I've decided that I'm switching to Ubuntu (Linux). I'm also switching to LatTeX. They are both awesome. Here are some reasons why.
Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings
A while back, during my open access rants, Jeremy predicted (in this post) that I would become a Linux user soon. Jeremy, it seems, is a bit of a prophet. At the time, I had already partitioned my hard drive so I could play around with it. I finally got some of the kinks ironed out, and now I think I'm ready to make the full switch.
Ubuntu is great, and you don't need to be a computer hacker to use it. It's Linux for Human Beings.
Many of the reasons for pushing for open access in journals seem like they ought to push one toward open source software. I think that's right, and I think that explains Jeremy's prediction. In fact, Richard Chappelle over at Philosophy Etc. has a great post that is sort of related to this issue here (Although his post is limited to open source word processing).
Philosophical reasons aside, there are other some pretty good practical reasons to switch to Linux(Ubuntu)
LaTeX
I've also been playing around with LaTeX. I know a lot of philosophers out there have been hip to LaTeX for awhile, and I'm sad that I am only now just discovering how great it is.
Making the sbit more in the future.witch can be a little odd for someone unfamiliar with markup languages, but there are so many template TeX files out there, that even someone with very little experience with these can jump right in.
I love LaTeX. I'll probably stump for LaTeX a bit more in my next post.
Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings
A while back, during my open access rants, Jeremy predicted (in this post) that I would become a Linux user soon. Jeremy, it seems, is a bit of a prophet. At the time, I had already partitioned my hard drive so I could play around with it. I finally got some of the kinks ironed out, and now I think I'm ready to make the full switch.
Ubuntu is great, and you don't need to be a computer hacker to use it. It's Linux for Human Beings.
Many of the reasons for pushing for open access in journals seem like they ought to push one toward open source software. I think that's right, and I think that explains Jeremy's prediction. In fact, Richard Chappelle over at Philosophy Etc. has a great post that is sort of related to this issue here (Although his post is limited to open source word processing).
Philosophical reasons aside, there are other some pretty good practical reasons to switch to Linux(Ubuntu)
- Security
Linux was made with security in mind. The Linux system is WAY more secure. You don't have to use anti-virus software. - Speed
You don't have a bunch of anti-spyware/malware/anti-virus software/crummy software you'll never use that comes loaded with your windows machine. In Vista, it takes 2-3 minutes minutes from the time I push the power button to the time I'm actually doing something online. In Ubuntu - it's 30 seconds (that includes the time it takes to enter my username and password). - Cheap
In the future, all that I will need to pay for to get a nice machine - is the machine! Everything else I need is FREELY available - including great open-source alternatives to many of the cool proprietary windows programs.
LaTeX
I've also been playing around with LaTeX. I know a lot of philosophers out there have been hip to LaTeX for awhile, and I'm sad that I am only now just discovering how great it is.
Making the sbit more in the future.witch can be a little odd for someone unfamiliar with markup languages, but there are so many template TeX files out there, that even someone with very little experience with these can jump right in.
I love LaTeX. I'll probably stump for LaTeX a bit more in my next post.
posted by Andrew Cullison at
10:16 AM
3 Comments:
Welcome to the world of real computing! I've been using some version of *nix for the last 13 years. (Originally for business reasons.) I recently bought a new laptop that came preloaded with Vista. I gave it a try and was surprised to learn that they could actually make Windows worse!
I've used LaTeX for a while but absolutely fell in love with it when I learned how to do syntactic trees while in a semantics course. (qtree!) I always have people comment on how nice my documents look, and then they want to know how they can get my fonts.
Congratulations on switching to LaTeX. I'm sure you can figure things out, but if you want a .tex document of mine to use for a template, I'll send it along. Maybe I'll look into Linux as well...
There's a reason that my pseudonym on many forums is themuteprophet.
The two reasons I've never completely switched to a linux distro are gaming and support. I know all of the penguin lovers out there can spout wine to me all they want, but frankly, I don't have another 512 ram to spare all the time just to vm windows. Additionally, if I have a hardware issue, hp's going to completely ignore me just because of my os. It's ridiculous, but true.
Ubuntu's stuck in the middle as "too restricted" for the linux people and "what? a terminal?!" for the windows people. It's sad, considering that it's the only absolutely free linux distro (not that the others are expensive by any means).
On the other hand, LaTeX has no such stigmas. It's book-style publishing format makes anything look sweet. The loser above me turned in homework using it all the time.
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