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In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive?
HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X.
What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
This question is critical in all environments, end-user and enterprise. The answer is really another question. What role does the end-user or server need to do? If the end-user wants to simply read websites, check mail, and write a document or two, a Celeron with Windows XP is the ideal choice. If an end-user wants to play with multiple OSs in VMware, terminal service to their house from work, and play the latest games, a P4 with W2K is the ideal choice. If a server is going to perform SMTP/POP3/IMAP/webmail, I would recommend an HP DL 380 G4 with RHEL 3.0. If they want to upgrade their domain controllers, I'd go for HP DL 380 with W2K3.
Is Quake 3 an operating system??? :)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Well, I appreciate you comment although I personally disagree, but... having X in userspace is the whole point of it, really. It means less "critical" code to mantain, and it usually leads to less security flaws. More, I don't think that having X integrated with the OS would necessarily mean a faster X. Also keep in mind that X11 was born for truly different reasons than M$Win. Can you have more than a person using a Windows computer at the same time with a GUI available?
As for keeping in topic, I must say that I'm a lot quick developing in GNU/Linux than in Windows or MacOSX. Probably everything is about habit, when you get right down to it; but speaking as an ex 13yrs-long Windows user, I can say that I got fed up with it for its counter-intuitive (yes, you heard me right) interfaces. I find a console damn simpler (maybe because I started with MSDOS so I ain't afraid of typing), and it doesn't force me to do what M$ wants because I don't understand what I'm doing, I'm forced _to learn_. And someone that has learned _why_ a thing works that way, can use it faster and better the second time. Maybe this is why a lot of Unix users don't like Windows (more than for ethical / political issues): they find themselves limited, like passing from swimming in the sea to swim in a seven ft. depth pool.
Also, on my old PIII 500Mhz 128Mb RAM, a Gnome 2.4 DE was twice as fast than Win98!! I even tried XP once, you know, but it lasted three days or so, even on my new 2.4Ghz 256Mb RAM. Just opening "My computer" made me cringe, and gave me the time to rewatch a Kurosawa's movie from the beginning to the end.
Another thing I found really simplier in GNU/Linux, is installing new software. It gets where you would like it to get (I really like the Unix approach: divide the files by function, not by productor), and a good package manager (I use emerge) does everything you want: download the needed files for you, solves dependencies, and install it automagically.
In Windows, you had to go to the site, download the program, accept fourteen licenses, install it, wait for it to add 5000 keys to the register (and thus making it slow in a couple of days...), and so on.
Unix systems are known to apply the KISS philosophy. But in Windows I had to keep: Media Player for wma, DivX player for DivX, WinAMP to play OGG, Adobe Acrobat to see PDFs... in Linux I just type "mplayer filename" or "xpdf othername" and I'm set up.
Last time I tried to set up a network in Windows, I got those six or seven errors that are cryptic and inexplicable, such as "the host could be disconnected" (when I could ping it?) and "unknown error" (winxp, if you're wondering). To get two computer connected via crossover cable, I had to configure one, disable network for it (it takes >2 minutes, don't ask me why), disable network for the other one, enable it for the first, enable it for the second, disable it for the first, re-enable for the first (dhcp related problem). Okay, there's a good explanation and it's not the Right Way(tm) to do it, I can admit it. But what's up with an "ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1" on the first computer (with the dhcp server) and "dhcpcd eth0" on the other(s)? And it didn't took >2 min per operation, I assure you.
A thing I couldn't really do without, is the Unix "API". "CreateProcess" & friends give me the willies, when you just need a "fork()" and an "exec??()". I found Unix libraries syntax much more clean, less bloated and well built than its M$ counterpart. Do you need a pipe? "man pipe". Do you need a socket? "man socket". As simple as that. Threading? "apropos thread", "man pthread_create".
At the end, Unix was wrote in academics by academics for academics, while M$ products were wrote in corporation by corporates for corporations. The first one is a more "elegant" approach, which is often explained with elegant math formulas, stratified development and clean design. On the other side, it all seem to me a huge hack (except for NT 3.0, wrote by a VMS engineer
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