Did you know that most developers use Linux as their main operating system (or at least dual boot)? Sure, a novice user may find it daunting at first–just like switching to any new piece of technology is–but there’s a reason that 90% of the world’s supercomputers run Linux.
Recently, our dev team switched over to running Linux and we aren’t looking back! Let’s take a look at the top five reasons why our developers love using Linux.
1. Free and Open Source
Everyone loves free, and it’s no different when it comes to an operating system (OS). Why shell out hundreds of dollars for an OS when you can get a stable and reliable one for free?
Open source applications come standard when installing a distribution like Ubuntu or Mint, and you get a file editor, PDF reader, libreoffice, etc. right out of the box. Although we primarily use the Google suite for all of our collaborative projects, sometimes you need to have something local that can load a few million rows of data.
2. Highly Secure
At OBO, we take security very seriously, so we were happy to discover that Linux fits our strict requirements. Linux offers the following security features:
- Default user privileges that help prevent viruses from accessing more than just local files
- Multiple distributions to make customizing malware and viruses more troublesome
- Application controls to lock down specific applications from running without approved permissions
- Log monitoring to detect malicious activity earlier
- Lower user population, which directly means lower risk
Now, with that being said, Linux is vulnerable to viruses like any other operating system. Therefore, it is not the miracle OS, but it definitely has a leg up on the competition.
3. Terminal Goodness
At OBO, our dev team is constantly working on the server side of Linux. We spin up and take down Linux servers every week for things like database backends, reporting, and testing. When we were on a Windows environment, we would have to connect remotely to our Linux servers using an applications like Putty. But now that we’re on Linux, we can just SSH using the terminal window.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
We can also edit our server side code through the terminal using built in editors like Emac, Nano, and Vim. This allows us to quickly update config files or hosted Python scripts on the fly.
And while those are all great, we can’t forget the little things like built in UNIX commands. Tools like cd, ls, ssh, grep, traceroute, mkdir, etc. come in handy more often than not.
4. Included Drivers and Support for Low-End Systems
When using Linux, all the required drivers are included within the current distribution. Linux does a great job reading the hardware on your computer and setting up proper drivers right from the gate. This is great when you’re trying to quickly spin up a local machine or run Linux on an older computer. For example, we’ve found a few older boxes sitting in our IT closet that we weren’t using, but we were able to bring them back to life by installing either Linux Mint or Ubuntu.
That said, the versatility of hardware support has been hands-down one of the top features of why we switched to Linux.
5. Frequent and Stable Updates
Most distributions of Linux come with frequent and stable updates. This not only brings new and improved features to the end user, but also ensures the latest security updates. No more waiting for the next big OS push or data breach for an update!
Best of all, when updating, Linux does not need to reboot, so there’s no downtime. Even with all of its frequent updates, Linux is very stable and rarely crashes. And since Linux is lightweight and stable, it will run fast on day one and day 1,000.
Why not get started now?
By switching to Linux, our dev team’s productivity has skyrocketed! Linux makes setting up and managing servers easier and it helps you avoid spending time on slow OS updates. If you’ve been thinking about switching your OS, we highly suggest Linux.
For more information on Linux, contact us today.
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