oreillynet.com — During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine.
Oct 28, 2005 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountOct 28, 2005
Submitted at midnight, October 28 on digg.Submitted at 11:22AM, October 28 on Slashdot.No wonder they are so behind.
defylogikOct 28, 2005
by this time next year there will be a article entitled " Why do people switch to OS X" - soon as the damn intel processors come out and non power mac's can compete on the same level. ahem ahem powerbooks ahem.
tarunOct 28, 2005
A very "Linux" way to do a survey--in a totally organic and unorganized manner. There were no facts or figures, just comments from users. Surprised it was on a site such as OReilly.
statictenOct 28, 2005
we should have a poll about what version of Linux everbody is using.mine's Ubuntu, you know, the one "For Human Beings":)
sailorOct 28, 2005
Fedora Core 4I think the comment "afraid" is kinda correct. Fear of the unknown. If you want to complain about no game support, you are correct but that is the least of what I use my puter for. Everything else is available for free on lunx.Windows opened up computing to the masses, it didn't make them smart enough to run linux, you have to be willing to learn how it works.
monkeyfitOct 29, 2005
I use it because i wanted to try something new. I always have trouble with Apple software (I'm that one guy it just doesn't work well for). Also, I had loaned my laptop to a friend so he could do a project with it. He installed Ubuntu on it (I told him i didn't care cause i still had the recovery disc and didn't have anything important on their anyways) and when i pulled it out a few weeks ago, I remembered he had done that and decided to give it a try. I became very intrigued with it even though it was a little slow (hardware prob. 800MHz P3 with 128MB RAM. it was a REALLY old laptop). I now dual boot XP and Kubuntu Breezy on my main desktop. still have some bugs to work out in Kubuntu but it's fun to tinker with it.
captainnicoOct 29, 2005
I use linux because I support the opensource movement. Think about it. Proprietary software hinders innovation, because we are so reliant on it financially. If you had quality software for free (OpenSource), there wouldn't be this problem. Add this to the GNU license, and people can modify the code and innovate independently or in communities, and I think that linux is the greatest example of this. I run linux, because I am supporting a movement for something better than windows and yes, even osx. You can't argue over the 16bit code back from win3.1 still floating around in xp. That is not innovation. OSX is really doing great, but in my opinion, insofar as it is a unix implementation, it is poorly organized. Looks great though, but then again, my destop looks cooler.
znxsterNov 8, 2005
Very interesting to see some the reasons given."I chose Linux simply because I thought the mascot looked cute enough"too funny.. dugg!