Slashdot Mirror
Windows Nearly Ready For Desktop Use
wallykeyster writes "NewsForge (ed: a Slashdot sister site) has an interesting review of Windows XP Home, written from the perspective of a longtime Linux user (ed: Editor roblimo). The article clearly is intended to be somewhat humorous while making a point to the 'Linux isn't ready for the desktop' crowd. The reviewer does a fair job of pointing out the strengths of Windows along with the weaknesses that would be apparent to someone trying to make the switch from Linux." From the article: "Windows XP can't be considered consumer-ready until it has driver support for common LCD monitors during its installation and bootup procedure, especially if those monitors are easily and routinely recognized by popular Linux distributions. It's possible that the monitor manufacturers aren't willing to give Microsoft and other proprietary operating system companies the information they need to create appropriate drivers and that the manufacturers, not Microsoft, deserve the blame for this problem."
Sources whom I consider accurate have told me that despite Microsoft's claims that Longtooth will be released by 2006 or 2007, the planned release date is actually late in 2019. Microsoft's secret goals for this version are:
Microsoft will accomplish these goals through a variety of changes. First, Longtooth will no longer be based on the Windows NT design philosophy, as were Windows 2000 and XP. Instead, Microsoft will release MS-DOS 9.0 2003, a 64-bit multithreaded DOS written in VisualBASIC.Net, and Windows Longtooth will run on top of that. Also, Longtooth will contain more code changes than any previous version of Windows, both in the number of changed source lines of code (SLOCs) and in the percentage of the total Windows codebase changed. Tremendous numbers of new features are being implemented in completely new code.
More importantly, Microsoft employees are combing through the codebase, in a relentless search for code that is mature, stabilized, and proven. This search has proved difficult, but when found, such code will be marked for reimplementation. I'm told that most of this code will be reimplemented in VisualBASIC.NET, even if the prior version was written in another language, such as C or C++. Programmers making the new VisualBasic.NET code are not allowed to look at the code that already exists, so that fixes to known issues will not be known until well after the software is deployed to millions of users.
The reason for these changes is simple: Study after study conducted by Microsoft has proven that security through obscurity is the only way to go, especially in an operating system deployed to millions of users, with many instances running mission critical applications in finance, industry, government, and other sectors. Microsoft has identified that viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, and phreakers are able to compromise Windows security because vulnerabilities in the code are known. By changing much of the codebase, especially the stablest and most proven parts, Microsoft will thwart the efforts of malicious programmers, as it will take time for them to find the new vulnerabilities in the unknown code.
To meet Microsoft's first goal of reducing the user's perception of the complexity of Windows, Microsoft will integrate a new technology, dubbed Microsoft Windows User Simplicity And Security Manager 2003, into Longtooth. This technology will hide all configuration settings from the user. All settings will be completely automatic, and the user will have no need to know or care what is under the hood. In reality, Longtooth will be the most complex version of Windows yet, with thousands of configuration settings controlling nearly every function of the operating system. The settings will be produced by discovery algorithms designed to automatically set a "sane" configuration. Since there will be no interface to modify any setting, the user will have no choice in his configuration, thus simplifying the user's perception of the system's complexity.
To meet the second goal of increased security, these settings will be scattered throughout the OS, its components, and in other areas of the file system. For example, Microsoft knows that viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, and phreakers are interested in moving the icons on user desktops without the user's permission, so settings controlling the number and size of icons appearing on the desktop will be scattered throughout parts of the registry, batch files, .ini files, web bookmarks, in the Windows kernel, in the file allocation table, in th
this made me smile at least :)
Wouldnt call it news worthy but it made me smile
You need drivers for LCD panels now?
Anyone that I know that has switched to Linux finds it quite easy to use. Linux has been ready for the average "joe" for years. Only the "panic" that M$ has tried ti instill in the "average" user has prevented Linux from being more widely accepted. Honestly, the gui in Redhat and in Mandrake, and I am sure in the rest, is no more difficult that the Windows GUI
Talking to geeks is like eating jello with a chainsaw, interesting, but painful.
Parody is funny when it's based on the truth. As much as a piece of garbage that XP Home is, arguing (tongue in cheek or otherwise) that it's not ready for the desk top is a bit silly.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
large parts of it read as a critique not of windows per se but rather of the whole money-for-software framework.
examples:
Base Cost (as compared to Linux)
CD-Key
Expense of Additional Applications
lysergically yours
Great article! On more than one level:
On the other hand, I'd like to make my own contribution as to one of the most ongoing and glaring "needs fixing" of XP....
I think one thing that will eventually make Windows XP for HOME (or PRO) ready for the desktop is fixing the START button. I'm still trying to explain to some of the people I have to support "LOGOFF" and "TURN OFF COMPUTER" are accessed by clicking the START button. It's hard to explain to them why when even I don't get it.
LCD monitor drivers are less important than graphics drivers. Find me a graphics card that works under linux but not under windows.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
...or are Microsoft and Linux debates turning into epic yet somehow very stale regurgitations of old arguments (much red-state/blue-state squabbles)?
/. to go a day without a Linux/Windows "discussion"
At this point, I wish there were a viable third option. I guess osX counts as a third option, but still... I just want something to break the monotony. Where is a OS/2 Warp upgrade when you need one?
Either way, I fear it has become impossible for
Maybe I'm wrong... *shrug*
Microsoft:
Linux nearly ready for server use.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I doubt that most users would put up with this problem. I suspect that most would simply return their copy of Windows XP to the store where they bought it and go back to familiar, user-friendly Linux.
You can't return commercial software. You would have to call Microsoft and pay $35/call (or is it $35/minute?)
I am pleased to see the same standards for "ready for the desktop" applied to Windows for a change.
Brilliant article.
I had this friend who was a major Windows fanatic, and use to say that while Windows was "Plug and Play", Linux was "Plug and Pray".
I should send him this article.
SCNR
Given that it is quite easy to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, why should difficulty to installing Linux be an issue if it apparently not an issue that affects users of Windows?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
As far as just about every PC user is concerned.
This is just a sad and fayled attemt at speling.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
comes on two floppies once the useless code is stripped out.
Its really a shame we can't also have an option to 'hide stories written by roblimo but posted/submitted by someone else'
Windows XP has always (for me, at least) been exemplary when it comes to detecting hardware. The fact that the setup (after copying files for less than a minute) leapt into high colour mode was impressive to say the least.
On my IBM Thinkpad and home brewed PC, everything worked straight out the box, apart from the TV card (which didn't work in Linux at all!).
I have had nothing but trouble configuring X for graphics - this is a bit of a cheap shot and the author should know better.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Let me start this comment by first stating that I am a staunch Microsoft disliker, and that I have enough Linux experience to validate my following comments. Honestly, this article left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The main points it attacked Microsoft on were based on ONE combination of hardware. For example, I have installed XP on a number of machines and have never had networking setup, nor have I much installation trouble. This reviewer based his review off his installation of XP on ONE machine. How many Linux distribution reviews have I seen with multiple PCs involved? Let's talk about Linux networking setup. For the average Windows desktop user, what is "eth0" and "eth1" supposed to mean? For folks with multiple built in ethernet ports and only one connected, this is a hassle trying to figure out which port has the cable hooked to it. I won't even touch installing software not already included with a distribution. (And yes, I'm quite aware of yum, apt-get, and emerge.)
I for one, has always seen windows as a Server OS.
the proud owners of Slashdot. I want to see a little fat penguin with a Borg eye on it!
This isn't news for nerds. It's Mein OpenSourcen Kempf, propaganda for the masses...
Greets.
I'm on a job, posting this from a Windows XP system I am hired to fix. Things aren't looking food from this perspective. I do solemnly attest, there is spyware and stealth IRC servers that can't be manually removed and are not detected by the proper utilities financed by Microsoft and the popular anti-virus software megacorporations. I see this is a positive light to advertize a platform for using true Linux systems (say no to root-boot of Linspire). All I can do is correct the situation with a certain well-tuned software firewall, and help the client contend with competing rogue applications for CPU cycles. I've seen a 2.5GHz Celeron system with 700+ megabytes of RAM get dragged to equal productivity of worprocessing as my lively 386 50MHz computer and MS-DOS/Microsoft Works.
The Microsoft front is a joke; it's the most profittable too, sad that I say.
without prejudice
There's more than LCD monitors that don't work with XP. From my experience:
1) Adaptec SlimSCSI APA-1460A PCMCIA card will make the computer reboot
2) Genius ColorPage HR-2 scanner, ditto
3) JVC camcorder, I don't have the part number because my cousin borrowed it, ditto
People have told me that these things don't work because of "broken device drivers", but I don't want detailed technical analyses, I want them to "just work", like they do with Linux.
but then, most of my experience has been fixing people's (sometimes horribly) broken MS Windows installataions. Since 2000, just about everyh roommate that I've had has moved out running Windows on their box. After working with Linux for about 4 months, my most recent roommate caught me by surprise when she asked me to remove the Windows partition from her box (it really does just get in the way).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
And I don't want to start another flamewar about what the best desktop for Linux is...
Why the ferk does a monitor even need a driver?
It bugs me when mundane devices need drivers.
Like keyboards and monitors.
What's next, my power supply will need a driver?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
A Slashdot Editor writes an 'article' for NewsForge, which is then linked to from Slashdot by a submitter. Maybe if they put half the effort into Editing Slashdot that they do writing 'articles' for other people, the quality of the site would improve substantially.
As for the article itself, one piece of hardware doesn't perform correctly with the myriad of drives available and we're supposed to gush heartily about it? I think not.
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
"I could not get Windows XP to detect the HP Compaq d220 microtower's onboard Broadcom NIC. I used another computer to download XP drivers from HP's site, and burned them to CD for installation on the d220, but still no luck.
This same NIC was detected and automatically set up by MEPIS, Knoppix, and Mandriva Linux during their installations. I was surprised that Windows XP was not able to do the same. "
Honestly, THAT is a real problem with windows, I can't believe when i have to do that with a fresh install of windows.
ajf
RTFA: "is a tremendous improvement over previous Windows versions when it comes to stability and appearance, but it still has many glitches that keep it from being competitive with GNU/Linux for everyday users, including a tedious installation procedure, lack of productivity software included with the operating system, hardware compatibility problems, and a price so much higher than any of the Linux distributions I've tested lately that I don't feel this product is a good value for most home or small office users"
Hahaha, um, what color is the sky in your world?
Either or both, take your pick.
Regarding the spelling: Look at the name. If you go by the hacker alias hillbilly you may as well concede defeat when it comes to spelling.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Windows XP can't be considered consumer-ready until it has driver support for common LCD monitors during its installation and bootup procedure, especially if those monitors are easily and routinely recognized by popular Linux distributions.
I've never had a monitor problem with windows XP.
I could not get Windows XP to detect the HP Compaq d220 microtower's onboard Broadcom NIC. I used another computer to download XP drivers from HP's site, and burned them to CD for installation on the d220, but still no luck.
This same NIC was detected and automatically set up by MEPIS, Knoppix, and Mandriva Linux during their installations. I was surprised that Windows XP was not able to do the same.
But Linux won't detect my USB wireless network adapter!
Yes, Firefox, the Thunderbird email suite, GAIM, GIMP, and many other well-regarded open source programs are now available for Windows XP, but each must be downloaded and installed individually. They are not included in the base Windows XP install. This makes no sense. If you pay more for Windows XP than for a typical Linux distribution, shouldn't it come with the same -- or better -- software on its installation CD?
Windows is bloatware, so nothing else will fit on the CD, and when it was released, not enough people had DVD-ROM drives.
Although Windows software is not included (reminds me of "batteries not included"), it is (usually) easy to install, configure, and use. You almost never ust the command prompt.
I have not yet gotten any viruses or worms on my Windows XP computer, nor have I experienced nearly as many system crashes as I did with pre-XP Windows versions.
No viruses!? I guess it is because the the internet would not work.
It is true that XP crashes less than ME (I hated Windows ME).
Given Microsoft's current development rate, it's entirely possible that within a few years Windows may be almost as good a choice for most users as Linux,
Microsoft's current development rate? What rate? Longhorn will come out 6 years after XP (7 or 8 if you include the inevitable delays), and it is only incrementally better. It looks almost the same, and the only new feature is the search, and if it is anything like the indexing service, it is all hype.
and if you must use Windows XP you should try to get a computer that has it preinstalled rather installing it yourself -- unless you are a hard-core techie/nerd instead of an ordinary user.
Good advice.
Although the article makes some valid points, there are several pros that Windows has over Linux on the desktop
- Quick and easy game install
- Reliable DVD playing support (Including menus)
- Ability to detect and reliably set up the Audigy 2 NX
- Better sound quality as there's no need to resample
- Easy-to-use C++ IDE with integrated edit-and-continue debugging. (With no need to mess with various scripts to integrate them)
- More responsiveness using Firefox and Thunderbird
- Only one binary package is needed for all systems.
Comparing 32-bit Windows to Linux in general (Ubuntu 64 in specific). Although I've tried many times to switch over to Linux completely, the above have kept me using Windows, especially since there is no 64-bit Cedega (AFAIK) and there doesn't seem to be any benefit to setting up a 32-bit chroot over simply using Windows.
-C
Just dawned on me. Nice sig man!
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
What sort of moron would switch from Linux to Windows? Why would anyone do that? Wait, may be for a reduced productivity. Linux makes me more productive, anytime. I'm fairly good at 5 programming/scripting languages, thanks to free software. My system doesn't crash absurdly. And I don't pay ridiculous amounts for any software.
Personal computers are the only machines that don't turn off and on when you press the on/off switch.
Sometimes I press the off switch and some asshat program pops up a window and says that it won't terminate until I move the mouse to some little point on the window and click it. I can't do that because I've already turned the monitor off. I come back hours later and the fucking machine is still ON!
When I press the OFF switch, I want the stupid machine to turn off. Turn Off Now. No windows, no prompts, no "Are you sure?", no nothing...just turn the fuck off.
Linux is the worst PC operating system in this regard. Press the off key and the system reacts like you're trying to shut down the Defense Department. Page after page of scrolling lines indicating that this and that mickey-mouse section of the OS is exiting. Who gives a fuck? Just turn off! Now!
Turning the PC on is just as bad. It has to load 100 million bytes of code that haven't changed during the last 1000 times that I turned the stupid thing on. Here I have a 128 Megabyte Flash Disk about the size of my little toe and costing $17. So why the fuck can't I have all the OS on the Flash drive? So that it will go on at the moment that I flip the ON switch! C'mon guys, we're not booting from floppies anymore! It's time to leave the 1980's PC mentality!
Turn off and on when the user changes the state of the off/on switch. Such a truly revolutionary and mind-boggling concept!
Of course someone will point out that after months of study, research, experimentation, and trial compiling, (and hours of waiting and staring at the monitor), I could configure the system to do something resembling instant off/on when the switch gets pressed.
So why the fuck is this not the fucking default state of the machine! C'mon, guys, the ENIAC days are gone. This thing on your desk is an appliance. And like all appliances, it should go off and on when you hit the off/on switch!
Since when do average users install operating systems?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
you can configure windows to shut down even if one or more applications are not ready, it is in the power options section of the control panel.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Tell me about Windows. Is it good or is it whack?
adkrpee
Alas for Joe User, his computer will be virused within about ten minutes of doing that. "He should have used a firewall" you say. But wait, MS tells us that you have to turn off the firewall to install SP2. In the time it takes to download SP2, the machine will already be 0wnered. So how does he solve this problem? The correct thing to do is to turn on all firewalls, download SP2 for off-line installation, disconnect from the net, turn off the firewalls, and run SP2. But it's a challenge to even find SP2 for off-line installation. Yes, I know it's there but to know to look for it and to be able to find it? Way beyond what an average user is capable of, or should be capable of. The way I did it for my dad's new computer is I installed IE on my Linux box and used that to download it, put it on a CD, and did it that way. Far far beyond the capabilities of Joe User.
And that's just one example. Dealing with firewalls and virus software and critical patches and spyware blockers... this stuff is tough, even for the pros. For average users, it's impossible. It's like expecting the average driver to know how to do an engine rebuild. That's just wrong. Average drivers don't even know how to change the oil, nor should they.
So yes, MS Windows is not ready for the desktop. Linux is safe to plug in and go. The safest would be a CD-based distro. I'm tempted that next time I am called upon to help some truly clueless user (that's not an insult, btw; we're all truly clueless about a lot of things) I'm going to just leave a Knoppix disk in the drive and leave it at that. Sure, Knoppix is slow, but when a Joe User gets his machine set up and connected to his DSL, within a week the thing is going to be so infested with viruses and spyware that it will be nigh-unusable.
MS Windows is a great desktop operating system. It's easier to use than any of the Linux distros. But it's only safe to use within a carefully managed corporate environment, not in a home environment. Wasn't there a story on Slashdot a while ago about some banks thinking of shipping banking CDs that contain Knoppix but hardwired to connect straight to the bank? That they are even thinking about this shows that my analysis above is not so far off.
enough said.
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Is lame.
slashdot has been taken over by yahoos it seems.
I just had to reinstall XP on my little bro's pc. It would start the install... then ask for a file from the cd (that it started the install from). Hit browse and you get to find out that it can't see the cdrom drive anymore! So I tossed in a knoppix CD, which detected everything fine, and copied the windows install files to the HD and tried again, this time I was able to direct it to its own damn files and get it to install... only to find it still can't see either cdrom in the system. So now i have a working windows xp install that can't see the cdrom or cdrw in the system. This is what we're paying bill gates for?
But then my parents were *complete* novices and the selling point of Linux was that it just worked
If SANE doesn't "just work" with my paid-for flatbed scanner (and yes, I know that's Microtek's fault for not providing docs), then GNU/Linux is not ready for my desktop.
heh..pretty good. I totally agree. there are a number of things like that in the computer world
Thats funny, on my thinkpad r50 the two network cards (centrino laptop) and the radeon video card were not detected and no drivers were installed. I install fedora core 3 and everything except the wireless has been installed. X was installed with the correct settings.
I think your computers must be old enough to be supported under windows. The point of the article was to point out that windows doesn't support new tech.
Neither worked perfectly, but linux was better.
I think it's the day-to-day issues that are important. In which case all OSes have some issue or another (some are small others are not). The sad thing is that to the average user, minor problems can cause big problems.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Windows Longhorn will make you pick your computer off of your desk and chuck it out the window. Then you have an actual desk(top) to use!
They've fixed this one already. On a modern Mac, when you drag a disk or disk image, the trash icon turns into an eject icon.
You forgot step 0: flip how many burgers to afford the price difference between a bargain-basement subsidized PC and a Mac mini + keyboard, monitor, and mouse? Yes, I admit that the Mac mini is usually of better quality than a bargain-basement PC, but it doesn't appear that anybody is subsidizing Macs with marked-up Internet access, and a lot of consumers tend to look only at the sticker price.
I have looked all over that control panel. It has tabs for "Power Schemes", "Advanced", "Hibernate", and "UPS"
Under Power Schemes: a dropdown for presets that changes the dropdowns for the times after which various things will shut off.
Under Advanced: "Always show icon on the taskbar" and "Prompt for password when computer resumes from standby". For power button, a dropdown for "when I press the power button on my computer", which is set to "shut down", but there's nothing indicating unconditional shut down. Another dropdown for the sleep button (which my computer doesn't even have)
For hibernate, there's a single "enable hibernation" checkbox, and an information box about how much space it takes
For UPS, well, that's for the UPS control. Gotta turn that UPS service back on one of these days, though the device itself is too flakey to be worth it.
Last I remember, it took a registry tweak or something with TweakUI or XSetup. Dialogs still block shutdowns indefinitely, since I haven't yet rediscovered the setting for forced shutdowns.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
OS News, January 2003.
...
... and so on.
It's time for Windows on the Desktop
Posted by special contributor Richard Keiichi Yamauchi, Jr.
Some of you might be thinking, why? Well, I think it's about time. MCSE's, VB Programmers, and techies have been using Windows for years, and I think it's about time Windows moves to the desktop for ordinary people.
We've heard it year after year after year: "This is the year Windows is for the masses on the desktop." Well, then another version comes out and still "Joe Longkneck" can't use it. I would love to see Windows on the desktop for the newbie. It's just it's going to take some effort.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Their PCs come with Windows when they buy them. In fact, it usually costs the same to buy the PC with or without Windows. Windows setup issues simply aren't.
Which is one of the reason the article is somewhat flawed. Almost any monitor made within the last 10 years, and certianly any made within the last 6 is automatically supported by Windows. Windows simply asks the monitor what it's capabilities are, and the monitor tells it. It'll report as a Plug and Play monitor in the device manager and Windows will ensure it only makes available mode choices that are supported.
Now monitors can have specific drivers installed that give more information on their capabilities than PnP provides. The biggest would probably be colour information, most monitor drivers include an ICM file that specifies colour information for the monitor. If you have a Colourimeter, you can generate your own based on observed characcteristics. However this is all unnecessary, the monitor works fine without it.
Keyboard and mouse drivers are similar. Windows supports PS/2 and USB keyboards and mice as is. However many have special feautres, such as non standard keys and programmable buttons. For that you need to install the drivers, however they aren't required for basic operation.
The whole "Linux monitor driver" thing is silly though. It matters very little that Linux (sometimes) knows what my monitor is specificly out of the box, since it works no better than Windows. It doesn't have cany sort of colour calibration capabilities, and the PnP data is all you need for mode definitions, so it gets me nothing that it can put a name to the monitor.
1) I can install and secure OS X in just under an hour
2) I can install Ubuntu or FC3 and secure it 1 and 1.5 hours respectively.
3) I can install and secure Windows2000 or XP in 3 to 4 hours.
The average Windows user has NEVER installed the OS, and if they had, Linux would look a lot more inviting. As a Desktop Gui, I actually do think, and so do many WINDOWS only users at my company, think the Linux Desktop is superior. (FC3 and Ubuntu both running Gnome). People always ask what I'm running, and when I say Linux they are always surprised.... especially when I start navigating through desktops and running multiple apps to help them out.
Most Windows users who have to wipe their machines because "it's slow" from viruses or spyware, have no clue about getting the latest spy-something and ad-aware to harden their systems... or running the updates to get all their security packs... "What? Well, I went to Windows Update like you told me, and ran the updates. I have to reboot and do it again? I have to reboot several times?! I'll do it later!"... How often have I heard that!?!
Yes you can get more support on Windows for certain appplications etc... but if major companies would support Linux as they do Windows.... which would be truly... "Better ready for the desktop"?
This article is dead on.
About 2.5 years ago I installed Suse 9.0 on my son's PC and he hauled it 900 miles away up to college.
Since then, it has crashed several times during power failures and became so badly corrupted that it was unusable. Not to mention, 9.0 is soooo old now..
My son is no computer prodigy and was left without a working PC. He was unable to find a single person in his school or area that could help him fix the problems and I can't just drive up 900+ miles to reinstall Suse.
His only option left was to install XP. There are plenty of XP "hotshots" around. So, he bought a student discounted version at the campus bookstore and his friend set about to install it for him.
Onboard nic = not recognized.
Onboard audio = not recognized.
Nvidia video card = not recognized.
One thing he forgot to take with him, the mobo and video drivers discs (which were NOT needed for Linux).
So, for the past two weeks he's sat around with no internet and no sound and shitty video while I tore the house apart looking for the discs.
I finally found them and overnighted them to him.
What I want to know now is, how/where is he going to get the program M$ word which is REQUIRED by his school? ALL of his classes distribute word files and require homework to be turned in in word format and powerpoint.
Is the college going to provide him with a free copy of these programs? (they should, at $8k a semester!) I hope so because I sure as hell ain't gonna pay for it.
And now he is open to all the problems the winders people constantly suffer.. His first year there, the entire campus became a huge petri dish, EVERY computer on campus was infected, except his Suse machine. No longer will he enjoy that exclusive privilege..
I mean really. Why would I want to run actual applications on my OS? 1/10 times, when I can get a Linux install to finish, it is often quite pretty to sit and look at. Of course, I can't get a decent accounting package, point of sale package, and there's nothing that comes close to VB for quick development, but Linux *is* pretty to look at. I think that once I actually got Firefox to work on a distribution (well, once... I never found a shortcut and couldn't figure out how to launch it after the first time), and it was very cool! I felt like I was back in 1995... excited just to get a program actually working! Sure, my sound never worked, but it was pretty to look at once it got finished installing.
Fucking Windows. It always works, and it's easy to install useful programs and get work done. What's the point of that?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So I've been playing with Linux on my desktop receantly, Fedora Core 3 specifily. I've used Linux in server settings for a long time but never on the desktop, figure it'd be good to get some experience. Now, as you point out, when Windows is installed, it lacks hardware OpenGL acceleration. It does have a basic software layer, but it's slow. Direct3d acceleration also doesn't work. It only does 2d, and not all that fast. Easily solved, however. I go to ATi's site, download the driver, and click install, the rest is taken care of. DirectX, OpenGL, and the GDI are all fully accelerated.
So I get Fedora installed. It comes up, and recognises my card correctly and we go. However the interface is a little sluggish when it comes to refreshes. I run a GL app and discover it's using software rendering which is very slow, and low quality. So I again go to ATi's site and download the drivers, ATi does have Linux drivers as well as Windows. Then begins my quest:
The drivers are RPM, so I tell them to install, no dice, conflicts with Mesa. Removing that proves to completely hose X. Ok so leave Mesa there, force the ATi installation. X comes up and it looks like it's using the ATi driver, but still no acceleration. Dig around on the net, turns out you have to run a script to make them work. Ok, run script, no dice, can't find something. Consult with Linux guy, says the error means they need kernel headers, maybe source too. K, thought those were there, I told it to install all the dev stuff. Whatever, get kernel source, recompile kernel, and now headers are there. Try script again, no dice. More digging turns up reference to drivers being for 2.6.10 not 2.6.11 but try these patches. Patch files, run script, success. Then run next script, no dice, won't install the module. Linux guy looks at it, not sure why. Decide to just try 2.6.10 since I have something else that likes that anyhow, there's actually an apt package (no not yum, apt, apparantly you can get that for Fedora) that is supposed to make it work all nice and easy with that. Try that, it goes and installs successfully. Reboot and.... reports the kernel module is incompatible on bootup.
And that's where it stands until I go back to work next week.
I'm failing to see the big advantage here. While it looks like Mesa is a more complete implementation of GL than comes with Windows, it's still software so the quality is horrible and it;s so slow that it's totally unusable for professional work, or even gaming.
Now in Windows the problem was a simple fix. Download a driver, click install. Everything else was handled and it works superbly. In Linux, I've gone through quite a lengthy process and it STILL doesn't work. I'm sure I'll solve the problem on Tuesday, however I can gaurentee a non-techie would have given up long ago.
I can't believe it. Has Slashdot gone so far downhill that they now write their own massive flamebaits, post them on another one of the corporate websites, and then point to it, calling it an article? Is Slashdot getting so desperate for traffic that they've resorted to this kind of ridiculous garbage? At the very least, they should have put the silly foot icon next to it so it's obvious that it's a joke. But then again, the picture of the Bill Gates Borg is about as juvenile as you can get. I now consider Slashdot's "jounalism" to be on par with the Onion as far as accuracy. Unfortunately, the Onion is actually funny, whereas Slashdot, more and more, makes me just surf elsewhere.
oops sorry about that, the only place that option exists is the power alarms option, must be have too much blood in my caffeine stream.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Actually Microsoft is so slow at releasing new versions that Windows XP is quite dated and showing it's age compared to desktops like KDE that have a new release every few months. The biggest avantage of Linux desktops for me is the clear fonts. Windows XP fonts are ugly and non-aliased. This may not seem important, but you suffer considerably less eye strain reading on screen.
Things don't just work, they need drivers. They won't work without drivers. Simple as that. Back when windows xp came out there were a lot of el-cheapo hardware like modems and soundcards that manufactures didn't bother to port drivers for, because they had new products and want us el-cheapo buyers of their shitty hardware to buy instead.
did you forget to take your meds?
By the time you know that, you don't need to know that. Just like shutdown being in start, once you know it, it's not a problem.
They are both examples of things that are confusing, but only trivially so. When people harp on things like that, usually means they got nothin'.
It's a valid point of discussion if you are talking about things that could be improved in a UI, nothing wrong with that. All UIs have room for improvement. However it's stupid when you try a "My platform is better than your platform" pissing match with something like that because it's easy to find a similarity on your platform.
Ya, perhaps start isn't the best name for the button, or perhaps shutdown should be elsewhere, but it's not a big deal, and certianly not something Linux can't complatin it does. Try explaining to someone how something sounding as vicious as kill can be used to restart things, with a cryptic flag like -HUP, but also can kill things without mercy with the -9 option. You can almost see the question mark over their heads.
At work I was installing windows on a Dell laptop, and the ps2 keyboard/touchpad didn't work out of the box!! I had to use a usb keyboard/mouse until I could fix the problem
Also at home I have a video cap card that doesn't work on XP (works on '98) but works great in Linx
why? XP home is a joke of a system as it is. I'll admit, I didn't RTFA but from the /. summary it stated that XP home was the tested MS OS.
why not professional? i am a windows technician (currently learning solaris 5.8 and red hat 9 support) and i refuse to support anyone's machine that runs XP home.
if you're going to go with windows at all, go with xp professional. choosing home over professional is a lot like choosing ME over 2000.
(they should, at $8k a semester!)
People that think that $8K/semester is a lot for a college education should simply not be allowed to reproduce.
Then, you leave this poor kid stranded on a college campus with a computer that nobody could fix? Are you some kind of sadist? So instead of this kid getting the most out of oh-so-expensive college, you force him to waste his time dicking around with his computer because of some bullshit principles you have about computer software?
If my dad was as much of a dick to me in the same way you are to your son, I'd disown him.
I don't think I get the joke. Someone please explain this.
Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
I guess if that mickey mouse filesystem would stop unmounting itself and just turn the fuck off (while destroying all your data) you'd be happy then?
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
The fact that every desktop Linux box these days has a journalling filesystem and the great Microsoft operating systems don't is pretty funny.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't need to edit a text configuration file to change my screen resolution.
Uh, which wire? I don't see a wire of fire....
I just voided your post.
In the mean time, the more people who take a couple of minutes to Google for Linux driver support before making each hardware purchase
Exactly! That's why I can't understand why XP doesn't come with drivers for so much hardware, when Linux comes with perfectly working drivers for that same hardware.
Back when windows xp came out there were a lot of el-cheapo hardware like modems and soundcards that manufactures didn't bother to port drivers for
OK, now we are getting somewhere. It seems like what you call "el-cheapo" manufacturers, for instance Adaptec and JVC, haven't ported their drivers for XP. Well, Free Open Source Software doesn't depend on manufacturers being willing to port their drivers. It's enough for them to publish their driver specs. It's the Operating System maintainers' duty to port device drivers, not the hardware manufacturers.
Any *decent* Operating System should have well-debugged device drivers for hardware that has openly available specifications.
I think Linux still has some major hurdles to overcome before it could ever see commonplace, widespread adoption. IMHO, they are:
1) Laziness. Quite simply, most people are lazy. They use Windows at work, they've used it at home/school, it just seems easier.
2) Too many variants. Each Linux distro is different in some or many ways, but it's not always clear how. There's just one "home" version of Windows, one "Pro" and one "Server", and the differences are easily found and most people just go for the "home" version because it's easily labelled. If there were ever a version of Linux called "Linux Home" sold at Best Buy, that would probably outsell all the others.
3) Commission. Most average home users buy from retail stores. Most retail stores pay on commission. There's not a lot of commission on $0, or even $20, so it's worth their time to hype up the $200 Windows, and most consumers won't look any further to find the free options.
4) Games. As a Mac user, this obviously isn't a big selling point for me, but lots of people still play PC games, and Linux supports far fewer big-name titles.
5) Ease of support. Every technophobe has a nephew, or cousin, or whatever that can "fix" Windows when it breaks. Fewer people know somebody knowledgeable enough in Linux to do proper troubleshooting, and most consumers are reticent to rely solely on net-based trouble-shotting (forums et al.)
6) Consistency. With the exception of a few skins and themes and whatnot, a Windows XP box performs like any other. But different distros act differently, Gnome is different from KDE, etc. For example, my computer has three labs running Linux, each maintained by different techs. In each lab, accessing a floppy disk that's been inserted must be done in a different way. For Windows, it's always "Click on My Computer, Click on A:".
7) Perception. Linux is still seen, accurately or not, as the "hacker OS". Most non-techy people that have even heard of Linux think of it as an inscrutable mess of arcania and technical gibberish. Names like "apt-get" , "vi", "emacs" and "gcc" don't help; "InstallShield", "NotePad"/"Word" and "Visual Studio" are clearer and easier to remember.
8) Microsoft has $60 Billion or so. They spend millions on advertising. Linux has Slashdot, and word-of-mouth advocacy. The latter may prove more effective eventually, but not quickly.
Just my thoughts.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
As a user of the Macintosh Operating System, I've found my most frustrating moments with Windows to be associated with networking:
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
The author had nothing good at all to say about Windows! He is clearly a biased Linux junkie out to take Microsoft's rightful place in the market. Could not believe it when I read it.
These days my head spins at the number of distros. Some may look at this as a good thing, but I am sure this keeps newbies away. There is something to be said for having fewer distros than having more.
I have twice installed Linux, first time was Slackware I DL'd to floppies and brought home to install on my then state of the art 486.
Later I tried Redhat on my Nforce based PC, but I could never get sound working so I eventually deleted it. My main use for my PC is a my media center.
Are all distros these days likely to work with my Nforce sound easily and is there some decent source of info on choosing a distro? Particularly I would like all my sound going out the SPDIF.
Any hints on the Major differences between the Distros?
OK lets be honest here. Really honest. Most of you USE open source software or are using a system with linux on it or use linux exclusively on the job. Heck, Slashdot is part of the Open Source Technology Group. In fact, above this 'Post Comment' page's title I see a little message saying "Don't Fear the Penguins". Basically, you are all biased.
:D):
On the laptop which I am using right now, I am running Fedora alongside Windows 2003 Enterprise. My past computers have used Red Hat (6.2-9), Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and DOS. I can say without even a glint of doubt that Windows is the best OS for the desktop. Yes, even better than you Mac lover's OSX (for some reasons you see below, though few
1) Installation of Windows is a piece of cake. You pop in the CD, hit setup, follow the VERY easy directions on screen, and it takes care of itself. Come back in a half hour and your computer is ready to go. Today's Linux distributions have gotten better - Fedora for one, was easy to setup thanks to Anaconda. HOWEVER, not all of the distros are like that. For example, Debian's installation process is cruel and unusual, and yes this is mainly cuz it lacks a nice slick GUI.
2) With Windows, everything just works. I have never had a single connectivity issue with windows. With Windows XP, the only device that I use for which I had to actually install drivers was my digital camera. Nothing else at all. In Linux, I struggled forever with ALSA to get my sound to work. Who knows how many countless scripts I edited, or what exactly I even did since I ended up going to one forum after the next getting random tips that I then threw together until the right recipe worked. And this is only ONE example. I have to proceed similarly with everything, trembling at each step about what might go wrong.
3) Almost all of the best software is available for windows (my one complaint about macs, tho they certainly have their niche too). Most people are willing to pay a little to get a proper working piece of software along with technical support. Obviously there is good software for linux - but I'll be damned if you can point out a slicker cpp editor on linux than windows (seriously, don't even point out some random ass text editor like pico or something and say that it r0xx0rs Visual Studio). And there is no alternative to many of the other software I use daily. One major example is AIM. There are no AIM clients for Linux that hold a candle to the windows clients. GAIM can't even handle file transfers properly so you cannot say it is better.
4) Windows is EASY to fix or maintain. If I want to update windows, I go to windows update and just click away. In Linux, the update programs alone fail. In fact, to get up to speed, I had to go install other 'updating' programs such as Apt (+Synaptic) or Yum (+GYUM). Even so, repositories are such an annoying way to install programs. Having individual binaries is the best way - the linux project that aims to provide the same 'Click Setup and Walk Away' approach (can't recall name right now, sorry) is a good start towards this.
5) Perhaps the best thing is that Windows is standardized. Having a large stew of linux distributions each which their own quirks is confusing, annoying, and unproductive. Having more options to choose from can be a bad thing if overdone.
Anyways I am not saying Windows >>> Linux all the time (read: servers). I am just trying to pull those of you who seem so biased back to center.
Well, I agree with the principle of what you are saying, but the fact is that the start-up and shutdown of a modern OS has more to do with initializing or closing files, buffers, ie data than programs. All that would still have to be done even if the OS was in ROM (and last time I checked, accessing ROM was slower than RAM, so at minimum, the OS would have to be relocated from one type of memory to the other.)
One way to avoid this is to never turn your computer off. A well designed system (Apple for example) goes to a very low power state when not in use. I just turn of the monitor, or left unused for about an hour that happens automatically too. If you are using an Apple laptop just close the lid. Unless you aren't planning to use it for several days it will be ready to go when you open it back up again.
Some Windows systems are configured this way, and I've even had my Linux laptop set up to do this (but it involved a bit of tinkering).
Now one problem with Windows is that as late as Windows 2000 it really wasn't designed to stay up very long. Seriously. If you didn't boot every day or two you'd find your memory leaked all over the place. Generally what I'd do is just reboot instead of logging off when I was done, then at least it was ready to go the next time I was.
They may have improved that with XP... or it might have gotten worse. I'm one of those people like the author of the article who don't consider Windows ready for prime time.
Use hibernate. Just hit the button and the computer will be off some 10 seconds later. When you next push the power button, everything will come back just as you left it.
I have never seen a program that asks if you are sure if you want to hibernate or tries to stop the process. I've hibernated while games were running without any problems.
Go to the power options control panel (type powercfg.cpl into the Run box). In the Hibernate tab, check "Enable hibernation". Click apply. Then on the Advanced tab, where it says "When I press the power button on my computer:" select "Hibernate". Click OK.
... familiar with the ms procedures. maybe just a bit disillusioned; but aren't we all at some point in our lifes? cheer up, and don't let your bosses find out about these slashdot posts!
Windows NT has had a journalling filesystem since Linus was tinkering in his mother's basement.
Actually, as much as I hate Windows they got some things right with NTFS (and some things monstrously wrong).
Right: the journalling and rolling back Just Work. In years of managing Windows NT/2000/XP boxes I have not had any problems with whatever the Windows equivalent of fsck is -- proven by the fact that I can't even remember what that utility is called (chkdsk? fixdsk? something like that). Power off a Linux box without warning, though, and you have to go to the physical console, enter the root password, and manually fsck it (sometimes even if you have 0 0 in the last columns of fstab, and even with a journalling filesystem).
Wrong: the biggest, worst Wrong Thing with NTFS is its allocation algorithm. Fragments? wtf? is it 1982 again? How frigging hard is a "best fit" algorithm? Come on, people.
All's true that is mistrusted
Come on, Windows XP Home Edition is not $199.
Sorted. Just hold the button down for 5 seconds. Your system will turn off immediately. You might have some difficulty when turning it back on, though...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In this case it's a complete impossibility, this is a work system, I don't simply tell my employer to purchase me a new card so I can play around with a new OS. However it's unacceptable in general. You can't go telling desktop users "Oh, sorry, our OS doesn't like the expensive hardware you bought, you need to buy different hardware." In a server environment, the admin should pick certified hardware. In the desktop environment, the desktop needs to support the hardware the user chooses to use.
Goes double when you are talking about 1 of the big 2 in something.
back in the day when you turned 15 1/2 they just gave you a permit and said "if you can find an adult stupid enough to ride with you, go for it!"
then we became great drivers.
and we used to have a stick in the car to shift with!
(actually I still do)
-pyrrho
It's not exactly the operating system's fault that it takes time to prepare the system for shutdown.
It only takes about ten seconds from hitting the power switch for my system to suspend, and about twenty for it to start up again. Frankly, that's good enough for me.
Windows XP still won't let me open up an explorer window to a remote server over an SSH connection, along with another window to a remote FTP server, and let me drag files back and forth to transfer them. KDE is an absolute godsend in this regard. I can't imagine going back. Windows is seriously hampered by the fact that you can't switch desktop environments if you find that the default doesn't work for you; and you certainly don't have the option to turn it off to save valuable resources. I mean, seriously; under Windows XP, the GUI runs all the time and you can never shut it off.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Or you can turn on fully automatic updates. If you do this, then Windows will quite happily shutdown the OS after installing an update even if you have unsaved data.
It's a joy to behold. My Dad will often keep docs open in Word or Excel for days - the practical upshot of which is that I can't leave his system configured to auto-update, because this means he can go to use his PC only to find Windows has trashed all the changes he made since he last saved his documents.
I'd like to know what genius made that decision - it means my Dad's PC doesn't get updated automatically (I'm sure as hell not turning on an option to randomly trash his data now and again). I'm sure that's not what they had in mind.
Even if you leave the updates to be auto-downloaded but installed manually, once you've installed an update that requires rebooting, you're in the same boat. Windows Update is dying to reboot then - you get the "Restart Now or Later?" dialog. If you do click Later, it asks you about ten minutes later. Over and over. Those are your options - restart now, or ask me again in about 10 minutes. How about the "I'm using this PC to serve a download that will take a few hours, so why not stop bugging me about rebooting?" option. If you're not around to click Later again, once again Windows Update will force a reboot and trash your unsaved data.
It's mind-bendingly stupid. It's almost as if they saw the "Format disk - Now or Later?" example from About Face and thought that it wasn't stupid enough.
Your hardware experience with Linux will vary depending on the distro you use, but most of the end-user distros can DDC probe monitors (a feature supported by 99% of screens) and autodetect video cards - even if there's no official driver in your distro, you can still use the Vesa driver and get 1024*768 while you download one.
A better example would have been SATA hard disks.
It's impossible to install any released version of Windows onto a SATA hard disk (including an XP SP2 install disk - Christ, that was only released that year) unless you have a floppy drive.
It's 2005. Who the fuck gets a floppy drive with a computer?
Linux handles it no probs.
1. Whether it's Windows or Linux, computers are complex beasts that don't always work the way you expect them to, and therefore there will be issues to resolve regardless of OS.
And more importantly...
2. Roblimo is not ready for the desktop. I mean, come on, you can't get through a Windows install without problems? I fucking hate Linux, but at least I can install it and get shit working (not perfect, but working) without too much trouble. What kind of geek are you?
What? You turn your computer off?
Despair not, young AC.
You just have to be quicker than all the others.
I *almost* got it the other day.
Or maybe you can write a really clever python script.
P.S. If it hadn't gotten so insane with the crapflooding a-holes, they wouldn't have had to do that!
there is a way to fix it on XP Pro so it will not try to auto-reboot, i don't know where i saw it but google will probably find it if you want to look for it.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If you can wait a couple of days, you can get it mail order for about 1/2 of that price, full version, albeit OEM, but still 1/2 price, including the required "hardware" purchase (floppy cable, etc.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I try to install a simple demo on my machine, run it, and get the following: /dev/nvidiactl because the permissions /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README for steps
Error: Could not open
are too resticitive. Please see the FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
section of
to correct.
Signal: SIGSEGV [segmentation fault]
Aborting.
The author complains about some install problems with hardware that sounds like the only hardware on the planet not supported by Windows, and I can't even get Linux software to run under Linux without hassles. I guess Linux is too "resticitive".
Vote for Pedro
My home pc, a modest whitebox AMD Linux machine with 256 MB of cheap ram kicks ass as compared to my dual processor 2.8 GHz Intel WinXP machine with 1 Gb of Ram. One main process runs fine, but multitasking is dead slow. Just pathetic, you mostly need to halt all other work while compiling software with MS Visual Studio (or while running a heavy number crunching sheet in excel).
The only edge for Windows is its huge user base. You know that you can buy any gadget and it'll come with a Win driver. It might suck but there it is. This is a convenience, let's face it, and that's the ONLY reason why windows still makes some sense as an option IMHO. The evil empire might be falling sooner than expected. :-)
Having gone through several betas (code named Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP) Microsoft announced to a shocked world that Windows is now suitable for a desktop environment and subsequently dismissed all prior court cases involving the Windows family of products, citing tiny letters between the lines of the Beta End User License Agreement that waive all liability for beta products sold on Earth.
In other news, lawyers' average salaries have gone down by $10,000 USD.
This whole "ready for the desktop" debate really is misleading. Generally when one hears the term "ready for..." visions of the hoi polloi (sweet old grandmas included) sending email, surfing and looking at digital photos ensue. The reality is that this is just not the case for ANY operating system, ANY! I defy any newbie grandma to be able to purchase a PC/MAC... take it home and make purposeful use of it without any immediate assistance. It just aint happening. The sad truth is that despite all the innovation in this industry, the PC is not even close to being "easy to use", no matter what OS is installed. Im not sure what it is going to take to make it so, but one thig is sure, whoever accomplishes this will crush the likes of MSFT in revenues. I just have a feeling that it is going to be a long time in the making, decades perhaps. Our current state seems as though a necessary step in the evolution of the user experience.
$ whatis msft msft: nothing appropriate
> I have never seen a program that asks if you are sure
> if you want to hibernate or tries to stop the process
I'm not sure if it's the VPN client, or the 1X wireless driver, but one of the 2 blocks any attempt to enter sleep or hibernation modes on my new work laptop... usually while those are running (they are set to always run together) it will simply ignore any sleep or hibernation request, on rare occasions it will present a dialog telling you that it is blocking this.
It is quite apparent that Windoze fanatics are a lot more ferocious in preseving their wrong ways than any free software "zealot" in trying to win a convert. But their behaviour does not hurt the cause of M$ in any way. How could they. Didiot and O'Gargara will always agree with them, so they must be right. Am I wrong ? Or, are they ?
I stay away from Windows as much as possible. If I had to use Windows more I'm sure I would have a longer list.
Some of my recent experiences with setting up a Win2k3, WinXP network (26 desktops, 1 server):
.. come to find out, this "user" has ADMIN rights and is setup by default with NO PASSWORD.
.. ended up having to log in, join the domain then reboot..
Win2k3 came on 3 disks, one being the service pack.. why isn't the service pack included in the original install disk? They were packaged together.
Office2003 came on 4 disks, one being the service pack.. in-order to create a self-installing MSI file, I had to create an admin setup then slipstream the service pack then set it up as a group policy. Not apparent by ANYTHING that came with the media -- ended up going online to a 3rd party site to figure this out.
WindowsXP Professional pre-installed on the desktops. Even though they were purchased from Dell's small business division, the setup required the following:
1. Setup admin account w/password..
2. Setup a local user account
3. Even though this is the Pro edition, during installation, it forced a workgroup install and would not allow me to join the domain
4. Many printers and peripherals were not installed properly and required manually going to websites, downloading drivers and installing. This includes mainstream older hardware such as HP printers.
5. Regular users do not have the ability to choose their own default browser and email client.
6. Regular users are prompted with dialog boxes that they do not have control over (ie if a change is made with msconfig as administrator, when a regular user logs in, it comes up with a dialog that has a checkbox to not show anymore.. next time the user logs in, the dialog still appears..)
7. Regular users for the most part do not have the ability to install software in their own user folder.
8. Regular users by default have write access to the root folder (C:\) -- from what I have read, this cannot be changed w/o significant impacting the system (ie program/Windows failures).
9. Regular users do not have control over their own fonts (Quite aggervating) -- admin has to grant write permission to the single font folder on the system (no per-user font folders).
10. Several applications, even using the "Run As.." to escalate to admin environment do not run properly. It requires a logoff and re-login as the admin.
11. Applications act sporadic when run by a regular user account. This generally requires granting write permission to the program folder or some other system-level folder for regular users.
12. Other applications simply will not run w/o full administrative access (haven't found a workaround).
13. There is no centralized package management. It appears the latest is a complex format called "MSI" but very few applications are distributed using this format. Several software companies when questioned expressed no interest in repackaging their applications in this format.
14. Troubleshooting issues is difficult. Unlike Linux, most apps do not appear to have a function to be verbose about their run-time activity to track down an issue quickly. Use of third party tools such as filemon and regmon appear to be the norm, but I have yet to find them useful (volume of information is too much and depth of information too narrow).
15. When displaying the "My Computer" it has taken a significant amount of time (a minute or more) to fully display, locking up the entire desktop (explorer.exe) interface in the process.
16. On Linux, when apps are installed, they tend to install into an appropriate labeled subfolder on the menu (KDE). On Windows, all apps throw themself in the main "Programs" folder (as well as the quick launch bar, desktop, etc..) and require more manual intervention to keep organized.
17. Even though all the apps are "Windows", the widget sets tend to be different. Windows XP has one feel, Office2003 another, Windows media player a third, and so on.. It use to be the opposite, but it see
What a great way to justify buying a copy of XP and not lose "cred" with the Linux crowd. For his next trick, he'll prove that Linux is Windows and get killed at the next buffer overflow. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
* A decent GUI installer (heh many Linux dists get hammered with that objection).
* A decent set of commandline utilities (grep, awk, sed, etc).
The amount of sheite your average Windows/Linux user is prepared to face day after day. ;-)
Now, based on all the gripes and various issues going back and forth between Linux and Windows users I'm waiting for the article titled "OS X on the desktop: it's lonely at the top".
I think, therefore I am...I think.
If you were a microsoft suit and were concerned about software piracy, then I can imagine that anytime an engineer proposed making it EASY to share files would be frowned upon from on high. Not get through without 'complexities' that prevent an average user from sharing through the shear annoyance factor. You can absolutely bet that this factors into their design! I mean look, i've got a file, you've got a file, we are both on the same wireless connection at a coffee house. Can i share a file to you without giving you a password or dealing with networking? No, of course not.
I do believe that commercial software design has suffered horribly by this, and as a collary result, the entire world has learned to live with the most pliable communications gift that's ever existed (books? child's play when the gutenberg revolution is compared to what's happening today!) being nothing more then a way to write reports. Insane! This reason is the #1 on my list of why to advocate open source software. It's not that it's BETTER (necessarily) but rather from a social standpoint we fight against a tide of mismanagement that threatens to turn the computer revolution into nothing more then an economic gambit of stigyian control. Losing this gift is a opportunity the entire human race may miss, and continue to miss, if open suorce cannot function as a balancing force. It's very, very obvious to me, but eat your conspiracy theories with your own blend of spices, if that suits you!
-jamesr
windows users are not ready for linux desktop
Used to have one of these.
It had exactly the same problem with my standard 15" Planar LCD. I didn't think it was a driver problem, just a shitty integrated graphics (i845G ?). I was trying to put a "real" gfx card inside, but the mobo (made by LiteOn, model NR135 I believe) in my d220 did not have AGP slot soldered in... Seems they needed to save $0.50 in manufacturing costs.
Until Linux OSes successfully recognise and install my US Robotics 5610B modem, {which is a real modem that I paid $85.03 USD for, {and says on the box that kernel 2.3 and higher support}), I will be stuck on Windows. All I know is Knoppix does not recognize my modem, so I am assuming that my modem will not be recognised in other distributions. This is the only thing keeping me using Windows, but until this issue is resolved, I will forgo using Linux, (because without modem support, I have no internet access.) Does anyone have any reccomended solutions to this, or am I SOL?
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
Every year or so I like to see how Microsoft is doing in its attempt to make a desktop operating system as usable as Linux.
That one simple sentence at the beginning of this article really makes it apparent just how clueless the Linux world is about UI, Users, GUI etc. Do you really think MS is attempting to make the desktop as useable as Linux? This guys a complete idiot. Whats happening is that LINUX is trying to become as useable as Windows or better yet Apple OS. Good Grief, sometimes geeks can be so brilliant and stupid all at the same time.
the article missed something important. It fogot to point out how friggin' small the product key is printed, and how similar the letters look. I have very limited eyesight, and the 8s and Bs look the same, and there are quite a lot of them in my product key (at least 6). It usually takes me 9 or 10 tries to read the product key correctly.
How much extra would it have cost to print it jsut 1 point bigger?
IE7 will have maximal 4 (four) open tabs and it will be an patented and all-new microsoft feature ;)
... wait and see the face of the guy when he plugs my Canon USB printer and runs Linux. Why do we care about compatibility of modern PCs? Except for accelerated 3D there are no issues any more. The issues arise when it comes to peripherals! And NO, buying Linux compatible hardware does not solve all the problems, imagine going with a linux laptop to a friend that doesn't have linux friendly printer.
Why not just compare Linux to Windows 95--that's what my mom's using and I'm certain the article would be even "funnier". I'm tired of biased comparisons. I'm an engineer--not a Republican.
Again, I must ask why we care so much about this? Why do we care so much that any thread debating the qualities of any OS over another will undoubtedly get more comments than most other stories and will likely be guaranteed a greenlight over any number of more interesting submissions?
I wonder: If we cared as much about politics as we care about our (OS and other Tech/Sports/Car/Fashion/Television and other Media) rivalries, we might actually be able to show conclusively whether or not democracy works on a large scale!
Imagine that...
Oh well, instead I guess I'm going to get on my Windows PC, to google what the model girlfriend of my favorite football player was wearing in that car commercial on Access Hollywood last night
It's all so frustrating...
After all, Windows' main strength is on the server side. Over 90% of all web sites run on IIS.
Give them time. They're currently the underdog in the desktop market, but that gives them a unique incentive to innovate and drive users to its product.
Windows Really Good Edition
:P
He's trying to install a version of Windows that's nearly 4 years old. He can't expect the latest drivers to be included in it.
He should get a more recent... oh, wait, that is the most recent version, isn't it?
The end user wont notice intially but over time, they will and then they will start to cry, and they will cry out loud.
Just one word DRM everywhere.
Microsoft took one step away from their original Palladium plans developers wise, you wont have to pay a huge amount of money to get the permission to program for (for now it is still open), but due to the demands of the Content industry, they introduced an entire secure layer which is basically encrypted from the hardware (harddisk etc...) back to the transmission into the digital output, it never really leaves the encryption state, with the possibility to lock the affected box remotely out. What happens is, that they bascially made a vault for the content providers, which will be enabled in longhorn. Remember parts of the technology already is in place. SATA has extensions for encryption on hardware level, same goes for DVI ouput, with the TCPA you will have a crypto chip on every box as well with the private key stored on the chip. You wont get the stuff you are used to instantly taken away, but I think the turning point will be with the move to BlueRay or whatever HDTV next gen DVD will be, then the users will start to scream, but too late, as much as they are mentally bound to it. Linux and other systems probably wont give them an alternative as well, since the players there will follow the same strict rules if they will exist at all and the remote lockout can affect the hardware (consumer hardware as well, but just blacklisting certain keys in future DVD replacements.
Those who now long and rave for longhorn should think twice, they will have the severe problem that they will get it. Xaml, total onslaught on the W3C after Microsoft successfully torpedoed the W3C into oblivion by not supporting their standards and lying on their fat asses for 8 years. Replacement technology for PDF in place, which in the long run also will become Windows only. Trivial patent grabbing left and right just in case we want to sue the competition into oblivion, and having DRMed the system left and right without informing the users (dont expect the journalists except a few mags writing about those things, most of them are either ignorant about TCPA, NGSCP (Palladium) or on the payroll of Microsoft)
When Palladium comes out, in the beginning it wont make that much of a difference to the end user, everything will work perfectly, but then extended services will be pushed in and the end user will slowly be fed with DRM hell (try this nice HDTV movie, WMx of course, that is another onslaught area, of trying to take over the movie codec protocolls and getting rid of the pesky mpeg consortium), you wanna save it do it... You wanna give it away oops... sorry man, you can move to alternatives if you want, but then you will loose your already bought 20-30 movies. A few years later... no more buying man, just renting.
I like the fact that he's realistic; if you keep XP SP2 autoupdated, run Windows Update every now and again and keep the Firewall up it's actually very easy to avoid viruses and worms unless you have a habit of retardedly clicking everything people show you.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Supposedly fixed in Windows 2000 SP1 and XP SP2, although if it is still a problem, search the MS KnowledgeBase (at TechNet on microsoft.com) for your particular laptop/network adapter. I hope this helps.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
And unless these nerds want to be at their friends house every day helping their friends get miscellaneous things working under Linux that their friends can't figure out how to themselves, the nerds will be honest and tell them that running a Linux system may be a little to complicated for the average user and to go with Windows or a Mac. This is not meant to bash Linux, it is just that I consider myself much more computer literate than the average user (though not an expert by any stretch), and I have so much trouble getting things to work under Linux that I couldn't imagine some of my friends trying to use it.
1) Go buy pirated Windows CD from the university
2) Add daemon which listens at port 66666 and gives admin access.
3) Use MS sysprep (TM) tool to make a new windows cd image
4) Sell pirated Windows CD w/ daemon. (profit)
5) Collect credit card numbers
6) profit!
One more time, Thank you Microsoft!
Focus for a second on this point: there is a competitive market for linux distributions.
Good: You can find a distro tailored to your particular needs and preferences.
Bad: You can make the wrong choice,as this gentleman has done.
That said, I think it is not the case that a newbie wouldn't choose a bleeding edge distro without knowing what he gettign into.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Funny, I went through the linux side of what you did w/ an ati card. Yeah it was a PITA. Not on the level of figuring out dot clocks like I did 11 years ago, but certainly less than any matrox card I've used. The main difference? I RTFM'ed. Sorry, but I recall 3 files in ati's ftp directory:
a kernel rpm
a user-space rpm
a README
Now, granted, the first pass at this, I wasn't very anal about following the steps in the README, and it didn't work (let's face it, it is a multitasking environment, and I was configuring 5 things at once (and, yes, the other 4 were no brainers)). But, by actually following the steps, and thinking about and understanding the instructions, it worked and still does.
3 years ago a nice list of equivalents between Windows and Linux was done. Unfortunately it it no longer updated but the fact remains : there is almost one or more free software for each big need under Linux
In the immortal words of Albert the Alligaator, "Fazz-Bazz."
Fully configured XP install 2+ hrs. Fully configured Mepis, Mandrake or Ubuntu install: 20-30mins.
I've installed and configured Debian in less time than XP. FreeBSD, for that matter. Windows is a freaking nightmare.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
For anybody else reading this in a similar situation (Linux wiz with non-technical children at college): If the kid has Internet access, give yourselves an account on that machine and ssh into it, then use su to get root and manage the machine, for example running file system checks, downloading patches and so on. Ask the kid for permission first though. An un-patched Linux or BSD computer has just as big a potential as a spam zombie as that of a Windows computer, although it's less likely to be attacked.
For the power failures, I would suggest using a journaled file system like EXT3, and a cheap non-interruptable power supply, if you can afford it. Actually, in that situation a cheap laptop is better, since it comes with its own batteries.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Well, I agree with the principle of what you are saying, but the fact is that the start-up and shutdown of a modern OS has more to do with initializing or closing files, buffers, ie data than programs.
All true, but it would be nice to just hit the power button and leave, knowing that the system would eventually shut down, even if it takes ten minutes. Instead I have to wait around because Windows likes to throw up a dozen error messages. And then there are occasions when Windows just forgets what its doing and I have to press shut down again.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
It's a joy to behold. My Dad will often keep docs open in Word or Excel for days - the practical upshot of which is that I can't leave his system configured to auto-update, because this means he can go to use his PC only to find Windows has trashed all the changes he made since he last saved his documents.
So its Microsoft's fault that your dad doesn't save his work at reasonable intervals?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
My pc hibernates when I press the power button. No programs even know they're going into suspension, so there are no messages. 10 seconds, and the machine powers down, saving the state. a quick power up and I'm back to where I was.
Interesting article, but
Linux itself doesn't have a desktop interface. If you were to voice any of these opinions in the kernel mailing lists you'd probably find yourself blacklisted for trolling.
The desktop is KDE, Gnome or generally whatever Window Manager you use with X Windows, if you use X Windows.
All these interfaces are not Linux specific.
I don't have a PowerBook, and if I did I'd personally choose OS X, but fron what I understand, YellowDog Linux runs with full support on PowerBooks. You can even buy them with YDL preinstalled and still have a full Apple warranty (TerraSoft is an Apple Authorized OEM VAR). As affordable for the power as anything else you're going to find.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
So its Microsoft's fault that your dad doesn't save his work at reasonable intervals?
This shows the absurd mindsets that computer enthusiasts adopt. It isn't up to the computer to decide what intervals are reasonable, it isn't up to Microsoft and it isn't up to you. The computer is an object, it exists to be useful to the user. If the user needs to change his/her behaviour to suit the computer then it is because the computer is flawed. Reasonableness doesn't enter into it.
This article did one thing very well: it convinced me that the only way to get Linux to the masses is to have OEMs install it before they ship it to them. Windows installs can go wrong, and the only reason people don't complain about this is that 95% of the Windows user base has never installed Windows. They got it preloaded on their machine, and if it ever had to be reinstalled, they took it to a shop where professionals did that for them.
So, what I propose is that the Linux crowd needs to get behind making the application experience (as opposed to the install experience) as good as it can. That's what people care about. The OEMs will spend enough money to get Linux successfully installed on one machine, then they'll just ghost that drive and churn out clones. They'll never see the Linux install process again (until the next version, I suppose).
If we can get Linux pre-installed, and sold by a main OEM, it will finally take off.
Linux has already beaten desktop WinXP hands-down, but, what about the games? You still need Win to run most of them. Major game publishers have been targeting the Mac, but I still don't see any major games written/ported for/to Linux. And a lot of Linux users keep a Win partition for these things.
Sometimes I turn off the ignition and some hasshat motorist flips a finger and says I'll get a ticket if I don't pull over to the shoulder of the freeway. I can't do that because I've already bailed out of the car. I wake up hours later and the fucking cops are still THERE!
When I turn OFF the ignition switch, I want the stupid car to be parked. Be parked now. No driving home, no opening my garage door, no complaints from my kids playing basketball in the driveway, no nothing...just park its fucking self.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
I'd love to mod you up if I had mod-points. Let me dig a little further, since some of the points you express can be circumvented with a little windows knowledge:
:)
:P).
:(
1-4: spot on, sad but true.
5: For some this is a good thing - it depends on the situation though. If you use AD and GPO you can control IE's behaviour (though IE will crash more if you do so).
6: OMG this is SO annoying - the MS tool for checking for the jpeg vulnarability is put in as a critical security fix, and insists on running at each log-in untill an admin user stops it.
7: Depends on the app - if it is just an exe and it only accesses the user registry you can run it if it does more then that forget it.
8: Depends on your setup - when I setup winxp the users by default did have rwx on c:\ however not on c:\winX and c:\program files\ and c:\common files where they only had rx or as appropriate.
However with this setting you will need to manually change permissions for certain programs, such as MS Office and Firefox. This however can also be true with the registry for certain programs, such as pre- 1.4.x versions of java which needed admin rights for their part of the registry for any user running it. XP is more "hardcore" with rights then win2k - for example the diagram editor for office 2000 only works for admins on winxp.
9: Hmm good point - however not something which has ever come up as a greivance for me. It is possibly to push fonts on all desktops if you want though. With standard tools however you will need to make an MSI package and setup the install in GPO.
10: Usually this is because "run as" is run wrong, the biggest problem here imho is that it's really hard to know what to run and remember it, mostly you need to write it down somewhere. I've managed to install, uninstall, run regedit and install local printers with "run as" atleast. It is however far from as straightforward as SU or SUDO
11+12: Se 8, here are some pointers:
regedt32: for granting registry permissions.
program and subfolder permissions.
common files permissions.
ini files located at various locations - for example c:\winnt.
However some programs, like the diagram editor for office 2000 will NOT work (that particular app problem MS sees as a feature btw
13: There are tools to make MSI's with - a downgraded version of a veritas tool is packaged with win2k, so I suppose you could find it in the 2k3 install somewhere. Can't remember the name though
#14: Debugging is detective work - sometimes you will find yourself in the problem that app A doesn't work with update Y while app B will not work without update Y.
#15: Indeed, often by changing desktop settings and not having cd-roms in the drives will speed this up somewhat.
#16: This can in fact be setup by making your own MSI's - though not really perfect it's a work around.
#17: Indeed - my GNOME desktop is IMHO more consistent as well.
#18: The only difference I've found is that Local Settings will not be replicated in roaming profiles.
#19: true.
#20: Indeed - you can do it over the network though: \\computername\c$ as admin will work.
In order to install an operating system, don't you first need a machine to install the operating system on? You need to start from the same point; otherwise, comparing installers for two different hardware platforms is like comparing Apples and oranges.
I was copying a couple of gegs from a friend of mine. He has a new machine running XP Professional with SP2. I was using my External Lacie USB 2.0 Hard Disk. ;)
When using GNU/Linux I never thought about USB 2.0 drivers or anything. I just plug it in and It just works with the USB 2.0 transfer speeds. On my friend's machine, Plugin it in displayed a warning "pluginning a high speed USB device into a non-high speed USB port". Apparently my friend didn't install the USB 2.0 windows drivers. My friend a newbie computer user had no idea what I was talking about. Finally I was able to find the motherboard installation CD covered up with dust in my friend's desk drawer. Installing the drivers and rebooting wasn't able to bring the USB 2.0 ports to work and we had to abort the whole thing because copying a 700MB file was taking 20 mins or so.
So yes, Windows is not ready for the desktop
Well, I think a lot of people have lost files by accidentally shutting down without saving, so sometimes it's good to ask "are you sure" because they're not always actually trying to shut down. Sometimes people lose school assignments they've worked hours on, or documents important to their business.
I don't know why suspend mode isn't the fault but I'm thinking there are limitations in the systems that make it good to completely restart them every now and then. Probably the best solution is software that shuts down very fast. Maybe a computer with way too much ram so nothing has to be loaded from a swapfile in order to shut down?
I think the tons of stuff being loaded at startup is due to project managers suddenly turning into idiots the minute they start working for a corporation. But I've never been a project manager so that's just speculation.
Sometimes I press the off switch and some asshat program pops up a window and says that it won't terminate until I move the mouse to some little point on the window and click it. I can't do that because I've already turned the monitor off. I come back hours later and the fucking machine is still ON!
Yes. This, I would say, is misbehavior on the part of a program. If a program refuses to shut down until something is saved, it is buggy. It can save that data to an "unsaved documents" folder if it wants and bring it up next boot, but this behavior is not correct with respect to handling the user's wishes.
Linux is the worst PC operating system in this regard. Press the off key and the system reacts like you're trying to shut down the Defense Department. Page after page of scrolling lines indicating that this and that mickey-mouse section of the OS is exiting. Who gives a fuck? Just turn off! Now!
Three points:
First, Linux prints out some text describing what is being shut down. I don't see what is wrong with it. This, in and of itself, does not hurt you.
Second, you want the system instantaneously off. I agree that this would be nice, but currently programs store a tremendous amount of state in volatile RAM, and it simply is not feasible to shut off instantly -- it is not a technical problem that the OS can solve (if you are unwilling to do a hibernate, which someone else suggested -- presumably not, since if you were your problem would already be solved). You can execute a hard power-off on modern PCs, where you hold down the power button for five seconds, and the legs are yanked out from under the OS and all applications. If you are using journalling filesystems, an option under Linux, you need not worry about filesystem corruption in such a case, though applications may be partway through writing a file, and you may thus lose the data that you are working on. No general-purpose OS does a full shutdown immediately.
Third, Linux distributions, unlike Windows, *do* always shut down when you hit the power key (barring bugs in the script that the OS runs when shutdown is initiated or bugs in the kernel). It does not let an application block the OS from shutting down -- if the application takes too long to shut down, it's going to be blown away by the OS. If the user wanted to save some data in an application, presumably they wouldn't have pushed the soft power button. There is some text printed out describing the daemons shutting down, but what I see as the real problem, the fact that a program can block a user-initiated shutdown, only exists on Windows, and is not a Linux problem.
I just can't see why you're particularly upset with Linux here, which I view Linux is superior to most other OSes on this point.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
> Turn off and on when the user changes the state of the off/on switch. Such a truly revolutionary and mind-boggling concept!
Yes, it is indeed. This leads to why I absolutely adored Microsoft: they got it right. They know the consumer demand for fast power switching. They even saw it back in ~1980, when they conned QDOS out of Tim Patterson's hands (read: bought for a *way* too low price).
Now, Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) had fast power switching on the feature list. Just switch it off. It doesn't hold any valuable data anywhere, ever, so no harm is done.
Then microsoft made shutting the box on and off an integral part of the system. It's done regularly by w32 (all the way from 95 to XP)--whenever you install a program, the OS will happily reboot your box. But somewhere along the journey, they somehow lost sight of the `fast at coming back online again' part. Not to worry, it still falls over pretty fast. If you don't believe me, just connect to the internet.
It's such a shame that GNU/Linux doesn't get this. I'm *FORCED* to have my power bill increased by long uptimes, wile the marketeers yack on and on about `stability', `reliability' and what have we not. Hell no I don't need stability or reliability. I want my system to shut on/off at my whim. Or whenever. As long as it power cycles from time to time.
Which is why I ultimately must hate GNU/Linux and love Tim Patterson, the great visionary.
At least write the source of the article.
Agreed, 100%. I knew some jackass would decide it was my Dad's fault and not Microsoft's that they wrote some code to deliberately trash his data at random intervals, because they decided that the OS being up to date was more important than his data.
Reminds me of those people who say that if Windows (or whatever OS) was properly secure, then the only things that viruses/trojans could destroy is the user data. As if that data wasn't the most important data on the computer.
Yes, Linux is probably more difficult to configure, but in any corporate environment, this should be a sysadmin role, NOT the user. After my last install of WinXP/SuSE 9.3 I am not even sure this is true anymore. XP=16 reboots to install OS, patches, M$ Office, Office patches, etc. SuSE, one reboot. XP took 3-4 times as long to install and setup, fix security holes, etc.
End user configurability has not proven to increase productivity or usability. For the major "productivity" applications, such as Word, Excel, e-mail, web, the offerings for Linux are comparable (and in some cases better) than the offerings for WinXP. More and more corporate applications are in Java, which makes the difference between OS rather irrelevant. Usability for KDE and GNOME is comparable to WinXP and OS X. I doubt any unbiased test could find a significant difference in most common end user tasks.
Windows enjoys a prominence largely because of Microsoft's unfair (and illegal in most countries) abuse of it's market share to force PC manufactures to package Windows w/ PCs. This creates a perception that Windows is a standard. Anyone who has had the misfortune to use Visual C++ knows that there is nothing standard under the hood and there are incompatibilities with MS's own runtime libraries. Windows is not a standard, it is a monopoly. This may be improving soon, as major companies are adopting Linux as an option (e.g. Sun, IBM) and there is now a "known" company offering Linux (Novell).
The major "corporate" objection to Linux (besides these misconceptions) on the desktops of the masses is a lack of a "commercial" office suite. If Corel or Lotus would step up to the plate and offer a 'nix version of their products the pace of Linux adoption would accelerate.
If you think that all software development should be non-commercial, open-source, work to help OpenOffice.org get up to snuff. Don't hold your breath waiting for major corporate adoption, however.
So, if you want others to migrate from Windows to Linux, pressure Lotus and Corel to migrate. "If you build it, they will come."
Ballmer.. get the fuck out of here!
Crime is much older then computers. Computers just change the landscape a little.
Quack, quack.
Agreed, 100%. I knew some jackass would decide it was my Dad's fault and not Microsoft's that they wrote some code to deliberately trash his data at random intervals, because they decided that the OS being up to date was more important than his data.
If Windows just shut down without warning, you'd have a point. But it doesn't. If you're at the computer, you know it's downloading a patch, and it tells you it'll restart the computer. If you're not at the computer, you should've saved your work before leaving--that's just plain common sense; I learned it in third grade when my school got its first Apple IIes.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
A have seen cellular modems get all gunked up when you press hibernate. And it happens EVERY time. (Almost like they didn't test the celluar modem on a laptop! duh!)
I hibernate a lot and I'd say about 20% of the time, when I go to power on (after a drive home), some application has stopped me from hibernating. Usually it's Microsoft Word, or Excel, because I have a file opened on a network connection. I think this is braindead! By the time the "prompt" is discovered, the network connection is LONG gone, and yet it still sits there asking if I really want to hibernte because of the network file open.
He's not asking for the computer to respond to your email when you press the power button. He's asking for it to turn off, when you tell it to turn off! Now!
I wholeheartedly agree with the grandparent. There is absolutely no reason, with journaling file systems and rapid copying of memory that the system couldn't ALWAYS be prepared to instantly turn off, and instantly turn on. 5 minute log offs or log ons are crazy, and poor operating system design.
If you'd bothered to read the story, I was moaning about not being able to enable auto-updating on my Dad's PC, precisely because if you do, Windows will shutdown at some random point in the future, without warning you first. Believe me, I've watched it do it. A friend who spent a long evening bringing his accounts up to date in Excel has also experienced the "where did all my data go?" feeling the next morning, thanks to auto-updates.
Really, what is so hard to understand about this? Forcing a shutdown when the user is likely to be not present, and abandoning their data if they're not, is bad.
The reason I get the Restart Now/Later button is because I don't use full auto-update (I just get it to download the udpates and tell me about them) precisely because of this reason.
Regardless, that doesn't mean that the restart dialog not having a "go away for a day" button is not stupid. It is. But that's not my point.
My point is that I don't enable auto-update on my Dad's PC because if I do, he will lose data. Guaranteed.
it's cute
it's genuinely funny
Same as his other column describing his Windoze experience:
A week of Windows (Migrating from Windows to Linux)
gewg_
most of the world doesn't appreciate computers; most of the world finds them frustrating.
If one really wants an immediate off rather than a shutdown, one should toggle their power strip's button. The meaning of the power button has changed, like it or not; Microsoft themselves switched during the Windows NT 4.0 days.
The majority of "5 minute" waiting (I haven't needed to wait more than one, I'd say the installation you dreamed up is defective) is for userland processes/services, not operating system processes. And you should complain to Microsoft too: Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP both suffer from the same slowness at shutdowns (and may be worse since if a specific process is hung it won't tell you which so you won't immediately know how to troubleshoot; I have ended up waiting more than 5 minutes for Microsoft Windows, finally giving up after 15+). Shutting down the OS itself takes very little time.Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
What is really interesting is taking a person who has absolutely no computer experience and sitting them in front of a computer.
It takes lots of teaching that you would never expect because you're so used to it and it is second nature to you.
Things like, move the box to the right of the keyboard around and an arrow moves on the screen, type in your username and a password only you know to get into the system, this picture is to get onto the internet, etc.
For these people I think starting with Linux or Apple or Windows would be the same effort... probably easier.
In all 3 cases they would need someone who has experience to set up the OS first and teach them the basics.
This is probably why Linux is taking off in 3rd world countries. There are probably lots of people there who have literally never used a PC. Amongst them all 3 are going to be about the same, the difference is that two of them cost a lot more than Linux does and one (Windows) will cause them security problems unless very, very carefully set up.
Opinions like "it is by no means ready for the mainstream or average user" miss the point. The point is that the "mainstream or average user" is almost certainly, in the USA or Europe, someone who has had quite a bit of experience with PCs or Macs so there is already an inherent bias.
When you rephrase it more correctly it goes like this:
Most of the people that buy and use new PCs for home and even more so for business in Europe and America will already be fairly experienced with Windows systems of various sorts.
For them to switch to using Linux would mean a period of learning much like when they first started to use PCs many years ago (although probably not quite so intense), i.e. they would need a great deal of help and could not learn it by themselves. (If you've ever worked with a complete computing neophyte you'll know what I mean.)
At any given time the relative cost/effort involved for them in retraining is often seen as bigger than the benefits in terms of cost savings, reliability and security. This assumption should be carefully looked at for what it is.