Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's 'Hands-On' Linux Lab
aneroid writes "eWeek has a story on Microsoft allowing a third party to present a 'hands-on lab' that allowed attendees to play with a range of Linux desktop software at its annual worldwide partner show in Minnesota this weekend. It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage. Whether it's for the desktop or server, wasn't clear. People did get to 'see the Apache Web server in action' and a KDE desktop.Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client? Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition? According to the Register, 'Microsoft is unlikely to stop developers moving to Linux and open source so its best hope lies in articulating a strategy of co-existence to limit the 'damage' to its business.'"
In Soviet Russia, Linux Lab Puts Hands On Microsoft!
Wouldn't be interesting to see them show a fully configured Win98, 2000 and XP systems along with Linux to show what compelling reasons to move to the newest and best MS has to offer.
Linux is only a small part of their competition. Their own installed base is much bigger
Talk about redundant 101.
Microsoft are giving customers a chance to look at linux running in an environment of their choosing because they damn well know if they don't there's a good chance this sampling will take place in an environment not of their choice, by people with a passion for the alternative.
Talk about business 101.
The Mothership
Does the Slashdot membership's interest in any involvement of Microsoft with Linux further the positive press of Linux, Microsoft or both?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Ladies and gentlemen please watch my assistant as amazing new Microsoft Windows Longhorn cleans tough stains like wine! Blood! Grass! Pet Stains! The leading competetive product still leaves unsightly stains behind even after three applications! Now watch as amazing Microsoft Windows Longhorn foams away denture stains like magic, while the dentures cleaned with Linux are still brown and dirty! Ladies and gentlemen, please observe as amazing new Microsoft Windows Longhorn cuts right through tough grease, while Linux leaves dishes covered with spots! Who will pay just $299 for a subscription to this amazing new product? You sir! And you! And you ma'am, thank you very much! You sir! Thank you! Don't crowd, there's plenty for everybody!
The parent story is highly misleading in regards to the actual article.
"...who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage."
That's hardly accurate. The article says he was MS-biased. It also outlines tradeoffs between Windows and Linux. It's brief, but it fairly states the differences between Windows & Linux. Those are: integration vs. flexibility; user friendly vs. expert friendly; & propriety or single architecture vs. open architecture that runs on multiple platforms.
According to the article, Don Johnson makes no more assumptions than the parent as to what is "wrong" with Windows and "better" about Linux.
n/t
Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client? Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition?
FUD apparently goes both ways.
So far the Microsoft anti-linux campaign has been driven by FUD. Mostly anecdotal claims to shield the real battle between Windows and Linux.
Now they seem to really believe that Windows is superior. They believe it to the point of "proving" it to the users. I'd be interested to hear the reaction from the attendees. My guess is that a few PHBs got a reality check, linux is actually better off than Microsoft claims. A gutsy move for Microsoft IMHO.
I refer to my boss as the typical PHB candidate. 5 years ago my boss boldy told me "we will never be a linux shop". Last week I got our 3rd RHEL server up in production, and he's loving the cost savings. What made him change his mind? Opinions of other IT directors were a good part of it, but Microsoft helped a little too. He realized that linux was a viable product as soon as Microsoft started their anti-linux campaign. For Microsoft to launch a campaign against another OS must mean it has the potential of market share. A free OS with market share is worth checking out in his opinion.
I would be interested to see why they planned the high infestion rate of viruses in their products or what the advantage of this infestation is.
and it was obvious from the get-go that Microsoft was trying to make Linux look bad. Not only were the running KDE (does anyone use that?), they didn't have Emacs installed (just vi w/o the X version), and they were running it on some pretty crappy hardware; a PIII w/ 128mb of RAM, a toaster, an old shoe, and a moldy piece of toast still in the toaster (which they were calling a Linux blade solution).
/., wrote "erpCON 2005" on their white button down shirts, and had an odor that was detectable from 30 feet away, again all before lunch).
Despite M$ stacking the deck against Linux the audience was captivated by the capabilities of the system and the posibilities of FOSS. I even saw two MBAs port Linux to their iPAQs, pull some code off the Internet, teach themselves C and perl, and write a complete ERP system for their business (which they are submitting to SourceForge soon) all before lunch (as an aside, in that same time they grew beards, joined
Amazing how Microsoft's attempts to undermine the community were undermined by the community.
I once read that the best way to get someone to swallow a lie is to mix a little truth into it. They showed the people Linux, then showed them the propaganda, disinformation, and blatant lies of their "Get The Facts" campaign.
Google to the rescue! It's funny because I don't remember ever reading anything about that. Wierd.
1) Johnson seems to feel that one must know the command line to use Linux....
My parents have used Linux since Red Hat 6.2 (what, 7 years now?) and have been quite happy with it.
They don't have to know how the command line works. If that is necessary, I will walk them through it (haven't had to in years) but I do the same for WIndows customers so that doesn't matter.
Of course if you want to run a web server, you might want to know the basics of the OS you are working on and be willing to learn the command line, but that is another matter...
2) Integration of user experience: Both KDE and GNOME offer this sort of integration to a large degree. Larger OSS projects like OpenOffice also offer such integration within themselves.
3) The flexibility of Linux does NOT just come from the ability to tweek and recompile the software. Instead it is the fact that you have a lot of pieces that do things well and can easily strung together (by someone know knows the system) into more complex systems. There is no reason I could not write a Perl/GTK program that could take a large number of programs and automate them behind the scenes. For other examples, see FileRoller, SimpleCDR-Tools, and a number of other packages that can make people's lives a lot easier when it comes to Linux. But this is more of a RAD environment than a user environment.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
See, the nice thing about Open Source is that it exists as long as people keep working on it. So if Microsoft is trying to give people a bad impression, it will only work until they see the software functioning again in 3-5 years and see that it works well.
This way, Microsoft can show their strenght.
Windows administration is all about graphic tools, integrated with the interface. Personaly, I don't like them... but there are people who find them usefull.
I know that KDE has pretty advanced frontends to configure stuff, but they're not as "easy" as the Windows ones. For instance, there is no frontends readly avaliable for Apache, LDAP administration, DNS, DHCP and others...
While I know that tools like Webmin exists, and are very capable, an average person will expect something integrated into KDE.
Also, there are dozen of minor fauts, and rought edges on a default Linux/KDE installation that can be used by them to show Windows still has "superiority" on the desktop.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I wonder if this is the first wave of the new ideas Daniel's got for the Microsoft crowd. (see here for the backstory)
and bullshit..
"Linux runs on just about anything, whereas Windows has a targeted platform focus," he said, adding that one of the main reasons people started looking at Linux was to avoid vendor lock-in.
No. Try again.. People quit M$ because they are sick and tired of dishing out bucketloads of money everytime they want to do anything, because they are sick of rebooting 400 times a day, because they are sick of BSODs.. And on and on and on...
An entire OS on a single CDROM that does NOTHING out of the box except get you on the internet and get infected before you can patch it..
I didn't want to spend hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a word processor, a paint program, virus protection, firewall, etc...
For the cost of a blank DVD and an hour or so to download an ISO, I can have everything I want and more.
And the absolute best part is is that I no longer have the big pain in my wallet and my ass called M$..
Oh yeah, and I have ZERO pirated stuff.. ZERO...
No warez, no serialz, no gamez, nothing...
It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor)
Well, now he is.
JMHO.
I run various versions of linux, and windows, on the same PC all the time. Franking, in a 5 minute demo, I think windows would win. Especially if viewed by a total newbie, or somebody who only knew windows.
Windows has a sharp, snappy, display. Plenty of eye candy. Applications launch fast. Linux is okay, but I think windows would win *that* sort of comparison.
After a few months, of going back and forth between both systems; I think a lot of people would chose Linux. With Linux you don't get the software rot, or the adware/spyware/viruses. Also, once you learn a little bit about how to use linux, it's more powerful and flexible. And with Linux, you don't have msft on your back.
Again, all totally based on my guess.
Microsoft should get in bed with Linux and go to work. They keep trying to play with it. Microsoft could clean up if they had a Microsoft desktop environment or something similar. They did it with the Mac? With Office, why not write software for Linux?
They are acting like a bunch of babies, "We are Microsoft, we are better, so we won't worry about Linux.". What a bunch silliness. Same thing happened when they didn't take Java seriously. What JVM does Microsoft support, version 1.1? A 10 year-old could write an update to date virtual machine. Microsoft, get a clue.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
That one's a no-brainer. The high virus infestation rate is an incentive for sucke^Wcustomers to pony up the $199 for the upgrade to the latest and greatest. Clearly that is an advantage to MS' bottom line.
MS needed to be "hands on" because their "longhorn" was to "soft".
"Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client?"
The article didn't say but just in case this is what they are up to, I think real Linux users need to show up at these things with well configured modern laptops running the latest versions of Linux.
That way if Microsoft tries to "prove" Linux is inferior by running old and misconfigured versions we can say "And here's what it looks like if you don't try to screw it up."
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The truth is that this type of tent show will sell, because for the average user, Linux is not there yet, and really does not, can not compeat with Win2k or WinXP desktop. Not for the AVERAGE USER.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
What exactly is the source of these claims? Where is a report or a study of some kind that does not involve the beloved anecdotal "my friend Floyd used to code MFC but now he's a PHP developer, Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc" bullshit everyone loves to quote around here?
As a consultant I deal with a lot of companies and a lot of developers in the US southwest region, and I simply cannot relate this "exodus" of developer to what I see in the field, every day. I see PHP gaining some ground, but that's it. And sometimes it's even PHP on Windows, which is idiotic. But I digress.
I'm not saying it's impossible mind you, but It just occurred to me that maybe I'm actually missing something. Or is it just part of the same old "M$ is about to go under" absurd crap I've been hearing for the past 10 years or so? Because keep in mind that people were saying this in the alt.advocacy newsgroups back then.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Microsoft isn't willing to open up its source but by flying the flag of interoperability it's suggesting FOSS people can "seamlessly" move data across platforms.
Recently I've been doing alot of reading about The Xen virtual machine monitor and The Xen virtual machine monitor, interestinly MS is/was involved in both projects. There's never any doubt in my mind that the wet dream of every large corporation is to own everyone from the cradle to the grave. I've no doubt MS will never give up the idea of owning the web, and, further that interoperability is just another way to say "come into my web said the spider to the fly."
Behind it all, I suspect, is a gameplan that has MS software as a utility piped into thin clients in each and every household and business.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
When I teach free computing courses to the community, I often teach that a lot of the frustrations that many of us have with computers are a result of trying to make them user friendly. This is because the original idea of a user friendly computer was that the user should be completely abstracted from the operation of the software (think Mac OS 8). So we are left with an opaque "magic box" and when it breaks we feel helpless because the error messages aren't helpful.* Furthermore, not only did Microsoft completely screw up this concept and impliment it badly but nobody bothered to actually tell the developers that error messages like "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" don't help users feel empowered about their computers.
When I worked at MS (PSS), you would be surprised how many people calling tech support mentioned that their first reaction on reading this error message was that the police had been notified. Fortunately with ME and XP the inappropriate tone of the error was finally fixed.
Then comes the fact that many versions of Windows allow you to go ahead and destroy your system because there is no concept of permissions (Win 9x) and so users have become quite resonably afraid of destroying their system and losing their work.
Say what you will about Linux and userfriendliness. However, I have found that novices are quite easily able to feel comfortable quickly on Linux. Intermediate users take a little longer. And there have never been any of these alarmist error messages that bring to mind swat teams coming to one's door... I guess the most alarmist error message one can see in Linux is a "Kernel Panic" but for people who spend their lives in X, they never see the text of the error message.
Linux provides a more comfortable environment for learning how to use the computer for many users. I can't tell you how many of my customers are now using it for this reason. My cusotmers know that they can accidently delete their work, but they can't crash their system unless they are logged in as root. So they tend to be more adventurous about learning new things.
* Compare with a transparent system like Linux where often the error messages are very descriptive, but the user doesn't have to know what they mean. But when you call support, it is usually *extremely easy* to pinpoint the cause. For example error messages like "Error in line 156 of httpd.conf: tomcat.so Is this really a valid dynmaically shared object?"
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I believe that this is a falicy. I feel that sometimes that Linux-based Operating Systems (Especially Ubuntu) do have the same, if not more, hardware support. I have Ubuntu 5.04 and it picked up all my Centrino hardware, which pleased me to no end. XP picked up the hardware, but did not configure it correctly as Ubuntu did. I mean honestly, the balls on Microsoft must be big to say such a statement without checking out the competition thuroughly.
My 2 cents, take it or leave it...
"C++ is to C as Lung Cancer is to Lung"
I'll bet the 3rd party was Novell.
Novell and microsoft seem to get by with each other well enough, and I could see them allowing them to make a demonstration.
That said, I'm sick of the lack of innovation on Microsoft's behalf in their OS department. That ALSO said, I don't think that there's much more that a desktop OS should offer that Win2000 doesn't already offer.
Longhorn will be a step in the right direction, but 2000/XP are minimal enough to leave a very low overhead and not be noticed too much. Personally, I like it when the OS isn't in your face. Until Microsoft can justify the whiz-bang features in longhorn that will suck up my resources, I'm quite content to devote my processor time to the applications i'm using.
Yes, I also use a mac and love that too, and I find it hard to have some sort of happy medium where you have the minimalism/low overhead that I like. Windows sucks at managing multiple windows -- this could be improved, and linux/macOS have a definite advantage.
But, on a whole, since switching back to windows from my mac after 2 years for work reasons, I'm finding that despite the loss of all of the cool producitivity-boosting features MacOS has (dashboard, iPhoto, Expose, etc.), Win2000 satisfies my needs just fine.
Microsoft is going to have a hell of a time pushing OS upgrades to corporations from now on. Windows as an operating system would seem to be almost complete (apart from a few glaring security things). All they can do now is tack stuff on top.
Linux on the other hand, needs to figure out what it wants itself to be. It's in an eternal conflict between being super-feature-rich(KDE/Gnome), and being uber-minimalistic (you're forced to go to the command line on a daily basis. this is something that almost never happens on other platforms, and rightfuly so). Comparing a linux desktop to Windows is just embarrasing for linux.
Comparing linux to MacOS is humiliating. With a tiny team of developers (compared to MS/Linux), apple built an OS in 5 years that is considered by most to be the most 'modern' operating system available to consumers. Sure you can debate this, but OSX/Darwin has stuff that windows and linux are hurrying awfuly fast to copy.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
In contrast, if Microsoft keeps mentioning Linux and rants like a mad dog, people think, "hmmm, there might be something to Linux. If MS is afraid, I should give it a try." It's a basic fact of human nature. It's like dating. If a guy is average looking, but has no girl friend, other women won't be interested. On the other hand, if he has a girl friend, or appears to have a girl friend, other women will be interested.
As more and more people try linux and move away, the holes in Microsoft's armor become bigger and bigger. After a while, it looks more like chainmail than plate armor.
It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with
Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks.
omg that hurs my brain to even look at, let alone read um, learn html?
There's a good article on Groklaw about Anti-Linux Strategy for Microsoft.
The high virus infestation rate is an incentive for sucke^Wcustomers
One day they'll invent a key that allows you to delete previous characters, so that people will no longer have to type "^H" or "^W." I imagine it will be called a "delete previous character" key, or perhaps a "backspace" key.
Who knows! The future is limitless.
Take this for example.. This is just an example of some of the fud mixed into the article. Although some (very few) people have problems with devices on linux it is no worse than Windows 2k/XP SP0. And those ( minor ) problems doesnt need to be brought up. This doesnt do Linux much good either.
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
"Many open-source applications, like Apache, now also run on both Windows and Linux, "which is something to bear in mind," he said." What he didn't say is that Windows is prone to crashing for seemingly no reason at all. Even if you have an open-source application that was ported to, or written for Windows, you still have that inherent problem. I have both Windows and Linux boxes running at my home. I have never seen one of my windows boxes go for more than a few days without one of the core processes failing and the computer requiring reboot. My linux boxes go months at a time and usually only go down if a package update goes awry. It comes down to which platform does the open-source application run BEST on, not, "Does it run on it?"
I just installed Linspire for my father (57 years old, non-technical) after his PC went down due to virus/spyware infections.
Regardless of your opinion of Linspire as my choice, he prefers it to windows. He loves the Click-and-Run. According to him, "it has EVERYTHING you could possibly want to run".
I like the fact that he's much less likely to get viruses and spyware.
True, he only uses it for surfing the web and playing solitaire, but still... Linux on the desktop is going to make a bigger and bigger splash.... no matter what Microsoft does or doesn't do.
it merely tolerates until such time as it figures out how to assimilate or destroy. Granted, it's been having a harder time with open source than it has usually had with past enemies, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft would willingly share the table with Linux or anything like it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Microsoft, the company that was caught faking evidence in a court of law, the corporation which lies, cheats and steals, showing its competitor's OS to the public?!
And I'll bet Microsoft chose the most stable, up-to-date and secure Linux distro complete with all available apps, necessary configs , upgrades and patches, right?
Not a chance. If Microsoft did that, then people would immediately switch to Linux once they compared the two OS's - I've seen it happen all too often when people compare the two.
Microsoft doesn't even understand Linux. If they did, Windows wouldn't be the piece of crap it is today.
Never believe what a company is telling you about their competition's products.
OS X excels at being a desktop operating system, Linux, not so much. In fact I can't even think of a thing Linux does well at.
They're going to show how bad Linux is by trying to run Australian tax software on it.
Anonymous Coward
I'm replying to this stupid post to undo my stupid moderation
Proposed names for this fabulous new key:
yes i agree. http://www.throughsearch.com/
Coexistence fine by me, but you have to put the weapons down. Beat every last sword into a ploughshare. Promise not to use any that you may keep by accident. Show by deeds that you mean it.
No warranty, of course, but safer that way.
From this example, we can see that Microsoft is its own worst enemy. Even with Linux running in front of them, even with the source available for any to see how to do what Linux does, they still can't do it. Because they're bought into their own BS, they they're selling so hard to everyone else. As long as they insist that their bugs are features, they're stuck with the bugs - and so are their customers. As people try to escape their bugs, and run into all their monopoly setups to discourage switching, people will also see the monopoly more. So MS will insist that the monopoly is good. Which will keep the ball rolling, until MS is deader than SCO.
--
make install -not war
The Apache people need to either
1) provide a simple API to manage the conf files (wow, a subsystem that is responsible for serializing its own config data... who heard of it?!)
or 2) recognize an important GUI and write a KPart or similar to handle the conf files.
KDE cannot be expected on its own to attain the kind of expertise with disperate conf files necessary to competently administer an enterprise server installation.
AND the same goes for xorg and samba projects.
I think we would be better served by a drop down menu with choices about deleting the last character, word, sentence, paragraph, etc. Perhaps this could be a new feature developed for Longhorn and backported to XP.
Oh, don't forget lots of "Are you sure?" boxes to click on.
Sorry for the rant, I've spent the last 8 hours supporting crappy MS programs for stupid people.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
I'm on slashdot so I'm too good to read the actual article, but I've heard about this technique before. Advertisers show both sides in order to appear "balanced" but actually show the bad side of the opposing product. Think those commercials that go something like "yeah there are plenty of cereals that have (some healthful statistic) but only ours has (omg this thing is even more healthful)"
"Introduction to Christianity" courses by Osama Bin Laden.
since 90% of what Windows has on Linux happens before the two are fully configured. What Microsoft brings to the table is an OS that can be admined by $12 dollar/hr employees instead of $50 dollar/hr ones. With hardware so cheap (and with value added upgrade cycles so short) this makes perfect sense.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The average user is too stupid to be able to run a firewall and antivirus correctly. They are too stupid to keep their Windows machine un-infected. They should run a system that makes it very difficult for them to break anything. Click on the "Browse the Internet" button and thats it. Certainly Ubuntu or MEPIS can provide this.
Windows ideally should only appeal to a small niche of users who are too dumb to operate an open system like Windows without getting destroyed, but not intelligent enough to type commands because its "too hard" and think all customization possibilities of a computing enviorment should be available with a single click somewhere.
"'Microsoft is unlikely to stop developers moving to Linux and open source so its best hope lies in articulating a strategy of co-existence to limit the 'damage' to its business.'"
Right. The need to make a living is what stops most developers from moving to Linux.
"Microsoft is going to have a hell of a time pushing OS upgrades to corporations from now on."
From now on?????
I was at my local Bank of America the other day and, curious about the screen display, I asked the manager what OS he was using. The answer: Windows 3.1.
This is a major corporation - with it's impending ingestion of MBNA, the biggest credit card lender in the US. Running Windows 3.1.
And MS is worried about competition from Linux?
The more Microsoft do things like this, the more it makes me believe that not only are they finished, but on a subconscious level at least, they know it and are actually conceding such.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Gates and Ballmer need to stay very punctual with their laundry and dry cleaning from here on, as I'm assuming they'll want something clean to get buried in.
Is that what you're suggesting them to do? They make most of their money from Windows, Office and SQL Server licenses. You're effectively suggesting them to sabotage about 37% of their revenue.
The Raven
microsoft is evil if it includes a web browser?
Microsoft is a monopoly on the Operating System market. This has been proven in court.
Microsoft have a relatively featureless, uninnovative browser compared to the competetion. Why is it so popular? It is because Microsoft are using their desktop OS monopoly to force people to use Internet Explorer (see Windows Update for example). Browsers like Firefox and Opera are put at a huge disadvantage.
If you were the boss of a browser company, I am sure you be complaining too.
Why is it ok for linux to include everything but the kitchen sink
Including multiple options is OK. I think there would be less complaints if Windows said 'Would you like to install Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera?'. It's not going to happen though, unless forced by the courts.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The whole reason that $50/h Linux admins (and therefore Linux itself) makes sense is that it doesn't require as many hours to admin.
The other thing you're overlooking is the consequences of "you get what you pay for". A $12/hour Windows admin just isn't going to be able to provide the same quality of work as a $50/hour Linux admin (otherwise, why wouldn't they charge more than $12/hour ? If they're good, they should be able to at least charge something like $30/hour ?), which again will increase the number of hours that you'll have to pay the $12/hour Windows admin. The quality of the functionaly equivalent jobs won't be the same with such as disparity between the per hourly rates.
Comparing the platforms based purely on a per hour admin rate, irrespective of the actual time and effort involved, is a way too simplistic comparison to be useful.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Microsoft will start to put products on linux when enough people are willing to buy them that it makes business sense to do so.
The following things, at minimum, need to happen first
1) linux users need to be willing to pay for software.
2) linux users need to accept that they will not get everything as source code, and that necessarily means that the overwhelming majority of platforms, distributions, and versions will not be supported.
Btw, Microsoft had the worlds fastest jvm when they were actively working on it.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
the reason you don't see an OS X vs Linux argument is because it's no better than an argument of BSD vs Linux, except the user interface is more refined, the support for plug and play hardware is fantastic, and the extensibility of the OS X environment can not be matched by any Linux distro. simply put: "no contest" is the reason you dont see the aforementioned argument spring up even on a cold day in hell.
Let the two-minute hate begin!
Read the article, the summary above doesn't do it justice.
"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" don't help users feel empowered about their computers.
Let's face it, you have to be knowlageable about the system to fix it. The system you know the best will always seem to be the most "user friendly". The idea behind any GUI (including windows) is to give a consitent visual human/machine interface so as to allow the user to map common functions across multiple applications and machines.
When an application using that interface walks all over itself, ("illegal operation"). I wouldn't expect the user to understand much more than "shit it crashed again?". I would however expect a Windows expert to "know" it means "application X screwed up at address Y and to contact the developer of application-X". Like-wise I wouldn't expect a user to understand the Unix message "Bad magic number." but an expert should "know" it means "bad library configuration, you need...blah, blah, blah".
I once worked with a comms driver that kept an activity log, it had phrases such as, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get" (meaning it had read, but not yet verified, a packet from the port). In other words you may be able to simplify the message but you can't simplify it's meaning.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
From the article:
What?! How on earth is the difficulty of installing a new operating system IN ANY WAY comparable to the difficulty of being physically prevented from doing something because of vendor-installed hardware, or even just vendor-installed proprietary software? Much of the vendor-installed software is specifically engineered to make it more difficult to alter or remove it. Unless I'm mistaken, no one in the Linix distro world does that... not even Apple. Is the author of this story changing the definition of "vendor lock-in" now?
The opposite might work more to their benefit: Get a random Gentoo zealo^H^H^H^H^H developer to give the demonstration, and see what kind of impression that leaves the audience!
going to MS is just naive.
I'm surprised that you see supposed "Linux" people saying, "wouldn't it be great if Microsoft open sourced Windows", or "hopefully they'll become more open source minded". It seems to me that people making these statements seem to have the view that Microsoft is fundmentally "good", and just currently misguided, and "we", the FOSS community, should "give them a chance."
Well, stop the presses. Microsoft aren't fundamentally good. They're a convicted monopolist, they use dirty tricks, they steal intellectual property from other companies they pretend they're about to partner with, to list a few of their sins.
Microsoft becoming a good FOSS citizen is never going to happen. Nobody should believe otherwise.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
From time to time I've explained the stability of some Debian based servers. When I state that they've had 100% availability or no down time whatsoever, I usually get blank stares from the non-techs and a "me, too" from the Windows fanboys. Then when I go on to clarify that this means no crashes, reboots, restarts, warm boots, cold boots or power cycles (neither scheduled nor unscheduled) that usually makes a positive impression. You just have to make sure you're using the same definition.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Backgrounder - still needs some work before it can become a proper movie treatment
Following on from the lowering of T1 into the foundary cauldren at the end of "Terminator 2 : Judgement Day", the steel was eventually used to make 1000s of paper clips. These paper clips each inherited a small part of the T1 intelligence, however, because of the heat, the software resorted to the evil, malicious intent of the T1 originally shown in "The Terminator".
Individually, these paper clips were harmless. However, when kept in a box, their collective intelligence could combine, such that they were able to execute Skynet's dastardly plans.
Out of a black-ops / skunk-works-type covert, federal lab arose Detypinator, who set out to detype the Skynet, and restore the paper clips to their original, benign uses - holding lumps of paper together, and annoying the hell out of MS Word users.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
OSX Desktop looks pretty but is slow and bloated.
KDE/Gnome Desktop looks fine but is much less slow and bloated.
However I expect I'll get chastised for this as everyone here seems to love OSX (even more than Linux)
[Disclaimer I have a G5, windows box and a linux box]
The assumtion that Windows is inherantly more time consuming to admin than linux is not neccesarily correct.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I know this will get modded down into oblivion, this being Slashdot where joining in the "windows sucks" choir is _popular_ and _fashionable_. But Windows XP is no longer Windows 98, and it's getting tiresome to hear the same rehashed bullshit that was only true in the 90's.
"People quit M$ because they are sick and tired of dishing out bucketloads of money everytime they want to do anything, because they are sick of rebooting 400 times a day, because they are sick of BSODs.. And on and on and on..."
No, again, XP is no longer Windows '98. Have you even used a Windows XP system lately? No, I don't think so. I haven't seen one BSOD-ing even once, unless there's actually a hardware fault. (E.g., if you think you're so l33t for running CL3 memory at CL2 and your CPU running 20% higher than the speed it was sold for. You can crash any system, Linux included, that way.)
"An entire OS on a single CDROM that does NOTHING out of the box except get you on the internet and get infected before you can patch it.."
Again, I'll call that fanboy bullshit. The last XP SP2 I've installed never got virused.
Oh, wait, you presumably mean "but if you install an old unpatched Windows 2000 with an unpatched IE 5 you'll get virused." Which is the usual fanboy loaded comparison: let's compare an old unpatched Windows installation to a new fully patched Linux box. Well, gee.
Well, you try running an equally old and unpatched Linux distro, and then we'll talk. You know, since Windows 2000 or '98 are the ones used to hand-wave through the "windows sucks" bullshit, it's only fair to compare them to a distro from the same years. I seem to recall that the statistic for 2000, was that you'd get rooted within half an hour if you went online without a firewall.
"I didn't want to spend hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a word processor, a paint program, virus protection, firewall, etc..."
Bullshit again. The Gimp, OOo and a bunch of others are available on Windows just as well as on Linux. Those of us who do pay for something else, pay for the extra functionality that Gimp, OOo and the others don't have.
"Oh yeah, and I have ZERO pirated stuff.. ZERO...
No warez, no serialz, no gamez, nothing.."
Well, neither do I. So your point is? The usual fanboy bullshit along the lines of "everyone is using Windows just because they pirate everything"? Or what?
It may come as a surprise to you, but even by BSA's bullshit inflated statistics, most people are _not_ pirates. And BSA exists only to cry "wolf!", so they do that lots. Yet study their inflated statistics for the USA or western Europe sometimes, and you might be surprised. There just isn't that much piracy to support the fanboy idiocy that everyone running Windows is only doing it because they pirate everything.
It may come as a surprise to you, but some of us actually _paid_ for Windows, and for everything else on it, and found it worth every single cent. And why not? If the choice is between (A) a system which costs money, and (B) one which is utterly useless to me, trust me, I'll fork over the dough for A every single time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You don't get it - in some old shells, which don't support backspace, pressing the backspace key produces an output of ^H. Thus the user pressed backspace, but ^H appeared. Get it? It's a *joke*.
BTW: what is the key on your keyboard which is equivalent to ^W? Who's going to be faster - you typing Backspace 10 times or me typing ^W? Thought so - shut up Winderz loser....
My comment is directly based on how often I have to upgrade my Linux box due to security updates verses how often I read about "critical" MS security patches on Slashdot. It is also based on what my friend says about the Linux servers his work run verses the windows servers and desktops they run. I'm fortunte that I got out of Windows desktop / server administration before the Internet became popular, and therefore these problems became common.
Windows advocates are more likely to make assumptions than Linux advocates. Windows advocates usually haven't used Linux at all, yet they're willing to repeat what other people say about it, without having any personal experience to indicate to them that what they are saying is the truth. It is hard to provide realistic or credible criticisms of something that you don't have any experience with.
Linux advocates are usually ex- or even current Windows users (sometimes not by choice, due to their work situation), so they're typically speaking with a level of experience.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Would it not be more appropriate to license your post under the FDL instead of the GPL?
What I think they're overlooking is that the "Integration" problem of Linux is something that used to be, and still is, a problem for the Computer Operator (he who came before 'sysadmins'), and that seperating this 'problem' into different roles of administration, you actually put the User/Operator positions into a better perspective.
Integration isn't supposed to be a user problem. Its supposed to be a problem of the person who is setting up and responsible for the computing system being used in the business case.
Microsoft have made a great deal of hoop-lah over the years over the fact that "you don't need a sysadmin to run Windows"
But it seems to me that, conveniently, they're overlooking the fact that Linux, in fact, makes better Computer Operators; you don't really get a fully-Integrated computing system based on Linux without at least performing some of the 'old-school' functions of the Computer Operations hat. And, if you put that hat on and do the job properly, regardless of if its full-time or not, while using Linux you actually learn the bits you need in order to maintain the operator function during the course of use of the system by the business.
I believe in the separation between "Operator" (what some people call 'Administrator') and "User", and I believe that OS's that provide modular functionality for the "Operator" to apply in building a working, productive computing system end up in a better "User" experience. One thing I have always abhorred about the Microsoft way is that they seem to have tried to build one tool that does many jobs; e.g. I don't want to have to use a GUI if all the machine is going to do is serve files
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The answer to the question, "why Microsoft is considered evil if it includes a web browser", is because used that bundling to illegally leverage its desktop monopoly to break into the browser market. Just search on for the case The United States of America versus Microsoft Corporation. You'll get way more than just MS vs Netscape.
That's also why most people consider Microsoft's "Linux Lab" to be some sort of sham, based purely on the company's record of past behavior.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I'm sorry but you have just pegged my wrong-o-meter. This has to be the stupidest piece of common usage going around at the moment.
COULDN'T care less. If they could care less, then that means that they care doesn't it? You mean that they don't care - ie. they couldn't care less.
Honestly people, it's not that hard to THINK.
"Microsoft have a relatively featureless, uninnovative browser compared to the competetion."
Well, good, because that's how I like my browsers. It's a browser, FFS, not a whole operating system. _All_ it has to do is render HTML pages. If it does that well, I'm perfectly content with that.
(And before you scream "Windows fanboy", go tell that to the makers of Firefox then too, because that one too had the goal of being "just a browser" all along.)
"Why is it so popular?"
Because back when it still mattered, and the browser market was up for grabs, Netscape was a festering pile of shit. It's easy to blame it on MS's OS monopoly and unfair practices, but the fact remains that Nescape was a buggy crashing mess on any OS, including Linux (yes, I ran it on Linux too) and on MacOS (yes, we had to test our web apps on Netscape on macs, too.)
Again, feel a need to scream "Windows fanboy"? Well, go tell that to the Debian developpers too, then. One of the standard Gentoo fortune cookies is of them joking about using Netscape's crashes to close several windows with a single click, and how that's progress.
And then came Firefox, which was for ages just vapourware. No, lemme rephrase that: it took years before even being worthy of being called "vapourware."
Instead of making a browser when it mattered, and when the market was up for grabs, they went into fantasy land and spent years coding their own widgets (yeah, I sooo need yet another widget set that doesn't act like any other app on that system), and their own bug tracking system (good one, no doubt, but not a browser), and god knows what else. That's _years_ spent reinventing wheels that already had been done better, instead of actually making a damned browser.
There were _years_ of IE being the _only_ usable choice. I don't know about you, but in my book that's reason enough for it to own the market.
"If you were the boss of a browser company, I am sure you be complaining too."
If I was the boss of a company who lost the market because they had a total crap product in the first place, and then spent years re-inventing the wheel instead of having a replacement product to sell... well, yes, guess I too would blame it on Microsoft. Beats accepting the cruel reality.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's a terrific idea! Menu options for deleting chars, words etc. Maybe then I could map some shortcuts to those, like ^W, ^K, or backspace? I'd love it!
Not to forget about Clippy: "I can see you're trying to delete a word for the first time. Do you want more information on deleting characters and words? [YES] [NO, TELL ME ANYWAY]"
"It looks like you're trying to remove something. Do you want to...
[_] delete your document
[_] delete all items in My Documents
[_] wipe out your user account
[x] delete your entire hard disk?"
Quote: Linux has been written for those who have more IT expertise and knowledge, whereas Windows is designed from the ground up to be user-friendly: "There is a steep learning curve associated with using Linux," he said.
Rubbish.
I have Linux desktop users who are every bit as productive, as they were on MS Windows, after and hours tuition. I have others who are confident, after playing with a Live CD distro, without any input from myself.
Desktop Linux is no more difficult to learn than it is to learn XP when upgrading from 98 or ME.
I am really getting sick of all these comments about user-friendly linux and how this is the magic bullet we need. The truth is I could not care less about having pretty icons, and flashy graphics. My biggest gripe with Linux is driver support. There is not nearly enough for it. Vendors do not care what you run, and in the case of some wireless vendors have refused to give any support. This has cost so many developers time, as they reverse engineer the constant in-flux of new hardware.
Windows never has this issue. Partially since vendors provide drivers until Windows places something into the system. There are valid criticism in the driver support, and the best solution is not to keep reverse engineering them, but to have vendors support them. The only way I can think of is boycotting them.
In the above picture, I've naturally left out the commercial interest in improving Linux. Suffice to say that distros and tools are now embedded in a far more competitive environment, because of the relative ease of transition between distros and tools. This means that good enough is no longer good enough, especially if the free tools are perpetually playing "catch-up". Perpetual innovation is now the rule for a successful company that is using Linux as a base.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Right, or rather it's just because Mac sucks rocks?
Trying to use it is like trying to work with your right hand tied to your left ankle behind your back, it's slow, it only runs on overprized proprietary hardware (don't give me that bullshit about the "value" of bundled applications, I don't want them, thus they are worthless), it cost money and it patronizes the hell out of you. And did I mention that it sucks?
You are entirely correct. No contest at all.
That is quite a generalization; install Debian from CD and then repeat your claim that Linux lacks a raw quantity of apps. If I were to claim that MacOS lacked apps because I was, say, a gamer, a textile designer and a studio engineer would promptly collapse on the floor laughing at me.
Likewise with Linux. As someone who runs a full compliment of business-class network services in my house, I view your claim with amused skepticism. In the future, aim for more precision in your statements.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I have a 75 mhz IBM thinkpad 365XD which runs linux, slackware 10.1 with Xfce and alsa. This was originally designed for Warp OS2. If I put a good bit of effort into it, I could probably force this laptop to run Windows 95... which isn't supported or even close to resembling secure any more since it has been dropped form MS's radar.
I also have a small development server at my home running Slackware 10.1 with Apache, ProFTPd, BIND, IMAP (etc), which is used from a 395mhz Athlon K6, which barely ran windows 2kPro.
I think a lot of businesses, especially small to medium sized businesses are in the same boat. I have a couple of new-ish computers that run XP, but half of my equipment is sadly outdated. Microsoft targets businesses with brand new servers, brand new workstations, brand new computers, slam full of RAM with uber-processors and an army of people who can barely check their email using Outlook. I would think (in my opinion) that they just don't want their bankrolls, er uh... prospective clients I mean, to see that other smaller businesses without an unlimited budget are using Linux and Unix with success.
Microsoft isn't evil. They're a business trying to make money. No one complains when the Ford car salesman talks bad about Chevy's, or when the Dodge car salesman talks down Hondas. It's part of having a business. You make money by targeting groups of people. Microsoft is doing just that.
Meanwhile... I'll stick with Slack. Not only does it "just work", but it works one heck of a lot better than other OS's on my sadly outdated equipment.
Evil Walrus >83=
What's that smell? Smells like a zombie infestation in here. Bunch of anti-MS whiner zombies mixed in with generous helping of Linux-elitists zombies....If there's an ounce of valid and worthy conversation in here, I'd be surprised.
It all depends on the job you're doing. I have power tools that I use for working at home that are *very* simple (and unfriendly) and downright distructive in if not used properly (think SawzAll. This tool lives up to its name! Come to think of it, all of my Milwaukee tools fit this description). I have other tools that contain lots of safety features that don't let me do dumb things.
With linux, I use fluxbox + xterms (when I want to do graphical stuff) because much of anything else gets in my way. With windows, I don't have the option of getting a low-impact UI and I can't circumvent the existing UI by edting text files. It would be nice if MS (or another party) offered a reduced feature UI for users who aren't interested in the safety features.
Until then, I'll have to make due with cygwin and the Win2K interface.
That must have been useful. I mean, considering how you can't download Apache installer packages for Win32 and try it out right on your own Windows desktop, I can see how people would clamor to see this hard-to-get product do its thing.
Oh, wait...
Read my blog.
I'd love to see where these mystery pay rates come from, because here in the UK a Systems Administrator gets paid the same regardless of operating system. In fact, if you don't know *both* Windows and some form of UNIX, you're unlikely to be hired.
"That is quite a generalization; install Debian from CD and then repeat your claim that Linux lacks a raw quantity of apps."
While Debian is one thing I haven't actually used, I've installed from SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake CDs, and write this on Gentoo. I'll still make that claim any day.
"Raw quantity of apps" means exactly nothing if it lacks the one I need. As I've said, the computer (OS included) is just a tool to an end. If it can't achieve the goal I need, it's not the tool I need.
If my goal is to, say, unscrew the screws off a GBA, I'm not interested in a great toolkit with a hundred thousand kinds of hammers. It either has the screw-driver I need, or it doesn't. Raw quantity of everything _else_ doesn't even start to be a consolation.
"If I were to claim that MacOS lacked apps because I was, say, a gamer, a textile designer and a studio engineer would promptly collapse on the floor laughing at me."
The point being? If you're a gamer, MacOS certainly has a lack of the applications _you_ need. Even said textile engineer might not use a Mac at home, if their hobbies included gaming.
"As someone who runs a full compliment of business-class network services in my house, I view your claim with amused skepticism."
As someone who has zero need for business-class network services in my house, I'm not even starting to be impressed.
And even if I had a need for that, it still wouldn't cover everything else. That's usually the problem with such niche views of the world. RL uses of a computer at home aren't just restricted to "but it runs Mozilla and I can install Squid and BIND on it."
RL uses of a computer might also include stuff like, yes, games. Even people who don't define themselves as hardcore gamers, might waste some hours playing some ActiveX Windows-only Backgammon on MSN or some shareware Windows-only PacMan variant or whatever. (E.g., Mom falls squarely in that category.)
Or it might include stuff like editing digital photos in Paintshop. The Gimp is fine for cheapskates like me who only occasionaly recolor some texture, but it's not something I'd recomend to my elderly relatives.
Or it might involve, surprise, actually specifically needing a MS program. I've received more Word forms when last looking for a job than I care to remember, half of which were rendered totally screwed up in OOo. And both at this company and the previous one I have to deal with Excel sheets which (A) contain scripting, and (B) again, render like crap in OOo.
Or it might involve actually needing IE, because some site doesn't even work in Mozilla or Opera. E.g., I can tell you first hand that WebSphere's admin page is broken in Opera, although it does work well with Mozilla or Konqueror. E.g., the company I work for, let's just say their whole intranet is completely broken in anything but IE. With Mozilla, Opera or Konqueror you can't even log in properly.
Etc.
The point is that it's quite the opposite of "aim for more precision". RL isn't made of narrow neatly confined niches. It's made most often of having to deal with a rather broad spectrum of wildly unrelated stuff. And having maybe 50% of them covered by Linux, no matter how well, won't even start to be a reason to switch.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You might want to look at Libconf - it's a perl interface to configuration files that behaves pretty much as you describe.
I've been playing around with config_confd, a GUI configuration editor for Gentoo that uses it - it seems to work quite well, and could be useful for those with a console phobia.
"There are several competiting ideas in economics of what a monopoly is, and none of them apply to Microsoft."
Well, yes, I took the time to actually read the whole article from that link. Indeed it doesn't apply to MS, or for that matter to any RL anti-trust situation.
Now I'm not anti-MS, or by Slashdot standards I'm sure some would call me pro-MS or a MS fanboy. But that article still misses the point by a mile.
It's talking from beginning to end about a situation where prices are strictly a matter of supply and demand, and the ratio between production and demand is the _only_ factor that determines price. (I.e., a 19th century style economy of scarcity.) In fact, an economy where everyone, monopolists included, can _only_ vary production output to affect the prices. Where if one company's product is priced too low, the _only_ thing they can do to affect the price is to destroy some of their stock of products.
Which is a nice dream, but that's not how it works for software. With software there's essentially an _infinite_ supply of any given version of Windows. That's not how MS sets the price. The costs of printing a few more CDs are negligible, so any company ever won't have any trouble ramping up production to sell as many copies as you want to buy.
E.g., it pretends throughout the article that the only entry barriers are product diferentiation and economies of scale. I.e., as if the _only_ way a monopolist could possibly prevent you from entering a market are advertising, releasing new models, and pricing them dirt-cheap.
Which has not been the case in any RL anti-trust case (I don't think anyone hit Coca-Cola with an anti-trust case for marketting a lot), and certainly isn't the case with MS.
The entry barrier to compete with Windows has _nothing_ to do with advertising budgets or with how fast they release new models. (If that was the case, Linux distros releasing a new model every 3 months would have won already.) The real entry barrier is having to compete with the whole interlocking set of pieces, not just with the OS alone.
Ditto for economies of scale. The situation isn't that MS sells Windows very cheaply due to economies of scale. Though with duplication costs being negligible, they certainly could. The point made during the anti-trust trial was that the price per copy actually went _up_ steadily, i.e., in the exact opposite direction than the economies of scale said.
Also it's a straw man anyway, since all modern anti-trust cases have to prove that the price increased for the consumers. I'm not aware of any company being accused of monopolistic practices simply because they could manufacture stuff cheaper.
And generally, the thrust of the whole article seems to be "but in a free market that works flawlessly and _strictly_ by ideal free market principles, it's not even possible to have a monopoly!" Well, duh! Yes, indeed, that's the whole point.
And that's why RL anti-trust cases are all about preventing stuff that's deliberately disrupting the whole free market idea. E.g., stuff like price fixing. E.g., maintaining artifficially high entry barriers, via controlling more than one market segment.
That's what it's all about, not advertising and economies of scale. If you just stick to advertising and ramping up production, I do believe no government in the world will ever bring an anti-trust lawsuit against you.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition?"
Microsoft has been trying to push people away from their systems for years by making awful software. Not that many people seem to be straying away. The way I see it, people will suffer greatly before they switch to anything different.
I have a friend that I setup with a really nice Linux system. It does everything he needs. It does not crash, it does not blow up. Yet he still fights with his Windows system and the Linux system just sits there. Every time I talk to him his Windows system is doing something like crashing or rebooting.
I had a business partner that has a Windows computer with a virus that calls europe every 10 minutes. He can't install a virus scanner because windows is so busted that all the install programs crash. He has to unplug the phone cable then mess with it then get back online to do things. The funniest thing is that he has a brand new Mac Mini still in the box that has been sitting there for over two months.
I'm not kidding about either of these folks. What I have wrote is true. Maybe I just don't understand because I haven't used Windows in 10 years.
The above is not worth reading.
Sorry, wasn't any revisionist history, I meant the _Mozilla_ team went and made their very own widgets, skins, bug tracker, frameworks, and generally everything _except_ a browser for years. I know the "Firefox" branding is only recent, but, well, that's the kind of brain-fart one occasionally gets when writing in a hurry and hitting "Submit" without re-reading.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
HAHAHAHAHA, you mention RHEL, and "free OS" in the same sentence. Redhat and free go together about as well as Microsoft and open source.
I first got into linux .. pre 1.0.. back around 1993 or so.. I was pretty fanatical about it for like 5 years.
I just _now_ realized why I no longer really care about linux anymore, except as a tool.
The instant the community reached a certain critical mass and saw itself as capable of competing with microsoft, it was no longer cool, it had been dipped into the bullshit.
All the fud..
All the attention whores..
All the marketing..
All the money grubbing..
Ugh.. it's depressing to think about.. is there a beacon of hope, far away from all this garbage?
"You get what you pay for..."
No, you pay for what you get. If you believe you get what you pay for, my Nigerian and Russian friends have some Viagra they'd like to sell you.
I hate it when [insert pronoun here] people spout platitudes w/o thinking them through. Repeat it often enough and it's the truth, it seems.
In this corner, the emperor! (applauses)
In this other corner, Maximus! (more applauses).
NOTE: Maximus was wounded and he's handicapped so he won't be able to defeat the emperor.
And the winner is...?
When I was at Microsoft, one of my projects outside my department was helping to track down an app compat issue with Websphere 5 and Windows Server 2003. When you would install Websphere 5 on a new installation of W2k3, it would crash (applicaiton crash). After an hour or so with a debugger, running the installation on Win2k Server where it worked and Wind2k3 where it didn't, I discovered the source of the problem.
In Windows 2000, if the API to set an environment variable is passed a pointer to an empty string, it unsets the environment variable. In Win2k3, it sets the variable as equal to the empty string. This itself is not a problem.
However, the problem occurs when you try to *read* the empty string. When the empty string is converted from Unicode, the terminating null is dereferenced and the program crashes.
So I wrote the developers of the APIs and told them what was wrong. They responded that everything was in line with the MSDN documentation so it was an application bug and they weren't going to fix it. I suggested adding documentation to MSDN at least stating that this case was undefined (i.e. don't do it) but they refused to even take this modest step.
To be fair to the developers, I am sure that they had a lot on their plate and didn't want to be stuck with one more bug. But one could have at least documented it (it would have taken, what, two mintutes to edit the MSDN page, and probably a bit more management time to get it approved, but hey the MSDN folks aren't overwhelmed with release-related stuff in the way everyone else is).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Many open-source applications, like Apache, now also run on both Windows and Linux, "which is something to bear in mind," he said.
This doesnt do Linux much good either.
Au contraire... when you find out that all the apps you're using on windows happen to run on Linux too (and natively!), why not switch? When all windows users use a F/OSS app on windows (instead of say, photoshop, or maybe excel, etc), one of the major obstacles for switching to Linux will be gone.
Which is the reason I've been telling F/OSS programmers to write cross-platform apps.
Anyone raise hands who has ever had a driver not install properly in Windows?
I have had *logo-certified* (ATM adapter) drivers cause blue-screens in Windows 2000. And then in NT4, there were the drivers that would cause blue-screens if a service pack was not installed...
I have had printer drivers not install properly.
In general, your hardware choices are more limited in Linux. But the driver headaches are less too.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Or it gets the hose again. At least this is what I'm hearing whenever MS wants to talk about linux.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
Slashdot has tons of anti-MS bias, though. Linux definitely has it's fair share of security problems. They're just not as widely publicised. (I am one of the dual users you speak of).
And /. is whore-like with it's mandatory waits between posts.
Microsoft Hand-Job Linux Lab
Oh well, whatever it takes to get people to print your redderic.
I was responding to what appeared to be your claim that I was making an assumption without any evidence or first hand experience.
You are partially right in your assumptions. I don't use Linux. However, I do use the *BSD and get to chuckle at the Linux users every time a new kernel comes out and half of their drivers break.
Has never happened to me, that's probably because I'm using open source drivers for my hardware, and have been doing so since I first ran Linux in late 1992.
Those faults are blamed on Linux, of course the root cause is hardware manufacturers not releasing programming specifications. I personally would like to see an agressive non-binary module stance taken by the kernel developers, so that lack of reliable hardware support (or hardware support at all) is directly attributed to the hardware vendors, not Linux itself./p.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I would say that it is the opposite!
I can honestly say that out of the box - if you are prepared to go throught the half assed stages of driver installation (if this is a problem do some research make sure THERE ARE DRIVERS sheesh)- that for me, Slackware 10.0 (10.1) Linux (my Linux distro choice) is vastly more superior to anything Windows or Apple have ever made. And not just the greater spped an reliability. I mean, I used OSX - panther (I think - correct me if I'm wrong). The terminal didnt even have colors. I had to download colors for terminal from a GNU site and make install them. And..they sucked. I had to run everything like ' ls -ail --color ' CRAPPY and UNACCEPTABLE. For free, I get a terminal rich in colors by default. My choice of about 10 different window managers. Not jsut differnt crappy skins - WHOLE different Window managers. A vast array of tools available from the terminal that are simply not there with Windows or Apple. I can say honestly I just found the whole experience with Linux so much better, more stable, more "the way I want it". You make it the way you wwant it. If you are a sloppy informal person and make it half assed - thats your problem.