Slashdot Mirror
A Visual Comparison Between XP And Mandrake
Mifflesticks points to this interesting "visual comparison" between Mandrake 8.0 and Windows XP. Even though it's specifically a visual / aesthetic comparison, this piece actually sums up the good things about XP -- good device detection, multiple users set up from the install, improved network configuration -- better than anything else I've seen. The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP.
Sheesh yeah! I forgot about telnet not being installed. *COME ON!* It's still Linux - home user or not, leave telnet in there! That's as bad as MS saying they're getting rid of the DOS window - hide it, maybe, but don't completely get rid of it! :)
creation science book
And, yes, I've run linux on the desktop for months at a time in the past, so I'm not a newbie and I do have a good sense of how usable the system is going to be for me in the long run based upon playing with it for a few hours
I'm sorry, but thats just crap. "A few hours" isn't long enough. You've used it "in the past"? How long ago was that? If it was a year ago or more, then "a few hours" isn't enough, because the system has changed a lot in the past year. You need "a few hours" just to orient yourself. I know - I've been using Linux for seven years, and I needed more than "a few hours" just to figure out where things were etc what shortcut keys were etc when I installed Mandrake 8 the other day. It takes "a few hours" just to start to learn all the shortcut keys for the various apps and WM, and to start to configure the file managers to open the applications that I like for various file types. It sounds more to me like you spent a few hours on it, got frustrated because not all the shortcut keys were the same as in Windows, and gave up. Use it for a week - anything less is simply NOT ENOUGH to make any FAIR judgments on. "A few hours" is not a fair chance by any means.
Something I've learned lately - "not being a newbie" on Linux doesn't mean all that much, specifically if the limit of your patience is only a few hours - Linux systems are changing rapidly, and it takes a bit of time (a few days) to adjust to a new version. This can perhaps ironically be regarded as a shortcoming, because things are not where people expect them to be when they install a new version - with new versions of Windows, normally not that much has changed, so its easy to reorient yourself. If your own personal patience limit for learning things is only "a few hours", don't blame it on Linux, just stick to systems you already know, i.e. Windows.
The geeks will always design for geeks, which is all well and good, but don't go saying that Microsoft products are playing catch up to Linux in ease of use. That's just ridiculous :)
Quite honestly, I've used Mandrake now for more than just "a few hours", and I've seen a number of clever, user-friendly features that have had me thinking to myself "Microsoft would do good to copy this". Its not so far-fetched at all. Compare how much Linux has changed over the last six years, then compare how much Windows has changed over the last six years - its abundantly clear which one is evolving much more rapidly than the other.
I'm using XP at work to test our software on. Let me state that XP offers VERY FEW stability or power enhancements over Win2K. The added "features" are purely user interface enhancements, which translates into sluggish performance. It's included firewall is weak (allows microsoft programs full access, so anyone can easily write a trojan that works as an explorer plugin)
As a developer, I've turned off all the user interface enhancements (fading menus, animations, anti-aliasing, etc) for optimal performance, and the result is, a slightly slower Win2000.
Furthermore, the biggest turnoff from XP is that it "calls home". Turn on Zone Alarm or Tiny Personal Firewall, and watch while screensavers try to connect to microsoft.com. Why? I don't know, presumably to send information about the system.
Win2000 is a rock-solid OS; It's stable, easy-to-use, looks good, and most importantly it's fast. XP looks a little nicer, runs a lot slower, and calls home; don't use it if you prefer speed or anonymity.
I have noticed over the years that what you are paid is not necessarily what you are worth. A skilled amin may actually be cheaper than the FUD spreading "Uber-Admin" who just got his MCSE and is demanding 70k a year. The question is if your organisation already has an admin that is capable, then it may make good financial sense to jump to Linux.
To be honest this descion will require some thought and a good deal of review. It's NOT a panecea!! and I'm not suggesting it is for everyone. BUT I am finding more and more Linux users and admins hiding in cubicles all over the place ;)
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
which user has access to the sound card?
Whichever one has permission to read/write to the device.
-- iCEBaLM
Windows XP is a HUGE improvement compared to Win9x. The UI is a lot better - and no, I don't mean in terms of looking cool - I mean it in terms of being usable - the way things are organized, etc.
Fully agree with you there; though I think Win2000 does everything that's needed; IMO XP provides the "coolness" factor that I don't want.
I'm using XP Professional on all my Win2K boxes right now and the major things I notice are reliability, not having to reboot every time I install anything and ease of use.
Actually I didn't think about that; That's true, XP can install drivers w/o rebooting. I haven't had to install drivers in a -long- time, so missed that.
The thing I notice most on my laptop is how fast the damn thing boots or resumes from standby. It makes it a whole heck of a deal more convenient to take my laptop to meetings, etc. The other big difference between Win2K Pro and WinXP Pro is remote access. It's awfully convenient for me to work on my desktop at work from home.
Never used either of those, (don't have a laptop, and used Radmin for remote access)...
but you've given some truly good points...thanks
and moderators, mod this up (the parent) please
I've actually had more problems with Linux than with Windos. Of course, on windos someone else figured out what all the settings should be, and all I had to do was put them in and reboot.
But Linux has a lot of trouble talking to Novell as a client. Or at least I've had a lot of trouble just trying to get it to do that. No success yet. Which means no file sharing, no printing, etc.
Rebooting is a big pain, but it doesn't compare with just not getting it to work. (It's especially annoying just now, since there's been a firewall change, and now KMail won't send e-mail, though it receives it fine. But Mozilla will do both. And I haven't been able to either logic my way through it or random path through. What does Mozilla do that KMail doesn't?)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You mean like aRts on Linux/Unix?
I've been testing XP extensively for my software company since Beta 1, and at this point (RC2), it is very close to replacing 2K as the OS on my windows box. Your points are totally right, but you miss a couple. First, the OS boots a lot faster. My main windows box is much faster than the test box running XP (athlon 700 vs k6-400) and yet it takes a full 27 secs longer to boot than the slower box running XP. Big deal, I know, but everything about the OS seems much faster to me-- application launch, ui responsiveness, disk access. Second, XP seems much more stable. While Win2k is definitely the most stable released OS from microsoft, I've definitely had a few crashes on it. Yet since installing RC1, I've had 0 crashes on the XP box. While not quite scientific, I've had to use to XP enough by now that I'm almost convinced I'll be upgrading to it because it is already far ahead (or so it seems to me ;) of Win2k in the exact things that made me go from Win98 to Win2k in the first place-- speed and stability.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Your example is way off base anyway. Brother is going to tell sister to take a hike, and sister is just not going to want brother reading her email. Too bad for sister, MSIE will continue to cache that mail where brother, or anyone local or remote for that matter, will be able to read it.
If they were really co-operative they would set up some scripts to su and call various applications, then put links on the desk top.
call bash
su sister
netscape -mail (or whatever)
Heh, I'm at an annoying NT machine at work or I'd paste a real script that worked. I think you can see how to do it from there.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My wife demanded to be the little green frog. She refused to accept any of the other icons!!
:1' (which only works if you know how many other people have logged on).
What's even better is that she now understands how to use her own account and switch to it without logging me off or having to type anything cryptic like 'xinit --
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Y'all always complain when people who don't understand Linux make poor reviews of it. Well, this guy doesn't understand MS operating systems. Easy networking setup? Been there since 95. 2K will put you on a DHCP TCP/IP network with nothing but an 'ok' click. The 'temptation to use another person's account because the name is already in there?' So tell NT to clear the last user logged in dialog. But I guess things like system policies are a bit technical for this guy; after all, penguins with wrenches are more important to him.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You don't have to compile the kernel. Only for very specific purposes do you ever have to compile the kernel for yourself. The average Linux-user will never, ever have to compile the kernel. This kernel compile FUD is just that, FUD.
Kernel compilation is just a very neat added feature for the Linux savvy.
windows is easy and there is nothing you can do about it :)
Nah - it's not "easy". It's "familiar".
People have been so conditioned to the way that Windows works, and told over and over again that Windows is "easy" - that it has become "easy" for them, in their minds. They know how things work in Windows - not because it's intuitive, but because they've been taught that that's how it works.
I'm fully convinced that in an hour, I could make a complete (non-MS-conditioned) computer newbie pretty proficient with Linux. An MS-conditioned newbie would be harder to teach, because they've been coddled and told that using a computer is "hard" and that the MS way is "easy" -- and they believe it so much that they resist learning anything.
That's why "Dummies" books are so popular. People like thinking they're stupid, as it gives them an excuse not to learn. "I can't use linux - I'm stupid with computers" -- yet this same person will spend HOURS learning the MS way of doing things -- because it's "easy". Reality check: If it takes hours to learn, it ain't "easy", no matter what MS tells you.
So which part of these instructions sets up the DHCP server?
After all, he says these people bought two PCs, two NICS, and a crossover cable. If they have *only* that, does Mandrake set them each up with a non-conflicting IP address? I know that Win98 and up do that by just pulling an unroutable address out of its collective wazoo. Does Mandrake do the same or is he missing the step I think he's missing? Someone with a more elaborate setup isn't going to just be picking up a cross over cable, but more likely a couple of straight-through cables...possible a new Palm, a few sticks of memory, some games...but that's beside the point. =)Of course, we don't live in an unconnected world anymore. Most likely them have some outside access already planned. BUT, if you have a cable modem that only dishes out one address, you're still going to need a third something to NAT through to provide DHCP addresses. Or you'll have to break down and pay the extra fee most ISPs want for multiple addresses. An SMC Barricade can do the trick of doling out the addresses, serving as a broadband firewall, is only $99, and even works with all my VPN setups into the corporate LAN.
To be honest, while I think this guy sounds silly in his article, comparing his apples to pineapples, he is the face of the average computer user out there in that we can see he is slightly familiar with these two worlds and are glimpsing into a decision being made.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
You can not easily kill X when xlock is running. It disables all "Zap" functionality, Cntrl-Alt-Backspace. The only way to kill it is to log in as root or the user and manually kill X (or type in the X lock password and then "Zap" it).
I run linux for my server for half-empty. I'm far from "too stupid" to run Linux. Regardless, the topic at hand here is ease of use, and ease of use, weither you like it or not, is the concept of making a system that "stupid" people can use.
I said that it would be possible for my Mandrake install to become usable if I tweaked it to hell and back (like I have done in the past with Debian, Slack, Redhat, etc.) but I didn't feel like it this time; I didn't feel it was worth my effort.
The "you don't have to use it if you don't want to" comments here are pretty lame, and in this case, totally inapplicable. Since we're talking about ease of use stuff like network detection (which, despite the authors assertion, as been there since win95) we're not talking about me here, a geek, we're talking about the proverbial Joe Sixpack. It might be hard for you to fathom, but I *would* like to see Linux succeed, and I do feel that is a success in the server world. However, its dillusional to think that XP is copying Linux. It needed to be said, so I said it.
--
You can do this with VNC !
The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP.
Wow, I haven't used Linux in years, but I find it amazing that the setup has evolved to a point where people start comparing the ease of Windows setup to Linux setup instead of vice versa. Succulent.
The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP
You can't assume that hardware is going to be supported. Every attempt I've made to install any version of Mandrake (or other Linux distros, such as Red Hat) on my apparently non-supported hardware (plug-in PCI Maxtor ATA/100 IDE controller card) has resulted in a system that locks up inexplicably while trying to boot the kernal. On the other hand, every attempt I've made to install any version of Windows on any non-supported hardware has always resulted in a successful boot and an entirely usable system -- minus sound support, minus UltraDMA support, or minus high-resolution video modes, mind you, but still entirely working and usable. When a given GNU/Linux distro can't exactly identify your monitor to feed XFree86 the correct refresh rates, it usually ends up using some defaults that are so non-standard it causes your monitor to display a rolling, flickering, totally unviewable picture -- whereas I've never seen this happen on any Windows system because Windows just defaults to the VGA 60 Hz 16 color 640x480 standard refresh rates, which work on any (S)VGA monitor. Imagine that--handling failure gracefully!
In general, GNU/Linux distributions, drivers, and applications don't handle error or failure cases well at all. Why? Because those developers only care about making the success cases work well. Screw the poor user who can't happen to get everything perfectly right on the first try--it's their own fault for being ignorant, after all, and they should just have to keep doing the entire process all over again until they get it right. God forbid any developer should spend any time, effort, or skill making things easy to use for non-experts.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
How can you possibly do a 'visual' comparison of a linux distro vs. anything? And that begs the question who really cares about a visual comparison? I'd rather see a comparison at how elegantly and efficiently each UI does a particular task. IMNSHO, OS/2's WPS has them all beat, and did it back in 1993 with 486's on 8MB of RAM!
I'm on Mandrake 7.2 here, running Windowmaker + ROX-Filer. I hate any UI that depends on a braindead 'task bar' somewhere on the screen. Either I'm smoking crack, or what I'm running must not be Mandrake, eh?
My preferred UI stays the hell out of my way, but is pretty enough to show off at the same time.
Completely agreed with you that under the surface (and in the development model, philosophy etc) that XP is full of privacy problems, untouchable code and general hassle anyhow, but that's just not what this article addressed.
And from the article (pg2):
XP chose my icons for me. I ended up as a guitar, and my wife was a frog. Never mind the Smart-Tags, IE6 privacy issues, registration reactivation for major hardware upgrades, product activation and all of the other issues that XP has that makes some of us weary of using it...Microsoft has managed to piss off my wife by making her default to a frog icon and has now nearly completely crossed over to the dark side of the "I Hate Bill Gates" club. As if the KMFMS t-shirt she wore to a Goth club the other night wasn't enough.
Sorry timothy, you're right. I guess I got a little carried away on my first post. I should have also included (instead of just implied) that Windows has a more polished visual appeal and organization to it's desktop, menus, folder structure, etc. than Mandrake 8 does. Unfortunately for me, any visual appeals and/or similarities between Mandrake8 KDE and WinXP are not sufficient enough for me to hang on to Windows.
It not the UI stupid, its applications.
We keep comparing Linux and Windows and how Linux is better et. al. But until when the set of available applications that are available for Windows make it to Linux, AND the marketing machine that MS has is used for Linux, I don't see Linux taking over anytime soon.
Think of a "killer app" for Linux and than you will see MS running for its money.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
It keeps a connection open for each apache process that connects to it. If you have 200 apache children, but only 100 connections available on mysql - POW! - errors galore.
creation science book
Why would anyone who has used mandrake (or any other linux) care about windows xp? If you are alredy out of windows hell, why would you want to go back?
We also alredy know that windows is easy to install. Thats the whole deal with windows. it's easy.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Was copied by Mandrake from Neptune and Whistler before they (Microsoft) had a chance to release code based on them to the public. A good chunk of this stuff he talks about is even present in Win2k and NT4.
Lots of FUD.
Yep, all operating systems will eventually be identicle. Powerfull "features", look and feel, form and function will be the same. As long as they are all expected to attach to the same internet they have to be the same. But OS(x),Win(x) et. al. will never have Linux's price point.
/. gurus:
This reminds me of something I've been meaning to run by the
Let's say there are a bunch of clients running microsoft.net. Is it possible through ip spoofing etc. that Microsoft will not be selling time on their application servers at all but using our hardware and our bandwith to provide services to eachother? I have to run application (x), It requires a given amount of resources that I do not have onsite because I have a crippled client. I request resources from microsoft, they sell me the time and bandwidth from someone else's idle machine. Just like a distributed computing effort. Eventually, Microsoft would not even have the costs associated with running servers at all except for passport. Running my little client, I would see all this data arrive from a single IP since XP can spoof an IP. I cannot tell when my machine is acting as a server for someone else because the two "personal" firewalls that monitor outgoing traffic have been mysteriously disabled. Napster has shown that this sort of model is completely funtional. Microsoft is going to sell time on our computers back to us. It is a beautiful model for distributed computing, giving everyone access to a globaly shared beowulf cluster. Is your processor working 100% all the time? Are there times when you wished you had a hell of a lot more processing power? Do you use all your drive space all the time? Wouldn't you like to store your data encrypted on a global raid array? Need any file at all? Someone has it. Want to avoid redundant effort? Someone has done your work, and better than you could do it. Neat concepts except we could do it for ourselves for free and microsoft wants to charge us for the privelage.
We may now know why Balmer was jumping around like a monkey and bellowing the incredibly arrogant phrase "give it up for me!!".
Taking our culture from us and selling it back to us. RIAA,MPAA,Microsoft,AOL
Nasty, Nasty, Nasty, Nasty. Fuck I hate This
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
This is already available in Linux:
Now you have two completely separate X sessions running at the same time. I've no idea if there's a point-and-click (x|k|g)dm way to do this, but the capability is there.
Who says that windows is better at detecting hardware than mandrake. At least for my case i found that after a motherboard upgrade, mandrake 8.0 detected the new motherboard and installed all the relevent drivers for me (sound, usb). I also hav win2k on another partition and i had to reinstall win2k after the hardware upgrade. This fud about windows being more hardware friendly has to end. Install windows first, and then go thru countless reboots to get all the drivers in place. It is just plain stupid. For any linux distro u just need to do 1 reboot (if you recompile the kernel) and things start working after that.
Trade secrets aren't 1/10 as bad as patents. Patents can make Linux support illegal. And the way they've been extending the patents, that could be forever. Of course, patents aren't usually significant forever, but just suppose, e.g., the MS were to purchase the hyperclick patent from BT. And then decide that it could only be used with the windows os. ...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I haven't been able to read the article (/.'ed?) but to me it looks like they're doing a side by side "Joe Shmoe, install XP on this machine, Mandrake on this machine, and tell us which was a nicer experience". This is good news for the linux community. Joe Schmoe, the same guy who's told that XP is the way to go, has found a free OS that does the same thing. Recent versions of Mandrake and Redhat have been very easily installed. The hardware auto-detect actually works under Mandrake, which is a huge improvement over any version of Windows.
To get into an argument over which GUI is btter is a moot point. Joe Schmoe has discovered for the first time that he has options.. lots of them. Joe Schmoe will go command line, TWM (my favorite), Gnome, or whatever as he chooses.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Here is a short list of reasons that Linux has not yet become mainstream that I ripped from one of my earlier posts:
Linux is not yet mainstream because:
I have to look through config files and search the internet to find out if my scanner, mousepad, modem, camera, network card, 3D video card, sound card, etc., etc., is supported.
When I go to the computer store to buy a new card or peripheral, I have to carry a small binder full of hardware compatability lists.
To get a new TrueType font to view and print in StarOffice I have to go through three separate manual proceedures for X, Ghostscript, and StarOffice which involve editing config files that could break my system or applications. Or I could use kfontinst, which still requires a major manual setup in order to be able to be used with StarOffice.
To get the same new TrueType font to work in AbiWord, I have to go through some addition manual procedures to those that were needed for StarOffice.
As someone else mentioned, for all the configurability of KDE and Gnome, I still can't right click on the desktop to change my screen settings.
To configure my system in most distributions, I have to look in several places for the configuration tools, they all behave differently, and many times don't do everything, often forcing me to edit config files manually.
The two major desktop environment camps give me 5000 themes and two dozen window managers, but can't get together on a common object embedding API, so I will soon be faced with choosing applications by desktop rather than by features, or giving up high level interoperability.
I have to spend extra money for VMWare express or Win4Lin and still have to spend hundreds on MS Office so I can communicate with all of my friends and co-workers who send me .doc and .xls files. (and no, StarOffice, AbiWord, and Gnumeric import filters are often not good enough). This is basically the "applicatin problem" that others have referred to.
I like to do digital photography, and for the best results I still have to scan and print in Windows. (Most film scanners are not even supported at all in Linux.)
Hardware and software vendors *don't want* Linux to become mainstream. They already have to support two - Windows (multiple flavors) and Mac - and adding another mainstream OS will increase their costs. They are fighting it as long as they can, hoping it will never become mainstream.
Most of these things are not a big deal for me and other technically inclined Linux users, but if you think "Joe Sixpack" is going to find this fun, you have another thing coming
Some of these issues are far more difficult to solve than the pretty interface, an easier installation, and better hardware detection. I don't mean to belittle these things, they are important, it's just that there's much more work that has to be done before Linux is the right choice for the huddled masses.
#1. Why Mandrake vs. XP?
Because Windows XP is the Next Greatest Thing from Microsoft, and it has received a lot of press about it's asthetics and usability. Mandrake is widely considered *the* desktop Linux environment to use to switch people from Windows. Makes sense to me.
#2. Who cares if they are similar/different?
The manager who you are trying to convince to move the department to Linux, that's who. Not to mention the users themselves. Helps reduce the fear factor.
#3. It doesn't really say much.
If it doesn't say much to you, then you aren't a network administrator looking to rid your system from as many BSA...er...Microsoft problems as possible.
Seeing how XP Professional is based on a new kernel...
XP is based on the same kernel as Win2k and WinNT before it. Sure there's been some revisions, but hardly even enough to justify a version change - if you look at the versioning it's gone from 5.0 (win2k) to 5.1 (winxp)
I just find it funny that the first time I saw this type of "easy network setup" was in Mandrake.
Guess he never installed a Windows system before. This has been around since Win95 and Win2k. In fact, the XP install is almost identical to the 2k install.
Microsoft has managed to piss off my wife by making her default to a frog icon and has now nearly completely crossed over to the dark side of the "I Hate Bill Gates" club.
She got pissed over the cute green frog, that you could have changed for her to just about anything (note that you can import pictures). Sheesh. Hardly a damning indictment that they kept the install simply by defaulting the user icons.
I actually like this better and it PROMOTES others to not use your account because your name happens to be already typed into the field.
Umm... you can turn this off in profiles if you want?
but I'm sure there's some keystroke out there that changes users easily in XP
Yup - right there in the help on it if you look. Window-L.
The real problem I have with XP is that by default it encourages you to run with root level permissions. This is going to get nasty from a security point of view pretty quickly.
Oh, yeah, you forgot that XP lets you have raw sockets just like Mandrake. Damn those evil Microsofties for implementing a standard!! The world will end! Well, at least according to Steve "Conspiracy" Gibson.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The problem I am having is with all these people who say they have tried Windows 2000 and hated it for some odd reason, yet they try Windows XP and think its the thing that will save Microsoft OSs. The thing is, as far as I can tell Windows XP is Windows 2000 with:
1. Windowblinds integrated into the OS.
2. Product activation
3. More MS apps integrated right into the OS
4. The latest compatibility updates for windows 2000.
I don't understand how anyone could say XP is better than Win2k when when you get right down to it, are the same OS. Personally, I know that there is no way in hell I am going to upgrade to Windows XP. People will always whine about compatibility with Windows 2000. I never saw it as that bad, and especially now, now that they have released two service packs with all kinds of compatibility upgrades inside, it is the best Microsoft OS.
I really don't want to buy another OS, and have it turn out to be the same one I'm using. I am not paying any money so I can have a green and blue start menu. I am fine the way I am. I actually bought Windows 2000, and to tell you the truth, it was worth the $250 (Canadian) I payed for it.
raw sockets have been around since Win2k. this isn't the only place I've seen someone comment on XP's evil use of raw sockets.
and if its not that they are new, but XP's "use", of them, I'd certainly love to know what's so nightmarish about it, especially considering its identical to Win2k's use.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Is that it will almost immediately be ported to Win32.
If you think about it, most of the best apps on Linux have either been ported to Win32, or are in the process of being ported. Take Gimp, for example, often quoted as a Linux "killer app". It took a while, but even this one has now been ported to windows.
Sure, there are some advantages to having our Linux apps available during those times when we are forced to use Windows, but the downside is that by porting all of the good Linux apps to windows, we are making Windows the universal platform.
What this article says to me is that if they can use XP they can use Linux. With the help of a skilled admin I'd say small business stands to save a good deal of money in several areas.
Could be interesting
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Linux is still too hard for the typical Joe while XP will do everything for them
Maybe a year ago this was true, but I really don't think it is any more. I just installed Yellow Dog Linux on my iMac a few weeks ago - I've never seen such an idiot-proofed install. Everything works flawlessly, KDE is up and running fine, the network settings from install are carried over; in short, I couldn't find anything wrong.
Certainly things have come a long way since I watched friends struggling with Yggdrasil and Slackware back in the day. Mandrake is actually to the point that I'm recommending it to my, er, less computationally inclined relatives.
--saintMicrosoft is coming up on a decade of interaction with users and usability testing. I think they're nearing the point that Apple did with OS 9, before they broke all the interfaces for the 'Aqua' look that pervades 0S 10.
In other words, despite all the FUD, marketing, and anti-competitive crap BillCo is engaged in, they're getting their User Interface pretty-damn near perfect in terms of usability. Remember that because a person is employed by MS, he or she is not necessarily a borg. It looks like those who actually get WinXP will be getting a hell of an operating system.
We're seeing a lot of the same application elements expressed in slightly different ways in different OS's now. You can say that someone is copying someone else, but what it really means is that someone has found the 'best' way to do something in terms of usability or security. Take the graphical logins. I think Apple was the first to get the whole 'Icon-Username' setup, but this is apparently the best setup for a multi-user workstation, like most family PC's.
By the same token, I think that we'll probably see MS making their UI/Windowing System skinnable in the not-too-distant future ala Windowblinds to compete with Apple's 'themes', Kaleidoscope and all the different theme-window manager combinations for X.
Now if only their development teams put as much effort into application security as they do into UI. I would really have loved not cleansing my Mom's PC of Code Red II....
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Why can't Microsoft survive in this model?
That's weird. Surely there are far more drivers, and far more support, available for Windows for all ages of device than there are for Linux?
All manufacturer x needs to do is dust off some old driver diskettes and stick them online and Windows is covered. For Linux, they've got to go out, find if someone has made them a driver, check it (cos no one wants to risk their brand on an untested driver or employ someone to write their own.
Why would they bother?
Because an odd handful of 5% of the desktop computer population might find some old hardware in a second hand store? And this helps them how?
That comment about XP copying Linux is pretty funny. I know I'll get modded to hell for saying this, but I just have to. I just recently installed Mandrake on a separate drive and had to nuke the whole thing after an evening of use. Basically, I try Linux on the desktop every couple months to see if it's finally getting usable. It only took me a few hours to realize Mandrake is nowhere near usable.. out of the box it's slow, the apps are still as ghetto as they were 6 months ago (When I tried running Debian on the desktop) and it just plain sucks to use. Perhaps it was because I was using GNOME, but regardless, to say XP is stealing the great features of Mandrake is simply ridiculous. (The link to the article is dead, so I can't get into much detail) It's possible that if I had tweaked the system on a geek level and didn't use GNOME it would have been better, but I simply didn't want to waste my time once again doing the "week long Linux march" that I do whenever I decide to install it. I'll never use Linux on the desktop until I can just install it and have it work and be FAST. I was impressed with how easily Mandrake installed, but the fireworks stopped as soon as it came time for me to actually get some work done.
:)
And, yes, I've run linux on the desktop for months at a time in the past, so I'm not a newbie and I do have a good sense of how usable the system is going to be for me in the long run based upon playing with it for a few hours.
XP doesn't require a Passport account, and it is damn usable. The new GUI is pretty damn good, IMHO, and for the guy who referred to the taskbar being for idiots or whatever, well, you can hide it. It's configurable for the experienced and it took me about 10 minutes to turn off all the dumbing down features that are in there for the computer illiterate. One thing MS does do right is understand that not everyone is a geek.. and this is why Linux will never become mainstream unless a well off company comes in and takes it under its wing and starts a massive usability testing campaign. For example, I found the most functional and well designed apps to be (although they were notoriously slow) evolution and nautilus, and, surprise surprise, they were designed and created by companies.
The geeks will always design for geeks, which is all well and good, but don't go saying that Microsoft products are playing catch up to Linux in ease of use. That's just ridiculous
--
The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP.
<sarcasm>Oh, I get it. Now they are copying us.</sarcasm>
Timothy, if you're the source of that comment (I can't tell because the site is Slashdotted) - get back in your cave.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Having bounced around between many distros the past couple years (slackware, debian, redhat, suse, caldera and mandrake) I found that the most *recent* mandrake 8.0 was actually about the most usable, from an installation and 'login/go' standpoint.
:)
However, during the installation I apparently didn't say I was a developer, so it didn't install ANY compiling tools. OK, OK there may have been *something* there, but about 60% of the stuff I wanted to compiled didn't compile. So, from a 'casual/everyday' Linux user's perspective, it isn't very good. For someone like my wife, who just wants to sit down and type a letter by clicking on an office icon, it's fine.
I'd have commented more on the article itself(!) but it appears to be unavailable. Any mirrors?
creation science book
Have you checked to see whether your hardware was actually supported under Mandrake?
As for me, the Linux hardware support for my home-built PC is BETTER than Windows 98 SE's. Particularly for my HP Deskjet 952: its Windows drivers are utter crap. Modem support seems to be better as well. When I upgraded my modem, Mandrake didn't even hiccup. Windows 98 nearly died.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Windows XP has an excellent feature that I have seen nowhere else. The feature is called Switch User, and is available only when the machine is not part of an NT Domain(not sure about AD). The feature is enabled in the Users/Groups control panel by a allow users to switch checkbox.
At first glance the feature was nothing that couldn't be ackomplished with a good X session manager like gnome-session. A user logs out and another users logs in. Go back to that first users and all the programs are restored where they left off. But This is NOT the Microsoft switch user feature. In XP, the user never really logs off. All the programs are left running in the background while another person works. This is a huge contrast to current X windows usage, and is a feature I would love to see on X at some level.
The application specific point I've found is for applications like file sharing. Brother is transfering files on napster, but sister wants to use the computer to check her email and use her Web browser bookmarks. Today in X Windows land, brother would have to close his program and let sister login. But in Windows XP land, he could simply switch users.
I know that all this really equates to is a full GUI version of screen. But Windowing applications are much more user friendly than console applications. Try teaching your mother or grandmother to user screen.
If anyone could come up with a model for allowing X windows to do this, I would love to see ideas. Would this kind of feature be implemented at the Display Manager level, allowing xdm/gdm/kdm to wrap each users session and let them switch?
If any work is being done in this area, please do tell. It is a feature I am most interested in. And with Unix's inherent superiourity in multiple user features, This is something X Windows should be able to do much better than MS Windows(no NT domain support *laugh*)
-j
I'm not even sure this guy understands what he's talking about. The network setup in XP is the same as in Win2k so obviously Microsoft didn't steal anything from Mandrake.
I see where you're coming from but our logic is flawed.
You ay you learned more about linux than you knew about windows.
That is a testament to windows.
I'll bet a lot of the stuff you HAD to learn about Linux you just "did" on Windows.
I'm in the same boat as you. I am definitely not flaming you. I learned all about more from linux and was astonished to find Windows had it to. (I always used type or edit).
The upgrade issue is realsitic, but consider what you "really" need to run OSX.
This
Maybe so, but we were discussing benefits from the ability to modify open source. What you're describing is the benefit of having a hobby, not an economic benefit. We all know that some people enjoy tinkering with code in their free hours. Presumably, we also know that most people would rather have sex, read a book or watch a movie. So the benefit of this opportunity doesn't extend beyond a tiny subculture.
Maybe he did it and contributed it back to the keepers of the source, they implemented it, thus saving hundreds if not thousands of other people to have to go out and buy a new sound card.
That could be, and if so it would be an altruistic act, conferring a benefit through the economy of replication. Did he, though? It seems all he wanted was to get sound on his own system.
There is a theoretical benefit to society from code sharing but it doesn't seem to have fulfilled the promise of systems with high reliability and low TCO yet. Part of the reason may be related to all the complaints from people who can't get their changes merged into the trunk of their favorite project. It seems to have become such a hassle that many people have stopped trying.
(And BTW, why the heck would someone have to read source code to understand how a kernel call works? Shouldn't he have been able to settle this using kernel docs rather than reading the source?)
Tim
Wow, that was a lot of talk with very little point. I guess the point is this - UI programmers of the world, don't give up on innovation just because MS has done a lot of research. There's always something better w/r/t MMI.
I agree wholeheartedly. MS has spent a lot of effort getting their UI to be the best it can, but it still serves MS's purposes, and doesn't really break any new ground.
Features I'd like to see in 'new' User Interfaces:
1. A departure from the 'Dock'/'Taskbar' modus operandi. Just about every GUI uses one of these in one form or the other. They eat up valuable screen realestate, and I can't help but feel that there is a better and more efficient way to accomplish the same tasks. Damned if I know what it is, though... Make everything a right-click menu?
2. Graphical Relational Links: One of the concepts I really like about 'The Brain' is that it helps you to build visual logical links between applications, files, and websites. For example, you can link your MP3 Player to your MP3 folder, Winamp.com, Gnutella, etc...
Unfortuneately, the last version of the 'The Brain' I used wasn't really an adequate shell replacement. There's no real file management. I would give up a lot to have those same kind of links in a 'real' UI.
3. 'Tearaway' components. This is a feature you tend to find inside office and productivity apps that could really help any given UI if they were made standard. We're starting to see this a little bit in the moveable menus inside most applications, but I would really like to be able to say, grab my bookmarks sidebar from Mozilla and yank it onto the desktop or another application when I'm doing work on the web. There are other examples, but there is a lot of room for improvement here.
4. 3d object manipulation - We're stuck in a 2D world. For most things this is okay, but I can't help but feel that I could be more efficient if I could manipulate files, folders, and applications as if they were 3D objects. There are a few UI's built around Doom and Quake for linux, but we have yet to see a comprehensive UI that was entirely 3D. The model that most quickly comes to mind is 'Black and White'. Use a 'hand' pointer to move objects around, keyboard chords or gestures to execute common commands, and have an environment that can be used at a macro- or a microscopic level.
I'd love to throw around all my downloaded files into a big 'sorting' bin, for example, and have more organized objects represent my media and application files.
We have the hardware to do these things now. It'd be nice to see them in action. I wish I were a little better coder so that I could try to impliment some of them...
Here's hoping Lionhead will release B&W Shell
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Hope this helps!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Where Mandrake can truly succeed is in the support of older hardware. The manufacturers and Microsoft are partners, in that they both want to sell new product to consumers. However, the open source philosophy is to use what you've got to it's fullest - new or old. Microsoft can't survive in this model, and many manufacturers of hardware don't understand the impact to their business models.
Microsoft controls the hardware market. No independent firm can develop new hardware without supporting and licensing Microsoft product. It's simply not financially possible, given the control by Microsoft of the marketplace.
Alas, trade secret laws sometimes makes Linux support counter-productive, as reverse engineering become tricky (if not impossible) business. As Ted McFarson said, "Trade Secret encourages Microsoft's Monolopy". How true.
huh, huh, perfectly useless without $900 of additional software. Someone reported spending ten minutes to turn off the "dumb down" stuff. Why bother? When you are finished you end up with W2K, NT, 98, ME, something like Win3.1. Same old, same old, it's not FUD to call it dull. If I were to use it, I'd expect the same quirky and inconsistent junk that everyone became familiar with and now considers "easy".
Code Red? Oh yeah, the XP call home features are much that. Expect MS.net to become very clogged and XP to be very slow or to quit working when you disconnect the internet.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
One of the things that drew me to linux in the first place was how dang cool it could look. I loved having little widgets here and there that would tell me the amount of CPU or Ram usage, or even the temperature of my CPU. When I first ran across enlightenment i could't believe how freaking cool it was. (and this was in the days when only winamp had skins).
It takes windows so long to adopt these kinds of things. Look how long it took them to be able to change single color on a window title bar.
If only they had native desktopX support in WXP. That would be the shiz.
Oddly enough, Mandrake work better on MY particular laptop (minus Sound, of course)- an IBM Thinkpad 760 XD. In Windows 98se, my PCMCIA modems (I have 3 to choose from) all get detected and setup twice at each boot. Eventually (say, after 2 reboots) the machine will lock up hard during bootup, causing me to power off/on, enter safe mode, clear out all of the modem entries in dev manager, and reboot again. Mandrake 8 does none of this. It detected my 56k card, configured it, and left it alone. I know I can always use Mandrake if I need to get up and running on the net without any hassles. Windows just doesn't give me that.
Now if IBM would only write sound drivers for the MWave device I'd be rocking.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
This is the Frankenstein approach to building a monster operating system.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I use Office 2000 at work, and it makes me miserable. It's just feature landfill.
There are serious bugs in Word that have been there for nearly a decade! Like the section break bug! And there are new bugs with every release! It's gotten to the point where I have to print out my docs and CHECK EVERY PAGE to make sure something hasn't spontaneously broken. It defeates the purpose of using a computer to do the work.
So, if switching to Linux means I have to use something else as my office app, I say bring it on!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Finally got through to the article! What was just so surprising about it was this this person seems to have never used an MS OS before. Well, never installed one before, anyway.
/usr/www/users/syslogic/temp/layout/discussions/1. php on line 7
:)
"The first thing that popped up that made me think about this parallel during the set up was the Network Connection Wizard built into the tail end of the set up process. Of course, XP being as new as it is, has a very large database of native drivers for NICs, so odds are that XP is going to find your NIC while it's installing itself on the PC...much like Mandrake 8.0 currently does. Once it finds this NIC, a wizard pops up wanting to set up your network!"
Wow, so Mandrake 8 finally has network card detection, and pops up a wizard. This happened back in Win95, when IIRC, Mandrake wasn't even around - certainly not for sale at Best Buy. Yet the author somehow implies that MS is *copying* Mandrake!
Then we're get to read about which icons he and his wife prefer. Ok, so XP 'chose' his login icon for him - he apparently didn't want to be a guitar, or whatever. *IT'S BETA*. I have a feeling you'll be able to choose your own login icon in the final release.
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (61) in
Hmmm... perhaps using pconnects isn't such a good idea if you're going to get slashdotted.
creation science book
wrong. It was quite boring. Linux is still too hard for the typical Joe while XP will do everything for them. Average Joe is still frightened of Linux in general and they are "comfortable" w/Windows.
XP in time, will have everything that it should, Linux in time will too, they are just currently worlds apart.
If you are going to write an article comparing them don't bother to compare their login screens.
Start->Settings->Control Panel? Anyone? You sound like some of the guys I work with: "Where's Word I can't find the icon on the desktop!" :)
The Anti-Blog
When setting up a simple network of two computers with Win95 I would often have problems just getting them to see each other the first time. The solution was usually reboot them a couple of times then it would start working, and would keep working. Win98 and Me worked better for home use, and I never had this problem with NT systems. Not sure why someone moderated this to flamebait.
I'd like to see you try this experiment sometime. Get back to us after the $20,000 and one month you expected to spend has ballooned into six months and $150,000, without delivering you any features in a form you want to use.
Tim
Um, d00d, one hour of C programmer time costs a lot more than a new sound card. What did you save again? Negative a hundred dollars?
Tim
Maybe he did it in his spare time.
Maybe he did it for a sense of accomplishment.
Maybe he did it and contributed it back to the keepers of the source, they implemented it, thus saving hundreds if not thousands of other people to have to go out and buy a new sound card.
load "linux",8,1
Rather than expect users to know VTs and startx -- :1 or
xinit -- :1
and other arbitrary concepts, you could just help fix this KDE wishlist item.
While the article was well-written and was helpful, I think there should have been at least a couple pictures comparing the two. Just my 2 cents!
Wow, look at those pictures! They present a rather solid case for XP. I guess I'll finally make the switch.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.