Linux

[Argyboy]

I've just installed MX Linux 17.1 (64-bit) on my MacPro 2,1 to run as a dual boot with El Capitan. Runs great and I had no drivers or hardware issues at all. Should help me to get a few more years of useful life out of this old workhorse.

 

[Toutou]

What is Linux used for these days?

Web infrastructure, the heavy metal (servers, supercomputers, industrial machinery), the tiny metal (set-top boxes, smart appliances, Android smartphones).
Linux is the product of the hacker mentality, of the ability (and will) to control and tinker with complex systems, and because of that it's also huge in academia and development (e.g. Google).

btw this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg

That is where Apple took its start from and later on Linux distro's.

The GNU/Linux marriage is, afaik, older than FreeBSD.

 

[Geeky Chimp]

Red Hat currently make the claim that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), presumably for servers.

Facebook use a customised distro based on CentOS (which is based on RHEL) .

Personally I prefer SUSE if I’m deploying Linux Servers.

 

[LordVic]

Red Hat currently make the claim that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), presumably for servers.

Facebook use a customised distro based on CentOS (which is based on RHEL) .

Personally I prefer SUSE if I’m deploying Linux Servers.

Interesting o note though, that as of last month, RedHat is now owned by IBM. IBM has their own version of Unix as well called AIX.

it will be interesting to see where IBM goes with their own AIX now that they own RedHat. and how they look to monetize RedHat to try and earn back some of the 30+Billion they spent to buy it.

This also will affect CentOS since CentOS is the community fork of Redhat.



Also to OP an additional note of why Linux over Windows as a server platform. Scalability and performance. Not saying windows isn't good for performance, But with linux, there's far more customizability over the "stuff" that gets installed. Such as software dependancies and platform stuff.

EG, Just built two similar database servers for some performance testing. Windows and Linux. Windows even minimum install required approximately 2gb of RAM on boot and about 6-10gb of storage.

My linux build i was able to get running and usable for our DB engine with only 256gb of RAM in use at build and about 1gb on Disk of OS. This scalability of the OS gives the ability to scale down to really low powered hardware, or scale up to do monstrous things. Windows has gotten better at this, but it's still not as good IMHO. Plus from a system admin perspective, once you understand how linux itself works, it's far easy to manage IMHO than windows. especially as you get into far more complicated scenarios outside of simple file servers.

but this is all server related. if you're looking into using Linux on your Mac, i'd say unless you have a real defined reason for it, stick with MacOS for your day to day usage.

 

[2984839]

Linux is used for everything. It runs your printer. It might run your car. It runs a lot of the servers you interact with as you browse the web. It runs the majority of the world's smartphones and probably a lot of flip phones too. It runs the vast majority of consumer routers and switches. If you still have a DVD player, it probably runs that. It might run your thermostat. The list is endless.

 

[kschendel]

In addition to the uses already listed, a large percentage of application and database servers in the enterprise will be running Linux. The share of Windows servers in the enterprise is surprisingly small, in my experience; we'll see 1 Windows server for every dozen or so Linux servers. (With the occasional Solaris or AIX box, but those are slowly fading away.)

 

[wicknix]

What is Liniux used for these days?

Reviving old powerpc macs. 🙂

 

[cadr]

What is Liniux used for these days? Why would anyone want to use this OS when Windows 10 and Mac OS dominate?

Linux is used for pretty much everything a computer can be used for. I use it for gaming, desktop publishing, photo and video editing, file and record management, personal finance, email and Internet, music and movies, education, etc. Basically, for me, the year of the Linux desktop arrived a decade ago. It actually culminated a few years ago when AAA games started coming out for Linux.

I found that keeping up with Windows is too expensive. I found it ridiculous to keep purchasing the upgrade for the same piece of software or hardware every time they upgrade the OS. And the upgrades were mostly for fixing bugs, not adding new features. I am not going to shell out my hard earned money to fix sloppy problems that shouldn't have existed in the first place, and I am not even allowed to fix them myself if I wanted to. And I didn't want to be bogged down with fighting virus and malware and crashes and slowdowns and unexpected stoppage due to long unwanted upgrades.

I also found that Mac was too restrictive in terms of how I want to use my own computer anyway I want, rather than the company mandating how I should be using my own computer. You cannot easily convert Mac for automated maintenance, central file sharing, etc. without shelling more money and giving up more control. I want to be able to seamlessly do all the things Linux can do. At least the Mac hardware is pretty fancy, which is why I use Linux on a Mac. And Macs are pretty good for non-technical users, I give you that, which is why I dual-boot it (Linux for me and OS X for my family, although they also use Linux for some power usage, and I use OS X for some games that don't quite work in Linux natively or with wine).

As others noted, Linux are also heavily used in server and advanced computing areas like cloud computing and super computing (top 500 supercomputers are all Linux based), massive data warehousing, AI and data mining in science and non-science areas, big movie studio production, etc.

Another area of heavy Linux use is embedded and special-purpose devices, like smart TVs, smart appliances, Internet of Things, network routers, car and airplane entertainment devices, controlling the sensors and actuators used in many areas such as agriculture, robotics, etc.

And now you have Linux-based Android, whose market share is far bigger than all other OS's combined. Yes, Linux kernel is used in consumer-oriented general computing devices in more quantity than any other computing devices, all combined. Desktops are just a small part of the consumer-oriented computers. Majority of consumer-oriented computers are Linux-based.

 

[Argyboy]

I've moved over to Linux Mint Debian Edition (64-bit) on my MacPro 2,1 and the new Cinnamon 4.0 desktop environment is absolutely beautiful. Maybe the most functional, smooth and efficient desktop environment I've ever used. It's really worth checking out!

 

[YaBe]

The linux desktop never truly came into its own, for years pundits proclaimed this was the year of linux. As we turn the page of 2018, and 2019 is around the corner, the desktop flavor of Linux is a niche, and it will probably never get beyond the 2% that it sits on now.

It won't be the year of Linux as Desktop (if ever) untill big commercial software comes to it.

Adobe and such need to support it in order to make it grow.

While I can do most of the stuff on Linux and the free softwares on it, it is simply NOT possible to use it for anything productive.

Gimp is awesome for a free program, but cannot be compared to Photoshop, the same goes for Inkscape and Illustrator....and well you get the piont.

I won't dual boot into Windows / Mac OS to use such softwre and then back to linux for other use, so untill i can do everything on Linux, then i won't be installing it, even if it is cool and a very solid OS by itself.

It is a dog that bite its tail, no user, no major sdoftware, no major software no users, and the hard user base of linux won't be happy about a commercial licence for a linux application, so there's that too.

Linux on servers is a completely different story.

iOS was built on the kernel of OS X, which was also built from FreeBSD.

To be fair OS X uses Mach Kernel not BSD, it shares lot of code with it though.

Darwin technology is based on BSD, Mach 3.0, and Apple technologies, so not really BSD, but a mix with it 😀

 

[maflynn]

It won't be the year of Linux as Desktop (if ever) untill big commercial software comes to it.

My inference is that it will never be the year of Linux, the market never materialized and at this stage, people have largely decided on windows or macOS. Yes, there's a group of people that adhere to linux on the desktop, but that's more of a niche.

Open source is an odd animal, there's some major applications that are outstanding, but so many that never reach any level of potential that was hoped for. There's even some that were promising, but were abandoned or just withered on the vine.

Linux on servers is a completely different story.

Agreed, which is why I wanted to qualify my answer to only the desktop

 

[S.B.G]

While I can do most of the stuff on Linux and the free software on it, it is simply NOT possible to use it for anything productive.

I tend to disagree with that blanket statement. It really depends on a person's profession, workflow, needs, and preferences.

For instance, I use Linux, KDE Neon, as my daily PC at work and it allows me to manage my network, my Windows domain, and various other Linux servers. I also use it for of the duties associated with my executive management position at the office.

I also acknowledge and recognize that Linux isn't for everyone or their particular workflow. But there are plenty of people who do amazing things in all sorts of professions who solely use Linux.

 

[YaBe]

I tend to disagree with that blanket statement. It really depends on a person's profession, workflow, needs, and preferences.

For instance, I use Linux, KDE Neon, as my daily PC at work and it allows me to manage my network, my Windows domain, and various other Linux servers. I also use it for of the duties associated with my executive management position at the office.

I also acknowledge and recognize that Linux isn't for everyone or their particular workflow. But there are plenty of people who do amazing things in all sorts of professions who solely use Linux.

Not that i disagree, and you are right, i shoudl have said creative (as in creating creative content graphics and stuff, and productive in the sense that yes you can do stuyff with Gimp, but why would you? it is far less time consuming on Photoshop / Affinity) and not productive, as yes you can be productive on Linux.

The thing is even with office, we (where I work) deal with lots of "Openoffice" and "Libre Office" at work while we use MS Office, and it is a pain.

It works between Libre and Open, but when you put a MS file on them it is messy 80% of the time, and hence less "productive".

I am not saying it is 100% impossible or that nobody does, but still, i really think it is a niche of a niche.

 

[timidpimpin]

Linux and UNIX (BSD) are for people with needs that cannot be met within the closed source world of Windows or macOS.

On Linux or UNIX the user is in the drivers seat. On Windows and Mac the OS has as much time in the drivers seat as the user. Maybe more.

But to really answer the question of the OP... if you have to ask that question... then you likely won't understand the answer in the first place. No offense...

 

[Argyboy]

Another tip for people looking for a nice Linux-based experience - PopOS, from a company called System76 that develop their own hardware and run PopOS as their operating system that's shipped with their hardware. An absolutely delightful user experience. Current one is based on the current Ubuntu release, 19.04

 

[nudoru]

Red Hat isn’t owned my IBM yet - the deal hasn’t closed. And based on public statements, they’ll let Red Hat keep on being Red Hat with RHEL and all of the cloud infrastructure tools. Also, Red Hat has a more experimental Linux distro, Fedora, which just released version 30.

Linux is used heavily by developers and basically runs the whole internet with servers, cloud environments, Docker and containerization, Kubernetes, and on and on.

The “Unix” command line is one of the main reasons that developers of all kinds use a Mac. If you’ll notice, Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with the Mac/Linux developer environment friendliness by adding a Linux kernel to Windows and the whole WSL system.

While end user computers run Windows or Mac, Linux is happily chugging away behind the scenes making everything we depend on work. “Unix” owns the mobile device space with iOS being based on FreeBSD at the core and Android based on Linux.