| wIndependence Day Essay: XBill and Other Great Reasons to put Linux on the Desktop |
by Ben Murray (July 11, 2002)
Sometimes I glance over at my computer and notice that it just got a blue screen. I panic, rushing across the room to find out what went wrong.
Then I realize it's just XScreenSaver (jwz.org/xscreensaver/).
I haven't gotten a real crash in years, because I run Linux on my desktop. I had seen a friend wearing a 'Got Slack?' T-shirt one day, and downloaded the Slackware brand Linux distribution. A week later, Windows crashed and crashed hard, ruining the FAT and leaving me with only the 2GB Slackware partition I had barely played with. Now Windows needed a reformat and reinstall. Rather than do that right away, I booted into Linux to see if I could get online.
I never switched back.
Windows is a distant memory. I can do everything I used to do in Windows on Linux, and I can do it better. My friends ask me to send them screen shots, and respond with things like 'Linux looks pretty'. All the software I need is easy to find on Freshmeat (freshmeat.net). Other people have trouble with simple thinks like getting clips of songs, but I can use sox (sox.sourceforge.net) or gnoise (gnoise.sourceforge.net). GAIM (gaim.sourceforge.net) makes instant messaging easier than on Windows, especially across multiple networks.
But I think the difference in applications between Windows and Linux can best be summed up with one example: Windows comes with MS Paint, a basic bitmap editor. Linux comes with The GIMP (gimp.org), a Photoshop replacement.
As for hardware support, I've never had any problems, and I have some pretty strange hardware on some of the machines I've installed Linux on. With Linux, either somebody had the same problem as me months ago and wrote it up on a message board someplace, or the instructions have been packaged as a HOWTO and are included in Slackware. And the Linux drivers are usually more versatile than their Windows cousins. Pilot-link provides a lot of handy tools for playing with my Palm Pilot's memory that the Palm Desktop just doesn't have. The Nvidia Windows drivers' most advanced feature is the virtual desktops (already there on Linux), but a quick search on Google reveals a few dozen special options that can be put in XF86Config to make the driver jump through hoops.
If these aren't enough reasons that Linux is better, anybody can find more for themselves. It's simple to download an ISO (or buy one from CheapBytes) and install. Slackware is one of the more complex distributions; Lycoris (lycoris.com) or Mandrake (mandrakelinux.com) make distros that have easy graphical installs and can set up hardware automatically. Once the install is done, just boot up, log in, and start X. Literally, just type "startx". Don't believe the rumors about the command line being arcane or hard to use.
Usually KDE (kde.org) is the default graphical environment, but there are plenty of alternatives. This is one of the biggest general advantages of Linux: there is always another way to do it, so if a particular program has problems or you just don't like the way it looks you can customize it or find a replacement. GNOME (gnome.org) and Enlightenment (enlightenment.org) both make excellent environments.
Once Linux is installed, it's ready for almost anything out of the box. Most fresh installs are ready to be used for anything from basic web browsing to programming. Programs like AbiWord (abisource.com), Gnumeric (gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/), and Ximian Evolution (ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution) enable new users to get working on their Word or Excel documents or email quickly, just like in Windows. And once all that serious business is done with and it's goofing off time, Linux doesn't settle for a wimpy Solitaire game like Windows. There's a everything from a Space Empires clone to Tetris *and* Solitaire. My personal favorite is XBill (xbill.org), an excellent game that Microsoft will probably never include with Windows, even though it's free and more popular than Quake (according to the Linux Journal).
There are more, of course. Gems everyone is glad to discover, like wmDiscoTux (wmdiscotux.stc.cx) makes a tiny penguin named Tux, the Linux mascot, dancing to whatever music you play. The aforementioned XScreenSaver includes more than one hundred screensavers, from Santa to BSODs to all sorts of neat optical effects. Linux users are constantly pushing the limits of Linux and publishing their work on the Internet.
What started with an accident has come to fill my computing experience. I'm glad I'm a Linux user, and I'd much happier sending money to Patrick Volkerding or Ximian than Microsoft. You can use Linux any way you want: as a basic GUI desktop to play Quake or do internet or office tasks, as a power tweaked, heavily customized desktop, or anything in between. My only regret is that I didn't start sooner.
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Please note: The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the writer, not of the management or staff of DesktopLinux.com.
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