Slashdot Mirror
Linux on the Desktop
Dhar writes: "Rob Valliere has posted a Windows vs. Linux review: "This review focused on Linux Red Hat 7.1 from a business user's view and attempted to answer my client's question "Can Linux be used as a replacement for Windows 2000". After an intensive hands-on Linux project lasting several months, I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question." I like the answer. ;-)" It's good that he covers the pitfalls he encountered; opportunities for improvement.
Very cool. I remember the Z80. PLease post links.
And along with the other poster's response, it's about far more than purchasing more ram. Bigger footprint, with little data in memory, means more code is in memory. That's more code running. That's a slower workstation. Just the simple use of more ram means slightly slower processing speeds. Bloated apps = less efficient apps = slower apps and slower workstation.
We have programmers at my company with your opinion... and they write the slowest software in this office. 2 weeks ago our VP yelled at them because of complaints of speed. I sure hope you're not a software developer.
Developers: We can use your help.
This is interesting. I've never seen a linux review (bias or not) get such a slamming from the community.
This is a current fad for "being cool". For years I have heard accusations that Linux/BSD/Unix/whatever users use and/or praise their systems and criticize Microsoft just because they want to look different from the rest of the world and oppose the popular opinion. Now finally so many people use Linux, it became "mainstream" in a simplistic view of modern uneducated person, so Microsoft praising turned from mindless exercise of repeating Microsoft propaganda or being a devil advocate into something that actually is different from enough people to look "cool".
Also this is a perfect way for a person too stupid to install an OS on his computer to feel good about himself -- praise the only thing you are capable of using, and you are suddently a great, smart rebellious person.
The fact is, Linux, XF86, GNOME, KDE, StarOffice and even Gimp already managed to fix all significant problems where they were noticeably worse than Windows software -- it's just the people who can't get their asses out of their chairs to install recent distributions feel more comfortable repeating ages-old complaints.
XFree86 installer, once in your life, asks you what is the goddamn mouse type you have, and may require you to download a driver? This is a problem? This is what can have even a minor influence on your decision, what OS you are going to use?
You need to download TrueType fonts to get scalable fonts support? This is a great problem? They are even on your favorite company's web site, for @%$# sake, and XF86 understands them perfectly.
You need an easy procedure to install and update things? How many times have you heard of Ximian? Have you ever tried to look at their installer tool, and how it internally handles dependencies, and works the same way on Debian (with debian packages), redhat/mandrake/... (with rpm) and even Solaris (with rpm because solaris packages suck, and even Sun knows it)? People went to a great length implementing all this, and it will be a great idea to get off their backs and let them spend their time doing something that actualy will be useful instead of trying to make installers more moron-friendly in a hope that one day morons that never even seen those things will stop complaining about them.
StarOffice doesn't support some shitty feature of Office files? Do you really need that at all? Did the lack of it ever stop someone from doing something useful? In my book, the only excuse for Office files existence is stupidity -- all useful information can be perfectly handled in text, HTML and, in a very, very extreme cases of printing books, in TeX. StarOffice allows to use files that MS Office users send to everyone, and as long as people can reasonably deal with that, it's fine. No one ever on this board complained about embedded objects in Office not being supported by the same Office on another box that doesn't have the same libraries, and I am certain, this happend way, way more often than StarOffice user receiving a MS Office file so mangled, StarOffice can't show it in a readable manner.
Oh, and, of course, Gimp. Gimp does not include colors handling for professional publishing support!!! You can't print magazines with it!!! Waa!!! Boo hoo!!! How many people actually can do professional publishing? What percentage of assholes that repeated all this colors-handling bullshit actually ever made a professional-quality page? In any software?
So, my point is, most of Unix/Linux software is actually fine for a real-world use, was fine for quite a while, and yes, reasonably educated person who cares about the results of his work, will get better ones with Linux than with any Microsoft OS.
If some software was only written for Windows, it may be the reason to use Windows instead, but it's dumb to blame Linux developers for it -- blame Windows software developers and their companies that continue writing windows-only stuff. Yes, I know that they see some dumbass "reasons" to make their software windows-only, but I am a user, therefore I can blame them, and I am a developer therefore I know how simple it is to port things if they are written in a half-decent way. Still, at this point most of software that actually is useful to do some work, exists for Unix/Linux/..., and it's usually only requires a quick look at Freshmeat and some minimal mental effort to find something that accomplishes some particular task in a manner, more easier and efficient than in Windows.
What we, Unix/BSD/Linux users, need most, is things we always were working on -- software that has nothing to do with Windows "equivalents", things that work in a way, completely unrelated to anything Redmond lamers are capable of thinking of. Desktops, installers, etc. are our defense from Microsoft that attacks our good software with their marketing, using their ridiculously high market share on the desktop, and if Microsoft didn't attack us we probably would just leave "office suites", GUI file managers and other similar stuff entirely to them. But since Microsoft is encroaching into our areas, we have to go to their ones, and so far we are doing fine. We may need more marketing to support this, but dumbass demands to make our "desktop" things more and more polished, way beyond "good enough" or even "reasonable for an educated user" levels, are absolutely unproductive.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.