what is linux

you know, i thought i knew what linux was, i use windows, what is linux, how is it different? why do programmers tend to preffer linux if they do? is it stablity or what?

Lunix = l33t.

But seriously.  If you run into linux fanboys, I give odds 10 to 1 that it's an elitist thing.  That's what I've generally run into.  If you run into someone who uses it and understands that all operating systems exist for a reason and that some are better than others in various areas, but there's no "best" OS, you're talking to someone who probably uses linux because they're interested in the way it works and they enjoy tinkering with it.  (Much as your dedicated mechanic loves tinkering with cars, but with less grease.)

Don't let slashdot convince you that the entire IT industry is filled with linux fanboys.  It's not.  Slashdot *is* filled with a lot of 16 year old elitist twits, though.

Linux *can* be very stable or very unstable, depending on the software running on it.  Pretty much just like windows.  Linux has one advantage in that it's free and the source code is available to play with in your own time.  Windows has one advantage in that it's easier to use, more widely supported, and (lately) has a much easier upgrade path for fixing OS bugs.

Any OS that requires I recompile the kernel even *once* isn't going to be an OS that I recommend to Grandma.

Referring to Linux as though it were a single monolithic OS is, of course, a bit of a misrepresentation.  There are dozens of flavors of linux, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Now, as far as *you're* concerned, stick with windows.  Don't start using linux unless you have a burning desire to do so, because it will take that burning desire to stick through the rough spots.

>>1
 if this is true then this is what you do:

Ignore >>2 because the information content in his posts is close to 0. Any actual information is cancelled out by the misinformation. The rest is noise.

Now you need to try out Linux. One of the best ways to do this is to download what is known as a Live CD, which will boot Linux without your having to format your hard drive and figure out how to install stuff.

Link: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

Download a CD image and burn it. If you don't know how to do that, figure it out. Reboot with the CD in the drive. Presto. Now you can try it out and answer your own question.

>>1 I don't know (in real life) any programmers who prefer Linux. All the ones I know prefer windows and the visual tools.

>>3
And your post lacks so much information it's misleading.

SOME Linux distros are easy to get working.
That's easy.
That's ALL that's easy.

The rest may very well be hell for you, and unless you love wasting your time compiling shit as a hobby, you won't like it. The second you want something out of the ordinary installed, you'll face the fact that Linux is so free, you just can't take an application and run it. You're given the source code (partly because of this, and partly because source code vs. binary is almost a matter of religion for long haired, tree hugging Linux fanboys; thou shalt compile thy code), and you have to waste your time compiling it, which often fails because your Lunix is different, so you have to go around correcting crap, linking files, downloading hordes of libraries (it's so free there's approximately a GAZILLION libraries for everything, and you end up having to install all of them if you want applications X, Y and Z working), seeing which goddamned version of glibc did it want (library versions = drama), and finding out why the fuck is it still failing.

For example, think you want to try image viewers (spoilers: there's nothing nearly as good as ACDSee 3.22 for Linux). If you didn't know ACDSee 3.22 is the best you can use, and you collected 10 image viewers for Windows and 10 for Linux, you'll spend an hour trying the Windows ones, and a dozen hours compiling and trying the Linux ones, assuming you can actually get all of them to work.

hehe im not that much a noob >< i've tried gentoo and liked it kinda but couldn't really tell how its soo much different than windows, i mean i know directx and all dont run on it but why isn't it portable?

there's nothing nearly as good as ACDSee 3.22 for Linux

That is so true.

I don't know what you people are talking about. Distros like ubuntu are much easier to use than windows.
Windows = HCI nightmare. The least user-friendly OS ever.

>>6
To open files, draw on the screen, read from the keyboard, etc., programs call operating system functions. Linux has a different core and provides different functions to do stuff, so you can't run Windows programs on it. (You may actually run a few with a system called Wine, which will emulate Windows functions with varying success.)

>>8
Lol Lunix fanboi

1. Not true
2. If it's so bad, then why did KDE rip it off?
3. You an "use a distro", but unless all you want to do with your computer is write letters to your aunt, browse the intarweb, zoom fractals, and play SuperTux, you really need to install software on it, and this is where Linux totally, intrinsically sucks.

>>9
can you explain what you mean by different core? and how does Wine accomplish emulation? how is this emulation different from running windows, for that matter how does anything achieve emulation? like psxe or w/e, how do they emulate stuff? i what emulation means but whats the logic or how it works? i hope i make sense

>>9
It's true in my case. Whenever I have to use windows, I have a harder time getting things done than when I use some of the "easy to use" linux distributions. Sure, switching to linux when you're familiar with windows is probably a lot harder. I'm not very familiar with windows *or* linux, so for me, ubuntu is easier to use than windows.

KDE didn't just rip off windows, it improved on a lot. Sure, I wish they would have based it on something better, but at least you can find what you're looking for using KDE.

The last time I booted ubuntu, it contained a lot of software. I'm glad it did and I didn't need anything else, because I'm agreeing with you on this point – installing software on Linux is a nightmare. A solution like the one Mac OS X uses would be really good. Drag and drop, everything you need packaged in one place.

1.i cant get my usb dsl modem to use on linux.
2.i cant play hentai on linux

and thats why i think linux sucks.

>>12
hey even i, the original poster, was able to do that ><

>>9
LOL YOUR OPINION IS DIFFERENT THAN MINE THEREFORE YOU ARE A FANBOI IT MUST BE TRUE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T ARGUE WITH ENUMERATED LISTS

>>10
Linux is an operating system. It's a Free clone of UNIX, an operating system that was created at Bell Labs in the 1950s. By Free (as opposed to free), I mean anyone can view, edit, and redistribute the source code, unlike most commerical software, which all but makes you give up your firstborn child. For more detail than you could ever want, read the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux).

To answer your specific questions.

By "core," he means the kernel and system libraries. The kernel is what actually makes up the operating system. It's the thing that the bootloader loads. It acts as a layer between the hardware and userspace software, providing abstractions like timers and timesharing and generally making it much simpler or possible to do things like write to a disk. Without an operating system, each program has to contain code for writing to (all different kinds of) disks, using the Internet, or whatever else it wants to do, and only one program can run at a time, per boot (if you've ever used an old computer that required you to pop in a disk and boot to use a program, and then reboot with a different disk for a different one, that computer didn't have an operating system). Most operating systems also use libraries (collections of code files that aren't stand-alone programs) to add more abstractions and increase portability. For example, Linux's main system library is glibc; programs can be ported to other OSes that use glibc, like BSD, without much trouble. The libraries act like a layer around the kernel (a "wrapper," in compsci parlance).

Basically, what this means is that programs that make any calls to system-specific libraries or the kernel have to be partially rewritten ("ported") for use on a different operating system. For example, a Windows program that creates graphical windows and such, like Firefox, has to use different libraries on Linux or Mac, since the Windows GUI libraries are Windows-only.

WINE isn't actually an emulator. It's a "compatibility layer." Basically, it translates calls to Windows code into the respective calls to Linux code. If I run, say, Office, and it requests that the operating system open a file, it only knows how to do that in Windows. WINE takes the request and sends the request to Linux. Any information recieved, like a pointer to the file, is likewise given to WINE, which then translates it back into Windows format and gives it to Office.

>>2
Linux *can* be very stable or very unstable, depending on the software running on it.

Not always true. Windows itself has a number of problems. It's been getting better recently in XP, but I still remember ME, which crashed randomly for no reason.

>>5
Ever heard of Debian? Ubuntu?

>>11
installing software on Linux is a nightmare

hal ~ # emerge mozilla-firefox
<put terminal in the background, go to play game>
done!

Or, emerge mozilla-firefox-bin, you're up and running in a few minutes.

>>12
1. There aren't drivers for it? Are you sure you've looked thorougly? If not, try ndiswrapper, which lets you use the Windows ones.
2. WINE.

>>14
you could say that without screaming and more logically, why's being a fanboi negetive? im a blizzard fanboi

>>15

yay that made a lot of sense to me, sorry for the questions on questions :P but whats a wrapper in programming terms?

>>17
i dont mean any sarcasm by that ^^

>>15 - On installing linux software.
Regular users are unwilling to use the command line, and most graphical package managers don't provide enough information about what software does, how ready it is for general use and which features it provides. It's a nightmare compared to what it could be like.
Windows is pretty bad in this regard too. Wizards where you have to click "next" for 2 minutes and have to make choices about which components to install also suck.

regular users should stfu and use typewriters then

it's called computer SCIENCE for a reason

>>20

programmers would make no money if they had that mentality

i think calling programming computer science is misleading and wrong. it is sofware engineering. what they are doing is engineering new archetectures etc.

>>20
UNIX isn't computer science, I hope you know. All the faggotry in this thread has nothing to do with computer science.

Shit like lambda calculus and turing machines, [I]that's[/] computer science.

>>15

(I'm >>2, btw)

Yeah, I didn't actually call it out, but (IMO) anything along the Win9x tree of development wasn't especially stable, even if nothing was on it.  WinME isn't the black sheep of the family, it's the contorted rapist uncle who's doing 25-life upstate and nobody in the family's sorry about it.  I've spoken with MS employees who hate that OS.  WinME was shite.

That said, though, Win2K and following have proven to be very capable, professional operating systems on the whole.  Especially when you consider that the vast majority of bluescreens in those OSes aren't due to microsoft, but due to some poor driver software installed on the machine.  *ahem* Creative Labs?  I'm talking at you, you bastards! *ahem*  Now, we could debate kernel & driver architecture decisions 'til the cows come home, but the fact remains that Win2k and following are reasonably stable.

My own XP box, which I've been running with the same hardware suite for ~4 years now (excepting that creative card which I rippeed out), has been quite stable with only the creative drivers and an overheating proc ever bluescreening the system.  AMD CPU fans sucked.

My two or three attempts at linux boxen, on the other hand, resulted in rather more teeth-gnashing and rather less accomplishment than I wanted.  They were fun to play with (knoppix still is!), but they never really made it to "production" for me.

>>1 seemed to state the question from a position that I could only endorse the Windows (or some other mainstream, like Mac) OS  for.

>>23

You = right.  Unix is not Computer Science.  Programming, while fun and applicable, isn't generally computer science.  Computer science is Automata and language theory and lambda calculus and the pi calculus.  Programming is *applied* computer science.  While there's occasionally some overlap (lambda expressions, anybody?), they are most definitely not the same thing.

hey hey, lets not degrade windows or linux and stick to the topic of what linux is ^^

>>15
It's been getting better recently in XP, but I still remember ME, which crashed randomly for no reason.
You're missing something here. WinME is the last Windows in the Win95 line, which was never stable and always sucked. Windows NT has been a high quality, stable OS since Windows 2000, and Windows XP is Windows 2000 "with stuff". Stuff you don't always need, BTW.


>>19
Regular users are unwilling to use the command line
True, but even those who use it, like me, find compiling and fixing others' code just to try some shit a waste of time.

Wizards where you have to click "next" for 2 minutes and have to make choices about which components to install also suck.
Not nearly as much if they're fast and don't deal with where's libSDL1.2.4 OMG I have 1.2.3 download more packages lol.

>>19
Anyone who's scared of a command line honestly has no business maintaining a computer. It's a line where you enter text, for crying out loud. If you go OH SHIT TEXT WTF DO I DO when you see a terminal, you're not going to be able to keep your computer healthy and running.

Portage has some graphical frontends, although they're still kind of rough. There's a graphical installation LiveCD, too.

>>26
Any competent package manager (coughnotrpmcough) should be able to deal with dependencies.

If you go OH SHIT TEXT WTF DO I DO when you see a terminal, you're not going to be able to keep your computer healthy and running.

Isn't that a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with the software? Why should it take effort to maintain a machine?

It's not just *nix. Almost everyone is to blame here.

>>27

You define the elitist attitude. 

>>28 is absolutely right for the ideal case.

>>28
Because computers are hard, and no one has successfully managed to abstract away that hardness behind layers of desktop metaphors or whatever.

>>20
I've never had to deal with where libSDL is in any linux distributions I've used.

>>28

garbage in garbage out, too much garbage in = fix it

ัyou cant play hentai on linux...
all recent hentai games needs japanese locale, and wine cant emulate locale. kthxbai

>>32
enable your garbage collector unless you're an explicit memory management fag

>>34

ohh common if you keep downloading crap getting spyware, its not window's fault and if oyu expect operating systems to be so perfect as to know wtf you're doing and to deal with it, go make one and gimme the name

>>35
So I notice you didn't get the joke.

>>36

i didn't, do explain!

Garbage collection and explicit management are two different ways of... managing memory. Whoo.

If you're not a programmer, it's not worth explaining.

Welcome to /prog/

Ok I'll try to get back to the topic.
Someone mentioned more programmers are working with Windows.
I just have to agree to that. If you just look into the newspapers and see the IT jobs you'll realize that many require .net knowledge but few linux knowledge. This is probably due to the programs they produce. Most programming companys write for users that don't want to think about the memory efficency or how poorly programmed the programm they use is. They write for user that just want to use a simple and easy to learn software.
So why not use .net if you can create the same GUI in half an hour that would take 3 hours to code manually if there would be only a minor spped and memory gain which the end-user would notice(I know there are GUI creation tools for linux as well. I just made an example).
But of course there are areas in programm which require a highly customizable OS. A good example here is science or production-software. For example a robot-arm can't be really be controlled precisely by a Windows machine because Windows lacks  realtime support which would cause a Windows controlled robot-arm to be not synchronised with the other machines.
Also Linux is good for internet hosting or any other server-sided task because "it can be stable".

But I haven't really seen a better-than-Windows desktop-Linux (maybe I just haven't tried out enough distros). In my opinion one of the reaosons for this is the lack of standards. Because if you really need a program and there isn't a package for your distro or package-manager of even worse none at all. You'll have to get the source and install the programm. Sometimes this is really easy but the other times it can be the hell (e.g. other non-packaged dependencies or need of extensive configuration) for people who just want to use the programm and don't want to know how much possibilities there are to customize the programm.
But don't get me wrong I am a helpless Linux fanboy so I see the great potential in Linux for as a desktop-OS but nontheless I have to be realistic and say that users that aren't interested in understanding computers but rather in using them would probably be able to use an already set-up Linux system but I think they sometimes will have a hard time customizing it.

>>40
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

>>21
Real programers DO make money because they don't spend their whole life writing crappy GUIs for noobs.

>>42
Don't you mean the opposite?

There's a lot of money to be made writing crappy GUIs for noobs. After all, this isn't the 70s and 80s anymore.

>>43
Similarly there's a lot more money to be made performing plastic surgery than developing innovative new heart surgery techniques. Are you more professional because you earn more money?

>>44
No, but you're no less professional either.

What that has to do with >>43 is beyond me though. I think you missed the point.

>>45
I'm comparing professionalism in programming to professionalism in medicine. Churning out pretty shitware is to writing real code as giving neurotic old californians facelifts is to doing real medicine. It's not really directed at >>43; it's just that he touched on a matter I felt like addressing.

Also I'm blatantly ripping off Philip Greenspun, but so what.
http//phil/...

>>46
Having been in an accident, and needing to go to a plastic surgeon as a result, I can assure you, they're quite professional about what they do. If they fuck up, guess what happens? People acknowledge they may end up dead in heart surgery, but for some reason go whack nuts when their face is messed up.

As for pretty shitware: this is the new era, friend. User interfaces are critical, because we're slowly entering the realm of grandma. Perhaps it's not as interesting as writing protein folding in MPI to run on a cluster, but the people writing GUIs were sitting next to you in university. The only difference is they ended up in one job, while you ended up in another.

People need to eat. In a bull market this isn't a problem, but it sure ain't no bull at the moment.

>>47
I can't understand most of what you said :(

>>48
tl;dr -> If you're working as a programmer, then it's all "real".

a

>>2 is absolutely right, end of story

>>3-51
I was going to say "back to /b/, please", but then I realized that /prog/ pretty much consists of just these posters.

>>52
I was going to say "but without /b/...", but then i realized that /prog/ is a distilled version of /b/ for older audience.

>>53
Sometimes, if (very) rarely, a tiny bit more cerebral too.

>>54
/prog/ is actually the most intelligent board out there.
Or at least it was about a year ago.
>>53
All those SUSSMEN and haxed anii are the distilled essence of /b/-style fun with programming theme. Unlike /b/, /prog/ isn't filled to the brim with retards.
Our retards are also more subtle, creative and intelligent. /prog/'s retard is /g/'s specialist or /v/'s genius.
This gives us the unique, genuine funniness, unavailable to other boards. /g/ tries to emulate this with interjections and routercats, but they are nowhere near /prog/.

Unfortunately, the glorious, master board of /prog/ is getting despoiled by floods of retards. /prog/'s not going to survive much longer.

>>55
Retards come and go but will only die if you allow it to.

>>55
Retards come and go but /prog/ will only die if you allow it to.

Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?

That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.

>>58
I'd just like to interject for a moment.

>>58
old kopipe is ooooooold.
0/10 == overall failure

>>58
I goofed the floof from reading this

>>58
Trolls should be more subtle.
0.5/10 Some dumbfuck might believe it after all.

They really spent $9 billion?

>>62
0.5/10 Some dumbfuck might believe it after all.
That is what makes this troll worth more than 0.5, I'd give it a 4

My computer runs on the Google and a Windows.

>>65
the Google
Hey, I use that too!

OHHHHH RLY

>>67

Congratulations, you've bumped a five year old thread.

>>58
i tried telling my friends this but they don't believe.  they said linux replaces windows.  WHY WOULD YOU HAVE TO HAVE WINDOWS TO INSTALL LINUX THEN?  notice how all computers come with windows (or mac), linux needs them to run.  that's why there are only two profit operating systems because it's so hard to do it all.  linux runs on windows like a program that is like an operating system, thats why you can't sell linux.

>>68
OOH I DIDNT NOTICE SILLY ME