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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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Open up the KDE control center, and go to the fonts tab. Drop a font in, or choose it via the file dialog. Press OK. Font installed.
As for fonts looking good, if you use a modern distribution with xft2 and fontconfig installed, fonts look better than under Windows.
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
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).
You know, I feel sorry for you and the people expressing similar sentiments. I like WindowMaker and X-chat, OS X and Qt, iTunes and Excel. And, Lord help me, I love my TiBook. It's pleasurable to work with tools you enjoy, and let you extend yourself. What they make you use at work is one thing, but I can't imagine sitting at a home computer boiling with demented rage at Rob Enderle. I doubt if the ex-Mrs. Enderle* does that.
* Purely hypothetical -- I have no idea if such a person exists or not, or what OS she uses.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You definitely should consider doing some kind of "imaging". If yo do linux, the easiest is to split your drive in half, or have a 2nd drive. Put linux on that other drive.
/backup)
When you get your windows box set up "just right", go into linux (or boot on a linux cd... linux doesn't even need to be on that computer). The do something like:
(first assume that your backup location is at
# dd if=/dev/hda1|gzip -c |dd of=/backup/winbackup_20040607.gz
When windows gets dicked up, just go back into linux and reverse it:
# dd if=/backup/winbackup_20040607.gz| gunzip -c |dd of=/dev/hda1
and reboot.
You can do that with cat and such as well. I do it with dd so that this can be done over ssh easily:
# dd if=/dev/hda1 |gzip -c |ssh backupserver "dd of=/backup/winbackup_20040607.gz"
and
# ssh backupserver "dd if=/backup/winbackup_20040607.gz"|gunzip -c |dd of=/dev/hda1
Like I said, you can probably avoid the "dd"s and use cat, but I know this works for me. And I'd rather spend time on slashdot than find other solutions!
This works extremely well if you can get all your apps to use another location to store data. Get your mozilla profiles, "my documents" and other defaults to go to a D: or network drive. Then, you don't have to change anything to get back up and running.
"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."
In addition, if you change workstations you can take your virtual system with you. You'll never notice the difference.
VMWare costs money, but compare the price to the hours you waste fucking with hosed Windows installations. It's a freaking deal.
I'm going to reply to my own comment to remark why my wife currently uses Linux. I'm a technical person (sysadmin) but my wife has her BA in Literature and her MA in Theology. No technical background there. And she also is as non-technical as you can get.
But my wife asked to move off Windows. Why? Because she was tired of Windows viruses, of always having to apply updates to Windows (sometimes that would break her system ... usually when a paper was due the next day.) Generally, she considered Windows to be buggy, and Microsoft software (Office, ..) to be just as buggy.
Today, my wife is happily using Fedora Core on her 600MHz 128MB laptop. Try running Windows XP in that footprint. She runs Mozilla for her browser and to check email, she finished her thesis work on StarOffice (she felt a little better about using an office suite she had to pay for - no problem on my end .. whatever makes her more comfortable with Linux.)
She's writing a book for publication using OpenOffice (after the thesis was finished, she decided to give OpenOffice a try.) She visits web sites that use flash or java plugins, and is able to see all the content.
As far as my wife is concerned, Linux is just as good as a Windows box. Or rather, Linux is even better. When she sees that another round of Windows viruses has appeared, she sort of cackles about those "poor Windows users." :-)
On a modern linux distribution you can just put the font file in ~/.fonts and it's installed and shows up immediately. Works on my SuSE 9.1/KDE laptop and on my Debian Testing/Gnome desktop.
I only use Windows now for testing webpages in IE (yuck) and the occasional Flash creation.
Ho hum for the life of a bear
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.
That's the exact same method used to install fonts for over a year now in Gnome. I'm guessing that KDE has the same thing.
-Mark
I bought a machine for my parents and insisted that I didn't want windows on it. They did the deal and I got 100GBP off the price. That's $183.75 according to XE.com. That a little bit more than $50 don't you think?
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
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.
I like the fact that my internet connection is faster under Linux than it was under Windows XP. It's a real kick. If you have both running side by side, try comparing them sometime. I do run both Linux and Windows XP. The bandwidth is the same.. XP by default enables qos which reserve 20% of your bandwidth for applications that support it. Just go into network properties and remove that protocol and there you go.
I was about about to point out WSH as well. As long as the terminal is running Windows 2000 or XP, WSH is actually a usable technology.
Also, if you already know Perl, ActiveState released a COM-scripting library for use in this application called ActivePerl. It will allow you to write windows shell scripts with perl if you'd prefer.
ActivePerl Product Page
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:
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.
If you place second, middle, last in your class because someone else had better grades than you, that's one thing. It's quite another to have someone pay the teacher to flunk you out of school so they can be head of the class.
Why does a difference between morality and legality needs to be distinguished in such a case?
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
It's even easier with Mac OS X. If you have the Fonts folder in a Finder sidebar or on the Dock you just drag the files to the folder icon and they are installed. The Font Book application that comes with Mac OS X is also great for managing your fonts, as well as installing them.
Not only that but also Mac OS X has much better typography than Mac OS 8.6. It's Display PDF all the way through from font handling to printing. The antialiasing is smarter, the kerning more exact, better handling of Unicode and right-to-left character sets. The text just overall looks better and more consistant.
Sapere aude!
There are some serious security problems inherent in the windows style of user operation; windows users are "Always Root", so to say. This is a BAD THING. Even if Linux were the most widely used operating system out there, few virii would exist for Linux. A trojan (the most common type of virus) cannot infect programs as an unprivileged user.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Despite the name similarity, I think outlook is pretty much a completely different program from outlook express
I'd rather be lucky than good.
That's interesting. My XP install has bluescreened once in its entire existence due to a video driver failing for reasons unknown, but otherwise it's worked like a charm. Debian fell apart like a piece of crap pretty early on, and FreeBSD has died horrible death or two (disclaimer: This was 5.2-RELEASE. Not promised to be stable, but it's the first release that comes with support for my network card). Perhaps you're thinking of Windows 98 which actually did suck? You'll be pleased to hear that it's 2004 already!
so you are in favor of security through obsurity? that's exactly what you mentioned. your reasoning suggests that the only reason linux and apple machines are more secure is that less people use them. while this is true, it's not a good form of security. i know someone who installed a red hat box and within a couple days, it was rooted and used to run ddos attacks on several major machines. the fbi contact the university about this box. that's because they did a standard install of red hat. it might have changed since then, but the fact remains that you can do a standard install of any linux distro and end up with an insecure machine unless you (1) install patches or (2) be sure to install only updated versions. seems to me that either option is similar to a windows install. and once your linux box is installed, you have to be sure you install any patches because there have been many very serious flaws in linux or the common software people run (apache, ssh, telnet, etc) that allow an attacker to gain root.
and i don't neurotically install patches, i have them automatically installed. i also don't fear attachments as i just delete the ones that look suspicious. there is no microsoft mentality at work here aside from the security through obscurity that you used as your reasoning for linux's and apple's lack of viruses.
please me, have no regrets.
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
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?
That's not a fault of Windows that's your responsibility for allowing your friends to use your machine with an account that has permissions to do such things.
Why the hell does it matter? He was asked why he doesn't use windows. His answer is "because my friends break it."
Seems like a reasonable reason to me.
RMS forgive me for posting this, but MS gives Bash (and most of the unix tool set) away for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/
You must use NTFS with it.
I hate the criminal monopoly microsoft and use linux because it is more fun. But if you are stuck with windows, services for unix is nice to have.
Interesting trivia related to this. Amtrak has never posted a profitable year since it's opening in 1970. They keep at it because they're backed by the feds.
The greatest hindrance to success is a well-rationalized excuse
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
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
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!
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.
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.
---
So clearly, 'limited user' is not the way to properly limit the users so they cannot install spyware.
I don't know if that is true or not. But I do know that when you set up an admin account for the folks, and user accounts for the kids, the kids will only use the parents account. Typically the parents could use a user account and not complain much, but the kids are the ones who want to visit sites that require lowering security in the browser, install games and such. The parents may try to monitor the kids at first, but they will get tired of the pestering and just give up the password. Too much experience with this.
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.
C:\ != /, no way man. Show me how to map a drive as a subdirectory of C:\.
1) Right-click "My Computer", choose "Manage", choose "Disk Management"
2) Right-click partition, choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click "Add", pick folder to map partition to.
3) Press OK, it's done.
Requires NTFS for this to work, but I don't think that's a big deal.
[]s Badaro
My sig became obsolete, and I lack the imagination to create a new one.
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.).
poor security
Windows supports excellent security, I'd argue better in some ways than Unix. It's just not set up properly by default. In fact, it's a bit of a challenge to set it up properly and then poke holes through it for all the incompetent application programmers.
poor stability
58 days, 7 hours, 34 minutes, 47 seconds (and counting)
This is a heavily used desktop machine, Windows 2000. Stability issues are almost universally due to bad hardware or bad drivers.
no built in firewall or other security features
XP has a built in firewall. What other security features do you want?
want to do everything for you
Yes, and I want the computer to do everything for me. That's what it's for. I don't necessarily want it to do them Microsoft's way, but you already covered that.
(I'm just keeping misinformation in check here, many of your points are valid.)
Actually the goal of business is not to profit, that is a byproduct of providing you a product or service. It may be that profit is the motivation for specialization but I wholly disagree that it is 'the reason' for business. Too much work is done for the sake of doing it, with no hope of profit, simply to dismiss every action of business to be profit motivated.
Causing competition to fail is not even necessarily profitable. It could be counterproductive. So please show some thought before you speak. Maybe read the Wealth of Nations again, or that new book by John Kay, Culture and Prosperity.
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.
I recall the scene in Pirates of Silicon Valley:
Steve Jobs: 'Our product is better. We make better stuff.'
Bill Gates: 'You don't get it, do you? It doesn't matter.'
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!
OpenGL "no longer useful"? You need a good, long talk with a certain mr. Carmack, methinks. OpenGL is the platform where the bleeding edge features first emerge.
And, please, don't believe the MS BS about DirectX being "The Platform". OpenGL is still widely used, because it's good.
Take a look at the top ten list of online games from gamespy.com/stats:
1. Half Life -- has OpenGL support (and the OpenGL renderer is far superior to the D3D renderer)
2. America's Army -- has OpenGL support
3. Battlefield 1942
4. Call Of Duty -- OpenGL only
5. Wolfenstein: ET -- OpenGL only
6. Neverwinter Nights -- OpenGL only
7. Battlefield: Vietnam
8. Unreal Tournament 2004 -- has OpenGL support
9. Quake 3 Arena -- OpenGL only
10. Soldier Of Fortune 2 -- OpenGL only
8 of the 10 most popular games at the moment use (or can use) OpenGL. 5 of them are OpenGL-only.
Eat the rich.
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
And who said you couldn't write perl scripts in Windows? When I had my laptop up and running on Windows XP (Lightning strike, unrelated to the issue at hand) I had several perl scripts run on startup that would back up my files to the laptop. Perl is just as easy to use in Windows as it is in Linux. It just doesn't come installed straight from the box.
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