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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.
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!
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!)
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.
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.
Then why does OSDN have Microsoft ads all the time?
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
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)
Bundling a package is different the bundling it all together as inseparable from the OS. If I didn't like Konqueror, I just wouldn't use KDE, all thats required is make a different choice when I log in as to what environment to use, maybe even remove KDE completely if I wish. If on the other hand I don't like IE, I'm stuck with it, because while I can use something else at some sites, IE is the OS, and for OS related actions, for example Windows Update, I have no choice but to use it. On top of that, there is no way to remove it, and many other OS bundled apps, (MSN Messenger), ignore the setting of default browser, and always launch IE.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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
hat'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...
Actually they are not "word clones" but word processors, and this may surprise you, but "opening a word doc" is not the ultimate goal of most people using one of these word processors. Different people have different needs, and so the choice is a good thing to have. As to the formatting problems in some complicated ms word docs opened with various word processors, guess what? even different versions of ms word can't open the same docs correctly. pot. kettle. black.
I do find though, that openoffice handles all the ms office files I've received lately - and when I edit them and send them back, the peecee users are none the wiser, and it never enters their head that I wasn't also using ms office.
If anything, Windows users are spoiled because they can click the install button and the program works.
hmm, OK... linux programs also come with installers that are activated with a click... and your point was...?
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
Yes, Install, I Agree, I Agree, I understand this agreement and agree, Next, Next... Setup has encountered an error and will now exit.
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..."
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!
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
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.
The lock-in is where you can not remove IE, or Outlook Express (easily, or at all) in favor of another product.
Simply put, you are forced to waste your HD space even if you do not want to use IE. If you do not use Mozilla, you can uninstall it. You do not have that option with IE.
Lets not get started of the undocumented system calls, etc that their Office apps can take advantage of to give them the edge that everyone else can't get.
Or how once you begin using Microsoft apps (Office, etc), you can not easily switch to another product, because the data formats are incompatible (because microsoft refuses to release specs on how their programs do it).
Anything which tries to prevent you from using another product in favor of the included product is called lock-in.
Brielle
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.
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
How did this get modded up? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Thanks, but Linux works just great as a server and a desktop for those who know how to use it. Yeah, it sucks so much to have 7000+ packages I can download and install with one command. *sigh*
LOAD "SIG",8,1
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.
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!
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...
Bah, the Altair? I prefer something bigger, like the Atanasoff computer. It may not be better, but if you crashed the two into each other, the older one wins, like an SUV.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Any how many of those 5 Linux word processors does Word claim to support?
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.
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.
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
This was done solely to make it easier (and cheaper) for OEMs to count how many licenses they have to pay for.
No, because MS did so-called "per-CPU" licensing" where the OEM payed per computer shipped, whether it had the MS product on it or not. Nice try, though, next time just have at least *one* fact right.
Oh and the idea that dell couldn't count which PCs shipped with which OS unless they were different models is just too silly for words. YOu don't even lie well.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
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 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....
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.
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.
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