title: What are advantages of keeping linear history in Git?
body: <p>When I was taught using Git with central repo (project on Gitorious) I was told to always use rebase instead of merge because we want to have linear history. So I have always been trying to work that way.</p>
  <p>Now when I come to think about it is it really so beneficial? Rebasing branch with many commits is much more time consuming then simple merge.</p>
  <p>There are 2 advantages that come to my mind right now:</p>
  <ol>
  <li><code>git bisect</code></li>
  <li>Possibility of submitting with history to another version control system like SVN.</li>
  </ol>
  <p>Are there any other benefits?</p>