Today's article is a meta post about why I use Linux...

[KGIII]

It's a bit of an essay, not all that long, that first appeared on the other site. I was lacking in time for a few days due to a death in the family, so that ended up getting brought over to the new site and is today's article. You may have seen it before, though I'm not sure if I was even sharing the articles here at the time that was written.

Why I Use Linux • Linux Tips

Today's article will be short and simple, about why I use Linux. I've wanted to write it for a while. You may find it interesting!

linux-tips.us

Feedback is awesome. If you want to be 'immortalized', feel free to leave your reasons for using Linux as a comment on the Linux-tips site itself.

On a positive note, things are returning to normal. So, I should be back around as often as is regular.

 

[guiverc]

I really liked the article (it was read about 3 hours ago, so my memory of it is already somewhat vague sorry so this is more generic)

I was surprised by mention of patching & compiling... I've not done that for years (I recall making changes, compiling kernels so wifi worked better, changing some defaults on some model IBM thinkpads but that was years ago). I do appreciate that I can do that again too, should I feel the urge/need...

Yeah the community is a strong point with GNU/Linux, and I'm very often still impressed with it.

Why do I use GNU/Linux...

OS/2 died, whilst I could use windows (and did for a time; w2k then 2002/xp from memory) decisions used in construction just annoyed me so I wasn't happy there except for windows as a second OS.. GNU/Linux was just easier than BSD (I expected I'd be a BSD user now). My primary & secondary OSes are now GNU/Linux(es).

 

[KGIII]

I was surprised by mention of patching & compiling...

Mostly mentioned as being optional - not that I need to, but that I *can*. Also, who doesn't like watching stuff compile?!? (I do not like it enough to consider Gentoo.)

OS/2 died

I'm pretty sure you're younger than I am - but sound so much older!

Yeah the community is a strong point with GNU/Linux, and I'm very often still impressed with it.

You know... Now that I think about it...

I'm not actually sure I'd have stuck with Linux had the community not existed and been the community that I've experienced.

One of the things I really like is that I can go as far as I want. If there's something I want to understand, there's someone willing to teach me - assuming, of course, I put the effort in. In return for their time investment, I try to make sure to (by extension) do something with that knowledge. Kinda like how I made sure to commit to testing Lubuntu long term after soaking up a bunch of new information...

I figure part of the community is passing it on. But, without that community, I may too have been a BSD user.

As an aside: From the modern BSD family, I find GhostBSD to be a very attractive offering.

Anyhow, back to my point (and to my pint, as I've a delightfully brewed local ale by my side), the community really is important to me. The community isn't just the devs, but the users alike - especially those users who step up to both help support new users, answer questions, and dedicate their time to helping other people. I think the 'support community' is often overlooked - or perhaps taken for granted, but it's a huge part.

We can't all be rock stars and creators. So, many find a niche in helping at the support end.

Either way, as I've often said, there's room for pretty much everyone to get involved. That's a good thing.