When many people hear the term “Linux”, it conjures up mental images of arcane commands being typed on a monochrome terminal. Linux can be intimidating for many users because for a long time it required a decent knowledge of UNIX like operating systems to use it. What many do not realize is that Linux has made great strides towards being an operating system that anyone can use. In fact, several technologies make it so simple that even newbies can use Linux.
In the past, installing Linux involved knowing a great deal about your hardware and being able to select the right drivers. The installation was largely command line and tedious. Today’s Linux distributions are much friendlier to newbies. Operating systems like Red Hat Fedora or Ubuntu provide graphic installation programs similar to the ones found in various versions of Windows. Additionally, these installers can detect most common hardware and select the correct drivers. The really great part of these new installers is that there are expert modes that allow advanced users to customize the installation while newbies can easily install Linux with the default settings. Some distributions even offer live CD installations so you can try Linux out without actually installing it on your hard drive.
Once Linux is installed, the new distributions provide an easy to use graphic interface. No more logging straight into a command line. In fact, many distributions of Linux including Fedora and Ubuntu use a graphic login by default. When you log in, you log straight into X Windows which provides an interface very similar to Windows or other graphic operating systems. Newbies will instantly be at ease with the graphic interface.
Advanced users can still control and tweak their Linux system by editing text configuration files on the command line. However, this turns many newbies off of Linux. To remedy this, most distributions of Linux now provide graphical configuration programs. You can click into these and select configuration options like you would in Windows. These programs then write the text configuration files for you. This makes Linux much easier for newbies to use. And as a newbie’s skills improve, they can, if they wish, edit the configuration files themselves for more control.
In the past, it was very hard for newbies to move from Windows to Linux. This has changed as more applications have become available for Linux that can read the file formats of similar Windows applications. For example, Open Office can open Word and Excel files which allows newbie Linux users to migrate their old documents to Linux. The Gimp is capable of opening a large number of Photoshop files. Hardware support has also broadened a lot making it much easier for newbies to be sure that Linux will support their hardware.
Linux has grown considerably over the years and is more accessible and usable for newbies than ever before. A new graphical installation system, wider hardware support and better applications make it much easier for Linux newbies to jump in and use Linux. On top of that, the graphic user interface make it easy for Windows users to quickly get up to speed. Advanced users can still customize Linux so the new capabilities make it easy for new users to get started without sacrificing the power that advanced users have always appreciated. Linux is definitely for newbies too.
Tags: configuration programs, correct drivers, decent knowledge, graphic installation, graphic interface, graphical configuration, great strides, linux distributions, red hat fedora, term linux