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4 Linux Distros Compared To Win XP, Mac OS X
Morf writes "The Australian Consumers? Association has evaluated Xandros, Linspire, Mandrake Discovery and SUSE personal and compared them to Mac OS X and Windows XP in its latest Computer CHOICE magazine. The article is very much focused on "mums and dads", and concludes Linux is just about ready for consumers, although installing new software could pose some problems for those who aren't really computer savvy. The report is available free for a short time."
And he loves it. I first tryed it on my own computer and was really surprised at how polished and stable it was. It detected everything out of the box and I had very little to do to make it work like I wanted. :).
So I decided to make my Dad switch from WinXP to Ubuntu, installed Abiword and gnumeric (oo.org was to slow on his P4 with 96MB RAM), setted them as default editors, copied all his Documents over from the Win partition and made a shortcut on the desktop to his Documents folder.
He really likes Ubuntu. At first he was a bit bored because he had to learn some new things (for example the "Applications" menu is on the top left, and not on the bottom), but he got the changes quickly and adapted to the new OS in a few days.
I asked him yesterday if he likes more Windows or Linux now that he tryed both, and he told me that it makes no difference for him, as long as he can use spreadsheets, write letters, read his emals and organize his pictures like he did before (btw. he loves gPhoto and Gimp is his new favorite program
So to him it makes no difference, but now I don't have to clean his computer from spyware and viruses every few weeks.
So for me (and for my dad) Linux IS READY for the desktop. At least Ubuntu is.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
The author doesn't bother explaining that Linux is free, that updates to Linux are free, or that Windows is a thousand times more likely to suffer from trojans and viruses. That article continues by marking down OSX for not having a 'live cd' despite there being no conceivable reason for a Mac owner to need one, marks OSX down further for lack of help files without commenting that it needs them less, marks Windows down for lack of built in Excel support (jesus, how monolithic do you want your OS?), then adds marks to a Linux distro for having a windows emulator without saying how well it works, or that Windows doesn't need one! Most of the marks are dependent on the bundled software, not one word is given to the possibility of adding more software, and practically no marks are given for stability or security, which leads me to wonder if the author even knows what an OS is - certainly any non tech-savvy readers won't know after reading the article.
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I noticed they commented on how some of the Linux distros couldn't resize the Windows partition down to do a dual boot. I've yet to see a version of Windows that allows me to size down my Linux partition and add a boot menu so I can easily choose which OS I want to run on startup.
Microsoft's website seems only to be able to tell me how to remove Linux (1, 2) and not have a Windows bootloader installed to allow me to run both. All the other Linux-related KB articles are to do with Virtual PC and SMB problems.
installing.
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No Linux distro expects "mums and dads" to do .configure .... Actually, it is DISCOURAGED.
With your "Windows-is-perfect-centric-biased" view, without even noticing it, you bypass all the real problems with the Windows model.
What is Hallmark Card Studio ? What is Blues Clues ? Why "choose" these apps ? Isn't there a lot of choice of these types of software ?
How "mums and dads" even got aware of these softs ? They have to actually leave their house to get the software ? How much does it cost ?
Who will install this (newbies are afraid of any dialog) ? Assuming it will install, will it work ? You say it will, nothing is less sure. Even games come with RELEASE NOTES full of identified problems !!!
They can get all these problems. Worse, they do, assuming the countless hours I lost helping people on this OS.
Contrast this with a Linux distro : no need to leave house, everything is there in the distro, nothing to pay, the description is there with a search button to find what you need. Documentation ? Mandrake comes with at least one full manual in each box, with PDF versions on the net http://www1.mandrakelinux.com/docs/Outputs/ !!! Installation of software is a breeze.
I am european (french actually). I see the only thing Windows has left for it, is that it is ubiquitous. USA people do not see it, but there are A LOT of problems due to internationalisation (i18n) and localization (l10n) in Windows, that are properly dealt with in Linux (do not know OSX). I see that americans just forget these problems, when justifying grave design choices in Windows (like no difference between different case of characters). And I see that when Windows comes out on top in a comparison, that is because the comparaison is Windows centric.