Top 10 Reasons Why I Use Linux

I figured today would be a fine time to have a fun article and I’ve never done a listicle, so I figured I’d write the top 10 reasons why I use Linux. After all, we don’t always have to have something productive. Sometimes we can just have a nice and fun article that doesn’t require much effort.

And this is a low-effort article! (EDIT: It turns out it is more effort than expected. I did not expect that.)

Disclosure, I did write Why I Use Linux some time ago. For fun, I won’t refer to the previous article. Besides, that was in essay format more than a listical. I’ve never done one of those before! 

We can also have some fun with this. 

These are MY top 10 reasons why I use Linux. These might not be your top 10 reasons. You might not agree with my reasons. If you don’t agree, or you want to add to the list, we can fight about it in the comments! 

So, without further ado…

Top 10 Reasons Why I Use Linux:

  1. Linux is just plain easy. 

    I realize that not everyone will think this is true, but I find it to be true. Things are logical and make good sense (generally speaking). Linux doesn’t require babysitting. I can ignore it and get my work done.

    There is a learning curve, but it’s not difficult. You can be up and running without any real help. For the most part, the installation is a guided process and then there’s enough of a base to get you started without even needing to add many applications. It all just works together and even updates are simplified to the point of being trivial.

  2. Linux has a great community.

    Linux is known to be full of people that just tell you to read the manual. While this is sort of true, it just means that they expect you to have put the work in. You should usually have tried to resolve your problem and you should have a basic understanding of the applications you’re trying to use.

    If you find the community to be unfriendly when you ask a question, read this:

    How To: Ask A Good Support Question

  3. There are many choices about how you do things.

    You can pick and choose what you want and what you don’t want. If you don’t want a desktop environment, you can go without one. If you want a different desktop environment, you can get one. As this site will show you, there are so many choices in the tools you use to get your work done.

    There are so many choices that it’s almost overwhelming. That’s one of the reasons why I have this site. It helps you navigate choices and informs you about the various ways to accomplish a task.

  4.  Linux can be harder if you want.

    I know that I said Linux is easy up above and it is. However, you can choose to learn a whole lot more – and that information is freely available. You don’t have to learn a lot to use Linux, but you can learn as much as you want. If you decide that you want to, you can even learn enough programming to contribute to the kernel.

  5. Linux is open source.

    I’m not a zealot. I use all sorts of proprietary software. However, I appreciate that Linux is open source. This means things get fixed. If you report a bug, there’s a reasonable chance that the bug will be fixed. It needn’t be the developer that fixes it. Anyone with enough skill can fix bugs.

    Linus’s law is that “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” My experience tells me that this is reasonably true.

  6. Linux is reasonably secure.

    While Windows (and Apple) have certainly improved their security processes, Linux is reasonably secure when you first install it. Then, there are all sorts of things you can do to make it more secure.

    You have full multi-user permissions, meaning a user can only do what they’re permitted to do. You can enable things like SSH but then prevent brute force attacks. You can secure your account and your information. There are even advanced subjects like jails and other forms of sandboxing.

  7. Linux is free as in free beer.

    While I don’t mind paying for things, I get hundreds of choices about which operating system (distro) I use. Imagine if I had to pay a fee for each of the distros I’ve tried and used regularly. If I had to pay a licensing fee for each distro (and then each version of that distro), it’d be outlandish. I get all these choices for free.

    I still believe in supporting the projects I like and use, but I’m not obligated to pay for anything. AFAIK, even the enterprise distros tend to allow free use in one form or another. Man, imagine the costs if we had to pay for a license for all the distros and applications we use. I have more than 2500 packages installed and I haven’t been asked to pay for any of them.

  8. Linux has longevity.

    Once upon a time, you could have called Linux a hobbyist operating system. That’s not true anymore. From mobile phones to the very infrastructure that runs the internet, it’s a whole lot of Linux. While distros may come and go, Linux is going to live on for a long time. That means I won’t have to change. It means I can keep on using Linux.

    That’s a good thing. I appreciate stability. I don’t have to worry about some company taking over and taking Linux away from me. I’ll be able to use Linux, in one form or another, until the day I die.

  9. Linux is consistent.

    Yes, Linux has a whole lot of variation between the distros. One desktop environment may be completely different from another. You may have to learn those differences when you pick a different distro. Fortunately, for the most part, things are where you logically expect them to be.

    But, yes… Yes, Linux is consistent. Underneath that desktop environment is a group of applications that are either installed already or able to be installed. Those are the consistency I speak of. The fact that this site exists with the content it has is proof of this consistency – as so many of the articles apply to all the major distros. That’s the consistency I speak of.

  10. It’s not Windows.

    If there’s a task someone wants me to do online, such as have an online meeting, I can just tell them that I don’t use Windows. They may look at me strangely but I can honestly tell them that I don’t use Windows. Sure, I might be able to accomplish those things in Linux – but they’re tasks I don’t want to do. So, I don’t do them and tell them the truth.

    “I don’t know how to fix your Windows computer.” I can legitimately say this. I’m known to be a ‘computer guy’ and people will ask me questions about their broken systems. When I first moved here, I made the mistake of helping them. I shortly moved to Linux and no longer know anything about Windows. So, I no longer have to worry about fixing someone else’s computer. 

    And that is awesome.

So, there you have it. That’s my top 10 reasons why I use Linux. The reasons aren’t in any particular order, or anything like that. I just wrote them as I thought of them, though I did write a few down ahead of time. 

What’d I miss? What would you add to the list? 

Closure:

So, if you think writing this list was in some way easier, I’ll point out that this is one of the longest articles I’ve published. It’s not the longest, but it’s up there in length. I dare say that it might have been more effort than it was worth, but I had to try it. I doubt I’ll do many of these, but this one was kind of fun to write.

I’ve never done a listicle (list article) before and I’m not sure that it’s something I’ll adopt, though it is a good subject to get some feedback. Please, do provide that feedback – preferably here so it’s all in one location. Heck, you can let me know how much you don’t like listicles if that’s what you want to say about it. But, feel free to cover anything you think should have been on the list.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

So, My AdSense Account Has Been Disabled

This will be a short article about monetizing the site’s content with AdSense. Google, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to cancel my account and will, presumably, keep any funds not yet paid.

The reason they did this was for invalid traffic.

In short, that means people were clicking the ads without actually being interested in the ads. They were clicking them fairly often lately and I noticed the uptick in my earnings. That was nice. 

I didn’t know that it’s a person (or several) who has been clicking ads to help the site along. For Google to have done this, it has to have been fairly drastic and frequent. 

I’ll look for some tech to resolve this and examine other options. We’ll see how that goes and I’ll let folks know what choices I make.

The reality is, that I can afford to keep the site going without ads. However, being rewarded for my effort and having some funds to offset my costs was pretty nice.

People don’t donate often. That’s okay. The total donations have been less than $50 since day one. I can’t count on that to offset the costs and that does nothing for my time – and, man, have I invested my time.

The site isn’t going anywhere. The ads didn’t pay that much. There are other forms of advertising. I may start accepting sponsored posts with some subjects AdSense wouldn’t allow but are (in my opinion) otherwise harmless.

The reality is that I don’t know what I’ll do, but I will make changes. The site gets plenty of traffic, so it’s eligible for some ad programs. I’ll do some research and see where we are at the end of the day.

It has never been about the money. If it was, that was a losing proposition. It’s just nice to have some ad revenue to offset expenses. If you’re looking to place ads, there’s a sponsorship link above. We’ll see what I accept for posts going forward.

When it is resolved, I do ask that you not click ads just to help me out. The sentiment is nice, but ads are for advertisers and they only want to pay for clicks that come from people legitimately interested in their product. Keep that in mind and only click on ads that interest you. Thanks!

Revisiting Christmas In The Terminal

Well, it’s the day before Christmas and a Linux Christmas can mean having Christmas in the terminal. If you do not celebrate the holiday, that’s fine. You can skip this article and move along. If you do celebrate this holiday, you might as well have a Merry Linux Christmas!

Last year, we had Christmas in the terminal. This year, we’ll be doing the same thing – but not in the same way. If you want an easier and quicker way to have Christmas in the terminal, you should follow along with the first article. This one is quite a bit more involved.

Let’s Have Christmas In The Terminal

That one is nice and easy! I’m also writing this article quite a ways ahead of time. I’ll schedule it for the nearest possible day. Due to my publication schedule, this won’t be published on the holiday itself.

NOTE: I did this on Linux Mint 21.2, Cinnamon Edition. That just happened to be the computer I was using. You may not need all of these steps if you’re using a different distro. You may already have things like Go and Git available.

We’ll be playing with all sorts of silliness and doing things we’d not normally do on this site. I’ll give clear directions, as much as I can. I won’t be diving into details like I have lately. This is a holiday article and ain’t nobody got time for that!

Linux Christmas In The Terminal:

You will need an open terminal. As I did this in Mint, I was able to open a terminal by just pressing CTRL + ALT + T which is something you too should be able to do in most distros.

With your terminal now open, let’s get into a good directory:

Next, we’ll install Git.

Then we’ll download some files with Git.

Now we move to the new directory:

This is in the language known as Go, so let’s get set up to compile that.

Now we’ll do some compilation magic.

Let that finish and run this command:

With any luck, you’ll see something like this in your terminal:

Tada! It even has blinking lights! That’s a rather festive terminal!

You can exit the program by pressing CTRL + C.

Of course, you can move the ctree file anywhere you want. If you want to just run it from the terminal, copy it to /usr/local/bin and you can do that. This being a temporary thing, I saw no reason to move the binary to a special location. If you do want to just run it anywhere in the terminal, you’d use this command:

Enjoy your holiday celebrations!

Closure:

I don’t think this can become a tradition or anything like that. There are only so many Christmas-themed things out there that you can do in the terminal. I didn’t create this and I have no idea what I’ll be able to find for the next Christmas. We’ll have to wait and see what next year brings. Until then, keep being you!

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Meta: The State Of Linux-Tips #20

Today’s article will just be a meta article, not a complicated article, and just the state of Linux-Tips. As you can tell by the numbering, I don’t remember to do this every month, but I try to. I figure it’s fun to share what’s going on behind the scenes.

The process of writing these articles can take as much time as it does to write a ‘regular’ article. They often take longer than that. That’s okay. I still try to write them.

Things are going well enough. The site continues to grow. The site attracts more and more attention. It is a slow growth, but it’s far more growth than I ever expected. Once upon a time, I was happy to see 20 visits (per day) in my logs. In the past month, we’ve had 4 days with over 1000 visits.

As you can imagine, this is expensive. It’s still well within the realm of affordable. The only two real expenses (I don’t count my time as an expense, though I probably should) are hosting and then paying for a CDN.

If you’ve donated in the past, thanks! You’re still invited to help pay for stuff – but, as I said, it’s still within the realm of affordable. There’s no chance I’ll close the site due to operating costs. Regardless of how large the site gets, I’ll keep the site up and running.

Hosting costs are up there. The server has been upgraded to 8x the RAM it had. I was running into resource limits and it was impacting the site’s public side. So, that had to be addressed.

How about some numbers?

Security:

I don’t talk about security much. I don’t want people to know a whole lot of what goes on behind the scenes, at least as far as security is concerned. What’s important is that I use a multi-layer approach. 

Spam is mostly eliminated. If it’s an automated bot, it’s going to have issues posting here. However, some people in low-wage countries have people who are willing to spam manually. It’s a nuisance as I have to go through and remove it manually. It never gets published.

How about some numbers… 

This is some automated spam protection:

automated spam protection
I do not need to manually remove that spam! So, that’s nice! (It should expand if you click on it.)

Oddly, these next numbers are low, they’re usually about 10x this amount. I suppose that means the site’s not under attack today. It could also be that other measures have stopped the attacks.

There are many varied attacks when you run a WordPress site.
Those numbers are usually much, much higher. The low numbers make me happy!

As you can see, the next numbers show that I’ve managed to block pretty much all brute force attacks. This is yet another layer of security.

WordPress gets lots of attacks.
Those numbers are pretty good too, which is nice. I do not pay for the premium subscription.

The next is one of the first layers of security – where I keep the login portion of the site secure. The image won’t make much sense, in part. I have no idea what the graphic is meant to represent – but the three successful attempts were all me. (I use 2FA, so ain’t nobody gonna access the ACP.)

You need to block brute force login attempts.
These are just people who tried to brute force or password guess to gain access.

I really could use a competent WordPress administrator to monitor all this for me. Then again, I don’t think I’d want to cede control.

Popular Stuff:

I’m just going to use Google for the next section. I won’t bother showing the numbers because they’re inaccurate. Google doesn’t seem to count those that block their scripts, meaning they’re useless for some analytic numbers. They’re still proportionately correct and easily visualized, so they’re not completely useless.

The vast majority of my traffic comes from Google. Like, 90% of my traffic comes from Google. People sometimes wonder why I deal with Google and the reason is that it’s worth it (to me) to do so.

These are the top 10 pages found by Google Search:

Top 10 pages found by Google Search.
Those are the top 10 pages that get the bulk of traffic from Google Search.

On the other hand, according to Google’s Analytics (again, these numbers are skewed but still sort of useful), different pages attract the bulk of my traffic. That’s a bit unusual but neat. 

Most active pages on the Linux-Tips site.
Those are (according to Google) the most active pages on the site.

So, there’s some new information for you.

Meta Article:

I suppose it wouldn’t be a meta article without some more numbers… Well, I have some more numbers! I love numbers and pay quite a bit of attention to numbers.

Also, I bought a new domain name and now I’m looking for motivation to write about being a WordPress admin. We’ll see how that goes, but I haven’t found much motivation yet.

This is the 450th article published on this site.
A new article is published every other day, so far without fail.
There are ​341,874 words.
It would take you 22 hours, and 47 minutes to read it all.
The longest article is How To: Ask A Good Support Question.
There have been 206 approved comments.
So far this month there have been 21,226​ visitors.
We’ve used 43 GB of traffic so far this month.

Closure:

Well, there are some numbers for you. I figured I’d spice it up a little bit and share some different information this time around. It’s just a meta article, after all. Taking, uploading, formatting, and filling in meta information for images can take a bit of time, so this article has taken me longer than normal. Imagine that!

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

Some Opinions (News?) About Purism.

Today’s article isn’t like a regular article, it’s just some news about Purism. There’s not going to be much written about this company by me, as I’m not wanting to get sued by angry people. I’m mostly going to give you some information and then share a video. With that information, you’ll be free to make your own choices.

Let’s start with the basics…

I have been paying a little bit of attention to Purism for quite some time. I have considered giving them money, but there were already enough complaints that I never felt comfortable doing that.

Purism SPC, the company, is located in San Francisco, California. They have been around since 2014 and they sell products that are based on ‘opensource’, hardware such as laptops and phones.

Their site can be found at https://puri.sm/

Purism claim to be interested in protecting your privacy and liberties, by using open-source software. There are lots of thoughts about this.

I have seen a few people mention this company lately, as though they were interested in their products. I feel an obligation to inform, thus this news article about Purism.

I will not be offering my opinions on the matter. As much as free speech exists in my country, I don’t really feel like spending money on legal fees and I don’t want to deal with a cease-and-desist notice that tells me to take the site down.

What I am going to do is share a video with you.

Warning, this video uses adult language – but provides sources for their claims. I would suggest watching this video if you’re interested in Purism products.

Now, you take that information and do with it what you will. You can view a bunch of old/current complaints at the Purism Subreddit. There are also a number of topics over on HackerNews but I don’t have links to those. I’m not trying to do an expose, I’m trying to help people make wise choices. This means doing your research – and real research.

Closure:

My opinions are my own, though I’m sure it’s okay to say that I do not now own any Purism products and I do not intend to buy any in the near future. This is simply one of many videos, articles, and comment chains that finally made me realize that I should probably share this with others – as we don’t all dive deep into things prior to making a purchase decision.

What you do with this information is up to you.

I will further suggest that any comments on this matter should be left here. It’s well known that I share my articles elsewhere but I don’t know if Purism is lawsuit happy and I don’t think I’d like to put other sites at risk. I’m sure it’s fine, but we’ll see…

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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