Quote:
Originally Posted by weverjames
3. If you had the opportunity to buy a new desktop and a new laptop, with no budget limitations, would you still use linux? would you prefer buying a mac or a windows?
Would it be stupid to buy new hardware just to install opensuse or ubuntu? (Would you do that?)
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Others have answered the first two in much detail but I'll answer this one because of my personal viewpoint.
I certainly will not buy Windows because you are then hostage to their software (upgrade treadmill), and to all the faults. I don't like watching over my shoulder all the time guarding against new malware exploits and so forth. Though things have improved a lot, especially if you use open source alternatives. Also there is a lot of black magic. Most things will work, and then you bump against a failure that can't be explained and people tell you to reinstall and deal with it. With Linux, you can find out what the problem is and usually fix it.
So no Windows OS for me, what about OS/X which is based on BSD then? Even if I could afford a Mac, I wouldn't buy one. Sure it pretty much just works, but you are limited to what Apple supports, plus developers who have decided to go into this market. Because of the relative scarcity of users compared with Windows, and the upmarket cachet, they can and do charge more. Want to do more and explore under the hood? You will find that user experiences and advice are harder to come by because the audience is much smaller.
Of course I install Linux on new hardware. Provided you choose your hardware carefully, it will work very well. I have tinkered with software (as opposed to developing software at work) in the past, but these days, I spend too much time just surfing, outside of work.
Here's a tip: keep your workhorse and your playpen machines separate. This will save you a lot of frustration. You won't find yourself suddenly be unable to read forums or answer email because you installed a bleeding-edge package on your workhorse machine. Do your experiments on the playpen machine, and you won't panic when things go pear-shaped. You can go away and think about it, seek advice, etc, without affecting normal usage. Also good for family harmony if the workhorse happens to be a shared desktop, shared server, etc.