Marcus wrote:You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows? I mean, having done Windows support for years, I do understand some of the challenges ... but issues with Windows stability and vulnerability always seem to be blown WAY out of proportion to the reality (as are issues with Linux usability, in my opinion ... but I digress).
I understand that many of you have a preference for an OS other than Windows. I find that acceptable. I just don't believe Windows is the inferior choice overall. Different tools for different jobs, right?
I actually don't think that as a *desktop* system Linux is much more secure than a carefully set up Windows system. That of course only holds if the user in front of the system is behaving reasonably. On Windows it's still way too easy to fool the user into starting some trojan and giving it permission to do damage. But for me personally, that doesn't really apply, because I would never dream of opening an attachment of a spam mail that's called "hot_babes.jpg.exe"
For me, it's mainly a usability argument:
1) I like tiling window managers.
2) For pretty much everything exept web browsing, I prefer the console to GUI.
These two points boil down to me preferring the keyboard over the mouse. I absolutely hate having to move my right hand between mouse and keyboard. A tiling window manager that's keyboard controllable, plus a reasonable console, gets me very far without ever having to touch the mouse. The former is not available for Windows at all, and the latter isn't really able to compete, either.
3) I like package managers.
These things are a huge time-saver. On Windows, I often have to search the internet for some software. If I'm lucky I find an installer that I can just execute. If I'm not so lucky, I have to install some prerequisites first, then I have to search for them, too. For example on Arch Linux, I just do "pacman -S <package-name>". Or "pacman -Ss <keyword>" if I'm not sure how the package is called.
Ok, once I have everything I need installed, that's not really an issue anymore. But especially when installing a new system, the time saved here is huge. On Windows, I often need two or three days of my attention until the system is in a state where I can actually do some work. On Linux, that usually needs about an hour at most, and most of that unattended.
An added bonus is that the package manager keeps all of my software automatically up to date, not just the system and the few programs where the developer provides an auto-update. And that is IMHO the biggest security advantage of Linux compared to Windows, because outdated software is generally the biggest security risk nowadays.
To sum up: Yes, I actually prefer Linux over Windows on a pure usability basis. That goes as far as me having a VirtualBox running Linux on my Windows work PC, where I do certain tasks where the usability difference is really noticable, opposed to just some minor annoyance.
And to answer the original poll:
At home, I use mainly Linux. Windows is only used for SC2 (at the moment, probably for D3 when it comes out
).
At work, I use Windows for .NET-Development, Linux in a VirtualBox for pretty much everything else.
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