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Windows Nearly Ready For Desktop Use

Posted by Zonk on from the keep-on-trucking dept.

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."

2 of 670 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Longtooth will solve these problems... by batkiwi · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are 100% incorrect. You're allowed to create your own slipstreamed driver and service pack disk, regardless of whether you're a home user or a business user. Microsoft even gives you a tool called "sysprep," which is for rolling out your own windows images.

    In addition, they have a cool tool which will add a file to your windows cd image (which you then burn) toauto-answer all of the questions asked during install.

  2. Re:And how's that different than Linux? by t35t0r · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is why i love gentoo and won't ever use any other linux distro, this is even faster than going to ati and downloading the driver for winxp if you already have your kernel setup and pointed to by /usr/src/linux:

    If you don't already have a kernel
    1) emerge gentoo-sources
    2) genkernel ..most already do at this point, so all you need to do are these steps:

    3) emerge ati-drivers
    4) opengl-update ati
    5) fglrxconfig , follow the directions, if you can't or don't want to understand it, then go buy a mac or use winxp.
    6) restart X (no reboot required), ctrl+alt+backspace will do just fine ..i've switched between my R9600 and GEForce 5500 so quickly because of Gentoo's setup ..the geforce has better drivers but its DVI output doesn't want to work (won't even POST) so it's sitting in a box.