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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."
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.
Yes, for those people who are cheap-asses who buy graphics cards and 3rd-rate Korean TFTs with absolutely dire or broken DDC support.
It should be noted that X.org balks particularly well on these too, and the
framebuffer drivers don't even check to see if a mode is available before
blindly switching to it.
Parody is one thing, but.. this isn't parody, it's just sniping.
...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 wonder if that was the point? By the standards that the ``Linux isn't ready for the desktop'' crowd apply to Linux, Windows isn't ready for the desktop, either.
I haven't tried to install OSX, so I can say that no OS that I am familiar with is ``ready for the desktop'' by those standards.
Roblimo just took the standard ``Linux isn't ready for the desktop'' article, replaced Linux with Windows and visa versa, and threw in a couple of very accurate slams at Windows weak points.
Good parody, based on truth. That's why it was funny.
See what I've been reading.
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?)
As far as just about every PC user is concerned.
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.
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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
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
Since when do average users install operating systems?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Maybe it's Microtek that's not ready for your desktop.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Hopefully that will change one day. In the mean time, the more people who take a couple of minutes to Google for Linux driver support before making each hardware purchase, the more market pressure will be put on the vendors to change the situation.
If, if, if. . .you have an UberGeek install and set it up for you. The average Joe can't install Windows either, but generally acquires his box pregeekilated.
KFG
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.
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.
And I wish we'd stop deluding oursleves into believeing that somehow the cool, geeky-tweeky OSs are the same ones that users want to buy and, subsequently, actually use.
Funny thing is, so called "power users" influence the buying habits of the masses. It is just like the perfume companies that market to the trendy 30 year olds with power suits because other women imitate them. People consult any nerds they know before making the big step of buying a computer hoping for some inside tips.
The people who make purchasing descisions for large companies are also computer nerds. You can see this in the slow adoption of desktop linux in large corps and government.
Really though, you just need to take a pill, the guy was just posting some grade A nerd humor.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Nah. No dumbass'ness about that. The older RPM based (and really ANY) linux distro's are/were a pain. There is a reason the term 'rpm hell' was coined. Of course the flip side is the same, I was having issues with a win2k laptop's video driver the other day, namely that I had to find and install it. Vendor of card says "talk to laptop maker" laptop maker says "not available for win2k". After about an hour of googling I found a non-passworded working download and installed it.
On a modern linux distro I could simply use the package manager's UI or the commandline and it would search and install the package for me. I use gentoo on my desktop and fedora core 3 on my servers and I haven't had to hunt for an RPM in over a year. Simply type 'emerge foo' on gentoo or 'yum foo' on redhat. Finds the package and its dependancies, downloads and installs them. AFAIK windows doesnt have anything like that, closest to it is windows update which only handles microsoft's core stuff not third party apps.
Of course 7.3 was new 4 years ago. *A LOT* has changed since then.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
From a technical perspective, that is correct, but from a legal perspective you are treading on very thin ice. If you are creating custom Windows distributions to install on computers at work, you'd better make sure you have Microsoft's permission to do so, or some day the BSA may raid your office and your company might end up liable for some very hefty fines.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I hardly ever use a word processor anymore (exept to open files sent to me by friends). I use Scribus for stuff that need design like pamphlets or resumes and LyX for the rest.
My sister won't touch anything that doesn't look like MS Office however.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Well you'll get no argument from me on the superiority of nVidia drivers. I feel their Windows drivers are superior to ATi's as well. However, this situation is also Linux's fault in few ways:
1) Lack of a good installer. Windows has an installer, a quite good one. You set your program up to use it to install, and basically everything will be taken care of. No such luck in Linux. RPM is a distant second and that's RedHat, not Linux in general. So to get to where nVidia is a company has to not only write a driver, but an installer too. Well that's considerably more effort, and more point for problems.
2) Incompatibilities across minor kernel versions. Windows driver interface stays quite consistent. 2000 was the last major change, almost all 2000 drivers work as is in XP. So you can release a driver and expect it to work, and update it as needed for features. Not so with Linux, as I pointed out, the driver (allegedly) works with 2.6.10 but not with 2.6.11. Man that's a pain, as a company, to have to re-release all the time to keep up with little version changes.
3) The lack of a good DDK. Microsoft has a very comprehensive driver development kit for Visual Studio that really helps the development and testing of drivers. Linux has no equivilant that I'm aware of. You are basically reading howtos and doing GCC coding.
4) Uncertianty in the display layer. Linux was almost exclusively XFree, now it's switching to Xorg, but hasn't completely. So driver developers are on the hook to support multiple upper level architectures on top of the multiple kernel architectures. Makes it even more complex.
Now this certianly doesn't let ATi off the hook, but part of the problem is the way Linux chooses to do development. Now for servers it's of little consequence, you buy your hardware to match what the OS likes, and you don't fuck with it once it works. However desktops are often on or near the cutting edge, and if an OS is to be good for the desktop, it needs to be able to keep up.
"...Microsoft's rightful place in the market"
This is either very funny or totally totally out of here. There are no rightful places in the market. There's just the market.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
the desktop needs to support the hardware the user chooses to use
I would also say that the hardware manufacturer should support the desktop OS that their users choose as well. It is NOT the responsibility of the OS developers to make 3d drivers when it is in fact IMPOSSIBLE to make them. They have made a pretty decent 2D driver, but that's because they have the specs for that part of the video card. ATI is the only company that can make 3d drivers for any OS for their cards, until they release more specs. (Tinfoil hat theory:) I wonder how much money MS pays ATI to not make good drivers for Linux? It IS possible to make high quality and easy to install (relatively speaking) binary 3d drivers for linux. The Nvidia drivers kick ass, and they install by running a script (the drivers are IN the script, neat). Although, you need to close X, and then change one line in your xorg.conf file.
In SUSE Linux, you just need to run the online update, it gives you the option to fetch the nvidia driver (no ati driver), now when you choose your video card in the SUSE configuration program (YaST) it will choose the 3d driver. It can't get easier, it's easier than Windows!
I wish more distros would give you the option to download binary drivers for both ATI and Nvidia. I believe Ubuntu and Gentoo also make it REALLY easy to install the nvidia and ati drivers.
For me, Windows won't be desktop-ready until they come pre-installed and operational as part of the base operating system. Sure I could spend a lot of time tweaking and tuning "my" system to make the user interface more comfortable for me to use. But the moment I have to sit at somebody else's PC, if all that stuff just disappears, then what's the point? I might as well just run linux on my own PC, and avoid touching anybody else's computer (as I do currently).
For windows to be desktop-ready for me, means that decent tools have to be available on everybody's computer, not just mine. (I don't care if the others use those tools or not, just that the tools should be available).
I always thought it was the software that influenced what OS people bought. (See: Gaming, Tax Software, etc)
-]Phreak Out[-
Of course you're completely wrong :
... Then, you are surely not force to update to the latest Linux driver, and it is even discouraged on consumer grade distros. To finish destroy your stupid FUD, there is one driver per architecture for Linux, I see several one for each of the two architectures Windows support.
1) Package managers on Linux have perfectly good installers. Distribution tailored for non-techie like Mandriva commercial PowerPacks include the packages necessary to auto-install NVidia or ATI drivers. And NVidia did not have to write an installer, they used an old one created by a game company.
2) Your problem is in the "almost" all 2000 drivers work as is in XP. In Linux, ALL drivers coming with the kernel that worked in 2.6.10 works in 2.6.11. If you were not biased, you would know that the NVidia kernel driver is NOT SUPPORTED by kernel developers, it SAYS IT LOUD when you load it, and this is NO fault of Linux developers, it is caused by the choice of licencing of NVidia. That is also why free distro can't include the driver out of the box, same for ATI and Java and
3) And that is why every time there is a problem in Windows, people like you come whining that it is caused by bad drivers ? When I used Windows, the NVidia certified drivers were utter crap, only the non certified ones coming from NVidia were good. Please ! Even the certified SCSI driver blue screened XP, and it was a known problem in Windows problems base (which is HUGE).
4) I wonder what is this nonsense you're talking about. Learn what is XOrg compared to XFree before saying such nonsense. And everyone mattering in Linux world has already switched to XOrg.
I can tell you that the peopke I switched to Linux are unable to install any NVidia driver on Windows, they stay with crappy Windows ones.
That's because current implementation of X makes X server have a part in device management, which is both incorrect (device management should be kernel's problem, not user mode app's) and inefficient. The correct way to do this is to have the kernel take care of video mode switching and 2D/3D acceleration, exposing them through some common interface like OpenGL (so X would have no device-dependant code). See Getting X Off The Hardware for details.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.