Slashdot Mirror
Turning Away From Linux And Back To The Dark Side?
Slowping asks: "A friend of mine posed me a good question that I think would be best asked on Slashdot: Of all the people who have used Linux or any Unix variant, how many have gone back to Microsoft Windows? I'm not talking about newbies that install it and never run it. I'm talking about people who actually learn the new OS, and can use it competently, but for some reason decide to go back to Windows. If you are one of these people, why did you switch back?" I've always thought that Unix can be configured into an OS for everyone (especially FreeBSD and Linux who are coming out of the server closets in big ways). However, we Aren't Quite There Yet. Where do Unix variants need to improve before they can serve as general desktop machines?
1. Because Linux is slow compared to WinNT in the graphics area. X is way too slow for me. I believe this is going to be addressed soon.
2. I cannot tweak it and tune it like I want EASILY. Nothing like a Control Panel where you can fine-tune everything. Linux-Conf crashes way too many times and is not comprehensive...
3. Usual reasons: Lack of applications, etc.
I still use it once every month...
Well, let's see here:
:-)
1) Games. Most still aren't available for linux at all.
2) Apps. Please, let's not talk about StarOffice here. Maybe when 5.2 is released, it'll be stable enough, but it's still too slow to use comfortably.
3) Config. I have too many things that I want to
'eventually' set up under Linux, but until I do, I can't make the complete switch.
4) Maintenance. Like it or don't, Win95/98 neither requires nor allows the same level of maintenance and customisation that Unix in general does. Linux with its thousand different competing desktops is too damned confusing in that respect.
5) Time out! I'm a Unix admin during the day, and I can _ignore_ my OS at home when I'm running '98. Can't do that if I've got Linux. (come to think of it, this might be the same point as 3 and 4
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
3) Linux is much more configurable than Windows, hands down. For most good distros, it's configured, and you only have to customize/configure it more if you want to.
4) Just because there are more options with Linux doesn't mean that someone would even have to choose out of those options. They could just use the default.
5) You can ignore the OS easily with Linux. Just because it's fun to do things with doesn't make it bad.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Personally, I work on NT servers all day at work, I have my own Linux Server on the Internet (who doesn't these days). At home I have one box that who knows what OS it will run this week, an NT Server, a SPARC with Linux, and my scanner machine which runs Win95/NT 4.0, plus an assortment of other hardware that may or maynot be working currently. But my main machine at home runs Win98SE. Mainly because it plays games, it is all SCSI and most Distro's don't want to install on the beast. My test bed has run Linux, OpenBSD, Win NT 4.0 server and Workstation, and may soon have W2K Pro on it, or it may not, I still have to format the drives that are in it now. Who says we absolutly have to use Linux and only Linux? If I had a Mac I would be running OS9 or OSX on it, but I could run Linux on it (hell if I had two HDs in it, I more than likly would dual boot it).
Linux is great for server stuffs, but the desktop still needs work, its better than it was, but its still not quite there. I have never been able to get sound to work on a Linux box yet. *sigh*
I put LinuxPPC on my aging PowerMac clone but ended up reinstalling MacOS because I needed a few of the features I couldn't get (easily) under Linux:
That said, I still spend about 80% of my time on the Linux box rather than the Mac. The Linux box is what I put all my effort and money into and the Mac is purely second string these days. I still enjoy the Mac, but Linux suits many of my needs (programming and general web surfing/email/news) better.
All-in-all, I wouldn't say I've so much "returned to the Dark Side" as "kept the Dark Side around as an amusing and occasionally usefull pet."
I think people who switch back are not looking for Unix. When I installed Linux, that's exactly what I was looking for. The Unix philosophy is obviously not for everyone. I live and work Unix (I administer ~15 Linux and ~40 Solaris boxen), and I would never want anything else (well, at least if new OSes keep in the vein of other recent ones, like Windows, MacOS, and BeOS, none of which I like much).
Personally, for apps, I have what I want. LaTeX (replaces Office and PageMaker), Gimp (replaces every graphics program every created for Windows), XMMS (replaces WinAmp), GCC and/or KAI C++ (replaces Borland C++ & Visual C++). I have a Win98 partion that I keep around for the occasional time when I want to play games [mostly Freespace2], and that's about it.
This is EXACTLY my reason...for using Linux.
I'm a programmer. I absolutely abhor the programming under Windows. Why? Because debugging multi-threaded network apps is hard enough without the additional hassles of Windows:
1) My app crashing brought down the OS (Hey MS--ever heard of memory protection?)
2) Small, non-virtual desktop (plus I like x-mouse behavior--yes, I know there's a "powertool" to fix this on Windows)
3) "Hey my program doesn't work. Is it a bug or do I need to reboot?"
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I make web pages for a living and wanted to go linux since I do a lot of perl and carriage returns are such a pain in the ass even with NT I still need constant telnet to my linux boxes to open and resave every script for it to work right. So I jumped into RH6.2 setting it with Gnome and the usual array of apps. In less then 3 days I switched back to NT since my productivity was cut in half. Yes GIMP is good but something that took me a few hours in GIMP takes 20 minutes in Photoshop (yes I know how to use GIMP, Photoshop has many key features that make work much easier and quicker). HTML editors were terrible and after trying more then a handful nothing could compare to the Allaire editors I'm so used to. I never used X much so fonts threw me a little bit (Adobe Type Manager is so easy), Netscape is terrible and crashed more then even my Windows version. Finally yes Linux itself is stable but the programs made for it under the X environment crash just as much if not more then the programs I'm used to under Windows, my MP3z would skip (a lot), and some things are better then windows, some worse. Lastly, a good comparison would be Zip disks, yes they suck, too small space wise, too expensive, too slow if not scsi yet we HAVE to have one because it's what our clients use. Well, our clients use Office and word and photoshop and pagemaker and illustrator and quark and I need to be able to use those programs on a daily basis, am I supposed to tell a client I can't open their MS Word file properly under StarOffice, I don't think so :) It's come a long way but still needs to go a long way before I could use it in a productive environment as much as I need it to.
I get paid to work with computers. There are a lot more people who will pay me to work on a Windows platform. (Plus they need me to work on their computers more often, which makes me more money.)
While I do use Linux for some tasks, by and large the apps I need to use and support are Windows based. People pay me to get stuff done and get it done now. Could I eventually get as competant with Linux? Sure. But right now it isn't worth the enormous amount of effort it would take.
Some of the problems I have with Linux are being dealt with: Common interface (KDE, GNOME), automated installs (RPM).
But the larger problem that the OSS culture doesn't seem capable/willing to address is highlighted by lack of common configuration guidelines (config file locations, standard file formats).
I do think there is room for a growing Linux presence, but I don't think it's quite there yet.
Erisian
What's the difference between an orange?
It's not a bug, it's a feature. Seriously. It knows your IP address. It's meant to prevent the very "abuse" that you were trying to commit.
anyway, last time I checked I could open up pretty much as many windows as I could possibly want...i don't think linux can be claimed to have superiority in multitasking..
As for real multitasking, i.e., at the kernel level, there are some nice things about the Windows model, including native threads and such, but (a) a common use of Windows threads is to wait on file and socket input at the same time, which Unix allows you to do without forking, and (b) what could be simpler than fork(); exec();? Sure it makes some things harder, but it's less for the programmer to think about, less doubting what to pass to a certain function (although the Windows thread-management functions aren't as hard as other Windows functions as far as arguments), and less stuff (thread IDs, etc.) for the parent process to keep track of. Basically the fork() splits off a separate entity that initially has some ties to its sibling, but can break these ties and in many cases split off completely on its own. Thus sort of flexibility can be achieved with threads, but it's a pinch. And besides, the Windows process scheduler needs to remove that favoring of the top window (NT: don't enable a screensaver... why? it gets priority over server processes!).
Other than that, I use Linux. I prefer the user interface for reading email, Usenet news, and developing programs.
If Quicktime and other browser plugins worked properly under Linux, I'd use the Windows partition even less.
On a somewhat related rant, I fervently wish somebody would develop a web browser that emphasizes performance and stability.
Mozilla had a great opportunity to get rid of the bloat and crap that have made Netscape almost unusable over the years, but instead they concentrated on mind candy like "skins". If Netscape 6 Preview 1 and M14 are any indication, stability and performance are even worse than Netscape 4.72, and that's saying something!
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A "freaking free-loading Canadian" stealing jobs from good honest hard working Americans since 1997.
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We use linux for an intranet test box, but decided the production box should be NT for the simple reason that our IT staff is not situated to support linux. They don't have the skill sets, and it doesn't make sense (yet) to learn a new OS and how to care for it for this one application. We'll see how NT behaves, as the intranet is brand new, and if there are problems due to NT, then we may consider linux or some UNIX variant. Until then, we use what IT knows how to use, because I certainly do not want to support the server long term. As a coworker said to me, at least the IT group is open ... minded.
your argument might make a shred of sense if even 1% of the users out there cared at all about the actually programming behind what they're doing. I just don't care if my OS is fork()ing or whatnot, I just care how it works. If I cant get as many windows as I want, I don't care one bit how the OS is doing it.
I use linux. I have manually grok'd a slackware 1.2 install into a RedHat 3 install with SRPMS. I have learned (ba)sh, perl, and tcl. I can make damn near anything thats out there work if it's possible. Do I use Linux on a day-to-day basis? Nope. Why?
.rpm wipes the .conf because someone forgot to change a config file. I should have backed it up? Right. I could go on. A lot of people reading this can probably afford the time it takes to come up with the most 31337 E theme you ever saw, or hack at mesa/glx for a half a day so they can play quake? What if you lost $500 per hour while you tried to figure out why in hell Samba wasn't joining the NT domain? What O/S would you use? I'll take the 95% uptime of windows to the 75% usability time of Linux any day; thanks.
No matter how many daemon's are running on top of X to facilitate matters, I cannot always copy and paste between applications. When I can, it's impossible to tell whether it's Ctrl-V or Alt-V or Shift-Ins (If your keys even work). It takes hours to fix all this crap. I dont have the time for that anymore. Sure, say fix it once it's done; yeah until the new
I only wish sometimes that the OSS movement had as many proponents concerned with the SOFTWARE ITSELF rather than the OPERATING SYSTEM it runs on. Let's see some adherence to established functionality standards rather than a lot of this "I know how to make my menu widget better" garbage.
Don't get me wrong. I have a ton of web abd mail servers running Linux. I just designed an entire embedded system around Linux. It's small. It's robust. It's stable, and it burns rubber. But the systems aren't designed to be used interactively by ANYONE. Honestly; if cut and paste between programs barely works, then I'm going to lose hope for Linux on the home desktop.
~GoRK