January 13, 2000 Web posted at: 1:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT) by Joe Barr

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(IDG) -- The question takes various forms, but it always comes down to this: "Why should I run GNU/Linux?" It's a question that's being posed everywhere -- in PC magazines, in chat rooms, in schools, in offices, and in airport waiting areas. If you are one of the many pondering just this question, this column is for you. If you've already taken the plunge, stick around. It might be of interest to you, too.

You've heard the buzz about Linux, and seen lots of the hype: Linux IPOs are setting records on Wall Street, Linus Torvalds is becoming a household name, and Miguel de Icaza was named Innovator of the Year by MIT.

You may also know that Linux is growing faster than Windows in the server space. It's cropping up more and more on the desktop as well, although the general consensus is that Linux isn't ready to mount a serious challenge to Windows there. Not yet, at least.

But we're starting to see Linux for sale more often, and in more places: at Sam's Club, in CompUSA, and in bookstores. Just look around Barnes and Noble these days; you may discover to your amazement that Linux has more titles on the shelves than Windows.

This might cause you to shiver ever so slightly, and get a sense of dread or impending doom. Something is happening here that you don't understand, and you're afraid it's about to pass you by.

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Relax -- you're too jumpy. Windows isn't going away anytime soon, and neither are Macs. Both will be around for years and years. Let's go back to the root question -- why you should make the switch. We can safely leave fear of abandonment off the list of reasons.

One of the most common answers to the question is that Linux is more stable than Windows. That is especially true of consumer versions of Windows, like Windows 95, Window 98, and the coming-any-day-now Windows Millenium, or whatever they're calling it. But Linux is also more stable than Windows NT, often measuring periods of uptime in months instead of weeks (like NT) or days (like Windows 9x).

How important is this increased stability? That depends on you. If you use your computer to play games, surf the net, and exchange email, it may not be as critical to you as it is to someone who is running an application around the clock, using the computer in a small business, or doing important research. But it often only takes a single system crash -- with the inevitable loss of documents that goes along with it -- to motivate even casual users to seek more stability.

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You might also want to switch because Linux can extract more performance from your existing hardware. Older machines with less memory and less powerful CPUs can boost performance nicely by changing from Windows to Linux. Raw speed is important in game play, number crunching, image processing, database management, and software compilation. After spending years buying more powerful hardware in order to keep pace with the bloat and speed loss that is inherent to applications coded for the Windows APIs, it's a relief to actually find an operating system that helps performance instead of hurting it.

People also list filesystems as another reason for making the change. I don't buy into this one, though, unless we're talking about the number of filesystems supported by Linux versus the number supported by Windows. If you work in an environment with a lot of different platforms, the fact that Linux supports a lot of filesystems while Windows supports only a few can loom large.

But, in my opinion, changing from Windows to Linux because you like Ext2fs better than FAT32 is like changing from a Yugo to a Mercedes because you like the floormats better. Perhaps this year Linux will have a journaling file system in place which will justify the move all by itself, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Money is certainly one of the primary motivations to switch. I know that it was for me when I shutdown my FidoNet BBS in 1995 and set up The Dweebspeak Primer on a Linux machine running Apache later that year.

You can spend as little as you want to get a full version of Linux. In fact, you can get it absolutely free by downloading it from the Internet. You can spend a couple of dollars to get it on a CD, or you can spend more money and get it with tech support.

If you're poor, you may not have any choice but to use Linux. If that's true -- if money is the single deciding factor for you -- then, in this case, being poor is doing you a favor.

Perhaps the reason is less concrete. Perhaps you have an itch that you just can't scratch with Windows. You want to play in the kernel code. You want to expand your knowledge of internals and drivers and applications. Welcome to the revolution, penguinista. This is the operating system for you.

In the Windows world, you can buy books that teach you about drivers and internals, but you're only going to get as close to the underlying code as Microsoft allows. You can buy thousands of applications, but you're never going to see their source code or how they accomplish the things they do. You're never going to find a bug and contribute a fix.

And, unless you sign your life away in an airtight nondisclosure agreement, you're never going to see the Windows source code either. Before Windows 95 was released, Microsoft not only required that the engineers who had worked on the OS sign such an agreement, but also demanded that they not to develop applications for other operating systems for a three year period. Microsoft only withdrew the requirement after a firestorm of protest from the developer community.

With GNU/Linux, you have the operating system and you have the source code for it. You can configure the kernel so that it matches your particular hardware setup, or even wade into the code and create a true custom kernel. Everything is right there in front of you. The same is true of thousands of open source utilities and applications. This is better than just having a book; this is the real thing. Of course, there are plenty of books as well, if you want to read them.

There are many other reasons for deciding to use Linux. But as I think about this question, I'm reminded of a poem by Robinson Jeffers entitled "The Beauty of Things." Jeffers lists some reasons for writing poetry but concludes that they are "reasons, but not the reason."

So it is with GNU/Linux: the answers listed above are reasons to use it, but not the Reason.

Freedom is the reason that Linus wrote Linux in the first place, and freedom is the reason he chose the GPL to protect it. He wanted Linux to always be available, and free, for those who came after him.

You lose many freedoms as a Windows user, whether you realize it or not. In their place, you're given shrink-wrapped licensing terms that Redmond can change on a whim. Even though you can choose not to accept unwanted Windows software under the terms of your end-user licensing agreement, very few OEMs honor that agreement in practice and refund the cost of the OS.

Here's another example. If you bought Windows NT Workstation and intended to use it to host a Website, you found that your freedom to do so evaporated the moment Microsoft changed its licensing terms. Faced with competition from Netscape, Redmond decided that its users were no longer free to have more than ten simultaneous connections to an NT Workstation machine. In a wink of a Microsoft lawyer's eye, your rights to use the software for the purpose for which you purchased it in the first place disappeared.

The reason for this change was not technical, despite company claims; it was predatory. Microsoft forced its own customers to buy Windows NT Server -- the cost of which is more than double that of NT Workstation. By doing so, the company herded users toward its own Web server software, which comes bundled "free" with NT Server.

When I interviewed Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, last August in San Jose, one of his key points was that people shouldn't use GNU/Linux simply because it, or any other free software, is better than its proprietary counterpart. We should use it because it is free, and because its continued freedom is guaranteed by the GPL. Not free as in free beer, of course, but free as in free speech.

Although I believe that Stallman is right, I also believe that only a small minority of Linux users began using GNU/Linux for that reason. But it is the Reason that we should. It is, after all, the reason Linux and the rest of the GNU system was written.

I'll close with another question for you: what are you waiting for? Come on, penguinista, put down the chains of slavery and pick up the gift of freedom. It's bundled with every distribution, you know.