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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?
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
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!
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!!!
I was tired of pirating software I couldn't afford. Open source software is largely gratis.
Douglas P. Price
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
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.
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
Hear hear..
Staying off Windows keeps me sane. I have a bunch of PCs at home. A Linux server, a G4 Cube, an iBook.. One is an Athlon 1 GHz machine I use to play Counter Strike. When I use it, there's no problem. I boot it, start CS (or MTGO), quit CS, turn it off.
The problem comes from my friends. One morning, I sit down in front of my PC, boot it. Something comes up full-screen, immediately. I've been spywared. By no fault of my own. My less-than-savvy friends have just cost me an hour of my time downloading, updating and running AdAware/SpyBot S&D.
This is why I like setting them loose under Safari on my Cube. They can visit sites loaded with IE exploits, ActiveX crap-objects and more and nothing bad will come to my system.
The fact that Windows is the big spyware/trojan/worm target is reason enough to keep me off of it. Of course, this is posted from a Dell WinXP box that I use every day at my job. Go figure.
Tasks that are trivial under Unix, have thus far eluded me. I still don't know how to set up DNS under Win2K.
Are you using Win2k server or desktop? The desktop version has a DNS server. In fact I'm not sure if even the 'normal' server version has a built in DNS server.
Setting up a DNS server in win2k3 enterprise server (which I got for free as a CS student, I'd never pay for a server OS) was very simple for me, much less of a pain then manually editing bind config files.
The only real difficulty is that most of the standard barer OSS servers need to be downloaded and installed separately, while they come preinstalled on Linux. It can be annoying to find, download, and install Apache, MySQL, Postfix, etc.
Honestly I find windows easier to administer, just because I'm more used to it. I prefer intuitive GUIs to text files for which you need to read gobs of documentation to figure out. The DNS server in windows is actually a good example of that. I was able to figure out how to configure everything I needed to do using just a few GUI screens. In contrast, I spent a few hours reading how to configure BIND when I used that.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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!
Yeah. I go insane when Windows starts freaking out after a month, and I think I need to do a re-install. It wouldn't bother me at all that Windows breaks so quickly if the place I work wasn't an ASP / VB shop. As it is, when Windows freaks, and I need to re-install, I have to install tons of apps. Work keeps me on Windows, and is a frequent reminder why I stay off Windows at home.
Maybe I should just start doing ASP.Net with Mono?
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.
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.
What makes Windows even worse to administer is the non-standard way Microsoft implements standards. Try getting Windows to integrate into a mixed environment. Many times you'll have to choose between doing things the Microsoft way (in which case nobody else can play) or a standards compliant way.
A quick example -- Microsoft doesn't implement IETF standard TSIG in their DNS implementation. So, your DDNS options are:
- Use MS DNS and workstations register using proprietary TSIG -- non-MS systems can't use DDNS
- Use MS DNS and have MS DHCP server make DDNS entries on workstations behalf
- Use non-MS DNS and TSIG from workstations -- MS systems can't use DDNS
- Use non-MS DNS and non-MS DHCP and have DHCP make DDNS entries on workstations behalf
We're not talking about oddball protocols here. DNS is a pretty fundamental protocol for a functional Internet.I don't use Microsoft for DNS or DHCP because they don't work correctly. The protocols which they seem to get right I don't use either because in my experience it's just a matter of time until they make them incompatible.
(sorry for this - I couldn't get it posted otherwise - even if I put this at the end) defeating1 lameness1 filter1 defeating2 lameness2 filter2 defeating3 lameness3 filter3 defeating4 lameness4 filter4 defeating5 lameness5 filter5 defeating6 lameness6 filter6 defeating7 lameness7 filter7 defeating8 lameness8 filter8 defeating9 lameness9 filter9 defeating10 lameness10 filter10 defeating11 lameness11 filter11 defeating12 lameness12 filter12 defeating13 lameness13 filter13 defeating14 lameness14 filter14 defeating15 lameness15 filter15 defeating16 lameness16 filter16 defeating17 lameness17 filter17 defeating18 lameness18 filter18 defeating19 lameness19 filter19 defeating20 lameness20 filter20 defeating21 lameness21 filter21 defeating22 lameness22 filter22 defeating23 lameness23 filter23 defeating24 lameness24 filter24 defeating25 lameness25 filter25 defeating26 lameness26 filter26 defeating27 lameness27 filter27 defeating28 lameness28 filter28 defeating29 lameness29 filter29 defeating30 lameness30 filter30 defeating31 lameness31 filter31 defeating32 lameness32 filter32 defeating33 lameness33 filter33 defeating34 lameness34 filter34 defeating35 lameness35 filter35 defeating36 lameness36 filter36 defeating37 lameness37 filter37 defeating38 lameness38 filter38 defeating39 lameness39 filter39 defeating40 lameness40 filter40 defeating41 lameness41 filter41 defeating42 lameness42 filter42 defeating43 lameness43 filter43 defeating44 lameness44 filter44 defeating45 lameness45 filter45 defeating46 lameness46 filter46 defeating47 lameness47 filter47 defeating48 lameness48 filter48 defeating49 lameness49 filter49 defeating50 lameness50 filter50 defeating51 lameness51 filter51 defeating52 lameness52 filter52 defeating53 lameness53 filter53 defeating54 lameness54 filter54 defeating55 lameness55 filter55 defeating56 lameness56 filter56 defeating57 lameness57 filter57 defeating58 lameness58 filter58 defeating59 lameness59 filter59 defeating60 lameness60 filter60 defeating61 lameness61 filter61 defeating62 lameness62 filter62 defeating63 lameness63 filter63 defeating64 lameness64 filter64 defeating65 lameness65 filter65 defeating66 lameness66 filter66 defeating67 lameness67 filter67 defeating68 lameness68 filter68 defeating69 lameness69 filter69 defeating70 lameness70 filter70 defeating71 lameness71 filter71 defeating72 lameness72 filter72 defeating73 lameness73 filter73 defeating74 lameness74 filter74 defeating75 lameness75 filter75 defeating76 lameness76 filter76 defeating77 lameness77 filter77 defeating78 lameness78 filter78 defeating79 lameness79 filter79 defeating80 lameness80 filter80 defeating81 lameness81 filter81 defeating82 lameness82 filter82 defeating83 lameness83 filter83 defeating84 lameness84 filter84 defeating85 lameness85 filter85 defeating86 lameness86 filter86 defeating87 lameness87 filter87 defeating88 lameness88 filter88 defeating89 lameness89 filter89 defeating90 lameness90 filter90 defeating91 lameness91 filter91 defeating92 lameness92 filter92 defeating93 lameness93 filter93 defeating94 lameness94 filter94 defeating95 lameness95 filter95 defeating96 lameness96 filter96 defeating97 lameness97 filter97 defeating98 lameness98 filter98 defeating99 lameness99 filter99 defeating100 lameness100 filter100
Installing a private certificate server, Linux version:
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change "<VirtualHost _default_:443>"
/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key
../ssl.crt
../ssl.key/server.key -x509 -out server.crt
Edit
to "<VirtualHost 192.168.10.200:443>"
[root@dts conf]# cd
[root@dts ssl.key]# openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024
[root@dts ssl.key]# cd
[root@dts ssl.crt]# openssl req -new -key
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New York
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...
Exactly my experience. Once you are used to multiple desktops and a good window manager (like one that supports moving windows with ALT+LMB) Windows just feels old.
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!
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 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.
The goal of any business is to do what the business owners want. The goals are often stated in the mission statement. If the business owners are greedy swine then sure, the businesses goals will solely be to make profit. But most businesses are not that narrow minded. Most businesses have an agenda and the profit motive is secondary. For example, most businesses aim to provide a certain product or service. Other businesses have stated codes of conduct (eg, Google's "do no evil" rule). Any business you look at will have a similar set of profit unrelated goals. I guarantee you will have great difficulty finding any business whose single stated goal is to "make money".
If what you said was true (and it is not) then companies like Ford could just stop making cars and start playing hedge funds on the stock market. That's tying in with "making money". But that's not what Ford does. The goal of Ford is to make cars at an affordable price. Everything else is a secondary goal; including the profit motive.
Sanity
Nah, money.
Many years ago, I started noticing when job shopping that the MS DOS (and later MS Windows) programming jobs never paid as well as the unix programming jobs. This didn't strike me as odd, as working on bottom-of-the-market jobs (whether fast food, auto mechanics, or software development) never pays very well. You're better off going with quality goods, and then you get jobs from people who are willing to pay for quality.
I did get tricked into working on DOS and/or Windows on a few projects. But in interviews, I've always been careful to tell them that my experience on MS systems is limited and not very recent. This encourages them to consider me for only the higher-quality unix (and now linux) job openings.
The Mac was always interesting for similar reasons. But the cost of entry was high before OSX, and I always had plenty of unix jobs, so I never invested the time and money that it took to deal with a Mac.
Way back when, I did some work on IBM mainframes. I'm sure glad that I managed to escape from that ghetto. Actually, this happened because the engineers where I was working wanted to bring in Amdahl's unix that ran on top of VM, so they could have a decent place to work on the mainframe. I volunteered to be the admin, though I knew little about unix at the time. It was such a relief that I concentrated on writing as much software for it as I could. I had lots of time to do this, as it took almost no adminning (unlike the IBM OSs). I managed to get enough resume material to hop to a real unix-based development job. Life has been a lot better ever since then.
Yeah, money. And achievement. It's great to be able to write software that "just works", and doesn't crash unpredictably somewhere inside a system library routine.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I know a number of small business owners, and none of them want to dominate their space. They want to provide a service to make their customers happy. Some of them are better at it than others, but they have good-natured relationships with their competitors, sometimes sending potential customers to each other when they're out of something or when that other business is closer to the customer.
Not every industry is cut-throat.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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?
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..."
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
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).
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?
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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.