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Re: [TCLUG:1267] Why Linux?



On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Bob Tanner wrote:

> Personal opinions, experiences are also welcome.

There must be a *few* people at least who haven't heard me tell this
story. :)

At work (see URL in my signature), I have a Pentium 75 with a 4x ATAPI
CD-ROM and a 1GB IDE HDD, very slow. 32MB RAM. The only almost-good thing
about this computer is the PCI Diamond Stealth 64 video card, which has
4MB RAM. The monitor is 17" of pure crap.

This was actually the first machine I put Linux on -- Red Hat 4.2, about
this time last year. (!)

Not understanding PC hardware very well, it took me a while to configure
the Ethernet card's BIOS to work with Linux (it's PnP -- thanks Dave!),
but I was able to get the OS installed in about an hour on my first try.

As you all know, even a slower 486 runs great under Linux, and any Pentium
will give very acceptable performance. This was no exception.

What convinced me of Linux' greatness was when I put Windows 95 on it, and
later, NT 4.0 Workstation. Performance took a nosedive -- NT hits the disk
when I move the mouse (no joke). It took me three hours to install Windows
95 on it, it couldn't find the driver for the video card. (It never did
work quite right.) Bloated MS software ate my HDD up and took forever to
load.

In terms of raw speed, Linux is about four times faster than Windows NT
*on the exact same hardware*, in my workstation environment. I could have
GIMP, Netscape and Emacs all running at once, and barely notice the minor
swapping that went on. Under NT, I could run Netscape, Photoshop, *or*
Word 97 -- not all three -- and *still* hear the disk grinding, and have
to wait 30 seconds or more for the program to load.

This is not to mention all the nice goodies Linux gave me: X queries while
I'm at the ACM lab, telnet in from home, 9 virtual desktops for plenty of
breathing room, choice of ~10 window managers whose every last parameter I
could control, source code to every app... Needless to say, Windows offers
none of this.

But the most valuable thing about Linux, which won't be appearing in
NT Service Pack 4 (*if* it ever comes out), is the community of dedicated
and knowledgeable users and developers.

_____________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Reid Palmer : jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu : innerFire on IRC (EFNet)

Free Software Special Interest Group : acm.cs.umn.edu/~jaymz/sigfs/
Digital Media Center : www.umn.edu/dmc/