Slashdot Mirror
Linux Users Are Spoiled
Dozix007 writes "NewsForge carries an interesting
article
on how spoiled Linux users are. It sites examples such as the
availability of wide ranging software packages that Microsoft can't hope to provide.
Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it
ships with Windows. Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux
distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and
stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that
one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice. You
aren't locked into one particular application. Most Linux distributions
include several choices for most program classifications; even
single-CD distros usually include several Web browsers and email
clients."
This advertisement for Linux was brought to you today by...
As far as i know, there is no legal agreement between manufacturers and distributions and software vendors that disallow a competitors application to be installed as well. I believe this is the entire problem with the wintel world. For example, dell cannot ship a dual boot system, nor can they ship firefox on the windows platform. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I tried useing windows XP for a short period fo time but it seemed like I was going to the store trying to find what applications I wanted but would have had to pay well over $10,000 to get all the applications I would have needed. I tried pirateing some software that I wanted to use but that just didn't feel right. I switched back to Linux and don't know if I will ever even try that MS stuff again.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Not to be YAGZ (Yet Another Gentoo Zealot), but one thing I love about Portage (and this applies to RPM/apt-get based distros to some degree) is the easy availability of up-to-date packages in a single location. With Windows, it would take all of a day to browse around the Internet and update my programs; with Gentoo, a simple "emerge sync && emerge -UD world" keeps my system cutting-edge. Microsoft couldn't hope to match this ease, simply because of the relative lack of free/GPL'd apps for the Win32 platform.
Damnnnn spoiled kids, my days we wrote our own operating system by flipping one single on/off switch ! We switched better then a New York traffic light did we ! Ahhhh the good 'ole days.....
Slashdot and Newsforge (host of linked article) are both owned by OSDN. We already know OSDN is anti-Microsoft. This is not news, just more OSDN Microsoft bashing mixed with Linux praising.
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
That's a really stupid argument. At least be rational with irrational arguments. I mean sure, I really need 5 different Word clones, none of which successfully open a complete word document...
If anything, Windows users are spoiled because they can click the install button and the program works.
Damn those spoiled Linux users. They should be made to suffer ad-ware, popups, and virii just like Windows users!!! :P
To discuss the actual article, I find it amusing that Microsoft reps can't handle the fact that Linux comes BUNDLED - LEGALLY - with TONS of applications and utilities.
.001 crap. But some of them are damn good (well, all right, at least as good as software gets these days - which is still mostly pathetic). This is true in the Windows world, too, if you spend some time on alt.comp.freeware.
And TONS more are available on Linux Format magazine CD's (and even 4GB DVD's)(I have over two dozen of these - GIGABYTES of software I haven't even looked at yet!) or from Web sites and places like Freshmeat and Sourceforge.
Sure, some of them are pre-release alpha
Microsoft's plan is obviously to buy up everybody who produces any software anybody wants to buy. This plan obviously has a few flaws such as the inability of Microsoft - despite $50 billion in the bank - to buy up the entire industry. Also not to mention that a lot of people would rather be CEOs of their own companies than slaves to Bill.
No way Microsoft can ever compete with free software in this regard.
Tough luck, Bill! Have a nice day!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Its lazy clueless users like me that makes Linux so good. We just wine about what we want changed.
Linux users are spoiled. Especially x86 linux users.
Everything is configured and tested for them, the spoiled brats. It's getting to the point these days when people are writing code for linux rather than just generic *ix, making it a pain in the ass to run on any non-linux OS, and making other OSes like the BSDs provide linux compatibility layers if they want to use such programs. (sheesh, and people complain about having to emulate MS's mistakes to maintain compatibility)
Get a real alternative OS people! Linux/x86 is way too mainstream.
Yeah when I used Linux I was sure spoiled all right. Spoiled by all those half-days and days spent struggling to install software. Spoiled by all that quality time trying to get my wireless adapter going. Spoiled by arcane command line syntax. Spoiled by the absence of decent documentation. Spoiled rotten, I say. ROTTEN!
Now I slog through my days running Mac OS X. The drudgery of one-click installs. And gone are those sweet, sweet hours of dealing with hardware compatibility issues! Add to that the cruel twist of LOTS of documentation where little is needed! I SUFFER! FEEL MY PAIN!
(I'd still rather run Linux than Windows though!)
That should read "Most Linux Users Are Soiled"
I can't believe this actually in considered an article, it's basically somebody giving themselves an ASCII blowjob. I can't get my sister to figure out how to right click reliably, but somehow a linux distribution would be easier for her to use because it somes with more options..in theory? Having 50 free programs don't mean jack if: 1. you can't install/run them easily 2. define a standard of usability among them all 3. coordinate thier appearance and setup You don't like Word...fine, but guess what, there's no learning curve practically. If you can't figure out how to download a program and install it (a task infinatly more easy in windows) I don't care how long your desktop has been up. Security thru obscurity is a lousy thing to brag about.
Stability isn't really a factor when I chose desktop os anymore from win2k it is "good enough", but it is such a bother to hunt down, download and then install every single app that is needed that I stay on linux where I just dselect or whatever what I need. I rather spend 10 minutes tweaking the config for my uses than 10 minutes googling and searching for apps that do what I need.
The key thing about Linux distributions is that there's more than one, and in fact if you're not happy with the Linux kernel you can go with BSD...
In Windows-land, Microsoft makes the kernel, Microsoft makes the one and only window-manager, Microsoft selects which apps come in the one and only distro, and nearly all of them are Microsoft-made apps anyway.
That's the difference. A Linux distro is the blending of the Linux kernel with a set of tools that use the kernel. And from the most basic use of a kernel, the shell, there's already several to choose from. There's several window-managers.
It's okay to bundle when you're in a COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT... that's the one thing Microsoft seems to be forgetting.
But I cannot have KDE without Konqueror! Why? Somebody says I am not forced to use it as a browser...but nobody prevents anyone from using Mozilla/Firefox/Opera etc on M$ either. I do not get it! Am I stupid?
You have to weigh the cost of initial setup vs. maintenance down the road.
Sure, with both systems you have to do a lot to set them up at the beginning (1-2 days intensive). But after that, you can *use* the system for as long as you want.
Windows tends to be more of a finished environment. Just do Start then Programs then click on the program you want to run and you're in. You don't have to set it up past that. Or it will have an icon put on the desktop for easy access. That's that.
With Linux, you can do that too. Or you can bind it to a right-click menu. Or you can set up access to it in 100 different ways. But you might have to tweak it up abit before you get it the way you want it.
So, who cares about the time it takes to get started. It matters what you do once you get going that really counts.
The programs packaged in a distribution are from different vendors, hence there's no monopoly here. Nobody would sue Microsoft if they would ship Apache and Mozilla with Windows.
Most of the software distros ship weren't even developed by the distro in question.
Most software Microsoft ships with windows was developed by Microsoft.
It isn't RedHat OpenOffice or Debian binutils.
You are late to the party. Deflowered she has been.
Thanks for that link to Microsoft: I never would have found them without it!
For business, I run FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows XP. I've yet to find anything that I use that doesn't run on all three platforms just fine.
Via the Cygwin installer you can install most of what you get with a Linux distro. Other stuff that I use, like dvdauthor, ifo and vob editing tools, OpenVPN, etc, readily compile and run on Windows XP in addition to Linux and FreeBSD>
There's no reason for *anyone* not to feel "spoiled" by the large amounts of free, high-quality, software available!
Best Buy can have you arrested
1 - Gimp doesn't crash randomly when editing very large images
.DOC and be certain it'll show up in Word as good as I made it.
2 - I can save some text in OpenOffice as
(Oh yes, and also if KDE and Moz could stop burning megabytes of memory for nothing, that'd be nice too, but I can live with it)
As long as there isn't a very reliable PS replacement, and a very reliable Office replacement, under Linux, I'll always feel like a one-legged athlete : really powerful and really good in handisport events, but never really able to compete in regular sport championships.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Choice/Options are good when you have a selection of software you wish to install. But what if you're new to things, You would install everything just to get a chance to play with things at this point options really do not matter because the user does not know what he/she wants. It becomes a discovery process which is good but bad if you need to do one thing and do not have time for options.
With that said Microsoft does provide it's "locked" interface so people can concentrate on what they have to do and not their interface and what not. So technically you pay money for a "locked down" set up so you can do what you need to do. Which is good and bad depending on what type of user you are.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So it cuts both ways: installing and not installing. Choosing the best apps and environment for your needs is not something that Windows allows you to do.
Whether you like them or not (or even use them or not), Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Outlook Express are installed by default under Windows. Under Linux, it's up to you to decide what you want and don't want/need on your machine.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Microsoft writes the (closed source) os, when it writes the applications you always feel they've got an unfair advantage because they (and only they) know the os inside out and design the os API. With Linux no-one has the unfair advantage, every-one in theory is free to know how the os works and to build the best ever application. You are only limited by your talent and free time. You trust Linux because you know what's there.
Its true. From a wiped clean computer to productivity, Linux IS faster. I have yet been able to install Windows, install drivers, do Windows update, install applications, configure, etc faster than simply popping in the latest Linux distro and being done with it.
Of course, this assumes two things:
#1 -- Your hardware is supported
#2 -- The software you want/need is made for Linux
I'm finding that both of these requirements are being met more and more every day. The latest hardware seems to be supported, the applications are becoming more feature rich and very useful to a wide range of users (some of the apps are the best no matter how you slice it (mozilla, firefox, etc..))
As far as being "spoiled" well umm.. I dunno. I think its more of a "meets expectations" type of a thing -- stable, reliable, secure. Though I must admit, I do feel a lil' spoiled a bit when my Windows buddies get zapped with the latest spyware or IE issue -- but honestly, should I?
- no difficult choices during setup (pre-configured PCs)
- no need to read difficult manpages and other such stuff
- most hardware just works out of the box
- no need to choose between distros
- no need to choose between multiple software packages that do the same job, just differently
I cannot imagine the days when my system didn't automatically have a comprehensive package management system that could track and update everything. This is something that even only very few linux distributions have. BSDs have it in their ports system, gentoo has it, and debian has it.
The simplicity of typing a few commands to automatically determine what is out of date and what can be updated and then proceeding to just do it is very very neat. Right now portage shows that I have 1604 seperate packages installed, tracking all these by hand and making sure each are at their latest version would be a nightmare.
Even applying experimental patches is simple and happens automatically with various use flags. Of course that's a gentoo-specific feature, but the huge amount of flexibility that is inate just but having package management systems of any kind is huge.
I shiver at the thought of installing something outside the package management system... how are you supposed to keep it up to date? How are you supposed to verify that it has it's dependencies? How are you supposed to make sure it can uninstall correctly?
Package management has changed the way I select software.
I touch computers in naughty places
Growl! This is idiotic. I'm not going to MS bash here, but the reason distros "get away" with it isnt a matter of choices, its a matter of choices that arent Debian-Excel, or RedHat-Word, or Gentoo-InternetExploiter. This isnt a matter of lock in to one vendors solution, or just MS including more MS proprietary crap. This is a distro made of whatever they could put in for free. Fundamentally, MS charges you for every item there. I used to work there, nothing is free. It's all about tie[lock] in. If MS wants to throw in office for free, without making it so ingrained to the os that you cant use WordPerf. w/o difficulties (and if you dont believe me, open up mozilla and go to windowsupdate, or click on just about any link in MS software. Sure, some do just call your default browser, but most are lazily coded to just call iexplore.exe URL), then more power to em. They wont though. Linux's difference is that if I install KDE, and decide today I want to use gnome, then theres no problem. If I want to declare my default handler of docs to be openoffice, and then change my mind to abiword, then its a quick change to mailcap or /etc/alternatives, or whatever your distros magic of choice is.
If you install word, and then install WP, your dlls, your links, your default apps are going to get beaten, sloshed, and trashed by word, to the point where you can use word 90% of the time.
Whooptie frickin shit.
-- (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I wanted to leave MS and bought Suse Linux (and tried three others as well)
1. Printer does not work
2. Cannot go on the internet - does not recognize/install DSL.
3. Scanner does not work.
Now tell me, you MS-bashing geeks. *WHY SHOULD I PRAISE LINUX WHEN IT DOES NOT WORK?* (and pleezz - don't play the 'oh he's so stupid' game on me).
Face it: Linux sucks until "it works" for Joe Average.
There been a bit of focus as linux as a do-it-all-directly-from-the-box kinda OS, and that all good. BUT, remember that a lot of people are using linux for quite different reasons.
:)
I personally don't have one piece of software installed that i don't use/need(ok, maybe one...), I like that i can install a server without a browser and a window manager. Flexibility and freedom, thats why I like OS.
I don't need to keep any silly lib or app installed that i don't use, and this is the real strength of Open Source in my opinion, your free to customize your system to what it actually does. Lets not forget that here in these Years-Of-The-Bloaty-Distros
Microsoft is having meetings now, company wide to explain this word "choice".
MS Employee at a seminar: "You mean, we can give them different choices of a web browser? Browsers we didn't even write?!?"
Linux Guru Speaker: "Yes, we realize now that we really didn't need to try to build in a web browser into EVERY stinking program we had back in the early 90's. Who needs to browse the fricken web when they only want to manage some files? We also realized that if we just concentrate on building a good, solid OS, then others could build stuff like browsers and word processers etc."
MS employee: "Wow, we were trained for so long to just build everything into the OS. Our next version after Longhorn was to be called "Kitchen Sink". Everything is built in so you don't have to worry about choice...we've made the choice for you! See, it's easy! It has built in web browser in everything including a web browser built into the web browser. Also built in, NOT seperate programs, is a word processor, calculator, spread-sheet, photo retouching, email, wmv-only player (we've made the choice that music software of the future will be wmv based only...again, we've made that choice for you!), all games are built right into the OS including MMORPGs. Now...isn't that easier than having choices? You can concentrate on getting things done instead of thinking of choice. Don't think! WE don't want you to think...it's bad for you. Thinking hurts...just let us decide what you need...we know best. And look, it will be priced at $300, so that means it HAS to be good."
Linux speaker: "Um...ok....did you have a question?"
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
From what I can tell of watching people use their computers, often what people want is one good app. to do whatever their current task is, not lots of choice.
The only people I know who use more than one web browser are web designers/developers checking pages out.
Multiple editors? I've seen that, but only to handle different languages, and only rarely.
Multiple word processors? Never seen that.
For most people, having one set of programs that cover exactly what they want to do is what they want. That's partly why Microsoft have done so well. Get a PC with Windows and Office and you can browse the web, do your e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet stuff. It even integrates relatively well between the apps. That's covered the vast majority of computer users in offices worldwide.
Going through a Mandrake install you get at least half a dozen options for each application. Really, what I want is one set of applications, each of which are very good at what they do, quality over quantity.
I've seen several people start using OS X over the last year. By choosing the Apple platform, they're generally getting less choice, unless they get down and dirty on the command line. But, I get lots of positive comments from them because they've got a set of good quality programs bundled with the OS, each of which does something specific very well, and although there's a more limited number of programs on offer, they tend to be perceived as being of good quality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed with the number of open source applications bundled in with distributions, and the huge number of others you can download and add. But really, one smaller set of really good apps is what I'd like, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
"What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
7 isos for install? Fuck off.
I am allowed to uninstall any apps I install with a Linux distro unlike with Windows XP which ships with a version of MSN messenger that cannot be removed without a service pack upgrade.
Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice.
That's not the answer to that one at all. The reason Linux can get away with this and Microsoft can't is because Microsoft is legally considered a monopoly, and Linux isn't. A monopolist has to live up to much higher standards than the average company. One of those standards is giving fair opportunity to your competitors products. If that means you get in trouble for bundling your own products with your operating system, tough. "With great power comes great responsibility."
Random and weird software I've written.
non profit organizations such as Open Source projects have a completely different philosophy compared to corporations such as M$. Not surprised yet? I bet! Yet people wonder why Microsoft pushes and tries to convince us that their applications are better than the competition which are obviously superior (firefox > IE. VLC > WMP, etc.).
Fact is, Linux users aren't spoiled. A lot of them are crying outloud "WHY WON'T IT COMPILE" or "DAMMIT HOW I CONFIGURE X". There's a price to pay for a good part of your installations under linux and unless you're using gentoo, debian, slack w/ swaret/slapt-get, you know that sometimes getting something to work is a pain in the ass (thus the reason to go with distributions which offer great package management). Spoiled? If they're so-called "linux l33ts", then yes. For the newcommers, it's the first weeks of mayhem until they figure out something that might be so simple.
On windows, you are forced to have IE. IE obviously sucks we know it but most use it. People don't even bother installing mozilla/firefox. What does this mean? Microsoft shouldn't be totally worried knowing the average windows user is a lazyass who won't do his research. I go around, se e what my friends n foes use on their pc. They all have IE and I hear them say "OMG IE FROZE. WHAT CRAP". Then I simply say "hey u could install firefox!" and they go "yeahyeah....".
As for linux users, sure we have a wide variety of products but sometimes we have to go thru documentations or forums to find the answers to some questions which may popup while wondering how to uninstall and install "X-Named" Program. Most of the time, we're ok and we manage to replace a program with another.
If anything, we HAVE to be spoiled the most possible. To have the wide variety of choices between a certain group of applications is nothing more than great!
In my opinion, the reason that most linux distros distribute every app in the world themselves is because there is no standardised method of distributing linux apps (and before anyone says deb or rpm, try making a package that will install cleanly in all linux distros without having to mess around with forcing dependancies, and then try to remove it)
Also, as the amount of linux software gets greater, it's going to get harder and harder to do. You seem to be able to distribute almost every linux app ever on about 2 DVDs. You can't do that with windows, even if everyone one of them was free. You couldn't do it with a hundred DVDs.
While linux is bad at standardising on anything, it could really do with a standard packaging system, so not every distribution has to package every application themselves.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I use a linuxfromscratch system as my personal workstation, so if I can't find a good OSS program for what I want to do I'm pretty much stuck. Oddly enough the only time I've run into that situation with a linux system is finding a good image viewing program. Sure, there are lots of clones out there, but not one is even close to Thumbsplus or Compupic's half-hearted linux version of their windows program. I mean what's the use of having all this pr0n when I can only cycle the slideshow with the mouse? ;-)
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
d3b14n 15 t3h r0x0r LoL!!oneone11!!eleven!!
There's a key difference here that the MS people seem to miss. MS think a distro is like them selling MS Windows including MS IE, MS Outlook, MS Media Player, MS Visual Studio, MS etc, etc, etc. Instead, it's really like MS deciding to sell MS Windows with Opera browser, Eudora e-mail, Real media player, Borland Delphi, etc, etc. The difference is that they are COMPETING products, giving users the choice of what they want to use, not bind them ever tighter to MS.
Fucking hillarious. Keep up the good work!
One thing I never understand is the constant bitching about how Windows supposedly locks you in to a whole world of Microsoft written software. I think XP only comes with Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Windows Media Player preinstalled, maybe Office if you pay extra, but that's it. So where is all the "lock-in"? There's no Microsoft Photoshop, Microsoft Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Quicken or Microsoft AutoCAD. For most jobs I have to get 3rd party or open-source software anyway, and it's usually available for Windows as well as Linux (in my experience more often for the former than the latter).
Because they are NOT a monopoly! Microsoft can do anything they want to, as long as it is NOT abusing their position of monopoly to unfairly skew the playing field for their advantage. Plain and simple.
I think "happy" would do better. Freedom of choice isn't being spoiled. It's a basic right that satisfies the majority of people. By setting up monopolies, Microsoft are only preparing themselves for heavy hits like Firefox and anti-trust lawsuits. By Linux leaving themselves open to whomever wants to develop on their platform, it can only flourish in my opinion.
The only difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits.
I once tried "emerge -pretend some-package" and it didn't show lots of dependencies, so a while later I did "emerge some-package" and discovered that somehow in the meantime libc had been upgraded and the emerge was going to install about a zillion packages. Worse yet, for some reason it failed and my machine was unusable.
I like gentoo, and I'm seriously considering converting about four machines over to gentoo, but I always remember that day and the time it took to get things fixed afterwards. And then too (which does rhyme with gentoo) I always hear a voice in the background whispering "emerge kde-base... The horror..."
but the fact that the bundling affects competition. If Microsoft bundled Windows with application X, competitors couldn't ship Windows with application Y. You could very well ship a Linux distribution that is your One Linux Way(TM), with no choice whatsoever.
Why? Because even though the Linux kernel may have a "monopoly" in its niche (actually not true since there's the BSDs, but let's assume), I couldn't use that influence in other areas. Not unless I had the power to say "The Linux kernel may only be shipped with THIS wm/app/whatever". Which noone does, not even Linus himself.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Excuse me. I'm being punished.
:E
Ever tried to set up a 56k modem in linux? Don't go there.
Get a printer working under CUPS? Faster to ask your neighbour to print it.
Firewire support in Fedora. Don't get me started.
Migration to Linux has never been easy. Sure the tools are advanced, but you regularly need 2+ years of a computing course just to begin to understand them. Not only that but most have (en)crypt(ic/ed) names like xmms,cups,esd and mdadm. And when you get right down to it, what the hell does hpjs DO anyway? The situation is made worse by that ONE guy on the messageboard who will always provide the genius solution of recompiling the kernel. I side with the majority here and say, I do not want to do that. All I want is for yum to work. Pity up2date dosen't, I actually knew what that stood for. (Sigh).
Windows is like a flashy SUV. Looks great, illusion of safety,easy to drive, buts WILL tip over at a moments notice.
Linux is like a Space Rocket. Yes it can get you home, hell it can get you into space. there's just a hell of a lot of buttons, and controls, and warnings and a NASA geek on the radio telling you to recompile the booster rocket software.
Still, the good ship Linux, against all reason, marches on.
May the Maths Be with you!
This article can be summed up as: I like Linux. It's better.
/. editors instead post this interesting story that came out today? I'll give ya' one guess.
What utter crap! That's not an article. That's not a discussion topic. That's a typical Slashdot post. And all it does is rehash the same old tired arguments. Why didn't the
Please, who am I kidding. She'll be hollering within two clicks for you to fix it. And you're definitely right about that guy giving himself a blow job. He made a few valid points, but I kept waiting for the rest of his argument to show up.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It sites examples such as the availability of wide ranging software packages that Microsoft can't hope to provide. Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it ships with Windows.
The major Linux distributions that I've tried don't include a media player for fear they might get sued, don't include a NTFS driver for fear they might get sued... This makes it very hard for people like me, who don't know how to find and compile all the right modules, to use linux. I've tried three times, always ended up frustrated and gone back to Windows. Mind you, I am the top 1% of users. If you can't convert me you are going to have a very difficult time converting others.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
As far as quantity goes, Linux wins hands down. Most of the apps I've ever used are available on Windows, but many aren't - and frankly, they're terrible. Simple stuff, like the palm pilot syncing - kludgey and tempermental at best. Open Office? There's a reason it's free and almost nobody uses it.
I was even trying to build a MAME box out of my Linux server, and it was pain and suffering just trying to get a front end to work. There were 10-15 out there, and only one worked. With Windows, you download Mame32 and everything "just works."
I have had a starkly different experience - and that's not even counting the near vacuum of EE apps on Linux.
I would have gone along with this kind of gushing buffoonery two or three years ago, but c'mon. Linux is good and if your willing to get your hands dirty you'll probably never go back, but thats the catch isn't it? If you don't want to have to roll up your sleeves randomly or unexpectedly, this still isn't the right operating system for you.
I wouldn't say I'm spoiled, like a lot of things there is give and take. Lets see some more substantial polish before thumbing our noses at anyone.
Quack, quack.
Linux distributors don't write the bulk of what they distribute, that's why it's called a Linux distribution. They bundle what's out there already. They're non-partisan -- a better widget appears on the radar and it'll go into the next release.
Microsoft on the other hand writes the OS and everything in the release. They're partisan. They might want to ship you everything you ever need but's that uncompetitive and people obviously get upset.
Why is it that when Microsoft bundles an application with Windows (such as Windows Media Player) it's considered to be the root of all evil, yet when a linux distribution does the same (include mplayer, xine, totem and kaffeine on top of xinelib et al) it's a good thing? Sure we give the user more choices, but the majority of users don't know what to do with the ability to choose. They want it to just work.
/. would be yelling that Microsoft is taking away the choice to use openoffice.org.
I might just be trolling here, but giving the user (especially a novice one) a choice from 10 browsers can be somewhat overwhelming. On my first install of mandrake 8.1 i was confused with what to pick and didn't have any clue to what 90% of the programs do, instead of having a clear selection which i could choose to use. Most of the software that make windows bearable for me are freely available (openoffice.org, firefox, thunderbird) and help me though an average day of work. So it's no big deal to have to download these extra, instead of getting them pre-installed by my distro installer (which saves me the trouble of having to download 4+ cd's). Anyways, if Microsoft decided to bundle MS Office with no extra charge most people on
Dunno, I'm planning on getting a cheap-o Linspire machine to replace a 10 year old PC running Win95. This obviously runs fairly basic functions now: Netscape, Office apps, Burn CDs, Winmx likwe that. I will let y'all know if a disposable PC running a free OS and free apps is up to the task. I'm thinking yes and since I don't plan on madly installing and uninstalling things like a masturbating crack monkey I think that most of the 'getting this shit to work' problems can be avoided.
Although Free Geek is currently using Pentium-IIs for our standard computers, but up until this year we were using Pentium 200s with 2 to 3 gig harddrives. And on that hardware, we managed to install
All of this took slightly less than a gig of harddrive space, and all of these computers were going out to people who mostly just needed to use the internet. And the reason we did this is mostly because we could.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Linux is certainly more stable than Windows, and the availability of a huge software library is a bonus for users who have the time to sift through it and the knowledge to use it.
I have to say, though, I feel far more spoiled by my Macintosh than by my Linux machines. Part of the reason the Mac desktop experience is so good is that you *don't* have a billion choices out of the box. There's usually a single, simple, and logical way to perform any given task. In my estimation, this simplicity is a bonus (and is the quality that "spoils" Mac users) because it saves time. I shouldn't have to dig around Sourceforge or a dselect package list in order to find the software I need to play music, for example, and then have to spend additional time doing research to determine the best option. Apple provides one solution in this case (iTunes), and it, like pretty much everything else Apple produces, is Really Good(tm).
The plethora of Linux software can easily be a blessing or a curse, as others have noted. Things don't seem quite so clear-cut as the article suggests.
I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so...
There are other window managers but I can't remember any off hand, I'll google and report back.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
Please, somebody spoil me. I just want to get a distro of Linux that works without haveing a fucking PHD in programming. I wish this were the case.
The difference is not only in the amount of software bundled and the choices offered within each category of software, but that Microsoft software is also designed to stifle choice in subtle, seemingly trivial ways and lead the user back to using their software. A few weeks ago I ran into an example of this when trying to switch my parents to Firefox--with their consent--because of all the popups that appeared and the spyware toolbars that kept getting installed when using Internet Explorer.
I set up Firefox, made it the default browser, changed IE's settings so that it wouldn't check that it was the default browser and wrestle back control if accidentally opened, and went as far as disabling access to IE in "Set Program Access and Defaults". The following weekend, I was back on on my parents PC to discuss what they thought of Firefox, but they complained that they were still getting popups. And when I opened IE, I noticed there was yet another toolbar installed.
I checked the browser history and realised they hadn't used Firefox at all--they'd been using IE the whole time. How could that be? I had them show me how they were opening their browser. They opened MSN Messenger, and clicked on the "you have e-mail" link to check their Hotmail messages. Guess what opened? IE. It turns out that this method is how they've been opening their web browser since day one.
And here's the problem--it is hardcoded to open Internet Explorer. It refuses to recognise your default browser setting, and you can't select an alternative in either Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger. This means that, when I'm not watching, they're always going to gravitate back to IE because of that silly little e-mail link.
So the task of switching them to Firefox becomes one of also switching them to some alternative instant messenging program, and perhaps a different e-mail service as well. The latter two are much more difficult. They consented to my changing the browser because of all the popups and spyware, but didn't want me to change the instant messenging program they enjoyed using and become attached to.
It may seem trivial to us enthusiasts, but it's surprisingly difficult to change ingrained behaviours in people who use but don't understand and aren't really interested in technology. Those who say "just tell them to stop clicking the e-mail link" have no idea. But those who have, say, preached the virtues of letterboxed widescreen movies, only to find that the oldies inevitably press the zoom button on the DVD remote to make the image fill the screen, will understand.
Get real. Even Microsoft programs don't share the same interface as each other. KDE or Gnome are much better in this respect. Other Linux programs may not fit in so well, but neither do third party programs on windows. Your claim is bogus.
I like having simple configuration dialogs for almost all my programs which let me easily change program settings, instead of messing around with obsure configuration files. I'm glad I don't have to spend hours trying to find a good program to do what I want, I just want one that works well enough and is easy to set up and use.
I could spend hours searching the web for the right windows program to do the job, then probably have to buy it, but instead I search for 30 seconds with my package manager and install it in no time. Even if I have to tweak some config files, it still takes me less time than tracking it down on the web.
I don't need 50 different packages that all try to do the same thing, I just need one good program that actually does it.
Have you been to tucows or other similar sites. There are more random windows programs than Linux ones. The only difference is that Free Software is generally much better than Freeware.
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
Is this a serious gripe or just whining?
I like the compatibility I share with 90% of the world. And then there are, of course, the games that I play. If I'm lucky, I might be able to get three or four of them to play well under Linux, not the entire library I have access to under Windows.
A valid argument for once. It doesn't apply for everyone though. Not everyone is into 3D games, or games in general. I'm fine with solitaire, and mahjong.
Linux computers may come with more pre-installed software on a CD, but if I have the money, I can get a Windows computer set up the same way. Most manufacturers would be happy to include a copy of Office if you're willing to pay. Besides, the time it'd take for me to learn how to use all the Linux equivilents of my Windows programs would probably offset any advantage gained by pre-installation.
Sure, if I was bloody rich. I would have to spend at least $5,000 dollars to get the equivalent programs on Windows. The "hassle" is not worth that much money. I'd rather take the ten minutes to learn how to use the program. I'm not that lazy.
As for stability, well, my Windows XP computer has been performing very well over the past few years. I can't say for sure that it's never crashed, but it's smooth enough that it's simply not a problem anymore, compared to past versions of Windows. In other words, it's stable enough.
You're lucky then. I've had no such luck with either 2000 or XP. XP crashed twice a day and SuSe did fine on the same hardware.
From my perspective as a basic desktop computer user, the only thing Linux has going for it is the cost (usually zero) and perhaps security. I don't need all the complexity and openness of Linux, as it all just adds up to a more difficult-to-use environment. Also, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to secure a Linux system properly, so I don't know whether my system would be any safer anyway.
Securing a Linux system is much less work than securing a windows system. You don't have to spend a half hour just configuring the damn web browser to be slighty more secure then the swiss cheese default settings.
So, am I jealous? No, not at all. I'm not saying Linux or open source is bad in any way (in fact, Firefox, CDex, OpenOffice, etc. are all very high quality), just that it's not the heavenly object the article makes it out to be. Maybe we're all spoiled.
Maybe, but if the hell of using windows is considered being "spoiled" then I certainly don't want to see what a bad computing experience is like.
Time makes more converts than reason
The simple truth is that it's only because Microsoft is so successful at what they do. So successful that they fall into the (rather arbitrary) legal category of being a monopoly. That's the only reason Linux distributors aren't "getting in trouble."
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
They would be perfectly within their rights to install Mozilla, Open Office, AbiWord, gcc and emacs, all of which run on Windows. I can't see how the antitrust authorities would have any problem with that.
They have quite a lot of choices actually. Freshmeat's list of Windows programs has a couple thousand entries.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
> Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux
> distributions and ask why they can get away with
> shipping stacks and stacks of applications without
> getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of
> course, is that the Linux distributions give you a
> choice.
The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions are not a monopoly.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The part that they did forbid is shipping Linux for the same PC model number as the ones that shipped with OEM Windows. This was done solely to make it easier (and cheaper) for OEMs to count how many licenses they have to pay for. In fact Dell did ship Linux boxes at one time. It turned out to be a support nightmare and they've stopped doing this.
Leeches apps from Linux, but they just don't work as well as they wish/propaganda pitching they would!
Seriously, I think that they are making a valid point; MS (or your favorite software mill) is expected to turn out monolithic applications that make most users happy most of the time (partly by lowering the expectations of their users, when necessary). If they shipped five web browsers or six media players, their customers would simply be confused and/or demand that they all share the same preferences, etc. Most lusers feel the same way about making such choices as other people feel about buying a car -- the choices seem infinite, confusing, and there's always a suspicion in the back of your mind that you're letting the salesman have too much influence on your decision.
They're jealous that Linux has users who are willing to weigh the options and make choices rather than blindly choose a one-size-fits-all solution.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Do you really prefer hunting through pages and pages of drop-down menus for the one checkbox that does what you want? Isn't it easier to just type 'man program' and be pointed to the right configuration file and right entry? And let's not even talk about the atrocity that is the registry.
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
Come on, could you be any more juvenile?
I like the compatibility I share with 90% of the world.
What sort of compatibility are you talking about? If I want to open a
And then there are, of course, the games that I play. If I'm lucky, I might be able to get three or four of them to play well under Linux, not the entire library I have access to under Windows.
This is a decent point. It's not linux's fault really that few people write games for linux. But in practice it is an impediment to its adoption. I mostly enjoy classic gaming though, so my gaming needs are mostly satisfied with dosbox, fceu, zsnes, and vice.
I don't need all the complexity and openness of Linux, as it all just adds up to a more difficult-to-use environment.
Windows may be user friendly, but it's also expert hostile. Climing the linux learning curve is an investment that pays off tremendously. Once you've done it, going back to an "easy" system is painful. Text based configuration for instance, allows you to use tools like grep and sed to automate things that would be impossible to automate via a GUI.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Saying "you could use firefox" is a lot more threatening than "I'll install firefox for you and teach you how to use it."
I love having a simple, unified interface shared by almost all the programs I use.
;)
Well, that might well be true for your own experience of windows, but by jove it isn't according to mine. Being used to the mac, I see no difference between the randomly designed interface of X client apps like xmms xcdroast xine, and windows apps like cubase, wavelab, nero... and all the rest
Gnome apps are way easier to figure out. Haven't tried kde enough to judge it.
As for XP performing very well, could you try out a gnome 2.6 system side to side with a winxp install with antivirus running, both firewalled? Which one feels snappier?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Granted, a lot does have to do with choice. Mostly because no one aggrees to what thye want so everyone gets 5 cds worth of stuff to choise from. And the fact it is free plays a big part!
Do you really want to know the real reason? Quiyte simple, MS has several monopolies, when a company has a monopoly it has a differnt/additional set of laws that applies to it.
OS/2 came with a lot of other applications as well.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
... but redhat still can't play mp3's out of the box...
As a Mac user, I'm really spoiled. I have a simple, unified interface shared by almost all the programs I use. I have simple configuration dialogs for almost all my programs which easily let me change program settings, and I have property list (xml) files which let me change more advanced settings if I want to.
My computer came with programs that actually do what they were meant to do well, and if not I can download a program and install it just by dragging it to the Applications folder (easier than Windows!), and I can install (at least) 50 different text editors using Fink, just like all those Debian and Gentoo people!
I may not be able to play all the comercial, boxed Windows games, but I can play more of them than the Linux people can. I can even get MS Office if I want, and the Mac version is better than the Windows version!
As for stability, well, my Mac OS X computer is based on BSD, so it's pretty damn stable.
On top of all this, I have lots of nice eye-candy, an OpenGL accelerated GUI (which enables innovative features like Expose), I can let newbies use it without breaking anything (and they can figure out how to use it easily too!), and I can also do all the UNIX-y things that I loved doing with Linux (using the command line - even bash scripting!, X programs, FOSS software etc).
And Apple even tries to adhere to standards, and encourage people to hook into and extend the UI, so the kind of customization and enhancement programs that are unstable hacks on Windows actually work well on OS X.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Who says that you cannot run a linux program easily.
I suppose you never ran Open Office? Takes all that one would ever use of micro$$$ apps and runs them fine. Not only that, it takes all their object files, you know, the '.xls', '.doc', files, and: loads them; alters them at will; and saves them any way you like. I use linux for all signifigant internet activity except dumb stuff like posting on slashdot. I'm no big linux expert by any means. I can't even bring mandrake back to life after a power failure. I can't bring back a failed SCO Caldera failure either....but then only GOD could do that and I'm not sure that he would'nt defer that duty to his
alter ego below decks.
Maybe Linux users are just too stupid to properly configure a Windows box. :)
And proud of it.
C|N>K
Nobody forces you via abuse of market power gained by a monopoly to use Linux.
I cant say that about Windows.
A 1:1 comparison of this distinct situations is definitely a fallacy.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
I really don't know why all people says that it's better Windows because you can install an app with one click!
I mean, Microsoft make the kernel and most of the apps a user can use, but you can't do nothing about it, it's a simple install or not install, i prefer compile my programs, of course an end-user can't do this easily, but of course there where developers come and try to ease this part of Linux.
People say "but dependencies..." well, there's a DLL hell too, and it's worse, because if you have a program compiled against a certain DLL, you update the lib packages, and boom! you break the app, so you need to copy the old dll and use it, until the owner of the program fix it (sometimes you just need to recompile), and yes, Linux have problems with dependencies, but, you can recompile right away to fix that, or make an static binary with the old one, and of course an emerge, swaret, aptget will make things easier for you, if you are in windows, you are just stuck!
And of course an end user doesn't see a benefit in "openess" like a inmmediate benefit, but hey! thanks to that developers like us can develop an app because WE want to make something in a way, we can get a code and extend it, or we can start from scratch, community will help and we are going to have a good App.
Of course, some people will say "that's unprofessional", "there's no quality", well, you see, there are NORMAL people in QA departments, and there are only humans in developer departments, yeah! that's right! and that kind of people code apps under GPL, and yeah, that QA people working for BIG_COMPANY can review code, for free? yeah, that's right... but of course, people want's something you can... sue... "Sue Microsoft!", "Sue Apple", yeah, they feel better because there's a big company behind that it makes crappy software, but at least, the can see a building with their name, come on? most people develop open source software on their free time, and they develop propietary software too, of couse, in OSS you make what you want and extend it, and you are not doing it because "marketing" department told you so...
Anyway, just try to see that WE, the community can fix the problems, improve and create like we want... Microsoft... Windows, well, the people using that are stuck, if Microsoft says "there will not be backward compatibillity", well, you are stuck! as simple as that... and of course, you can always grab a Windows 95 copy, install it, use old drivers, so you can use an old program that they don't make anymore because the X company went bankrupcy.
It is a whole different thing to fill up the system with your own apps to beat the competition than it is to fill the system with apps created by other developers for the benefit of the users. The issue is not the number or type of apps included in Microsoft Windows, but the aleged reason they are there (an the lack of 3rd party equivilents can be used to support this accusation). Most linux distros hardly include any of their own code, and when they do, it's usually open source, which cannot be used to beat out the competing distributors in a similar way.
After 10+ years of configuring a Windows box, I think I know what I'm doing. Besides, I thought the claim was that Linux is just too difficult to set up for Window's users. Configuring a Window's box isn't really that hard at all, even for an idiot, it's just a pain in the ass.
Time makes more converts than reason
It's not just so much that MS is a monopoly, or even the fact that they've violated anti-trust laws to illegally maintain and extend their monopoly (for having a monopoly is not actually wrong in and of itself). It's the fact that there was a consent decree (stemming from their monopoly abuse) specifically forbidding them from bundling more apps with their system. (Unfortunately, it had a loophole for "apps necessary for the operation of the system", which MS abuses on a regular basis, but that's a side issue.)
MS can't ship "stacks and stacks of applications" because they're being punished! They were bad, and they have to go sit in a corner! If they'd stop being bad, then maybe their punishment would stop sometime (but if they weren't being bad, they might not want to bundle apps quite so much).
It's like a guy in jail whining, "other people can go to the movies anytime they want without getting in trouble, but I can't - it's not FAA-I-I-R!" Ya did the crime, now do yer time and shaddup!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the point here is that Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on dektop OSs. This is fine as long as they don't abuse the monopoly...which...well...they do. For instance, they have leveraged there dominant OS to propagate their browser, Internet Explorer. Additionally, they have used their dominant OS to propagate their media player, WMP. In this case they go on to use this to propagate their own media CODEC, which then places them in a position to license it to media companies wanting to serve media, as it has the largest market share. Unfortunately, this is an abuse of a monopoly; and that's the problem.
...10,000$ worth of software you could get on Linux, or the amount that you'd like to have on Windows? Yes, I would certainly like to have top-of-the-line commercial products that'd easily cost me 10k as well, but I certainøy wouldn't need anywhere near that to put together a comparable offering to Linux (never mind the fact that you can emulate Linux under Windows), plus you then have the choice of more specialized commercial products that are head and shoulders above Linux offerings.
Btw, notice how many whine about the price of Macs. Compare x86 + 10k$ worth of software with Mac + 10k$ (prehaps less due to Macs' shipped applications) worth of software. Suddenly you realize it's only expensive if you put the cost of software to 0$... People are just like you, except with less moral backbone.
Personally, I much prefer my current solution: Windows X server & two machines, one Win, one Linux. Best of both worlds on one unified desktop. Because I'm not ready to let Windows go, not yet.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Temporarily switch to a non smp kernel. The second CPU will be ignored, thereby effectively making your system act like it has a single CPU.
Not that I know the exact diff between 'window manager' and 'windows shell' as it applies to Microsoft, but there are quite a few other... shells (I guess) to replace Explorer with:
litestep from ls.net
sharp e from the low dimension guys
among others...
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
Gentoo is going to be a great joke in 5 years when no one wants to maintain the package tree (read: Debian)
Get real. Even Microsoft programs don't share the same interface as each other.
Notice how grandparent said "almost all programs"? That is very true with Windows, and if you don't agree with it, then you don't know what a unified interface is (or don't use Windows).
Although you make some good points, a lot don't have to do with windows.
This isn't true in general about Windows applications any more than Mac or GNU programs. Your "unified interface" is generally the result from using software created by only one vendor. What about ATI's Media Center, Intel's Create & Share, or Cyberlink's PoweDVD? What about almost every game (which is generally considered an advantage for using the Windows platform)? What about the Print Shop, Winamp, AIM, or even iTunes? What about Microsoft's own Media Player or MSN browser? Every one of these Windows programs has a drastically different interface compared with MS Office or most bundled Windows apps (like notepad, calc, or mspaint). Yet I used most of them several times in any particular week while using Windows. Granted some programs like CD Creator or even Mozilla Firefox try to mimic Microsoft's HIG; however, those are the exceptions rather than the rule. The only thing that prevents complete disintegration is limitations of Windows's GUI toolkits and half-hearted attempts to follow the HIG. It is a myth that Windows programs share a common interface.
I grant you that, in general, most set-up options are harder with Linux programs than Windows programs. However, that is a feature not a bug! Many Windows problems are the result of users making configuration changes without thinking first. Setting stuff up should be hard so that you don't make changes on a whim. That way most users understand what they are changing and the consequences of it. If something should be changed often, then it is a bug in the program and should be an option instead of a configuration setting.
Besides, try setting up multi-user account defaults in MS Windows (in Linux, you only need to set up and copy a default user's account). Try setting per-user permissions. Try automating common tasks with shell scripts. These things are harder with Windows than with most Linux distributions. And have you ever heard about the registry? This little (big) database with obscure locations for software settings?
Then just pick one package at random. Or do you have problems making decisions? Besides, there are many choices in Windows's world: MSIE vs. Mozilla vs. Opera. Winamp vs. iTunes vs. Media Player. MS Office vs. OpenOffice vs. WordPerfect Office. Notepad vs. jEdit vs. SuperEdi vs. EditPad Pro vs. 1000 other programs. The only difference is that most Linux distributions conveniently bundle most of your options while you have to download or purchase the ones you want with Windows. Windows isn't usable by itself for nearly anything besides browsing the internet, after all.
What about "pushd", "Excel", or "Explorer"? Each one of those is a Windows program distributed by Microsoft with an equally ambiguous name. (BTW, "GREP" is an acronym for "Global Regular Expression Parser". Your confusion is like MSIE to someone who never heard about MicroSoft's Internet Explorer.")
I can make PDF, HTML, JPEG, or even Flash files that work with Windows programs just fine on most Linux distributions. Most (9
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
they want everything to be free...and they want to get paid for the work they do...hah
Sure, Windows is an excellent games machine, but some people need computers to do real work and don't have time for games or viruses and other crapware...
Oh well, what the hell...
No I don't think so. You are the one who doesn't know what a unified interface is. I'm not even talking about apps made for windows, I'm talking about app made by Microsoft. Take a look at media player and office. Gnome and KDE apps fit together much nicer than Winodws apps and there are many more of them than apps made by Microsoft. Third party apps like MusicMatch and other programs commonly found on OEM PC's look nothing like the so-called windows unified interface.
Time makes more converts than reason
[Most of the rest is your opinion, or not worth responding to for other reasons, or hell, it might even be correct. But on this one issue...]
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
Yeah, because md,* Outlook Express, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, GDI are all so descriptive, aren't they? I mean, we all know what Excel means. It means to do well. So Excel does well. What the hell does it do well? And those are all made by the same combany.
On the other hand, I look at the Applications menu on my Gnome Panel and I see 'Office/Word Processor' or 'Image/Image & Photo Editor'. I don't even need to give a damn about who made a piece of software. Is the GIMP a piece of GNU Software? Maybe (Yes). It doesn't matter, I can find it anyway. Is Abiword a piece of GNU software? Maybe (No. It's made by Abisoft.) It doesn't matter, I can find it anyway.
Now, by this, I don't mean to pretend---not by a long shot---that GNU+X is the most usable environment (even though my evaluation of its pros and cons---including that it's Free---convinced me that it's better, at least for me). Just that the next time you claim Windows' superiority, you don't add this to the mix.
* Giving console programs is stupid. If I'm typing at a console, I want to be able to quickly type in the name, not find-within-files or find-files or edit-a-plain-text-file or make-a-new-directory. That's just silly.
Look out!
i started out on Mac(OS 7.3), switched to Windows 2000, upgraded to XP, and now run Suse 9.1 Professional. I also have a PB G4 with Panther. For me, it's mainly having a choice, and also the community. Not only are updates released more often, but people on forums and such are more than happy to help you, and free of charge no less. I still have to use my Mac for music stuff(Reason), but otherwise it and my linux box run together happily.
Nobody cares how many Linux apps you ship with your distro. You're not being anticompetitive by doing so. The distro maker doesn't make any money one way or another. Those who write the software that gets included don't make any more. Those who write software that doesn't get included don't lose anything.
The problem with Microsoft including software with Windows was that they were making a decision as to whose products would be used and whose would not which would then bring in more or less money to those companies. Microsoft decided which companies lived or died, and that was too much power.
Distro packagers have nowhere near Microsoft's dominance... and "living" or "dying" in the F/OSS world simply means somebody will be happy or disappointed with his pet project's uptake by the community. Nobody's jobs are at stake, nor anybody's precious "shareholder value."
Save time now so you can waste it later
Sure, but IBM and HP and Dell don't have to be so careful. They can ship whatever applications they damn well feel like.
The reality is that Linux doesn't ship with all the application software. Go to www.kernel.org and you can see Linux ships with no application software. The distributions bundle Linux with the application software. There are dozens of distributions who all offer different application bundles. That's how it should be.
Similarly the OEMs pick and choose what they bundle with Windows. The previous IBM notebook I bought had third party fax software, photo editing software, etc. Dell had a different bundle. HP had a different bundle again. The local whitebox store bundles 1,000 shareware games. This is also how it should be.
Microsoft got in trouble a few years ago because they informed all the OEMs that they must ship Microsoft's web browser in order to receive bulk discounts on Microsoft's operating system. Some OEMs wanted to ship Netscape's web browser but Microsoft put a stop to that through economic force. That's illegal because it is anti-competitive.
The article gets it wrong. It claims that Linux gets away with it because there are multiple IRC clients in every Linux distribution. That's not the reason. The OEMs could bundle an IRC client with Windows if they wanted to but there are high support costs associated with bundling an application. Every application in an OEM bundle must have a "wizard" for their help desk and that costs money. If the OEM doesn't think that the increased revenue from bundling an IRC client would outweigh the associated costs then the OEM simply won't bundle it. The Linux distributions don't offer the same level of support, so there's no reason for them not to bundle an IRC client. Indeed, there's no reason for them not to bundle ALL the IRC clients. The proof of this argument is in the newer distributions like Linspire. They offer greater levels of support but they don't bundle as many applications. I predict that as distributions become more focussed they will lose the variety, or at least relegate the variety to "supplemental" discs.
Microsoft could solve this problem (if indeed it is a problem) the same way Linux does: allow third parties to produce customised builds of Windows. Unfortunately his means your version of Windows might be different to your friend's version of Windows. This splintering effect is what Microsoft wants to avoid, because at the moment the only saving grace of Windows is that it's homogenous. Linux allows customisation in droves and that's partially why Linux is harder to configure and maintain. That's the tradeoff.
Stop doing free tech support for them. No one knows how cars work either but most still know that if they drive like maniacs all the time then there will either be a wreck or damaged powertrain. Refuse to do that maintenance unless they are willing to meet you halfway and listen to easy to follow advice.
Tell them clicking the link for anything but Hotmail is like doing something really abusive to their car and expecting the mechanic in the family to fix it free. It certainly isn't the end of the world for you if they disregard and wind up paying somebody $75.00/hr to fix it for them. If that won't educate somebody then nothing will.
There is no malice here. It tough love and I starting practicing it when friends and family had me bail them out one time too many after ignoring that sort of advice. I get paid to fix same damn problems caused by the same damn people doing the same damn stupid things over and over again. I won't do it for free anymore. I'll give free help to family and friends but I expect my pitfall advice to be heeded or there won't be any more where that came from.
Would that be the 3.x, 9x, .NET, XP, or Office interface? It's pretty darn easy to see each of them on screen at the same time, so my KDE desktop is much more uniform than what I expect you're used to.
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense
Vivio, Roxio, Winamp, and Quicken are solid examples of obviously-named applications - moreso than, say, KDevelop, KMail, Gnucash, or MP3Burn.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What I find lacking in Windows is not so much the third-party applications (like work-processers and such), but what really is lacking is a powerful toolset and shell. When I set down at a linux or bsd box (even a barebones minimal install), I will find by default things like grep, awk, sed, zcat, tar, mail, and probably perl (to mention just a few). Add in the power of pipes to glue it all togather and a good scriptable shell (like bash or ksh) and a unix user is superman compared to a windows user. I don't know how many times I've found myself sitting at a Win2k box and wanted to parse and rearange some stupid ascii text report only to have to fire up notepad and start editing line-by-line. A unix box would have let me pipe it through awk or sed and be done with it in seconds.
And if your install doesn't have what you want then grab it from a mirror (apt-get for linux or pkg_add for bsd) and seconds later you are working away productively. Windows doesn't even come close to that kind of power.
If Microsoft wishes they could distribute Linux's programs they should include a distro with every version of windows. I'm sure they could negotiate a very affordable price for wine and any other software.
People might still be willing to use their software especially since they seem so sure its intrinsically better. The could also distribute all the linux goodness they want.
Yes, because when somebody says "Outlook" I immediately think of an e-mail client, and the name "Excel" practically screams "I'm a spreadsheet".
MS should have the right to ship their software any way they like. If you don't like that, don't buy MS software. "But, I'm *forced* to use MS software at work". No, you're not. If it means that much to you, quit your job and look for an employer that uses FOSS. The complete lack of respect for the rights of others on Slashdot is amazing to me, sometimes. According to /., MS has some kind of obligation to help out its competitors and provide customers with zillions of options. No, they don't. They can put out their product and package it in any way they want. If you don't like it, tough. Don't buy the package.
Microsoft isn't a monopoly and never has been, except in the sense that they have a few monopoly priviledges (patents, copyrights) that are granted by the State, and would not exist otherwise. However, all software companies have copyrights and patents, and FOSS developers have copyrights as well.
A monopoly does not occur when one firm has a huge market-share, or even 100% market-share. In the classical (and true) sense of the word -- before Statists started redefining it -- a monopoly only exists when the State creates artificial barriers to entry, making one firm the protected only provider of a service. The best example of a monopoly would be the State. See:
Monopoly and Competition (part a)
Monopoly and Competition (part b)
Monopoly and Competition (part c)
Monopoly and Competition (part d)
Monopoly and Competition (part e)
a href=
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. "
Comparing apples and oranges. What touble is there to get into? As long as distrobutions do not break license restrictions, why shouldn't they offer their customers a solution that can meet any need at anytime. Just because Microsoft locks their customers into a high pricing game doesn't mean the rest of the world has to follow.
It sounds like you don't know the tools to use in Windows. I'm sure with some VBScript you could quickly rearrange that text file. Windows has power. You just have to be educated. For example, I don't have a clue how to do the things you mentioned on Linux. Does that make Linux powerless?
[nit]
I WANT the movie to fill the screen.
I do. not. want. 1/3 of my screen going to waste diplaying black pixels.
Sorry.
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
A valid argument for once. It doesn't apply for everyone though. Not everyone is into 3D games,or games in general. I'm fine with solitaire, and mahjong.
:)
I built and use my Linux box specifically for 3D games. All I had to do was learn a couple vi commands to edit 2 lines in XF86Config-4 before installing the Nvidia driver to get 3d acceleration to work. Moreover, most commercial Linux games I've installed have the same easy-to-use installers as Windows. Because I don't have Norton Antivirus sucking up all my resources running in the background I enjoy smoother gameplay as well.
I dunno what version of MSN Messenger or Windows you're thinking about, but my Windows XP with MSN Messenger 6.2 (I think) will launch firefox, my default browser.
Just as long as you realize that by making the image larger that you cut out part of the image. If you don't want to see the entire image, that's fine. I'd rather they stretch the image to take up the "lost" space at the top and bottom than to not see parts of the movie.
I really felt this was quite a badly written article. I have used Linux since around 98 ever since I got sick of my Win95... but now I am using winXP most of the time. I feel that Linux is not yet ready to be full on desktop platform. Yes, Linux dostros do come with a full choice of programs to use, but often they are not exactly the programs you need, so there we go for a search and install routine, especially in slack. Anyways, there are still a number of things the linux desktop cannot do... and that's the main reason I do not use it any longer simply, because there are no decent Audio production apps and no decent vector drawing progs. Most of the installations are still arcane for a simple user... and the amount of time it takes to figure out how to properly .configure and install a program in Linux probably takes as long as finding and installing a app in Windows trythfully, plus most users will know exactly what they need anyhow.
Not to mention the hardware compatibility problems , some of the hardware on my 2 year old notebook is still not easily set up under Linux. X needs severe messing about to get the screen resolution to the way it has to be using an NVIDIA driver as well, most people wouldn't even figure it out. The D-Link wireless card, which at the time was the only type I could find, is still a mess... Firewire does not work and so on.
I really do think the hardware compatibility especially with notebooks the ultimate portable desktops simply are not easy to set up under Linux and the lack of a whole sector of applications is highly annoying.
I still use OpenSource software, but there is only a handful of apps which can be termed as fully functional and well developed... I can only think of Mozilla, Firebird, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and GIMP as truly ready for fulltime use, the other ones still seem quite flimsy. But the main grievance is definitely the initial set up especially all the drivers for all the hardware... Most people who ever tried to set up Linux on a brand new Laptop could testify.
So maybe in a couple of years when there is a decent DAW and Illustrator replacement, and there is no problem using the whole of my computer capabilities I will use Linux fulltime, but as of right now I feel more restricted rather than spoiled.
That attitude makes my blood boil. I use SuSE, and the reason I use SuSE is because YaST lets me set up things easily (in most cases). xinetd for example. I know how to configure it manually but why the hell would I want to?
I'm not a clueless user. I'm a professional programmer and things that make me more productive are good. My boss isn't impressed if I spend hours simply configuring a program.
What sort of compatibility are you talking about? If I want to open a .doc, or .ppt in linux I have no trouble. I can even write them. If I want to open a .sxw or compile a .tex in windows, that's a major undertaking. /me recovers from the fit of laughing
.tex files? LaTeX is my preferred word processor, and I create and edit LaTeX docs on Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris without problem. On Windows, opening an .sxw file is as simple as double clicking it. Do you not know there was a freely downloadable OpenOffice for Windows? Neither are a "major undertaking."
Don't get me wrong, I don't really like Windows. But I use it at work, and do with without problems. Without problems since 2k/XP that is- 98 is hell.
He talked about having compatibility with 90% of the world- not with 5-10. How many people use LaTeX for their documents? And out of those that do, how many are stupid enough to distribute them as
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
As for XP performing very well, could you try out a gnome 2.6 system side to side with a winxp install with antivirus running, both firewalled? Which one feels snappier?
As sad as I was to discover this, I'd go with Windows. Though in this case, I'm talking about 2k, but in my experience in similar hardware, XP isn't much worse- as long as you turn off some rubbish. But on my 380 MHz K6-2 machine, Win2k is a lot less painful than RedHat 9, both with the shipped GNOME and newer versions. GNOME and KDE are like using Win 98 on that box- frustrating as hell. When I'm just using ion or pwm it isn't as bad, but it's still slower. Which has me in Windows on that box most of the time, as sad as it is.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I have to say I agree with your general line of argument (that MS are entitled to bundle IE with windows), but not with a few specific points:
(1) Yes, distributions do tend to favour one desktop environment/browser/etc over the other, but you can change for a different one. Sure, things might not work as well (like KDE and Fedora), but you are able to change.
(2) I'm not sure that anyone I know has ever advocated the removal of IE from windows for disk space reasons... more security and usability IME.
But, as I said, I agree with your general point. Much as I dislike it, IE and windows explorer are, if not one and the same, too closely linked to be easily separated. I also think for a lot of people having one standard browser that is easy to find and operate(?) is actually quite useful.
I'm not sure that explorer is used for rendering help files by the way... someone with a lot more technical knowledge will probably correct me here, but I'm pretty sure that, in win2k and later, help files are rendered by a separate program (which eats about 10 meg of memory!)
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
The real answer of why nobody complains that Linux distros bundle too much software is that the included software usually is not from the same gus who made the distro. If you have multiple word processing programs, but anyone was made by Red Hat, Mandrake, debian, and so on. :)
Another reason is that i windows is easy install most programs, in linux not, so you better have them all on the install CD
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
FreeBSD. Give it a try. :)
I first tried installing every Win OS that should work on it from Win95/98/Me/NT none worked.
I figured I would learn Linux, started putting several Linux distros (old & new from RH 6.2 to Fedora) and **all of them work without any headaches**.
Is Linux hard no it just gives **you** all the power to do whatever you want that just makes Linux look complicated but you could do a "basic" install of any major distro and have a perfectly fine GUI OS with **at least** 1 app for any major task within 60mins. What more could you ask for? Windows would take 60mins to just install itself forget the apps.
I am a converted Linux user and still use WinXP but Linux is the foundation to my home & work network while WinXP is kept around so all our apps which we have been using for years could be used. Linux still needs some apps but it has almost everything a normal user would need. I use Win for Adobe Video/Grpahic software.
Because without the "P", it's just fucking nonsense.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
There's no experience more eerie to me than when my hardware just works out of the box on linux. I bought a soundblaster32pci, plugged it in to debian, powered on, and blammo, it just worked, no modprobe needed. Similarly for the first time I tried a usb drive. I kinda resent this- I mean, if its not hard & cryptic, then I have to waste time with a new device figuring out if it "just works" before I get down to figuring out how to make it work.
A foolish inconsistancy is the hobgoblin of OSS peripheral installation!
Off thy high horse, please.
....... nothing happens. Solution? Open up a console and run mplayer ( which isn't in the path for some reason, so you have to locate it and type the full path to mplayer ), along with a number of switches that I don't remember now, all in order to play an XVid file that I can play just as easily by double-clicking from nautilus. Ways to fix OS-X's invocation of mplayer? We couldn't find any.
OS-X isn't perfect. Far from it.
I remember a recent gaming session, trying to play Warcraft III.
I was running Gentoo Linux & WineX-3. One friend was running Windows XP. Another was running OS-X. We had to doing some serious swapping of files to get things working, as Warcraft III insists on having the same patch level installed on each PC. Networking between my PC and the Windows PC was a piece of cake. The OS-X laptop, however, was less than impressive. It worked intermittently, and occasionally crashed the file manager ( finder? ). Network browsing wasn't working so well either.
I also seem to remember other aspects of the OS-X experience removing the silver lining from my perception of Apple's systems. I've seen a fair few hard lockups on this laptop, and I don't see it that much.
MPlayer is another example I remember. I backed up some of my DVDs to XVid / Ogg format, and took them around to play on the Mac. So we clicked on the file
Sure it looks nice. But let's not fool ourselves here - single clicking goodness is only good when it works flawlessly. Once you hit a problem, you're up shit creek. And sure, most Mac users are happy to play in the sandboxed world that is OS-X, but I don't see serious users flocking towards it. They're flocking towards Linux.
DOA. You're kidding, right?
I like having simple configuration dialogs for almost all my programs which let me easily change program settings, instead of messing around with obsure configuration files.
Uh, do you know about regedit?
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
You mean such as the Word procedure known as "digging to China" - to change your outline numbering format?
Linux computers may come with more pre-installed software on a CD, but if I have the money, I can get a Windows computer set up the same way.
If I have the money, I can buy a Cray.
Also, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to secure a Linux system properly, so I don't know whether my system would be any safer anyway.
Your statement suggests that you know how to secure a Windows system properly. If this is the case, I know of a couple of million Korgo victims who would be very interested in speaking with you.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I would like to be able to guess a command name according to its function, or conversely, to be able to tell what a command/program does by looking at its name.
I would say that problem exists in Windows also.
Enjoy hunting windows utilities. I hope you use IE to expierence the full pop-up shower google spamers will unleash on you.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
After 10+ years of configuring a Windows box, I think I know what I'm doing.
If I had a $1 for each time I heard some so called expert toot his own horn by saying 'I've done x for y years", I'd be rich by now.
You prove my point for me. I would have to hunt down, download, and install all of those things to do what I can already do in unix with a barebones install. And I still probably wouldn't be able to pipe them togather or script them to build a more powerful sum of the indivdual parts. On unix, those capabilities are built into a default install.
All the things you mentioned are not what you would typically find on a default windows install or even on the Windows CD. But they *ARE* found by default on every unix system (except perhaps somehthing like a stripped down appliance). Nor is there an easy all-in-one system of packages and mirrors to install such things in windows.
If I wanted to, I could point my browser to sourceforge and download and install all the gnuwin32 utilities, but again, that would prove my point. They are not native or default components of Windows, nor are they available in the "Add windows component" section of control panel.
Microsoft is treated differently because Microsoft is a convicted monopolist (and copyright infringer).
The rules are different when you break the law.
What they did was serious enough that had Bush not been elected, the company we know as Microsoft would have been split into 2 distinct companies.
The problem was that bad; it was so bad that it could be solved in no way other than splitting up the company.
If you don't have a monopoly, you have no monopoly to illegally leverage to your advantage in other market segments.
That's how the law works.
Convicted felons don't get to own firearms.
"If I had a $1 for each time I heard some so called expert toot his own horn by saying 'I've done x for y years", I'd be rich by now."
It's called experience, moron, something you might want to look into getting.
Man, I want some of what you've been smoking!
when I try to help win users out, it's tough. I'm used to all sorts of free software to choose from to do anything I want (as well as things I don't know I want, yet). So yeah, we are spoiled, but it's a good spoiled.
P
free ipod and free gmail!
Are you sure? I would have thought most programs would run just fine...Isn't that the point behind having a standard C library and POSIX standards?
Most of the specific kernel stuff is supposed to be wrapped by the C library (and other system libraries), so all the linux/BSD specific stuff is linked at run time.
And [my understanding is that] since the ABI is set by the processor manufacturer, the same ABI would be used for both, meaning it should work.
With the exception of a [rare] few extra/different calls in glibc is there really that much of a difference in the environment to a program? (I'm not familiar enough with the two kernels to know)
The only programs that shouldn't work between them should be ones that make direct system calls or do something linux-specific (like valgrind).
Yes, you can't expect to simply replace the kernel and reboot. But you should be able to replace the OS (which includes the system-dependent libraries and configuration files), and reboot. [If it's not like this...it *should* be....]
And then you can run your choice of theme-ing engine, wm, and XFree86 you want.
On windows it's all or nothing. Even if you wanted to run microsoft's wm on BSD you couldn't (even if you were willing to recompile the entire system to do so, you can't!).
The original's poster's point was that it can be done. The fact that it may or may not difficult isn't really relevant. Especially since the moment GNU/BSD becomes fashionable there'll be a million shell scripts to do it for you automagically -- these are computers, they're good at handling complex and tedious problems (provided it's the same problem every time).
Just one comment... the name thing I'm really serious about. It's hard to remember random command names in a command line interface unless it's something you use all the time. I would like to be able to guess a command name according to its function, or conversely, to be able to tell what a command/program does by looking at its name.
Remember apropos and man and you're set. Well, almost.
The funniest thing of all is that Microsoft could bundle all of the same software. It's free and everyone can use it. Lots of the killer software is already ported to M$'s crappy OS. All M$, or any vendor for that matter, has to do is distribute their changes to the source code if they bother to make any. So what keeps them from doing that? It would further validate free software and drive home the fact that M$ is just another software distribution. The only thing special about Microsoft is how expensive and restrictive their distribution is.
Ha ha, M$ reps, you cling to a corpse. Though the word is out, M$ refuses to grow, change or even move. That's death in any industry. In software, they were dead six years ago. The overwhelming superiority of software choice and the quality of that choice is the direct result of Microsoft's business model and refusal to change.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You have obviously never used KDE or Gnome or you wouldn't argue this point.
Time makes more converts than reason
Not much more than the guy who has done all of those things exactly once.
Experience doesn't come with time on a job.
Experience is about broadening your horizons and trying different things.
What the grandparent was implying is that being an expert isn't about having done 1 thing for 'y' years: it's about having a broad experience in the field and being able to deal with various contingencies that crop up.
By its very nature, "configuring" doesn't require the kind of skills that promote expertise. There's no design or understanding involved, you just set things in a way that makes things work...Yay... In short configuring is a task for a (small) shell script. (You've wasted your life). j/k.
In addition, Windows has changed significantly since 3.11, so how much of that experience would be valid today?
Also (responding to great grandparent), how is setting
to 0x400 an "easy" step in configuring a window's machine?
Is it easy just because you don't have to use the command line?
This is true, it's easy to install Nvidia drivers and play SOME games. A lot of them are supported now and some have native versions but there isn't much alternative to a game like there is other software. I don't need to use gnucleus when I have gtk-gnutella, I don't need mediaplayer when I have mplayer, but if I did want to play an unsupported game on Linux an alternative will just not do. This is not to say Linux is unusable as a gaming platform though. I know plenty of people who use Linux just for that.
Time makes more converts than reason
Yes, Linux comes with a lot of software that Windows doesn't . However, you can easily download most of it (in fact, Cygwin makes this almost trivial).
No, the reason I feel spoiled as a Linux user is that, in the past 9 years, I have not had a single virus, trojan or worm, and I've never needed software to deal with or prevent these.
Further, in that time, I have never seen a pop-up window I didn't specifically request, and I haven't given a second thought to spyware or adware. These things just aren't part of my life, thanks to Linux (yeah, I know, non-IE using Mac users can make the same claim).
I usually take this for granted, but every once in a while, I sit at somebody else's Windows machine and realize just how fortunate and yes, spoiled, I am.
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
I have to say that I sit somewhere between the two of you. There are things that I love and hate in both linux and windows, though really I shouldn't say I hate anything in Linux but that's for later.
I love playing games on a rare basis, because I don't want to worry about getting the latest edition of wine and making the game work, I keep windows. It is solely for that purpose but it has other advantages. As an econ major, I deal for ages with excel files and usually I'm required to turn them in in a format that the teacher can easily read, any trouble he has could mean a lower grade and even though open office is great, it has lots of trouble on the randomest of things. I don't run into version problems with windows(between my computer and my teacher's, the computer lab is a completely different matter) but at least because of what my school does, we have version compatibility. This means I prefer to just do the spreadsheet work on windows rather than having to double check that everything on 20 or 30 excel sheets is exactly as I want it. Sometimes this isn't very easy as I might fill up 10000 cells on one sheet.
But then windows crashes constantly, can't move large files without explorer throwing up on me, has endless problems with compatibility of previous releases of their own software(Excel sheets can't port properly from the latest version to only 2 generations ago, and I don't use any new features, I versed enough to know that), I have to constantly be on the alert for the next major security exploit and lock down specific parts of my computer usage if as windows loves to do, wait for ages to come out with a patch.
So for many things, I just got fed up with windows and had a linux zealot as my good friend and neighbor at school get me started. When I say get me started, he gave me the install cd's. I'm not so ignorant as to have trouble with a right click functionality. Now get this, wtih my wierded out hardware, core 1 didn't want to install easily but I took about 2 minutes on the web and found the solution. It happens to be that any time I have a problem with windows I usually spend hours hunting down a solution, and that usually happens to be a functional program on sourceforge(example: VLC replaced windows media player when in order to get WMP to run I would have to spend hours hunting down the right codecs and how to use them while for some reason, they just flawlessly play on VLC).
So I'm caught in the transition between windows and Linux, I don't think I will ever fully migrate but slowly I use linux more and more. Anyone who has problems with the redhat desktop should probably crawl back under a rock. I can do everything on it and a helluva lot more than with windows, especially with that nice multiple desktop feature X does. My only real complaint with linux is what I had with windows years ago, I don't know it well. But oddly enough, I can almost do everything I do on windows. I know if I spend the time, I can make linux 100x more functional. I think the real problem is this, while linux users claim to be lazy people always looking for ways to save time and evergy, they aren't lazy when it comes to computers, they like the idea of learning something new. Anyone who defends windows way of doing this really just doens't want to learn something new. Because Windows is much older in most people's mind, its ways are cemented in. We actually associate their nonsensical names with certain program functions(no, excel and powerpoint in no way describe what the programs do, but after years of having the association drilled into our heads, it does). So of course, the argument that I like my program names to make sense really doesn't have any merit.
I think it any well versed windows user sat down and used X(not the mac) they would almost seemlessly integrate, all they would need to do is get used to programs being in different places. I love one thing about linux, you don't ever have to touch the command line if you don't want to(and frankly, because of
But everyone seems to be more concerned with how easy it is to use a program (or OS, etc) than how well it works. It can crash 4 times every day, but as long as you don't have to think to be able to use it, that's OK. I'm seriously starting to think that maybe 'Joe Sixpack' doesn't really need to have access to a computer, at least not the type of access to the type of computers we have today.
Just stop and think about it: computers are *insanely* powerful machines that were originally developed for mathematics, and that still do nothing *but* mathematics at their core. We've simply adapted them to do (basically) what we want them to do (IM, email, etc.). Then we keep giving people who have no clue what they're doing more and more powerful computers, and the limits of what they can do with these computers continue to expand. With all the malware, spyware, worms, etc. that are out today, it's like giving control of an aircraft carrier to someone who doesn't even have a driver's license (not a great analogy, but it's all I could think of). Stuff *is* going to go wrong, and it *will* affect more than just that one user. Now, I don't claim to have a solution. And the internet is obviously something that everyone should have access to, if no other reason than the sheer amount of information available on it should be accessible to anyone. And don't get me wrong, I run a Gentoo machine and can't even imagine trying to run a distro without Portage (maybe Debian with apt-get, but I digress). There are some things that computers simply handle better than humans for the most part, and package management is definitely one of them in my opinion. But should we really be focusing on dumbing the interface down so much that a 2-year-old with a learning disability can 'use' the computer? It just seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot, and that later we'll be paying for it even more than we are now.
and choosing a program with a consistent UI that allows the user get their work done with a minimum of fuss was considered a valid choice, linux developers would be considered tyrants and the OS itself would have no choices at all.
End users have different ideas of freedom and choice than the traditionalist unix Text-Trash who dominate linux. The GPL is a programmer's idea of freedom, not an end-user's.
I disagree with the parent post that freedom as seen from an ordinary PC user's perspective implies cost and risk. I think the real PC user's definition of freedom is something so radically different that Stallman an Co. cant't even begin to understand it.
I'm all for Open Source succeeding, I just feel before that can happen we end users have to stand for our freedoms and "take out the Text-Trash".
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
1. Thanks all of you who gave useful advice.
2. But for the others, who do seem to be a bit angry because someone does not show he's in love with linux (go to bed with it / licks his distro-cd's before he gets to bed etc.): you proved my point; you geekos are so full of your yourself that you actually put people off. Think about that.
As for me: until Linux matures and comes shipped with what I need to get my hardware working, I will use Microsoft. And I will recommend everyone around me to do the same. *Because of your arrogance* (I mean group 2 here).
Peter
Have you checked for a hidden registry key for this?
I know in a previous discussion someone mentioned a fix for typing web addresses into the file manager (for http and ftp protocols) to cause it to open Mozilla instead of IE, by changing 2 registry keys.
I don't know if the MSN thing is related (if it just passes the web address off to the shell then this should fix it).
Disclaimer: I have not tried this, I do not run windows, but it kind of makes a Microsoft-y sort of sense and might solve your problems.
Anyway here's the post I was talking about
As a Windows user, I think I'm spoiled. I love having a simple, unified interface shared by almost all the programs I use.
The notion that Windows programs have a "simple, unified interface" is so ridiculous that, either you must "use" your Windows machine mainly to heat your apartment and to look pretty on your desk, or you have used it so long that you are completely blind to what a mess it actually is.
LOL!
Oh yeah, writing up some VBScript is totally the same thing as using standard Unix command line tools.
The point was that the Unix tools are already there in everything but Windows.
Sounds to me like you're the tool.
Yeah mozilla mail opens up Mozilla by default, instead of the default browser, too.
Capitalism is essentially survival of the fittest for buisnesses. Sooner or later the best one will come out on top in any market and then they'll have a monopoly if they so desire it. And I don't mean best in terms of their product(s) or service(s), I mean the best (most ruthless?) at running a buisness. Beating your competition either by being better or just eliminating them is what survival of the fitest is all about. If you don't want monopolies, don't use capitalism.
Question everything
- no difficult choices during setup (pre-configured PCs)
Not only can you get Linux pre-installed, you also get options like Knoppix. And if you really want to install something from scratch, SuSE installs more easily than Windows.
- no need to read difficult manpages and other such stuff
If you just want to use Linux like you use Windows (run GUI apps), you don't have to read any more documentation than on Windows. Quite to the contrary, actually: Linux GUI apps have benefitted from having been developed with more hindsight compared to Windows.
- most hardware just works out of the box
That's a myth. On Linux, many devices just work after you plug them in, because Linux has so much hardware support built in.
On Windows, on the other hand, most hardware comes with separate driver CDs and instructions for how to install it. You know: insert the CD before connecting the device (or was it after?). Often, the driver doesn't work with current Windows versions, so you need to download new binary drivers from some web site. And doing a Windows upgrade is like Russian roulette--you always have to wonder what hardware stops working afterwards.
- no need to choose between distros - no need to choose between multiple software packages that do the same job, just differently
Ah, yes, you hate choice--you would have been right at home in the USSR--one centrally planned choice for everything--no need to think. Just follow the supreme leader Gates into the bright, bright future of the centrally planned Windows utopia.
Pardon the rest of us while we continue to engage in the messy by useful business of evaluating options, making choices, and participating in a free market.
while (!asleep()) sheep++
You mention "just pointing your browser to sourceforge", all sounds fine and lovely, until the shitty hardware support linux has does not allow you to "just point your browser" somewhere.
Windows XP SP2 > *
I totally hear you on the rest of your post, but actually pretty much all of the bourne redirectors work on the Windows command line: | pipes, > redirects, >> appends. Windows doesn't really have a concept of "stderr" as a separate stream so there's not much sense in 2> or 2>&1. Also, findstr is like grep, route works mostly like /sbin/route, etc. These tools are there just aren't often used.
Still, when I do sit down at a Windows machine the first thing I have to do is spend about a day finding and installing the software I need for the machine to be usable (perl, lisp, a firewall, ksh, emacs, firefox, etc.) and for the most part it's just not worth my time.
I also have a problem that judging from /. comments is unique. Windows XP feels incredibly slow to me. Unbelievably slow. I've timed it, and IE can take about 15 seconds to start. MS Office has taken 30 (yes, somehow OOo is actually faster. I never thought I would see the day). And the startup is very slow too: it can take about 3 or 4 minutes for all 5 icons in the notification area to appear; and until they are all there if I try to start *any* application the computer can freeze up. This is the kind of crap that I've just never had to put up with on Linux, and frankly I just don't see the appeal of Windows especially considering how much I'd have to pay for the inferior performance.
All's true that is mistrusted
I think it is a familiarity thing..
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense
Like what? Outlook Express? Excel? Access? PowerPoint? FrontPage? Sure you know what they are by using them, but sit someone down at the computer that doesn't know what they are, and its just the same as "grep "gimp" "x" in your example.
but if I have the money, I can get a Windows computer set up the same way
I must ask -- why? Why would you want to spend money on something that you don't necessarily need to? Fortunatley a significant amount of FOSS software IS cross platform (unlike Microsoft's wares) so you can run it on Windows w/o spending the money.
From my perspective as a basic desktop computer user, the only thing Linux has going for it is the cost (usually zero) and perhaps security.
I find it interesting that you just discount both of those items. Spend a few thousand on hardware/software that you don't need for the privelege of having a less secure computing experience where you have to worry about people hijacking your credit card numbers, personal information and so forth.
It's late and I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but is it not possible to set a bookmark in Firebox to point to their webmail? I have done that with my Hotmail account (cough "spamtrap").
Like most users they just want a simple button to push. Give them one on the Firefox toolbar. And make sure the shortcut on the desktop is prominantly displayed.
Sorry if this horse has already been beaten.
Um, wordpad? wordpad?
/bin/vi (really ed). "How did you do that?!" It is sad. Sure, maybe Windows can do it via some VBscript or XML blah blah tied to Office via some OLE or COM blah blah, but I can do it from vi with a colon, or sed with a |. It's a whole mindset, and Windows just doesn't have it.
Tell you what, you take 150000 lines of text, where the pattern is:
23523: asdf[134] - foo bar : xyz
All the numbers and text change on every line. I want *only* the leading digits before the colon, and the trailing text after the final colon, space separated. Doing this with a regular expression and sed is incredibly trivial. Something along the line of (not tested, but basically correct):
sed -e 's/([0-0]+):.*: (.*)$/\1 \2/' f2
Voila. Takes about thirty seconds.
Try that in, um, wordpad, and get back to me in a month when you finish. And don't blather on about some other Windows tool. You said wordpad can replace sed. Have lots of fun.
I always get a big kick out of the awe shown by Windows lusers when they see me rapidly and easily do a complex text manipulation operation such as that in
Larry (who was using vi and sed before Windows even existed)
no OS is better or worse than any other one. it depends on what you want out of it. i run slackware linux and the only issue i have is that i can't play games on it. that's fine with me, whatever. i just whip out my PS2 if i want to play games. as a programmer, i personally enjoy trying to solve problems under linux. i don't mind that it make take me 3 or 4 hours to get a driver to work properly or that i may have to do some hefty configuration to make an app work. but, that's me. if i just wanted a desktop system to play games and surf then net, i would use windows... but, im a programmer and windows programming is homogay.
You say your parents get pop-ups and spyware. Can we say google toolbar? 99% of popups gone. How is it I can surf and not get any spyware at all on my machine? Have your parents use spybot and adaware and teach them better surfing habits. It works.
Oh man you are so full of it I can smell it across the internet. But before I get to you, did anybody else find the whole "Linux users are spoiled" thing actually laugh-out-loud FUNNY! I did. OK, back to you.
... well more power to you. But beware: Just because it all seems easy and intuitive to YOU does not mean that it's easy or intuit
> If you want an OS that "just works", Linux is actually a better choice
Wrong. You are wrong. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
Empirically, objectively wrong.
And I'd like to believe that you know your wrong.
*sigh*
OK, maybe you don't know your wrong.
I've used Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X as my primary platforms at different times. My last install (correction: attempted install) of Linux was actually quite recent. Nobody can accuse me of lack of exposure. I've been exposed all right.
Have you ever actually *run* OS X? Have you used it? I cannot possibly fathom how anybody of sound mind and body could possibly conclude that Linux "just works" more so than Mac OS X. You've been smoking something? How could you POSSIBLY reach such an absurd conclusion? Wow. I'm stunned.
Run it. Use it. But please don't have a stinkin' geekfest with it though, OK? Fire it up, browse the web, check your email, install a few commercial apps, run Software Update. Import some photos into iPhoto. Make a movie. Use it like a normal human being uses it. Forget FINK and Terminal and all that and just freakin' USE it, OK? IT'S FUCKING BEAUTIFUL, MAN! It is the most satisfying, unified, uncomplicated user computing experience I have ever had. Nothing fights me. Stuff works. I can focus on other things. Get real work done. It's the closest thing to computing nirvana I have yet to experience.
Now go try Linux. The very first time you drop to the command line the game's over because command line anything isn't user friendly for 99% of the population. In fact, it's absolutely out of the question. Even WITH the command line it's a pain in the ass to get shit going. Maybe it's fun for some folks to mess with dependencies and config file changes in vi and shit but it ain't for me. It SUCKS. I hate it. And don't you dare accuse me of being non-technical or a newbie or whatever; I've been programming professionally for 21 years and I'm sick and tired of dealing with mundane technical BULLSHIT all the time. Which is precisely what I have to deal with anytime I get within 20 feet of a Linux box. It's HORRID. Man oh man does it suck. First time you have to Google for info I cry foul because Google is no substitute for either 1) Application Help Menu, or 2) Being intuitive enough in the first place to not require help. Even if the documentation exists and it's verbose it still likely sucks because the author doesn't know how (or doesn't care) to communicate effectively.
(A side note: I once visited the website of some open source project [name long forgotten] and found ample documentation. I trolled that documentation for an HOUR and nowhere was I able to ascertain what the said software project actually WAS. Web software? Networking stuff? Application software? No clue. I don't know because he didn't tell me. That's a clear indication that the author of the documentation was either 1) Clueless enough to assume that everybody must know what his software does, or 2) Arrogant enough to assume that everybody must know what his software does, or 3) Both clueless enough AND arrogant enough to assume that everybody must know what his software does.)
Even Microsoft Windows absoutely SMOKES Linux in terms of usablity. Windows is substantially easier and friendlier than Linux can ever hope to become. Microsoft sucks royal ass for other reasons which makes it no longer an option for me as a computing platform. And it's usability could use some work too. But compared to Linux from a usability standpoint it's absoutely no contest. It's obvious.
If you are a command-line junkie and geek and like messing around with this nonsense
Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it ships with Windows.
That's because they used such hard-ass tactics with retailers (such as "ALL the machines you sell will be loaded with Microsoft OS and apps, or we will remove your authorization to sell any Microsoft prodcts") to increase their market share, both OS and apps, from 85 percent to 98 percent [SWAG numbers], until the US Government finally said "No, that's monopolizing, you can't do that." Minority players will never have to worry about the Government complaining of "bundling" apps with the OS, and they don't have the clout to have retailers agree with a "You'll sell us only, or you won't sell us at all" policy.
Tag lost or not installed.
You can get a good toolset and shell on windows by installing Cygwin. Yes, it does have the drawback of being a big download, but at least it's only one download instead of several hunt-and-peck sessions of downloading. Cygwin provides all of the standard unix tools you mentioned: nice shells, grep, awk, sed, tar, and yes even perl and XFree86. The programs mostly behave the way you expect, because they're compiled from the same source code as the linux versions. You will find some bugs in Cygwin but none so bad as to cause data loss or hinder productivity.
Cygwin isn't as good as the command line environment in Linux (cause it's slow, has bugs, and requires third-party download), but it goes a long way towards filling the gap.
Unfortunately I can't recommend any Windows program to fill the role of apt-get....
For people who got a different banner add, google for "version tracker pro" or click (assuming href is working again) here
You're right VBScript is a bad example.
But Windows XP (and, I think, Windows 2000) does come with scripting tools (more than batch files) that work right off the command line. VBScript and JavaScript support is built in, but you can add you favorite scripting language (like perl!) with a third party add-on, Run a search on Google for "Windows XP scripting". You will find that there are ways to automate things in Windows. You just have to know how to do it, just like in Linux.
Some links to Windows Scripting Resources:
Microsoft's Web Site
X vs. XP > Scriptability
Also, if you really love the Unix command line tools, you can get a port of them for Windows.
You're aware that you're basically arguing for totalitarianism?
while (!asleep()) sheep++
linux has usability standards? problem is there are probably 5 of them and 90% of linux apps don't follow any of them
Why don't you check out the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. KDE has their own, but both share a common base-set of standards outlined here.
Stick to gnome applications under a gnome desktop, everything should be fine. The most disturbing thing for me is Balsa, written with GTK+ 2, has an address book manager written in GTK+ 1.2, which sticks out like a sore thumb.
Linux apps have some way to go, but the situation is a thousand times better than the mess we had a few years ago. It's getting there.
graphic design, electronic circuit design, music composition, genealogy, CAD, Mathematical modelling
:-)
Sorry to nit-pick, but - CAD? Electronic circuit design? I'm about to upgrade my EAGLE package in exchange for some $$$ (still much cheaper than most competition and especially Protel, that which I have a hatred for which burns with the power of a thousand suns).
Is there some free stuff worth using I dont' know about? Please tell me it's true!
This statement is actually extremely false. Now, there's a lot of FUD making the rounds about the so-called "viral" nature of the GPL, but what I'm about to say is fact not FUD. Microsoft would have to GPL all of Windows in order to bundle a GPL program together with Windows.
The relevant section of the GPL is Section 3, which states in part (edited for space but with no significant change in meaning):
In other words, when distributing a GPL windows executable, you are not required to distribute operating system source code unless you are also bundling the executable with the operating system components. Unfortunately for Microsoft (and other proprietary OS vendors such as Sun, HP, and IBM), bundling is exactly what we are talking about here.
Microsoft can bundle GPL source code with Windows, but they aren't allowed to bundle GPL executables.
As for the whole "oh the command line is so difficult", it seems to be a mindset that MS has created despite the fact that it was the command line OS. Lets face it MS started with DOS. A command line only OS if ever there was one. Apple had a GUI (well a working one anyway I tried some of MS'es earlier GUI's) and even some Unixes had some. Yet we all know who won (for now).
I think that the people who complain about arcane CLI interfaces are just the basic bone idle lazy bastards of this world, the same who complain about the goverment but never vote, who throw trash on the street because the bin is 10 meters away and complain bitterly about the messed up streets and the high taxes for city cleaners, who don't want landfills anywhere in their state but don't seperate their trash, who complain that the area around their kids school in their morning is so crowded that they have to wait in line to drop their kid of in their suv.
In short the dipshits. The people in the B-ark. It is pointless trying to use reason with them. Doesn't work anywhere else so why do you think it would work in the computer world?
I recently worked with some muslims some of who until a few years ago thought a flushing toilet was high-tech (not my prejudice, was there own story). Yet they didn't seem to have any trouble learning to work unix program that was run from a windows 2000 terminal session. Including all the "arcane" start up commands. The difference betweem them (and every normal person) and these kiddies who can't handle "cd"? They were willing to learn.
Actually calling them kiddies is an insult to real childeren and everyone who has remembered the most important thing about being a child. How to learn and have fun while learning.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"cites".
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
>what really is lacking is a powerful toolset and shell.
What really gets me about the Linux defendants is stuff like this.
Somehow it's okay to have to know the name of "abiword" to make it useful in an "apt-get" string, but it's completely unacceptable that you might have to use a Google search (or IRC channel, frequently cited as a valuable resource for information) to find the Cygnus tools. Or even the sourceforge ports of many of the standard shell utilities.
I guess I just Don't Get It.
-l
Actually, I've used Gentoo now for almost a year...and I've never ever ever had to wait for anything to compile...ever. Even when I first installed it.
How can this be?!?! Well, there is this thing called "let things compile at night while I sleep". I don't turn my computer off, so while it's up at night, it updates.
I've yet to even be around while it's compiling anything, so no, I've never had to wait. Sorry, don't mean to be so sarcastic, but when people complain that Gentoo has to compile everything I just kinda sigh and say it's a moot point.
But this is just me, I don't run a server. If I did, I'd probably run a binary distro like Debian, which again proves there is more than one choice for Linux.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Is that, for many people and bussinesses, this is a GOOD thing. The vast array of differences in Linux are actually BAD in many situations. I'll give you a few examples:
1) Clueless user usability. With Windows, there is a Windows interface, and only one, and apps are supposed to (and generally do) conform to that Windows feel. So you learn how things work, and they nearly always work that way. At the very least the basic system is always the same. This is good for those that are clueless and have problem learning new tech stuff.
Not so with Linux. Each distro has their own look and feel and worse still, there are some MAJOR difference occasionally like different window managers. This means that when a newbie learns "Linux", they can go to another distro and find that they DON;T know how to operate it, because it's different. Sure, for the geek maybe it's easy, but we aren't talking about geeks here.
2) Support. We are wrestling with this at work. Supporting Windows and Solaris is easy, we support at most two different versions (2k and XP, 8 and 9) and the differences between the versions are small. Linux, well, there are just TONS of variations. Everyone can, and some distros do, things their own way. Red Hat, in particular, is problematic for our Linux guys. I guess they do libraries in different locations than the distros they are used to, and this causes problems. Then there is fiddling with different driver versions on different kernels and different app and hardware compatibility, it's difficult. What you have to support varies widly.
3) Coding. With Windows, you are gaurenteed the availability of interfaces, libraries, COM objects, etc. They are a part of Windows, and you don't need to worry about them not being there. Not the case with Linux. If you use something, you depend on it, but it might not be there, leading to the dependency hell. Can be even more problematic if you have to pack everything on CD in binary form and ship it out, to make sure you don't break anything existing on the system. It's that, or do everything yourself from the ground up which is inefficient.
Now I'm not saying that there aren't advantage flipsides to these. PLease don't take this to mean Linux is doing things wrong, it's doing them DIFFERENT. The problem is that some people seem to think that it is the One True Way(tm) and that everyone should like it. Well, no, there are disadvantages to a very uncontrolled, unstandardised system. Whereas some will see a choice of 8 window managers liberating, others see it as frustrating.
You just need to keep that in mind, that openness and lack of control has tradeoffs as well. Apple and Sun demonstrate the other extreme here. Not only do they control the OS, they control the hardware. Forget driver issues and such, unless you add third party stuff, there is only one platform it runs on (ok, I'm ignoreing Solaris for x86 here, and just talking about Sparc) and they control it. It'll all work ncie together, they make sure of that. Of course, this limits your choices.
All a tradeoff, there really isn't a right way.
Get real. Even Microsoft programs don't share the same interface as each other. KDE or Gnome are much better in this respect. Other Linux programs may not fit in so well, but neither do third party programs on windows. Your claim is bogus
Consistency of the UI is not one you can put in the win column for linux. Consider configuring samba. Do you use swat, webmin, redhat-config-samba, vim and a text file, etc. Consider your basic editors like emacs and vim, these interfaces have nil in common. I use vim almost daily and still don't remember the exact syntax for a search and replace. Why? Because it's not a consistent interface. For comparison, in just about all windows programs that have this feature, it is ctrl-h and you can find it under the edit menu.
Is this (obscure program names) a serious gripe or just whining? Linux program names are truly awful. I have always been apalled by the use of prefixes in KDE and Gnome programs which makes visually scanning through lists of programs and command line completion all that much harder.
Sure, if I was bloody rich. I would have to spend at least $5,000 dollars to get the equivalent programs on Windows. The "hassle" is not worth that much money. I'd rather take the ten minutes to learn how to use the program. I'm not that lazy.
Huh? How exactly does this chain of reasoning go? I mean, without crossing into the realm of very special purpose software, most of the tools I use on Linux are also available in virtually identical forms on Windows (Mozilla, Gimp, Open Office, vim, Apache, Perl, Php, etc).
Securing a Linux system is much less work than securing a windows system. You don't have to spend a half hour just configuring the damn web browser to be slighty more secure then the swiss cheese default settings.
It all depends on what you want to do. I mean, for basic needs configuring something like IPChains is hell compared to say the built in XP firewall.
He is pointing out why some people like solutions like Windows. Funny thing is, I bet you do too for many things in your life, Did you build your computer? How about the parts that make it? Did you build them, or did you buy then built? Your car, was that prebuilt, or did you assemble it? Your house? Your consumer electronics?
I'm betting most of those things, you bought as a pre-built solution form a manufacturer. You lacked the knowledge, care, time, tools, whatever to make your own. Not all people choose to, some people choose to make their own things. My parents designed and actually built, with the help of friends, the first house they owned. They ten bought existing houses after that, until receantly designing, but not building (they paid people to do it) their new one. Me, I just bought mine as is. No desire or skills to build my own.
However I am going to try building some consumer electronics. I want a headphone amp, and I don't really feel like spending the money on one (they are more then most power amps). So I found schematics, and I am putting one together. It's the Linux way, no one telling me what I have to have, just making it myself. I can change the design to my liking, and I'lld save money to boot.
Of course there are tradeoffs. I am going to have to invest a fair bit of time in this project. There are also skills required, ones I actually don't have, however I work with electrical engineers so I'm covered there. Then there is the fact that if I fail to build it right, I'm on my own. Nobody will take a return if it doesn't work, it's mine to deal with, and whatever help I can get online.
Now compare that to my Hafler power amp. I bought it, plugged it in, and it started making my speakers go. No fuss putting it together, no worry that something was wired wrong, just easy to use. I don't have to care how it works inside (it actually has a circut diagram) it just works, and Hafler will fix it if it doesn't.
Well, that's the same kind of experience you get buying a prebuilt Windows system from a big manufacturer. All the hardware works, they'll fix it if it doesn't, and pretty much any software you buy just put in the disc, click a few times and you are golden.
There is an appeal to doing it both ways, both are good for different reasons, and bad for different reasons. Just because you want some things in life to be simplifed in life doesn't mean you are advocating totalinarism, one has nothing to do with the other. You are saying "I don't care to do what it takes to get the knowledge/tools/skills/etc to make and customize this myself, so I'll take a preconfigured solution."
Unless you build everything in your life, you are doing the same thing too.
Is that not the American solution to ALL problems? "It is not a problem see, because IF.."
Some people do not have an endless supply of money you know. Even in America.
Lessee.. -looks around- three pc's thats what, 300 EU in Windows? Open Office, another 200 EU,a good terminal client, mud client, cd burner app, PVR app sets me back another 200. Dude, thats 14 extra games for my PS2! And thats just the value of my daily usage software..
Oh, and on the security thing? In 95% procent of the cases a Linux users just doesnt NEED to think about security.. Like removing the default browser, and installing Firefox... Virusscanners, spyware removers.. I dont call that a "perhaps"
"/Dread"
that actually always really pissed me off. actually, the problem was clicking a mailto: link in Mozilla which would always open up an Mozilla mail message. i mean, fine, if you're not going to teach Mozilla how to get my default email client from my OS, then at least give me the option of, say, totally ignoring mailto links or something. SOMETHING.
i guess in the end the solution was not to use Mozilla, but to use one of the browser-only versions instead. that kind of makes sense, since Moz is in fact a monolithic app.
Do you really prefer hunting through pages and pages of drop-down menus for the one checkbox that does what you want? Isn't it easier to just type 'man program' and be pointed to the right configuration file and right entry?
Let me think about this. I find IIS much easier to configure than Apache. While Exchange is a piece of shit, Exchange configuration is infinitely less terrifying than something like sendmail. Samba configuration is about as much fun as a bag of rabid chihuahuas when compared to windows file sharing. Editing various linux network configuration files is far more tedius than using something like a windows network config gui. IPChains firewall configuration is very intimidating when compared to a little gui like the XP software firewall. You'd have to be insane to say you'd rather change resolutions by editting some X configuration file than by right clicking on the desktop and selecting a different valid resolution.... I guess I just don't see many situations where I am more comfortable adjusting fragile and obscure text configuration files.
Ditto. Cygwin and perl are usually among the first few things I load on a windows workstation. Some other folks have put together a nice collection of unix/gnu software for windows. In particular, the grandparent may be interested in these nicely packaged Unix Utils.
No, you don't get it.
First of all, using apt-get directly with a package name is just the quickest way. There are plenty of nice interfaces to browse and search for packages, with plenty of control and flexibility.
Manually searching and downloading software is a nightmare compared to tools like apt-get. APT doesn't just install software -- it understands your wishes and looks after them for you. When you ask for some program, it works out what else you need, and installs it. It can ask you what other information it needs to know, and bring up fully functional software for you. It can automatically swap other software around for something that's more compatible with what you requested. It can install drivers, upgrade the whole system, make sure you know about everything that's changed in a the latest upgrade and inform you of any outstanding bugs before you commit to installing.
Essentially, APT makes managing software effortless. A single command upgrades and patches EVERYTHING on a Debian system -- kernel, drivers, apps, etc. Compared to downloading and installing independant software from independant manufacturers on a windows machine, patching windows and IE with windows update, your firewall and anti-virus with systray apps, your other 'net-enabled apps when you run them and then get bugged about updates, and your drivers when you happen to google and notice they're out of date, Linux package management is a beautiful solution.
NTFS support + xine (media player) right off the CD...
Why? I run servers - firewalls, DNS servers, mail servers, file servers, web servers on Gentoo. You just only update when you a: need new functionality, or b: when there is a security vuln in one of your packages. Gentoo is excellent for servers.
Some pretty good uptimes there. (We've had unexpected power failures. And yes, we have a UPS. And a redundant UPS. Don't ask me.)
Get your own free personal location tracker
Why would a newbie be using an apt-get string. In Mandrake to install Abiword, which is your example, you go to the "install software" menu item and browse to:
Office
and it's listed underneath with a description of the application and what it does when you click on the name.
No google searching involved, and hundreds of categorized applications available to install.
The MS code would probably get debugged.
Think of the benefits of:
I must elaborate this concept and make a bed time fairy tale for my kids out of it titled "The bully that decided to share toys" .
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
While Cygwin is definitely something I'd install on a Windows box to make it more usable for me, the sad thing is that it is obviously that the tools are "second-class citizens" on a Windows system. They're slow and some things just don't work right. I've never tried the POSIX subsystem that has been available for WinNT-derivatives for a while (whatever it is called now), perhaps that's better.
Better than as an argument for Linux, the Unix tools argument would perhaps be best as an argument for MacOS X. It ships with a more complete set of tools in the default install (if you include development tools and X11) than any BSD or Linux distro, plus it provides good and easy availability of native GUI applications. It also runs X11 applications very easily, although they don't integrate into the desktop quite as nicely as I'd like them to.
In any case, I think what Microsoft would need to do in order to attract Unix users would be to bundle development tools, ports of Unix tools and a decent X11 server with Windows. But it probably isn't profitable to do so. While Apple scored quite a few Unix-users with MacOS X who would never have touched a traditional Mac, the numbers are too small to be on Microsoft's radar.
Oh and to be fair, WinNT-based operating systems do include decent command-line utilities. The main reason they aren't attractive to Unix users is that they aren't compatible with anything else. As a developer, one of the most important goals for me is portability, across operating systems and CPU architectures, and when looking at current systems (especially for server software), targeting Unix is the most efficient way to make use of low-level resources.
I can honestly say that I don't need Windows, not at work or at home. There's nothing I need that it does better than MacOS X/Solaris/Tru64/HP-UX/FreeBSD/Linux (all of which I use regularly), and many of the things I care about it does worse.
I don't know why this is modded "troll." The parent is making a very insightful comment: there are tools in Windows, but they are just as foreign to the *nix user as *nix tools are to even the most skilled Windows admin.
Just because the tools you prefer aren't readily visibile, doesn't mean similar things do not exist.
Personally I don't admin Windows, so i don't know what the best tools are)i do know all versions have built-in scripting capabilities). But there are lots of Windows admins out there, and they get their job done somehow...and its not my installing Cygwin. Logic implies that there are clearly tools there being used to get their job done.
once you go slack, you never go back
I have almost 1000 programs installed on my XP machine (terabyte of HDD's, 2GB RAM). With the obvious exception of browsers, email clients, office, and some utilities, I estimate that about 99% of my apps are not available for Linux. I dislike MS as a corporation, and I like Linux. But I will not give up the value of having those 99% of my apps.
--Doug (who can't remember his ID and password right now)
Ah, that's a good strategy!
But as I said, I don't run a server, and I try to keep my desktop pretty cutting edge, which is why I update just about every other night. But like I was saying, I don't even notice it at all as it's always at night. The only time I reboot is when I upgrade my kernel...and that's mainly for security fixes etc. So that's maybe...maybe....once a month.
We've had power failures here too, and I LOVE my UPS, though it's mainly where it lets me shut down gracefully...as when power goes out around here it's usually for days.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Fragile? Obscure? Guess you don't need the registry. Apache hasn't been that hard to configure, once I figured how to make the directories accessible. Can you make Windows file sharing work with Linux boxes? Is configuring XP's software firewall that much easier than using Yast? It may be harder to configure X, but at least I can restart it without rebooting.
Not spoiled. Smart.
That's to say Microsoft would make lots of apps [as well as system-things like, ahem, MS's own coffee-like language] that ONLY run on the MS distro. I'm not familiar with what you have to do to make a "legal" Linux distro, or how compatible it has to be, but MS has lots of lawyers, and whether they do things like this is based solely on a cost-benefit analysis.
Tag lost or not installed.
Why hasn't anyone heard of this? Great vector drawing package.
As for audio. We've got Beast, Ardour, Audacity and Soundtracker. That's everything you could ever want right there.
How about Microsoft Services For Unix?
Free download, *supported by Microsoft* and comes with all of the GNU tools, and support for NFS etc.
One thing I like MS for.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
My personal "investment" in windows involves quite a few modifications to the way it operates out of the box. Then again, i'm not suggesting that i'm an average windows user. I maintain my point, however, that the average PC user is more "spoiled" by windows, as (s)he will not have the need to do as many modifications as me.
- For example, your notion that it takes a lot of time to choose among different distros is just illogical: it takes no more time to choose SuSE than it takes to choose Windows
It's all economics, as you must distinguish between choices that are made initially (clean PC) and choices that involve switching (pre-installed windows).
Take a look at the front page of Distrowatch. Along the right hand side, 100 distributions are listed. Then, consider windows - you have the latest flavour (possibly in a "home" and "pro" edition) and that's about it as earlier flavours are no longer supported. A choice between two flavours is (all else equal) less time consuming than a choice among hundreds. For your statement to be true, the average user should perceive windows as "yet another OS/distro", which is only the case on a "clean PC" with no existing windows OS installed.
And, moreso: This will only be true in an "all else equal situation" where the user has no experience whatsoever about any of the alternatives, as otherwise (s)he is already biased and will incur switching costs in addition to the pure choice costs.
So, by having windows experience, or a pre-installed version, the costs (in terms of time) involved in switching becomes larger than the costs involved in choosing.
- you happen to know it and it's not worth your time to switch because it works well enough for you
Oh, i know far more about windows than i should really need to, and a lot more than i would like to know, but that's another story. And although it works "well enough" for me it doesn't work "really great" for me, which is what i sometimes require, as i'm not an average user. For that reason i use Debian as well on my personal work machine, but when i'm out among customers i use their default, which is windows.
The "average joe" however, does not share my needs.
- if there was some intrinsic advantage to using Windows
The "intrinsic" advantage comes from switching costs, as well as security. Not "network security" but perceived personal security. Joe's friends use windows, and he needs somebody to turn to if things f**k up, and possibly he uses it at work too. Also, while "they" do sell preconfigured Linux machines, the mainstream outlets don't.
So, the predominant advantage to windows is the reduction of risk. Of course not the real risks, like virii etc, but the perceived personal risks, as in "i really hate to seem stupid and i also hate getting in trouble and not being able to ask my friends, or, as a last resort, the nice and friendly people at customer service".
This is of course not related to the actual inner workings of the OS, but only to the dominant market position. So, in the literal sense of "intrinsic" you are absolutely right.
To minimize these risks you have to spend time, and that time is what you invest in your OS of choice in addition to the currency. To some people, an OS isn't really the most important thing, which is why they would prefer to spend as little time speculating about it as possible - they'd rather worry about what graphics card or sound card they should buy in order to play those games, watch that pr0n, or listen to that music. Oh yeah, and then it would be nice if you could get the box in blue to match their decor.
I hope this cleared up possible misunderstandings.
>Do you really prefer hunting through pages and pages of drop-down menus for the one checkbox that does what you want? Isn't it easier to just type 'man program' and be pointed to the right configuration file and right entry?
Um... no? Seriously, if it was easier then you wouldn't have windows (KDE, Gnome, OSX or MS) applications with configurations screens, just a help html file.
>Climing the linux learning curve is an investment that pays off tremendously.
Why is the Linux learning curve "an investment" when installing OpenOffice for Windows or learning the Windows Registry a unnessary evil?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Your guess is correct. He didn't need the registry for any of the programs he listed.
On the other hand, calling linux configuration files 'fragile' and 'obscure' may be going a bit far. Some people feel it's ok to focus on the subset of bad linux applications and ignore the mounds of windows crap that is sitting on the web.
I don't need 50 different packages that all try to do the same thing, I just need one good program that actually does it.
s X_Windows='X'
... Because names like "Excel", "Access" and "Powerpoint" tell you exactly what those programs do...
Ah, one good program that does it... like IE you mean? What exactly does that do well except letting random people hijack your computer?
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
They are all short for something, to save you having to type an essay for each command you want. If you don't like typing the shorhand then try using alias:
alias Get_Regular_Expression='grep'
alias Graphical_Image_Manipulation_Program='gimp'
alia
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's all economics, as you must distinguish between choices that are made initially (clean PC) and choices that involve switching (pre-installed windows).
Yes, switching is costly. We established that. But that wasn't your original point; you claimed that there was an advantage to using Windows independent of any cost of switching.
So, the predominant advantage to windows is the reduction of risk. Of course not the real risks, like virii etc, but the perceived personal risks,
So, you are saying the risk people perceive is different from the actual risk. That's my point exactly: people are choosing irrationally because they falsely assess costs and risks.
This is of course not related to the actual inner workings of the OS, but only to the dominant market position.
The perception may be related to Microsoft's dominant market position, but the perception is wrong. Half a dozen years ago, Microsoft's dominant market position made using Linux hard (I know, I was there). In 2004, Microsoft's dominant market position doesn't make it any more costly or difficult for you to run Linux than if Microsoft didn't exist (Microsoft keeps trying to make it hard, of course, but they aren't succeeding anymore). You can buy Linux PCs at your local computer store or mail order for less money than Windows PCs, they are supported, they come with tons of software preinstalled, and they just work better. Packages like OpenOffice even interoperate with Office well enough for most day-to-day use.
Contrary to what you keep saying, many users have no rational reason to prefer Windows over Linux. They are either reasoning irrationally or they have incorrect information about Linux and Windows. And where do they get that incorrect information from? From statements like you made in your original post, where you made silly claims like "[Windows hardware] just works out of the box".
Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble.
Can they even spell MONOPOLY? You'd think that after a number of trial and consent decrees in the US and the current going-ons in Europe, someone figures out that abusing monopoly is a big no-no. Doesn't Microsoft have high population of PhDs and yet none could figure this out. It really gotta make you wonder about their arrogance blinding their senses.
You know, for the everyday user that doesn't want to get involved with the politics of the software industry and uses their computer to play a few games now and then and who has a comfortable salary and not too many bills and no interest in using computers as a general hobby...
You're probably right.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next guy, but Microsoft SFU is a great product. It even won Best of Show at LinuxWorld in 2003.
Read what I said again. I didn't say all of OSS was consistent with each other. I said Gnome and KDE are consistent with each other (just open up a command prompt in XP to understand what I am saying). They both include more than a standard Windows desktop and integrate better too. If you roll 3rd party programs into the mix then they are equally as bad. At least most Linux programs use either QT, GTK, or Motif most of the time. There are tons of Windows apps with their own interface that isn't consistent with ANYTHING else.
Linux program names are truly awful. I have always been apalled by the use of prefixes in KDE and Gnome programs which makes visually scanning through lists of programs and command line completion all that much harder.
Is typing one more letter (g or k) at the beginning of a command really that much harder to do? I really don't see the issue with this. I've rarely had a problem figuring out a command name.
Huh? How exactly does this chain of reasoning go? I mean, without crossing into the realm of very special purpose software, most of the tools I use on Linux are also available in virtually identical forms on Windows (Mozilla, Gimp, Open Office, vim, Apache, Perl, Php, etc).
You're obviously not a developer.
I mean, for basic needs configuring something like IPChains is hell compared to say the built in XP firewall.
Actually it is just as easy to configure a firewall within Redhat as it is with XP.
Time makes more converts than reason
But one of the reasons Linux distros come with all these apps is because there isn't a single really good one. For example, in the days before Mozilla became truly stable, there wasn't a browser that stood out as better than the rest. Right now, I'd be hard-pressed to find an email client that likewise fit that billing. Choice is a good thing, but in the end, do all of us want to choose every single one of thousands of apps?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
The "Spoiled Rotten" argument is a bad joke in my eyes. It's like saying "Mercedes and BMW drivers are spoiled, it's why they won't drive less comfortable cars anymore"... the fact that it's this very element (choice of software, comfort for cars) which is one of the key elements for purchase/usage nowadays seems to be totally unnoticed by those "Microsoft Reps"
I still use Windows 2000, but with Cygwin and Eclipse, I'm very close to making the transition to Debian (I personally like that distro best). On my internet server, which I actually abuse as a workstation to quickly compile some stuff, etc, I already run Debian and am very very happy with it.
Some key differences I noticed between Linux and Windows.
1. GUI vs shell
The windows shell sucks arse, no two ways about it. Hence the only proper way to control windows is using the GUI.
That way works by letting the user SEARCH for the solution in an INTUITIVE environment. You click on something, then look for an icon that seems right, and then you hope it'll work. If not, you go back and search some more. What you see is what you get.
Using a shell such as bash, you are bereft of your ability to intuitively search - you need to RESEARCH in a COUNTERINTUITIVE environment. However, once you get the knack of researching (what's the name of the program to count the words in a text document? how does it work?), you can very quickly achieve what you meant to by a few keystrokes. What you get is what you mean.
2. Granularity vs. Bloatware
Linux programs are tiny. There even is a program that merely outputs the letter "y" until killed. You need to combine these small programs using a programming language (in the shell's syntax, which is the problem most people have understanding!) into sequences of commands that will do what you meant. If you do it right, each of these programs will do its individual job very well.
Windows instead offers programs that offer to do fricken everything for you. Zip programs that encrypt files, word processors that play music, and email clients that spellcheck. But very often, they don't do these things very well, and worse, they sometimes the programs don't even do the things right they are supposed to do! So while you can always SEARCH for a solution by looking over your software's user interface, and switching through softwares trying to see which one does the desired job best (Photo Impact for fancy fonts, Picture Publisher for cleanup jobs, Open Canvas for drawing), chances are most of the bloatware features will go unnoticed. On the upside, you have everything in one package (even if it means that it might not work reliably).
3. Control vs. Intuition
Few people that use computers have ever heard the name "von Neumann" or understand what a "stream" is.
While using the Linux shell, you sooner or later end up manipulating streams of data, which is quite essentially what the computer itself does. It doesn't really matter what the data in its binary representation may look like, as long as the result will make sense.
With Windows, you almost exclusively manipulate opaque data objects - documents are documents, images are images, and mp3 files are mp3 files. The computer wears a 'mask', the GUI, that helps you understand what the individual streams are, but it also takes away a lot of control from you as to what you actually want to DO with the streams. The only way to spell check a Word 2000 document is to use the application's integrated spellchecker, or destroy the document by loading or pasting it into another application, spell check it there, and paste it back.
While Linux with its shells empower the user by relying on his ability to research, windows with its GUI relies on the user's intuition, forcing the programmer behind it all to make wild assumptions as to what the software needs and needs not to do when a certain button is klicked.
Linux is better to get the job donw, but Windows is more intuitive to use for people who don't know how
I used the word fragile because, in my experience, it is fairly easy to edit configuration files (for apache for instance) in a manner that renders the configured program or service unrunnable. Of course, there's plenty of things you can do to protect yourself against this. And of course the same thing *can* happen in a gui based config, it's just that it's usually a lot easier to do in text based config. On the other hand, with text based config you kind of need the program to complain and not start just like you need a compiler to catch syntax errors. But I'd rather not need this syntax check over the entire configuration process.
'obscure' may be going a bit far.
Consider a couple of things. When configuring a text file, you often have to look up the options you wish to configure in documentation. In contrast, most GUI based configs are organized in a manner that makes it fairly easy to find your option. If a particular field can have 3 values, those values are enumerated right there in the configuration program and are guaranteed to be up to date. In contrast, even if the options you want happen to be enumerated in a comment within a text conf or manual, you don't always know that this information is current.
Oops, typo... should have been [0-9]. And, it looks like slashdot ate some of it, thought it was html. Should have wrapped it in pre.
sed -e 's/([0-9]+):.*: (.*)$/\1 \2/' f2
Using GNU/Linux -- Windows-free zone!
But not in the mind apparently. Let me guess, you love how the Linux GUIs are becoming more and more usable as Windows replacements.
Larry
Oops, typo... should have been [0-9]. And, it looks like slashdot ate some of it, thought it was html.
sed -e 's/([0-9]+):.*: (.*)$/\1 \2/' <f1 >f2
Using GNU/Linux -- Windows-free zone!
But not in the mind apparently. Let me guess, you love how the Linux GUIs and GUI applications are becoming more and more usable as Windows replacements.
Larry
Fragile? Obscure? Guess you don't need the registry.
I've needed to edit the registry once in the past two years that I can recall. It was a network problem on a friend's pc that was a result of some kind of bug.
Apache hasn't been that hard to configure, once I figured how to make the directories accessible.
What I'm hearing here is that it was hard to figure out how to make the directories accessible.
Can you make Windows file sharing work with Linux boxes?
Yes, but not as well as I would like to. Of course, now we are talking about interoperability features, not configuration. If we are talking about configuration, it would seem to me that it would need to be linux based configuration.
Is configuring XP's software firewall that much easier than using Yast?
I've run several versions of debian and redhat. Are you suggesting I now switch to Suse so it's easier to configure my firewall? The underlying problem here is that it is often hard to figure out how to configure something in linux, and when I do, I want that information to be portable. However, many of the semi-easy hit and miss configuration programs out there are vendor specific and I can not afford to be.
It may be harder to configure X, but at least I can restart it without rebooting.
That's not going to make my top ten most useful features list any time soon.
Grow up.
Well. I don't think Morlath should have been modded as a troll, but I do disagree with his post. My point is that the default windows tools (when they even exist) are weak compared to their default unix counterparts. I don't think VB or the windows scripting tool comes anywhere close to the power of the unix shells and tools.
While Services for Unix or Cygwin might be great at emulating a unix envirnoment, these tools are not Windows defaults. You won't find them on vanilla NT/2K/XP installs. You have to hunt for them and install them. Even though Service for Unix is great (hey.. its based on OpenBSD!), those tools are not part of the core OS.
What did I write that was indicative of not being 'grown up?' Did I identify you correctly?
Like I wrote earlier, I've been using Unix since before Windows existed. Today, I am writing this on a W2k machine. A Mac OSX Powerbook sits in the next room. I'm ssh'ed into one of our Linux boxes, behind which the Windows boxes are safely firewalled. These are just tools, you use the one appropriate for the task. Sure, Windows has long sucked (though W2k redeemed so many of those faults). But it remains the best tool for certain things. And Linux? It is a progeny of The Unix Way. That command which you proclaimed to be 'assinine' is The Unix Way. That is one of the hallmarks of its superiority in particular instances versus Windows and other environments. Linux and Unix in general is better because of those 'assinine' commands and its underlying architecture, not because it parrots Windows with pretty GUI environments. I haven't booted Linux into X for at least two years.
Bringing us back to the original point. Microsoft wordpad is in no way whatsoever an equivalent to sed, and anybody who says that Just Doesn't Get It.
Larry
Not if somebody else installed the machine for you. Like my friend who built my first one. Or the other members of the MIS committee at work
i.e. the people who should be maintaining the system for you, then?? At most workplaces if you're not a developer you're not allowed to do updates yourself, and if you are you should know enough to look up command syntax.
Yes, per-cpu licensing, but ONLY for certain model numbers. Increase the model number by one (leave everything else the same) and ship any Linux distro you want with it.
RTFA, dude. The facts are not as scary as Linux zealots on Slashdot want you to think.
Why is it almost every article there is some guy who complains about the lack of "shell tools" on Windows, and we all have to point out Cygwin yet again?
Cygwin, Cygwin, Cygwin. Get it through your heads, people.
You also make a very naive but very common mistake, in assuming that everybody is somehow born knowing all sorts of arcane microsoft bs, but for some mysterious reason they must go scouring the internet to find out simple, beginner-level linux tasks
But that's the truth. You make the same assumption most other people here make--that arcane Linuxt asks aren't difficult or are "common knowledge" and "basic noobie stuff."
You just read it here, how big a secret can it be?
Is there a link to Slashdot.org in the Gentoo installer to let people know to read it here?
Care to cite an example? I and nobody else I know have ever experienced this--or are you referring to something like Office 97 from seven years ago when they changed file formats for the new version?
I always see these vague claims that are modded up yet never actually proven to be true. Usually it's one guy's little anecdotal story of some document that didn't like his third-party Word macros or something.
...Nobody would be using Word, and it wouldn't be the standard office document format.
Some of you on Slashdot make it out like it's a worldwide epidemic of file incompability, with documents not showing up correctly on other people's Office installation. It's just not true at all (if it was, the three major businesses I've worked at in the past four years would have gone out of business).
I think it's just juvenile anti-Microsoft vitriol from OpenOffice fans (by the way, how do I get rid of that stupid light bulb?).
Most of your arguments didn't actually argue anything but were just knee-jerk reactions to someone daring to prefer Windows over Linux, complete with valid reasons to back up his opinion. I'm curious why you even got modded up.
Get real. Even Microsoft programs don't share the same interface as each other.
Cite an example.
KDE or Gnome are much better in this respect. Other Linux programs may not fit in so well, but neither do third party programs on windows. Your claim is bogus.
Wow, you've blown away his claim by...not offering any counterpoint. Just telling him he's wrong. Nice. You actually cite GNOME and KDE as evidence, when the fact you have two competing desktop environments invalidates your entire point that they're consistent at all.
I could spend hours searching the web for the right windows program to do the job, then probably have to buy it, but instead I search for 30 seconds with my package manager and install it in no time.
This is just an outright lie. You can find Windows freeware in seconds. There is plenty out there, and it doesn't take "hours searching the web." Ever heard of Google? You're just making shit up to bolster your argument.
Even if I have to tweak some config files, it still takes me less time than tracking it down on the web.
Again--Google. They call it a "search engine," don't ask me why.
Have you been to tucows or other similar sites. There are more random windows programs than Linux ones. The only difference is that Free Software is generally much better than Freeware.
Wow, can't argue with that kind of subject, anecdotal evidence. "The only difference is that Free Software is generally much better than Freeware." Care to cite examples? Evidence of any kind? Proof?
Besides, you just contradicted your earlier claim that it takes you "hours of searching on the web" for Windows programs. Now all the sudden you can just visit Tucows? Sweet.
Is this a serious gripe or just whining?
It's a serious gripe. Keeping track of endless arcane project names is more difficult than remembering Winzip, Microsoft Word, or WinDVD. On Linux, it's "tar -jxpvf something.tar.gz" or something called "xine" that doesn't even have an Open button--it has a "://" button that calls itself an "MRL Browser." At least there's KOffice, even if the K-prefix naming scheme is completely amateur and unprofessional.
A valid argument for once. It doesn't apply for everyone though. Not everyone is into 3D games, or games in general. I'm fine with solitaire, and mahjong.
Then stick with solitaire and mahjong forever. If Linux desktops had a proper binary installation/uninstallation API that created uninstaller instructions, menu entries, and so on, you'd have commercial vendors writing more applications. But for that to happen, APIs would have to settle down. Can you run a Red Hat binary from six years ago on a Red Hat system today? No. But you can run a Windows 3.1 app on XP today (you can even run some Windows 1.0 apps).
Sure, if I was bloody rich. I would have to spend at least $5,000 dollars to get the equivalent programs on Windows.
No, you wouldn't. Have you used an OEM Windows machine? They come with Office, DVD players and rippers, music players, e-mail, games, and more.
The "hassle" is not worth that much money. I'd rather take the ten minutes to learn how to use the program. I'm not that lazy.
Except that it takes way more than ten minutes to learn most Linux applications. Most of them are hacked together in QT over a weekend by some non-intuitive programmer who thinks GUIs are evil compared to the command-line. If you want to keep with that, have at it, and the rest of the world will continue to use Windows and Mac.
You're lucky then. I've had no such luck with either 2000 or XP. XP crashed twice a day and SuSe
17 different choices of MTA and they all require a PhD in Pedantry to configure.
I'm thinking of writing a user-to-lazy-geek input library, so that all these uber-genius coders can have sensible config file parsing that doesn't have hardcoded line lengths or break on newlines (or both, if your name is Exim).
Sure we have tons of eccentric, inspired software, but 90% of is it grossly unpolished, be it the config file paradigm, or glitchy X interfaces, or vicious compile-time issues. Rather than reinvent the wheel 7 times for each software task, why aren't we cleaning up the rough gems ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
People are "spoiled" to expect the things they like.
Linux users are spoiled on Linux things. Windows users are spoiled on Windows things. News at 11.
Oh, I'm sorry we just wanted another Microsoft-bashing article to meet the daily quota (remember when Slashdot went for days without a Microsoft article?).
My point is that a default vanilla install of Windows itself does not have these utilities or anything close, but a default vanilla install of unix does. And yes, I know about Cygwin. I use X on Cygwin everyday to log into my Fedora box.
YAY
... IVE BEEN RUNNING FOR YEARS DOING FAR MORE THAN THE AVERAVE LINUX USER DOES WITHOUT A CRASH. ... mainly because the average Linux user gets nothing useful done due to having to build and recompile everything every other day, WHILE IM USING THE DAMN SOFTWARE AND ACCOMPLISHING THINGS.
... not like all the crap that just doesnt work or does nothing like what it says on my linux computer.
I'm cool cuz i can be a dumbass prick and take apart someone's thread making it look like he's wrong!
YOU DUMBASS PIECE OF SHIT!
WINDOWS IS PERFECTLY FINE FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF USERS!
WINDOWS XP IS DAMN STABLE
YOU JUST CANT STAND THE THOUGHT THAT SOMEONE CAN OPERATE WELL, FAST, AND PROFITABLY USING WINDOWS!
WELL NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH ASSHOLE! YOU ARE THE LONELY GEEK WHO CAN'T SEE THE LIGHT.
What world are you from!?! have you even tried to use windows? Most programs DO INDEED share similar user interfaces that are intuitive and functional
Linux is not more secure, it just hasn't been attacked.
If Windows crashed twice a day for you, then you must be one of those pricks who goes through deleting every other file on the C drive trying to save space, thinking none of it is needed.
10 minutes! damn you Ive spent weeeeeeks trying just to successfully compile some of those free linux programs with their none-existant manuals, and errors everywhere where there are any instructions.
WHOooWOOOooo you are fine with solitaire! yippee fucking dooo! some of us actually try to USE OUR COMPUTERS TO THEIR FULLEST! I bet mahjong is that one program you managed to install with the packet manager in a mere 10 minutes. try doing useful work quickly and you'll see the difference!
whining about stupid names like gimp? COME ON! you command line foooools! lazy dumbass programmers! YOU CAN MAKE A NICE USER INTERFACE THAT CAN DO JUST AS MUCH! you are just too damn lazy to try for most programs!
go back to your mahjong and solitaire while we get real work done.
Don't you just love it.
... while you guys are trying to recompile kernal xxx.x.x.x.xxxx for the 100th time.
Someone posts a reasonable, honest, level-headed description of how he/she uses windows, how it does just fine for him/her, how it doesn't crash, how much can be done. And just points out a few annoyances about linux.
even compliments the high apparent quality of several linux softwares.
And the calls of flamebait run rampant! the crazy dis-assembly of his post, with irrelevant linux responses shoot forth!
I really think you Linux users are just not in touch with reality! get some sun!
Millions of us do make good full use of our windows computers, accomplishing great things, making money, making new tools, and having a blast
His post was the truth, far from flamebait. It just hurts you doesn't it?
I'm cool cuz i can be a dumbass prick and take apart someone's thread making it look like he's wrong!
Hmmm. Nope. I don't think so. I merely pointed out inaccuracies.
YOU DUMBASS PIECE OF SHIT!
You are clever!
WINDOWS IS PERFECTLY FINE FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF USERS!
Your point? I never said it wasn't.
WINDOWS XP IS DAMN STABLE ... IVE BEEN RUNNING FOR YEARS DOING FAR MORE THAN THE AVERAVE LINUX USER DOES WITHOUT A CRASH. ... mainly because the average Linux user gets nothing useful done due to having to build and recompile everything every other day, WHILE IM USING THE DAMN SOFTWARE AND ACCOMPLISHING THINGS.
It's actually not difficult at all to compile something and do something else at the same time. It's not rocket science. You don't have to recompile anything either if you don't want to.
YOU JUST CANT STAND THE THOUGHT THAT SOMEONE CAN OPERATE WELL, FAST, AND PROFITABLY USING WINDOWS!
When did I say that? More power to you if you can, just don't pretend problems don't exist on that platform, like they do on others.
WELL NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH ASSHOLE! YOU ARE THE LONELY GEEK WHO CAN'T SEE THE LIGHT.
More lively debate.
What world are you from!?! have you even tried to use windows? Most programs DO INDEED share similar user interfaces that are intuitive and functional ... not like all the crap that just doesnt work or does nothing like what it says on my linux computer.
What world are you from!?! have you even tried to use KDE? Most programs DO INDEED share similar user interfaces that are intuitive and functional ... not like all the crap that just doesnt work or does nothing like what it says on my windows computer.
Linux is not more secure, it just hasn't been attacked.
You must have accidentally deleted the part where you supplied evidence to back that claim up.
If Windows crashed twice a day for you, then you must be one of those pricks who goes through deleting every other file on the C drive trying to save space, thinking none of it is needed.
This just gets funnier and funnier. I'm going to reference this post, and this entire thread in fact, when some bozo tries to exlcaim that Linux users are always trying to pick fights while Windows users don't EVER do that and don't care enough to in the first place. Most replies have been quite defensive (and offensive) considering I did nothing more than cite inaccuracies in the parent post.
10 minutes! damn you Ive spent weeeeeeks trying just to successfully compile some of those free linux programs with their none-existant manuals, and errors everywhere where there are any instructions.
Linux has binaries too ya know. Besides that, you can actually compile an entire (relatively new) system from scratch in less than a day if you felt like it. Maybe if you have trouble compiling something you should ask questions instead of freaking out on /.
WHOooWOOOooo you are fine with solitaire! yippee fucking dooo! some of us actually try to USE OUR COMPUTERS TO THEIR FULLEST! I bet mahjong is that one program you managed to install with the packet manager in a mere 10 minutes. try doing useful work quickly and you'll see the difference!
Did you read my post? I said those were the only two games I really played on my computer, not that that's all I ever used my PC for. In fact I rarely even play those games. I'm too busy coding. Read before you criticize.
go back to your mahjong and solitaire while we get real work done.
Doom isn't "real work". ;-)
Time makes more converts than reason
Quit astroturfing already.
No it wasn't the full point, but it was an important part of it. Your comment: " your notion that it takes a lot of time to choose among different distros is just illogical" ... made me elaborate that specific part.
- you claimed that there was an advantage to using Windows independent of any cost of switching.
No, in my original post, i claimed (and still claim) that the windows users are the spoiled ones, not the linux users. I also claimed (and still claim) that it takes more than rational reasons alone to make them switch. It is not to be taken as a "windows is best" post, as that was never the intention - i'm sorry if it came out that way.
I will claim, however, that windows has perceived inherent advantages to the average PC user. These advantages, in turn, are not necessarily true or specific to windows.
- Contrary to what you keep saying, many users have no rational reason to prefer Windows over Linux
I don't think that's contrary to what i'm saying. It's all about costs (in terms of time) and perceived risk. The examples given were perhaps a bit provocative, but they were not directly wrong, imho, and they gave a good discussion. Even though each example has been commented upon in this thread, the basic issues of cost/time and perceived risk (however irrational) are still the core of the matter.
So, more software (or even better software) won't do the trick, imho - bringing down these two (perceived or real) barriers are the real keys to get more people to use Linux.
As another poster suggested, RedHat (like it or not) has done a lot in this respect, and personally i think the concept of "live-CD's" also help a great deal. Your own example of OpenOffice interoperability is also pointing in the right direction. I haven't seen preconfigured Linux PC's anywhere close to where i live, but that's just a matter of time i reckon.
... but maybe not in desktops. I just bought a blade from them with RH.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
Read what I said again. I didn't say all of OSS was consistent with each other. I said Gnome and KDE are consistent with each other
I see your point and concede it. Part of the problem for me is that it's difficult for me to make a fair comparison because the kinds of programs I use regularly on linux are so very different from the things I use regularly on windows. Is typing one more letter (g or k) at the beginning of a command really that much harder to do? I really don't see the issue with this. I've rarely had a problem figuring out a command name.
Kputting kthe kletter kk kat kthe kbeginning kof kevery kword kmakes kthings kmuch kharder kto kread. Gdon't gyou gagree? Remember that study a while back that said if you mxied up the mdidle letetrs but kpet the frist and lsat letetrs the smae, thnigs wree sitll redaable? Well, that just goes to show you how important that first letter is. Perhaps if I used gnome or kde on a daily basis I would get used to it, but as it is, it is damned hard for me to visually sort through a list of program names when everything begins with the same letter.
You're obviously not a developer.
First, developer tools are specialized programs and I specifically said without crossing into the realm of very special purpose software. Second, I am a developer first and an admin second. Are you thinking of any particular outstanding tools?
Actually it is just as easy to configure a firewall within Redhat as it is with XP.
I'm sure you're right. Years of hellish experience configuring things through text files on various linux distributions (not just Red Hat) has trained me to google before trying alternatives like looking at the redhat-config scripts or rummaging through settings menus. It's a mostly bad habbit I need to break because while it is useful to figure out how to do something using the basic tools, it's not always desirable to spend the time required to do so.
Well, actually, the most skilled, creative, and intelligent sysadmin I have known is a WinNT guy.
The whole idea of widescreen movies is that you see them the way they were filmed - which is in wide screen. Why chop off the sides of the picture to have more filled pixels, when really what you're seeing is less of the movie?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Especially when most of the options are rubbish. I must have tried a hundred Unix e-mail clients over the years, and maybe two of them are any good. There's *way* too much crap bundled with most distributions IMHO. (And increasingly with commercial Unixes.)
Well, Wordpad's ridiculous. I'd use Excel.
Column A contains a lot of
23523: asdf[134] - foo bar : xyz
Column B is
=LEFT(A1,FIND(":",A1))
Column C is)
=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(":",A1,(FIND(":",A1)+1))
Column D is
=CONCATENATE(B1," ",C1)
Now, isn't that lot much simpler than what you'd have had to do in Linux? ;-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Lemme get this straight...
You're saying that man pages eliminate the need for hunting?
Have you tried searching one of those mofos for something non-common? How bout the ones with multiple man pages?
Have you seen man gcc lately? Try figuring out how to set/uset some obscure settings from that garble of flat file data. I'll take a menu based hierarchy _anyday_
And what if you aren't running a GUI? And I have had the opposite problem. Editing smb.conf by hand was easier than using SWAT.
And how consistent is Microsoft between releases? Does one have the same configuration GUI's in Win XP as in Win 95?
You would switch from RedHat to Win XP because you believe the latter to be more easily configured, but you would not switch to SUSE?
Also, the problem I had with Apache was that the directories themselves lacked the proper permissions, not with Apache directly.
Also, when you use a GUI to adjust settings, is the GUI a front end for editing a text file, or does it affect the registry?
96% of desktops are Windows. There are plenty of skilled Windows admins out there...numbers would suggest more so then there are for unix.
the problem isn't that there aren't skilled windows admins out there. The problem is that the sheer amount of them creates a market for even unskilled admins to find work.
If there is ever a day that unix is 98% of the desktops, you will find plenty of unskilled *nix admins out there, doing their best to screw things up for the rest of us.
once you go slack, you never go back
WinZip is good; heck, it's one of the very few shareware programs I paid for. I wish it could extract bzip2 archives, though. And I wish it could perform the equivalent of a tar -> bzip2 process, since I get significantly better compression rates than with the normal pkzip compress-each-file-individually method.
Still, it's great being able to right click on a folder and select "Add to xxx.zip". Damn convenient.
how bout a universal way to install software on linux like there is in windows? You run the installation, copies the appropriate files to the needed directories, adds the shortcuts to the programs menu in whatever desktop environment you are using, done. If you want to remove it, it'll remove all those things it just added to your system. Windows does this, that's why its a breeze to install new software in windows. Try doing that in linux. Try having ONE setup program to install on any linux distro. ONE setup program to uninstall that just added program that works in any linux distro. But we don't have that yet. Now I know why linux distro's have so much third party software. It's cause each program has to be customized to work with that distro. Shortcuts have to be added to the programs menu of whatever desktop environment it's using. You can't use the rpm of a program for say fedora core 2 for mandrake 10, cause they're not compatable. If you do happen to find a program that you need installed and there is an rpm of it, if that's what your distro uses, then great. But you gotta remember if you don't have a needed file, then it won't install and you gotta hunt that down. Once you do manage to install it though, then you gotta add in the shortcut with a proper icon for it in the programs menu of whatever the desktop environment is. My second point is this. Distro's include third party software because of how difficult it is to install software in linux. So they think if they include common programs that everyone can use and would want, and give them a choice of which ones they would want to use, then they can try to avoid that big HUGE problem with software installation on linux. It doesn't fool everybody though.
My Gawd WTF...