Rediscovering Linux
Last week as a side effect of watching an interview with Linus Torvalds , which was phenomenal as usual, I ended up doing two unexpected things:
- Installing on all my home computers a Linux distribution
- Listening continuously an audio book about Linus and Linux (“Just for Fun” by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond)
These two things appear to be pretty unusual for a .Net developer, because for us everything is spinning around Windows world, but in my case, the nostalgia was to strong and the curiosity even stronger regarding how Linux evolved for the past 8 years, apropos, I didn’t interact with a Linux machine since the second year of the college when I was running a Counter Strike server on my Linux machine ( Debian distribution by the way). So, first thing was to search the internet and find out what is the most popular Linux distribution for a desktop in our days and it appears that Linux Mint is a very popular and robust distribution for a desktop and what is the best part, is that it is based on Debian and Ubuntu distributions, what could be more pleasant for a former Debian fun. I downloaded a 32 bit version for my wife’s laptop and a 64 bit version for my desktop. I started by installing Linux on the laptop, its a old Dell Inspirion with a Windows XP on it, and everything went smoothly without any problems regarding drivers(no driver download was needed) or with dual boot Windows/Linux. Nevertheless on my desktop(Winodws 8 64 bit) I had some problems regarding partitioning, and all the troubles came from the fact that my hard drive contained dynamic partitions ( the smart ones …) instead of the basic version, after some struggling I succeeded to install a 64 bit version of the Linux Mint on my computer, and what can I say, I didn’t need any drivers, unlike windows 8, the speed and responsiveness was better then in Windows, I’ve found with the software manager all the equivalents of the software that I’m usually using on windows, and everything was for FREE and of a very good quality. I’ve installed the ADT (android development tools) and everything worked flawlessly, I’ve been very surprised how much Linux evolved on the desktop part. Basically after installing Linux you don’t need to install anything, it comes pre-installed with everything an average desktop user needs(tools for office, video, audio, browsing …).
Frankly, if I wasn’t a .net programmer I would migrate to Linux permanently, because now you can find in a Linux desktop box everything you can find in a Windows box and even with a plus of performance. Of course you can say that windows is prettier, Linux is not for gamers …, what can I say, personally, for me Linux offers everything I need and I will try to use it as much as possible.
In the end I want to say one more time, I’m very impressed with the Linux evolution and I hope it will continue to evolve in the same way.