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SuSE 7.3 vs XP
rutledjw writes: "This should be good for some flame wars. A story on HPWorld that I read about on NewsForge gives an interesting comparison between XP and Linux. I personally think the story wanders a little and wouldn't call it comprehensive, but it is interesting. It does point out a particular bottleneck in how the 2.4.x kernels handle asynchronous IO. Apparently this is being addressed in the 2.5 kernels..." It actually appears quite low-flame and balanced, and unlike some Linux vs. Windows comparisons, goes into decent detail rather than just glib generalizations.
I guess you have to pick one, but RedHat, has a more Windows-esque hardware detection system. Hell I can yank out the video card and change it and on reboot the RedHat 7.2 machine will autodetect it and change the X config for it without asking for any technical information. something that SuSE, Mandrake and the likes dont have yet.
Granted a RedHAT install is really bloated compared to the others but if you want to compare apples to apples.....
The whole article could have used a second going over before it was released.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Microsoft addressed that in Windows 2000 - the dialog must have popped up as a child of the active window. In 2000 and (I believe) ME and anything later, the window will appear in the background, while its title bar and taskbar will flash indicating that there's a new window that needs addressing.
You'll get the same problem in X apps under Linux - provided the dialogs popup from the active application; other than that you can always adjust your window manager preferences so new popups don't get the keyboard focus.
I had an identical problem back with Windows NT4; I was typing in ICQ and two dialogs, entirely separate from ICQ, popped up. I incidentally hit the spacebar in the midst of typing and dismissed both of them without reading what they were.
Essentially, if dialogs are popping up while you're typing, it's probably an interface issue with the application, not with Windows XP. I'm not a GUI wizard or anything, but I prefer text entry fields to validate when you click "OK" as opposed to while you're typing.
I dislike Windows as much as the next person, but I need it for development. If it wasn't for my job, I'd eliminate it entirely. But putting up with Windows is less grief than going without a job, especially with the current economy.
Other than that, complaining about intermittent dialogs is just nitpicking, and shouldn't decide your final decision on any OS.
The 7.2 SuSE Distribution had definite problems. At our company, we kept all of our servers at 7.1, after hearing about and then experiencing problems with upgrades and installs with 7.2.
:-)
Because we waited a bit, and did some tests first, we weren't bitten.
However, seeing these kind of "not quite ready for prime time" errors ALMOST soured us on SuSE. Almost.
We concluded that from time to time _every_ distribution is going to have a less than stellar release, and well, that's just life and business. We concluded that we'd follow the same cautious pattern where 7.3 was concerned when it came out.
When 7.3 was released, we purchased it and did a bit of initial testing. We waited until it was available via rsync from the major mirrors and set up an in-house mirror of the 7.3 tree, and waited a bit longer to allow many more users to install from the ftp sites. Then we waited to see what kind of horror stories about installs/upgrades would show up on the SuSE mailing lists or the usenet news groups. There were very few.
We upgraded most of our main servers to 7.3, all of our workstations, and so far, everything's been running _really_ nicely.
Now for the fun part: Using VMWare 3.0 Workstation for Linux, we can run Windows operating systems like Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional if that's what a project we're working on for a client calls for. We refer to it as "Windows, in Jail", complete with the jokes to "Hi Dad, I'm in Jail" from the Was-Not-Was song.
For us, it can be SuSE 7.3 and XP at the same time, but we let Linux control the underpinnings.
Oh: Tip to those wanting to go this route: Use the IDE-SCSI module, and configure your CDRom and DVD-Rom drives as SCSI drives and access them as virtual SCSI devices in Raw mode. This solves the infuriating problem of horridly slow access to the drives under VMWare when accessing drives in raw mode.
I've got two computers at home and I currently use both Linux (Mandrake 8.1) and Windows XP Home. I need both boxes to accomplish what I need to do.
The Windows box is still a necessity. I have a 4 year old who likes educational games and without Windows, they simply don't run. Windows XP has also proven very adept at guiding my non-techie wife through moving pictures between the digital camera and the hard drive. XP is a huge improvement over ME in both stability and capability. Before, emailing pictures from the digital camera was an ordeal for her. Now, she just selects the picture out of a "filmstrip" view and clicks "Email the Picture". XP automatically resizes it for her (if desired) and attaches it to an email in her preferred email client.
I also wouldn't do without Linux. I use it as a firewall/proxy/Samba server and occasionally run a webserver on it with DHCP. Windows doesn't come close to being as capable for these services on my home network. I use the Linux box whenever I want to automate something through scripting or to use the superb open source utilities that come preinstalled. Got to automatically crop a bunch of pictures to a specific file size, hard to beat Imagemagik from the command line on Linux. Please don't ask me to get it working on XP.
I don't think of it as an either or. I look forward to the day when Linux can meet all my needs. I've long since given up or even looking forward to the day when Windows can.
I don't think they are interrested in changing the video chip
But I guess the main reason for SuSE is that they have some kind of agreement with SuSE.
Besides, IIRC they also mention something about everything being recognized directly by the SuSE install whereas there were some glitches with Red Hat...
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.