"Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

Hi!

I just had to come and share this with you guys:

[ My friend: "[After 2hrs of idle time] Your phone's still connected to the PC."

Me: "Yeah."

Friend: "I think the download must be paused by now. You'll probably need to reconnect again to continue tethering. Let's go check on it."

Me: "Nah the device was designed to be connected to the internet all day long."

Friend: "Yeah, I know, but how can you be sure it's still connected?"

Me: "Because its running Linux."

Friend:" Yeah but how about your PC OS, I bet that's bugged the connection out."

Me: "Nah, that's running Linux as well."

Friend: "Ah, OK." ]

This is a nice true story with me running Maemo on my N900 and Ubuntu on my laptop. Doing a huge download of Freespace2! ;)

To me Linux is so reliable, that simply thinking "It's running Linux" is explanation enough to stop -- worrying. Something I've never experienced with other platforms.

Have you guys had similar "Because its running Linux" experiences? :)

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

I have been using Linux as my main OS at home for about 10 years.

A few people have said to me:
"My anti-virus software is slowing down my PC...my PC got infected...I bought a new PC because I need latest version of Windows..."

"What anti-virus do you use?
When are you going to upgrade your laptop to new PC?"

I usually say "I don't use any anti-virus software.....I have not upgraded my laptop for years..I just upgrade my software"

Their response is " ! "

Then I say "Because its running Linux"

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

However,

People say "Why are you annoyed?...What do you mean your proprietory graphics driver is no longer supported?...You are having problems with the wireless driver?"

Then I say "Because its f***ing running Linux!"

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

You can turn that around to lessen frustration (by shifting blame from "us" in the community to others), though:

"Because the evil scumbags that manufacture the hardware want to make money by not giving people Freedom, which would obviously be the right thing to do."

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

I was only joking!

You are right though - I'm really annoyed ATI have considered my laptop r300-based card as a "legacy" device.
Can't they at least release the source code of "legacy" devices to the community?
At least we could have still supported it.

Similar thing with my rt2500-based wireless card. The included driver in the linux kernel is hopeless with my wifi device. The serialmonkey version is so much better - unfortunately it is no longer maintaned and will not compile with later kernels.

But that is a moot point with my ATI card. There is an open-source driver but it's 3d performance is poor compared to the proprietory version.

That's the problem with proprietory drivers. If a company decided to cease support then you are pretty much screwed!

For now I can keep my linux kernel at version 2.6.29 (last known kernel to work with rt2500 legacy) and xorg 1.4 (any version later than this is incompatible with legacy ati drivers).
I can still upgrade other software around thus, stay up to date and compile against my older kernel and older xorg.

The important thing for me is freedom of choice.

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

That's nice. Same applies to me, but sadly quite many users do not give a damn about it and actually my mum, dad and all my friends would be just confused in the ocean of choices. They like to be controlled and told what to do and they happily give they money for that. Additionally they have huge amounts of that loose money and no time for learning new things because most of time goes with work and family :)

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

I have managed converting to linux my two brothers-in-law, one of their girlfriends, two of my colleagues, and the girlfriend of one of them.
USB sticks booting ubuntu have been the most effective mean of dissemination.

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

I've been a fan of linux for years but I have grown up with Windows. Only now I've installed Ubuntu 9 (Might put 8 on, seems a lot better) and have started the move to opensource.

With the N900 being linux, and the deskop being linux I can work in harmony, and move forward in development of my knowledge of IT on a support level as at my company the move to Linux has been thrown up so many times recently. We do have a linux server for wordpress, and I tell my boss when he says... can't we run it on a hosted site or on one of the windows servers with IIS... I turn round and say, "One, hosted = lack of control, Two, IIS is useless at running PHP very well."

Saying that I had a debian server running for a couple of years and people asked me how I never had issues running stuff... and I could turn round and say: "Because it runs Linux".

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

apparently none of you work with CheckPoint's Secure Platform. Its call SPLAT for a reason. They bastardize a RedHat version to be "secure".

Re: "Because its running Linux" -experiences
 

Yes, there is philosophy and there are principles and there is the real world. I wasn't being absolutely serious with "evil scumbags", because I understand that they are children of their time and in their time (now, too) proprietary and lock-in and all sorts of abominations are commonplace. "Everybody's doing it". So, one could say that they can't help having a bad upbringing.

The point remains, though: Linux can be less frustrating if one can find joy in the Freedom aspect of it and treasure the open applications one uses as their own. I love my child (which in this case is the child of all the peoples, if they want to) more than that proprietary child and I think it's better, even though the proprietary child may be more shiny and can do more tricks or do them better.

Sometimes one might want to use what works, though. I'm no saint either, I use proprietary drivers for some computers, for example. :)