i'm thinking of writing a linux users experience/guide type piece.

of course cost plays a major part in why a lot of people try linux for the first time but besides the normal no defrag, no virus scans, extra security sort of thing i wondered what made people keep on using it. so i'd be grateful if you can answer a few questions and maybe add your own thoughts to your replies. what makes your distro special to you? do you have favorite apps. utilities that make you a happy linux user and the reason why you never went back to windows? was there any windows program that you must have that didn't have a linux equivalent as good, if so what was it and how did you overcome this problem? dual boot? wine? vm? why was it a must have windows program? work or just pleasure, personally i use suse because of yast, and that's the number 1 reason i never change distro. i just find it so much easier to install/setup things using yast than with any other distros package manager/setup tools. i don't mind what desktop i use, my preferred is kde but would use gnome, lxde or xfce too, just as long as it's running on suse. i actually have lxde running on a 2nd pc that i might start using as my main mythtv server. i suppose my favorite/most used apps. at the minute are mythtv, firefox, skype and virtualbox and of course folding. now not being much of a gamer or needing any program for work i've never had a must have windows program that i couldn't do without, usually i got it to run in wine or vm, but if i couldn't then i stopped using it. i did dual boot for a while at first but never seemed to use windows so decided to use the extra disc space for mythtv and install windows in a vm. i'm not much of a terminal/command line type of linux user (mainly because of my bad memory), of course i use it for lots of things, but usually in my day to day use for any type of file manipulation i'm more of a drag and drop windows type user. i eagerly await your replies.

Hi Terry, great post, very appropriate for me to answer at this point in time! Here's my history with Linux: I started at the urging of a classmate in college I'm guessing around 2002. It was a slackware distro. I loved it and soon bought a retail version of Mandrake and then RedHat, which were both great. Linux with 3 months of actually phone support, what more could I ask for! I felt like an explorer delving into the unknown, there was just so much to learn. Shortly after, I took a couple of classes as part of my degree program, a Unix course… very helpful in learning all about the shell, building scripts, vi of course, etc. The other class was kind of a mix. It was based on Linux but concentrated on different odd topics and showed how Liniux worked in a security type of way. For example, we built our own PC's and installed linux and then worked on many different areas including, flooding a particular PC on the network to crash it, how security certificates are used and created our own, email servers and how headers are forged. The class was a real eye opener! Meanwhile, at my day job, I convinced our network coordinator to let me build our webserver and base it on RedHat, which was moved to Ubuntu a few years later. Currently, again at my day job, we are moving our Novell based network to the suse platform and I'm currently building a few SUSE servers. The problem I'm having at this time is, I'm very familiar with Ubuntu and am trying to learn the ins and out of doing it this way., but don't know the Novell or Novell + SUSE way of doing things! Wow, I like to ramble, sorry! To answer your questions: The distro I really like is Ubuntu, I believe it's because I'm so familiar and I feel I was finally comfortable with Linux. My favorite app or utility hands down is the Apache webserver, I couldn't live without it, it was the reason I 1st turned to linux. I realize this was probably not the type of answer you wanted, but as an end user I can almost get away with not using Windows at all, at home or work. I can't because I support many users with MS Office. I'll stop now and complete my post a bit later. Thanks, Astabi

Well, I think these two posts show us why 95% of the world doesn't use it.

mmmmm only 5% use it? they must be the people in top 5% iq range then. Astabi, ive never used apache webserver, so know nothing about it, and have no idea what it can/ can't do. so what do you use it for at home? do you use it to host your own website or something?

According to psychologists, about 5% of the population in most countries are Masochists.. Now we know what OS system they use on their Computers

yep, windows.. just look at all those topics with people needing help to fix a malware problem for proof..

Astabi, ive never used apache webserver, so know nothing about it, and have no idea what it can/ can't do.
so what do you use it for at home? do you use it to host your own website or something?

Hi Terry,

Sorry I never answered you, but I haven't gotten back here in a while and didn't notice the replies!

I'll post an answer If you were still interested though.

The Apache webserver is the most widely used web server in the world, it is completely free and
open source. I believe at this time about 60% of the websites in the world use Apache but at one time it was over 90%.
The Apache webserver comes with most main, if not all distributions of Linux.

I personally use the Apache webserver at work, hosting an internal website for employees viewing only. I have a small business
developing, maintaining and hosting websites and use the Apache webserver for this as well.

Again, sorry for the late reply,
Astabi

yep, windows..

just look at all those topics with people needing help to fix a malware problem for proof..

Come to think of it… I don't believe I've EVER had a malware problem while using Linux almost
on a daily basis for almost 10 years. Interesting eh!

always interested in what other people use their pc's for so yes thanks for the reply. i'm actually going to be installing and using apache in the near future too because i found out mythtv's mythweb uses it as it's default webserver. i never really looked into connecting to my mythtv setup outside of my local lan before because my internet upload wasn't fast enough for streaming(might still not be) so never learned about mythweb and apache before but now i have a 1Mb upload speed i'm looking into it and hope to do some testing after xmas or in the new year probably. hope it's as easy to setup as my ftp server..

Interesting, I didn't know about mythtv and apache! You'll have to let me know how your setup works out. I've always wanted to do a setup like you're doing but could never find the time. Astabi

yes will do, not sure myself yet how mythweb and apache work together that will allow a connection to mythtv and it's mysql database from outside my lan. i'm assuming apache is just used to control who connects to my lan and the mythweb app then it's the mythweb app itself that connects to mythtv's backend as a user(frontend) which would allow access to mysql's database and all mythtv's controls,recordings, etc. i'm pretty sure mythweb can control mythtv from anywhere with no problems but unless it can also stream my recordings at a watchable quaility i won't be keeping mythweb and apache on my pc. all i think i need to do is install both then work out what files need editing to allow a username/password connection to my lan and mythweb (wonder if i can use the same open port i have set for my ftp server), sounds easy when i say it but i bet it's going to give me lots of headaches before i finally get it working(if at all).

i bet it's going to give me lots of headaches

I'm sure it will!

I'll tell you Terry, I'm trying to learn suse right now but it's kind of a pain, I'm so used to Ubuntu. We do have the test Oracle server in place though! whahoo! I'm not a database guy, but I did help get the oracle server part installed, and I did the Linux install

If all works out, We'll then try to duplicate it on the new rack mounted servers, 64 bit… I'm excited!

I can't believe they pay me to have all this fun, it's almost a crime!!

It really is great to be doing for a living what you enjoy.


Astabi

well it went a lot easier than i thought it would, all up and running and must admit the streaming quality is a lot better than i thought it would be from my experience of a few years ago. so now i can watch my tv from anywhere in the world.