Hence I thought it would be useful to advance a few cases where people should not use GNU/Linux; indeed, they should not even go near it.

1. You work for an organisation that uses Windows-only applications for its prime money-making functions. But you, the techie in the workplace, don't like Windows (for whatever reasons) and think it might be better to use GNU/Linux instead. Should you start to push your views? My friend, it would be better for you to change your job and find a place where they use GNU/Linux instead. And good luck, you're going to need it.

2. As a home user, you love to play games. Your PC platform has always been Windows but occasionally you feel a bit left out when people on your newsgroup/IRC channel/mailing list discuss GNU/Linux, and (it appears to you) very knowledgeably too. You start to entertain ideas of switching over. My recommendation? Please don't. You'll never get half your games working on GNU/Linux.

3. You hear a lot about how GNU/Linux users never have to deal with spyware, scumware and malware; how viruses and worms are practically non-existent on this OS and how reinstalling or rebooting are rare things. You've just reinstalled Windows for the fifth time in six months due to a massive CoolWebSearch infection and you are quite fed up. Should you switch? Not until you have drawn up a list of pros and cons and seriously evaluated whether the pain you have just gone through is worse than what you will experience in terms of loss of other kinds of functionality once you switch over.

Seven years ago, when I made my first tentative moves to GNU/Linux, I looked at the other side of the coin and wrote a rather naive piece about the reasons why I decided to start using GNU/Linux. (Ten years down the line, I may look at this article and decide it was naive; time tends to provide perspective.) Most of those reasons are valid even today. There are a host of others as well, good reasons why you should switch to GNU/Linux. But that's a different discussion for another day.

{moscomment}

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Linux  Open Source  Sam Varghese  Software