Filed under: Linux, Open Source
Common Linux myths dispelled
by Grant Robertson Jan 31st 2007 at 1:00PM
Fanboy FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), it comes from all sides of the computing landscape. The three most well known operating systems, Microsoft Windows, Apple's OSX and the open source Linux have been called everything and accused of almost anything you can imagine in one press outlet or another. Linux is lousy for games, Windows is a memory hog, OSX will force you get a Liberal Arts degree and recycle... but, I digress. We're here to dispel the myths, not spread them.Linux is great, too bad there aren't any good applications
-or-
On Linux, you can't open files other people send
False. Linux applications are plentiful, well written and widely compatible with their OSX or Windows counterparts. Microsoft Office files are easily opened by Open Office. Photoshop's functionality can be found in The Gimp, or better yet with GimpShop. Audio editing, maintaining your mp3 library, file management, databases, instant messaging, personal information management, etc... They're all available and, in the vast majority of situations they're free.
Linux won't allow you to watch your favorite video files.
False. Out of the box many Linux distributions have so-so support for common video formats but, did you know there are open source players which can handle almost anything you can throw at them? It's true. Due to patent restrictions you may have to install them yourself but, fear not, there are great forums for popular Linux distributions and, installing an application under Linux is usually a snap. For Ubuntu or Debian users, check out Automatix, which will help you install a whole host of useful but patent restricted applictions and add-ons which make Linux a force to reckon with.
Linux doesn't have a modern 3d desktop like Vista's Aero or OSX's Aqua
False. Beryl has emerged as a strong contender for taking the Linux desktop to the next generation. Check out this video to see exactly how cool your Linux desktop can be.
But, if I use Linux I won't be able to run Word/Photoshop/Internet Explorer/____.
False. Crossover Linux (formerly Crossover Office) allows even the most neophyte of users to install their favorite Windows Applications and run them at full speed, right in Linux. That one application you need for work, school or, just as a matter of preference can be easily installed and working in minutes. For less than half the cost of a Windows license, you can have Corssover Office with a year of helpful support. Just check out the list of applications Crossover fully supports.
I can't play Half Life 2, Prey, or World of Warcraft on Linux
False. Recent updates to Crossover Linux allow you to play your favorite Steam engine based games on Linux. So, fire up HL2, WoW or Prey and try to forget that you ever used Windows.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
glacia said 1:11PM on 1-31-2007
"We're here to dispell the myths, not spread them."
When did policy change?
(Must resist pointing out that dispel was misspelled)
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Grant Robertson said 1:16PM on 1-31-2007
Thanks for pointing out the (di)spelling mistake. Cheers.
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glacia said 1:22PM on 1-31-2007
I kid of course. My years as a proofreader haunt me.
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DNAMichaud said 1:50PM on 1-31-2007
Great little post; I'm currently undergoing an Unbuntu re-introduction to Linux (last used Linux with RedHat 5!) - so far I am very pleased! I am impressed with the maturing of Linux over the past few years... I'll not be getting rid of my Windows partition quite yet, but I must say that I am impressed enough to be trying it as my primary non-gaming OS (I know, Linux *can* run games - heheheheh.... baby steps man, baby steps).
Oh, and if you are like me and hope people point out mistakes: "OSX will force you get a Liberal Arts degree and recycle... " is missing a 'to' between 'you' and 'get'. If you don't like people pointing it out, please forgive me. :)
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James said 1:51PM on 1-31-2007
That last point seems like a half-truth to me -- sure, 5-10 of the most popular Windows games will run natively in Linux (if your video card drivers have been ported...), but what about the other several thousand? Sure, some might work in Wine or Crossover or whatever, but we'll probably never see Linux emerge as a proper PC gaming platform, especially if the "Games for Windows" tag takes off the way Billy G hopes it will.
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Mark said 1:51PM on 1-31-2007
Wow. That Linux Beryl looks very good. :O
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alf said 5:39PM on 1-31-2007
It's a shame that I couldn't get iTunes to work properly in Ubuntu, or have my printer's full set of features supported. Don't get me started on my scanner...
Linux has a long way to go before I look at it again.
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Jono said 6:10PM on 1-31-2007
WOW, that beryl video is INSANELY SLICK. Have never really used linux, am seriously thinking about it now... but where do i start?
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Hinde said 7:11PM on 1-31-2007
I suggest you get on ubuntu.com. Check the os out and the community supporting it. Then download a cd image of Edgy Eft (v6.10). This cd is called a "live" cd. Pop it in your cd drive, and, if your bios are compatible, your computer will boot up ubuntu for you to try. Your xp bootup will not be touched, so you don't need to worry. If you like it you can install it.
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David Smith said 8:42PM on 1-31-2007
Ugh... Linux can't play games worth a DAMN... Try playing a Linux game that is more than 2+ years old, and no longer supported by the community or the original developers... Example: Mind Rover.. Great game, but it sure as heck doesn't work properly in any of the latest distros.. You gotta spend hours searching around and installing obsolete library files to get the fonts to show up in the game correctly inside their little text boxes..
Playing the same game on Windows XP works FLAWLESSLY, exactly the same as it ran on Windows 95. No problems whatsoever, you don't need to install ANYTHING.. It just installs and runs... For windows, the game is 8+ years old.. And you can still use your original disk!
The linux release of Mind Rover was only a few years ago, and the original manuf. stopped supporting it, and it is a non-open source game... So it just doesn't work now after a few years.. I spent like 50+ hours trying to get it to work, gave up, formatted my drive, and then just installed an obsolete version of linux to play the obsolete linux games that I bought and were no longer supported. The answer from the linux community: Talk the software vendor into patching their game. HA!! You gotta be kidding me... The community also says... Don't use the old libararies!! They have security holes!! Oh no!! Use the fixed libararies, the community says.. But then the old games don't work the way they're supposed to! So you're screwed anyway..
Linux can't even touch Windows when it comes to gaming.. You'll always be the ones that get accidently banned from World of Warcraft (google it), or where the game just stops working after a couple years because a feature was removed from a libarary to fix a security vulnerability and instead of rewriting it, they just moved on to something totally different.. Breaking backwards compatibilty..
Most of the demos for Windows Vista is showing how productivity is enhanced, how you can do more things and faster (with the ribbon in Office 2007 for example).. Most of the demos for Linux desktop is showing pure eye-candy.. Ooooooo Pretty!!! But how the hell does that really enhance my productivity, or improve the gaming experience, or listen to music, or do whatever it is I like to do on my computer.. Unless you like to watch the little cube spin virtual desktops around all day long, you'll get bored of the LInux eyecandy fast and move back to Windows as I have so I can play games without all the BS...
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cwgraham said 12:44PM on 2-01-2007
I'm a Linux newb myself. I put Ubuntu on my laptop just after Thanksgiving. I have to say i'm loving it so far. I was using OpenOffice exclusively on XP so the switch hasn't been that tough. Plus the forms make the little things that i need to learn pretty easy.
As for the guy who couldn't get iTunes to work. Well neither could i but i ended up doing a Google search and found a program called Amarok which sinked my iPod and actually in a lot of ways is a better suit then iTunes. You will have to enable a few things but doing some Google searches and you will find how to enable AAC files.
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archiesteel said 9:32PM on 1-31-2007
"Most of the demos for Linux desktop is showing pure eye-candy.. Ooooooo Pretty!!!"
Not just pretty, useful. Having the four desktops on cube faces is a good way to visualize your workspaces. But the fact is that Beryl has many functionality enhancements, such as the expose-like Scale plugin, the Show Desktop plugin, Windows thumbnails, a visual Program Switcher, Zoom functionalities, etc.
The main advantage it has to the Vista equivalent (though it's not much of an equivalent) is that Beryl is easily expanded through plugins, and development is *very* active.
"But how the hell does that really enhance my productivity, or improve the gaming experience..."
You *do* realize the two are mutually exclusive, right? Improving the gaming experience on a PC is a sure way of decreasing productivity!
In any case, the gaming scene has mostly moved over to consoles by now. Apart from WoW, the most popular titles are all on consoles, including the vast majority of "hardcore gaming" titles. With the Wii, a whole new population of gamers has arrived. For an increasingly larger proportion of people, computers are used for other things than gaming.
For those users whose gaming needs do not absolutely require Windows, Linux is a good alternative. For those who do, dual-booting is quite acceptable, considering that it actually *helps* your productivity by making it just a bit harder to get to your games. :-)
"or listen to music, or do whatever it is I like to do on my computer.."
Listen to music? What gave you the idea that you couldn't do this on Linux? You obviously have never tried amaroK - it blows away anything that is available on Windows or OSX...don't worry, it'll be available for Windows one day, so you'll have access to it...
The rest of your post was a predictable flamebait from a MS fanboy. You don't like Linux, fine. Don't try to discourage others if they want to find out by themselves, especially since the author has provided a nice guide for potential newbies.
I also highly recommend this for new Ubuntu/Kubuntu users:
http://www.ubuntuguide.org
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Siddhartha Gandhi said 9:53PM on 1-31-2007
David Smith, that's the biggest piece of bs I ever heard. Does 0$ enhance your productivity? Hell yea! Does the fact that you need not search for programs and then download the installer (after paying for the program of course, and then installing it) increase your productivity? Hell yea.
Itunes guy: All the software you need is in the repository. Use the Linux replacements. Don't try moving Word and Winzip and Itunes over, use the replacements.
Jono, start by backing up your important files on CD. Either download a Ubuntu iso and burn it, or ask them to ship you free cds at shipit.ubuntu.org. Install, then restore your files. If you need any help, post back.
There are great games for Linux, but sadly no one ever hears of them. True Combat Elite is amazingly good, as is Doom 3. Sauerbraten and Alien Arena are also good, but my favorite is Wolfenstein ET.
Vista is lucky though, Crysis will save it from gaming doom.
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Marko Kettunen said 9:37PM on 1-31-2007
Dear Mr. Smith,
It's obvious you just can't handle simple applications like Cedega and Wine. Stop whining. Reading your post made my eyes bleed.
Vista is definitely showing a lot of progress in increasing your productivity - all you need to do is clicking all those fancy little warning boxes popping up every second, when you want to install something, run something, or.. Uhmm... Do something creative or... Uhmm... Do pretty much anything at all. As Vista comes bundled with Internet Explorer 7, which has an astonishing number of compatibility problems with services written for IE6, I'd say all that fanboy whining has no solid ground to be based on.
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AoE said 10:15PM on 1-31-2007
Grant, if you SERIOUSLY want to dispel myths about Linux, shouldn't you... not perpetuate them in the very post you're trying to dispel myths in?!
"Photoshop's functionality can be found in The Gimp, or better yet with GimpShop."
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Michael said 2:05AM on 2-01-2007
Good article, and I agree on some points. But please, do not compare Gimp to Photoshop. Gimp is nowhere near the league of Photoshop.
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Eric said 10:27PM on 1-31-2007
TO bad every single piece of software I use on Windows is "Untested" on Linux. I have Ubuntu on 2 of my computers, including this Laptop. Unfortunatly, Sony Vegas, After Effects, Illustrator, Sound Forge, Flash, Dreamweaver, and a host of other multimedia programs I use on a daily basis won't function. I am not willing to try doing this. I need to work, not play around of weeks on end just to get one program to work that works fine across the room. Case in point, I recently spent WEEKS trying to get DMX4LINUX working so I could run my lighting system on my Linux laptop. After talking with developers and posting in forums something that was suposedly supported and working failed on both of these installs. It worked fine first time on my Windows box.
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AoE said 10:28PM on 1-31-2007
argh, it cut off my rant... I guess that's a cue to keep it short. Anyhow, as anyone who makes a living in the graphic arts will tell you, gimp is as good a replacement for photoshop as a tricycle would be for an escalade. If you doubt me, then please show me where the cmyk support (which is ESSENTIAL for print work), or how about the layer styles are? And those are just two of the hundreds of missing features. Maybe gimp is a decent replacment for your purposes, but honestly if that's the case, you were never the target market for photoshop to begin with (if you were, it's missing features would have been immediately apparent)
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Jim Engelhardt said 10:38PM on 1-31-2007
Sorry to be off-topic... but is this the same Grant Robertson who used to work at the Museum of Science and Industry in L.A. in the late 80s?
If so, Jim wants to know where to contact you...
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michael said 10:43PM on 1-31-2007
I've used Linux and Windows at home on various systems for years, Linux still needs serious work. As much as I admire Linux projects - Fedora, Ubuntu, etc - they have lightyears still to go to fix all the compatibility issues .. As slick as that video was I ever got my Linux boxes to the level I needed and Windows even under all the criticism never gave me the hassles that Linux still does.
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