From Windows to Linux: The File System
One of the biggest obstacles to making Linux accessible to people raised in a Windows world is the organization of the file system. Linux has a file system that makes sense to programmers and administrators, but is indecipherable to laymen. Windows, on the other hand, has directory names that are at least somewhat comprehensible. I can tell what “Documents and Settings” and “Program Files” are. But usr, bin, var, etc, lib? Gibberish.
The Linux file system most likely got the abbreviated names to save typing on the command line. But the first time I switched to Linux it was a major obstacle. You can imagine my frustration: “I installed new software….now how do I run it? Where is the .exe file? Oh, there’s no exe file? Ok well let me just browse to the directory the software installed to and see what we have. Wait…where the hell is it? I’ll just search for it. Crap, the files for this program are spread into a bunch of different directories. What does “bin” even mean??”
This is not an obstacle for the proverbial “granny”. Granny doesn’t understand folders in windows anyway. But for intermediate and power-users of Windows, this aspect of Linux makes it a very confusing system.
I hear a lot of Linux fans say that it’s a myth that Windows is easier and that Linux is hard and confusing and for geeks. Well, Linux is pretty easy once you study it a little. But the file system alone refutes the idea that Windows users should find Linux to be easier to use.
I finally was able to get a handle on this with my second go at linux by reading the PDF document here.
I’m officially done with Windows
I’m switching to Linux. I’m not a Microsoft hater. I think Office is an incredible set of tools that integrate with each other fantastically. I also think all in all XP is a great operating system. Yes, XP is gimped in some ways compared to Linux’s power, but it’s great for end users and in my experience contrary to what the Linux fanboys say, the NT kernel is every bit as stable. I’ve had a Windows 2000 server running Active Directory at my company that hasn’t needed to be rebooted since last year.
But Vista, on the other hand, deserves its scorn. And if Windows 7 is going to merely be a patched-up version of Vista, I’m just not into sticking with Microsoft. At some point, XP support is going to end and we’ll stop getting security updates. Faced with a choice between Vista SP3 or Linux, I gotta go with Linux.
No time like the present, right? So I installed Linux Mint on my main computer as a dual-boot alongside XP and have been using it almost exclusively for two weeks now. I have some experience with Linux; I’ve tried it several times in the past, only to go back to Windows each time. To the open source community’s credit, the ease of transition has come a long way. I opted for Mint because I didn’t feel like messing around with installing proprietary stuff like Flash on my own. In my next few posts, I’m going to break down different aspects of the ease/difficulty of switching, and from there I’ll update the blog with my experiences as a “switcher”….
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