Windows? Apple? Why don’t you try Linux?
I am a geek. I love electronics. When I have to buy an electronic device, I spend days and nights to research about each product to come up with the best one. I also like finding tricks and gimmicks to make things work better or just look cool. Although these temptations and attempts often came with bad consequences — setting aside burnt computer chips and abandoned music players — I have found joys in them.
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When I first came to college, many students were still excited about their new laptops and busy with exploring about them. People talked about their laptops, and enjoyed showing off their laptops. The majority had laptops with Windows operating system installed on, some had Macintosh, and a friend of mine who I had known since high school had Linux.
It was a weird experience to do many computing tasks by typing on command line, instead of clicking on icons. First I thought it was weird and inconvenient, but ever since I gave it a try, I became addicted to it. Compared to other operating systems, I learned that Linux has so much to explore about and play with. Plus, it is free of charge for the most part — think about how much that Windows 7 disc cost you. Depending on what you want and what you do with it, you can set up a nice workload machine or a pretty working environment with many special effects (watch the video below). Since then, I still use Linux once in awhile to enjoy the fun in computing.
Linux is not really an operating system you put a disk in your computer and install. It is the backbone of many distributions that developers make out of. The following are some distributions that I have tried before:
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This is the distribution of Linux that I’d recommend to anyone who wants to try out what Linux is without making any commitment. It’s easy, simple and flexible. There are more icon-clicking involved than command-line-typing, it can be installed with just popping in a disc in the computer and probably is fully functional without making any tweaks or changes after the installation. This product is newly released in every April and October, and the current version can be downloaded from here.
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Some of you probably have heard about RedHat. It’s a paid Linux distribution that many corporates and businesses used. Fedora is a simplified, stipped-down and personal-oriented version of RedHat that is distributed for free. This is also the second-most popular distribution. When I tried it back in 2008, I found it sluggish and overweight compared to Ubuntu. However, as news are coming in that their new versions often perform better than Ubuntu, it must be worth trying.
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This one’s a tricky one. I’ve tried only a few times but I haven’t really got much fun out of it. Some say it is the most polished business-oriented distribution among all, but it was just hard for me to get used to their package (Chunk of codes that make up a software) managing and it would often take too long to load up certain programs, so I often gave up on using it. However, if you want to step up and become a super-geek, please feel free to try this one out.
These are just a small, tiny little portion of Linux distributions available. There are tons of them out there, and they all have their unique advantages and disadvantages. If you want more information on what distributions are available, please visit DistroWatch.com.
I also bothered to search for an appropriate video to show you guys what Linux can do. Please enjoy, and happy computing!
