I'm in my second year of a programming course in Ireland (Galway, Mint's homeland!
) and I hear so much about Linux from classmates and lecturers that I just had to give it a go.My data structures lecturer loves Linux, talks about how smooth, secure and reliable it is.
I'm dual booting with Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon Edition (Ubuntu based).
I absolutely love it!.
I need Windows for Visual Studio (making windows phone/tablet apps).
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One of the epiphanies I had one evening 2 weeks ago was that most of my software started out open source or was available on Linux.
For example:
-Arduino
-VLC
-uTorrent (using transmission now)
-GIMP
-Chrome
-Eclipse
-Notepad++ (use gedit now)
-Spotify
-Blender
-RoboCode
-Steam
-WireShark
-Cisco Packet Tracer
-Skype
-FileZilla
-Libre Office instead of MS office
I use Tomboy notes instead of OneNote, more slimmed down, I prefer it.
Also the calc, notepad and screen capture tools are better than MS ones.
to be honest I used GIMP a lot the past 2 years as our college has it installed on all the IT lab computers, this got me into open source.
I did a presentation on GIMP and learned all about Linus & Stallman.
Interesting guys with great ideas.
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I made a bootable USB with Linux and I could finally play minecraft on my pc! which Windows wouldn't allow.
This is from my USB!
So I spent the weekend researching Linux, watching videos on open source etc and I made the dive.
I love it, the guys on the IRC are so sound.
One of them guided me through the whole set up of my laptop and even sent me a copy of the game FEZ.
Still in contact with him.
All in all it's a great community and the next step for me is to get involved with an open source project.
I would especially like to get involved with some work in relation to Linux mint, some community project, give something back you know
Any ideas or thought would be great.
Thanks
-A happy Linux newb
