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Windows Compatability on the Linux Desktop
davecb writes "O'Reilly has been kind enough to publish one of my
how-to articles,
Windows Compatability for the Linux Desktop, about dealing with that 'one last annoying program
than only runs on Windows'. The answer? Run it under Linux and win4lin, and never venture onto the Windows desktop at all. Especially don't run programs via dual-boot, which tempts you to stay and use all those other wonderful programs like Outlook...
Why spend all that time developing a program that emulates Microsoft Windows products, when they could just devlop a better solution to the software they want to run? I mean, come on people, mIRC, Outlook, AIM, Comet Curson... they're not all that great to begin with.
I still like Microsfot office only cause my spelling sucks hard, maybe if google made a program that was just a spell checker then I could go full linux
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
Run it under Linux and win4lin, and never venture onto the Windows desktop at all.
Except, like, every time you run a windows application through win4lin. win4lin is just a virtual machine! You still need to install an authentic copy of Microsoft Windows on your machine. Although there is a big usability difference, there is not philisophical difference, as the summary seems to imply.
Why don't you just run windows if you need to run windows applications? They'd probably run better.
Linux is great for being productive, but when you want to DL some trivial game and waste hours upon hours... You just can't beat a windows machine for that...
And I hate MS...
Of blankness, I know nothing.
all those wonderful programs like Outlook And then you get to round out the full Windows experience, with all those wonderful Outlook viruses!
I'm NEVER tempted to use Outlook. I always use internet mail or Thunderbird.
There are two problems with paths, both of which can interfere with running Windows programs this way. The first is that running programs from Windows can involve directories with spaces in their names.
The solution for this problem is to find the DOS name that corresponds to the directory you want to use. DOS does not allow spaces in names, so you can use DOS directory names in win commands.
OK, so now I expect you all to stop writing Microsoft as Micros~1
just pay up, get vmware and be done with it.. damm near everything compatibility.. i even got QNX to run on it once..
I've been playing around with several different solutions for this. Personally I have no need for any of them except when coding microcontrollers at my robotic's competition once a year or so, in which case I just use some makefiles that act as the interface and run the compiler with wine for me. It worked totally fine.
Other than wine however, QEmu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) is a nice speed driven emulator that will do full on emulation of a system. It recently became able to emulate a system well enough to install and use all versions of windows up through XP. Quite a neat thing actually. It's much faster than boches, which I've also tried, and it has a fairly complete feature set. (Though obviously is for a slightly different purpose than boches, as boches is being mostly used as an operating system development tool now.)
Wine, WineX and Crossover all also work for even faster results but of course don't emulate the entire system. The apps integrate better of course though, due to the fact that wine will go ahead and put it on your desktop for you so you don't have to know the difference.
I touch computers in naughty places
Nice article, I have installed and run Linux a few times so I have a feel for it. (Redhat and Mandrake, I loved Mandrake!) The very steps you articulate are so over my head even though you seem to be creating a rosetta stone for others to follow.
Give me DoomIII on Linux and I might switch now.
Give you guys about three years and Microsoft is going to feel the pain to the point they are going to be forced to offer concessions.
I think that day is coming sooner than we think.
security
I'm not trying to start a big flame war here but my killer Windows app is Visual Studio.NET 2003. If Microsoft put half as much work into their OS as there is in Visual Studio the computer usability world would be a much better place. And if there was a Linux app that had comparable features I would switch over completely in a second (even if I had to pay for it).
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
WINE wouldn't support MS Project, which was specifically what the author was trying to run.
licet differant, aequabitur
Why is this modded as insightful? RTFA. The first page states just this. There are other options, but none worked with MS Project, according to the article.
Back when I first installed linux (dual boot) I hardly ever booted into it, and thus didn't learn all that much about it.
Half a year or so down the road I read an article on one or the other linux sites that said "just switch to it for a few months". So I did. I did get win4lin for that last program (omnipro for me). KMail is very very good, konqueror is just great (gotta love the file preview), the GIMP is excellent, the scanners work (and the colors with vuescan are even better than those I got from photoshop+silverfast windows), OOo works for texts and spreadsheets and compresses its files too - lovely.
I've been running linux for a year or two now. It helps that I use SUSE, which is nicely polished, as distros go.
-- Henriette's herbal -
Especially don't run programs via dual-boot, which tempts you to stay and use all those other wonderful programs like Outlook
Because we know linux users must only use linux. Nothing else!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Can someone please correct the spelling of Compatibility? Not really enjoing being a spelling nazi, but it really hurts my eyes to see that in the title...
It is spelt "compatibility" for crying out loud !
And it is repeated both in the article AND in the slashdot title. Unacceptable...
Where the hell did this weird "compatability" mistake come from anyway ? I see it more and more everywhere, even in important reports and it's driving me crazy.
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
If Linux had a sync option with iPaq PDAs i wold go with Linux. Please cant i have this.
And yes, Linux is ready for the desktop. I switched my own firm PC to Debian/testing last October and I use it for the daily work stuff without any problems. Even being a small island in a Windows-focussed infrastructure doesn't give much trouble.
The trick is not to try to be a 100% compatible to Windows. No, I rather prefer to be compatible to open standards and so I'm sharing my documents not in *.DOC files but in *.PDF and originally they are written with LaTeX. You can't convince a bean counter that switching makes sense if you just want to do the things the same way like before, because then nobody sees some "added value". If you do things different and even more successful then people start to think about the why...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All very interesting but who is going to pay to convert hundres of millions of bussiness PC's to Linux and how much will it cost (time=money)? I find nothing influences the boss/customer more than the bottom line. The average guy with pointy hair and and a fat wallet will say "So what if Windows has a few bugs. Find a way to work around it. I'm not paying some overpriced egghead to convert to another platform unless it makes my wallet considerably fatter".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> Especially don't run programs via dual-boot,
> which tempts you to stay and use all those
> other wonderful programs like Outlook...
Hmm, some years back I installed Linux to perform one task. But a couple of days later I started to use Linux for the other things as well and a couple of months later windows was gone with the wipe.
cb
Has anyone had success with running lotus sametime messenger on linux ?.I currently run it as a applet built using the samatime java toolkit,but is there someone who managed to make sametime run it in linux as a application ?
fifteen jugglers, five believers
man... I was stupid enough to have a look at extreme wookie love.. thats gross!!!>..
No definitions found for "compatability", perhaps you mean: web1913: Compatibility wn: comparability compatibility foldoc: compatibility
Now, mod me down if you want but it is quite serious when the topic has a typo.
"run just the necessary Windows programs under Linux." so this is good for linux or windows ? chris
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Win4lin does its job quite well.
Having a non trivial amount of old 16 windows code, win4lin allows you to keep all those old aps that will not be ported in the near future, while living in the Linux world.
It's not 'perfect' (It needs a patched kernel), but works fine and without problems.
What's in a sig?
More importantly, how can you write an article published by O'Reilly and still be unable to spell a word in the title of your own article? Compatibility you muppet!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
WINE can do Winzip perfectly, but it's the games and the ease of use that keep me on windows.
With Windows at least all my hardware is detected. Sure it doesn't perform the greatest under bloated XP, but it works... which is better than it not working at all under linux (and by the time it gets supported it's several years down the track)
Windows installs things really easily. Linux on the other hand can be a total NIGHTMARE when it comes to installation... I must admit that some installs on linux are a dream.... just a shell script does the job. As for having to compile source code for most of the other stuff???? you need to have a good distro or you will spend a whole day compiling something... only to have some library missing or the code breaking and not working for some inexplicable reason. Then Fedora won't let me install the KDE development packages due to some bug there. Heck I just compiled a 2.6.7 kernel today and some modules barfed on install to the point where I had no modules.dep file to mkinitrd with! I still don't understand why!
On security fronts Linux wins HANDS DOWN. Windows forces you to buy stuff from Symantec, when a free IPTABLES script from the net can do the same job on Linux for free. And linux viruses are almost non-existant.
The day when Linux takes over the desktop can't come soon enough... but at the moment its capabilities are pretty limited to being an alternate email/internet/office/server replacement... but not much else.
WINE is getting better but it's still jagged in places. Still pretty unusable for me. It gets some business Windows apps going, but as Linux apps get better to replace them, I hope WINE will eventually be used as a front end just for old windows games.
Sure linux is free.... but that doesn't help someone like me who shelled out on Windows only because Linux and WINE isn't really there yet.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Anyone got any luck running warcraft on linux? I suspect it could be done under VMWare etc but what about the performance? Please enlighten.. warcraft is impt to me :D
Didn't anyone notice that it should be compatibility? Or is this something US-English?
Gerb
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
This still doesn't fix the problem of games under linux, unless someone's managed to port DirectX 9 and hardware-accelerated drivers for the major graphics cards...
Coined by the same fools who brought you "preventative maintainenance", no doubt. If misspellings get under your skin, then that ought to really wrankle.
Well I've got karma to burn, so I'll speak my mind:
If you haven't used windows recently, maybe you should try. It's actually gotten much faster and more stable, and it's actually very easy to cut out a lot of the bloat with just a few settings.
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement. Compare to Windows XP Professional:
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
Don't get me wrong; Linux is great for a server environment and a viable alternative when you have limited hardware and only need certain limited programs, but here at Slashdot it seems to be the solution to everything.
For reference, I'm a Computer Science student and work as a programmer in the summers. My home computer is Windows XP Professional running on a pentium 4 1.7 ghz and my work computer is a pentium 3 450 mhz. I've managed to get some pretty snappy performance on my work computer by running xfce or blackbox (I prefer blackbox) as long as I don't run more than one or two real programs.
I basically run the same few programs on both computers (emacs, mozilla firefox, aim/gaim, winamp/xmms) most of the time. Granted, it's a little unfair because my home computer is three times the computer of my work computer, but I think I get a lot more than 3 times the benefit out of it.
Flame away.
Could you please explain the meaning of the word enjoing ?
My first post instinct was to ask why anyone would bother trying to get anything that's buggy windows to run on anything Linux. But then I read the second post.. and the third... and so on...
There is a lot of software out there that doesn't run on linux natively that only runs on windows.
But you have to keep in mind why Microsoft killed Netscape and tried to kill Java. The desktop application environment is being replaced by the webtop application environment and there isn't anything they can do about it.
So, if there is some project/application that you want to run under Linux that only runs in Windows, don't rewrite it first to run under Linux as in Gnome or KDE, but write it to run under Apache plus whatever you need. It might be more appropriate to run it under web pages.
Good examples of these are anything to do with corporate financials, email, or planning/scheduling. Bad examples of this are going to be anything that isn't really shared, like Instant Messages, IRC, or other personal user specific applications.
You looked at extreme wookie love?.. you have way too much time on your hands.. how extreme can wookie love get? I worry that I share the internet people with you... (did anyone else use IE to look at this?? man it screws up your browser!) haha
The solution that I introduced to the company I work for a few years ago was to run an old box with Windows 2000 Server on it as a terminal server. We had a guy running VMWare and putting up with trying to get it to work again with every kernel update and this eliminated all the hassle.
I'm sure there are commercial terminal services clients for Linux, but we run rdesktop. Since we started using it rdesktop has included support for RDP5 which supports 16 bit colour, so with a Windows 2003 server ( we have upgraded ) you get a reasonably nice looking windows desktop. Audio seems to go mostly too, not that its needed for a couple of minutes worth of checking some html renders in IE or talking someone through how to setup outlook express.
If a windows only accounts package or similar is keeping you from running Linux on your desktop this could be a good solution, the only negative is possibly the Windows server licensing is a bit steep for some situations.
I am a lawyer and this constitutes legal advice and I shall indemnify you against any losses arising from taking it.
it's interesting, as someone thats used both systems I always find myself returning to windows for sheer ease of use. I hardly ever need to have a system running with the abilities of linux at home so I don't see the point.
Still, I keep a knoppix disc handy for whenever I get bored, but theres a few pieces of software I use on windows that I doubt is available, or indeed working with WINE etc, such as program that allows me to read specially compressed files containing images from graphic novels [/comicgeek]
Open source on windows is just as useful, well in my opinion as well (mozilla firefox and thunderbird user, avoid using the windows office suite as much as possible etc)
I'll try to address this without it sounding like the "zealot".
I have had serious problems with 2000, and can't afford to purchase XP... so call me cheap. Makes me want to choose linux.
Perhaps the OS is actually just a smaller target for security threats... so call me pragmatic. Makes me want to choose linux.
I installed my distro to nearly exactly where it is now in about 20 minutes. It runs faster, looks prettier, costs less, does everything I ever do on a windows system, and requires less work to get it moving the way I want. Call me lazy...
Makes me want to choose linux.
I don't think people who use windows are morons. I don't even pity them. I'm not really worried about sticking it to the man. I'm no crazy linux guru. Best of my understanding, the only place it seriously lacks is in video gaming... but I don't play video games.
Now, maybe someone could create a knoppix type distro that has some super cool video game that only works on linux. It might work as an inroad into the gaming market.
However, the vast majority of Windows users run MS Office purely because they've managed to get it free from work or a colleague, not because they need all of the features it gives them.
I've actually made a point of exploring Open Office myself and there is very little that it will not at the level I need an office package to function - my only real qualms with it are the occasional but minor compatibility issues when importing MS Office documents.
If, like me, you're in the process of migrating to Linux then, yes, you will probably keep a Windows installation handy for the occasional game or for running some specific software to control some piece of hardware (say for a digital camera) but apart from that, it's up to we same people to encourage Open Source developers to take the packages we use in the right directions.
We're already seeing a large number of very high profile Open Source projects coming into the public eye - Mozilla, Open Office, Ethereal, GIMP, etc. - and the great thing about all of these is that they run in Windows & Linux natively. In other words, start using these now so that they become "the norm", make sure the developers of these packages are aware of what features you need them to implement and when the time comes to migrate from Windows to Linux, it will be much less painful.
I admire the technical wizardry of the developers of VM and emulation software like VMWare and Win4Lin but, ultimately, this is just encouraging commercial developers to simply not develop for Linux natively and that can only be bad for us in the end.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Kind of OT, but does anyone know of a DFS solution that works for both Linux and Windows on the desktop (or server)? I know Samba supports some DFS features that are similar to DFS for Windows, but does anyone know of some other solutions out there that work seamlessly between Windows and Linux? I only have experience with DFS on Windows (which has become a headache for me), and a small amount with Samba (although it has been a couple years). Any information on the topic is much appreciated.
Netscape died of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head while on the toilet.
They had all the money they wanted and a huge lead. Somehow the academics, the assholes who took over Mosaic after Andressen left, managed to keep producing the best browser until what? Right, the project had achived all of its goals and launched a new medium.
Netscape's grand plan of writting progressively less impressive iterations of their one-trick software, and GIVING it away (just like MS) while simultaniously expecting people to pay for it, failed. Shocking. No they spent too much time fiddeling with the endless controls on their fancy chairs. Time they could have spent on streaming media, tabbed browsing, gestures, any of the other noteworthy things which they had NOTHING to do with. What's Netscape's once founder do now? He ships IT, especially programming, jobs to India, and ports beyond.
Notice Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, and friends. They're still around. They were actually in business, as opposed to flaming-out on someone else's dime.
...you can bash outlook all you want (sure you're not getting caught up in the OE-bashing?) but Exchange server and Outlook clients (i.e. not for pop3 mail) is a pretty good combination, and it's integration of group calendars, etc is pretty much second to non. it's also a defacto industry standard.
censorship devise? not likely, unless you're holding some corepirate nazi puppet payper monIE? remember, IT's pateNTdead 'stuff that matters'?
lookout bullow.
the daze of the felonious corepirate nazi execrable is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the speed of right.
tell 'em robbIE?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... compatable with almost everything, since/until forever.
I could understand, as a remote possibility, someone who does not care about either of those two qualities, possibly admiring MS-Windows' ubiquity and the huge variety of hardware on which MS-Windows runs. But honestly, "wonderful programs", "ease of use" and "good user interface" ...these are terms which as a Linux user I would reserve for Mac OS X systems, not MS-Windows...
Someone tell me how to run everquest (DX9) under Linux and I'm so there.
I just spent yesterday downloading a virus scanner, scanning all my data on the machine and my file server, cleaning up and setting up the firewall which I forgot after last reinstall of windows. (Got Nachi.B ad some other remote exploit worm.)
I only noticed I'm infected when I needed to poke around with ethereal and noticed that I AM spouting shit in the network.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Third page of the article at LinuxDevCenter.com - figure 6.0 /gra phics/visio_5.gif
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/linux/2004/06/1
Terminal window in the background. The author is using xhost along with some hairy ssh command line. Is there a good reason for this and not using ssh's built in X forwarding?
Win4Lin is pretty spiffy, but it only works with programs that will run on windows 98 and only require 128Mb of memory...
Ok, here's my situation:
At work, we have 4 desktop machines running Windows 98, and a file/print/web server running Linux. The Windows machines were purchased years ago, they're cyrix 686 machines running at 200mhz, with 32-64mb of ram. All up, we spent about $5000 or $6000 on hardware way back when, exluding the server - which was a P90 with 16 megs of ram.
The people I work with don't like computers. The existing machines are 'good enough' for the job, and that's that. So, under what circumstances do I buy and install Windows XP on these machines? Or indeed, upgrade them in any way?
I bought a new PC (wow) as a server - an Athlon 2500+ with 512 megs of ram and a 20gb hard drive. The goal was to have all the old clunkers running as LTSP terminals so that they would operate a lot faster - and about a week after I'd got things set up, one of the machines had a hard drive failure. One by one, I've swapped the rest of the machines onto Linux via LTSP, and despite some fun and games it's been smooth sailing since.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
if you had a choice - either buy some crappy p100/32 _and_ a windows licence OR that your shiny new XXGhz - without windows - which one would you choose ? of course, pirating could help you have both, but it's not that fun when somebody actually takes away your computer and you have to pay fine ;)
don't dismiss price as insignificant factor just because you can easily afford buying windows. not everybody can - and there are people who prefer spending that money on something more useful.
Rich
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement.
Freedom. People like to talk about technology but forget why the whole thing started.
It is not easy being green.
If running linux and windows in parallel tempts you to stay on windows and not use linux, then by all means - use windows.
You should use the OS you like best. If the parrallel installation does not tempt you to use more linux then either there's (still) something wrong with linux on the desktop or windows is in fact (still) the better desktop OS - at least for you. And you're who should matter to you.
Stick to windows.
1. Is there an application that you just have to have that runs on one operating system?
If yes, you have no choice. Change your life or live with it.
2. Do you want to just use the computer or want to fool around with the internals?
If you just want to use it as a tool, go out and buy something from Apple. Yes, they are more expensive at first, but they last longer (unless you have a dual USB iBook, of course), are trivial to use, don't get viruses, look great, and you can always run Linux on them if you change your mind. The only drawback is the lack of a good, free office package: OpenOffice.org for OS X just isn't there yet, and it looks like we're going to have to wait at least a year. Apple should have addressed this problem earlier.
If you want to play around with the computer for its own sake, you want Linux. If you are buying a computer from scratch, still buy an Apple, because the hardware is great. Then, install either Gentoo or Yellow Dog. If you have a computer sitting around, just install Gentoo. You will learn all kinds of stuff, and the system will work like greased lightning.
Notice there is only one case where you might get Windows: If there is an application that you really, really need and that only runs with Windows. The chance of that is getting pretty small for normal people -- I have had lots of fun point out that OpenOffice.org can export directly to PDF whereas MS Office can't. And Firefox and Thunderbird are better already than anything that Microsoft or Apple can offer. In about a year...
Your story works 2 ways. Hooray for you if you think Windows covers your needs. Other people feel the same way about Linux (fashionable or not) or OSX et.al. Just because Windows covers your needs doesn't mean that is true for everyone (and vice-versa).
>If you haven't used windows recently, maybe you should try
I have no need to change, so why should I?
>1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet.
Hm.. since I don't use XP I really couldn't answer this one. But no kernel panics here yet.
>Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
Hm.. that depends, sometimes I get my favourite desktop fully configured and with all *MY* settings and stuff with a simple reboot. I just take my Knoppix-cd and boot the damn thing with it. Of course it takes some time to compile your custom cd, but I think it's worth the effort.
>2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
I've been told by the MS-zealots, that the problem isn't really Outlook, but Outlook Express. And from what I've heard it does come with default installation and it's next to impossible to get rid of.
(Of course I might be wrong.)
But since the article was about migrating away from Windows, I'd think there has been other reasons for the change than just coolness factor.
.signature: Command not found
For me, it's when things start to go wrong that the differences really stand out. Killing an errant process which is stealing RAM and cycles from the system is rarely successful in XP et al; if it does die eventually, don't expect to be able to run a new instance of it until you've rebooted! A simple system running software and hardware put together by Dell, for example, runs XP very nicely thank you. Try pushing the enevelope a little and it all starts to fall apart.
Ok, I have a dual boot Windows XP (Home) and Fedora Core 1.
1) Linux is *much* more stable. I can count the amount of times I have needed to cold reboot it on one hand. Windows BSODs quite often, usually when switching users. It can also get into a state where one program is using so many resources that Alt-Ctrl-Del takes *ages* to display the task manager.
2) Linux appears more secure, probably because there are no viruses, trojans, spyware, etc. Windows is forever being taken over by spyware/adware. I have to run web filtering software just to keep the machine running ok. Security through obscurity is still security...
3) What extra aggrivation? The only thing I have a major problem with is USB mass storage. On Linux, more work may be done to set things up, but on Windows I seem to spend all my time chasing Spyware/Adware/Viruses. Linux therefore requires far less maintanence, but maybe a bit more set-up. That's fine by me.
Performance: Linux beats Windows by miles, no exact benchmarks, but things feel far more responsive, which is what people really mean when they feel that their computer is slow.
Oh yes and you would get more that 3 times the speed out of it. Proccessor frequency is not the only thing involved in the speed of the computer. P4 will be faster that P3 at the same MHz, and I bet the P4 has more RAM and a faster hard disk, what about the video card?
The article says even though MS Project runs only on Windows.
Actually I think you all will find that MS Project does run under Codeweaver's WINE, see MS Project is there on the list. It's got a Bronze on the Supported Applications list too, up there with Outlook XP which also has a Bronze (and that runs very smoothly on my PC).
The author also writes With this, I can have my "must-have" programs: MS Project and Visio.
Well, with Crossover you can have both Visio 2000 and Project. The question is, which one would you spend money on, $89.99 for Win4Lin (slower) or $39.95 for Crossover (faster).
I think that a better way to migrate from Windows to Linux would be to start using open source apps that run on both for your everyday chores while still using windows. Once you are comfortable using those tools, switching the OS won't be such a scary process. It's much easier to switch one app at a time then to switch everything all at once.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually, I believe it should have been stated before, but I'll repeat myself from an earlier posting some time ago.
The new Crossover Office does really run Microsoft Project and does this flawlessly. I wish it could run Rational Rose as well, but since we weren't able to force the poor emu-layer to do so, we decided to evaluate Borland Together which is cross-platform by nature. Up until now, it manages just fine and even better, since it integrates with StarTeam really smoothly.
___
On Slashdot, Russians comment on YOU!
I'm a graphics/video production student, and "heavy-weight" software like Photoshop, Maya/MAX, Painter, Premiere, After Effects, and so forth are a major part of my computing. I'd like to try Linux, especially because of HeroineWarrior's Cinelerra, which I'd like to get some experience with, and support. But I can't live without Photoshop/MAX, and really don't want to have to pay for a Linux liscense of Maya (the only one of these programs for which I think Linux support natively is even an option) unless I'd be paying for an upgrade anyway, and even then I'm nervous about being locked into an OS I'm not that experienced with.
Yes, I know Linux has GIMP and FilmGIMP and Blender, but in all honesty, while I like the idea of Blender, I need the featureset I'm used to working with in order to be productive.
Unfortunately, I'm guessing that these emulators probably can't handle emulating these complex programs without a pretty big performance drop. I have a fast system because I want fast response from my complex apps, and I don't want to lose that for the sake of running OSS, as much as I'd like to try. Anybody who's tried care to share their experiences? I'm sure WINE and their ilk are fine for programs that mainly involve poking around text in various datastructures, but what happens to digital video or image manipulation software?
...but I seemed to "grok" KDevelop easier than VS .NET. On the other hand, I'm trying to program in QT (both QT/X11 and QT/Windows 3.2.1 non-comm that was with the book), so that might be it. The program compiles and works identical on both platforms though, without reverting to basic C++.
.NET compiler complain about different things (I'm of the "if it compiles, it probably works" type), so it's a very nice QA session to switch back and forth. Setting up dependencies etc. in both is a bit annoying though, since things are obviously in different locations. But I use both environments, and don't notice that big a difference really.
Actually it seems like gcc and the
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Everyone seems to be missing what he meant by "that 'one last annoying program than only runs on Windows'"--he did NOT mean some specific program (like MS Project, which he used as an example in his article).
Rather, he meant that one last program that YOU use that has been keeping you from switching entirely to Linux. The one you have to reboot into Windows for, because there is no good Linux alternative. It's a different program for everyone.
I'll try to answer this from my own experience:
1. Is it really more stable? Sure has been for me (though I don't run XP... I've got a bit of a beef with their "Product Activation," since I change out hardware almost as often as I change my socks).
2. More secure? Oh yes... I'd say definitely fewer attacks. You can argue whether there's a selection bias with the number of windows systems out there, but the vast numbers of attacks/viruses/worms still stands. Besides, even if some 1337 linux worm comes along and compromises your unpriviliged user account, so what?
3. Aggravation? What aggravation? I've got a bunch of neighbors, friends, and family members running redhat and mandrake linux. Setup these days is no problem... and once installed and configured, you don't have to do too terribly much.
I don't think linux is perfect for everyone either... but the look of wonder on a win98 or winME user's face once they start using a nice KDE desktop under Mandrake warms my heart, particularly once they find out that they don't have to sweat the lastest windows Worm-du-jour.
After I've rescued/recovered someone's hosed windows system a few times, they always ask me what I use. I hand them a knoppix CD, tell them to try it out for a few days, and let me know if they're interested. You'd be surprised what an eye-opening experience that is for many windows users...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
If you haven't used windows recently, maybe you should try. It's actually gotten much faster and more stable, and it's actually very easy to cut out a lot of the bloat with just a few settings.
This is true, and I wish we already got over the BSOD jokes. Windows has gotten much better since the w2k days.
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
I'm using Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.6 (no update to .7 yet :) and, yes, I have sound, I have 3D acceleration (old ATI Radeon 7000) for when I want to play some bzflag. And I have a kickass filesystem (XFS) that I don't need to worry about if/when there's a power outage/machine goes down. Now, I'd have to spend more time setting up a Windows desktop than I did for this, just to end up using almost the same software which, incidentally was developed first for *ix (read: Mozilla stuff, emacs, etc).
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed
I'd rather *add* software after install, not remove it :) Besides, if Outlook is so flawed, what makes you think the rest isn't?
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
This is where you're wrong. See, some of us don't run Linux and BSD to feel cool, we do it because we feel more comfortable in a unix-like environment. My first Linux experience was Slackware in 1994. After fvwm I discovered WindowMaker. Over the years I've tried almost every WM/DE you can think of: KDE, Gnome, E, *box. Do you know what I use today? WindowMaker. I love unix because it's so well thought out, I love doing file management with cli tools, I do all development (C/java/C#) from inside emacs. I'm used to work that way, and that's the way I like it. If I had to use windows I'd have to install cygwin right after the install. So no, it's not about feeling cool, it's about getting the work done.You are right that I'm not the typical gamer/casual user, and you have a point there. If you love playing the latest games, using the latest photoshop, using (only) Linux makes little sense.
Which internet person did you share with me?
So that was YOU underneath last weekend?
Actually it would. Project is now a supported application for Crossover.
JBuilder and Eclipse.
There are numerous other IDE's for other languages for Linux as well.
I'll know more after I've used it for a while, but considering I write kernel drivers, I'm guessing I'll see the BSOD at least a few times.
More to the point, use what gets your job done. I run Linux at home for exactly that reason.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Faster, more stable, sure... But I still can't get used to the lack of features. I get lost with how hard things are to find and accomplish with a Windows desktop.
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement. Compare to Windows XP Professional:
A good interface, quick command line access and a useful command line. SFTP/FTP/HTTP/everything/etc directly accessible under my filesystem browsing (KDE/Konqueror)... lots.
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
Yes, it's more stable. From what I understand of XP, the BSOD doesn't happen anymore because the machine just reboots rather than show a screen dump to most people who will never know what it is. And sound support is not so hard as you make it out to be. It just works, just like in Windows. As for the total 2 hours of configuration, that's BS. I can't remember ever rebuilding a Windows box in under a day. My Debian install, should I need to reinstall it, can be reconfigured in less time than that will all programs and preferences and configuration carried over.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
Yes, and the fact that Outlook insecurities can affect the OS is proof that the OS itself is also insecure.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
Again, I choose Linux because it works better for me. I can't do my job from a Windows machine anymore. It just isn't capable. As for aggravation, the only computer aggravation I have is crappy hardware that I can't afford to replace when the caps on my mobo blow out or something.
Don't get me wrong; Linux is great for a server environment and a viable alternative when you have limited hardware and only need certain limited programs, but here at Slashdot it seems to be the solution to everything.
I use it on my servers, my desktop, my laptop, and my TV. That's a whole lot of environments, a wide variety of hardware, and lots of different programs, moreso than I think is even available for Windows. Linux isn't the solution to everything and karma whores here are often pointing that out while those that say it is are usually modded down for lacking insight. That doesn't mean it should be pigeon-holed to only specific circumstances though.
For reference, I'm a Computer Science student and work as a programmer in the summers. My home computer is Windows XP Professional running on a pentium 4 1.7 ghz and my work computer is a pentium 3 450 mhz. I've managed to get some pretty snappy performance on my work computer by running xfce or blackbox (I prefer blackbox) as long as I don't run more than one or two real programs.
Sounds like when you want to work from your machine, you use Linux. But for the home machine, it doesn't matter. Lots of people here use their computers for work and therefore rely on their functionality. Linux is a much more viable choice then.
I basically run the same few programs on both computers (emacs, mozilla firefox, aim/gaim, winamp/xmms) most of the time. Granted, it's a little unfair because my home computer is three times the computer of my work computer, but I think I get a lot more than 3 times the benefit out of it.
For the
I've nothing to say here...
Microsoft has one great application: Microsoft Flight Simulator. I need it. I know about Flightgear, but it is nothing compared to Fsim, and it's thousends of addon scenery and planes...
Not all programs run in win4lin. In particular, Pro-Engineer 2001, and Wildfire, refuse to run on my machine, I believe because they have a lot of underlying platform and machine specific code.
:(. That means that for that program, I and other mechanical engineers are stuck dual-booting.
Unfortunately, I've read elsewhere that PTS is refusing to make a linux version
You make some good points, I reply I would say that I am happy in running Linux in a corporate environment and find it far superior to Windows for what should be Windows strengths, office productivity applications.
To answer your points
i) Stability.
Here is the uptime from my PC from a few months ago (running SuSE 7.1)
alistair@omlette:~> uptime
5:31pm up 393 days, 2:06, 9 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
I have an XP machine and it doesn't come close to these figures, it still seems to have Virtual Memory problems from time to time.
Sound works excellently for me, and I have two large LCD screens running flawlessly from my Matrox card, dual head actually being easier to set up and tune in KDE / X than Windows XP.
Open Office has come on laps and bounds recently, I have over 250 Powerpoint presentations on this PC and they all open flawlessly these days using OO 1.1.1. I actually prefer OO Writer and Presenter to the MS equivelent these days, only Excel is clearly better.
I use Mozilla for mail and web browsing, it often goes for 30 - 40 days between restarts. I currently have 744 emails on my IMAP server and 27,000 emails (3 years worth) in my local folders and Mozilla indexes and searches then very fast on this average PC.
Upgrading to SuSE 9.1 took me under 3 hours and I have done very little upgrading since. However, bear in mind that before that I had the 400 day uptime, and before that 293 days uptime and think about all the time saved by rebooting the PC once a year on average and you'll see where the performance benefits come from.
There are many more benefits but I'll finish with just one.
I use a Mac at home and Linux on the laptop when travelling. Often I will be called on to find an email thread from 18 months earlier. All I have to do now is connect to the corporate network, ssh into my PC and X back Mozilla, 3 years of work history are now in front of me, this has saved so much time on more occasions than I can remember.
I am certainly no longer a geek and wouldn't say Linux is the solution to everything, however in my corporate role involving email, web sites documents and powerpoint I would estimate I am 10 - 20% more productive using a Standard SuSE Linux build than if I used the Windows XP Microsoft Office equivelent, but as I said, your mileage may vary.
The table of Linux software equivalents (that .ru site, search with Google) is great... an awesome resource.
b le.shtml could adopt an additional marking sign ( a "W" for instance) to indicate the application is available equally on Windows and on Linux.
This article points to another way to liberation, though more complicated -- but we need "bridge apps", those which run well on Windows and on Linux -- e.g., OpenOffice.org, Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, etc.
These apps are very useful since "normal users" can change from Windows to Linux effortlessly.
As a suggestion, http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/ta
Two computers? One Linux, One Windows. Don't start me on WINE and all this stuff. I KNOW. I was using Linux only for about a year but there is one simple point that cannot be ignored, if you still play games you still need windows. It is better to have two machines, less rebooting back and forth and you can always remote X into the linux one or KVM or whatever you choice would be. I recommend two computers for all homes...especially when you play enough games to make it matter.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Try Visual Slickedit, one of the best IDEs I've ever seen. Kinda expensive, but worth it. Try the trial version if you don't believe me.
It has native support for (not just color coding!):
Ada, dBASE, JSP, Slick-C, Ant, Delphi Pascal, Lex, Tcl, ANTLR, DTD, Pascal, Transact SQL, C, Fortran, Perl, VHDL, C++, High Level Assembler, PHP, Visual Basic .NET, C#, HTML, PL/SQL, VB Script, CFScript, IDL, PowerNP Assembler, Verilog, Ch, InstallScript, PVWave, x86 Assembly, CICS, Java, Python, XML, COBOL, JavaScript, REXX, XSD, DB2, JCL, SAS, YACC
And syntax highlighting for more.
People like to talk about technology but forget why the whole thing started. ... which was mainly because Linus Thorvalds wanted to make proper use of his new and shiny 386 and none of the systems available to him back then enabled him to do this. The whole freedom shebang (while not necessarily bad) got added later on.
This is very on point. If you're a linux power user, I defy you to put a video on your website of you installing linux. I've heard people say here they can do it in 20 minutes. I'm basically Joe Average when it comes to linux, but I've never done a *full* install (with sound, samba, and cable modem/wireless) in less than *2 days*.
Show me a video of you installing XP (30 minutes) and then a video of you installing a version of Linux with the same functionality in a comparable amount of time. You might be able to do it, but let me tell you I'm certainly not there yet.
Keep in mind I've been trying to get rid of my Windows totally for about 2 years now. My biggest problem is always device drivers. Getting support for my usb devices is always difficult, and I still can't seem to get drivers for my gba development flash cable. My little keychain USB drive is also hit or miss depending on the distro.
I would love to ditch Windows forever, but let's face it, without proper vendor support, it's just not going to be as simple as XP.
Just to head off the inevitable anti-win comments:
Yes, it will be less secure for whatever reasons.
Yes, I won't have a webserver installed.
Yes, I won't be able to natively ssh to the box.
Yes, I'll have to spend 5 minutes turning off annoying graphical options.
At the end of the 30 min XP install though, I will be able to browse the web, share files, use all of my hardware, and both share my printer and use others. All without ever having to look into the innards of my box.
Meh. Flame on now.
-- I have fans? Wow.
1) Is it *really* more stable?
In my experience, yes. I used XP home for six months before I switched to Linux. Now I've been using Linux for little over a year. In the time I used XP, I had to restart my computer about twice a day, to stop memory leaks. I also had reinstall XP about once a month, because it would simply break. In the time I've used Linux, I've only had two crashes, both due to bugs that were fixed shortly after. And I've also only had to reinstall once, and that was because I was switching distros.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks?
Does it matter? Regardless of the reason why, the fact remains that Linux is less prone to viruses.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it?
Aggravation? Oh! You mean like when I had to reinstall windows 98 THREE TIMES in one day because the installer decided to ignore the settings I chose (in the end I just settled with what the installer thought I should have).
I've been pretty satisfied with my Windows XP install, not had a single virus exploit a security hole or, like you, a single BSOD. Even because of this, I tried giving Linux a go because of all good things I kept hearing about it. The last time I did, it was Red Hat 5.2 or something like that.
So I downloaded a Knoppix Live CD. The entire OS locked when I tried to access my auto-detected NTFS-formatted hard drive.
So I downloaded Mandrake Linux 10 Official. The OS stopped booting up properly after 3 days of usage. I had just had time to install a couple of RPM's for a decent picture viewer, some TTF fonts for Firefox. No errors had been shown to me and I don't even know if those installs were the cause. I had never edited a config file by hand or played around as root either.
I have never ever had these problems with XP, and considering I also have to do a series of annoying steps just to run applications and games that don't exist for Linux, the choice is a no brainer for me.
I won't give up on Linux though, and consider giving it another go at about the time Longhorn is released to see how it compares in terms of OS crash safety, and how well it performs as a desktop OS.
Yes, I'm then not using a "free" OS, but usability simply goes first to me. When Linux distros start getting as mature desktop OS'es as Windows XP are, I'm sure I'll pick that one instead because of the Free software aspect. I do want to, and that's why I'm using Firefox, Thunderbird, Miranda, and recently tried out Gimp.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The main reason why GNU/Linux appeals to me is it's philosophy. It's an open-sourced OS and it's a programmer's OS.
Being open-sourced means that nothing is really hidden from you. You're only limited by your imagination (and how smart you are) in moulding the system into whatever you want it to be. And it is quite a cool feeling that the software you're using is yours, and not owned by some Big Corporation. It's nice to be free and not be locked into an upgrade cycle, as you often are with Windows. And the best thing is, of course, you can be cutting-edge (software-wise) without having deep pockets.
The other reason why I like Linux is that it's an OS made by programmers for programmers. This really shows in the abundance of development tools. I don't wonna fork out half a grand on Visual Studio to get the same functionality that comes as standard with Linux. Again, Linux is a Unix flavour, despite what some people say, and Windows is Not Unix. Most people to get any real productivity out of Windows install Cygwin, which is still very slow. I don't see a point in running Cygwin on top of Windows when you can just use the Real Thing.
I mean, I'm not saying that Windows is crap, Windows is now a decent OS, but it's still not the same for me.
</rant>
My only experience of WinXP is trying to recover a friend's system after he hosed it by pulling the plug out the wall socket while it was writing to disk. System crashes on boot trying to load WinXP.
1/ Try XP recovery console. Unable to get in because admin password required (due to disc corruption - password is actually blank).
2/ Try Win2K boot discs (bypasses XP password). Get into recovery console. CHKDSK won't run due to missing files.
3/ Try Knoppix. Boots OK, can read NTFS partition, run NTFSFIX to force CHKDSK. Reboot, CHKDSK runs. WinXP still fails on boot.
4/ Try various other things with no success.
5/ Try winXP 'repair' reinstall. Now I can boot WinXP but all additional programs are in a 'half installed' state. Spend several hours uninstalling/reinstalling and eventually get the system back pretty much how it should be.
Now, I'm not an XP expert so maybe there's something I could have done different. But my take on this it that a basic problem is that NTFS is a 'closed' file system which has to be reverse engineered. Non-windows NTFS read support seems fine, but write support is either partial/unstable or if you use the 'captive' version needs bits of WinXP which may be corrupt in this sort of case.
By the time NTFS has been fully reverse engineered with stable write support, MS will have moved on to the new Longhorn WinFS 'closed' filesystem and we're back to square one.
I wouldn't object to a closed O/S like WinXP nearly as much if it used a fully openly documented filesystem like ext3 or something so you've got a full set of tools to work on it and repair it even when Windows won't boot and the recovery console won't work.
BTW, I've convinced my friend that next time he gets some 'dodgy images' downloading that he doesn't want he should disconnect the cable modem connector, NOT the power...
Your post seems thoughtful, so I'd like to give you a point by point response.
Windows certainly has gotten faster and more stable, to the point where its just installed performance is no longer an issue. However, under use by normal users, it seems to pick up a variety of little applications, which eventually interact poorly. The registry is not your friend. The response is to lock down XP sufficiently so that users can't install anything, but I wonder what other problems this would incur. It certainly wouldn't work well in most home environments.
Linux is only fashionable in Linux friendly circles, like Slashdot. People who have choosen other OSes usually think you're weird for choosing something else. I also use XP Pro, not for my primary system, but so that I can gain familiarity with it, to better support my clients. I prefer Linux for several reasons, including:
*) Apps are easier to install (config && make && make install) and easier to obtain in that I can always download the app I need, for instant gratification.
*) Better logging when things go wrong. When Windows apps fail, I frequently get no error message, or a useless one. Not long ago I had problems with a sound card in Windows. It was in Device Manager, it was in the list of sound cards in the Multimedia config panel, but when I went to the pick list in the Multimedia panel to choose it as the device to output sound to, it didn't appear. Huh? In Linux, at the absolute worst, I can use sh -x and strace to find, at a very low level exactly what is going on. This shows me what I need to know to fix the issue suprisingly frequently, as I'm not a systems programmer.
*) Superior flexibility. There are many small tools that do one thing well. I can glue them together in spontaneous shell scripts to extract information from large numbers of files. Recently, I attempted to help a coleague to do a similar analysis on information contained in Word files. No similar solution was found. Lots of nuisance manipulation by hand. I prefer to make the computer do the mindless work.
*) Text file-centric configuration. A simple SSH session (from my T-Mobile Sidekick, a great sysadmin tool!) can configure nearly any app, and run most of them. Also, since I can grep/sed/awk I can mangle them with easily. If I'm really stuck for where a config option is, I can grep the entire file system. It's not a great option as it takes a long time, but when other options fail, it's there. I can't grep config dialogs in Windows.
*) Support. Suprised? Don't be. Does Microsoft even offer "free" support with a purchase? When I do call support, I get the annoying level 1 tech that is employed to keep the idiots away from the techs who know something. Depending on their training, I may or may not get passed to level 2 quickly. When I post to the mailing list for a given app, the developer and several people who have dealt with the same issue usually see it almost immediately, and give me the help I need, immediately.
*) Simplicity. I never have registry problems under Linux. Uninstalling an app is a simple matter of deleting the files. I don't have the sort of application interaction issues I see in Windows.
*) Security. Yes, it really is more secure. There have been viruses for UNIX, but they have not propigated well. There are technical reasons for this, and at least a couple of papers written about it. Google is your friend. Patches come out more quickly. Common client apps tend to have fewer issues, and do fewer things on behalf of the user without consulting them.
*) Freedom. Can't underestimate this one. It's just nice to really own my system.
To your numbered points:
1) Yes. No BSoD so far, but I've seen XP lock cold and less dramatic failures. Yes. Yes. Yes.
2) It is really more secure, see above. It is more secure considering only the core system, not to include apps. It is also more secure considering apps. Considering system secur
I use Windows XP, Linux (RH 8.0) and OpenBSD on a daily basis. Linux and Windows have my highest 'interactive' usage.
RedHat 8.0 took about the same time to install and configure as Windows XP - neither supported my video card out of the box apart from in VESA mode, so both needed video drivers installing. Both supported everything else I use out of the box.
Can I get the uptime with Linux? One of the boxes I administer has 450 days uptime, so I'd say yes. With sound support? I've never had a problem with sound support on Linux since the original SoundBlaster drivers went in back in 1993 or so (admittedly, these days it autoconfigures, back then you had to configure it yourself). I even play *games* under Linux when I'm not writing software (UT, RTCW:ET, Quake etc.)
RH 8.0 had *no* extra aggravation. It works how I want it to work, it has a proper command line, and it came with basic tools like SSH et al. so I didn't have to download them. For my use at least, Linux makes much more sense than Windows.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Using terminology like "tempts" and the summary implying that you are a better person if you don't boot Windows, once again I am fully convinced that Linux is a religion to far too many people at this site. michael seems like the type of guy that posts every little article he finds on the net that confirms whatever he thinks is true -- "Hey, if its on the Internet, it has to be true!" And when you pat yourself on the back for your choice in an OPERATING SYSTEM then you know you've completely lost touch with reality. I mean, step back a second and look at yourself in the mirror.
Then again, for all these fanboys, it just gives them a bigger cause to live their life for. Hence why I see it as a religion -- it manifests itself as a purpose. They can wake up in the morning and say, "I am making the world a better place by trying to get rid of that EVIL money thing!"
... is the Windows client for the Internet Chess Club (www.chessclub.com). I've tried to run Blitzen under wine and winex in the past under Gentoo. (But now I'm running Fedora.) Half my kingdom to somebody who can tell me how to run Blitzen under Linux.
Linux is bloated? So exactly what would you leave out of the kernel? (Besides the fact that you probably can do it if you don't care recompiling your kernel)
Ah, you mean "Linux distribution XY is bloated"? So, then don't use Linux distribution XY. Use Linux distribution Z instead. Or even: Use Linux distribution XY, but do a selective install and don't install that software which you consider bloat.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Now, maybe someone could create a knoppix type distro that has some super cool video game that only works on linux.
:)
Or better yet: make it yourself
As for cool videogames, ever tried Angband? It doesn't _only_ work in linux though, so maybe this is not what you mean. Maybe Tux Racer is more to your liking
My first post, You are so right and this is becoming more the norm everywhere. Personally I have been using linux (MDK mostly) for about 4 years and I can still do things faster in Windows than I can in Linux. Yea Linux is easy but it does seem to take longer to do things. For example installing Nvidia drivers it's real easy but it still takes less time to do it in windows. At this point I'm just as good at Linux as I am with Windows OSes but Windows (especially XP) tend to take less time to configure and set up this is especially true when trying to run new release games in Linux that were made for windows. So the last App for me is gaming it just to big a pain in the but to set up in Linux. I'm starting to rant so I'll end this here, just my 2cents worth.
That my friend, is a crock of horseshit.
Your mentioning problems that are famous in Win95 but unheard of in XP.
Linux is coming along & NICELY. I'm glad to see it because I remember Slackware 1.02 (or some early version of it circa 1993 iirc) & the OS has come 'worlds' of distance since then with KDE (which I like better than GNOME personally) & Plug-n-Play, and much greater device support. Linux bypassed an OLD fav. of mine in Os/2 Warp years ago in fact because of what their community has persevered on & kept steadily working at! These types of tools which this post is about are just another good step to have (Spell check lol) COMPATIBILITY w/ Windows apps. Linux is a strong server system that is getting stronger & I like how fast the latest error ('evil' was the name? Not sure but the 20 lines of C code one recently) was patched up! You have to admire the Linux Penguin community & how fast they can fix their stuff. The only place Linux needs work is not where it is strong (server oriented environs), but for more applications for the end-user on the desktop imo (because device support by many vendors is happening, this is wher Linux used to have a HUGE problem, not so much anymore though). This is where Windows gets the better of it! This is why folks return to Windows many times, or even need emulation layers like Win4Lin &/or VMWare (which is great stuff, congrats to the Penguins on this stuff & the OEM's who made them for other purposes as well). Get some more folks into Kylix (which is, if you ask me, the best 'RAD' development platform for the desktop on Linux judging by the critical acclaim it received @ various Linux 'best of' tradeshows etc.) you'd see more desktop app development probably... this is all Linux needs imo. Borland's given the Linux crowd that, as well (iirc) as a C++ Builder for Linux too! I imagine since Linux is basically a form of UNIX, most of its following is from C/C++ folks & coders & they tend to stick to that. Makes sense, the OS is built on C/C++ code, correct? Hard to change mindshare though, from building in C/C++ to Object Pascal in Kylix. All in all, though, I am impressed by the Linux community movement (this is coming from a Win32 person, by ALL means)! They prove people on earth can & do produce stuff for free that works and works well. Restores my faith in humanity, lol... now, to get folks to work together on world peace the way they have on Computers! apk
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Really, you yanks listen to way to much of that right-wing talk radio you all seem to love. Repeating a lie over and over again does not make it true. Install XP once a month? Utter nonsense. Unless of course you didnt really know what you were doing in the first place......
Killing an errant process which is stealing RAM and cycles from the system is rarely successful in XP et al; if it does die eventually, don't expect to be able to run a new instance of it until you've rebooted!
Uhmm, I don't really know what else to say to this besides - you are completely wrong. I have been using Windows XP on my main machines and a multitude of others when doing troubleshooting for almost 3 years now (and 98 for years before that), and never had to reboot to be able to restart a program after killing a process. Whatever you're referring to was either an extremely specific problem, or you managed to mess something up pretty horribly.
A simple system running software and hardware put together by Dell, for example, runs XP very nicely thank you. Try pushing the enevelope a little and it all starts to fall apart.
Heh...The system i'm typing this on would probably disagree with you. Pushing 5 years old now, P3 667 , mishmash of hardware from upgrading over the years, all different brand hardware than what was originally in here, runs XP fine. Even when I only had 128 megs of RAM in here instead of 512, it still ran passably, if a little slow.
Mr. Project and Gnome Planner are decent alternatives. Granted, they don't have all of the (often useless) features of MS Project, but they still do the job just fine in terms of making charts and doing scheduling/tracking.
r .imendio.org/
http://mrproject.codefactory.se/
http://planne
The unfortunate fact is that neither can import MS Project files at the moment. That said, it's not a common thing to be tossing around to co-workers *unlike DOC files).
Overall, thats a well thought out and intelligent post. However theres one bit I have to disagree with.
"Apps are easier to install" - im sorry but thats pish.
So I take it you took a Windows XP CD image with SP1 and slipstreamed all the hotfixes ? Or is patching optional and not part of the installation?
Let us all just get one thing straight. There is a major difference to people in an office running software to that of home users.
The majority of compatibility problems with this whole linux vs windows vs otherOS, have to do with applications that DO NOT have a place in an office environment. By saying office I mean office in the true sense of the word, admin to mid level office, not as design studio or higher management.
Office workers should not be playing games on their PC's. If you want to play games get a windows machine or a dual boot system.
To many people seem to have missed the plot.
So MAYBE Macromedia is now a threat to Microsoft with its "cross-platform" games!!
As an added bonus I could get Yetisports 1 (yeah, the "smack the pingu!!" one) running on my Series 60 phone as a Java app. No sound, though. Most of my gaming now done on the 3650. Only one virus to worry about (that is a "proof-of-concept" anyway), easy unninstall that does NOT leave traces, portability and surprising power for a small device (it runs a 109mhz ARM9 processor but some of the demos I saw for it do pack a punch)
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I haven't gone a day without a linux partition since '95 and I wouldn't change my BSD server for anything else, but when it comes to the everyday versatile workstations, windows is hard to beat. (If you feel the flames growing, please remember the "versatile workstation" criteria for this statement. Unixes have areas where they are hard to beat, I know this perfectly well, no need to remind me! ;))
Everything from sed, awk, vi and emacs to X11, KDE, Mozilla, OO.org, abiword, whatever you (Ok, maybe not exactly you who just went "Not me!" but many others) want, is available for windows as well as linux.
So if you love your UNIX tricks and tools, but absolutely, positively must run windows apps, it makes more sense to emulate unix under windows than to emulate windows under Linux. Since the solution proposed here needs a valid windows installation to work anyway, it doesn't even make political or economical sense.
The stability flamefest is fun, but let's avoid it? 2000 and XP are both capable of uptimes in the four digits.
How is this different from VMWare? They also have a Linux client, you can have your main OS be Linux, and be running win 2003 server/xp ect virtauly. I use vmware for testing/development; I have a windows 2000 advanced server running IIS and SQL set up to test within a virtual Machine, I do what ever I need to do then just drag-drop a backup copy of the Machine over - and I got a brand new dev enviro - no reinstall or config! Saves Butloads of time and not to mention no need to have 4-5 systems running under your desk. The plain Version of VM can run just about any version of windows, dos 6.0,
Mandrake Linux 8.2, 9.0
Red Hat Linux 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1
SuSE Linux 7.3, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1
SLES 7, 7 patch 2, 8
Turbolinux Server 7.0, Enterprise Server 8, Workstation 8
NetWare 5.1, 6, 6.5
Solaris x86 Platform Edition 9 (experimental), 10 beta (experimental)
and FreeBSD 4.0-4.6.2, 4.8, 5.0 more specs here
the only place it seriously lacks is in video gaming
I have to take issue with that. There are other issues that keep me of Linux as my primary OS.
1. Most graphical applications seem half done, mainly with respect to the interface but sometimes functionality as well. Commercial applications have an added incentive to achieve more because if they aren't seperated from the others, no one will buy them.
2. That leads me to my second point. When I get something with a complex interface or setup (DVD playing apps come to mind) my first instinct is to click the help menu. There is rarely any information there. Usually its a message that it will be implimented in the future or to write your own. This is usually not the case for windows, even with free software.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Nah, having used linux since the 1.2 kernel days I too would say that linux is most definitely bloated... My kernel size now is about 3x the size of my old 386 one, and *STILL* requires more modules to make use of all my hardware.
Furthermore all the programs available on linux have indeed filled out to utilize the space and cpu's available in the current timeframe.
-- vranash
I have "accepted it is happening" slowly. I am also a well paid egghead who like his fat salary. For the last 15 years I have been contracting to the likes of IBM, EDS, Fujitsu, Telcos,ect, in both development & third level support for Windows & *nix ( I don't care which O/S as long as they keep paying me ). I also happen to think OSS is the premire development model. In fact the project I am now on uses a neat little public domain data base called sqlite. ( but maybe I don't understand OSS and sqlite is actually crap? ). For as long as I can remeber the majority of servers in large corporations have actually been *nix not Windows. Windows is still king of the desktop and if you want to swap to Linux it will cost money to do it unless you can find an army of eggheads who are not interested in a pay check. I may have "my head in the sand" but I doubt that the Windows juggernaut will gone before I retire no matter how much zeal there is in the original article.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I shared... www.pwgalleries.com\639 some of these internet people have real loose morals
It is quite obvious that you aren't a gamer. The one and only thing keeping me from switching to Linux is the lack of game support. I don't want to just play one built-in game, wtf kind of boring geek are you? I don't want to hear that wine bullshit either, I want ALL of my games to work natively or its useless to me. Gamers drive the PC industry as a whole, it only makes sense to focus on them. I know it isn't all the distros' faults, it's mostly the developers' faults IMO, but they sure havn't tried very hard have they?
I really like Linux and despite all of the trouble it may be to switch to it from Windows, I would do it in a heartbeat and adapt if I could just play my games on it. However, the elitists are too stubborn to change; they want everyone to change for them, and then they still want people to switch from Windows. It won't work like that, they have to meet it in the middle somewhere. Because of their unwillingness to change, I don't expect we'll see very many native games on Linux for a long long time... if ever.
I can't live without my 3D Max... I have tried Maya and it is just too much to get up to speed as I have been using Max for 10 yrs or so and I have to be productive... I have not yet seen another Linux based 3D program to compete with Max, so if you know any let me know... other than that, I have switched off all other M$ products using Moz and open office... Anyone else have the same issues? /. saying the same thing, that Linux programs really need to be made easier to get up and running, Installers need to be made simpler, Interface needs to be streamlined and redefined... and I agree... as developers we have to remember people who chose linux over M$ tend to be able to deal with the tech behind getting their computer to work, but regular joe users are for the most part total Muppets.
Games you say... Thats what my PSX is for...
I think that it is important for office and businesses to be given the ability to open windows only programs yet not be dependant on the high costs of licences for M$ boxes... Yet, reading the article, I can't help but think the reason most people use M$ is because it works out of the box and installing programs and getting them to work is as easy as clicking a mouse... I went through the article and thought to myself... Who the hell can be bothered to do all this just to get a program to work when i can install it and run it instantly on a M$ box?
I have read a number of comments here on
flinging poop since 1969
Care to elaborate on your Win2K experience? I always wonder what the source of people's complaints are regarding these things.
Personally, I use it exclusively and I've never had it crash, catch a virus, get any kind of spyware/malware (other than tracker cookies). It runs quite fast unless I'm doing a whole bunch of CPU and memory intensive stuff simultaneously: Running AutoCAD, running MD5CRK in the background, burning a CD, playing music, and having 6 or 7 pages open/loading in FireFox - all at the same time (Plus other typical services like antivirus and such). Usually at that point AutoCAD's regen starts to take a little time and Firefox gets a little jittery on the scrolling but that's about it. Specs: 1.5GHz P4 with 128MB RAM. Performance wise I'm quite satisfied.
The machine I'm on now has also been running for about four months. I just 'lock' it at night to keep people from screwing with it. When I get in the next day I just turn on my monitor, type in my password and it's like I never left.
=Smidge=
... to something like +5, informitive.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Last time I looked European Air War still not supported which is sad for me.
Current:
Rating:0 out of 5 [ Does not install and does not work. ]
I believe it is a directx problem - has anyone heard any word of a change in this?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I did, on my laptop, 30 minutes after buying it. I had installed RedHat dual (the first 28 minutes), rebooted, and voila, total lock. Redhat didn't work either. I'd also like to point out that when I install something, I don't want to go on a treasure hunt for it, a-la linux. I installed realplayer...not only could I not find it for days, when I did find it, I had to mod the security permissions on it to get it to run. It ran the registration, and hasn't worked since. This install is similar to MANY that I've done in linux (and don't get me started on dependency trees).
The X11 network protocol is tuned to deliver events as fast as possible, for example it disables the nagle algorithm.
Tunneling this protocol increases latency That means that a round-trip takes longer, so your application seems to respond slower.
The problem will vanish when the toolkits use Cairo instead of X11 RPC calls. A GNOME, GTK/cairo port is already in the works [cairographics.org] Once it is finished apps over ssh -X will be as responsive as local apps, because with cairo all state is kept on the client-side.
In the meantime you could use NX [nomachine.com], which uses extensive client-side caching to avoid round-trips: The NX protocol is as efficient as cairo. Another possibility would be to avoid using GNOME/GTK apps and use KDE/QT apps instead. If I remember correctly they use a widget-library (Xt) that tries to avoid the round-trips as much as possible.
Anyhow, once Cairo is available (expect it in Fedora Core 3 or FC4), the latency problem will vanish. Plus it will be very easy to move GTK/GNOME applications from one DISPLAY to another. Because cairo will keep all widget-state on the client-side.
Moving apps was not possible with the old stateful X11 network protocol; with xmove you could only move an application to a display which had the same characteristics, because xmove had to re-build the widget-state on the new display.
Your USB devices are not "distro dependent", but are "kernel dependent". There is no reason that it might work on one distribution and not on another. Nearly all of those USB storage devices use the standard USB mass storage protocol, and don't require any specialized drivers.
I, for one, have never had a "30 minute Windows install." It takes 30 minutes just to install device drivers... Install 4-in-one/nForce driver. Reboot. Install video driver. Reboot. Install audio driver. Reboot. Install CD burning software. Reboot. Install NAT/Firewall. Reboot. Install antivirus software. Reboot. Install 250 service packs. Reboot reboot reboot Reboot Reboot Reboot.
You're never done with Windows in 30 minutes. With Slackware, for me, it's a 20 minute install, 5 minutes of configuration (including installation of nVidia's driver), and 10 minutes to install Dropline Gnome - then I'm DONE for another year, except for a handful of programs or regular ALSA driver updates and occasional Gnome updates. Did I mention that this could be done WITHOUT a reboot (after initial install of Slackware)?
I guess since IBM had a license to the Win 3.1 code and OS/2 ran DOS programs very well, I didn't have to develop slavish loyalty to an OS. Win4lin is great. My wife WOULD NOT have used java arachnophilia and The GIMP. OpenOffice for Flash creation? I don't think so. No, she wanted Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and her HTML editor of choice. The old "it isn't industry standard" argument _and_ the availability NOW of features.
Without win4lin, she wouldn't be booting linux or using linux for email, web, scanner or digital camera software.
I use Streets and Trips quite a bit when travelling - it's got flaws but for easy off-line map finding it works fine. I have not been able to find a good alternative to this that will run on Linux or Wine. Also I can't use my modem in my Dell laptop - somehow the modem drivers eat the sound card drivers and vice versa. If those two things were fixed, I'd switch to Linux in a heartbeat on my Inspiron. (and it would be nice to get Macromedia Studio to run, too).
12:50 - press return.
Ugh. Windows 2k/XP repair is a NIGHTMARE. Spyware removal is also a pain as well, and is almost impossible in many cases because some of those things get so deeply rooted into the OS. The only option is often a reimage.
I tried using Captive NTFS with "System Rescue CD". a Gentoo based recovery system, and was able to rip some bad DLLs out of a machine in which I didn't have admin access. And the damn things STILL came back bacause of the cryptic network of INIs and registry entries that these fucking things take advantage of.
Blah. And to repair a bad NTFS drive... You can forget about that.
You're satisfied with your W2k experience (jimi hendrix rolls over...), but many people are not.
Recently I've had the entire graphics subsystem freak out, forcing a reboot. Probably can blame that on an app, but whatever.
I also look at my task manager now, which got corrupted and has no title bar at all. No window frame either.
As an expert user, you can be happy and relatively healthy using Windows. But there are many people unable or unwilling to bother with the forced maintenance.
"Freedom. People like to talk about technology but forget why the whole thing started." This isn't insightful or accurate. Linus just wanted a better free (as in beer) version of unix then Minix. I've been using linux since 1.2.13 (back in '95) and back then I never heard of this open source movement. Linux was just a tool to learn Unix. Now Linux is a cheap way of running "Unix." Businesses couldn't care less about open source. They care about their bottom line. Linux is simply a cheap alternative to Sun, HP-UX, et al.
I thought that was one of the greatest features too, until I was involved in the development of a considerably large Windows Forms application. There are so many bugs associated with the combination of anchoring and resizing. Its obvious Microsoft's focus during development & testing of the .Net CLR was ASP.Net not Windows Forms!
You say it is the distributions fault, where it clearly isn't. You have little or no understanding of the differences between DirectX and OpenGL or why DirectX doesn't play nice with Linux. You have little to no understanding about what Wine* is. If you want someone to blame, blame the game developers who don't develop native Linux clients, the developers who strictly use DirectX only. Those are your stubborn elitists who refuse to change.
The standard argument here is that without a large enough slice of desktop market share, Linux native application investment will never offer a compelling business case. The intention of Win4Lin is to enable native application development by bridging over a large number of Windows-dependent users, thereby making a larger market share, thereby creating a larger market share that promises to provide a return on the investment in time and money that is needed in writing native apps. I totally disagree with the old, narrow argument that this inhibits native development. In fact, I see no other way to ensure that native applications will ever get written. Without bridging the mainstream and getting market share from 1-2% to up to over 10%, there is no way that all of the "other" applications - not Office, IE, Outlook, etc.... will ever get written for native Linux.
I work in a small research group (10-15 people) and our solution was to install windows 2003 server on an older box and use rdesktop access windows. Sadly we need windows for things like our plotter which is only supported in windows. If you have a small group and have an older computer to spare, I think rdesktop is a good solution.
-- john
Well obviously everyone has a difference experience. For example, trying to use XP is a constant aggrivation for me, but some people swear up and down that it's the best version they've ever used.
Maybe it comes down to luck? Maybe I just never did that one incredibly stupid thing that is so slight that nobody even realises they do it, but it forever ruins their system. This is why I'm curious about the stories behind the complaints.
=Smidge=
I dont understand the fascination with uptime...As long as it is at least a day, who cares....
My old machine was constantly having trouble under Win2k. It'd crash out every now and again with a BSOD for no particular reason. Personally I suspected buggy hardware, because I couldn't make any sense of it. I installed Linux on it, and it ran for 3 months straight. Before it'd lasted a day or three or so on average. It was rather surprising, but pleasantly so.
To contrast that, I ran WinXP on my new machine without getting a single BSOD during 1,5 years. Then in completely buttfucked itself during an upgrade (couldn't even reinstall over or anything), and I decided to go with Win2k again. Win2k SP4 is very nice, very stable on the right hardware.
That's why I think people have so different experiences. The kernel itself might be solid, but the drivers sure as hell can make it into an unstable nightmare. On Linux, the drivers hold the same high quality that the kernel does, at least in my experience. That is, if your hardware is supported. Linux is still struggling there.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ye, I used to get that quite a lot under win2k too. I could also never get more than a weeks uptime out of it. I put it down to me meddling too much :)
:) ) mplayer is the best media player out there, and the windows builds are a little flakey.
But I'm afraid the biggest things I miss when I boot to windows now are a decent command line, being able to install apps with a single command (e.g. emerge, apt-get), and sometimes X-forwarding. Plus the little things, like not being able to use X2X to control my laptop and desktop from the same keyboard and mouse.
Oh, (flamebait I know
I'm more than willing to admit that Linux isn't for everyone, but I don't think that I would go back to Windows out of choice.
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Yes, Apples are nice, but you should add to your list of questions - Do you ever plan on buying any additional hardware for it? Apple hardware is nice, but expensive. That doesn't speak to the OS, but more to the platform.
I have had lots of fun point out that OpenOffice.org can export directly to PDF whereas MS Office can't. And Firefox and Thunderbird are better already than anything that Microsoft or Apple can offer.
I hear that. But usually there are the counter arguments, that there are freeware/shareware out there that can do the same thing. The key is that Linux software has the ability to simply pull away from the competition through innovation. I am not 100% confident that they will, but they have the ability to.
I was just out of town on business, and the hotel offered free wi-fi. They had loaner PCMCIA wi-fi cards, and this was my first experience with it. I loaded the driver on my laptop (WinXP) and after some installing, the card was detected and everything was fine. Then I wondered how Knoppix would handle it. I had a Knoppix 3.2 CD in my bag, and booted it up. Everything was auto-detected, and I was on the net with no problems. Nice. I had heard in the past that wi-fi wasn't very straightforward with Linux, but Knoppix has never been like the other kids on the playground. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Nitpick: That is certainly not the case. A P4 is designed to scale up to high clock speeds, and is less efficient per MHz. It does end up being faster by virtue of MHz (very few P3 cores are as fast as even the slower P4s)
In this respect AMD's processors are a bit more efficient than the p3, but pretty similar: they are pretty darn efficient per clock compared to a P4: at 2/3 the clock rate, they generally beat a P4.
I bet the P4 has more RAM and a faster hard disk, what about the video card?
And we have the reason a P4 seems better.
When you use Win4Lin it still required you to own a copy of Windows. So your still getting screwed over by being forced to buy Windows. Sure it might 'fix' the compatibility problem, but you might as well just duel boot if your going to have to buy Windows.
-Cnik
Especially don't run programs via dual-boot, which tempts you to stay and use all those other wonderful programs like Outlook...
If you like Windows that much... Why not just run Windows.
I thought that we programmer types were supposed to be Libertarians, not communists. If you really like Windows better, then just use Windows. Pick software based on your preference of the software. We're a capitalist society. I get paid to write the software that I write, which runs, for the most part, on Solaris.
If windows is giving you a BSOD for no apparent reason, download memtest86 and run it. Every single instance I have encountered windows randomly blue screening (in win2k and XP) it has been due to bad RAM.
This isn't always the case, but it is almost always due to hardware. Windows 2k and XP are actually extremely stable when you have non-faulty hardware.
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
/etc/modules
Back in 2001, the last time I used windows, it was on an old Compaq Armada 1592dt, a fairly run-of-the-mill PC laptop with APM and no ACPI, I would switch IPs regularly, and sometimes frequently, as well as switching between a Xircom Realport and Cisco 802.11b wireless card several times a day. This was all part of my job, the computer was used for troubleshooting and configuring high end networking equipment.
Windows 2000 would frequently lock-up completely when inserting a new PC card, and/or get confused about networking settings until I rebooted.
Sometimes the problem was so bad I had to remove the drivers and all related registry settings before I could get the cards to work again.
I switched to Debian Linux, and after setting up the drivers the problems were gone. It was very difficult and sometimes impossible to do my job with Win2k, and easily possible with Linux.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
Windows ships with a bunch of services installed and listening for connections by default, Debian installed with ports open at all. I'd rank that as being infinitely more secure.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
In my case, it had nothing to do with being "cool" and everything to do with getting my job done. It's supremely arrogant of you to assume that you know anyone else's motivations for choosing software. In my line of work, it is certainly not strange to find people who prefer, or even need to use some kind of UNIX for their workstation OS, and it has nothing to do with being 31337 like you seem suggest is everyone's motivation. You need to get out more if you think Windows can do it all.
In my case, as I said earlier I was unhappy with Windows 2000 because of it's apparent problems with changing hardware and networking settings. Secondly, having installed all the relevant drivers from Compaq, I also wasn't happy with the amount of time the computer took to wake-up and sleep using the APM BIOS (about 30 seconds to sleep and 30-40 to wake in Win2k). In Linux, I was able to tweak the settings and move much of the APM subsystem into a RAM disk to streamline the process, and prevent having to wait for the disk to spin up, I was able to shorten the sleep time to around 10 seconds and wake-up time to less than 5 in Linux - that would not be possible in Windows. Stability problems I had experienced in Windows related to APM sleep/wake-up also disappeared when I switched to Linux. I was able to use tools in Linux that were not available in Windows that worked at the ethernet rather than TCP/IP level and I was able to change my MAC address without needing to use promiscuous mode, these were both very valuable features.
Finally, having been UNIX obsessed since a young age, I was familiar with many UNIX type operating systems including Debian Linux prior to installing it on the laptop. So it was a departure from normality for me to be using windows at all, but I decided to do so because it was pre-installed on the laptop, and I was not convinced that Linux would be better for portable hardware.
Incidentally, setting up sound on the laptop (as with most systems) was a matter of typing one command.
echo "sb" >
One of my pet peeves, and definitely one for the pullet surprise list. Grrrr...
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Actually, I can't. It takes at least an hour for the CD's to copy and unpackage the 4GB of RPM'd applications that I use to do my work, shit I don't have to install separately.
.Net SDK + Office + Mozilla/Firefox + gaim + antivirus... then I'll consider it a fair test.
Now if you want me to video tape XP + Visual Studio 6 +
Using Win4Lin, VMWare, Crossover Office to run that "last program" is old news. This adds nothing new except provide an opportunity for the 12-year old /.'ers to vent. (I'm 13, BTW, and really mature, butthead, so go away.)
why feat so much about windows? as long as I cant run all those new games on my linux boxes, I still need at least one windows box, well, I actually keep most boxes with windows so I dont have any "compabitlity problem" and no desire to run linux program on them what so ever.
He's right, though. My own transition to Linux was complete on the day I wiped my windos partition many years ago. It was only afterwards that I really noticed some things, and started to wonder why I had put up with the shit for so long.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Your mileage may vary... Some restrictions may apply
Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
Yes, yes and yes.
For both systems, if it supports your hardware out-of-the box, it's pretty much painless nowadays. If your hardware is not supported, you're out of luck in both cases. In Linux you hunt down the drivers, compile, recompile, load modules, etc. in windos you hunt down the drivers, find they don't work, hunt down another version, find out they suck, load down a third, find them acceptable but unstable, etc.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks?
It really is more secure. Sorry, professional bias (I'm employed as a security dude.)
Nevertheless, to paraphrase Scott Culp (an M$ dude, ironically), stupid admins trump secure systems.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
I don't do business with convicted criminals.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Your USB devices are not "distro dependent", but are "kernel dependent". There is no reason that it might work on one distribution and not on another.
True, but also false. They key word here is "default", it's quite distro dependent on sense that necessary kernel modules, hotplug, automounting, etc, may or may not be enabled or installed in some distro and be in another.
It's obviously possible to do all that manually, but it may end up taking hours of work in one, and work automatically out of the box in other distro.
Hi, I'm one of those clueless newbie users that linux users hear so much about...
I dual boot at home, Redhat 8.0 and Windows 95 (yes, its a Pentium I). I have problems with USB mass storage also. This is a real problem for me, as the floppy drive is broken and it is not a networked computer. In other words, my only means of getting software onto the computer is downloading it elsewhere and taking it by USB storage device to my home computer. Unfortunately, it likes to get "stuck". I am sure there is a driver problem, but there is only one driver available, to my knowledge. However, the way linux handles the failure has left me Not Impressed.
See, I'm always hearing about how stable linux is. Great, so how come I have to reboot 3 times to get data out of my USB device? I have tried both CLI and GUI (Gnome), and either way it gets stuck (read as "slows to a crawl and won't do anything except by CLI, very slowly") when I try to cp a file. I know there is a way to kill-9 the process, but how? I know, find the pid. How the heck am I supposed to do that? And why doesn't the GUI do that? Is the cancel button there for show? I figure since you have had similar problems, maybe you can give me some advice. I'd greatly appreciate any help you could give me, because the man files are no help, and the answers I have gotten on linux help sites are not very helpful.
I'm just a little unhappy that Win95 is kicking redhat's butt. So far my experience has been that Win95 is faster, and more stable than linux. I know I will receive responses to try another distro, but I get the feeling that if I try another distro, I will just have to learn another way to do the same things. I'm not someone who wants to "play around" with my computer for 100 hours before it works right - I have other geekly pursuits which are much more important than my computer (else I wouldn't still be running a P1). I just want the darn thing to work right.
I haven't even tried WINE yet. I'd like to, but if I can't even get regular linux working, how am I going to get WINE to work?
Frustrated Newbie
All distros include the everything and the kitchen sink as modules (or internal). This especialy goes for USB mass-storage and HID devices.
While I may be a programmer, I'm really into games. Linux is great; don't get me wrong. There are 100x more things you can do under linux. But until someone can implement all of my favorite games on linux, and make them work on linux, I'm kinda stuck with windows. Also, I happen to have some ATI video cards, some of which don't have the best linux support. So, I'm kinda stuck. MAKE BETTER DRIVERS FOR LINUX, ATI!!! Although, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible just to write dll replacements or something, and whenever a windows program refrences a dll, you refrence the equivalent library on your linux box. I mean, you could just write a simple DirectX dll translator that takes all directX calls and translates them directly to the equivalant linux command. True, this approach would require a lot in the way of reverse engineering (if we don't want copyright infringement to kick in) and a lot in the way of work (I mean, how many different versions of dll's are there out there? Seriously, it is rediculous).
...when they get AutoCAD (and all 12 sub-packages: ADT, Land, MDT, etc, etc.) and REVIT to run under Linux.
And before you tell me I should be running VectorWorks or MicroStation (yuck!) or whatever else: No, we can't, our clients require AutoCAD - It's not an option.
And before you tell me I should be working on a Mac: You give me the money.
---
"Just answer the question." -John Bender
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
There are alot of Electrical Engineering apps that keep me on windows. Yes, they have *nix versions but those are PAY versions. The free student versions tend to only be available on Windows.
Even outlook 2000 runs fine.. and its 'almost native' linux this way.. unlike win4lin which is more of a virtual machine idea...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article says Project won't run in BOCHS or Plex86. Why not? They're just emulating the PC architecture, so you should be able to install Windows in the VM, so you should be able to run Project. Or am I missing something here? And he did forget to mention QEMU in that mix...
You play SS as well? If Linux had a port of that game then life would be all the better.
However, the vast majority of Windows users run MS Office purely because they've managed to get it free from work or a colleague, not because they need all of the features it gives them.
I guess you could say "because they've managed to have someone hand them an illegal copy".
The more Microsoft tries to put an end to illegal copying, the more people will be dissatisfied at having to spend huge quantities of money on Office and Windows, and the more likely they are to consider switching to other (FOSS?) products.
Microsoft will probably manage to shoot themselves in the foot in the end.
Score: i, Imaginary
as a Sys admin at a small software company in Austin, I'm enjoying running only Gentoo Linux as my desktop, with two other boxes (a build machine and cvs) running the same as servers. With the Exchange plugin now free for Evolution, I have no need for Windows anymore. What do I need day to day? A terminal for ssh, a webbrower (firefox) to view status of other groups (and post on /.), Evolution for mail/meetings/calendar, AbiWord for any .doc viewing/editing, rdesktop/vnc to control any Win activities, xchat for support, gaim for fun, and Eclipse for everything else.
We're at a point where you just need an Admin (me) that will install/configure/maintain Linux as either a server or Desktop enviroment. I'm playing with Slackware/Swaret (again) as a primary desktop, and with it auto updating to current weekly (daily if you need), that solution is the best overall for me, while still using my fav overall distro. I'm ready to move everyone over to Linux on the desktop. Sure, maybe the marketing folks *need* MS Office, maybe some of the VPs *want* to stay with it, so let them have Windows XP if they want em, while we save on any Lic costs from 90% of the company, we're way ahead of where we were.
After that, we just need to stop paying for the 'priviledge' of all the Exchange problems (locking for no reason, getting stung by worms/viruii) and go with a Linux backend there.
Call me an optimist, but I think we're ready for Linux on the desktop, and beyond.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
You should shop around, where I buy my software a windows license doesn't even come close to the difference between the cost of a p100 and a new 3.4 ghz whatever... Not saying I don't like free stuff, just saying that doing without Windows isn't going to make you able to afford a state of the art machine if you can only buy a p100 after buying Windows.
That's the only thing holding me back at this point. I must use SQL server and I think it's a rather good relational DB. But I cannot find a good replacement for Query analyzer. If I could, I'd never boot into win2k again.
Load a >100 page document in Windows. Try to print some odd combinatoin of pages. Say 20-30,45-57.
Then Word gets lost in "repaginating"(what a word ). Can't close it, so kill it with taskmanager.
Error message :- The application is being debugged. First close the debugger.
Can't find no instance of any debugger any where in taskmanager. Eventually Word dies in one hour. Try launching it again, no can do.
And I encounter this daily. The only solution is to print all pages and use only the one's I need. So in that sense , Windows is even hazardous to environment.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I recently did a clean install of MDK 10 on my notebook. I don't have exact times, but it was less than an hour because I started it when I started watching Buffy, the install finished before the end of Buffy. And it probably would have been shorter but I waited till commercials to change discs. And I also had full Office suites and Graphics editors instead of just a text editor and bitmap editor. I was able to network print and ssh into my desktop after the install. (I am rather lazy and for the rare files I transfer between the systems, I just use scp).
While I could compile a LFS system, I find Mandrake just works. Maybe you should try a different distro. I can understand taking two days for say Gentoo where you have to compile everything yourself. Most everything else should just work. A few devices might require you to compile the drivers, but that is usaully on the order fo minutes. You can compile a whole kernel in twenty minutes.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Where the hell did this weird "compatability" mistake come from anyway ?
I blame the loosers who spend all their time masterbating instead of reading teh dictionary.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/
Project sucks rocks anyhow, I found several web based project management tools were better, and made it much easier for multiple people to co-ordinate on a project without having to be all around at the same time.
And solarwinds toolkit only exists because windows lacks these basic tools. Everything it does is easily handled by unix apps, just check out the ports tree some time.
It has everything you describe, plus quite a bit more. I could list a litany of minor features here and there and maybe there'd be a pissing match, but it all comes down to polish, polish, polish. IDEA is just one of the most "completed" pieces of commercial software I've seen. Even where it does the same thing that many IDE's do, it just does it much better. Better than VS, better than Eclipse, better than Netbeans - basically better than everything else I've tried.
VS.Net users I know either spend a lot of time envying it or switch. BTW the developer is supposed to be porting some of their advanced functionality to the VS platform...
Just try it out. Seriously.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I agree, WinXP is perhaps the most user friendly OS Microsoft has put out yet. I still give my props to them for W2K being the most productive (I find many of the interface changes in XP to be umm.. annoying).
Infact, I agree that for a desktop, XP is adaquately stable and generally don't have too many issues assuming that you don't pound the system with a huge array of applications.
However, in todays computing environment, people are connected to the Internet. Just that action alone makes any Windows OS equate to "extra aggravation". I'm talking spyware issues, adware issues, viruses, security issues. Even the more tech saavy among regular end-users get hit with spyware on occasion.
So whats the solution? Well on a WinXP box you start by running an antivirus application, spyware blocker, pop-up blocker, setting up a firewall, perhaps switching out Outlook & Internet Explorer for something like Mozilla.. Of course, setup Windows Update to auto-update. Perhaps if your lucky, you can even setup users with restricted accounts (though I *STILL* run into required apps that insist on having admin access) so security is improved in that regard.
Thats one of the big things I like about Linux distros.. pop in a CD, tell it you want it setup as a workstation.. after about a half hour or so, your booted up into the system, the default security is not to give administrative access (nice), default reasonable firewall is already setup, applications already installed and the computer is ready to use.
WinXP (and definitely W2K) are old enough that the CD you use is too old to have the latest drivers and security updates. So even a basic install takes significantly longer (and requires more skill) than grabbing the latest (free) Linux CD.
Of course, then there is the entire LTSP which is great for many-many-many installations (nothing like taking a computer out of a box, setting it to network boot and presto everything is good to go..), the fact that I can yank out a Linux hard drive and pop it into another system and be able to continue to work (never understood why Windows creates such a fuss requiring basically a fresh install), better package management, ability to move to different hardware platforms (choice), ability to customize virtually every aspect of the system (choice), etc..
Of course, there are many drawbacks, mainly stemming from marketshare -- there are still lots of niche apps that simply are not available for Linux. It truly is unfortunate. However, it seems like every month I see some positive news in this regard -- either better compatibiltiy with Win32 apps, apps being ported or other natvie apps providing the needed functionaility.
Maybe they spelled it that way because it is not completely compatable. Truth in advertising!
But the ONLY programs that I have that only run on windoze are a few games. Neither win4lin nor its over-priced older sibling VMWare, can run games.
Now that there are web-based versions of tax software, I don't need to reboot to doze for those either. I am left with games and that means one of two things: wine or windoze.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Your USB devices are not "distro dependent", but are "kernel dependent". There is no reason that it might work on one distribution and not on another.
Distro dependent is approximately equal to kernel dependent when we are discussing Linux desktop installation. Certain distro's have certain kernels with certain patches, and autoload certain modules. In other words, not all distro's install the same kernel. My wireless NIC requires a certain version of wireless tools, and on some kernels even requires a patched module. The end result that lack of vendor support means a variety of alternatives that may or may not work and I have to decide which one. This illustrates the largest issue of Linux: choice. There are thousands of programs I can use, that's great, and certainly better than windows, however, without community support, I have to try many of those alternatives and fail before I find something that works.
It takes 30 minutes just to install device drivers...Reboot...Install 250 service packs. Reboot reboot...
Service packs/security updates and rebooting are annoying:agreed. I have slipstreamed SPs as the sibling article states to alleviate this somewhat. It's still a pain though. As to drivers though, on an unknown system installing Linux, audio drivers require a similar process of "install module, test audio in 3 different types of apps, uninstall module, try another" etc (I still can't get the damn flash plugin to play audio at normal speed though). The big difference is that if you are installing Linux on your own known system with drivers you know to work, that's great, but rarely do I have do any kind of research on Windows boxes I know very little about.
You're never done with Windows in 30 minutes. With Slackware, for me, it's a 20 minute install...
Actually, I did it for my brother last week in about 40 minutes (WinXP + OfficeXp). I haven't tried Slackware in a few years, maybe I'll give it a shot. However, I suspect the speed of your install is largely dependent on your knowledge of the hardware, whereas in Windows such knowledge is a lot less important
Don't forget I love my Linux systems, and my Gentoo box is my current favorite. However, I still believe Linux won't be ready to challenge Windows on the desktop until including Linux drivers with the hardware becomes more commonplace.
-- I have fans? Wow.
Firstly:
By default Windows XP doesn't have a BSOD because MS found that people were associated it with a windows/crashing. Instead, the system will boot, or in many cases simply freeze up.
I get regular freeze-ups when playing various games. I somewhat miss the BSOD, as at least I had an idea what was causing the issue. Could be video drivers, etc but with two XP machines only one of them have the issue (same video/sound card).
Viruses: Do I need to elaborate. If it weren't for my linux boxen firewalling my XP machine, it could get ugly.
Hardware: Honestly, with the interface I'm using on my nix laptop, Celeron 700, it's just as productive at most tasks as my XP2500 desktop (sometimes moreso on the laptop). Some things I can't compare as the Cel only has 256MB RAM vs 750MB
Require them to go through an install process that alters their kernel, "whatever the hell that is, won't that break it? I mean, why can't I just mouse it or something? Really, I'm not a hacker, and I don't want to be one, I just want to use my computer, and if linux is better, GREAT, so why the hell can't all those thousands of people working together put together something I can run without having to understand how it runs much less how to change how it runs?"
The positive of the concept is far out done by the negative of the implimentation.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Fix that and maybe Linux will have a shot on the desktop. Of course, I know that will never happen - for no fault of Linux developers, mind you. Microsoft knows that their very existence hangs on their lock on Office compatibility. If they lose that they are dead. So they will make sure that doesn't happen.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
The difference is that the newer kernels support a lot more hardware and are much more scalable then the older kernels are.
most people (linux people seem to fall into this category) who bitch about bloat don't realize that there can be a good reason that code base increases. run linux 1.2 on your damn 386, I want to be able to take advantage of a large address space, development tools, and other things that allow me to be more productive.
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
I like how the guy compares windows to CP/M, and Linux to DOS. Like Linux will be the successor to windows. nice...
However, the finger should be pointed at Symantec for this but I still should be allowed to kill the process.
The greatest hindrance to success is a well-rationalized excuse
s/n: 1w4p053x-n06dd2-5pwp-79wh-7xwh-74
I also look at my task manager now, which got corrupted and has no title bar at all. No window frame either.
Try double-clicking on the frame.
I think the rest of your comment can be evaluated in light of your magnificient grasp of the task manager window.
Note that the article only covers installing and configuring win4lin. Win4lin doesn't support XP or NT. EMC's VMware, a powerful virtual machine capable of running Windows NT, 2000, and XP; Linux; and Novell NetWare. The Samba team uses it to run multiple different Windows versions to test their SMB file server. Its only disadvantages are its preference for NT over Windows 9x, its cost ($299), and the need for a powerful PC..
If I were to run an emulator I'd have to have XP/NT capabilities. But $299 is kinda steep. And WINE doesn't suport the example app from the article MS project. Why would WINE not support an app like that? I thought it offered direct support for (in theory) just about any windows app?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
"1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?"
Not trying to flame you or anything friend, but what makes you think that just because it doesn't get the BSOD that it makes it stable? Maybe you haven't had a bad experience with Windows, but a lot of people have. You have to look at the times where it just wants to freeze up for no reason at all... during installation of programs that take awhile to install... and other times where an "unexpected error occurs" and randomly shuts down that text document you were working on for quite some time -- without saving it. Oh sure, you saved a great deal of it, but who really saves after every word? And then when you load it back up, you notice that good ol' Microsoft Word's recovery system did not help at all. Oh, and don't get me started on how many little programs that Windows XP runs in the background to hog your RAM... sure, you can turn those off, but they just always seem to come back. Like DCOM... it's almost always running and you never really need it.
"2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed."
Yes. It is "really" more stable. Look at how many security holes that is found in Windows over the past few months and compare that to Linux's. You'll notice that there has been a "critical" hole in almost every piece of Windows software, and it always seems to take Microsoft six months to fix anything. Maybe they can't help it... but at least they could find those flaws for themselves.. and get them fixed faster. Linux MAY at one point in time have had more holes, but for one, they are a lot smaller and two, they are fixed almost immediately after being found. As I've said before, you've probably had a great experience with Windows, thus, that's what you are backing your opinions on. But have you really ever used Linux? And yes, Outlook is terrible... Internet Explorer is terrible... oh hell, Windows Explorer is horrible.
"3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?"
You sound a tad bit jealous, friend. No one is extra cool for using Linux, they are just smart -- both in their actions and decisions. And hardly no one uses Linux to "stick it to the man"... unless it's those little skiddies and their MandrakeLinux. No offense to that distribution though, as some of my friends use it from time to time.
"For reference, I'm a Computer Science student and work as a programmer in the summers."
Awesome dude. I'm happy for you (no sarcasm intended), but maybe you'll start to notice that Visual Basic and C++ aren't the only programming languages you're ever going to need. =P I know you're going to reply back to this and explain to me other languages that you program in, so save it for another time. For a programmer to be stuck in the Windows operating system though... I feel sorry for you. Expand yourself man.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
One of the apps that the author brings up is MS Project. Curious, I went meandering through portage (yeah, yeah, Gentoo fever, I know) and found a Gnome2 app called Planner. I emerged it, gave it a look, and it looks GOOD. Support for Tasks, Resources, and a great big chart to link them all together. It appears to be in the very initial stages (mine is version 0.11) but so far it is functional and useful.
http://planner.imendio.org/
Score one more open app that does the job!
1) When Linux fails, it typically fails consistently. It typically logs information that will prove useful to figuring out why it failed, and 99.9% of the time it failed because I did something dumb. Windows XP still breaks on me for no apparent reason. It doesn't do it as often as Windows 98, but I think not understanding what happened actually bothers me more than the crash itself.
2) Does this distinction really matter so much? Personally, I think Linux is really more secure, in addition to being more obscure. But just so long as your box doesn't get hosed, do you really care why? And again, in Linux I can probably recover and figure out what happened. In Windows, might as well just grab the install disc and start over. Oh, and can you *actually* get rid of Outlook? I didn't think you could. Even then, you'll still have IE lurking someplace.
3) The amount of aggravation is inversely related to the degree of experience you have with the system. Use Linux long enough and you'll find that when you use Windows it will piss you off because nothing works the way you expect. Just make sure you research your hardware purchases, but any good geek knows everything about the hardware he's buying anyway.
On a personal note, I don't like the Windows GUI. Never have really, even before I knew about alternate operating systems. I do, however, like the GNOME GUI, and also the XFCE GUI. And don't get me started on the prevalence of useless wizards in Windows! Why do you think Windows users always click OK without reading the dialog? I could go on, but I probably shouldn't...
This is a poor solution if you want Linux to hit the mainstream.
IBM had a Win-OS/2 to solved the problem of running windows apps under OS/2 that did the same thing. And look what happened OS/2. Linux problem is with the development of native BUSINESS apps. Come up with a VB for Linux and you might start to gain ground.
Has anyone noticed that beer is already 'Free as in speech?' At least the good beer anyway
Barley, Hops, Water, Yeast. My favorite open sourced beverage.
Think i'm going to emerge some 1516 compliant lager now
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
The problem is the Rabobank application need acces to your modem, AFAIK.
Yeah, that's what all end users do.... high def graphics work, 3d content generation, and complex data mining. Why, just the other day, I called my mom to ask her what she was doing, she said, "Oh, just hanging out doing some high def graphics work, 3d content generation, and complex data mining."
"Heh, that's funny, I'm chatting with sis on AIM, and she's doing the same thing!" I said.
Moral of this story: Get a fricking clue.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Who needs Everquest? Play NWN on a Persistant world like NeverSummer. Not only is it cheaper, supports Linux, and most mods are open source. Wan't to play Golf game on Linux? Duffer's Golf is an excellent UT04 Mod which plays fine on Linux.
As someone who spent a couple years working in the video games industry, I've had more fun with Mods, and open source games than with "professional" games. Mods and OS games are the last spark of creativity left in games.
Quit worrying about what you can't play, and enjoy what you can
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
You must be trolling or something...killing a process in XP isn't "rarely successful." It kills that process no matter what.
If you meant that ending an application (you know, the next tab over), then yeah, that can take a little while as Windows tries to do a lot more cleaning up and error reporting. But killing a process has never, ever been a problem for me, and I think, for most anyone. They get killed just as fast as they do under Linux, although I have had countless instances under Linux where I couldn't kill a hung process that I had started which froze up. I have never had that problem in XP. Take that as you will...
We hear constantly about how bad Outlook is supposed to be, yet it's usually from people who obviously haven't touched a Windows machine since 1999. For at least two versions now, it's blocked all scripts, executable attachments, and more. Outlook 2003 even has built-in spam filtering.
I just don't get the criticisms sometimes, it's like these vague accusations that never cite any specific examples. And people just nod their heads along with it. Same with BSOD jokes and even Clippy jokes (I haven't seen Clippy in a default Office install since...well, 1999). People are stuck in the days of Windows 98 and won't let go.
So run VMWare. You'll suddenly have access to an entire Windows system in a window on your Linux "desktop."
Why don't you lick my fucking nuts you cum-guzzling Slashdroid.
If you liked licking my balls, add me to your foes list!
dont' loose youre cool - its to late too fix now.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Things like RTCW, Enemy Territory, Doom *.*, Quake *.*, UT *.*, America's Army and many more already run natively on Linux. We know it. He knows it. So don't even ignore him.
I love C++
Some may laugh out loud..by the only reason I have to stick with a Windows machine is cos I need to use the MSN messenger with Video Chat Capabilities. Reason: All my friends are on MSN. Does any of the simulating softwares support MSN with Video Chat?
Torvalds' Linux 1.0 came out in 1991 IIRC. This "whole freedom shebang" preceeded Linux. Stallman wrote his GNU manifesto in the 80s. It is this whole freedom shebang that brought you the basic building blocks of a free, usable operating system. Linux was just the last block in the puzzle. Don't bend the history.
Moderators, could you please check the facts before moderating. This should be -1 misinformation.
It's not corrupted, double click on the grey area.
No, as I said, I'm not a gamer. Maybe I am a boring geek. I'm not suggesting that linux developers should work on only one game though. I just think that a good start would be one really attractive game, that anyone can use, but runs solely on linux. That entices people to use a really slick, functional OS, even if only to get to the game. If you put it on a knoppix cd, people will begin to get over the idea that linux is super difficult to use.
I might give it a shot. Angband looks like something I would play with on occasion... but I was thinking more like a super cool, ultra gory, 3d fps. That's all the rage now with the windows gamers, right? I saw another post in here where someone was talking about stuff like the new DOOM. A game like that, but one that only runs on linux.
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE that I know that uses a PC for their business needs QuickBooks for payroll and bookkeeping chores. There is NO linux alternative yet.
I know a lot of small business owners, and I always get the call when viruses or spyware are causing them headaches, but once I see QuickBooks on their system, I don't even mention linux as an alternative. There's no point.
Apple is another matter. They just don't want it for whatever reason, but I have no experience with it, so I'm in no position to debate.
If I switch to that "free" operating system I can run my Windows programs if I buy a $90 program and then do a crapload of configuring.
Or I can just keep running my Windows programs on Windows.
Hmmm. Tough one.
Insert witty sig here.
Our company uses DOSEmu to run our FoxPro 2.* accounting apps. It won't be as good as running under Windows, but maybe you'll find a way to manage. The problems have less to do with the functionality, but more to do with navigation & key combinations, if I understand correctly. Don't take my word for it, though. I could be wrong.
No pressure.
testing out my trending skills
Why not use Evolution with the (now GPL'd) exchange connector?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Is this a windows or a user issue? If a Linux desktop was as popular, don't you think the same annoyances would appear? If not, why not?
Apps are easier to install (config && make && make install) and easier to obtain in that I can always download the app I need, for instant gratification.
I can't possibly agree with that, after the hell I've gone through installing *nix programs inside msys. Dependencies are nightmarish and I've never had that happen in windows (apart from VB runtimes, which now ship with the OS).
Better logging when things go wrong. When Windows apps fail, I frequently get no error message, or a useless one.
In my experience, I just get a stack trace in *nix. Apart from that, most serious applications (windows or *nix) keep log files or the event log itself.
Superior flexibility. There are many small tools that do one thing well. I can glue them together in spontaneous shell scripts to extract information from large numbers of files.
You can get the same tools for windows. If your coleague stored his work in .swc or .pdf files in *nix your little scripts might not have worked as well either.
*) Simplicity. I never have registry problems under Linux. Uninstalling an app is a simple matter of deleting the files. I don't have the sort of application interaction issues I see in Windows.
Partially because *nix apps typically do not interact with each other. Hence the nightmares of copy and paste (which *always* works in windows), interface fragmentation, etc.
Security. Yes, it really is more secure.
True.
- HOORAY!
Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
It's Outlook Express that is awful. From what I understand the most recent version of Outlook isn't too bad. However, Outlook Express is installed and next to impossible to remove. If you delete it, Windows automatically reinstalls it. Threre is a trick to getting it actually deleted, but from what I remember it is way beyond a normal end user.
The article talks about how great it is to run your needed windows app on linux while staying away from the evils of MS Outlook. To get this done right, the article informs you that you need your lovely windows cd anyway, and you need to shop around for the emulator that can do what you need, then you have to get all the three work. Oh yeah, and you should of course use a mail app and web browser under linux (not IE/Outlook on the emulator). All this adds a level of complexity and time effort to get the XYZ Windows app like MS Project that you needed to use when you can just run windows and use it in windows in the first place and for the same or a cheaper overall price tag. If you already have to pay to run Windows legally, and you want a safer browser and email program, use the free great ones from the Mozilla project under Windows. DUH.
Instead of bloating your system much more to get two OSes, an emulator in between and some application working (and resist the temptation to try to get Outlook to work with the emulator *shudder*) just secure your windows box a little more. Enable the XP firewall or buy a third party solution (probably cheaper and less complex than setting up linux and the emulator). If you're concerned enough about security to consider linux, consider not running every executable you come accross.
There are tons of Linux distros out there (a good thing) and linux has gotten a lot better at making installations quick and painless. Well, unless you have to figure out how to manually set up your display or soundcard or some other device the linux distro you chose doesn't like on the system you're trying to get it to run on. On the other hand, Windows is quick and easy to set up, you're already familiar with it, it comes with the drivers or you get them with your computer, install disc, helpdesk guy you bother with every problem you have, etc. So why switch from windows to linux in the first place if you're an average user with windows needs?
Sure, the hope is that as the number of windows users switching to linux grow and need apps that are only developed for Windows (not just the one listed in the article, but also apps that are not mainstream, and often developed in-house to run on windows), those apps or alternatives will show up that run natively on Linux. But, with the demand for these ports being so low, why bother? Why wouldn't the developer think "if they switched to linux, then they can get the emulator working and we don't have to do a damn thing to make our app linux friendly"
A lot of the slashdot crowd likes linux, because, well, it's an impressive operating system. You have more freedom. You can stick it to the man. But the poor guy that needs to run MS Project will have a seizure when he screws something up and will get less help after breaking his linux than he would after breaking his windows. He won't be able to get the same technical support from the next door neighbor's teenager who can put the MS Project shortcut back on the desktop after mysteriously disappearing due to a cat jumping on the keyboard.
For people who like to rough it and get excited by unpredictable quirks and incompatibilities in their (handful of) supported applications, Codeweavers will give you the experience you are looking for.
But, if you want to run your (hundred's of thousands of) Windows apps with 100% fidelity, in a Linux process, then Win4Lin is for you.
And financially, you get what you pay for - who wouldn't spend $20 extra to run hundreds of thousands of Windows apps, with no re-write or porting, and with no quirky behavior; versus aa handful of apps, all with suitable replacements/alternatives in Linux, and suffer through the flashing toolbars, the empty pull-down menus, the freezes, etc...
And, whoever said Crudweavers was faster obviously hasn't tried win4Lin and is confusing it with VMware - did you ever read the competitive paper on the Codeweavers site? They seem to think that Win4Lin is VMware as all of their negatives on Win4Lin are really relating to VMware and have zero relavance to Win4Lin.
System Shock 2! Linux users need to be scared out of their minds too!
I just noticed this behaviour the other day, and I use the task manager in Windows constantly. I thought it was a problem too, and it took me a day or two to figure it out. Why on Earth does it do this? It doesn't save enough screen real estate to be worthwhile, and no other Windows apps do it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, if we had the source code, we could edit out those annoying movie ads that download unwanted, and then blast through people's speakers. Adware, not Freeware is the best word to describe AIM.
No more or less secure than linux, which is what the discussion was about. If you are running an application as root under linux and it has a security problem, then your system is in danger. The same is true on windows. If you were running a linux mail client as root and it did something bad, that would not show that the "OS iself is also insecure".
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Oh, great. Now it's not enough to look down on Windows users. We have to have Linux users and Linux "desktop users," whatever those are. We know this, though: they're not as savvy as us real Linux users.
Sheesh!
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Sometimes I feel the same way about a Linux desktop; I know it's because of inexpierence.
I find the Windows command line to be useful; if you want Unix tools, use cygwin.
Yes, the default mode is to restart automatically. That behavior can be modified; and it still puts an entry in the event log. My main computer running XP hasn't crashed for 6 months since I upgraded the video drivers; the two crashes before that were their fault.
Sound support has improved greatly in Linux; I agree that is that easy.
I bet I could reinstall Windows in a couple of hours too, configuration and all. I'm not sure, because I've never done it before.
If you are saying that OE can somehow bypass the opearating system's security, then no. All system calls go through ntdll, after which security is checked, and every object has a seperate ACL. If you are running OE as admin, well that's your fault.
Fine, whatever works for you. As for 'not capable', could you be more specific?
I use Windows on my desktop, laptop and servers. I always build my own computers, so I make some interesting hardware combos too. I have always been able to resolve them under Windows. Linux too; althogh it takes me longer because I don't know it as well.
As for old hardware, Microsoft has taken to removing older drivers from newer installs; for no good reason. All I have to do then is install the drivers from the earlier disc. I would never hope to install an old binary driver under Linux. I also wouldn't know how to make it work even with the source.
I use Windows for work. Again, because I know it better. I don't need to be fooling around with the OS at the same time I'm trying to work.
Sometimes open sou
Point taken about the zealotry, but there is some truth to the original statement. I setup a dual boot machine once (somewhere back in the RedHat 5.x days) and I've never done it again. Why? Because you invariably end up staying in only one of the systems (well, at least I did). If you're trying to learn another system, it's not going to do any good since you'll just stay in the system you already know all the time. The only real way to learn a new system (be it Linux, BSD, or Windows [if you were lucky enough to grow up in the UNIX world]) is to setup a dedicated machine with that system.
Dual boot may work for testing, but it never works (in my experience) if you're trying to learn a new system.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
If you are going to goto the extent of a complete VM machine just to run windows on your desktop, you might as well just dual boot your pc.
This doesnt apply if we start discussing the vmware server products, there it would have more of a use.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
Let not forget that so many worms/viruses exploit security holes in pre-existing in Windows 2000/XP. Many just by being connected to the internet. I have fixed so many computers over the last year that were infected with Blaster, Gaobot, et al, just for being connected to the internet with a Windows 2K/XP pc. The patches had not been out that long when I first had to fix these. Others had not connected their pcs to the internet for quite some time. The MS Security CD is a great idea, but long overdue and not all Windows users are aware of its existence, or even know the url to obtain it from.
It was supported as of v3.0.0 of Crossover. They have just released a minor patch v3.0.1. I have found the support to be quite excellent for Office 2k, Notes 6.5.1, Remedy 5.01, IE 6, Quicktime, MS Media Player, and Visio 2k. I have even played Half Life in it. Worth every penny.
The next hurdle will be iTunes and installers in general. Most applications would run if you could install them. iTunes breaks on install. Many more things will be fixed when ntoskrnl and other things are brought over from ReactOS. Things like copy protected games should become less of a problem. Also DirectX is making strides as pointed out in the Lionel Ulmner interview on WineHq.
yeah, yeah,
:p
and the americans were selling weapons to Hitler until Pearl Harbor...and the USA didn't have it's own jewish Ghettos, they were already taken by the "Niggers"...
Do you really have to repeat again and again the same old cliches, just to show you weren't asleep during the history classes ?
Or, Wanna Play ?
also, on a lighter note, it's "n'est ce pas" and "Vichy".
Your's faithfully,
The Grammar Na...oops Collabo will do for the time being
I didn't mean it in a degrading fashion at all. In fact, if I'm a Linux anything, I'm a 'linux desktop user.' That's precisely why I stay on Windows 90% of the time-- the applications I can work most efficiently with happen to be on Windows. Even if an equally-good Linux version exists, it'd still take time for me to switch over and learn to use it.
How ironic, just as I was reading this slashdot posting, I got an error on my work XP machine about the RPC service exiting. At about the same time, my network service crashed. Needless to say, I was unable to even open the network connection dialog (it just flickered up for a fraction of a second) and when I opened the services app, the RPC app was grayed out, neither letting me stop nor start the service. Only solution was to reboot... However, the reboot took so long that I just ended up going up to my Linux machine and launched Mozilla from there to read Slashdot and pen this post. What sweet timing and irony! Despite the reader's experience, I find that on my vanilla XP machine (XP + MS Office + just a few other utlities), I need to reboot every few days or else it goes unstable. True, I don't get a BSOD, I just get plain vanilla instability and crashing that requires reboots. Also, even if the machine were more stable, I would still need to reboot it every few days as required by the endless stream of M$ security patches and by many application installs or upgrades. Also, the machine leaks memory like a sieve and despite having 768M of RAM and oodles of free disk space still seems to constantly run low on VM (unlike my solid FC1 Linux machine). Of course, you have minimal control over processes and almost none over drivers. My Linux machine, OTOH, is rock stable. I only shut it down every few months to clean out the dust, to update firmware (when no Linux installer is available), to update the kernel, or to run some silly Windoze app that I only have on this machine. Not sure what planet the parent poster is from, but Windoze still has a long, long way to go in stability and an even longer way to go in flexibility and user control, and almost infinitely far to go in security. It is still very much a toy, crippled OS (don't even get me started on the even more intentionally crippled nature of XP Home) OTOH, Linux IMHO suffers from only 2 flaws. One is that it is has less hand-holding, making it more difficult for beginners, though this is getting better and doesn't personally affect me since I prefer command-line control and scripts to endless point and click. The second flaw is the relative lack of applications and drivers but this is not the fault of Linux but rather the direct consequence of the monopoly power and position of Microsloth.
He claimed that Linux could not run any games except for WineX, which he falsely claimed to cost money (most of it doesn't), then he falsely claimed that the games that work under WineX refuse to run sometimes (nonsense, Linux is much more consistent in its behavior than Windows), and then, which was the important part of his post, he went on to call Linux users "idiots" and release some pretty unfounded FUD about Linux security. E.g. which "Joe Blow" user would compile security patches himself instead of simply using his distributor's update function?
He has a point that Windows is still better for gaming, but apart from that he's a troll,
Here you go. Not yet.I love C++
I just installed windows and linux on different machines this month (I was setting up a lab with one of everything). Windows is NOT easier to install. Of the installs I've done: win98 - had to build my own boot floppy. Windows 2000: it installed, no networking though, and only VGA resolution. Had to find the venders site to download drivers from, as windows didn't include them. I managed to find them by doing a google search for the numbers on the various chips on the motherboard! Thats easy? Did I mention that I had to pry a heatsink off of one chip (northbridge) to get the right numbers to search on? Are you sure windows is easy? Xp didn't recognize all my network cards either.
linux installed and recognized everything except the modem. Even though this is a laptop, famious for being hard to install with linux. And I knew in advance the modem wouldn't work. Linux even recognized and installed drivers for the wireless card (and if I had the firmware it might work).
With windows I had to read a license agreement that was very restrictive compared the the linux one that I read. Windows has these activation keys that I had to type in (several times because I messed up the first time). Many more clicks were required to install windows, yet less options were presented, and they were no easier to choose from.
Then I had to reboot many more times because windows out of the box has 4 critical updates that cannot be installed togather. (a fix pack, which I understand, then a fix for the fix pack, then ie6 which is almost optional, and something else I forget). Even after that was done I had to reboot when I latter attached a USB cdrom to the machine. (windows 2003 with all fixes) It really felt like that old joke "windows has detected you have moved the mouse, you need to reboot for this to take affect".
Try installing linux and windows sometime, instead of ranting about that which you know not.
Ahhh... but that is exactly the point!!! In Windoze it seems like nearly everything (even most games) need to run with admin privileges. A mail reader should *not* be running as root -- that is ludicrous! In Linux, mail is read with user privileges so the worst you can do is to corrupt your user space. But even this is unlikely since the applications and widgets are just so much better written than Outlook and the dangerous active-X stuff. In Linux, I just about never log in as root. At most, I use sudo when I need to admin-type stuff. In windoze, OTOH, my user account has admin privileges because otherwise half my programs won't work properly. Plus, if I want to do admin-type stuff, I have to log out (or switch user) which takes forever. In Linux, I just run sudo or at worst run root for a few minutes in another desktop window.
But if something in XP breaks, you basically have to reinstall from scratch unless you have a full system backup (and even that is hard to do without something like Norton Ghost which requires a reboot). The registry is one big piece of twisted mess waiting to be corrupted.
If something breaks in Linux, I just reinstall the RPM. No wacko registry to worry about. Config files are mostly plain text and easy to copy, understand, and edit/modify to your benefit.
Knoppix already shipped with Frozen Bubble on the LiveCD.
You laugh, but I dropped a 3.3 Knoppix CD into my mother's Windows XP box and rebooted to do some remote X via ssh sessions. My mother came home and saw it. She wanted to try seom of the stuff out and I directed her to this, ahem, addictive game. At 2:00a.m. the next day she, still playing Fozen Bubble and up to level 105 or something, asked if there was a Windows version. There is, but it only for up to level 70.
Then she asked if I could install Linux on her PC.
I would have. However,
While I would have junmped at the chance to hook her on stuff like oo.org's PDF exporter[3], I must demure to the wishes of my step-dad and not mess up his Deer Hunter gamming experience.
-----
1. Sometimes telling data-loss horror stories to people and cautioning them to burn CD's of personal information other than MP3's doesn't sink in
2. There is a nifty way to boot Linux from a Windows Menu option with loadln and a kernel file on the Windows partition. But you have to edit 'scary M$ boot files'(tm) to do it.
3. Besides which, the guy who built the PC for them apparently installed pirated M$ Office XP and Adobe Studio. Being able to export and work with PDF''s on Linux is not a selling point here.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly. That's why I use vim and egrep.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"Open Office has come on laps and bounds recently,"
Have I totally degenerated, or is this the dirtiest thing ever said about Open Office?
(I damn near passed out I was laughing so hard!) };->
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
"You play SS as well? If Linux had a port of that game then life would be all the better."
My point, exactly.
Thank you!
Wow, the point totally flew over your heard. If you are going to just skim a person's post, don't even bother to reply. I don't give a damn what games run on Linux other than MINE, and I'm sure most others feel the same way, so the whole listing of ones that do work is pointless. Not all of the ones I play would work even in Wine/WineX. Since gaming is pretty much the #1 use of my computer, why the hell would I switch to an OS which not only doesn't natively support my games, but which I have to PURCHASE an application to play my games on (WineX)? I'm the CONSUMER, that means the developers have to change for ME. Period. If they don't want to do that, I don't want to use their OS. Now magnify my feelings times thousands, and you end up with a useless OS. If you actually read my post you would see that I blamed mostly the game developers, not the distros, but the distros have made little effort to entice the game devs into using Linux. They don't seem to care about games, even though, like I mentioned previously, PC gamers drive the whole damn PC industry. As for your DirectX argument: make the alternative, OpenGL, better. To expect DirectX to play nice with Linux is to expect pigs to fly. Developers will use what is easiest and most featured packed for their games, and obviously OpenGL ain't it.
You make a good point. Downloading all the hotfixes could take a certain amount of time, but that's all download time.
I don't remember how long the download for service pack 1 took (I think I was playing Neverwinter Nights with my roommate at the time), but it didn't take long (I was on a university LAN)
How much time do you spend downloading new kernels and RECOMPILING them? Last time I recompiled a kernel on my computer here it took a few hours.
One thing micrisift did in windows XP was include a setting that automaticaly restarts the computer when it encounters a critical error. Most people won't even see the blue screen if they were getting it. One plus to this is that the errors are locked away from the user and there is less to agrivate them. On the downside, the user doesn't really know they have a problem until it is serious enough to need imeediate attention and often resulting in the computer entering a continuous reboot problem.
The answer to t he rest of this statment is yes, depending on what distro your running and what hardware you have. I can install mandrake and have it up, running as well as having internet and email setup in less then 1 hour But again i am using hardware that is supported and a distro known for being easy to get going.
To what degree that it is more secure is questionable. The main factor regurding linux being more secure is it requires user interaction for virus like activity to happen. One of the biggest reason virrus's don't target linux isn't because it is less popular but the rate of fixes and the users tend to aply the patches. Also there is a serious degree of more dificulty in automating the vulnerabilities for a linux flaw as aposed to a windows flaw. Your averag script kiddie cannot achive the desired results. This still doesn't tale inot consideration that fact that the linux code is publicly inspected by people wanting to fix it werre microsoft will tend to hide issues unntill it is convienient.
this is really opinion oriented and the answer has so many different variables like how much agrivation the user had in the firstplace as well as what windows programs they are using. In my opinion i think it is worth it but i have a windows boxen for those situation when i need to.
I do find myself trying to use all the same open source programs i have in linux while running windows. For most people i'm not sure if they could have a level of comfort in the same sence. linux has come along ways in the last couple of years just like windows has. I would like to see linux go a little further mainly because the competition is starting to make Micorosft actually care about its products. Anyways the perception that they are carring more is there.
I think if you noticed, I said there was no frame, you arrogant fuck.
Yes, GNU was around long before Linux, no question, but the motivation for Linus to write Linux was not to topple evil closed source and promote freedom but to do a pet project to make most use of his new hardware.