When I first tried using linux, I was one of those assholes who was just using it because they wanted to be "1337". I wanted to be a hax0r and after a week I got bored with it and quit. Several years later after I graduated from college with a major in Computer Information Systems, I got kind of big into web design and at this point I became frustrated with hosting services and decided that I needed my own webserver. To be truthful I looked into Microsoft first, but quickly realized that my budget was nowhere near big enough to run a MS server. I also heard that they were very insecure. So I looked into linux again and installed a dual boot system to get started. Even though I had been dabbling in the OS a little bit before, I found I knew next to nothing about it. So I took a Linux/Apache webserver class at the local community college. I learned a lot, and I eliminated the windows partition to begin using linux full time. While taking the class I also took a MCP class(Windows 2000 Server Security) and in that class I met a lot of criticism about my preference for linux. The one thing I learned about Windows 2000 as compared to linux is that once you get deep into Active Directory and security, it is just as complicated if not more so than linux. I was told constantly that linux was too difficult to admin to be practical, yet in my opinion it is no more difficult than Windows. Dont let the fact that you modify text files in linux lead you to believe that it is difficult or obsolete. I had a classmate who thought the linux gui looked worse than windows 3.1, but I soon realized he had seen the old kde and thought it pretty weak. After showing him kde 2.2.x, he admitted it looked pretty good. The one issue I get battered with most is hardware support.Windows users love plug and play, and I like it too, unfortunately since very little hardware is made to work with linux, this might always be a problem. After defending linux on every issue, they declare that Im just being stupid since I wont admit that windows was superior. All I can say is that if you believe people who want to use something different are stupid, I must be head moron.
A good comparison would be the manual transmission(linux), versus the automatic transmission(windows). The manual transmission is more difficult to drive, it takes longer to learn, and requires more work to be good at driving it, but it gets better gas mileage, accelerates faster, and breaks down far less than the automatic transmission.
[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: ThePreacher ]
