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What Keeps You Off of Windows?
J. J. Ramsey asks: "schnell has already asked the question What's Keeping You On Windows? It seems only fair to ask the opposite question. For those of you who have elected to not use Windows, what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?" Might recent events sway your decision to keep Microsoft's premier software offering off of your computer?
What keeps me off Windows is mainly because I don't want to be
locked-up in some savage immoral decommoditizing scheme.
The practice of scrambling and obfuscating the standards to insure
the failure of the competition is so much a threat to my eyes that
losing some compatibility and some discutable features for not dealing
with this is more then acceptable.
Death to close source, death to DRMs, long live the Open Source.
Sanity
Personally I use Linux because its free, the software is free and it runs resonable on my Dual Celeron 500 vs Win2k which runs slower. That's why I do it
I always stop my "Linux conversion" when I get to the point where I have to choose Gnome or KDE (or both).
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
yes
A couple of months ago I finally made the switch off of windows xp and onto Fedora Linux on my home machine. For years now, I have been using my home computer as a thin-client, doing most of my work via VNC and SSH on a remote server connected to a T1. That way, wherever I am my real desktop is available and stable and right how I left it with dozens of my windows open for various applications for months at a time. So I was already using Linux for most things. I would use windows on my home machine only for web surfing (firefox), gaming, digital camera hookup and its ability to suspend. Then I made the mistake of connecting to windows update... Suddenly all my programs started crashing, the windows on the desktop would pick a stacking order and not be convinced to alter it, and the new and improved active-X made all of my favorite games (diablo) unusable. So I said screw it, and made linux my default boot. I no longer game, and only need to reboot to windows when I have to upload pictures from my digital camera. And when I do boot to windows once a month, I make sure I am offline. My next laptop will have linux pre-installed so I guess USB support will be there and my need for windows will be gone. Oh yeah, I occasionally boot windows to see how crappy my various websites render under IE. So final answer: I keep off windows because it sucks. Also I do not want to support an abusive monopoly.
Curiously, in the last year I have actually started using Windows for the first time.
It has been the most difficult platform I have ever had to administer. Setting up even trivial network configurations is near impossible, with seemingly endless screens to move through, and very poor documentation.
Tasks that are trivial under Unix, have thus far eluded me. I still don't know how to set up DNS under Win2K.
Doesn't that sound like precisely the Why $FREE_UNIX_SYSTEM Can Never Succeed on the Desktop Argument? I am sure that Windows is no harder to administer than Unix. But I have fifteen years of Unix adminning experience, and zero Windows experience. To people who grew up on PC-DOS and Wintel, it is as intuitive for them as dd is to me.
So, for everything that matters to me (writing, email, network infrastructure) I use the Sun. For everything that is trivial and fun (websurfing, chat) I use the Winblows box.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
It costs too much in buying it, maintaining it, getting new anti-virus software, fighting with it... I just don't have the money and more importantly time...
Sasser keeps me off windows... then I go back on and it restarts my computer within 10 minutes!
Mac OS X.
Are you BioCurious?
Does anyone else see the irony in a linux company owning the website that this is posted on?
Someone mod this article flamebait!
A Mac.
I can't keep off windows. I am a construction worker, you IC.
The price, almost absolutely the price....it is just to expensive to keep up with windows releases for a college student. Microsoft is really doing a disservice by selling software for hundreds of dollars and sometimes even thousands.
Last October I made the switch from Windows to Linux (SuSE 9.0) and
:-)
haven't looked back. I was a long time Windows user and programmer
(going all the way back to 3.0---just remember how great it was when
3.11 came out!), but I'd grown tired of the bulk and cost of Windows.
When Microsoft finally stabilized Windows with XP it was too little,
too late.
What keeps me going back to Windows is simply that I don't need to.
Here I sit with
0. A Unix command-shell that let's me do real work
1. A perfectly nice GUI (I'm using GNOME)
2. A stable web browser and email program (Firefox and Thunderbird)
3. A good personal finance application (gnucash)
4. Instant messaging (GAIM)
5. Outlook compatibility (Evolution)
6. A stable operating system that doesn't hide things from me
7. Speed, such speed, compared to XP.
8. No viruses, worms, and other crap targetting Windows
9. Graphics editing (The GIMP)
10. Multimedia (mplayer, XINE, etc.)
11. Complete office suite (OpenOffice.org)
12. Built in firewall (iptables)
13. A really cool spam filter/email sorter
Why would I go back?
0. Windows costs $$$ to buy and they've got this evil registration scheme
1. It seems like every week some worm or other would be able to take out my machine
2. No freakin' idea what all these services and things are doing
3. A web browser and other components integrated into the system like some sort of cancer.
and bottom line
5. Microsoft's software just isn't cool. It's like some pale imitation of cool software with just the minimum set of features to make the average Joe go "cool" while drooling into his beer.
John.
I'm using it now, because it does what I need it too, I can't always say that for Linux unfortunately.
Simple! Greased walls.
They break as soon as I get on them.... =(
What makes me stick with Linux is the fact that when something does go wrong, there's a finite and small number of things that can generally cause the problem. I can quickly and easily narrow down what the problem is without having to understand the significance of lots of unrelated things. The 'everything is a file' mantra has some far-ranging consequences, at least IMHO, and it's the exceptions that cause most of the problems!
It helps that it's very stable, it helps that most of the config files are in ASCII, and almost always commented. It helps that there's a tremendous resource (man) available about just about every command, and of course it helps that it can be learnt piecemeal to a large extent. The K&R book starts off saying that they don't think 'C' is easily taught using a big book, that the smaller concept-driven approach works better. I think the same thing applies to unix. I don't think the same thing applies to the Win32 API. Perhaps with
To a certain extent this preference comes from learning unix (linux) before Windows - I know more about Unix than Windows, and I like what I learnt. Unix is a programmers OS, written for them, by them. I'm at heart a programmer ergo I like Unix
The old adage, "Don't fix what isn't broken" comes to mind as well - Unix has served me well in various incarnations, most recently Linux. It's not broken yet...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I find myself much more productive in a Linux / Unix environment. Linux is just much more user friendly for me.
Windows doesn't work well.
The only thing that I get with Windows XP that is of any use to me is greater compatability with games.
I find Linux to be much more useful in that I have a lot of free tools at my disposal just from the stuff included in the default install (Debian testing user here). KDE has a built-in free newsreader, there are a lot more useful command-line utilities (Windows has no builtin WHOIS lookup utility) and overall I prefer the aesthetics of the interface (both the GUI, which is far more customizable than in Windows, and the command line).
Most of it is a matter of personal preference, but the free and fast availability of easier-to-use utilities (apt-get install vs looking for a website that has a Windows utility that matches what I want) gives Linux a greater edge.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Windows attracts virii like a rotting horse and it has 20 other problems too. Last time I messed with linux it was a navigating and configing nightmare but I'm going back because windows sucks so much.
familiar
it's still #8 in the hall of fame
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Licensing fees, baby...Licensing fees.
Windows gives me almost no options
Gentoo Linux lets me customize anything I have the time to customize.
and Gates and Ballmer and ...
The Truth About Slashdot
Shoddy business practices, nerve-wracking battles with the Control Panel (I'd much rather deal with /etc thank you) and a long history of instability crises. That and UNIXish environments are much more conducive to development work, I find.
I do know that WinXP is much less crash prone than stuff I was using years ago, before I made the switch, but I just use what works. GNU/Linux is a pretty good power user's desktop platform. And of course, the price is right.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
GAMES GAMES baby. I'm 32 but I still love to play the games. Yes, I have some games on my MDK9.2 partitions, but they mostly suck (sadly.)
If games came out on Linux at even roughly the same rate as WinXP boxes, I'd NEVER LOOK BACK (except at work where I have to [currently] use XP.)
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The reason I'm still on Windows is because of my profession. I work in architecture, and neither Apple or Linux have efficient solutions for digital drafting. The second Autodesk ports AutoCAD to OS X, I'll gladly make the jump.
I've been very disappointed in the direction Windows is going. I'm a long-time NT user and have been a Lan Manager expert since '93. I still use NT 5.1 at work (unfortunately) and am now ready to jump to Mandrake 10 at home (where I currently have NT 5.0). I think MS has gotten themselves into a bind where they are moving too slow and in too many directions (xbox, NT, Office,...) and are doomed to recreate the IBM downsize issue when they lost focus in the '80s / '90's.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
And some great open source applications, like ardour... http://ardour.sf.net/
I've tried to run 4 different distros on my Gateway laptop. Not one has been able to identify my display and run the system in a decent resolution. So, I stay on windows because it runs on my computer. I tried to make a switch, and it was just too frustrating.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Might recent events sway your decision to keep Microsoft's premier software offering off of your computer?
Uh, Michael, I think you've misunderstood your question...
This space intentionally left blank.
Snobbery
What I really like in Windows is the font system. It's simple. Drop a font into the fonts folder in control panel, and it will just work. And it looks good. Unix fonts are a pain in the eyes, and blurring them to death with font aliasing does not please my eyes either. In fact, bad looking fonts are the killer argument that _prevents_ me from running a Unix as my main OS.
Personally, if I was looking for a sys-admn I wouldn't hire someone who wasn't familiar with Windows and Linux, at least. But then again, I'm not.
In order for you to switch to something it has to be cool or compelling in some way. And for most individuals, I don't think windows is. Maybe a couple years ago it might have seemed "cool" to switch from old UNIX stuff to windows, but I don't think many people perceive it that way anymore. And for home users, windows is probably what they've always used.
And Mac users probably wont switch to windows because they hate it.
Heh. Actually this post is story is kind of funny, I mean. It's just a chance to bash the hell out of Microsoft without being off topic.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I already have 2 Macs and an Xbox, and a Windows PC doesn't offer a large enough advantage over that combination.
Originally, I installed RedHat 5.0 on my old 486 because I needed to plug it into a cable modem, and Windows 3 just didn't cut the mustard. Ironic, because it probably would have handled it (in hindsight), but to my uneducated eyes, it seemed that it'd be easier to do under Linux (and, admittedly, it probably was easier, since my only goal was connectivity, and I didn't really do anything requiring a GUI in those days.
Since Windows 2000, Windows has been the best desktop operating system available.
So it is very rare that I am off Windows, in fact my only use of an alternative platform is my firewall, which runs OpenBSD, mainly because it's so straightforward to set up IPSEC tunnels to work.
Prior to Windows 2000 I used Linux extensively, mainly because it was very stable indeed, and rather exciting. Now it's just not worth it, Windows does everything Linux can do and more.
Because my G5 can't run Windows at all, DUH!
I was tired of pirating software I couldn't afford. Open source software is largely gratis.
Douglas P. Price
When I sit down at the computer lab running Solaris, typing http://slashdot.org into the Netscape browser will invariably show me a huge ferking Microsoft banner ad. Isn't this whole story item, anyway?
Tons o' preaching to the choir in 3... 2... 1...
(This coming from a Windows/Mac user.)
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
1. compatibility 2. low maintainence 3. easy to setup 4. games 5. quality programs from commercial companies
Linux fanboys.
I had a fairly common video card (the exact model escapes me, but it was built in to older intel boards) and I could NOT get x86 to start no matter what.
/etc/bin/tla/fla/jizm/ to read hexflow.945=`iii8`" but guess what- windows 2000 works perfectly with it right out of the box. I don't much about linux and I really don't need to because I can do everything I want to with Windows. I know a fair amount about the command line, I can SSH into my university account to do stuff; but that's all I have ever needed to do with it.
A thousand people are going to reply to me and say "You're insane, you can get that to work if you edit the lwirmvc.rc.conf file in
my fear of heights and for two my lack of suction cup tipped fingers.
And seriously for 3, it's the stupid license model. I buy an OS for family/non-commerical use and I can only install it on one machine. No thanks, even Apple allows for a family license; sure they still charge you, but at least they give you some break. Maybe MS has changed their stance on this, but I doubt it.
And for 4, I do a serious HW upgrade about every 12-18 months and I'm expected to re-activate. I've heard the MS has made it possible to do this with out a lot of effort, but the fact that any is required or expected of me at all really turns me off from their product(s)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I think. Therefore, I am (off of Windows).
Back in the days of Windows 3.1 when I was 14-years old I didn't have the resources to by a lot of software. For me I switched over to Linux because out of the box I had a web, ftp, and telnet server and a half-decent compiler in GCC. I also liked that if I wanted to know how a certain program did something I just had to track down the location in source that did it. Now over the years as I have gotten a job and money in my pocket, and XP Professional comes with similar features I would say that I split my machines 50/50 over what runs Windows and what runs Linux based on what I want to do with them. But initially it was the lack of advance software that kept me away from Windows.
I hold a patent on sigs...
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
friggin 1d10t!
Among the obvious reasons such as security and stability I also like the usability aspect of linux. I know, I know, Bash me all you want. For me, Linux is more user friendly than Windows. I like the command line, the config files in plain text that I can edit, and the choice of window managers (I use BlackBox, I like its simplicity). As someone said, "the only intuitive interface is the nipple, everything else is learned" most people consider Windows user friendly because they were trained to use only windows.
But most of all because (IMHO) it's not as easy to use as either linux or OSX. I love Linux because I get all the control I want at 0% of the cost. I love OSX because it does everything windows is supposed to do but more intuitively, in my experience faster and with gratuitous use of transparency. I love the two together because they play nicely. Personally I don't see a niche for Windows in my future.
I am not losing income because I am not using Windows
There is no software that I need (yet) that is Windows-only
I'll leave the posts about viruses, worms and trojans for others to comment on.
I like microcars
swing and a miss
So, I keep on Linux, because I like retaining control over my computer.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
1) I have a load of documents in MS Office format. If I need them in the future, I must be able to import them properly. And before anyone says anything about incompatibility between MS Office versions: I have used the last three Office versions. I have had absolutely no problems with my legacy documents or with any documents I've received from other people.
2) Exporting to MS Office. My collaborators and clients require documents in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. You're just naive if you think I have the option of telling them that that's a no go. And no. Free alternatives do not export documents properly.
The last time I tested Open Office (1.1.0) I wrote a two page document. One page of text, the second page with two bitmap figures. When exported to MS Office format, there was only one page in the document: the figures were laid on top of the text. Unbelievable.
The owls are not what they seem
the other day at home my wife discovered she had 9 different viri/worms on her windows computer.
I had Zero on my Linux box.
last year we were running AIX at work. reboots were once every 6 months.
now we have windows. we reboot 6 times a day.
i'll stick with what works. it's not windows.
The biggest problem with Windows is that once it breaks it's really hard to fix. A few times Win2K was left unbootable, and it took me a week to figure out how to get it to install.
Linux, while it may be less intuitive is at least trivial to troubleshoot once you understand how it works. Windows though... it just freezed during the logo screen with the progress bar. You can't really get any less informative than that.
Besides that, stability. Not having to worry about the exploit of the day, spyware, and what every program will do with my registry is also very nice.
Used to be blue screens and reboots kept me off Windows and watching the POST count up memory - so the BIOS has kept me off windows. Windows (XP) has proved more stable - but it regularly dumps core as well, if not as often.
:-)
Thankfully modern POST routines skip many power-up tests - so most of the time it is GRUB keeping me off of Windows
Oh... and the other alternatives that GRUB permits...
It never even occurred to me to get windows. I have never needed anything that only windows offers. My linux box did everything I needed and now the mac does. There is simply no reason to use windows especially considering the cost, licensing issues, and all the invasive and obnoxious phoning home that MS products do.
I had to use windows when trying to continue the work of another student in graduate school and that little escapade probably added a year to my Ph.D. I could run the same code on the mac, ibm workstations, the linux boxes, but I would have to stop and rewrite everything for windows... stupid.
For those of you who have elected to not use Windows, what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?
Yes.
Basically, I didn't want to pay for an OS to the computer that I built recently.
But I also didn't feel right about using a pirated copy of Windows.
So I'm happily using Fedora Core.
(Of course, I've already got a laptop with Windows XP too, so the "but what if nothing works" argument is lost on me.)
Samba and Wine keep me off Windows, I just can't find reliable alternatives on the Windows platform
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
Control and transparency. Those are the biggies.
That and simply not being involved in the whole commercial hype and the Monkey Dancing that goes with it, but I suppose that's just corallary.
The fact that it's simply a better system overall doesn't hurt either.
KFG
I am a hardcore Mac user back from the old days, but I gave up on Apple for a few years. OS Lineage for me: Mac->Win3.1->Win98->Debian->Debian->XP->OSX. However, my mac is not perfect and some mundane CPU intensive tasks such as Stock Streamers, just run better on XP. Recently, I got the sasser virus on my XP laptop before I knew what it was, and then, I did a clean install. Because of work (Oracle Programming and Stock Stuff), I am still forced to use windows, but at home, my windows laptop is never even touched.
On the other hand, if you look at Microsoft Software as a whole, there are some great applications. I absolutely love the new office for OSX, and microsoft Project for windows has virtually no competition - even from Oracle. Truly, XP has come a long way from the 98SE crash fest, but the fact that Microsoft leaves the systems wide open is never good.
Im not an M$ fan, but you have to admit, that if they get their act together, we could be in for some trouble. Even from my OSX world.
On a side note, I want to plug a new site that I just made live. If you are interested in Day trading or the stock market check it out: Group Shares.com.
Thanks,
Aj
-------
artlu.net
Ok, the reason I use Linux primarily [at home] is just the options it provides (for free).
- Evolution for getting all of my personal mail and OO-ximian for all of my office needs (very simple at home).
- Gentoo to compile and make my old hardware still useful
- Less chance for viri/worms and it's easier to see what's going on, or what was installed. Same goes for adware and spyware.
- Theme options are much better, much more choices and all for free. All windows themes require clunky third party packages that are slow, and some of them cost money (i.e. the ones you would really want to use).
For a development environment, I don't see a big difference other then that Linux is our production system and developing on Windows just means more testing. There are some nice development tools, but work won't even pay for them so that's not a reason to use linux over windows (or vise versa).
At work, I do use Windows -- because everyone else does, and every time I try to switch (OO, ximian connector, etc).... there are always little wrinkles that I don't have time to deal with. At home, I have more flexibility.
Oh yes, I also now use Xbox for all my gaming so I don't care if linux game support isn't that great.
--------
Free your mind.
I just find it to be more enjoyable because there are no surprises. Slackware works well for me. There are no virus problems, practically no crashes or freezes, no spyware...
It does what I need it to do; music sounds great, the (limited) games are good for killing time, Openoffice meets all of my needs for word processing, and pr0n plays fine through XINE and MPlayer.
Plus, it gives me an excuse to tell people that "I've not used Windows at home for two years. I can't help you with your exlpoit/virus/adware/crash problem".
My OS desisions are based soley on bang for the buck. I keep a windows box around because I can devop simple data apps in Microsoft access faster than I can with anything on Linux.
I use linux mostly. Because I can't beat the bang for the buck on most every other application. I love using Quanta plus.
All of the other bonuses are nice. I like the freedom to look and figure out how something works. (or doesn't work)
I like the added security of evading the Worms and Viruses that plague Windows. Most of the plagues are avoided with a small amount of expense and a fair amount of common sense, so those are not a determining factor.
I will never pay for software again.
I have never pirated software.
I stay off Windows where possible, because it is better for society to have a strong competitor to Microsoft. Without the choice of other OS's Windows would be a poorer and more expensive product.
Furthermore, OSS ensures greater trust is possible. We can verify the source code. With Microsoft, we cannot do this and without a strong competitor they would have less incentive to keep things clean.
I use Linux, in short, because it prevents too much power accumulating with one small group.
Also, it's free and more versatile.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Ease of use and availability of software.
I use Linux for all my "important" machines - Masq'ing gateway/firewall, file server, even personal code development.
But for day-to-day use? Win2k (I would not say the same about any other version) simply works easier. Download something, install it, and it works. Under Linux, I find binary packages often have (non-obvious) dependancies I need to track down. Source packages require configuring, building, and installing, and often it takes a few tries to get it to a functional state (and I say that as someone who has, in a formal employment capacity, produced custom embedded distros from scratch).
Also, relating to the "download something" point - Most of the "productivity" type programs, particularly dev tools, I can get better versions for Linux. For entertainment, though (and really, if we didn't consider PCs as basically for entertainment, we'd all still have P2/300's), you just don't have an even remotely comparable number of games and such for Linux.
Overall, I would consider Linux "ready for the desktop" in the workplace. At home, Windows will hold its own for a good number of years to come.
What keeps me off Windows? Well, I use a Mac running OS X for my desktop use.
I run Linux for my server OS.
I think that probably says it all.
--Richard
Basically, all I need is a web browser that functions, an email client, instant messengers, and chat programs. That's all I really do with my computer. (and some music playing)
One reason to stay on Linux, is that I can't seem to get Windows to support my computer's SCSI controller.
One reason to get rid of Linux, would be because it's virtually freaking impossible to get all of this working in Mozilla AND Opera for Linux, all at once: Java, Multimedia Plugins, Flash/Shockwave. And then KEEP it all working, as you upgrade versions of Mozilla/Opera.
On my roommate's Windows computer, I can stay up-to-date on web browsers, without having to re-install all my plugins, or risk breaking them badly. Mozilla/Opera do not lock up regularly under the Windows platform. (IE, however, is a supreme piece of garbage)
I could play games if I were using Windows. I might care about that if I had hardware that was actually capable of PLAYING the latest games.. but the fastest puter in the house is a 1.1GHz and doesn't have 3Dhardware worth talking about. My machine is a 600MHz P3 with a Radeon 7000 PCI. Not exactly a power house. It plays Quake 3 ok, but that's about the extent of it's power. (Return to CW didn't run at all on it, and barely ran on the 1.1GHz machine)
Of course, my router computer uses Linux. And before it used Linux, it used OS/2. And it did the exact same things that it did with OS/2 that it does with Linux.. except on Linux, it can be booted from floppy, and run without the hard drive (without the additional services i have it running, such as email/web/database). No compelling reason to keep it with Linux, except that there's no compelling reason to go back to OS/2, and Windows just plain wouldn't cut it.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
So what keeps (most) users on Windows? The inability to handle the learning curve needed to use Linux. Don't get me wrong-- I love Linux to death, but it does have its own set of problems. Yes, I can fix most of them on my computer. No, I can't expect my grandmother to fix them by herself.
I run Linux to avoid viruses, keep from having to reboot all the time, have some control over my computer without having to figure out what to click on, and have a choice on my interface. Actually, the last thing is what really keeps me; I like being able to choose KDE over GNOME, or just using the shell. And, for that matter, once I've chosen a GUI, I like to be able to configure it the way I want to. Heck, if I want it to look like a Mac, I can have that, too, or some hybrid.
The biggest thing, though, is the openness. I don't read C code well enough to be able to delve into the bowells of the kernel or the GUI, or even modestly complex applications and have a chance of knowing what's going on. But there are people who can, and I know where to look to find out what they think. There's a certain safety that I feel when I run Linux that I don't feel when I run Windows. It's public safety, and it's maintained by the neighborhood watch.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
I'd wager a significant chunk of /.'ers are in this same boat, and won't admit it. I know I am.
My name is Mark, and I'm a Windows User.
Let me count the way's that keep me off windoze. Can someone say unethical business practices. More security breeches than swiss cheese. Licensing Agreements, that are way too high! And don't forget the constant need to upgrade to be running the latest software. Thank's I'll stay with Linux
Windows is my primary gaming platform. I have no gaming consoles, so, if you want to play games, you have to go Windows, for better or for worse.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
Though I still use windows (FF7 & Starcraft just don't play well in winex), I most use Linux because of it's speed, and the fun of constantly changing things to get things to work like you wish. =)
Though I suppose that could also be an argument agaist linux.
1) Price 2) Viruses that target it 3) Bugs that they delay fixing 4) Anger at their arrogance and refusal to support a company that mistreats their customers 5) Less Hangs on Apple/Linux
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
OS X is cheaper, more stable, more secure, runs all the really importants apps (office, photoshop, quicken etc), has tons or fantastic apple apps, has wonderful hardware support and best of all it can run almost any linux app as long as it is not hardware dependent. Oh and PPC emulates Intel very nicely. :-p
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
YES. That's really what it is and that's how most people still use it today. They don't administrate it, they don't implement a user security model, they don't even take backup of its configuration files but only the data in it. How does that differ from terminal software?
BTW,
Linux, on the contrary, can at least make coffee!
When I sit down to do some graphic work or make music, I'd rather not have software crashing, hardware compatability errors, or any issues whatsoever. When I was trying to do this on a Windows box, the above was pretty much status quo, and it would irritate the inspiration away.
-=Android=- Chew's Eye Shop http://www.chewseyeshop.com
/me puts on tinfoil hat
/me takes off tinfoil hat
;)
This sounds like MS fishing for free market research...
Windows seems to be a pretty adverage OS. I like something a little better, Something I can really use rather than something that wants to try predict what I want to do. I want something stable and useful. The ablity to tinker is just an added bonus in Open Source OS's
Silly rabbit
Consistently, every version of windows (win95A, win95B, win95C, win98, win98SE, winME, winNT3.51, winNT4/win2000/winNT5/winXP) has been billed as extremely stable, the solution to all previous woes. Consistently, they have all come up short.
There is no security. Not even a tissue paper thin veneer of security. Just lies on top of lies.
There is no stability. For every one of these OS's, I routinely crash them daily. If I'm lucky it's only daily. Typically, one quarter to one half of my hours billed go towards recreating work lost by Windows crashing.
In contrast, my linux boxes run happily for years at a time. Under a heavy workload. (Ok, ok. I did have to increase my maximum number of open files on the fly. But that's about it.)
-Anonymous. Posting from work.-
Linux does not have as many games and has not got all the name brand software (yet). This is a huge plus for my company that previously had to work to keep games off the network and didn't have a clear idea of deployed software.
All hail Linux that made our software situation more stable, more simple and much cheaper!
open office is great.
postgres is doing better for us than SQLserver
We sit quitely trying to respect other company's sorrows when they talk about viruses -- we don't have them. The ones we get sent from Internet Explorer wash off. We send back polite notes sayin they are infected and might want to get rid of LEGACY Windows systems.
Mentioned above a couple of times is games.
The second reason, I don't find that kyle works as good as winedt for writing documents in Latex. When you make a presentation, acroread takes forever to change slides. xpdf doesn't support some of the nifty features that acroread does. Whereas Adobe in windows runs really smooth for this purpose. Those are the only two reasons that I keep windows rolling along. Plus, it came with my laptop, no choice there.
Windows makes easy tasks really easy and hard tasks very hard.
/dev, etc.
UNIX/Linux makes easy tasks slightly harder and hard tasks easier.
For example, to view the contents of a CD-ROM in Windows, double-click My Computer, then your CD drive. In UNIX/Linux, you must know how to use the mount command, the proper entry under
In UNIX/Linux, the hundreds of utilities like du, sed, wc, cut, just to name a few, achieve that which could only be accomplished by writing something in C/C++ on Windows.
My Mac keeps me off Windows. Though, I guess to be fair, I do have a copy of Microsoft Office installed for my wife to use. (Personally I ssh to my SuSE machine, push X console back and open OO.o but the wife just doesn't want to learn that option.)
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
I don't feel like I should have to pay a bunch of cash to some a-hole in Oregon or wherever just so I can use my own goddamn computer that I paid my own goddamn good money for.
I have no particular ill-will towards Microsoft. I'm just not gonna give them a goddamn penny. (Nor are most people; most people I know just pirate XP).
That's one reason. The other is that I feel boxed in on modern Windows systems. You can't do shit. I used to get the same feelings from Macs, which is why I used DOS back in the day.
Having worked in tech support I can see the value of desktop lockdown; but it should be a possibility, not the only way.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
I have a 15" Powerbook and a 15" Inspiron.
They're not mutually exclusive.
This space intentionally left blank.
Uh Windows is also free, for most people. Ask how many people have actually paid for a copy of windows. Either it's their friends copy, or came preinstalled i bet.
#include
int main(){
vector float v1,v2;
v1 = (vector float) (2.4, 2.3, 1.5, 1);
v2 = (vector float) (7.9, 1.3, 1.6, 3.3);
v1 = vec_madd(v1,v2,(vector float) (0));
printf("%vlf \n",v1);
}
And Altivec rulez..
Games. And games. And oh, a few hardware devices that only ship with Windows interfaces. And games.
Neglecting all the obvious shortcomings and the hig price of MS products, it is unethical to support the activities of a convicted (and obviously, heinously guilty) monopolist. One cannot say s/he supports capitalism and at the same time uses MS products.That's the main reason I reject them out-of-hand.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Every time I start windows I'm helping an evil corporation that has been proven to use anti-competitive business practices maintain it's monopoly. Not to mention you really don't know what's in windows. Frankly, I feel safer using opensource software, because people with a practiced eye can peek into what I'm using and tell me if I have any backdoors open for the NSA/CIA/LEP.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
At my previous job, I was working in a server environment. 99% of the time, the solution we needed was on a Unix platform, or was least expensive and move robust there.
So I did a lot of programming on Linux, and it became easier to install a Linux partition on my laptop so I could develop on there, give it a test, then upload it to the servers for major testing before rolling it out to "the masses".
I actually found it easier to develop in the Unix environment. Programs could be killed when they went awry without freaking out the entire OS. It was faster because there wasn't so much "stuff" running in the background - I knew what was running, and nothing could get by it.
I eventually went to OS X, which I think is the best of both worlds: easy to use OS that lets me use MS Office, movie/DVD viewing, games and the like - but lets me develop all of my Unix tools without having to dual boot or use something like VM Ware (which is fine, but can feel pretty slow emulated depending on what you're doing).
Most interesting are the guys who work in the Penetration Testing area. Most of them dual boot between Windows XP and OpenBSD all the time. The latter for actual penetration testing/hacking, the former for writing up their reports and getting into Exchange (without using the web interface). Several of them have moved to OS X for the same reason I did: same Unix, and enough support for the other programs (MS Office, etc) for their other needs. Oh, and Warcraft III/Fallout/Jedi Academy/etc. The important stuff.
So far, most of our cracking and penetration is done via OpenBSD (some Virtual PC is needed at times for programs that haven't been ported to OS X yet), but some folks have been pushing to move entirely to OS X for the whole team. And since more of those tools are being released with OS X support (such as Hydra, John, etc), it might just be the route we wind up going in the long run.
I don't run Windows because I already have what I need: stability, performance, works with almost all of the tools I need - and the ones that don't are coming my way almost daily.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
1) Non-standards compliant.
2) Lack of control.
3) Insecure, buggy code.
4) Homogenisation of the computer market.
5) Acceptance of subpar performance.
6) On or off, it either works, or it doesn't.
7) Too expensive, lack of support.
8) Three words: Vendor Lock In.
9) Programming/scripting for it is a bitch.
10)Too slow, even with good hardware.
11) Buggy wireless networking.
12) Nagging and bloat with a fresh install.
FULL DISCLOSURE:
(I do have an XP desktop, for games of course, a 12" Powerbook 1GHZ, and a P3 450 with Debian and the 2.6 kernel.)
I hate sigs.
I *wish* I could stay off Windows. But no, the company is looking at plunging even deeper into the Redmond Matrix with dot-Net.
.NET development environment, and was greeted with this restriction in the EULA:
I just installed the
3.2 Distribution Requirements and License Limitations?General Requirements. If you choose to exercise your rights under Section 3.1, any redistribution by you is subject to your compliance with this Section 3.2; some of the Redistributable Code has additional limited use rights described in Section 3.3.
3.2.1 If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, VC Redistributables, or Server Redistributables (defined in Section 4.2.3) (collectively, the ?Redistributables?), you agree:
b. That the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;
Oh, great... even if I were to find a way to make my code work outside Windows, I would be prohibited from distributing the otherwise freely-distributable runtime modules!
In fact, the runtimes can't be distributed with any program licensed under the GPL, if I'm interpreting this paragraph correctly:
3.2.2 If you use the Redistributables or any portion thereof, then, in addition to your compliance with the applicable distribution requirements described for the Redistributables, the following also applies. Your license rights to the Redistributables are conditioned upon your not (a) creating derivative works of the Redistributables in any manner that would cause the Redistributables in whole or in part to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License; or (b) distributing the Redistributables (or derivative works thereof) in any manner that would cause the Redistributables to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License. An ?Excluded License? is any license that requires as a condition of use, modification, and/or distribution of software subject to the Excluded License, that such software or other software combined and/or distributed with such software be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge.
Apparently, I can't write a program and give it away with the redistributables. In theory, I could write a program and give it away without the runtimes, and depend on Microsoft's largesse, hoping they continue to make the runtimes available.
I know, I'm whining. Wah!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Do you know how many users are allowed to use your copy of Windows XP Home Edition? Neither do I, and I'm not going to hire a lawyer to find out. I'm also not going to trust a PR flack from MSFT who claims that there is no limitation.
Free software is for people who like to get stuff done WITHOUT having to consult their lawyers all the time.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
PRODUCT ACTIVATION
I upgraded my wife's computer over the weekend (new Mobo, CPU, and Video) and I had to re-activate Windows. No problem? I don't think so.
I ended up having to call into their help line and read something like 25 numbers to a voice-recognition system and to get something like 25 chars back from a RealLiveHuman(tm) 5 minutes later.
So, all should be good, right? Wrong! Simply moving the HD over to the new configuration and installing the correct drivers made the MOST UNSTABLE system I've ever used. So, I tried going back to a restore point -- guess what? It was PRE-ACTIVATION so I had to call again. Still, after another call, the machine was broken.
Finally, I decided to just re-install. Guess what, ANOTHER CALL!
It's just silly that Microsoft is SO concerned about their $100-or-so per computer that they make people jump through these hoops. It's like the music business: people who want to use the product will buy it, either with a PC or stand-alone. The people who illegally copy it weren't going to pay for it anyway.
Fortunately, there's a happy ending: all this nonsense has my wife willing to try Linux (Fedora Core) so we'll be giving that a shot! (on a new HD, so we can go back to Windows if we have to...)
Cheers,
Ken
When I got certified on NT 4, it was heavily implied that when NT 5 shipped, NT 3.51 would be retired (MCSE Track) and NT 4 would last until NT 5.5 or NT 6. When Win2K shipped, they decided that they wanted to forklist upgrade the industry, so they would pressure us to upgrade my retiring our certification early.
Having been one of the peons that was busy ripping out NetWare installs and installing NT Networks, I was floored at being mistreated that way. As a result, we run lots of Linux and OpenBSD servers, and OS X Workstations. The only Windows machines at my company are old machines we picked up to run the Google Toolbar, Check browser compatibility, or run Quickbooks. Outside of the accounting machine, the rest are running old Windows versions that came with the machines when we inherited them.
Alex
1) Illustrator
2) Rhino
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
added a WHOIS utility and all the other utilities in linux that are completely useless for a large percentage of users everyone here would be calling it more bloatware.
...but the only reason I'm still on Windows is that Linux doesn't have what I need-- primarily games and desktop publishing applications.
Should Linux fill that hole, then I'll be there in a heartbeat. In the meantime, please stop patronizing those of us who use Windows. Most of us are aware of the unethical business practices and shoddy security of Microsoft products. We just can't switch because Linux is not a solution to very real needs we have.
I used to be a big fan of Windows, I thought Win32 was the coolest API, COM rocked the socks off of my ass, and why would anyone ever use ... yikes, a Mac (unless they were doing audio or graphics work, but who would ever want to develop on one)?
Then the antitrust trial hit, and I found out about so many shady, potentially illegal and often downright mean things about MS. The real kicker was when they tried to fake evidence (of the Felton program destabilizing Windows 98), then backpedaled when they were caught, saying it was only a "simulation of what we've seen in the lab." That pissed me off greatly, and that is when I really started reading and learning about Linux. When Mac OSX came out, I was already familiar enough with *nix to be able to get around comfortably.
So now, I only do Windows if i'm getting paid (and even then, i'm putting the bug in people's ear about Linux). Otherwise, it's Linux or OSX. I've no real beef with Windows, but i've major issues with MS and don't want to support them in any way.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
Honestly, who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea: "Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Hardware / Next / Uninstall/Unplug a device / Next / Unplug/Eject a device / Next / Select device / Next"
1. Reasonably low cost
2. Part of Open Source Movement
3. More Stable then Windows
4. Different from Windows
5. More flexible then Windows
6. Cutting edge software
7. OpenMosix
8. Faster than Windows
9. Better Security then Windows
10. More transparent More understandable
11. Does not profit Bill Gates
I like an easy life. Free from Application errors, licence numbers, bugfix delays, unexplained crashes and unpredictability. Linux, BSD, Darwin and Inferno behave as they should, as one would expect, and according to the manual. If they don't, then it's a bug and it gets fixed.
I like knowing my systems are going to stay up, and if they should ever fail, which in general they don't, I'd like to know they'll be fixed asap without me having to take the blame and pay.
Open source makes the world a better place.
Mind you I am a fulltime Linux user, but your post contains mostly non-arguments.
GAIM, Firefox, Thunderbird, Openoffice, Gimp etc etc all run on Windows just fine (well just fine maybe a bit too flattering for Gimp on windows). XP has a built-in firewall.
And most importantly, XP starts before your X server is properly loaded (not even GDM yet) I bet.
There surely must be better arguments for not using Windows.
Windows is like a prostitute. It's expensive, but it does look pretty, give you a good time with its 'ease of use'. Unfortunately you can easily contact virus, worms and other parasites (such as adware, spyware) easily by using it long enough.
I'd rather have a stable relationship, that's why I pick Linux.
Please direct all bug reports to
but its for the GUI that I keep away from Windows, the so-called ease of use of Windows is easy to use coz its been fed to most users since they started to use computers.
I prefer to use fluxbox with an easily configurable menu that I get by clicking at on the background of my screen.
All the icons and systrays items and taskbar are pretty useless to me.
Also lets not forget the mention the ease of use of multiple desktops something windows hasnt even been able to put in yet.
(1) I don't want my $ to subsidize a company whose business practices appear to be at odds with my own views on ethics
(2) Windows is damned expensive for functional (read pro) versions. I can get huge amounts of functionality from Linux for $100 (really $30 if I don't need to run a server - this means the "personal" version of whatever distribution I choose) - Windows can't touch this price for even the base OS, let alone any useful apps.
What keeps me off Windows? Buying a Mac. And _never_ looking back. I sometimes wonder how I lived with a computer that didn't "just work".
Find me in ~/.sig
The reason that I stopped using Windows 2K was when they changed their licensing for service pack 3. I couldn't bring myself to click on the "I Agree" button.
It was at that point that I stopped dual-booting and started using Linux full time. It's been several years now and neither my wife or I regret the decision.
Specifically the combination of C# and Visual Studio; one of the best programming languages and certainly the best IDE I've ever used.
Add to that decent hardware support (if it exists, it'll run on Windows), great games, a huge range of software, file compatibilities with pretty much all other platforms...
Instabilities and security issues a problem? Nope. I know what I'm doing regarding security, sit behind a Firewall, and don't turn my computer into a dumpster by installing garbage and beta software on it, which is the main cause of BSoD's - at least on 2K and XP.
And yes, I'm perfectly at home with OS9, OSX or any Linux variant, but strangely don't have a compulsion to use them on a daily basis because they don't offer anything new to me. The oft-cited issues of Linux being free don't bother me, and the graphical lushness of OSX passes me by because I recognise it for what it is; eyecandy.
The bottom line is; give me a damn fast Windows XP box any day over anything else, because it'll let me get the job done with the least amount of messing around.
Internet Explorer and spyware and viruses and worms. Yuck. (yes, I know that's beginning to happen to other operating systems and browsers other than IE are out there)
Speed and ease of installation. I can get a very good install up and running quickly, without having to register it. Heck, I can even boot up a GNOPPIX/KNOPPIX CD and not effect the PC I'm using.
All the cool networking tools that aren't available on Windows (or cost money, or the ports stink)
Linux runs great on older hardware. 16-32MB RAM, 800MB HD's, 90MHz desktops, Pentium 200MHz laptops, you can make a quick web/dns/email server out of just about anything.
I have three desktops and a new laptop. Two of the desktops are running RH Linux, the laptop is running SuSE 9.1 professional. The "baby" desktop is running Win2K. The ONLY use I have for Win2K is when I need to come into the LAN from home. And then, mainly for Outlook access to Exchange.
Why? First - SuSE 9.1 Professional cost me US $99.00. I like buying the "boxed set" instead of downloading. With this I get (1) a stable OS; (2) OpenOffice - which does 99% of what I do with MS Office at work; (3) MySQL and PostgreSQL - both "enterprise quality" SQL systems on the order of MS SQL Server; (4) email that cannot be subverted by viruses or worms (I use the very primitive PINE - character mode only, no scripting, no diddly other than reading and writing text); (5) A bunch of REALLY GOOD games.
I could have gotten MS Windows/XP home edition for approximately the same. What would I have gotten? An unstable OS and a virus breeding ground of an email client.
My company just changed VPN software from ?something? that used MS's PPTP protocol to one using the "industry standard" Cisco VPN. I now have a VPN client for my Linux box. This, along with the ability to view my Exchange mailbox via the "web interface" and Konquerer may eliminate my need for Win2K entirely.
Windows is just too buggy and expensive for me. And constantly paying for upgrades to for my "application" software just makes it worse.
And, on a personal note, I don't like MS's business practices. I don't mind competing based on "features". I don't like competing based on "knee capping" your competitors.
--
John in Texas
The lowest-common-denominator design (or less politely designed for idiots) guarantees you'll run into limitations of the design -- "Windows isn't designed to do that". Since "Windows" now includes numerous programs formerly known as applications, this is quite a serious problem. Been burned many times over the years; no more.
Better to start with a system where you're not guaranteed to be constrained from the get-go.
Windows equals handicap. Avoid the handicap.
The lack of games is a big plus sometimes. I had started to play Asheron's Call 2, a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, and I was spening entirely too much time playing it. I booted in to linux one day and told myself that I wasn't going to boot back. So far, I've found more interresting things to do than play AC2, and I've had a lot more free time. Don't get me wrong, games are great, but you can accomplish a lot more without them as a distraction. To sum it all up, I've been staying out of windows because I think that using linux has made me a better person.
--untwisted
Hmm, try "shutdown -a"... but then again this is /. and 'everyone' knows how to use a command line shell.
The Mac OS is easy to organize and easy to search graphically - widgets and windows are neatly rendered and most every window has an appeal to it. It contributes to creativity and to productivity.
Apple's hardware and software + software guidelines for 3rd parties give you the same kind of feel of having a BMW vs a Hyundai Sonata - the Hyundai has a better engine, better horsepower and more room on the interior + it costs 1/3 of the equivalent BMW. But it's the feeling you have driving a BMW vs that Hyundai that makes the driving experience more enjoyable.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
How can you stay off Windows?
I love my Linux machines at home. I'd love 'em even more if nVidia would get their collective heads out of their asses and write some decent nForce sound drivers. But there's lots of great things about Linux, and my preferred flavor, Gentoo.
1) What, I don't have that piece of software? emerge foo. Poof, now I have that piece of software!
2) I _like_ typing at a computer. My Windows-using friends hate doing things like generating thumbnails of their digital pictures for web use or shrinking them. I just throw imagemagick at it and poof, the computer does it, like it should be. I don't have to make space on my screen for a picture, I don't have to go all pointy-clicky on widgets for resizing, I just type convert -scale 50% foo bar and I'm done.
3) I don't give a hoot in hell about Sasser or SoBig or any of the others.
But every once in a while, I get stuck rebooting and firing up the Windows hard disk. Turbotax and Taxcut don't exist for Linux. Still nobody's written a decent panorama stitcher fot Linux (or, at least, nothing half as good as Canon's PhotoStitch, and that's saying something...) How can I stay away?
-JDF
...I have work to do. I need a computer that gets out of my way and lets me do it, not one that needs constant maintenance and keeps incessantly popping up irritating speech balloons and whatnot that distract me and derail my train of thought.
I don't have time to try to keep up with all the patches and hotfixes and updates and vulnerabilities and worms and viruses, oh my!
I dislike Windows for several reasons, but the main thing is the bad user interface. I can't work fast enough in Windows and I have to use the mouse much of the time. After having used Evilwm for over a year now I find it to be annoying when I can move windows to the screen corners very fast and without using the mouse. It sound stupid, but it's a feature I really love.
People may learn to use the Windows interface very fast, but that hardly makes it userfriendly. Userfriendliness is comprised by learnability and operability. Windows only provides learnability, in my opinion.
Also Windows run very slowly on my 1GHz Via C3, it shouldn't but it does.
These days however i'm beginning to doubt that there exists any good operating systems, they all have major flaws. I haven't tried MacOSX, I want to, but no way am I paying that much for hardware.
Why I use Linux at home:
/. ad infintum)
-I support windows machines 60+ hours a week, and I am frankly tired of dealing with the litany of issues (documented at
-I don't have the disposable income to spend $150 on an OS when a comparable product is available for free
-I like to maintain a fairly broad skillset
-I am troubled by the business model of the large software companies
- lack of cross platform compatibility
- OS lockin through products or development languages (SQL Server, C#, etc)
- poor security
- poor stability
- code bloat/ excessive functionality
- lack of choice; choices are forced down your throat on install
- no built in firewall or other security features
- closed environment that cannot be modified
- want to do everything for you
I like choice and Microsoft doesn't. That's pretty much it.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I'm constantly amazed at how many slashdot people complain about windows crashing, buggy, virus filled, or some other excuse. Either the slashdot crowd is not as intelligent as I think or they don't really use their computers as much as they like people to believe.
I went from Mac to Windows and very rarely do I have a windows crash/virus/bug problem. I'm actively using my PC for 8+ hours at work and then for a few hours ever night at home. Then again for many hours on weekends. One would think with as much use that my PC's get I would encounter some of the problems that others do. But I don't. Either I'm really good, or most slashdot complainers are not as smart as they pretend to be.
I don't think I'm really good. Does Windows have "problems"? Sure it does. Every OS has problems. Are those problems as large and earth shattering as some people and the media make them out to be? No, not even remotely as big.
At work I'm on a G4 Mac but at home I have several boxen running most every flavor of the Win OS's. For the most part, I don't have too many troubles with my WIN boxes as long as they are patched, and well behind a firewall. I also run my antiviral nightly, and have turned off or blocked most every port except what's needed for web browsing.
My wife's XP laptop is another story.
A hard drive failure, happened at the same time that it was hit with the sasser worm. Lucky for us, the worm did no damage but we spent a few hundred on getting the data pulled from the drive. Then found out it wasn't the drive that failed but a memory stick that caused errors, and an early version of sasser that only prevented us from booting.
Sorry to say it took this to get my wife to allow me to place her laptop behind the firewall and not outside of it.
For the most part I don't have problems, but you have to stay on top of the patches and baby the boxen sometimes.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Religious zealotry based around lies and misinformation from other religious zealots who have turned their backs on Microsoft after years of giving what users and developers wanted.
What other reason do you need?
One thing that makes me really, really happy with Linux is that I can automate things that I'd have no idea how to automate under Windows. I have my system set up to perform an automated backup of my user and configuration data once a week. With Linux this is easy; a short bash script in /etc/cron.weekly does the job. I'm not sure if it would even be possible to do the same thing under Windows, at least without either spending a good sized chunk of change on specialized backup software or cheating by doing the same thing under Cygwin. The same thing is true of a lot of what I do under Linux; there are enough useful built-in tools that I can do what I need to do without having to pay for a bolt-on program to do it for me.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
-1, Troll :)
I don't know that I necessarily "stay off of Windows" as I also stay off of Solaris, Mac OS, etc. I even stay off of FreeBSD. I use all the above OSs in my line of work (computer consultant). However, I find that Linux is the best platform for connecting to all the other OSs. Linux connects to Sun, Mac, *nix, and Windows better than Sun, Mac, or Windows connect to each other. I also like choice. I like knowing I can keep my stable RH9 system and upgrade apps as they are released, but I can also use FC2 and try some newer, bleeding edge stuff. For me, its mostly a decision of compatibility and/or accessibility with other environments combined with the fulfillment of my personal need to tinker under the hood... something I can't really do on Windows, and am sometimes limiting on Solaris and Mac due to not all the code being public. My Linux laptop connects to all the networks I need (wired LAN, 802.11b, Verizon celluar network internet access) as well as the OSs my clients use Solaris, Mac OS 9/X, Netware, Windows. Further, I find more vendors that are *seeing the light* are developing for Windows and Linux, not Windows and other OSs. For example, both Network Associates and Computer Associates have made recent Linux software announcements. Note that they haven't made any new Netware, or Mac announcements, and no Solaris announcements at all. I see Linux as the most thriving OS out there and the one with the most (growing) vendor support next to Windows. Heck, in irony, its even most likely that we'll start to see Linux viruses than we will Netware or Sun viruses. In summary, its interoperability and the ability to tweak things that makes me choose Linux over Windows... or to choose something other than Windows. In all honesty, its not cost as I have access to all the costly Windows' softwares.
MSBlast, Welchia, CodeRed, etc, and also its a monopolistically evil company
got sig?
*BONK*
You pay for pre-installed windows. (assuming it's a brand-name vendor and not an home-brew)
I would choose either the 'All of the Above' option, or CowboyNeal as a saftey guess...
1) Cost: I've used probably 5 different distros between 3 or 4 PCs at my home and work for a net cost of $0. I do have a single XP home license should I need to use it though.
2) Viruses/Malware: Immediately after installation before even getting to windowsupdate I'd have a virus and 30 adaware-cleanable programs on my machine. I currently have my fiance's machine and her friends machine waiting at the house for a good virus removal/adaware/spybot cleanup.
3) Comfort: I've now been using Linux long enough that the tools I need to do what I want are just as obvious and easy to use as their windows counter parts.
4) !!!APT!!!: Goes for yum, uprmi, and portage as well. Installing software is now stupid-easy as long as you know what it is you want.
5) MythTV: Nothing comparable on windows.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I'm not really 'off' Windows. I use Windows PCs and manage Windows networks daily. Linux systems as well. Most of my actual work, however, is done on a Macintosh. Even my Windows-related work is typically accomplished from my Mac using standard VPN tools in combination with Windows Terminal Services and/or VNC.
It is the solution that works best for me personally. I am rarely in the office which means that portability is a key factor and I enjoy the portability options of Mac OS X over those of Windows or Linux while maintaining a fantastic 'middle ground' to communicate with and manage these other platforms.
My favorite, albeit tired, phrase is "Use the right tool for the right job." For my job, a PowerBook running Mac OS X is that tool. But, like any good carpenter or mechanic, I have more than one tool in my toolbox. I just happen to use some more than others.
If he was he wouldn't even have to ask this question.
...I use FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux too! I even have a couple of Macs (of the non-BSD variety) sitting around.
I am proud of the fact that I have the ability to be able to sit down in front of virtually any modern computer system and do what I need to do, whether it's business, graphics, coding, browsing, or whatever.
I have always said that I'm a Mac person by training, a Windows person by necessity, but a *nix person at heart.
Responsibility is the punishment for compentenc
Sure, there're some open-source options out there, but until the big players take up Linux then at least one of my machines will always need to run Windows (or I could get a Mac, I suppose). If it were possible to use a sequencer with decent audio and MIDI, and to run VST plugins/instruments/etc. on Linux.. that'd be fab. But until then, Windows is a necessary evil for me.
You traded mysterious config files for mysterious registry files. I don't know which one I hate more, actually.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
For example, Windows tells me every time I unplug from the physical Ethernet and go wireless.
I know that already. Why does it need to tell me?
I could go on and on. Usability problems in Windows are so numerous, and usually inconsequential or tiny when considered individually. But as a whole, they add up, and it's why I use a Mac running OS X at home, even though I'm forced to use Windows at work.
Oh... another favourite? When I reduce my resolution, Windows re-arranges my desktop icons. When I increase the resolution back (perhaps after doing a presentation when hooked up to a projector) the icons do not go back to where they were. Very annoying if you care about where icons are on your desktop. Mac OS X conveniently remembers where your icons were at the higher resolution and puts them back where they belong (where they were before you reduced the screen resolution).
Slightly off-topic, but just unplugging a removable disk on any operating system with sane write-back (which includes OS X) caching might/will cause filesystem inconsistencies.
But of course, it's indeed still way easier to drag the disk to the recycle bin.
OK, it's not just Clippy. But everything about Windows just screams that it was done by the sort of people that think Clippy was a good idea.
...and, indeed Clippy, which Microsoft now seems to believe they never invented.
.NET is the solution to DLL hell. And just where did that DLL hell come from in the first place? Did the devil make them do it?
Everything in Windows feels like it has a hidden agenda. Instead of being done some simple way for some straightforward purpose, everything there has some other purpose as well. Clippy isn't there to really help me, it's there for the purpose of producing an impressive demo that looks like lots of help is available.
Are the menus in Word different every release because of UI research that shows that each is an improvement on the last arrangement? Or are they they to reassure some manager that he or she is truly in charge now so and has the power to put the menu commands where they happen to like them.
Every new improvement feels as if its there 40% for the purpose of providing real convenience and functionality and 60% there for the purpose of promoting a technology in which Microsoft has a vested interest... or to undercut a rival... or to lock you in.
When I use Windows, I feel as if I'm being sold something all the time, every time, and I need to waste a lot of psychic energy keeping up my sales resistance.
And there's all the effort of trying to forget all the stuff that I was sold two years ago that has now been dumped and that Microsoft wishes I would forget. Active Desktop, Back Office, digital_nervous_system...
And all the wonderful new solutions that we're supposed to admire, not noticing that they are solutions to problems Microsoft created.
There's just nothing there that seems to have the pure purpose of pleasing me or making my computing life
genuinely easier.
Other will have different perceptions. These are mine, and these are why I use Windows only in situations where I have no real choice.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Once you make the switch you never really want to go back. Linux and free OSs in general have so much more to offer. And it is all free. For example, I can go and talk to one of the developers for something in an IRC channel, and ask them for some help, and chances are they will help me (or say RTFM, which is commonly used as well). And you can get all sorts of things that are interesting, for example, if you get Debian then you can simply update all of your programs in a matter of minutes (depending on DL speed). And all of this is free, as opposed to paying hundreds of dollars for an OS that isn't even STABLE. Linux has so many good things about it that it is hard to list them all in one comment. But to anyone who might be considering getting started using Linux, just to try something other than Windows. I would recommend installing a LiveCD such as Knoppix or Gnoppix. You don't even have to install it, you can just boot off of it and have fully functioning Linux. Give it a shot.
Seriously, two things: habit and common sense. I've been using Macs since I was seven, but it was blindingly obvious as early as Win95 that Mac would always be a far superior platform in every category that mattered to me. The endless worm parade of the past five years and the agonies I've seen numerous IT people going through trying to secure Windows networks have only solidified my commitment to Macs. I'm currently socking away at least a third of every paycheck towards a PowerBook come the end of summer. (Here's hoping the G5 PB's are out!)
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
What keeps me off Windows?
Steve fucking Balmer: a man whose wobbling, flabby, sweating body is a testament to corporate greed. A stomping, ignorant, braying ogre, his mind a gelatenous mass of scams and ploys to kill any project dead that could possibly take a few cents out of his yearly multi-million dollar paypacket, bulging with the gonads of the PC manufacturers that Balmer and co have castrated and fettered. No matter that other companies are striving to produce something they believe in; something to give people choice, something they love, enjoy, advance and improve. No, mr fucking Blobby Balmer and his toad army are there, all puffed throats and poisonous flesh, yellow eyes swivelling toward their neighbours; whipping out their tongues to lash the hearts right out of anything like competition.
Rob Enderle/Brown/other 15 minute blunder: The snivelling, penny-a-word grubs thrown tit-bits by MS, SCO and anyone else with more cash than concience. These drive-by gutter-dwellers grinding their axes embossed with the "Made in Seattle" logos down the handles, the blades dripping reason, logic and fact as they slash their route through the increasingly "thick" jungle of online journalism. These congealed sacks of walking puss write to generate violent reactions and advertising rewards - they deserve real violence and lawsuits. Each day for an Enderle is just another opportunity to burp up another stream of carefully targetted bile, hoping it'll be lapped up by all the wrong people.
Clippy.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Years ago I had a computer die and I cannibalized that and bought some new stuff to put together a new PC. Since the old computer came with Windows, I realized I would have to buy an OS to get the PC working. I went to Best Buy and I looked at Windows 2000 for $300, Windows Me for a hair under $200, or Mandrake for $50.
It was sort of difficult to learn because it was so different. It required a totally different way of thinking for me. Since that time, I can only stand to use Windows at work, and I would never give up Linux. I love being able to configure it the way I want it. I can't stand it (seething) when an OS decides to make configuration choices for me. Dumbing down computers just dumbs down users.
Believe it or not, The BeOS terminal (which was bash or tcsh or whatever you wanted) drew me into the Unix-ish way of doing things. Though GNOME still doesn't show the simplicity, polish, or usability of the BeOS desktop, it's getting there ever so slowly.
The politics in the Linux are sometimes unbecoming to the community, but it's easy to overlook them and just use the bloody OS day in, day out.
MicroSoft keeps creating bastard children of established languages - i.e. Access/SQL Server's SQL support. It's just not very compliant. I also find it a maze of menus/apps to find what I need to do, when a quick *nix shell would have the job done in a fraction of the time. Piping, greping, etc. Compilers: free and abundant. Great for any student or professional. Distributions come with a multitude of (FREE as in speech and/or beer) that can perform many tasks that must be bought from 3rd party vendors, not included in MS Windows. (Some are availiable for MS's platforms, however). Many of these programs can be used in conjuction for greater usability. Not always so in windows. But above all this... when an application crashes, the rest of my non-MS system doesn't begin to experience other problems that lead to an OS crash.
As my modem is incompatible with my Linux distro. As it is, I have several solutions: 1. PURCHASE a Linux driver from Linuxant 2. Purchase a new modem (I'm stuck on dial-up regardless) 3. Use Windows for pretty much everything, as almost all of my computer usage is internet-related This bites. I think I'm going with #2. Purchasing a driver for Linux, to me, goes against what Open Source is all about. I'm not going to support prostituting any software if I can help it. Microsoft does enough of that without my help.
--RIAmAses! Let my MP3ople go!
What do you want to ask next - why is the sky blue?
I'm a UNIX guy myself, but a few months ago we started co-locing a Windows server. The "Manage Your Server" program (under Start->Programs->Administrative) has to be one of the easiest things to use when you're not entirely sure what you want to do.
I'm not talking raw power, or admining 50 boxen, something that you'd want someone who knows the ins and outs of the system for. I'm talking easy basic server administration looking for a "good enough" result.
Even the individual server admin screens are pretty easy to follow. I needed to add a new virtual domain to IIS - something I can do to Apache in my sleep. Followed the linky to the admin page, right-clicked on the "Web Sites" folder, chose "New...". Entered a description, the folder, IP, port, etc. Chose the default "Read" permission.
Did that take me longer to do that it would have done in Apache? Absolutely. Was it faster than it would have taken an IIS wizard to accomplish the same task? Almost certainly.
It gets more interesting though - right click on the new website and choose "Properties." Hmm - performance. There's a checkbox/field to limit network bandwidth to this site. Cool. Not something that I need, but the exploratory nature revealed it and - I have to admit - I don't know how to accomplish the same task using Apache. I've never needed to, and I'm sure that I could figure it out with a lot of STFWing...
But, for lone box / untrained admin situations, I have to say that Windows Server is surprisingly, even remarkably, easy to use.
For this UNIX admin, anyway.
Oh, and as for DNS - on that same program (which starts by default on your administrator account unless you've disabled it), you can choose "Add role" and then "DNS server" and be walked through the entire process. Just a thought.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
and the willingness to spend countless number of hours tweaking and compiling code.
I'm afraid the windows will break if I stand on them.
Humorless sig goes here.
I would say the major factor keeping me off Windows is KERNEL32.DLL!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I'm in jail, you insensitive clod.
Linux is fast, stable, and I can write books/programs with equal ease. I don't have to worry about reboots. I don't give Microsoft money. I can look at the source. I can get it for bandwidth costs. I can improve it if it doesn't do something I want it to. Your question is rather like asking why use an electric razor when you could shave perfectly well with a rusty skillsaw. Linux just makes sense.
Allthough I am an avid gamer, my programming has kept me from using windows as a primary OS on a few of my computers. I would not say I am a total L/UNIX advocate as there are certain tasks that Windows excels at. Like gaming, and certian media applications. But there are other things, like hardcore development, networking, security and internet usage that L/UNIX is just plain better at.
.
But, in my mind, each have their weaknesses aswell as their strengths. L/UNIX is harder to dive into as an inexperienced user with the longer processess to install and maintain software. also the diver confilicts and that dark kernel area tend to keep people off the horse. Windows makes it easy to go out and get hardware for it and software is much easier to install with these so-called Wizards. On the other side of the coin widows has the security issues, and a very rigid set of licences that make it hard to be confidant that your system is safe from those kiddies out there.
Personally, the concept of an operating system that works out of the box, accepts most new hardware, and is so easy my 80 year old grandmother can use it explains why M$ is the market standard (or was, or won't be for long). However, the fact that Windows based worms and virii outnumber L/UNIX virii 100000 to 1 (in the mainstream enviroment) makes me wonder how long they will stay there.
L/UNIX however, for the most part distributes their source with the system so if a hole is discovered, there are many personal programmers like me out there who fix that kind of stuff in their spare time. that way, we find and deal with those problems and everyone is happy. But this comes back to the licences. If someone who got their hands on the Win2k source found and patched a hole, M$ would see the book thrown at them (or offer them a job... depends on the resume).
So, I only really use windows on my laptop and one desktop for gaming. I have UNIX (Solais 9) on my Server cluster, Gentoo on my programming box, and FreeBSD on my gateway. But most people out there who refuse to go back or onto windows do it because of the security issues (in my mind) and I keep it off my servers because of that and the long update cycle.
P.S. distro's like gentoo and debian have excellent update programs. Portage and apt-get respectivly. I really can't live without my emerge -uD world
**wipes hands on pants, takes a drink of Bawls.
while(1) { fork(); };
Despite this, I've been WinXP-free for my first month (thanks to UT2004 and America's Army being on Linux.)
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
Well... part of it is that the interface is clunky... another part is that it is a resource hog... and control is a factor, windows sucks for really fast trminal manipulation of "this and that"... and finally... I had alot of friends that went off and becomae microsoft employees... and I got a good look at the company, and.... they just became creepy people, with creepy ethical arguments... so I will admit part of it is just that microsoft is a big bunch of really creepy people who dig power ina really pathetic way... in a Bored of the Rigns Bogey sort of way...
My 25 cents (redmond has brought the cost of living up so high here that 2 cents doesn;t really work anymore.)
I have to use Windows here at the office because of some legacy software that will never be ported to Linux. I just had a lockup and had to reboot. My Linux boxes never do that to me. They're just cleaner and more straightforward.
I still have a Windows box at home because my grandkids have their games that they like to play when they come over...No, No, not "Grand Theft, Auto". They are 4 and 5 year old girls so it's Dora the Explorer and Barbie.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Its most definately not price for me. I shell out the $$ for each distribution because I believe in supporting them (SuSE in this case). I use it because:
1) It works great on older hardware saving me money and upgrade pains.
2) Unlike Windoze when I install a distribution I'm not only getting an OS and desktop platform I'm getting 99% of all the applications I need all at once.
3) Its reliable with uptimes in the months (I do stupid things occasionally otherwise it would be longer).
4) Its secure. My email is not my enemy and there is nothing on the system running that I haven't turned on myself.
5) Its multipurpose; desktop, server, dev environment, games machine, network monitor, firewall, you name it.
6) It can be modified/configured to do things the way =I= want to do them. Not the way I'm forced to do them.
7) Choice!!!
S'njit
to help her clean Sasser off of her computer. That is what keeps me off of Windows. Also the pricetag. I shouldn't have to pay to put up with crap like sasser, I much prefer putting up with linux.
The first is, it's relatively difficult to make backups without paying money for additional tools. I like keeping my data safe and secure, which leads into the next: Security through obscurity doesn't fucking work, and everybody knows it by now. Every time I've been asked to help someone fix their windows XP machine, it's been absolutely infested with viruses. I'm not saying it's impossible to secure a machine like that properly, but the fact of the matter is, it's impossible to do it with the tools microsoft gives you. Oh, and don't even get me started on 'windows update' - that thing is the biggest joke I've ever seen.
Linux distributions such as debian come with all of the tools necessary to use your system, keep it secure and updated, plus you don't lose your soul in the liscensing agreements to just use the software.
There are a number of things linux isn't yet good at, the UI and installation of it are sore points that are being addressed by many people as we speak. However, as things stand, here. Now. Linux is more than capable of keeping my data safe, secure, and backed up. Without spending a cent.
Windows cannot and never will be able to do anything in the previous sentence in my own opinion.
what keeps you off linux?
poor support, poor hardware reckon, spending an entire weekend getting the thing to run....
linux....still a long way to acceptance...
...today (back fives years ago when I switched I was just annoyed by Win98 and curious):
Windows...
I know almost all features I miss on Windows can be "upgraded" with some tools, like an X server for Windows or SSH daemon for Windows. But it's not always working like it should. For example, since Windows has no native support for virtual desktops like X Window has all virtual desktop tools I've seen under Windows had some flaws and didn't satisfy me.
A few years ago I really hated Windows. Now I just don't care ;-) I don't have to use it, only rarely at work, so I really don't care what Windows can or can't. I've become a real fan of the Linux/UNIX architecture and acquired very intimate knowledge, so I don't think Windows will ever start to appeal to me again as everything I need is present in Linux/FreeBSD. Especially since KDE 3.2 is really good now and OpenOffice as well.
Plain and simple....Windows is not elegant. They have made simple tasks (like setting up network settings) way too difficult. Installing software takes restarts way too often. The system doesn't provide good feedback when something is occurring.
Then, there is the problem of virii and lost time due to system downtime. I should state that I do use Windows, but only for testing, and for when I have to use something Web-based that's not standards-compliant (like the brain-dead Plesk server admin tool).
The problem is, Microsoft doesn't have elegance in them, so it won't improve.
gameDB
The system comes out of the box shiny, fresh, speedy. After only a few months it's slow, dingy, infected and just sad. They must know this at Microsoft, but why don't they fix it? Why does the computer get slower the more you use it? Why does it get eat up with spyware, to the point that I spend 10 minutes every boot killing off spyware procs that I can't remove from the registry because they don't post nice little tags there. I don't want to spend all my time innoculating my PC. So I use GNU/Linux and Macintosh.
Thanks for asking!
I was writing a paper on the PC and then it was like BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP and then, like, half of my paper was gone! And I was like... Hnh? It DEVOURED my paper. And it was a really good paper. And then I had to write it again and I had to do it fast. So it wasn't as good, you know?
My reasons:
- Slow bloated feel
- Awkward UI
- Buggy
- Insecure, always virus concerns
- Expensive
- Everything takes 10 clicks.
Mac OS X showed me how great an OS can feel
- Smooth slim feel
- UI feels right (can't explain it much better than that)
- never crashed
- software update is nice and elequent, pretty secure.
- inexpensive ($129 isn't to bad)
- minimal clicks.
Overall: Higher quality, gets my vote every time. Windows is just an inferior product.
At this point, I might have Windows XP on all of my Windows computers if it were not for the fact that I have to buy a separate copy for each box. Do I want to pirate it? No. I want to be able to legitimately install from the same WinXP CD onto multiple computers.
Until then, I'll stick with my legitimate installs of Win2K and Win98.
wait, it's on-topic! that's one of the reasons i stay far away--i have a whole collection of useful programs that i'm used to, and porting those things to windows is a nightmare due in part to this / vs \ debacle. that's why i went to OS X instead.
backslash seems like a really, really poor choice, but there must be a reason. why, god, why?
The last time I paid for my OS was when I bought SUSE (which, I might add was well worth the price and a fraction of the cost of Windows XP). Now I just download ISOs over a 24hr period, burn using K3B and load the OS, first onto a test hard disk and finally over to my main disk.
I can still do my work related tasks (which are Win XP based), using a VNC session to my work machine via VPN and have the ability to write my own software using C, C# or Java without having to pay ridiculous fees.
Whoever says that Linux is not ready for the desktop is just plain afraid or ignorant. Sure it's not easy, but then again, neither is Windows, in certain situations.
Another nice thing is that most updates (99% IMO) on Linux do not require a reboot and those that do, like a kernal upgrade, can be done at your leisure.
Lastly, I like having my system running 24/7, with remote accessibility (through SSH) and not having to worry about it slowing down or crashing.
Back in '93 when a 486 running windows was a dog and a 486 running Linux was a useful machine I switched. It seemed like junk to me at the time.
For years I've been a UNIX developer and it never mattered what Windows did. Two years ago I found myself needing to do Java coding on a Windows box, so I had to get used to the environment after a bunch of years away.
I run two machines at home, a FreeBSD box and an XP box, both behind a hardware firewall.
I still use my FreeBSD machine as my primary machine for the following reasons:
1) I know a lot about how to work in a UNIX environment, so I'm more comfortable.
2) Performance wise, I find FreeBSD/UNIX is actually more responsive under comparable loads. This is because the Windows scheduler seems to be capable of optimzing for Desktop or Server, but never gets it right for me. (YMMV on this one, I frequently find it gets bogged down and becomes hung for a few moments)
3) I trust my FreeBSD box not to be sending random data to other people.
4) No entry point for viruses, trojans, spyware, etc
5) Call me old fashioned, but I have no interest in animated cursors or anything flash based, so I don't miss it.
6) I find tasks like file copying or stuff like that is done a lot faster at a command line
7) When I tell my FreeBSD box not to accept packets, I know how to do it, and that it will in fact do it.
8) Windows feels like the scary old days of fly-by-wire. I'm not 100% convinced it understood what I asked it to do or that even if it understood it will actually *do it* the way I expected. I just keep expecting that sharp right turn for no good reason.
9) I don't trust Microsoft as far as they'd let me try to throw Bill Gates =)
I finally capitulated and bought the XP box because for things like tax software always require it, and there is always a site or two that will require IE to access.
Even on my XP box, the primary interface for me is cygwin command lines or mozilla with privacy cranked up to a bajillion.
I'm not your average desktop user, and I just don't use or care about any of the ways in which Windows is more "user friendly" and "easier to use" (since for me it's the exact opposite).
I'll concede Windows has gotten better, but for old-school geeks like me, it just feels more like home.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm afraid they'll break if I stand on them...
Humorless sig goes here.
If you count on Windows, you are at the mercy of Microsoft and thier business model. They will try to make you and your business so depandant on them that you can't go in any direction but that which they tell you - you become thier cash cow.
Concientiously deploying thier solutions, however, means that they become just another vendor - who you can turf at any time for something better, if and when it comes along.
Realising what amount of control you give a vendor ultimately keeps control of your business where it belongs - with you.
There are probably more than a few businesses that woke up to the fact that Microsoft had an inordinate amount of control over them when they introduced Licensing 6.0. Once it sunk in that Microsoft was actually capable of exacting an annual tribute from them (and actually willing to attempt this), the ultimate damage was done. IMHO, Microsoft's huberis is killing Windows, not the worms.
*goes back to finishing the deployment of 2 brand new Linux servers...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I hate to admit it, but I use Linux because I can't figure Windows out. It baffles me. Configuration hidden in a million different places (where's the place to change your workgroup name in XP? Not in Control panels, that's for sure. Why, it's in the "properties" panel accessed by right-clicking "my computer"). Accessing even the simplest things is a nightmare. How on earth do those "shortcuts" work, anyway? Where do I go to get standard out and standard error? What's up with those drive letters, anyway?
/etc. I can't even _find_, much less understand, half of the configuration in Windows. And it's getting worse: While configuration on Linux is gradually migrating to common locations and formats, configuration on Windows is migrating out of the "control panels" and other such findable places. Don't even talk to me about the registry.
Linux is just plain simpler these days. Fewer bizarre interface quirks. I can understand an editable configuration file in
I think I've gotten too old for Windows. It's gotten to the point that only kids raised on it can make sense of it.
--G
For me, its definitely all of the above (stability, security, shady business practices), and more.
Price is a big sticking point, as I simply cannot afford Windows, not on my budget.
Support is another concern. With Linux (or BSD, or Solaris, etc.), there is a wealth of information available on the Internet that I am very accustomed to. With Windows, I either have to rely on Microsoft's Knowledge base (which is terrible, except for the most obvious problems), or *shudder* call Microsoft.
Granted, there are web forums and other places on the net that give tips for certain Windows issues, but they rarely work, and many times, aren't really applicable to my problem. And not to go completely against Windows, many of my past Windows problems have really been hardware issues... but a BSOD does not help me diagnose my problem. It may help Microsoft, but I'm not about to call them to find out I've got a bad stick of RAM or that my CDROM is flaky.
No, I think I'll be sticking with Unix for the forseeable future.
sure they exist for other platforms, but they're not as prevalent as on windows.
before windows XP, I would have said stability, but that is getting better, no matter how much we hate to think so. perhaps once windows is stable to a workable level, they will work on security, but I'm not holding my breath.
I've always been a linux/unix geek, and after trying OSX 2 years ago, I haven't looked back.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
I am an IT professional and have lots of other reasons to avoid windows.
However, from time to time I think it would be useful to have a windows box at home.
The first thing that stops me is money
- cost of the OS
- cost of virus subscriptions
Then there is all the spamware you get with windows through MS & OEM
Then the lack of a real command shell
Then performace
Then M$ business practices
Any activity that I might do in Windows has the side-effect of locking me into more Windows. It seems that every "feature" has some "extension" designed to work only if I'm willing to give up some non-MS thing. So if I'm willing to use MS products to deal with some standard they've "embraced", it evolves into their proprietary thing similar to, but incompatible with the standard, then they announce that their proprietary thing has reached the end of its life cycle, and that I need to pay money and learn new ways. ... And if I do this enough, they get to certify whether I'm educated!
Because...
* Windows isn't as elegant and pleasant to use as other alternatives.
* Windows isn't as well integrated (hardware / software / OS) as alternatives.
* Windows (and some other OS') make me work on the OS before I can get to doing what I'm *actually* trying to accomplish.
* Windows makes me spend significantly more time on patching & security compared with alternatives.
I *do* use Windows2000 / XP / 2003 daily at work, and can say with certainty that it's more effort to manage by comparison.
My particular field is bioinformatics, but many (most?) serious math and science applications are made for unix/linux.
It's a great read. It gives a brief history of UNIX and competing OSs, then describes in depth properties of the UNIX OS and contrasts them with other competing OSs. If after reading this book you're still developing on Windows, it better be only because your company says you have to. If that's the case, I'd be trying to convince them to begin migrating to a UNIX-like platform.
This book gives great guidelines for programming in general and is a must have for any serious programmer.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
These programs are available for windows, but you have to hunt for and install them yourself. I recently had to set up a windows box and it took me over an hour to get all the free software I needed installed. By contrast, Fedora/SUSE/Mandrake has you up and running from the first login.
Any way to have a unix-like symlink behaviour natively to Windows?
I choose not to use windows (although I'm still bound to a WinXP box with the current state of ATI's linux support and with the awesomeness of Unreal Tournament 2004) because it offers me nothing.
When I finish a shiny new WindowsXP installation, I'm left with an insecure, restless, and useless set of half-assed applications. Out of the box, its not able to protect itself from viral threats, its not the best at defragmenting itself, and it has no killer core-apps like my PowerBook would have after a new OS X installation. It reminds me of my sister and her inability to change her own diapers as an infant as well as her lack of essential life skills at that age.
Because all the good things must be purchased (or ultimately pirated) I consider it a real hassle to set up XP the 'right' way and I now use a PowerBook as my primary machine and linux for anything I don't have to interface with (file server, experimenting boxes, etc)
I wasn't necessarily talking about removable storage, but if you insist... my understanding is that the journal -- unless you are actively writing to the disk -- will prevent the sort of corruption you're talking about if you forcibly remove the hardware from the system. OS X is especially good at this, too, as I have run lsof a few times, checked to see that my external Firewire drive has no open files, and then just yanked it offline. No problems whatsoever.
I have never owned a Windows PC and I have barely ever used Windows, even though I bought my first computer in 1983 and have been using computers in one shape or form since then.
I have owned:
1 Commodore 64
3 Macs
1 Newton
1 iPod
I have used everything from Vic 20's, VM/CMS systems, PDP's, VAX's, Crays, SGI's, Macs, Linux, and Sun. And have never needed a PC to do anything I wanted to do.
Although, I might get one to play Grand Prix Legends (or Racing Legends, if it ever comes out) one day.
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
I was going to use Linux for a new computer I had, but there were too many things that I wanted to do that didn't seem to work on it. I already had a copy of Windows 2000, so I used that instead.
Main problem with Windows is it's vulnerability, but I'm certain if hackers put as much effort into it, they could get a load of Linux viruses/worms/etc. going.
If you're going to do damage to something, and do as much as possible, would you go after the empty house with an overgrown lawn, or go after the lavish mansion everyone stares at?
[dons flame retardent suit, awaits backlash, moderation as troll, Karma to negative]
GUI:
- for some reason MS doesn't get Multiple Desktops;
once you get used to them, you can't live without
them; I know that there are versions of that
for Windows, but they just don't cut it speedwise
(compared to my trusty IceWM);
- proper shell... why is it so hard to write a proper shell; give me something I can use, not
the ancient command.com that took until Windows2000
until it hat filename completion (inofficially
supported in WinNT 4... but unfortunately, you
had to walk through Registry sludgle to add
some mysterious Key to some value to turn it on);
and... the damn thing still can't autocomplete
Command names on the PATH
- security... well, I just can't work if I
constantly have to fear some Virus or something
else to infect my PC. I also hate to have to
think 10 times before klicking on any file,
because it could actually be an executable hiding
behind something else (yes, with extensions turned
on).
- apps: after using Debian for 3 years, it
just seems sooooooo arduous to work on Windows;
On Debian whenever I need some app or extension
I use trusty old apt-get; on Windows? I don't
know actually... where do I get an mp3 encoder?
Google... OK... but does this thing really
work, is even supported,...
Can I download stuff from any old site? Is
Tucows trustworthy? Could the app I'm downloading
turn my Windows installation into a quivering
heap?
That are my reasons for me reinstalling the
laptop I'm writing this on with Debian as
soon as I get some time on my hands,
murphee
It's a kludgy peice of bloatware... riddled with viruses and security flaws.
I simply will not tolerate it. If I had no choice but to use Windows, I highly doubt I'd spend half as much time using a computer.
... I choose on feeling and productivity. That was a factor in my computer purchase a few years ago.
I mostly use Linux at work (with a smattering of Windows). I had a PowerMac 7300 at the time, so I was using Mac OS 9. My undergrad roommates had Windows machines which I was on frequently.
So, the time came to choose a new computer for home since my PowerMac was slowly dying (various SCSI drive troubles... would've cost me $600+ to fix entirely).
Linux was nice, but I hated working with some of its idiosyncracies at the time (it's much better now compared to late 2001). It was the cheapest solution, but felt like too much work to run at home where I wanted a machine that would run without being a pain. So, Windows vs. Mac was the debate that was most prevalent. I'm not a huge gamer, so that wasn't an issue, really. The big issue for me came to simple productivity.
I absolutely HATE the way Windows intrudes all the time. It always felt as if Windows was just there... watching me... like a boss standing over your shoulder. And just setting simple things up could be such a pain in the rear. It's not that I don't understand the reasons for all this, but it just felt like Windows was always doing things using "brute force" methods.
Granted, Mac OS wasn't much better in some respects. But, it felt more comfortable to me. And with OS X coming along soon, I figured that it couldn't get much worse. With a BSD core, I also figured that it would help me inter-operate with my work computer better.
In the end, it was just how the different user-interface philosophies between Windows and Mac that sold me on getting a new Mac. Nowadays, with all the improvements in OS X, I'm completely glad I chose that way (even though I've been seriously looking into building/buying a cheap x86 box for Linux recently, too). So, for me, I just disliked the philosophy of the Windows GUI... it seems too intrusive to be productive.
-Jellisky
I usually run KDE or GNOME (neither one seems to really have a speed advantage on the other) and sometimes XFCE (which does seem a little bit faster) on Fedora Core 1 and Mandrake 10.0 but running the same program (Open Office.org or Mozilla) it definitely runs slower in Linux. This is noticible both on my Athlon XP 2400 and my 450 Mhz laptop. Just basic things about the GUI seem to run slower (moving windows, etc).
Am I missing something here? Should I be messing more with the configurations? Are people who talk about the speed of linux using blackbox without any eye candy whatsoever? I know this is slightly off-topic, but I'll tell ya, the speed issue makes me more likely to start up Windows instead of Linux, and I'm wondering why people say linux is faster.
I run three Macs and maintain a fourth. I also run Windows 98 in a sandbox on two of the Macs and I maintain a second Windows installation that my wife uses. Why do I stick with Apple?
1. style
2. security
3. high hardware reliability
4. high software reliability
5. BSD UNIX
I used not to use Windows because it wasn't good enough in all sorts of ways - botched memory management; poor security model; poor reliability. All those things have gradually improved over the years and now Windows is reasonably robust and reasonably reliable. But Linux is very robust and very reliable, and does all the things I need it to do. So I don't have any need or reason to change.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Why do I not use windows as my primary OS? well, the main reason is that I work for a macintosh software developer, so it makes sense to use macintosh. The sales and admin are all run on Windows, as are the servers. but the dev and support stations are all mac.
Having said that, I also run Debian. It installed with ease on my p4 laptop, and the fact it does not use rpm's is so nice!!!
Since I use both, perhaps the question for me is what will make me leave Windows. There is only one thing that comes to mind. If they keep forcing DRM in everything they make. It seems like Windows wants to keep limiting what I can do with their products. I want to watch an occasional DVD from Europe on my PC in the USA. Not on standard Windows components. I can't say how many times I have had to find open source alternatives to standard Windows components. And I hate the EULA. I hate that Windows can keep having the "update" pop-up and want to connect to Microsoft, and that it is impossible to turn off unless messing with the registry. And I REALLY WISH Microsoft would wait with releasing whatever version of Windows they are working on until they fix most of the bugs. I was so MAD when I PAID for Windows 2000, and I wanted to get service pack 1 to fix security holes-- Microsoft made me have to accept a new EULA and that damn update pop-up was part of it. I had a friend with Windows ME on a HP computer they purchased. It kept crashing. They eventually had to go to the store to buy Windows 98 (they did not want to learn Linux, they just wanted to type papers for class).
So I guess if Microsoft decides to sell computers that make the RIAA happy and fill it with DRM technology, and take away my control of the computer, I will finally say goodbye to Windows.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
As a developer, I can't stand writing software for Windows. The hassels you run into trying to support your products are simply nightmarish. I have friends who develop commercial Windows software and all they ever do is complain about how the vast majority of tech support they provide has absolutely nothing to do with their products, and is more likely the result of problems with other applications or the operating system itself. Life is too short to program for an environment that is so rife with problems and buck-passing from one vendor to another.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
I belive that if it was not for MS illegal business practices we would all be running java on netscape and have software that we can not even dream of.
MS philosophy is to to compete with products that you can defeat. Out of the rest buy those that will sell. And for the remaining destroy them by corupting their technology.
MS stinks and I only use it when I HAVE to (work, etc).
Damn the MAN!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
I'm still stuck on Windows. Mainly cause of some games and some multitrack audio recording, and DVD authoring software. I've not found anything acceptable for linux with regards to the last two. I'm not aware of any good linux software that can record audio in 24-bit resolution.
There are projects that may fill that gap soon though!
NVidia's X windows drivers are fantastic and KDE 3.2 and OpenOffice leave no reasons to stick with Windows otherwise. I'm currenly using WinXP, gotten at a huge and legal discount, and do not plan to ever pay for Microsoft products again.
I'm currently dual booting between WinXP and Suse 9.1. I also use Solaris 9 rather heavily at home.
and so many more..
I have two main machines (and eight second tier machines spread around the house), one runs Windows XP SP2RC1, the other runs Linux (Suse 9.1 X86_64). The Windows machine does video editing, SAS programming, and gaming, the Linux machine does day to day tasks (email, surfing, network backups, Open Office).
My windows machines never crash or hang. My Linux machine never crashes either, though X hangs a lot, but that's recoverable in a heartbeat. My firewall rules them all, and in a secure zone binds them.
Why run a linux machine at all? To stay current, learn new things, new viewpoints, new technologies. For the challenge of getting things working in a new paradigm. For the feeling of success of setting up my first truly successful Linux box, instead of my 20th Windows box.
Linux isn't for every task, but neither is Windows. I am not fond of BG, but I'm also not fond of RMS. Both preach that their viewpoint is RIGHT, and any other is WRONG. Free (libre) software is not viral and is not a violation of the Constitution. Proprietary software is not morally wrong.
Our goal should be to avoid a monoculture based around ANY system.
Can't we all just get along?
My Linux box just runs and runs. I push the button, it comes on. Reliably, consistently, efficiently. And when the virus infected Email comes in I can open it up and look at the code. Quite sophisticated. Try that with Winblows.
Product registration is another issue I don't like. Back stabbing EULA, no right of first sale, lack of security. The list is actually quite long.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
>> You pay for pre-installed windows.
> Not really. You pay only $50.
Uh. OK.
Mac is a wooden box, linux is a metal box, windows is a cardboard box.
For one, I have emacs key bindings hardwired into my hands. Not only Windows, but occassionally other applications using the newer desktop toolkits like GTK and QT in their default settings seem to collide with these key bindings.
In particular, in Word, if I type "Ctrl-B" to go back one character and get presented with some option to Bold something I start cussing.
It's partially my fault, though. There are evidently customizations not only in KDE and Gnome, but someone knowledgeable about Word once referred me to some way of customizing keys. If I were forced to use Word more often I might learn how to remap key bindings. As it is, I just make due with the default and "get by". And I don't feel guilty if the output in Word, Excel, or Powerpoint doesn't look pretty - it's not worthy my sanity to try to polish things up in those tarpit applications.
A default quick command line environment would be nice. If I had Admin access to our shared Windows box and felt confident about not trashing something valuable in the registry or the security settings, etc. I might install cygwin or mingwin to get some of that...
Then there's all the product activation and licensing hassles that in a Linux free beer environment are nonexistant...
I only do Windows under duress. It's my personal Abu Ghraib.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
and on Linux....
1. Choice
2. Stability
3. Virus/trojan/worm susceptibility
4. M$ funded SCO's attempt to kill Linux
5. KDE
6. Gnome
7. Evolution and Connector
8. Being able to compile and fix my own sources.
9. Being able to fix and compile other people's sources.
1. The desire to save several hundreds of dollars
...and the list keeps going on and on....
2. I trust Open Source software because there is nothing to hide
3. I don't like M$'s business attitude
4. More and more quality apps are filling the void
5. Community!
David
I don't live without Windows because there are too many apps and games I like that simply requires it, but I've been making an effort over the past few years getting comfy with Linux and trying lots of distros (SuSE is where I seem to have landed), because I'm pretty sure that in The Future®, M$ is going to be doing a pretty good job of force-feeding it's users the content they are supposed to be eating, and keeping them away from the other stuff. I want to be able to have a non-DRM/Pushed-Content/Locked-In/Locked-Out type digital world, so that's why I keep myself Linux-able. I don't set up any computers for myself now without dual or triple-boot options.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
...Then again, Borg now runs Linux, ever since the Bill Gates Disaster at Wolf 359 long time ago. Borg communication Node #63 had a Windows Protection Fault 0xC0000005, causing a massive chain reaction.
Now, back on topic, there's a good good reason: Gentoo Linux is just too cute and huggable. This penguin actually has better IQ than Bill Gates -- I love it!!
add regular and easy updates. I use debian at work ('cuase that's what our sysadms have set up) and Mandrake at home. For some reason I just love the fact that I can easily update Gnome, the kernel and my apps with the minimum of fuss. I never did that under Windows as I just knew I'd be out of action for a good while.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Where do I begin? Here is a short list of things I can tick off the top of my head:
1. Blecherous command line interface (I invariably can't do various things that I take for granted from a real CLI - grep, for example).
2. Blecherous GUI interface (I invariably want to do something that the GUI does not support - punt!?)
3. Too many applications share the same DLLs - and patches to a particular DLL by one application breaks another in too many cases.
4. API stack is labyrinthine - and resultant system programming is magic and full of inconsistencies.
5. Too many exploited security holes makes having it on my network a liability.
6. The owning corporation is morally and ethically bankrupt.
7. Clippy... (*cold shivers*)
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
With Windows, even the most experienced person cannot entirely avoid the popular hazards of windows such as its viruses and adware. Many of those Windows users who would claim to not have problems with these things actively run anti virus programs and anti-adware programs. It does not occur to them that this is not a normal part of computer use....Similarly, "Ehhh, sometimes you just have to format your hard drive, it happens, ....", BS!! This is not normal use. This is a bad product from a non competitive industry. Not surprisingly, with an open source os which is mainly based on open source software, you are more in control of what is going on on your computer. Even the community of users is different. Do these people constantly download and run binaries? Not nearly with the frequency of Windows users. Even if one chooses to be reckelss, and lets say, does run a random binary, why should your whole system be vulnerable? Almost all windows users don't understand the concept of a non administrative login. Windows users are used to bending over and they don't even know it. I would rather run a system where the system as well the software itself is set up to let me choose just how much trust I want to give to everything. As we all know, even being carefull on a windows system for the average user guarentees nothing.
Microsoft's mantra should be a take off of the 80's, (He who dies with the most toys wins)Microsoft's version should be: He who has the most bugs wins!
Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices?
d) All of the above.
I started playing with linux on a laptop over four years ago. At first, it was simply to play with, see what it had to offer.
Later that year, my workstation died. I'd had a number of proprietary programs installed from a job I had only recently quit, so I no longer had access to them. Linux on my workstation was a no-brainer -- I could put on the GIMP, StarOffice (OpenOffice wasn't yet released), and Mozilla, and have just about everything I'd had before, without needing to shell out the money.
I stuck with linux for a variety of reasons. At first, cost was an issue. Later, I was running on underpowered hardware (200MHz, 64MB machine) on which Windows was sluggish, but linux with a minimal window manager flew; performance became the issue.
Now, years later, I'm working in a primarily Windows shop -- all our users use Windows, but our servers are linux. When I first started here, I tried to perform my job with Windows. But I discovered quickly that I simply couldn't get Windows to adapt to my work habits. I've grown accustomed to multiple workspaces, highlighting automatically going to the clipboard, shading windows, and, of all things, a command line. In addition, I'm accustomed to administering services at the CLI level, and the point-and-click interface of windows really feels unintuitive -- no handy man pages or a --help switch to give me command options.
So, in the end, I wiped my windows partition and went to linux -- and this time it was a usability issue. I'm simply more comfortable in an X and CLI environment than Win32.
I've been anti-microsoft in the past, and I still disagree with many of their decisions, business strategies, and technical decisions, but in the end, these are not my primary reasons for sticking with an OSS operating system; usability is.
As a long-time Windows user/developer (I have run small LANs with Novell/Win3-9x), I have tired of the constant security breaches, bug patches and the BSOD (although XP does not give these - just system freezes). It (like me) is also getting too fat. 512MB to get decent performance from just the OS? No thanks!!!
...on my workstation at least. I had windows, and it was going fine till one day about a month ago, it bluescreened. When it started to come backup, it got an NTFS error and couldn't access the boot device. I didn't have any viruses or anything. I tried to reinstall win2k, and after the first 2 or 3 reboots, I got the same error. I installed debian, and all is well. I have only had to reboot once, and that was because my video card decided it didn't want to work anymore, and I had to replace it. I don't know what problem windows had with my hardware, but it didn't want to work anymore. I'm much more productive in linux anyways.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Drivers. Strange as it may seem, it's a lot eaiser to get things working in Linux (provided it's actually supported).
Infinite flexibility. I have a D-Link USB radio jobbie. My computer is set to turn on at 5:50 every morning in the BIOS. In my crontab I have the following commands record Jono and Harriet's breakfast show on Heart 106.2 (great show - listen to it!)
- tune the radio,
- unmute the line in,
- start recording at 5:55
- stop recording at 9:05
- shutdown the computer at 9:10
I can't even imagine how to do that in Windows.Better looking fonts. All my apps have AA fonts. The web looks so much more prettier in Linux.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
I like to change out my hardware a LOT, this is super easy to do in Linux and can vary from trivial to a re-install under Windows. I have tried various flavors of *nix over the years starting with an early Debian port to the Amiga...every time I tried a distro or two, they were a bit better than the ones six months before but still not quite "right." Until this past November when I tried out Gentoo, I figured it didn't have some of the problems I had with various other distros over the years and I was right. I love it, haven't booted back up into windows for anything other than games and even those reboots are getting more and more scarce.
I even recently convinced a non-techie to make the switch, he plays more games than I do but I think he'll stick it out and eventually be a true convert =)
With Windows, it just isn't there. With Linux you can often solve problems using logic alone. The powerful command-line tools, the text-based config files, the structured filesystem layout... these things all make it fast and easy to operate on the machine. Some things may seem a little arcane at first, but rather than requiring rote memorization, you can actually understand what is going on.
Compare this to Windows, where the system rarely makes sense, and where even after you become an expert administrator you never really develop a good understanding for what is going on under the hood. Consider the solutions to common problems found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: As often as not you're asked to follow some complex series of steps editing registry keys that no human can possibly memorize, rebooting, clicking through to deeply nested directories to delete random dll's, rebooting...
Now if all you've ever used on Linux is one of the commercial distributions running Gnome or KDE, Linux may feel essentially the same to you. But for the serious sysadmin (the kind of person for whom a window manager is primarly used for handling 50 xterms), Linux is a godsend. Even something like a remote kernel upgrade (2.4 -> 2.6) from 2000 miles away isn't all that difficult. [For the sake of reference, in the Windows world this would be the equivalent of migrating from Server 2000 -> Server 2003 completely over the Internet. Even if it were technically possible, how many MCSEs would be comfortable attempting this on a live production server.]
In short, the thing that keeps me (and many others) away from Windows is the inability to really understand and have control over the machine. And it all stems from the fact that the focus with Microsoft ever since the DOS days has been to make the system as opaque as possible in the name of user-friendliness.
Yeah, that's right. I still use dialup, and I have to use my external 33k modem in WinXP. I get a blazing 56k through my internal winmodem in linux thanks to linmodems.org. All drivers that I've tried under Windows has failed.
This is part of a quote from Microsoft about random client files being lost forever on their Hotmail.com servers.
"Frankly, it's understandable. There are always going to be glitches that lead to data loss."
need I say more...
I would say that I'm cheap (or perhaps I just hate wasting money) and I don't believe in pirating software. Most people that I know who are loyally committed to Windows pirate a great deal of their software. It bothers me that someone would dismiss Linux and praise Windows but will not pay for Windows or Windows apps. Also, if a "free" application is just as good as a "non free" application its logical to pick the free version. Even when the "free' version is not as good it still makes sense to pick it if it meets your needs. Let face it, I eat more ground beef than filet mignon even though the filet mignon is better. It is simple economic logic. I bet if someone could end all pirating of software it would not be long before the majority of people where using Linux.
I just like it more... ...I like the way it works, i like how i can edit most files in plain text, ...i like the open source, being able to troublehsoot stuff...
:)
i like that i can configure most of the stuff just like i want it...
In a way...using linux means getting back all the good stuff from OS/2...
maybe this is not making sense...but i just like it more than Windows.
cheers,
pol
I only use linux at home!
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
E
U
L
A
Why should I PAY for something I don't own? Why should the company writing the OS get preferential access to my system? Why don't they ask me if "I Accept@ BEFORE I've paid?
Why do I use Linux? Because I like it. It does everything I want, and everything I need, and doesn't give me headaches. Because there's plenty of people writing neat stuff for it, that I can get free, or at a reasonable price. Because I have plenty of choices of distros, and I can download and install them til my heart's content.
:) If I had started playing more with *BSD first, I'd probably be using it now. I used BSDi a long time ago, but they want (or wanted) a lot of money, that I'm not willing to let go of.
Why not Windows? Because I don't want to pay whatever market value is on Windows. Because I don't want to pay again in a year or two, just to keep up to date. Because I don't like doing daily updates. Because I don't like the way it freezes because it wants to. Because sometimes I do things that take days to do , and I don't want the constant feeling that I need to save my work because something might break. Because I don't like rebooting daily because "that's the way it is". Because I don't like the constant war of spyware, adware, and viruses on my desktop. Because I spend more time maintaining a dozen Windows workstations for other people than I do maintaining my workstations and 100+ servers.
Why not *BSD? Because I never really got into *BSD. How's that for an argument?
Why not Solaris? Because it just rubs me the wrong way. But again, if I didn't have Linux or *BSD, I'd probably use it.
And all the other choices? Because I haven't used them enough. People love their choice of distro, either because they're blind and someone told them "Oh, you have to use this", or because they have used it and really like it. There's some I did and didn't like. I kinda like Irix, but it was slow compared to a comparable speed Linux box. That was years ago, who knows, it could be better now.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
This is quote from the GNU Manifesto. It resonates with most GNU/Linux folks to varying degrees. Like many readers of this forum, I have made an implicit Faustian bargain with my employer and do not live up to these ideals at work. At home I do.
an ill wind that blows no good
...it's sooo much easier to get work done under a unix-like operating system shell. Not having to fight a GUI is so liberating.
Not having to worry about viruses and worms means
I'm NOT afraid of receiving email from total strangers.
The price is a big factor. It's not that I won't pay for software though. It's more like...for that much money, there isn't all that much I can do with it. XP seems stable enough, and it looks neat. But you can't really mess with it. It's an OK platform for running simple, standard software. That's about it. If I want that, it costs about as much in terms of time for me to set up a Linux system that can do that as it would a Windows system, so just by costing money on top of that, Windows loses.
But beyond that, I don't want an OS that's just good for running standard software, and that's it. I like to tinker. That's not particularly easy to do with Windows. It's not because MS designed it to be hard to tinker with. It's because their design is just too incomprehensible.
So...I don't use Windows because I can't really do what I like to do with it.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/08/01 55218&mode=thread&tid=111&tid=126&tid=185&tid=190& tid=201&tid=95
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Viruses
Keeping my kids out of my files
$300 for each of my 5 computers in my home
Software like MySql, openoffice, gimp, apache, etc...
Programming languages and scripting
The idea that something written once will not have time wasted on being reinvented in every other product out there.
(I hate the idea of paying for MS to re-invent something that they saw opensource or anyone else they can't buy do)
supporting inovation
to increase my standard of living
(more open source = less duplication of effort = less overhead = lower production costs = higher productivity = better standard of living)
I find it too hard to install!!
I have a Powerbook that kicked ass out of the box; both in terms of security and UI. I don't have the urge to play games on my PC's beyond MAME. (I have a PS2 for that). I got the OS for my Linux box from the library. It also installed without a hitch, and is loaded with help and man pages that are actually helpful and serve as manuals. Also, that book mentioned above is great.
I don't see the point in using Windows beyond the access to games--which doesn't interest me enough to risk trojans, zombification, worms, an obnoxious and backwards default browser that requires an act of Congress to remove, etc.
blarg.
a) Habit.
After 5 years of exclusive Linux useage, I'm just so used to it that I have trouble using a windos system when I have to (at work, friends, etc.) - I'm always looking for my shortcuts, the windowmaker dock and I try to middle-mouse-button-paste all the time.
b) (closely related) Tools
On Linux, I have all the tools I need to work efficiently. I have found the text editor, window manager and mail program of my choice and customized them to my needs. None of them exist on windos.
c) Ethics
Supporting Microsoft in any way is supporting a convicted criminal. Since it also is a crime that I care about, I just don't think it's the right thing to do.
d) Security
Doh. I'm a security dude (both at work and privately), so that one is obvious. Yes, windos systems can be locked down pretty good. However, almost no windos admin has the required skills or experience. For all I know, it also is so badly designed that the lack of security is a fundamental problem, not one of implementation details and bugs.
e) Privacy
Thank you, Mr. Gates, but I do believe that what is on my computer is actually mine, and that I am the one in charge of my private and personal data, and unless I want it given away, no software has any business doing so.
f) Better Living through Linux
It really makes my life easier and less stressful. I've never lost a major document because Word fucked it up, and I've never had a total system crash. I never had to clean up a virus-infected system and I don't have to worry every time I go online whether or not my virus scanner has the patterns for the latest worm already.
Also, I don't have to play cheap tech support for all my friends all the time. For those who want a serious hint, I tell them to use Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. So far, most of them were glad they switched.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Strike one: The licence. Have you read it? When you use windows you practically give away your first born child.
Strike two: Adware/spyware. When I was using windows I had to constantly worry about spyware slowing my system down. It's a PITA.
Strike three: Viruses. Let me get this straight. I have to pay a couple hundred dollars for the operating system and then spend another 50 to 70 dollars for one year of virus protection? NO thanks.
linux is such a great development environment (even for scripting), because the tools are either built in or easily obtainable...
let's face it, linux is a developer's os. screw mainstream, i want a developer's os, and for now, it fits perfectly
I fail to see the disadvantages of steering away from windows. Think about it - what kinds of apps are you going to be using on Windows? Bloated office suites, overcomplicated power apps, and so on. There's always an open source, FREE way of doing things, even if it takes a few simple individual apps to do the work of the whole. Besides, who wants to buy in to a bug-ridden, unstable OS? UNIX-based OSes are the best, hands down. OSX, linux, anything.
Before I was a Linux user, I was an Amiga fanatic.
Using Windows make me feel stupid. It is like buying a car that you can't work on, although I know Windows nearly as much as I know Linux since I have to work with it at the job.
I like to tinker. It makes my weekend to totally hose my box, and burn the midnight oil fixing it. I come out of the experience always learning something new. There is hardly a hosed Linux box I can't fix within an hour.
I stay away from MS-Windows for one simple reason: the future.
Microsoft has done its damndest to lock up the computing world. They have shown no interest in cooperating in the computing world: they are only interested in control.
I cannot ethically remain idle while a single group tries to control the flow of information. Microsoft has already set the computer industry back a decade through their tactics; by being complacent or "practical/pragmatic," by using MS software, I am tacitly approving their actions.
This might seem a bit simple to some, but to me it is the most important thing: we as professionals should try to make choices now that provide for the best future.
As with any long-term project, the choices we make now will affect future abilities. Until Microsoft universally takes a cooperative approach, I will not use their products.
I'm just not willing to sacrifice the future to them.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
One of the things that I love about free software is that there are hardly any ads. On Windows and Mac, it seems like every program tries to sell itself, or its parent company, to you. Some apps are even crippled and keep bugging you to buy an upgrade or whatever.
On my computer, things are very functional. There are no app splash screens, and programs have descriptive titles like "Music Player" or "Web Browser". They don't push themselves in your face, they just seem to say "Oh, you want to do this? Here ya go." It makes the computer much more pleasant to use.
I use Windows and I like Windows, The Operating System in my opinion doesnt creat lock-in the Applications do. Thats why I use the Gimp, iTunes, WinAMP, StarOffice and other Open Source offerings on Windows. They work and they work well. As for the news earlier IO thinks its a crock of crap, What did the company use to verify their facts? Most analysts groups make stuff up and thats why I give them no weight whatsoever.
I've always been a Mac person, so I'm used to the Mac'ness of my life.
And I simply don't have the time or energy to devote to being a skilled and attentive admin for Windows or any *nix box right now. Windows especially takes too much effort to load, secure, network, patch, secure, and patch and secure and patch.
My Mac OS X (yes, I know it's also a *nix) box has far more secure defaults than Windows, and less setup complexity than other *nix distros.
That and the relative obscurity of any non-Windows OS helps keep malicious code and kiddies at bay.
Why do I avoid MS?
Because I never had to submit to the Borg in the first place. My background is in graphic design and type design, and all the cool stuff in that little world was on the Mac OS, so I never had to get a Windows Machine. I *did* have to aquaint myself to the Borg Mind that is Windows, and when I was doing technical support in the late 1990s, I had to get *really* good at it (win3.1, 95, 98, NT). Everytime I found myself in the depths of the living pit of despair and mediocrity that is Windows, my love for that which is not MS only grew.
I still think the MacOS, specifically OSX, is superior to Linux, but I am also fairly well convinced that Linux OSs will be of comparable quality and ease of use in less than 5 years. Once the apps on Linux get GUIs worth using and looking at (which I also believe will be in the next 5 years), then Apple will have an interesting dilemma, but not half as interesting as what MS will face in the next few years in trying to get the travesty that is Longhorn out the door.
At first, I detested Windows because of its instability. Look at it sideways and the BSOD would come visit. Woof. MacOS v7 - 9 wasn't any prize for stability, but it did improve over time, and would often fail in a less spectacular way. Linux has always (to me) been more stable than either, except for OSX.
Another thing I dislike about Windows is its gamma. Looking into a windows machine is a dim and dingy thing compared to Apple. (I wish Linux were brighter as well...) And the OS has always been cumbersome, ugly and just plain nasty. Remember IRQs? What a load that was - just to hook up a freaking scanner or install a CD drive was often a nightmare in Windows.
So, let's see- it was ugly (still is, IMHO), unstable, unfriendly, and owned by a rapacious monopolistic enterprise run by an autistic geek and Monkey Boy. It's an insecure system in continuous need of updating, it's the source of continuous viruses and worms because of the Swiss Cheese nature of the OS and VB.
What exactly is there to BRING me to Windows? So I can trade .doc files with every other office drone?
So: that's why I don't use Windows. It's Just Not Worth The Hassle.
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
My only reason to use Windows is easy access to binaries -- Warez and Pr0n.
I'm beginning to think these things are overrated, as:
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I know this is the reason people can't switch away from Windows, but this is actually the reason I can't switch *to* Windows: applications. There's just too much open-source stuff I use which isn't ported (or easily available) to Windows. Examples are LyX, Octave, command-line tools (awk/sed/grep/...), valgrind, and many others. I know you can always download cygwin and all, but running Linux is just so much simpler.
Of course, not having to fear worms/virus too much is also a plus (though I still keep my system up to date).
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
You consider dating simple? Now I know you're out of touch with reality!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Another segment of the game market, MMORPG isn't going Linux any time soon either unfortunately. And MMORPGs definitely represent a good chunk of gamers. Those companies that develop these types of games have enough trouble fixing bugs on the fly, let alone porting their game to another platform.
Although, on a side note, Planeshift (MMORPG) looks promising for all platforms.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
In my experience, OS X yells at me if I unplug a volume without dragging it to the trash. OTOH, stuff like a scanner that there is no need to 'unmount' is fine. Under windows, it yells at you no matter what, even for a read-only cdrom drive with no open files, or a scanner not in use, or whatever...
As I said earlier, I use a Mac. I walk around work with my wireless PowerBook G4. Hell, my PowerBook typically has similar uptimes to our Solaris and FreeBSD servers! (Alright, maybe not that good, but pretty close.) I know that my system is a lot more secure than Windows and it's much more stable. I can do everything on my Mac that I can do on Windows, plus with the Unix backend, I can do alot more.
My question is, why do you use Windows? I mean, with all the security holes and virus outbreaks, etc, why do you still take the risk?
Nestled tightly within the fucking Windows XP "OS" is Microsoft messenger. It starts up when WIndows starts.
You open the Task manager, and kill the process.
It comes back 10 seconds later.
Loop(x)
(where x is number of times before I defenestrate the pc and start anew, suse 9.1, like the sun in the winter of my life.)
But even now, with Windows long gone, I sometimes can feel msmsgs.exe, outside my door, wanting terribly to get in.
Beware.
I stay off Windows as much as possible because I'm tired of an operating system patronizing my skills as a computer professional. I am tired of being constantly asked to confirm or deny the actions I take. I am tired of windows and popups offering to help me with this or that when I just want them all to shut up and go away.
Windows has mass appeal for those unfamiliar with computers because it hand-holds and coddles all the way, making those who are fearful to even touch a keyboard at ease enough to surf the web, send email, and order jockey shorts from eBay.
However, Microsoft says that Windows is a professional-grade OS suitable for programming, computer science, and complex development. Yet this OS still treats me like I am a two year old. No, I don't want you to ask me before throwing it in the fucking trash. Yes, I want to view my files...ALL of my goddamn files, thank you very much. I don't GIVE A SHIT if changing the extension makes the file unusable or inaccessible or even if it blows up China...JUST DO IT!
Hence: Yes, I DID mean to type: format c:
Blog,Twitter
When I said:
Did that take me longer to do that it would have done in Apache? Absolutely. Was it faster than it would have taken an IIS wizard to accomplish the same task? Almost certainly.
I meant, "...IIS wizard to accomplish the same task in Apache." Not meaning to imply that I can click faster than they can do whatever. Just saying that for crossover administration (like the grandparent discusses), I've found precious little in Windows that wasn't easier than it would have been for my mythical counterpart.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
So naturally, my Windows-install was not updated when the following sequence of events occured:
Needless to say, that Windows partition is now history. Some extra storage space always comes in handy.
Anyway, what keeps me away from Windows at this moment (the most important reasons, anyway):
It takes too much time to admin even just my own personal Windows system to keep it 'safe enough' to even have it on the internet: I'd need a firewall (Windows firewalls, even commercial ones, often have security problems themselves, read Bugtraq!), Antivirus-software (which costs $$$, takes huge amounts of CPU power/memory, slows down even a P4 to a drag, etc.), Spyware scanners such as Ad-aware and/or hijackthis, run Windows Update automatically or at least regularly and generally spend at least a day freaking around after a fresh install, turning off services (in Linux they are off by default), running Windows Update and installing all the crap mentioned above.
Then, to sum it all up: in Windows, I would not use IE and OE, because - oh well, I don't have to explain why if you have read the above.
So I would end up using Firefox, Thunderbird mail and OpenOffice just like I would do in Linux. So why would I bother to run those apps on Windows anyway? That software runs great in Linux, too...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I bought a mac.
Unless you are a game freak, you don't need windows, and WILL be happier using a mac, regardless of what misgivings you have, even though a mac may be more expensive. you will not regret your investment.
...because I just don't like it. I find its interface more complex to use for a power user. For example, I find the K Menu much more straightforward than the Start Menu because it's all organized into submenus, not just a big long scrolling list of unorganized programs in the Programs menu.
Another thing I like about KDE/Gnome are their User Interface guidelines. Any program worth its salt follows these uniform guidelines and it makes applications much more straightforward to get the hang of. Even different apps that Microsoft releases look entirely un-uniform together (for example, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and even Microsoft Office (to an extent) feel different than the rest of Windows.
I think KDE is also much nicer looking. I can get a variety of themes and styles and customize them in ways you just can't in Windows (at least not easily).
I also like that I can use one media player for all my media files. And it matches with the rest of KDE (fyi, I use Kaffeine, a Xine frontend). Plus music piped through ALSA sounds much nicer than what sound on Windows did.
I also like the flexibility of being able to build most Linux apps from source. I like being able to use the command line for things that seem to use complex GUIs on windows. And I like having a tabbed Konsole. Tabs make your taskbar so much cleaner.
Overall, I keep off Windows because it just doesn't fit my wants. I've grown comfortable with the Linux way of things, and I'd like to stick with them.
i'm a mac guy, been so for a decade and a half. i've got a winXP box that is intended just for games and as a web browser testbed and a platform for occasional academic software needs. i still fucking hate it.
my mac is old. really old. it's 375MHz, ok? and that's with an upgrade... meanwhile, the PC is a 1.8GHz Athlon with much more memory and MUCH more hard drive space. so why do i still use the mac for everything important (mail, irc, www, aim/icq, html, etc)? because i never feel like i'm working with windows, just against it.
using windows seems like i'm constantly haggling over just how useful of a "user experience" i can get out of it. granted, i'm more familiar with the mac, but after a several years of using windows at home and on jobs i still feel like i'm working with a smart-but-tantrum-prone child that really wants to do things their way, but will bend if you take the time to talk to it (or hit up the MS kbase).
people have accused the MacOS, 9 and X, of pandering to the home and school users at the expense of the power user. this may be true so far as administrative and hardware tools are concerned. but for general desktop use, file handling, typical system settings or other areas, it always feels like windows thinks i'm much more of an idiot than the mac OS does. "would you like to clean up your hard drive?" NO. "you should clean up your desktop!" NO. "i'm gonna put a pretty freakin' sidebar on every window!" NO. "how about i ask you every time what you want to do with this inserted media, and never remember?" NO. sitting down at a fresh OS X installation, i spend about two minutes setting things up just the way i like them. with windows XP, it's a good fifteen-twenty minutes of turning off bubbly GUI crap, all the "helpers" and "wizards," dangerous services, hidden files, effects, and so on. sure, the mac has some of that crap, too, but it never feels like the same pain in the ass - like windows doesn't want me to play with that stuff.
pretty much the only times the windows box isn't pissing me off are: (1) i'm playing a fullscreen game, and can't even see the GUI; (2) i'm watching a fullscreen video, and can't even see the GUI; (3) i'm using a program that's virtually identical across multiple platforms (itunes, adobe cs, firefox).
my friend mig had a great idea for XP, or really any software: when you install, there's a two big buttons: "HOME/BUSINESS USER" and "POWER USER" - and alllll those little bullshit settings and helpers and pretty crap just disappear after you click "POWER USER." of course, these aren't even touching on the ridiculous security problems that windows has... but since i hate all those problems, i make sure to run a tight ship and try to never have them (not using IE is a great place to start).
ultimately, i feel like i have to fight windows more to get what i want out of it. no interface is perfect, even the oh-sacred-holy mac os (no, not that much of a zealot), and i think far too much crap gets introduced when you have engineers and marketers designing features without a good interface designer or product manager there to lay the smack down.
- emilio
neurostyle dot net - it's all in your head
well here's the reasons i can come up with in 5 minutes:
;-)
;-)
1. scripting: i LOVE scripting! without some nice bash/perl/python scripts and the heavy usage of piping, bash variables, etc. an operating system would be more of a hindrance than a help!
1b. automation: automation together with scriptability is just the greatest. schedule some event for tomorrow, start anything in a screen session and connect from somewhere else lateron, convert all your filenames into something else, schedule backups, schedule reboots, *you name it*.
1c. remote access: any OS that doesn't allow remote access which differs in no way from local access is crap (hmm, hopefully remote sound support comes soon for X). windows incapability to allow transparent and easy remote access is one of the main reasons of not using it for anything but desktop. having a windows server and being responsible for administrating it remotely (as you most likely will, if sitting in some basement ain't your thang) is the most horrible nightmare imagineable!
2. transparency: i just trashed one of my file-systems (i WAS actually my fault). but linux/unix allowed me to repair what was left and most of all give me the CHANCE to spend as much time as i wanted! with proprietary systems you often have to rely on shoddy support (if you have any).
3. community: this has actually little to do with a specific system, but the open-ness of linux/bsd produces a better community. in free/open software there is so much know-how available on the internet with most of your questions already answered, and if not capable individuals in forums, IRC, newsgroups!
4. fixeability: windows give little choice when it comes to fixing bugs. the little you can do in the registry is most likely to trash your whole system (which you then will have no chance of reviving!). you CAN very well destroy a linux system, but much of the configuration files can be saved.
5. security: windows just sucks when it comes to securing against trojans, virii, worms! with A LOT of effort you can clamp everything down to a state where a w2k/wxp system can be called secure, but with stringent (it could be better) user separation of unix, compromising one service does not necessarily mean compromise of the whole system, as it does in most cases under windows.
6. extendability: in non-windows OSs (i.e. linux/bsd) you always have the chance to go further. if the system isn't secure enough, configure SELinux. if you would like some additional feature in the kernel, patch it. if you want perfectly configured mutt/exim/fetchmail/apache/cyrus spend hours over hours and get it the way you want!
7. choice: having the choice of several programs for one job is often a nuissance and will likely take you a while to figure out which one is best suited. but this inconveniance still beats having less choice (as you DO under windows!).
8. price
9. modularity: nobody is forcing you to update to such and such, update your operating system to install an office suite or anything like that. with the compile-from-source approach, almost any program should run under almost any posix-compatible OS (if written with compatibility in mind) and therefore put no pressure on the users as to what OS to use!
9. freedom: the certainty that you will NEVER have to do with anything less than you have today. the good feeling that a free-software community is building software for the future which will not be obliterated in a 5-year-cycle. sure, the bazaar model has its drawbacks, but the freedom from monopolistic enterprises which try to force you into dependencies (i.e. the MS Office format) should clearly be more important than the little comfort you gain over free alternatives (with notable exceptions of course).
i surely have forgotton many reasons (as well as not mention some drawbacks of not using windows), but the above should cover it for now
Linux simply has all the apps I need to get stuff accomplished. The networking is head and shoulders above Windows. (hell, 10 years ago, I was running Win95 except when I wanted to connect up to the net, when I'd reboot into Slackware and use real net tools... remember those kludgerous TCP/IP stacks 95 had?) WineX has progressed to where I can play an occasional round of Half Life (though it still won't run DeLorme Street Atlas 2003). And I can use my 'puter from anywhere I can get a SSH tunnel up. Try that with Windows.
On top of all of that, I don't have to worry about the worm du jour and if I don't like how an app does something, I can dive in and fix it.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
I have been using FreeBSD for a while now. I recently had a project that forced me to use windows, and I was reminded all over again why I dont like to deal with it.
/etc conf files are ALOT more easier to understand than a registry imho.
/home/usrname(unless you are root or gave yourself lots of permissions) Also, there are alot fewer places to hide in a *nix system, as you can just cat your *rc files and see if something is starting up or not, and a "kill", doesnt startup another process like it can with complex xp viruses when you try to kill them from the task manager.
Windows 98
- Illegal operations
- blue screens
- unexplainible freezing
Windows xp
- Spyware
- Addware
- Trojans and Viruses.
- The fact that all the above are so prevailent that it is near impossible to just browse the net without alot of extra software, hardware, and tech knowlege to protect yourself.
- Even with an extensive knowlege of the registry, and windows API its so hard and confusing to clean your system of all the crap that gets install on it.
I dont own XP, but I have a few friends and family who do. The number of malwares trying to attach themselves you your startup list, or Browser are so great that it reminds of of the number of unemployed people at a job fair.
Im not saying that everyone in opensource is Good, but for the most part opensource developers what to create something useful and reliable.
Even if Linux viruses started poping up, they wouldnt be able to do much to the system other than mess up your
But for some reason, after all my attempts at switching to Windows, I stick with my mac. Windows feels like a file or rasp that I constantly need to clean, I can use it for awhile without paying attention to it, and it will do a good job, but eventually it just become unusable. On my Mac, it feels like a hammer. I can use it as much as I like, or as little as I like, and it will constantly perform the same tasks without a hitch. I don't know if that analogy makes any sense to anybody, but Windows seems to require some level of maintenance that my mac does not require. That piece of mind is important to me.
As for the other reasons:
#2 I like things that are free. Free as in beer is good, free as in speech is more important. I don't mind paying for software as much if it uses open standards and works the way it's supposed to work, as opposed to selling crippled products as an attempt to use one product (which I paid for) to force me to pay for 20 new products. (heavily related to #1)
#3 would be that, after using Gnome and OSX for a while now, the Windows 95 style interface seems out of date, and the Windows XP interface looks horribly ugly.
#4 I use linux because I don't have the feeling that I'm getting money squeezed out of me for every little thing. Sure, Windows XP includes a free FTP server, but you want to download a >4GB file? You're paying extra. You want a new theme, pay extra. There are so many great programs and tools for linux.
#5 I use OS X and Linux because they play nice together. I can even compile my favorite linux apps/tools for OSX! (which, like I said in #4, are free)
#6 I've never had as transparent a computing experience as in OSX. By "transparent" I mean that, in using the computer, I didn't have to think about the fact that I'm using a computer. I just do my work.
#7 I work in IT, and keeping up with OSX and Linux seem like it might be potentially good for my career.
I think those are the main ones.
...oh wait, that keeps me off Window *ledges*...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
This annoys me to no end.
Should it?
Slashdot not getting enough hits today? This is like throwing a match into a warehouse that stores gasoline in cardboard boxes.
Linux is for those that hate windows.
BSD is for those that love Unix.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I'm kept off of Windows for the same reason a lot of other people are kept on. Windows just doesn't support my needs. Sure, it'll do posix, and X, and other standards, but everything else just does them _better_. The only thing Windows does better than everyone else is Windows, and I just don't need what it offers. I can get plenty of games for my Mac (not as many, but I'm far from a hardcore gamer), and run all of my OSS programs in a much more comfortable environment. I can even run Word, on those rare occasions when I have use for it.
Windows will _do_ everything I want it to do, but frankly, I just don't enjoy myself as much when I use Windows.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Probably the main thing is basic security. I've spent hours cleaning spyware and viruses and other bullshit off my wife's Win XP machine, and she's well trained not to open attachments in email and other idiocies but STILL that crap gets on there! It's goddamned annoying. I _would_ move her to linux too but the usb multifunction printer, her digital camera, not to mention all those silly browser games/etc she likes to play either won't work in linux or are a pain in the butt to get working.
:)
Another big reason is I hate fucking with Windows licensing, every time I upgrade my wife's machine I have to call that god forsaken toll free number and read in the longass "code" and then they read me back another longass code to "re enable" my OWN LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED copy of Windows CP, the CD is on her tower case, and the product code sticker is stuck to her monitor, I HATE being treated like some kinda pirate just because I upgrade motherboards or swapped sound cards/etc on a computer I OWN running software I PURCHASED.
Mozilla tabbed browsing - ok I know I can run this in Windows too but I still like Mozilla's tabbed browsing
One of my other "biggies" is a rather simple one, tabbed SSH shells on Konsole in KDE, I keep upwards of 30 shells open to various servers open at ALL times, having these in one window with tabs at the bottom is absolutely priceless, I've yet to see any other apps do this outside of Konsole and unless my memory fails, the default term program for Gnome also does this.
Email - I like Evolution it serves my purposes without being bloated or trying to "do everything" for me. Check my email, send my email, I'm pretty happy. I will let procmail do my filtering and sorting thanks anyway (yes I know Evolution does a lot more than this but it doesn't put it "in my way"). Also, last I checked there isn't one single email virus that will fuck over Evolution (or any other Linux email client that I'm aware of). But this point is really made in point #1 about security.
Stability - uptime on my box is 28 days, nothing awesome (I'm not shy about rebooting but just don't have too much). Windows while it HAS improved, still isn't that stable, my gaming computer, which has a barebones install of XP with just what is necessary to play the games I like to play, still manages to need a reboot about once per week or so. Nothing more aggravating than having to reboot when you really don't WANT to.
--- www.f-theocean.com
I use GNU/Linux because it's licensed under the GNU GPL license. I don't want to use any non-GPL software. See http://www.gnu.org
Back in 2000, i was just finishing my sophmore year of college. I had spent a semester in project classes using UNIX based tools (in particular i remember Viewsim). My desktop in my dorm room was
a 366 Mhz celeron running windows. I had a terrible time with the free X server for windows that i got off the web. During that summer, i asked myself:
"Why am i running windows if NONE of the applications i use run natively on windows?"
That summer i switched to linux and have never looked back since. (Not quite the summer of love, but close!)
If your distro has really good package management, (Gentoo, maybe Debian as well (haven't used it)? Personally, I don't like RPM) it's much more convenient than running Windows installers and uninstallers. For me it's just "emerge foo" and go.
-insert a witty something-
I was so pissed off I just trashed the system partition and reformatted it as ext2.
The reason I avoid Windows (beside the questionable business tactics of the company) comes from my own and my friends experience with the products. But mostly, its my experience with the horrible, inconsistent design of Office and occasional bouts of Window's use. Its obvious that MS has lots of coders and that they each do their little bit in total isolation from each other. Add viruses (more than 30 per day in May) and I see absolutely no reason to switch.
My one, recent , experience with Windows was trying to get a peripheral (with Windows-only drivers) connected so I could use it. On a totally fresh install of Windows, I discovered that inserting an IBM PCMCIA-to-CF card adapter hosed the system so badly, I had to wipe the drive (the fault persisted across a normal reinstall of the OS). Funny how my all of my Macs (from a old 190 powerbook to a newer Pismo) handled the IBM adapter perfectly with no driver software, no configuration, and no hiccups, while software from IBM's former partner barfed chunks.
I've also watched friends, highly intelligent friends who are profession Windows developers, struggle with their systems -- accepting that they will have to reinstall (and probably reformat) at least once or twice a year. In contrast, in nearly 20 years of Mac usage, I've only been forced to reinstall the OS once (and have never been forced to reformat a drive).
I'm sure some have had spotless experiences with Windows and I'm sure some have had horrible experiences with Mac. But my experience has shown me that Macs just work and work well when compared to the alternatives.
I know I don't own the cheapest, most popular computers, but then I've never owned the cheapest most popular cars either.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'd say all of the above. Windows in incredibly insecure. You won't find any deathly viruses for Linux.
/very/ expensive to upgrade. I don't want to spend $150+ ever few years to upgrade my OS! Linux is freeeeeeeeeee.
Windows is
Windows is very expensive to develop applications for. Free development tools are almost non-existent, and those that are there are very primitive and lack much needed functionality. The tools that do have the features and performance I need cost hundreds of dollars.
Windows is not open source, and neither are most of the applications that run on it. This means I can't quickly fix a bug or apply patch, instead I must wait for the company providing the software to send me a fix.
Windows has never been as stable as a Un*x operating system. IMO, my Windows XP Pro machine still has yet to be as stable as my SuSE Linux machine.
I also dislike Microsoft's business practices. They pay-off, buy out, or shut-out the competition, and if that doesn't work, they badmouth them. For example the paid off Corel to stop developing their software for Linux. Recently they have been releasing (or rather funding) research showing Linux as being a bad alternative. Also, Bill Gates has bad mouthed the open-source community as a whole, in statements such as... oh forget just go read this article. (register.co.uk)
Ok so Ya, I hate Windows. The only reason I have a Windows XP machine is so I can more easily troubleshoot my grandparents' tech problems. If it weren't for them, there wouldn't be a single MS product in this house.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
My motherboard!
No, seriously. Earlier this year the hdd controler took a dump to the point where windows wouldn't run. I've tried: 98SE, ME, 2k and XP. Not a single version runs. I end up with "Hardware failure: contact your vendor for support" or something similar. On safe startups it dies immediately after MUP.SYS. I've been through new ram, video cards, hard disks, bios flashes, network cards, and HDD low level formats.
Anyway, I had a gentoo partition on it for a while, and I run mandrake/debian/redhat on various servers so I'm not quite jumping in the deep end here. The reason I was running windows was really for games and the 'it just works' factor. I know if I get a device somewhere, or a game, or some app I know it runs on windows.
Now, I know the arguments against all the above... if you want to game, get a console. Buy only hardware from linux-friendly manufacturers.. and I agree although the reality is that it doesn't always work that way.
Now, to get my computer functional, I installed several distros (all of which seem to work flawlessly despite windows claims of hardware inadequacy). I didn't feel like installing gentoo all week (I'm not knocking gentoo! I ran it for a year or so and liked it), and fedora lasted almost half an hour before me getting mad at it, so I went back to my old standby... Mandrake 10. I booted knoppix and saved the community iso to my ramdrive, burned it, and installed from the ftp official sources. An hour later I had a copy of Mandrake and it was my new desktop - permenantly. Albeit by force.
Now, I tried to go back to windows a few times on another partition with no success (and yes I mapped the partitions around with grub to be windows-friendly).. And it failed.
So I had a choice.. stick with linux (by force) and learn to love it in a desktop environment or shell out for a new motherboard.
Setting up the system was simple. Sound, mice, usb printers, nvidia graphics drivers etc... All that went well. The next task was clear - getting games to work.
Now, I have a collection of several hundred cd's and numerous floppies dating back to the days of the original Mechwarrior and Starflt (and I still have the code wheel). After a weekend of wine and compiling the winex cvs several different ways, I ended up with a grand total of 0 working games. This was very disappointing.
I struggled for about another two weeks with some mmorpg's I played and had just about finished with the withdrawl pains since I was unable to play them. Still no luck.
I was hard-set against paying $15 for a transgaming subscription, mostly because of the lack of it being free (in either sence of the word).
At one weak point I threw out my cc# and ended up with a nice little minty-fresh RPM. The installation was easy.. no config files needed to be setup (although I tweaked them later) and it made all the directories I needed. The interesting part was... most of my games actually worked. I've been going through KOTOR for the last week on linux, and aside from some mouse irritations it mostly works.
Now, I'm not an advocate for Transgaming, and I recommend using wine/x if at all possible, but for anyone thrown into the deep end it can ease some of the pains.
And now, my home system is linux and its staying that way.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Windows doesn't give the user enough control. For instance, at work today we tried to restart a Windows "server". The server would not go down. Did the start menu reboot thingie. Sent it a reboot command over the network. The sucker wouldn't go down. So we had to walk all the way down to the server room to hit the big red button. Have you ever had "shutdown -r" refuse to reboot the machine like that? Hell no. When shutdown is called, the system is going down, no ifs, ands, or buts.
When I tell a machine to do something, it damn well better do it.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm a professional software developer. A couple of years ago I divided my time between two systems: Windows for professional use and Linux for personal use.
In the time since, I've steered our company to Linux and Java on the server-side, and ported our main client application to a browser-based web application. In the process, my need to use Windows for business has fallen off considerably (not totally).
These days I use Mac OS X for about 85% of my computing time. I develop Java applications in Eclipse on the Mac. I do all my personal computing on the Mac. I support our Linux servers and software on the Mac (ssh, X11, et cetera). I open MS Office documents that other people send me on the Mac.
The remaining 15% of the time I'm using Windows to support legacy applications that are Windows-only. That's all I use Windows for, these days, and I'm slowly getting rid of that dependency, too.
Come one come all......to OS X
Plus I forgot to mention that Linux is much faster. With Linux and Windows on the same machine, speed-wise the former beats the pants off the latter.
I don't hate Windows like many here, but I like how I can get down to the kernel level and strip out anything I don't want to run on startup, all the way to how X starts up and what runs. I like where the configuration is stored vs. the Windows registry. I feel more comfortable with it.
Plus, I have a programmer's mind, so the whole idea of tinkering with my machine like that is fun to me. I don't really try to participate in the zealot wars one way or another... people can use what they want. I've been very happy with Linux though.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
1. it's too hard to figure out how to do things.
2. Not very customizable. (unless you spend money.)
3. Ugly as sin.
4. I can't do any work on it.
5. commands rarely do what you want often do what Bill wants or rather thinks you really meant but didn't ask for.
6. Slow
7. Too many security holes.
8. One size doesn't fit all (Are you listening RH)
9. limited interoperablity with other OS's and computers.
10. Poor networking.
11. Poor handling of large files and large file systems.
12. Too many things are automatic and can't be shut off.
13. TCO is too high.
14. Requires continuous maintenance.
15. Poor backwards compatability.
16. Poor UI
17. Ram Hog
18. Outlook
19. Small selection of software packages. (It has big names but a small range of products.
20. Windows users. (No the mouse doesn't bite.)
I now have the money to buy a specific brand of hardware for which there is a great OS, and just find I'm more productive. The bundled development tools are practically worth the additional layout alone. I have not programmed before using Apple kit because I've found it too difficult, whereas I'm developing software for OS X quite easily. I use Microsoft PCs at work, I'm a doctor in the UK, and we have to hire someone to make sure all the antivirus stuff is in place, and it is very difficult to integrate any new software with the (admittedly) poorly written software chosen by the government for us to use. Linux I don't use much for the reason that as with the Microsoft stuff I have difficulties with any hardware that is esoteric, although it is seemingly improving quite quickly.
If I promise to be a good boy can I have some better karma?
but I prefer to use Windows because I know what I'm doing with it. I've never had any of these problems people speak of. No Sasser. No Virii or Worms of any kind. I got a little paranoid after Sasser and installed AntiVir Personal Edition just to check things out......Nothing to report.......Ran ad Aware.....Nothing to report. I've never had a problem with my Windows box. Disclaimer: I run a Linux box as a firewall. I use Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email :-)
P.S. Does anyone know of a Yahoo client for Linux that has voice capabilities?
"There is only a one in six billion chance that you actually exist"
What keeps me off Windows is that it's closed source and not POSIX compliant. The two conspire to make it both not fun to hack for, and nigh on impossible to hack on. Also, it just doesn't work for me. Windows annoys the heck out of me with its clunky interface, seemingly random failures, and seemingly certain slowness.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Drudge confirms it, The Gipper is taking his final nap. According to the Drudge Report, screams and gnashing of teeth could be heard as Ronnie roasted away.
surprised I havent seen that one yet
until high heat baseball and madden football have linux ports (probably never)
Seriously, I don't want to sound like a zealot here, but Debian is great!
I can install (virtually) anything with a simple aptitude install xxx. Need an office suite? One aptitude install openoffice.org and it's there.
I can also keep my system up to date with a simple "aptitude update" followed by "aptitude upgrade".
Microsoft should make apt for Windows and start a repository of Windows software. aptitude install officexp. That would be a great idea.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
You mentioned almost every reason to dislike Windows in your question. Those are the reasons I don't use Windows. Microsoft is evil. Their OS sucks any way you look at it. The hidden costs associated with using Windows (spam, viruses, lack of support for open source) are practicially infinite, meaning, for better or worse, that those problems will always exist for Windows. They say there is no such thing as a dumb question, but I don't agree. Your question is dumb and you, imho, are also dumb.
To be read aloud a la Steve Balmer's famous developers speech:
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- It's not Free!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S not FREE!
- IT'S NOT FREE!
- IT'S NOT FREE!
- IT'S NOT FREE!
- IT'S NOT FREE!
- IT'S NOT FREE!
- IT'S
... NOT ... FREE
Is it clear yet?At home I have OS X boxes. At work I am forced to use a variety of Win2K and XP boxes for developmnent.
What's keeping me away from Windows at home is the constant exposure to Windows at work. With a constant basis for comparison, who would choose Windows? Even the Microsoft apps are better on other platforms.
What also keeps me on Windows so much at work as opposed to a Linux box (I have one) is just the calendar support. That's pretty much it. I await evolution with full calendaring support quite anxiously, I plan to look at that pretty soon after my current project winds down a little.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The last piece of Microsoft software I bought was Word 95 that came on about a gazillion floppies. I had a 386 PC at the time running DOS/Win95 and decided I needed a word processor.
I installed it and used it for a few months. Unfortunately my hard drive died. Of course I *never* do backups other than my own source code, I'm a computer scientist! So I bought a new drive and re-installed everything.
The Word install had "sensed" I have previously installed before and ASSUMED I was pirating it instead of suffering from a legitimate data loss. It MADE ME HIT OK FOR EVERY FILE IT WAS GOING TO WRITE TO THE HARD DRIVE with some stupid message like "This file has been installed previously, continue?" Of course no "Yes To All" button.
They are mean bastards.
The next weekend I installed FreeBSD 1.1.5 and haven't run Windoze since. I happily live in a windoze-free world and run Gentoo on all of my machines now.
As far as I know there are no programs for Linux that provide encryption of the whole operating system. There are individual utilities like PGP that may provide encryption for indiviual files but none that I know of that do so for the whole OS.p )
Whereas for Windows there are quite a few such programs available (e.g. check out http://www.securstar.com/products_drivecryptpp.ph
Only when such programs become available for Linux will I consider switching. Actually it's a bit strange that there don't seem to be any such progs given the privacy oriented mindset of most open sourcers. Does anyone know if there any projects on the horizon which are trying to address this issue?
Journaling filesystems in widespread use log filesystem metadata only, NOT actual file data. So if the OS has not flushed file data out of its cache, and you unplug the device, the file data itself could be in a bad state, though the filesystem structures should be okay or recoverable from the journal.
:)
If you have no open files on the device, the chances of this are slim (esp as time passes)...but it's hard to know for sure when everything in the cache has been flushed to disk.
You would have to sync the filesystem before unplugging to be sure this wouldn't happen. But then, you might as well just inform the OS properly that you're about the remove the device
To be blunt about it, I'm a cheapskate. Given the choice between a $300 office suite that does everything I'll ever need and a lot more, and a free one that does 90% of what I need, I'll take the freebie any time. With a *nix system, you can get all sorts of free (really Free!) apps. On Windows, finding "free" software means navigating a confusing maze of shareware, adware, nagware, spyware, and payware. They say "free" but mean "no cash up front". You will end up paying for the software somehow. Anything worth having that you can download for "free" seems to be either a timed demo, or ad-supported. The only sure way to get functional malware-free apps for Windows is to pay gobs of cash for them, so chepskates (like me) end up with machines full of viriuses, popup ad servers, spyware, etc.
On platforms like Linux or the BSDs, "free" means free as in take it, copy it, give it to all your friends, look for spyware in the source code, do whatever you want, it's really free. None of my apps have banner ads, I never see popups, and I don't have to worry about my new l33t 0-day release of The GIMP infecting my machine with virus. I like that.
0 1 - just my two bits
..from Windows XP. I need a new computer (5 year old dual PIII box finally showing its age), and I can't decide if I want the cheapness of a new motherboard/CPU combo, or the ease of use of OS X for video editing.
But on a Mac, I'd miss DVDshrink.
I have been graced with having an updated Gentoo box with Gnome 2.6, of course my XP box at work, and an iMac for my girlfriend.
Mac has a lot of usability improvements, but it still has some weird gotchas. For example, I didn't know you could click the apple logo icon in the menu bar. I knew file, but I expected apple to have something like 'start' instead of just an icon. Also, no right-clicking is a big change fo most windows users (my gf is a big right clicker, she immediately got a new mouse).
one thing I have noticed is that Gnome is becoming increasingly more usable. Not to start a gnome vs OSX or vs other linux desktops or vs windows flameware, but when I click or right-click, or mouse over something in Gnome, I seem to get a lot more choices that I want to pick than in other desktops -- *generally speaking*
I'm interested in seeing how the desktop evolves and how different products/projects start addressing usability more and more.
--------
Free your mind.
Or maybe flamebait. Geez Louise.
"It seems only fair to ask the opposite question"
But it's not, it's the same friggin' question!This story is basically saying: "First we had a story about why you hate Microsoft. Now let's do one on why you love hating Microsoft.
Same thread, if you ask me.
But it's much easier to just pose the question to 'Ask Slashdot' and get a consolidated thread of answers.
It was scary as all hell because I had never even touched an Apple computer since the IIe.
I was thinking "This is a bunch of money and I hope this f*cker works!"
Like most, I got tired of:
1) the nazi registration scheme for windows
2) the viruses, worms, spyware, and what have you
3) WINDOWS ARTHRITIS this just po'ed me
4) everything was a pain in the butt to administer
5) magical disappearing disk space
6) general flakiness
7) I ain't paying MS to help destroy the OpenSource movement
Why didn't I go with Linux?
-- I needed a laptop. There are few and far between Linux laptops.
-- I am so sick of fiddling with things. I want something that "just works." Sure I can get Linux to do what I need it to do, and often in ten minutes - but man. Come on. I don't want to fiddle anymore. I have been fiddling since the 80's.
You seem to fit the description. PERFECTLY!
MacOS X - Definetly my OS of choice.
One thing I dislike about Microsoft originated stuff is the belief that they know better than the user. Case in point: you paste a file:// URL into Excel and then ensure the the hyperlink address is 'file://' . Does it stick - no!!! It insists on switching it to the non-URL version. Have they thought that maybe I want a 'file://' type address in there? Because of this trying to publish the Excel document as a web page, with links (they all point to windows SMB shares) becomes difficult.
I just gave up with this and wrote my own Excel independent solution for my users. In the long run over simplification sometimes actually causes more issues than it solves.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
All of the above.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
Umm, I just right-click on the device icon in the system tray (bottom right corner) and click 'eject' or something like that (I'm in Linux right now so can't verify directly). Pretty simple IMO.
Poor CLI.
Horrible to develop for (archaic messy libraries).
Bad file system, and poor directory structures.
Non open interface. Hard to customize properly.
Susceptible to more viruses, due to its popularity.
More open holes which are hard to fix.
Not enough proper stuff built in (no programming language with XP, no GOOD firewall, no stable Web server).
Costs too much.
I could go on. And I've been suffering MS stuff for 16 years, and had a Mac for a month now.. I'm won over.
For most of my life I've used a Mac because:
A. Windows has always been a kludgy knockoff of the Mac OS.
B. Ethically, I cannot support their business practices.
C. Although the security foundation has begun to show some cracks from a Mac perspective, the security of a Windows machine would be the laughingstock of the industry if it weren't so pathetic.
D. Mac plays better with industry standards - not try and co-opt them.
E. I've never been unable to do what I wanted on a Mac that I could accomplish with Windows.
F. Apple is still and always has been the leader in innovation on the desktop - bar none.
G. I like the Power PC architecture better than the x86 architecture if for nothing else than reduced power consumption. I use laptops.
If Apple weren't around, I'd have a Linux machine. Granted, Linux is at this point a Windows knockoff but I can't bring myself to give Microsoft one red cent of my income.
i grew up on windows and when i used a mac for the 1st time since apple II i was amazed, i work in an all windows enviroment but at home im all OSX. i just personally do not like windows, im not a fan of microsoft but that has little effect on my judgement, i find osx easier and more stable, and it does what i need. its really just a prefrence.
A lot has already been written about various reasons for not using Windows - stability issues, control, viruses, cost, customization, and so on. I agree with all these reasons, but I'll add another which I don't think has been stated: I stay away from Windows and use Linux because it's more fun.
I have fun tinkering with my OS. You can't do a lot of that with Windows, but you can with Linux. I'm not a developer, but I can still get a kick out of compiling my own kernel, editing a config file, or trying out a different window manager. I know a lot of people don't find fun in these things, but I do. This isn't my only reason for not using Windows, but it's important to me.
DRM is the biggest reason I stay away from Windows.
:)
To be fair, spyware isn't totally Microsofts fault. But DRM certainly is. Viruses are not a problem if you've got a decent scanner and are careful about downloading files from the big bad net.
Oh, one of the bonuses of using Linux is when windows users ask you what virus scanner you use
When I do Windows development, I do the actual development under something Unixish and port the result to Windows, typically with the help of a cross-platform GUI toolkit.
My reasons for not developing under Windows are:
As a user, I'd probably use Windows a little--to play some games and run the occasional interesting app--if only it weren't so freaking expensive. I've seen computers for sale that cost less than just the standalone license for the version of Windows they have pre-installed.
If I could get a (legal) copy of XP for sixty bucks, I probably would. But I can't, so I'll just have to keep my money.
1) Non-conformity. I dont like using/doing what everyone else uses/does.
2) Hardware. x86 is a minority on my network. There are more computers running m68k, ppc, and ultrasparc on my network than x86. Windows wouldnt hardly be here even if I wanted it. Which I dont.
3) Money. I am a poor college student that works at a grocery store makes $8.45 per hour. I cannot fork over ass-loads of money for an OS.
4) Education. I am in school right now getting a degree in Computer Information Systems. I want to be a sysadmin. I have a variety of systems that run freebsd, netbsd, gnu/linux, osX, and a/ux. I feel that using UNIX will help me more in the future than Windows.
5) Fun. UNIX is a pleasure to use. Its hard for most people to realize, but figuring something out after sifting threw pages of docs and man pages is a good feeling. I love typing into a console at three oclock in the morning.
6) Safety. I am a little on the paranoid side. There are things Ive heard about windows that make me gag a little.
7) Software. Again, Im poor. I am very grateful for all this free software that comes from the OSS comunity.
There is not a single reason for me to run windows. It can be a battle sometimes living in a currently windows world. But Ive battled conformity before. I just wish I didnt have to compile so much software on my sun ultra2 running gnu/linux!
You think the number of useless options in Windows is bad, you should try KDE.
Check boxes make me angry.
I don't like how they operate. I don't like what they try to do to standards, just to make their piece a bit bigger.
I don't like paying 500+ per license for the lastest version of office, which comes with everything I don't need. I don't like their exclusionary tactics against linux. i don't like the 100-200 per OS license ( or CAL ).
Their software, on average, is ok if you know what you are doing and don't mind having to work with a handi-capped system ( security wise ). But given the reasons above, I can't ethically recommend anybody purchase from them.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I dislike their interface. Their interface is duplicitous. It fools the me into thinking my computer is straightforward and easy to use. I also dislike using my mouse and windows is mouse centric. They cater to an audience that is too stupid to remember the names of command line tools and not to me.
Probably everyone knows that Win* ... ..
...
.. and I lacked a wget, bash etc etc etc ... to have with me all the time ....
...
...
-likes to crash,
-loves to host virueses and parasites
-as fexible as a rusty metalpipe
-costs shitload of money (you HAVE to buy it with certain hardware eg my IPAQ, or my Toshiba laptop)
-insecure
etc etc etc
-I just hate BILL for putting OS/2 outta business!!
For me:
-I work for myself, eg I do not want downtime because of stupid forced upgrades and virus catastrophy
-I love linux and I love X (no it is not a geek love or something, I just love how I can form everything to my working taste/speed, and disable unusual features, and enable (maybe even more unuseful) ones that i like
-most of the time I work on remote terminals via SSH and though putty and alike are cool apps, it is just more clear to talk unix to unix (yeah, yeah stupid reason, but i just feel like this is the right thing)
-linux is tha base for LAMP ant that's what my services/business is running on - though I recently moved everything to FreeBSD (due to redhat dropping poor customers on the server side and Debian not being an option at the mopment of the decision)
ON my PDA: it just bugged me that i could not find a decent SSH client, a decent fetchmail app, a decent traceroute/mtr
+I wanted to rotate the screen reliably, and have
tabbed browsing on my pda for my morning sitting-on-the-toilet-reading-news coffeetime sessions
On the other hand I wrote my diploma a few years ago on Using Linux as a software alternative in a production environment and out of the cca 150 pages I have a bunch talking about why you should in general avoid non open source and even more avoid non GPL stuff
Sorry it is in hungarian btw
I like the fact that I can do whatever I want to do. If I dont like the splashscreen to a program, the messages when I load RH, or the exact priviledges each user has, I can change it!
n/t
C|N>K
Alot of things.
First of all, i'm a developer. And windows is the development os from hell. It doesent even come with a decent C compiler. The private devel community for windows is pretty much non-existant and it just sucks to write windows applications.
Next, i don't like viruses. And with windows all i need to do is jack in the ethernet cable to get at least 2 viruses.
Next, i like to brag about my uptime. My slackware box has > 1 year of uptime. My record in windows is ~ 2 weeks.
Next, i don't like the idea of not being able to read the sources of what i run.
Next, bill gates is evil and eats little children.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I will admit, I started toying with Linux due to a severe disdain for Microsoft's business practices and the general instability of Windows. I wanted something different. Of course, that was five or six years ago. It'd be a pretty weak argument now if that was the sole reason I continued to use Linux today.
As I kept toying around with it, a lot of thing stood out from Windows. The interoperability of programs via things like pipes, redirectors, etc. "Common" tools like grep, less, etc that could be called on many things via pipes or passing files through them. Fairly basic syntax for many programs, and manpages for nearly anything I needed more help with. Tons of people I could ask for help if the manpages weren't enough.
From a programming standpoint, the fact that any hardware could be addressed through a normal file was a major plus. The ease of installing new libraries and having them fit into the system was also handy. And the fact that I could quickly compile C/C++ code with one command-line tool was quite welcome.
I'm also keen to the fact that, for the most part, I can directly tell Linux what to do, and it will do it. I've gone through numerous terrible experiences with Windows trying to get it to properly recognize new hardware, only to have it continuously demand driver disks or misidentify hardware entirely. I've had Windows (or various misbehaving programs I never said to install) muck about my system for no particular reason, changing settings and doing things without letting me know about it. Under Linux, I have to fairly well explicitly tell it to do everything, but at least I know what's going on.
Now, I still do have a Windows box around for a few reasons (read: Games), but I much prefer using Linux.
(Note that all of the above would most likely also apply to BSD or other things if I had another spare box on which I could toy with them)
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I don't use windows because pirating is illegal.
but I'll give you one for using *nix:
I want my computer to do what I tell it, not ask me what I want.
My laptop is Window XP, with VMWare running Debian/Gnome. Works out great for me, because graphics performance for my Linux desktop isn't as important to me as graphics on Windows. IMHO
The reason I first installed Linux is simple: I was a UNIX sysadmin at the time, and it made most sense for my desktop environment at work to be the same environment that I managed on the servers (for familiarity, same toolsets, ...) and I installed it at home because I found I was just as productive on Linux as I was on Windows. My first Linux was SLS 1.03 (which only the old-timers here will recognize.)
I continue to run Linux at work (now Fedora Core) because I find it's easier to use and manage. The software is familiar (Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice/StarOffice for most office apps, and java versions of the few non-native apps that I need at work ... like calendaring.) When new Windows viruses are announced, I sort of groan because I know it means I'll have more virus email hit my Inbox, but otherwise I'm unaffected.
At home, I'm still running Linux (again, Fedora Core) because everything I need is there. What does a home desktop need to do? Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice for the annual Christmas letter ... I installed some third-party stuff so I can rip MP3s, listen to them, and dump them onto my iPod. I can download photos from my camera, and modify/tweak/enhance/print those photos with the GIMP. Not a lot else that I need to do ... I play some games on Linux, sure ('Enemy Territory' is my current favorite.) Oh yeah, and I also have a development environment (DOSEmu) for working on FreeDOS (also useful when playing old DOS games.)
Why do I need Windows?
OS/2 was my last religious experience. When my faith in OS/2 became an obstacle to getting things done (like trying to get a publisher to accept a electronic manuscript in Describe format), I became completely secular in my technology tastes and choices. So I do use Windows for a limited range of tasks. Linux, OS X, and Solaris (though much less of late) also provide me with useful tools. If BeOS, Plan 9, or Coleco Adam offered me a convenient way to do something I need to do, then they'd be in my toolbox too.
I dislike Microsoft's sneaky, underhanded, arrogant business practices as much as anyone does (well, maybe not as much as their abused competitors), but I'm not zealous enough to let my distaste for Bill et al to over rule my pragmatic sense of what works for me. Sorry. (I'll bet if I'd known Jackson Pollack, I wouldn't have liked him much, but if I could afford some of his art, I'd be pleased to have it....Same sort of rationale, from my perspective.)
.
My other machine is a lever.
It's quite simple really. I avoid windows because I don't want to deal with Viruses, Spyware, and the general security nightmare that is known as Windows (how apropos the name is, Physical windows are easy to break, and so is the MS ..product)
I don't want to have to deal with IRQs, DMAs, Addressing, Drivers, and a seemingly unstoppable _flood_ of hotfixes because MS coders can't seem to write decent code.
I don't want to deal with the cost every time I need to upgrade. I don't want to deal with a bloated registry.
I don't want to deal with swap files and systems that never seem to quiet down even if they've been idle for a day (What the hell is it DOING when nobody is using it anyway?)
I don't want to deal with SMB networks.
I don't want to deal with bloated office applications that seem to slow down the entire system every time I change the font size.
I don't want to deal with activating my system everytime I upgrade a minor hardware component.
I don't want to deal with windows... I don't want to deal with Linux either for that matter, but that's a different story.
when I use Windows. After a random amount of time, sometimes even before I can log in, or if not, usually within an hour or two, it just freezes solid. Nothing moves, not even the cursor or the clock.
This never, ever happens when I boot into Linux on the same machine.
Actually, what ticks me off is that Windows makes it easier to unplug a device incorrectly than it does to do so correctly.
On Windows, if I want to eject my iPod or my camera, I have to click unplug device. Then I have to click the device i want to unplug. Then I have to select the device. Then it tells me I'll also be turning off the filesystem on the drive (duh). Then is asks if I'm sure. Then it tells me it ejected okay.
That's 4 windows opened. If I just pull the cable, I only get one window. Guess which one I do?
On Mac OSX, if I jack the plug on my iPod or my camera, I get a single message telling me I did something stupid and probably screwed my file system (whcih, on the camera, i probably did). If I drag it to the trash, or click the eject button over the volume in the finder, and i'm not using a file on the drive, it ejects and doesn't even give me a window. It becomes LESS of a hassle to do it right!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Subject says it all really, and as far as down as I looked at this point (about 300 comments) very few people were pointing this out, quite like you were. I've got a bit heftier laptop that I used to have, but even when it was a 700 Celeron it was blindingly fast, especially with fluxbox and 2.6 series kernel.
I guess another thing is I'm pretty picky about my desktop, with fluxbox being my top choice giving me lots of screen real estate.
The only thing that can compare to the speed and beauty of my laptop was my roommates old laptop, he had XP with a blackbox port as the WM and a bunch of the services turned off, which was pretty sweet for windows XP.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
The reason I don't like to do Windows is because after I have installed a $free_unix, I can do this:
It's thas simple. And it's all there, even without going through a thousand urls to download whatever program that just won't match these other operating systems anyways. And if I ever need some other piece of software I can have it in a minute by simply pkg_add -r'ing it. Simple convenience, I guess. Priceless.
&& aemula C. ab stirpe interiit
- Gentoo to compile and make my old hardware still useful
How long does a Gentoo compile take on a 486 or p233 anyway?
I mean really, I don't see how you can get "better" performance from a source based distro since your system is basically useless anytime there is an update. I'd rather have binarys and just recompile the kernel, glibc and maybe 1 or 2 other things I can't think of. Anything else after that would be ridiculous.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
1. Price (particularly, the upgrades. This is a no-brainer. I have to pay for new versions of Windows regularly in order to keep my skills sharp and current, and I couldn't imagine forking out that much cash to run Windows on each of my 25 personal machines, much less paying for a whole office. I have no idea why corporations keep doing it, and I suspect that with Mozilla and OpenOffice coming along so very nicely, that they shan't be doing so for very much longer...)
/.ers have been alive. I am convinced that OpenOffice is a far superior office suite, with a more sane lay-out and a much more efficient file format. Mozilla and Evolution beat IE and Outlook handily, and are not prone to nasty infections. If only Quanta would develop the features from HomeSite that it still lacks, and someone would write a good CSE HTML Validator clone, I would no longer need VMware--this is just about all I boot a copy of Windows for anymore,and even that is infrequent. Quanta is quite good already.)
2. Flexibility and Reliability (I can set it up _my_ way; especially important for servers, where I do _not_ want a GUI eating up resources. I can start and stop _any_ service, something Windows will never be able to do, and I can upgrade just about anything without a re-boot. Windows gets good uptime if it has few applications instaled and does not have a high workload. Try running something like Citrix MetaFrame on it without regular re-boots! I have one machine with a 5+ year uptime under a heavy corporate workload; no way that'll happen with Windows--the weekly updates and patches alone necessitate regular re-booting!)
3. Ease of Use (am I the _only_ one that thinks KDE is a better-designed UI than Windows XP's? I mean, the file manager alone is worth the price of admission--scrolling is easier done from the bottom of the window and you can open up a terminal session from any directory, etc. etc. Then there are such nifty things as right-clicking the desktop to lock the screen, being able to radically re-organise things to make them easier to find and more pleasing to the eye--even the games are better! As a FreeCell addict, I must insist that the GNOME FreeCell is the best-designed version of the game I have ever played,and it doesn't cheat like the Windows version does! My current record for consecutive wins stands at 675, and I'm trying to break it.... *grin*)
4. Multiple Desktops (I don't know about you, but for me, what's the sense in having these fast machines if I can't load 'em up with things to do? I routinely keep applicaitons open on six desktops and quickly toggle betwixt them for tasks. When I'm not using them, they stay open and waiting for me. Try using 20 separate applications at once on a Windows machine!)
5. Trouble-shooting (Ever try serious trouble-shooting on Windows? What happens when the error code is not in TechNet (they like to remove older ones, such as the NT 4 errors!) and you can't find it in Google? And how aboutthat logging! *sheesh* If the Windows Event Viewer was any more useless I'd recommend that they remove it to save a few KB of disc space... As for Unix-y system... how's about remote CLI log-ins for when the screen goes screwy? Alt+F2 to access a CLI locally? How's about killing the GUI without re-booting the whole system? Being able to kill X is very handy on a multi-user system that's had its GUI screw up.)
6. Why Not? (There is nothing I need to do normally on Windows that I can't do off of it, and I have been using multiple computers, daily and professionally, for longer than many
For the record, I am not a GNU/Linux zealot, either--I still use AIX and Solaris regularly on a pair of workstations here. Further, I am not just a Unix geek--I've held an MCSE certification since 1998 and have used Windows and DOS consistently since they first appeared. I still keep up with the newest versions so that I can see what MS is doing and I can help people out with problems. Further, I support aerospace 3D CAD users professionally, so I am on Windows 2000 frequently. For my personal use, however... I just don't see the attraction of Windows. My SuSE boxen are faster, prettier, and more functional. Just my tupence...
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
I use it because Windows is completely closed. I love programming and Linux makes it easy to screw around with (screw up?) anything.
Heck, Windows doesn't even ship with QuickBasic anymore. They've certainly made it clear you aren't welcome to explore (unless you have several hundred for VS.NET).
Too bad too; I think a lot of youth are missing out on the excitment of programming because of this too. I don't think MS is really interested in fostering more programmers. They have the ones they feel they need.
So anyways - like I said before I started rambling. I love to program and I'll never run out of possibilities with Linux so I love it. I'm like a kid in a candy store.
It motivates me to participate and grow.
BTW - I can relate to 'easier to diagnose problems' argument too.
- Security
- Stability
- Flexability
- Better user interface (especially with XFce)
- Compatability
- A bunch of other "-ability" adjectives I can't think of off-hand 'cause my brain is fried from work
The fact is that there's absolutely no reason to run any Microsoft OS and little reason to run any of their apps.--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I suppose there are lots of political or moral reasons but, for me, *nix just works better & smoother.
And I have my choice of command line, Windowmaker, KDE, or XFce. So, I can have my computer look/act exactly how I want it to depending on my mood or current project.
I use Linux mostly because I have more fun with it than I do with Microsoft operating systems. I could wax philosophical about free software, or berate their evil empire... But I just do it because I like it.
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
I am a heavy user of both OS's.
As my primary -HOME- computer I use windows XP. Why? Its more compaitble with the things I want to do. As a server OS, I think linux is great, and it runs well in that environment. On a laptop, or desktop Windows is better for personal use.
A few reasons to support my argument:
*There is better application and media support
for windows (although MACOSX is attractive in this area),
*windows makes a good PVR in windows media center PC (there are linux alternatives, but they dont hold a candle to media center pc.)
* The linux drivers for things like webcams and the sofware bundles that come with such devices are much better then the Linux alternatives. Not to mention mobile device hookups like blackberry and PPC devices suck, or are non existent on linux
* Game support is still lacking in a non windows environment
* Easier for non-pc professionals to learn and understand...some of us have non computer literate wives
* Lack of hardware support for OEM systems, my sony Vaio does not have inux drivers for many of the hardware devices integrated in the laptop.
* Faster GUI. Most of the linux GUI's do not compare to XP (flame away, but it is true). If linux is to be a true desktop platform, then the GUI will need to catch up. In most cases the GUI renders slower in linux, and is buggyier (is that a word?) then the XP GUI. To the positive side, most of the Linux GUI;s are more configurable.
* Although viruses and worms are more of an issue, simply usng windows update and virus protection software can solve the problem.
* Better support , thus far REDHAT support has been the worst of any company I have ever worked with. RHN is down multiple times per week, and logging a support ticket, sometimes takes days for a response. Some of the Hardware vendors I work with have more people supporting linux, then the actual distribution company has (ie redhat).
Just a look from the other side...
"Honestly, who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea: "Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Hardware / Next / Uninstall/Unplug a device / Next / Unplug/Eject a device / Next / Select device / Next"...when the Apple engineers tell you: "Unplug the device from your Macintosh."
That's funny, when I eject a device, a little icon appears on my system tray. Double click it, pick the one you want to turn off, and a message tells you it's ready to go. How would anybody know that? If you unplug something without doing this, you get a nice little message explaining it to you, and it shows you what to do.
I doubt it's as nice as what Apple has, but it's nowhere near as dramatic as you're making it out top be.
"Derp de derp."
As far as I'm concerned, the only 'real' reason to use an alternative to MS's pathetic excuse for an OS, is that its simply better. That I dont agree with MS's way of doing things, might also play a role in my chosing of OS.
I've been running Debian Gnu/Linux for about 2 years, and I'm never turning away.
For my part, I left Windows almost a decade ago, and never looked back. I have control. It is actually something that belongs to *US*, the community that uses Linux. I can run web servers and databases and GUIs and IM and email and... everything I care to do. True, I don't game, but I do multimedia (sound/graphics work) and I'm not unhappy in Linux.
Then I married a Taiwanese woman. Now Windows is back in my house, and it looks like it's here to stay despite all the worms, viruses, and other crap that makes Windows a huge pain in my ass (I reinstall it on a monthly basis it seems).
Multilanguage support is crap in Linux, and passable in Windows. She can type in her native language on Windows, and all the myriad Chinese input programs in Linux have thus far eluded me. (The English documentation doesn't work). I'm a sysadmin sort, so I'm not without clue when it comes to setting up complex pieces of software. The documentation is just bad, bad, bad.
I think that as Mainland China keeps migrating more and more toward Linux, and Taiwan follows, Linux Chinese support will get better, but for now... Microsoft is in my home, and I feel dirty.
fifth sigma, inc.
All my clients...
A post from my blog a few months back:
This post could go on for volumes. What is on my mind right now is the lack of software that a consumer receives when purchasing windows. I thought I would start a list of things that I take for granted in Linux/BSD distributions that are missing in Windows.
I just wish I could understand why some tech. folks defend this OS. With its lack of applications out of the box, I can't think of a single place in the working world where it fits. Certainly not in engineering. Total cost of ownership less than Linux/BSD? Are they adding in all of the extra shit that people have to buy? I don't think so.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
When DOS came out I thought, OK, so what's the big deal compared to an Apple II? It was much bigger (but not much better). GUIs became available (to me) with the Mac in '84 and its copycat Ataris and Amigas in '94 - and that was much better than a castrated CLI-only system such as DOS or CP/M. Yeah, VMS and Unix were another story at that time: those were better because they were powerful, unlike DOS.
Nowadays, MacOSX combines the above two qualities, so I see no reason for using a system where 1) the UI is inconsistent and counterintuitive, 2) the security holes are endless and caused by arcane obscurities, 3) you have to keep working for the damn machine and not vice versa, 4) the kernel is closed-source, and 5) last but definitely not least, its vendor is a proved condemned abusive monopolist (yes, all those are true for MS-Windows).
So maybe Jef Raskin is right when he says that a GUI is a double system: it combines slow-to-use menus and hard-to-learn keyboard shortcuts. In other words, a modern GUI is a combination of two bad ideas but it's also seems true what Tufte says: To sell a product that messes up data with such systematic intensity, Microsoft abandons any pretense of statistical integrity and reasoning. (Tufte's comment is about Powerpoint, but it similarly applies to any software sold by the same infamous monopolist).
Bottom line: when I'm offered a job where I have to use MS-Windows, I turn it down. Unless I'd be in a life-or-death starving situation, and thankfully enough, for IT professionals things are not that bad yet :-)
One has to strive to gettin' better!
I use Linux almost exclusively (I have one Windows machine, which is mostly used for gaming and for my parents who are just more used to that interface). The primary reason I don't use Windows for any critical things is that I find it confusing. I find myself searching google for 30 minutes to figure out how to change a configuration setting, in some cases only to find that it cannot be done, or the only way to accomplish such a task is through some horrificly mangled approach. In Windows I use seperate accounts to limit administrative priviledges and to give each user their own environment. Unfortunatly when it comes to installing applications, or even just using them, 9 out of 10 applications REQUIRE administrative priviledges for no valid reason at all. Many of them use the wrong areas of the registry to store settings. Some will run but not save configuration settings as a result, others will die with obscure errors, and the rest simply refuse to run unless I give them the windows equivalent of root access.
.... isn't it?
When stacked up against Linux, Windows seems to be an amateur attempt at an operating system by comparison. Half of it's so-called features don't even work properly in practical application. The cost of licensing Microsoft products, given the fact most don't work as intended or have serious problems, is just way way too high.
After switching from Windows to Linux a few years ago as my main OS I have become much more comfortable with a commandline interface than with using GUIs for everything. I often have a Linux laptop with me while I use a Windows system just so I can easily accomplish whatever task I need to without having to jump through hoops in Windows to do the same thing.
Linux might have a ways to go before people will seriously consider it for their everyday lives, but for those of us who are very familiar with Linux I think it will continue to be our primary OS. Really, give me one good reason why I should install Windows and use it. Life is easier with Linux for those of us who understand it, and I think eventually it will seriously give Microsoft a run for their money as a desktop platform. How can MS beat a reliable, secure, fast, open source and FREE operating system? It's obvious MS is going to have to make some huge changes and adopt a different style of business if they plan to remain the one true popular choice for a general purpose desktop OS. I kind of hope they don't, and instead vanish into thin air. That's dreaming though
When Windows can play all the latest 3D games, then I'll make the switch; the linux emulators just don't give me good framerates.
I'd be off if I could afford to switch to a Apple. I didn't really like Macs until OS X was released. Now, I'd love to be running a G5 or powerbook.
Windows does have major flaws. M$ does have bad practises. Windows is a definite security nightmare. Fortunately I have grown up with both ends of the spectrum, unfortunately I have to deal with both.
Since I have to support front end "workers" we use M$ product. Why? because they are used to it. They have it at home on their Dells and want to see it at work as well.
Most users have no idea about the "back end" of how computers work. So technically if a program sends mail, it sends mail, but it has to "look" the same as Outlook. If it doesnt look the same, it is different.
Dont even get me started on our production pods that need adobe this and that.
I really do know KungFu
Because Bell Atlantic used a ppp(oe) dialer called WinPoet (I think) for DSL connections. I was using Windows NT and the connection kept dropping off. I didn't now how to fix it so I just installed redhat (which I was using at work at the time) and it eliminated the problem.
On MacOS and on GNOME, apps all behave so similarly. On Windows, just about every program I download has a completely different GUI (including apps by Microsoft itself); in my GNOME desktop at home, apps are simpler, more powerful, more intuitive and more consistent. There are no MDI apps in GNOME. Everything "just works."
Of course, I still can break things and I sometimes spend half an hour trying to get new devices to work. But I, personally, don't have a problem with that. And that kind of thing has been improving in Linux in general at an alarming rate.
Oh, and in GNOME the mouse-wheel works on the window underneath your mouse! That alone is a reason for switching (let alone that there's an actually-functional terminal app).
Infantile, cumbersome and boring.
what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?
That pretty much sums it up for me.
half-life has more players than any other games by a huge margin, check out this if you need proof it has 9x the number of available servers as any other game on the list.
want me to use linux on my xp desktop? get half-life to run and run well (anyone remember when q2 finally game out for linux? i dont like the green tint and my sound Just Works in windows).
linux fan mod-troll disclaimer: i started with slack '95, i use linux every day but never ever as my desktop too much work to make it useable, lack of support for what i love most (porn and games, mplayer2 beats the fuck out of everything else).
But it is just little things.
I'm using VIM very much. I hate VIM, I hate Emacs, I love MSDevStudio. But. But under VIM+Bash I'm at least three times more productive.
Windows GUI is good and consistent. To some degree. I'm as a person who designed for two years GUI applications for Windows and knowing every input/output/message/control available I can say that Windows GUI is most advanced GUI ever created. But. But M$ itself stopped following itsown GUI desing guidelines, and I'm not taliking about dumb so-called "VB Programmers" and other commercial software developers who have problems doing simple window with two buttons right. This is really sickening.
Error handing in Windows is just awful. It has nowthing comparable to /var/log/messages. Once I have spent 3 month being not able to run one of the my development tools. It was really bad situation and no one have ever had any clue what have happened. I have used other machine with devkit installed, where my tool worked Ok. But after sometime it stopped working there too. After two weeks of games with regedit/etc it turns out that this application was Win16 application (Win32 has no required system call - but Win16 subsystem does) and when and size of evironment was giong over some limit Win16 subsystem was just stopping to work. With no error message whatsoever.
I can go on and on. For a long time. I've being long-time M$ user and developer. But once I (actually bit forcefully) switched to Linux - I was really amased: some things didn't worked, but most of other things just worked. Without reboots, without crashes, without asking tons silly questions. Just worked. Breath of fresh air after 6 years of WinNT 4.0.
P.S. w2k/xp really didn't changed this balance much since early year 2000 - the time I switched to Linux completely.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I have a dual boot (Windows XP/Gentoo linux) and when I boot in Windows (when I have to do my taxes...) It freezes every 10 to 60 minutes randomly. Everything stops to respond, and I must reboot. I have all the latest patches and drivers for my hardware, but I still have the same problems.
On my Gentoo, everything is smooth, even my other Windows XP running in VMWare...
I agree. Since I don't need to edit DNS records very often, it's not something I can do on Unix off the top of my head. Previously, I had to spend hours reading documentation before I could figure out how to do it. Setting up zones in 2k3 was extremely simple.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I have Windows on one computer. In some ways that computer's better than my
Linux box, hardware-wise (though it does have less RAM and a worse soundcard).
The CPU is a lot faster, and it's got more hard drives, a CD burner (which
I've actually thought about moving to the Linux box... xcdroast is actually
a lot easier to use than that Nero thingy), a LOT more USB ports than I can
ever use, plus FireWire (for which I also have yet to discover a use), and
a better graphics card (Matrox, as opposed to onboard junk in the Linux box).
So you'd think I'd use the Windows system quite a lot...
I have a KVM switch and can go back and forth between them at will. But I
spend *almost* all of my time under Linux, even when editing a file that's
actually stored on the Windows system. Why? I don't know, exactly... It's
just more... comfortable. Things work properly. I don't have to jump through
hoops to get things to do what I want.
There is an exception. Copy & Paste works better on Windows. On Windows, I
don't have any trouble e.g. copying from Emacs/Gnus and pasting in Mozilla.
But a lot of things work better/smoother on Linux. The terminal emulators
are better. The Gimp runs more smoothly and crashes less. Symlinks are
supported better, which makes it easier to get to things I often need to get
to without navigating through a bunch of nested directories. Little stuff
like that.
I do have Windows in a *much* more usable state than it would be out of the
box. I have Mozilla all set up and properly customized, plus Emacs, Gimp,
and OpenOffice. (OpenOffice actually runs pretty well on Windows, except
I have to remember to save from time to time.) And I installed ActiveState
Perl, plus Cygwin, plus various Windows ports of various other utilities,
ttssh, and assorted other things to try to bring it up to snuff. But I
haven't yet got *everything* installed. There's no dig for example.
The big thing, though, is a complete lack of adequate customizeability.
With sawfish I have a windowshade button on my window titlebars. On Windows
that's just not available. On Gnome I have a panel full of launchers and
drawers up the left edge of the screen, and the task list along the bottom
edge. On Windows that's not possible. (No, I know about LiteStep, but...
No, just, No.) I could go on listing little things like this for paragraphs,
but I don't need to list every one. Individually they're all very little
and mostly insignificant quibbles, but they add up to quite a lot, taken
all together.
Oh, and I can't ssh into my Windows system remotely.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I'm probably the only one, but it really bothers me when people say that Windows is more compatible with games, or Linux needs to be more compatible with games. "Games compatibility" has *nothing* to do with the OS and *everything* to do with the game developers. Many (most) games are developed using Direct-X (Microsoft) or uses all sorts of Windows-only shortcuts because they know that's what the market is (currently, anyway) and they always pander to the market. This is a valid business decision, so I can't be too hard on the game developers. But get it right, people. Game are written for OSes, not the other way around.
I use Debian GNU/Linux and MacOsX. Here is why....The Unix base in both make it alot easier for me to do *cool* stuff like easily running apache or ssh or telnet or ftp, it also allows me to not have to deal with things like virus's, browser hijacks that take the whole system with it (I use firefox at work on windows to avoid this stuff) Not to mention why buy stuff you can get for free, sure you may have to learn something to run it but thats good for you.
My list, at the risk of other posters having already mentioned them. In order:
1. Business model: Maybe FUD is to blame, but my perception it that MS puts itself completely before its customers.
2. Linux offers the chance that if I want to enhance a program, I can do it (in principle). No need to wait for the next official update.
3. I can do what I need, using Linux. Why pay more?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
It's been about 5 years since I used Windows. In the past year or two, whenever I've tried to help a friend do something on his Windows machine, I haven't been able to help much. I just don't remember it. And so long as I'm happy with what I use, there's no need to learn Windows.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
The number one reason I don't use windows is because its not open source.
I'm a programmer and I have many times hacked things about - not in the kernel, or even the desktop manager I use - but applications on it.
And the whole philosophy of open source makes me wanna use Linux (or another os OS)
I use SSH every day; from work I ssh into my home machine so I can read my emails, use icq, and all sorts of other things - I seem to recall something similar is possible with windows console services or something; but the range of apps just isn't there for the console
Finally - and its just an example - Xine. There are a number of apps which are just top notch on linux - and the support of those apps is astounding. I had a very rare bug in playing a particular dvd through xine, and one of the developers took a lot of time to go through it with me to find the problem and the fix.
Yes, I know that there are some projects which can claim similar for windows programs, and perhaps its not a real reason to stay on linux - but its certainly a psychological reason.
I left windows 2 years ago, and after a while of booting into it for games, I haven't looked back
I use both Windows and Linux, but at home I find myself spending an increasing amount of time in front of the Linux box.
... yes, you can also turn pop-ups off in Mozilla Firexox for Windows. However, many Windows programs seem ... well, too loud and obnoxious, like they're always engaged in self-promotion and trying to justify their existence. Menus and help screens constantly tell you how great the program is. There's the endless "Are you sure?"-type prompts that result from attempts to change mundane, non-critical preferences. Programs steal ownership of file types from each other. "Hey, there's this great update available for this fantastic program ... wanna' download it?" "Are you sure?" "Are you absolutely sure?" Each and every time you start a program? Yuk.
Why? Peace and quiet. It's not so much spyware and popups
Using Windows XP, I increasingly feel like I'm driving down a wide freeway in Houston or Atlanta, with massive signs and billboards distracting from the road and detracting from the experience. Using Linux is like driving down the Pacific Coast Highway or a winding country road in Vermont, or even an expressway in a state where litter-on-a-stick and ugly roadside development is prohibited -- sometimes more challenging, but somehow less stressful and more peaceful.
I applaud you giving them the benefit of the doubt...but no. Setting up LANs, firewalls and such - as a client - is harder for me on Win XP than for *nix, and I have 12 years Windows experience and 3 years *nix experience.
As has been pointed out by others, windows now ends up scattering all the important utilities needed to modify, say, a network client all over the place. Some are under subscreens of the administrator tools, some are under subscreens of network neighborhood, some are God knows where. And that's just an example.
grep
Yes, I used atari from it's beginning.. I always disliked windows, which is user unfriendly and very buggy and unstable. At one time, I was kind of forced to use windows, cos linux was so primitive, and atari was a little bit underpowered for the time. So at about P1 133, I began using windows, without liking it much at all. When I saw there was an alternative that was customisable and useable graphically, I began to love linux.. Now I adhere to opensource philosophy. I must admit I used windows for 4 years or so, this was about the period I was nearly away from computing because I had not much interest in it. Now I use Linux and OpenBSD, and I have regained interest in computing as I am now working in IT...
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
I run a few servers on Linux. Every now and then, one of them craps out; the motherboard goes bad, or the ram gets flaky... or sometimes we just buy a whole new faster box to run our server on.
When that happens, I just shutdown the old machine, take the hard drive out, put it in the replacement machine, and boot it and walk away.
Windows ME and earlier versions could do this, but only after about 30 minutes of "New Hardware Detected", and finding drivers and rebooting, etc. On the other hand, I can take any Linux hard disk image and drop it in just about any machine and it boots right up.
Now, keep in mind that X-Windows is probably not going to work on the new box without some tweaking... but all of the services and console-based interactivity is there. Contrast this with Windows XP where, if someone *gave* me a brand new machine that was much faster than the one I use now, I'd still heasitate to switch to the new machine because of all of the hassle involved in migrating my settings, re-installing software, etc.
Mac hardware is what brought me to OS X, I love my 12" iBook, and it just works so much better than my brick of an XP laptop ever did. Battery life and stability overall are just better. But Mac OS X 10.3 has just been one huge surprise. I knew it was good, but I never realized how well it caters to both beginnings and power users. It keeps things simple enough to not have to worry about constant maintenance and tweaking, but allows people to peek under the hood if they so desire.
I also love the fact that just like most llinux distros, mac comes ready for developers. I have a native bash terminal, java, gcc, and xcode ready to go. I can't say that much windows.
Also, other huge surprise, there is a -ton- of freeware/shareware available for os x, and i find most of it to be of high quality (i.e. adium, transmit, subethaedit, colloquy, etc, etc).
Now that I'm on a laptop with OS X, I really don't see myself switching back anytime soon, even with centrino options maturing somewhat.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
I found myself in some real trouble with my GUI class (Windows API programming) project this term. Basically, this was because A) the project that I picked didn't hold my interest for the entire term and B) I really didn't like booting into windows to work on this not-so-fun project.
I suppose to answer the question, I don't like using windows just because it rubs me the wrong way most of the time. Something goes wrong? Reboot! If that didn't work, Run spyware scan/virus scan/do windows update. If that doesn't work, Format and reinstall! When something breaks on a windows box you so often get no error messages which can help you out. It also bothers me that some seriously unpredictable behaviors occur on windows. For instance, just today, a guy calls our helpdesk to complain that there is a dog showing up on his screen when he opens microsoft word which hasn't been happening before. i.e. Word for some reason decides the user needs clippy. That sort of thing just bugs me a lot.
"What version of Windows do you have?"
"I use Linux."
"Oh! Red Hat!"
"No, pal, It's Debian."
And then, suddenly, all their arrogance is gone...
I don't use Windows anymore because Linux is more fun.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
I was a long time mac fan... but got tired of being milked by apple... after that getting milked by microsoft didn't make any more sense. I'm also pretty wired to use unix. Been my main platform for a long time... the mac in the olden days was for graphics... and a terminal through a modem to the unix boxen... after I had linux on my 486DX in 1994 at work, I've never looked back. (ok, sometimes I drool over the mac hardware style...).
Many things...
Yes, I paid for Windows, so I do use it occasionally. After all, it is my right to. But when I use it something just doesn't feel right.
But I don't merely use Linux because it's _NOT MICROSOFT_. I've learned that there are some real advantages:
And my last point is probably my best one. There's a certain joy in using something that someone else created for you, not for personal profit or greed, but rather, as an act of giving back to the community that has given so much to them. I've benefitted greatly from using Linux, and I really look forward to the time when I myself will be able to give back to the community that has given so much to me. Linux is almost sacred because it is free from the influence of money; it was created for the purpose of blessing the users, not exploiting them. Linux is software the way it was meant to be.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Microsoft refuses to allow me to run MS Windows. This is because I can't agree to their EULA.
Concerns about stability. Security. Dislike of Microsoft's business practices.
Yeah, that about covers it. Windows is about as stable as drunk in an earthquake, a secure as a prostitute's vagina, and produced by a company whose business practices make me sick.
With Linux, I get a system that has crashed on me as many times in 3 years as Windows used to crash in one day. All the code is peer-reviewed, and Mandrakesoft is not a conviced abusive monopolist.
Thanks for reminding me.
Backups are stupid in windows. You can't simply copy the files off to another location and then copy them back later.
That would be too fscking easy.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Can we mod Cliff karma whore for posting this new bit on here, I mean come on.
ps: I'm not seeing enough +5 Funnies on a topic that should be rife with them. get on it people!
in bed.
I've recently switched to Gentoo. Stability is great! I do not run many service deamons, so I have minimal security needs. Bastille works good for me. I dispise MS business practices, and there tech support is terrible (or at least it was I haven't been really using MS at home for about 6 years, and haven't call for support in about 10 years). I am current running KDE and I love it. All the applications I want are availble for download and custom compliation. Gentoo has really streamlined dependency issues. True the first install can take a long time esp. on older machines, but that's only if you want it to. Binaries are availble as well.
Prays to the Plug and Play gods --- viola :)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I prefer a unix-ish type system, so run Linux or Mac OS X. Since there is no specific need for my desktop to run windows... I don't. I like linux/bsd X-Windows and the multiple desktops, cut-and-paste mouse clicking, and a host of other things. I like Mac OS X for being able to run more proprietary software and being pretty slick visually while giving nothing up in terms of scripting, command line, etc.
Another big reason is not having to worry about licensing -- at least for linux/bsd. No product codes, no worries about an impending audit, no getting budget approval for the $200-500 microsoft OS tax, no worries about how many users access the system, or how many CPUs it has. Not having to worry about it on server systems is a huge relief.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
I "went free" a long time ago. I first used UNIX as an 8th grader and was running linux .98 when i was in 10th grade. I stopped using MS products as of Win 3.1 (and after dabbling with OS/2 2.1/2.11) switched completely to linux.
:) A friend gave me her old p166mmx machine. I bought two $10 ethernet cards and put openbsd on it. That machine is still my openbsd firewall/filter/"stuff" machine. In march of that year i bought a $400 machine and put win2k RC on it to compete in a windows CE development contest. (note i hadn't used any MS stuff in years, apart from a friends machine or the occasional lab computer).
:)
For a year or two.
Then i bought a sparc IPX with sol 2.4, then an SS10 with 2.5.1. Then i went off to college.
With these two real machines i had no need for linux, so i stopped caring about PCs in general. I had real hardware and a real OS that ran basically as long as i left the things turned on. At college i had 2 sparcstations but no PCs.
My junior year of school i bought an SGI i^2 high impact (i wanted a fast 24bit gfx console, and sun didn't have any available unless you got an ffb, which were very expensive and UPA only, or a ZX, which i bought, and was dirt slow)
Finally, in my senior year of college, i got a PC again. Why ? my sgi got rooted
In may of the same year (2 months later), i started work full time at Microsoft.
Not much changed at home - my main box was still my SGI for a number of years, with my ss10 doing web and mail hosting, the obsd box doing all firewall duties. I sold the sparc IPX back in college.
I built a duron 600 file server and put obsd on it. This was when UDMA 100 drives were fairly new; i put two in that machine and discovered a bug in the oBSD IDE driver, which i submitted a minor patch for (and which was subsequently re-written, but im in the comments somewhere
At work obviously i was using w2k, xp, server 2k3, etc. I had a linux box in the corner for some occasional tasks that were actually faster to do in unix even with the penalty of moving data over and back again (i am something of a fan of awk)
I found that W2k was refreshingly nice compared to 3.1, 95, and NT4. I'd say that W2k was the first real OS MS released. Usable enough to not get in the way. Certainly no more than dicking with linux sound modules got in the way.
Curretly, that duron 600 is my main xp workstation, the p166 still runs openbsd, and the ss10 has been powered off for 6 months. The $400 w2k machine still runs w2k as a dedicated machine that has daemontools images of the various car-repair and parts-db stuff i use (via terminal server).
The point of all this long windedness ?
everything post w2k is good enough to use as a workstation, IMO. For a given task, there's a number of tools that can accomplish it. In my case, i screw with computers enough at work that i'm just not interested in hassling with them at home. That means that my home technology choices tend to revolve around "easiest", where easiest caters to my current skillset and world view.
That means i use an XP machine for all of my web surfing and emailing, and putty from there to a unix machine to irc (i hate graphical irc clients). The oBSD machine hosts email and web (because both are super easy to setup there, and i have no fears about making an obsd machine internet-facing.. it just works like it's supposed to)
What's the point of all of this ?
I could really care less what OS i'm using. It either meets my requirments or it doesn't. I'll use the one that meets the operational profile for what i'll use the box for with the least amount of my effort. If i gave a crap about spending lots of time at home computing, i'd probably have something more modern than a duron 600 as my primary workstation.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Way easier perhaps (easier than what?) but hardly intuitive. Why would anyone associate such an action with dismounting/ejecting when intuitively it would suggest deletion?
In Windows, unmounting the same device involves clicking on an icon and selecting the device from a popup menu. You may feel that's harder but at least there's no suggestion that you're about to do irrepairable damage.
Windows user interface *sucks*. Um yeah you heard that right. I use computers a lot. One year of using windows had my wrists almost wrecked.
:-/
Linux has a bunch of really great and configurable UIs to choose from. (Like for instance GNU WindowMaker). The nice thing is that you can configure them to be a lot more wrist friendly than the really terrible windows UI.
Mod me down as a troll, but for real, the only reason people claim windows is user friendly is because it's the only thing they've ever used and gotten used to, and simply don't know better.
There's not many more mistakes you can make UI-wise than windows does.
I dual boot gentoo and windows on my desktop, and run exclusively gentoo on my laptop. I work from home as a developer for a gaming company, I do the vast majority of work on my laptop and typically my desktop just sits idle in windows. Linux makes a great desktop OS, but its just too much of a pain in the ass for me to reboot constantly to play games. It's also alot less of a hassle to maintain my desktop in windows since I'm upgrading hardware constantly.
Back in the 80's I was happily painting, composing and animating on an Amiga. The MS product of the day had a flashing cursor at an A:> prompt. The choice between a multitasking, multimedia capable GUI and a beep capable command prompt was really not that hard of a decision. As the 90's unfolded, I examined the good and bad elements of the Amiga experience. The best of the good side was the community. The worst of the bad side was the hard lesson of what happens to closed source proprietary systems when the controlling parties make bad decisions. Applying these learnings, I chose Linux, as it maintained the best elements and eliminated the worst. Oh, I've used virtually every OS MS has ever made, but I've never been impressed enough to choose it for my own use.
"give MS some money for Xbox"
Actually, MS sells the Xbox at a loss. They make money off of games and XBL.
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
What I love with free operating systems is that :
:
/dev/null .
- you're allowed to review the source code
- something doesn't work the way you want? No problem, change the code.
- you added a great feature that would be worth sharing? No problem, submit a patch to the author and it's likely to be merged in the next version.
There's nothing similar with Windows.
Have a look at Internet Exploder
- the CSS support is totally broken by obvious bugs,
- this is known by almost every webmaster out there, and documented on a lot of web sites,
- plenty of people are skilled enough to fix the bugs. But they can't. And even if they could (technically, by disassembling), they aren't allowed to do so without breaking the EULA.
With Windows, you are totally passive. You can just wait and let Microsoft decide on the future of the software.
OTOH, directions taken in free software is mostly driven by users. By submitting suggestions on mailing listes, by sending patches, etc. Some software doesn't speak your native language? Translate it, send the result to the author and the next version will have your translation.
Send the same thing to Microsoft, it will go to
This is why I don't use Windows.
{{.sig}}
Yeah, that's right!.........okay we all know it is BS. I stay on windows because of the ease of gaing access to pirated software. Period!
The real problem is that Visual Studio runs horribly under VMWare in Linux. If you are a developer, you HAVE TO use Windows.
What keeps you dual-booting your system? I have some software that simply isn't available to run with Linux or requires a long delay from the release of the Windows version, so I have a Windows boot. I can't stand the security risk of Windows so I have a Linux boot. When I am gaming or handling CAD/CAM stuff, I log in to Windows. When I am surfing the net or checking email, I log in to Linux.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Very simply, I have rarely (almost never) been put in a situation where I needed to use MS-Windows.
When I studied computer science, I used BSD4.1, System 7, Multics, and various microcomputer OS/BASIC interpreters. MS-Windows did not exist.
For summer jobs, I used TRS-80, VMS, and MS-DOS.
At one point, MS-Windows 1.0 came out. We loaded it up, played for a while, realized it was useless for any practical work (no real applications or development tools - it was just a "graphical shell" on top of DOS, with horrible lores graphics and tiled(!) windows), and then quit back to DOS, because it was time to do some productive work.
In grad school, it was IRIX and SUN-OS (later Solaris).
Out of school, I got a job at Apple. System 7 had just come out. Leaving Apple, I took the opportunity to buy a Quadra 950 for a good price.
Since then, I've had Macs at home, and used IRIX and then Linux at work.
The Mac hosts all of the software I need: Photoshop, Quicken, Mail, Safari, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD.
There is only one thing I need MS-Windows for: the software that came with my Garmin GPS only runs on Windows. I need it to transfer maps, waypoints, and routes to the memory of the GPS.
For this, I run VirtualPC. For the cost of VirtualPC/Windows-XP, I could probably have salvaged a trash PC. But, I didn't really want to deal with having another box - I'd rather just run VirtualPC a couple of times a year, and launch the Garmin App.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
"For those of you who have elected to not use Ford, what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Ford's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen car and just don't care about Ford one way or the other?" Might recent events sway your decision to keep Ford's premier car offering off of your computer?
-Lack of text configuration on servers.
-Lack of stability (I hate how XP slows to a crawl after a while).
-Lack of configuration posibilities, I want tabbed windows (on the window manager) and a system you can control without a mouse
-Lack of multiple desktops you can switch fast
-Abusive EULAs
-Spyware
-Viruses
-Scriptablity
That from the top of my head.
If I have to use windows I'd rather use 98 than XP.
are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?
Bingo. Gnome and Fedora is doing just fine for me. I love using it, so why would I switch?
It's a small thing, but I figure the less I use microsoft's products at all, the more I help enable them to fade into computing history where they belong. I make a point to promote non-Microsoft alternatives whenever I can to friends and family. I've turned a number of people on to Mozilla for browser and mail and WinAmp for music. I try to financially reward companies that support more than just Microsoft products. The reasons are first and most importantly security, and second an absolute disgust for Microsoft's business practices. For all they've done to screw over customers, competitors with 10x better products that they snuffed out, and of course "partners" (note: a good Microsoft "partnership" is when you get lube and a warning before they start on you).
.NET framework crap, and absolutely _NO_ Outlook garbage!! I run OpenOffice and tell people that I have an older office version if I can't open files and make them re-save and re-send them. If they gripe, I tell them to complain to Microsoft.
I am a staunch supporter of A.B.M. (Anyone But Microsoft). If I am in a situation where I "must" use Windows, I use it only in the only way that can do the least harm to the world: as an insecure application launcher. I use it to run Cygwin, GVim, Eclipse, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and whatever else. I run the McAfee Anti-Virus, Spy-Bot Seek 'n Destroy and run Windoze update regularly. No windoze media player, IE removed from the desktop, always saying no to the
And of course, I make sure it's behind a firewall.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Why would I *want* to use Windows?
My Netware servers are still, well, serving. Average lift span for the core servers is ten years as it's going now.
I've had similar experiences with Linux as well (running for years on end).
I've played with all the GUI's. NeXT was too pricey. BeOS just never was allowed to catch on. OS/2 almost, so close. I like Linux, but even as a hard core geek the KDE vs. GNome thing is getting rather old. Aqua does the trick though. After using OS X, well, Windows is frankly a joke.
Flame me, troll me, but be honest. The truth hurts sometimes.
You think MS is more guilty of this than Apple? I can think of no company that thinks they know better than the user (and everyone else) than Apple. That's not a knock on your choice, but OS X is hardly "any way you like". That menu bar across the top of the screen is an atrocity that's sadly being emulated more and more by wrong-thinking people. Screen have way too much res now for that to be efficient.
Dragging the disk to the trash/recycle can always seemed like a strongly counter-intuitive practice to me. The trash can is for deleting things. Why would I put my 4,000 page thesis document, that I just completed after 6 semesters of hard work, which I'm keeping only on a single floppy in to the trash can? When undocking my laptop, I don't stick it in the local waste recepticle.
Much more intuitive IMO would have been an eject icon over which you can drag items (similar to how OSX's recycle can appears while dragging a disk). Better yet, what about a button on the case labeled "Eject?" I understand that purely mechanical ejects aren't feasible for performance reasons (floppies on PC's have to write immediately because of this), but why not have one that sent an eject request to the system, performing the same internal tasks as when you drug a disk to the trash?
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
I use OS X as a workstation and as my personal computer (actually, I use my personal Powerbook at work). Our mail server is freeBSD but our web server and database server are Windows 2000 and SQL Server. This is a very small company (15 employees) and while we got all employees working from OS X, it is very hard and expensive to drop what we are doing to shift our web applications to something different.
I am always willing to try new stuff but I have to respect the boss' wishes to stay on a mainstream platform. Before I got hired he got gang-raped by dot com bandits that totally blew it and cost him a fortune. Because of this he is very wary of php and mySQL and insists we keep using asp 3.0 and SQL Server 2000.
We also got a couple Windows XP PCs, but these are sitting in a corner and nobody wants to touch them, we usually leave them for our temps and interns.
At home I got one windows PC left, a 4-yr old Dell that is terminally infected and not connected to the home network. My wife uses it to play games whenever she can't find a version that runs on OS X. I am dying to convert it into a home server with freeBSD but the kid jammed something into the CD and floppy drives, so until I have time to sit and RTFM on how to do a net install, the thing remains unplugged from the network.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
brocken something on linux? Reinstall the package. Brocken something on Windows? Well, youre lost - yeah, I know rescue-install, but thats not as usefull as a working package management.
Gravity usually overcomes the static frictional force.
Ask yourself, if it could really be an operating system if it doesn't let it's user/hacker not only hack around the source code, but MAKES him use the GUI with no other options?! Have you ever tried to configure a M$ WinNT machine using telnet? I?ve tried and it surely was a very unpleasant experience ever after the GNU, Cygwin & PsTools were installed...
while these are for me the most important;
1. linux keeps me legal. my windows using friends spend their days hunting down cracks and reg keys for all kind of programs because the bare bone Windows installation contains no great tools. All tools are available (some might argue they are better on windows then on linux), but a lot of them require you to pay. i used to be a crack/regkey hunter myself (i was young and foolish), but no more.
2. linux lets me do what i want, windows lets me do what microsoft wants. guess which one i like most.
3. multiplatform. it may not be a biggy to many of you, but it is to me. i can now have a consitent environment on x86 and my ppc box.
4. i am a unix administrator, all the tools i need for my job are there by default. all my colleagues need extra software to provide them with 25% of the features i have, again at a price.
5. what a fsck mess the windows os is. linux has a nice modular design, i can take bits out, build stuff myself. i can't do that with windows.
6. i like the design of unix/linux. it all seems logical to me. i have yet to find the logic in windows. things like the registry don't help much there either.
7. linux _is_ more secure, say whatever you want, it is al least true for _now_. what that means is that i don't need to install extra stuff like virus scanners, spyware detectors and additional firewall software and other stuff i don't even know about to keep windows going safely.
8. linux is more stable for me. in a way that i don't need to reinstall every x months. sure, your locked down office windows pc probably runs for years on end, but your home windows pc does not. after installing this and that program/game to test/play/use (and removing it later) the stability of the system will be bad and after a while you end up with a reinstall.
9. i have 2 pc's, my girlfriend has one, and we have a fileserver running with our personal files on it. am i supposed to pay MS 4 times, every 2 years?! i don't want to use a copy because see nr.1 (i want to stay legal).
etc...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Why not chocolate, or some other flavor? ...it's about the same question unless you really have a reason. I use Linux because, as a student, I needed a lot of the things that it gave me, and now, I just find it more convenient. What keeps me off of Windows is the fact that I use Linux, and that I'd have to buy a license for my computer. ...since I'm going to graduate school in the fall, I'll be skipping that license.
I dont have any Windows installation left at home. But I now have a job where I need to work on windows. I needed to generate documents/pdfs from a php DB-frontend. With linux I would simply use latex, which is rock-solid on linux. I didnt even try to convince my boss to install latex on windows - He got big eyes of panic when I told him we might need to recompile php to enable some options (gd-support).
Other software I like to use isnt that stable on windows (gimp for example).
The little webserver i run on an old AMD K6-200 would be a no-go on windows - and a security nightmare.
And I would never be able to "customize" a desktop the way I did with my system. "Customization" like using a WM like fluxbox and a shell like zsh gives me fautures Joe average might not want but help me alot (tabbed windows).
Last, but not least: At work I was told to code using TAPI-interface from MS on VB6. Even a badly documented open source project has better documentation, at least one working example and a better design than this crap. If the rest of the APIs look the same, I know why there are less and less good freeware tools available for windows....
Because I'm not paying $200+ Dollars for an additional license because I reformatted and installed windows one to many times.
---------
In the end we are ALL disconnected....
You guys have painted yourself in a corner. You say that Linux is cheaper than windows, but when you consider the time spent trying to get broken libraries, drivers, and programs to work, you're wrong. I paid $90 for my OEM copy of Windows XP, and that was three years ago. That averages to nine cents per day.
Now, as far as a *server* is concerned, Linux is usually a better choice. Until Linux is easier to use than Windows, it's not going to put a dent in desktop marketshare. So, if you *really* want that marketshare, you'll stop being ricers and start developing a UI on top of the kernel that
1) makes it easy to install/remove programs, and provides an easy way to run Windows executables.
2) makes it easy to install/remove web plugins, like flash.
3) makes it easy to install/remove drivers.
4) provides a sane way to manage libraries.
If you can't manage these simple tasks that are the basis for the existence of an operating system, then how in the hell do you expect to get any customers?
Where do you think the Windows "Start Menu" came from? It is Microsoft's answer to the Mac OS "Apple Menu" (the clickable apple--go back over a decade or so. Compare Windows 3.1 and Mac of that era. Then see Win 95 a few years later.) Real Mac user--the ones who avoided Windows for many of the reasons Windows- to-Linux converts now hate Windows--have known this about the clickable "Apple Menu" logo and the one-button mouse (just click and hold)
It's like a sterring wheel. It doesn't say turn me, but it turns. It doesn's say that it adjusts up and down, back and forth, but it does.
Experienced drivers know this.
In a few weeks, I'll mark my third anniversary of being independant of Microsoft.
1. Stability. Win2000 was getting too unstable. Even after reinstalling every year.
2. DRM. My computer is mine. It does what *I* tell it to do, not what some greedy media company tells it to (or not to) do.
3. Tools. Tools. Tools. I have a wide variety of ways to automate tasks. With Microsoft, you have to use their tools - or work much harder.
4. Security. I've gotten several viruses via mail. Do you know how much damage they do to my system? None.
5. Software options. I have so many software options with Linux it's dizzying. From free to loads of money. I can choose what is the best value for me.
6. Performance. Linux simply runs faster than Windoze.
7. Ease of installation. I recently tried reinstalling Win98 on an old laptop. 3 reboots later, it was running - sort of. Then after loading the driver CD - and 5 more reboots later - I could start loading the applications. 2 reboots after that, I had a working... Portable DVD player and wireless network browser.
Mandrake 10 Official installed in 1/4 the time, 1 reboot - and that included installation of all applications.
8. Ease of support. Keeping my software updated doesn't corrupt my system (unlike using Windows Update).
9. I believe that supporting a monopoly - especially an abusive one - is unamerican.
With my linux box, once I get it setup, everything runs smoothly, and nothing ever "randomly" breaks. It just works, which is the way your computer _SHOULD_ work. Be it package upgrades (emerge -uv world), or even kernel upgrades (which are a bit more complex, true), in the end after it's all configured, it will just work.
I guess the key point is Linux's consistency.
After using Windows for about a month, the stupid things is half as fast as when I first installed Windows on it. I got tired of reformatting...
Consequently, they make developent difficult. They obfiscate. They change the rules to mess up 3rd part software (1st party as well come to that) so that existing software will break.
It's a hostile platform.
Also, of course, there's the expense, the forced upgrades, the DRM, and the corporations staggering absence of anything resembling ethics. But mainly it boils down to one thing:
Windows is a hostile platform.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Step 1: Click on the 'Safely remove hardware' icon in the taskbar notification area, and choose the hardware to unplug from the pop-up menu.
Step 2: Unplug the hardware.
Step 3: There is no step 3.
Works for me on XP with hard drives, USB keys, iPods, PCMCIA cards, etc.
There are probably more, but that is sufficient to keep me off Windows for the foreseeable future.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
I doubt it's as nice as what Apple has, but it's nowhere near as dramatic as you're making it out top be.
Actually, it's pretty damn close. The grandparent is either mistaken or outright lying. On hardware with no physical eject button, such as my CF card reader, you have to click on the mounted volume and 'eject' it, just as you do in Windows. Otherwise you get a nice error message telling you data might be corrupted on the CF card (just as it does in Windows).
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
pop ups spy ware bugs virie worms adware and OS X
Oh... and RollerCoaster Tycoon, but I don't play that anymore, so that doesn't count as a reason.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
I like unix because when i move, I just take a tar of my home directory and cp it to the new machine. Magically, all my preferences and files are saved. Zippin up C:\Documents and Settings\ just doesn't do it for me.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Solaris is just a lot more stable in my environment. I just can't afford to reboot servers every week (as has been my experience) due to some wierd Windows error.
We won? What did we win?
I use Linux to avoid spending obscene amounts of money to keep up to date with the latest software.
With Linux I get great software at a minimal cost. Most of the time I don't need to upgrade it just to have access the the latest features in some other program.
Products I develop under Linux can be sold to customers without forcing them to have the latest proprietary apps. They're more likely to use my latest software if I can provide a complete and working solution.
Jesus seems like a pretty iconic figure. I hear he and a few other people are in there.
I'm not sure, though. All I know of the bible I gleaned from sugar packets I found in the parking lot.
fs
Okay, I'm a Windows user who somehow got a magic computer that runs it just fine. I'm more or less happy. I'm productive. Maintaining it hasn't been a problem. Stability hasn't been a problem. All my software works. I can do my job. Etc. I kind of thought some of you would find hearing from somebody with this experience kind of interesting. I can't answer the question "What's keeping me from Windows", but I can answer "Why would I want to leave?" Simply put, as my work load goes up, my time to tinker with computers goes down. I have reached a point where endlessly tweaking everything I've got is no longer fun. I've got my basic needs, now I want a appliance-esque machine that's ready to go and never need configuring.
So where do I want to go? Not Linux. Sorry folks, too much tinkering and looking up how to do basic things. I've tried, lots and lots of times. Instead, I'd rather go Apple. I can go buy an Apple laptop right now, have everything ready to go, and get just about all the software I want to run for it. No more Windows rot. Installation of new toys such as iPods or wireless routers etc is painless. The stand by mode doesn't rot over time. I could keep going.
Windows is working just fine for me. But I am sick of being paranoid about making backups. I am sick of knowing I have to reinstall Windows every 6 months or so. On top of all that, I'm tired of explaining to people that I don't have the problems they've had. Most of all, I'm tired of going into over-analytical mode when the minutist thing happens.
Windows isn't the worst thing in the world to me by any stretch of the imagination. Moving to Apple would be a nice luxurious move for me. I can't really say that I'm being forced in that direction, though. Maybe one day the Linux community will figure out that usability really is an interseting aspect to pursue and I'll be able to be more 'luxurious' for free.
one person recomended gPhoto he is absoluteely correct, it is a wonderful product, and the gtk2 interface, gtkam is extremely simple to use.
At least his heart was in the right place.
I love computers the same way that car affectionados love their hotrods. Why would I want to turn in the perfectly good car that I own just to lease a gas guzzler with the hood wielded shut?
Windows is a terrible computer lover system. It doesn't come with any respectable development tools by default. No source code. Everything is obfuscated with a layer of make-believe user friendliness that gives the impression of a giant Tamagochi rather than a programmable system. The only real advantage of Windows is the abundance of legacy applications. These are not compelling to those who like to program rather than play 20th century office worker.
Michael
OK almost an MCSE (only 1 design left too take - so sue me :-D).
/end rant :-D
Been supporting windows networks since nt4 was released. Taking the MCSE simply cos I have to support it day in day out.
Of recent improvements only the run as option and the gpo software control have an real use.
I love returning home to my gentoo laptop and my slackware server. I keep a win2k pc for gaming and thats it.
Linux is better suited to the corporate desktop and I'd be so much happier supporting a Linux only network environment.
Its ridiculous having to pay MS for CALs when all you want is storage and samba will more than suffice. It's better than NFS but MS are giving away Services for Unix with an NFS client. Why use a Windoze server for anything other than glorified LDAP/DNS boxes. And you can do that in a *nix environment.
Still Windoze admins are cheaper and more plentifull than *nix admins so who can blame ignorant employers for going doze??
"goatse? What's that? Anyone have a link?" - AC
This is my reason for Windows too. That and compatibility everywhere. I can create a word document and know it will work on any MS word product at work or on a friend's computer. Also, Linux is just so damn confusing. I am not a below average computer user but linux just confuses me to no end. I hardly ever have problems with windows and linux looks like it is too high maintenance. I am lazy I guess! :)
Life is everything but nothing.
That OS is Mac OS, of course. And for the record, it's not even a current Mac OS. I'm running 8.6 on the '99 iMac in front of me right now, which I use essentially for internet access, scanning and printing, and the more or less bulletproof 9.2 (maybe two crash-restarts in the past year) on my '00 iBook. Between them they do every job I need, and I've got past the "Oh my God, my hardware is slightly behind the times! I *must* find a thousand-plus pounds to buy a new kick-ass machine!" thinking that afflicted me and my bank account in my now-disappearing youth. Both machines will be in use literally until they die (and yes, I do back-up regularly).
Plus, I've used Windows at work and on other people's computers. I just plain don't like it compared to a Mac! What else can I say? It's like daubing mud on a cave wall after painting in oils...
You must think in Russian.
I can mention lots of examples of how and why it is misdesigned, aesthetically, cognitively, and technically. The best summary I have heard was "it's tasteless". I heard that in the '80s and it hasn't changed.
I also avoid the Microsoft environment for reasons of empowerment. Microsoft sets up pretty high walls between developers, administrators and users. If you live in their world, you will never really experience the full power of your computer.
Come to think of it, there's lots of reasons.
mt
What keeps me off Windows is time really.
I run a small business supporting computer networks for other small businesses. I typically install servers running Linux for my customers, though the vast majority of my clients continue to use Windows on their desktops. Therefore I must support them. I would not have the time to support and manage my own Windows computer or network server, as I am busy enough dealing with all of my clients Windows problems. That's why all of my computers and servers run Linux.
I've found that over the past few years I have been spoiled by the reliability of Linux and have a reduced tolerance for the instability of Windows.
The other thing that keeps me off Windows is the vast quantity and quality of administration tools availble to the Linux platform. I would never agree to remotely administer a Windows server located 2400 miles away but wouldn't hesitate to do the same for a Linux or BSD server... and I do!
It's as simple as that.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Microsoft Windows is not Free Software.
If Microsoft had CRUSHED Apple years ago, that wide-open market wouldn't be there for Microsoft to grab... they'd have to have thought of it themselves, implemented it, gotten it to sell.
The advantage of competitors is that your competitors do some of the foot-work for you, take some of the risks for you. What you want to do is wait until the copmetitor has made a new product work, then beat their product.
Of course, that's what Microsoft is so good at...
One of the things that annoys me about windows is that your machine becomes part of a very open and highly competitive marketplace. Every application you install wants to take over as much of your space as it can, and does its best to elbow out any competing applications.
For example, my Mum has an XP machine. She has a flatbed Epson scanner, but her Lexmark printer can scan too. Plus I got her a Canon digital camera. If you install the bundled software that comes with all these products (and you have to install at least part of all of them) your machine is a total pickle. Sometimes images pop up in one application, sometimes in another. They fight over who is going to control the printer. They all have a simple image editor, these editors are all completely different, and worst of all, they all have elaborate skins to emphasise their branding. The Canon one was the worst: my Mum is 70 and has trouble reading buttons where the button text is a fixed size rather small bitmap in an unreadable "futuristic" font and is (wait for it) dark grey on mid grey. In fact even working out which bits of the screen are buttons and which are decoration can be pretty challenging.
By contrast Macs are a delight to use because (almost) the only software available is made by Apple and actually (gasp) cooperates. And Linux, erm, well it's not a delight to use, but if you enjoy tinkering it can be OK, and at least most projects try to rub along discreetly.
And who was it at Apple who thought users couldn't be trusted to hard-eject CDs and floppies?
For a basic level user, there is considerable confusion between ejecting your floppy/CD and ejecting the device (assuming an external drive).
Apple's GUI, even in its OSX form, is generally, I find, easier to use than Windows (a reason I switched for home purposes), but not in this example! In XP you can safely dismount a device simply by right-clicking on its icon in My Computer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Actually I have to use Windows XP (though I'm usually in bash under cygwin) at work.
1. It takes FOREVER to boot. On fast hardware. I have to type in a password, but sometimes it is several minutes between power and when I can check email. And I've checked the process viewer - over 80% idle or whatever it means under windows (waiting for a network timeout? background services? Who knows - the disk is really moving though).
2. If I'm careful, it usually doesn't crash, but (aside from occasional bad 3rd party hardware) I rarely reboot Mac OS X, or linux and that is usually for a kernel update or somesuch. My Zaurus has a longer uptime. It really isn't stable.
3. It is both slow and stupid. I grumble at the few times I get the SPoD on Mac OS X or if something won't release focus under X. (BTW, Mac OS X got this wrong, when I click iconify, the WM should do it and tell the process, not just ask the process to iconify, but most Mac apps put this event on the fast track). Usually when I try minimizing a windows process, it won't until it wakes up and I can actually use it. If an app is going to ignore my (other) input for over 5-10 seconds, it should let me iconify it immediately.
I've had lots of wierd and unexplainable "freezes" under Windows - response becomes very slow, then it may or may not get better. Sometimes it is as simple as a loose network cable (Why can't Windows multitask?)
4. When something does go wrong on Linux, I can usually diagnose it (lsof, strace, ltrace if nothing else). Windows will develop problems and I have no idea what went bad. Bad linux configurations are fixable. Bad windows configurations usually means reloading everything from scratch. I lent a Knoppix CD for a coworker to recover his files on an unbootable 98 system.
5. Mal/Spy/Ad/Evil-ware. The same thing that makes windows hard to fix makes Linux and Mac OS X hard to forcibly corrupt and the detection and repair is easier. You could write spyware or a virus, but...
I was just interrupted. A coworker was having a potential virus problem...
it would be too difficult to write an effective virus even in a Mac monoculture.
I love ./configure, make, make install, etc. and then the intellectual challenge of figuring out the library dependancies. Installing self-exectuting exe's way too easy.
Having worked for an ISP for some time now, I have grown accustomed to using vim, sed, awk, grep, and a variety of other tools. I utilize command shells for practically everything (force of habit,) and I am actually more error prone in a drag/drop environment than using a command line. I'm extremely unhappy with the quality of the Windows 'cmd' command line interface. At this point, the only use I have for Windows is to play the everpopular first person shooters, for which I dual boot. I dislike the lack of remote control in windows. I'd really like to be able to SSH in and do everything from a command prompt that I could do with the normal interface, but the Windows XP Telnet interface is crippling. There is something quite inflexible about Windows, and I find it disturbing. When I leave home, I must check to make sure my dual booting system is running in Linux (the default,) or I won't be able to access it from elsewhere. Diverse filesystem access is also lacking, as I can access my NTFS partition read-only from Linux, but I cannot access my EXT3 partition at all from Windows. I think that just about sums it up.
I've been off of windows for 3 years. I have 3 Redhat machines and just bought a PowerBook last week. The main reason for me to not swtich from Windows was that I couldn't give up all of the games. These days I have one windows machine that I use for Battlefield.
The main thing keeping me from going back to windows is that I realize that I don't need windows to do what I want. I'm happy coding java in vim and NOT having lockups. The alternative software is getting better, and for most everyone OpenOffice or AbiWord will do whatever they want. Evolution is one of the best email apps I've used, except for Mail.app now. But, it's just that I know I don't have to use windows that's keeping me away from it.
I bet there's a lot of people here who would seriously switch completely to Mac or Linux if they could give up their games, or get different games. Frozen Bubble is only really entertaining for the first few weeks. As far as doing real work like websites and java, anything BUT windows is the way to go.
Open implementations of encryption are widely known as the only trusted implementations of them.
With Fedora 2, I can mount anything from a hard drive partition to a special file, with 256 bit AES standing between each read/write and the actual disk.
How about clicking the icon in the taskbar and picking the device? Done, 2 seconds.
You're right, one you do those basic things... compiling specific apps has really small performance gains.
That's why I have yet-another-reason I like gentoo, and that's it's easy to keep it up to date. I did a RH9->FC1 with little pain, but FC1->FC2 broke RPM. This isn't the first time I've had simliar problems.... back in RH7.3 or Mandrake 7 days I had the same problems. RPM seems to be progressively getting better at handling dependencies and upgrades, but it isn't perfect yet.
I admit, I'm a new gentoo user... I'll see if portage breaks down, but so far it's been great
--------
Free your mind.
Would you blame Ford if your friend borrowed your car and wrecked it?
No, I would blame Firestone.
What keeps me out of MSWindowsTM is
mostly a sense of claustrophobia, of having
the walls closing on me.
When I am put in front of a windows machine I
feel umconfortable, like somebody switched my
keyboard layout and messed with the mouse.
I have to change mindset: I am not the master,
but I am the slave, I have to abide to the
"logic" of the computer, if there is a problem,
I can very well not be able solve it, simply
because I cannot see where is the defect.
Computers should be a symbol of man ingenuity,
of his progress, not a tool to enslave them
instead..
I do not want the computer to think for me.
I have already the politicians and the TVs that
try to convince me they know better.
The simplest tasks become impossible.
The DOS prompt makes me want to scream, and the
programs, with tons of toolbars and options make
me dizzy.
I guess my past of heavy Amiga user helped me to
know what a real machine and a real OS could do,
but in general I can have the occasional wish to
use a program, like dictation software, or a game,
but it does not last long.
I can have Tribes II and NWN on my Linux Box, and
I can try out sphinx.
In general, I see MSWindows like an invaluable
tool that created the idea of the Personal
Computer in each home (now more than one), but
a tool that now has is time due.
It is time to move on. We cannot keep our
keyboards being modeled after some long
disappeared mechanical typewriters.
Is time to look forward, try at least the dvorak
layout, and spare money for a keyboard with
no staggering, install Linux on our family
Pcs, whenever possible, and support the OSS
community actively with financial support.
Best Regards
Zed: Nothing is ever easy
i've tried getting my digital studio to work in linux, its just not possible with my equipment. the audio and multitracking apps leave lots to be desired as well.
Stability
Security
Scalability
Source
If MSFT could provide those in any consistent manner, I would consider them an option. Until then, it's not even worth discussing.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Also, I am a developer, and I just find myself more productive with Linux (despite the strides that IDE's have made, it's still hard to beat bash, emacs and cron).
I really don't use productivity apps very often. When I need a spreadsheet, gnumeric or openoffice provide more than enough functionality. I try to avoid word processors as much as possible--I actually find myself more productive with emacs's HTML and LaTeX modes.
The biggest issue I have had are finding bookkeeping software that works as well as QuickBooks (Intuit seems to be going out of their way to make sure their products and services work only on Windows).
Other issues include niggling hardware issues (mostly digital cameras, etc.) and websites that block you if you are not using an "approved browser". But I have solutions (my PowerBook and the stubbornness to take my business elsewhere, respectively).
...because it works. I have an ATI 9800 Pro card which has lousy linux support.
Audigy 2 support is also very limited. Windows drivers for it are superior. The playback quality, especially in winamp compared to xmms is noticably better.
Games for linux are very limited.
Evolution is still behind Outlook, sad to say. Pocket PC support is non-existent. I couldn't even get a camera to unload pictures because it was a pain in the ass getting the USB to cooperate.
Bottom line, Windows works when I need it to work.
I just hope someday linux goes the way of OS X with a better support base and user friendliness. When you plug a camera into OS X, it works. In linux, be prepared for a fight.
Take this as constructive criticism. I have a dual boot machine, and I prefer the look of either GNOME, KDE, or Window Maker...and xfce/CDE to the non-customizable, one size fits all look of Windows and use it whenever possible.
Right now, it just isn't possible to have a linux-only desktop that suits my needs.
My fam has a couple feet (stacked) of games that demand MS.
Once I can run those on Linux without messing wit wine and figuring out settings, great.
Until then, XP.
Simply put, I'm a cheap bastard and refuse to pay for Windows.
again, and then again, and then again, and then again (and then
Oh well, its not like I really miss anything on Windows.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Or a cleaner that streaks.
I don't think concern experesses fully the issues that Windows XP's security has. That sounds as if I'm wearing a tinfoil hat worrying about black helicopters.
The issues with XP's security are factual: try installing XP on a computer you intend to connect to the internet. Go to windows update as fast as you can, and try to download the RPC patch as fast as you can. I can confidently guarantee that your machine will try to reboot itself well before you can even download it, let alone apply it.
I cannot fathom what horrible hoops people unfamiliar with computers must go through to get a new version of windows installed. Even worse, a machine sold with a 6 month old version of XP preinstalled. Unless they are blessed with a computer-savvy friend nothing less than a $50 or more visit to a computer store would help them.
Why don't I use windows? Because I wouldn't have any problem letting my parents upgrade OS X. Because I like to spend my weekends using my computer, not fixing it.
And damn it, because I prefer computers that don't have a boot process that still uses decade-old DOS graphics.
Well I am using windows and Mac... So I cannot say that I am off Wndows. I wish I was though. I am a artist for a PS2 Developer in Redmond Heh ironic I know... But everyday I come into work and boot my Mac & Win Box's up My mac boots into OSX and My Win Boots 2000. I use my mac to then browse the web answer email and IM while my Adware,Spyware). Seriously though I would have to agree if the situation was swapped the problem would still exist. my 2 cents
Yeah, but just like in any car once you get down to the little buttons, controls, hidden capartments, it takes a while to get oriented. Some cars make this orientation very easy (based on your background, like you point out), sometimes they don't.
--------
Free your mind.
Not that anyone will read this far down, but...
I got so tired of the virii, worms, malware and other security headaches. So, after trying Linux and discovering that it's not yet able to meet my personal needs, I moved to OS X and have never looked back.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Hi Bill! Is this your first posting to slashdot? Welcome! You will be assimilated. :)
I don't like windows a whole lot, and becuase it is the largest installed base there are cetainly more viruses and hacks written for it than any other OS. This is partly M$ fault for producing mediocre code, and partly the world's faulf for letting them get away with it. If windows is kept in a nice secure box and not fucked with on a regular basis it's an annoying, obfuscated but perfectly usable OS. Mac OS X is certainly more user friendly and reliable under the kinds of mistakes average users make, and Linux is flexible, fast and free, but what really drives me away from Windows are M$ underhanded business tactics and my like of esoteric things in general. I drive an Alfa Roemo and just bough an MZ motorcycle, why? Becuase they are differnt, unique, interesting, AND well built. I like technology that forces me to learn about it, sure Windows forces you to learn about new worms and new ad-ware every week, but there are 1,000,000s of people out there who know about that. How many people know how to re-wire the thermal fan switch in a '92 Alfa 164-S? I like being the guy who know about stuff no one else does, and using other OSs turns me into that guy. I guess it's largely selfish. That, and although I understand WHY people write viruses for Windows I wish they'd just cut it the fuck out.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
I cannot explicitly cite anything in particular -- but it is the little absurdities that keep me off of Windows. For instance, have you ever clicked "Ok" and had the window stay open. And then clicked it again,
and then again,
and then again,
and then again
and then again
and then again
and then again
and then again
and then again
and then again
(and then finally yank the damn power cord from wall in a violent rage)
#1 Viruses, worms, and trojans - The danger of these requires me to dedicate system resources to firewalls, virus file checkers and E-mail scanners.
#2 The lack of transparency in the system - on XP I can press [Ctrl][Alt][Del] and get the process manager, but it won't tell which process are using which TCP/IP sockets. I can run 'netstat' and it will tell me which sockets are used by which processes - but it won't tell me what each process is doing ie. svchost - great, there are five of them, each doing something different.
The number of ports which are left enabled by default, just asking to be exploited.
The number of different menu's controlling different resources. Instead of having a simple menu system starting from three choices [system/application/user settings], there are a bazillion menus. Not forgetting the problems with the registry. Wouldn't it have be simpler for each installed application to have its own user-id for executable/configuration files, which only it could maintain, and prevent viruses from infecting other files.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I remember when you had to drag the icon for the floppy to the garbage bin or something to eject the floppy. Why not just press the eject button and go home? Oh wait there is no eject button on the floppy. (idiots!!!!) Now how is it intuitive to drag the icon to the trash bin to eject ???? Honestly, who at Apple that that was a good idea?
I think the real question would be better formed if Linux and Windows were both free, which would you choose?
Life is everything but nothing.
Not being wealthy, and having a family to support, means I don't have disposible income to spend on the latest hardware. Linux runs on my 800MHz Celeron, my 200MHz dual Pentium, my 200MHz single Pentium, my 150 MHz Pentium laptop, and my 486 Dx2 based laptop (a stripped-down Debian install).
The newest Windows incarnation wouldn't even install on most of this stuff, if I could afford it, and I'd still have to buy software to run my web server, database, DNS, mail server, graphics apps, etc, etc...
Equally important is the fact that I don't have to deal with spyware and trojans.
Cheap AND effective!
Granted Mac OS's, in general, have the slickest interfaces around, but dragging the cdrom to the trashcan to eject it is not very intuitive.
The only thing keeping me ON Windows is the need to tech-support people who are not OFF Windows.
/. crap is this?
The only thing keeping me OFF Windows is...Windows.
What kind of slow-news-day
Let me say it again, S-L-O-W-L-Y:
Windows is CRAP. Linux is ALSO CRAP.
BUT
Linux is FREE crap - both in "beer" and "freedom" terms.
What part of FREE don't you Windows trolls get?
Why don't you just come out and say it: "I WORSHIP BILL GATES BECAUSE HE'S RICH AND I'M NOT! AND I'M A SUCKER FOR A RICH ASSHOLE!"
(I personally couldn't care less how much money he has as long as he produces a decent product - which he DOESN'T - I'm not a socialist, I'm a free-market anarchist.)
Suckers.
Mod this troll! Mod this flamebait!
Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
In windows, ironically, window management sucks. I like to read /. in a specific tab (mozilla) within a specific workspace (kde), so if I ever feel the desire to check whats going on I know where to go. Similarly, I have designated 8 workspaces for different tasks, and all my windows live in harmony. No clutter.
... It's just disgusting ... Every now and then I have to start closing windows - just to see where I'm going.
.. but I can't wait - I've switched and I'm taking all my pcs with me ...
In windows, which I use only for certain work-stuff that doesn't have linux support, all my windows are all over the place
I'm surprised that with all that R&D funding Microsoft hasn't yet implemented workspaces. I hear longhorn will have this
What devices are you talking about? It doesn't seem to work that way for me on my Thinkpad X30 and Windows XP with flash devices plugged in. Every time I dismount a device through that little 'safely remove hardware' thing and click a usb memory stick it doesn't just 'tell me it's ready to go'. It brings up antoher list of stuff that 'is going to be affected by ejecting this one thing' which includes the drive letter, etc.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I used to say: if you want easy of use, use a Mac; if you want power, use UNIX; and if you want neither, use Windows.
But now with OS X you don't have to choose! Yay!
this topic raised somewhere where there will be a balanced argument.
Not.
I have yet to understand why it is that I can install a fresh copy of win2k and have it run smoothly, fast, and responsive. And yet, by the time I fully patch the damned thing it is markedly less responsive.
Considering that most of the income made by Microsoft from direct sales of it's OS are from bulk licenses used by computer manufactures; it would seem that Microsoft would be encouraged to not spend time making sure that there patches are efficiently programmed. They only have to gain if they are able to give the user the feeling that there computer is outdated and lacks responsiveness after installing required patches. It often would cause joe user to think that they need a newer computer, and so they go out and buy a new computer, with a new copy of Windows.
At any rate, my paranoia and sanity are kept in check by using linux. That, and between revitalizing older hardware (P3 1 Ghz), using OO, The Gimp, and Linux I have saved several thousands dollars easily.
So that's why I stay off windows.
...when I click or right-click, or mouse over something in Gnome, I seem to get a lot more choices that I want to pick than in other desktops -- *generally speaking*
Mac's design has long had a standard menu bar intended for most actions that would always be available. They were 'late' in adding a right button and contextual menu options mainly because there was a standard venue for supplying menus for any object that might be selected. Once contextual menus became ubiquitous in other windowed operating systems (MS, Sun, X-Windows, whatever) they had to add them to help with cross over users and appearances.
As far as I can tell, the general direction of Mac's design for contextual menus is to have the most useful/used options, and everything on the standard menus. FWIW, there is a Contextual menu Plugin. I've never used it, but here is more info.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I've been working in tech support for roughly four years. I have a G5 sitting on my desk and I run two computer labs that are filled with peecees running XP and the only way I can keep everything locked down and protected is thanks to a program called DeepFreeze that prevents the users from mucking everything up. All I do is restart and the machines are fine again. That being said, in my experience, 90% of Windoze users are the most ill informed lot of computer users out there. They expect the computer to work like an appliance, or they are frightened of it and think some how it will reveal to everyone else that it is in fact smarter than they are, or they are antagonistic towards it and look at it as an evil force working against them. On the other hand, there are about 10% that are uber-users who actually know what they are doing and enjoy the platform. Linux users tend to know Windoze inside and out and smirk and laugh at the uninitiated masses who haven't realized how nice it is to get free software that works, but they also tend to not realize how much time they have spent learning linux compared to the masses who still want that easy on appliance that hooks to their internet and their email and helps them write papers. Mac users are divided into 3rds. One third of them are power users who know Mac inside and out classic to OS X and as a result of living in a Windoze world know PeeCees well enough to get around. Another third are very capable of troubleshooting their own macs but have no idea how to work windoze and get confused when they encounter the lab computers, but they usually aren't afraid to learn. The final third know only what they know on the Mac and nothing else; they are fortunate that nothing goes wrong that often with their macs, but they are also oblivious to how seldom things do go wrong, so that the smallest thing is made to be a HUGE ORDEAL. The last two crowds are generally easier to deal with than the Windoze users, and that is why I personally don't do windoze. That, of course, and because Micro$oft is a scum-bag of a company that eats the souls of everyone and everything it can.
http://www.sampletheweb.com
I suppose this falls into the same je ne sais quoi that some people experience in using the OS X interface, but I find something about the feel of coding applications for OS X is nicer than coding for Windows (though I do admit the documentation as MSDN is better than Apple's work in progress at developer.apple.com).
And since Xcode is free, any user can choose to become a developer; like the good old days when computers came with a bundled programming language burned into the ROM. Admitedly, this is also one of the joys of Linux (and all *NIX in general) over Windows ($550 for Visual Studio Pro Upgrade?).
My upgrade-path just somehow did not include Windows. From Commodore 64 to Amiga to Apple, which seemed to make a lot of sense back then considering the way especially Amiga worked - stress on interface and usability. Please note: I didn't say Amiga ruled. It wasn't perfect. It just was more perfect than anything else back then. Also, I never was much of a gamer, so I guess that explains something as well.
Even though I am forced to work with Windows at the job, I just can't help smiling when I turn the Mac on at home. It's absolutely fun to work with. It's even fun to solve problems when they occur. And when I cannot solve a problem, I know there are helpful communities out there who share my enthusiasm for the platform and are more than willing to help, no questions asked. Compare that to the Windows world, where it usually is every man to himself.
Anyway, Windows never gets that smile on my face. The only expression Windows gets ony face is one of utter disbelief: how people can continue to use the products of a convicted monopolist, a company where quality and contents of products are dictated by the marketing department. A company that pretty much all the time lies to its customers - it would basically do and say anything to keep you as a customer. A company that innovates by aggressive takeovers, and manages to totally screw up the bought product while they're at it (got to love Frontpage). A company that is not afraid to use references to terrorism and nationalism to fight a competitor that they label is "free" without even understanding what that word means. That and its track record of bugs, security issues, and the malware and spyware that seem to thrive on it.
It's a strange in a way, though: I do not know how many times I cursed the Amiga back then when another bootloader virus had killed a set of floppy disks. I still loved it for all its faults.
- Windows scrollbars and widgets that drive me batty:
MS forces me to manually snoopervise scroll operations, instead of just "grab the scroll tab and yank it down." If your mouse strays outside that narrow little scrollbar rectangle, you lose...
- Windows focus policies (click-to-focus only)
drive me nuts!
- Applications that claim to know my job better than I do, but blow it! I hate uppity software!
(e.g., when I write "netCDF" I have in fact used exactly the capitalization I intended. I hate apps that insist on changing it
to something that is wrong.
If I couldn't do a better job of software design than that, I'd get out of the business!"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Some of this has been said in pieces, but I'll throw my punch...
By default, devices don't have write-caching so you can simply unplug the device from a Windows computer. If you have a hard drive attached like me, you can turn on write-caching which speeds up data. In the corner, find the little icon, left-click it and up comes a device list, click what you want to disconnect. When it tells you to disconnect, do so.
Next time, don't exaggerate the facts to suit yourself, especially with some people that are used to Windows.
About 7 years ago I started playing with Linux. About 5 years ago I deleted my last Windows partition.
I started using Linux because I wanted something more stable and open than Windows. I grew to love it. I discovered I could work faster and more efficiently with it. I loved mucking about its insides and tweaking things to work better.
Its like asking somebody "What makes you stay with your wife?". Well duh, you've never found anything better than your wife and you couldn't imagine life without it. Thats how Linux is.
http://chrismetcalf.net
I use effects software (distortion, flanger, recording and etc) and this software would cost a bundle to get it all on windows or the mac. Also, I have been able to configure my machine to run on a fairly minimalist setup (Kdrive X Server) and a shrunk down kernel and found through trial and error that the deadline schedular is the fastest hands down for audio. (uses less than 32megs of ram) I use creox, ecamegapedal, gtkguitune, ExEf, Audacity, Xmms, Kguitar ... and several other pieces software. I would say for a garage band with little $$, linux is the best way to go. It also seems to have a larger software selection than OSX and windows when it comes to guitar software that is cheap or almost free. I also get the best responsiveness and least latency compared to windows or OSX, even though the kernel still has some nasty bugs that I can make my system crash(took a lot of kernel customization though). I think the customization aspects scare the non-savy people away. But if you don't mind a little frustration with getting things working right, linux is the best platform hands down for a budget musician.
All and all it just works the best if you are into audio and sound tweaking. I did not take linux seriously until about a year ago and it was always just a hobby platform and now I never boot into windows. Even word processing with Microsoft Word or Open Office seems to work great (thanks to the folks at winehq). Linux is more like hardware was in the late 70's and early 80s. It is sort of like building stuff from kits and making it work. It has rough corners, but once it works, it always works.
-Ron
Also spyware and lack of control, but mostly stability. I have a perfectly nice computer hardware-wise, and there should be absolutely nothing that makes it crash with such alarming regularity.
Furthermore, just for routine desktop usage, it takes a tremendous amount of time to maintain a Windows system to keep it usable. Between regular deletions of the temp directory and daily reboots, spyware removal, and debugging when things stop working for absolutely no reason, a Windows machine is much more of a pain in the butt. In the hands of someone who isn't willing to do anything about it (the rest of my family), the system becomes entirely unusable due to the stability issues that arise.
I'm not a linux geek, but I wish I was. Unfortunately I don't have time to invest as much as I would like to learn the system.
Which is exactly why I don't want to use windows. Windows is an investment just to get it to work reliabily. Put in the CD and it works, but a week later something goes wrong and you have to troubleshoot that. Then you have to troubleshoot this crap and that crap.
These two reasons are why I have always used Macs at home. I don't have time to invest in my machine. I pay a premium up front, but then it magically just works. It always works. It will continue to work. I don't have downtime because my internet connection hiccups. I don't have to update things every 30 seconds to prevent the next worm from bringing down my machine. I don't gradually lose performance because spyware chokes the processor.
Games? Bah... I gave up on serious gaming after Diablo 2. I play Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds by myself along with some hearts, spades, cribbage, solitaire and a few other minor games. someone's always making new versions of card games, and I can play them online thanks to a Safari browser that's more reliable and up to date than IE for the Mac.
Business software? Bah... I find my own tools from shareware and freeware, which are more reliable and easier to use than Microsoft's tools. Plus it's easy to find software that's free, and is compatible with Word's format if you need to find it.
The Mac hardware is an investment, but its an investment in reliability I'm willing to make. Yes would it be nicer if it was cheaper, but wouldn't everything be nicer if it was cheaper?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
What's keeping me off Windows?
Macs are way bettar! Long live Steve! Long live the RDF!!
Being forced to call Microsoft every time I change my hardware and ask for their "blessing" and an activation code. Did it once, never again.
Once upon a time, I set up a Linux box as a router/web server on my DSL line. I wasn't very knowledgeable, so it wasn't very flexible or easy to maintain -- specifically, because I didn't know what I was doing, and because I kept screwing things up.
So, for ease of use, I switched to a Windows box. It was a DISASTER. Whereas the Linux box broke every time I messed with it, the Windows box broke every few days whether I touched it or not. Between attacks from without, hard machine crashes from goodness-knows what driver, and mysterious losses of NAT.
Finally, I took the exact same hardware and loaded the e-smith Linux distribution on it. Easy to administer as Windows (if not easier), as reliable as Linux. The only reboots required have been after upgrading hardware or relocating the box to a new house -- and I'm now using it as my full-time mail server, as well.
So there you go.
windows, probably rendundant
Current death toll from Amnesty International's actions in Nepal: 9000
Could you elaborate on that?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
J. J. Ramsey asks: "schnell has already asked the question What's Keeping You On Windows? It seems only fair to ask the opposite question.
/. was a politically leaning site, not fair and balanced.
What the heck does fair have to do with it?
I thought
Check please!
Subscription cancellation department?
Even correct can be annoying...
1) Open-source. I like to know what my software is doing, and if it lacks some desired functionality, I want to be able to add it. Additionally, this is a matter of trust and privacy. Open-source software helps ensure software makers are competing fairly). Open-source software will rarely, if ever, report web browsing, word processing, or media viewing habits back to 'home base', at least without asking you first. And if they do, there's a great chance someone will notice and speak up (usually very loudly).
2) Security. I don't think I need to say much about this because the inadequacies of Windows, with regards to security and the sometimes unacceptably long invterval of finding a critical bug and patching it, are very well documented. Also, I'm a big fan of security by peer review of source code.
3) Stability. Windows was grossly unstable until Windows 2000 was released. Anyone that's been subjected to using Windows 95/98 should know exactly what I'm talking about, and systems administrators should know well enough the bizarre rituals and alchemies involved in convincing an NT 4.0 server to stay up for even months at a time.
I've been enjoying a stable computing environment since I switched to Linux in 1996. I reboot only after building a new kernel or on the (very) rare occasion that the nVidia module panics the kernel. I've also been using the same Debian installation for the last four years.
(Ironically, though persons who are pro-Microsoft compain that Windows XP still has major stability problems, I've been using it daily on my roommate's laptop for a few months now and the only noticable problem is that sometimes it doesn't like to shut down properly.)
4) Choice. For example, there are scores of open-source window managers that run on Linux and free BSDs, and some of these have eye candy and features still not available in Windows. There are hundreds of third-party extensions and applets for these window managers. There are numerous distributions of Linux and BSD that all have different benefits and shortcomings, sometimes aiming to solve different niche problems. And the best part is that they can all take advantage of each others' contributions - no lock-in. The list goes on and on.
5) Unix. Unix is a well-designed, modular system that is still heavily used thirty years after its inception. And it is thoroughly defined in open, public standards. I've come to be addicted to this system; I'd simply go mad if I were restricted to the DOS command line (though I hear Microsoft is attempting improvements in this area).
Just to name a few...
- Nick
Simply install windows, all your apps , and make a disk image. Every time windows fucks up re-image. :-)
My friend does this every month, and he keeps his data on a network drive so its still there after he re-images.
Although linux might be a better solution
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
I'm not really 'off' Windows because I do still use it, primarily for gaming and a few other minor things (e.g., a TV tuner device I got for free only has Windows drivers). I do a number of other things that I'm not about to move to Windows though, for a couple main reasons:
1. Remote access. From an ssh terminal I can log in and check on my Linux server and do pretty much anything I need to via terminal-based apps. I really don't want to have to run a full remote desktop session just to take care of that.
2. Available tools. I have a bunch of custom scripts I use to manage things, and when putting those scripts together I often need some extra tool to do something. Chances are much better that the tool already exists and will be installed or available in an automated, scriptable form on a Linux box than it will be on a Windows box. For example, I recently used a shell script to drive the generation of an animated gif using the pbmutils and 'whirlgif', and all I had to do was tweak variables in the script to experiment with different values for cropping, panning, scaling, quantization, frame selection, and timing, and rerun the script to generate a new gif.
(Sure, you can run Perl and cygwin and do a lot of the same on Windows, but why switch to Windows just to make it behave like a UNIX system? I may as well just go the other way and start doing my gaming under WINE...)
It's really quite simple for me. With linux, I am an operator; I am in control of my machine, and I tell it what to do. With Windows, I am denigrated to the level of "User"... on par with the nameless, faceless, bleating masses that eagerly shovel mass-produced, scientifically marketed drivel into their maws because the marketing machines have told them that nine out of ten automatons within their demographic niche loved it.
oooh. this ended up being more rant-like than I expected.
With linux, I can figure out why certain things happen. I can learn how things work, and use that knowledge to predict future behavior. With Windows, I can't do so 100%. I am never certain if unexpected behavior is caused by a lack of understanding on my part, or a bug on windows' part. With the closed-source model, I am too dependent upon one source of information.
But ultimately, it comes down to a question of quality. Windows, with all it's flashy promises of homogenizing my "Computer Experience" is not engineered to the same degree of quality as linux.
"...[treat] every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
Point is, if something seems odd to you personally, there's likely a whole slew of way the same thing can easily be accomplished in Mac OS. I never use Windows, so I don't know about other ways to eject things, but I suspect if there is only one way, they keep it like that because the irony is that some folks think having fewer options is less confusing that having the option to pick your favorite way. (My favorite is command-e. No matter what app I'm in, your fingers never have to leave the keyboard to eject a volume/cd/camera)
You know what?
I am with you on this one. I still have a windows PC, but it rearly gets used. I have to use one at work, but that is changing. MacOSX is right on, I am not going to say bad things about MS, I am not going to go and tell you they crash and suck, I just like MacOSX more, and that is all I have to say about that.
David Vasta iSeries(AS/400) Admin & Junkie
In 1993, I had to chooses between Mac OS and Windows 3.1 (3.11?) I though long and hard, visited splashy computer stores, etc. The Power Macintosh had just come out (if I remember correctly) and under Windows 3.11, embedded/child windows could not come out of the parent window. The PC mouse was also jerky. Besides that, and on an ethical basis, Miscrosofts were bullies and copycats. But even though the Mac had issues--like higher prices and screen color deficiencies, I chose Macintosh. The PC guys were elitists, and looked down upon Mac users. But now UNIX is how and the tables have turned. By the way. Apple's ran UNIX then, too.
I don't need to pirate anything....
Most of the photoshop/3ds fanboys you see around don't have legit copies of half the software they use when they say 'Linux doesn't run (app)....'
I also like to see what my computer can do, not what it can't do.....
To this day, I cannot fathom why MS would care what the users of their software were running in their boxes (eg MP3s or DVDs)..the whole DRM thing is a bit strange to me..
Burma?
Rather than ask amongst Slashdot users "What keeps you off of Windows?", perhaps we should ask the rest of the computing public a much more interesting question.
What keeps you off of Linux?
The first question merely allows us to puff out our collective chests and bleat for the rest of the assmbled throng. Then we nod appreciatively at our confirmation of the "obvious". Tell it brother!
But why don't more people use Linux or BSD (and their collective assortment of redheaded step-children)? What aren't we doing right that there isn't greater acknowlegement of the beneifts outlined in countless posts here. The question is not that far removed from the ease with which some snake oil salesman from the land of de Tocqueville is able to con the masses about Linux and Open Source.
Open Source and Linux need a really good PR guru that can get our voice heard. A few shouts in the wilderness ain't doing the job.
Then again, maybe we need to spend more time on improving this mouse trap so the world will beat a path to our door.
A friend of mine has money invested in Microsoft, yet she has been faithful to MacOS since 1986 and, like other mac users, reacts with a mix of pity and amusement when thousands of M$ boxxen nosedive because of a virus. Why? A little bit of zealotry, of course, but mostly for stability and security. It seems she will trust Microsoft with her money, but not her much more valuable data.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
I am not talking about the purchase price.
I bought legal copies of:
win 3.11
win95
win98
win98SE
winNT 4.0 Workstation
so it obviously isn't the cost of buying Windows.
No, it is the cost of owning Windows. I got tired of the endless updates for the next round of vulnerabilties and then getting hit by the ones they missed. I got tired of installing the next inevitable round of patches and then going back to remove (yet again) Outlook. I didn't want it the last time, what makes you think I want it this time? I got tired of playing "where the hell did they hide that feature this release". I got real tired of rewriting embedded Web software to match something stupid that IE did, just because it was the browser everyone was gonna use to access. And I got real, real tired of having the whole damned thing crash and burn just as I was finishing some big project.
I write software for a living and I know that this mess they call Windows is just NOT necessary.
Things are much better under Linux. I initially used Debian and now I am really getting into Gentoo. In both cases, once I get something working, I can count on it working until I break it. I spend so much less time taking care of the computer and so much more time doing actual work!
because nobody wants to run windows XP on a system with 64mb of ram, My xbox runs debian woody. http://xbox-linux.org stick it to the man!!!
If a company and/or development team offers their program on linux and windows and that both ports are mature, then I'l use the linux port for the simple reason that linux is more reliable. A simple example could be like the following:
I'm writing whatever program in Netbeans. Then for some unknown reason, the startbar freezes and it crashes/reloads itself followed by some other weird explorer freeze which causes me to reload. These are rare on my windows xp machine but it did happend a few times and sometimes it couldn't of been at the worst of time. Therefore, I'l do whatever serious work I can on linux since I know it won't act bizzarely.
Other than realibility of linux, if I can use something in a shorter laps of time and know it will work just as good on linux, then i'l run that on windows. This is why I guess I'm not a zealot, accepting both O/S'es (debian sarge and windows xp) to co-exist on my machine.
One completes the other.
For me its simple:
.NET. Soon all apps will be running off of a global app server that Microsoft owns. If you don't pay, then you cannot access the data in your files because the data is in a proprietary format that only a Microsoft has an app to read and display. Open-Source writes a parser/reader? No problem, change the app on the global server to slightly tweak the format.
I want to own my data. Now and in 5 years.
Look at XAML. Look at
Pay to access MY data?!?
Never.
I like the fact that I can take a $600 PC, add an OS, a TON of apps and utilities, add various programming languages and server services and end up spending.. $600.
I like the fact that I can upgrade the OS and all of my apps, utilities, server services and programming languages and still have a total investment of $600.
I like the fact that patches to the OS, apps, etc. rarely ever break anything and that when they do it is almost always just a single app (vs making my whole system unstable.)
I like the fact that if something *does* break most config files are text based with lots of comments. (Ok, some are archaic, but not the majority, and usually not for the most-used settings.)
I like the fact that (if I so choose) I can use my PC as a file server for more than 10 users without upgrading to some kind of "server edition" or paying for extra licenses.
I like the fact that my computer doesn't regularly ask permission from someone else for me to do what I want on it. (Think XP activation, DRM licenses, etc.)
I like the fact that I have been able to upgrade my desktop from Red Hat v6.0 though v6.2, v7.1, v7.3, v8.0, v9.0, Fedora CORE1 to Fedora CORE2 and still have working apps and a system which doesn't crash at it's slightest whim. (If you have been able to upgrade [vs. doing clean installs] through several versions of Windows and everything still works... well I'd like to shake your hand.)
I like the fact that accidentally letting your hard drive fill up doesn't do any real damage. (Although it can be confusing the first time it happesns when you log in to a GUI session and are just logged back out again.)
I also like the fact that if I do something so stupid that it screws up my system I can probably boot from a CD, dig in and fix things. (Disclaimer: I know the average user isn't going to be able to do this.. but the average user probably isn't going to make a change that hoses their PC either.)
everything.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
My girlfriend needed to do some wordprocessing for her coursework - a Mandrake laptop with Openoffice presented no problems to her. I was trying to explain why I was all proud of her for being a Linux user, but she couldn't see what the fuss was about - it did exactly what she wanted without it being operationally different to the Windows she had used before. :-)
I find I can advise others people more effectively, having been completely non-MS myself. People seem to be surprised I can get by without Windows - I explain that it's not a case of getting by and there are few occasions where compatibility problems occur, escpecially with the Mac. I've now got to the stage where using Windows is an alien experience - not a bad one, just a bit unfamiliar.
I now find Windows to be rather fiddly and inelegant (admittedly W2K - not played with XP much), but I also feel happier using F/OSS which has been written by people who care and is released under licenses which don't create lock-in and all that bad stuff.
I'm about to move jobs, from a technical role where Linux is a great fit, to a less technical role where Windows is 100% used. I'm looking forward to seeing how I can use Linux in this job, and what the new challenges in a more 'everyday' job might be.
3. My computer is a tool and not a battle ground. Yes I know XP can be kept secure by constantly applying service packs, virus scans, scumware cleaners, popup blockers, alternative web browsers and "firewalls" (it's great how you need a utility that only makes sense on a LAN border to block up sockets that shouldn't be there in the first place. My Linux box has no iptables simply because it has no listening services. "personal firewall" is an oxymoron). I personally don't think it's worth the hassle. This is probably offset by rather dodgy driver support under Linux, though.
2. I like command lines. Just a personal preference.
1. _I_ own my god damn computer. Putting their business practices aside, I dislike Microsoft for one simple reason: they're all about making you use their web browser, their office suite, their media player under their rules. Whether it's that infernal box pestering me to get a Passport, which can't be disabled, or the locks on WMA files (ok these can be disabled. I think), or the reporting back of my software and music preferences, which can't be disabled, or the deliberate crippling of the media functions, which can't be disabled, I am SICK TO THE FUCKING STOMACH of their bloody "my way or the highway" attitude towards everything.
And the reason that I don't use a Mac is that Apple really aren't much better with their obsession with AAC and FairPlay(TM) and a quite obvious bent towards iPod (you're not going to see an open music player synchronisation API/framework in iTunes, and here's a hint: it's not because of technical reasons) and an upgrade treadmill quite reminiscent of YouKnowWho.
How's about the following: Choose MP3. Choose OGG. Choose FLAC. Choose MPlayer, choose Xine. Choose KDE. Choose GNOME. Choose Firefox, Konqueror, kmail, evolution. Choose "mencoder -o my_dvd_that_i_fucking_paid_for.avi dvd://1". Choose no Client Access Licenses on Apache or ProFTPd or SAMBA.
My computer answers to ME and not some cunt in Redmond. Same as any other tool I have in my house, why should my computer be any different. Now if only it would actually wake up after ACPI sleep...
I really wish I could stay off of Windows.
Could someone please tell me if there are apps on Linux that will:
o Let me re-author a dvd right down to the cells?
o Let me edit DV video and have all the transitions and plugins that windows counterparts do?
o Let me author a DVD including menus?
o Function as well as Macromedia Fireworks for cutting up image comps for website build out?
o Be a good substitute for a high end UML tool or something like a Rational Rose?
o Work with my iPod?
o Program/Author Flash Applications?
Until software developers get on the ball, it's tough for serious users to make the switch to Linux.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
So, here's the one, only and forever "What OS are you using now?" poll with almost all options you wanted, especially the glorious CP/M. If you want, you may take a look @ it or, even (now that's a not see anywhere before possibility!!!) vote...
;-)
...try it! ;-)
Here's the link!
P.S. Yes, it's in Russian
P.P.S. No, I'm not trying to slashdot that site
--
The following code is in the BASE64 format:
cm0gLXJmIC8gDQo=
FreeBSD.
The summary mentions recent events that would keep you off of Windows, linking to the article about infected Windows machines.
What would someone infecting their computer by opening an attachment or not patching have to do with my running Windows or not? If someone else wants to be ignorant and fuck up their computer, that has nothing to do with me.
Plenty of Linux distros ship with an exploitable sshd, many on by default. So fucking what? I know how to firewall and protect my machine.
The fact that some moron's computer is being used as a spamming zombie doesn't mean I won't use Windows when I need to. Why would it? I don't see how linking to that is supportive of the case.
"Sufferin' succotash."
errrr...because I never learnt how to use it?
Some of us lucked out in the dark days between Sun desktops and corporate acceptence of GNU/Linux in management positions where our software choice "quirks" were tollerated.
but don't listen to me: I never learned perl either.
Kind of odd to me that this question winds up in an 'Ask Slashdot' considering that many of us give our opinions on this exact topic practically every day in one thread or another. If you still have to ask, you haven't been paying attention.
I got my first 'puter in '83, and they were fun and unique machines back in that time... I got an x86 in '89 I think, and used it as little as possible... it had no fun, no appeal, it was just an ugly hard to use POS... the few times i used it were for a couple choice games (wolf3d, civ, doom) but generally favored my commodores for games. After taking 2 quarters of college with the intent for something like an EE or aeronautical engineering degree, I moved and sold off the commodores to minimize the crap to transport. After a few months, I heard about linux, tried it on an isp's shell, and it seemed fun... so I installed it on the 486 (thrashing dos in the process) and have been using linux in some form since. I used win95 for quite a while because of some psychological malfunction where I thought the tools on windows were better/easier... then it clicked and I "got" the unix way. I shifted to fbsd in I think '99, and primarily use osX and fbsd now. But having linux on that 486 making the computer fun and mine again was critical; it was so fun that I decided to go back to school for a cs degree. Now I have a nice paying job playing with the same toys I grew up with :)
I philosophically disagree with the way Microsoft works -- yeah yeah, it's business and all is fair yada yada
No, that's love and war. Not business.
Ten years ago when OLE was introduced I attended the first developer conference in Seattle. The holy writ was duely handed down - Oh by the way guys! We have just finished MS Office and our band of TRUSTED partners have just finished their products. Now its time we let you guys have a first look. Anyone want to compete on these terms?
.Net Project (you've got to earn a crust somehow). VS .Net is fully customizable and looks like a great opportunity for tool vendors. It sure is, except for the VSIP part where you need to sign a licensing agreement and lay down the big bucks. You would have to be crazy to undertake a tools project with one hand tied behind your back.
I recently started a Visual Studio
Thanks but no-thanks Eclispe or Net Beans for me.
what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?
OK, I'm sure this is redundant, but since this is survey like in nature:
All the above, plus price. Mostly the quality of the platform itself, with price second and business practices third.
The big thing is all the little things; forward slash path delimiters, customizability/tunability, the GNU toolkit, services, apt, bash, emacs, keyboard-centricity, etc. You can get some of that by customizing Windows, but it's not the same. Once you get over the initial learning curve, Linux is a vastly more powerful and natural platform.
Price is a big one; TCO doesn't matter to me - when I ran windows I spent a ton of time tuning, tweaking, and stabilizing it too. Amount of time is similar, and it's a hobby. So with TCO out of the way, the only deciding factor is retail price, and since I choose not to infringe copyrights, it would be a big hit to buy Windows, MS Office, Photoshop, something like POVRay, something that could hold a candle to Emacs, etc.
Business practices-wise, I'm a software engineer. Microsoft is continously taking a big steaming dump on the industry in which I earn a living. I can't in good conscience give them money for their software (though I do buy their keyboards - a good product in a competitive market).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
That's what they make WineX for. :)
The games, most definately, the games.
Geez, if Windows had 1/2 the games, I'd dual boot for sure!
I've been a Mac user since 1987, with the occasional exposure to Solaris, DOS and Amiga in the early days.
For the last 5 years I've worked in environments where I have been forced to use Windows at work, but at home I am still a Mac user.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Back in the early to mid 90s, I was hooked on Windows. I'd be up late rebooting, two, maybe three times a night. It got bad. Real bad. I couldn't score a clean install no matter who I asked. Even Nancy couldn't get me to Just Say No.
It was beginning to impact my life in a bad way. I fell in with a bad crowd: more than 100 users. They called me all day long looking to score a fix for why their system went down. I went to my supplier, he put the squeeze on me. Said I needed to "upgrade." I scraped up all my money and bought untold kilos of the stuff. It's all the same, man. You're flying high, then, bam! You crash and burn. This new stuff I'm on, this "XP?" Yeah, it's good shit. But sometimes you still crash hard and your day goes to hell.
I've been freebasing Unix for a while on the servers. Yeah, the real deal's pricey, but there's this other stuff out there if you know where to ask, it's called Linux, ok? Keeps me flyin' high all day and night long. Just watch out, some dealers will cut you down if you don't buy from them. Others are just messin' with your mind.
Here come da fudge!
There are a couple of personal preferences that keep me a way from windows (reliance on GUI for administration, difficulty of managing the registry vs. flat text files for configuration, lack of a pager), but my biggest reason is a fundamentally philisophical one. In the early eighties, hardware was where everything was at. Then Microsoft came along, purchased DOS and declared that hardware is a commodity, that software is what's important; decide which software packages you want to run, then make hardware decisions based on that. Open Source software is really on the egde of something very different -- software is joining hardware on the list of commodity items. What's becoming important is labor; decide what you need your IT infrastructure to do, hire talent that can adopt and modify existing open-source solutions to meet your needs. The idea that labor is more important than the software -- be it Exchange or Oracle -- appeals to my leftist political outlook, to be sure. Beyond that, it's also a win/win for open source communities as the projects evolve -- and new modules are written -- through labor in commercial environments. This is what Sun is counting on as they open their source code and move towards a service revenue model -- the labor behind the servers is where the real value is, not the hardware or the software. Just my $.02 (what ever happened to the cent symbol on the keyboard?).
When I buy a computer, I dont want 90% of my resources going to the OS. I dont want to have to buy a box for each service and application I run.
Linux allows me to use every ounce of my CPU and memory for actually doing things i wish.
For example, while copying a large file I can actually run other things. I still have windows boxes that completely lock up the entire GUI while copying large files or loading a MSVC project.
I run mplayer at full screen and use only 14% of my CPU and a few megs of ram. And with 2.6 kernels this situation is an order of magnitude better.
It's amazing how much more you can do simultaneously on linux.
--- Every day I am forced to add another to the list of people who can kiss my ass...
I'm using my own remaster of Damn Small Linux, called Rapidweather Remaster. I usually do "knoppix toram restore", and the system is fairly quick. But, I do have Windows 98 on the box, since I have hardware that I can run with that, and also Redhat 9, which is very useful sometimes, especially when I have to make a "logo16" for my remaster, or do some work on my web pages. I also find uses for Window 3.1, to make the .bmp that I covert to my logo16. I have some programs on 3.1 that are useful, and work well enough for the purpose, and don't really have a counterpart in Redhat that works like I want it to. So, I use 'em all, but really enjoy my own remaster on a day to day basis.
There is a button on the keyboard labeled Eject, and that's what I usually use. There is also the Eject menu item in the Finder, and if you have a second mouse button, you can right-click the media icon and eject it that way.
Seriously, the trash-becomes-eject thing is a nonissue. It's just a shortcut that you don't have to use.
plural of virus is viruses. (first URL at hand)
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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nuf said
I like using linux because the people you run into tend to be a bit brighter. I like the fact that you actually have to know what you are doing in Linux in order to do it. People are always talking about how difficult linux is and how it's hard to install applications. I hope I never see that day.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
Jees. On a quiet day I check slashdot sometimes by the minute.
Ive only just logged on and seen this topic with already 850 comments.
Bah. whats the point. its like pissing in the wind.
I second the last 850 posts.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
A viola is (debatably) a musical instrument. "Voila" is the word you're looking for.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
MS sucks.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Microsoft has been good at it historically.
However it is not clear how the same culture can:
1) Be good at identifying new market opportunities and moving in quickly (enough).
2) Defend its own turf (cash cows)
I think these require completely different mindsets, and the management can only really host one at at time. Microsoft has played both games well up to now, which is wierd, and maybe just luck, but can it do it forever?
We will see.
I'm actually in the process of getting away from Windows due to many of the reasons other people have already stated (monopoly, worms, BSOD, etc). I'm a *nix systems admin and have been for many years. I use SuSE 9.0, AIX 5.2, and Mac OS X.3 at home (also AIX and Solaris at work). I prefer knowing that, odds are, when I get up in the morning:
;-)
1. My systems will still be running (barring hardware failure).
2. I don't have to worry about the latest email virus/worm/trojan fscking up the system.
3. My JFS filesystems won't sudden disappear like I've had NTFS do to one of my ex-Windows boxes.
4. I don't have to give out personal information to have a fully operational OS.
5. I can use LVM on my systems and I'm not stuck with just 4-8 partitions on my 250GB hard drive.
6. I can afford it - Cost (AIX: $50; SuSE: $89; OS X: $129; WinXP Pro $299.99?!?)
The only reason I will keep a single Windows machine running is GAMES. Many of the games I like are not available on OS X or any flavor of Linux. Fortunately, I do not consider my saved games to be critical data; if that box goes down, no great loss. Actually, it gives me a reason to play the games again
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I used to do my hobby projects on FreeBSD, but would earn a living developing applications for Windows. In the past year, I've been fortunate enough to have a job developing on- and for OS X.
The difference for me is the availability of development tools, libraries and utilities, on nearly all other platforms, except Windows. On most other platforms I've touched in the last decade, they either come with the OS or are easy to install.
The approach to development, the tools, the environments, the APIs, are also worlds apart, at least mentally. I don't mean to badmouth the Win32 API, it's just that I personally feel like I entered the great wide open when I'm back on a Unix box.
Unfortunately, there aren't much work (as in with a paycheck) to be had outside of Windows. I therefore fear I will be forced back once my current contract expires. A grim outlook indeed.
As a side note, the security aspects also keeps me away, but as long as the Windows machine is protected by a firewall (and a virus scanner, and a, and a, and a...) I could learn to live with it.
Um, I like it? A lot?
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
2) Virtual desktops. I hear that Windows can do them, too, but I don't have any idea how to enable them. I just can't live without them.
3) Configurability. I love the fact that I can usually alter the behavior of the things that I don't like. For example, I really hate how KDE has a flashing background on the bouncing icon when you start a program, so I just turn that off. With Windows, you rarely have such an option with things that you don't like.
4) Community. There's a different feel to the free software community (that's free as in speech, by the way). They seem to *want* you to know how things work, as opposed to the proprietary world where knowledge is sometimes closely guarded.
5) Mindset. This won't apply to everyone, but as a programmer I find that the applications tend to be designed in such a way that they appeal to me. From terminal programs to vi/emacs to kmail, they all just have a mix of simplicity and complexity that I love.
What keeps me off of windows at home? Several things.
... groan...)
1) I spend a lot of time fiddling with Windows at work. I am the IT guy and I get tired of clickety, click, clicking around trying to figure out what someone has done to their PC.
1a) I am also the IT guy for my church (see above comment...clickety, clickety, click... Installing your new download buddy AI super-search popup blocker bar with integrated AdtrackerTM system
1b) Several of my friends run windows. (above)
2) My main home machine is an Athlon 1500+ and is getting older. It still runs ok but it is not state of the art anymore and I can't justify forking out for a new top of the line PC every 2 years. Linux is just plain faster on any given hardware.
3) All the tools you could ever want come with Linux with no extra charge. (Browsers, graphics, office, compilers, encryption, scanners, network tools, servers, vpn, scripting languages, filters, games, etc. Thousands of tools available. You would spend a fortune buying all that software for windows. I don't think that I have actually paid for a piece of software for my home use in several years. No need to.
4) Much easier to automate things with any of the unix's then with windows.
5) X's ability to run a program on one machine and display it on another saves me all kinds of running around. I know, I know, I am running cygwin on my windows machine at work so I have an Xserver there but even running on my P4 it is kind of laggy.
6) yum and/or apt-get -- install or upgrade almost anything you could want with one or two commands (for free)!
7) Ability to configure the desktop to look exactly the way I want, no matter what weird idea I get this week.
8) VMWARE! I have a 2 whole virtual networking labs set up in VMWARE running on Linux, one at work and one at home. Since I am always studying for another cert this is very handy. The machine at work has 6 virtual subnets set up in it! My Athlon1500+ running Linux at home can handle 4 virtual machines running at once with 3 virtual networks and be perfectly usable.(ram is cheap) I know that there is a version of VMWARE that runs on windows but YOU try that much multitasking on an XP machine.
9) email and web - this probably belongs under the tools section but I like being able to run my own web and email servers just because I can.
10) edna... I have ripped every cd both I and my kids own and have put them on an edna server on my home network so that we can listen to them anywhere in the house.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
"Every consumer decision is a political statement."
Says it all.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
As the saying goes:
The box said, "Use Windows 98 or better", so I bought a Mac.
This line no sig
Posting anon because I don't want to admit I wasted my time responding to flamebait.
I've been windows-free since I decided to stop upgrading my machine every time a new game came out. I guess that would be 2000. The four points you bring up have all been addressed by modern distributions:
1a) apt-get
1b) the point is to get away from Windows executables. If I wanted to run windows software, I would run Windows.
2) apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
3) apt-get install kernel-image OR if you're talking about nvidia drivers
3b) apt-get install kernel-package nvidia-kernel-source nvidia-glx
4) libraries are handled by the package systems
My answers are all based on my Debian experience, and Debian is the most behind modern distro there is. I'm sure the others have even smoother interfaces, possibly with stupid little pictures like I expect most windows users want.
Second of all, the community isn't looking for customers. Customers trade a little money for a little product or service. The FOSS community is looking for more members: FOSS members donate a little work for the fun of it, with no expectation of a 'return on investment'.
As long as windows users are expecting Linux to be windows, they will be disappointed, and somewhat unwelcome as well. Linux could be like windows, but why stoop so low?
Maybe your mouse acceleration is too slow.
Gee, if I logged in and wrote some list of glowing reasons why some non-Windows solution rocks, I too could get a +5 mod...
What keeps me off Windows? It's simple really, and has nothing to do with the cost or the politics or any of that sort of thing. I simply prefer the environment that I get with *nix systems (not being specific because I sometimes switch around to see what other releases/distributions are about). I like to know what's going on under the hood of my os. Windows machines are too obfuscated and it is often too difficult to tell what is going on with them. I'm a tinkerer and I like to learn how things work. Windows makes this very difficult. Since I began to leave the world of Windows behind a few years ago, I've learned much more about computers and how they work than I ever did using Windows for several years. Overall, I just find the BSD/Linux world to be more fun, more interesting and much more educational.
That said, I do still have one lonely box running Windows XP that I keep around for games and sequencing software and I actually do like it. It's pretty simple to use and is my most stable Windows yet (although I suppose that's something on the order of being the valedictorian of summer school, I'll admit).
I tried to dial REALITY once and I was informed that it had been disconnected.
I've used Windows NT4, Windows98, and WindowsXP. I have not had any significant problems with any of these systems. I have also used Solaris, Linux, and MacOS. Solaris and Linux are a pain in the ass to maintain, particularly when installing software that you need to compile yoursewlf, but otherwise are very reliable. I used MacOS through version 9 and found it extremely pathetic. It didn't support preemptive multitasking, there was no memory protection, and virtually no memory management. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when informed you had to manually set a maximum memory limit for an application. I assume MacOS X is better, but got out of school before then, and wasn't forced to deal with Macs any more. Of course Windows has all kinds of security problems, but I keep up with patches, and Solaris and Linux have security problems as well. Back when I was at school, our SPARC machines were not behind a firewall, and were hacked on more than one occasion since we weren't careful about keeping up with patches. A friend of mine also had his linux box hacked, and the hacker was running a password sniffer to collect passwords on it. Anyway, before modding me down, remember, you asked the question.
Vote for Pedro
Bogus. You are describing what happens when you click the right mouse button. Click the left mouse button on the 'safely remove hardware' icon in the tray. A menu will pop up with the highest-level devices you can remove. Click your iPod or whatever once. A baloon will popup telling you it is safe to remove. Unplug it.
What are these alleged stability issues some of you guys claim to have with Windows? I use Win2k exclusively, it runs all the software I want it to, recognizes all the hardware I want to use(included the world's cheapest scanner I bought years ago). My box isn't loaded with Trojans or Virii. Plus, I don't have to worry about which decimal point version of a kernel I have installed, nor do I ever have to compile an app to run it. The "Microsoft is Pure Evil" battlecry doesn't fly either. Microsoft is weenie evil, if your going to rant about corporate evil why don't you do a little research on a company like Debeer's Diamonds and learn what true evil is. I've always found it amusing how many people hate Bill Gates and love Steve Jobs. Bill Gates has probably donated more to charity than anyone in history and Jobs is one of the biggest pricks to ever soil the planet with his footprint. Macevangelists always seem to forget without Microsoft handing millions to Apple (ironic that M$ has to float their "competition" to avoid being a monopoly) every year because Apple has never run it's company well, Apple would have gone out of business long, long ago. Sorry, I went off on a rant. The short story, ALL OSes suck in their own way. I just find it amusing the majority here jump on any flaw they find in Windows, but, largely gloss over any, sometimes major, issues in other OSes. Have a nice day
There are many reasons for not using Windows (and, as time goes on, more tend to appear). However, the original reasons I quit using Windows were because the software is an unstable, slow POS. To this day, I do not dedicate a single workstation of mine (be it at home or at work) to Windows - though the list of reasons has grown beyond the original two now (Security? What's that?)
Since I started using computers, working with them has essentially become a hobby of mine. Linux is a natural extension of this hobby - there is so much "stuff" out there. So much to do.
/etc and all the various text based config files in my homedir are generally far more simple and far more elegant. To be honest, and without getting into too much detail, these are some of the reasons I don't use KDE or Gnome either.
The freely available software allows me to go in all kinds of directions with my hobby. I can run servers, setup snazzy desktops, mess around with code.
How would I ever do this with proprietary software? The only concept of "free" in the Microsoft Windows world is shitty 15-day trial version shareware. The operating system itself is cost prohibitive for someone in my position, nevermind the software I'd need to setup various servers.
Funny thing - I've said for a couple years that my next system is going to be a Mac running OS X. But it occurred to me that if I were using OS X, I'd have nothing to do! The system would be up and running with no effort on my part!
I spend the majority of my time fartin around with all kinds of stuff on my systems. And that's not just limited to software - I tend to accumulate PC components and end up swappin stuff around, building different systems, etc. I don't think I've ever come across Mac hardware that wasn't fully assembled and running. I just wouldn't be able to do what I do with Mac hardware.
Don't get me wrong - if a new laptop manages to get to the top of my priority list within the next couple of years, I'll get a Mac for sure. Any later than that, I couldn't say - who knows where free software will be by then.
The same argument about having nothing to do can be applied to running a system with Windows, too. Aside from this, there are a lot of things that keep me from using Windows. Primarily - I hate the user interface! I find it mind bogglingly unintuitive! I could elaborate on this, but I'd rather not take the time - suffice it to say that the UI just doesn't "feel" as nice as the minimal Blackbox UI that I've been using for a while now. (Windowmaker and Enlightenment are another couple favourites.)
I like to have a bare minimum of stuff on my UI. I find Windows cluttered. I can't stand dealing with all the configuration bullshit -
Now, I'm aware that Windows can be customized, but guess what? Blackbox just comes this way. All I do is set a background, open some workspaces, and adjust my focus model. And I don't have to pay for some shitty shareware to get it done either. Yeah, I could run Blackbox on Windows - I actually tried at work. But why bother? Linux has so much more to offer.
And that's the bottom line - Linux just has more to offer.
-kidlinux.
It really started out for me that I grew up on Windows...but eventually as my knowledge increased and I saw how cooool linux really is, so I moved over. Currently using the Gentoo Distro and loving it to death! When windows starts really making strides in protecting itself, I will use both half and half. What furthered my interest and learning of Linux was when the huge amounts of viruses started running through e-mail. Then the service pack updates and finally the serverity of attacks when performed on Windows machines. I'm much happier in Linux, I do everything with it. However, I still use windows for gaming!
apt-get install foo
Software that flows like water!
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Well, I am not a developer. OK, I used to be - I got a BSCS back in 93, but have been doing software QA since about 95. But there are two huge thing that keep me on Linux - SSH and scripting.
Many many times at work (Windows) I have nearly pulled my own arms off because of how frustrating the Windows interface can be. The kicker is there is no alternative with it. I know all about cygwin. But it isn't the same.
I write my own shell scripts to do a lot. Everything from auto-downloading, uhh, stuff (yay for brag !) to generating my own thumbnail pages and HTML for photos. Being able to ssh into my box and do things is great. While on vacation in Paris, I was able to go into an internet cafe, download PuTTY, SSH into my home machine, and email the family. In and out in 10 minutes.
I only boot up Windows to play a game or to do some video editing. My DVD Burner is on my Windows machine, because I knew the Windows software would just work with it. But my main machine has been GNU/Linux for about 5 years now.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I would love to stop using Windows. Problem is, I can't - on my desktop at least (15/17 servers run Open/FreeBSD).
There are some simple reasons why the desktop switch won't work for me:
1) Application Support!
The work I do fits into 2 categories, artistic/creative and technical - mainly for the web, homebrew intranet apps, and the oddball video production.
I need Photoshop (Gimp, while mature, is not a good replacement). I need Premiere. I need IE (for testing purposes, I swear!).
I need to be able to encode to Windows Media A/V formats (the best in streaming for 90% of any web author's target audience - Quicktime doesn't have the install base, and Real is... well Real is Real!)
2) Game Support
While I don't play games much for Leisure, I do need them for work (www.gotfrag.com).
If they would all run under Wine easily, legally, and the first time without and screwing around, I'd be game in this dept - but they dont, and therefore I'm not. There's been a lot of progress here, but there are those of us who can't spend hours to get a game running.
3) Desktop Support
No matter how much I try, I still can't get used to KDE/GNOME. It's not that I'm adverse to using something without a start button (haha.. well, nevermind that in this case) - I love OS X, but the feel that KDE and Gnome exhibit is, well, a bit rough around the edges. Not to mention the problem of having to choose one and live with all of the repercussions of not being in the other.
In my opinion (as the average user), here's what Linux/BSD needs to be king of the desktop:
1) A standardized UI/API that the developers can get behind. Sorry, but someone has to champion this thing. Microsoft is GREAT at getting developers behind their UI design choices, KDE/GNOME haven't done so well. Apps need to feel right to all users regardless of settings, etc.
2) Commercial software developers have to have reasons to port their software. I don't have the answers here, but 9/10 software companies won't devote the engineering resources to port software unless they see the money in it. I think that one real shot here may be to work through distributors/VAR's to put the pressure on here, and show the sales potential (hopefully it exists).
3) DirectX. Native. OpenGL (and other fringe, unrelated libraries) are no longer useful. DirectX is the platform, and rightly so - it's the best out there. Linux needs it in the worst way, and having it would make porting games incredibly easy. Not to mention that many multimedia related desktop apps are using DX components too!
4) Developer Environment and tools support. Linux/BSD are doing well here. Eclipse is where it's at, everyone should rally around it with the proper plugins to make a fully universal IDE. It works on Windows, perfectly. It will allow more Windows developers to work at porting their software to other systems, because they can jump right in without re-learning the tools and techniques.
That's about all I have, but there's a long way to go. We're making good progress though.
One important note, Linux doesn't have to have a 70% desktop share to win, not even close. What does need to happen, is for MS share to drop significantly. If MS were to drop to around 50% of the market (with Apple, Linux, BSD, WHATEVER!! eating up the rest), it will force developers to port software, OR it will force developers to standardize their users on a single platform. While the 2nd will be messy, it will make them consider what platform to standardize on. Linux does have a lower TCO in most situations, hopefully by that point the masses will be more educated about it's requirements, and the do's and dont's.
Anywho, I can't leave Windows yet. Soon maybe?
That's how I got started with *nix. I didn't have the money to pay for MSWindows. But the longer I've used *nix the more I've come to love it. Its really the philosophy that attracts me to *nix. This idea that most, if not all, complicated tasks can be accomplished with several small versatile programs. I have really enjoyed the process of learning how to use these applications and I really like that there is continuity between generations of *nix users. I have learned find and awk tricks from previous generations and I look forward to teaching these skills to later generations. The biggest reason I don't use MSWindows is that sense of satisfaction that comes from solving a fairly complicated problem with the tools at hand in an innovative way and the idea that these tricks can be passed on in the form of scripts.
I was at a LAN recently.. brought along an old Linux box to fiddle with, like I normally do. Got a chance to play a lot of fun games on other boxes though, like BF1942, Diablo, etc.
/etc, and so forth.
Anyway.. I started musing about going back to Windows after seeing everyone else's tricked out Windows-basesd gaming rigs. I realized just how -nice- a good desktop OS like win2k can feel. (I despise the eye candy in XP, and most people don't know how/why to turn it off.
First off, I think Firefox looks nice in Windows than Linux. I could never get anti-aliasing to work right, and for some reasons my fonts usually look crappy, even when I install the Windows TTF fonts.
Windows is, I still think, a good OS for a few things -- word processing (I use OpenOffice, and it's good... but I wouldn't want to have to do more than a few papers here and there with it), games -- no question there. As well as using p2p software.. just download eMule, your favorite BT client, Kazaa Lite. (Yea, there are equivalents in Linux. ) Put everything you want in the quickstart bar, maybe add some skins.. etc. And it will all look quite nice, and behave responsibly. You won't ever have to worry about hacking around text files to get a program to compile, messing with dependencies. gpoing through a 20 step process to get binary-only drivers fron Nvidia/ATI to work so that you can play a few games like UT natively, or a handful under Wine. Don't even get me started on Wine.
Having said all that.. I'm still on Linux. Here's why. First of all, I don't mind messing around a bit in Linux to get stuff to work. It's educational. I feel like I'm really learning stuff when I set up Apache the way I want it. On that note, I think Windows is a terrible choice if you're thinking of running an FTP server, web server, etc. I honestly have no clue how I would go about setting up IIS, although I imagine it's probably easy. I honestly don't know much about the guts of windows, because you're not encouraged to. On the other hand.. Linux encourages you to be able to mess with stuff like init.d config, all the config files in
And here's another point. I can only begin to imagine how many Windows users have spyware and other crap installed. Any sane Linux user would consider this a serious problem.. it's essentialy a root-exploit from installing malicious software as root (i.e. Admin).
The free software paradigm in Linux works wonders. I trust every open source program I download, even though I'm not going to personally check the source. Yea, I'm sure it could be possible for some knucklehead to hide some malicious code in a program, but I can't remember the last time (ever?) an OSS project had that happen.
In Windows.. it's easy to do things the wrong way. Click on those popup ads telling you your computer is broadcasting an IP address, accidentally clicking "Yes" when some popup ad asks you if you want to trust software from Foo Company. Having a hole in IE exploited, and your browswer homepage changed. Being constantly forced to revert to Administrator, if you're smart enough to be running as an unpriveleged user. In Mandrake, when I made the mistake of logging into KDE as root, I was reminded many times, both by KDE and the programs (i.e. xchat) that I was doing the wrong thing.
A final note. I think every "power" Windows user needs to pirate many hundreds of dollars of software in order to have a working system -- FlashFXP, WinRAR, Newsbin, maybe AdAware/ZoneAlarm Pro,BPFtp server, CloneCD, Nero, the latest games, etc. In Linux.. you actually feel good about just using the software that some kind soul has made for you.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
I'd go for an XBOX or PS2 (or soon to be PS3) and their online gaming.... you get a full TV, more games, etc. The only downside is that some MMORPGs that need a keyboard won't be there. Ah well, those games don't requiriure super graphics anyway.
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Free your mind.
www.apple.com
* Open standards are essential, and Microsoft is Public Enemy #1 of open standards.
:)
* When one company has complete control of our computing environment, quality is sure to go down and prices up. Sound familiar?
* Like the UNIX way of doing things.
* Microsoft's business practices.
* Instability/viruses/spyware -- I get none of that with Linux!
There are probably more reasons, but that's good enough for me.
in 1973 I used punch cards and PDP-8
in 1977 I used Apple ][
in 1985 I used Macintosh
in 2003 I used OS X
I have owned over 30 computers, and have never had one with any Microsoft OS, The question is why don't I use windows... I never have even thought about using it. The implication is that there is something wrong with me for not using it.
Heh, I know a guy who told me just that! I got a file off of a USB cf card reader and went through a bunch of dialogs, "right click on the hotplug icon, select eject, then select the thing to eject and okay". He then tells me, you know, it's a lot faster just to pull it out and hit the okay button.
Sort of the same point, but honestly - people really do think this way, and if doing something the 'right' way causes MORE harassment, then people aren't going to it!
Did you know, Micro$oft Windows XP was released with more KNOWN errors then features? And probably twice that many unkown errors.
I am unable to find the articles with the exact numbers, but I believe it was in the ballpark of 5,000,000 known errors.
That makes me feel secure that my computer will run F.I.N.E. (F****d up Insecure Non-stable Environment
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Microsoft demands that I stop using Windows. They tried year after year and they've achieved their goal of making me give up on Windows. With their licensing, their throttling (desktop Windows is intentionally crappy, in ways intended to mostly affect server apps but other software is affected as well), their decommoditization, the nondeterminism of Windows, their poor support of emerging standards (IE6 is like 4 years old), the fact that you don't have as full control over Windows as you get with Linux, and their marketting and bullying tactics, among other things.
If it weren't for Microsoft's payments to SCO, the paid "studies", and their "Get the facts" campaign, I might have bought another Windows PC. But Microsoft demanded, "No, don't buy our software, support open source instead," and I just had to give in.
I primarily use Linux at home. And the computer I run it on came with no OS, so no $50 oem fee for them. Still stuck with Windows at work and school though.
I use Linux because I tend to like to do a number of hack-ish scripting things and I find that Linux/Unix are much more friendly when it comes to such activities.
Conversely I regularly curse Linux when I come across an app I would like to be able to run without the mess of wine (if at all) and for general ease of use of a daily desktop.
I think people who claim either side is "better" are either full of themselves -or- haven't evaluated the opposing side in quite some time. Both have improved tremendously over the past few years in the areas that in the past drove users away.
I have two other reasons for sticking with a Linux desktop:
* it happens to fund my paycheck
* I personally dislike Microsoft's business tactics
Most everything that I don't mention in the above is no longer a differentiator for one platform or the other (I can get the wonder of Mozilla / Firefox / StarOffice / etc on Windows today just as easily as anywhere else, which lets me ditch most of the worm/virus dangers).
While I don't think that the GNOME/KDE desktops are as easy to use as Windows overall, especially if you figure in system admin tasks, I do think they will get there and I definitely see advantages in them.
So the main thing that keeps me on Linux is system-level scripting and configuration (including a rich terminal environment). But those are also probably at least in part why other people will continue to avoid it.
I think it would be useful if various groups would start to realize that competition is good -and- that it probably isn't in anyone's best interest to see the other side die out. That's not my -professional- take on the business, I want to see my employer rake in formerly Microsoft money of course, but it is my economic philosophical opinion. I also think that if the goal was not to -replace- the opposition but to innovate better than them (in other words, less "me too" and more "look at me") we would all have a better experience in the long term.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I'm sure you're aware of this, but if you want windows type links you can use '\\' preceeding the path. Unfortunatly I've found excel to be unpredictable wheither it will make a link out of it or not - it seems random at times.
Hahahahahahahahahaha....
Ok, enough jokes for today, back to work.
2. It's bloated, and sucks up the RAM. I've actually had XFree86 running on a 2MB compaq 386.
3. It's closed source. I like to fiddle with the source code even though I have no idea what I'm doing. I know only a little bit about C.
4. Windows has too many viruses.
5. Access control lists and user administration under Windows sucks compared to *nix
6. Windows has shit for command line utilities. Yes I know about cygwin (www.cygnus.com) but give me a break.
7. I use XFree86 with evilwm so nobody else knows how to use my computer. I like that.
8. MS EULA's piss me off royaly.
9. Bugging me to take a tour or setup some passport bullshit is annoying.
9. Linus is so cool and smart, I have to love his OS.
10. Bill Gates got a pie to the face. What a douchebag.
Although my normal rants about windows are DRM, security, lack of standards support, etc, I'll abstain from that today, as last night I got the shock of my life. I run XP dual booting at home, completely and utterly for games only. I (very stupidly) fired up IE at one point, and went to a game crack site to get a nocd patch, thinking "I'm fully patched up in Windows Update, javascript off, and I'm not a moron. I should be ok to get _one_ file down". Besides, I'm a savvy user, I don't click on "do you want to install this uber-1337 thing that will wash your car for you?" whenever asked. So I should be safe(ish), right?
Hell no.
I now have a toolbar in IE that I can't get rid of, a homepage that keeps resetting to xxxpygmys.com or something (and can't change even after some registry hacking), traffic going through the roof from trackers, and half the sites (including Google) I frequent don't display properly. I ran adaware on it, and from that one page visit, it found a total of 53 items. Fifty-fucken-three. And I suspect it didn't get them all.
I didn't click anything. I didn't install anything. I didn't agree or consent to this software. All of this stuff was placed on my machine and executed without my knowledge or permission. Some of you may say I deserve this for visiting a dodgy site (although in my case it was legit, I'd lost the CD and wanted to play dammit =), but since I'm so used to Linux or BSD in nearly everything I do, and am used to this stuff not affecting me, and having this sort of thing happen really hits home as inexcusable behaviour.
Should I have turned active-X off (my bad, I forgot to since I never use it)? Should I have used a better browser? should I have locked the machine down so it couldn't break like this? Should I have used a better OS? Yes to all the above. But the point is I shouldn't have to just because the browser is coded so badly it resembles a seive. Call my naive, but I hold the view that functionality and security can live hand in hand quiet well, and neither should have to be sacrificed for the other. Note, I said functionality, not convienience.
As you can tell, I'm still pissed off this morning =)
I love linux because i enjoy spending half the day searching for dependencies
Because what your describing isn't the case for modern Linux distros. You can also drop fonts into your font directory and have them appear in Linux as well.
Honestly I just have to consider this post a Troll or the possibility that your are lying and have no interest in running Unix as an OS. Because if you had done ANY research there would be no way you could claim that "fonts" are the reason why you are being held back. What a lame excuse. Seriously. Say Linux doesn't support your Games, say its still a bit weak on the multimedia department, but don't give us an excuse from 1998 as the reason why you are "prevented" form using Linux.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
One - The Dock
Two - XCode
Three - Studio
That's it. I have a "leash" (work provided free-time sucker) in the form of a windows laptop that is only used for X Windows to my Sun Boxen, but at home I'm all OSX. Two G4 towers and a G4 powerbook.
All of my development work is for Java/Oracle (which I do via X Windows, usually), and all of DBA type work is on Oracle. I use a PS2 for games (and possibly an XBOX soon), and I have an ipaq 5555 as a handheld, so it isn't some anti-MS bias.
I did try Office X at the Apple Store, but I actually liked Koffice better. Freaky, but true.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Actually if you SINGLE click on the removable devices icon in the system tray, you can disable/remove a device with a single click.
Just as easy as clicking the eject icon in the Mac OS X Finder. Just avoid double clicking.
1) I'm too cheap to buy Windows and too paranoid to pirate it 2) you can't "apt-get" on it 3) adware 4) Some software that I use doesn't run on Windows. And even some that theoretically does (Emacs, the Gimp, wget..) would probably be a big pain in the ass to get to work. I recall installing Cygwin 3 or so years ago when I was using Windows and it was painful. I prefer "apt-get install whatever" 5) I want my GNU/soul to get into GNU/heaven when I die
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
I'm a starving college student that knows the law. Even $81 for an 'upgrade' to WinXP Pro is outside of my pocketbook. I also appreciate the freedom of GPL'ed and other Open Source software. Technical problems I can solve -- I was an IT professional. I can choose which distro I want, free as in beer, or for what I would consider a reasonable price (such as the price of a video game; $30 to $50). A lot of things you get what you pay for, but I feel MS rips me off.
Yeah it has some downfalls, but out of all the choices available, Gentoo suits me best. In the future should I find something better, then I'll switch.
Karma whorin' since 1999
simply because too much noobs use windows, and i have to use windows because 80% of people use windows!
Mac OS X and Yellow Dog Linux on my desktop machine, Debian (Libranet) on my (wireless) Sony laptop..why in the world would anyone use window$?.. Fond of viruses, worms and Spam? (oh my)
Up until 1993 I was an Atari user. I bought an Atari 800 in 1979. In 1981 the IBM PC was introduced. My family all piled into the car and we went to a computer store to look at it with the intention of possibly buying it. IBM had a good reputation and we thought they might have a better computer. After checking the technical specs and using the machine, we decided that the Atari 800 we already had was a superior computer. The Atari had good color graphics, basically the same storage options, and about the same amount of memory, and more software available.
I continued to use my Atari system all through the 80s. In 1993, I needed a new computer and had intended to buy an Atari ST. However, my local Atari computer store was no longer selling them and they were basically not competitive computers any more. So, I looked at my options and bought Macintosh PowerBook 160. At the time PowerBooks were the best selling laptops in the world and Apple was the #1 computer company on the planet. Buying a Mac was not a bad choice although it wasn't exactly a "no brainer".
In the past 11 years, I've never had a reason to change platforms. There was never a time when Windows was enough better than the Mac to justiy the hassel of chainging platforms. The switch to OS X was not a big deal - I transitioned while 10.2 was current.
Today I have several PowerBook G4 and iBook systems running MacOS X. I have used Windows, but it seems klunky to me and I see no compelling reason to switch.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Two more words: Dropline Gnome
;-)
'nuff said.
By all means, keep playing your games. That should not keep you from enjoying free software. Dual boot, or just get an older machine for all of the things that free software does better than Winblows, browsing, email, remote administration, programming, web development, DRM free music, and on and on.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
To give some background, I'm a software developer and (these days) an sys admin as well. I originally started on Windows, and gradually switched to Linux sometime in the RH 5.x days. Now I use Gentoo and manage servers running FC.
Here are some reasons I don't use Windows anymore:
I made the move a while ago, and I now have my linux desktop doing everything I want, including syncing my iPod and palm. It crashes less often (I have some hardware problem that I've yet to figure out), and I can't copy without select 'n' paste. Of course there is always that its free and legal (unless you believe sco) and I can use it with a clear conscience. The support that opensource communities offer is unparalleled through forums and mailing lists.
Also a major factor is innovation. Windows seems to do very little, whereas linux is constantly evolving adding new features etc.
I also like the die-hard attitude. It's not a case of it doesn't work, oh well nevermind. It's it doesn't work, I know, I'll rewrite/port/hack it until it works.
Plus you are given decent control of your system and don't have to put up with menus etc. if you don't want.
Thomas
No longer the Trash Can.... OSX changes it to an eject icon. :)
I don't mean to sound like an Apple switch ad, but I got jealous of seeing people on Macs never have the problems I did on my PC laptop. They were never the computer-savvy types either. They never had to bother with any technical issues, while I found myself constantly fixing my computer instead of using it. One of the Apple switch ads had somebody saying they got tired of "the operating system always getting in the way", and I was sold. I'm desensetised and numb to advertising like everyone else, but that line really snagged me.
My old laptop would constantly hang whenever I tried to shut it down or put it to sleep. I would have to unplug the AC power adapter and pull out the battery because the power switch wouldn't work. Now that I switched to a PowerBook, I just love being able to wake up my computer and be on the net, using a broadband connection, literally in a second or two. I can turn it on, get on the net for a brief moment, then turn it off.
With my old laptop, I would turn it on, go to the kitchen and start to prepare a meal, come back and hit return, go back to the kitchen to make sure I'm not burning whatever I'm cooking, then come back to browse the net. I remember timing it once and it was something like 15 minutes. That was average. Turning it off would be a similar experience. I couldn't just get off the net and leave the flat. It was like waiting for someone to get dressed to go out. I would shut down the laptop and wait a while until it would hang, because I wouldn't want to interrupt the power in the middle of a disk read/write process in fear of damaging the hard drive. And then I would unplug the AC and battery.
I also got tired of worrying about security vulnerabilities in software I used to hook up to the net. I was really glad to be able to stop using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. I knew there were other browsers, but I didn't have enough hard drive space to use more than one, because of the bloat-ware factor involved with upgrading to Windows 98 on a Windows 95 laptop. I couldn't get rid of IE because I was using Visual Studio, which required it. The security holes in OE were ridiculous, with email viruses able to infect your computer without you even having to open up an attachment. But I do miss being able to place hyperlinks in an email.
However, I can't say that I'm totally satisfied with OS X. It has great features, but doesn't have the technical feel of previous Mac OS versions at the filesystem level. I keep encountering strange bugs- garbage for permissions names when doing a get info, gigabytes of missing hard drive space on my external drive after using applications, and now the help viewer application won't launch in the Finder. I would know what files to replace on a previous OS version to fix these sorts of problems, but now it is more complicated with OS X. The OS arrangement on the hard drive resembles a Windows system more now, with the graphical front-end feeling more like a superficial facade, rather than a view of the computer's internal workings. It feels like a blind-fold. Application install processes place tons of files all over the place, making them difficult to remove. I remember the old days when, if you installed software that caused conflicts, you could just manually drag out a file in the extensions folder and re-boot. You could remove software and feel secure in knowing that you would end up with the same amount of free space that you had before you installed it. Now you just don't know.
And I preferred it when the file type was separate from the file name.
1) MacOS X
/etc/fstab) that either my Mac or my netBSD box has crashed. Stability, usability, security, that is what keeps me off windows
2) netBSD
3) PS2
Seriously. I have been working in the IT industry for 15 or so years now. Presently I am (uggh) typing this on a Windows box running XP..It plain SUCKS, even with my anti-virus, our firewall (that I do not admin), etc. etc. etc. I *still* get plenty of Spyware every week on thismachine. It runs like crap, it's slow, and crashes consistantly.
On the other hand, I cannot think of a time in recent history (well, except that time I was playing with the
I have used too many operating systems to feel content with Windows. It is inelegant, toylike and aimed at. apparently an 11 year old boy in interface design (not that there's anything wrong with being an 11 year old boy!). In short, I find it condescending. Mac OS X is very elegant, and doesn't feel limiting, even when it is. Linux, and for that matter SGI Irix are still rough around the edges, but so much more flexible than Windows. I will admit I haven't had more than a dabble at XP, but I have spent considerable time on 3.11, 95, NT and 2K - they just don't work for me.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
That's the real reason. Every time I use windows, I feel a burst artery drawing nearer. How do I hate thee. Let me count the ways...
Linux might be free, but Windows came installed on my aging PC. Why remove it immediately and install Linux? Windows does not cater to me. I write cross platform apps for a living and I have always loved the convenience of the command line and the Unix philosophy of clean interfaces and small programs. I don't use Visual C++, so the tools for those programmers do not allure me. If Microsoft had catered to Unix programmers a bit more in the early days, Linux would never be where it is today-the de facto operating system (all other open source OSes and OS X included) for people who thrive on the command line.
Step 1: Click on the 'Safely remove hardware' icon in the taskbar notification area,
Step 2: choose the hardware to unplug from the pop-up menu.
Step 3: Unplug the hardware.
I recently tried to install Mandrake 8.1 I had picked up a while back and finally got around to installing it on a spare hard drive. All seemed to go well until I tried to boot it up. I recieved an unfamilar warning and the screen started to flash. After a lot of digging on various websites I found the problem was an unsupported video card, I later found my current monitor wasn't supported either. That's when the fun began. I tried the Mandrake site. It claimed the video card was supported on 8.1. I looked for updates and found none. I tried tech support and got no response. I tried various Linux user websites and go no response there. I can't even get it to boot up in safe mode. There appears to be no forward compatiblity with video cards. Even an old copy of Win 95 will boot up with a modern video card even if there are no drivers. It just defaults to a standard VGA driver. I was really unimpressed with my first Linux outing. I got zero support from anyone and I couldn't even get to a desktop. First time I ever had that happen and I've been installing operating sysytems since DOS 5.0. I even got ME up and running, if you can call it that. I always considered ME the worst operating system ever. At least I could get it running. Mandrake/Linux looks like a lot of fun but it's useless if I can't even get it to run. I realize 8.1 is an older version of Mandrake but the machine I was trying to install it on dates from the same time the software was released and the video card is older yet. Still feels not ready for primetime. More and more software supports Linux but it's hard to get a straight answer about what hardware is supported and tech support is dodgy at best. I want to switch but I can't aford to keep trying different versions of Linux and different hardware combinations to find one that works. Buying a preloaded system is a bit annoying. I've been building my own machines for a lot of years and I'm loathed to buy off the shelf. Mandrake sadly just became my most recent piece of shelfware.
As if we don't get enough of this on a daily basis already.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
I use linux for everything else. Despite linux's shortcomings in the UI department, I find that I have trouble living without a tabbed (gnome) terminal and true virtual desktops.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Granted, thats the short list. Ultimately though, for me, I have realized that Windows simply restricts what I can do.
Using basic tools found on *nix, I have been able to create lots of very useful utilities that interact with me via email. Its great as I routinely check email so it makes sense to have as much information delivered via email as possible. Virtually everything can be redirected to email which is very nice -- how bout Windows? Seems like I have to check a handful of different application GUIs to collect the information.
Bottom line -- the flexibility is the key point. Granted, I'm sure if I spent a few hundred more on development tools, I could probably do many of the same things on Windows, but why?
Am I too late to join the conversation? I'll join anyway :)
I recently tried to install linux using a 2.6 kernel (I need it for some hardware). I tried install mandrake 10.0 and debian testing.
Mandrake 10.0:
Main problem was that programs (particularily kile and kdevelop) kept crashing all the time. Also when I ran xine it would tend to go black and white for no obvious reason. Off to debian.
Debian:
I quite like debian testing, and compiling a 2.6 kernel wasn't too painful. The main problems I am having are:
1) User accounts get annoying. Yes I know I shouldn't run as linux, but I had to spend ages figuring out how to get dvds, sound and my windows drives so a normal user can use them
2) Too many systems. I could choose DRI or FBdev in the kernel, then had to give a seperate driver to XFree86. How are these connected? I can choose OSS or ALSA for audio, and then choose between esd, arts and various other things.. what do these mean? I could only get sound working by going into KDE's control panel and disabling sound (?)
3) FONTS. The single most important thing. The fonts are horrible. There seem to be 3 different font servers I can install. I just want to know what to install to get nice readable fonts.
If mandrake was more stable I'd probably have stuck with it. The main thing keeping me on windows is that I don't have to make choices I don't understand, and don't seem to be able to find a guide to on the internet.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Alright, fine. Here's how I was told by Windows Pocket Pc 2002 in order to fix a network naming problem:
"Start -> Settings -> System Tab -> About -> Device ID Tab -> Change the device name."
On A PDA, that's the entire screen filled.
And you know what's even funnier? The PDA crashed while going over the steps to get to the device id tab. That's why. It's not my PDA.
For me it is a plethora of things that keeps me away from Windows at home. (I am forced to use it at work.)
First of all I work as a programmer and so I'm fairly in tune with IT issues. The amount of effort spent to protect our users from viruses, worms, trojans, etc is enormous. The staff can barely keep up. It feels like we're playing ping-pong. No matter how many times we hit the ball back over the net we know that it's always going to get returned and it's only a matter of time before we miss.
The expense of the never-ending licensing fees is another. Server licenses, client licenses, Software "Assurance" fees for software that we aren't ready to upgrade but have to pay a big fee now or pay an even bigger fee later.
But mostly what keeps me away from Microsoft at home is their total disregard for the anti-trust laws. They put people in the above position and then keep them there by stifling their competition though endless sleazy tactics. They don't follow standards in an effort to prevent others from writing software that can interoperate. They make backroom deals with companies in order to fund bogus litigation while trying to hide the fact that they are the ones behind it. They lie about their competition. They pay politicians to write and/or support legislation that would kill their competition. The decision to break the law is just another financial calculation for Microsoft. If there is a big enough payoff they're willing to break the law. We don't need corporations that feel that they are powerful enough to disregard the law and play by their own rules. I think it would be much better for innovation if we were dealing with three smaller companies that had to abide by the rule of law like the rest of us.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I use Linux for: browsing, email, office, 2D graphics, sound processing, making music, DVD authoring, video editing, etc. It works very well for all those tasks and it's free.
With that said, Linux drives about 75% of my computer work these days and that percentage is gradually increasing as I get more and more of my hardware and data to work in Linux.
I intend to complete that migration fully to Linux as soon as I can without "cutting my nose off to spite my face" - I firmly believe in using the software that does the job you want it to do no matter who makes it.
As things stand today, I prefer Linux to Windows, having had a fair degree of UNIX experience over the past 15 or so years anyway. I can now shell-script, do a little PERL & C hacking and enjoy showing these skills off at work where I'm fortunate to support a number of Linux-based IP telephony plaforms.
However, from a personal perspective, I point blank refuse to hand over my hard-earned money or time over to corporations who I consider show little morality in their business practices. I don't eat in McDonalds or fast food restaurants because of what these corporations are doing to the farming industry, I don't watch MTV because of their push behind plasticised modern music, I don't buy copy-protected CDs because of the infringement of my rights to fair use & I won't support Microsoft's bullying business practices and the fact that they are trying harder than ever to pushed closed file standards & DRM.
It may take me another six months or so to get there but every Microsoft product will be uninstalled from all of my PCs unless MS start behaving like they care about their users & focus less on just screwing them for as much money as possible.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
i like knowing what's going on within my machine.
i like knowing i've manipulated swathes of data with a few keystrokes.
i like being able to discover the reasons why it acts as it does.
there are others reasons, but they've mostly been covered ^up there^ in other posts.
it's the taking apart that counts
1. Money. Windows is expensive. It's an operating system, for crying out loud. Why should I have to pay for an operating system?
2. Security. I don't mean security from "hackers". I mean I want to be sure that my OS isn't reporting information back to HQ.
3. DRM. Don't want it.
4. Power. Linux comes with an amazing array of development tools. I know this probably doesn't matter to Joe User, but when I got into computers, "user" and "programmer" were synonymous. I'm still a programmer. And I still don't want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for compilers.
5. Stability. Frankly, Windows' bugginess doesn't bother me too much on a desktop. You get used to it. But I wouldn't want to run a server on it.
6. Efficiency. I don't like to buy new machines any more often than I have to. To quote Bill Gates, "What do I look like? The queen?" If I have to upgrade my hardware, it better be because of an actual application, not my freaking OS.
7. Accountability. Closed-source companies are accountable to no one. If they close up shop, I'm screwed if I need their app. With open source, that can't happen to me.
All Windows has that I can't live without comes from Adobe. When Adobe sees the light or WINE supports Photoshop, MS can kiss my skinny white butt.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
How _do_ you moderate a posting as "Flamebait"?
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
The most easy way is buying a OEM copy which costs something about $100 US dollars in my country, but i will not have any kind of assistance, so i will be buying more and more problems, it doesn't make any sense.
Of course i can use a pirated copy, Microsoft like to see normal users in poor countries using pirated copies of windows, but i don't feel good doing this.
This is my main reasons, but of course there is also many others.
and my brand spankin' new Powerbook. God bless Steve Jobs and his maniacal intensity ;)
i am joe sixpack and i tend to like free beer. i am also an american, so i like free as in speech as well. win-win.
i gave win95, win98 and winme a chance. my experience was less than joyful. i'd rather deal with debian/sid (my current OS on my desktop) than winxp. i've used debian since slink.
i've gone from dial up to dsl and from one desktop box only; to my current AMD thunderbird 1 gig as my desktop (debian/sid witha rolled my own 2.6.6 kernel), my dinosaur P75 as my NAT/firewall/gateway deally (debian/woody witha 2.4.17 kernel)with an ocasional inclusion of my xbox (using the mechassault exploit)running xebian 1.0 on my teeny network. i can edit movies from my sony cam corder, burn cds, websurf, pretty much anything i can do with my hardware running mr.gate's blue screenOSs i can do with my penguins. cept fer my ancient mustek 1200IIIEP scanner, i still need windoze for that, but that's cuz i'm sorta cheap. my ancient HP855C printer works with linux, but to align the print heads after a cartidge change i need to run some windows crap.
oh yeah, no virus or worm worries or the cost of software to attend to the problem. i can spend more money on beer :-)
Serenity now, insanity later.
- I have no fast xterm-bash-CLI, wich is sometimes verry nice.
- I can't script stuff
- rox is faster than explorer
- xmms is less bloated than winamp
- i know whats going on
- everything happens as i want it to happen, no windows poping up, no waiting.. everything happens as i command it to happen... windows is nice as friend but unusable als slave.
My laptop is a Windows machine, and my desktop is a Linux box. So I think I see both sides, and no religion drives my decisions, I think - just the facts as I see them.
WINDOWS:
I need the Windows box - no way around it - because I need applications like Adobe Photoshop (not an option to do without); Pagemaker; and Outlook to synch my Sony/Ericsson P900 phone (it has no PIM). Not Office: I use OOo only. Anyway, no way around the other apps. Also I quite like the integrated desktop: a font added works in all apps rather than in just some. The control panel is great. Media work (no "no quicktime" errors etc). The HP printer (Grr) needs a Win box. Etc.
Dislikes: I just had to reinstall Win on the laptop to bring running processes down from 38 to 19. Typical Win issues. Registry hell.
LINUX:
The desktop is great - a Redhat 9 box. No re-installs. Fast. Multiple desktops. I can (and do!) shell into it from work (using putty). Proper multitasking. Opensource so it is free (as in speech). All the usual Linux advantages. Very few virus attacks. Can you say "ROCK SOLID STABLE".
Dislikes: I never know how to set screen res (unless I go into Xfree86.conf manually). Fonts are haphazard and never work in all apps. Cut/paste is always a gamble. Installing a new app can take an entire evening and often does (can you say 'dependency hell'). The typical Linux desktop issues.
So there - each have their place.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Yeah, WINE is impressive technologically speaking, but the reality of the situation is quite different ;). I wouldn't want to run Far Cry on it, lol.
I've always thought that if Linux created a competitor to DirectX (sort of a super SDL) it would easy things, especially if it worked on Windows (thereby gaining instant acceptance and at the same time making porting Win games to Linux MUCH easier just like the PC to XBox conversions.)
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In order:
1. Spyware/Viruses/Worms
2. Bloat
3. Stability issues
4. Microsoft Business Practices
5. Lack of customization ability
Yes, really. Scientific applications to be precise.
I admin, support and teach scientific applications on supercomputers, clusters and workstations. All the heavy duty stuff originates in Unix. Some of it has been ported to Windows, granted, but 95+% of what matters to my users and to me is still Unix only.
My current desktop is a Linux box. My last one was an SGI, my next one will be a Mac. Windows need not apply.
- Christoph
'95 through '00: OS/2 --
1. Load balancing preemptive multitasking
2. virus protection
3. Richer interface than Windows
4. Ability to create an individual config for each program
5. Good IBM site for fixpacks and support
'01 - present: Linux --
#1 and #2 above
3. Freedom
4. Even better security
5. (lack of) cost
And, frankly, with some of the current trojans, I'd be afraid to do anything useful on the web with Windows.
I was tricked by that for a while, too. You want to left-click on the icon, rather than right-clicking. Right-clicking brings up a rather arbitrary menu, you see, whereas left clicking brings up a list of connected devices to remove; one further click and you're done.
I find it so much easier to program in perl, SQL and use Apache under Unix.
Everything I need is under my finger tips, there is a lot of documentation to help me overcome diffult tasks and I am hamstrung without copy/paste with the middle mouse button. Ever tried to figure out how to copy the contents of a directory into a document under windows?
Oh and Emacs!
bushes and shit that scratched the paint,
pot-hole filled roads that ruined the suspension
and all that crap.
Of course... I'm never going to buy a car that
automatically opens the door for car-jackers
and would only stop at the highest priced gas stations either.
I still use windows in the corporate world on workstations that run AutoCAD. Otherwise I would switch everybody to Linux in a heartbeat. I use Linux on my home computers exclusively.
Why.. because I like to have CLI remote control, the feeling that there are not 100 viruses and spyware programs running that haven't been discovered yet. In addition to the "tweak-ability" of linux, which for many users means nothing, means a lot to the admin that is in charge of them. My SuSE 9.1 desktop has been a landmark release in my oppinion, it is so much better then ANY of the others, everything finally works without much work. (I did have to install libcss and the newest mplayer, which plays just about everything out there).
When I started in computers I used DOS 5. It felt like there was so much that was there I didn't know about and I also felt like I had control over everything it did. Windows today doesn't give me that feeling anymore. It feels like there is someone watching all the time no matter what I do. If I want to automagically install a codec, I feel like someone is keeping track. Linux gives me the feeling I used to have with DOS all those years ago.... The feeling of Freedom.
"Keep on Tuxin"
...when the Apple engineers tell you: "Unplug the device from your Macintosh."
I used to have a Mac at work (and I liked it!) But this statement simply isn't true. Take a usb pen drive plug it in - shows up on your mac desktop right? Simply unplug it gives you a warning about possible data loss. No the correct method to unplugging your usb pen drive, firewire drive, ipod etc is ironically to eject it or drag it the trash - just like in OS9 - or oddly enough linux and windows.
BTW - windows has similar technology - just left click the safely remove hardware icon in your sys-tray, pick the device, pull the device out - and thats only for read-write media. For any other usb/firewire device you only need to unplug it - I do this to my sony digital 8 camera all the time.
Good lord, is this an example of what our public schools are disgorging out these days? The goal of business is to make money. They are not "greedy swine" because of it either. If the company I work for didn't make money, I'd be out of a job, as would thousands of others.
I'd say it's less a threat to your eyeballs than to IT in general and the global economy. And what the fuck is "discutable"? You write like a fucking 10 year old, Quebec.
The system tray?
That's the part of the taskbar with all the 16x16 pixel illegible icons, correct?
I actually do use windows and build my own boxes...have for years. I will name a few of my dislikes about windows.
1. Stability. Contrary to what a lot of Windows fanatics preach WindowsXP is far from a stable OS.
2. Quality. Since I build my own units I put in the best I can since I have seen so many cheap systems over the years. However the OS itself is not up to snuff. I recently tried to install Easy CD Creator 7 on my XP pro box and had problems with the install. Even after cleaning up the problems and fixing the registery the program hangs before it even starts to install. Another problem with the platform is that the company you by from might not be around tomorrow. So it is best to stick to big names. Usually those big names offer the same things on both Mac and PC. I spend way too much time keeping my XP box running. Computer are supposed to work for me not the other way around.
3. Security. Hands down OS X is better than Windows.
4. Business practices. Microsoft is no sweetheart here. If they have the better product as they claim then why do they have to resort to lies, strong-arm tactics and questionable business practices?
5. Behind the tech curve. Again MS always seems to be behind the curve when it comes to inventive, easy to use applications. Their "copies" of iMovie, iPhoto and the like are a joke. No one can touch apple in these areas. I have put off buying an MP3 player until this month. I checked out many of the ones available and even considered MP3 based CD players. I wound up with an iPod. You can say they are over priced and you would be right but they are worth every extra penny you pay for them. The iTunes, iTunes Music Store and the Pod cannot be beat.
6. Ease of use. Actually with MS wizards you think that MS would be easier to get running and keep running. Not! Their are times when the wizards are not the way to do things and take longer and cause more problems than doing it the "hard" way.
7. Elderly OS. Say what you will XP is just a prettier DOS. It relies way to much on the old DOS conventions like DLLs. Until MS moves on and develops are truly modern OS without the 20 year old DOS parts then they are just contributing to a larger and larger mess of an OS.
That said I still use my PC but not as much as I used to. I may even dump windows and move it over to linux. The only thing stopping me is that I will soon be taking an MSCE course and may need it for a study aid.
i use OSX because it just feels so much better than Windows. i turn on my mac make and it's like ahhhh, that smells clean. when i turn a windows pc i feel like i want to go take a shower.
thats what keeps me off of Windows. I tried windows once in High School but I didn't download, I swear!
I don't like the GUI.
I grew up w/ DOS and learned C, AWK, Gnuplot, vi and emacs on DOS. I used MacOS 7 and Windows 3.1 I played with Minix but kept hitting its limits. I tried OS/2 and did the same thing. Finally I installed Linux after 386BSD failed to install.
Linux did everything I wanted w/o the memory limits. I could run GNU emacs instead of microemacs. I had a nice programmable shell.
And I could make the GUI do what I wanted when I needed a GUI. Some things are better in a GUI but it's hard to script.
I've used Win 98, NT 4, XP and MacOS X. I don't like the GUI. If you need to track dozens of systems (I'll have ~ 80 windows open), the single user model doesn't work.
I can change the GUI to suit my needs and use an integrated workspace manager. None of the others does that.
Oh yeah, having networkable graphics is nice too. I can run a CPU intensive thing on the fast server & display the GUI back to my desktop.
... that an operating system called "Windows" would lack something called "Transparency"?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Eh.....Well, I can't name the drives cool names like 'Wing Wang Doodle' and they have floppy drives on them and I ALWAYS hated floppies, and I hate the the My Pictures folder is called that on everyone else's computer too, and I hate that everything looks like it was designed by an engineer and I hate that stupid Explorer crap. Oh, I hate the way the mouse is geared, and I hate that stupid big arrow cursor thingy and I hate the tabbed control panels. I hate the way when I click on what should be the close window box it quits the application. I hate the spam and the appalling stability issues. I do like the speed of scrolling though.
Confusing and distorting stardands so that only M$ products work. I refuse to purchase applications that will only work with IE. I will tell any ISV who does this that they are automatically cut from the selection process because they aren't following open standards. There are web standards - follow them. Don't like them - change them officially so we can all use them.
All the security holes that M$ has known for over a year and have yet to fix
All the spyware that I get due to ActiveX
All the viruses
The licensing extortion.
The phone-home spyware installed by M$
Requirement to be an administrator to do anything useful. On a Linux box, I rarely run as root. Keeps my machine totally stable. With Windows, I need to reinstall every 2-3 months because something has corrupted my machine. I have better things to do than constantly having to reinstall the OS.
Making money. M$ has pretty much taken the oxygen out of the Windows market. They leave no money on the table for their ISVs. If an ISV does have a big hit on their hands, they buy them or they release their own crappy version that competes with the ISV. Within a short period of time, that ISV is dead. Being a M$ partner is deadly to your health.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I'm tired of fixing the daily M$ crap for people. *sigh*
:)
:)
In the 20 years I've been using computers, I have
wasted more time and effort RE-doing things on
microsoft products than any other task.
I quit. I've had it. The world can go fuck themselves.
I will give MYSELF free tech support for life.
I'm sooo much happier NOT dealing with M$ problems.
Poorer, yes, but infinitely happier
Yaaaay meeeee!
I use M$ for EVE-online. That's it.
Everything else I have Linux for.
I've replaced everything I used to use Windows for with Free alternatives.
I switched from VB6/C# to Java. I switched from VS.Net to eclipse (way better for it). I switched from Photoshop to Gimp, Illustrator to Inkscape. My desktop is Gnome, so my ease of use isn't hampered.
There's no reason to use Windows.
Well, lets see. Just this weekend, a friend decided that, since I'm their only computer literate friend, that I would be doing the tech stuff for their nonprofit artists co-op. ;) Well, in Windows, I could have paid tons of money for an NT license and paid for all of the different services I needed, and if I encountered a problem (if??), I'd have to call MS tech support.
;) Every so often I have to use Windows, and almost always I run into the "I-Need-Some-Capability-But-I-Would-Have-To-Pay-Ex tra-For-It" scenario, and not only does it frustrate me, but it blows my mind.
Instead, I tweaked my sendmail config, setup pop3, created them user accounts, made a simple cgi script to enable them to create more at will, installed and setup majordomo, created them a new directory for apache to serve, and didn't spend a dime. All they had to schill out was 10 bucks for the DNS. And the same weekend I setup a streaming radio station so I can listen to my home music at work, using icecast and mserv (ah, mserv... if only they'd iron out the bugs and make it easier to use...)
That is what keeps me off Windows. I'm bloody cheap.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I have no problem at all running Windows. In fact, I run it regularly...
...from within VMWare with Linux as the host operating system.
:)
Otherwise my manager starts bitching that "you're not actually testing your apps in windows, are you!!!". prick.
Let the Jihad begin!
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
for me it was easy.When I first started using a computer (on the net I mean, netsacpe 2 and netcom as the ISP, fooled with them before that,286's, DOS, didn't like it whatsoever )daily it was on my roomates 486 machine using windows 3.11. It was always fubarred, like every other day. I used it, but man it was painful. Went by a yard sale, saw a mac for sale. Had the lady run out an extension cord, booted it up. A few minutes later it was sold, and so was I, no IRQ conflicts,no jumpers, no driver hell, no tweaking, you could do what you wanted to do without getting headaches. Then many happy years of never getting a virus, never getting pwn3d, nuthin, just nice computin, everything just worked and it was very easy to use, never even owned a firewall. Eventually got some pentiums, started fooling around with linux after Jobs priced me out of macs and I got stuck not being able to upgrade to anything that would run OSX. It's luverly, linux is luverly. It's more difficult for a noob, but really, now, 98% of everything is easy to use GUI, at least for my purposes. I have a few windows machines here,the ones that are left over from that big batch of used junkers I bought, but barely ever use them, and mostly I fix them and give them away as a benevolent hobby, and that's it, after the last one is gone, no more windows at all. There is NO WAY I would ever put up with the virus du jour or BSOD or add your spies to my warez or anything like that, just "wouldn't be prudent". No need, no desire, I can spot a Yugo plenty good enough, no thankee. And the cost? Excuse me? They want HOW MUCH for that stuff? That ain't happening either.
Went to my ISP today to stop in and shoot the breeze and pay my bill. He runs a little whitebox shop as well. He's got a BIG ole sign out front WE WILL FIX YOUR VIRUSES. That's the advertising that drags in the customers. Not "get your copy of XP today!" Not "Windows Office,hot stuff! get it here!" Nope, "fix your viruses". Man, if that ain't reality. It's a gold mine for him.
Wow, I haven't even bothered to read any of the other comments, and I'm sure I'm going to add nothing new here, but the reasons keep growing by the day.
//c, an incredibly open archetecture, and I just got used to being able to twiddle with things any way I wanted. I still remember a few of the hex codes for assembly lang. instructions (Ex: 0x20 = JSR, 0x60 = RTS,...)
I started my computing career on an Apple
My Apple broke and for a few years, I didn't have a home computer (gasp!) Of course, at the time I was working as a programmer, so I got plenty of computer time. I quit my job and went back to grad school and decided I wanted a computer. By this point I had heard about the *BSDs and this thing called Linux, and since I decided I loved Unix so much, I thought that I would give Linux a spin.
Of course, I had a dual boot machine at this point. I liked playing with Photoshop (this was in the days before GIMP) and a few other Windows apps, but I couldn't help the feeling of being... restrained. W95 was fun to play with at first, but I was frustrated by the fact that there was only so much you could tinker with. I was a math grad student, and so the fact that TeX was installed by default helped me to stay in the Linux environment most of the time. I played a few games in Windows, but for the most part, Linux was my choice. Viri were around at that point, but they were a relatively minor nuisance, compared to today. And spam? Hadn't really been invented yet. Ahhh, to be able to go back to those days....
Well, to cut a long, rambling post shor.... well, never mind, way too late for that. (Note: Quantity of single malt scotch is directly proportional to length of posts/e-mails.) At this point, it works like this: Every time I turn around, I find another reason not to use Windows. At the end of the day, as much as I love Linux, I'm still not one to slobber over it and denounce Windows; it just seems so childish to do so. On the other hand, I love Unix/Linux so much, and administering said systems, that I've decided to make a career switch to system administration, despite all the outsourcing/bad economy/whatever.
Linux is great technology, and it isn't just the technical part that is great. It's the people. The people I know who are into Linux and Unix are , by and large, enthusiastic about what they do, and that just makes it so much more fun for me. There are of course Windows admins/users like this, but I've met so many pissed off/frustrated ones that it just brings me down.
Oh well, that's my 2 cents (ok, more like four bucks) worth.
seriously - spyware, adware, everybody trying to stick their greedy dirty little hands (sometimes not so little and very sweaty) in how I decide to run my business. drm this shmrm that, license this, upgrade this, patch that and at the end nothing runs like it is supposed to. That's what is keeping me off of windows. sucky, bloated, insecure, unpredictable and costly software. If it were a car I wouldn't drive it, if it were a dog it would be a bitch, if it were software it would be windows.
I'm not as big of a techie as many of the folks on slashdot, but I am very much on everyone's side for why I don't use Windows. I consider myself a writer, so my computers are primarly used in writing essays, editorials, and manuscripts.
Now, when anyone uses a computer, they're using it because a computer is supposed to make things easier and faster than conventional methods. For instance, typing is much quicker than writing by hand.
However, Windows defeats this function by crashing and corrupting my files. It's great that Word has an auto-save feature, but anytime it crashed I was guaranteed to lose at least some of my writing. This defeats the purpose of computing entirely - at least for me. When writing in my old paper-based notebook, I never have to worry about my pages or pen spontaneously combusting. Similarly, I shouldn't have to worry about my computer crashing.
For me, using Windows and suffering from its consistent lack of reliability was the absolute most sound and solid advertisement for other operating systems. Apple may produce cool hardware, and Linux may be backed by a passionate geek community, but neither of those sides ever made an argument as convincing as using Windows itself.
I now work on a 15 inch powerbook with Mac OS X 10.3.4, and my desktop has fedora and gentoo on it. I've only reinstalled Mac OS X once, and that wasn't even because something was wrong. I suppose it was really more because I was nostalgic for the days of formatting my Windows machine weekly. I type all my manuscripts in OpenOffice (when in Linux) or ThinkFree Office (when using my Mac).
I don't miss windows at all. I am, however, having difficulty adjusting to all the free time I have now that I don't have to do daily system maintenance.
From someone that has worked on and used windows for over a decade.
1) I have never gotten a virus, having taken the most basic steps of securing my machine and not blindly clicking on things that I don't know the origin of.
2) Bloat? Compared to what? Linux (With a GUI) takes up more memory, takes longer to boot, and occupies more disk space than Windows does.
3) Stability? I do not install, every thing that comes down the pike and My machines are actually MORE stable than my Linux machines (with GUI) which have a tendancy to go off in La La land at the slightest provication (by using the GUI too much).
4) Microsoft has fostered a hell of a lot more succesfull 3rd party buisness than they have damaged. Probably on the order of 50:1. I and virtually everyone I know that is an engineer have made a good living off of Microsft, thank you.
5) Complete FUD. Windows is very customizable with a ton of third party customizing tools.
You may work on Windows "all the time" but you clearly do not know much about it.
I am by no means a M$ fan boy. My desk always have two boxes, one windows and one unixy (freeBSD, or some form of Linux) box. In the end it's one for work and one for play. My windows box is for playing games, encoding/burning DVDs, and word processing, everything else is done on my other non windows boxes.
The past is just the present only older -me-
What about 'Hunt the Wumpus'?
It's pretty simple really, in fact the procedure is exactly the same for installing Linux and not getting rooted in the first 5 minutes you are on the net.
After installing Windows, enable the firewall, OR connect computer to net behind a linksys or other stand alone firewall.
How hard was that?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I don't like Windows connecting to Microsoft.com and the lack of options to disable such communications.
It is all my past suffering with windows, which keeps me off now. I could write a forty pages about Windows horrors here, but it does not make sense. All has been written in previous 1000+ replies already. The simple fact these troubles are so common indicates a poor quality of the Microsoft software is a reality, not mythos.
In short, Windows is a consumer grade OS. It is a gaming platform and not industrial level one. Switching to Linux actually boosted my programming productivity a lot.
There you are, staring at me again.
Those are the big two for me. I got fed up with Win98 puking all of the time. Some say that WinXP is more stable and generally more swell, etc., but I heard that before. I wasn't about to fork over the cash (plus the cash to update all my utilities, etc.) to find out. My kids' box dual boots between Win98 (for their games and Quicken) and Slackware 9.1. My main box is only a highly modified version of Slackware 9.0.
That's funny, when I eject a device, a little icon appears on my system tray. Double click it, pick the one you want to turn off, and a message tells you it's ready to go. How would anybody know that? If you unplug something without doing this, you get a nice little message explaining it to you, and it shows you what to do. I doubt it's as nice as what Apple has, but it's nowhere near as dramatic as you're making it out top be. What is funny is that I thought you WERE talking about OSX when you wrote that. What you described is exactly how OSX handles USB Floppy drives.
That sounds like the "Mount paradigm": To increase speed you can do wirte operations asynchronous. So you have to "umount" things with the lettle icon. I guess it'd be much easier to "mount" things as sync. That way you wouldn't have to use that icon, would you?
...in the tooth fairy too?
I began writing java web applications on Windows 98 about 5 years ago and found that I had to reboot every few hours. A friend (who incidently works for Microsoft) turned me on to Linux and although the desktop was relatively clunky (KDE on RedHat 6.something), I found I could do everything I needed AND IT NEVER CRASHED. Consequently I was way more productive, especially with access to all UNIX command line rather than that horrible DOS command line thing (which I noticed still has not improved even in XP!).
So I became a fan of Linux very quickly, not because of the openness or cheapness (though that's a nice bonus), but because of the stability and power of UNIX.
About 18 months ago I was working on a website for the U.K. Government and they had a requirement to test the site on a Mac since a number of their academic customers use macs, but the I.T. dept were too cheap/narrow-minded to spend any money on something that didn't run Windows. I had an old laptop that I had got a while back for a project and dusted it off, installed OS X and we used that for testing.
After tinkering to get the thing connected to the network and complete the testing I was really taken with the overall QUALITY of OS X - it had all the things I loved about Linux, plus way more usability than anything I had ever seen - it is genuinely intuitive, so long as you approached it with a view to what makes sense rather than what Windows or Linux does!
Date: 1979 Augest,
After setting up my Vic20 for the first time.
Me: Thats great now where are the games?
Mom: You want games make them.
I did.
Nothing quite good enough for the market so I did buy the occasional game and still do but 90% of the software I use I write.
That was the Vic20. After that my mother got a C64 and eventually got this goofy toy called "Designers pencle" where you write code to make demo like programs. It was fun. Came with a programming contest and I won the grand prise (in my age group and code size)
I got a Commodore 128 with the money. (Stupid, Baka)
That got me into CP/M. Not so easy to code but the software dev tools were cheap.
Then I went from CP/M to Dos. My coding stopped cold. I couldn't get my hands on useful dev software and books were expensive. But ok so I sucked it up and got the software and books. The cheap books. And wrote code for a while.
Then Dos died.
So now I'm going to.. Buy Windows, Buy brand new software dev tools and MORE books. Spending more money to develup software than I'd spend if I were to just buy it off the shelf.
Or use Unix with GNU tools.
So I got a used AT&T 3B2/300 and never looked back.
I don't actually exist.
I've been working in computers and IT for the past 12 years and I have never had to work on a Windows machine. I've been using a Mac since 1985 and have been able to eek a living based on that alone.
The few times that I have had to use the Windows OS I get so indignant and pissed off that I embarrass those around me, so I try to avoid it. This utter disdain of Windows that I used to evangelize and now just imbue has kept me from honestly evaluating it and, for the most part, I honestly just feel badly for people that have it forced on them, which seems to be the majority of PC users.
However, this same reliance/insistence on the Mac OS has limited my exposure to Linux and BeOs, but thankfully, OS X has helped me appreciate the wily ways of the terminal...
0
---mike
It is a common mistake to think that because you have more options that the product is better. Sure M$ gives us 10 different ways to do things on the system with 10 different languages. They create a multitude of non-standard gui driven tools and wizards that purposefully move the user away from understanding the underlying tasks and force them into memorizing GUI's. I prefer companies that specialize in building a solid core product like lets say Honda as opposed to GM. GM gives us dozens of colors with several different but same cars. GM also drops tons of features and when compared to a Honda, initially they are cheaper. But when you compare over the long run, Hondas are much cheaper. I see Mac OSX (Honda) vs Windows (GM) the same way.
Their success at this can be measured by the number of MCSE's out there of which probably only about 1% of which could make any production quality code on their own. Protocol names that differ from standards based protocols not for any reason but to confuse people. And syntax in languages that again differ purposefully to distract programmers from the true common methods.
Open standard languages and platforms is the only way to form a solid foundation and M$ has clearly and purposefully thrown smoke and mirrors to make developers think that thier programs are simpler when in actual fact, they are not. Take a VB programmer and put them on a real language like Java and they are totally lost.
I use Mac OSX for my home machines because it supports Open languages and frameworks. It is also imensely more secure than windoze and is extremely simple for me to set up my family to use.
I only use Windoze for work becuase I need a machine that has Netmeeting and my company paid for it. Thats' it. Finito. No more. Chao
JD
This is obviously complete FUD.And the worst kind too. "Common sense" FUD. Where such a huge numbner of people know so little about a product that they make up an entire community of misinformation and self feed on it infinately.
1) Windows has MANY scripting options available as installs and built in. A hell of a lot of the "Linux" command line software and shells is available for Windows as well, believe it or not.
2) Window led the way in AA fonts on the web over Linux for YEARS. Linux has only just barely caught up.
Nice try though.
Mostly what keeps me off of Windows can all be rooted back to the fact that it's not open source. I don't care if they charge for it, although free is always nice. If it's open source then everybody and anybody can help to make it better. Windows sucks and that's all there is to it, but if everybody could contribute, it would actually be a good operating system. And, anything you don't like you can change by yourself if you feel like it.
So really, that's my only gripe with Windows, or any Microsoft product for that matter. I understand that there are a lot of other software companies that are not open source and people don't complain about them, but Microsoft is trying to take away Linux for those of us who prefer it and stop others from trying Linux(or some other OS for that matter) so they can decide for themselves.
When you factor in diapers, care, and feeding its just not worth it.
" guess it'd be much easier to "mount" things as sync. That way you wouldn't have to use that icon, would you?"
Having to use it does suck. Anybody remember when you had to park the hd heads back in the 286 days? OUch.
"Derp de derp."
What keeps me off Windows and on Linux is not just the stability issue, or not having to restart the machine every time a trivial setting is changed, but the development tools as well. If I want to write a gui-based windows program, I have to get microsoft's high-priced development tools. On Linux, I can choose from a whole list of nifty apps, like, kdevelop, glade, qt designer, waht have you. (And yes, I know you can get Qt for windows, but still...)
I'm assuming that you're refering to the dancemonkeyboy video. Yeah, he was wobbling & flabby, but who cares. The scary part is that he could say "I love this company" with a semi-straight face. It's just a company. I fail to see how anyone can love 50,000+people that you have never met, and I doubt the reason of anyone that does.
That being said, there are plenty of reasons to dislike that group and the leaders without getting on them about their "beauty." After all, our hero doesn't look all that great in a Speedo (oh god, my mind's eye!)
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
MS Windows has a way over-inflated price
it's the source of way too many virus's, tojans, and SPAM
it's closed source
too many popus/adware junk
Linux (in my opinion) is more streamlined, secure and user friendly.
Win2000 - if you bought it new, retail, so far it's cost you $50/year. Give up a coupla cases of beer. (Blasphemy, I know). And is quite stable, and isn't going away anytime soon.
XP? Same thing. Not going away anytime soon, and over time, quite cheap.
And no one says you have to upgrade every new release.
Thousands of dollars?
Visual Studio Enterprise, maybe. There are a host of cheap or free versions. VB.Net is $110, student version is $59.
In OS X, when you grab something that is ejectable, then the trash can changed into an eject button.
Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
Well I'm on windows because it's easy and doesn't crash. I never lose data. Plus it's intuitive. The GUI makes sense and I can do what I want easily. I only had to use Unix once because of work and my productivity went down trying to figure it out. Now this is basically exactly the same as the anti-MS posts but conversed. I don't know about other people but I've only had good with Windows. Linux on the other hand hasn't been as useful. I'll be modded as troll for not being anti-MS in a troll story but it's still the truth. I install and uninstall stuff, have limited RAM and HD space, have a slower CPU speed and type, and even use win95. It's still great. If I was riding a bicycle it would be one of those dealies with the front wheel bigger than the back that Homer doesn't like just because it works for me.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
but it is too awesome
"Never ask a man what sort of computer he drives. If it's a Mac, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?"
Tom Clancy
explorer.
outlook.
messenger.
oh yes..and dcom, blaster, sobig, slammer, etc, etc..
SkyOS =)
When my laptop died a couple years ago, I couldn't afford a new computer. I managed to put together a K6-2 500 with 96 MB of RAM, a 1.6 GB hard drive, and 2 635 MB hard drives. I actually had a legal copy of Windows XP sitting dormant on the shelf, since MS used to give them out like cheese samples to CS undergrads, but no machine to put it on. I couldn't even put my perfectly legal non-oem store bought copy of Win98 on there and do anything useful with so little disk space spread across 3 drives.
/usr on one of the small drives, /var on the other, and everything else on the 1.6 GB one. Not much room for mp3s, but I had no sound card, so it wasn't an issue. It turned out that my crappy video card couldn't drive the monitor at 1024x768, so my friend gave me a slightly less crappy one he had laying around for the price of a Big Lebowski DVD (the entire tangible cost of the venture) and that got it up to 1024x768, which was as high as I felt like going with a 15" monitor anyway.
I went over to my friend's place, popped in the debian network install disk, and set up a barebones system, with
This computer, which had about the resources for a minimal installation of Windows 98 first edition, did everything but media (remember, no sound card), and was blazing fast doing almost all of it at the same time. The only exception was OpenOffice, which took a minute to load, but was again blazing fast once loaded. It went from power off to completion of KDE loading in 20 seconds.
I started tinkering with it a bit, setting up a few services for myself and such, learning the shell, and found that I really liked the system design philosophy. After 3 months of use I had more control over my Linux box than I'd had over Windows, which I'd been using since its debut and in various predecessors back to DOS 3.3.
After working the next summer, I could afford a respectable machine, and I gave that copy of Windows XP a shot. It was better by degrees, and it had some concept of a security model, but it was still the same old thing. The internals were hidden away from me. Sometimes they'd break, and a google search would turn up a flamewar arguing over whether or not deleting a cryptic hex string from the registry would fix the problem or make it worse.
The Linux install on the new box was not without flaws, but I was able to fix the problems based on past experience. Unlike Windows, Linux made sense. I'd learn how to use one utility, and other things would just work the same way. I realized I really had it down when in the same day I guessed the command line switches to change the behavior of a utility I'd never used before, and guessed the name and path to a configuration file I'd never seen before without even looking at directory listings.
Linux was certainly not easier to use out of the box the first time I installed it (though knoppix was beautiful when I tried that later), but it actually let me learn how my computer worked, and as such I recommend that any CS student, whether or not they can afford a top-of-the-line Windows machine, should try their hand at using some sort of open system as their primary computer for several months. It might be annoying to adjust, and you might not stick with it, but you'll end up with a much better understanding of how real software actually works.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
But the thing that dissuades me from using windows are two separate reasons.
Being an australian, i dislike supporting a foreign company (foreign non-profit orgs are another matter, so i'm a debian user).
Other reason is that i'm simply far more efficient in linux than in windows. i can get stuff done, get the software i need, work as a unix-alike system administrator much more efficiently when i'm using a unixalike myself.
ashridah
Here's some flamebait if you ever see one... oh but I'll say it anyway... .NET keeps me on Windows. I've been developing on the .NET platform for a while now and I really like it. Of course, there are improvements to be made, but overall I think it's great.
.NET, I'd probably fulfill my long-time dream of buying a G5.
If it were not for
Speed. First of all, I'm used to -- and pampered by, perhaps -- the wonderful performance of Windows' GUI. It's simply extremely responsive. I wrote this in a Slashdot thread recently, but nobody replied:
Question: How does FreeBSD compare?
As far as I know, Windows derives most of its speed from having display drivers live in kernel space. NVidia's XFree86 driver actually uses a kernel module, so in theory the two architectures should be roughly equal; is XFree86's internal architecture that bad compared to Windows and GDI?
FreeBSD's kernel is, according to its adherents, faster than Linux. Apparently it had an O(1) scheduler long before Linux. How well does XFree86 run on FreeBSD?
Anyone want to reply this time around? I should add that by sluggish I mean noticeably, unacceptably slow on an Athlon XP 2500+ with 1GB of RAM. If you're a Linux user it's probably not something you would notice unless you spent a few weeks on Windows and then went back. Also, I should like to point out that I turn off most performance-crippling visual bells and whistles (anti-aliasing, drop shadows, animation, fading) on Windows as well as Linux.
Consistency. Windows' GUI is also fairly consistent with respect to keyboard shortcuts, clipboard functionality, drag/drop etc. There is a whole bunch of applications that subvert Windows' natural consistency by inventing their own widgets (Microsoft Office is one example, but by no means the worst), but they are the minority.
On Linux you have GNOME and KDE and the big glaring seams between them. GNOME's file open/save/etc. dialogs are completely different (and vastly inferior to, imho) KDE's, for example. Keyboard shortcuts such as for clipboard accessing also don't seem consistent. You can cross-dress the toolkits with compatibility themes to make them appear identical, but they still behave differently.
Applications. Windows' file manager, Explorer, is not a great app by far, but it's fast and effective. Nautilus and Konqueror are bloated and slow, full of features I don't want and missing the ones I do want; for example, Nautilus, last I tried it, had a folder pane that only allowed opening and closing of folders, no interaction; and where's the click-and-drag to select multiple elements?
Speaking of file management, where's the transparent, GUI-managed support for Samba, FTP and WebDAV browsing that's also integrated into the OS so that mounts are available to other, non-GNOME/KDE apps? I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but I've never been able to find it. Windows has had network-transparent file-system-mounting for, what, 10 years? OS X has had it since its first release.
While Linux/BSD seem to have a larger quantity of apps, the quality is so-so.
For example, on Windows, I have foobar2000, a most excellent audio player blissfully free of visual bells or whistles; pure function. On Linux, it seems I have the option of XMMS (horrible Winamp clone), ZINF (horrible I-don't-know-what) and something GNOME calls "Music organizer and player", plus a whole bunch of other ugly, nerdy-looking apps with nothing to set them apart from the rest.
On Windows, I have Klient and mIRC, two excellent IRC clients; on Linux, there is X-Chat, not an excellent IRC client. On Windows, I have Media Player Classic for playing movies, another hyper-functional, minimalistic app; on Linux I have MPlayer, VLC and Kaboodle -- 'nuff said. On Windows I have Nero for CD/DVD burning, but I haven't seen anything worthwhile on Li
1. I object to Microsoft's illegal marketing tactics.
2. I object to Microsoft, SCO, and anyone else who poses a threat to the idealistic, altruistic world of open source software.
3. Every time I use Microsoft products, clumsy design and annoying flaws get in my way and waste my time.
4. Unix is a much more powerful and flexible environment. For example, compare the Korn shell with Microsoft's lame excuse for a shell, CMD, with its ridiculously messy syntax. You can't even maximize the damned thing without going to a lot of trouble. And Microsoft's idea of system utilities is a bad joke. With Linux I get bash, perl, awk, sed, egrep, and a bunch of powerful compilers, all for free.
Gravity!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I use Linux for three main reasons:
- Flexibility: I can configure my computer to work exactly how I want. In addition, I use Gentoo, which allows further control. Yes, this adds complexity; it doesn't work "out of the box", so to speak, but that's fine with me. No one dictates how it looks or feels. For the record, I use parts of GNOME with Enlightenment.
- Freedom: I am a programmer. If I can't make a program do something I want it to, I can always open the source (another advantage of source-based distros, by the way: it's easier to modify the source for programs than with binary distros, because you have the headers for everything). To date, I have patched 4 programs, and submitted the patches for 2 of them.
- Philosophy: I can't explain why, but the whole philosophy behind the open source movement appeals to me.
I would say "price" as an advantage, but that's really a non-issue, since *ahem* I have never bought a copy of Windows (Microsoft tax excluded).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
1) Stability.
.NET... a *free* ADC account beats the hell out of MS developer program prices. Most apps I need ( and some I just want ) come for free with the machine, which is bundled with a complete OS. The machine is so easy to use, my two-year-old navigates the desktop, web browser, and filesystem. It's easy enough to admin that I've been able to provide him with an account that he can't screw up.
I have a windows machine. It just stopped booting one day. I couldn't get it going again without re-installing the OS. It's done this before. So I stopped using the windows machine, even after taking the time to re-install the system. I still have a mess of drivers I need to install to get the thing working right again, but why bother ?
2) Windows XP broke a chunk of win32 app compatability. I don't feel like buying new versions of those apps, or paying for XP, for that matter. Microsofts' inclination towards per-machine licenses and subscription-based licenses are spooky, too. I'd like to keep my costs down once making a hardware/software purchase.
3) Windows has improved in ease-of-use, but it's still a patchwork of utilities in many ( most ) ways, and there is a bare minimum of inter-application conformity and support.
4) Unlike many people, I want a computer system I can program without spending a lot of cash for a set of libraries and compiler.
5) It's not my first consideration, but the business practices of Microsoft make my stomach churn. I'd like to see at least a _few_ viable software companies out there, rather than one monopoly.
That said, (1) stability is my main reason. If my PC had never hosed itself to the point of requiring a system restore, I'd still be using it at least occasionally.
As it is, I've gone on to OS X with the purchase of a flat-panel iMac, and I haven't looked back... programming Objective-C with a powerful, freely provided IDE beats the hell out of Visual Studio
The main thing keeping me off windows, are the numerous worms and bugs and other creepy-crawly stuff. Within an hour of connecting a Windows computer to a "big pipe"-based broadband connection, and infection has already happened.
Meanwhile, my iMacDV hasn't been reformatted since I bought it in 99, and it's now running 10.3, and there hasn't been reason to reformat or otherwise ultimately disinfect the machine yet!
The reason that I use Linux instead of Windows as my primary operating system is that Linux just works better than Windows at the tasks I do. I think the deciding factor in it all though is the fact that no matter how hard I try, Windows just can't in a million years handle my cheap built-in sound card. When I run any program that plays sound it will always give cruddy playback (including going out "randomly" for no apparent reason at all.) Running other programs while using sound is a definite recipie for problems with sound playback. In Linux both OSS and ALSA have worked beautifully for me and never given me a problem (other than a bit of initial trouble setting up ALSA.)
:-P.
Then there's the fact that I run many servers on my desktop computer and don't quite do "desktop computing" with it. Word processing? I certainly don't need that, just need Vim. Anyone with a good distro gets automatic updates of their software, or at least automatic notification. That way I can get security updates the day they're released instead of having to visit each server's page daily to check for updates, were I to try to use the programs in Windows. Besides, I'm sure there's something that I use regularly which lacks a Windows port (I know my webcam software which I wrote myself wouldn't work under Windows.)
I like to see my computer as the "ultimate setup" where everything I can do it so easily accessible. One of the few reasons I used to boot into Windows was to burn CDs and use Paint Shop Pro, but I've since learned that PSP runs fine with Wine and once I get off my lazy butt I'm gonna figure out how to configure this system to burn CDs
So it cant be cost.
In my case, its stablity. I prefer something that doesnt need a lot of babysitting to keep going properly.
Sure things have improved over the years, but its not worth the switch.
Having control is nice feeling too, but really, how many people will actually modify the source to what they have in the OSS world ( not many )..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Same for programming environments. My editor (emacs or vi) edits; may syntax checker (lint) checks syntax; and my complier (gcc) compiles. This ends up being a far more flexible environment than any of those GUIs that do one thing well (set a breakpoint) but suck at everything else (editing, etc).
While I have problems with Microsoft's business practices (monopolistic bastards), my real objection to Windows (in particular, and most other MS products in general) is that it is badly designed, difficult to use and generally tasteless (queue the Steve Jobs quote from Triumph of the Nerds). Doing just about anything using an MS product is so thoroughly, frustratingly difficult and counter-intuitive, that its only similarty to a pleasurable experience lies in the fact that I am present for the ordeal.
With Mac OS (classic) the user interface design is still pretty good and I can suffer through the rough spots. With Linux, though the user interface design tends to suck (with a few exceptions, notable by their quality) at least I have a lot of choices or a shot at hacking together a reasonable work-around. With Mac OS X I get the best of both worlds (and, again, I can suffer through the rough spots).
My computer should do what I tell it to do: nothing more and nothing less. With Classic Mac OS I was able to get pretty close most of the time. With Linux and Mac OS X I get a lot closer: I'm pretty well able to figure out what bits to fiddle to turn things on and off, or what files to read to find out why something went wrong. With MS Windows, even if I can figure out what the damn thing is doing, I am rarely able to find a way to change the behavior.
Early in my computing career I was lucky enough to spend several years working on a platform that made almost every task pleasurable and easy, and I got used to it. I simply see no reason to do or use anything that causes me continuous physical or psychological pain. Microsoft Windows, unfortunately, falls in the category of fingernails-on-a-blackboard, blood-spurting-from-the-eyes, nerve-shriveling, brain-peeling, testicle-crushing pain.
What are you talking about? The parent here should be moderated -1 Wrong.
Look, you click the "Safely Remove Hardware" button. You select your device on the list. You hit Ok. One window open and you're done. You even get a nice friendly little speech bubble that says "device can now be unplugged." I have no clue what weird-ass configuration the parent has, but he should install whatever program is making him jump through all those hoops to do something so simple.
It might not be as quick as Apple's "drag it to the dock," but it's pretty durned close.
Comment of the year
I can't stand the fact that everything about M$ is designed to keep users locked into Windows with little regard for anything else. The system is unstable, unpredictable, insecure, inflexible, outdated, badly designed and far too expensive. It wastes everybody's time. What's more, the license agreement is incredibly restrictive and M$ takes no responsibility whatsoever for their product. After having used M$ products for far too long, I switched completely to an Open Source system three years ago. My only regret is that I didn't do so earlier; the experience has been nothing short of a liberation for me.
Everytime it boots up it says there's an error on my hardrive and needs to run scandisk. It runs and finds no errors.
A shitty spyware thing called Blazefind has crept onto my machine and everytime it boots up, it switches on the search assistant at the bottom of my taskbar.
It's slow to startup because I use mozilla as my browser/mail client. To be fair though it has run without a problem for about 3 years. The scandisk problem only started recently.
The word "install" in my previous post should, of course, be "uninstall." I hate typos that result in the exact opposite of what I want to say.
Comment of the year
Honestly, at this point it's habit. I first toyed with Linux back when '95 first came out, I hated that POS. By '98 I had erased my Windows partition and was chugging along happily with Slackware. At the time I honestly believe that Linux was the superior OS; it had better multitasking, better memory protection, and quite simply felt much 'crisper' than Windows.
;)
These days I imagine that with a bit of tweaking I could get an XP Pro system to give me a virtually identical feel as my 2.6.x Gentoo Linux install. However, at this point I've been in the Linux/OSS world for a long while and I simply have no desire to switch. I think that XP Pro is probably 'as good as' and not 'better than' Linux and I don't feel compelled to wipe my OS and spend the time necessary to catch up with all the changes Windows has undergone while I've been away.
Perhaps Longhorn will change my mind, but I doubt it. It seems to me that with Xorg and FDO chugging along I should have a fully OpenGL accelerated desktop with nice SVG graphics a good deal before Longhorn hits the shelves.
Besides, Windows doesn't have Portage
In OSX right clicking on a removable drive will give you the same 'Eject' option.
...the power of Unix. FreeBSD rocks!
Believe it or not, I think the user experience is more positive. A nicely configured Linux distribution with all the graphical trimmings, and you have a fine workstation you can do everyday things with. No worries about viruses, popups, spyware or even spam (as most mainstream Linux mail clients have some sort of available antispam solution - in the case of Mozilla, a builtin, and easy one).
Because of the added feeling of security and the increasing maturity of Linux desktops, I don't think I've had a *need* to run Windows for much except the odd video game.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
Freedom comes first, everything else is secondary.
Hitches and lags are what keep me off Windows.
I HATE hitches. When gaming or doing anything else, Windows has to write to the disk or read from the disk every little while. You kind of get used to them, but for some reason I've become very annoyed by Windows writing cache or whatever it does.
UNIX does not seem to do this. In fact, the memory management and drive handling in Linux is so much smoother than Windows that it astonishes me. Applications running on Wine, even applications running in emulated XP on VMware, run smoother than applications running in native windows.
Yes, I know about drive fragmentation, and I do have enough RAM to do what I do. Shouldn't be a problem. It shouldn't BE that a 233 box from, uh, 1998 is silky smooth in comparison to a hitchy XP on an Athlon 1800. Totally ridiculous. This is obviously not taking into account rendering speed or drive access while loading. However, when doing browsing and word processing, running a fairly stripped down Gnome, the 233 is buttery smooth and never touches the drive. Oh, and the AMD box has 1/8 the memory. NOT ONLY ALL THIS but I think Linux has greatly slowed the drive wear and tear I was getting with Windows.
WHY WHY WHY could some bozo in Finland cobble together an OS that absolutely wipes the floor with the best that a multibillion dollar corporation can come up with? On something as apparently straight forward and uninteresting as memory management?
There are also issues about the way that windows are presented. I'm not really sure about the way Windows does event handling, but when an application crashes, the inability to close the window the application is in or do anything with it (Norton Processviewer helps extremely with the ability to kill them) is totally inexcusable. Why should a hung application also hang the widgets of the window the application it's in?
I suppose I should be thankful it no longer hangs the box it's running on. That's one thing I'll say is that XP uptime is now measured in even weeks instead of hours or minutes on 98.
But it's still a piece of dog shit. Oh, and there's the fact that it's a black box, so I need 3rd party software (originally ported from Unix I think) such as uhhh Filemon to see who among the processes is hitting the disk. And then I usually see that they're system processes, which if killed crash the box.
Software support was the thing that was keeping me on Windows. Now that I can run Windows stably and reliably and fairly "fastly" on VMware, there's no reason for me to boot into it anymore.
Now that linux and BSD finally have some big-name support from the likes of IBM and Apple (and yes, even Novell) things seem to be really clipping. Those guys haven't forgotten the way Microsoft has dealt with them, and we can hope they're not above a little bit of predatory marketing and sharp business practices themselves. I hope they blast Microsoft back to Bob.
Sorry for the rant, but god it pisses me off. There's no excuse for the way that Windows behaves, and then it's shoved down our throats with the sarcastic nerdy smugness of Clippy to add insult to injury. If they spent as much money on stability as they do on retard-crutches like Clippy and Rover, they might actually have an OS that's not a total piece.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
It's all about control. I want to control my computers, as well as other aspects of my business and personal life. Of course, there are many aspects that I have very little control over, but where I can, I want to make the choices. They're not always good choices, but I'd rather make my own mistakes than live with someone else's.
Freely licensed software puts me in charge. I'm not locked in. Microsoft always trys to lock me in to continued use of their products. Their strategy is to create a high barrier to migration away from Microsoft products. I've learned to treat that barrier as a barrier to my entry. I won't go someplace that I can't leave.
There's a word for places that are easy to get into and hard to get out of. They're called 'prisons'.
Nothing I do requires Windows, aside from games, and I don't play enough to warrant it. My laptop doesn't even have Windows on it anymore. Everything I do, web, e-mail, word processing, movies, music, programming, etc all works fine in linux. Works better too, so why not use it instead of windows?
The box said "Requires Windows XP or better"... so I installed Ubuntu!
How is that not "beating" the product? You don't have to be better to win. You just have to win.
Another Control that has me not even thinking about Windows for my computer (I'm selling my eMac and building/buying a x86 Desktop/Laptop) is Ctrl+Alt+Delete. I'm just so tired of pushing it. :(
All those years of "Just Say No" must have had *some* sort of effect.
Thanks, Nancy!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I hate that point-and-click stuff. Much more efficient to use the command line.
Windows usually leaves you lots of ways to do something, and the standard user doesn't disable any of them, even when being constrained is sometimes a good thing.
For example many programs create uninstall shortcuts on the start menu. If there's any chance of a six year old child getting its hands on your mouse for 10 seconds before being forceibly removed (I recommend a mallet), this is an option you don't want. (If you ever mouse while your mind is free as in beer, ditto). I'm sure there are some people who greatly value being able to uninstall without having to go through the slightly longer control panel/add-remove programs method, but I suspect they are a minority.
Who is John Cabal?
I'm such a nerd. I can't get a date. All the "pretty people" use windows, and get lots of sex.
And... If you're looking for some hot anal action, then you go with the Mac.
For example, many of the best book publishers from the first half of the last century made money to execute business. Victor Gollancz published the Lord Peter Wimsey books to make the money with which he underwrote his Left Book Club. In this country, Random House and Scribners were publishers that used the profits from their bestsellers to underwrite books that they wanted to published - some of which have become the classics of our literature. Nowadays, of course, those once-superb houses have all been gobbled up by corporations, and it's all astrology, diets, and self-help.
Obviously, it's easier for a privately held company to re-invest its profits in doing work that the owners feel should be done; but it's not impossible for a corporation to have a conscience - or a sliver of a conscience, in any case. The much-maligned automakers, I think, do have a commitment to building high-quality vehicles, however, bad they are at it; if they didn't, they would get out of the business altogether. And there are others as well. Perhaps fewer now than there once were; but they're there.
As for Microsoft, I find it hard to believe that its management gives a rat's ass about software; if they did, they wouldn't ship the crap that they do. But I'm not a billionaire, so what the hell do I know?
[this
I have been a Mac user since 1994. The Mac (now a dual G5 running Mac OS X 10.3.4) does everything I need to do, and it does it very, very well. So, I have no use for Windows. None at all.
... that it's not Panther.
- Cowboy
what, what?
At the time I bought my first Powerbook (Fall '01), I was thinking of buying a Sony VAIO and dual-booting Linux and Windows. However, it became obvious from the way PC laptop vendors supported Windows that having support for a Unix-like platform that could also be a multimedia "workstation" wasn't likely.
Microsoft Windows licensing, for the home user with multiple PCs, is very expensive to maintain legitimately. I know I'm the exception, but I actually bought Windows for each machine I installed on, and with three PCs, the prospect of buying a fourth machine and paying that much for Windows licenses was a major deterrent.
In fact, when Apple started updating OS X on an annual basis (which they won't do after 10.4 "Tiger"), I was worried I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, until I saw this and realized that growing the population of Macs in my home wouldn't be cost prohibitive.
Obviously, with Linux, it would be even cheaper.
That said, I can also add the following reasons why I haven't "switched" back:
Overall, the question now is... having invested now in two Powerbooks and a dual G5... why would I want to switch back to Windows?
Amnesty international backs, funds and provides moral support for Maoists in Nepal. You can hop over to the AI site and you will see condemnation of the govenment and some mild criticism maoist. If you want to see how AI has made the conflict into a civil war, goto the BBC and look at the stories on nepal since 2000 and the 2 failed truces. But it gets worse than that. Since AI got involved in 2000, the democratic govenment has been overthrown and communists not control 40% of the country. In the last 4 years 8000 people --mostly civillians-- have been killed in the period from 1996-2000 only 1000 were killed.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I use windows, because linux couldn't connect to the internet with my wireless adapter, and no one helped me. It really sucked, because I was able to use the internet for a while under linux, and I thought that in terms of everything besides working with my network adapter, linux was great.
I've read all the 4/5 posts so far, and I haven't seen anyone comment directly about this, but I've seen it stated emotionally:
Under MS, people have a loss of controlling free and independent programs that they've chosen, written or can wrap their minds around. The NT kernel is documented (not freely), but the services, runtime dependencies and so on, are still a mystery to people. Most of them cannot be replaced with a better version you or some other smart programmer changed and released.
Under Linux, due somewhat to the novel time we're living in, there is a wealth of question/answer documentation about many daemons, programs aor options. Config files can be hacked and rehacked. This doesn't mean there's less complexity, but I think the complexity is more componentized under Linux. Linux may be a monolithic Kernel, but if you look through the history of MS's OS progression, you'll find many many things going into the "OS" that simply don't need to be there (culminating, famously, with a simple web browser being "an integral part of the operating system").
Today, MS strives to have one of the most "approachable" OS's on the market. They provide a platform for market dynamics with their OS. This is to allow endless vendors to install and provide additional services - some before you know it. They suffer, however, from a chosen userbase that then doesn't know what is on their box or how to manipulate it. So one of the myraid of issues is the "install", "play nice with..", "uninstall cleanly" cycle that MS leaves up to the user and vendor. Some past endeavors (think "plug and play database") have tried to cure this, but wrapping your arms across an entire living market is a moving target.
Linux, coming from a technical birth, strives to be approachable, but in the end it caters to the tinkerer in each of us. Even finding the "ps" command in a manual can be a world of discovery for the newbie tinkerer. Even without knowing how the guts work, one can ps for processes and look them up by name. In this way, it harkens back to "computer as tool" instead of "computer as appliance".
MS wants to sell you an appliance that has the largest set of behaviors to provide this market: Vendors selling goods / users consuming services / playing games / advertising channels sold to the market / digital rights management to allow any set a procedures to deliver content. MS wants to build the market and decide how users/businesses participate in it.
Linux provides none of this. It relies on its users to participate in the market by writing free tools, but not really define such a market. PGP didn't make a revolution, nor PNG images, nor any pretty desktop display. However, they are all great tools to allow people to get stuff done - without succumbing to a vendor-decided ruleset. The Linux movement strives to allow people or businesses to participate in the market without any vendor acting on their behalf.
I want my computer to start in a resonable amount of time. Where windows takes three minutes for it to become fully functional, my Debian box can in about one minutes with a GUI and thirty seconds without.
I want my computer to be able to stay on for prolonged amounts of time without slowing down to the speed of a derailed locamotive. Windows seems to have a large problem when not shut down for a long amount of time, where my Debian box is ALWAYS on.
I do not want to worry about exploits in my software that results in viruses and trojans invading my computer like a pack of horney school children. Under Linux I have yet to encouter any maliciouse software.
I want my computer to do what I tell it to do!
Regards, Rob
Come on guys, let's get the syntax right!
The only thing that is keeping me off windows is the fact that I can't get windows update to work with linux!
If they can't manage something so simple, then why should I switch?
Nothing keeps me from running Windows. Windows XP is a great OS, unless you're a total goof with no common sense (which is why the Mac exists). I DON'T run Linux because of all the insane Linux Nazi's. Seriously. Same reason I don't run AMD. AMD Nazi's really turn me off.
Reason #1
Reason #2 is that I am now aware of the whole friggin' industry's greasiness. Microsoft just so happens to be the largest of them, so they get to be the whipping boy.
Speaking of which, does anybody know of a site that catalogs all of Microsoft's crimes over the years? I know Groklaw, in chronicling SCO, brings up MS badness, but it started rather late. I'd like to have facts behind my hatred.
OS X.
Surely nobody would question it's immoral.
Since the government says it it's illegal then it's automatically immoral? That's called the fallacy of "The Argument from Authority". Nothing is immoral, or should be though to be immoral, because the government says so.
In 10.3 the device appears in your finder (equivalent to windows explorer) with an eject icon next to it. Click on the icon and the device is removed and you can unplug it. It's that simple.
Theming is available for free in Windows XP. You can use any of the Windows XP themes that were not specificially designed for the third party apps, and they run without fuss and rather smoothly. Check themexp.org for more info
-]Phreak Out[-
My girlfriend has a Windows computer. We'll be sitting in her room, reading, talking, whatever, and her hard drive will be endlessly cruching something. The hard disk light will show incredible activity, and as soon as you touch the mouse, the hard disk seeking stops.
I want to know why the hell it's doing that? What is it doing? What is it looking for on the hard disk? And who told it to anything anyways for that matter?
With Linux, I know what every little bit of the software on the machine is because I put it there. If something's crunching the hard disk or pegging the CPU, I know what it is. I can tell who is on my machine and what they're doing. I can go under the hood and figure out why something isn't working.
Linux works 95% of the time. Windows works about 98% of the time. There are lots of aggravating polish things on Linux that I wish they'd fix and fix faster, stuff that Windows has done right for years. But I'm willing to put up with a little frustration in order to be able to feel like the computer belongs to me, not to Redmond.
-jag
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
wrong Canberra Bob.
The biggest reason many people don't simply drop winblows and use a better OS, linux being one of them is *not* the zealotry exhibited on this site. The very vast majority of winblows users do not ever come to this site nor engage with attitudes that you read here. This vast majority of users suffer from what the American consuming public suffer from - laziness and stupidity.
They are lazy to find *really* the best product - they have heard of winblows and seen it at work, so instead of thinking about it they simply go buy what they know. You can apply this laziness to other product types.
They are stupid in that they are not curious enough to discover that winblows is not the best product they could choose. These 2 are tightly bound to each other.
Our laziness and stupidity are major reasons why people in other countries loathe us. I don't blame them.
The funny thing is, as the rest of the world slowly dumps Microcrap off their desktops and embraces linux, eventually America will have its OS choice made for us - it will be linux.
I am not a zealot. I am simply not as lazy or stupid as many other American consumers. If I need a product I want to choose the best product I can afford. Then I actually spend time finding that product. Right there I make a decision that separates me from most Americans.
If you need to - don't come here and avoid the zealotry.
But one day, not toooo far away, you will be using linux.
1. Poor quality of UI.
2. Insconsistant UI
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
No, he don't have it backwards, jack. He's got a little historical perspective, is all.
When "corporations" were originally being invented, they would be set up with "charters", which said what the corporation's primary and secondary goals and mission were.
Corporations still have charters. But it's in fact a relatively recent development that the profit goal is popularly considered to override all other stated goals (as opposed to being one among them, and not the primary - of course profit is necessary, but do you live to eat, or eat to live?).
Some corporations retain this (Apple, arguably, among them; possibly Ford now that a Ford is back in charge and the silly Frenchman - with views like yours - who brought it to the brink of disaster by moving into fields unrelated to cars, intending to increase profits, is out.)
Look into a little history sometime. (Why this change - conceptual, ideological, and legal - is an interesting question.)
So, stop mistaking concepts for reality.
Eventually, non-windows-specific applications took over my Windows desktop. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice... NVidia drivers were an incentive as well.
...)
The only thing I miss is Visual Studio.
I had Windows basically partitioned like a Unix system, and had GNU console tools installed. I'd been familiar with Unix consoles from various sources.
So to answer the question, "What Keeps You Off Windows?"... lack of flexibility and active development.
Things that keep me away from Windows:
- Half-assed console implementation
- Lack of console administrating options
- Administrator doesn't have half the priveledges that root has (I don't like being told what to do, I'm the boss)
- Wacky default filesystem layout with spaces in the names of important folders (Program Files, My Documents,
- Many applications cannot initialize their own settings, so you need to run the installer to get them to work
- If something bothers me, I'm less likely to whip out the hex editor and disassembler than I am to modify sourcecode.
- Closed source applications in general have slow development cycles, leaving bugs and annoyances open for months.
- I never paid for Windows anyway so I'm a horrible person to use it.
- The only upgrade option for professional workstations is an operating system designed for teenage girls (Windows XP). Forcing Windows 2003 into a workstation only goes so far.
- Proprietary software tends to be made without the end user in mind. Or, at least the kind of end user I am.
I only stayed with Windows long enough for open solutions to catch up to a usable level, which I believe they've now attained for a computer hobbyist/programmer (maybe not quite the average Joe just yet, but Mandrake 10 is damn close).
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
What keeps me off windows?
This Slashdot community , which never ceases to scorn M$ , keeps praising Linux!
Any windows user who reads regularly , would want to quit windows and switchover to Linux! (or would hav already done that , by now!). Anyway,to be honest, iam a windows user, and iam looking to switch over--hav to get the correct Distro, and install it correctly!
Why does yahoo do this
Ten years ago, I dumped Windows 3.11 off my Packard-Bell Pentium 60 and replaced it with IBM OS/2.
I took this drastic action because I had found by painful experience that Windows only worked as long as I didn't try to do any actual work with it. It was clearly beta quality at best, and I'm reserving more than a few choice words here. To call it junk is putting it mildly.
After the switch to OS/2, my system was like a new computer. It was actually USING the 32-bit instruction capability of the Pentium for which I paid a premium. It would actually handle actual work without crashing every half-hour. Oh, I could go on and on...
The point is, that I, an uninformed PC buyer, had been duped by Microsoft. When the light of reality shone in on the fraud, I resolved then and there to NEVER buy ANY other Microsoft product, EVER.
In the intervening years, Microsoft has proven, time after time, that they are nothing more than a gang of felons out to con the world. If you do business with Microsoft, you are dealing with a gang of organized criminals, plain and simple. If you give money to Microsoft for any reason, you are paying protection, plain and simple. What part of extortion don't you understand?
I refuse to support organized crime.
Do you?
I have a family of 5 and we used to use Win98 for web browsing, email and games mostly. I migrated to Mandrake because:
1. I downloaded MS patches regularly and got hold of one that created a "ding" with every mouse click while surfing the web. There was no way, and I mean no way to undo it...Well, actually there was...uninstalling the OS did it!
2. I was afraid of loosing privacy with XP.
3. I didn't want to pay about $200 for another liscense and there was no upgrade path since I'd been buying upgrades since Win3.1.
4. I wanted more control over individual user accounts since my children are elementary school age.
5. The threat of viruses, IE didn't/doesn't block popups or cookies and adware.
I stay with Linux as a home desktop system for the family because:
1. My wife and kids have no problems surfing the web, checking email and playing games.
2. I don't worry at all about adware, viruses, popups.
3. I program, maintain a corporate website and database all day at work...the last thing I want to do when I get home repair an ailing Windows box.
On Windows, "many programs create uninstall shortcuts on the start menu"?
Really?
Oh, man... forgive me.. but,
Hee hee hee hee !
It's just so illustrative...
Now on my non-Windows rocking G4 TiBook computer:
No more DLL hell
No more registry labyrinth
Strong security
Less administration
A GUI with elegance and easy of use
Power of Open Source tools and BSD
Things work out of the box
Great industrial design and sense of style.
Finally, ONE computer to control PCs, Macs and Unix/Linux computers, contained in a sleek portable laptop.
A system administrator's dream. It was tough to get the laptop during budget cut's, yet everyone who's seen me use it will agree it was worth every penny. I get a LOT of work done on OS X
My years of using X on UNIX has made me addicted to the ability to mouse over a mostly occluded window and type into it.
And
The ability to move a parent window of a popup dialog box. For some reason the information that I need to type in the dialog box is in a window occluded by the parent of the pop up.
Both seem to be an inherent feature of the integration of the windowing system with the OS.
I've worked in Unix engineering organizations since 1984 starting at HP, starting at Sun 1990. I stayed away from Windows primarily because the PC and Windows was underpowered, clumsy, and lacked an environment like Unix to work in.
.Net... But what Java owes it's success to is one of the greatest technical marketing programs in the last 20 years. Sun is not capable of leading the industry in user interfaces, so that problem needs to be left to IBM and SWT or something else.
That has all changed for me though! I now enjoy working in a Windows environment over that of Unix/Linux (excluding OS X)
Everything I need is now provided in a Windows environment, including Open Source Software.
After working in the Unix industry for 20 years, I'm confident that Unix commerical companies cannot deliver a better environment to work in. Microsoft has greatly improved their ability to deliver as good as and better in most cases APPLICATION development environment.
Java many would argue is a superior develoment environment that
But Linux... that is another story!!! Linux could become a great desktop, but they (the Linux community) has to have a vision. I don't see that, yet... possible KDE is the answer to the desktop, which is implemented far better than GNOME. Why the American commerical distrubtions are clammering around GNOME is a mystery to me. I also think that to draw more Windows developers to Linux, the simplicy provided to Windows developers (i.e ASP.net, VB.net) must be brought to Linux)
Opinions are worth what you pay for them! That's mine!
1) Viruses. Do not tell me Windows is fine with up to date anti virus software as I know few organisations or home users who have never been infected, and the cost of even one infection can be huge.
2) Cost. Despite buying official versions of Mandrake (Powerpack is convenient).
3) Ease of installation/upgrade. My expeience with Mandrake has been that it is easier to install than Windows. I am not sure what improvements there may be in Win XP as I have never isntalled it so this may be a little unfair.
4) Software availability: a huge number of applications with the distro, no need to buy or download.
6) Lyx: There is an "experimental" version for Windows, I am not happy with running something experimental if it is important to me that it works.
6) Driver availability: If it works, the driver is on the install disks - no downloads, no seperate CDs or floppies to keep. Of course the downside is lack of drivers for some things, but as the only thing that has affect so far is an old Agfa scanner I never used anyway it has not been a significant problem yet.
7) KDE: Ease of use AND configurability. Konqueror is a wonderful file manager and an OK web browser. Nice little touches like file browser buttons.
Is that enough to be getting on with?
Where I work the IT "support" folks are complete idiots. When my machine was running Windows they loaded it with all kinds of corporate crap-ware. I had a 1.2Mhz machine that ran like a old 486. They forced us to run Tivoli, Norton AV, Pointsec, a personal firewall, the list goes on. Now I can understand forcing the secretary to run these services on their machine, but how in the hell am I supposed to do performance benchmarks of my code when you have all of that crap running in the background. Believe me, I have a ton of horror stories about how much work I lost due to their incompetence.
Once I installed Linux I have had no problems. And now when some dolt from IT comes by to "check on my machine" they leave it alone because they have no idea what to do with Linux. Life is good.
Everyone I work with uses Windows - it's what everyone knows, and quite a bit of the (proprietary scientific) software that we use is Windows only. It suits me fine for basic graphing, presentations, etc.
For heavy duty data analysis, bioinformatics programming, compiling data from several sources into one sorted file, intensive modeling, or any other problem that would take hours by hand but several minutes with a script, I maintain one linux installation. It didn't take my coworkers long to figure out that they could do a few things much more efficiently on my machine, and that for some things, they should just come and ask me if I could write the program.
As I get better at admining it, I'll open up SSH so I can do some work from home, transfer files, provide accounts to coworkers who are already savvy enough to still use the old university unix servers to check email, and probably build some sort of network jukebox in so I don't have to tote my CDs up to the lab.
The point here is that I pick the best tool for the job. Neither Windows or Unix fits the bill all the time. Sometimes neither does - there is some really nice Mac only stuff out there. Fortunatly, since OSX came out, I can sit down at a Mac and pull up a unix prompt - I know what to do with that...
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
In order, I use Mac OS X and Irix. Irix, you say? Well, check this out, sparky. It never crashes, runs fast on ancient hardware and runs all sorts of Unix and open source apps.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I like and agree with most of your points. Can you give me an example though of item #3. I can't think of any Unix/Linux environment (excluding OS X) that is better than Windows
Having worked in Silicon Valley since 1978, Microsofts practices are nothing compared to IBM (IBM can kill a market in a heartbeat... do some research... Remember Taligent). What I think really irks Unix people is that a once inferior technology, Windows has achieved more than the commerical Unix companies. Take OSF and Unix International in the 80's. Both of them... incredibly arrogant. How about Sun's arrogance with Swing... Unix led the way with great technology for systems, and technical workstations and they took their eye of the ball! Unix companies never respected MS and PC... not look who's come to dinner! Microsoft and they is viewed from a subjective eye, are now delivering software development environments that are equal and in some cases superior to any of the Unix/Linux alternatives.
i>"Windows, what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?"
Yes.
It started some years ago... I was unemployed and couldn't afford Windows+Office+Other paid programs (piracy is for the weak!).
:-P . I've been using it since then and I didn't come to an end. New versions come up everyday (sometimes more than once a day), entirely new applications are born now and then and some appear out of nothing (like Scribus, recently). And it even is entertaining as I watch this whole "world domination" soap opera.
Just ease things, let me draw an analogy: there's a lot of excellent paid sites on the internet. E.g., I can subscribe to a very important newspaper and read it online, in my pajamas, being ecological and all that.
But, I think to myself, there are almost infinite sites which are *totally* free. And they're excellent, too. So, I decide to read them first and after I run out of free (as in beer) sites, I'll pay for the subscription ones.
Now, starting in this Linux thing was real hard at the beginning. But after some time, it eventually made sense, mainly after I understood there's free support online -- via Google
My date of return to Windows keeps being postponed...
Three things: 1. Slashdot uses a broken quad-color four-pane window, similiar to the Windows icon. 2. Slashdot has discovered Bill Gates is a member of the Borg Collective, apparently. 3. Broken panes department is bad, right? So, as you can see, Slashdot, being objective, unbiased and in no way run by fringe Linux and Open Source zealots, has most certainly convinced me that Windows is the root of all evil, and are Communists to boot. This doesn't make logical sense to me, but Slashdot's judgement must never, ever be questioned.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Here's something I can never do on Windows:
Lets pick one of those processes at random, oh, gpm! Now what the hell does that do? man gpm gives me some information. Oh, it's not enough? No problem!
apt-get source gpm and I've got the source in 30 seconds, beckoning me to change it. Why change it? Well, call me crazy, but I think it'd be neat for gpm to kill every process straight up to init on a given terminal if I hold mouse-1 and mouse-2 for 5 seconds -- this way I can be sure that a trojan isn't capturing my login information next time I type it in*.
Total elapsed time: 10 minutes?
I could not do this on Windows, certainly not in under 10 minutes. I don't mean the end result, I mean the process. Microsoft thought of this problem and Windows NT makes you ALT-CTRL-DEL to login (which can be compromised just like my gpm security feature can be compromised). But the point is that I added this feature to my system in 10 minutes.
I could just as easily be annoyed at, oh, every time I try to su to root and mistype my password, su sleeps for 3 seconds and catches CTRL-C so I have to sit and wait (or ^Z and kill -9 $1 which isn't as convenient as ^C or just having it reprompt me). I can change that in the time it took me to write this. Under Windows, I just can't manage this level of control.
* Yes Linux provides this feature via SYSRQ but I don't like all of the other side-effects of enabling SYSRQ. OH WAIT, I CAN CHANGE THAT TOO!
heh, i actually have a hard drive that can't be stopped. Fun. Hasn't corrupted itself yet but it's my backup drive and i have to grit my teeth everytime i yank it.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Sunview (SunOS 4.x) was in kernel space in the 80's and Dave Singleton at Sun in the early 90's implemented selected window priority for Solaris...
Linux doesn't have a guerilla marketing team asking questions like this just so they can make money - that's why I like it.
A question like this is highly questionable in nature considering that Microsoft is going to make the next Windows offering (Longhorn) "much more linux-like".
I smell a Microsoft rat. As such, my first response to this question is: Use a non-Microsoft operating system [for a while] and find out.
Some things can't be told - they can only be experienced.
"Are you experienced?" -jimi hendrix
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It's typical uninformed /. comments like this that really add to the anti-Microsoft mentality.
The senario you described hasn't been the case since Windows 98 was released. Unless the manufacturer wrote a crappy driver, you can add/remove any USB or PCMCIA device on the fly without clicking anything.
I haven't rebooted my XP laptop in about a week (according to taskman) and in that time I've plugged and unplugged my SmartPhone, wireless PCMCIA card (and been roaming on 3 networks), my webcam, and the docking station nightly. Not once have I given the OS warning about what I was about to do.
The menu selection you described only exists for backward compatibility.
I might as well make an arguement about what shortcomings Linux had back in 1997, compared to Windows XP of today.
-David
Actually, I still use Windows. I have two headless linux boxes running RH, as firewall and server. They never go down and I don't worry about them. They are in use every day, 24x7.
I have been using Linux for the last 5 years, servers and desktop.
However I still use XP on occasion cause I find that some of the (paid for, commercial) software is still light years ahead of Open Source. There is no comparison between Quanta or Bluefish, and Dreamweaver. GIMP is a great tool, however the UI is still a long way behind Fireworks.
Although I know I would save many hours of effort in the long run, I would still not put my parents through attempting to use linux. My girlfriend has enough problems with it!
Basically, Linux is very good. I know many people that use it exclusively, however somethings are still slicker in Windows.
1. I carefully screen my kids daycare to make sure everything there is legal
2. I check my bank to make sure no illegal activities go on there.
3. I make sure my employer does not break any laws
4. I invite no felons into my house to have supper with me
5. I drive a car from a company that never ignored safety in favor of corportate profits (can you say Pinto? I knew you could....)
Why the HELL would I allow a lawbreaking monopolist onto my computer? Enough perjury happened in that damn trial to help pay the national debt!
I have 2 computers, one runs MacOS X and the other runs Fedora Core 1. And that's the way it's staying.
started with x windows
I cannot stand the ms-windows environment.
It doesn't work right.
You can't maximize ONLY vertically xor horizontally.
Your current task MUST be the one on top.
No virtual desktop.
No choices/configurability.
Basically, I've always found ms-windows to be confining. I get claustrophobic.
The only time I spent any length of time running ms.. I was typing into a terminal window onto a unix box.
Granted ms-windows xp has fixed some of the problems I have with ms stuff. The problem is, they've not done enough, and they're trying to charge me 5-10 times the worth of the environment.
using unix is still a no-brainer.
---
MacOSX.
I'm off windows because of recent problems with the paging file. Stupid system allocation in XP.
--- these days, what with business and stuff, you gotta get your emails...
Shutting down.
I live with my parents (I am still young) who have a WinXP box. That WinXP computer is used as a gateway for internet access, as we're stuck with dialup. I usually use my own computer, running Slackware, late into the night. When it's time for bed, I tell my computer to shut down, turn off the monitor, and leave. Then I do the same to the XP computer in the other room.
More often than not, the computer running XP doesn't shut down. I end up with a dialog box telling me that a program isn't responding properly, and asking me if I want to shut the program down, or wait until it responds. It completely misses the fact that I'm turning the computer off, and freezes up. All night.
What boggles me is why on earth it would even ask me that. I want the computer to shut down, and I don't care if one program or another isn't responding, I just want the computer to turn off for the night.
I prefer my Linux installation, even though I was raised on Windows. Why? Linux does what you tell it to do. And I think that's what a computer should do.
All the IP addressing, routing, DNS tasks can be accomplished with the netsh command that's been around for the last four years.
net and echo and telnet have been around for longer.
So your complaint comes down to: Windows lacking a command line packet capturing tool. As a Linux user I personally prefer to be able to drill down into the contents of the packets, and see lots on screen, which I can do better with a GUI packet capturing tool like Ethereal or the one Windows comes with (if you want one, make like Linux and install ethereal).
actually we drag something to the "eject" icon, not trash can, or where used to be a transh can, so we know we are ejecting the dragged stuff rather than "destroy" it.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Yay me!
Vote Quimby!
Ok I hit the wrong button (dumb dumb dumb)
Myr reasons for avoiding windows.
1. Poor quality of UI.
2. Inconsistant UI
3. Age of the technology
4. Number of security holes
5. Lack of applications (Ok the big names are here but the range of applications and things I can do are really small.)
6. Spend more time getting things to work, vs time working to get things done.
7. Two words, Memory Hog
8. Slow as molasses.
9. Poor interoperability with other OS's
10. Poor interoperablility with Windows OS's
11. Poor networking ability.
12. Too many things done autmagically that I can't control or turn off.
13. Too many decisions made by Bill as to what I want.
14. Controls and commands that do what they want despite what is claimed or I want.
15. Preponderance of ancient technology. (IE and Outlook for example)
16. Lack of knowledgeable support (it costs more to get to your problem, than it does to solve your problem. (Yes my monitor is turned on, how does this make Outlook crash?))
17. High cost of hardware. (I have to replace to keep running, not replace when EOL is reached.)
18. I don't like renting software. (or cars, or clothing, or or or.)
19. Lack of configurability.
20. I don't like communism and I don't like M$ for the same reasons.
21. Poor inter application communication.
22. Did I mention that it is butt ugly?
23. I'm sick and tired of Blue and Grey.
24. Poor language support. (If it ain't MFC or C# they don't want it to work.)
25. Forced upgrades.
26. Gates and Balmer support the shrub
27. Lack of control of what my computer is doing.
28. Poor Quality control
29. One size does not fit all (are you listening RH?)
30. Because applications install and run like leaches hanging on a hikers leg memory control is lacking.
31. No true multi-user environment.
32. Poor multi-tasking support.
33. Poor or no documentation of commands available.
34. Poor Double Byte and Unicode support
35. Poor Memory management.
36. And on and on and on and on and on.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Dragging to the trash? That is so 20th century. OS X 10.3 Finder windows add an Eject button next to ejectable volume icons in the sidebar. That is in addition to the File > Eject command and the Eject button on the keyboard; if you insisted on ignoring those, you now have a third way to eject without "dragging to the trash."
if you drag a disk to the place of transh can, you will find a big "eject" button rather than a "trash can". maybe your OS X is different from mine.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I use windows because I have over 15 years of experience with their products and because many of the software applications which I use are not available on other platforms. As if the author actually wanted a valid retort. Heh. I also have been running Linux since 1995. I like Mac OSX too, but I just don't use it. Still, for me, for Audio, it is Windows or Mac, and I don't feel like dealing with the Mac learning curve or additional cost. Of course, the machine stays the hell off the interweb. ;)
It's not about peer pressure, or hip anti-MS sentiment. A computer is a tool, and I already know how to use mine, and I am not going to be pressured into changing that until there is a VALID reason to do so.
> Why would I put my 4,000 page thesis document, that I just completed after 6 semesters of hard work,
> which I'm keeping only on a single floppy in to the trash can?
Because if you're keeping your 4,000 page thesis document on one floopy disk, without back-ups, then you DESERVE to lose it.
I was Win3.1/Dos when Win95 came out, I couldnt
get it to work for more than a few days
without a reinstall. Old hardware? Sure. A 486
DX 33 and a Cirrus logic 1MB adapter. Hot stuff
but still behind the curve a bit. My 95 was an
upgrade and I tried to find an OEM cd thinking
this might help but in the meantime I stumbled
across a Slackware 3.x distro for $5.00 at
the bookstore, shrinkwrapped in a plastic cd
case even. Gotta try this, nuthin else is working?
Wow, what a pain in the ass but at least I had
a stable system that would boot every day and
do the same thing. It still took a year or two
longer and some more Red Hat and Slackware
farting around for me to realize that my machines
and even me were not the problem. Still, insisting
on a dual boot config and in the back of my mind
not really trusting my results I moved to 98 and
then to Win2K again thru upgrades. Thats it, that
does it, get this foolishness off of my machine.
By this time I had Red Hat with VM ware running
on a fancy 'new' Pentium 3 with ATI Rage and
although it had been a while since XP had been
released I thought a spin in the emulator may
be fun. This was in early Aug '03. I forgot
to tell my NIC in the VM to use NAT instead of the
hardware directly, oops - hello blaster. I havn't
seen anything lately that makes me wish to
pursue MS products any further. Win3.1/Dos6
was as stable and reliable (although crippled)
as anything I see now. I maintain a XP box or
two for some friends and they like to install
lots of apps and hardware and by archiving
their partitions I have been able to avoid
most SP and upgrade regressions and breakage
although thru considerable hairpulling. I love
these 'works just fine for me' guys. TCO is a
factor even for end users. If three virus
scanners, 4 adware and spyware programs, 2 or
3 different system integrity checkers can even
be installed and made to work, and still not
find all the problems, what chance have I got?
In version MacOS 10.3, the finder displays a small eject icon next to any mounted filesystems that can be unmounted. Click on the icon and the device ejects. It is no longer necessary to throw the filesystem into the trash.
While I'm sure this will simply get lost in the noise, it's a very timely subject for me. I had the pleasure of installing Windows 2000, then Windows 2000, then Windows XP part of the way, then Windows 2000 and finally Windows 2000 on my wife's new/old computer this weekend. Her old machine died a blue smoke death, so she inherited my Athlon 2.0 ghz and I got a shiney new P4. Mind you, My sturdy old Athlon ran linux like a champ. We're talking dual headed xinerama and all. The exact same hardware just wouldn't run Windows! The end result was that the TV card was preventing 2000 from installing, then the network printer drivers kept windows from booting, then windows update kept me from sleeping until finally a virgin, pure install of 2k was burned, booted, copied and stored forever to prevent future reinstalls on her machine.
I don't do windows because it's too delicate and takes too much time to get happy.
www.linux-skunkworks.com
... than software I don't.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
I have IBM notebook, and I eject stuff by the method you just mentioned, however, I always have several equipments ready for ejecting, and I clicked wrong one for many times. But on my G4, I simply drag what I want to eject to the right bottom corner, and release it.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
altova, get with the program! port xml spy to linux!
In all fairness, I don't think that your second and fourth points are very valid.
Yes, WinXP broke a lot of compatibility with DOS and older Windows apps, and in my opinion, it was far overdue; supporting the legacy APIs was hurting Windows. To put things in perspective, the majority of the software that it broke compatibility with was written for Win95 or earlier; the Linux kernel was still in 1.x in 95, and I doubt that you could find any Linux program compiled for a 1.x kernel that would run on a modern system.
Also, saying that you can't program without spending cash on a compiler and libraries is just wrong. I am familiar with at least two free C++ compilers that run under Windows, DJGPP and MinGW. Dev-C++ is also a fairly popular development environment. You don't even have to use Microsoft's libraries, if you don't want to; while I believe the DirectX SDK can be downloaded for free or bought on CD for a nominal fee, you could, alternatively, use SDL or wxWidgets or any number of other graphical libraries.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Debian.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Ohhhhh, you meant Windows the OS, not the window that you can see that girl get undressed from.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
A great deal of spyware is installed without user intervention, without a dialogue, simply by using some new (or old) Internet Explorer weakness. There's been countless security patches from Microsoft to address these issues but it seems likely to me that there's many, many others.
The fact that UNIX systems don't have Internet Explorer is technically superior to me.
I run Mozilla on my Linux and Windows boxes. One good thing is that I can bring in my settings and such no matter what OS I run, but also that I have no more problems with spyware on my windows machines.
So, it's not necessarily Windows itself, it's Internet Explorer. However, the windows platform itself isn't very secure and the registry is such a disaster that it makes a good home for Spyware, with IE as the delivery method.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Ok, this is a little boring, since it's just the actual reasons that got me to switch. I have all kinds of reasons I like like Linux now, but the main reason that I don't have any Windows boxes anymore is:
.cpp files), in notepad. They were just utter rubbish. Word would do this to me and other people I know (particularly Word 2K, which had just came out). So I just lost two weeks of coding because the IDE frelled all my files.
1) I was kind of interested, so I dual booted, but was used to my Windows, and didn't really do too much with Linux, mainly because I was hooked on using Visual Studio 6, because I felt a little intimidated by writing Makefiles.
2) Then I spent two weeks working on something, and then Boom! Visual Studio froze. OK, normal thing I guess, programs lock up. I kill it, start it again, and all the files I had in the project couldn't be opened with Visual Studio. So I looked at the files (the
3) So I got pissed, booted Linux, learned that while making a nice, good, neat Makefile is something that requires some knowledge and skill, making an ugly crappy one that does the job every time, and doesn't frell all my files, was quite simple.
4) And never looked back.
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
Stu
Back in '89 I had money to buy a computer. Seeing as they averaged around $2500.00 I wanted to make an informed decision. Since I'd just started college and needed some computer class credits, I took Intro to DOS. I looked for Intro to Mac but the closest thing they had was Desk Top Publishing. Halfway through the semester, I was still learning how to move files around and change system settings in the DOS class. In the DTP class, we were editing scanned in pictures in Photoshop and laying out the school paper. Which system to get...?
A couple of years later, my roommate gets a PC and it has something called Windows on it. "Jump on it anytime. Feel free to play some of the games I have." I try this a few times but it totally blows. Back to my room and my Quadra 650 and Marathon, with stereo sound, monitor w/subwoofer built in and video I/O.
Several times this last year, I've been asked to help out in running virus software and MS updates on the OS for the little darlings at my school. What a pain in the ass. Hell, just reading the text in any web browser sucks ass compared to OSX. The total user experience is shite.
So far, nothing no MS OS has ever had a better user experience than my Macs.
I drank what? -- Socrates
You don't work on enough PC's, apparently. Registry corruption is ramapant; it doesn't have to be the obvious "Your registry is bad. Re-Install." problems either, it can be something as simple as any program changing a few things around to suit it's own needs. Unfortunately it changed something that breaks something else and it's not obvious what caused the problem since you don't notice it for three weeks.
Almost every application has full access to the registry. How secure is that? And yes, I know, you can limit user access and that will help while RUNNING the software, but the software needs to be installed as an administrator.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
C'mon, all you people with .sigs with your reason that keeps you off Windows.
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
1. Cost - I can't afford to buy 5 XP PROs, 5 Office XPs, and renew 5 Norton Antivirus licences every year for the 5 PCs I have in the house. I do have 2 out of the five running XP PRO (dual booting to XP) so me and my son can still play DirectX games.
2. Product Activation - this feature has really soured me to Windows but at the same time opened my eyes to Linux and OSS (OOo, Evolution, etc.).
Most people who have fled from windows cite all kinds of moral qualms about supporting "the man" or "ruining the world by making Bill Gates even more filthy rich." Not me. I mainly switched to OsX because I am fed up with windows problems and wanted more STABILITY. Don't get me wrong, I still have a WinBlows box for gaming, but my main system is my beloved all so sweet 12" Powerbook g4. I am a more than happy MAC user and can't imagine a reason why I would go back.
will spend hours happily screwing around with linux trying to get something to work correctly, and then bitch if he can't figure out how to do the same thing in Windows within minutes.
History is irrelvent in this case. What was is NOT what is.
The change is not good, and I'd have never argued to a statement of past tense.
But his post was in the present tense, and hence yesterday is irrelevant, if what he said isn't true today then his statement in the present tense is not true.
Although most of these ideals were never true, Ford is a good example. Ford had a good PR image, but Henry ford was a good example of man who was all about making money. Right up there with Ben Franklin and most of the others who pioneered in the foundations of the corporate world.
Hardware and driver compatibility. Nvidia chipset-based motherboards and ATi-based video cards do not play nice together. Not Linux's fault, but Nvidia's and ATi's. I got my motherboard and video card playing nice together (sort of), but the framerate was poor and as a result unplayable (compared to Windows, think 15-20 fps versus 30-35 fps).
The other problem is the lack of wide-spread adoption of Linux by game developers/companies. Yes, I know Unreal Tournament [200x] as well as many other games run on Linux. My main concern is MMOs. As is, most MMO companies only develop for Windows. I've dabbled with Wine to play games, but it isn't compatible with the latest advances. MMOs are (usually) constantly being updated.
And yes, I've tried many times on many occasions. After hours of trying to get Linux working the way I wanted, I got frustrated, and decided to dump it for Windows. This is one other thing that keeps others from switching to Linux: ease-of-use. If I had more time to spare, I'm sure I could get it work how I want, but time is precious to most. 5 years ago when I had no committments (wife, baby, full-time job), and wasting away 24 hours a day in front of the glowing orb of computation, I could've done it, would've done it. As is, I can't.
Same with sudo dumbass...
Windows is the anti-Perl. It makes the easy things hard and the hard things impossible. I think at the end of the day it all reduces to the fact that Microsoft doesn't understand the kind of things I want to do. If I wanted to write a paper using Word, it probably would mostly work, provided I wasn't too picky about formatting or layout. But if I'm writing a paper, I want detailed control - the kind of control TeX gives me. And most of the time I'm not writing papers at all - I'm writing code, cross-compiling it, and netbooting the result on some other system via RARP and TFTP. This kind of task, admittedly, is hard. But Unix makes it possible, while Windows makes it impossible. And every single piece of software you add to Windows (1a) costs money or (1b) sucks or (1c) more likely, both; (2) installs its own libraries over the system copies, destabilizing the system irreversibly, and (3) suffers from the second-worst user interface ever designed (only the 1-button MacOS7/8/9 interface is worse). The sad truth is that Microsoft has made a system so complex that no other vendor can produce reliable software for the platform; unfortunately, Microsoft's products with few exceptions suck so badly (or are nonexistent - find me a Microsoft RARP server) as to be useless.
The fact that thinking at the thing the wrong way makes it crash.
And that instead of a directory layout is 20 years less mature than unix systems, and that much flakier because of that.
Oh, and that it's security model would be utterly hilarious, if it wasn't so dangerous.
Or even that it's owned by a corporation that is out to enslave us all in an intellectual property sort of way.
I can even forgive the lack of a decent command line shell, and that the wizards insist I'm an idiot and that I don't know exactly how I want things to be.
Truly, the one thing for which there can be no excuse, no forgiveness, and no tolerance, is the lack of developer utilities. Even a 10 yr old that wants to learn to program would be forced to spend hundreds of dollars to do anything other than a dos batch file. It's even rumored that w2k was intentionally altered so that the free dos c compiler wouldn't run. Would it truly cost them anything to make a Visual Studio/C/Basic Hobbyist Edition? Just goes to show how evil the fuckers really are.
I hate its piss poor systems design. Everythings a damn gui, and the stupid thing crashes constantly.
As far as Linux goes, I simply love it. I love that everything just works. I love Windows Maker. I love XFree86. I love Mozilla Firefox, in all its speedy glory. I love not having to reboot every other day. I love Debian's apt-get. I love Red Hat/Fedora's easy as hell systems administration/UNIX on the cheap.
My wife loves not having viruses and adware. She also loves Window Maker and ROX-Filer.
My 4 year old hates windows and only wants to play GCompris and fiddle about in Gedit.
Most of all I love Linux because its fed my little family for 10 years.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
First of all, a little introduction to my environment. I primarily use Mac OS X (TiBook G4), and keep a Linux server running on the Internet somewhere. I use Solaris 2.6 at work (though it is now more or less a dumb-terminal for the Linux server).
What is unusual about me is that I actually grew up in the world of Microsoft. My first programming uses MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler) 2.0. I hacked the internals of MS-DOS, hacked the internals of Windows 95 when it came out (for the record, I also hacked Windows 2000 a bit later on). The internals (things like how to override system interrupt tables) were secrets that you don't find in many places. I read books written by other people who reverse engineered, and followed their examples to reverse engineer a lot of stuff. However, doing so violates the EULA. But what did I know? I was only 16. A stupid age.
I didn't find out anything about Unix (other than the fact that MS-DOS filesystem somewhat resembles it) until much later. I started using Cygwin on Windows 2000 and gradually became more dependent on the command line tools. One time, I messed up the system so bad, but I did fix it without reformatting my hard drive. It was more hacks through the registry and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. But then I decided to switch to Linux for something different.
At first, I kept a dual boot, but I just never switched back. So I eventually reclaimed the disk space too.
Linux was a very pleasant surprise to me, because everything I want to know (not necessarily I need to know) is available to me. I think that's a great beauty of free software. It's all about freedom of knowledge. I've spent too much youth doing reverse engineering, and I'm sick and tired of it (*). Also, as a yongster, I spent too much time on Windows downloading warez. We didn't have KaZaa back in those days. On Linux, everything I use is perfectly legitimate. And it's good enough for me.
(*) Incidentally, nowadays you can find more developer documentation about Microsoft products on MSDN website, which I would have very much liked earlier.
Now came Mac OS X. It's a nice hybrid of what Windows and Linux have to offer, at the same time. It has a nice UI, and it has the power of command line tools. You can configure a personal site using Apache through point and click (default in localhost/~user), or you can customize /etc/httpd/httpd.conf using vim or emacs. You can configure or compile a program from the command line, or you can use Project Builder (now Xcode) for a nice integrated development environment.
Nowadays I tend to use a lot of remote services like ssh (with X forwarding) or web applications, particularly because I usually keep my machines online, and then I go from one place to another without bring any computers with me. And it's a nice thing (very convenient) that I can use my computers without bring them around. It's what I call ubiquitous computing. I can do that without signing up to some ad-supported and soon-to-be-bankrupt free online services. I can setup whatever service that suit my purpose, instead of what some company thinks I need. Linux does that. Mac OS X does that. Windows is not quite there.
Even if you can run Apache on Windows, you know it never runs as good as on Unix because Apache is not designed for Windows. Even if you can run sshd with Cygwin on Windows, too many things just can't be done because Windows is not designed for sshd. There is Terminal Service for Windows, but you need a Windows Server edition to run it. But hey, I still want to use my machine as a desktop when I get home!
So if you want a punch line ... I use Mac OS X and Linux just because they work for me. I haven't used Windows for a good 3 years now, except where Windows machine is the only kind available to use, and I don't miss too much from it.
P.S., my friends are surprised when I'm able to remotely use my computer running Mac OS X or Linux from their Windows machine. I thank Microsoft and some third pa
I once had a signature.
Mac hardware is cheaper than PC hardware, if you consider that the Windows hardware is being used for Windows. I designed a custom PC at CompUSA that was comparable to the 17" iMac. I had to add over $900 in software to it to compare to the Mac out of the box. The PC was over $1100 more. You can get a complete Mac system with a DVD burner and good software to run it for less than that. Now consider that the Mac will last the average user 2-3 times as long as the PC. How exactly is the PC cheaper?
1. Constant crashes -- programs that crash should be programs crashing... not taking out the entire machine.
2. Active Exploit scripts that install spyware behind your back.
3. The inability to see what's going on behind the scenes, without decent process logging. Lack of logging capability for any/every service/process imaginable.
4. No opportunity to see the source code.
5. Spyware, viruses and exploits, OH MY!
6. License fees on a "rent as you go" basis.
7. Bill Gates has too much friggin' money already.
8. Microsoft killed Netscape, Digital Research, WordPerfect, Lotus, and is guilty of anti-competitive behavior to boot!
9. FAT and NTFS file systems.... need I say more???
10. Windows 98: We fixed the bugs. Windows 98SE: We fixed the bugs. Windows 2000: We fixed the bugs. Now, more secure than ever. Windows XP: The most secure MS OS ever!! Right.
1) Make sure you are running the correct / best driver for your particular video card
2) Make sure your partitions are all something like ReiserFS with optimally tweaked settings (distro's like mandrake do this automatically for you). DO NOT RUN EXT3, it will cause your whole system to run super slow!
Other things you can do....
- go thru your startup services and turn off unnessary services (also remove from boot time)
- buy more ram, the less swap space is accessed, the faster your system
- use only 7200 (or higher) speed hard drives
- don't use KDE or Gnome, instead go with fast (but familiar looking for windows user) GUI's like IceWM
There's probably more.
Meh.
I started using Unix in 1982 and have found it preferable to everything else I've encountered. I have always had Unix available at work, and since I first installed GNU/Linux in 1995, I've had it on my personal machines as well. So basically I've only used MS Windows (and before it, MS/DOS) on personal machines before I knew about Linux, and occasionally when I have used somebody else's machine or had to write something in MS Word or something like that.
Unix gave me a powerful, flexible system. The command-line is much more powerful than a GUI, with history, aliasing, shell scripts, file globbing, completion, shell variables, loops, and i/o redirection. The Unix philosophy of combining lots of little programs each of which does one job well is extremely powerful. The programming environment is superior, as are many of the individual tools, such as emacs and awk. X Windows from the outset was vastly superior to MS Windows, both because it ran over the network and in its configurability and lack of idiotic restrictions. As I recall, until fairly recently in MS Windows child windows were constrained to be positioned within the parent. Awful! All in all, I have always found Unix to be more powerful and flexible and generally easier to use.
The superiority of Unix documentation is also important. The five volume BSD manual set may not have been as easy going as "Windows for Dummies", but it provided the information I needed to do my work. The various books on Unix internals and programming, starting with the Lyons book, provided real insight that was impossible to get for MS Windows. Most of the time I also had the source, first with BSD, then with GNU/Linux, which both provided the ultimate documentation and allowed me to make modifications.
Being used to a stable and practically bug-free system, I was simply appalled when I discovered how unstable and buggy MS Windows was.
An added attraction of GNU/Linux is the associated community and the ideals of the FLOSS movement. Naturally, there is no such attraction to Microsoft. (I should note that merely being commercial and proprietary doesn't necessarily turn me or other people off. I'm sure that Im not alone in having fond memories of DEC, a company which we felt was on the side of technical people and willing to work with us. For example, when the Microvax came out, our DEC rep gave me a copy of the architecture manual. When a senior researcher from Xerox PARC saw it on my desk, he commented that he, a senior Xerox employee, could only get access to the comparable Xerox manuals on a need-to-know basis.)
Microsoft's disgusting monopolistic behaviour has certainly added to my unwillingness to use Microsoft products, but that is a relatively recent development and just adds to my long-standing technical dislike for MS Windows.
quite simply there is nothing I can't do on OS X that I can do on Windows.
Out of all the people on here who posted similar reasons to mine you picked me to respond to!
:)
Yes!! I've made it!!! I feel special.
"Beat" as in make a superior product or "Beat" as in repeatedly club in the head? Seeing as how you said MS was good at it, I'd guess it's the latter
Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
My new digital camera is a Vivitar. Windows found the drivers instantly.
With linux....I can see the camera, but I can't mount it. Although over time I found out that it uses SCSI, and a vfat filesystem.
Windows does stuff for you. Linux is for those who want to see and control every bit.
A Linux environment, to some extent, forces you to know and understand it. It isn't all point-n-click.
I'm responding to yours because you were funnier.
The issue was originally "is it morally right for a business to crush all the competitors? Isn't what what businesses are supposed to do?" The answer is that whether it's morally right to crush or not, it's stupid, and MS rarely does it. Netscape is still around, Apple is still around... Microsoft can take the best of their ideas and run with it.
It occurs to me that the word for this is hegemony. Empires don't work because they collapse. Hegemonies work better. it's the American Way. See current foreign policy regarding the cost of pacifying Iraq.
free as in freedom
It's more stable, and less buggy. any bugs or instability is at least predictable, unhidden, and fairly easily correctable.
"the work I need to do" doesn't revolve around "productivity" tools. I'm a technical person, and my tasks resolve around getting things done specifically with computers. having native tools such as bash, perl, and the standard unix utilities (as opposed to something like cygwin) is a necessity for such tasks.
things 'just work'. That doesn't mean that things work out of the box, necessarily. It means they work in a predictable manner. I don't consider stupid quirks (for example) such as losing my entire profile because the profile server is down as predictable.
I prefer a componentized, modular operating system design.
I like the academic nature of open source, where scratching an itch is much easier, as I can pull stuff from multiple projects.
I think it's rediculous to pay such copious amounts of money for base functionality of my hardware (ie, the OS).
the flexibility: nothing in the windows world rivals the obscene functionality and flexibility of ssh, bash, pipes, or any other number of UNIX-y things. maybe longhorn will be different, but... it still won't be unix.
the empowerment: unlike the corporate software environment, users have just as much ability to understand how a software package as the person that wrote it (reasonably speaking). this empowers users, allowing administrators to be more than simple "technicians", and to have actual creative and technical control over the machines they administer.
the users/culture: this ties in with "empowerment" - the users are clueful overall. It makes getting help for technical problems easier. there is a wonderful community which can only be coroded by the mainstreaming of linux: the Average User Quality Quotient will degrade the more hype and the easier linux is to migrate to 100%.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've never gotten the huge partisanship either way... and I never know if it's how I use computers or other people just have bad karma with this or that system. Apples always seem like home to me - other than the TRS 80 I had on long-term loan from a friend I started with IICs in grade school, mainly classic Macs in college, one of the pizza boxes at my first job at a nonprofit. When I started taking more conventional office jobs I needed to learn windows and did so. It's mostly worked fine for me. I have some basic box with Windows 2K at work, it doesn't crash, it works fine.
However I've known some true lemons in my day on the PC side. I think one issue is you may not get a consistent product like with Apple: it all depends on what else the manufacturer has loaded up on it. A clean install of just Windows from 98 on has never given me many problems.
On the other hand... up until a couple of years ago, the only computer I had at home was a Mac LCIII. It's battery was fried so everything constantly reset, it was slow and weak... yet I worked productively on it, even surfed the internet at 56K. I'm not sure a Windows box of similar provenance would manage to still be functional. Now I have a new iMac with OSX and I'm very happy with it. I've been using Safari, and there are little things I like - essentially, that it is more or less an Explorer clone with more privacy-centered presets, one step cache/history/forms clearing, and effective pop-up blocking on a top-level menu. The fact that MS doesn't get these kinds of features after so long says a lot about the failures of their software. Also, without a whole lot of knowledge of the nuts and bolts of digital music - the first time I put a CD into the iMac, stuff happened. iTunes was clear, easy, before I knew it I went from "never listened to an MP3" (seriously) to deep into ripping my whole collection and fiddling with playlists within a couple hours. I'd put CDs into a dozen Windows boxes at work and it never did anything but momentarily turn my computer into a (not very interesting) CD player. Now that I think about it, before the iMac and OSX I was less partisan... particularly after getting Jaguar, and hooking it to a broadband connection and my stereo, for the first time in my life there it's like I really get the point of having a computer.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Well, I am late to this discussion, and perhaps no one will see this, but here goes anyway.
I cannot start to list the put offs of Windows without listing what does keep me on Windows, for the time being.
Voice capability in Yahoo Messenger:
I have friends and family in several continents. Yahoo Messenger voice conferencing is a good and cost effective way to keep in touch with them. Before anyone mentions GnomeMeeting, the people on the other side already have Windows, and cannot use Linux (yet), and are happy with Yahoo. I would not recommend that they install NetMeeting (for voice) and Yahoo (for text, since GnomeMeeting text messaging is not compatible with NetMeeting).
Quicken:
Well, that one is obvious. Don't tell me GnuCash or SQL Ledger, since they do not come close. The only real competitor is MS Money, and I don't want to give Microsoft more money ...
Arabic Support in Browser:
Microsoft has cornered that market a while back. They turned a blind eye to piracy, until all the young geeks got addicted to their development tools, and the end users using only Windows. And then, they indocrinated web developers in their technologies so that even open standards for the web, and the separation of back end server and front end browser cannot be done. The result is that there are several high profile sites that are written in ASP, and use ActiveX ...etc, and work only well in MS IE. They also drove competitor Arabization companies (Sakhr) out of business since the Windows 3.1 days (IIRC).
Having said that, now we come to the put offs, and there are plenty of those:
Viruses/Worms/Trojans:
That one should be obvious.
Cost:
Windows cost money. And keeping up to date means shelling bucks every other year or so. Not to mention the added cost of anti virus software.
Speed:
My digital camera pictures are dumped on the server, and is shared using both Samba (for Windows) and NFS (for Linux). The pictures just load so much faster in Linux, and the preview of the directory with "Large Icons" in Linux is much faster than "Thumbnails view in Linux".
I am seriously thinking of dumping Windows completely in the near future, except for one PC on Windows for Quicken and Voice chat. Konqueror Arabic capabilities are very very good now. Even better than FireFox on Windows! We are getting there, albeit slowly.
Out of 5 computers at home (one for me, one as a server, one for the wife, and one for each kid), only one is pure Windows, and the rest are all either 100% Linux or dual boot. The kids (early teens) are happy with Open Office for homework, Konqueror for browsing (even works with neopets with flash plugin), and GAIM for chatting (no voice though, but works great!)
By the way: Open Office is a great product, whether on Linux or on Windows. It has saved me buying MS Office for the kids, and a better way to do homework and reports than WordPad (free alternative to Word processing). Kudos to them for such an excellent product.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Microsoft broke the law. I feel that the government did not appropriately dispense justice. I feel betrayed as a consumer and a citizen of the United States of America.
They used their Monopoly to illegally leverage their inferior products and flood the marketplace. I now have a hard time finding a job in the computer field where I do not have to deal with these products. The hope and enthusiasm I had as a child for a career in the computer industry has been ruined.
Thank you OSS community for all of your hard and often thankless work. One day your efforts will help to make the world a better place and rid the world of this painful nonsense once and for all. I don't just want to avoid Microsoft, I want to see them ousted before I die. Give 'em hell OSS!
In 1996, I finally caved in and went from WFW3.11 to Windows95. 1 month later my monitor died. 3 months later with no computer in the interim I switched over to OS/2 Connect Version 3, and eventually to Linux in '97 which I have stayed with ever since then I have flipped distributions from Redhat to Slackware to some LOAFs and finally onto Debian which is what I run on just about everything today I can go to http://www.knoppix.com and download an iso of a fully operating Linux distro complete with a GUI on a bootable CD. These things rule because you can test it on a system first to see how well it will handle Linux. If you want to test Windows, you need to get one of those activation keys these ddays which cost a buttload of money, on top of which your system will turn into a spamwh0re! As quoted earlier (and I still scrutinize the number), 80% of Windows PC's on the internet are the cause and spreader of SPAM and virii. I don't have to worry about some corporation trying to play catchup with the worm that was released 20 minutes ago when I will more likely have a patch for the problem in about 5 minutes.
BSODs
GP Faults
STOP Errors
If the OS cant be stable.......
is that with as many comments as people have posted, they aren't nearly as repetitive as one might think. It's utterly amazing how many legitimate issues there are with Windows, and I'm certain we haven't even come close to touching on them all even after 1000+ comments.
... sigh... I could go on and on, there really doesn't seem to be any end to the issues of this OS. I think the biggest problem is most users today simply do not know how much better things could be because they've never seen any alternative.
A few that come to mind for me include:
* The help system is downright insulting. How many times have you been presented with a checkbox of options and pressed the help key only to get instructions on the proper procedure to click a check box? Is that what Microsoft intended to dedicate the F1 key for? "To select one of the options click on the box" - Jesus!
* With few exceptions (i.e. Eudora), most applications take a Borg-like approach towards installation, assimilating themselves so deep into the OS that you can't ever remove them, and you most certainly can't copy an app from one directory to another (a common and painless procedure in Unix) without making the whole thing break, or worse, crashing the OS.
* And of course, every person who installs any new program has the added anxiety of wondering if the new application:
a) Will even install properly without freezing up
b) Won't disable or break other applications
c) Run rampant with unrequested file associations
d) Install some unnecessary "startup agent" that hogs memory and contacts the mothership
* I don't know a single Windows user who hasn't had to run Windows at least twice to get a proper installation, or any Windows user who hasn't at one point or another had to completely wipe their hard drive and start over when some ill-behaved application took the whole OS down with it. I have NEVER had to do this with any flavor of Unix.
* Users even live in fear of Microsoft Update, wondering if the next patch to fix their system will actually break it.
* Two words: memory leaks! They're everywhere, and nobody really seems to ever be able to fix things to the point where any decent continued use of the system doesn't eventually require a reboot to make the system not run like dog shit after awhile.
* Speaking of reboots... why? You don't need to do reboots with Unix except in the most major/dire of circumstances. Under Windows, 95% of most software, plugins or anything require a reboot.
* No symlink. Such a simple, wonderful feature of Unix that would obviously make Microsoft's OS's explode and throw shrapnel at the user.
* No respect for software autonomy. Microsoft's desire is to be everything to everybody. As a result each new iteration of their OSes tends to be more bloated and bundled with tons of crap you don't want, don't need, or can't extricate from the OS to make it run efficiently.
* No respect for develoeprs. Any developer for Microsoft OSes has to safely assume that each new version of their OS might completely put an end to their software's ability to run, versatility, performance and everything else. There's a reason why there's better quality software for the Unix community: no self-respecting developer that really cares about the future of his code wants to subject his work or himself to the uncertain future that lies ahead when developing apps under Windows platforms.
Myself and a friend of mine both came from the DOS world. We both developed commercial software. When Windows came along, I went to Unix; he went to Windows. I have systems I configured 8 years ago that are still going strong and doing their job; I have software programs that were written 9 years ago that are still viable and marketable today and in use online. OTOH, he's had to completely rewrite his code countless times; he's constantly battling with customers over tech support issues that are beyond his control, that don't have to do with his software. Sounds fun.
In every situation I would LOVE a linux laptop, I am reminded why I haven't switched every workstation I have to linux... Driver support. I have tried four different wifi configurations... and the only one I can get to work I have to disable hotplug to do so. I hate compiling my kernel just to get a stupid driver unavailable in the default config, and NOT easy to configure. Very little automatic resource configuration... X11 needs work, as does the default configuration tools for it, I'm tired of digging through monitor manuals to find the right freqs... Apt/yum has squelched my worries about system dependencies a great bit... but every once in a while I still need to go digging for an obscure dependency. Games... my wife's system will probably never have linux installed because of the games issue. Heck, how can I justify not being able to play a game recently released on my gaming machine?
I love my L.A.M.P. I love the insane uptimes I get on my webservers, firewalls, fileservers, mailservers and DNS servers... but they don't need a special soundcard driver that takes 3 different kernel compiles to get to make any noise.
The first reason is the printer protocol. In EVERY version of Windows from 95 to XP, it takes at least 2 minutes to cancel a print job. I want to kill it.
The second reason is that when things die you usually can't view an error log or any diagnostic information; not to mention run them under a debugger.
And finally, I get fed up after fixing Windows for everyone else.
Active windows INSIST on being on top. I may want to be reading in one window, and typing in another, partially obscured window.
Click to change focus. Default should be focus follows mouse. I can't figure out how to change this. From what I can tell it is not possible without addon software.
DOS command shell is pathetic.
Windows, and all programs designed for Windows, are constantly popping up some modal dialog window requiring user attention for some bullshit. That does not lend itself to automation. Programs for Windows are invariably designed as if to be run with the user sitting in front of the machine. That is a poor assumption to make.
There are virtually no programs with the base OS, you have to buy everything. Not even a C compiler is standard equipment.
Most programs INSIST on a particular font and size of font, instead of being configurable.
DOS windows are not generally resizeable in a useful manner.
Selecting text in a DOS window with the mouse is not done with intelligence, instead a rectangle of text is selected... I want lines of text, not a rectangle of text you idiot.
Cutting and pasting of text is inconsistent with the DOS command window and all other programs.
It's not case sensitive. (That's right, I LIKE case sensitivity.)
Documentation is horrible. you will often have NO idea what a particular *.EXE file is for.
Filename extensions are significant.
Remnants of the 8.3 character filename convention still persist.
GUI is required to do anything with the machine, there's not a standard equivalent to ssh. You can't really have a machine with no graphics card and no monitor.
It's dog slow -- so many unnecssary features (menus fading in/out instead of just popping up, etc.)
I could go on, but basically it just sucks.
Windows machines are not really multi-user. Multi-tasking yes, multi-user, no.
Number one reason why I hate windows: Windows programmers migrating to linux and bringing their horrible windows notions and preconceptions with them, wrecking linux by making it do things "just like windows" as if that's the best way.
We all know Windows degrades with time and we all now that you get infected with trojans/viruses/worms pretty easily.
So reinstalling from time to time is the normal/healthy thing to do.
Well guess what? After the eight time (I think) it just won't let me install again.
That is for *both* my Windows XP CDs (laptop and desktop). Which over the 4 years or so I've reinstalled it 7-8 times.
So its not what is keeping me OFF windows, is windows keeping me OFF itself.
Having said that whenever I have to use it - be it at a friends place or internet cafe. The annoyances are:
- Application crashes no matter what (from MS products to non-ones) and when they do - they insist in say corrupting the file you are working on so that you lose everything
- The hunger for processing is stupid. Shame you don't get more games for Linux. But I find whatever native games there are: Enemy Territory or Unreal is 5x better and 20x more stable than in Windows XP
- Just today I needed something printed off a colour printer. Went to this college they had this brand computer with Norton-Anti Virus. For some reason they coudn't connect to the internet. It was a virus. So it's that easy to get infected no matter what.
- Browsing the Internet: no forced dial-up installation or any such malicious scripts.
- Free programs contains no spywares. Unlike say your Kazaa
- You can easily let your friends and relatives use it and relax (it will come back intact).
I miss less and less packages on Windows. Gimp 2.0 is pretty good for me now as are many of Linux alternative. I see my self ever so relaxed when using a computer now (running Mandrake) - but use to get very tense whenever I had to long onto Windows (even before I knew about Linux).Window users are real Masochists!!
What keeps me off windows? The fact that I cannot have the equivalent of, for example, 160x60 framebuffer virtual consoles! Sure, I can run rxvt or any number of term emulators, but that's not the same thing. Sure I can get 80 column dos modes. But can I get 160 column modes? If I could, I would probably run windows + cygwin more than I do.
There's something fundamental about the linux console, it's simply the most efficient console available, and I can't live without it -- not even on Linux (where framebuffer console sometimes doesn't work, which is hasn't for some of my cards since 2.6)
Anyway, Windows doesn't have anything to compare with VC's at all. And it doesn't have anything like the highly efficient framebuffer consoles, or like SVGATextMode (which I miss terribly).
That's what keeps me off windows.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There's no good software it
1) The OP was talking about running software without *any* special permissions. Just put the binary in ~/bin and you're good.
/etc/sudoers however.
2) Sudo does not require the administrator password. Just your own password to verify your identity. The admin must put you in
3) Dumbass
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
JJ Ramsey == Bill Gates. Duuummm. Duumm. Dum.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Dragging the disk to the trash/recycle can always seemed
... godDAMN it's amazing how much time that one feature can save a simple developer...
In OS X, when you grab an ejectable volume, your Trash disappears. In its place appears an eject button, like the one you describe.
And when you grab a blank CD volume on which you've placed files (actually handled as a disc image, but this is transparent to the user), the trash is replaced with a nuclear symbol, the system-wide icon for "burn disk".
what about a button on the case labeled "Eject?"
Uhh... it's on the keyboard, dude. This is easier to reach. F12 works if you have a 3rd-party keyboard.
Wake up, Toto! We're not in 1999 anymore, but you're complaining about the limitations of that era's Macintoshes.
It's 2004 and Apple's UI engineers are still half a decade in front of everyone else. Check out Expose, for example
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Interestingly enough, reductions in product quality result in a brief spike in profits, then a steady decline down to a lower equilbrium point as customers get angry that they're purchasing inferior goods. The sad thing is that usually the company that sells the higher quality product goes out of business before people catch on.
These all fundementally cause a business to stop making a profit, and that's why the business fails.
Just as I always prefer to use the right hand tool(s) or a given type of test equipment for a specific job (matching the tool to the job, as it were), I also prefer to work the same way where computers are concerned.
.... different .... enough to depend on Windows-based servers for Internet apps often ask me why I feel this way. The arguments they present are that Windows is 'perfectly secure' if I keep it patched and updated, and that "any server can do with an occasional reboot."
;-)
For end-user workstations: I have no issue with Windows from W2000 on down. I will NOT use Windows (X)tra (P)ain under ANY conditions due to the many inherent 'spyware' features and its ridiculous "Product Activation" crap. Why should I EVER have to ask the Redmond Empire for its blessing when I change out hardware or apps?
For intranet (not connected to the Internet) servers: Again, no problem with Windows, but I stopped updating when I got to Windows NT Server 4.0, SP6A. W2K Server is simply too bloody complex and bloated to do the simple things I require our LAN servers to do.
For Internet-connected servers: I would NEVER trust such a box to Bill-ware under ANY conditions due to security and stability issues. Don't even get me started on licensing costs. For 'net-connected servers, I rely on NetBSD and open-source software, exclusively.
Those who are
My response is to tell them the story of what happened with our web server (a SPARC box running NetBSD and Apache) when my wife and I went on vacation one year. Within 24 hours of our departure, the hard drive in the SPARC failed. The OS could no longer write to it, though reading was not an issue.
Despite this, that wonderful little SPARCstation kept right on serving up web pages, keeping our site alive, for THREE DAYS until I got back and was able to rebuild it. As near as I can tell, it would have kept going even longer if I had let it.
After their eyes quit bugging, I tell them that I defy anyone to find me a Windows-based server that can survive as our SPARC box did, AND KEEP WORKING even though its hard drive is half-kaput.
I've yet to get any sort of coherent answer in response.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Microsoft doesn't know when to stop, they don't see the virtue in keeping things simple, and they don't modularize their system well.
UNIX and Linux have a simple, stable core set of APIs and utilities. They were designed right once in the 1970's and they have held up to this day. And when featuritis strikes Linux implementors (as it does, from time to time), it is usually self-limiting: supposedly great new kernel features that nobody needs or wants don't get maintained and disappear quickly. That's the advantage of having the market decide what features should be in an OS.
Microsoft is on a constant quest trying to prove how "innovative" they are and adding new checklist items to their marketing brochures in order to justify selling upgrades. Windows has become a playground for "technologists" to keep pushing half-thought out and useless features onto a marketplace that neither needs nor wants them. And unlike Linux, the market has little say: what goes out with a Windows release is centrally planned at Microsoft, and Microsoft has enough technically meek customers that will start using something just because Microsoft tells them it's good for them, whether they actually need it or not. Finally, because Microsoft is under severe time-to-market pressures, stuff gets added in the quickest way possible and it doesn't usually get redone if it was done wrong the first time around.
(Well, there are also issues of cost, business practices, and stability with Windows, but those are secondary to the deep philosophical problems I have with Windows.)
I wonder how many Microsoft Employees come here checking Slashdot and posting Anonymously.
;)
Of course the above 5 points are complete BS.
with point number 4: telling me everything I need to know
My second guess he is an offshore worker
Sponsored by none other than:
The prices will skyrocket.
Yes I know I'm being off topic, but hey, I don't see any trolling in this message. I hope it's a mistake.
- Voice of Ambience -
This is an unpopular opinion around here, but getting Linux workin on my desktop was a royal pain. I had a weird sound card that took weeks to configure correctly, and I'm not too fond of compiling nvidia drivers either. Oh, and I had to recompile my kernel because god forbid redhat put NTFS read support in there by default.
:)
*whew*
Now that I've gotten that off of my chest, the reason I use Linux on my desktop is that, once it's set up, it runs like a dream. For one thing, I like the multiple desktops feature. I've noticed that something like this is in XP, but it's not nearly as full-featured.
Also, if I'm going to be staring at a computer screen for hours on end (like I do at work), it damn well better look good. Linux supports antialiasing of small fonts, whereas Windows does not (or has this changed now?). Another thing is that Linux gracefully lets me crank up the resolution and make my fonts bigger. GTK and Qt are both designed from the ground up to have scalable window and font sizes. The majority of Linux gui apps support this very well. Windows apps, on the other hand, tend to look really funny when you increase the size of the window fonts.
Also, Linux is unbeatable when it comes to multimedia stuff, such as viewing videos. MPlayer or RealPlayer? MPlayer or Media Player? MPlayer or QuickTime? The prosecution rests.
Then there's the spyware. Free/Open Source Software is basically immune to that, whereas on Windows you have to check the thing for spyware every time you install an application. Oh, and don't even get me started on viruses.
Yeah, I think that's about it. I still have a win2k partition that I run games on. For the most part, though, I avoid it.
In 1988 I was working on a contract to Lotus. Our very small team was developing an outline-based technical word processor called Lotus Manuscript. I sat between the two principal developers - on one side, Dave wrote the document editor - on the other side Scott wrote the layout engine and print formatter.
I worked on the project for 3 years and rarely did anything related to word processing. My job was to overcome the limitations of the Operating System (made in Redmond). This was pre-NT, so I got to write an overlay manager, a dynamic linking loader, virtual memory manager, window manager, menu system, and libc abstraction that avoided all the bugs in the Microsoft C library.
In October 1988 Steve Jobs came to Cambridge for the east coast introduction of the NeXT Computer. In his keynote address, he put forth the statistic that current application developers spent 70% of their time developing the UI and and compensating for weaknesses in the OS. That left the remaining 30% to write the actual business logic that made the application unique. His promise was that the NeXT Computer, coupling the rock solid Unix OS and NeXT's object-oriented development frameworks and Interface Builder application, would knock that 70% effort down to 10%. 10% effort to develop the UI, 90% to do the business logic. It allowed us to write better apps, faster.
I walked away from DOS and Windows development that day. I started using NeXTstep 0.8 in 1989, and continued developing apps for NeXTstep, OpenStep, Mac OS X, Unix, and Linux to this day. When I was using NeXTstep (or OpenStep) while all the other developers around me used Windows or Solaris, they laughed at me. But when their Windows boxes are decimated with 256 different worms, trojans, and viruses, I'm the one laughing. When Microsoft randomly changes, obsoletes or replaces some API for no apparent reason, they get to go back and rewrite their code.
Although I have 2 Windows machines, and a Linux machine, Mac OS X is still my preferred development and user platform. Now that Macs are "fashionable" again. I get the last laugh.
Of course, being this far back, no one's going to see my comment. But I feel like pitching in my two cents anyway. Or ten cents, if you will (I'm an Apple fan).
I could talk about Microsoft's business practices, which are sure to bring an end to software innovation if successful. I could talk about security holes and the downfall of the Internet as we know it. I could talk about intellectual property concerns and the death of 'sharing' material.
But my bottom line is that Windows, and everything else Microsoft makes, is just plain shoddy. Obfuscating and lazy UI, shitty operation organization - and this is to say nothing of unintended problems.
Glog!
While I've programmed for and used Windows for quite some time, I recently switched to both Apple's MacOSX and Linux. Although I have myself experienced DLL hell, et. al. with Windows from both an end-user and developer perspective, I don't think there was just one thing that sent me to Mac OSX/Linux. One major determining factor that wasn't technical was Microsoft's business practices which stifle creativity not only in the software market at large but also in their own organization.
I switched to the mac os last summer and have no regrets of it at
all. Mainly, I was tired of the constant updates, windows nags (you know that evil little search engine dog?) and having my new hardware and software not work. Apple stuff JUST WORKS!! It's easy, it's efficient and I couldn't be happier. I still use windows for my home file server and stuff like my old dos games, but that's about it. All of the latest games that are actually worth buying like call of duty come out for mac very shortly after their windows counterparts. And also with some of the technologies and stuff in mac os x panther, I have found it to be true that microsoft IMITATES rather than INNOVATES.
Within a year of buying my first PC, I'd learnt everything I needed or wanted to know about DOS and Windows. That was in 1993-1994. Then I discovered linux.
Since 1994, I'm still learning. What more could you want?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
"On Windows, if I want to eject my iPod or my camera, I have to click unplug device. Then I have to click the device i want to unplug. Then I have to select the device. Then it tells me I'll also be turning off the filesystem on the drive (duh). Then is asks if I'm sure. Then it tells me it ejected okay."
Since Windows XP, most flash devices are mounted in a mode where they can just be unplugged. I can unplug my camera in Windows without doing *either* of the above.
That's what Microsoft is aiming for. Don't worry, just unplug it.
Most of all the incredibly pitiful Windows' user interface. I can't get used to to the lack of workable virtual desktops (yeah, I tried them all), window autoraise, the multitude of useful behaviour customizations that X offers, or network transparency. Has anyone ever thought of how amazingly screwed up the simple process of copying and pasting text between applications is in Windows compared to X?
Just yesterday my (new) office mate asked "what??" when I mentioned autoraise casually. When I showed him my Linux desktop (a very simple, conservative, old-fashioned one) and its capabilities he was duly impressed.
And, of course, the lack of applications and tools comes close second.
Why should I? I went through the whole charade with Win3.1, 95, 98 and ME. I see nothing added to the table now except snazzier (to some people) graphics and more junk added that doesn't *do* anything. Not to mention the recent flood of spyware and viruses .. why *would* you use windows?
I became interested in Linux when I worked for an ISP and some of my tech support friends hijacked my laptop and put Mandrake 6.1 on it. I was hooked within about 6 hours (even though I broke it in less than 3. Lesson learned: DON'T use root for everyday tasks. This was before the installers reminded you about that.) I ended up using Debian untill switching to OS X 3 years ago.
I switched to Debian because of apt-get and I switched to OS X because I liked the magnification effect of the dock. Trivial reasons maybe, but I've never looked back. When I want to nerd-out on OS X, I pop open Terminal & Fink and away I go (running KDE or GNOME on top of OS X is just too much fun.) When I want to just relax and have fun, OS X hides it all for me and the simplicity of the Mac comes out. Windows is worst of both worlds; a crappy GUI that wasn't improved in XP, instability, a goofy filesystem, no ssh-ing in (go *nix), constant reminders, the list goes on.
As a side note, I hadn't used windows in about 3 years until I got an iPaq a few months ago, with of course pocketpc (or pocket windows, whatever.) Sometimes WiFi doesn't work, sometimes Bluetooth doesn't work and windows tells you to please perform a soft reset to fix the problem. Suddenly it all came back to me why I switched in the first place. Only in the m$ world is this acceptable behavior for a computer environment.
Not to mention that m$ has abhorrent business practices, crummy software, joke security, underhanded marketing tactics and absolutely no morals whatsoever.
only windows keeps me off windows. it's such a worthless piece of crap OS. for LOSERS that is. i am happy with a couple of real osses (arrogantly called "alternatives" by windows lusers ... alternative to what ? to sucking satan's cock ?)
As equipment ages, it doesn't keep up with the requirements of the latest microsoft o/s, or even the bells & wistles of the newer non microsoft window managers. I've got a :
* P100 as a firewall (smoothwall)
* AMD 300 as a test web server (apache)
* celeron 500 as web/file/print server(apache/samba).
Using something other than windows I get: better support, better products, better price.
I found a bug in samba once, and had a patched solution within a fortnight, with the patch incorporated into the next release.
I have a bug in MS office, and despite installing all patches, having support from a Microsoft partner, and even upgrading to the latest version of office, I can not get the Microsoft bug fixed.
Check this out.
.Net. No luck. So I ordered Windows recovery CDs from IBM. (The CDs don't come with the laptop.)
.Net projects yet.
I received a new IBM Thinkpad when I started a new job. It was preloaded with Windows XP. I asked permission to put Linux on it; they didn't mind. So I tried to set it up to dual-boot, but apparently Windows has a special partition table that I didn't know about, and I managed to make Windows unbootable. I even destroyed the restore partition by accident.
I tried every tool I could find to get Windows working again because some projects at work are using
Meanwhile, I set up Gentoo with the latest kernel, hundreds of neat applications, OpenOffice, Xinerama, etc... Linux is better than ever on this hardware. Development is going well, though I can't work on the
Now I've been waiting for the recovery CDs for a month, all the while enjoying the competition immensely. They say the CDs are on back-order. So I guess a support problem is keeping me off Windows, but I'm right now I'm pretty glad to have this problem!
Use Zope!
<rant>
Yeah well if I want to connect up to the net I have to make sure I have a firewall (not a supplied application), and a current virus detector (not supplied) and patches patches and more fsckin' patches ... all the time hoping I don't get creamed by Sasser or Blaster. THEN I have to get a new email client cos Outlook is total shit! Then better to get a browser without cobwebs and worm holes in it something like Firefox or Opera or Moz. Then I have to install an Office package while not blowing my budget, then if I want to do any development I have to search on the net for a compiler / interpreter. It doesn't even come with a decent text editor .. geees! OK ... and THEN if you have any trouble with drivers you're screwed. And did I tell you my current install of Win2K is degrading ? Well yeah its getting 'old windows disease' ... funny don't remember any unices acting like this. In fact my other partition with RH9 is perfectly fine and it is used far more often than Win2K.
I tolerated MS stuff in the old days of DOS cos dos was always hackable (and it desperately needed a lot of help), but windows isn't easily fixable.
Windows is simply bad karma.
</rant>
Ahh ... feel better now.
Bitter and proud of it.
Yes, that's right. You get a stupid error message and there's virtually no way to find out what is going on. So there was a network error. Details? Windows is not used exclusively by Dummies, you know? Why is there no way to get more info, like a real syslog (and not this sad excuse they call event log).
There's also the fact the influence you can exercise over the system in general is extremely limited. Theres a few secret registry settings you can fiddle with, but that's it. I recommend continueing to use windows to a lot of dummy users, but I loathe to help them with computer problems because it means having to fiddle with an OS that doesn't communicate with you.
There's a lot of other important things - no really usable shell, no compiler, no extensive collection of tools, you name it.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
MacOS X.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
On top of that, using a non-Windows operating system (Mac OS X in my case) has made me far more reselient against worms, spam and virusses, thus increasing my happiness. Not to mention the superior Photoshop experience... Photoshop really was built with the MAC in mind... it blows Photoshop on Windows out of the water.
Once I stepped off of that jingling merry-go-round called Windows and started playing on tux's swingset, I realized that Microsoft was stabalizing the software world. At first glance that looks like a good thing...and it was. But the stabilization hasn't stopped and we are fast approaching the doldrums of computer operating systems if Microsoft continues in its monstrous stride towards a single imperfect operating system. For that will be the result if windows remains king. One OS shall rule them all. And Frodo (played by Linus or whoever creates the best OS) will have to smite the Window in Mordor, under the Eye of Sauron (played by Billy G). And then there will be much rejoicing.
One of the problems, in my opinion, is that when a business goes public, "mission statements" and all of that go right out the window. It becomes soley and entirely about money. That's just the way it is. After that point, it's almost futile to blame the CEO for the way the business is run. Think of Nike's experience with sweatshops. Yes, Phil Knight let it happen. But could he stop it now, even if he wanted to? No. If he suddenly "got ethics", he would be replaced within 24 hours with someone who didn't. It 's a slippery slope- when you start down the road with something like what Microsoft has done, nothing on Earth is going to stop it. People will be put in place to do what has to be done to make money, pure and simple. Bill Gates doesn't answer to Bill Gates. He answers to extremely wealthy, powerful men and women who want to stay that way. His involvement is inconsequential as long as the money keeps flowing.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
I used to work for Clorox and a marketing person explained that if a new, better bleach came along, it really wouldn't change anything for a long time. People will buy Clorox because their Mom and Dad bought Clorox.
And so it is with Windows. I use Windows. Why? Because I don't have a reason to change -- the risk inherent in change is too high of a cost and there is no benefit that Linux and Apple have that could justify that cost. Even if Linux was perfect and could do everything, I still wouldn't change for a long time. Marketing people have known this for years.
So geek on about how great Linux is. You're probably right, but it's irrelevant.
Had Microsoft bought Napster and cut a deal with RIAA, it would have been all over for everybody else.
gewg_
Why the hell are you comparing Mac OS X/Apple to Windows/Microsoft ?
This is a story about Linux.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
Oops, this post got me wrong :
c id =9371087
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=110435&
I was about to get mad..
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
When i first looked at Redhat 6.0, i saw a very powerfull system. (Compared to the rotten Win98 crap we used then) Later on i learned about the whole story. I learned about the GNU in GNU/Linux, an why the freedoms free software gives are more than important. Windows?... Well the license forbids me to use it, since i clearly don't agree with they're license. Besides Windows comes from a box, GNU/Linux comes from a community... :)
I use BSD on my servers, and WinXP on my desktops. BSD does a better job of hosting my domain names and web sites, handling my email, and securing my perimeter. XP provides a dead easy to use desktop, with wider peripheral support (and game support).
Nothing I've read in this thread has convinced me that Windows would do a better job on my servers, nor that BSD would do a better job on my desktop. That's for today, who knows about tomorrow.
I think I'm fairly typical of tech-literate computer users. What makes me atypical of /. users is that I can't get sufficient rabid about one platform or the other.
No-one twists your arm to religiously stick to a PS/2 or GameCube or PC for your gaming needs. Why then do we have to choose a single platform to host our other applications and services. Horses for courses.
To be fair, you can also use the file explorer and select "Eject" in the device's contextual menu - just like one uses "Unmount" on Gnome.
Unplugging an unmounted USB device is no problem.
blah
I got started on a number of platforms (DOS, Atari, C=64, etc.) but I quickly was drawn to the complexity and finesse of UNIX. Getting sucked up by the Linux torrent I eventually made a career and found many reasons along the way to not focus on a Microsoft platform. While most of the operating system technical reasons are no longer valid the UI reasons still are. I've essentially made a career in telecom and UNIX and I'll probably continue in that vein until I find a better platform or am required to learn another one.
I mostly stick to Linux and MacOS X these days and when I have to use Windows I find the interface cumbersome not to mention slow. If necessary I can write a shell script or some other program quickly on these platforms while on Windows I do not have the same flexability. Because telcom is still very administration based I find use of simple tools like sed and awk to be my own standard, using these tools in cygwin almost always proves to be a crash course in something strange.
Depending on the level of computer science you apply I don't have any real qualms with Windows these days. Suffice to say I don't care for it. If I have to use it I'll use it - but it's not first on my list. I haven't owned a Windows system at home in years and really doesn't care to either.
A lot of people complain about Microsoft's business practices without thinking of the scale that they live in. I'm an engineer and I know how easy standards get fiddled with - claiming standards seem dumb anymore. Anyone who faults Microsoft by saying that they are out to get money and not contribute to the ideological good of the world has missed the point of capitalism and should probably evaluate the corporate soul-sucking monster that they work for prior to casting the first stone at Microsoft.
I've come to the point where I realize that computers are really just about numbers and math, even if it's cool or gee wiz, or information, or whatever it really doesn't matter because next year there will be something better and what is this year will seem so out of date by that time that you can hardly stomach thinking about it.
So honestly there isn't much holding me back from Microsoft - but really there isn't anything compelling me to Microsoft either. I find that age-old products that I end up preferring due to my curmudgeonly nature have rivaled most of their products for my purposes.
But that's just me...
(this post spell and grammar checked in microsoft word v.x / macosx )
I just do not need any Windows software, so why should I pay for it?
Unreal Tournament runs on Linux and FreeBSD. TeX does. vi does. And gimp does. So just why?
After well over a decad on PC, I became a minor Windows expert. It made me a useful guy wherever I went. Then, I experienced OS X. All of a sudden all the time I spent maintaining my PC (and the cohort of PCs at work) seemed so stupid. So, I bought myself a Powerbook, and my PC has been collecting dust since. OS X offers a vastly superior GUI, infinite tweakability, a rational design, a Unix implementation that allows me to run oodles of useful software (LaTex is great for equations). And, thanks to Fink, I don't have to do much work to install the *nix software. iPhote, iMovie, and iSync are all great. iTunes and my iPod have essentially supplanted my Harman-Kardan stereo system. I have MySQL and PHP running flawlessly on my Powerbook, and this allows me to keep nice backups of everything I put on the web. The list of reasons is endless. In short, in comparison with OS X (and with Linux and BSD), Windows is just primitive. P
"...who search the reason of things
Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves." --Euripides, The Medea
You buy two computers, A and B. Each comes with Windows. A dies, you buy computer C. Can you install the Windows for A onto C? Legally? Don't know? Well, you'd better, because Bill will send you to jail if you get the wrong answer. Can you install Windows D onto computer D using the product key from Windows E? Guess again! Threats. I can live without the threats. I live a deliberately low-stress lifestyle and I don't want to live with Bill pointing a gun at my head.
It's very simple: choice
;)
Linux/BSD gives me the choice to do what I want with my computer. Nobody can EOL my software and nobody decides how things should work on my computer.
In other words: I'm free to paint the bikeshed whatever color I want.
Though I do tend to like the color on the FreeBSD bikeshed
After all, Mr. Bill's Software Co. had to be sued to make the Alpha release of NT, and they still won't make an OS for other architectures.
1) The Cost. I have 8 computers, 3 of which are servers(7 of the 8 are here in my house) No why would I want to pay $200 (The cost of Win XP Pro, as home has annoying issueswith PDC's and networks) per computer and $600+ per server for an OS when I can do everything I want for free? 2) Stability. I like being able to leave my servers running 24x7x365 WHy would I want to have to reboot them on a regula basis when I don't have too. And for the uptime quotes check out www.netcraft.com 3) Security. Encrypted filesystems built into NTFS yet? Not having to worry about Microsoft saying stupid programs are "Security Fixes" like msn messenger (What's up with that). Not having OUtlook/Outlook Express Automatically opening every piece of mail by default. Not Having my word proccessor trying to infect the computer using macros by default. (Yes I know you can disable these things, but if microsoft were security minded they would come isabled by default) 4) Application Costs. There are lots of Applications that come with most Linux Distros that you would have to pay for the euivilent on Windows. 5) GUI. I use Windowmaker, I don't like KDE or Gnome becuase they are System Hogs, and WIndows is even worse. I like th fact that the total running size is anywhere from 3-8MB's. Also, it is fast, simple, and straight forward. 6) System Resources. My servers are Dual P2 266 & 300MHz machines with 2MB PCI Video Cards, I like the server OS to be usableNot slow as Molasses on a winter morning. Win XP Pro says it will run on 300MHz, but have yu ever tried? You could sleep as long as it takesto boot, and then watch all your CPU Cycles go towards Windows itself. Win2K Server is not much better.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
These are not directly fixable by myself, world needs to move along. In the meantime, I practice patience & PHP :)
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Ok, it is cheating but Cygwin has a very nice implementation of ssh/sshd. Sure enough, it isn't Linux underneath but it makes your system more manageable.
See my journal, I write things there
Post as a user and then we'll talk.
Windows is too expensive!
> What keeps you off of Linux?
:) Xandros business. I've been considering going back to Windows. Admittedly, whenever I'm in Windows I spend *all* of my time in either (1)firefox, (2)thunderbird or (3)putty sessions to linux consoles that are remote or running under vmware on the same box.
I'm using linux atm
The Windows UI is still significantly better than linux in ways that should be easy to copy but which linux has not yet mastered. These are my niggles:
- Windows_Key + r, and then being able to launch things easily from this ('putty -load {profile}'). Xandros almost has this, but at the moment it requires you to either hack the X config by hand or else have the keyboard applet running. I don't want a US flag displayed on my desktop permanently so that one's out. (I have hacked X though so this one isn't a consideration)
- Having multiple monitors is trivial under Windows. I've been unable to get it to work under linux. Different graphics cards - Rage XL onboard and a Nvidia 5200 clone.
- For some reason the windows widgets feel more responsive than linux. Maybe only by a fraction but it's enough to be discernible to me. This even affects software like firefox. Firefox feels a lot faster under Windows. Swing feels a lot faster under Windows too. The mouse feels less responsive too.
- Putty launches a lot more quickly than konsole
- Fonts are still better under Windows
- Windows_Key + E brings up explorer which is a rapid and excellent way to move around the filesystem. Linux doesn't have a good in-spirit substitute at the moment.
- General presentation of every linux I've had contact with is still poor compared to windows or be. Icons are ugly, UI is annoying, applications don't come with their own icons. Icons don't line up on the desktop in a well-spaced way or align to grid.
Linux has come a long way:
- Can get my modem to work under linux with ease, can't get it to run under windows (lost the driver disk - that's the end of that)
- Alt+Tab works properly in kde (and maybe in gnome - don't know) and is swift enough these days
- Doesn't look half so bad as it used to and fonts are improved.
Still, linux has big advantages over windows in several fields:
- Workspaces!! God the lack of worspaces in Windows is a pain.
- No need to install vmware and a distro in it to have a viable development environment. This gives you a speed advantage. I wouldn't be able to stand windows were it not for things like cygwin and linux under vmware.
- I do upgrades via crontab and never think about it. Security is a hassle in Windows, although usually more so when you have to fix a family member's pre-ruined box.
- When you don't know much about Windows you have a perfect excuse not to get caught with shit responsibilites for family members who have stuffed up their workstations.
- Heaps of mundane activities are made easy that are unfeasible for people with time constraints working under linux.
Believe with me, my saplings.
1. Click icon
2. Click "Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Device"
3. Wait
4. Click OK on the dialog box saying that windows cannot stop this device now because an application is using it.
5. Close EVERYTHING.
6. Repeat 1 to 4
7. Open task manager. Kill every process that isn't a system task
8. Repeat 1 to 4
9. Give up and just unplug it anyway
At the end of the day, it's a computer and some software: a tool. Sometimes one tool will do a job better than the other and vice versa. And as with any tool a lot comes down to the user.
*nix folks like tweaking things and the result is often a more efficient and powerful solution, but for a specific task. Windows folks like getting things done and just want it done profitably. Apple folks are just Windows folks who like to look good while they're doing there thing(flame on! ;->)
Seriously though, we have many types of hammers in this world for a reason: each is suited to a specific (or a general) task. We'll have many OS's/CPU types/Computer Brands,etc... for a long time because each will be suited to a task.
I'm running both and I'm happy with both for the things they are good at.
And that's the unfortunate truth. I see reports of a new worm every other week, and it scares the crap out of me. I wouldn't install windows on my own PC if my life depended on it. But, I use windows at work because there's no choice and I enjoy paying my bills (well, more than I would enjoy living on the street anyway).
> Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices?
All of these, plus:
* i don't like the Win32 API; APIs like CreateProcess, CreateThread, FindFirstDirectory (or similar), FindNextDirectory - all of those are not very elegant designs;
* the registry is a misconception;
* windows will send any signal from any GUI process to any other GUI process, ignoring different security context; that's a security design error;
* it does not run efficiently on multiprocessor hardware;
* programs need to be especially designed and installed, if you want to run them as background processes (program must be a "Service"); what a stupid idea %-/ - and if they fail, you can not even kill them using a task manager;
In my opinion, the NT kernel is a bad design; i think, that's where most of the bugs come from (not because of bad implementation, but because of bad design).
Also, recently I have been doing commits to Sourceforge with CVS - when Sourceforge changes something it is a two second change on Linux, and an over an hour change on Windows with WinCVS, Plink and so forth. Doing the development is just so much easier on Linux. Plus I get free tools like Valgrind on Linux that you don't find for free on Windows.
The last improvement in Windows was from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, which made getting your hands on Trumpet Winsock unnecessary as PPP dialup had been incorporated. That was 9 years ago. On the other hand, I can think of a lot of things that Windows has done to cripple itself and cause me headaches - instead of sending a normal install-from-scratch CD with a new PC, I have a bunch of OEM "repair" CD's - blah. What a pain. Then there's their monkeying around with booting so as to try to discourage a machine that can dual boot to both Windows and Linux.
I also don't like how Windows sends some packets off to Redmond when I first sign onto the Internet for the first time with a PC - what the hell is that? I remember the Melissa virus writer was caught because Microsoft Word secretly (or at least only in technical specs a few dozen Microsoft developers know about) embedded his UUID or name or whatever in Microsoft Word documents so the FBI could catch him. I don't want every message I sent out incorporated with some kind of information so Big Brother can come after me. You keep eharing about how Microsoft Word documents have all of this "extra information" that winds up embarrassing someone - what the hell, just incorporate the text I want in there. Not my command line history or whatever.
Which brings me to the point of you have no idea what Windows is doing. With Linux you can just look at the source. Anyhow, other things I hate about Windows? You have to reboot after doing ANYTHING! Jesus, if you're doing a bunch of stuff you have to reboot the machine 10-11 times. Linux, and especially Solaris, can handle most of the same exact stuff with 0 reboots.
Then there's the Windows registry. I remember having an old version of NT (3.51 or something). Any editting of the registry by the user would null and void the technical support. So if you wanted the machine to have 16 IP addresses, how would you deal with that? Only one way - edit the registry. Some programs only worked if you editted the registry. The registry sucks in general.
Anyhow to summarize - it's less the crappy design decisions like the registry, needing to reboot after almost any change and so forth that puts me off the most - what puts me off is how every new version of Windows doesn't have improvements, but extra crippling to try to make it harder for you to use any alternative to Windows or to try and share ("pirate") Windows (with the anti-piracy features and methodology being very annoying for licensed users). What puts me off is how it is closed source, and the FBI is tracking down virus writers through secret information embedded in Word documents, and how new Windows installations send off packets of data to Redmond - I don't like the idea that Big Brother is looking over my shoulder, who knows what Uncle Sam, or the pointy-headed bosses at Microsoft will have embedded in the next release of Windows, post Patriot Act? I am not too impressed with the design of Windo
As an example; Ever tried creating a rescue-floppy for win98 under win98 and inserting a win98 install-floppy when prompted to insert a floppy ? I have. Windows says something along the lines of: "This floppy contains important files. Please insert a different floppy." That's it. There's no option to say: "I know, do it anyway." or anything like that. Sure, I can work-around, format the floppy first, and then retry, but that's not the point. The point is, I won't tolerate that attitude.
...stay away from Windows... ...stay off Windows...
but from where does the ridiculuous "off of" come?
Top reasons for me to stay with Windows:
.NET
CygWin (runtime Unix libraries/wrappers for Windows and Gnu Tools)
Visual Studio
DirectX based Games!
--- Eat my sig.
OSS OSes, Linux in my case, are free, open, stable, secure and allways give you the possibility to solve problems. We all know that. Yet there is one thing that comes with OSS that lots of people don't think of conciously, one which I think weighs in bigger than all the rest. Linux is open and thus there is no comercial interest in making it obsolete. On the contrary.
Entry: The single biggest reason for embracing OSS/Linux and never touching Windows again:
I never again will have to learn a new OS and how to handle it.
I repeat:
I will never again - in my entire life - have to learn a new OS and it's wayabouts.
Or the other way around:
All I learn now on Linux will most likely never become obsolete.
Just think about that one for a minute.
Thinking about it, this could be a reason why MickeySofts death may even be inevitable in the end.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You should have installed FreeBSD It works and does what you tell it to do.
I've used MS products in the past. They were buggy and unstable. They didn't improve over a few iterations, so I quit using them.
I helped set up an XP box last fall. It works ok. What I found was the utilities and tools that I take for granted in Linux aren't there. If I wanted to view something, I needed to download something, or purchase something. It doesn't even come with a zip tool.
The value proposition of using Linux is so good that I find no reason to even look at anything else.
And no, I'm not going to remote activate anything.
Derek
Windows is not Microsoft's premier software "offering". Saying it's an "offering" implies that it is offered, as opposed to mandated. As it presently stands, Microsoft's near-100% monopoly in so many areas (desktop OS, word processor, spreadsheet, "one-stop shop" for small business software...) effectively mandates that everyone-- even people who hate Microsoft for their immoral and illegal business practices (myself included)-- be familiar with Microsoft's "offerings", and that means that we are forced to either buy them (bad) or pirate them (almost as bad).
Also, the story asks something that doesn't make much sense. It asks, "Might recent events sway your decision to keep Microsoft's premier software offering off of your computer?" But the thing it links to is a story that is NEGATIVE for Microsoft. Hence, it would only make sense to say "Might recent events sway your decision to keep [Windows] ON your computer?" (Why on earth would a NEGATIVE story about Windows sway people to switch TO Windows!?)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
This is probably the ultimate /. circle jerk there is.
Bill's desire to make more money by selling sw written by others is a not a holy cause enough for me to buy MS SW and support him.
Teaming up with religious groups etc. for that cause is not good. He is just a big scammer.
Amen, brother.
Let me add to this list that I only got my first job thanks to my Linux experience. Since then I learned everything I know thanks to OpenSource pricing schemes and transparancy.
Of course, if it were not for all the pirated software, I would have never bothered using Windows.
The thing that strikes me most about Windows is that its supposed user-friendlyness for simple administrative tasks is in fact such that all my friends, family members and employers seem unable to configure anything, because, despite the annoying GUI's, which only get in the way of the actual admin (unless, of course, he or she is a complete moron), you can't administer nothing without prior knowledge about what you're doing.
Computer administration requires knowledge of whatever you're doing. There's currently not a GUI in the world which can change this simple fact. All they can do is hide this, which only makes the job more difficult.
Further, I feel I can force people to use a real OS because I'm the one who's called upon to solve the simplest of problems, anyway.
Sadly, I've lacked the gut to install it on anything beyond my own desktop and various company servers.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
After a couple months in XP of collecting updates and such, my system slowed to a crawl. I've been using Slackware for over 6 months, and I've found that is it going as fast as it ever did.
Not to mention how unstable I find Windows (Crashes)
Also, the need for a good antivirus in Windows is a must, meaning Symantec and other antivirus software companies keep wasting my money with the annual subscriptions.
To make a long story short, I'm just sick of Windows crawling (Over a year installation of XP), and Linux runs fine, so why not? The only thing I can't do in Windows is play my games (Because WineX is kinda broken right now).
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
The title means two things -- I'm answering this post after almost 1800 comments! And that simply speaking, Microsoft was late to the game.
Look, the simplest answer, then, is I don't use Windows out of habit. It wasn't around when I started using computers. I grew up with the TRS-80 MC10, the C64, the Pet, the Vic-20, the C128. My first Graphical Environment Operating System was GEOS on the C=128. PC's at the time were still DOS-based, which I knew how to work (via CP/M on the Commodore), but outgrew because of the WYSIWYG-essness of GEOS. Like a gateway drug, GEOS led to the Macintosh.
Disclaimer: this was all during high school for me. We had PCs in the Pascal class, and Macs in journalism. I remember writing a non-graphic headline-width calculator in Pascal for the Mac.
So, I got a hold of a Mac SE. I admit to trying Windows 3.1 when it came along, but what a friggin' mess compared to the Mac!
I'd moved up to a Colour Classic by time Windows 95 came about. It was pretty eye candy, and a far cry from 3.1 -- a real improvement, but still nowhere near as nice as the Mac.
So these experiences burn a person, you know. There are people that won't drive Fords because maybe Ford had quality problems for a time -- it produces a sickening reaction when you think about it, even though it makes no logical sense. So, yeah, it makes no logical sense now (XP is fairly decent), but emotionally Windows has scarred me.
As for Linux, well, I guess I have no need for it on the Mac. I *do* have a Windows box, but I can't think of a need for Linux there, either. XP is installed, but just not used too much. Since XP was free (as in beer, as in came with the thing) there's no financial motivation to change. Yeah, I *do* have SuSE 8.2 installed for goofing with, but it's certainly nowhere near as elegant to use as XP (yeah, the juices in my stomach rise for saying that, but it's the truth). Disclaimer: I'm not using the PeeCee as a firewall, http server, mail server, DNS server, printer server, or any other type of server (and as far as I know, not as a spam server, either!). When I get around to building my HTPC to replace my TiVo, I'll probably move to SuSE full time, because that's when uptime becomes important, when being a server becomes important, and when elegance doesn't mean a thing (elegance from the OS, that is).
--Jim (me)
First on the list has to be available software, you can get virtually any program under the sun running on windows, for Linux that means fafing around with wine and god knows what else.
:/
Second on the list, speed games like Neverwinter nights just don't give me the same responsiveness under Linux as they do on windows.
Thirdly, I can blame Bill if it crashes, if my system crashes under Linux it's always my fault
Even though the beauty of open source model is reason enough for me, the primary reason why I avoid Windows is the licensing cost I believe.
In our place many people use pirated copis of Windows. I do not want to have the guilty feelings associated with a pirated software. In addition in our business we have to distribute the OS etc to our clients and using open source software keeps the total cost of our service low for our customers.
yAthum UrE yAvarum kELir All the places are our place, everybody is our kin. (A Tamil Poet - 2000 years ago)
Well, first of all, from the developer perspective: The Windows C/C++ APIs are just plain horrible to look at. They're ugly, offensive and just plain bureaucratic-looking. And there's million of different APIs that do almost the same thing. When I see some Windows app source code, I'm forced to just stare in horror. I haven't looked at C#/.NET, but I heard they've improved things somewhat. About damn time. It will still take time until Windows API can possibly be as practical as GTK+ or as elegant as *STEP/Cocoa...
"The GUIDs are coming! THE GUIDS ARE COMING! AAAARGH! RUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!" I see those damn GUIDs every time I look under the hood of any app. Mysterious numbers everywhere. It is as if the files collectively screamed, "I'm not a 49384203843294823043942803, I'm a resident DLL number 6!
Another reason: Eight-dot-threeisms. I'm not sure if Win2K/XP have improved their system directories any, but I cringe every time I see Win98 c:\windows\system. "Um, let's see, what does MSEBTL32.DLL do?" "Well, it's the Microsoft E-commerce Bit Toggling Library for Win32. Duh." *NIXes at least have mostly descriptive names for their libraries ("libecommercebittwiddle.so.1.2.0"), MacOSX has things in bundles. Windows OS file organization looks like a mess.
Windows' guts are pain to the eyes.
Then, from an user point of view: When Windows works, it's beautiful. When it doesn't work, it's just about the most frustating thing to work with. It can helpfully tell that something is wrong, but damn me if I ever find out what actually seems to be the problem.
That said, it could be worse.
And ehne all the software become unsupported?
And if companies that produce software for WIndows that you are using go under?
In today's IT world I just don't understand why people are conned in paying for MS software. It is simply not worth it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just pity people that are willing to sell so cheap their own freedom to chose.
In regards to the installation, my mother, a retired 65 year old primary teacher, can do it. She does not even speak English.
You are a lazy person, which is fine, but not blame Linux for your lack of impetu.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Every now and again I get an urge to hose Windows from my PC and replace it with Linux. Today is looking like one of those days.
I'm pretty comfortable with Unix, been a sysadmin for a relatively large clump of FreeBSD and Solaris machines.
So anyway, I have a few questions.
Office. I use Office 2k, Outlook and Project extensively. What options are there to get these running on Linux? (I'm not interested in using some alternative product)
Distribution. I'm comfortable with dealing with conf files in VI. I like the idea of relatively easy software installs. Which distro lets me manage it relatively easily without hiding config files in retarded places? (just want to highlight again that i'm comfortable with FreeBSD and Solaris)
Window Manager. Gnome or KDE? One of the things that bugged me last time was for some reason certain "windows" were unable to handle copy/paste - i had some text to copy from one window, and when it came to pasting into another window it wouldn't - did this get fixed?
Security. I would prefer it if there wasn't 500 random binaries SUID root - one of the things in FreeBSD I liked was the wheel group - any Linux distros like this?
What keeps me off "Microsoft Windows"?
... that gradually becomes "theirs" - windows. And ditto for "access", and "excel", and "word", and "explorer", and ... you see, Microsoft is like the person who lives next door to a public park, and he gradually pushes his fences out until - oops, the public park is inside his fence. Funny that! Microsoft English (TM).
Well, I note that they chose a name that includes a common noun
So FREEDOM, as in liberty, as in not being treated as an object to be manipluated, owned, lied to, spoken marketese to, etc etc.
Linux is written by real people. Linus lived out *my* dream - of writing my own operating system. And I got a shiver up my spine the first time I booted Linux and thought - this PC is running without a single bit of Microsoft code.
I love the community sector and co-operation. Linux is pure community, pure co-operation, and people doing things as an end in itself, and not just as a marketing ploy - as a tool to extract more money.
Windows is fundamentally, irretrievably insincere. Linux is sincere. Linus Torvalds is not trying to sell you anything.
I am anarch of all I survey.
...if you don't know the meaning of "obfuscating". :)
I do a lot of cross platform development, so I have an OS X box, a couple Linux boxen, and a Windows partition, and hop between them pretty often.
The killer app that keeps me on OS X is SubEthaEdit -- the collaborative editing is invaluable for me, as well as many of its unique features to make life simpler for actually writing code.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
In all honesty, one of the main reasons I use Linux is because it has a nifty command prompt and all this other stuff. I was a Windows baby and all that shit is second nature to me, but Linux makes me feel like I'm exploring the depths of the unknown. Plus it's much more stable for when I'm writing papers in OpenOffice (I can't tell you how many times Word crashed on me) and all the upgrades are free, which is great too. Over time I've become addicted to some of the features of Linux (mostly WindowMaker and being able to fine-tune everything to a point) so now I can't switch although I do have a dual boot for games. Oh, and no annoying dialog boxes. I hate those damn things.
Everything is mainstream now.
performance
reliability
stability
lack of good command line
non-hierarchial file system
wants to do everything for you - if it guesses wrong, your fucked
lack of plain text config files
no X server, so i cant work from elsewhere
no compilers come with it
no office suite comes with it
microsoft are evil
its not as pretty as KDE
internet explorer
outlook express
all the services that ruun by default
the ugly task bar
the memory usage of window-blinds (i know, 3rd party software, but its the best i know of for windows)
slow development
poor hardware support due to windows guessing what i want
no virtual desktops
cant mount using console
no virtual terminals
windows media player
there's mnre, i just cant be arsed typing any more
I don't use Windows because trying to configure your system through their abysmally stupid GUIs is like trying to overhaul an automatic transmission with a baby rattle.
In an Unix system, the porn stash can be kept in your home directory, which is *actually* safe.
Joking aside, what you can do with Windows is only what Microsoft and its evil minions want you to do. They pretend they know what you want to do, but they don't. They just write hollow shells that look nice but don't do anything useful. Ever tried formatting real math equations with anything Microsoft/WYSIWYG?
I'm curious, as I stated elsewhere, I've not found OSX to be to my personal tastes, so I'm not sure how this works. I've only used OSX on a G4, which does not have an eject button on the keyboard, but does have one on the case that only functions when there's no disk in the drive.
What happens if you have multiple disks inserted (say, a DVD ROM, a CD burner, a floppy, and a ZIP disk), and you push the eject button? Does a menu come up asking which disk you want to pop out? Does the most recently inserted disk pop out? Does the disk inserted longest ago come popping out? Do they all come popping out?
Since I have not tried it, I cannot tell what this behavior will be, and that by definition makes the eject button on the keyboard non-intuitive.
Again, eject buttons on the case are the most intuitive practice. For CD & DVD I have to push the button to open the tray to begin with, so by the time I've gotten a disk in to the computer, I'm familiar with the concept that this button opens the drive. Why, after all this time, can Macs not unmount a disk when its eject button is pushed?
Don't get me wrong, I think the Mac UI is brilliant as a whole, but this point really gets to me, it's one of the earliest functions most users will learn, and it's very non intuitive.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Quote:
(similar to how OSX's recycle can appears while dragging a disk)
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Oh, my!
Once upon a time, X Windows was the definition of bloat. Then came Lose95, et al. Every. Single. New. Flavor. of M$ o/s almost *requires* new hardware.
Now, this isn't a big surprise to me, since I read an interview with Gates in the early 90's, where he admitted to being a hardware junky.
The rest of us, though, who can't afford the latest machines every six month, and want to do something other than gloat over how hot our systems are....
Then there's the incredibly poor design of WinBlows: it *could* have been good - hell, I was hanging onto DOS for a *long* time. The real mistake was that they should have put virtual memory and at *least* foreground/background multitasking where it belonged: in *DOS*, and that by the mid-eighties. Windows could have sat on top of that, as X does on *nix, and things would have been fine.
Instead, they put the GUI *into* the o/s, so if the GUI craps out, the system craps out.
While shoving all the GUI into the o/s, they then set themselves up for all the bugs that they propagate, and that grow with each release. They added to it by rushing release dates - marketing trumps engineering, and EULAs that say "you bought it, but, no, we still own it, and we're *STILL* not responsible for anything".
Meanwhile, although I'm *not* happy with OpenOffice.dog (that's intended), everything runs reasonably well under Linux on my (slightly overclocked) 250MHz AMD K6-II, with the latest Linux 2.4 kernel, and I haven't been forced to upgrade my hardware by o/s upgrades.
mark "if only abiword2 didn't break Apache"
Probably the fact that they won't support my weight or the fact that I don't stick to them like a fly.
Wow, I could answer this one without even RTFA.
DOS boxes were too expensive, played lousy games and were for business (yuck)
In 1987 (now working)
We went with a Mac at work, because Dos/Windows boxes were way harder to use than the Macintosh (our primary app at the time was the newsletter for our non-profit agency).
In the 90s
There were no compelling apps for Windows that the Mac didin't already have just as good - if not better (in databases or anything else). also the Mac was still beating the PC in DTP. Though over the decade alot of the vast selection of various competing Macware has dried up or been bought up (by MS).
Now
I see Windows as the slum of the OS world where your computer gets jacked every day. Also the $$ and Licensing models of MS (and others) are getting near draconian. Add to that the Apple community is starting to follow MS's lead by getting OSX out the door way before the product is solid, its lost much of its simplicity, pricing is rising, and the array of competing apps for the Mac are not longer as abundant.
To me, this makes Linux a very viable option now, in the past year I have seen alot of improvement on the Linux desktop the tools are freely available, and it's now well worth the effort of getting over the steep learning curve. Also with Linux I'm seeing nothing but flexible on what is being offered, developed, or possible.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
As long as we are looking at people associated with particular software, I think Richard Stallman is far scarier looking than Steve Ballmer, in addition to also being wobbling and flabby. And Linus is already approaching the "wobbling, flabby, sweating body" condition.
National Weather Service advice for those threatened by severe thunderstorms: "Go inside a sturdy building and stay away from WINDOWS!"
For a company that prides itself on its intuitive UI's, I find it surprising that they would even consider such a technique that suggest something so bad to a naive user. If MS had done that I'm sure many get a lot of mileage out of the criticism.
As it stands, it sounds like Windows and OS X are comparable in how this is accomplished. The orignal poster suggested that you had to go through an elaborate and unintuitive set of nested menus which is entirely untrue.
Do you actually mean being a good example for others (be it even competitors) is somehow a bad thing concerning business? Couldn't a shop compete by selling better products instead of suddenly lowering quality because it costs too much? And about `committing to charitable causes', it should only be good for sales, that's why so many even do so in today's world.
- Voice of Ambience -
Not as scary, certainly, and much more informative about the action that will be taken if you drop it there.
That said, I still CTL-Click -> Eject a lot more than I drag.
- Windows_Key + r, and then being able to launch things easily from this ('putty -load {profile}').
If you like that then you'll love Alt-F2 in KDE. (Check out the Options button)
Until Linux can play any cutting-edge game right off the shelf, it is worthless as a platform. This is not a failure of the OS itself, naturally, but a failure of the game companies to see the light. Of course, it's very unlikely that very many game companies will ever develop for Linux considering the lack of an api like directx and the questionable market of "cheap" Linux users. I for one see the inherent superiority of any Linux distro over a stock Win9x/Xp platform. However, Linux has still failed to reach the average user, and, as long as elitism is the norm among Linux users, it never will.
First it is history. My machines: about 1981 - HP 25, then ZX 81, ZX Spectrum, PC XT with DOS. On some i386 I started to use DesqView (with Remote Access BBS and ka9q - a system of itself and with DOS window in foreground for other lusers). Windows were out of question at this time - to primitive. In 1992 ka9q was really something elegant and convenient. I had access to some Suns but did not know that they are similar to ka9q..., or reverse, or even better. I started to use Usenet and installed Linux. Unfortunately it did not have DOS emulator yet so I had to stay with DesqView and play with Internet connected SCO, then with SunOS and CrayOS. At the end of 1992 I finally could set up a Linux-only machine and start to learn it by installing all kinds of software. That was it! Just Unix - at this time I knew what it was.
In 1995-1997 I was working for one of the first Polish providers and had to install Internet software on Windows and Macintosh. I learned Windows 95 a little and it was not a nice experience. We have made software packages but installing them still needed a lot of clicking, configuring even more + reboots. Macintosh was even worse. I had to use it as a terminal for some time before but still installing Internet programs by myself was a tedious task. Fortunately my customer (BTW an American) was patient enough.
I was using Slackware, switched to RedHat after a half year break in security patches, tried Debian but the installer was too complicated. I did not consider switching to Windows seriously (once at the beginning we - that provider - were talking about SCO but they stopped when I said that in such case I would go away). Maybe it would be possible to run a server with several modems, terminals, e-mail, WWW, FTP, UUCP etc. on Windows but I did not try. I do not think it was a mistake.
What keeps me off windows? Innovation. Simply put innovation is occurring in the open source realm and very little is on the windows side. If I want to try to nifty new widget from freshmeat....its going to require linux.
But I have found that I cannot eschew windows totally. First, Linux is not keeping pace with device drivers, especially on laptops. Second, I do play games, and that basically requires windows. Driver wrapper and WineX don't cut it.
From my experience Apple is more likely to not let you do something, where MS will allow you to do it and then act that it knew what you wanted, even though it is not.
As to the menu bar you will find most users maximizing their windows, on other platforms, so the end effect is the same, ie menu at top.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You'd probably also be able to set up a decent FTPD/HTTPD in XP if you really wanted to, and it might surprise you, but mIRC is probably the best Windows shell I think I've ever heard of...There are command line tricks in it to do just about anything, and the programming language in it allows for everything from custom UI to socket manipulation. I've seen it used for FTP, HTTP, SMTP, hardware manipulation, and remote administration before. It takes some doing, and it's a bit ugly sometimes, but it is possible.
Windows is a pain in the tail, I won't deny that, and I'm also not trying to claim that technically it comes anywhere near GNU/Linux...but you'd be surprised how little you can't find a way to do with it if you screw around long enough.
download.com if shareware/spyware central.
perhaps the other site you mention is worthwhile, but frankly I doubt it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets wait until 2100, then it would have cost $1/year.
That is really cheap! (still Linux is less expensive btw).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...is a reasonably complete obliviousness to marketing and fairly simple home computing needs. I know exactly where I want to go today, thank you very much.
I started on a friend's Franklin (Apple IIe clone) playing "A Bard's Tale." Mostly because the games I liked ran on Apple IIs, I bought a IIc (1987) and a IIGS (1989). In 1991 I switched to a Mac IIsi, which served me faithfully and well for seven years.
My family now owns two iMacs and an eMac. We surf the Web, do a little word processing, use e-mail, make DVDs of our home movies, and play a few games. We are content with our "simple life."
I should add, though, that my day job is as a regional director (covering 25 states) of telecommunications for a large government agency. I've worked with two different flavors of Unix, Banyan Vines wide-area networking, DOS from versions 2 through 6, and every flavor of Windows from 3.0 to 2000. (No XP yet, though.)
My experience with our use of Windows here at the office has been such that I would prefer not to deal with that level of complexity and insecurity at home. While the Federal government can afford to hire 2 million contractors to stick their fingers in all the holes in Windows' dikes, my family can't. We're happy with our simple, little niche Macintoshes.
(Though having Unix underneath now makes it a bit more fun for me.)
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Yes.
Add that one to the reasons I don;t use Windows.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If I had a washing machine that would sometimes work, sometimes, detroy my clothes, or keeps going to the repair center every 6 monthes (period of reinstallation of windows...). I would say that it does not work, that is exactly the same with microsoft products. A PC destiny is not to reboot each time you want to install something, or perform a task that I would not allow, without asking me anything... Moreover, the company has always stolen a lot of ideas (Xerox labs,...) and now want to pattent those?? I like GNU's spirit, and freedom, internet and computers do not know any limitation: none can counter that.
I've been using GNU/Linux since late 1998. I started just hoping to have a sandbox environment where I could practice my recently-acquired AIX skills (we had one AIX box at work, which was a production Sybase DB server... a lone box... no clusters or hot backups ... one box... and I was a newbie... a scared newbie). I set up a Linux box and started poking and prodding and practicing. I set up a website, started writing some BASH and PERL scripts... set up cron jobs and all the other adminny sorts of things that *NIX newbies do. At the time I had 3 Win95 boxen on my desk (and my hidden RHL6.2 box). I came across VMWare. Bliss! Joy! More Physical Space on my Desk!!!
... oh... and there's that $12,000 a year we were no longer spending...
I eliminated all the physical Win95 boxen on my desk, and build virtual machines instead... Glee! I found myself using Win95 less and less. Eventually, I was using Mozilla as my Exchange client (I never used the calendar or task list anyway), OpenOffice.org as my Office Suite (I usually write in gEdit or vi anyway). I was in hog heaven.
Then... I discovered that Sybase had released their ASE 11.0.3.3 product for linux, for free, for eval AND DEPLOYMENT. It just so happened that the aging AIX box our production database was running on was running ASE 11.0.3.3! I immediately dowloaded the product and began figuring out how to reverse engineer the existing prod database onto the Linux platform. I had that running on a Linux virtual machine on my Linux desktop box. Did a bunch of testing and enventually convinced my boss to dump the AIX platform, which was costing us USD$12,000 a year for "support" and would have cost us USD$40,000 for a replacement box, and instead, get a triad of Dell PowerEdges, 2 running Linux and one running Win2K AS (I was really pulling for the tripple crown... but as Meatloaf sez: "Two outa three ain't bad.") for ten grand less than the single IBM box.
I now run a M$-free household. I have a Sharp Zaurus, a Sony VAIO laptop and a variety of whiteboxen... GNU/Linux on every one. Do I miss MS Windows? Not at all. I've given both of my parents boxen running Fedora Core, and they use them without complaint.
The difference between MS Windows and GNU/Linux for me is this:
Before I started working with MS products, I was an Atari head. I cut my teeth on an Atari 400 (with the membrane keyboard, cartridge slot and a whopping 16k of RAM) Certainly that system had its limitations, but it was pretty open. Then MS came into my life... first with DOS, then Windows. The hardware was certainly more powerful than my old Atari 8-bit machines, but the overall system felt lamer. The "Joie du calcul" I had known with my Ataris eventually died. I got used to MS Windows, and I used it. I didn't love it. I got quite proficient with keyboard shortcuts and so on... but I wasn't passionate about it. I didn't care about it. It was like having a co-worker that you don't like, but can tollerate; you would never invite him or her over to your house to have dinner or watch a game or whatever. Then I started using GNU/Linux. My "Joie du calcul" from the old days was back. It was back with a vengance. I tried doing everything in GNU/Linux... and nearly everything I tried worked (often not the first time, but that's how we learn). I have never had a catestrophic system failure or data loss I could conclusively attribute to GNU/Linux. I've had hardware up and fail... HDDs, PowerSupplies and so on... and sometimes without having backed up. My fault, not GNU/Linux's. Sure, sometimes drivers for bleeding-edge hardware are unavailable. Fair enough, but I feel safer, more confident, more in-control and happier on FedoraCore2 Test2 than on WinXP Pro SP2.
The final nail in the coffin:
I was waiting in line at BeastBuy one night, and they had all these expensive software products in the "impusle buy" area. That struck me as strange, but OK... I took a moment to add up all the MS(a
So these folks were lucky enough to have a person who was skilled in Linux to help them setup an alternative. Not everyone has that kind of skill or access to it. Which would the other people in the group been able to do, click on some menus or struggle down endless directory trees looking for configuration files that are barely documented. Man pages can be very obtuse and usually don't give any usage examples. Writing cgi or perl is a whole other set of skills that can't be mastered overnight.
As long as Linux needs a library of books and years of experience to do basic admin tasks it'll always be a specialist's OS.
--
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Here here...
/. chopping block!
Way to stick your head on the
I have the same feelings about Linux vs Windows. I just want to do some damn work! I don't want to wade through endless config files and research esoteric system settings. I don't want to have to master cgi or perl to get my system running or master how permissions, users, sticky bits, etc all work together. I just want to run my app! And I don't want to have to pull out a cheat sheet of ctrl and alt key combos to use emacs or vi.
Windows may be unsecure and overpriced but at least I can load it and run it with needing a degree in CS.
"Couldn't a shop compete by selling better products instead of suddenly lowering quality because it costs too much?"
Yes, probably. However, all it takes is for one shop to open up down the street, providing a cheaper product with "barely good enough" to slowly run you out of business.
A populist movement of the scope you describe would almost certainly result in a populist-dominated government seizing control of the corporations. Welcome to Socialism.
Is that what you want?
@HbFyo0$k8 tH!$
But, the things I hate about Windows are:
Lately I've been trying to populate the Windows box with some good Open Source apps and I've been quite happy with those: Mozilla, Gimp, etc.
this message composed using stone knives and bearskins
Everyone can read
- Voice of Ambience -
http://www.reactos.com
Go support reactos !!
An Open Source implementation of M$ windows NT !!!
analogy:
UNIX : Linux, BSDes,
WINDOWS : ReactOS
I'm reading /. while Installing Linux.
- Voice of Ambience -
What keeps me from using Windows?
1) The blue screen of DEATH
2) Downloading patches
3) Security holes the size of the Jupiter
4) Inexplicable freezes and crashes
5) Zombified/enslaved/trojaned all to hell
6) Malware/spyware of titanic proportions sucking up all my resources
7) Minesweeper
I have Windows you insensitive CLOD! (and I can't use it)
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
If you are on Linux, you tend to not want to convert to Brand 'X'.
If you are on Brand 'X', you tend to not want to convert to Linux.
The less said about Brand 'X' the better.
There is an old saying:
"Better the devil you know,
than the devil you don't know."
So you stay where you are. It takes a significant event to propel people into change-mode. That might be the 20th crash today, the Boss says DO IT NOW!!!, or the latest virus/spyware/exploit, or $$$$, etc. etc.
But it takes something. Left to their own devices, FEW PEOPLE MAKE RATIONAL CHOICES.
Most slashdotters are not most people.... too bad! Rational decision making would not doubt lead to a different mix of Linux vs. Brand 'X'.
Actually Linux is like a kit car or a tuner car. People hunt around on the web and at meets looking for answers to odd problems and hard to find parts. Using it requires an intimate knowledge of it's inner workings.
Windows is more like a Cadillac; easy to ride in, lots of corporate hand holding, way expensive and a bit buggy for the price.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
In OS X, as soon as you start to drag an icon for a storage device, the Dock Trash icon changes to an Eject icon. Granted, this isn't necessarily that much more intuitive, but maybe users will notice the little change in the corner and react accordingly.
You made a very good point. The OS depends on more than just one source.
Brief precis : ,but soon learnt my lesson.
Started on an 8086 with dos
moved up through 286, 386, 586 cpus as they arrived all on windows os's.
Got into the net when 33600 modems were new
Unfortunately started with AOHELL
Bought my first domain in aound 1996, and was admining my first colo server in 97.
Liked the uptime and functionality of Linux a lot
Tried out Suse around '99, had issues with ppp
Got adsl around 2 years ago, and have never looked back.
Currently have 3 RH webservers in colo, with achievable uptime of well over 365 days, no security issues to date.
Have 4 boxes at home, 1 dual boot RH9 and win 98SE (for dvd ripping and games, + the usb TV box is "unsupported" as yet.), 1 FBSD 4.9 as a web / dbase server with a Dyndns service linking to the world, used for webmail and remote file access. 1 FBSD 5.1 file server ( on a PII 350 gateway box ! )with samba for keeping files handy for any machine on the network, 1 winxp laptop which I bought for video processing on the travels a couple of years ago. The laptop also runs apache2, perl, and php with mysql.
I want to get rid of win98se but it means a reinstall of a win os to keep the tv etc working and a reinstall will hose my RH9 setup, but, hey, I would like a 2.6 kernel too, so time for another hard disk I think. (removable trays).
My most noticable point about win98 is that it has never powered down the pc when asked, since the day it was installed, it just hangs, then reboots. RH9 works first time, every time. And as for speed, RH9 with gnome 2.2 is plenty fast on an amd xp2200 with 512 MB ram. Faster than win98 anyway, ( I did have 1 gig of ram, but win 98 freaked so I had to remove it).
Having said all that, win xp is a vast improvement over 98 but still no match for a *nix system.
And to all those people who don't want to keep tweaking a linux box, and use that as a reason against it.... you don't have to tweak it, when it works right, leave it alone and it'll keep working right ! The most regular tweaking I do these days is to my rclock messages !
I liked it too.. I'd want to change my sig too, the one I have is so stupid..
- Voice of Ambience -
Why have you never been to Madagascar? Never had any reason to even consider it. It might be fun, but why would I?
Why have you never read anything about orthoceratites? Never had any reason to even consider it. It might be fun, but why would I?
Why aren't you using Windows? Why would I? I already have four fully functional computers. Never had any reason to consider buying a Windows machine as well.
Basically I know of nothing that Windows has that I would need. There may be things in Windows that I could need, but none that I currently know of.
I realise I'm one of few that considers Windows an acceptable platform (at least here on /.) but personally I dislike Lynux.
I don't consider the extreme tweakability of Lynux beneficial to me. If I absolutely cannot tweek whatever I don't like in a given Windows app there is usually a plethora of alternative app choices available just a download away.
In my experience Lynux crashes as regularly as Windows - you may vividly disagree with this statement, but consider that any Lynux user is very likely to be quite clued-up with all matters concerning Lynux; as a consequence system stability in Lynux is augmented by these users. Similarily, I know my Windows environment quite well, and hardly ever experience system ceisures.
On the other hand, my occasional foray into Lynux is occasionally coupled with frustration as things dont necessarily just work (for me). And I do experience Lynux crashes.
Regarding security on Windows and PCs being hijacked for spamming... - if I were to write a virus, worm or sparm-app I would most certainly target the Windows OS, not because of security holes - but to take advantage of the vast selection of PCs out there were my payload could hit. I may be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that Lynux is impervious to security attacks. Also I think that the average Lynux user is more savvy then the average Windows user, which acts as a deterrent to virus programming.
The extensive scripting capabilities in Lynux are quite useful, but anything that I really have difficulties with (and cannot in some way automate) in Windows I can easily write a quick app for.
Lastly, I do not agree with some of MicroSoft's business practises, I'm against DRM, against software patents, and in favour of open source. I do however think that Bill Gates does do tremendous good with the considerable financial resources that he commands due to MicroSoft; he and his wife truly go above and beyond the call of duty to use both their wealth and intellect to aid those with lesser privileges around the world.
At home I run 3 linux servers, 1 linux firewall, 2 linux desktops, and 1 windows desktop PC [games]. My main desktop was a Windows PC running mostly free software so that when we switched to just Linux on the desktop, it would be easy for my wife and kids. We made the switch to Linux on that desktop a year or so ago.
I still have to go back to Windows for printing color photos to different types of photo paper [HPDeskJet712C]. We also have to use Windows for most of the purchased PC games and educational software. My wife misses the HP Copier application [scanner->printer] and PrintMaster [greeting cards].
I mainly like Linux and free software because I am frugal and because I don't believe in pirating software. I also like the filesystem choices and the rock solid stability that Linux systems provide. I also like being immune to the myriad of Windows viruses and worms.
..that path leads to the dark side..
- Voice of Ambience -
If you don't like monopolistic behaviors, then you shouldn't like the GPL, and therefore the Linux kernel and GNU tools.
;)
If you like Unix, you should try a true Unix such as FreeBSD. It's free and its Handbook is well-written
www.freebsd.org
Doors.
freedom
Very simple. It crashes regularly without a reboot every day or two and often just for the hell of it. I finally got tired of it. Maybe Gates hates me personally. Maybe I customize things beyond what the Lord Gates permits. I use KDE. Before 3.0 I had to reboot that every five days. 3.2 does not appear to need rebooting but it appears to slow down after a three weeks so I reboot just KDE every couple weeks.
Now that you mention it, it does seem strange that the case buttons don't do anything... I don't know, do Macs even come with tray eject buttons on the case anymore? Judging from pictures, it looks like they don't, so you'd be using the keyboard or going through the OS to open the tray. (This is how floppies always worked on the Mac, by the way. There was never any floppy eject button on the case.)
But I agree that if there's a tray open button on the case, then by golly it should eject the media.
I don't know what happens when you push the eject key if you've got more than one removable volume mounted. I know you can select one in the Finder and choose Eject from the menu, or click the Eject button next to the volume. I mean, it works for me...
Broken printing. I always feel lucky when printing Just Works, and when it doesn't, rebooting is required to restore printer functionality. But even then, I'm forced to listen to a guy shout "Printing started!" and, subsequently, "Printing complete!" through the sound card. Option to disable the screaming man is non-functional. Driver software hasn't been updated in years, and will probably stay broken forever.
Broken scanning. Scanner drivers work inconsistantly, and included taskbar software is complete trash, causing general instability. Also years-old, and will remain broken forever.
Windows XP does not include OpenGL support.
Autodesk products are a bitch to steal. Easier and cheaper to use something like PythonCAD under Linux, perhaps with Cygwin's X server...
You haven't been annoyed, until you've been surprised by an errant Windows "DING!" through several thousand watts of PA. Why must everything "DING!" at maximum volume? Whatever happened to the PC speaker? And why are all of these samples normalized to kill?
If these issues ever get solved, I might give it a more serious role in my daily activities.
Kid-proof tablet..
Here! Although it has a price. But it's possible! :)
- Voice of Ambience -
I'm looking forward to support for True Crime now that it's out on PC, as well as Driver 3 when it comes out, though I'm still trying for 100% completion of Vice City between rounds of America's Army, which is a pretty damn good game out on all top three major OS's.
Help us build a better map!
Concerns about stability? :-)
Yes, I hate to see my box crashing everytime I open a word doc and IE while playing AOC.
Security?
Not really.
Dislike of Microsoft's business practices?
Now, that's more like it. Dislike? Hatred would be a better word.
Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?
Exactly. Linux rocks
> I know that already. Why does it need to tell me? Because 9 times out of ten, the windows user at her desktop throwing her purse under the desk and knocking her ethernet cable out of the wall does *not* know that already.
...that none of you morons live in the same world that I do.
Microsoft is everywhere. Sure - being number one means you're gunned after more than the rest. It also means familiarity for the users.
Microsoft makes me tens of thousands of dollars a year. *nix makes me next to nothing.
People want name brands - not some white box with black letters that say "OS" on them.
Ever run an Enterprise? Guess how they're powered? That's right - MICROSOFT.
Mod me bad karma - it makes me laugh! "I do things my way" - good for you. The rest of the world does it Microsoft's way.
Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
I actually don't think that spyware is the fault of the browser or the email client. Spyware could be written to run (differently) on Linux just as easily as it could on Windows. And maybe someday we will see some spyware/adware issues on Linux. But I remain doubtful.
I think the problem is less a technical problem and more a problem of economics. Windows has not ever had (up until recently) an open source community which offers a wide range of consumer products. Instead, the economic model which has surrounded freeware on Windows has developed into a spyware/adware model. I think that this is because the freeware is competing solely on the basis of price and solely with proprietary software. Consequently, they package spyware with their products in order to earn revenues. I also find it sad that this business model has (temporarily, perhaps) replaced the shareware model. In the long run, I don't think that either model works well as a way of making money.
Now, programs including spyware and adware on Linux and UNIX would have to compete not only with a wide range of tools which require licensing fees, but also official releases of open source projects which could compete both in terms of licensing costs (none) and in terms of convenience (open source, being without adware, will be more convenient).
The wide range of open source software available on Linux keeps us safe from adware, and it also is the primary reason why all my computers run it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Regarding product activation:
I do not generally do business with any company which assumes that I am a criminal because I do business with them. This means that I do not watch many movies either. And I will NOT buy DVD's even though I could use DeCSS and LinDVD on Linux, because I will not put my money there. And I do not think that I will by a HDTV either.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Wow, you completely get it, but I would add more.
I run a small consulting business in North Central Washington state. Many of my customers are now using at least some open source software. My usual selling point is that the licenses free them from various administrative tasks and possible liabilities (in the event of, say overdeployment of a database server). In this way, it is similar to your experience.
But here is the catch. My customers typically spend more money on open source software services than they would on proprietary software (which is good for my business, of course). Now, this is not extra work required to make the product a drop-in replacement for a proprietary product (that would not work well for my customers). Instead, invariably, customers come to me and say, "Can my Linux system do this?" and I say "Sure. Here is how much it will cost to set that up." The inherent flexibility is where I make my money. In essence, I can tailor a system much more to the liking of a customer than I can with Windows. This translates into more work for me and better return on investment for my customers.
Computers should be tools which serve our needs (UNIX tools strung together, open source) rather than out-of-the-box products which we have to adapt our business processes to (proprietary packages).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I started playing with computers when my father brought in an Apple ][e. From there, I went on to use a IIGS (a rather fun machine, and with ProDOS, which taught me the elementary Apple GUI which just hasn't changed very much at all.)
When I was in High School, I had a Macintosh (actually one of the first Powerbooks, which ran wonderfully for four years.) It was loaded with all kinds of shareware, and it worked wonderfully. I've been a Mac user ever since.
It is true that you can pirate software very easily on the PC -- it's just everywhere. I imagine Microsoft, though not the vendors, is happy with this arrangement. You can still get MS Word (which I don't use anymore) on a college campus for the Mac, but you just can't get the billions of "warez". Yes, there is a huge lack of games on the Mac, but that's probably why I was able to graduate.
Now that I have a research stipend and need to use UNIX on a very regular basis, I don't mind the (apocryphal?) price markup for the Mac. Most Mac vendors producing the superexpensive software (e.g., Maple, Mathematica, IDL,...) give amazing student discounts so I don't have to pirate, and the amount of high quality shareware coming out is stunning. Programmers seem to like working on OS X much more than they did with the later versions of the Classic OS, and it pays off.
So, to make a long story short: what keeps me off windows is that I've never even seen it's benefits and I'd rather deal with what I know than what I don't.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
losers.
This is my opinion and my own so I don't care if you disagree. I am a Windows user, I have been since Windows 3.0. I am used to Windows, and I like it. The problems that many other people complain of, I rarely if ever run into (blue screens, messing up files, slowness etc.) About 6 months ago I installed Gentoo Linux on my machine. My friend told me that it was the best thing since sliced bread, so I thought "Why not". It was one of the biggest nightmares ever. It took me almost a week to install it, if not longer, and barely anything worked. I had the help of 2 or 3 linux "Guru's" at the time as well as the Gentoo community. I have things working pretty well now. I honestly never touch my Gentoo machine. Here's why. Nothing, not ONE thing on Linux attracts me over Windows. There is not one thing that Linux can do that Windows cannot. It is not any faster then Windows, it GTK crashes more then my XP box does. It's slow and buggy. Things dissapear on me all the time. Programs are hard to use, and hard to FIND as well (What the heck runs this file/that file). I tried running Unreal 2k4 and it wouldn't run with my Radeon 9700. Wine is slow as garbage with 512 megs of RAM and a P4 3 ghz. Open Office offers no benifits over Microsoft Office, I actually like MS Office a lot more now that I've used an alternative. Also, most programs that Linux offers you can get on Windows. It's the same thing as Macintosh, there is NOTHING for Macintosh (besides Final Cut Pro) that is really worthwhile to buy. The whole Photoshop being better for Mac is PURE BS, as it has the exact same functionality as on Windows. The only cool things about Linux, that I've found, is the thumbnail previewer (which I think looks prettier then Windows for some reason) and GDesklets (which are buggy as HELL and I'm sure can be done on Windows especially with Avalon). I have talked/read comments from HUNDREDS of linux users over the years who say how great it is, how secure it is etc. The only thing it has is built in pop up blocking(Google Toolbar/Pop Up Blockers, SP2) and less virii (and the only reason there are less virii is because Linux hackers sit and fix any holes in Linux because they have nothing better to do all day). Oh and the customizeable logins are a lot easier to do. Really, someone please tell me any benifits that Linux has that Windows does not have I'd love to know. There really exist none. Actually, don't give me that, as I know it probably does manage memory a little better in some ways and a few other things, but tell me something that it does that would actually IMPROVE my life and I can't do in Windows. Sorry to seem anti-linux here, but I am just tired of hearing how much Windows sucks, and how great Linux is, when no one can provide any proof as to why.
What keeps me away from windows. The normal bs you get with winodws. viruses, or worst yet spyware. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars wasted in software you need to buy where you can get free on linux(office and what not). With linux there's nothing to activate(I can see in a way why window's does it but still annoying to me). Oh yea the biggest evil of them all..THE REGISTRY.... I can go on but those are my biggest gripes...
I hate activation my mobo damage and crash often (more than 20 times) , btw new high end technology cost lots of money . But can you stop technology grow up ? I have small problems into Linux is hardware .
Just my point.
And thanks for the namecalling. I found that especially informative.
emt 377 emt 4
Actually, in OS X when you begin to move the icon for something like the iPod, the trash can in the dock disappears and is replaced with an eject icon.
Fellowship 9/11
A large number of posts, this post will never get modded!
Yay!
For starters, Security.. I have never heard of anyone getting an IE exploit fixed when they privately disclosed it to MS in less then 3 months.. And I believe that that will be a major cause of windows attacks after NX gets added. In fact, Microsoft's only real attempt at trying to secure windows against script kiddies has been bugging securityfocus and forums to stop disclosing windows exploits (which still leaves it open to the better hackers, who might just one day release a worm using that exploit, which is when it will get fixed).
:)
Next, me and my friends were doing a group assignment for 2 days, and all 3 of my friends laptops had explorer crash at least once, while my linux laptop easily stood its ground even though it had less ram and was slower then all the rest, but ran linux (in fact, at that time it was even running a version of gnome not yet marked as stable and it still beat windows).
Microsoft blatantly ignores bug fix requests for months on end.. Yesterday I asked for a bug fix for a D plugin for eclipse.. It was fixed by the time I woke up the next morning.
Microsoft also purposely digitally signs simple stuff like themes, so that only they can install new themes on your computer.. That doesn't appeal to me. In gnome I dont even need to pay for external programs like windowsblinds to skin anything I want. In fact, I even gave grub a new background
Microsoft barely puts much effort into optimisation. NTFS runs 2X slower then reiser4, and reiser4 is getting old.. Because Microsoft doesn't have any competition to benchmark things against, they prioritise new features over performance.. Thats why the only things you ever see them actively working on are things like Directx, which is only updated to try to get knock opengl out of the market, and all the coders out there know that opengl is highly portable, unlike directx.
Windows is poorly organised.. Lets be brutally honest.. When you need those annoying personalisation buttons at the bottom of the screen, even though you only installed a fifth of the apps you have installed on your linux box, you know that microsoft has some serious problems with proper gui design and organisation.
It costs a killing when you have more then one computer, and you dont even get free tech support.. In fact, you need to pay microsoft to tell them when you find an exploit..
Its uninnovative.. Whens the last time you have been able to spot something in windows which hasn't been done before.. NEVER. They just patent everything, even though it is rare they thought of it first.
Its hard to fix bugs... Microsoft have conveniantly designed windows in a way that if theres problems, you only solution is to wipe and completely reinstall.. Not make it easy to diagnose the problem.. that would be crazy.
you dont get what you paid for.. if you buy a mac, or you buy linux, you get an advantage.. If you pay for windows all you get is a command.com file basically.. nothing of use is included.. If you buy linux at least you get free tech support and many commercial apps and ebooks etc. If you buy a MAC, you dont just get a stripped down OS either, you get a OS with a great GUI, thats easy to use (a commercial copy of unix that is powerful).. Even though its only a bit less stripped down then windows, at least a MAC is always cutting edge, Windows just tags behind macs with nothing. While linux just tags along behind macs, at least it comes with programs to make up for it.
And thats my incomplete list of problems with windows
It definitely has changed since then. Redhat 6 was the last version where you could root a default install.
Every Redhat version since Redhat 7 has a default installation with zero open ports and a firewall blocking all ports below 1024. The Fedora incarnations of Redhat are even better--on those distros, a default installation includes a firewall blocking all the ports. It now takes active effort on the part of the administrator to make Redhat/Fedora vulnerable to rooting.
The default security issue is something that Redhat has had problems with in the past and learned from their mistakes.
I nuked linux off my drive when I went to windows 2000. And I haven't missed it since then. It was great for managing text files, grepping, some perl, but after a while you just get tired of just managing text files.
With games and software like Virtualdub etc. there are too many reasons to keep booting to go to the other OS, be wise and just stick with the best.
A better one would be, "Would you blame Ford if your friend borrowed your car and the windshield was a magnet for bugs, then he crashed it because he couldn't see?"
I would sue Ford and the bugs. Yay America.
Home Lineage: [Atari 8-bit] -> [MSDOS] -> [Windows 3.1] -> [Windows for Workgroups] -> [Windows 95] -> [Windows 98] -> [Mandrake Linux]
I look at this from a higher level perspective. It is a choice of paradigms. And this goes back to the core underlying battle between Windows and Linux. (Or Bill Gates and the hackers. His age-old battle he started with the Homebrew Computer Club.)
One side is all about commercialization. This is good and this is bad. It is a trade-off. There can be some really great software made for Windows. At the same time, I've got people trying to monetize my desktop by loading spyware and every turn of a web page. I've got a corporation supporting me, which is good and bad.
The other side is all about freedom (free $$ and free ideas). This is a good and a bad thing as well. There isn't much big commercial user software with superadvanced features. But there is superadvanced server software. And most things are customizable out the wazoo. Lack of commercial games. But I've got a community supporting me, which is good and bad.
Yes, each individual point here can be wrangled to death with points and counterpoints. But what is stopping me from going back to windows is the following:
1] Spyware/security/email nightmare.
2] Power of small tools working together.
3] Customization.
4] Additional cost over what I already have.
At best, I can spend a lot of money to get something equal to what I have now. Some $$$ to Microsoft, some to others. It just isn't cost efficient to go back to Windows.