What's Keeping You On Windows?

schnell asks: "Here's something I've wondered about for a long time. While it seems that the majority of Slashdot readers are no fans of Microsoft, recent polls show that 47% of Slashdot Users are using Windows as their main OS (and I bet that number is much higher in server logs). So I have a two-fold question: 1) Is it just the 'vocal minority' that favors alternate OSes over Linux and 2) if not, what's keeping you from 'putting your money where your mouth is' - why are you using Windows? My own situation is that I use an IT-mandated Win98 (ugh) laptop at work, but at home I'm Mac OS X all the way. While I did pay Microsoft for Office for Mac, I try to avoid filling their coffers whenever possible, so for all the family/friends who rely on me for computer recommendations I recommend Mac or Linux. Do people like using Windows? Are games the driving factor? Or is it just 'the right tool for the job?'" It's a perennial question, and one that is fitting to review every so often, if only to see how far Open Source has come, and how far it needs to go.

Comments

Games

[D3]

Games, interoperability with others at work (OpenOffice is good but not a perfect replacement), and the ability to maybe get a first post? ;)

Re:Games

[israfil_kamana]

Pretty much. I just re-loaded win32 to dual boot with OpenBSD on my laptop so I can feed my addiction to Civ3. (No FreeCiv is not as fun in my view...)

Anyway, where it counts (on servers) I push open solutions where they make sense, which is in most places in an enterprise config - at least as far as my previous work-places have gone.

Applications, baby, applications

[tinrobot]

We do lots of graphics work here. We need all sorts of apps -- Photoshop, After Effects, 3DS Max, Combustion, etc, etc... I can run all of them under Windows. Some aren't ported to Linux, not all run on the Mac, either.

It's always been the applications that have driven things. Still the same today.

Let's all say it together:

[Bonker]

One App:

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop runs under Wine, I've heard, but not well. Also, type support, which is highly necessary for any kind of decent design work, is miserable under most linux WM's.

Re:Let's all say it together:

[skeedlelee]

My two apps...

Adobe Illustrator

and

the EndNote plugin as used in Word.

That said, I just spent like an hour browsing around trying to figure out exactly what was up with BibTex. Sounds functionally good enough but EXTREMELY painful to use. You really can't beat the triviality of bibliographies with the new XP implentation of EndNote. Of course there's a bit of a crashing issue, but there's a work around.

Let's say I go to the trouble of learning TeX/LaTeX/BibTeX etc. Then pretty much Illustrator is the only thing keeping me on Windows. Anyone run it under Wine and give it a good workout yet?

And the usual "what about Mac?" Well, I'm a cheap bastard and when I looked, getting what I wanted meant a PowerMac, which I just couldn't afford. So far though XP hasn't been bad, VERY few crashes (like 5 in about four months, three of which were EndNote's fault). I would like a Unix command line though...

Re:What keeps me on windows

[Denver_80203]

I agree. While the 9x and NT machines were a little bumpy, they got MS in the door. Now 2000/XP are very stable and easy to use. All the applications that my company uses are in MS OS. Linux and Mac machines simply don't have the applications that an Oil Drilling company needs. Certainly are are /some/, but not nearly enough to support the company being "half on one foot". Finally: I don't care if Bill is rich enough. It's not my concern. I have better things to do than hate a company because it's "big". I'm certain that when linux grows large enough and starts serving every possible customer, things will bump into each other and cause problems, too.

Re:Cuz of all the warez

[8282now]

You too can become an honest man/woman/AI too! Just remove all the WAREZ you've been running all these years and become a GNU/FSF convert and make MS, Adobe, Macromedia, etc,... happy! No more s/w pirates! Yay!! --- Support the end of warez, use free s/w! :)

What Keeps Me on Windows?

[Psx29]

The Asian Language Support. I can seamlessly switch between Japanese and Chinese input with windows. It is a lot more cumbersome in linux. Aside from that...there are certain programs that are just not available for linux systems and won't function under a windows emulator (or WINE for that matter) which are a neccesity(namely certain CD-R software, and file-sharing software).

Why my main is Windows

[ruszka]

Being a beginner to *nix (having only started running it for a couple years now), I mostly use Windows because of school. I am taking two webcourses at the moment, so I am constantly sending my instructors documents in Word format (correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume *nix can't save as Word formats). Also, I am in the programming curriculum and taking c# this semester so I am using VS .Net. As much as I enjoy slackware and learning about it, I am not comfortable nor knowledgable enough to go full-blown *nix only while I still depend on M$ apps.

Other than games? Not a hell of a lot.

[TellarHK]

I'm buying my second iBook today. I have two PC's, a 500Mhz iBook and a couple Sun classic-era workstations that I play with. Windows is for gaming, pretty much says it all. Sure, my Windows machine is more upgradeable than my laptops, but for the past month I've been using the iBook constantly on the job and have no problem whatsoever with it except that I really like what apple has done to revamp the line. So what did I do?

Today I got a loan from Apple, and will be getting a new $1489 iBook. 800Mhz, 640M of RAM, 30G, and a 32M Radeon in it. Am I stoked? Fuck yeah, I'm stoked. My iBook is going to my partner on 'indefinite postponed payment' once I get my new one. He'll make the second person I've brought over into the Mac realm. And just about two years ago, I was bashing them myself.

OSX is just incredible. No two ways about it, it kicks ass. Closed source GUI? Sure. I can live with that. Secretive API's? I can live with that too. It just works.

And as soon as I get back from the Salem, NH Apple Store tonight, I'll be reading good ol' Slashdot from it. Happy as hell.

Microsoft OS'es are lousy, but the games are okay. At this rate though, I'll be shelving Windows in favor of a PS3 or whatever comes next, and a desktop Mac.

Why Windows

[Shadow Wrought]

At work I use the company issued Compaq with Windows 2000. At home, well we are working on that. We are looking at buying a computer for the house in the next few months but it will most likely have Windows on it.

My fiancee wants to use it for Quicken, the kids for games. I want to use the games as well have having the option of working on documents from home. I am also, however, planning on getting the Amithlon as a secondary part of the system for my fun.

I have talked to friends about Linux and, quite frankly, I just don't have the computer knowledge base to try and use it as the primary OS. Hell I'm not even sure I can pull the Amithlon off ('tis been a long time since I played with my A1200). I have seen people with far more experience than myself struggle to get things to work with it. They are happy when they do, but I don't want to spend my weekends fighting with the confuser.

My $0.02.

I'm a Lightwave dude...

[Anonvmous Coward]

I'm an animator. I use Lightwave (PC or Mac, no Linux for at least a year or two), I use Photoshop, and I use After Effects. Right now, I'm stuck with Windows or even Mac.

Would I switch to Linux if magically everything worked? Not today. I recently tried Linux. My biggest complaint was that there was no way I could be productive on it without knowing some obscure command-line stuff. I had trouble getting the network going, I never got sound to work, and I found installing some (not all) software to be difficult. This was Redhat 7.2.

I enjoyed setting up a Redhat webserver. That went reasonably well, and it's behaving quite nicely. As a desktop machine, though, it was a horrible experience for me. I'm an artist. I'm right brained. I don't want to learn a bunch of commands when Windows' UI very elegantly manages the hardware. So yeah, I'm spoiled.

I plan on re-evaulating Linux in a year or so, but I think they need to evolve the UI more before they convert me. In the mean time, I am a satisfied Windows 2000 user. It's hard to switch when today I have working machines that don't give me problems. I've never lost an overnight or even an over-the-weekend render due to an instability in Windows or Lightwave.

I guess what I'm saying is: Not only does Linux need to be as good as Windows (particularly in the UI area...), it's also got to entice me some how. Film Gimp was a step in the right direction...

Yes it is the games

[avante]

The only thing at this point keeping me with a very very old copy of Windows 98 at home is the fact that the games are all there.

Unfortunately, this situation does not seem to be diminishing. What's worse, more games are coming out for XBox, and NOT on the PC platform, meaning to continue my lifestyle, I would need one of those... which is unthinkable to me.

I will completely abandon Windows when I have outgrown computer games. All my favorite development tools are on GNU/Linux or are cross platform. In fact, I even like Netbeans (free/open software) better than Borland JBuilder, which I happen to like a lot. For graphics, I like Gimp, although it takes getting used to. Mozilla has finally reached a critical point in development for me (and I want to develop for Mozilla as a platform). OpenOffice does more than I'll ever need, and doesn't even give me enough problems with Word documents anymore. The chat clients are better, text editing better, etc. Evolution is better than Outlook for me. I've had it with that other MS thing.

But the games...

I used to work at home, and when I did, I used GNU/Linux. Now I work in an office, and I still use GNU/Linux there. In fact, we are working very hard to ensure that all of our clients use GNU/Linux. There are two reasons. One, Free and Open software does not cost money, that's obvious. Our clients are poor NGO's, often working in even poorer countries. But there is another... with the continuing introduction of new technologies to track and control content, computers and their use, it is concievable that it will become more difficult for our clients to continue working with Windows in the areas where they are working. Often, they live in places with oppressive governments and need to maintain a certain degree of anonymity and we must be certain that there computer does not communicate what they do to a third party. Can't do it with closed source stuff, and more and more it's harder to do with Windows.

In short, our clients are only using microsoft for application compatibility, but that will change. In some instances, their lives may depend on it.

I made the switch...

[Kintanon]

A few months ago I went completely over to Red Hat, pretty much right after the release of RH 8.0 I went fully over. I still have a windows box because this one specific poker client I use and really like doesn't run under Wine (it was made really crappy) and since I have the box there I also use it to play streaming mp3s so I don't have to tie my main boxes sound card up on that. I'll also occasionally fire up Kazaa on that machine to download something. But I do all of thse through VNC since the windows box is sitting headless and half naked behind my desk. All of my day to day gaming, web browisng, e-mail, etc... etc.. is done on Linux both at home and at work.

Kintanon

Third-Party Apps mostly.

[simetra]

For the last X years, hundreds, maybe thousands of 3rd-party software vendors have been making all their stuff for Windows. As such, we utilize these Windows apps for which there are no alternative in the Free world.

I still use Windows at home most of the time because it's easy for the wife to use, and easy to install and use various apps and hardware. I can, but choose not to, blow hours reading config files and man pages to get something running that would take maybe 5 minutes to set up in Windows. And no, it never crashes, because I only install software I want, and allow very, very few TSR's and unnecessary services to run in the background. Basically, it works.

Yes, I know I CAN do all this in Linux, but I don't have as much free time as some people. It's still very far away from being user-friendly enough for anyone to actually use as an all-purpose OS.

Nothings Keeping Me Anymore!

[1stflight]

Nada! As soon as my new parts arrive (I'm waiting for after the holiday season), I'm building a straight RH 7.3 (skip 8.0) or Mandrake based system, with a subscription to Transgaming's software, OpenOffice and KDE 3.1. Windows, my wife can keep that box!

P.S. As for the reason this message is posted from Windows, I'm at work..as with most Slashdotters I'm sure have workplaces that still use Windows.

To all of you who say 'Games'.

[thatguywhoiam]

I see a really commonly cited reason is games.

My personal view is that a PC for games is a totally shitty value for your money. I have a Mac, which has a half-dozen games (mostly gifts). I use the Mac for my work. I have a Playstation 2, which I use for games.

Now, considering that a PS2 will work 100% of the time (no patches/bugs/drivers/cruft), has a bigger screen, and pretty much the same number of games as the Windows platform (insofar as both platforms have way more excellent games than I'll ever buy).... and considering that the high-end video card you need to buy (for the PC you've already bought) costs nearly as much by itselfas a whole PS2/GC/XB.... why do you guys do it?

It's not a troll, I really want to know. Is it certain games? Keyboard-based games? The supa-bleeding-edge graphics and sound?

It's just a variant of the original poster's question, really, but I find my Mac/PS2 combination works really well. I don't want for many games.

Nothing better

[cpt kangarooski]

By which I absolutely do not mean to say that Windows is the best possible OS, or even tolerably good. I hate Windows with the burning passion of a hundred suns. I find MS's business practices deplorable. I don't even care for the poor values in the Windows developer culture.

The problem is a lack of superior alternatives. I'm only using this thing by default, after all.

I used to use MacOS until pretty recently. It had a lot of heart. But it was also a very old design and was honestly at its peak in the early 90's. Apple should have pursued Taligent and replaced it by 1994 with something heads and shoulders better.

OS X is the devil. While it masquerades as a Mac, it embodies none of the values or design goals that were responsible for the Mac being as well-crafted as it was. Without this, OS X is turning out to be very poor indeed. It isn't significantly advancing the state of UI. In fact, in many areas it is regressing. Where there are Mac carryovers they are usually half-assed; they are the result of a cargo cult of imitators, just as happens with Windows and Unix. Largely they are dominated by NeXT, which was also never any good. (I speak from experience here -- looking slick isn't the same as actually being good, and NeXT is a master of form without substance)

Linux, and other Unices are popular here, but again, there's no dedication towards designing the entire OS and its attendant software around well-conceived and tested UI purposes. Without that, it's doomed to be bad. No one has ever delivered a good desktop Unix -- I don't think that it's really possible without so much work as to make it harder than it would've been to start from scratch with lessons learned and brand-new ideas to try.

I DESPERATELY want something new and better. But at this point in time, no one is interested in doing so. I'd switch to something else in a heartbeat if there were only something to switch to.

Man, this is huge

[Apreche]

I can see this topic is going to go crazy, it already has, but I gotta say my piece, even if nobody is going to read it in the giant pile of crud.

I run Win2k and Mandrake (the newest one).

Primarily though I use win2k, and here is why. It is stable, it is easy, it works perfectly with all my hardware, it has features like windows file sharing, all the advanced features of my hardware are fully supported (I have a logitech cordless keyboard with a bunch of extra buttons on it that don't work in other OS's, Winamp makes mp3s sound good and I listen to lots of mp3s, the sound driver in windows makes things sound better, windows has working non-beta software for IM, video playing, VNC, etc..

There are more reasons, but they are small reasons, though numerous. Note I use no other MS software other than Win2k, VS.NET, and IE. I have mozilla in windows, but I only use it when I'm browsing pop-up ad laden sites since it is slow and a memory whore (though not as much as it used to be). IE is fast, that's the only reason I use it really. As for VS.NET, it makes making windows software easy, quick, and powerful (with C#) and it was free from my school. I would never pay for a compiler.

I DO run Mandrake in a dual boot. I use it to develop software. I am a CS major in college. The CS machines run Solaris. In a *nix environment with X-forwarding, shells, and compilers for java, C, C++, etc. it is much easier to write code. Especially with all the nice text editors in linux. When I'm writing code though mp3s sound like ass since linux has no idea how to make my sound card work right (it does work though), and it can't play games for crap, I need my Half-Life mods man. And its basically HARD to use linux. Even harder to change something. When the day comes where linux does everything windows does without me having to open a shell or edit a text based config file I may go all the way.

As far as I'm concerned neither OS is technically superior. Linux is superior in it's free as in speechness, but from a purely technical standpoint win2k and mandrake are equally stable and fast, from my experience any way. Sometimes X messes up in linux, and sometimes windows gets funky. Those are due more to my crappy computer than the os's actually. But the only time I ever have to reboot really is to switch os's. Anyone who tells you that win2k crashes left and right is a lying sack of crap. They didn't set it up properly. They are probably one of those linux guys who only knows how to do things the hardware and can't figure out how to change settings through a GUI designed for someone with a 5th grade mentality.

To sum it up, win2k is stable and fast, it does everything I want without extra effort, and there is software to suit all my needs. Linux does almost all of that, but to do everything windows does is either too much effort from me, or not currently possible. Linux is a good environment to code in windows is a good environment for everything but.

PS: Mac OSX looks really cool. I really like their portable stuff, especially the ipod. As for beOS it appears to be technically superior to all the other OS's I've seen, but again it doesn't have enough software nor does it do everythign windows does or support all my hardware fully.

The operating system I want doesn't exist yet. Read my journal for more on that.

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[jonabbey]

This is silly. Do you think that Windows and Macintosh don't have protection boundaries between the graphics rendering layer and the applications (client)? X has used shared memory and event coalescing forever. The only possibly defensible issue regarding X's C-S architecture is the context switch/scheduling delay, and that's on the order of a hundredth of a second delay. Even those delays can be ameliorated with one of the low-latency/interruptible syscall patches for Linux.

People calling for the rip-and-replace of X windows are simply not being realistic, either on a technical assessment level, or on a welcome to the real-world level.

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[dhsmith]

Funny you should mention the Photoshop vs Gimp thing. Photoshop is the thing that keeps me on Windows. I've been using it for my graphics stuff for about 7 years now.

Recently I needed to do some graphic work and didn't have access to Photoshop so I downloaded the Gimp. Honestly, I hated it. But I've been exploring it's features off and on for a couple of weeks now and I'm starting to find that the Gimp is not as weak imitation of Photoshop as I thought. All of the most important tools are there, and the majority of them work as well as the ones in Photoshop.

Basically I'm finding out that the Gimp is indeed suitable for many kinds of real work.

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[Alioth]

Funnily enough, my experience has been pretty much the opposite (at least recently). A few years ago - yes, X was a bear to set up.

But the recent installs I've done?

RedHat 7.x seems to have BETTER graphics card support than Win2K, and the devices on all the machines I've installed recently have just *worked* with no fiddling at all - this goes from a Dell PII-266 to a new whitebox cheap component Athlon 1600+ box. We got some new machines recently - the ones I put RedHat on were in 1024x768 on the install. The Win2K installs required additional drivers. RedHat also supported the network card out of the box - Win2K needed 3rd party drivers.

Windows XP and 2000 "different beasts"?

[lvdrproject]

Ok, i didn't even have an account on Slashdot before i saw the above two posts, but i completely disagree with both of them, and had to make my opinion known. Now, i am in NO WAY a fan of Microsoft, and personally i love the Mac OS and Mandrake, but there just needs to be something said here.

"Saying "2000/XP" is like saying "MacOS X/BSD". The two are completely different beasts."

No, they're not. Windows XP is just Windows 2000 + skins + better drivers + new Start menu + a few aesthetic details. In fact, i'm sure you've noticed, Windows 2000 is Windows NT "5.0", and Windows XP is Windows NT "5.1". That is to say, a semi-moderate update, but not a completely new product.

"Windows 2000 is indeed stable, and all-around is the best OS M$ has ever put out. XP, on the other hand, is a nightmare at all levels. The UI changes are ridiculous and counterintuitive, the stability is a joke, and the mothership-calling/DRM/licensing/totalitarianism is insulting, painfully annoying, undesirable, and runs directly counter to the philosophy that made Microsoft, DOS, and Windows a success, which is putting more power and control in the hands of the end user."

The UI changes that actually go any deeper than simple colour and logo changes are very few, and most of these can be modified to work/look exactly like Windows 2000. The stability is a joke? Bull. Windows XP is just as stable as 2000. I've NEVER, repeat, NEVER, had Windows XP (that is to say, the actual operating system) crash on me, and i've been using Windows XP since the pre-2600 build stages. In fact, i might relate a little anecdote here: a few weeks ago, i was attempting to get an old (500 MHz) computer up and running, and as my XP CD was mysteriously corrupted, i installed Windows 2000. Mere MINUTES (and i do not exaggerate) after my initial boot, i got a blue screen, and it died. In Windows XP, the operating system rarely crashes; instead, the programs crash, and the operating system continues on its merry little way. As for "mothership-calling", almost all of those features can be disabled, and if you still think that "M$" is HAX0RING UR IMPROTANT FILEZ then you can invest in a decent firewall. If you know how to work XP, you can make it work or look any way you want it to.

As for the second post:

"In all seriousness, I have found XP to be terrible both in general speed (crispness, responsiveness to clicks, etc.) and stability (especially in an environment where the machine is pushed hard)."

Ok, i don't know what you're running on your computers (i have a Dell Dimension 4300 1.8GHz/512-MB RAM computer, which sounds like the same model, or a similar model, as yours), but XP is nothing but speedy for me. And i'm one of those people who loads his computer with every possible RAM-sucking gadget he can find, including transparent mouse cursors, transparent windows and menus, every single visual effect XP comes with, etc., etc.. XP is super fast for me. My programs don't load up slow at all. On the other hand (and i did notice that you didn't defend any other operating system, but let's use an example here), Mandrake 9 with KDE 3 runs noticeably slower, and this is the standard bare-bones install, with no fancy tricks or gadgets. On both my 500-MHz K6-2 and my 1.8-GHz P4, i have Mandrake and XP Pro dual-booted, and XP is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH faster.

Now, why do i use Windows? Because i'm 15 and don't have the money to buy a Mac; because i was BORN in a house that ran MS-DOS/Windows; because i'm used to it; because it looks prettier; because it's more user-friendly (not so much as opposed to the Mac, but definitely so as opposed to Linux); because all of the great applications that i can't live without (Winamp, Photoshop, Flash MX, Nero, Exact Audio Copy) aren't found on Linux; the list goes on.

I LIKE Linux, i LIKE the Mac; i don't use my computer for playing games (except frozen-bubble :D), i don't use my computer ENTIRELY for chatting with my school friends (like most 15-year-olds i know), i have a little bit of programming/scripting/"getting into the system" experience, and i'd like to think that i know what i'm doing.

So, as an objective observer, i would like to just make my disagreement known.

:Lav

Re:well..

[Jugalator]

Before you see decide to mod this as flamebait, it isn't *my* opinions, but the opinions of many Windows users:

WC3: Runs fine on linux, see www.transgaming.com
The Sims: Linux port available, see www.transgaming.com

But... you need WineX... and does WineX come preinstalled with, say, Mandrake? If not, how do you install it? Type "install" or "setup"? Double click on an icon? It's harder than that? Do you need to configure it too?? Do you need more stuff as well? Do my video card driver work right with that... WineX? Hmm... I think I'll just dual boot with Windows. Yeah. I mean... It will work then and... Why bother? I want to play that game I bought this evening. I'll see about Linux some day I have more time. Yeah.

Neverwinter Nights: Port is on the way

But... I can play it months ahead if I dual boot with Windows... and who knows when it's out? It's on the way? Will it have bugs? Will it be less supported than Windows? Will its patches come later than the Windows patches? Do I need this... WineX thing for that too? Naahh... That sounds tricky, I think I'll stick with Windows.

Unreal 2k3: Runs perfectly on linux, the linux native version is in the box you bought at the store

Wow, that's nice if... Well, I like first person shooters.

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[u19925]

"No matter how fast they make the drivers, no matter how much they optimize it - a client-server based desktop environment is ALWAYS going to be slower than a non-c/s solution"

Slower by how much percentage? 0.1? It is like saying, you won't take bath in ocean because fish f**k in it. I not only use X, but use VNC client exclusively on my laptop to access all my unix/linux boxes at work and haven't felt it slow. I access the same sessions from home/work/travel etc. BTW, I do heavy development work on unix/linux. I use windows a lot, however not because of X on unix. In fact, I consider X to be number one point of using Unix. Look at VNC on PC and you would know (it typically eats 20-30% CPU on 1GHz PC vs less than 1% on 400 MHz Linux). My reason for using windows are:

Lack of good fonts. They are improving and now a days a well tuned linux has quality comparable to PC. Still Unix boxes don't have good fonts or the apps don't use them correctly.

Many stupid websites shut you out, if you don't use Netscape or IE. I hate Netscape as a browser (though it is my exclusive mail client and HTML editor). On windows, I use IE for those sites and Opera otherwise.

I have a laptop which came pre-installed with windows and no media. Due to lack of time and media for XP, didn't feel like playing with Linux. Even if I could, the only use of this laptop is to browse, access unix/linux machines and view photo/video taken with digital camera/camcorder. Linux has no advantage in this space. For other machines, I use Linux/Unix.

I guess, X has something which windows never had and most likely won't have for ages. It is stupidity of Unix/Linux marketing folks for not exploiting this advantage. Your second point: "There's no accountability for bugs, so they're only fixed when someone feels like it."

You are comparing commercial apps in windows with free apps on Linux. I use almost all commercial only apps on Unix/Linux, and can vouch that there are far less failures on unix/linux than on windows. Just last night, my XP started acting weird on network (it was booted in morning), so I tried to shut down. Well shutdown hung too! I had to hard boot it. While I reboot my XP about once a day (haven't seen uptime more than 1 week on reasonably used XP and more than 2 weeks on NT) while all other unix/linux boxes that I remotely access, are booted once a quarter or so (typically for adding some OS patches) and they are used much more heavily.

I guess, Linux/Unix folks would rather be without U than be without X (pun intended).

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[ruriruri]

It's not suitable for any real work.

i think you're mostly right, but when it comes to designing icons for the web, gimp equals or exceeds photoshop. admittedly this is one of the simplest tasks (from a technical viewpoint) for a raster program.

on the other hand, if you want to take full advantage of your tablet, photoshop is it.

and speaking of that, two major improvements in the unstable 1.3.x gimp are redone XInput support and, finally, CMYK color space. what i'd really like to see is an improved bezier curve editor. raster and vector programs are evolving into single combined entities. be nice if gimp was there too...

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[angel'o'sphere]

the interface is terrible

Yes. Thats the problem. A friend of mine was telling me that I had at least to admit that at least GIMP was a GNU software wich rocked.

Sorry. Its the terribelst thing I've ever seen.

a) the UI is UGLY, *U*G*L*Y*.
b) everybody claiming that GTK is FAST, .... we had that discussion in QT versus GTK ... well, GIMP on my machine is not only UGLY, its incredible slow in window redraws and menu openings.
c) Linux simply offers NOTHING windows does not offer as well.

History:

I admined about 40 SunOS 4.3 and 20 DEC Ultrix machines. I worked with slackware linux kernel version 0.91 or 0.93. My first "big computer" after my Apple ][ clone was a Mac.

I do not switch to linux for three reasons:

i) everything which is unique on linux (and good working versus other OSes implementation) does
-- not interest me (I do no video editing)
-- is incredible difficult to use (e.g. GIMP)

ii) I have a running Windows system. Why should I kick everything I have on it?

iii) everything which is similar on linux, KDE for example, I allready have on Windows.

Well, I come from MAC. I go back to MAC now where it runs basicly NeXT Step/OS X (BSD).

The whole GNU/Linux movement just behaves as if 30 years of user interface design research never had happened.

One third just does what it likes.
One third sticks to old standards because they think better a standard than nothing (X11/Motive)
One third coppies primaryly the bad examples of Windows(KDE).

None of them can get me into the hazzle of wasting 3 or 4 hours installation of a dual boot system.

Furthermore: how to configure a linuy system?

Its not like BSD, its not like System V, its not like AIX, its not like Solaris.

Even worse: every linux system thinks it has invented the holy gral of how to admin a system.

Today I try to work with Mandrake(my DSL router is a mandrake system) tomorrow I like to use Suse.

I can not copy a single config file from Mandrake to my Suse System ... because both keep their config data in totaly different stores.

BTW: GIMP, how do you draw a straight line? Start point -> End Point?

You cant do that without reading the manual. The simplest thing, the first thing every user attempts, is impossible without reading the manual.

And in the manual you can not look under: line, straight line or something. No, you have to read it from front to end to stumble over the point where you finaly figure that you have to use the alt key.

I have to admind, I did not figure that my own, no, I had to ask one.

I spend 3 or 4 hours with GIMP, trying to make some smal PNGs. I gave up.

Well, now you come and tell me: most is OS or even GPL; take it and change it.

Sorry, YOU wrote it. If you like ME to USE it, write it in a way that I want to USE it.

If the surface of your software sucks, I do not even like to look into the source code.

Yes, when I work on *nix I use VI.

regards,
angel'o'sphere

Simple answer...

[Andy Smith]

I choose Windows over Linux because I think Windows is better.

And when I recently purchased a new computer I wanted to buy an iMac but after using one for a few hours I realised that OSX is basically an untidy, nonsensical wannabe, so I got a PC instead. I use WinXP and despite a few grumbles I'm happy with it.

This week I lost three days to a corrupted driver. I had to spend one day running diagnostic tests, a second day running multiple repair attempts, and a third day reinstalling from scratch. So after three days of cursing Microsoft, which OS would I say is the best? Windows. Because despite its faults, it does much more right than other OS's and much less wrong.

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[runderwo]

I hope you were joking. Not only are you wrong, it's also way simpler than that.

An X server provides the I/O interface to the program. It takes input from the keyboard or pointing device and outputs on a display.

An X client is a program that simply connects to an X server to use its I/O interface.

What's so hard to understand about it? That is, unless you're deliberately trying not to understand?

Re:Cuz of all the warez

[stinky wizzleteats]

Support the end of warez, use free s/w!

Actually, that is precisely the reason I switched to RH8 on both my home and office desktops. I find it impossible as a professional IT person to use Windows without having warez of some kind. Since I can't afford to run clean and green with Windows, I am switching to Linux.

Hear that, Bill?

Device drivers and documentation quality

[Phronesis]

Three things primarily keep me on Windows.

• The quality of the documentation. Nothing have used under Linux has the quality of documentation that I get with MSDN. Sure there is a much larger quantity of Linux documentation, but very little is of the professional quality that I get from MS. In particular, the quality of integration between the Visual Studio IDE and the MSDN documentation makes me cringe every time I need to fire up Emacs and info (or man).
• The quality of the tools. Last time I checked, Visual C++ still blew the doors off gcc for numerically intensive calculations. Even my Linux-using colleagues have given up on gcc and use closed-source compilers for their numerically intensive work.
• last, but most important, is device-driver support. Sure, Linux r0x0rs with a small subset of mass-market hardware, but try getting esoteric DAQ hardware to run efficiently with Linux...

All this is very frustrating because many of my projects could benefit from something closer to an RTOS than Windows will ever be, and for that I could live with the primitive state of Linux development tools to play with the RT Linux variants, but the absence of hardware device drivers prevents me from even thinking in those terms.

Re:So far...

[onyxruby]

Actually, I consider this to be an important issue. I have played with trying Linux off and on since Red Hat 5.2 and inevitably give up every time after a short while. Part of the frustration is that I don't have anything consistent for interfaces. It's one of the things that MS screwed up with XP, they changed the interface enough that it can be a real pain in the but doing what you've always done. In short, don't discount the whole kde/gnome consistent interface thing. It is important for furthering adoption of Linux beyond a certain crowd that has already embraced it.

In short, I want to be able to "just use it". I want to go to a consistent place every single time and be able to enable a nic to use / not use DHCP regardless of flavor of linux I am on. That and the biggest thing that the linux community needs to do is have a serious attitude adjustment. The whole, holier than thou attitude and general unwillingness to help (with exceptions of course) have ruined it in many portions of society. I was working a very large gov contract position a few years back and when I asked why they didn't have linux in use (despite many of the workers privately using it), I was told bluntly, "because the community can't be bothered to step out of their white tower to help unless your a programmer". "The entire concept of anyone /other/ than a programmer administrating a machine has been lost on them". In short, I should not need to know "C" to admin a box. I am not, and have no interest in becoming a programmer, I simply desire to be an administrator.

In case your wondering if it's the whole CLI interface thing, no it isn't. I've been using computers since the TI80, have 5 years professional experience, and have absolutely no problem with the Cisco CLI. I'm also in school to pick up Solaris, Cisco, and Unix once Linux is finished. Thus I am hardly a newbie that is scared by the lack of a pretty interface. hope this helps.

X is what *brings* me to Linux!

[PotatoHead]

I hear a lot about X being bad, X being hard, X is this and X is that. All of it is bullshit plain and simple.

The X window environment is likely the best feature of any UNIX and Linux is starting to do it really well.

X is what gives Linux its true multi-user environment. Sure you can run command line stuff without an X server, but why bother?

You don't have to be a CLI geek to make good use of X. Just know ssh, xhost, rlogin and how to set your DISPLAY variable for UNIXes that are not crafted to be display friendly and you are set. That is very little to learn really.

X window setup is getting easier every day. When I started with Linux, X was hard. Now it is a whole lot easier. Give it another year and it will be no harder than dealing with win32 display issues.

X is what brought me to UNIX. I was headed down the MSCE path until I landed in a situation where I needed to work with a few UNIX machines. The users there used all of the machines as if they were their own. To someone used to non X display systems, this was amazing, not to mention very productive from both a user and administrative standpoint. Client server is not the only computing model. Think about all the web applications out there. They work remotely and you just display and input. Lots of people seem to think this is great. Guess what, X is that and more and it is here today, working nicely.

Before we had the networks we have now, X would have been a waste on most desktop machines because they were not connected enough to matter. Not to mention that if they were the OS was clearly not up to the task. So today we have a bunch of people who don't know what it is. This does not make it hard, just different.

Today we live in a networked environment. X was designed years ago with this in mind, we are just now getting there. Why continue an old mindset just because it is comfortable?

Take a little time to learn just a little about X, it is worth your time.

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[Pooua]

First off, I'm not arguing where their ideas / peices of source code come from, I'm only saying that they almost never take something without making significant changes to it (and these are generally very self serving, ie. make it work the way we want it to and the users want it to)

Why do you differentiate between "we" and "users" in your statement?

I would appreciate it if you would provide an example, because I am at a loss for one. In the examples I provided, Microsoft did not change the way the user interacts with the programs. Many of the changes that Microsoft makes to software is not to improve functionality, but to break compatibility (i.e., make the code proprietary).

This entire thread is entitled "What's keeping you on Windows?" From reading the comments below, it seems that quality is a major player here.

Quality has nothing to do with the fact that Microsoft is "leveraging" other people's work.

Wow! I never knew that Microsoft was started around 1954! Because you do know that Linux is just another Unix [www.cnam.fr] (ohhhhh, gonna get flamed for that one) varient,

You should be flamed, because Linux is not a UNIX variant. Linux is POSIX-compliant, and all POSIX-compliant OSes can interchange software (after recompiling). Coincidentally, most versions of UNIX are also POSIX-compliant. However, it is possible to make any OS POSIX-compliant (including Microsoft Windows). That doesn't mean those OSes are variations of UNIX. None of the code in Linux came from UNIX. Linux was written from scratch.

"Linux is not Unix! Unix is a proprietary OS, and its code can only be licensed by large companies. Linux is close to Unix in terms of architecture, because the same concepts were used to design both OS's. Linux is POSIX* compatible, so it is able to run the same software as the other Unix variants (HP-UX from Hewlett-Packard, AIX from IBM or Solaris from Sun for example); you just have to recompile your source code on a Linux machine."

Linux Pages for Beginners

and Unix was first created in 1969 by Ken Thompson.... Or maybe you did'nt know that and you really did think all this started in 1995......

Actually, Linus began working on his OS in 1991:

Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

"Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work....

"PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs."

History of Linux

I wouldn't take such a shitty tone, but you're attacking my intelligence and creditability here and I don't take that so very lightly.

I am not intending to attack you personally, but I am sensitive to the mis-portrayal of the computer industry by certain political segments. My own sister, who otherwise knew virtually nothing about computers, dogmatically asserted to me that the only reason that Microsoft was being sued was its competitors were jealous. The reason she took that position is her conservative leadership told her these things, and she believed them. This is the same line that Rush Limbaugh and Libertarian commentators take-- and it's all political hysteria, spread by people who don't know and usually don't care about the accuracy of their statements.

Debian uber alles ;)

[stevey]

I'm a Debian developer, and I run Debian at home and work, as I have done for ~3 years. (I don't use kde/gnome though, I don't have the horsepower for it - just icewm).

I'm quite rare though. In our company there are three people who use Linux upon their desktop, Me (a sysadmin), a web developer/perl coder, and an Oracle guy.

So far I've not had any major problems, I can view PDF's/Java/DOC files etc, and generally operate on a par with other people within the office

I used to have a dual boot setup so that I could run things like the Microsoft policy editor, but not any more - if I want to run something like that I'll walk to somebody else's PC and borrow it for a few minutes.

Sometimes I wish I were running Windows - because it can be very hard to help one of our home works over the phone when I can't look to my machine and talk them through what options to select, etc. But apart from that life is peachy :)

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No, you're misinterpreting. Linux, as a desktop operating system, won't be worth using until:

1. It's stable. The nightmare that was the 2.4 release family must never be repeated.

2. It's documented. There must be no more "coming soon!" pages in the documentation.

3. It's easy to use. KDE and Gnome need to be scrapped and replaced with a consistent, intuitive desktop environment.

4. It includes key features like color space management, intelligent typography, unified audio and video frameworks, a unified printing model, and some sort of display list rendering technology like PostScript or PDF.

That's just the short list; I didn't spend any time on it, so I'm quite certain it's not exhaustive. Until Linux has these, and other, critical features, there's simply no reason to even consider using it.

The hobbyists of the world will probably never understand that people don't want to use an operating system that's incomplete and inconsistent. Since the community has a terrible track record for completeness and consistency, Linux will never be more than a niche operating system.

It just doesn't offer anything at all to compel one to use it.