HoomanB.com/cs/Linux - Desktop Linux

Desktop Linux: Should You be using it?

Last updated...

(January 06, 2007) I added my latest Linux-based laptop (after exactly 1 year of purchase!!).

A quick note before you go on with the rest... I just noticed this page is (in part) out dated. Today's distros are far easier to install and some of the sutff mentioned here no longer apply to them. But I'm keeping the full article for reference.

The Pros

Linux is more stable than Windows. In case you don't know, it is based on UNIX which has proven its stability for over 30 years. Stability is very obvious about Linux and it is the reasons many servers run Linux, so I will concentrate on other features.
With Linux you will free yourself from Viruses and Spyware. This is the number one reason people switch to Desktop Linux right now.
Unlike Windows, you won't need to re-install the operating system and lose your files to fix your problems. In fact you don't even have to restart Linux not even when you install things.
Linux distributions for desktop come with lots and lots of free software. You will find equivalents to tools you use in Windows and a lot more. Linux comes with a great collection of educational, scientific and development software that Windows does not have or if it does most of the time it won't be free. With Linux you won't have to pay for every little program or see any ads or spyware.
Software installation is extremely easy with most distributions. You just find and select by name or description and it will downloaded and installed from the Internet. No worms, spyware or ads attached!
Linux, because of its open source nature has a much better internationalization than Windows.
While you will find some hardware that is not still fully Linux compatible (fortunately this mostly includes no so popular hardware) there's hardware that only works with Linux and once a hardware is compatible with Linux it will stay compatible (unlike Windows that will stop supporting things after a new version is out).
Both KDE and GNOME desktop environments that come with every Linux distribution for desktop are very well designed, customizable and come with every built-in feature that you can imagine. I would prefer KDE for desktop use because it has more features and built-in programs. GNOME is very well designed and nice looking. Basically if you like Apple then you'll like GNOME. Xfce is a light desktop environment based on GTK2 (like GNOME). It is light and fast, yet has lots of cool features. It is easy to use and nice looking and supports integration of both KDE and GNOME programs. I did not like Xfce until version 4 came out and future versions (4.2 at the time of this writing) are even better. The only problem with the current version is that you can not have icons on your desktop (it does support wallpapers and other desktop goodies like calendar) unless you run a seperate program that supports desktop icons. Xfce is very good and has an even better future, but it's not the best choice for newbies unless you have an old computer and want something light and fast. For starters I recommend KDE or GNOME because they are much easier to use. If you have an older computer there are window managers even lighter than Xfce that you can use. They do not come with their own software but you can run KDE and GNOME software on those as well. My favorite is IceWM which is simple but looks very nice. It also is easy to use for Windows users.
Linux is an open source software which means it is free to use and share and you can modify everything about it. More important than that is the fact that nobody owns Linux and it will always stay free. Plus once you use Linux you will get to know lots and lots of free software tools and fun stuff that you can enjoy. You will also get good support from the community.
With Linux you can turn your game consoles into a desktop computer.
And lots of other reason...
I will soon post about 101 reasons why you should be using Linux. The page is up and I will add more reasons on my free time!

The Cons

Since for desktop computers Linux is not as popular as Windows, hardware compatibly for certain hardware is not perfect yet. But note that this also an advantage (see above) as some hardware or only or better supported in Linux. Besides, you will easily get the main hardware setup during the installation. Some drivers (some USB printers and graphic cards like NVidia) need to be installed separately in free distros due to licensing issues. In the next section you'll find out about some distros for newbies (like Xandros) that include these proprietary software and make installation fun.
There are some specific programs (e.g. some educational programs) that do not have a Linux equivalent. Wine runs many Windows programs like Photoshop, but it is still under development. There is a non-free version (CrossOver Office) that is only about $20 or so and runs many programs better and is very easy to use for newbies.

Which distribution to use?

So you're convinced to give Linux a try? The first question to be asked is which distribution to try.

I recommend that you start with Linux on a bootable CD and see it for yourself. KNOPPIX is a Linux distribution based on Debian that boots from a CD and detects your hardware automatically. It boots right into KDE (the the desktop you choose) and includes a few games, OpenOffice, KOffice and other useful tools. It of course doesn't have everything Linux has to offer but it is an excellent demo. If you are happy with it you can install it on your hard drive and add more programs. Installation is easy but it doesn't have the setup tools that Mandrake, SuSE and Ark Linux have.
Ubuntu is desktop Linux at it's best! It came long after I wrote this article and it's a revolutionary idea. It is definitely the Distro I recommend to beginners at this time. It's based on Debian and has just about any package you can imagine. Plus the programs are very up to date. The installation is very easy and fast. There is a live-CD demo version too but if you have a spare drive or partition just try the real thing, I know you'll love it!
Xandros, which is not a free distro, has a free version called the "Open Circulation Edition". This version of Xandros is free for non-commercial use. Xandros looks like Windows and is very easy to install. Xandros is based on Debian and once you get to know Linux a little bit better you can install more software or just completely upgrade it to Debian.
For if you want to try a Linux distro that is not meant for Windows users then try Mandrake Linux or SuSE. I used Mandrake for a while but then switched to SuSE. SuSE has less bugs specially in the control tools and uses KDE as the default environment. Since Novell owns SuSE now, you get more support and what's more, you can download ISO images for Free (this was the number issue stopping people from using SuSE). If you are a commercial user then SuSE if my recommendation to you. On the other hand, people contribute more packages for Mandrake and Mandrake 10 is a lot more stable than previous versions.
Another very good distribution is Libranet which is in one sentence "Debian made easy". It is very easy to install and configure and in many ways is like Xandros (both Canadian too!) except it is not based on Windows. They always make the older version free. The free version is one CD but since all packages are old you will need to upgrade. Upgrades are easy with Debian and if you are not a complete newbie, this Debian-based distro is great for you.
Yet another distribution is Ark Linux. At this time it is in Alpha development stages but it looks very good and once it's released it'll probably be the best choice for beginners.
To try Linux along Windows without having to repartition I recommend Phat Linux and WinLinux. It was Phat that introduced me to the wonderful world on Linux.
Other desktop distributions (that I haven't tried) are Yoper which support packages from other distributions and Ark Linux which claims to be a more easy to use version of the famous RedHat. Peanut Linux is another nice and small distribution for download.
For Linux on your game consoles try XBox Linux or BlackRhino (for PS2).
Fedora is a community distribution by RedHat that is under development and is supposed to be a good and easy to use desktop once it's ready.
For more advanced users - who probably won't be reading this article - Debian GNU/Linux and Gentoo Linux are good choices.

My Linux Laptop

I use Kubuntu on my Compaq Presario v2000 with an AMD Turion 64 professor.
As of Kubuntu Edgy (6.10) everything (except wireless card and some graphic card features) installed automatically, even the media reader.
Wireless card didn't install automatically (because I had to install a non-free firmware from the laptop's CD) but that doesn't mean it was anything hard to do.
By default ATI's drivers are not used – which meant no 3D.. but they were included and it was very easy to switch. I even used a 3D desktop, pretty cool.
In addition to the built-in stuff, I use a standard USB compaq flash reader (which works better in Linux than it does in Windows), a USB-MIDI interface which worked out of the box and usb connection to my Sony Ericsson handset.

My Linux Desktop/Server Machines

AMD Duron 900MHz and 1GHz (Two similar machines)
512MB and 256MB DDR (not much difference so far)
One machine (my sister's desktop) has a SiS 740 chipset motherboard with onboard Video, sound and LAN. SiS is good for Sound and LAN but as I mentioned before I had problems with 3D games on this motherboard. The server had a motherboard like the one above with SiS 730 chipset but later I switched to a VIA8235-based Biostar motherboard with USB 2.0 support. VIA officially supports linux, but both motherboards (or any motherboard I've ever tried) are supported. I tried every single feature the VIA board and everything (joystick, power management, USB 2, etc) works like a charm.
Both computers have Nvidia GeForce2 video cards. Both ATI and Nvidia cards are fully supported and 3D graphics are much smoother than Windows. It is hard to get 3D graphics with your motherboard's cheap built-in graphic card in Linux, so if you want 3D graphics then get a good graphic card. One of the cards also has a TV-out feature that is fully supported.
40 and 30 GBs Hard Drive (5 GBs is enough for Linux with lots of software. You will be amazed how little space Linux programs take!)
Different DVD and CDRW Drives fully supported.
My Acer 620U Scanner and Handspring Visor USB PDA work with Linux without any problems.
As for printers, right now I have a Brother HL-1435 laser printer and the server machine acts as a print server for both Windows and Linux machines. I previously had an Epson and a few Lexmark bubblejet printers that worked fine but I had to use Lexmark's drivers. All printers are supported by Linux so don't worry about printers. (Speaking of printers, do yourself a favor and get a laser. It's worth the price paid! Trust me, I've had about 10 bubblejet printers so far and they are such a waste of paper! That is unless you need color.)
Recently, I got an Epson Powerlite S1 projector. Of course all projectors support Linux but there was a PC remote control that came with the projector and was recognized by SuSE as soon as I plugged it in. Later on it also worked with Debian.
A even more recently, I got a Canon Powershot camera that is also supported. There is a really nice program (GTKam) to work with digital cameras in Linux. My previous camera (Agfa CL34) did not support Linux (or Windows XP!) so I got a USB memory card reader that I still use as it is much faster that using the camera.
My USB MP3 player works just fine. All those little USB MP3 players that don't need a Windows driver work with Linux too.
I have a USB webcam that I use as a security camera in my server. Most webcams are supported and there are really cool programs to use them for conferencing, online camera, and other stuff.
Modems are a problem. Good thing they're almost history. The server machine is to be used as a fax server. First I bought a cheap Intel softmodem (aka Winmodem) and had problems with it. It wasn't good for faxing and it would freeze the system. In Linux software modems suck and if you still need a modem you better get a hardware modem, specially an external modem. There aren't many hardware-based PCI modems. But if you're still using modems for internet access then my suggestion to you is "Please come to this century..."!
I think I've covered everything that's attached to my computers so far. You can watch out for more if you want, but so far every gadget in my home that works with Windows XP (and more) is supported by Linux so that should be enough to prove how compatible Linux is. By the way when I initially wrote this article, hardware support was a problem but as you can see in only a year it has gotten much much better.

My First Linux Laptop

I have used Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE and Mandrake on my Dell CSX laptop with a Intel Pentium III 500 CPU, 128 MB of RAM (Later upgraded to 192MB) and 10 GB of hard drive.
A Belkin F5D5010 ethernet card (all network cards support Linux.)
A Belkin F5D6020 wireless card. (All wireless chips are supported in Linux but this card is not a known brand and I had to let the system know what chip it was using myself.)
External CD drive (Since I can easily install anything I want off the net I got the lighter/smaller laptop with the external CD drive.)
Except for the wireless card that was hard to install, everything else worked just fine using Debian, SuSE and Mandrake. Linux supports power management and plug 'n play much better than Windows does.

The Experience...

Linux has a great user interface. I liked Mac OS X better so I made it look like Mac but now I like KDE better. You can of course make it look like Windows but on earth would you wanna do that!?

A nice Brazilian guy called Everaldo has made the nicest icons around called Crystal an also a great icon set for kids simply called Kidz. These icons are so beautiful that people have ported them to Mac and Win XP!
Check out KDE-Look for KDE themes, icons, screen shots and more.

Both KDE and GNOME come with great Internet/Mail/Network programs, administration and control tools, basic graphics and paint programs, audio/video programs, Personal Information Management (with support for PDAs), games, editors and other utilities. While I'd recommend Gnome to businesses since it's faster and has a better performance I'd recommend KDE as it comes with better features like Kooka which is a great tool for scanning and OCR. Kooka (like most KDE programs) is just a front end for SANE which is the scanner tool for Linux.

For instant messaging I use Kopete that will be a part of KDE as of KDE 3.2. Both Gnome and KDE users can also use Gaim. I use Yahoo!, MSN and Jabber at the same time with these programs. Both programs support other instact messaginf protocols like IRC, AIM, etc.

As I mentioned there is OpenOffice.org which is the open source version of Sun's Star Office. It has every useful feature that Microsoft Office has and many better features like automatic text completion and better equation and graph editors. OpenOffice 1.1 has lots of improvements.

MPlayer is the best media player for Linux. It plays DVDs, Windows Media and everything you can imagine. It is a text program but it also has many graphical user interfaces including KMPlayer which is part of KDE 3.2. MPlayer has features Windows users would never imagine. For DVD playback there is also Xine that is very much like PowerDVD. There is also a WinAmp clone called XMMS. It even supports WinAmp plug-ins and skins.

For managing your finances there is GNUCash which is a great Quicken equivalent for Linux. I like GNUCash better than Quicken because it forces me to stay organized. There is another program (KmyMoney2) for KDE which is great for basic money management.

There is also KOffice which can be compared to Microsoft Works. It is not as powerful as OpenOffice.org but it has a nice interface and is great as a basic office tool.

Being a Photoshop user, the next important thing I was looking for was a good image editor. Linux comes with the GIMP which is even better than Photoshop in some ways. The more I use the GIMP the more I like it. But Photoshop too runs in Linux using Wine.

There are some excellent programs that later became free and open source. A very good example is Blender3D which is a professional 3D editing program. It supports Autocad and 3D studio format. I am not really good at 3D editing but I tried to work with Blender3D for while and I've got to tell you it's great.

And last but not least there are the great number of open source games. A good example is FlightGear flight simulator. Try happypenguin.org for a good selection of Linux games and their screen shots.

As you can see there are just so many programs that I can't mention them all. Also you should know that many popular programs like Flash plug-in, Java, RealPlayer, Netscape/Mozilla, Opera, Maya and much more are available to Linux!

Conclusion...

So, should you try Linux?

My answer is of course yes, otherwise why would I be writing this? If you were curious enough to read this article, then you are someone who would want to try Linux. You should at try a bootable Linux CD like KNOPPIX and see it for yourself.
You can install Linux and keep Windows too. Many people do that, so did I. When I first installed Linux, I kept Windows. Then I slowly moved things to Linux and after a while I erased Windows for good!
I have tried installing Linux on many machines. As long as Linux installs smoothly on your system, you will never want to remove it again. If you get a good distro it will install smoothly.