Daily Dose of English 108
Linux
Daily Dose of English 108
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Linux because we're at the point where I want to get a little bit more into some of my interests. and Linux is one of those I would consider. But a lot of people haven't really heard of Linux and they don't understand what it is. And so hopefully I can make an interesting episode about that that will make you learn something new, not only about English, but also about computers in general. So Linux is actually a lot of things, but the simplest way to think about it is it is a computer operating system. An operating system is the program that your computer runs to do everything, basically. In a way, it's the language that you use as a user to interact with the computer like itself, because we know that computers use billions and billions of just ones and zeros to do math, essentially. But we humans need a way to interact with that, to find our files, to save things, to install programs, and that sort of thing. And so an operating system, is how the computer functions as a computer, essentially. It's the most important interaction that we have with our computers. And there are a couple of different operating systems out there. Windows is the biggest one. Most people in the world use Windows. And then macOS is pretty small, and so is Linux. For personal desktops is the big thing. But you might not know this, but you have interacted with Linux computers every single day for the past many years. Because Linux is the backbone of most of the internet and servers and websites, essentially. Because Linux is what's called open source, which means that the code that runs the entire program is available for free on the internet, and it's something that you, if you wanted, you could look at it, you could read it, you could edit it. You wouldn't necessarily get approved with your edit, but you could make a version for yourself that you made yourself, completely, if you wanted. And this means that it's incredibly popular for things like servers where they're actually running like hundreds of thousands of computers or things like that or whatnot. But then also, because it's been around so long, it's optimized for efficiency and stability. Stability is the key word. And with a server, you want it to never fail, because it's supposed to be always on. If it fails, you'll lose, either the website won't work, or really that's the main thing, things won't work, they'll have to restart, et cetera, et cetera. I have a Linux server in my apartment on just an old computer, and the only time that it goes down is if the internet goes out. The computer itself is always on, even if the light goes out, or the power, it's on a battery, so it has a couple of hours before it shuts down. I never have to restart that computer, ever. because that's just what it is. I can update it, and I can restart it if I want. I have that control, but I never have to, and that's really important. I actually also, I rent an online server for a few things. So that's a server that is running on somebody else's thing, like in some big factory somewhere, essentially. And the only time that I ever had to restart it was when somebody else's virtual machine on that thing had a problem and they had to restart it. They literally sent me an email and were like, hey, we're sorry, The computer that you're using for your server on our system had this problem. It's not your fault, but you do have to restart, sorry. And that stability is critical for a lot of things. However, it's not as important for personal computers, like the computer that you might have in your house, because you might restart it every couple days, and you're probably gonna have updates and all those sorts of things. And so, a lot of people end up using Windows, not just for that, even though it's less stable, but also because it was originally made to be more user-friendly, because Linux does have a reputation for being a bit technical. However, I want to talk a little bit about why I use Linux every single day on all my computers because I think it's an important thing to understand and know for possibly in the future or if you ever have to give recommendations, but also I think it's interesting. I use, I've been using Linux on my computers for I think like over eight years. I think it's approaching a decade now because I got frustrated with Windows for being basically annoying because Windows constantly bothers you and tells you that you have like all these different issues. You have to constantly update. They have a ton of security issues and they also like do stuff that I just don't really wanna vibe with, if that makes sense. They collect a lot of data, they do a lot of advertising, like Windows now, some versions do have advertisements in them. And like, I don't really wanna mess with that. Like, I just don't want ads on my computer. I don't like looking at ads in the traditional sense. There's better ways to do marketing. And so I switched over to Linux quite a while ago, and I just haven't gone back. It's been great, honestly, because everything for me feels better and easier and more straightforward. Sure, there's plenty of problems, but computers have problems. I work with people that use Windows, or most people use Windows, but they constantly have issues. And so it's not like there's any difference in like the amount of issues. It's just like, okay, do I have control of this issue? Or do I have, like, can I just change things or move things around? Like, it's just better for me. However, I don't think it is the right option for many people. That being said, I don't think that Windows is the best option for a lot of people, but whatever, we'll get to that in a second. Because most people already have their workflows in place and they know what they use and they're comfortable with their computer. And that is more important than anything else. And so if you've been using Windows for 15 years, you should probably keep using Windows because you know how things work, you understand the systems, you have your whole thing set up, and switching just doesn't really make sense for you. Same thing goes for Mac OS. If you've been using an Apple computer for a long time, probably just keep using it because you already know how things function and relearning everything is a big commitment. But if you're getting your first computer or you are really frustrated with Windows or you want to try learning something new, that can be a great reason to start using Linux because it's easy and it's free now. It used to not be. And most things just work. They didn't used to be like that, like a decade, two decades ago, it used to be a lot more technical and you got to do things yourself. But nowadays, if you use something like Linux Mint, which is a version of Linux, it just works great out of the box. Which is a really nice thing for new computers, especially like if you just got a computer For the first computer in your life. I would recommend starting with Linux because You're you don't have anything to relearn. You're just learning in general and it's gonna be a lot more beneficial for your for your long-term use However, there are a couple of reasons that you wouldn't want to start using Linux if you aren't specifically interested, and that's if you play a lot of the newest video games. For that, you have to use Windows and potentially macOS, but mostly Windows. Or if you use a lot of specialized tools that are only on Windows. So like Adobe software I think is only on Windows and other software like that or Final Cut Pro is a Mac OS exclusive. So if you're using a tool that is exclusive to a platform, then you probably shouldn't switch. But that's only if you've already been using those tools. Because, again, if you're starting from scratch and you're learning how to edit videos, for example, you should use something like DaVinci Resolve, which is very, very full-featured, but is available on all the platforms. Because the more options you have, the less you can get screwed over in the future. Because, for example, if somebody's been using Final Cut Pro their whole life for video editing, which is a macOS thing only, but for some reason Apple decides that it's only going to work on their newest computers and those cost $3,000. They legally can do that. It's their stuff. and then you would have to buy that thing, which can be problematic for some people, right? You don't wanna spend $3,000 on a computer if your current one functions. And so having more control over the things that you use and not having to constantly rent them can be really, really nice. And so I'm at time for this episode, but I barely even scratched the surface on what Linux is. So I hope that you enjoyed this. I probably won't come back to this topic because it's a really niche, but you know, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a few new things and potentially some new words. And I guess I'll see you again for another episode. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
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