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DarkLordoftheMonkeys

Linux is not hard to use.

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DarkLordoftheMonkeys
, 06-21-2010 at 09:24 PM (699 Views)
I don't know why people say Linux is unfriendly and hard to use. I have been using Debian for nine days now and I haven't had any difficulties with it. Want to install software? Just download an RPM file, click on it, and let the package management program do all the work. Want to hook up to a network? Just click on the icon in the top right corner and select the network to connect to (in the GNOME desktop). Everything is intuitive, point-and-drool.

The only time I ever had to use the command line for anything that a non-geek would want to do was when I wanted to unmount a flash drive so I could eject it. I didn't know the commands I had to use (fdisk and umount), but I was able to get them by just looking at a post on a Linux forum that I found by googling the problem. I just followed the directions.

Linux has come a long way in the last decade. It is no longer a user-unfriendly OS that requires excessive technical skills and command line work. It has all the graphical frontends that Mac and Windows have, and it comes with a whole lot of alternative software that works just as well as the proprietary equivalents. Heck, I just found that OpenOffice.org can open Powerpoint files; it's completely compatible with Micro$oft Office.

I've found Epyphany (the default browser for GNOME) to be pretty good. I use Firefox in Mac or Windows, but in Linux, Epyphany is my browser of choice. It already has all the necessary Flash plugins (so I can play internet games, watch cartoons, etc.), and there is no screen flickering. It's not arcane in the least. Neither is anything else, aside from the command line.

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  1. Guest's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkLordoftheMonkeys
    I don't know why people say Linux is unfriendly and hard to use.
    I think it's because the people who tried it 10 years ago spread word about how hard it is to use, and a lot of people still have that idea floating around in their heads.
  2. atheium's Avatar
    isn't epyphany Just another flavor of mozilla? id love to see the difference between it and firefox, the short time i ran linux i installed firefox, worked just as well as on windows
  3. DarkLordoftheMonkeys's Avatar
    I don't like Firefox for Linux. It causes screen flickering and it keeps blocking Javascript, so I have to tell it to allow scripts from certain sites in order to watch videos and stuff. In some ways I think Epyphany is better because it's simpler and less bloated, and probably takes up less memory too. Firefox, on the other hand, is good because of how many options it has and how many plugins are available for it.
  4. atheium's Avatar
    i had no issues with Firefox in the version of Linux i used, though its hilarious that your saying that. congratulations on contributing to the Linux inferiority theory.

    try to consider perhaps WHY rumors about Linux being hard to use come about.
    Linux refers to hundreds of different operating systems with different problems, people are more likely to speak out when they have a complaint rather then when something is going right, because it SHOULD be going right.

    with all these complaints coming from all these different people using all these different Linux flavors, yet every problem coming back to a single word.

    Linux.

    so what exactly can be done? what can be changed about linux in order to make these rumors and thoughts about linux being teh suk go away? perhaps we should start packaging an operating system with a computer and rename linux to something else!

    apple. (apple=unix=linux OHSHI)
  5. Guest's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by atheium
    perhaps we should start packaging an operating system with a computer and rename linux to something else!
    I think Dell has an option on some of their computers to ship with Ubuntu on them.
    Quote Originally Posted by atheium
    isn't epyphany Just another flavor of mozilla? id love to see the difference between it and firefox, the short time i ran linux i installed firefox, worked just as well as on windows
    Epiphany uses Webkit, so it's actually more similar to Chrome or Safari as far as HTML rendering goes. I've never had a problem with Firefox on Linux either, it's actually my favorite web browser for all operating systems.
  6. shaxquan's Avatar
    it's not hard to use linux, but not convenient to use if you are new to linux, for example , if you want to listen to mp3, i think it's a hard work to do, nearly none of the linux distribution shipped with mp3 encoder, or if u want to shopping online, some website use activex to make your account security, then you may be not able to use it on your linux, I happened to encounter such situations, that's quite annoying.