Slashdot Mirror
Linux Users Try FreeBSD 5, Windows
uninet writes "Most people know what GNU/Linux is, but fewer know about BSD and fewer still have actually used one of the major BSD variants (other than the highly customized Mac OS X). Ed Hurst, a writer and a long time GNU/Linux user, decided to give FreeBSD a try. Will Ed join the ranks of happy FreeBSD users? Find out at OfB.biz." And our own Roblimo, Windows-free for five years, has spent a week learning Windows XP.
Alternate viewpoint on "switching from Linux to Windows".
.02
Some background: I had been a Windows user for a short time back in the Win 3.1 (and prior days). I had a 386SX-16 with 5mb of RAM so Windows wasn't terribly good. I used a lot of DOS programs and Desqview for task switching. I decided it was time to go to something decent and I switched to OS/2. It was a dream world for me, ran DOS, Windows, and OS/2 (and unix-based applications compiled for it). Then I went to Linux and stayed there from 1996 until 11/2002.
Of course I had used Windows on school/friend's computers and was familiar with most of the applications for it. I was 100% against MS's evil empire and Bill's attempts to takeover the world.
I was out of work for a short period of time and had been searching for a job for probably the nine or so months I was working in a hell hole. I was sending out my resumes as a TXT email or printed from Wordperfect for Linux. I got NO hits. My parents wanted to do video conferencing with me but we couldn't because Linux didn't support my USB camera well enough (and they didn't want to use anything other than Netmeeting). I acquired a 1.8Ghz e-machine in November of 2002. It came w/WindowsXP and I began to use that...
First thing was switching away from the native XP interface to the Win2k look. Nice and comfortable. Second was installing Office (no problem, as a student it was $10). Third was using IRC (Cygwin + irssi). Last was getting used to IE from Mozilla (not a problem, Mozilla is slow, clunky, and doesn't support anything as easily as IE on Windows).
Office was MUCH better than WP for Linux. Interoperability with EVERYONE else I knew. No converting and reformatting, no font problems, no nothing. It was fast, easy, and nice. IE was far superior to Mozilla. I never used tabs as Roblimo did and I never thought Mozilla was fast. I opened the browser and pages loaded faster, nice. I clicked on movies and low and behold codecs were downloaded automatically and the movies started playing (all without having to compile mplayer, get codecs, and fool with Mozilla to get it to play them).
Upgrading Windows was easy. Either do it through the web or through the GUI. I didn't have to worry about dependencies breaking, problems with "stable", "unstable", or "seriously broken and use at your own risk".
While I have complaints about Windows (still evil) I think it is a far superior experience to Linux.
That's just my worthless
went back to Debian. Couldn't get over not having apt...
Betcha they don't.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Ed Hurst, a writer and a long time GNU/Linux user, decided to give FreeBSD a try.
I figured that most people hear about the *BSDs as they're getting into linux, and just about all of them try one of them out as soon as they get a handle on the whole *nix thing. (as i did).
Maybe i'm just wierd, multi-booting 5 different partitions on one 6.4GB hdd back in 1999.
do() || do_not();
It's not a review of Windows XP, but rather a series of old stereotypes and jokes about Windows that we've heard a million times. If you want a serious, objective review of XP in the same manner that you see Linux distributions reviewed, you should look elsewhere.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Google Cache of main page here
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux as well, but I've always used BSD on my servers and on a couple of my home desktops as well. The ergonomic design of the BSD kernel makes it more efficient at many tasks than Linux and (especially) Windows. BSD supports other features, such as RAM-level RAID that allows you to stripe memory across DIMMs to offer complete fault-tolerance in case of memory failure. Things like this are obviously not going to be needed by your average home user, but in a production server environment it's great to have.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story.
A week goes by and he couldn't figure out how to use the 2nd mouse button? Is this review a spoof?
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
I haven't had XP Pro crash on me all week in the old 'blue screen of death sense'
Burn the witch!
...but I'm the kind of guy that likes the ease of use systems like XP Pro and Mandrake Linux (both of which I currently use). Windows and Mandrake provide me with a flexible and simple to configure desktop environment.
Short of switching to OS X, is there any FreeBSD-based distribution that is as simple to install as Windows or Mandrake Linux?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I tried to use BSD but they said I wasn't arrogant enough!!
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story. Geh.
You do realize that in Windows you can highlight the text, then right click on it to bring up a menu with Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Select All, right?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I don't really care if he's an editor or not, writing a "review" of Windows XP whose basic premise is "It's not like Linux, and all the Linux software I like is different on it" is drivel.
He just went from a manual stickshift to an automatic and is still expecting to control the shifting as usual. I'd call this stupid user behavior, except that I know he's not stupid. He's just trying to make a (redundant) point in a (troll) heavy-handed fashion. Which is fine I suppose, except that it seems a little beneath the editorial bar for the front page of Slashdot.
Well! the thread is only 7 comments old and :(
mysql has already given up on the bsd link.
slashdot people should ask permission from the host before linking to its websites.
no ordinary mysql server could survive getting slashdot-ed.
The smarmy attitude got to me after a few paragraphs. "What's this 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' thing that I keep hearing about? It's profoundly inferior to everything I've ever used. People say it's popular, but they must be lying to me because it doesn't have tabbed browsing, and who can use the web without tabbed browsing?"
Sorry, but that gets old awfully damned fast. I've been using Red Hat at home exclusively for the last 7 months or so (since I got laid off and had time to really learn to use it), and while I much prefer it to Windows--even Win2k, of which I am rather fond--the difference isn't so incredibly huge that I would rather eat a Windows CD than install it.
Also, half of his problems seem to be with Windows APPS, rather than Windows. Nothing is keeping you from using a lot of the same apps in Windows, friend. When I do log in to my wife's Win2k box at home, I use OpenOffice, XChat, Gaim, and Mozilla Firebird--the same apps I use on my RH box.
How about some honest advocacy on the strengths of alternate operating systems? That would do more to show options to people who don't know they've got them. This kind of drek doesn't help anyone.
What's so special about Ports? I've been using FreeBSD lately, and I'm an experienced Debian user.
/. readers rave about Ports, but after using it for several weeks, I still prefer apt-get. Unless I'm missing someting, ports is not as automated. apt-get automatically finds the software, downloads, and installs the debs. apt4rpm does the same. Fink does the same. Ports has extra steps.
Some
Anyone want to "enlighten" me?
Disclaimer: I'm running a stable server and installing binary packages. I'm not interested in compiling from source, so that part of Ports isn't important to me. I'd be using Gentoo if compiling from source was important.
IMHO, Roblimo didn't honestly try out Windows XP, but instead just wanted to write down some often repeated statements. Why take the trouble to work with an OS if you're prejudiced from the start?
XP has its good things and its bad, but this article is far from an honest overview of them.
(I am writing this on a GNU/Linux system, by the way, but I also use XP once in a while)
When I was a freshman I started running servers for me and my friends (and about 30 other users). This was mostly an experimental network, for my, and other's learning purposes. I started out using slackware (which is STILL the only linux I will use) on all of my servers. This did work well, until Netatalk stopped working with the latest version of slack (I think they changed TCPWrappers and NetaTalk hadn't cought up yet). I then was forced to move to FreeBSD. I will never, ever, ever go back. System Admin under BSD is silky smooth and DAMN fast. The way I think about it is that BSD has had 30 years of lazy system admins working on it. Linux has a few years to go.
Thank you. Interoperability with EVERYONE. Web Apps work far better on IE. While I like tabbed browsing, I think it is over-rated.
I do prefer netscape.
And, games run properly on windows.
I guess we have to rely on the BSD trolls for all our stories now?
= 7182480
:)
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=81828&cid
Rather amusing, that.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
What is this GNU/Linux you speak of?
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. (GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix"; it is pronounced "guh-NEW".) Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as "Linux", they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Installed 4.7 on my Inspirion 4100 laptop with NVIDIA Geforce2go. Installed BSD drivers from NVIDIA and ran a short test of 'glxgears' (I know, I know, bad test.....), average FPS was 789.78.
Same 'glxgears' test in Slackware 9 with latest NVIDIA drivers, average FPS was 456.76.
Questions to consider: 1) are NVIDIA drivers more optimized in BSD than Linux? 2) is the kernel somehow beter in BSD than Linux?
All I know is that BSD is staying on my laptop.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
-Lucas
The first thing that happened after I fired up Windows XP is that it virtually ordered me to download a series of patches. I did so, but it wasn't like a SuSE update where you see every patch available and can say "yes" or "no" to each one if you like. The Windows update process told me nothing except that it was happening, and that I needed to reboot when it was over. A Windows-using friend said, "Yes, that's the way it works, and if you don't do the updates your computer keeps annoying you, so you have to do them even if they take hours like they sometimes do."
I don't know what he's talking about. By default (a stock Windows XPPro install) Windows will download updates in the background, and let you know when they're ready to install. You then have the option of saying "yes, install them now", "no, install them later", or you can click a button (labeled "Details...", I think) to see exactly which updates have been downloaded, and choose precisely which ones you'd like to install. I don't often give a lot of love to Microsoft, but I actually like the way they've handled the Windows Update thing- it's automatic and painless by default but you can have fine-grained control (or disable it totally) if you like.
So I find his claims really false- it sounds like he missed the "Details..." button. It's possible that the pre-installed copy of XP on his laptop was configured by the OEM (Toshiba) to work differently than a "stock" WinXP install, but if he's gonna write an article (and presumably get paid for it) then it's really his duty to figure that out.
I don't know if that's the case, just saying it's possible. In my opinion, anybody who is going to review an OS should really be reviewing a stock install, not some pre-configured OEM install that might differ from the "standard" experience.
At any rate, I'm only a couple of paragraphs into his review, and already I can't take anything he says seriously because there's such a glaring error right off the bat. Nice job.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Looks like my computer merged with a game of Candyland. I'll stick to UNIX thanks.
Man oh man, I was reading this review and I tell you, I would be offended if I was a Macintosh user, never mind a Windows XP user. This guy is so "it ain't Linux and all the software I'm used to" that it makes me sick. I applaud him for his desire to try out Windows XP, but I think he's whining too much really.
Once you get used to something, no matter what operating system it is, it is easy to use. Period. End of discussion. When you've trained for 4 years on Linux and move to a very different platform, of COURSE you're going to hate it! Sheeit!
I DARE the user to use MacOS X and try to competently review that against Linux. I'm sure he'll be whining about that beautiful system too!
like dude, seriously.
if you need a week to learn WinXP, you are one serious lame loser.
either you are seriously stupid and challenged, or you are mentally retarded and no one had the guts to tell you.
It was nothing but a pandering, self-serving, condescending, piece of garbage.
This supposed look at XP is more about rants with IE and OE and other apps, which is not part of the OS. If you don't like IE, go and use Mozilla or any other broswer, XP isn't stopping you from doing so.
His closing remarks expressing "sympathy" for Windows users is so smug and arrogant. What kind of person of who would switch to Linux would take that shit seriously?
And slashdotters complain about "M$", microserfs, or whatever cute names..where are the slashdotters to come out against this mindless zealotry?
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
regarding Roblimo trying out windows Xp- that article is a joke. If i were to try Linux for a week, i have no doubt that i would be ALOT more lost than he "apparently" was under windows. He refers to things as if they were strange foreign concepts! This is my favorite part.
"The bottom panel on my KDE desktop is filled with icons for my 'daily use' applications. No matter how covered my screen is with applications windows (and it is almost always fully covered), I can click on a panel icon and open a new app. I haven't figured out how to put app icons on the Windows bottom panel. I don't even know if it can be done. Perhaps it can only be done by smart Windows geeks, but not by simple-minded Linux people like me."
Its called quick launch rob! Its on all windows machines, and its called drag and drop! You just drag the short cut onto the bar- and voila! Mind you, i agree -you do have to be a smart windows geek to do that...
"When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people."
Did you try clicking on the date and time? That seems to bring up a calendar like application... Maybe its just me... but then i am a super geek.
"This Windows thing about needing special drivers for every bit of hardware is irksome. Setting up a wireless network card in Windows is tedious compared to Linux, where it's a 'click-click-click and you're done' thing. And in Windows, if I plug in my Linksys PCMCIA card instead of my SMC one by mistake, nada. In Linux either one will work (since I have models that have similar chipsets). In general, I find it easier to add or remove hardware pieces or peripherals in Linux than it seems to be in Windows. "
Special drivers for every bit of hardware? Im sorry? It isnt a similar situation on linux? I didnt realise that my Nvidia graphics card drivers will now power my sound card, and my network! Super- im switching now!
But the gem for me- this really i the best bit :
"First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story."
Says it all. Comparision : Englishman going to US of A and driving a car. "hey. whats up with the steering wheel on the wrong side? In the Uk, i can drive more efficiently with it on the right. Why must it been the left! I'm clearly alot less good at driving with it here"!
I got tired long ago of using Linux--of programs not working because no one is paid to make them work, of constantly searching for programs that do what I want, and of writing my own code to suit my needs when I knew that Windows basically had what I needed out of the box. So I switched to Windows. I tried XP at first, then sold that computer and now I use 98, which I hate. I often feel that the problem is that "other people" have hijacked the hobbyist-OS idea, so that they can use it as a server or whatever, who cares what. I yearn for a simple multitasking OS that does what I want. Maybe TriDOS is a start. But Linux and BSD don't capture the "spirit" of the hobbyist urge. Anyway until someone does capture it in a new OS happens I'm just going to have to use Windows.
He spends his time bashing an OS by crapping on the browser and the e-mail support, LOL. He blissfully ignores the fact that you can (like I do) use Mozilla if you wish ON XP. It is like a Windows user bitching that Linux is crap because he doesn't like using Pine for e-mail. Come on, that guy would be almost as big an idiot as RobLimo.
Loading...
Ugh.. I barely made it through Roblimo's "review".. its nothing more than a compilation of bitching and moaning, with a little reinforcement of his laziness as a user.
Its not hard to figure out how to disable windows messenger, or add icons to the taskbar. Do what you would expect any Linux user do, RTFM, or google it.
...Of course, I'll need to make the change from Windows to Linux first. As soon as I graduate from my MS-loving college, I'll be able to do just that.
"First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it."
:)
Id blame your mouse driver, you shoudl be able
to remap if you want, otherwise try right click
and select, if your copying that much text a day
that the second click will cost you time then i woudl relay like to know what your doing..
Id like to know how you suvied when ctrl-v/c was
the fastest way.. rembere before mice where had
caught on.
"The first thing that happened after I fired up Windows XP is that it virtually ordered me to download a series of patches. I did so, but it wasn't like a SuSE update where you see every patch available and can say "yes" or "no" to each one if you like."
Ok, so i havent used windows update in a good
year, but i clearly rembere being able to review
and select which updates you wanted.
"Yes, that's the way it works, and if you don't do the updates your computer keeps annoying you, so you have to do them even if they take hours like they sometimes do."
Thats funny, see above point.
"but I think this lack of security for software installation may be one of the causes of the hidden spyware problems I keep reading about Windows users having,"
Acttuly most uses chose to install the programs
that have spyware in them, so having to type
a password will only slow it down, if you chose
to install program X and its got spyware in it,
having to typing your password makes no differnce
"First really rude surprise: mIRC costs $20. It isn't free like XChat. Supposedly you get a free 30 day trial, but my copy started blinking "your evaluation time is up" each time I started it after the 3rd day. Apparently the mIRC developers have a slight math problem."
And this is a problem with windows how??
ID talk to Mirc about that, hevens forbid having
to pay for a computer program.
"It doesn't have the tabbed browser feature that makes work-related research (and pleasure reading) such a pleasure in Mozilla, Opera, and other modern browsers. "
Ok, so ive never used tabed broswers, but how
about the tabed Taskbar that is on by default..
dose that compare?? if it dose, i turn it off anyway
"Why people will pay to have Explorer's popup feature shut off instead of simply downloading free Mozilla and clicking on a couple of little boxes to decide what they will allow Web servers to do to their browser windows escapes me."
probly because you can get free popup blocking software too.
"This experiment lasted less than 1/2 hour. I downloaded 2 'passes' worth of email and had to wade through over 200 spams to read 3 useful emails. I (heart) Mozilla's Bayesian spam filters. I will no longer use an email program that doesn't have fast, automatic, easy-to-use spam filtering."
once agine ive had no expreance with Mozilla,
but in under 5 mins i set up my mail rules and
i lower my daily spam from 200 to about 10,
but then even then i do check, never relay on
spamfiltering, everynow and then something gets
filterd out, and it may be that new higher paying
job interview.
"Please don't argue with me about this. I don't get paid a percentage for each (free) Mozilla download this article generates. I'm telling you to dump Outlook for your own good. Really."
same for me.
"My copy of Windows XP Pro seems to have a program included with it called 'Windows Messenger' that, as far as I can tell, is some sort of ad delivery mechanism. I haven't figured out how to turn it off."
ok, ill give the turning it off to you, took
me a good 10 mins, but as for ad delivery, i get
more on ICQ.
"I haven't figured out how to put app icons on the Windows bottom panel. I don't even know if it can b
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
I had thrown away windows in 1998 in favour of (don't shoot me) Caldera Linux. Since then i've tried all the biguns- Redhate, Mudrake, SuPe, i had been a slackware wh0re for a while. I've dabbled with the 3 major BSDs (which i really like), but i've ultimately settled on Debian.
At work i'm *forced* to use Windows. I will say that WinXP is a vast improvement over what i remember of the bletcherous mess win95 was back in the days..
But the interesting thing that i've noticed is that i know more about linux and BSD than i do about windows. Sometimes, the thought of doing something on Windows makes me nervous like it would a typical Windows user. Some of my friends (both of them!) will say stuff like "I thought you were some computer geek, or something?" and give a look of disapproval when i can't say, figure out the COM port insanity for their new printer.
I'll agree that i find Linux easier to use and configure than Windows.
do() || do_not();
It's Windows. Millions of AOL users can figure it out. If you say you can't, you're either lazy or lying. It's not rocket science; it's not even model rocket science.
Count the movement:
Drag mouse over text
Right-Click
Select 'Copy'
Move cursor to new location
Right-click
Select 'Paste'
Drag mouse over text
Move cursor to new location
Click both buttons
3 less clicks
"Will Ed join the ranks of happy FreeBSD users?"
Will ofb.biz join the ranks of happy fried slashdotted servers?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
You can hook a monitor up to a FreeBSD box?
Why would you when you can just ssh in from your gorgeous 15" PowerBook?
This
From the second article, "I'm not sure saving the work of typing '***********' into a little box when you want to install or update a program is worth the security risk it causes."
First, someone should tell him that he shouldn't reveal his passwords on an online article. Now anyone can root his box!
Second, someone should tell him that having a password of all the same characters is itself a security risk (and using one so obvious as '*' is just plain silly).
Humor is _never_ off topic.
And one of the main reasons has nothing to do with features, stability, security or anything like that.
I'm just an OCD computer control freak. I like knowing EVERYTHING that's on my computer, where it is, nice, neat organized. If I don't have complete control over my desktop and applications, I'm not happy. I hate bloat, so if i don't use something I'd like to completely remove it, no registry keys, nothing remaining, at all.
That's just me tho.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Two beefs with the mouse paste that the author loves so much:
1) If you accidentally deselect or select something else you can paste the wrong thing. This can be an annoyance or actually dangerous if you're pasting a command.
2) You can't paste on block of text over another. In Windows I select what I want to paste, copy it, then select what I want to replace and paste it. Can't do that with the mouse paste.
so they do, they get some confidence with experience, then switch to a real OS.. like FBSD.
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
I spent a few days with FreeBSD 5.1 - and I have fallen in love with it. Been using linux for a year before that (got fed up with windows, but I have no formal training in computer science, I study literature). What was really surprising in my experience is that I expected FreeBSD to be much harder than linux was - its not!!! Well, you need some experience with CLI (if you can install and configure Debian, than your are set to try out FreeBSD) - but that's just it. Everything seems more simple and easy than in linux. And BSD is way much faster than my Mandrake was, and is easier on resources. XFCE4 (+ sshd and sendmail and some panel apps) after startup consumes 49Mb (!) memory! WOW! That's resource management. And the best thing is: DOCUMENTATION. Their handbook is up to date, and even though 5.1 is not the stable branch, it already reflects the changes - wherever something works differently in the new release, those differences are explained in detail. Another thing: package management! Think of a combination of apt-get and gentoo - and you got FreeBSD - The best of both world. Kernel compilation. I tried it many times in linux, and it worked (for most times), but wading to xmenuconfig was a time consuming. When I recompiled the BSD kernel, I was prepared to spend an hour with it. Got the Handbook ready, followed the steps described in it, and after 5 minutes I noticed that MC's editor would not scroll further, and went: what? That was it? I even checked if I was editing the wrong file, but no. EASY! The only pain in the buttock was installing JAVA, but everything else works just like they should be. I have KDE 3.1.4, Mozilla 1.4, XFCE4, FLASH, MPlayer, OpenOffice 1.1 (rc5), XINE (Kaffeine), GIMP 1.2.5, etc. Also, the community is great. They are indeed polite in their RTFM - RTFM translates to politely directing you to the relevant chapter of the FreeBSD handbook. And they are right! The Handbook is comprehensive, easy to follow, and very accurate. (After all, the main writers were paid for making it. Also, I noticed that in their to-do list for the next release, updating the Handbook is always there!) BSD earned my utmost respect, in every way - if you don't feel unconfortable with the command line, you should try it out (and if you want a working and bleeding edge Desktop OS, its way much easier to configure than Debian. For instance, my USB wheel mouse was detected automatically. So far, no packages in ports were broken, and I never seen such a beautiful Enlightenment desktop by default in any of the linux distroes). GREAT! Final note: I would have never tried 5.0 - and I don't understand why OFB writer choose that. It was the first release for the new branch almost a year ago, and 5.1 is out since August! Its fast, its stable, and ports are not broken. I didn't have a single issue with 5.1! (and sysinstall, its installer is way more user friendly than debian's installer, in fact, its almost like a wizard if you choose the standard install - there is extensive help, and everything works exactly like it is described in the handbook - lots of screenshots! -.)
Yeah, that's great. Except windows has unpatched holes in IE which are extremely dangerous. I would not rate that as a "far superior" experience.
Did you finish reading the whole Linux-to-WinXP "review"? By the time you got to the section where he was astonished at this strange, new Internet Explorer browser that 90% of web surfers used, it should have been obvious that it was satire.
Michael's only oversight was failing to add the "It's funny. Laugh." icon to the story.
I just finished reading the whole article as it was pointed out by a troll in another BSD story:
2 28205&mode=thread&tid=122&tid=126&tid=172&tid=185& tid=190&threshold=-1#7182480
http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/10/1
Coincidence?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Recently my business partner and I moved to an office, we were getting enough business, so I decided that I'd DL the latest FreeBSD ISO's and formatted over my Linux drive with FreeBSD 5-Current. Gee, with KDE 3 and everything, I couldn't notice any whopping difference. The OSS desktop community doesn't cater to FreeBSD as FreeBSD proably still has its place on my Racks as a server, but when we hire a secetary, looks like she will get the FreeBSD tower with Openoffice instead of Linux.
Biggest thing I think, is that FreeBSD still has the old text based installer, but its not as ass backwards as say 2.2 or 3.4. For most noob's the YaST in SuSE and whatever it is on RH is very pleasing and better to use. Plus Linux gets support for the latest and greatest in hardware with drivers, etc.
But if your just looking for a nice, stable, OS, you can't loose with either FreeBSD or Linux. Especially if you use Gnome or KDE. Looks the same, and proably 99.95% of the people would never know.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
It's amazing what passes for satire now-a-days
Basically, he makes a good point; XP doesn't come with software that Linux has, for free. You have to buy/download everything you want, which is a PITA. IF you do not want to pay for things that are available for free on linux, XP is not very attractive. If you have no problem shelling out dough, then this article is not for you.
Who is the GNU Project that decided what someone else's creation and ongoing project should be called? Was it in their License?
I can't say I've noticed that Word documents look the same on different installations. It seems to be an undocumented feature that all documents thus created will appear utterly different on each machine on which they are viewed.
It's very tiresome, and one of the things that I use as justification for sending articles as PDF files but with a .txt alternative.
It's called the 'lollipop' user interface.
Lusers seem to really love the way it hogs monitor real-estate with big fat curvy textures, while anyone who actually wants to get work done will generally switch to the 'windows 2000' look and feel as soon as they find the option.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
FreeBSD also has packages, which are a lot like .deb packages.
Admittedly I like apt too. If I had to choose between Debian or FreeBSD, I'd jump off a bridge from madness... Actually, I'd pick Debian for the workstation, and FreeBSD for the server, but this is a personal preference.
Debian is great, great as a server. I've been the admin for a tonne of RedHat (...) boxes, and a cluster of FreeBSD boxes, and I used to preach the merits of FreeBSD over RedHat. With Debian though, that argument gets a lot harder, and you have to start looking really low level, like comparing the kernels, and packages, and core teams, and other crazy stuff.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Aside from the really obvious massive bias that Roblimo has, he's completely anti-Windows even before he starts, lets rebut a few points:
(Note: I'm defending Windows in the interests of fairness. I am in fact a Macintosh user.)
1. mIRC does not blink "Your evaluation time is up", it's just a registration reminder. In fact, you can use it forever without registering, although this is morally and legally questionable, it never stops working.
2. He couldn't work out how to add a new network to mIRC in two weeks? I honestly do not believe him. He's either lying, not trying, or really, really dumb.
3. "I have heard that over 90% of all Web-connected people in the world use this browser, but I find this hard to believe." You do? No, of course you don't. You're just trolling. (Although the point about Mozilla being superior is well taken. It is.)
4. "My copy of Windows XP Pro seems to have a program included with it called 'Windows Messenger' that, as far as I can tell, is some sort of ad delivery mechanism." It was at this point that I realised this was not a genuine attempt to learn Windows, it's mostly a giant Windows flame-fest.
Even the sarcastic comment about Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V at the top is rendered utterly pointless by the end of the story, where he admits that in fact it's simply what you're used to.
What a waste of time that article was.
helo is tihs teh famuos linucks ghey cummonity becasue i wanna to joihn u.
p . s . : i luv u all!
> According the Linux's own creater, the system is accurately called Linux.
No, according to Linux's own creater, the KERNEL is accurately called Linux.
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
I mean, it may be bad if more consumers don't use linux, because not as many commercial apps will be released for it. Then again, it's also good. It keeps the idiots away.
"What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons"
In Windows you can right click copy right click paste. Fast and simple
" virtually ordered me to download a series of patches. I did so, but it wasn't like a SuSE update where you see every patch available and can say "yes" or "no" to each one if you like."
I have never been forced to update in Windows. When I run windows update it lets me select what I want to update by simply adding or removing from the list and then I can review that list and apply the updates.
" It doesn't have the tabbed browser feature that makes work-related research (and pleasure reading) such a pleasure in Mozilla"
If you are going to run StarOffice isntead of MS Office then you can just as easily install mozilla on Windows. It runs just as fast on windows and looks better without having to install additional fonts.
I could continue but these jumped out at me right away and its time for me to go to lunch.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I've never used Free or NetBSD. In fact, I'd not used the BSDs at all (apart from SunOS 4.x which is BSD-derived) until recently. I've been using Linux since January 1992.
/proc filesystem and 'killall '. Also, the ability to run User Mode Linux (or in this case, it'd be User Mode OpenBSD).
What I felt about OpenBSD? Having heard of OpenBSD's security reputation, and the goodness of 'pf', I wanted to evaluate it to replace a CheckPoint FireWall 1 system (expensive software rental that MS can only dream of). I had already determined that OpenBSD will do all the things we currently do with CheckPoint.
Installation - it felt like installing SLS or Slackware back in 1994. Now that's not all negative - I had OpenBSD installed and ready in minutes and all off a single CD. Deciding to investigate further features of OpenBSD, I started doing a desktop install - put X on first (and got X and fvwm95 - I'd forgotten how fast X is with a simple UI). I then decided to install KDE from ports as I was missing Konqueror too much.
Evaluation: Ports is nice, but apt-get is better.
KDE works pretty much like it does under Linux.
Compiling stuff from source seems to all work the same way. Mostly you can find it in ports, but I've built a few other things too.
Things I miss: Other than Debian's apt, I really miss the
However, for the real eval, I was mostly looking at pf and altq.
I think OpenBSD shines here. The syntax of pf rules in pf.conf is far clearer than Linux iptables. Also, altq (for queuing and traffic control) has much easier syntax than the Linux equivalent. I don't have to go diving for the FAQ - the manual page for pf.conf is clear, concise and understandable and makes constructing the pf.conf rules file a piece of cake.
Generally, I'm impressed with OpenBSD, particularly having a compact default install which is very useful if you want something as a firewall or a server. Although I will stick with Linux (Debian for servers, RedHat for desktops), for firewalling, my future installations will be OpenBSD due to the ease of use and power of pf and altq.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
First, ctrl-c and ctrl-v are not the only ways to copy and paste. You can use the menu at the top of most programs or right click with the mouse.
Second, Windows Update most certainly does tell you which patches it wants to install, what they do, with the option of unselecting any of them.
If you want to add new programs to the windows taskbar panel, just drag and drop them!
If you want to see a calendar, just double click the clock in the lower right hand corner!
I've watched Windows evolve from 1.0 and I've gotten a pretty good feel for the things about it that I don't like and that they're not going to fix. The assorted pop-ups and fluff (Like Clippy) came after the majority of my Windows use, but I still have to use the OS from time to time. With cygwin it's almost tolerable but the non-OSS software reminds me of an overenthusiastic puppy that keeps trying to figure out which way you're going to go and getting under your feet. I don't want my applications to try to figure out what I'm trying to do. I know what I'm trying to do. I want my applications to provide me some tools to do that and then stay the hell out of my way.
If Microsoft can ever do that better than Linux, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat, but they're not making their operating system for me. It's quite obvious that they don't like developers who aren't under their thumb. Their software is like Disneyland, fine as long as you stay within their carefully scripted domain. Their software is like Disneyland and I'm trying to climb Everest. Everest does not fit in Disneyland.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you take a standard Linux distribution, and list out all the packages
there, you will find a fair amount of GNU software, agreed.
However, you will find a *MUCH* larger number of packages that are GPL'd,
but which do not appear in the list of GNU projects/software. And this
list of non-GNU software is *far* longer than the GNU content.
Now how does one go about being fair?
By calling it "GNU/Linux", you are giving credit to GNU, which *is* a part
contributor to the distribution, but by no stretch of imagination the
*only* (or even the largest) one.
Maybe you'll read this at some point, so...I'm sorry, Rob, but that article was a complete waste of time.
....
You spend almost 2000 words going over every single problem you can find, and spend 300 words in a couple paragraphs giving a lukewarm appraisal of "Some nice things about Windows XP"- most of which seems spent pondering how Windows has better apps than Linux in some areas, but you don't see a need to use (or pay for) any of them.
And then, you dive right back into the bashing, coming up with some rather innane things you say are missing compared to KDE, like this:
When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people.
Seriously, either you're just an idiot, or you're pretending just for the sake of finding more negativity.
Try double-clicking on the clock to bring up a calendar, Rob. I know that's an advanced super-geek technique, but maybe you can pull it off.
Anyway, I hope you can see where this is all trying to go. If you're going to do a test-run review of another product, be objective. Don't turn the whole damn thing into a bitch-fest, that helps nobody.
It almost seemed like you were scared someone might actually want to use Windows instead of Linux, and you dragged out every horrible flaw you could think of.
That's all i've got for now, so flame away.
The only thing I've got to comment here is that
Windows XP SUCKS BIGTIME! It's the crappiest
piece of shit ever released into the public and
I wish everyone using it would be SLAUGHTERED.
Yack! Disgusting!
You completely missed the point. This is a parody of the ``reviews'' of Linux whose basic premise is that: ``it's not Windows, and all the Windows software I like is different on it.'' Are they drivel? More so than this article, which can at least claim to be parody, and thus has some merit.
See what I've been reading.
That bit about how easy it is to install wireless cards? Bullshit, linux-compatible or not, if you've got the wrong distribution. And even when you do, it might break: I've just managed to apt-get-upgrade my way out of a working wireless setup, and it's going to take a more lot of my precious time to wallow through bash scripts and config files to find out what's wrong than an XP driver reinstall would. Windows users have problems with software installing itself when you don't ask for it? Hey, look, RedHat will install SendMail, Cups and a stack of other stuff even when you specifically tell it not to.
If you're willing to download some software to make your XPerience a bit better, get TweakUI, turn off the popups and leave it be. It'll take five minutes, and you're done, forever. Star Office runs well on windows? Woo. Whoopee - try using MS Office for a bit. It's only about a billion times better. Windows doesn't come with that product because it is good enough to sell: in comparsion, Star Office is clearly only good enough to give away. I run Linux exclusively, and you know what? It sucks. I don't know if you've been informed, but it really does. Just a few weeks, ago, Keith Packard made it possible to change the resolution and color depth of X-windows without actually restarting the server. I've been able to do that in every other UI I've used since approximately tbe bronze age. Christ, it's only recently that I've been able to eject a CD by pressing the button, and wasn't that a breath of fresh air.
Mod this whatever you like, I could not possibly care less. Here's the news: this kind of blind, patronising zealotry exists so that the zealots can feel superior, and maybe chortle amongst themselves. It's for losers, in other words.
Mike Hoye
Yes, if you like watching a blank screen.
I just read that Rob Limo article and basically he is whining that it is different than what he is used to. Big deal - anyone switching experiences this. He complains about things that can be changed easily in the control panels - much like Linux, there are multiple ways to do things.
Then he complains that his commericial OS has commerical software that requires money to use. Right.
I have used Linux since 1996 and back then I had more free time and enjoyed toying with things and then feeling that I was somehow better than others that hadn't figured out how to do the same thing.
Since then, I now do things on my computer that actually matter to other people that give me money - meaning I'm less concerned about knowing what is going on and I simply want to be able to do something quickly and easily and be done with it.
Linux has areas where this is possible - but for day to day things for me, Windows is setup more easily for that (banging out a resume and sending that via e-mail, ftping 50 files via a GUI, checking 5 different e-mail accounts with a GUI and then sending attachments out, ssh into a server, remote desktop into another, etc).
All things that I very much *can* do on Linux, but I can personally do more easily and quickly with less headaches on Windows.
On a side note, I have had a number of Linux servers in my apartment running in a cluster for distributed analysis comoputing - I had to shut that down and sell it when I moved here (Bermuda) since the cost of computing is much higher here.
I have retained my Windows laptop (HP) and it is now dying. I use it to program on and ssh into my servers in the States (which run FreeBSD).
I have decided to get a new laptop - I ordered a new Aluminum 15" PowerBook which I should have by early November.
I have long hated Macs, but they have since moved away from the things I don't like and closer to the things I do like (FreeBSD).
In the end, I don't expect to love the thing the first week or even month that I use it. The menus will be slightly different, and it will do things that I won't initially know where the control panels are for it - but I'm not going to write it off and immediately put YellowDog Linux on it.
I'm going to give it a shot for about a year - if I still can't stand it, then I'll go Linux on it.
I'm interested in the supposed reliability of the PowerBook hardware and therefore I have the option of another OS.
I find it amusing when people make the switch to any platform and immediately hate it - duh - it is change. Humans are resistant to change by nature.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
You're a dyslexic AOLer! Holy fuck retarded people are funny!
Don't get me wrong, Red Hat is great and their enterprise editions are probably more stable. BUT, in the office we want the servers as stable as can be, and so there is BSD. I'm downloading FreeBSD 5.1 now, and if I like it, I may stick with it.
Linux has a way to go yet. Until there is more stability and conformity on certain issues, and the average user doesn't have to break out the command line and recompile the kernel to get something working... THEN Linux will rule the desktop AND the server.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I'm not by any means a Windows weenie, but this article strikes me as pretty superficial and written with a pretty bad case of "whine about windows". It's seems like its just asking for people to argue with him, not actually saying much that is important. I know my first reaction, even though I'm a Mac OS X guy who detests windows, was "hey, thats not true" or "you can too do that"... which doesn't make me think windows users will respond any better. Anyway, I have a hard time with anyone who tries to make Linux into an "easy to use OS" by writing articles about it in that light. Lets face it, linux may in some cases be more intuitive and logical, but in the long run it is more of a pain in the ass... some people enjoy that though and thats ok.
->Ben
P.S. and personally I really like the deterministic qualities of command-c/command-v copy/paste operations. In linux I'm always having to go and delete something I accidentally pasted. And I like being able to paste something a long time after I've copied it which I can never do in linux.
I overestimated Roblimo's intelligence. He's frickin' dumb as hell.
The bottom panel on my KDE desktop is filled with icons for my 'daily use' applications. No matter how covered my screen is with applications windows (and it is almost always fully covered), I can click on a panel icon and open a new app. I haven't figured out how to put app icons on the Windows bottom panel. I don't even know if it can be done. Perhaps it can only be done by smart Windows geeks, but not by simple-minded Linux people like me.
Have you tried dragging and dropping the icon for the app from the start menu into the taskbar? *gasp* How about using some context sensitive menus, they're very nice.
Also, does he not know about the Firebird? I'm a dual boot XPpro/Gentoo guy. But I use the same general software in both OSs. Firebird, Thunderbird, gaim, cygwin, winamp2/xmms, gimp, openoffice.
Which OS I'm in doesn't really matter. But when I need to play a game, if I'm in linux I restart. And if I need to code a cs project, and I'm in windows I restart. Other than that I use whichever os my pc is in, in order to minimize restarting. If you avoid MS software (besides of course the OS itself, and the powertoys) Windows doesn't suck that bad.
I would also like to note that he somehow thinks that installing any software in linux is as easy or easier than in windows. Double clicking on an icon, then clicking ok is infinitely easier than even the amazing apt-get or emerge will ever be. Simply because you have to know beforehand the command and the name of the software and such. With windows you just click on the picture. The necessity of the user to know a piece of information without any prompting makes it really really hard. But, for smart people who know what they're doing it makes it really really easy. So yeah, linux stuff is just as easy as windows stuff, after you give someone an hour lecture on all the commands and such. A monkey can use windows. Hell, a newborn baby can use windows. They'll never be efficient as the linux guy, but in order to be that efficient they have to have a higher level of intelligence and learning. Something most people can't achieve. Lack of brain capacity and such.
Damn, I made a post that is too long again. Shit.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I am quite sure I will be moderated into chilly oblivion for this, but, ow. I hate to say it, but this is journalism so yellow that I think Rob needs a liver function test - his jaundice is showing.
Problems using the keyboard? Want to use the mouse instead? Wow - it's as if the keyboard is no longer good enough for cut and paste. Of course, Windows gives you that option of using the mouse. If anything slows me down, it's using the mouse, not the keyboard.
Banging on mIRC, well, who doesn't hate that program? Trying to use a chat interface that is only slightly less painful than telnetting directly to port 6666 and somehow painting Microsoft Windows with it does not seem like a balanced comparison. Hell, there's even CLI versions of ircii ported to Win32 if you want them - I know of two.
The reason the suits push Outlook and Exchange as a package is not Outlook Express and email - it's all of the little featurey things they so adore ... task lists, contacts, notes, things that give business people some kind of meaning to their lives, aside from stealing staplers. Hence, your average email client doesn't really fill those needs.
Can't find the clock? Weird - it's right in the corner - when I have trained a seventy year old woman to look for, well, text to actually read and to click on, I'm pretty sure Rob can do that.
Acting like there is somehow a bare handful of users who must use Windows-only programs is, well, naive. A lot of businesses have third party software that is tied to Windows, sad but true.
Don't like Notepad? Not featurey enough? Well, when I want to feel like Mister Fancypants, I find TextPad a pretty nice program.
That little bit of faux sagacious advice about looking for Linux-compatible hardware is cute, but a Mac comparison is silly. Be honest - most generic PC hardware manufacturers make Windows compatibility a number one priority. Oh, then Windows 98. And Windows ME. Linux priority number? How about FreeBSD? Well, that number might take two bytes to store it.
Want to complain about patches? Fine ... let's teach Sally the Secretary to recompile the kernel. I can see that happening REAL SOON NOW.
FUD, in either direction, doesn't do anyone any favors nor is it good journalism.
in the one about switching from linux to windows .It is seriously biased, with untrue statements
1. you CAN see what Windows Update installs (and author states the opposite)
2. "except for the fact that most Linux distribution CDs include either StarOffice or Openffice so you don't need to go through this procedure at all" - yeah, right
openoffice, yes, but star - NO
3. not requiring to type root to install a program isn't a bad design decision increasing security risk, it's a stupidity of using pc logged in as administrator
4. Why the heck he didn't used xchat is beyond me...and he bitches after that about how bad mirc is (i don't use it, there ARE other, better clients)
5. tabs in ie
you can have it - just install myie2
besides you have something wchich some people prefer over tabs (serioulsy, they tried tabs, but like this better) - grouping of many windows in the taskbar, which is not only restricted to ie, but global
besides he confuses Explorer with Internet Explorer many times...
And you DON'T have to pay (as author states) for popup blockers (there are good free ones)
6. worms and virus problem in OE = no problem with FREE antivirus software (like AVG) & updates
and also, there ARE FREE spam filters, but the author states otherwise
7. Windows Messenger can be completely turned off without a problem
8. He couldn't figure out how to turn on quick launch bar? yeah, right
I undestand that the article is little cynical, but please, keep the facts right
Windows XP sucks because I don't know about the right-click context menu that makes it easy to copy/paste
Windows XP sucks because Staroffice is free.
Windows XP sucks because xchat is better than mirc
Windows XP sucks because Mozilla is better than IE.
Windows XP sucks because Mozilla is better than Outlook.
Windows XP sucks because there are a lot of games for XP and I'm not a gamer.
Oh My God
./configure; make , so you cna probably use Xchat if you like.
I started reading, expecting the standard power-user, Linux is so much cooler because I can do all this stuff thing. What do I find instead?
A Mouse User!
That was the most sickening, clueless thing I expected to see in a linux-to-windows conversion article. The first thing he complains about is no mouse-copy feature. Then he complains about no tabbed browsing like any newbie that doesn't know how to use alt-tab.
The thing that most annoyed me about Linux on any windowing system, or on any unix system really, is the lack of keyboard bindings once you start X. Many applications didn't have accelerators for the menu, alt-tab was a circular list, rather than a most recently used list, making it a pain to switch back and forth between two applications, and so on. Granted, last time I even tried living with a Linux-based GUI for long was Gnome one or two years ago, but that's what sent me back to windows.
About copy and paste: He obviously has never seen anyone editing with a keyboad before, select what you want (crtl-arrows to move by words, hold down shift what selecting) ctrl-c, move where you want it, ctrl-v. I find it annoying in Linux GUIs that highlighting auto-copies, because if I hold the mouse button in the wrong place, then suddently my copied text dissapears. Even if you use the mouse, you should have one hand on the keyboard anyway. I realize mouse-ctrl-C/ctrl-V is annoying for left handed users (those that use the left hand for the mouse anyway) but it's not that hard. It's not like you move both hands to the mouse anyway. If you don't like hitting control, then right-click, C copies and right-click P pastes on most apps.
As for tabbed browsing, alt-tab does very nicely and faster if you are willing to not use the mouse for switching. Opening a new window in IE is right-click N.
I'm not saying that windows is better than Linux, or anything stupid like that. Yes, the lack of popup control under IE is annoying, but the latest google toolber (which you did install, right?) kills popups for free. Yes, there are important features missing, like the lack of Spam control, but overall I'm happier with windows/cygwin than I ever was with Linux.
For people who absolutely need X, you can install cygwin (from cygwin.com, duh), which includes good stuff like GCC and such. Most apps, even X apps compile with a simple
(And what was up with that stupid jab at anyone being able to install software. If you could install it, you're running as administrator, and any linux user knows just how STUPID that is. Newer windows will ask you for an administrator password when you run a setup program and run it under the admin account just like unix)
Anyway, I stopped reading sometime after the IRC stuff. This looks just as bad as the standard windows-to-linux switching story where the writer didn't bother to set up the machine, or to learn to use it. I rate it -1 Flamebait/Troll.
when you complain that the calendar/clock won't pop up or that you can't get quickbar icons to appear on the start bar - it seems like you're just trying to fill space. XP has plenty of faults, many of which you pointed out very well.
So i can't imagine why trying to say these features don't exist (they certainly do) or are impossible to figure out (they aren't) is necessary.
i mean, maybe you'd like to see the quickstart bar enabled by default - that's fine say that. or that you'd like the calendar/clock to pop up on a single click (personally that would drive me insane); or you'd like systray applications to display their option menus with either a left or right mouse button click (so you could figure out how to turn off msn messenger). just say that instead.
i'd like to believe that you're not -actually- unable to figure out how to turn on the optional quick-start bar (an option that used to be on by default and is now off due to -common-user-request-), open the calendar/clock with the default double click or turn off messenger with a right click on the systray icon.
those nags just strike me as hollow and contrived, and are wholly unnecessary. Particularly when juxtaposed between legit gripes about IE,OE,no default productivity suite, etc.
i just don't see the point.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I'm sorry, but I read this article earlier and this guy kind of reminded me of my girlfriend's spoiled little brother picking any small thing to complain about because he's already decided to have a negative reaction to whatever is thrown his way. Ok, fine, it's not aesthetically pleasing to you, no problem, but are you really thinking of going home and crying to mommy about how big bad billy made you do "extra hand motions" in front of the whole gym class? Puh-leez
Fnord.
How can you read Roblimo's review and not notice his tongue firmly planted in cheek? That "article" read like every single "Windows to Linux: An Average User's Oddessey" article I've ever read. The point seems to be more that that door can swing both ways and people are creatures of habbit. There are a couple good chuckles in there. Laugh, it's ok.
"Watch your cornhole, bud."
I used Linux and BSD for years. Never used Windows past 3.0. OS/2 was awesome, but they didn't go anywhere.
So I switched to Mac OS X. It runs perfect. I can run my Linux apps just fine, I can run all the main stream apps just fine, and I can inter-op with just about anybody. So far I love it.
The only thing I don't love is that the good software costs so much money. How can anyone afford $500 for MS Office? I sure can't. Yet everyone and their dog uses it. They must all be stolen copies, or....hmm... Maybe that's how MS got so rich.
The above is not worth reading.
(The Wizard of Oz: If I Only Had...)
If the Hacker Gods beside me
I'd make fun of the internalsWould graciously abide me
And let my wish be heard:
That I would consider shaving
I might even start behaving
If I only had a Hurd
Of monolithic kernels
Old-fashioned and absurd
Since they don't put "Gnu" before it
I'd prefer to just ignore it
If I only had a Hurd
I could maybe have a relapse
And do some work on Emacs
To make a brave Gnu/Word
I would write some manifestos
Clad in flamewar-proof asbestos
If I only had a Hurd
----- :)
The text is in the public domain. No offense, honestly
So you really think it's up to the developer to chase you down and beg you for money? Perhaps you should simply pay for a program which you seem to use a lot, that's how things normally work in the real world. Nothing says "I appreciate what you're doing, keep up the good work" like a small stack of green.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
And if you do, please tell me you don't consider /etc, /usr/lib, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/X11/bin, /usr/X11/lib, /usr/local/lib, /var, etc., "organized."
>> They do now.
Come on...
Relatively few people read Slashdot (or have ever heard of it) and even fewer have read your summary.
> What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V"
...and it's easily replased with Mozilla. For free. Mozilla on Windows works extremely well (that's what I'm using right now).
...if you know how. :)
> copy/paste stuff?
I dunno, but at least I can copy from one program and paste into another without worring about which development platform each program was written in.
> it virtually ordered me to download a series
> of patches [and] told me nothing except that
> it was happening
90% of Windows users wouldn't give a flying whatever what those updates are actually changing. Just be glad that Microsoft DO fix SOME of their security holes, and that there's a servicable mechanism for delivering those patches.
> Next I decided to install an IRC program.
mIRC sucks, therefore Windows sucks? That's absurd.
> One program that does come with Windows XP
> Pro is a Web browser
> I'm telling you to dump Outlook for your own
> good. Really.
I use Outlook Express in combination with SpamPal. It's not the best arrangement ever, but it works perfectly well for me. My email database is currently close to 1 gigabyte, and it still runs very fast.
With the HTMLModfiy and Bayesian plug-ins, SpamPal removes all of the dodgy HTML as well as all the spam.
And yes, Outlook Express profiles are VERY easy to back up
> 'Windows Messenger'... is some sort of ad
> delivery mechanism
Not if you don't install any additional plug-ins. Sad but true: the dull but servicable WM beats the pants off some horridly abysmal alternatives.
> The bottom panel on my KDE desktop is filled
> with icons for my 'daily use' applications.
> I haven't figured out how to put app icons
> on the Windows bottom panel.
Right-click, Toolbars, Quick Launch.
> When I want to find out the day and date, or
> check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to
> clicking on my little KDE clock and having a
> calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do
> this in Windows, even though I've tried.
Double-click.
> This Windows thing about needing special
> drivers for every bit of hardware is irksome.
I'll take too many automatically installing drivers over too few hard-to-install drivers any day (yes, I'm looking at you, 3COM).
In short, Roblimo's exercise shows that if you put very little effort into learning about a computer platform, you're not going to get very far. How insightful.
Cheers
Simon
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Is it just me, or did almost everyone here miss an underlying truth in Roblimo's article? Yes it was satire, but at the same time it proves a very valid point. Easy of use is equivalent to what you're used to. He was used to highlighting text and pressing a mouse button to paste. He was not, however, accustomed to using the keyboard for that operation so it would seem strange and frustrating.
As for IE, if you only used Linux, you'd know nothing about IE. You'd expect it to have the nicities that Linux browsers have (tabbed windows, popup blocking, etc), but it doesn't. Taken in the context of a person who is used to Linux, I think this article is pretty thought provoking. Everyone says windows is easier to use than Linux, but that's bunk. Windows is more well known, and that's it. I have used Linux for years (started in windows of course), and windows now annoys the piss out of me because the things I am used to in Linux are not available in windows. Not to mention the time I went web surfing with a browser other than Mozilla recently. Without popup blocking, the web is practically useless nowadays. I hadn't noticed this with Mozilla.
I'd like to see a non-satirical article written on this topic. A person who isn't a geek but is used to running linux for years switch to windows and see their review. I'd be willing to bet they complain as much as the windows users who review linux. You get used to the way an OS works and that's what you know. It has nothing to do with an OS being more "intuitive". At this stage, I'd say Linux and windows are about equal in terms of usability. It just all depends on what you're used to.
KhyronI'll readily admit that I'm an OS junkie. I have a 1.4ghz workstation, a 233mhz server, and a 500mhz server which all have to endure multiple formats while I try different OS's out. The servers have gone from being Windows2000 Advanced Server to FreeBSD to Mandrake to Debian to Solaris to everything else out there on the market. My workstation has bounced between XP, Windows2000 Pro, and Mandrake.
Let tackle the servers first:
The 233 server was running FreeBSD and the 500 was running Mandrake until just recently when all of the openssl and openssh vulenrabilities started coming out. I go to update the Mandrake server and do urpmi.update -a and urpmi --auto-select and its patched. I got to update the FreeBSD server and spend about an hour trying to figure out how the hell to do it. Ok, slight problem there. There's probably some easy way to do it that I'm completely missing, but oh well. So that server's Mandrake again. If I can't find easy to read instructions on the FreeBSD site about how to update it, I'm not gonna mess with it. Enough about that. Lets move onto the workstation:
The workstation is an AMD1.4ghz with 1gb of ram and 500gb of hard drive space. It has a Geforce2 MMX400 and a Soundblaster Live card. I was getting tired of all of the windows garbage and thought I'd try running Linux on it. Naturally, I chose Mandrake. The install went ok except that the soundcard didn't work correctly. It detected the correct card, but was using the wrong driver for it. Changed that, no big deal. Now the problem lies in that I can't play any of my games, use photoshop, forte agent, etc. Ok, maybe installing mandrake wasn't such a hot idea. Let's goto XP. Install is a breeze etc, the only problem is that XP is insane. I have a lot of different folders that I was explorer to remember the view settings for...the folder is a list, this one is thumbnails, etc. Nope, that was too much for it. It decided that random folders should just be tiles, or large icons, or thumbnails where they shouldn't be, etc. Annoying. So, now its Windows2000 Pro again. As much as I like linux for my servers, etc...its just not very good as a desktop OS. Mainly this is the software vendors fault for not releasing linux compatible stuff, I know...but wishing it existed doesn't make it any easier to load photoshop in Linux, so I have to stick to windows.
Or maybe now is the time to get a nice Mac.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
He cant figure out how to bring up the calendar by clicking on the time in windows? Ever hear of "Double click"? Also, he can't figure out how to add quicklaunch buttons to the taskbar? Right click > unlock taskbar. Then drag icons. Then right click and lock it again. Man, This guy isn't even trying.
Man, I don't even think Linux fanboys would have found any of that funny. And it had to be merely an attempt at satire, because no one could be that stupid.
Boring anti-MS drivel about IE lacking tabbed browsers and a builtin pop-up blocker. I don't like CTL-C/CTL-V! I'm a 'tard and can't find the calendar or drag a icon to my taskbar!
Silly little writer. Very poor work.
The user is clearly looking for problems since using the OS is not exactly the way it was in Linux. All of the so called problems are easily fixed in Windows. Copy / Paste options are available in Logitech and Microsoft Mouse software so that you can have one hand access to that feature rather than using the default keyboard combinations.
Mozilla and OpenOffice.org are easily downloadable and install quickly. Sure IE and Outlook Express are not that best, so it is easy to download and install something else.
The difference is that Windows will require people to download third party software for special options. There are millions of programs, so it is easy to find any feature to add to the OS. Windows is proprietary sofware from Microsoft, so they will never bundle an OpenOffice.org or Mozilla.
The best third party software is called Drive Image by Powerquest. It allows you to do a perfect installation, and capture that on a CD ROM. It secures users from Hard Drive failure, Viruses and Trojans by allowing users to revert to that installation and configuration.
Miranda, Mozilla, and Trillian lite do IRC for FREE.
Exploring the third party software is important for any OS.
Reading through all the comments, you'd almost think the Slashdot crowd _liked_ XP.
(or it's a mark of how really, really off kilter the XP vs Linux article was...)
My faith in the good sense of slashdotters has been restored.
(well, sorta)
sorry, big rant coming up!!
/viagra comments?
"I'm sure there's an answer to this question, and it's probably, "Because my moron boss runs Microsoft Exchange servers and we have to use Outlook with them." Fine. But just because your boss is a moron doesn't mean you need to be one at home. Unless you have a tiny penis and/or breasts, want to look at lots of porn, need a new mortgage to finance Viagra purchases, and love to help Nigerians (and others) con you out of your hard-earned, you should get rid of Outlook or Outlook Express NOW and get a sensible email program, hopefully one like Mozilla that has easy-to-configure spam filtering built in. "
firstly, what was the need for the penis/tits/porn
secondly, what's with calling a boss stupid because they use exchange? i'm sorry, but i've been a dual linux (home) and windows (work) user since 1997 and there is no open source (ie. free - because Rob has to have everything for free) groupware solution that comes close to MS Exchange for sharing calendars ( scheduling meetings with others). we work, like many large corporates do, in a multi-site environment where we need to schedule conference calls across both locations and time zones. i know there are a number of web-based solutions such as TWIG that can do this sort of thing. but NOTHING compares to the user experience of Exchange/Outlook for this sort of thing. (PS. Kudos to Ximian for building a fantatic email client with Exchange integration - now only if you can give us a server! oh wait, groupwise...)
i'm also quite curious about his whole "installation is easy" on linux. windows there is ONE way to do things, you download an installer, you double click it (if you have correct registry permission - so his point about root access is moot in a corporate policy-driven environment) and it installs. with later versions of RH (dunno about SUSE), sure you can do this with an RPM - but first you have to find the bloody RPM for the correct platform. then you have to choose what sort of RPM you want. static linked glibc blah blah blah. then you install the RPM and, where is your menu item? where is your desktop shortcut? the amount of times i have to create my own shortcuts in gnome for RPMs i've just installed! ARGH.
then there are TAR balls! now, if you want the latest and greatest, you have to use the TAR ball. case in point, i recently wanted to patch my SSHD owing to the most recently exploit. i has the stock standard out the box RH9 RPM. was there a patched RPM available for RH9 yet? no. so i had to get down the tar balls and make them myself. no problem for me - problem for the less advanced user. actually, wait, problem for me. my sshd didn't start correctly the next time!! luckily i had a screen session open to the box so i could make some changes to the config file. yeah, easy install process...
then there was this:
"The bottom panel on my KDE desktop is filled with icons for my 'daily use' applications. No matter how covered my screen is with applications windows (and it is almost always fully covered), I can click on a panel icon and open a new app. I haven't figured out how to put app icons on the Windows bottom panel. I don't even know if it can be done. Perhaps it can only be done by smart Windows geeks, but not by simple-minded Linux people like me. "
what, you couldn't drag and drop an icon from your start menu onto your quicklink bar?
and this:
"When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people. "
er, double click on your windows clock? i mean, come on - you couldn't figure that one out IN A WEEK?
basically this whole "review" is about a total linux advocate running something he hat
OK, I'm in a similar position - I haven't used windows since about '98. But Rob's first complaint is that it's difficult to copy and past in XP? Is this a joke?
I love Linux, and for all its virtues, the ability to copy and paste is not one of them. I can occasionally copy and paste text between applications in Linux (if, for example, they share the same windowing toolkit, the planets are aligned correctly, and I haven't forgotten my vitamin pill). But other media types? How about copying images, sounds, styled text, or icons? Forget it!
Again, I haven't used Windows in a long time, but it can't possibly be worse than Linux at copying and pasting.
I know on SD that Windows=Evil (as in Hell) but come on, can we get a little objectivity?
At first I thought it was an honest (if biased) Linux/WinXP comparison until I came to this:
...
"Silly little Linux features I've missed
When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people. "
Yikes! This is a "hidden" feature?! I guess the author has not mastered the art of the double-click because when I double-click on my clock, I get a calendar...
This article MUST be a spoof. C'mon, fess up somebody...
What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff?
Well, It's certainly handy when you don't want to paste a huge block of text everytime you SNEEZE.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Roblimo's "review" is just FUD, and we all hate FUD, right? Oh, so IE doesn't have tabs? There are about a hundred free add-ons that do; I'm using CrazyBrowser right now. It doesn't stop pop-ups? Again, there are plenty of free solutions available. OE doesn't filter spam? Ditto. The list just goes on and on. I use both Windows and Linux every day, and I find them about equally customizable without spending a dime on either one. If roblimo had invested 1% as much time investigating the availability of free add-ons for Windows as he has spent investigating free add-ons for Linux, just about every one of the "problems" he identifies would go away.
Sure, Windows could throw in everything but the kitchen sink, just like commercial Linux distros do, but you know what? They tried bundling stuff with the OS and a whole bunch of people bitched. They backed off because people like roblimo kept saying choice is good and bundling deprives users of choice. How quickly those very same people forget that when it comes to (for example) bundling GNOME/KDE or Mozilla or StarOffice with a commercial Linux distro. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I'm generally satisfied with what's available to me in Linux, but I recognize that others may not be, any more than they would be satisfied driving an old but reliable pickup truck instead of a low-slung, zoomy sports car with all kinds of fancy power accessories"
I'm sorry, because you can't figure out how to install thunderbird and mozilla or opera isn't my problem. When I start my XP box, it does what i want it to, when i want it to how I want it to.
Linux sucks for games.
Linux sucks for digital cameras and USB keys.
I spent 5 hours trying to figure out how to use my USB key under linux, eventually I said fuck it and put the data on a HD partition so that linux could figure out how to mount it. Windows on the other hand can figure this out in seconds. Maybe this means I'm losing cpu on looking for usb devices when there aren't any, but why would I care about this? My computer is still fast enough to run any 8 home applictions without slowing down by a wink.
Windows IS customisable, you just have to NOT be retarded, like the author.
Turning off messanger, IE, outlook is one fucking click away in the "set program access defaults", which a doped up chimp could find and figure out how to use.
The idea of having day to day programs on the task bar dates back to win 98. It's called the quicklaunch bar. you enable by clicking "show quick launch bar".
OoOoOOOOooO mysterious!!!
I hate you linux circle jerks. It's not that great, it's just trendy, so get over it.
This kind of nonsense is typical of PC trade press. You can't find a review of Linux in one of those things that don't do exactly this, except they are not as polite and spend less than an hour deciding free software sucks.
You might also note that Rob also pepered his review with legitimate complaints. Windoze security is a multibilion dollar shortcomming and the programs he complains about, IE, MS Messenger, and Outlook are the root of many problems. These are more serious than the anoyance of constant "update" and advetisment interuptions, but users don't see the security issues untill their computers are unusable or their ISP turns them off.
I know far more about windoze problems than I ever wanted to know, having spent the last month at a local computer retail store repairing Windoze boxes. No, XP is nowhere near as stable or usable as free software is. It is not even much of an improvement over Windoze98 or win2k. The driver issues have simply migrated to new hardware. Try setting up a new HP multifunciton printer on USB sometime! Older hardware is not supported well and breaks systems, newer hardware has bugs. "Security" is still non-existant and XP does crash after a little web use because the victim will be stuck with pounders, gator, and a host of poorly performing malware. The user will then load down the system with another host of AV programs, the best of which are AVG and spybot, that almost bring back "like new" perormance untill the user does a wipe an relaod and has to get all the "updates" again and waste more hours. But hey, if you've got the cash you can have a snappy local computer store fix your problems for you. The hell I worked in could turn you around in an hour if your problems were minor, a week for wipe and reload. There, you were only out $75 if you had your "original" software and no hardware problems. CompuUSA and other places take weeks just to look at your box and tell you you need a $250 wipe an reload.
The windows eXPerience is not a happy one. It's a life sucking chain of billboards leading to less and less performance from what should be considered outstanding hardware. Just how bad things had gotten was a shock.
My life under free software, though it took a little learning, has been much easier than that. Rob hits the nail on the head when he talks about free software being easier to obtain and use, especially for business customers who don't need or want a gaming machine or a video phones (still difficult for simple minded people like me, though the Quake II deb package works great). I've been windoze free at home for two or three years now and I know it takes less effort to do things and keep them running with free software.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This article is pure troll. There is very little usefull or helpfull information; and it's full of dry sarcastic humor. For once I shouldn't have RTFA. I've said it once, and I'm sure I'll say it a million more times, each OS has it's pro's and con's. No OS is perfect for all things and no OS will ever meet someones every desire/whim. People are fundimentaly way to picky. They learn things one way and are afraid/threatened by change; be it for the better or not. How this article ever got published is beyond me. Next thing we will see peoples anti-Microsoft /. posts being used for "informative" aticles. Sheesh!
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
is a service, you can turn it off easily, its the one called 'messenger' in your services manager. If you cant find that, your helpless. If you can, set the start up type to disabled and shut down the service. See wasnt that painless? I guess Google dosent work for him under windows, im surprised he didnt do an 'ask slashdot' about it.
I want 2D games back.
[Once again, the software download and install was as easy as I've come to expect from a modern Linux distribution.]
Bzzt. Wrong answer. Take off your Linux-colored glasses and try again.
I've got my dad's Windows computer at home repairing it after a few nasty viruses rendered his machine nearly useless. Rather than repeat this cycle every few months, I installed Mandrake 9.1 and I'm going to have him try it out. However, when installing the latest OpenOffice and Mozilla programs, I had to change the permissions on the installer files prior to proceeding. Fortunately I'm an OS X guy so I knew what to do but there is no way that should have to be done on a consumer system.
Other observations. The "Start" menu in both Gnome and KDE is a mess. Too much redundancy. I also placed shortcuts of Mozilla and Openoffice on his desktop. It would be nice if these had a nice pretty Mozilla or OpenOffice icon rather than some generic file icon.
Aside from that, I hope my experiment is a success and there is one more user that realizes computers don't have to break and it's actually Windows that sucks, not computing in general.
BTW, Roblimo. Your article sucked. Sorry, but your, I believe, attempt at sarcasm was pretty bad.
1) Drag mouse over text
2) Move cursor to new location
3) Click both buttons
4) Mutter "god damn it" when you realize that X cut/paste doesn't preserve font styles.
Roblimo doesn't need to give a sarcastic-toned list of points of why he hates Windows to show Linux in a good light. If he'd just stuck to simple facts he'd have a much better argument.
The things that annoy me most using Windows are:
1) Badly designed UI
2) Slower than my Linux install
3) few configuration options
4) Poor interactivity - often hard to do something in the foreground while something is compiling in the background, for example.
I find these problems on every windows box I've used.
This review had all the quality of an anti-Linux troll, only it was anti-Windows.
You're that hard up for tabbed browsing? Download Mozilla for Windows. You think Linux's "copy and paste" is superior? Losing the copy buffer with a slip of the mouse is not a good idea, IMHO. I'm not even going to comment on his Windows Update troll-baiting.
Any time a user goes from one GUI paradigm to another, there will be pain. If I tried to close a window on a Mac using Alt-F4, I'm going to be in for an unwelcomed surprize. That doesn't mean Macs are inferior, just different.
Lack of similar features, ease of installation and upgrading, basic and advanced user operations, etc. Those are what should go into a proper review.
Warning: mysql_select_db(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/tmp/mysql.sock' (111) in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 78
Warning: mysql_select_db(): A link to the server could not be established in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 78
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283
Going well then?
Maybe I read that wrong? Save your resume as a Microsoft Word Document in OpenOffice. Write a cover email in your mail client. Attach the document. Send. What was so hard about that?
Personally I send documents as PDFs or HTMLs because even when I use Microsoft Office I've never been able to make a document that always looks exactly the same on another person's MS Office installation.
All's true that is mistrusted
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
ctrl-c/ctrl-v (or cmd-c/cmd-v in my case on a Mac) is slow? Uh, OK. Whatever. What's slow in Windows is that there still is no consistency in supporting these keyboard shortcuts - many applications ludicrously don't support it. On the Mac it always works and I cmd-c/v nearly instantaneously. Anyway, if you really want it on your mouse you can buy a 3rd party mouse and they almost all support mapping buttons and/or cords to keypresses such as copy and paste so you can have your cake and eat it to. Mind you, I can't vouch for Windows in that regard
--- What?
For the past month or so, I've been toying with all three free BSDs (Net, Open, and Free), first within VMWare, then on a few small test machines. This was mainly to enlighten myself to a foreign OS, a fun diversion.
I liked FreeBSD a lot, so I converted my office wokstation (which was Solaris for 1 year, RH Linux for 3). I'm still getting used to some things, but I like it a lot. This machine is using 4.8-STABLE.
I have plans to convert my home machine eventually. I'll likely use 5.1 (or 5.2 when released) so I can use "pf" and VMWare.
I've never used Gentoo or Debian, though I've toyed with apt under Redhat. I thought it was pretty cool. However, ports under FreeBSD seems so much better. I can't quantify how or why, but it just "feels" more polished. Between "cvsup" and "portinstall/portupgrade", system maintenance is pure joy compared to the (Redhat) Linux method.
My only major turn-off will be needing to use Linux emulation for running VMWare (seems "unpure" to use binary emulation). I wish there was a more up-to-date binary packages repository than the packages tree on the freebsd.org site (the OpenOffice 1.1 build is a nightmare, thanks to Java licensing stuff, and to it being such a huge project), but running a source update on 99% of the ports I use isn't so bad. What good is "portupgrade -arRP" if 95% of the latest ports aren't in binary format?
Those rare, obscure programs I use which aren't in ports (the nutrition program "nut" is one) seem to compile fine manually. There are some linux-only things I'll miss. It seems that "dd_recover" (a rather robust recovery tool) is one such tool.
Overall, I'm sold. It's only a matter of time.
Method of processing duck feet
Are in every camp. NBD. Don't let the few color your view of us all.
Quack, quack.
sorry, make that IS a grade-A moron. Where's your 'any' key Rob? Where's your freakin 'any' key?!
So why this rubbish such as and other similar comments. The author is well aware of what a popup is, even if he hasn't seen them on his linux box for a while.
For me, this feigned ignorance just ruins any credibility the article has and makes its political slant even more obvious.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
i know you are being semi-sarcastic here, but I do feel I have to make a point. Most people are complaining that this "reviewer's" complaints are half-assed at best.
The points he makes that bother me the most are:
"I haven't figured out how to put app icons on the Windows bottom panel. I don't even know if it can be done." and "I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried."
What?? These things are mindlessly simple! He couldn't have tried! My MOM can do these things, and that is really saying something about their simplicity.
I think most people are bothered by statements such as these, and are interested in fair, logical arguments and discussions. In fact, this reviewer almost does a disservice to Linux by prompting such debate.
Your last "paragraph" certainly sounds like haiku.
perhaps that is your problem,
all my hardware worked with the defult drivers
in xp.
"First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff?"
-> allows you to REPLACE text. Lack of this in some X programs annoys me, having both is best
A blog I run for the wealth
What a bad article from a totally biased opinion. Roblimo's "horrible" windows XP experience would be about as much fun if I switched all over to linux. The thing he didn't want to point out is that both OS's can work for anyone if they put the time into it. My personal question is if Linux can be installed on 90% of the computer and recognize every modem, sound card, and video card as well as Windows does. I have no clue so its a question and not a troll.
:)
My experience on a SUN machine a couple years ago in college was not wonderful. I used it to program but when I downloaded an MP3 on my Sun work station, double clicked it, and nothing happened. WTF, same with movies. Someone pointed me to a mp3 player for the OS but I didn't know how to compile the code right.
My point is that both work if you know what you are doing. Roblimo's problems with IE are solved with a download of Opera or Avant (which provides tabs to IE if I am correct). I maybe get 1 spam a day with my outlook and none on my yahoo webmail account. I upgrade when MS puts out a patch and have never been hacked in the last decade even though I have a cable modem always on AND never used a firewall.
To each his own but since Windows XP doesn't crash like WinME I can only say I am happy to be a windows user. But I'm a gamer and need my fix
Another problem I noticed with Explorer is something called "popup ads."
Please don't argue with me about this... I'm telling you to dump Outlook for your own good. Really.
My copy of Windows XP Pro seems to have a program included with it called 'Windows Messenger' that, as far as I can tell, is some sort of ad delivery mechanism.
I'm generally satisfied with what's available to me in Linux, but I recognize that others may not be, any more than they would be satisfied driving an old but reliable pickup truck instead of a low-slung, zoomy sports car with all kinds of fancy power accessories.
Christ, what an asshole.
It's like putting all your white socks in one drawer, all your gray socks in another drawer, all your older socks with holes in them under your bed, and all your sports socks in the refrigerator. And randomly selected white, gray, older, and sports socks anywhere from a kitchen cupboard to the garage. So I've got /bin /usr/bin /usr/bin/X11 (or /usr/X11/bin, or /usr/X11R6/bin, or /usr/bin/X11R6, or maybe the X11 is symlinked to X11R6) /usr/local/bin /opt/bin (maybe)
.......... 2 hours pass and aha! It's not called imagemagick at all, there are 208942 different separate binaries for it and they're in some stupid place I would never have thought to look. I found them all, and I deleted them, but wait, I only deleted the BINARIES. NOW, where are all the config files? And what ELSE might imagemagick have scattered all over my drive? This is one reason the Unix fs hierarchy sucks for the average desktop system... there are many more.
And I've got a program I want to remove. I want to delete ImageMagick because I never use it. OK, let's have a look. "whereis imagemagick". No response. "find: imagemagick: No such file or directory." OK, this isn't working, I'll go to each directory and ls for it myself. Nope, can't find anything.
It's not even a joke, it's a rather poor attempt at delivering a political polemic via humor. Obviously Roblimo isn't the "gee, I'm just a simple linux user" he makes himself out to be, and the entire thing just comes off as deliberately disingenuous.
So what if other Linux reviewers didn't think Linux as a GUI environment worked very well? A lot of dyed-in-the-wool *x users* think desktops built on X are a bad joke, would it be any surprise that a reviewer used to Windows wouldn't come to at worst a critical conclusion?
i'd be interested to see what windows and linux fanboys think when they recieve formal training from some sort of professional certification program for the opposing os, not just them tooling around for a week.
this article was a giant troll. any asshole who cant figure out how to bring up a calander on xp pro has no business using a computer. just fucking double click on the god damn clock on the bottom right! fuck why are people so dumb?
Not with quotes like this:
When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people.
You... doubleclick the clock...
It seems that an article written in jest has gotten everyone riled up! He is just poking fun at all the "I, a Windows user, tried Linux for a $time_period" articles out there, so don't take it seriously. If anything, you can laugh about it when the next "I tried Linux" article comes out.
And to the author: Thanks for a great piece of satire!
TylerS
Could it be that Windows and IE only seem faster because you're running them on this new faster machine?
I suggest you dual boot Linux on this XP computer before making up your mind as to which is better.
Windows bashings aside (it is getting old) but the new found fashionability of 'Linux' bashing is pretty silly.
Can't think of one thing you can't do on Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP)? Let me give you a hand: Fire up Mplayer to watch any video you want. Interpolate with a large number of different machines. Secure your network. Remote X Session over ssh.
I'm just throwing out what's on the top of my head, but you get the point. 'Linux' isn't perfect, of course not. But it isn't less then Windows and has strengths that make a highly technical group very fond of it.
Linux bashers and Windows apologists are just as pointless as their Linux/BSD/Mac counterparts.
Quack, quack.
Aside from the really obvious massive bias that Roblimo has, he's completely anti-Windows even before he starts
It's a par-o-dy.
You're kidding, right? This is "/.", not "c:\" or "My Computer". If want massive bias go to microsoft.com and a thousand other sites. I for one want something to balance out that garbage. Slashdot is one of open source's premier mouthpieces. M$Windows apologists and astroturfers should go back to microsoft.com etc. where they belong.
This news story is turning out to be a really great way to spot the M$ astroturfers. ;)
It's funny you mentioned Word and compatability, since most Word versions aren't even compatable with *other* versions of word without borking some things up.
If you want to be able to have everyone see your document exactly the same way, you should be using TeX. With the rendering engine permanently frozen, TeX is vastly superior to anything else in terms of forwards and backwards compatable. Not only is it backwards comptable, but it will *always* be backwards compatable. Furthermore, it never crashes, and there hasn't been a bug found in it in years.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Rob's article was incredibly biased. His first complaint is about copying and pasting, which is simply a result of the fact he's used to the other method. No method is greater than the other.
Then he says Windows "ordered" him to download patches, and that it didn't tell him what they were or whether or not he could install them. This is COMPLETELY FALSE. Windows Update, whether in IE or in the system tray, allows you to view every patch. If it's the system tray app, it lets you uncheck any patch you don't want. If it's the website, you can click the button to remove it from installation.
Then he complains that Windows doesn't come with office productivity software, which is a little bizarre considering you know he'd be bitching about Microsoft and their monopolistic practice of including an office suite. They're damned either way.
He mentioned installing mIRC didn't require a root password, and goes on to mention spyware problems. Of course, his account is set up with administrator privileges, and if he was set to a limited account, he could prevent installation and so forth. The standard Slashdot argument against this is that installation should ask you to do this by default, but since we're dealing with RobLimo the Suse Linux user, you'd think that'd be the first thing he do anyway due to Linux experience with managing user accounts. But, of course, now it is a "security risk."
Then his complaints are with mIRC and his inability to uncheck the dialog box so it stops popping up. At this point, I stared at the screen with my jaw dropped. Was RobLimo purposely being stupid? I've used xchat and mIRC, and mIRC wins hands-down as an IRC client. Even if you don't like mIRC, it's so customizable you can create your own IRC client using its scripting capabilities. xchat is godawful, interface-wise and customizability-wise.
But, again, that has nothing to do with Windows. In fact, xchat for Windows works just fine (and retains the ugly-ass GTK widgets), so RobLimo should have stuck with it, but he needed something to complain about, right?
He rightfully complains about Internet Explorer, but then waits four hours before bothering to get Mozilla (Opera is the best one anyway, just not free). He just needed to bitch about Internet Explorer for a paragraph, when most Linux users switching to Windows wouldn't bother with IE to begin with. He's purposely dumbing down his using experience to complain about Windows.
He does the same for Outlook Express. Why would he use Outlook Express if he just downloaded Mozilla? Again, he's purposely dumbing down his using experience to have more complaints. His spam comments don't even affect me since I use Outlook 2003 which has great built-in junk mail filtering.
Windows Messenger is easy to disable from starting up. Especially for an advanced Linux user like RobLimo. Another biased complaint.
Apparently, RobLimo's only slowdown problem is CTRL-C and CTRL-V. Of course, for Windows users, those are incredibly fast shortcuts for them. I use them all the time. If this is all he can offer alongside pointless IE/OE bitching, there is no other point for his article than to be Windows flamebait. In fact, I find it amusing he complains about the copy/paste shortcuts and ignores the fact that Linux can barely copy/paste anything between apps. With Windows, it's almost sickening what you can play around with and copy between apps. But that never gets mentioned. In fact, there are no real positives mentioned.
RobLimo vaguely mentions "slowdowns" and "idle time" problems. Huh? Nice specifics, there. I've experienced weird little quirks in all Linux distributions as well. I chalked it up to cache flushes, swap space, whatever. Since RobLimo never, ever mentions what exactly he's talking about, we'll never know what he meant.
Then he goes on to mention "little specialty programs" that he would have to pay for on Windows, which, of course is false. There is tons of freeware for Windows,
"Sufferin' succotash."
Free software is NOT about getting something for nothing. It's about a community of users who help themselves and don't mind helping others when that help comes at no cost to themselves. No cost software that the average Windoze user sees is NOT free software. Trust comes from your distribution and your friends. I trust my friends and I trust Debian. I'm willing to pay people money for help getting my work done. While software may be free my labor and that of others is not. I do business with people I trust. That the costs are lower than being conned by Microsoft and other scum is demonstrable.
These are simple concepts that everyone already understands. It's basic business sense and it does not make people uncomfortable. Promote free software this way and people will trust you as well. Promote it as no cost and people will treat you like a drug dealer.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
right clicking and then moving down to past is just as slow as CTRL-V. Simply selecting the text to copy and middle-clicking to paste is a hell of a lot easier and faster.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"This Windows thing about needing special drivers for every bit of hardware is irksome. Setting up a wireless network card in Windows is tedious compared to Linux, where it's a 'click-click-click and you're done' thing. "
** What a f***in' MORON!
Microsoft has nothing to worry about...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If you are used to a system and you come across a new system, you try and use the same conventions on the new system. For example, I recently took a course in using the VIM word processor on gxentoo.org, and I found VIM easer to use than pico, but I kept trying to use
:(, the console didn't even use bash, so half the commands i tried didn't wank!
Fortunatley, most modern distros are very similar to windows by default, with the only noticeable difference that there is a Giant K where the start menu is supposed to be.
Im very GLAD that linux has a feature called "symbolic links", allows me to use new programs with the command line options I'm used to.
Gnome and KDE are both similar to each other, and I have no problem switching between them, but when I tried MacOS X at my local Pc World I failed miserably
I read Robin's tirade a couple days ago. What a piece of self-serving tripe. Advocacy is great, but Robin is proving herself to be a stark raving zeolot, without any consideration for truth or moderation. I used to respect her some years ago be for she let herself degenerate into mudflinging hysteria. But now I can't trust anything she says because her motives are suspect, and she is not above employing the same FUD tactics that she accuses others of, as this article reveals all to plainly.
As the old joke goes, it is a pile of excrement and none can abide the stench thereof.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
It's a par-o-dy.
;)
Funny, it's not April Fool's Day, and the article is posted on a legitimate news site with no signs that "It's a par-o-dy." anywhere.
Must be one, though, because that's the only way to explain his wildly slanted and inaccurate writing, though, right?
Slashdot is one of open source's premier mouthpieces.
And by posting such garbage as legitimate writing, they lower themselves another small step.
M$Windows apologists and astroturfers should go back to microsoft.com etc. where they belong.
This news story is turning out to be a really great way to spot the M$ astroturfers.
F@$% off. I like and use Windows XP, and yet I dual-boot RedHat 9 as well. What does that make me, eh?
Besides the fact that you might not WANT everything you highlight going into a clipboard buffer, there is a legitimate reason for that. Here is an example: Copy and paste a selection in one window into another selection in another window:
1) Ctrl-C window #1
2) select text in window #2
3) Ctrl-V window #2
You would not be able to do this with highlight-automatically-copies mode. You would have to highlight in one window go to the other, highlight in that window, go back (and hope that whatever toolkit/windowmanager/whatever kept both selections simultaneously), and then middle click somewhere and hope that the "somewhere" knew to put the clipboard into the selection in window #2.
Bullshit. Unless XP is vastly different than 2000 in this regard (that's rhetorical - it's not), you are given three choices 1) download and install automatically 2) download and prompt 3) don't do anything. Surely a linux guru can figure out how to configure this. Hint: there is a big fucking icon in the control panel.
Holy fucking shit! Software costs something! Give me a break. It is written by a shareware author who probably gets no significant revenue, and nobody pays for that stuff anyway. I happened to pay for it after a long time of freeloading because it WAS a decent app, and my $20 "registration" also happened to be going to a charity (in which case I was feeding starving kids, not programmers).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Your Mplayer example is a great example of why 'Linux' is a great alternative. Compile and install mplayer? Maybe, if you'd like the CVS or some special optimizations, then its great (powerful) to be able to simply download and compile the program. But if you just want to install it I'd suggest Apt-get or Urpmi/Rpmdrake, or if you want to go through all the trouble of a Windows user, just download the Rpm (binary installer) and install it that way.
You've skipped right over most of the real concerns and shown yourself to be at least a little unfamiliar with 'Linux'.
Quack, quack.
You Linux hippies should all die.. BSD is far superior to your fisher price OS.. Windows is even better than Linux.
Got an error message from the server, seems it may not last much longer. So here is the full text:
/var/log.
-- start --
Babe in the Woods: A Linux User Migrates to FreeBSD
By Ed Hurst
Special to Open for Business
October 09, 2003, 16:47:31 EDT
Most people know what GNU/Linux is, but fewer know about BSD and fewer still have actually used one of the major BSD variants (other than the highly customized Mac OS X). Ed Hurst, a writer and a long time GNU/Linux user, decided to give FreeBSD a try. Will Ed join the ranks of happy FreeBSD users? Read on to find out.
It's about having choices.
Some folks are better off being restricted in some ways. Give them too many choices and they won't make any at all. I'm not one of those people. When it comes to computer use, I want options. That's what drew me to Open Source in the first place. I have often eschewed safety for the sake of opportunity.
In a generous mood, you might say I qualify as a "power user" of Linux. Out of poverty, I was first drawn to Linux because it was free to obtain. I stayed for the freedom. My first experience was with RedHat 5.1, quickly followed by 5.2. It took a couple of attempts, but I got it installed and working properly. While the hobby aspect was a strong factor, it was the work I got done that made Linux a fixture in my life. I am a communicator; I write, speak in public, teach, etc. Critical inputs for my craft include surfing the Internet, where anyone can publish anything, and only the reader's discernment plays censor. Linux served as a most agreeable tool for my pursuits.
Of course, "the steep learning curve" was more than just a by-word. While I did indeed consider learning the inner workings, and even read a bit on coding, it only distracted me from the main task. I've learned to configure most things that matter in my work, and gained enough experience to find solutions a little faster nowadays.
Thus, I was not totally unprepared for the move to FreeBSD. I was advised Release 5.0 would be "rough around the edge" and it was true. Not in terms of glitches in the the software that installs on the machine, but in other ways. In that respect, FreeBSD is certainly no worse than any other OS I've used. What I was not told was that this is the bleeding-edge alpha grade release in BSD's terms.
The install scripts are probably the roughest part of my experience. One really _must_ read a thorough guide before attempting it. If you forget something, you may not get the chance to go back and correct it during the initial installation. If you try to go back and run the process again, you may get a surprise. When I went back to run sysinstall, it wiped a lot of config and log files. I had to add my user account back, and create the passwords for that and the root account. The locate database was wiped. I also found nothing but empty files in
There were other problems with the release, primarily broken packages. The Linux "emulator" is broken, and I never got any of my Linux apps to so much as install, never mind use them: Applix 5.0, any version of OpenOffice, WordPerfect 8.0, etc. The fix, as I understand it, is to recompile from patched sources. Considering it not all that important, I decided the Linux-compat sources were simply too large for my feeble dialup connection. Regarding this as a mere warm-up exercise, I decided to wait until I secured a better release of FreeBSD.
Other problems might be simply the nature of the BSDs. I noticed that my hardware was very properly detected, and the record in dmesg was shorter and actually easier to read than what I was used to in Linux. Conversely, precious little was configured automatically by comparison. I had to specifically tell the boot loader to grab the modules for my sound card. Even though my XF86Config file from SuSE worked rather well as a drop in, as did my entire TrueType fonts directory, it required some rather precise tweaking to get my MS Wheelmouse properly working.
'Linux' isn't Windows. But its an unfair comparison, it was never intended to be Windows. But I'm willing to be that your reffering to commercial support (Dreamweaver/etc). We all know commercial support under Linux is still pretty young. But if your using it (maybe with the Nvidia drivers and your Macromedia Flash plugins installed) you know this will continue to improve.
Quack, quack.
At least 50% of the pasting I do in Mac/Windows is over an existing selection.
1. Select text
2. Copy
3. Select other text
4. Paste
versus
1. Select Text
2. Press Delete a 100 times to get rid of the existing text
3. Try to paste, but nothing happens
4. Find out you lost your text selection.
5. Throw computer out window.
FreeBSD 5.x is clearly documented as being still "alpha-quality" and is certainly not for newcomers. 4.8-RELEASE (preferably with patches, since 4.9 is almost done) or 4.9-RELEASE (due in a week) would have been the proper platform for this new user.
I thought the article was going to be objective. I was wrong. The guy is either an "average Windows Moron" that happened to end up with linux installed by a friend, or he is stretching every little thing to make his preferences seem better either way this article was posted purely to drive up slashdot posts.
I run Win2000 at work and WinXP at home and a linux play computer. The only open source program that I use regularly is phoneix. The only real reason I use phoneix over IE6 is tabbed browsing. I've tried Open Office at work. At some takes it is much better than anything else, but it is just too slow starting and saving documents do compete at the moment with word.
This article shows how much FUD there is on both sides.
Why so much on specific tasks and applications and so little on the actual OS? BECAUSE THE COMPUTER IS A TOOL, AND PEOPLE WANT THEIR TOOLS TO WORK THE WAY THEY EXPECT THEM TO WORK! This is something folks on the Windows side have been saying for years. A Windows user who likes his Windows apps is a drone, but a Linux user who likes his Linux apps is a spokesman for his community?
So much trouble with copy/paste? Or maybe he was looking for trouble. The Linux way, as described is NOT "fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard." Fast and easy is keeping my hands on the keyboard and not reaching for the pointing device.
As others have noted, working the toolbar in XP--adding quick start icons, adding a calendar, add a link of all the items on my desktop--are easy, easy, easy, straight forward click-and-drag. "Perhaps it can only be done by smart Windows geeks, but not by simple-minded Linux people like me." Looks like FUD, quacks like FUD, must be FUD.
Next, Outlook Express. Well, yeah, OE is a peice of shit. First, Outlook and Outlook Express are 2 different apps. OE is not Outlook Light. Yes, blame MS marketing for making it easy to confuse the two. By the same token, are you telling me there are no half-assed, poorly documented open source apps for Linux? Should a Windows user judge Linux by the worst app available? No. So don't judge Windows by OE.
Speaking of apps, why all the bitching about what's included with Windows?? I thought you wanted choice. I thought you wanted freedom to innovate. The open source/free software community has been shitting itself for years over the inclusion of IE with Windows; imagine what would happen if they wanted to ship an office suite, too! (Yes, I know the issues with IE have to do with engineering and integration with the OS, not that it is just shipping with Windows.)
Then there is all the whining about having to pay for some apps. 1-there is plenty of free (as in beer) ware and share ware available for Windows. 2-Wait. Wasn't it all about Free not being the same as free, and open source not a threat to coders' livelyhood and IP and all that? More FUD I guess.
And all the bitching about IE. If you don't like IE, don't us it. There are plenty of other browsers out there. But you don't have to pay to block pop-ups. And no browser I've seen is truely standards compliant. IE, Moz, and Opera are close, but none are all the way there yet.
And what's the big deal with tabbed browsing? I have tabbed apps, and I really don't prefer them. I can alt-tab between windows quicker than I can reach for the mouse. I can't alt-tab between tabs inside an app. I can open up a whole row of links and move between them (I don't even have to click between them, but I could if I wanted to) and read one while the others load. If Roblimo spent 4 hours with IE and couldn't figure that out, why would I trust he'd be able to figure anything out? I don't think it's question of smarts, but a question of not trying or wanting Windows to work.
"I haven't had XP Pro crash on me all week in the old 'blue screen of death sense,'" but isn't what the anti-Windows folks are always going to? We still see posts on /. on poor folks forced to suffer through multiple BSODs each day in their draconian Windows workplaces. Gee, maybe that too is FUD? Windows (XP and 2000 at least) don't crash; bad operators crash Windows.
I'm not a huge MS supporter. I'm a right-tool-for-the-right-job kind of guy. I run Windows and Linux. Roblimo's article is only different from any Windows-to-Linux write-up I've read in that in this case, I couldn't help but feel the user wasn't trying to learn a new system but rather find as many things to complain about as possible.
Save your heart and sympathy; I don't need it.
A few comments about that:
Roblimo doesn't really want to switch. He just wants to complain. I bet he started the experiment and already knew Windows would suck. Well, in that case, you'd better not switch.
As a Windows and Linux user I find it amazing that his Windows seems to be so different from mine.
- I can review every update and say 'yes' and 'no'.
- I can use Ctrl-V,C very effectively; I don't know what Roblimo is doing with his left hand while he is copy-pasting using the mouse, but my left hand rests on the keyboard anyway.
- Why does he complain about the updates? According to his article his Windows has not been used for many months. If I didn't update my Linux box for a long time this would be similar
- Then his favourite IRC program is not available, so he installes some shareware. Everythig has to be free, otherwise it's worthless??? There are plenty of free IRC programs for Windows.
- Maybe the only thing I can agree with in this article is that IE cannot display pages in tabs. But again, I recall that IE 6 has automatic pop-up blocking, so which version did he try?
- He doesn't know what Windows Messenger is...what the f... was he smoking? Even the most remote UNIX guy must have heard about that. And if he's not able to use the options menu to disable the program...well, I don't know how he can use Linux then.
- He couldn't use the quicklaunch bar. Well, Windows has a learning curve, too. I remember that I fought quite hard when I added the first few icons to Linux' equivalent.
My mother could use Windows better after one week than Roblimo. This article is may be funny, but worthless.
"Yes, that's the way it works, and if you don't do the updates your computer keeps annoying you, so you have to do them even if they take hours like they sometimes do."
Didn't do that on my XP-ridden laptop, and it's not like that machine is up to date.
Onwards.
It seems Windows, unlike most commercial Linux distributions, doesn't come with office and other productivity software.
Everyone knows that windows doesn't come with office. Stop being so `I'm so innocently rah-tah'ing for linux'. It is embarrassing to the rest of us.
Explorer simply won't be ready for the desktop until it has [tabbed browsing].
Agreed and well-put. I hadn't thought of it quite like that before.
Apparently a lot of Web sites have these things and something related called "popunders" that also open browser windows you don't ask to open. Apparently many Explorer users dislike this feature so much that they are willing to pay for software to shut it off.
That disingenuous tone again; spare me. And there are freeware popup blockers available, fella. STFW. Gah, uninformed platform bashing.
I would like to have a better 'simple' graphics manipulation program for Linux than any I've tried so far.
Good lord yes. I need to do relatively straightforward graphics tasks frequently, and gimp and things like imagemagick are just overkill; I just wat to resize/crop/etc, not develop an alternate theory of the creation of the universe.
When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people.
Umm, you double click there. If possession of that factum makes one a super-geek, then I think, roblimo, that you are in the wrong field. Try selling encyclopaedias.
What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff?
Whatever you do, don't try comparing getting a task done with a mouse versus with a keyboard. Keyboards are generally faster when used exclusively, and as such there's nothing wrong with ctrl-c ctrl-v.
You can suggest a more intuitive/ergonomic keybinding, but it is just silly to bash the concept itself. Shame, fella.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Here are a couple of IE CSS bugs that cause massive problems on my web sites:
Try setting table width to 100% inside of a nested DIV tag. IE suddenly flushes your page layout out the window by expanding that nested TD to 100% of the browser window width -- regardless of how wide the DIV it's nested inside is! This blows away right-hand columns on my web site, and is extraordinarily annoying. You end up with a scrollbar on the bottom of the page to see the whole thing. If you try to work around this by doing some math and setting, for instance, width to 50%, well, now it looks OK in IE, but in every other browser on the planet that cell is suddenly 1/2 the width it's supposed to be.
Yeah, that's an incredibly obnoxious thing, and all my pages are XHTML. If you're designing your page, you have to avoid tables in nested DIVs due to IE's bugs in CSS.
OK, problem number two bites: if I set background-color in #main on a page, IE won't display any images inside DIVs. This can be worked around by turning off background-color in #main entirely, and IE will read the background-color of the first attribute and apply this to the whole page, but it's still obnoxious that I have to be careful where I set that attribute or else IE will randomly re-draw backgrounds overtop of images.
I freely admit, I'm a casual HTML coder. I know several programming languages, and have been a sysadmin for nine years, so my forte is back-end systems and not HTML. But even in my limited experience, these two have been obnoxious and painful, requiring hours of research to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it on my sites.
I make sure that my pages all validate as XHTML 1.0 and render correctly in Mozilla, IE, and Opera. The only causes I've ever had to break that validation is when something is screwed in IE and I have to work around it (like needing a wrap attribute, which is not valid XHTML, on a form input field or else IE goes buggy on it). IE mis-understanding CSS has caused me many hours of frustration due to its bugs.
As an amateur web developer, the statement "IE isn't so bad" is utterly false. IE is the worst. Period. Pages don't render pixel-perfect because it mis-handles font sizes as if they matter to the size of a div with a height attribute.
Mozilla and Opera do it right. Internet Explorer does not render pages "pixel perfect" without hours of tweaking to work around its problems with CSS. Yeah, you can design attractive sites that look perfect in all browsers, but at much, much, much more time expense for anything but very simple sites. And virtually all the extra time is spent accomodating IE's broken, buggy behavior.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
What a joke, this moron can't figure out what settings are on software, and then bitches about the default settings. PS if you are ever on XP linux zealots and your feeling lost. Download unixtools for windows go to the command prompt and what do you know it seems just like a unix box. I can grep;pipe;cat; and whatever the hell else my litlle myopic self needs. If your going to write a review at least try JACK ASS
Anybody who cannot start the calendar in windows by dbl clicking the time is an idiot..
If MS wasn't an evil empire, I would be able to use Windows with a 3rd party office suite, 3rd party browser, 3rd party compilers and so forth. This will, in turn, make Microsoft work hard to make their own applications attractive.
As it is the case, MS monopolistic practices ruined companies like Netscape and WordPerfect. True there is open source, but after a work day of programming I want pay some reasonable money for pre-debugged software rather than "contibuting".
I am a happy Apple user and even with 1% market share we have multiple office suites and multiple unique browsers (Safari vs Opera vs OmniWeb vs iCab vs Camino). Miricles would happen with 20% market share.
It's called Group Policy Editor. Look it up. If you couldn't find it, you're a danger to yourself and others.
must be the user then, because of my 5 windows boxes (3 Win 98, 1 2k, 1 XP) none of them have been compromised with a virus, malware or spyware, the Win98 boxes rarely crash, the XP & 2000 boxs have never crashed (and in the case of the 98 boxes, its usually a poorly programmed 3rd party software that crashes) and all of them perform exactly as I want them to.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I have to use Windows for some applications, that don't work with Wine. At first, I couldn't stand being in Windows. My biggest problem is having to find a icon of the file in a huge pile of icons, and sometime I had no idea which was the right file because they didn't list the extension.
At this point I wanted my command line back since I knew where the file was, and the name of it. Windows command window thing sucks, bigtime. I luckly have installed Cygwin to fix them problem. In fact, I've installed XFree86 w/WindowMaker in Windows.
If you're a *NIX trapped in Window, check out http://www.cygwin.com/
perl, gcc, vim, etc come with the install.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down.
Try this with your "quick" Linux way of doing it. Grab a URL into your clip board. Now, in your web browser, replace the URL in the address bar with the one you just copied. Not so quick now, eh?
Most software designers realize that the act of highlighting text may not be indicative of a will to copy that piece of text. I might just want to delete it, or paste something in its place. It is impossible to paste over in the standard X way of doing it. Thankfully, most modern apps keep a separate clipboard so that I can use the keys, too. But if I'm stuck with a lame system that automatically copies my text to the clipboard when I highlight it, I'm screwed.
A lot of what I read in this is, not surprisingly, the same sort of goofy stuff that I read about people trying to come to Linux from Windows. Rather than think about why something works the way it does, they automatically assume it's stupid because it's not exactly the way they've always done it.
Windows users think Macs are lame because they have only one mouse button. Unix users think both are lame because they don't have three buttons. And yet, oddly, people are able to accomplish tasks on all three.
And I hate to say it, but surely there's a free irc client for Windows. Hell, even Microsoft used to have one (comic chat) that passed as a pretty good irc client (you could disable the comic characters).
Do you have ESP?
of the whole article was when he tried to tell me that using a mouse is faster than using the keyboard. Cut and paste in windows is vastly superior to that of linux systems running X. Not only is it unified, it works everywhere. In X, maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't. Some applications don't take kindly to the clipboard, while others tend to try to impliment their own method. I don't care what anyone says, linux isn't all that hot as a desktop system. Like the author complains about windows, it's the little things that make it awful.
In fact, most hardcore linux/unix users i know do everything they can to get away from using their mouse. Guess this guy doesn't use vi/vim.
While we're on the subject of mice, why do i *STILL* have to hack in support for my wheelmouse manually in the conf? Are we not at the point yet where X can detect this automaticly? Making buttons 4 and 5 on my mouse is a pain as well.
The author also fails to mention that you are not strapped to applications like IE and Outlook, they can be replaced, or simply not used. I mean, what is wrong with using firebird and thunderbird? IMHO this is strong evidence that he didn't really explore his options much. The desktop can be replaced as well, with any one of dozens of explorer replacements. Hell, you can even get blackbox for windows or another favorite, geoshell - there are many more if you look. He also failed to mention that installing programs is almost always hassle free, while with linux you're into a horrid mess of library dependancies, un-unified packaging formats, and software that doesn't compile for whatever reason. If windows is so inferior, why is it past all this?
To me, linux users are just like windows users who swore by the 9x series, you're just used to the way things are, and you're past the point of objective thinking. Windows 9x users didn't like how their machines crashed all the time, they just accepted it. Linux users don't admit all the hassles that linux causes them, because they are used to it. When put on the defensive, most people will argue in favour of whatever they're using.
I've used both as primary operating systems before, and hands down, windows is much easier to use, the software is easier to install, and most times, you don't have to follow some cryptic manpage or readme that was designed for other programmers to understand it. My theory is Linux fails not because it's inferior, but because it's written by programmers for programmers. This tends to make it confusing, awkward and just plain hard to use, let alone set up. Just try to set up a pppoe or dialup connection, it's hours of frustrating fun if your distrobution doesn't include something to help you out.
I apologise if i come across sounding like a troll, but this guy's article is laughable, at best. It just goes to show you that you have as much chance of locating an unbiased article about windows on newsforge.com as you do finding an unbiased article about linux on microsoft.com.
I suppose the bright side of the argument is that he was not 100% negative about windows like most linux zealots, but make no mistake, this guy is a zealot. From the very start, he's setting this up to be a negative review.
In the end, i use windows. I want to work, get paid, and live a happy life, not wade through an operating system that tries to make my life hard at every turn.
His article was nothing more than an attempt to prove an already developed conclusion and he did little or nothing to hide his bias. What the fuck was his problem with ctrl-c and ctrl-v? It's consistent across multiple apps as is ctrl-x (cut). But if he wants to play the mouse button game he could have just as easily obtained a Microsoft Intellimouse (I have the Trackball Explorer myself) which has five buttons and a scroll-wheel. I could easily program the buttons beneath my right ring and pinky fingers to handle copy and paste with a single mouse click btu I choose to leave them set to back and forward in Explorer and Inernet Explorer.
Next bias I found particularly full of shit was his contention that Widows Messenger awas nothing more than adware and one couldn't turn it off. MSN Messenger adds an ad space below the friends list (Windows Messenger does not have this) but you can turn this off in the tools menu. Either way, roblimo is definitely full of shit here.
On to his silly little KDE icons gripe. Windows comes with a quick launch bar that allows you to add icons to the taskbar (some apps even, annoyingly, add themselves to this little shelf) for quick access. I picked up an app that extends this capability quite a bit and is well worth the $20 price. It's called TrueLaunchBar and it allows you to add not only shortcuts to the taskbar but menus and plug-ins. Add the freely available StartKiller and you can have a very organized, clean, efficient taskbar that meets your needs and does it within the confines of Windows so it doesn't look or act like third party software.
Folks, the fucking idiot roblimo did't bother to do his homework on this article and it is rife with inaccuracies and plain bullshit. If the OSS community keeps propping fucktards lke this up as defenders of their cause, it is no wonder that people won't take the OSS cause seriously.
You posted a pro-Windows message on /. and GOT MODDED UP!
Quick, I've got to check the front page again, it might have a new article: "McBride: Oops, Looks Like Linux Is Clean After All."
(emphasis mine)
The problem here is that "almost all" isn't good enough.
At least in the Windows world, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V work on "all" applications - none of this "almost" stuff.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Anyone else remember this bit while reading the XP "article"?
"Do you know ?"
"i dont care bout that shit MAN!!.....im keepin it
REEEEEAL!"....."Yeah.....real DUMB!!".....
Chris Rock
IOException - Can't Speak
I don't know whether Roblimo wrote in that style on purpose or if he truly doesn't know how Windows functions. However, my take on his article is that he is emulating the writing style of dozens of so called IT-journalists, such as those on trash-raqs like CNet/ZDNet who, every now and again when nothing else big is happening, try out a Linux distro. Usually they get manage to a certain extent to install the distro, can start Star/OpenOffice well enough, are happy with Mozilla and evolution's basic functionality, but will almost always complain about the lack of Exchange server functionality in Evolution, Office compatibility in OOo and some or other technicalities, very much in the same style as Roblimo did.
And he's right to a certain extent. WindowsXP has certainly improved a lot over the Win98 days, but the automatic update functionaility, while perhaps simple and obvious to a longtime Windows user (I personally find that putting it in System is questionable) can be anything but obvious to a computer or Windows newbie.
Added to that, Outlook, while also better than it used to be, is anything but simple to configure, and Explorer is plainly getting old in not having the ability to block pop-ups or use tabbed browsing.
Finally, I really wonder why so many Windows-users get so upset when they read an article like this? Is it the same phenomenon that Mac users are always accused of i.e. Zealotry? Criticism of one's platform of choice should be welcomed, because that would enable a truly innovative company and one that listens to its customers to improve things, would it not?
I moved from Linux to Windows. I've read articles about others who made or at least tried to make the switch.
I notice Roblimo had some arguments in there that seemed to mirror much of my own, and others, experiences with moving to Linux.
First is Roblimo's argument about X-Chat vs. mIRC. He mentions how difficult it is for him to add a new network to mIRC. I had the same problem, in reverse, with moving to Linux. I found adding a network in mIRC incredibly simple and easy while X-Chat seemed to be overly difficult. I also hated the user interface and found it counter-intuitive. Exactly the opposite of what Roblimo says in his article.
The copy/paste thing. Being rooted in Windows for a long time I was quite familiar with CTRL-C / CTRL-V. It tooks a complete rewiring of my thought process (which has yet to fully mature) to even think about being able to paste without having to explicitly copy first. Just highlight and press the middle button? Eh-GADS!
Anyways, there were many many other similarities (in reverse) with my conversion to Linux and Roblimo's look at Windows XP.
My point being that I hope perhaps Roblimo learned (doesn't seem like he did) and others will acknowledge that moving between platforms is not something that's easy in any direction.
And you would have thought people would understand that by now. Just look at Window/Mac conversions during the 90s.
"How the hell do I right click?!"
"Who the hell needs more than one mouse button?!"
It's like trying to convert anything else that's deeply ingrained in one's personal life. It takes a lot of time to get familiar with the new surroundings. One day or one week or even one month's worth of experience in the new platform simply is not enough to make a solid argument on which platform is better.
I've been on Linux about 2 years now and I still don't get the VI(M) advocates out there. I can't stand working in VI. Yet there are those who would sooner give up a loved one then their copy of VI.
I'll try to keep an open mind... but that whole VI thing is just damn hard to comprehend.
I do agree with your point about the *nix file system needing a bit of updating/orginization. I've read all the arguments about the wonderfulness of having /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /sbin, and such. And some of it agree with, but some of it is just arcane, and a nice /config, /system, /programs would be cool, but i'm not going to argue that right now.
what i am going to argue is your point about the dificulty of removing imagemagick. I am willing to be that removing imagemagick would be just has hard if it were in windows. after removing the binaries, you'd have to find the dlls in \winnt\system, or \winnt\system32, or \windows\sytem32, or wherever they are. then you'd have to edit the registry and remove all the configuration options. where would they be? HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/imagemagick, HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/imagemagick (these may not be valid resistry locations, it's been years since i've looked at the windows registry). anyway, you can argue, that you would just go to control panel and tell it to uninstall imagemagick. but for that to work, you'd have had to install imagemagick as a package that windows recognises. if you're willing to do that, then an imagemagick rpm (or apt - never used that though) would be just fine. and 'rpm -e imagemagick' would take care of all of your problems eaily under linux.
Ufck.
I moved from Linux to Windows.
Reverse that.
I moved from Windows to Linux.
When I want to find out the day and date, or check a date a few months ahead, I'm used to clicking on my little KDE clock and having a calendar pop up for me. I can't seem to do this in Windows, even though I've tried. Again, this may be a feature only super-geeks can can use in Windows that is hidden from us ordinary desktop people.
I know this is amazingly difficult to do, but if you move your mouse over the clock and don't move it for a second. Kazaam! The month and date pop-up. Amazing! It know it sounds difficult to master, but with enough practice it should become much easir for you. Also, I don't know if you have heard of this new-fangled thing called double-clicking, but if you click twice on the clock a calender pops up with a whole bunch of other neato options. Once again, with enough practice you too can master the art of double-clicking!
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
Yeah, the paragraph on cut and paste is ridiculous. I mean, the linux power user can't figure out right-click? When I highlight text in a word processor or a browser, I get "copy" on the context menu at least, sometimes also "cut".
I mean it's just pointy-clickety. That's pretty much it. If someone
needs to spend a week learning Windows XP, there's something seriously
wrong with them. I'm being totally serious even though I know this will
get modded down. I'm a Linux user and have been for some time. But
There really isn't much to Windows XP Pro or Home. I've been able to
move between the *nix platforms and Windows very easily. While Windows
is easier to use, there's less you can do with it in terms of the
technical realm (without paying thousands of dollars for development
tools). *nix is a lot more flexible and useful, but harder to use.
This applies to Linux, the *BSDs, Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64. I've used them
all and there really isn't a problem going back to Windows XP. Geez.
Must be a slow news day.
In other words, your post reads as...
Someone switched from Linux to Windows, so I'm going to just baselessly rule it out because I don't agree with anybody switching from Linux to Windows.
I'm going to shrug anything pro-Windows off as a "Microsoft press release," because that's the cliched and obvious thing to do. All Microsoft is evil and bad.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Most of your comments show you have no clue about Windows. You can put icons on the bottom to run your favorite programs (plus the start menu, which KDE copied from Windows, BTW). You can set up update to only patch things you select. If Winodws is configured correctly, you should only be able to install sw as root. etc. If you're too stupid to be able to figure out how to use Windows, don't blame it on Windows. Any moron could make the same complaints about Linux, saying features don't exist simply because he doesn't know how to use them.
I guess Rob can't be a very inquisitive person when he didn't manage to achieve simple things such as dragging and dropping icons onto the quick launch bar.
But I don't think Rob's an idiot even though he didn't manage to do these things. If an experienced computer user like Rob has these kinds of problems when trying to switch, imagine what problems regular computer users faces when they try to switch to Linux. Rob has made an excellent point as to why people don't migrate to Linux in flocks. It just isn't what they're accustomed to.
The problem is that a lot of people from the Windows side have been trained to think in the Microsoft way. A lot of them had enough trouble getting to understand A:\ and C:\. Suddenly they are confronted with this alien hierarchy that doesn't even have drive letters and uses / instead of \.
/home/blacksmith/
But I have a little tale to illustrate the point. When I came over to Windows 3.1 from Mac OS 7 in 1994, I was used to long file names, no file extensions and a logical personally defined file hierarchy. I would leave the System and Finder folders on their own and I would create a personalized set of folders on the hard drive. It was "organized" according to me:
Programs
Documents
Games
Downloads
Inside of each of the Program folder I would have:
Word Processing
Graphics
Internet
and so on within each of the other folders...
It made sense to me and I love it. What I REALLY loved was that I could move a program from one category to another, or reorganize the folders and the program would still run.
Then I moved to Windows 3.1. When I installed it, it wanted to go in C:\WINDOWS. I thought that was ugly and installed it in C:\SYSTEM instead. Then I created directories in C:\ that followed my old Mac hierarchy:
C:\PROGRAMS
C:\DOCUMENT
C:\GAMES
C:\DOWNLOAD
Again, it wasn't optimal like the Mac had been, but it made sense to me and made it easy to find stuff on my system. Of course, I got bit by quite a few applications that were hard coded to look for C:\WINDOWS. I didn't know enough about DOS to get around this, so eventually I re-installed and used C:\WINDOWS.
When I moved to Linux, I was now confronted with no drive letter and '/'. Getting used to '/' wasn't that bad since it was a lot like using FTP. But, it took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of no drive letters. Once I "got it" I could see the beauty in the layout. Basically, it's not device dependent. With the exception of a few directories that must be in the root, most directories can exist on any drive, across multiple drives, on network drives, any combination. The other thing is that as long as the apps are well written, there are standard locations for everything (as someone points out later on down this thread).
These days, my hierarchy is back under my home directory:
~ =
~/bin
~/Programs --> ~/bin
~/Documents
~/Games
~/Downloads
What really makes the filing system beautiful is that I've used this same exact structure for most of the years I've been using Linux (since 1997). I mean this literally. Once I understood how things worked in Linux, I've been able to completely wipe systems with the exception of the drive that holds my home directory and start clean. About the only thing I need to do going between versions of RedHat is clean up the . directories in my home dir. Such as when GNOME went from one version to another and changed some things.
It all comes down to getting used to something. The problem is that most people are lazy and don't want to have to get used to something new once they've gotten used to something that works for them.
Un-news
I've also used both Xchat (under Windows and Linux) and mIRC, as well as a few console IRC programs, and I'd have to say that I've found Xchat to be a great piece of software, while mIRC is worth two flushes. I had a similar experience with news readers; the ones people seem to like under Windows (like agent) seem like total ass in comparison with Pan.
As for the article, I'm sure it was quite tongue-in-cheek (I know Roblimo), and as others pointed out, it's very similar to the vast number of "Linux sucks because it's not the same as Windows" articles.
And sorry, but I've used 2000 and XP (current job) at work, and I still think Enlightenment is a far better desktop environment. I used to be one of the Tweak-UI, latest beta of Windows 98 just to see how cool it was crowd. I ran Litestep and Xmouse. I know about all the little options for Windows, and it's still not as good for me. I feel compelled to "admit" nothing.
As an aside, jMax is one excellent Linux application which is not available for Windows, but most people prefer to make music in...more traditional ways (it's the successor to Max, the software Aphex Twin uses on his Mac).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Just tried it on a whim--double-clicking the clock also brings up the calendar.
An entire week with Windows XP, and RobLimo never bothered to double-click the calendar? That's the most obvious thing to do. Something VERY fishy there.
I like that most of his article is about the initial setup of things instead of the actual week of usage of Windows XP. Entire sections devoted to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, when he abandoned those the first day anyway. What happened to the rest of the week?
Just curious.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Or just print to the Acrobat PDFwriter.
At first when I read Rob's "review" of XP I was like "WTF?! Is he retarded? Couldn't figure out mIrc or drag and drop or cut-n-paste?! WTF!?" Then I figured it out: he's trying to be funny and at the same time tell you that Windows has come a long way, baby. XP is the best Windows yet, and Longhorn will be even better. Rob isn't a retard, he's being facetious. Essentially, the way I read his report is that XP and Linux can do the same things when it comes down to the almighty desktop--choose your passion and go with it.
Whatever works for you, is what he's saying.
Now if I'm wrong, then Rob is retarded and should get his keyboard taken away, but like I said, I think he's just messing with you...put away the spears.
You dumbass, garcia is a known troll, and you have been trolled.
Granted, it was a well-written troll.
Of all the things to complain about in Windows (and they are legion), why would this dim bulb pick what is basically the ONE feature that is totally, unarguably superior to harp on? C-c/C-x/C-v is a BETTER solution than highlight 'n paste. 1) You don't have to move your hands off the keyboard and 2) you can highlight text to replace without losing your cut buffer.
Sheesh.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Copied from a post I made at Newsforge:
"You know, I use XP Pro, and the main reason I've never switched to Linux (I've tried) is because people like him would mock me whenever I had a question. The Linux community is both its best asset and its worst enemy.
Some people don't want to have to dig through a bunch of configuration files to make their mouse work. Like I did with both Mandake 8 and 9, and Mandrake's supposed to be easy! He complains that he couldn't figure out how to make toolbars appear in the taskbar. All you have to do is right-click on it! If I made a stupid comment like that about some flavor of Linux, I'd get mauled! In fact, I'll probably get that kind of treatment for making this post. From at least some of you.
I've tried Linux at least a dozen times, and every single time it was people like him that made me go back to Windows. Linux was built by a geek for geeks. I'm a geek and don't like it. Windows was built by an idiot for idiots and he's too much of an idiot to figure it out. He can feel sorry for my Windoze stupidity all he wants. I'll be laughing at his massive superiority complex. The Linux community needs a good psychiatrist."
I can't believe this guy runs Slashdot. Sounds to me like he's the worst thing to ever happen to it.
Gotta agree - and judging by the vehement defense of XP and IE by Slashdotters, it's was very successful, so it's actually pretty funny. I admit it took me a while to get it (little early for April Fools Day), but having read some of Roblimo's other articles, I'm guessing this is a tongue-in-cheek poke at the somewhat-techy PC magazine "when I grow up I wanna be a geek" author (Katz, Dvorak come to mind) writing about their inane, clumsy, clueless attempts at trying to figure out what all the fuss is about this "Linux thing".
Few comments though - this does show how far Linux has come, as it's real strength is server side, not desktop pc. That he can switch to XP and not be too different is impressive. Also the fact that lots of familiar free software is still available. It illustrates that the Linux phenomenon has put the pressure on MSFT to improve Windows greatly (Win2k ain't bad, XP good too).
This is a good thing. Look at IE, MSFT seems to be letting it languish, not even attempting to fix certain bugs, and the no tab pages is a legit gripe. Come on, how hard is it to add a tab page? It seems the only workaround, is to download a Windows only Google thingamajig -huh? - dunno, out of the box with Opera/Mozilla/etc.
Or maybe they are finding the old codebase of IE too hard to make changes to, which was the reasoning behind the Mozilla rewrite, which set them back a little - perhaps that's now paying off with the ability to easily add new features.
In the artical about linux user trying windows XP he says he hasn't found a way to disable windows messanger. True its a real pain in the ass. Here's what I found. run the command gpedit.msc Then drill down Administrative Templates, Windows Components, and finally Messenger. Messenger has a setting you have to enable to disable messenger. I know it sounds crazy but trust me. Its worded like this... "Enable the Disable of Messenger" Here's a website that talks about it. http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/archive/39/2 002/02/1/426
To "fully update" Red Hat 9.0 only takes 300MB worth of downloads? That's pretty impressive, considering that encompasses the operating system and all of the applications, many of which are probably not installed on your system. A large distribution like Debian distributes multiple gigabytes of software, so if the total size of their updates is not far greater than the total size of updates for Windows, something is badly out of place.
Windows XP service pack 1a is 125M, which includes the OS, IE, media player, and OE. There have been a good many patches since then. On a typical system here (P-III, 128M of RAM) SP1a really does take nearly an hour, and that's pulling it from the CD.
As far as games, for a gamer like _me_, it's all about the consoles. I see very little in the Windows-only gaming world that interests me even a bit. When the latest nVidia cards can cost as much as _two_ game consoles, you have to wonder.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
The review about BSD was very balanced. He stated that it was alpha, and he would try a stable before makeing his choice.
The review about windows was just an excuse to professionally flame windows.
Yes, there are differences of the two os's he uses.
1. Cut and paste is different. Big Deal
2. IE is a piece of scrap compaired to Mozilla. I guess that depends on what you are used to using. Pressing ALT + TAB isnt any harder than switching tabs (I use mozilla and preferr it to though).
3. Cant find the calender by clicking on the clock. Try to double click!
4. Says that he cant and wont use windows becuase of how it acts. Fine, your not used to it and dont know its quirks. The comment "At least you're going from Windows to Linux, not the other way around." is the same type deal. Why do you think that windows users are so afraid to try *unix? It doesnt work the same way.
5. OH, just one last thing. You wouldnt install a program from source that you had never used before (say something like blender) and not read the manual. Every little nuance (cut and paste and the clock) are covered in the manual. READ IT.
In short, there is a learning curve when you switch from one os to another. In one week, the CTRL + V/C is the only way he learned to do it? He cant use his mouse? Part of the learning curve buddy. Imagine if you had never heard of using the middle mouse button for paste? You would find it difficult to do in linux, and you couldnt use your CTRL V/C.
Most of the things complained about are just part of the learning curve, and are mostly covered in the startup manuals. Just because something doesnt work the way you are use to using it doesnt mean it is inferior.
Oh, before you all flame me for being a windows lover, I use linux on both my machines at home and will not install windows.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Another useful feature for QuickLaunch is that it doesn't *have* to be in the task bar. I dragged mine to the top of my screen and set it to autohide. So now I have immediate access to about 35 icons whenever I move my mouse to the top of the screen. This also frees up more space for the taskbar at the bottom. I also added an adress bar to it, so I can open a web page without having to open IE/Firebird first.
Great post. Too bad my mod points expired yesterday.
Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V certainly don't work at Windows XP's command prompt. You have to use the right click method. I'm not really sure why they did this; Ctrl-V, at least, does nothing at all special there (just prints "^V" to the prompt).
And yes, it's nice that Windows provides a framework which _allows_ people to build consistent applications, but that doesn't mean they always do. WinAmp is one big example, and Quicktime is a particularly horrible one. If you think this only happens with freeware, I have an expensive GPS app to sell you. Microsoft doesn't have magic bullets which kill bad design (well, I guess that was obvious).
I haven not (in recent memory) come across an application in Linux (aside from StarOffice 5.2, which had an evil UI and doesn't count anymore) where the middle-click method didn't work, and Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V is also available in all of the applications where I have needed it for replace-paste (OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc.). I believe that it may be slightly "lower-level" than Windows copy/paste, and therefore sometimes problems can supposedly happen when pasting interesting data between applications, but this has never bitten me.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
The trolls must really be sleeping in today for a BSD story to go by this long without some kind of semi-creative "*BSD is Dying" post.
'course, OS X lives on.....
-shpoffo
Yeah 5.0, the base install is a little rough. 5.1 is a much better install. A newcomer coming to FreeBSD, installing 5.0 is assine. I mean, the website clearly states Advanced Technology Release. 4.8 would have been a much easier starting block. I still have a 5.0 and patches laptop, that runs great. Although I am not a newbie to FreeBSD by any stretch See here for proof :) . I also have a 5.1 server @ home now, and I must say it is a much cleaner release, install, setup and make world/buildkernel went well, and it is sitting nicely in the corner, just quietly chuggin away.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
I've used 5.0 and am currently using 5.1, and have never had any problems remotely approaching his. I can only assume he didn't even read the documentation, and proceeded to fiddle with the configuration without knowing what he was doing.
One example. He went on and on about Linux compatibility not working. For the life of my I can't even imagine how you could break that. Every Linux binary I've ever tried has worked like a charm.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It was tounge in cheek, don't you agree?
I thought he was trying to take on the tone of a typical Linux basher or Slashdot troll, only to flip the tables, lamenting a switch to Windows now that it has "matured".
What's sad is that Limo doesn't inform our intrepid article editor that it was a joke, and to add the "It's funny, laugh" icon.
In fact, what evidence do we have that Rob even wrote it? As I understood it Taco and Hemos are ardent MacOSX weenies.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
What do me mean by "evil"?
Evil is one of those interesting english words that have numerous meanings and connotations... yet induces a generally universal emotional reaction. When critics describe Microsoft as "evil", they are certainly implying negative behavior. But why?
Microsoft's critics point to a laundry list of negative behavior. But I'll focus on one of the lesser-explored evils... since "technical reasons" was brought up.
Techies have a somewhat simplistic view of technology. Things are Good when they work. They are Bad when they don't. When things fail to work, not only are they Bad... but very likely they are also broken. And the average techie / hacker will feel compelled to fix things by making them functional.
Each individual's concept of functional may be slightly different. Something may perform exactly as designed but still be found broken due to discovery of better methods or a desire to make an item do something beyond what it was originally envisioned.
Quite often, this involves inter-operability between systems - be they devices, software, etc. Bad systems are often hard to interconnect since there was no thought about interfacing them beyond themselves or with non-standard systems. This can present quite a challenge to the individual trying to fix the system in question.
It might be worth noting that sometimes a bad piece of technology is simply buggy. Something may be fully intended to interface with something else but fail to do so because of a failure or mistake. Although it is just as common that bad technology exists because of bad design.
The point where something goes from being simply bad to being evil has to do with intent. A system may be bad because it is faulty or not very well designed. It is evil once it is discovered that the system has been designed not to work in the desired manner. This is more than simply a lack of functionality. The focus is on the intent to make something not work; that this lack of functionality is as much a part of the design as what the system in question does.
When Microsoft is labeled as Evil on technical merits, it is this behavior being criticized. Microsoft has a history of making systems that are incompatible with other technology. Their strategy more recently has been to work with supporting open standards, but coining the "embrace and extend" strategy to make other systems using these standards incompatible. In any case, Microsoft's products are often designed to fail to function with other systems unless they too are from Microsoft. It is this kind of "lock-in" behavior that is distained by techies and worthy of the Evil tittle.
Granted - this may seem a little esoteric to the non-techie. But then, the average non-techie is not maintaining the architecture they take for granted today or designing the systems they will become dependant on, but continue to take for granted, tommorow.
I'm not going to argue with the efficiency of your method, but the Ctrl-X/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V method is a standard set forth by Apple and followed by Microsoft. If Microsoft didn't follow that they would be bitched at. It's Linux that decided not to follow the standard.
BULLSHIT. Click on the fucking Details button and every single patch is listed with a checkbox. Uncheck the checkbox and it will not install that update and not bug you about that update again. You would have to manually visit Windows Update later in order to download that update.
And if Microsoft did bundle productivity software then they would be sued.
Forgot to mention that you were logged in as Administrator, didn't you? But that would be embarassing.
HOLY SHIT! People write software for money now? And if you don't like mIRC (and believe me plenty of Windows users don't) fucking look around. It's like you purposely picked the most braindead client just so you'd have something to bitch about.
You'd be surprised by how many casual users don't care about this feature. And for those that do tabbed browsing functionality is a downloadable feature. Internet Explorer is an extensible browser. One implementation for IE includes tabbed browsing groups where you can have multiple layers of tabs organized horizontally or vertically all displaying at the same time, along with docking a browser to any of the four sides and tearing them by dragging.
Again, extensible.
Add me to that list. Mozilla reminded me of Netscape 4.5 in functionality and performance.
I'd first have to ask you what the Fuck are you subscribing to in orde
Just to show my biases, I've got a 2k box, a 98 box, and various Mac and Linux boxen in various stages of construction (and destruction). I don't have any intention of upgrading to XP from 2k. I use XP regularly at school and work. It annoys me. I don't like it much. 2k I've gotten used to using. When it comes time to replace a computer, I'll probably go with OS X or Linux, if ever I soldier through to a useable desktop Linux box. That, however, is all beside the point, I guess.
I know it would be harder to do this, given that 2k is not really on the market anymore, but why not (consider|recommend) 2k? I'm thinking specifically of the "If you're stuck with Windows, use XP" statement, which to me seems like a standing broadjump over Windows 2000. It's kind of like saying "If you must use DOS, be sure to use MessDOS 6.22" while ignoring PCDOS 7 completely.
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
Yeah, I know, there's probably 343 other personal accounts of people moving from OS to OS, but I'm going to post mine anyway :-P
About 3-4 weeks ago, I got sick of my unstable WinXP machine and decided to reload it. Normally, I'd whip out my Win2k installation (that I have running on another machine that I use for games) and load that up, but I decided that I would give RedHat another try. The last time I used RH was version 7, I think, and the experience wasn't very satisfactory. In truth, it was mostly because I was loading it on a POS machine, but that's a differn't story :-P
Anwyay, I ordered a new HD (so I could easily switch back to the old OS in a pinch) and I downloaded the ISO's because I was too cheap to buy it at the store. Actually, that's really kind of inaccurate. First, I didn't know if I was going to keep it around, so there was no sense in spending any money on it and second, from what I read on the box at the store, you only get 4 months of the RHN subscription. If it were a year, I'd be more willing to fork out the cash. OK, you're right, I'm just cheap. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the reason I chose RedHat instead of something else is mostly because I have a Promise Raid 5 controller. In hindsight, it wasn't such a great purchase, but what's done is done. My next project will probably use software Raid 5 or a 3-Ware controller.
So, in comes the new hard drive and I start my installation. The install process fails 3-4 times. More specifically, it *looks* like the install went OK, but when booting there are LILO errors and all sorts of other problems. It's getting late, so instead of trying to fix all of the problems by hand, I get a flash of insight and try the automated CD Checking utility that you're presented with when you first boot the install CD's. Sure enough, two of the three CD's are bad (as I quickly verified by looking at the back of the CD and seeing the large scratches on them).
I gotta say, self-checking media is Da Bomb :-)
The next day (after creating a new install set and carefully putting the CD's in cases), I run the install again without problems. In my opinion, the RedHat install process is *MUCH* easier and straightforward than either Win2k or WinXP. I've installed a lot of Win2k machines from scratch and the process is hardly intuitive. Two thumbs up on this one! After I'm up and running, I give the OS a spin. It works pretty much as expected and on a GeForce 3 and a P4 2.4 GHz it runs well. I download Opera (I love mouse gestures) and Mozilla (I like the e-mail client. I should probably try the stand alone e-mail version, but I sticking to what I'm used to for now). Opera installed easily, but as Mozilla (1.2) was already installed on the system, I had to put the new version somewhere else. Today, I would have done an RPM -Ihv on it, but at the time I didn't know what to do. Also, as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a windowed RPM manager that allows you to see what's installed and what version these programs are. RedHat has a slick Add/Remove programs interface, but it only handles the software that was installed from the CD.
The automated RHN software updates are pretty slick. Once I got the new SSL key installed, everything worked great. My only question is: why don't they have a new build of the ISOs out that have the new key?
My next adventure involved figuring out how to install drivers for my Raid card and the nVidia card. The nVidia drivers were pretty easy (once I figured out how to stop X-Windows), but the Raid controller drivers kind of sucked. If a vendor is going to do binary drivers, they really need to follow nVidia's example. It took a couple of hours to figure everything out, but I eventually got the whole thing figured out, got the raid card mounted and even figured out how to automagically mount it in the startup sequence.
When I started copying files off of the array, I found my first issue. You probably already know this, but when I was copying files
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
I use Windows at work and I'm gradually switching to Linux at home. On Windows I use the official AIM client. I am curious as to why you prefer gaim on Windows. I find them pretty similar.
Maybe, maybe not.
Although he does quit a bit of complaining about the installation and configuration process, he did have some nice things to say about the memory system and the way it handles resources in general.
At times even I've found *BSD to be a bear to configure correctly. Yet even when it's not configured correctly, it continues to chug along without so much as a wimper.
Whenever I'm setting up a workstation or server to handle a service that I just cant afford to have die, I use FreeBSD. It's that simple. My other choice is QNX, for those specialty applications.
Yeah, so maybe he picked up a version that wasn't quite suited to a *BSD newbie. Even then he came to realize that the system is more than just the sum of it's config files. Heh.
I use Linux at home, but am currently stuck with Windows 98SE at work due mainly to driver-related issues {we have some esoteric telephones with USB interfaces for auto-dialling. I'm on another project now, but will soon be back to researching how to get Linux to talk to them, basically by analysing USB traffic, attempting to replicate commands and seeing what happens. Highly scientific stuff}.
.doc attachment, you can always use KOffice to create an .rtf and then change the extension to .doc. Word will open it just fine. For added effect, you might want to infest it with a Windows-only virus :-)
What I miss most of all when I'm using Windows, is multiple desktops. It's so handy to be able to click and have a fresh desktop. The nearest thing in 98SE is an icon which minimises all open windows. Maybe XP supports multiple desktops; I don't know. It wouldn't work with our hardware/software setup even if we were prepared to pay for it. We do not have as many MS Office licences as we have PCs, but I have installed OpenOffice.org on several machines and it's fine for all practical purposes. There is one Linux machine for use by the non-techies; the only issue with it is manual dialling on the phone. Sometimes the Windows machines' auto-dialling breaks too. As this is done using closed source software, we can't just fix it. Once we figure out the phone driver thing, of course, we'll have it fixed for good.
My laptop is mine, so it runs Linux, but I have used it at work. All I have to do is start gFTP - which reminds me a bit of a few old Amiga programmes {Sid and DirOpus were the ones I used, but there were others} - and I can edit files on the remote server using Kate. Of course, I still have spare desktops to use for Konsole {think a tabbed XTerm}, Konqueror / Mozilla and other stuff.
By the way, if anyone ever really insists on a
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You tone is TROLL.
RPM
IPTables>Shorewall
Snort
Work it out.
Quack, quack.
And what ELSE might imagemagick have scattered all over my drive? This is one reason the Unix fs hierarchy sucks for the average desktop system... there are many more.
All filesystems suck. I happen to think unix sucks less. Although X is a downright hideous.
Although the filesystem layout is usually designed for the OS, not for the user. Removing anything on any OS (bar MS-DOS) is a pain. Hence the package management tools. BSD has it's ports, making it reall easy to install and delete stuff. Linux has RPM. Unfortunatly package management introduces it's own issues. Like remembering to use them in the first place.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
The article is for Linux users, by a Linux user. What do you expect?
For example, Roblimo complains that copy/pasting text requires a keypress. This alone may be considered a petty complaint by some (and, indeed, a Linux newbie would be laughed out of the forum if he posted something like that). However, Roblimo chooses to ignore the fact that Windows copy/paste actually works, and it works consistently. I can copy a URL from my text editor into my browser, and have it work. I can copy an image from my browser into my graphics program, and have it work... etc. This is something that X/Gnome/KDE/Qt/Motif/XYZ has never been able to accomplish, and probably never will.
Roblimo then complains that Windows doesn't come with all the software that he is accustomed to using. Well, yeah. But Windows also comes on just one CD, not seventeen or however many of them Red Hat has now. Still, all his favorite tools are just a download away. Yes, some of them aren't free -- but there are plenty of free tools for the common tasks, as Roblimo himself demonstrated by downloading OpenOffice (or StarOffice, or whichever, I forget).
Roblimo then begins to complain about the Messenger service, and his inability to disable it. Tasks like these are faced by Linux newbies every day; the aforementioned newbies are usually told "RTFM" or "j00 d34d f00" in response to their questions. I find it ironic that Roblimo the Linux guru was unable to complete such a simple task as disabling the Messenger, especially since this task is much easier on Windows than it is on Linux (you can do it all in the UI, as opposed to editing arcane text files).
I could go on, but I think my point is almost clear by now. I will, however, point out one Windows feature that is so well implemented that Roblimo breezed right through it without noticing: ease of use. Roblimo the Windows newbie was able to pop in the CD, click a few buttons, and begin using his computer right away. Not once did he have to edit xconfig files, or learn the "make" syntax, or figure out where init.d is, etc. etc. In addition, Windows automatically recognized his video card, monitor, keyboard, mouse and network card (and presumably the sound card as well). This kind of functionality is light-years ahead of Linux, which requires a lot of manual tweaking (and an occasional hardware purchase) to even begin working.
Basically, I find Roblimo's article disingineous at best, hypocritical at worst. Why should Linux-to-Windows migration be held to a much harsher standard than Windows-to-Linux ?
>|<*:=
that story was very tongue-in-cheek.
i agree that even in his sarcasm, it was ridiculous at times, but the jokes about pop-ups were just that: jokes.
i sell illegal drugs
Ouch... Teach me to not use Preview before posting. Here's the same thing, only with a little whitespace :-)
:-P About 3-4 weeks ago, I got sick of my unstable WinXP machine and decided to reload it. Normally, I'd whip out my Win2k installation (that I have running on another machine that I use for games) and load that up, but I decided that I would give RedHat another try. The last time I used RH was version 7, I think, and the experience wasn't very satisfactory. In truth, it was mostly because I was loading it on a POS machine, but that's a differn't story :-P
:-)
Yeah, I know, there's probably 343 other personal accounts of people moving from OS to OS, but I'm going to post mine anyway
Anwyay, I ordered a new HD (so I could easily switch back to the old OS in a pinch) and I downloaded the ISO's because I was too cheap to buy it at the store. Actually, that's really kind of inaccurate. First, I didn't know if I was going to keep it around, so there was no sense in spending any money on it and second, from what I read on the box at the store, you only get 4 months of the RHN subscription. If it were a year, I'd be more willing to fork out the cash. OK, you're right, I'm just cheap. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the reason I chose RedHat instead of something else is mostly because I have a Promise Raid 5 controller. In hindsight, it wasn't such a great purchase, but what's done is done. My next project will probably use software Raid 5 or a 3-Ware controller.
So, in comes the new hard drive and I start my installation. The install process fails 3-4 times. More specifically, it *looks* like the install went OK, but when booting there are LILO errors and all sorts of other problems. It's getting late, so instead of trying to fix all of the problems by hand, I get a flash of insight and try the automated CD Checking utility that you're presented with when you first boot the install CD's. Sure enough, two of the three CD's are bad (as I quickly verified by looking at the back of the CD and seeing the large scratches on them).
I gotta say, self-checking media is Da Bomb
The next day (after creating a new install set and carefully putting the CD's in cases), I run the install again without problems. In my opinion, the RedHat install process is *MUCH* easier and straightforward than either Win2k or WinXP. I've installed a lot of Win2k machines from scratch and the process is hardly intuitive. Two thumbs up on this one! After I'm up and running, I give the OS a spin. It works pretty much as expected and on a GeForce 3 and a P4 2.4 GHz it runs well. I download Opera (I love mouse gestures) and Mozilla (I like the e-mail client. I should probably try the stand alone e-mail version, but I sticking to what I'm used to for now). Opera installed easily, but as Mozilla (1.2) was already installed on the system, I had to put the new version somewhere else. Today, I would have done an RPM -Ihv on it, but at the time I didn't know what to do. Also, as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a windowed RPM manager that allows you to see what's installed and what version these programs are. RedHat has a slick Add/Remove programs interface, but it only handles the software that was installed from the CD.
The automated RHN software updates are pretty slick. Once I got the new SSL key installed, everything worked great. My only question is: why don't they have a new build of the ISOs out that have the new key? My next adventure involved figuring out how to install drivers for my Raid card and the nVidia card. The nVidia drivers were pretty easy (once I figured out how to stop X-Windows), but the Raid controller drivers kind of sucked. If a vendor is going to do binary drivers, they really need to follow nVidia's example. It took a couple of hours to figure everything out, but I eventually got the whole thing figured out, got the raid card mounted and even figured out how to automagically mount it in the startup sequ
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
... let the Linux --> XP article be a poor attempt at satire by Roblimo. Because if it's serious, with Linux advocates like that, Windows doesn't need any more supporters.
Mr. Hurst's review of FreeBSD is puzzling to me. It's almost like he was reviewing a completely different OS, because hardly anything correlated to my own experience.
/var/log.
/etc/rc.conf file. If you could reproduce this, send in a bug report pronto.
/etc.
I've been using FreeBSD as my primary OS since FreeBSD 4.0. I've used FreeBSD 5.0 and am currently using FreeBSD 5.1. In fact, I CANNOT go back to Linux, because no currently shipping Linux distro will install on my new hardware, while FreeBSD will.
What I was not told was that this is the bleeding-edge alpha grade release in BSD's terms.
You were not told this, because it's not true. 5.0 wasn't "stable", but that word has different connotations in the FreeBSD world than it does in the Linux world. There were some rough edges, and it wasn't as stable as 4.8 currently is, but it's a long cry from "bleeding edge apha grade". 5.0 was released because it needed wider usage to ferret out the remaining rough edges.
But be that as it may, Ed's complaints don't stem from the "unstable" nature of FreeBSD 5.0.
The install scripts are probably the roughest part of my experience. One really _must_ read a thorough guide before attempting it.
Note to all users of ANY operating system: read the documentation. Remember the first time you installed Linux, and didn't know the difference between hda and hdb drives, and why the partitions jumped from hda2 to hda5? Welcome back. This isn't Linux so you shouldn't expect it to be. In the case of FreeBSD, you're going to be a newbie all over again. The install scripts are rough, but not terribly so.
When I went back to run sysinstall, it wiped a lot of config and log files. I had to add my user account back, and create the passwords for that and the root account. The locate database was wiped. I also found nothing but empty files in
This is very strange. I can't imagine how sysinstall could do this even if you tried. First, it doesn't touch any log files. Period. Second, most of its configuration goes into the single
The Linux "emulator" is broken, and I never got any of my Linux apps to so much as install, never mind use them
This is really strange. Linux compatibility is something that "just works". You don't even need to configure it. All you need to do is to turn it on in sysinstall or during the install process. Every Linux binary I've used has worked. Most work so flawlessly you would think they're native binaries. Acrobat, Opera, Textmaker, Loki games, Blackdown Java, etc., all work "out of the box". You might have some problems with older binaries that aren't properly "branded", but these things are downright scarce today.
(Opera, Textmaker and Java now have native FreeBSD binaries)
While CUPS was installed, it required Linux-compat to set up, and mine didn't work.
You do know, don't you, that there's a native CUPS package for FreeBSD?
Firewalling is a nightmare of hand-editing the ipfw configuration.
I've never set up a firewall, but it seems obvious to me that the configuration syntax for ipfw is going to be different then that for the Linux firewall du-jour. There is a wealth of documentation out there for ipfw. In addition, pf is being (or has already been) ported over from OpenBSD.
There is no default machine name, such as one finds with most Linux distros -- "localhost.localdomain" or "local.linux" and so forth.
Hmmm, my default machine name if I don't explicitly set one is "localhost.localdomain". Did you accidentally knock your system off your desk in the middle of install or something?
Frankly, Ed's review puzzles me. I don't think I could have this hard of a time with FreeBSD if I actively worked at it. I suspect (but do not accuse) Ed ignored the voluminous FreeBSD documentation and then dropped in some preexisting Linxu config files into
Try
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You succeeded in getting Slashdot readers to react just like they do to Linux "reviews" from Windows users. Great job, even if the irony was lost on 90% of them.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I've been using an alternative OS as my main OS for almost three years. The last Windows version I seriously used as NT4. The article, although its made in jest, is absolutely true. Windows is not at all intuitive for somebody not familiar with it. I'm not saying that Linux is any more intuitive, but it does point out the very real fact that most of the kvetching that amateur reviews of Linux do are really based in familiarity with Windows. Let me give some examples:
:) Also, the configure dialog is very confusing compared to Konqueror's.
1) The other day, I wanted to install the latest NVIDIA drivers for XP, so I could play Battlefield 1942. In Linux (Gentoo) its a 1-command, 3 second process. In Windows, I had to find the driver page, download to a directory, navigate to the diectory, click "Next" a dozen times, reboot, and then delete both the installer and temp directory when I was done. So painfully manual!
2) Roblimo's right. IE is a piece of junk. No popup-blocking built in (I hadn't noticed how unusable the Internet has become thanks to popups), no tabs (constant urge to press CTRL-T
3) Windows lacks consistency. In KDE, KWord looks like Konqueror, which looks like KDevelop, which looks like KMplayer. MS Office, Visual Studio, IE, and Media Player *all* look different. Also, configure panels are never in the same place. In KDE, they're always right under "Settings". In IE, they're under "Tools" of all places, and I couldn't for the life of me tell you where they are in Visual Studio (there are actually several in VS.NET) or MS Office (again, I think more than one). Outlook's UI, OTOH, is pretty well designed.
4) I can never find what I'm looking for. I want to configure a network share. So I go to control panel. Nothing in control panel about that. Apparently you have to right-click the folder you want to share. I want to clear my "recent documents" menu. Its in the taskbar's property panel! WTF?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You took all that time to write that post?!? Gods, man, it was a freaking satire on Windows users "reviewing" Linux. Get a life, and a sense of humor!
...yet another Slashdot DORK who doesn't get it. God have mercy on the humor-impared.
Here's my take on the Linux v. Windows thing (I'm writing this from Windows 2000, but using Mozilla). I am not a zealot of any kind, though I am sympathetic to OSS, and think MS is a fairly bad actor (as most huge corps end up being). My computer is a communication and information tool, not a religious icon.
:-/
:-).
I used Linux as much as I could for several years - RH 4.something until 8.0. I was mainly after stability, and I found it. I could do any email, browsing, officy stuff that I needed to do, and do it well. Got my scanner working great, printer too. Sound was great, had all the CD ripping and burning stuff anyone could want.
But I was a "dual-booter", and here's the reason: Software. I have a handful of Windows apps that I use regularly, and there simply aren't Linux equivalents. I know - I've looked, and I've tried many alleged equivalents. And I simply had to run FrontPage for a few clients, without question
Let me be specific: I'm talking about astronomy software, birding software, topographic mapping software, genealogy software and a Quicken workalike (no, Gnucash and CBB are not Quicken workalikes
I tried dual-booting... I HATE dual-booting. I like to just leave my computer running, and have it ready when I need it for whatever purpose. I tried Win4Lin, but that's just running Windows anyway.
So I booted into Windows 2000 pretty much daily, and found it to be adequately stable. I run anti-virus software, and I'm very careful anyway. No problems there. I have Mozilla on win2k, which is vastly superior to IE in my opinion. I have OOo on win2k, which easily satisfies my fairly basic office suite needs, and seems.
Well, I deleted my Linux partition, because I needed the disk space. To me, Win2k is just an OS. I am not a MS fanboy. I just don't have the time or inclination to keep up with two installations anyway.
Here's the bottom line: I will not dual-boot. Therefore, I can have only one OS. Therefore, I can not use an OS that doesn't have the apps that do the things that I want to use my computer for. If I were running a server, it would be different, but I'm not. So I run Windows 2000. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Why doesn't somebody just create a distro that uses the BSD versions of the common userland tools so that RMS can finally shut his piehole-
What's actually needed from the GNU camp?
gcc and gmake?
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
Based on my experience, I do not agree. I have had more success with 5.1 (2 weeks ago) than 4.8 (about a year ago). I use Mandrake Linux full time at home and at work, and I experiment with FreeBSD at home when I have time. My experience is similar to the author of the article.
One point worth bearing in mind: the creators of FreeBSD have no particular interest in making it a competitor in the home/workstation market. There is an interview somewhere on freebsd.org (sorry, no link) that makes this clear. If you want a FreeBSD non-server system with user-friendly stuff, get a Mac.
Having said all that, I like FreeBSD, and I think Linux can learn from it.
- FreeBSD boot starts services much faster than Linux.
- I get the impression that UFS is faster than ext2/ext3. Has anybody done some tests on this?
- The documentation is more detailed and better written.
- The package and ports systems work very smoothly, compared to rpms that are not portable across distributions.
- FreeBSD puts anything "non-system" in
/usr/local, including making use of /usr/local/etc. The division between essential system stuff and bits added later is blurred in a typical Linux system.
FreeBSD may be more effort to install and set up initially than some Linux distributions, but the effort is worth it, because real knowledge is gained. Even if you never use FreeBSD full time, just trying it out is good.Obligatory MS bashing: The more you learn about Linux and xBSD, the more there is to use and enjoy. The more you learn about MS Windows, the greater your despair.
holy shit, what ARE you smoking?
;) Who said you needed to use windows media player anyway? At least windows _has_ a unified method of installing and registering codecs. You don't have to worry if program X has the shit you need. Install one codec and it becomes available to all your media programs. In linux, you install things for the software only which is a fucking rediculous approach. It really is a server pretending to be a desktop.
If XP is crashing, you have shit hardware, or you are unable to properly maintain your system. Plain and simple. The fact that you use windows 2000 for games tells me right here and now that your are an idiot. XP is better for games, all the way around.
mplayer handles odd formats? try playing back a wmv
Oh yeah, your 'easy install' is really, really laughable. sure, stock installation may be easy, but as we *all know* a system is rarely left at a stock installation. In 2 hours I can redo this box, complete with software. And what, you took a break to write this stupid drivel? You still have things to do? Man, I'd be done by this point.
Seriously, if you find the XP installation process hard, you should find a new hobby and just give up computers all together.
> First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story. Geh.
I *hate* this behavior- let me tell you why.
Selecting things should do just that, select them for an action.
Lets say I'm in an AIM conversation and someone sends me a link- I want to copy it, then paste it in to the web browser URL bar.
So I simply "select" the URL, and now it's in the clipboard buffer- then I want to paste it in to the URL bar.
In windows, I select the already-existing URL in the bar (by dragging or double-clicking) and then Ctrl-V over it and hit return.
How do I do that in Un*xland?
I can't select the already-existing URL because that will overwrite my paste buffer.
So I have to click in the URL bar, and then hold down delete/backspace to erase everything that's there, only *then* can I paste.
This is my #1 problem with Linux- all I ask for is universal cut and paste commands, it shouldn't be that fucking hard.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
It makes you wonder how experienced the author is with Open Source when he didn't even bother to start with a STABLE release...
Me thinketh he not a geek...merely a dork.
2d 4f 62 6c 69 67 61 74 6f 72 79 20 73 6d 61 72 74 2d 61 73 73 20 73 69 67 2e 2e 2e
Computer journalism is normally very mediocre, internet journalism in particular, but the problem with this article is that the writer is a complete idiot, in the same league with those people who perform "mods" on brand-new hard drives. This jerk didn't bother to read the handbook, doesn't know what the heck he's talking about in regards to ports, and made countless other factual errors. I have no idea how much time this loser wastes with whatever his favorite Linux distro is, but I sincerely doubt he does anything useful with it. Articles like these only succeed in hammering home the point that no operating system is idiot proof, but people with a little more knowledge than this guy don't need to be reminded constantly.
What the hell is this supposed to be?
What a fucking tool- I run Linux day-to-day on my laptop and have for months so I'm certainly no naysayer, but he's delusional.
Simply insane.
What are his major issues?
First he doens't like the fact that an office suite isn't included in WinXP.
Then he states that he has a Staroffice CD with a windows version on it- ok.
So his big huge complaint is that "most Linux distribution CDs include either StarOffice or Openffice".
Call me insensitive, but when either of those are freely downloadable I don't see that as a big "OS difference"...
Next he doesn't like MIRC, both cause he finds it hard to use and it's not free.
Hey genius- you just said that XChat is available for windows- since you love it so much why don't you use it?!?!?!
I use it on both Windows and Linux, and actually- the Windows version has a couple more features than the Linux version does.
I thought this was an OS comparison.
Next he goes on to the browser, IE- and complains cause it sucks.
Well great- again, you mention that Mozilla and Opera are much better- why didn't you use them?
They actually run better on Windows than they do on Linux.
Again- I thought this was an OS comparison.
Then it's on to Outlook Express, and he derides it just like all of the above.
Well FUCKING GREAT Robin- what the hell are you thinking?
Comparing OSes while refusing to use the apps that you know and love on one of them?
What kind of idiot are you?
This entire article is just full of snide, smarmy remarks that just piss me off.
XChat works great on both Windows and Linux.
Mozilla and Opera work great on both Windows and Linux.
The fact that you purposely *dont* use your chosen programs when running windows is not a comment on the OS itself AT ALL.
Get a clue- what you have just written is despicable.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
And it's hilarious.
First, I know about the little black X in Konqueror. They had to put it there because it doesn't work otherwise.
I also know about pasting into the background on a mozilla page. Do it all the time.
What you're missing is that I'm giving the URL example. Forget that it's the web browser, imagine that I want to paste over text in some other place, say the search box in xpdf.
It's *great* that some application designers have decided to create good work arounds for this bug. But that doesn't help me everywhere.
Say what you want, but when I'm on Mac and Windows (and thankfully most Linux apps now) I can use the ctrl-c and ctrl-v to accomplish this the right way. I'm glad that the quick way exists for when it does work, but by itself it's not enough. That the designers of Mozilla and Konqueror have written workarounds for this doesn't invalidate my point, it proves it.
Do you have ESP?
As a "Linux user" for such a long time, haven't you been able to find about how to install your fonts properly? (I mean, KDE does it, too, for those who don't like to type in commands, and this for more than 1 year. Of course you can use M$ fonts too with Linux, *BSD, and all other OS' which use X11.)
The same is for movies, even if they are in some proprietary formats.
I came across a post on a blog in whichthis guy admitted that he was paid by MS to surf weblogs and post stuff in favor of MS. So there are probably some on /. too.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
This review is laughable.
Umm you never heard of "pop-ups"? Umm Mozilla just came out with this pop-up block feature in 1.3 so I am sure in 5 YEARS you have seen a pop-up.
Your review is not honest and I see you even lie more than once.
Please slashdot don't let this kind of reviews make the news.
When you have "penis" in your review it just shows your immature attitude.
I'm going to go out on a huge limb here, but i'm going to say that Linux V. Freebsd V. Mac V. windows V. Be V. Sky V. OS/2 V. whatever is a matter of personal preference.
Many people prefer to give up some user friendliness and ease for a configureable, extensible, secure Free system. such people will prefer Linux. Some people think it's too much to trade off and stick with windows. Some don't like either and find another alternative. My main desktop OS is Mac OS X. I admit i am sometimes troubled by the lack of configureability, but i am willing to trade some changeable options to have something that works so well and is so compatible with everything. (i have yet to throw a piece of hardware (camera, ext. drive) at it that it doesn't recognize. It's simply awesome.
On my servers i run Linux. I like the configurability and i like being able to control every little thing. but it's a pain trying to get it to work with anything.
I use windows to play games. pure and simple. Windows has all the games, period. However, because of MS's business practices, plus Windows's useability, configureability, security, and technical shortcomings, i rarely if ever use it for anything else. it's a "this program rocks but it's windows only" type of thing.
The point is that each OS has advantages and disadvantages (yes, even Windows. Flame me all you like.) However, all things considered, i try to stay away from windows as much as i can because in most areas, there's *something* that does it better.
that is all.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
Not even close. I use Apple Mail, but Outlook is a decent program. And there's even Bayesian spam filter plugins for it.
Outlook Express sucks, but Outlook ain't the same thing.
...faith I have in the /. crowd.
Roblimo was being sarcastic! Mod me up so people can stop posting what a biased asshole he's being.
I've never seen an article generate so many pro-windows comments on /.. I've been a Linux user(Red Hat 9.0 and Fedora(testing) right now) for a while and I'd like to throw in my 2 cents.
It seems unfair that an OS developed by a company with billions to spare and a fifteen year head start is the standard by which a completely free OS is judged, but that is the way of things. The funny thing is that I don't use Linux because I hate Microsoft and I don't use it because it's free. I use Linux because I love it. I love the desktop environment I use. I love command line tools. Forget the fact that if I had bought Windows plus office I wouldn't have a computer in my room because I couldn't afford it.
My Blog
Thus, I was not totally unprepared for the move to FreeBSD. I was advised Release 5.0 would be "rough around the edge" and it was true. Not in terms of glitches in the the software that installs on the machine, but in other ways. In that respect, FreeBSD is certainly no worse than any other OS I've used. What I was not told was that this is the bleeding-edge alpha grade release in BSD's terms.
/var/log.
/etc/rc.conf and another 1 line change to /etc/X11/XF86Config.
/etc/hosts installed with FreeBSD *does* come with an entry for localhost and localhost.localdomain. However, during the install, you should have been asked for a hostname and a domain name. And anyone who wants to connect to a TCP/IP n
Looks to me like he was "totally unprepared" as he didn't do even the minimum bit of research prior to installation.
First mistake: not checking the website *before* installing. Even the quickest of visits would have shown that 5.x is a "New Technology Release" and not a stable release. How can you justify not doing even the simplest of research prior to installing a new OS??
The install scripts are probably the roughest part of my experience. One really _must_ read a thorough guide before attempting it. If you forget something, you may not get the chance to go back and correct it during the initial installation. If you try to go back and run the process again, you may get a surprise. When I went back to run sysinstall, it wiped a lot of config and log files. I had to add my user account back, and create the passwords for that and the root account. The locate database was wiped. I also found nothing but empty files in
Again, not reading through the included help files, and not reading through the online Handbook and installation guide have come back to haunt you. These help files are there for a reason: use them.
There were other problems with the release, primarily broken packages. The Linux "emulator" is broken, and I never got any of my Linux apps to so much as install, never mind use them: Applix 5.0, any version of OpenOffice, WordPerfect 8.0, etc. The fix, as I understand it, is to recompile from patched sources. Considering it not all that important, I decided the Linux-compat sources were simply too large for my feeble dialup connection. Regarding this as a mere warm-up exercise, I decided to wait until I secured a better release of FreeBSD.
Did you miss the dialog box with the question "Do you want to enable Linux compatibility?" during the install? It sounds like you did, and are trying to shift the blame onto the OS and off of yourself. Answering that question would have enabled the Linux compat system for you.
Even though my XF86Config file from SuSE worked rather well as a drop in, as did my entire TrueType fonts directory, it required some rather precise tweaking to get my MS Wheelmouse properly working.
Again, reading the Handbook and the FAQ would have solved this for you in minutes. It's a quick 1 line change to
Printing wasn't too bad. While CUPS was installed, it required Linux-compat to set up, and mine didn't work.
CUPS does not require Linux compat. There's a native version of CUPS that works just beautifully. Why did you install the Linux version of CUPS??
After almost a week of futzing about between actual work sessions, I just now discovered that I was supposed to make up a convenient hostname for the machine that specifically avoided using my ISP's domain name for dialup. There is no default machine name, such as one finds with most Linux distros -- "localhost.localdomain" or "local.linux" and so forth. The stand-alone dialup workstation is scarcely included in the planning of these things. What little I found assumed far too much knowledge. It almost feels like "Newbies not welcome" at times. If you ask advice, you'll get polite versions of "RTFM" mostly.
The default
1. Click/hold first mouse button and highlight text.
2. Click second mouse button on field to paste.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? ... All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story. Geh. Firstly, CTRL-C/V have been cut and paste since back in the MS-DOS days. So, they are hardly going to change it just because you personally find it easier. Second, if you are working SO fast that you cant manage a one hand, two key combination, there is probably smoke coming out of your keyboard; I think the keyboard combo is the least of your worries.
The Windows update process told me nothing except that it was happening, and that I needed to reboot when it was over. A Windows-using friend said, "Yes, that's the way it works, and if you don't do the updates your computer keeps annoying you, so you have to do them even if they take hours like they sometimes do."
His Windows-using friend is very uninformed. You can set Windows Update several ways- to update with no user input (best for businesses), with confirmation, or to disable it entirely. I personally have it disabled, because I update manually thru windowsupdate.microsoft.com- this gives you the selective, informative install he (incorrectly) says isnt available. You can even personalize Windows Update to permanently exclude updates you dont want (or want to see as an option anymore). Its very easy, and they did very good work on it.
It seems Windows, unlike most commercial Linux distributions, doesn't come with office and other productivity software.
Except Wordpad. Not the best, but its free, and it has many basic and commonly used options. I personally use MS Office.
As for your IRC travails, that is an issue with your choice of applications, and not Windows per se. It just sounds to me like you want all your programs to perform exactly the way you are used to them; sorry, but you will most likely have these complaints with any non-linux platform you go with in that case.
Those Microsoft people need to get on the stick with Explorer. This lack of tabbed browsing is simply not acceptable. There is no good excuse in this day and age for distributing a browser that doesn't have this fine feature. Explorer simply won't be ready for the desktop until it has it.
Again, his complaint is that the application doesnt have a feature you consider essential. IE has a Favorites drop-down list, you can open new windows with CTRL-N, and it has a Links bar for even faster access to favorites. IE just does things a way different than what he is used to, and he proclaims it as a flaw.
Again, this is more of a defective end user problem than an actual application flaw.
Another problem I noticed with Explorer is something called "popup ads." Apparently a lot of Web sites have these things and something related called "popunders" that also open browser windows you don't ask to open. Apparently many Explorer users dislike this feature so much that they are willing to pay for software to shut it off. Why people will pay to have Explorer's popup feature shut off instead of simply downloading free Mozilla and clicking on a couple of little boxes to decide what they will allow Web servers to do to their browser windows escapes me. Mozilla is just as easy to install on Windows as it is on Linux (and once again, in the Windows version no 'root' password is needed).
First, you dont have to pay anything to disable pop-ups, or switch browsers. Just get the Google Toolbar (which is invaluable irregardless of the pop-up killer). No need to install a buggy beta-esque browser on your machine. I personally switched to IE all the way back at version 3.0 just to get away from the evils of Netscape/Mozilla; no way I'm going back to that
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
All you fag evangelists who think there is one true OS that beats all others and take pride in having "skillz" by knowing some obsecure features need to get a life. There is no perfect OS for all situations. There are right tools for different needs. Complaining about Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V? I would think that the stupdity of this person is the biggest hindrance to productivity.
I also ctrl+alt+arrow in order to switch workspace.
What windowmanager are you using and do you know how to make BlackBox do this?
Read, L
We've had the same nit pick shit from Linux reviews in the mainstream media for god knows how long. Just because of differences most reviews end up with the conclusion that Difference = Bad. Maybe you should go find your humor cap, dust it off, put it on and read the article again?
It's too bad that it doesn't have a better installation program. It doesn't have to be nice and graphical like RedHat or Mandrake, but a more capable installation program would be much appreciated.
The Ports collection just doesn't work very well. I wish there was an easier way to select groups of packages that are commonly used together. Again, something that's more like one of the better Linux distributions.
Next time you want to try an OS, try OpenBSD. There are some rough install scripts :) Although after some reading, you can get through them pretty easy. The same with the FreeBSD install. I don't think it is wrong for an Operating System to have assume the user has some clue about what is in the computer, in order to install/use it.
As for the complaints about people telling him to read the manual,etc... It is solid advice. While I don't mind helping people, it gets kinda annoying when you are trying to help someone who doesn't want to help themselves, so sometimes people become jaded. If all you do it blindly do what people tell you without thinking or learning about it are you really better off?
I guess I am just wierd, I love to learn about different things, and don't mind reading tons of stuff before I install something. I guess I have given up on the it just works attitude, although it is nice when it happens. I love to play around with different Operating Systems, I have machines @ home that run Freebsd(4.8,5.0,5.1), RH Linux, BeOS5, Solaris 9, OpenBSD, Irix, NetBSD, Windows(XP,2k3), and MacOS X. Some where harder to install then other (OpenBSD and NetBSD on my Dreamcast), Some where dead simple(MacOS X), but each one presented its own challenge and and it's own learning curve.
Actually the more I read this, the more I realize I should probably get away from the computers and get rid of the JD on the rocks that is helping wash away the week from hell.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
No, it is not dying. I said DEAD. D - E - A - D.
*BSD is dead
It's the only subgenre of comedy open to those with no sense of humour.
I used to have writing workshops with people who would submit something, everybody would be scratching their heads trying to figure out what he was saying, at which point he triumphantly proclaims "It's SATIRE!" as though this is going to solve all the problems of shoddy writing style, etc. Usually people would roll their eyes and spend more time on stories where the author wasn't trying to show off how clever he is.
Don't get me wrong, normally I think the author is pretty funny and I like dry humour, but satire is a very difficult thing to do well, and if the central value of the article rests on knowing whether or not it's satire, chances are it needs a bit of work.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
"First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff?... All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story. Geh. >This is a problem? Only if you need two hands on the mouse. Frankly, the better I get at Windows, the less I use a mouse. Highlight text with right hand on mouse. Left hand little finger on Ctrl key, index finger taps C Leaving little finger on Ctrl, click insert location with mouse Tap V with index finger. Apparently Linux users can't use both hands for dissimilar activities. How are they with walking and chewing gum, I wonder? " The Windows update process told me nothing except that it was happening, and that I needed to reboot when it was over. A Windows-using friend said, "Yes, that's the way it works, and if you don't do the updates your computer keeps annoying you, so you have to do them even if they take hours like they sometimes do." Umm, no. If patches were that insistent, everyone would be patched and viruses would not be a problem. Don't like Winodw Update? Turn it off. How? As you Linux geels like to say, RTFM. "It seems Windows, unlike most commercial Linux distributions, doesn't come with office and other productivity software. You need to buy or otherwise obtain and install your own." Any commercially purchased PC offers "Productivity packages" of MSOffice, MSWorks, Corel or some other office suite. You have to work to un-include them from your order. No, they aren't "free-as-in-speech/beer" but don't say they didn't try to sell them to you. "Once again, the software download and install was as easy as I've come to expect from a modern Linux distribution. Indeed, it was slightly faster since I didn't need to type in my root password to make the installation happen, but I think this lack of security for software installation may be one of the causes of the hidden spyware problems I keep reading about Windows users having, so I'm not sure saving the work of typing "***********" into a little box when you want to install or update a program is worth the security risk it causes. " I've installed and used Linux, and it has no problem with me running it as root. Follow best practices and create a non-admin account for your day-to-day activities. Need root access? shift-right click and choose "run as" and type in your root id/password. Again, RTFM. "One program that does come with Windows XP Pro is a Web browser called 'Microsoft Internet Explorer.' I have heard that over 90% of all Web-connected people in the world use this browser, but I find this hard to believe. It doesn't have the tabbed browser feature that makes work-related research (and pleasure reading) such a pleasure in Mozilla, Opera, and other modern browsers." Never heard of it, can't imagine it being useful, don't miss it. You're so attached to your mouse for cut-and-paste, why is it hard to click "Next" at the bottom of a web page? "Forget the endless worm and virus problems that plague Outlook and Outlook Express. While they're enough in and of themselves to turn any sane person away from this pair of email programs, the spam thing makes them totally and completely useless. Yes, I know there are lots of server tricks I could use (and lots of proprietary spam blocker programs I could buy), but again the question is, "Why bother when Mozilla is free and does just what I need?" " I agree, Outlook Express sucks. But it's free and included with the OS/browser. do you use every free applet that comes packaged with your Linux distro? No, that's part of the ooh-ahh factor espounded by Linux zealots, you can pick and choose your apps for free. Don't like OE? Download Eudora, Mulberry or any of the other freeware POP3 or IMAP clients. Personally I think Mulberry is the worst abomination ever foisted on an unsuspecting public, but hey, to each his own, right? "My copy of Windows XP Pro seems to have
BSD is more or less dead.
Well duh! It's software you bloomin' idiot! Software isn't alive. Heck, it doesn't even qualify as an inanimate object.
And while we're at it, software does NOT want to be free. It frickin' software! It doesn't have the capacity to want anything!
I think this says something about the nature of Linux users' hatred of Windows.
Linux users hate Microsoft. BSD users love UNIX.
Go on.... I'm Fascinated!!
At the risk of being attacked by patriots ...
Perhaps I am taking this the wrong way, but I see Microsoft as an apex of American business evolution. They are only a product of the environment in which they operate.
All of the above complaints have everything to do with Microsoft's bottom line - they didn't get rich by being nice (or for that matter, smart), they got rich by exterminating any threats to their business by any means possible.
Everyone seems happy to complain how evil they are but no one wants to do anything about root cause of the problem. The system in which they operate is not built to reward ethical behaviour. Cripes, look at who's in charge of America, is it any wonder that Microsoft operates unchecked. Ethics are not something that American government has a working concept of, why would Microsoft try to work in an ethical manner if the government doesn't even know what that is. The rot goes deep.
Microsoft is not a charity, why are people expecting them to act like one?
Yes, the article was a troll. Occasionally, trolls make good points. This time, the point made was: it is useless to review an operating system while expecting it to work in exactly the same way as the operating system you are used to; people do this constantly when reviewing desktop Linux.
And I must say you're a fine one to talk about trolling, since virtually all of your comments are trolls. You and roblimo both have massive agendas.
.You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favourite artist is Picasso.
you freaking dolt - just because you don't know how to do it does not mean it does not work.
I get the satire, it may even have supraironical in the most endearing sense of the word.
The point was that it wasn't funny and his points were stupid.
Linux is fantastic for a variety of reasons but doesn't work the way I want it to (ie: without having to look things up repeatedly) for a variety of others.
Perhaps this means I'm both retarded and not fit to produce offspring as is often what linux users tell me.
I think it means that linux isn't prepared for home desktop users.
P.S. you're an asshole
To bad pavelow never contributes anything relevant. Try thinking without that chip on your shoulder sometime and get back to us.
>Too bad none of those fuckers would say why its a troll.
... Finally, I'd like to know how I can cite or prove something that was NOT said or done. The burden of proof is on you
lets see an example of one of your troll posts:
TROLL: It's amazing to see how the moderators fall over themselves to mod up the typical Bush-hating rhetoric...
Yeah, thats what all those +5 insightful comments were, "Bush-hating rhetoric". I'll bet your very popular, arent you? Discrediting all the insightful comments will get you nowhere. What was wrong with offering something opposite to this "Bush-hating rhetoric"? Like for example, some instances to show these "bush-haters" why NOT to hate him.
OFFTOPIC: Using Michael Moore as a source pretty much says it all. He is not credible or trustworthy, you can find many dozens of sites that demonstrate how he twists and bends facts and quotes.
The topic was scientific research being censored for so-called national security. This was your response to someone elses response to your TROLL criticism above. The response was a good one. He made his argument clear and concise. The thread "-1 WRONG" should have ended there, but then you wanted to take it another notch up by arguing against Michael Moore. If you want to chat more about Michael Moore's flaws, then do it in a journal. Hence, OFFTOPIC. And your last line starts with the word "Finally" as if you were making a final point relating to the previous argument or your criticism towards the parent post, except you don't make another point, you ask a question which doesnt even make sense. In that span of (what, 1 minute?) of writing that response, couldn't you have spent an extra minute to read over it to make sure it is clear, concise, objective, FAIR, and ontopic to everyone reading it and that it follows good format (as in the faq?)?
FLAIMBAIT: That article by Roblimo was one of the most awful articles I've ever seen posted to slashdot....
GREAT start! And you could have gotten away with it had you argued anything rational. Instead, your criticism was unfair and had no ground. Have you ever read (or written instead of whined about) an article about windows XP experiences written by a pure linux user? NO you havent. Not only did Roblimo spend (or waste?) a week of his time trying out XP from the pure linux user prospective, most people thought it was very fair in criticism, though sometimes only about personal preferences. But many times personal preferences are important, especially when they deal with efficiency.
we could go on and on, but if you still don't get it, then maybe you ARE a troll and you KNOW it.
Under FreeBSD, you can remove it by typing:
/var/db/pkg && pkg_delete ImageMagick_5.5.7.11_1
/usr/ports
cd
(or whatever version you have.)
How hard is that? If it was installed from the port, you can do this:
cd
make search key=ImageMagick
That will show you what the path to the port is. Then go to the proper directory and do a
make deinstall
Whoa, this is tricky stuff, I know. And of course it's not like it's documented in several places, right?
Your problem is just that you're used to doing things a different way. Better or worse has nothing to do with it. You're just not familiar with it.
I happen to think the Windows way of doing a lot of things is flat out bass-ackwards. I just find FreeBSD easier to deal with. Easier, even, than Linux.
To each their own.
"it's only after disaster that you can be born resurected" - My friend Dave
Sorry but I can't believe anyone can't see this as a piece of humour [Roblimo: your humour sucks, don't give up your day job]. I'd suggest you guys who can't see that this piece is obviously satire, well you need to get out more.
Bitter and proud of it.
and then you woke up.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'd mod you up (+10 funny) if this where Kuro5hin!
Quack, quack.
Might I suggest Decaf?
XP was crashing and no, it was not (faulty) hardware. The machine has been rock stable for 2 weeks now. I kept the machine up to date with patches and had all of the latest (non-beta) hardware drivers. I administer 200 machines at work and run WinXP on my office laptop. I have no problems dealing with it on these machines. I was not trying to say that XP is unstable (though it isn't exactly rock-like), but that it was not stable on my particular box and I got tired of trying to make it work properly.
Admittedly I know a lot of the problems were not explicitly XP's fault (Corel Painter 8's CTD, etc), but it was all the little headaches that were added together that made me decide to switch.
Win2k for gaming has not been a problem for me at all. It does everything I expect, doesn't have a stupid registration process for everytime I upgrade hardware (which I do somewhat often as it's a gaming box), doesn't have services that mysteriously turn themselves back on (MSN Messenger, etc.) and runs every single game I put on it flawlessly. So tell me, *WHY* should I use XP to play games? Oh, yeah, right... it's "Better." Forgive my ignorance. I think I'll just stick to Win2k until they stop making games for it. When they stop, I'll probably just stop buying games. I'm tired of paying Microsoft to abuse me in the name of fighting piracy. It's bad enough I have to deal with that sh*t from game makers.
Why would I want to? Don't have any, don't want any. But first, perhaps you should have gone to their website and hit their about page. Here's a quote:
And those are just the "highlights." The full list is longer. Hmmm... I'd probably need 2 or 5 different programs just to play what's on this list on Windows...
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
That's just the info I was looking for.
I'd love to. <3