At Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:55:46 +0000, Simon Royal wrote:
So what make you lot a Linux?
Flexibility and features. GNU is good because it comes with tools! Windows has been acceptable as a desktop operating system since the XP release, but it's immensely frustrating to use because it has almost no tools. Linux-based systems are slightly more liable to misbehaviour in hardware related things such as suspending, but the trade-off is that anything you can imagine that you want to do will be possible somehow (except computing when a computation will halt, but that's also impossible in Windows).
Price. When I first started using GNU systems I was a poor student and very much appreciated having access to useful software without having to spend money. Access to free but industrial grade software is also invaluable for learning. For example, anyone can learn to set up and configure Apache just as it would be in a production context on their own computer at no personal expense. But in order even to learn how to use IIS, you need to buy it. What if you do so and it turns out to be rubbish?
I like Debian specifically because of the package manager and package management. My first experience with a GNU/Linux distribution was Red Hat and I gave up after a few months because it was such a chore trying to install software. But, as others on this thread have said, the Debian tools, policies, and archive are what really makes free software stand out.
Best, Richard