Windows User Experiments With Linux for 10 Days

An anonymous reader writes "Clarence Ladson over at Flexbeta decided to kick Windows to the curb for 10 days in an experiment to find out just how hard it would be to 'quit cold turkey' and move entirely to Linux. It's amazing how many day-to-day operations require the inadvertent use of Windows in our daily lives."

Comments

Necessary Evil

[kkirk007]

As much as we all hate it, we have to keep Windows around for some necessary things.

If nothing else, then at least to play a lot of our games.

Re:Necessary Evil

[Tim C]

If you wanna play games, go get a console.

I was round a friend's house the other weekend, and she fired up Halo 2 on her XBox, and I was struck with how primitive the graphics look. Sure, an XBox is a damn sight cheaper than my PC, but I can see why.

Computers are for serious work.

You elitist snob - my computer is for whatever I choose to use it for, and I'll not have anyone tell me different.

Re:Necessary Evil

[NickFortune]

The only problem with windows, is that it is designed for the Average User.

And that it has this pesky forced upgrade cycle thing. Oh, software bloat to drive hardware upgrades. And serious secuity issues stemming from an unwise level of integration. Which is an instance of a larger problem: fundamental technical decisions being made by marketing staff rather than techies. And then there are the licencing terms which mean that you don't own your OS, and which reserve for MS the right to monkey around with your system at any future time. And there's proprietory file formats, and vendor lock in. And some of us have concerns about how spyware-friendly windows appears to be, especially in the light of the Claria/Gator aquisition.

But apart from that, you're dead right. The only problem with windows is that it's designed for the Average User. Oh, and a few of us dislike windows because it supports an illegal monopoly which has a well documented history of unethical and anti-competitive business strategies,

But apart from all that...

Re:Necessary Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's business practices are no different than any other corporation and in many respects they're less aggressive, like compared to precious Apple who locks down everything they produce from competition. So you're really not bashing Microsoft at all, you're bashing capitalism and we all know the alternatives don't work so get with the program.

You're right, Microsoft won't be on top forever but will be for a very long time because it's such a well-run and adaptive company. Microsoft is the winner right now because they're outsmarted the competition but nothing lasts forever. That's how the system works.

Re:Necessary Evil

[digidave]

Actually, configuration aside, learning Linux tends to be easier than learning Windows. Email, Internet and office are virtually identical. Users don't have to learn the hard way about email viruses. They don't have to learn the hard way that the Control Panel can be dangerous. All they need to learn is to click on the three or four icons at the bottom of the screen.

I put my mom on Linux and she has never used a computer in her life. Yes, she had a learning curve, but that was mostly with how to use the mouse. Now she's burning CDs (easier with Gnome than Windows) and emailing digital pictures (again, easier with Gnome than Windows' shoddy digital camera support).

10 days is not enough

[andy753421]

"It's amazing how many day-to-day operations require the inadvertent use of Windows in our daily lives."

Maybe this is true at first, however after several months of using Linux I began to see the FOSS alternatives to using windows and now I haven't had windows installed for about 9 months.

It seems like switching to Linux should be more gradual. Linux has a steep learning curve. If you try to jump in all at once your more likely to get a bad impression when you can't figure out how to play a dvd, or even 'mount' the cdrom drive.

My Wife, my mother and Linux...

[MosesJones]

I put my aged PII 400MHz home computer over to Linux a few years ago (well 2002 actually) and since then my Wife has suffered not a single case of having to reboot using the plug-socket, not a single crash and not a single failed application.

Until she got her iPod... so now we are buying a new PC, just so she doesn't have to use my work machine for iTunes.

My mother had an horrific attack of the virii which has meant I had to do a complete re-install of windows, and I've lobbed SUSE onto the other partition to help the recovery next time. My mother has elected to use SUSE to access the internet, and just go into Windows when she has to use the software from work.

My wife does email, internet, work processing and accounts, pretty much the same as my mother. BOTH have faired perfectly well with Linux (SUSE), with less hassle to me than on Windows.

And here is the kicker... installing Windows on a SATA drive was a pain in the arse, my mothers machine having no floppy drive and Windows not being able to detect the SATA (even in an SP2 install) SUSE 9.3.... had no issues and went straight on.

I couldn't WORK on Linux yet... but for the majority of INTERNET users who just want EMAIL, a browser and OpenOffice.... it really doesn't matter.

Re:I kicked Windows to the Curb, too!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not touching MS Office in part because I can't pay for it and I'm not going to do this copyright infringement thing.

I think it would be hypocritical of myself (and others) if I / they complain about GPL infringement when the complainers themselves don't care that they themselves are committing acts of infringement themselves.

10 days is not enough time to learn a new system

[hattig]

Disclaimer: I'm a Mac OS X convert as of two months ago. Before that I was a FreeBSD / Linux person that used Windows for various things (Office, games, etc) but without much enjoyment.

Windows: Tries to get in your way, force you to do things its way, doesn't provide a decent option to de-dumb globally. Office is a nightmare of over-featured bloat that most users will never use. When something goes wrong, it takes ages to fix because whilst you know what is wrong, Windows tries to stop you fixing it.

Linux / FreeBSD: Works well. If you know your stuff, it is easy to fix stuff and set up. I've had issues with upgrades however, after some time it will eventually mess up. Desktop applications are a mishmash of good and bad, or poorly thought out in a single crucial aspect whilst being very powerful.

Mac OS X: Doesn't get in your way. Allows you to actually get work done. Many applications are much more specific in their task (alternatively known as not having as many features, but the features that it does have actually work as you expect them to). Dashboard sucks. I don't think it can be beaten as an end-user operating system, however I can see that it lacks certain things that corporations would like in a desktop computer.

Computers come down to personal preference and what you are used to. If you only know how to do something in Windows and you aren't of a mind to sit down and learn how it is done in Linux or Mac OS X, then you are simply going to state that you need Windows for that task. Despite the frustration that you might have with it in Windows (e.g., tables in Word).

One thing that I like about Mac OS X is that it generally eschews the dozens of small icons in a toolbar that you can't really make out that well and thus never really use. Applications like Pages, Keynote, Mail and so on have a few buttons that bring up or hide inspectors or sidebars. A good design guide means that you'll always know how to do the common tasks (save, open, print) and you don't need a small icon that is hard to hit (Fitt's Law) present.

However it will take you a while to get used to this alternative way of working. Once you are there though, you will know you are more productive and find computing much less of a drag. What is unfortunate is that this goes for migrating from Linux or FreeBSD as well as migrating from Windows.

Also there are issues such as Logitech's APPALLING lack of support for Mac OS X for their webcam range. Canon's DIRE support for their scanners (hurrah for ScanVue). Samsung's AWFUL support for their printers (can't use my 1 year old ML-2250 under Mac OS X, but you can under Windows and Linux, sheesh). Now that the Mac seems to be having a small revival, maybe some companies will spend a little time on supporting it. When you run into something like this, it can be very demoralising, and appear as a negative against the OS.

But is there anything I *must* use Windows for? I can't think of anything in my line of work that couldn't be done in Mac OS X. However I think that there are big gaps in the software range for Linux, such as good finance/accounting/tax applications. Specialist software is another area where Windows can have a stranglehold, and if you use some of that, then you'll have issues.

Re:Microsoft in schools

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples and oranges. Coke and Pepsi sell their product to these companies, and in many instances, actually own them as part of their diversified portfolio. At one time Pepsi-cola owned KFC. Don't know if they still do or not.

Microsoft gives schools the software, takes a tax break for it, and then locks the schools down to using only their software, which benefits them financially in the long run.

And after the school has removed all Linux and gotten rid of the techs that used it, MS may NOT give them more software the next time they need it. In fact, they may force them to buy it.

This has happened. MS made a school remove GIMP, then refused grant to cover purchasing Photoshop.

Of course, I'm not saying this isn't brilliant. MS gives the school a disc which costs 27 cents and "bills" the US Gov for list price (through IRS), and creates a whole new generation of MS button monkeys.

I just think it's laughable to call it "charity."