Why dont we use Debian?

It's one of oldest still activelly maintained and biggest distro using not only linux kernel and supporting most archs out of the box! Great!

Slackware 14.1
I just use Windows on my job because it does not depend on me.

+ 1

I use Windows for my day to day administration and to access and manage the Linux systems I install.

I usually only allow windows inside virtual machines on my linux devices.
But wait ... a cheap "windows tablet" is running native win10 here.
Now, after all, "Windows-to-Go" on a USB-Stick is slow but boots almost
everywhere (even to unlock bitlocker-encrypted no-more-booting notebooks) when
the usual linux rescuecds are not applicable.
So, every coin has - at least - two sides

Linux From Scratch is my main system and has been for a number of years, rasbian on my pi 'cos I'm lazy, and it only needs to handle my website and email server.

PMagic and occasionally Slackware for disaster recovery and backups.

Just FYI, Google Earth does runs on Linux.
I've been running it on Slackware64 for years, but as it is 32-bit I do have the multilib (32-bit) files installed. It also requires the Nvidia 32-bit drivers which can be installed side by side with the 64-bit drivers.

Edit in: Just found this on how to run google earth in mint 17,
https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1710

1 members found this post helpful.

Ubuntu 14.4 LTS

I run Linux of one sort or the other on 5 desktops and 3 Laptops. Windows on 2 desktops and 1 laptop. OSX on 1 laptop. Linux has been my primary system for going on 15 years now.

My desktop OS is Win 7. My laptop OS is Linux Mint. If Linux would run Quicken or Garmin, two that come to mind easily, I could easily move to Mint on my desktop. I still emulate older Windows aps that don't run on Win 7; ie Lotus. I've more to learn about Linux.

I have been running Linux for over 20 yrs on the desktop. Mostly Archlinux ...

Now I run PC-BSD on the desktop with a real filesystem NFS ... won't look back ...
I also use FreeNAS for my server needs .. also a BSD machine.

I use Mint 17.3 Cinnamon as my primary, because of easier management of usb keys with os images and other data on top of everyday use of convenience. Nothing comes close imho.

I like and use Fedora as well, but it is not as powerful a tool for me. When I have to solve an issue, I always turn to Mint Cinnamon.

There are a full spectrum of fuzzy-search tools and specifically Levenshtein implementations availale for the *nix platform. Even scripting languages like PHP and Perl both support Levenshtein searches, PostgreSQL has Levenshtein for database searches, and on and on... and most now support Levenshtein with UTF-8 which I would guess a DOS tool would not.

But a core genius of Unix and Unix-like OSs is a tool box of small light-weight programs that each do one thing well, text in, text out as the universal interface, trivial filters and pipes mechanism to tie it all together. The fundamental paradigm of DOS/Window$/GUI is different and not desirable for many uses on *nix platforms.

Not just enough, but preferable and superior for many uses!

And you say you don't use REGEX, so it is you who is not utilizing the available power.

And it is not at all in evidence that any or all of the Levenshtein implementations on *nix platofrms do not use the available processing power... can you back that up?

But frankly, you need to go to rehab and get over your GUI-for-all-purposes crippling addiction.

Searching for text matches of a text string in text files and displaying the result as text, on a platform with text-in/text-out as a fundamental concept... kind of cries out for a text based tool.

And having found your result set, in a GUI, can you trivially pipe it into one or more filters for post processing?

A superior speed metric for a single limited context (also not actually substantiated) used as a broad brush criticism of other OSs with fundamentaally different contexts is... well, indeed kind of sad.

So, by that description, the GUI shell adds overhead not really needed to complete the task. Go to rehab immediately!

Although I have not tried to run it, I did download your _GW.zip file (100MB, 150MB unzipped). Pretty big for my tastes.

To be fair, you have written code that you are obviously proud of, and apparently offered it freely for others to use - my compliments and no criticism directed at that, or at the code for that matter (I have not read through it).

But I think that you need to reconsider the claims of usefulness of that tool within the *nix context as compared to other available tools in that context, and the fundamental usage paradigm mis-match that results from the DOS->*nix port.

It was very likely the GUI slowing it down...

Grep needs a GUI about like...

... a race car needs a ball-hitch and 24 foot caravan...
... an olympic swimmer needs ankle weights...
... a research library needs a jukebox...

All in serious good humor!

I boot into Windows[10] so that I can update Windows and so that I have it in case I need it to apply for a job. Otherwise it's jsut taking up space on the hard drive of this laptop.
Well, OK, the above is my personal machines but since I'm paid to use the systems at work they're not "My Primary" and, in actual fact, Linux would work just as well if only my employers customers could see that.

Hi Guys,

I prefer Linux as my primary desktop OS.

On office laptop I use Kali for pentest.

On office desktop I use mint 17 as alternative os.

At home use primary os windows to play most of the high end computer games as our Linux don't support directx and all that nvidea stuff.

Thanks.