Apr

Using Linux as your main OS!

Kyle

Linux distribution, Microsoft Office, Open source, Operating system, SUSE Linux, SUSE Linux distributions, Windows Vista

Linux has been around for quite a long time now. It has been around for as long as I can remember. Now I am not that old. I am currently 25 and have used Linux from its not so popular early days. In the days of Windows 95 and 98, Linux was not that great of an OS to use for the average Joe. I myself didn’t really like it that much. If I could do something in Windows without having to use the command line then I did it in Windows. In those days Linux was pretty much everything from the command line with a limited GUI interface. My how the tables have turned in the past couple of years and definitely in the past few months.

Now, you can run programs in Linux that you would run in Windows. You can do this with a handy program called Wine. It emulates the windows code inside Linux so you can run your favorite Windows programs without having to run Windows. I know that Wine has been out for a while, but only recently has it gotten to the point that it works pretty well. Some programs do not work all that well with Wine, and some do not work at all. For the most part it does serve its sole function pretty well, to run Windows programs in Linux.

Now, I personally do not like to use Windows programs in Linux. I prefer to use the open source versions of other programs that run natively in Linux. Like for instance. You have Microsoft Office for Windows. Open Office does the exact same thing in Linux. It is a completely free Open Source Office suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office. So if you use Linux at home and Windows at work. You can still work on the same files with no problems. This is what I do mostly. I use SUSE Linux at home and Vista at work and have had no compatibility problems at all between Open Office and Microsoft Office.

There is more to Linux than just this one program of course. You can pretty much find an open source application in Linux to do the exact same things that other programs do in Windows, but this is just icing on the cake for me. The other nice thing about Linux is that their are so many different distributions of Linux out there that you can find a distrofor just about anyone. They have one called edubunutu linux made by Ubuntu Linux. It has lots of educational resources on it for someone who is either in regular public school or is attending college. The possibilities with Linux are endless.

My wife is not computer savvy at all. The only thing she knows how to do is My Space and that’s about as far as it goes. I went from Windows Vista to SUSE Linux 11.1 and she never skipped a beat. I just asked her did she like the new theme and she said “yeah it is pretty cool”. She didn’t even know that I had switched Operating Systemson her. She seamlessly started using Linux and really didn’t even know it. That is how easy it is to use Linux these days. I advise everyone to give Linux a shot. If you have never worked with it before then Ubuntu Linux is about as clean an install that you can find, and it is so easy to use. You might be surprised that you don’t miss Windows that much.