux project. But for me, it all boils down to these four things:
Resilience: I include here what used to be meant by the now-meaningless marketing-speak “robustness”, as well as reliability and even security. Most software works fine running on systems with lots of resources and perfectly formed data. But in the real world I need an OS that gracefully handles too many processes running on a system with an old CPU and insufficient RAM. Remote system-pwning exploits of Linux are rare, email-borne viruses unheard of, and apps can fail without requiring a reboot.
Manageability: Can I easily back out software upgrades? Automate patch installation? Change configuration without rebooting? Administer the system free of activation codes? Backup personal configurations and data? I get all that with Linux. Can I run a supported version of Linux on otherwise obsolete hardware? Can Linux run on modern computer platforms from palmtop to mainframe? Yup. Can I examine and modify the source code? Yes. Do I worry about vendor lock-in, or getting stuck with proprietary products orphaned by bankruptcy or other corporate hi-jinks? Not at all.
Usability: I needn’t relearn everything every time some vendor decides it’s time to “upgrade” the UI. Configurability falls under this heading, too; I can configure the way almost everything works with KDE, GNOME or one of dozens of other desktop managers. Did I mention portability? Not just across platforms, but across time and space. I can carry system settings/desktop configuration/key data on a USB thumb drive and boot into my desktop from any PC. And I don’t need to re-learn (or re-configure) all my applications and utilities when I update system software, nor do I need to update scripts or applications every time I upgrade my OS.
No/low-cost: Microsoft’s deal last year with Novell signaled Linux is a legitimate OS, so why use the high-priced spread? You don’t really pay much extra for Windows when they buy a new PC (the already low-cost license is subsidized by shovelware publishers who pay to be included in the standard OS pre-install). Microsoft’s real cash flow comes from corporate sales, same as for Linux vendors like Red Hat and Novell; key developers of Linux components get funded by companies like IBM that are increasingly coming to rely on it. Personally, most of the “cost” I’ve recovered has been in the form of reducing the amount of time I spend fiddling around with computers running Linux—most of the things I need/want to do are pretty easy (or at least uncomplicated) and pretty well-documented online.
Sure, applications exist that aren’t available (yet) on Linux (for example, tax prep); and yes, there are times when proprietary software works better than open source. But for me, the benefits of open source simply overpower any disadvantages I’ve yet encountered.