8 May 2011

Why I am not moving away from Linux any time soon

  • KDE is freakin' awesome.  In addition to making all sorts of customization possible, it gives me tons of tools to make my life easier.  I cannot possibly list everything I like about KDE, so here's a tiny list:
    • Klipper remembers n recent clipboard contents, so I don't accidentally lose some text I copied.
    • KDE's Run Program dialogue lets me do things like doing simple math, doing a Google search, switching to a different app, etc.  This is the kind of convenience that doesn't sound like a big deal first, but you miss it when you don't have it.
  • Extremely powerful, customisable command line shells.  I am a keyboard junkie.  I do most of my work on the command line.  I play my music and movies, browse through my files, etc. from the command line.  And I can automate any random chore by writing shell scripts.
  • It has awesome media players.  Mplayer is my favourite.  It plays any random codec you throw at it, out of the box.  Oh, and it has configurable keyboard controls for everything.
  • Ease of migration.  A few days back I wiped my hard disk and upgraded to 64-bit version of Kubuntu.  I was able to export the list of programs I had installed before wiping and reinstall all those apps with 2 simple commands.  All programs keep their configuration under home directory, so I didn't have to reconfigure any program.  I cannot imagine such an easy migration on Windows or OS X.
  • Most, if not all, browsers natively support playing Windows media format.  I just found this online Tamil radio and it Just Works on Chrome, out of the box.  (I don't think it would work on OS X.)
  • Efficient use of resources.  My netbook really would suck when running Windows 7 merely because the hardware is cheap.  But it easily handles Kubuntu.  The OS and apps are not memory hogs.
  • The Unix culture has a good taste in user interface.
    • Apps don't show you useless notifications.  I had booted into Windows 7 for a while last week.  My machine's audio driver showed me a popup notification every time I plugged in or removed headphones!  I can't imagine a Unix program daring to do anything dumb like that.
    • No frequent reboots required like Windows.  (I admit that it's been a long time since I have used Windows; they might have reduced the frequency of reboots now.)
  • Vastly secure than Windows and OS X.  No viruses.  No OS design flaws that make the system terribly insecure.

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