First Impressions from a Economist using Linux (Ubuntu)
Posted by noble8_@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 101 comments
Brief Introduction
In this post I want to expose some of the impressions I have gotten using a Linux distro for the first time as an economist. If you want to convince an economist to acquire a Linux distro, he or she may want to read this post.
I have been using Windows since XP. I never had a problem with the OS as I only wanted it for gaming. Now my priorities have changed as I have become an economist, and Windows 11 simply wasn't right. Unknown RAM consumption or forced-broken updates are some of the things that make me move from Win to Linux, as I have not a huge budget and can't even consider a Mac. Right now I mainly use my computer (an HP laptop) is to run models and program, and that memory consumption is not tolerable.
After this boring introduction, let's talk about what advantages and disadvantages I found,
Advantages and Disadvantages
First I want to talk about the advantages:
- Windows manager is better, and if you don't like the one from your distro, you can change it thanks to Linux. This might be seem like something secundary, but it is not because it has a huge impact on the working flow. Now my productivity has increased due to the changes in windows manager I have made.
- Better control on the memory. In Windows you have hundred of services which you don't know what they do, however they have a huge impact on RAM if you aggregate them. This makes the experience much worse, but this is solve in Linux as it has less unknown services (no spy-ware), and also if you close a tab, it stops inmediately to consume resources from the machine.
- Smoother. Maybe it is because of the last point and perhaps it is biased, but I sensed that everything was quicker and smoother. This applies when running scripts (in my case R).
- It feels more secure compared to Windows. The machine is always checking for administration power and password, so it gives me the comfort that I am not opening something bad as admin without noticing.
- It's free, do I need to explain this?
Now the disadvantages are:
- Your work environment doesn't use Linux. In my case, the university provides Wi-Fi connection, and they state clearly that it supports also Linux OSs. Well, I had a great surprise when seeing a bugged python script as the configuration to enter in the university network, so in the end I couldn't even log in. This case could be extrapolated to other places for sure.
- Time-consuming configuration. It is not really a problem if you are gonna use any ready-to-use distro (like Ubuntu) but, when you start to personalize the system, you will see that sometimes it doesn't work at first or won't work because you have a different desktop environment... Even without that, I had the case of extra configuration for R that I never had to do in Windows.
- Inexistance of some packages, but nothing serious. You still have STATA, R, Python, GNU Octave/MatLab and many more. Even MS Office can be substituted by LibreOffice, which is better imo because it is incredibly faster, so for economist level I don't think you will need visual basic scripts.
Would I recommend to change from Windows to Linux?
YES, if you have a Windows PC, an old Mac or nothing. Also you have to consider that this is a time investment, so if you don't like computers in general, I don't know if I would recommend this. However, in the long-run you will increase your work flow and decrease your stress (and the configuration part is fun actually).
Enthusedchameleon@reddit
Btw, R is just superior on Linux and Mac vs Windows. The language sort of doesn't support multithreading, so multiprocessing was bodged onto it., and since multi processing is much simpler on unix(likes) it works "by default" on Linux and Mac, and simply doesn't on Windows.
If you are writing for publishing, LaTeX > literally any WYSIWYG, especially considering Economics has some use for formulaic expressions, not close to maths or comp sci, but also far from the 0 of sociology et al.
Lastly, you WILL come around modelling done in excel with VBA, I guarantee it. But a VM or Wine etc., should be good enough.
Cheers from a past actuary scientist.
apshinyn@reddit
Installing R packages takes like 100x longer on Linux though - and installing tidyverse takes 5-10 iterations, with each one requiring you to install something in between.
I will never forget the amount of “fribidi” packages i had to type and install on ubuntu/any other Debian distro. Fedora was weirdly ok.
If there is something I am missing out on please let me know!
noble8_@reddit (OP)
It is not that hard if you simply read the instructions, but most of the people won't read the error warning messeage and won't be able to use R properly
apshinyn@reddit
Yes, the error messages say try installing x/y/z and so on and then you do it and then you get the next batch of missing things to install.
I was asking if the commenter (or you!) use some better way to do install packages that makes it better. Did you do it some other way?
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Nope, I didn't hahahhahaah.
brodrigues_co@reddit
I highly recommend using Nix shells for project specific R environments. I wrote a package to make this easy https://docs.ropensci.org/rix/
barraponto@reddit
this is the truth of open source: you can always go one level up in abstraction.
nix is great, but it is a distro on its own, running on top of your distro. it is not for the faint of heart.
brodrigues_co@reddit
Getting into Nix is not easy, through, but it's really worthwhile imho. Which is why I made rix 😁
Mooks79@reddit
Sounds like you probably have already but, if you haven’t, make sure you’ve checked how to install binary packages in R on your distro of choice - eg for Fedora see here - it makes installing much easier and much faster.
brodrigues_co@reddit
I highly recommend using Nix shells for project specific R environments. I wrote a package to make this easy https://docs.ropensci.org/rix/
Skept1kos@reddit
u/apshinyn You can get binary packages from Posix, which speeds it up massively.
There are a couple of requirements that are tricky to track down, though it's mostly a problem when developing your own packages. There's actually even an R repository providing R packages as debian packages (so that the system requirements are installed) if you prefer that.
I have dotfiles on github where you can see how to set up the Posix repo in .Rprofile, and where I have the important system packages listed: https://github.com/wmay/dotfiles
Mooks79@reddit
You are missing something. On Linux most distros default to a simple R setup that means you’re compiling packages into binaries then installing them, not just installing a prebuilt binary. It’s the compiling that’s slow. Check for prebuilt binaries for whatever distro you’re using - for example, for Fedora you want to follow the guide here. The fact you found fedora ok implies you already had this setup, somehow.
Enthusedchameleon@reddit
I did not have any issues on OpenSUSE. But I took a look at Debian and Ubuntu, I found this. In the instructions for Ubuntu they also recommend r2u.
But as the other commenter said, building from source is easy as pie, just ./configure make make install
defuneste@reddit
You have binary here: https://github.com/eddelbuettel/r2u (still good to build from source)
AdmiralQuokka@reddit
Typst > LaTeX
deafpolygon@reddit
Don't trust any software that offers for free, then upsell to Pro/whatever features.
thuiop1@reddit
It's all free, open source software. The only paying part is the web editor, whose free tier is currently better than Overleaf.
boomboomsubban@reddit
I don't see an issue if it's all free software, their premium version seems to be cloud integration.
Enthusedchameleon@reddit
I just heard about it this month. Is it actually good? Or just different? What do you like about it?
ludicroussavageofmau@reddit
Yes it's awesome! I've used it for a lot of things including coursework, my CV, and some study guides I've made. I've never used LaTeX much, but I found its syntax very archaic and unintuitive. Typst is much more intuitive and beginner friendly, and it has a website (https://typst.app) with file syncing and live previews, making it very easy to start off with. The issue you might encounter is its ecosystem, there's a very small amount of packages available, and I don't think they're as polished as their LaTeX counterparts.
AdmiralQuokka@reddit
It is actually good. Been using it exclusively for over two years at this point. Syntax is nicer, installation is super easy, the builtin scripting language is modern and powerful. I remember in my latex days, I used to just use overleaf, because setting up latex locally was such a pain. While typst offers a web app, I never use it because the local experience is so good. Incremental compilation is very fast.
95% of the time the syntax feels like markdown. When you need a little more power, you use the scripting language, which feels like using Python to generate a document instead of writing one. I'm continually amazed at how they combined simplicity and power in one system, typst always seems to be exactly what you need at any given moment.
GolemancerVekk@reddit
I would also suggest the LyX editor as a nicer way of doing LaTeX. You can use visual tools to do things but also use templates for matching a precise paper specification, and write actual LaTeX when needed. More details here.
QuickSilver010@reddit
Does typst work as well as LaTeX
JockstrapCummies@reddit
Typst only works well if you don't need to use almost any LaTeX packages outside the narrow subset that mathematicians use.
It can't do e.g. parallel translation texts for literature critical editions (reledmac/ekdosis/etc.), Gregorian chant for ancient music (gregorio), and a myriad of book publishing indexing/multiple ToC/Table of Whatever stuff.
thuiop1@reddit
Typst works well enough for 99% of the stuff people do in LaTeX. How many people do Gregorian chant typesetting? And it's not like can't do it, simply the package does not exist yet. And as a matter of fact I find it much easier to create new commands you need in Typst than in LaTeX; making a parallel translation is definitely doable, making multiple toc also is, there is a package for indexing... In fact, many things are easier in Typst than LaTeX, mostly because a lot of it is in the standard library rather than random packages. So yeah, the Typst ecosystem is not as mature as the LaTeX one but your criticism is not really representative of reality.
fmoralesc@reddit
Typst can mostly do it, you just have to set it up yourself. There are still some layout limitations, though.
QuickSilver010@reddit
I've used a bit of both. And for me it seems like typst is a lot cleaner to use. And it's docs is great. Whatever I do with LaTeX feels like a hack. So I guess if basic documents and diagrams are possible I'll just keep using typst. I currently don't need any of the LaTeX stuff you mentioned here.
mitch_feaster@reddit
Nowadays AI assisted editors (Cursor etc) make it just as easy to write raw LaTeX.
lcnielsen@reddit
Please don't blindly do this. LaTeX needs to be hand-tweaked to look great, like any layout system.
mitch_feaster@reddit
Please don't conflate "vibe coding" with AI assisted coding under intelligent human supervision, which is the future of coding (and typesetting), like it or not.
lcnielsen@reddit
Just use macros and templates, it has always worked just fine. Ask an AI if you don't know a feature, but hand-implement things unless you want a mishmash of styles and style-appropriate tags in your document.
greenknight@reddit
Shhh... I was thinking about going back to school in the future and my go-to gig has always been doing latex figures for econ/BA masters students!
DeinOnkelFred@reddit
If you are just getting your feet wet with LaTeX: http://overleaf.com. Then, if you decide it's the things for you... there are a bunch of choices.
LyX is not bad, TBH. I'd argue that https://www.texstudio.org/ is "better", but all "betters" are subjective and relative.
Or, shudders... Emacs. LaTex and Emacs are like Port and Stilton, or peanut butter and jelly: a classic combination! But it's a bear to set up if you are not already invested in Emacs.
Skept1kos@reddit
Heheh, if you read economics research you would know that it really is like math or comp sci. Economics is notorious for the math (especially for someone like OP doing modelling and programming). Latex is standard for economics research, and even used for making presentation slides.
mamigove@reddit
between using VBA in Office (with Wine) and using Python in LibreOffice (linux native) there is no color between them
Amazing-Mirror-3076@reddit
How is multiprocessing simpler on Linux?
Having developed extensively on both in not aware of significant differences.
Mooks79@reddit
Linux supports forking, Windows doesn’t. Historically it was much harder to get parallel processing working on R but with the advent of packages like future this is basically seamless, for the user. However, the lack of forking means you get one full R process per parallel process - with the full environment loaded - so it’s much heavier on RAM. You will eventually come up against a situation where you run out of RAM on windows that would still work fine on Linux.
Mooks79@reddit
R on Mac (iirc) and Linux is also using optimised BLAS by default so is significantly faster for anything doing linear algebra operations. It can be done on Windows using MKL but it’s manual and hacky.
cornfeedhobo@reddit
Honestly, as an economist, you should. This is one of the few domains which presents itself on the surface as pure collectivism, but in reality has so many externalities than I have lost count. It's an interesting question for users that are willing to pay for software to save time - something that is hard to do in the linux world even if you are willing to pay.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I have a comment discussing open source from an economical point view with another user. You may want to check out.
Beautiful_Crab6670@reddit
So basically
Windows: has ads
Linux: no ads
pwwwaaaahh
NowThatHappened@reddit
So in summary
Windows; insecure, slow, crashes, idiot orientated.
Linux; secure, fast, solid, highly customisable.
Beautiful_Crab6670@reddit
"Idiot orientated". Please excuse me while I yoink that sentence for me.
meagainpansy@reddit
"idiot orientated" 🤔
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I understand the logic (though, I wouldn't call it "idiot oriented"), but there are also "brain-dead" distros in Linux.
meagainpansy@reddit
I was moreso amused they called people idiots and then misspelled the next word.
Multicorn76@reddit
If you mean they spelled orientated wrong: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orientated
... no?
meagainpansy@reddit
Oof. You're right. I wasn't aware of the British spelling. Now I feel like the fucking asshole.
deafpolygon@reddit
Don't forget Windows=telemetry, spyware, closed-source, user-hostile
the1iplay@reddit
Do you even rice bruh
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
You missed the best.part: now as an economist you can investigate the mysterious situation that this entire operating system didn't require you to pay anyone. What is its value?
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Economical value doesn't need to be reflected in market prices if they are not necessary. Open source distributions can be replicated unlimited times, so there is no scarcity and, therefore, no need for prices. That doesn't mean that there is no value, just that there are no prices reflecting a scarcity.
Big-Afternoon-3422@reddit
You can replicate Windows infinitely and yet there is a price.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Because you don't pay for installing Windows, but for using it. MS limits the licenses, and there you have your scarcity.
Big-Afternoon-3422@reddit
They don't limit anything. It's artificial. It has no value. Microsoft licences are not Bitcoin. There isn't a finite amount of them. And not paying for installing but paying for using is meaningless here. Nobody installed a tool to not use it.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Price is not equal to value. Value is the subjective preference of someone comparing to its budget constraint (demand), whereas price borns from the interaction of this willingess to pay with the firms capabilities and costs.
Pure public goods, for instance, has a value but not a price, even if it can be "replicated" to everyone in the population. Microsoft puts a price because they can and almost no body cares, in statistical terms at least.
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
Oh for sure there's value for contributors. Users who don't contribute anything don't seem very interesting economically.
But it's fascinating to see corporations contribute large amounts (of expensive resources) which means their competitors can get it for free, and for that still to be a rational decision (which it must be)
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I know what you mean. It is a very interesting topic, but my hypothesis are:
Economies of scales. As everyone already use Linux for servers, why would they move to a non-free system? Also, the more a kernel or a OS is used, the better performance will have in they economy because of the acquire human capital.
Dropping wages. If something is open-source, this means that "everyone" knows or can know how to program it. By supply and demand law, the more people who how to use the system, the less wages the companies will have to pay. This is why Alphabet has free courses published, not because of charity, but because in that way they get the best talents with the lowest price.
Independence with MS or the USA. Because many people doesn't like, wishly, to be dependant on the States and Microsoft, they prefer to invest in open-sources to develop their own technologies.
jalmito@reddit
These blog-style posts should be in /r/linux4noobs
gabriel_3@reddit
If I may, you are missing three important points:
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Agree. The better understanding, the better the performance you can get. However, I am just starting, and this wouldn't be a genuine impression from me.
I haven't used these extensions before, but, from what I have seen, it can be substituted by SQL and any other package for data manipulation (pandas, R ...). Again, I am not an expert on the topic, so you may want to illustrate me about how messed my opinion is.
True. I thought I made that point clear in the post, and it doesn't even need to apply to all economists. For instance, economic historians wouldn't need to change if their Win computer works fine for them, as it is an office/chrome bootloader (for the cases I have seen).
gabriel_3@reddit
LibreOffice vs 365 by The Document Foundation gives you a reasonably fair comparison.
I see where you are coming from: when I was exposed the very first time to a spreadsheet I asked if there were any advantage to use it instead of writing a few lines of C.
The full integration of these tools in Excel saves hours of work and makes the distribution to others a piece of cake.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
This is a pretty good point. In my case, I still prefer to code when working with any kind of database, but this is, sometimes, more time consuming than simply using Excel, so I totally agree.
Btw, that page is pretty good, they do a truly fair comparison.
Big-Afternoon-3422@reddit
Please instruct chatgpt to not be so verbose. It's ok to use it to structure and improve your text but this verbatim is actually bad imo.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Why do people think I used AI? Hahahahha
Seriously, this was fully made by me. I have this structure because my markdown notes look more or less like that. However, I'll take notes to improve my writing, I may sin of using too many words.
marrsd@reddit
I think window management is a big part of why a lot of people stick with Linux.
I've always believed that Linux distros would draw a lot more people to the platform if they made configuration of the desktop environment easier, and by that I mean making it trivially easy to swap out window managers, customise keyboard configurations, and so on.
I realise that these are "power user" features, but who else is coming to a system that doesn't support commonly used software? There are lots of Windows power users for whom Linux is still too complicated. The irony is, where power users lead, regular users typically follow.
Stpwn_D@reddit
Also a bit more details on pros and cons and differences in performing some real life day to day tasks in office suites on Windows vs Linux would probably be interesting and insightful for potential newcomers as well.
FunnyMustache@reddit
This smells like yet another AI-generated generated post...
kevdogger@reddit
Agree. Economist who doesn't have any money.
deafpolygon@reddit
Can you trust an economist with no money? Live on NEWSMAX!
Emissary_of_Darkness@reddit
I think anyone actually working as an economist can at least afford a middle class lifestyle. I believe from “university wifi” getting brought up that this is an economist in training.
kevdogger@reddit
Soooo...not really an economist then. In training as you mentioned
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Nope. I am a "junior", but an economist.
Emissary_of_Darkness@reddit
A baby economist.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I usually don't need, but, for instance, if I want to read a closed paper, the only way to access via institution is by connecting to the university network. Yes, this is garbage and I didn't have this problem in my old college. Also applies for applications that require licence, although I already have all the licenses I need to work.
FLEXXMAN33@reddit
A economist who doesn't know when to use "an".
NiceMicro@reddit
it is hard being a non-native speaker nowadays, every language mistake is a clue you are an AI.
pfassina@reddit
AI doesn’t make any language mistakes. This was clearly written by a human
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Nope, my own writing in Markdown but thank you, this means that my English has improved a lot.
Actual-Air-6877@reddit
Really honest and by honest I mean complete dogshit.
fek47@reddit
Welcome to the community.
I'm a bit surprised OP didn't mention the biggest advantage which is reliability. Linux is light years ahead of Windows when it comes to having a reliable computing experience.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Thanks! What do you mean by that?
fek47@reddit
My decision to start using Linux and abandon Windows, about 20 years ago, was to a large extent based on reliability problems. I couldn't get my work done on Windows because of constant crashes.
After the transition it didn't take a long time before I realized that one of the main advantages of using Linux was the absence of major reliability problems. I could get my work done without worrying about when the next crash would occur.
My opinion is that when discussing the main differences between Windows and Linux it's important to mention the difference in reliability.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Luckily, I didn't have this problem (at least in this computer) in Windows, no blue screens. What I actually had are a lot of problems with the updates, specially on days where I needed the computer to work and a wild update appears just to break my computer. In the end, I had to call the technical support, but I already lost the day by the time I could fix it.
fek47@reddit
It has been a long time since I last used Windows on any private computer, besides on the work. Windows can be reliable, as your experience clearly shows, but my experience is that Linux is more reliable.
Iwantmyownspaceship@reddit
Can you tell anything about the wifi login script or share it? Probably we can troubleshoot, I'm sure it's not doing anything very sophisticated.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Thanks, but there is already a technical support section in the university for who I will ask to. It is jsut that I hate non-anonymous social contact, but thanks anyway.
bageldevourer@reddit
I started using Ubuntu while in grad school for Statistics after a lifetime of Windows. The thing that pushed me over the edge was Rcpp configuration, which was a pain on Windows but "just worked" on Linux. That was about 10 years ago now, and I've been using it ever since (I've scrapped R for Python, though).
I think you'll find that Linux (and especially the command line) opens up a lot of doors for you to learn about computers more generally. As a statistician, I was surprised to discover that almost everything I became curious about in computing was ultimately able to be related back to modeling. Indulge your curiosity and it may lead you to interesting places.
justarandomguy902@reddit
Glad you are liking linux so far :)
noble8_@reddit (OP)
These are just my first impressions and in time I may change my mind, though I don't think so. Thank you anyway.
Accomplished-Sun9107@reddit
Check out Undine Almani’s Linux videos on YouTube if you’re an economist, they’ll resonate.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I have overviewed the channel, however I don't understand what she has that it is related to economics. Nevertheless, it seems like a cool channel
DueAnalysis2@reddit
Excited screeching another one!
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend looking up distrobox, it's a way to set up "containers" (basically development environments) that integrate well with your main system. There's another project called "boxkit" which allows you to construct custom container images that you can then pull into other systems.
So what that means is you can create a custom container image with all the statistical analysis software with pre installed libraries you'd need, and then just keep pulling that image into whichever other Linux system you use and you'd have all your programming environment set up and ready to go.
Here's my boxkit repo where I've set up a general purpose container which contains Quarto, R and Python with the latter two having some essential libraries pre installed: https://github.com/evsv/boxkit. You can also expand on this to have the container have all your required LaTex libraries and stuff pre configured. It reduces your setup to basically a one-time thing.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
I have a lot to learn from Linux, but this is actually pretty cool. Thank very much!!
Demortus@reddit
I'm a political scientist and my experience is very similar to yours. I'll add that Linux has the added benefit of being very easy to automate if you are interested in large scale data collection over time. It also lacks the forced automatic updates and reboots that can interrupt your workflow, analysis, or data collection.
MatchingTurret@reddit
Yet another essay. Yay.
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Yet another guy saying that Linux is great, everyone install it
KlePu@reddit
Pls don't try to evangelize people, Linux or else ;)
noble8_@reddit (OP)
Just selling the post, but I agree. This is a tool, not the goal
Craftkorb@reddit
I've probably spent a total of 40 hours just getting my
.zshrcjust right, so I know what you're talking about. But: I've used that configuration file with only really minor changes for over 15 years. It has travelled with me across computers, servers, and workplaces.For some tools I think the initial invest is high, but the payoff is nigh infinite.
luizfx4@reddit
Hail to the Penguin buddy. 🐧