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Windows Tech Writer Looks at Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Three days ago I accepted Linux into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Windows. It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path."
"Three days ago I accepted Linux into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Windows. It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path."
If they have been using Windows for 20 years they are foremost a technical person, early adopter, and to some extent a knowledgable computer person.
The fact that Linux is always an "alternative" to Windows is in my opinion, just furthering the saying that "Linux is for people that hate Windows, BSD is for people that love UNIX". Why do Linux users always have to profess their fate to Linus & Stallman and in the same breath say something, ANYTHING, about Windows?
I run FreeBSD & NetBSD because I love UNIX and its capabilities and its features and EVERYTHING. It has nothing to do with Windows. Ever. I still run Windows XP and 2K. With Linux users it seems to be a conversion of holy nature like they are becoming a shaolin priest and can't look back....why?
Well, as most other people here, I support Linux. However, that does not mean that I think Slashdot should be just a propaganda machine, pumping out all positive material regarding Linux that the editors can find, no matter how newsworthy it is. I come here to read news for nerds, stuff that matters, not just to be subjected to "Microsoft sucks and Linux is the best".
The gift came to me via David and Roger, two very nice, not pushy, Linux missionaries who are involved with the coming Linux Installfest.
It wouldn't hurt to have more of their type.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
This kind of feeling / comment can't be encouraging for people who want to make the switch from MS. As it mentions in the article (and a comment above), he had two 'nice, not pushy' guys to help with his install - people who would probably help him with a problem like this rather than sit back and laugh.
Sheer hell, it sounds like!
Back in the day, attempting to decipher the poorly written, unorganized, and very cryptic ppp, slip, and chat documentation could take hours if not weekends.
An hour is clearly a milestone of progress, here.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
.. the thing I found about Linux, is once you have it set up right, it is great for technophobes.
This is true about UNIX, in general. While Windows would behave as if it were born in a universe with no cause and effect, Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc. just behave. With UNIX, most problems are either up-front configuration issues or external issues, such as an ISP going down for an evening.
UNIX is sort of like a hard mountain climb, which ends in a flat plateau of endless easy hiking with oasises along the way. Windows is just an endless climb where fatique makes hallucinations of plateaus appear and disapperar tauntingly.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Linux is not for ordinary people. It's for computer enthusiasts. Most people want to use the computer as a tool, not for its own sake. They have no interest in memorizing reams of arcane computer trivia in order to get email, surf the web, write, and work on spreadsheets. ...Windows comes preinstalled. If you have a properly set up distribution with some good default choices (OpenOffice, Evolution etc.) it is not really any harder than on Windows, apart from unfamiliarity. Getting a Linux geek there to install and configure it shouldn't be the problem, the question is what it takes to keep it running, and more importantly if it runs the software people want to run.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A decade ago, getting access to Unix was HARD. Sure, a few people could get a shell in a university timeshare setup. However, running 'ls' and 'pine' as non-root in a term emulator doesn't really compare to running a modern productive Unix 'desktop'.
I know a few guys like the author. People working with PCs in a business setting had DOS/Novell/OS2/Windows/NT and tons of apps and languages to deal with. Non-PC systems were usually VMS or IBM. Unix was easy to avoid because that's not where the applications were. (That's all changed, but only in the last 5 years or so as UNIX took over the high-end and Linux made the low-end accesible.)
If you're advocating, it's important to grok that "PC Culture" is as old and entrenced as Unix culture. People just don't like to throw out 20 years of What They Know for something different. In a lot of ways, Linux is the bridge between the PC world and the Unix world, but it's still a big jump to make.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Show me a Linux replacement for Adobe FrameMaker (or better yet, a port), and I'm there. Even at $599.40 or whatever Adobe's charging this week.
The original article was written from the point of view of a technical writer. IMO, any technical writer using MSTurd for documents over 100 pages in length needs to have his head examined. (Fuckin' Windows print drivers that won't print the same Word document the same way on two computers, meantime the FrameMaker d00dz are happily writing stuff in Frame on their Windoze laptops, then checking the files in to the source code control system at work, where they resume working on them from their Solaris and Windoze and Mac desktop boxen.)
I think FrameMaker's market share at the midrange of tech writers is pretty high, and for good reason. If you want to go beyond FrameMaker, you're talking even more money - Documentum-class document management systems, single sourcing from a big pile of XML into PDF, hardcopy, or HTML - but Linux ain't even in contention here.
It's sorta like Photoshop vs. The Gimp. The Gimp's great for Joe Tuxpack's vacation photos, but if you're doing color separations for inks that are requires to print on a billboard, and you wanna be damn sure it's the shade of puce that your Marketing department wast^H^H^H^Hpaid half a million bucks in researching, sorry kids, break out the Photoshop.
I'm not buying your Red Hat 5.2 : Red Hat 9 :: Win3.1 : Win2k analogy. Windows 3.1 is a 16-bit DOS shell with a crude UI, and Windows 2000 is a 32-bit protected OS with pre-emptive multi-tasking.
So by your logic, Windows XP really isn't all that different than Windows NT 3. I mean Windows NT 3.0 was 32 bit pre-emptively multi-tasked operating system. In fact if you look at the help about for Windows XP you will see that it is in fact only Windows 5.1 (Windows 2000 was 5.0). Windows XP, just has better hardware support and a better interface (packages aren't any better though).
You are of course falling into the unfortunately common mistake of equating the kernel to the OS. They are not the same thing, yes Red Hat 9 runs a kernel that descended from the same kernel it ran with 5.2 (albeit significantly improved). However a kernel does not an Operating System make, just as a heart doesn't make a human being.
There are significant differences between Red Hat 5.2 and Red Hat 9.0. All the Linux distributuins have underdone *tremendous* amounts of growth during the past 5 years. In fact they have changed far more dramatically than Windows has in that same time frame.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt