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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
Betcha they don't.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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 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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
It's hardly an objective review for several reasons. One, a lot of major programs available for Linux are likewise available for Windows. Even though I run Windows XP most of the time, most of the applications are free, open-source alternatives like Gaim, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. These are all nearly effortless to install under Windows. Unless they come as a package or has a nice install script, it's not as quick or easy to install most programs under Linux. But really, he can't complain about Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or any of those. He has just as much choice as on a Linux system to pick a different program to suit his needs.
He couldn't figure out how to add things to the taskbar. Click and drag. You might have heard of this amazing technique before. Now, admittedly, I think taskbar optimization is a bit easier under Linux (especially under KDE), but let's not kid ourselves - it's not horrendously difficult under Windows.
He complains about forced downloading of patches, which is something you can disable. But let's be honest - critics of Microsoft can't have this both ways. They complain when it pesters the user about updating, and then they complain when people don't update because of the bugs that proliferate. It's circular damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don't logic. Dare I say, to fully update a distribution like Red Hat 9.0 takes little over 300 megs worth of downloads. Thankfully, you can save the patches off in both OSes for a later point in time and burn them to CD.
Lastly, he doesn't play computer games, which is perhaps the single greatest reason why people would choose a Windows desktop over a Linux desktop. There just aren't many professional games being written around Linux. Linux mainly gets ports or has to run them through Wine or WineX. Epic Games, at least for UT2003, made the smart move of bundling the Linux version on the Windows CDs (albeit it only worked for NVidia cards and had a clunky install procedure). As time passes, we'll definitely see this trend change, but for now most games are very Windows-centric. There aren't enough Linux users to warrant a store carrying a seperate boxed edition, so what Epic did was the best solution.
For what the writer of the article needs his PC for, Linux is certainly more than enough. It is superb for day-to-day office work, e-mail, and Internet browsing. It is superb as, in general, a desktop operating system. But for the gamer like me, it's hard to switch away from Windows since most games are written for Windows.
Are in every camp. NBD. Don't let the few color your view of us all.
Quack, quack.
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.
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."
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 had a similar path. I use mostly Windows workstations (I'm an Elder Scrolls addict :-). But mostly with OoO, Mozilla, The Bat!, and gretl (econometrics, never mind).
But on the servers I use exclusively Linux. I started with a Slackware with a 1.3 development kernel. Thou I didn't really got into Linux until RH 5.0. I'd been Netware guy before. Anyway. Around 2000 I bought an OpenBSD 2.7 for a firewall (it used ipf by that time). And inmediately fall in love with it. I't an amazing firewal/router. And over the years I've come to understand that what seems like a spartan install it's actually the only OS I can install in under 5 minutes. Besides I can have an aditional site00.tgz with all my config files so if I burn the CD myself I can have the server up and running in 5 minutes. Just amazing.
Since I use it only for router/firewall (dhcp, ntp, dns, vpn and all this little services) I've never installed X. But I've found a couple of things. Once you understan to use the man page and the FAQ it's the easiest, simplest system around. Do you have a dubt about how to configure anything? use man. Have a dubt about a system interace? use man. Have a dubt about the syntax of a command? use man. Compare this to the HOW-TO, man, info, hadnbook, mailing list, googling of any Linux instalation.
And the other thins that sold me is the IPv6 support. Everything works with it. You can have the reference IKA implementation (see WIDE.org) running on IPv6. I couldn't believe when I bought my XP laptop that I was actually seeing the KAME turtle swimming! And this was thanks to my router that had hidden all the uglies of IPv6 configuration. It's even hardware accelerated (Linux, NetBSD and FreeBSD guys had to import the crypto framework from OpenBSD).
I can't really not mention the true jewel of OpenBSD, pf. It simply has, quite simply, the most awesome team of developers on IP filtering around. I was used to the Linux world when someone came with a stateless ip firewall. Then someone else came with a NAT extension. Then they rewrote the filter with the nat extension. Then there was a couple of projects with quality of service. Then they rewrote the whole thing to make it pseudostateful. Then, some patches crept out for some foo. And so you want to hide the amount of PC you're NATing? Find the patch and hope it's compatible. Want to use strong sequence numbers for all broken client's? Hope there's a patch somewhere.
With pf you have twice a year the guy telling the new features they integrate for the next OS version. They went form making it a 80% of pf in three monthes, to making it 120% in the next six. Then they integrated accounting, bandwidth and pririty queuing, tagging at the ethernet level, IPSec level, dinamic inclusion and deletion of rules as well as addresses on tables. And so many things I can't even remember.
And all the meanwhile you have the little treats like the week next to the paper explaining how to count the number of clients behind NAT, thay integrated a new keword that defeated it. Ditto for the weak sequence numbers. Ditto for the spam tarpit. And the unbelivable thing is: I could use the same configuration file from the very first pf version. And mostly form any ipf version. I had to rewrite it to take advantage of new features, but that's expected.
So I'm absolutely sold to OpenBSD on the router. For the server I'm still a Gentoo guy. I might try a bit of FreeBSD or RedHat when they get their act together with AMD64. But for now it's kind of the perfect combination.
Duh. That's the whole point of the article. IT'S SATIRE. His Linux-to-Windows review is written from exactly the same perspective as the many Windows-to-Linux reviews that you see in the mainstream press. The viewpoint of someone who is not an alpha geek and doesn't feel comfortable wandering around this strange new OS. Did you notice his intentional usage of the phrase "not ready for the desktop"?
An ordinary person (raised on some mythical Microsoft-free island) using an OEM-default Windows PC would have an experience 95% like Roblimo's.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?
(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.
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.
I wonder if some people don't see through the inherent sarcasm? You seem to be one of the few people to get it. On a related note, why did the parent.parent get modded +5; informative? Umm, the article's tone was definitely childish, sarcastic, and taunting. I think the authors intent was to act like veteran Windows users who try Linux for a couple of second and complain about it.
For one, he did use Windows 5 five years ago. Many of the concepts are still the same.There hasn't been any dramatic paradigm shift. The article was definitely a sarcastic ploy.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05