My Computer

Linux "Secret" Hand Signal

When Linux users want to identify themselves, we use the "Linux user" (popularly known as "Luser") hand signal:

Why Linux?

Linux provides a powerful alternative to Microsoft Windows. Some advantages of Linux are:

it's free
open source model - vast quantities of great software and community support
uses open standards for file formats, but also compatible with other OS files
more secure - minimal danger of viruses, trojans, spyware, etc
faster and more efficient
more customizable
more powerful tools for advanced users - my productivity is much higher on a Linux machine
more transparent - logical and non-obfuscated layout
ubiquitous - linux powers web servers, smartphones, and many other devices. Even Apple OS is Unix based.

Links and Information

General purpose:

There are many distributions of Linux. These essentially package linux with other open source software for end users. I have tried Gentoo and Debian, but I recommend Ubuntu, which has a nice guide.
A Linux user has full control over the desktop environment. There are many window managers / desktops to choose from, such as GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and Fluxbox.
You can usually find the answer to your Linux questions by searching the web and user groups.
You can run software built for other operating systems by using an emulator, such as wine, Virtual Box, Qemu, dosbox, dosemu
If you are forced to use Windows, install Cygwin. This is a Linux environment embedded into Windows. It makes most common Linux software available natively in Windows.
You can dual-boot your computer with multiple operating sytems. For Linux, I recommend having a separate /home partition. If need-be, you can resize the Windows NTFS partition using GParted.

Special purpose:

IPod works fine with Rhythmbox in Ubuntu. You can treat your IPod shuffle like portable memory and store anything on it. However, in order to listen to the music, you must update the database.
Here are a couple of links to help you forward MS Outlook/Exchange email: L1 | L2
A web-based favicon generator, and GIMP instructions
Introduction to robots.txt
Linux provides many server tools (ssh, Apache, VNC, ddclient) that allow your computer provide remote access.
DNS Report and DNS Stuff
Ripping from Vinyl

Software

Software for Linux is free. My priorities for choosing software are: functionality, efficiency, and then aesthetics. Currently, Ubuntu offers over 30,000 software packages. Here are some that I have used:

Text editors: emacs | gedit | nano
Office: openoffice | gnumeric
Compilers: gcc (GNU Compiler Collection)
Music: audacious | xmms | grip | streamripper | streamtuner | tunapie | audacity | ogg | gtkpod | amarok
Graphics: gimp | inkscape | sodipodi | xfig | feh | gnuplot
Multimedia: blender | mplayer | vlc | xine | totem | googleearth | dvd::rip
Mathematics: scilab | octave (forge) | R
Web: firefox | thunderbird | gaim | wget & curl (downloading tools) | rsync
Server: ssh | apache | mysql | php | Webmin
Development: make | blas | lapack | cephes | glpk | GTK & wxWindows (GUI toolkits)
Desktop: bash | rxvt | J | XPlanet
Publishing: dvips | dvipdf | gnuplot | gv | latex | TeXmacs | evince | xdvi | xpdf | lyx | metafont | mftrace
Archiving: brasero | k3b | zip/unzip | tar | gzip/gunzip | rar | file-roller | gpg
Tools: qtparted | mp3splt | mp3gain | pdfjoin | pdftk | catdoc | xls2csv | pstotext | pdftotext | spidermonkey | ffmpeg

Frequently used Linux commands (use man to get documentation)

ls,cd,mkdir,ln,mv,cp,pwd,rm,chmod,chown,touch,dd
more,less,tail,grep,awk,sed,cat,paste,diff,wc,w
ps,top,kill,df,date,time,free,alias,lp

Kenneth Massey, updated May 2011