| Package management and repositories are what make linux better than windows from a day to day use perspective. This is really really nice. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, if I need some software.. I can apt-get/yum install and have it within seconds. Then when there is the rare time that I am using something that isn't in the repos, I can compile it within minutes.. apt-get/yum installing dependencies with ease. On windows/osx you are always running into freeware/trial ware/apps that you have to vet, don't always 'just work', and general annoyances. The security is obviously better as well; and viruses/trojans are aimed at you much less often. A huge fringe benefit to using Linux as your Desktop, for a hacker, is that you necessarily become more intimately familiar with Linux in general, which is just generally a good thing for general purpose hacking. Long before I coded for a living; I tried using linux many times for philosophical/wanting-to-be-cool reasons; but kept going back to windows because something or another wouldn't work out of the box and I would give up before getting it fixed. That problem is almost gone; the winning distros have made HUGE progress in user-friendliness. I finally 'stuck' to Linux around Ubuntu 8.10 when I stuck it on my computer, everything worked but my 5.1-out-of-two-jacks (stereo worked, but I wanted my surround sound goddammit), and after about 12 hours of fighting it, it worked. To top it off, I was able to play Hon, and having played hundreds of hours of Dota.. that's all the gaming I really needed or wanted. I was a power user on Windows, but having used linux exclusively for a couple years now I can definitely say I am WAY more efficient. It's a hard benefit to point at, but the linux philosophy of lots of small, specific programs, combined with an semi-efficient user adds up to a lot more productivity than I could get on windows. As a developer, this goes a long long way. Countless times I have written one liners with find/sed/awk that saved someone else tons (or even just a bit) of tedious and/or time consuming work that while possible on their OS, didn't really occur to them. This probably matters less for OSX and you can definitely get all these commands on both OSes; but just constantly being inside that way of thinking, I think, leads to ever-increasing efficiency. |
But.. I hate when I want a beta version of some software and it's not in the repositories. Then it's a bit annoying.
I think a mix of the Windows way and repositories would be the best for the average user.