On 06/22/2017 10:12 PM, Mr William Balthes wrote:
A suggestion from the list is that I use linux.
I know nothing about it. Does it have automatic updates that you
can't avoid where the system restarts.
No - at least not the version I use. Each distribution has its own way
of doing updates, but having the computer automatically update, and then
re-starting, seems, well, stupid.
Is it more stable and do you avoid the crashes out of the blue and
when selecting large amounts of text with the mouse.
I don't have any trouble with that.
Does linux still have back-ups and save temp files.
Sure, but everything is configurable. There are advantages to linux:
stability, speed (some programs), versatility. When I started using
TeX, the windows version was a complete mess. Under linux, everything
talked to everything else easily (a unix feature in general) and
everything worked like it should. Networking is part of the design, not
a bunch of nonsense add-ons. Security is far better.
There are, for some, disadvantages to linux as well: No Word (I regard
this as a feature, not a problem), not many games. The big commercial
programs usually just ignore linux, except for Maple and Mathematica,
and things like that. You do kind of have to like fiddling with your
computer to want linux on it.
--
David L. Johnson
Department of Mathematics
Lehigh University
