10 years of Linux, and this blog!

Ten years ago I destroyed my last Windows installation (by accident) while installing a Linux distribution. I had been dual-booting Linux for a couple of years before that, and had been using Linux exclusively on my older laptop for sometime. No big regret (Except for Half Life).

So, for ten years, I and my spouse and my children have all been using Linux quite happily (or perhaps it might be fairer to say obliviously for most members of the family).

So why Linux?

Well, first of all, because of Firefox. When I first got online at home in about 2003, Internet Explorer was dreadful. A quick history lesson:

[Microsoft] missed the world wide web and then set out to exterminate the one company – Netscape – that hadn’t.

In the 1980s and 1990s, it wielded its monopoly power ruthlessly and effectively. It wilfully destroyed the most creative startup of the early web.

The Guardian.

Firefox (originally named Phoenix) arose from the ashes of Netscape. It was something new to me - open source software - and it was good. It worked well, it was secure, it looked good, it encouraged open standards and the development of the web, and it was free (as in beer)!

At that time I was using a lot of software gleaned from free CDs which came with computer magazines, installation CDs borrowed from other people, and downloaded freeware programs.

I time went on, I became aware of open source alternatives and started using them. The Gimp replaced the ancient version of Photoshop, Open Office replaced the outdated Microsoft Office program, and Amarok replaced Winamp.

Making the leap to an open source operating system was a obvious next step.

As well as being "free as in beer", open source software is also "free as in freedom" - when you can see the source, you can make any change to it that you want which appealed to me. And of course, the software is only free in price because it is a collaborative exercise, made possible by the freedom to see and alter the code.

I'm not a computer programmer, so I haven't contributed to open source software by writing code. I've dabbled in customising themes for various programs, and enjoyed customising the desktop in Gnome, XFCE and OpenBox. And I've tried to help other people use Linux with this blog, so I hope I'm not a complete freeloader.

The choice in software in Linux is huge, and the possibilities of customisation are limited only by your interest and coding ability.

A second reason is that Windows, for me at least, is not as good as Linux.

The original XP which came on my Internet connected laptop was dreadful (I'd had a previous laptop which ran CP/M, the operating system which Microsoft ripped off to make MSDOS, but that's another story.) OK, SP2 was a lot better and SP3 was good, but it still took about ten minutes to shutdown, presumably because of registry cruft.

By that time, I'd jumped ship.

I have used or worked on or administered Windows computers since then and Vista was dreadful, 7 was pretty good, 8 was awful and 10 is OK, apart from the updates nightmare. My newest computers came with Windows 10, but I was never tempted to keep it.

For me (and the family - nothing stress tests a computer better than children), Debian 9 has been 100% reliable for the last couple of years. My younger daughter managed to induce a kernel panic in Debian 8 from time to time with random keystrokes (she was only 2!), but my eldest daughter has been using Linux since age one without issue or complaint - and she uses Windows at school, so it's not as if she has nothing to compare it to.

Another reason to run Linux has been that it works better on bottom-end computers which often struggle to run windows, even though they come with it installed. Fr example, both this laptop and the family all in one computer are definitely not high powered machines. Purchaser reviews for both machines often complained that they were slow, but both are quite happy running Debian.

As I mentioned, Windows 10 isn't too bad, but the updates issues are not something I would no like to face myself- updates installing at inappropriate times, failing to install, getting stuck, and the endless enigmatic messages.

Updates in Linux have always been quick and easy. No endless downloads or forced reboots, and if you really want to know what is going on, you can read the terminal output. A lot of the problems with Windows 10 update seem to be with feature updates these days, and it's fair to say that a Linux upgrade requires some technical knowledge, but it's not really that difficult. (Here's a how-to for Debian from Make Tech Easier.) If that puts you off, remember that most Windows 10 users are running a feature update from over a year ago, because they are either unwilling or unable to update. (BetaNews, Slashdot).

And of course, security in Linux is less of a concern. In Windows I was always trying out different anti-virus and firewall programs, whereas I don't use an anti-virus program in Linux. I have tried out some of the Linux ones, but now just don't find one necessary on the home desktop. The update process itself makes Linux more secure, since it updates almost everything on the system. You don't have Internet-facing applications or hardware drivers that don't get updated unless you check with their third-party authors or run a vulnerability checking scan tool.

Hence the fact that the emphasis of this blog has changed over the years. In fact, I notice it has been almost 10 years that I have been writing this blog, as well as using Linux!

Perhaps it might be time for a name change?