The same reasons why I started experimenting with Linux twenty years ago mostly covers the reasons why it still is my preferred operating system. The fact that I can find everything I am interested in on Linux when it comes to software and it is all open source explains why I still use it as my main operating system after all this time.

Apart from the fact that there is so much diversity and constant development in the Linux and FOSS world, I also still prefer some aspects of Linux which the other operating systems do not provide or not in the same straightforward way.

I am in the first place thinking of:

repositories, which provide one and the same access point and system to keep both operating system and all software I run on it up to date;

software updates which I control, thus not making me wait when I do not expect it, at shutdown or start up;

virtual desktops with simple and straightforward switch accessibility;

choice of window managers, allowing to select between full blown window managers on recent hardware and lighter window managers on lower power system, and taking into account what you intend to do with it;

less demanding and more responsive than other operating systems on the same hardware;

not so arrogant as to make it difficult to multiple boot unless installed first;

still less virus and malware vulnerable than other systems;

good alternatives for all main paid for software (office, graphical, sound...);

lots of good Internet and printed magazine info;

choice between development versions for living on the edge and stable versions for peace of mind, although the former have mostly proven to be stabler than the so called stale software and operating systems of the paid for alternatives;

if one likes to experiment with and try out lots of different and new software one would bankrupt oneself with lots of paid for software which only gets used occasionally or abandoned all together;

and I am sure there is more, that will come to mind as I work with it all...

I find it easier to use and there is help available if I get stuck from many friendly people.

Let me exclude redhat because used it or studied it as much. And Knopix because I haven't tried it at all and know little of whether it is just another binary distro with alternate packaging tool - as many distros are.

These days I wouldn't suggest Linux even to a new programmer because distros are hugely hacked (contain malware, made by mis-informed authors, uploaded by microsoft, other hostile parties). It's more impossible than ever whether it's secure and who could breach it, and more than ever: all these contribs are "nameless lists of foo", people you'd never find if you wanted them in jail.

The fact is there is more money being spent hating linux than supporting it. Our generation was sought to be deleted early on - it took them 30 years to make a Windows version that worked and mess up Linux - however I feel they did both. It's the big reset button: and it was planned - planned to just delete a generation so that the "in control" generation could, for longer, get double pay. AND THEY DID AND STILL ARE.

HOWEVER - if you'd already been using Linux or BSD - then I'd expect you'd still want to use it. If. If your not a slave to the likes of "debian maintainers" or who ubuntu or (BSD taking a dump on a fast great C compiler and using "GNU" (redhat hack actually) then dumping that - none of their code survives!)

"mr x-lfs-2010" made a compilation of linux distro from scratch (an LFS) that tries to stay "gnome-1&2 compatible", old and new C compiler compatible, and new "but not too new" Linux. But is that BSD 4.3 compat? No.

It's way too complicated these days. You could as a new user load "some linux" and be happy. But if you tried to UTILIZE IT as a unix machine or develop with C (or even Mathematica) - you' d be rightly totally pissed when you find out that nothing works for long, and you'd become "married to fixing what others broke intently" (ie, debian maintainers, apple, microsoft, who).

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I have hope for Linux in the future but I've never once got permission to upload a package or alter source - admins are "too much higher than me to talk to me". I'm done with that.

I think the hope would lie in funding and going back to being college centric. And possibly being compatible with running along side Mach like BSD does. (why - for the drivers you never are going to get, that get made 1x only and are more limited in breadth of support than one would first suspect - they are nearly one-off's)

The problem there is colleges are no longer Centers of excellent design: every crack a** has a college with IT courses now. And worse: many of them are remarkably political agenda run - like Berkeley of CA. This poses a severe problem with "the trusted professor questions".

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#0 MONEY is important and should be sought politically (look at Mozilla in CA, they live off usa tax money). microsoft and apple raped taxpayers on gov projects to get the kind of money they couldn't get by profiting from "normal sales".

#1 LIABILITY. college professors (ie linus) were and are liable as they are paid and under standards. it should NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED that non-liable people became in control of hacking any part of any distro "if they had political power to get in and do it" (ie, knew how to get GPG keys). GPL should be more clear that authors were never allow to "upload malware" (GmHB) by law in usa, and should state that since in usa it is the law (i'm sure it is internationally except where corrupt government denies it). THE WORST? you can't find or contact people if you did have a problem. Code just seems to anonymously appear as "uploaded and in final version" despite all user protests like magic - and always does wrong just what users were protesting. that's why liability is needed. so there can be teeth to complaints like "we all said not to, who in the world too privelage to overwrite a name space to insert poison and disable normal unix features?"

however - control i think should sway to being:

#2 modular like linux kernel - never forcing users to run things they don't want

#3 distros are formed only by what branch people most download. maintainers should have no control.

#4 like linux kernel, the whole thing should be "hot compilable", not "u could get source and spend hours compiling it". users should be in complete and ultimate, root, control of the machine to the extent law allows. today's distros can take a year to compile when you find out they left bugs behind and hid middle ware used to make "the binary distro" they are pushing on people. they are not "truly open source" if the source you GET is not the source that COMPILES easily (that they used). (infact many distros hack the source specifically to give themselves "keys" that others don't have)

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again I have great hope for Linux and BSD

but i do think there are hurdles

one step would be to work BESIDE (by law if necessary) companies that "have it all" (like iMac - or google) instead of working to "be a replacement of them". I thinks apples model is a good approach. there are simply reasons beside "naught reasons" that a hardware platform release company needs "not everything to be spoken". If every bit must be spoken of and released - it may be a bad thing not good (ie, temporary intel board internals).

Linux being a replacement of (well known hardware platforms) simply is not going to work: they have too much money, and there are too many bad people in the world

They are there.
Curiosity never killed a cat.

There are many reasons. The most obvious is because it's considered to be a lot safer. There is also the fact that we can, if we know how, change almost anything to our own taste and preference. And of course, most of it is free. I think it's worth mentioning that, in return, I always try to contribute somehow to the software I use.

Ok, this is a story about open source software.

In my country, there is this slightly crazy old guy who is, among other things, a social activist. He was arrested once and the police took away his computer. Not sure why becoz the computer was not part of the thing he was arrested for.

Anyhow, when he eventually got his computer back, it didn't work. The hardware was ok, but somehow the OS was borked.

A mutual friend asked me to help the guy out.

So, away I go and I find him in an internet cafe downtown. He's overjoyed that our mutual friend has sent me to help him.

After some discussion, he hands over his ancient Toshiba laptop with 512MB RAM to me. Now, here's the challenge. 512MB of RAM?

No matter what I put on this laptop, it's gonna swap.

His 2 main requirements are a browser and a word processor. He's an activist, so he writes. I discover that literally the entire lower floor of his house is full, FULL of books.

Ok, now, What distro can I put on an old laptop with 512MB of RAM, that will run a browser and a word processor?

Eventually, I install Linux Mint 10. I don't like it myself but I figure he will be able to learn it.

And the old guy figures it out, without too much trouble. We get his printer working (always a challenge), get his internet connection working and he's off to the races.

He always pays me something but, since he is a class act, he always invites me to lunch. We have good times.

A while later, he calls me, "I'm writing a book and I need help with the pagination".

I know little to nothing about word processors and I find that I actually know less than I thought.

He wants to paginate his book which ends up having 587 pages. 587 pages on an ancient Toshiba with 512MB of RAM. Talk about pulling teeth. This is a painful experience.

But slowly, I begin to realise that OpenOffice is really quite an interesting piece of software. It does things completely different to Microsoft Office, of course, but in its own way, it is really quite intelligently done.

The reason most people, including me, have problems with it, is that they are trying to use it the Microsoft way. I needed to learn the OpenOffice way, which is by using styles.

Once I figure out what styles were and how to use them, we were able to get the pagination fixed.

But man, there is no substitute for more RAM. That bloody laptop swapped all day long, doing the re-pagination.

But eventually, he got the book published and I even got my name in the acknowledgements.

So, that is a story about how open source saved someone's computer and helped to write a book. It's not a great story but it's a human story.

And that's the thing about open source. It lets us be human again. We can share, meet people, have lunch together, solve problems together.

I really must give him a call, see how he's doing.

Good tools (sometimes the best) without the hassle of having to manage software licences.

I´m compelled to still use specific applications for Windows due to reasons out of my control. But I always try to find a Linux equivalent application; if there is and it suites my needs I prefere it to the Windows one - no license issues.

I use open source to avoid buying commercial software, if their functionality is similar.

However, open-source can never completely replace commercial software. When the application complexity starts growing, people give up doing so much work for free. They just think: "Hey, I didn't get my car for free, I didn't get my apartment for free, medicine is criminally expensive, taxes are high, highways aren't free, food is not free, airplane tickets aren't free, doctors are wealthy, lawyers are wealthy...... why would programmers give up their hard work for free, when nobody else wants?"

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To be very honest, the main reason is that because it is free in the sense it costs no money.

I know the other advantages but I'm not so concerned about the availability of the source. More of the fact not being tied with a proprietary solution.

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1998! Man, that's a long time ago. It seems like a lot of Linux users got started with Linux right around that time.

When you say "IMB", do you mean "IBM"?

I'm not trying to be mean or superior or anything. I'm just trying to alleviate some confusion. I mean, there could have been another computer company called IMB that I didn't know about.

I do believe that tronayne meant to say, "on the order of 32K!"

"Thirty-two K?!" What an embarrassment of riches! And, man, that's a lot of ... what was it, then? ... "1K by 1-bit" chips on that one board! And it must have cost a fortune!

I had a friend who sincerely tried to hook up a magnetic-core memory bank to one of those machines. But I don't think he ever quite managed to get the bus-timing to work out right.

I use it because:
1) it is free
2) it doesn't contain back doors that I know of (but still have a lot of unpatched holes in it's security)
3) most software is free, updates too
4) it is immune to Windows malware
5) It just WORKS without having to find drivers.
6) it is faster than windows
7) it doesn't require maintenance like windows.
8) it can boot off of a flash drive or dvd and work on most any computer.

I do wish they would fix the incessant USB write speed problems. I have yet to see a transfer to USB flash drive that was actually complete when it said it was. Not to mention the SLOOOWWW speeds overall. Seems there is no GUI to switch write caching on/off for usb flash drives and retain the overall setting.

I do notice that all versions of Linux are CPU hogs but use a lot less ram than windows.
But it is better than Windows and Mac.

OSS software is usually free (but severely limited in many things)

OSS is easier to obtain and most times easy to install (especially if it is in a .Deb format - I HATE typing command stuff).

OSS software usually doesn't have back doors that I know of.

OSS software has patches/fixes sooner than other software.

OSS software usually has something for everyone.