Linux one month on

29 February 2008 - 17:50

One month ago I posted on why I'm switching to Linux. One month on, and I'm still using it. In fact, all the Tech-Pro.net computers are now running Linux, which was a surprising development and not part of the original plan. True, I have Windows Vista installed in an emulator under Linux for software testing, and I'll probably set up a similar virtual machine to run XP. That's mainly because the business we're in means we still need Windows. But I haven't found any really compelling reason to use Windows for ordinary day to day work.

This has been quite a stressful month, so I have been very busy. There have been times when I felt I could have done something quicker under Windows because I knew what to do, or already had a suitable tool. But that isn't the fault of Linux. Inevitably, there's a learning curve, and you have to take extra time to figure out how to do things. But I have been having to find new ways to do things anyway, due to the need to be able to work with my colleague Manoj who is working from home thousands of miles away in India, so now was as good a time as any to make the change.

A strong reason for making the change was the ability to use Quanta Plus, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago. We are finding it to be an excellent HTML and PHP development environment. Firefox is a big help, too. It works the same, including all the same plug-ins, as it did under Windows. And Firefox plus plug-ins is a really powerful tool.

There have been a few problems that after all these years you might expect Linux had finally got worked out. I have had issues getting various bits of hardware to be recognized: the sound card on this Toshiba laptop, the Broadcom wireless network adapter on the cheap new HP laptop we bought specifically to allow Olga to join the Linux revolution as well. That was nearly a show-stopper, but the problem was overcome after a lot of midnight oil spent Googling. But it does show that Linux still has a long way to go before anyone can just pick up a copy, install it, and everything works. Yes, I know it isn't the fault of Linux because hardware manufacturers won't make Linux drivers, but to the average computer user that's no excuse.

The other surprising issue is application stability. Several times, I've had Firefox just disappear from the screen when browsing a web page. Start it up again with the same pages and the same thing happens. The Windows version never did this. FileZilla suddenly refused to run until I deleted its configuration folder. The file manager sometimes freezes up and has to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Other applications sometimes crash with "SigSeg" faults. It's like being back in Windows 95 again. So much for Linux' legendary stability. Yes, I know it isn't really Linux that's crashing, but KDE or the apps I'm using, but again, the average computer user won't see the distinction.

So my verdict, one month on, is that Linux is a great operating system, with some great apps, but it has quite a few rough edges that still need to be worked off before it becomes acceptable to the masses. It's oh-so-nearly there, but not quite. Unfortunately, I doubt if that is going to happen any time soon. It's the commercial imperative (plus the resources brought by volume sales) that allow teams of programmers to focus on the niggling issues of stability and usability, and make hardware manufacturers provide driver support. Until that happens, Linux is going to remain a tool for techies who have the desire to use it and the smarts to overcome the problems they encounter in the process.