Building my own computer - Linux vs Windows

[Garland]

I'm in need of (or just want, anyway) a new computer, and this time around, I thought it'd be cool to build my computer from scratch. I'm going to buy the specific processors, video cards, etc and assemble what will hopefully be more to my liking than any stock assembly computer from the Staples' store shelf. Buying the hardware is simple - a matter of buying the best I can afford. I don't know what OS I should get. Or rather, I know what Windows XP is like, and I'm wondering what benefits Linux offers. Basically, when a person switches from Windows to Linux, what prompted the decision? Note that "Because it's not Microsoft" isn't a valid reason in my oppinion. Supporting the underdog can't be the only value. Any oppinions?

[Dr Unne]

Good things about Linux:

Morality. MS is a company full of shysters, and $300 is too much to spend for their inferior operating system In a few years when Longhorn comes out, and DRM (Digital Rights Management) sorts of crap starts taking effect, you may one day be unable to run any software or play any music or watch any movies that aren't "digitally signed", i.e. that you don't have a copyright to use. Every OS MS produces takes away just a little bit of your right to do what YOU want to do with the computer YOU paid for. How ridiculous is it that you have to contact their website, transmit some kind of hash value based on your hardware, and get permission from MS to use the software you already bought? MS has been convicted in the US of abusing their powers as a monopoly; that means they are LEGALLY GUILTY of ripping their customers off. They're close to being taken to court for the same exact thing in Europe at this time. Why would you want to give them more of your money to RENT a license, and basically beg them to allow you to use their crappy OS?

Technical superiority. Linux doesn't deteriorate just from daily use, like Windows does. Linux doesn't have such a thing as a Blue Screen of Death; if something crashes, you know why, and you can fix it. Linux doesn't do mysterious magical background things without telling you about it. Linux doesn't grant every program on your system administrative priviledges. Linux doesn't come installed with 27 "services" listening on various ports by default, waiting for viruses to arrive. Linux has technical problems too, yeah, but 99% of Linux problems are BKAC problems. "Between Keyboard and Chair."

Choice. Linux gives you options. Windows forces MSN and MS Office and MS Whatever down your throat. There are dozens of window managers for Linux, from bare-bones no-graphics-at-all to fully integrated "Desktop Environments". And I can use any of them, simultaneously even, or I can use none at all if I wish. I know exactly what is installed on my computer, because I put it there, not MS. There are hundreds of choices of distro alone. From ultra-newbie to ultra-advance. There are Linux clones designed to look exactly like Windows. There are Linux clones to do nothing but run a server or router. And there's everything in between the two.

Freedom. Linux is free as in money, because you don't have to pay for it. It's the product of programmers who program for the sheer joy of programming. I don't put up with nag-ware, spy-ware, ad-ware, etc. in Linux. Linux offers many free office suites, free graphics programs, free music programs, free everything. Windows: $300 for the OS, $400 for Office, $20 for the ability to skin the OS, $100 for anti-virus programs, etc. etc. etc. Linux is also free as in speech. The entire community shares their source code and their work with each other. Linux is almost scientific in the way it progresses. MS on the other hand hoardes its source code to keep any competition from having access to their "secrets", and uses that advantage to rape your wallet.

Power. Linux is more powerful for many things. It takes programming knowledge to get at a lot of the "power", but it's there if you want it. Everything you can do in Windows, short of a few very specialized applications, I can also do in Linux, and I can also do way way more.

Fun. Linux is fun to use, plain and simple. That's a matter of opinion though.

Bad things about Linux:

It's hard to learn. Yes, it is. Especially since you have to un-learn a lot of the total garbage that's built into Windows. The learning curve is steep. It takes a huge leap of knowledge to get a foothold. Things that take 2 seconds in Windows often take 2 hours in Linux, especially at first. However, once you have Linux working, it WORKS. There is no "double-click and icon and pray" in Linux. But I for one don't miss it, because half the time, Windows does the wrong thing, in spite of your prayers. I, on the other hand, do the right thing. :)

Hardware support. MS has half the world in its back pocket, so many companies (hardware and software) don't support Linux. However some notable ones do. NVIDIA does. There is good Creative support. Few games support Linux, but some do, like NWN.

Basically, if I wanted user-friendliness, I'd get Mac OSX. If I want a good computer to use for anything I want to use it for, I'd use Linux.

[Garland]

That's a really convincing argument. While my computer is more an entertainment system than utility, the paragraph on choice seems what I'm looking for. The whole point in my making a computer from scratch is so that it ends up exactly how I want it. Right now, the only thing that could potentially sway me from Linux is game support. While Linux has no mystery background programs slowing down the system (good for game performance), it's of little use if I don't have a game to play on it. I figure I'll have to go and see what games have Linux ports, and what's due to be released for Linux. My new dream computer is going to essentially be a videogame system with a wordprocessor, art program, and internet access.

[Citizen Bleys]

It depends upon what you want to use it for.

Do you have lots of old programs that you want to keep on using? If so, you need Windows. Wine will let you use *some* of your old software, but it's not a wonder-product that will run any Windows application on Linux, especially if that application integrates itself (i.e., writes stuff in the system registry)

Are you a hardcore gamer? If you want to play the latest and greatest FPS games, you need Windows. If you don't mind waiting a year or two, Linux will do.

Are you an internet junkie? Linux is for you. Browsing the internet is a much more smooth, enjoyable experience under Linux. 99.999% of the viruses, worms, and trojans out there attack only Windows systems. There are more internet applications available for Linux. (Don't like mIRC? Well, in Windows, you're pretty much stuck with it. In Linux, there are literally dozens of apps out there. Including, I believe, an mIRC port for Linux.) Everything from browsers to IM clients to P2P filesharing applications. Linux actually has decent internet integration from the command-line. I don't ever run KDE (or any other GUI) on my Linux server, but I still used it to browse to kernel.org in Lynx, download a kernel update from it, FTP to the gamers-alliance.com server and upload the A+ Self-Test Software for Nameles, and send and receive email, all this week, all from the command-line.

Multimedia junkie? Linux is probably better for you, as well. Full-screen video can be a resource-intensive process, and Linux is a lot easier on your system resources (CPU, RAM, etc) than Windows, so videos will play smoother and crash less.

Afraid of the command-line? Windows is for you. Everything in Windows is integrated into a GUI applet of some sort. While many GUI applets are avaiable in Linux, they almost all suck, and the command-line is a preferable method of getting anything done. Like Unne said, there's a steep learning curve with Linux, and you have to be willing to get into the guts of your computer. But since you're rolling your own, that's probably not an issue.

Want to set up a web server? Use Linux. Just add Apache to your package list during installation, and Linux will automatically install and configure your computer as a web server. Then, all you have to do is copy your html files to /var/www/html and go. Anybody on the web can see your web page by pointing their browser to your IP address, or you can register a domain name (or a redirect with dyndns.org) to get a human-friendly domain. Also, the vi editor (at the command-line) is about the best tool I've ever used for writing HTML. Screw those WYSIWYG editors that write IE-only code and put so much useless crap in the page that when you view the source it looks like the Tazmanian Devil has attempted to mate with it. If you code HTML in Notepad now, once you learn vi, you'll never go back. It's got syntax highlighting, hanging tabs, and it doesn't suck up your memory resources or anything like that.

Want to quickly and easily write GUI software? You want Windows. I have yet to see a programming IDE that can compare with Microsoft Visual Studio. It's got everything a programmer could possibly want except bragging rights. If writing good software quickly and easily is more important to you than beating your chest and bragging, go with Visual Studio. Otherwise, you're probably coding ASM programs in the DOS editor anyways.

Want to set up a large-scale network? You want Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory. Linux has a reputation for being a good networking product, but for large networks, Active Directory tops anything Linux has to offer. You can set up domain controllers with multimaster replication, so if one of your servers goes down, it doesn't matter--any other DC in the domain can fill in for it transparently. Unlike with a workgroup environment (which is all of the networking that Linux supports), if you have multiple servers, you don't have to authenticate to each one separately, and have a user account on every computer in the network. You log in once--with your user account in Active Directory--and every computer in the domain recognizes you. Linux doesn't have any unified directory service *at all,* although Novell is working hard to bring NDS to the Linux world.

EDIT: Why don't you just set up a dual-boot machine and try Linux out yourself, and see how you like it? That way, if you don't like it, Windows is still there for you?

[Dr Unne]

GTK and Qt are pretty fun to program for actually. KDevelop supposedly has a good WYSIWYG editor, but I never tried it. GTK and Qt both have Perl bindings, so GUI programming is insanely fun and easy that way. But anyways.

I mostly agree with Bleys other than that (mostly). Dual-boot is sadly a pretty good idea, and it's not hard to set up. It's easier to transition that way too, so you can keep Win-doze around for the few (very few) things you still miss, for a while, until you love Linux so much you don't need Win-doze any longer. :)

[Garland]

Since the two of you agree that a dual-boot is a good way to go, as it would give me the best of both worlds, and you both know more about this topic than I'll know in years, I think that's what I'm going to do. I think I'll go look at some potential distros somehow, and see what's available. My general tendency is to buy the most advanced. You get what you pay for after all. Besides, user-friendliness often comes at a price of functionality, and getting the Linux-For-Newbies distro would probably defeat the point of getting Linux in the first place. Time to see just what they consider "advanced".

[Dr Unne]

All the good distros are free, so you only have to buy it if you feel like donating money to the cause. :) Go with Gentoo, it's good for everyone.

[Garland]

Both Gentoo and Slackware seem to promote flexibility and customization, so I think one of those two will be the one for me. It'll be a matter of which one has the current strongest version at the time I start putting this all together, which I hope will be early post-Xmas.

[Citizen Bleys]

I'll second the recommendation of Gentoo. I used to be a Red Hat guy, but Red Hat is slowly bleeding out functionality with each new release. The Fedora Project is the biggest crock since the Meech Lake accord. I like Red Hat 8 still, even though I have to download a patch if I want to play mp3s in XMMS.

Slackware will be an easier install, but it's a nightmare to add software to. People complain about RPM, but Slackware's .tgz packages are even more useless. You'll wind up downloading source and compiling it yourself more often than not.

Gentoo will be a nightmare to install, but it's short term pain for long term gain.

However (especially if you're going to use Gentoo), I reccomend that you not only read but *study* the installation instructions. Especially if you're using an ATA card instead of one of the IDE channels on your motherboard. And even more, I'd reccomend installing Windows and Linux on separate physical disks. (Windows on hda and Linux on hdb). Plus, you'll have to learn both GRUB's method of naming hard drives and partitions and Gentoo's, which IIRC, is really confusing. Still, if I can learn ARC paths, you can learn Gentoo's system.

Re: Programming: I have used KDevelop, and it's crap, especially put next to Visual Studio. Anjunta's better, but still not as good as Visual C++.

[Dr Unne]

I never really got into Visual Studio (even though it was required for all my classes at college; go figure), so I guess I don't know all the nice things it does that other text editors don't do. I just use vim myself. Anjuta is good too. I've heard good things about Eclipse too, as an IDE, but who knows.

Yeah, use Gentoo. Gentoo doesn't even have "versions" per se, it has non-stop incremental package upgrades. Gentoo is the way to learn your computer inside-out, and learn Linux inside-out while you do it. It forces you to do just enough where you have to learn it, but it makes the really hard tedious things (finding dependencies, blah) easy enough to make it possible to do anything. This is the first distro I used where EVERY program I ever wanted to install actually worked, because everything is pretty vanilla and standard. I can't say enough good about Gentoo, honestly.

[Garland]

Alright, you've both sold me on Gentoo. First hand experience beats company promotions any day. Since my computer is online whenever I turn it on, via a cable modem, I'll be able to reap the benefits of Gentoo's automatic upgrades without much hassle.

[Citizen Bleys]

Just make sure you leave yourself lots of time during the install, and if possible, back up your Windows hard drive, because I think you might have some problems with partitioning and getting the bootloader installed in the right place. (It should be on the Master Boot Record of the first IDE drive in your system; /dev/hda1 by Linux nomenclature, multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) in ARC paths (which it seems to me that Gentoo may use. Although it might not use a partition number, since it wants to address a physical disk for the MBR, not a partition number. (in ARC paths, all numbers count from zero up except partition, which counts from 1. multi(0) is /dev/hda or the master disk on your primary IDE channel, multi(1) is /dev/hdb or the slave disk on your primary IDE channel, multi(2) is /dev/hdc (secondary master) and multi(3) will be /dev/hdd (secondary slave)...that's assuming a typical onboard-IDE only setup, not like my computer, which has four IDE channels instead of two, due to the ATA card, and Windows seems to look on the motherboard first, while Gentoo looks on the ATA card. I'm not sure. I never was able to get the bootloader installed in Gentoo.

It's hard to say without seeing a screen in front of me. Just read the hell out of those install docs before you even *think* of putting the Gentoo CD in your drive. If you mess up the partition table on your Windows drive, you'll lose all of the data on it. And even if you start from two clean drives (or partitions), you'll have to install Windows first. It won't install cleanly on another partition unless there's another version of Windows on the first partition of the first physical disk.

EDIT: Actually, you might be able to get away with installing Gentoo first if you configure GRUB properly; Install Gentoo on a secondary hard disk or partition, and tell GRUB that there's a Windows install on /dev/hda1 ((hd0,0) in GRUB's nomenclature, IIRC) even though it isn't, and that when you boot into that, it should hide your Gentoo installation. That way, it might install Windows XP cleanly even though Gentoo's there. Just make sure you have a Gentoo boot disk so that you can still boot into Gentoo after Windows overwrites GRUB; once in Gentoo, you can put GRUB back in the MBR. That's still a theory, though. I'm not *sure* it'll work.

[Dr Unne]

I find that it's easier to install Windows first, just because it b0rks your MBR, and at least then you have one working install to fall back on if, say, you need internet access to look something up. I wouldn't trust Windows not to go "Hey look, another HD. It looks empty to me, since I can't read reiserfs or ext3, and anything without a FAT32 or NTFS parition is certainly 'empty'! *format Linux to death*"

In grub, hda is hd0. hda1 is (hd0,0), hda2 is (hd0,1), etc. hdb is (hd1), hdb1 is (hd1, 0), etc. I'm not sure if they could've made it any MORE confusing. Even better, since generally people have /boot as its own partition, say at (hd1,0), to reference a file like /boot/bzImage in your grub.conf, it's actually (hd1,0)/bzImage, NOT (hd1,0)/boot/bzImage, because /boot isn't even mounted yet when the boot loader is running, and calling it by the name /boot makes no sense. So many people make that mistake that Gentoo actually creates a symlink in /boot called /boot/boot, which points to ".", That is, /boot/boot = /boot, /boot/boot/boot = /boot, /boot/boot/boot/boot = /boot...

[MecaKane]

It <i>b0rks</i> my MPR!?
Holy crap. :eek:

At school I use Kde, it's pretty nifty. Slow as all hell on starting Mozilla and kit though, but that might be the computer itself. The ones in the lab where we have to use windows are probably better or something.

[Dr Unne]

Mozilla is slow to load on any system. As for Kit, Gaim is way better, and the new versions of KDE push Kopete instead of Kit anyways, which isn't better than Gaim in my opinion, but anything is better than Kit. KDE is kind of slow though, compared to the likes of Gnome or ones of the *boxes or XFCE4 or what have you, but oh well.

Yes, it does b0rk your MBR. There's no other way to accurately describe it.

[crono_logical]

If it borked it badly enough though, the BIOS wouldn't be able to boot from it though, so it must be "correct" to some extent :p

[Dr Unne]

It automatically overwrites whatever's in your MBR without even asking you and replaces it with something that only boots Windoze, so I think b0rk is a good term for it.

[Shoeberto]

<font color="#009999">
One thing that may seem small, but actually made me ditch Linux, was what kind of modem you use. If you're going on a broadband line, or you're on a network, you should be fine - but if you're on dial-up, make sure you have the right kind of modem. If you get a Winmodem, which is what you'll likely want to get as they're much cheaper, make sure that there are hacks available for it to make it work on Linux. Unless in the nine months since I last used it, some developers figured out a way around it.

But it's only something to think about if you're on dial-up.

[Citizen Bleys]

I'm amused by the word "b0rk" being posted by Unne. Or any scatological reference, for that matter.

[Garland]

Windows XP on hard drive A, Linux Gentoo on hard drive B, installed in that order, and it seems like I'll have a pretty nice setup. Once I install both OS, it shouldn't be too hard at all to make the Linux hard drive the one that boots first by default. My Linux drive will be devoted to everything utilitarian and functional, like word processors, internet browsing and such, and my Windows drive will be pretty much PC games only. I'm only bothering with Windows at all because I have enough PC games that I can't live without.