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 Subject :Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-06 13:14:31 
aweber
Rookery Moderator
Joined: 2009-06-03 16:34:16
Posts: 68
Location: Spokane
The Contest
During November, users who post 100+ words pertaining to why they're thankful for Linux or how it makes life easier will be entered into our November 24th drawing. Speak your mind and share with the world what makes Linux so special.

The Prize
The winner will receive a printed copy of the Command Line Training Manual. This step-by-step guide features over 40 lab projects and is perfect for the new Linux administrator.

Thanks and Good Luck! - Andrew
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 Subject :Re:Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-09 13:41:06 
jhanson
Joined: 2009-05-28 08:01:13
Posts: 16
Location
I've used open-source products for years and could go on for days about why I'm thankful for them. No doubt I've saved thousands of dollars and discovered many solutions using Linux. Although I'm quite excited about this, I'm blown away by the sense of community. The bands of fellow Linux Gurus waiting to help in the forums, IRCs, and really everywhere. without them, this whole Linux thing would never have gotten off the ground.

No doubt that I'm thankful for Linux, but more than that I'm thankful for the people that power it. Happy Thanksgiving!
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 Subject :Re:Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-12 20:19:01 
lilmike
Joined: 2009-11-12 18:40:15
Posts: 2
Location
Hi,
I am thankful for linux for many reasons. I have used windows for a long time, and linux provided something new for me to learn and work with. Also, linux is a very good operating system for running servers, and I needed a server, so I turned to linux. Along with that, linux is not that hard to learn, and I found it interesting to say that least. I also enjoy how almost everything is open source, so you hardly have to pay a thing. In fact, all I am paying right now for linux is the hosting space.
I always dreamed of running my own game, and administrating my own web server, and linux made that possible. Thanks to linux, I am now doing exactly those things, and more. I am even running my own mail server, and I plan to give other users hosting so my server can be used to it's full potential.
Plus, linux is one of the most stable operating systems I have seen. Sense linux is open source, you would think it wouldn't be as stable as windows or mac, but it is much more stable. And ubuntu, which I use most of the time, is very reliable in their production cycles, producing and releasing a new version of ubuntu every 6 months.
There is always room for more developers, and I like that about linux too. Whether you're a linux expert, wanting to create your own kernel, or a simple c++ programmer wanting to create a game, you can do it with linux.
In conclusion, linux has been enormously helpful and benefitial to me, and I hope it never dies!
-Michael.
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 Subject :Re:Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-23 06:13:53 
bigbrovar
Joined: 2009-08-11 04:01:49
Posts: 1
Location
How Linux Greatly Changed my Life


In the Beginning

Its funny how i came to start using Linux .. because my journey started in a
flame war btw me and some “Linux Geeks” in the biggest online forum for
Nigerians http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?top…262#msg1188262 ( I was such a
witch back then ) I was supporting windows vista. You know i have never used
anything other than windows so I thought it was the best that computer can be
One thing that touched me was the continuous use of “open source” , “free”,(not
the price free) and “community” by the linux guys. This concept were alien to
me but they sounded good and i have always wanted an OS where the community
matters. I didnt get that with windows and I thought that was how god made
things to be. Eventually Sent a private message to one of the Linux guys
apologized for being a jerk and asked him how I could install Linux, if it had a
GUI, if I could play music and use it like a general average user uses is
computer without running geeky commands, and he said yes and recommended I try
Ubuntu. So my journey began. It wasn’t an easy one. I had to download the Ubuntu
DVD. (yeah I know I could have gone for the cd version but I wanted something
big that wont require me to use the net too often.) Anyway it took me a week to
download the 4gb dvd on my 10kbs modem. Before then I searched the web like I
have never done before. From blog to blog looking for how to dual boot and use
Ubuntu. I met many pple who told me that it was safe and it wont kidnap me or my
family.

The BiG Change

Mid night July 5 2007, the last bits of feisty fawn was downloaded. It was a
cold raining night, so I grabbed a coffee, went down to the closest thing to
a basement in my house, then it started. I followed the guide to a T. Gave
Ubuntu 17gb out of my 160gb. Rebooted. Checked that windows was ok.
Rebooted, then logged into Ubuntu. and was greeted a splash and the welcoming sounds
of Ubuntu 7.04 aka feisty fawn. for the first time in my life I was in a Desktop other than
windows. with the help of Adewale, my former enemy now a comrade, I setup
Ubuntu for everything I needed. with time i could do everything I did on
windows on Ubuntu and because I used less and less of windows. the vista
partition started shrinking from 17gb-ubuntu – 45gb vista rest storaga. It
became 50gb-Ubuntu vista 20gb rest storage. now its 50gb-ubuntu vista 0 rest
storage

Giving to the Community

Ever since coming to Ubuntu I have always wanted to be more than just a user.
I wanted to give back to the community and since am not a programmer or an
artist and am always broke and cant donate. I decided to with the help of
Adewale form ubuntunigeria.wordpress.com an Ubuntu loco that with the
aim of promoting the value of open source and letting pple know that there is
life outside windows. To press home our point we got involved with many flame
war in nairaland (the same forum where I was converted) and we objectively made
the windows fan boys understand that Linux has moved from the bad old days of
redhat and slax (no insult intended). We posted screenhots and and guides and
howtos. We left our numbers in the blog to offer support. To bypass the lack
of internet for most people in Nigeria. I made aptondvds that has almost
everything that a new user would ever want. We also used Ubuntu ultimate
distro. With is a wonderful distro for new users. With time the calls started
coming in. People from all over Nigeria wanted to know more about ubuntu, and or
get involved with our user group. To make things easy we took in users from
the different regions in Nigeria. And we armed them with Ubuntu cds and
aptondvds. If anybody request for an ubuntu cd. we just directed him to
the closest ubuntu Nigeria member to him. So far the success has been quite
modest. I have been able to physically install and configure Ubuntu for more
than 50 pple in Lagos alone. Not to talk about pple that we have influenced to
make a switch. For a country of 150 million pple that is tiny. But remember
to everyone that has changed. It makes a different to them and we are a tiny
group. But we are highly motivated and passionate about what we do.

Payback Time

It started with call. A certain Andy was having problems setting up dailup on
his ubuntu box. From his ascent I knew he wasnt Nigerian. He tried the guide I
posted in the Ubuntu Nigeria Blog but it didn’t quite work. And he called the
number I left by the guide in case anyone had problems following the guide. We
went over the problem and got it fixed.
Next thing he send me an sms about job offers for linux geek in Abuja, and he
wanted me to come over for an interview. I told him i dont have any
certification in Linux and he said F that … I asked the community for tips and
the responses were awesome. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=821616
he paid my flight to abuja and the interview was has smooth as butter.
the next day was giving the job. at AUST Afican University of Science and
Technology. Its a new University which is backed by the world bank. The aim
is to build a world class university that would build the next generation of
African Scientist.The schools uses only open tools and my job was to deploy
Ubuntu on all their systems and laptops for the students. Their job was to
provide me with free accommodation with all the convinces, free food,free
laptop. Plus I get to use the gym, swimming pool,tennis court if I
want to the internet is also free I admin it BTW. All this for a guy who
start using ubuntu last year and who has no formal IT qualification I studied law in
school. But they liked my passion and the fact that I have a very good
knowledge of the linux desktop.

THE AUST CHALLENGE
To make things easy we setup systemimager which i used to build a customized
ubuntu containing the very best of open source science tools that I got from
research online. we exported the home directory of all the users to an Ubuntu
fileserver using NFS and ldap was used for authentication.
I took the students on how to use ubuntu. And in the first few days things
were rough but, now must are pretty cool with it and are having it smooth.

I words can not express how much gratitude I owe to linux and the free and open source community. Through it I got a job, doing what I love doing the most. And also a chance to give back to my country, Africa and the world.

Sorry for the long post
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 Subject :Re:Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-23 07:31:15 
hsmak_linux
Joined: 2009-11-23 06:23:50
Posts: 4
Location
Before Switching To Linux

It’s been about 3 years since I started to use Linux seriously. Before switching to Linux I was trying to set up a Network Server at home starting with a home network, creating accounts for every family member along with their passwords, and then provide some network-based services to them. I tried to establish my home network and deliver the required services using Windows OS. The mission was a total failure due to the unavailability of the free tools doing the required job. Even the costly tools are useless. I really got fed up with the fact that whenever I wanted to do something then I had to pay that much of money and at the end for nothing professional.
I’m specialized in Computer Science and I find the joy in developing applications and administering OSs. So, I was looking forward to having an environment enabling me to do whatever I want to do, whenever, and however. An environment providing you bundles of very flexible tools for Monitoring, Networking, Analyzing, Developing, Hosting, Securing, Virtualizing, Clustering …to name few!

Eventually, The OS that I underestimated long time ago was the whole solution for all my problems and needs. It is definitely the Linux OS!

The Linux Journey

Hence, My journey into Linux had started. This journey was a full of joyful adventure to me. Day after day while adventuring, I was exploring new ideas, fantastic applications, great solutions …etc. through which I managed to completely migrate from Windows to Linux!

The Linux Journey has been of a great adventure to me. This Journey has really left high impact in my life. In this journey I found the convincing reasons to abandon Windows for ever and not to get back to it whatsoever!

Why Should I Be thankful For Linux

Thus, by my turn I have to very grateful and thankful to the Linux OS, to what it has been giving to me, to those who have been contributing in delivering it to the community at its best and highest potential. Therefor, I am very thankful for many reasons all of which time won’t be helping to mention but to list the most obvious ones for which everybody should be thankful to Linux:

Open-Source

Open Source, which everyone should be grateful for, is the concept of sharing the technical information with the community. When talking about an open-source software, then this software according to the Open Source Definition must comply with 10 criteria, 4 of them to me make Open Source Softwares rock:

1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code
3. Derived Works
4. Distribution of License

An example of Open Source Licenses is the the well-known GPL, GNU General Public License, under which Linux OS is distributed. So, Linux really rocks because it is an open-source OS!

Performance

Linux performance has been one of the major contributing parts through which I was inspired to migrate to it. Linux has been of high performance in various aspects, to mention some:

1. Kernel: No one can argue that Linux actually got its power from its kernel. Linux Kernel features multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6. And that’s according to the main Kernel website.
2. Filesystem: Ext3 is the prominent Linux filesystem featuring the Journaling, up to 2TiB file Size limit, fragmentation is not that much of worry. Ext4 has just been out and is becoming the default in some distribution such as Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and it features the extents, Persistent pre-allocation, Delayed allocation, Journal checksumming, Online defragmentation, Faster file system checking, Multiblock allocator, up to 16TiB file size limit …etc. With all these features, Ext3/Ext4 have been strong competitors to other filesystems such as FAT32 and NTFS.
3. Processing: Just to mention the different types of computing that high performance is of high priority and Linux was chosen to perform these types of computing. So, we recently heard about Cloud Computing, Parallel Computing, Distributed Computing, Grid Computing, HPC …etc.

Security

Viruses, spywares, malwares ..etc. Huh! what are those? Sorry, I’m a Linux user, never heard about those before! Ooh, I’ve just remembered! they are Windows-related technologies. Sorry, I mean malwares. If we look at Security carefully then Security is not about installing a firewall and it’s not a product. Security is a policy, methodology, and an ongoing process. When it’s said that Linux is very strong in Security and unbreakable then because Linux is implementing the security policy itself in its core. Besides, Linux Authentication and Permission policy is what makes viruses impossible to have their effect on the system. So yes, Linux doesn’t need an ant-virus! Furthermore, Not having a running anti-virus software has also a huge positive impact on the system performance.

Support

Linux is a full-blown, feature-rich, and extremely powerful OS for free. Free doesn’t mean that you won’t get the required support. On the contrary, people working on it are already making a huge effort to deliver it, then how come you don’t get the support from them unless they want to get their effort to vanish and fade out. Actually, providing the support would help them harness the system and that’s by finding solutions to the problems that users complain about.

One way to ease the support process is the centralized repositories enabling you to install/update all packages you need from one place, and this by its turn relieves you of getting a headache and distracted in finding the the packages you want.

Reliability

Linux is reliable to such a degree that you don’t need to frequently restart or shutdown the machine in case of errors or crashes, almost no hangs, very robust, fault-tolerant, and stable. I remember working in a department whose main mission is providing high Availability of the deployed applications (Business Continuance). Guess what? A Unix-based infrastructure was used to provide such a highly available environment!

Flexibility

A very fantastic feature of Linux is its Customizability to your needs. So, you can use it as a:

1. Desktop: you can choose from different Desktop Environments (Gnome + KDE), edit and play multimedia (MPlayer, VLC, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender), have your office suite (OpenOffice), play games, browse the Internet (Firefox), Internet Messengers(Pidgin, Empathy), manage your files …etc.
2. Server: Linux is the optimal OS to run as a Network Server(web server,ftp server, DNS server, e-mail server, file sharing, …etc.), Database Server, Monitoring. An important point needs to be mentioned here is that you need to master the use of the Shell through which I found the real flexibility I was looking for long time ago
3. Development Environment: which is a combination of both Desktop and Server environment. So install whatever desktop applications you want, set up the type of servers fitting your needs, and have the required tools for development such as IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans, Quanta), UML Tools (ArgoUML, Umbrello), Programming Languages(C/C++, Java), Frameworks (Qt, GTK), Scripting (PHP, Perl) … you name it.

Last But Not Least

As I said before, time won’t allow me to surround all the reasons why Linux is an ultimately optimal OS, but I tried to express indirectly that Windows has been a major obstacle to my productivity and I wish I had known Linux long time ago!

You go to any IT-related company whose infrastructure is of high performance then with no doubt you will find that they use a Unix-based environment to run their business, and you can rely on Linux to run your business. Linux has been embedded in ADSL modems and smart phones. Furthermore, Dell Company ahs already started shiping some laptops with Linux as the default OS!

So, Why should I bother myself about a buggy, costly, virus-targeted, insecure, frequently crashing OS if there are already OSs capable of achieving the Business Level performance at home and for free!

Hereby, I would like thank those, the Open Source Community, for their great efforts, sincere endeavors, and continous support which greatly contributes in helping the community from naive users to the professional ones!
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 Subject :Re:Why Are You Thankful For Linux?.. 2009-11-23 09:22:21 
octopusgrabbus
Joined: 2009-11-23 08:01:45
Posts: 1
Location
I am thankful for Linux for many reasons.

First, Linux can take any form, from desktop to server with workstation in between. It serves as an excellent programming and learning environment. For example, even if a web site had to run on a non-linux platform, a Linux system would make a good learning environment.

Linux and its server environment provide a first-rate group of solutions, from several kinds of email engines, to text processing, web server, and databases.

Finally, Linux is probably the best OS to use for setting up an appliance like an email list server or web router (a dedicated box to protect back-end web servers from having to connect directly to the internet.)

In our present economy and the need to do more with less, the Linux OS can be used to extend the life of over server hardware, and perform tasks that would require additional software cost and vendor configuration time on other platforms.
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