Switching from Ubuntu

[Michel]

I did not want to turn off the computer and risk damaging something.

Perhaps turning off the computer might have worked as open office
has document recovery....

[rreagan]

The virus thing is a non-issue on Windows, with free software like Microsoft security essentials. Or any number of other free products. I keep seeing this as a strong argument for Linux, it just isn't.

Actually it is. The best antivirus software products, free or paid, are far from 100% effective. I've even seen some estimates saying antivirus is only 60-70% effective. I don't know exactly what the number is, but I do know that everyday people all over the world who have current antivirus get infected. Mostly they are getting infected with rootkit type infections where the author has written code to bypass all of the well known antivirus products. If you ran Combofix on your computer, or Windows Defender Offline, or booted from a Linux Live CD and ran a free AV scan on your Windows disk, you might be surprised what it finds. If you run Combofix, only download it from bleepingcomputer.com.

Here's an interesting read. It's a guy talking about how he took the source code to a well known piece of malware, and he reworked it to make it his own (he was kicked out of the virus world championships for it), and he has infected thousands of computers that he can remote control. He says antivirus is basically a joke, it's not effective against any malware coder who knows what they are doing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s ... rator_ama/

There are also malware development packages you can purchase as a monthly service. Some malware coder writes a rootkit framework and sells it, and they provide updates. So if Symantec issues an update to prevent their infection from bypassing it, these people release an update so you can bypass Symantec again. It's all a big game of cops and robbers. Do you think the cops are 100% successful anywhere in the world? Of course not, so why would it be reasonable to think that any antivirus is 100% effective?

Here's another good read about the Conficker worm.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... in/308098/

What will really change this is virtual desktops, where each desktop is generated from a known good "golden image". Your data and settings are kept separate from the OS, and you can automatically reset the OS part. This will really change the IT landscape, because instead of IT people spending half their day trying to fix computer problems, they just reset the user's computer and in 5 minutes the problem is fixed. A whole class of problems is effectively eliminated, or it's at least minimized to the point where a minimum wage worker can perform the task. This all sounds awesome, until half the IT work force is no longer needed...

[UncombedCoconut]

If you like working the command line look up the command "screen" it's one of my favorite apps.

tmux is a shiny alternative that's probably worth looking into. I can't give much of a review, though, since it's been years since I used such programs heavily.

[bob]

I agree with Russell on this. If I was setting up a small business, or was advising anyone else, it would be Windows all the way. Support is more plentiful, it is more widely available and it is cheaper. And they are very good products these days.

Last night was an example of the virtues and drawbacks of Linux for me. I was working late on the revisions of a manuscript for publication (not CC, it was Journal of Bacteriology). I had a table in LibreOffice Calc (Excel equivalent) and I cut and pasted it into a blank page of LibreOffice Writer (MS word equivalent). As soon as I did that simple task, the program hogged the computer, the disk started to spin like crazy (RAM memory was overflown and started to use the disk), and I could not do anything. I was trying to desperately access the system monitor (Task manager equivalent) to kill the program but it was so slow it never responded. I try several things but I just could not access anything. I did not want to turn off the computer and risk damaging something. Finally, I figured I could open a terminal (it took a while), run "top" figure what was the ID of the offending program, and kill it. That was not enough, but it left the computer slow, but I least after a short period of time I could access the monitor and kill the rest, restore the memory and get back to normal. I wasted half an hour probably.

The problem was, when I cut in the spread sheet, I selected the columns, which means the program thought I selected A, B, C, D, and assume almost infinite rows... I repeated the operation selecting just a squared area of spreadsheet and that worked. A very amateurish behavior of LibreOffice (which by the way, is slow as hell). For many things I use gnumeric, which is fantastic except that... the printout is messed up.

1) Many critical software for Linux are not ready for prime time. The office system is one of them.
2) BUT, as an operating system, Linux is SUPERB. The system resisted this aggressive evil software and did not crash!!! After that, it wen to normal without rebooting and I still did not reboot!

So, I think Linux is for
1) Grandpa and grandma, who only read email, pay bills, read news, write a letter.
2) programmers.
3) power users
4) computer illiterates with great curiosity. They will learn and learn and become power users. Everything you learn, you keep.

It is not for people who are very active with computers using them as tools but hate them. One of this problems will be a complete turnoff. One of the advantage of Windows over Linux is *SOME* of the auxiliary software, and it just happens that these is what these type of people use.

Having said that, I LOVE Linux and that is the reason I am willing to put up with this. For me, the advantages are overwhelming, but I totally understand the other side of the coin.

However, trying Linux pays off, A LOT.

Miguel
PS: BTW, I am using an old dual and still very functional. With Linux you end up saving in hardware! not only in software!

Note that is not limited to Linux. My daughter recently spent 2-3 hours working on her AP biology syllabus (teaches high school at a private school). Suddenly, MS word died, she got the usual error pop-up "do you want to report to microsoft". But her document was gone. Even with autosave, no trace could be found. She spent an hour going thru the "12 step program" that microsoft gives as various ways to recover when autosave fails and word crashes.

She gave up and re-typed everything. Not had that in open office, on my linux box.