Linux Myths
Things you may have heard about Linux and whether they are true or false
Installing Linux is hard
Common one this one. Firstly, most distributions take as much of the headache out of Linux as possible. Installation isn't too different from installing Windows but there are is one big diffference.
The main hurdle which puts people off Linux is disk partitioning. Linux uses a minimum of 2 partitions, 1 for the main filesystem and 1 for the swap area, but may commonly 3 or 4 depending on the purpose of the machine, to separate the data so that if one partition fills it won't affect the rest of the system and if something nasty happens to one of your partitions, you won't lose everything. This is very different to the Windows approach where there is one partition with everything on it, which leads to fear in people new to Linux. The easiest route is to put a spare hard disk in your PC and get your Linux installer to automatcically partition it for you. If you prefer a bit more control over this, you can do so. I recommend Ubuntu Linux as a first Linux installation, it has a very good installer, certainly no harder than installing Windows and the partitioning tool will do almost all of the work for you.
Linux doesn't support much hardware
Linux hardware support has come a long way in the last few years and hardware vendors have started to come forward, even ones who tradionally were rather blunt in their refusal to support Linux. People like IBM, Hewlett Packard, 3Com, Intel, nVidia, ATI have quite a good record of either providing drivers or assisting the community in producing them for their hardware, others have been less helpful. The main problems areas are winmodems, wireless network cards and graphics cards.
Winmodems or software modems are generally internal PCI modem cards, USB modems or built-in laptop modems and are cut down versions of hardware modems which require special drivers to emulate the functions of a hardware modem that are not present in the software modem. This is done to keep costs down and they are known as Winmodems as these special drivers are generally only available for Windows. Manufacturers are unwilling to assist in the production of Linux drivers as they fear giving away their design secrets. The situation is improving with some vendors realising that Linux is the fastest growing OS market at the moment, particularly in the the commercial sector and therefore seeing that their hardware being supported under Linux opens up an important revenue stream. All the same, internal, USB or laptop modems probably won't work (unless you have one which is supported by working Linux driver). On the other hand, who uses dial-up modems these days?
Some wireless network cards have been a problem over the last few years and their manufacturers have been resolute in the resistance to providing Linux support. Intel cards and those that use Ralink chips are now well supported. Broadcom card have always been a problem, but improvements in the Linux wireless software stack in general have meant that more and more cards have support and recently Broadcom announced that they are developing Linux drivers. To be on the safe side, it is worth searching Google for information on your wireless network card and it's level of Linux support. Make sure you look how old the version of Linux your search results are talking about is before determining whether yours is supported. Unless you have something very new or something which doesn't do things in the standard way, then you should be ok. If you card is very new and based on a new chipset, you may well have to wait until the next release of your version of Linux as drivers are included in Linux itself, rather than using drivers supplied by the manufacturer on a disk.
Traditionally, graphics cards could be another problem area, but not so these days. Intel cards are well supported. You may laugh but Intel sells more graphics hardware than any other manufacturer including NVidia and ATI due to their onboard chipsets. Most Intel hardware has excellent support under Linux thanks to Intel themselves. Intel employs a lot of developers who work on Linux. Nvidia and ATI cards also provide 3D accelerated graphics drivers, though this wasn't always the case and is often the reason why people think Linux doesn't support much hardware. These days the manufacturers supply 3D accelerated graphics for the cards under Linux so you can use the funky 3D desktop effects and play Linux versions of modern 3D accelerated games under Linux. Even Via, who have a history of poor Linux support have created a website dedicated to Linux drivers for their hardware and the fruits of this will probably be in your version of Linux before you read this. In a worst case scenario, most often your card will work with the standard VGA driver that comes with your distribution, though you probably won't get 3D gaming out of it.
Check with your Linux distribution's hardware support pages to see if they support your hardware before taking the plunge.
Linux is hard to use and maintain
Linux is a complex beast from the outside, but on the inside it's actually a lot simpler than Windows when it comes to design. The theory of complexity comes from the fact that with Windows there's a magic button that makes everything happen. In Linux there are configuration files. You can edit them by hand, but most new distributions like Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS and SuSE come with some kind of control centre where most settings can be changed using graphical applications.
Actually using Linux for normal desktop stuff is usually problem free, web browsing, email, instant messaging, office software, photo editing and multimedia players are all catered for and you may be spoilt for choice. There are gaps however. Video DVDs use a proprietary encryption that cannot be open sourced or used without paying a license fee due to copyright. For this reason there is no 'legal' open source DVD player software, though there is no shortage of playes for which you can get a DVD support libary known as libdvdcss2.
Linux is a little behind in multimedia production software (like professional grade audio and video editors), though these areas have projects gaining ground fast. Gaming is one area where Linux can be erratic. Few games companies produce Linux versions of their games, though more and more are doing so. Linux suffers from the problem mentioned above regarding graphics cards where historically there were no 3D graphics drivers so there was no Linux games market to develop games for. With regards to commercial games, the market is only just starting though there are plenty of network multiplayer first-person shooters, especially those based on the Quake or Unreal engines as the network games servers are often running Linux.
Free Software isn't very good quality
Aahhhh a popular one, most commonly spread by Microsoft as part of it's FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) tactics, but also a misunderstanding of the terms freeware and Free Software.
Microsoft likes to tell everybody that Linux is substandard and has described it as a cancer. Seriously, in those words. Linux is a cancer. Said by Mr Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. Don't believe them, it's not true. Without going into a major explanation of the social benefits of Linux (I will be writing a page on why Linux is good news for everybody in the near future), Linux is free and is an alternative to Microsoft products. Where do you think Mr Ballmer's opinion is based?
The other aspect of this is that the term Free Software is often confused with the term freeware. Free Software is the name given to softeware where the user has access to the source code that the program is made up of and is free to alter it to his or her own needs. The word free in the term Free Software refers to the freedom to read, change and distribute the source of the program at no charge to the individual. These rights are ensured under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL) and other Open Source certified licenses. The concept of the freedom to use and modify the software as you wish is so core the meaning of Free Software that it is always written like that. Free Software rather than free software.
Freeware is software that is provided by it's developers at no cost. The source code is commonly not available and the software is usually simple, low quality and of low interest. An extension of freeware is shareware, which is where software is available at no finacial cost, but usually contains a trial period, advertising or some other feature which restricts the use or appreciation of the software to encourage users to pay for a full version.
The difference between is distinct. Free Software is production quality software provided with full source code to allow for further development, improvement and peer review. To futher distinguish Free Software from freeware, many have advocated the phrase Open Source Software to describe Free Software, however the creators of the Free Software movement have dismissed the phrase Open Source as it only described the availability of the source code and not the freedom it is intended to provide. Nevertheless, the phrase Open Source has gained mainstream popularity when referring to Free Software.
The Linux, Open Source and Free Software communities have been resposible for much software that is currently in use in many large organisations in the world or forms the developmental basis for popular products.
The Firefox web browser is used by 20% of all Internet users. I have a page on Why You Should Be Using the Firefox Browser.
Open Office.org is an Open Source office suite similar in functionality to Microsoft Office (and far better than Microsoft Works) and forms the basis of Sun's Star Office. If you don't have or can't afford Microsoft Office, or you have Microsoft Works, get Open Office.org.
Apache is the most popular web server in the world. It runs 60% of the world's websites.
Most ISPs use Open Source mail servers like Sendmail, Qmail, Exim and Postfix, they don't use Microsoft Exchange. Sendmail is historically the 'standard' Email server. Yahoo use Qmail. I run Exim :)
The world's most popular search engine in the world, Google, runs entirely on Linux.
The database which runs Wikipedia is MySQL, which is Open Source. The servers which these databases run on are a mixture of Ubuntu Linux and Red Hat Linux.
Do these sound like sub-standard products? No. These run on Linux, other UNIXes and there are also Windows and Mac versions.
In addition to this, many of the worlds largest computing companies (with the obvious exception of Microsoft) have begun investing billions into Linux development, support and moving their own software to Linux. Notables include IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Oracle and Novell. In particular, Novell have begun to produce their own Linux distribution after buying SUSE, one of the most popular and successful Linux distributors and Sun have bought MySQL. Would such large multi-billion dollar corporations waste their money on shoddy software? No. Nor would major organisations like the Munich city local government, Disney, General Motors (it may have been Ford ; ) and others who have moved their entire operations from Windows to Linux, or the Peruvian, Brazilian, Chinese and Israeli goverments amongst others who are reviewing Linux solutions with a view to replacing existing Windows solutions wholesale.
Do not make the same misunderstanding that most people make and more importantly do not listen to what Microsoft say.
Didn't find what you wanted eh?
If you really need help try joining your local Linux User Group, thats what they are for - asking questions and giving and requesting assistance from your peers. There are lists for the UK at http://www.lug.org.uk/ and worldwide at http://www.linux.org/