Linux

[sim]

why should one go to linux? a friend of mine told me about linux 4years ago tryed to convince me for awhile then stopped, now another friend of mine is trying to convince me to use it now. i installed it once and couldnt get my soundcard or my ethernet to work, this was about a year ago.

not really any good games for linux.
anything you got on linux is probally allready on windows
most people who need all the power of there computer probally allready runs linux.

everything is open source? so every single thing you install on linux, you can just edit to make it run different?

or is there some way to actually prevent people from altering your program.

[EeeekPenguins]

why should one go to linux? a friend of mine told me about linux 4years ago tryed to convince me for awhile then stopped, now another friend of mine is trying to convince me to use it now. i installed it once and couldnt get my soundcard or my ethernet to work, this was about a year ago.

not really any good games for linux.
anything you got on linux is probally allready on windows
most people who need all the power of there computer probally allready runs linux.

everything is open source? so every single thing you install on linux, you can just edit to make it run different?

or is there some way to actually prevent people from altering your program.

Linux is free which is the big deal. MS sells their OS for over $300 which is an outrageous price. Plus it lacks alot of basic utilities and programs (MS Office). Linux comes with alot of programs which have expensive MS counterparts. Linux also, as you said, is open source so anyone can edit any program in it and make it better or more convient to fit that persons needs. Linux is also good because anyone can write and distribute the rewritten programs for linux or make any modifications to the OS and distribute it legally. Gaming isnt that big of a deal to most that use it and if it is they usually dual boot windows just for gaming. Even though alot of software companies are coming out with linux versions of their games (Quake III). There are a million other reasons as well.

[jesse]

there's also a great deal of reasons not to use linux. If you:

- are a profession artist/graphic designer
- are a musician in need of professional quality recording and synthesis
- are an avid computer gamer
- are employed as a windows systems admin
- just an ordinary joe sixpack who only needs internet explorer and ms word.

you probably don't need or even want linux.

But if you're a:

- serious programmer
- sysadmin for a non-windows based network
- someone who's very interested in how computers work
- someone who's opposed to Microsoft for political reasons
- someone who prefers Unix to windows

Linux may be your cup of tea.

I'm not a fan of the zealotry of a lot of linux people and I like Mac OS X a lot more as far Unix OSs go, but if you really want to learn how computers work and pick up some knowledge of unix, linux isn't a bad place to start. Just don't expect it to be the perfect OS (since such a thing doesn't exist).

[sim]

...............

there's also a great deal of reasons not to use linux. If you:

- are a profession artist/graphic designer
- are a musician in need of professional quality recording and synthesis
- are an avid computer gamer
- are employed as a windows systems admin
- just an ordinary joe sixpack who only needs internet explorer and ms word.

you probably don't need or even want linux.

But if you're a:

- serious programmer
- sysadmin for a non-windows based network
- someone who's very interested in how computers work
- someone who's opposed to Microsoft for political reasons
- someone who prefers Unix to windows

Linux may be your cup of tea.

I'm not a fan of the zealotry of a lot of linux people and I like Mac OS X a lot more as far Unix OSs go, but if you really want to learn how computers work and pick up some knowledge of unix, linux isn't a bad place to start. Just don't expect it to be the perfect OS (since such a thing doesn't exist).

do programmers actually money programming for linux.

would graphics,gaming be a big thing if someone put the time into developing such a program, and wouldnt have to tweak the OS.

[skroo]

do programmers actually money programming for linux.

Very, bery few. See my next point.

would graphics,gaming be a big thing if someone put the time into developing such a program, and wouldnt have to tweak the OS.

Maybe. The real problem is that the Linux community largely tends to not buy commercial software for Linux, so software companies tend not to develop commercial packages for it.

To expand on what you've said, though: graphics and gaming aren't such a big deal as things stand now. However, if you're a software company and you've got a guaranteed large market for a Windows version of your software, but only a very small Linux market, why bother porting it? Chances are you won't even make back the development costs.

And I agree with jesse... If you don't need it, don't run it.

[darrenstamour]

I recall reading a while back that a fairly large 3d animation company used linux workstations, with a linux renderfarm *shudders* and proprietary 3d modeling software to create the animations for a movie. I would expect good money could be had if one created such types of software for companies.

I don't beleive this is the one, but this discusses a renderfarm running linux http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/4.2...Networx_R.html

I beleive most companies that have decided to switch to linux due to cost savings. I know I did. After reinstalling windows xp 4 times in 3 days, I finally switched fully over. What do you know, a free os that works. Of course some things required banging my head on the wall, but the gratification of getting things working the way you want them is cool. Of course, if you don't want to work to make it work (ha) it may not be for you. Though, the out of the box hardware support is getting much better for the newer distros, and instructions can be found on the web for almost anything.

jesse and skroo seem to have hit it on the head.

"... or is there some way to actually prevent people from altering your program."

By distributing binaries opposed to distributing the source code for an app. would keep most people from altering it. Of course, it could be reverse engineered and altered...