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Pepping Up Windows
PhairOh writes "Toms Hardware has an article about improving Windows with free and Open Source Software. It features everything from the obvious like Gimp and OpenOffice and also some interesting choices like Virtuawin. From the article: 'The average Windows user tends to be less than satisfied with Windows. And that's no surprise, either, given the rather woeful state of its default applications.'"
It's one thing to point out some nifty FOSS apps to people that may not have heard of them. It's an entirely another thing to jump on the anti-MS bandwagon and claim that this functionality should have been included in the OS.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Don't forget UnixTools, GVim, Password Safe, Paint .NET, Cruise Control, Subversion the list goes on to infinity.
This is a bitter-sweet pill. It's great that OSS is making the Windows platform so rich, it bad that it's creating inertia to change platform entirely.
I'd have switched to Linux a long time ago if the application stack for Windows hadn't been so greatly improved
by the army of budding OSS developers. Progress is being made though. I'll never use Microsoft Office again now that
I've fallen in love with Open Office 2.0.
It's no so much Open Office that made my mind up, it's the fact that we've got OpenDocument. OpenDocument is far more important that anyone really realises right now.
Why is it important? Well, I used to work for a company that wanted a web based way of doing sales quotes. The problem is that you need a nice document at the end where they can enter a bunch of text so that it feels tailored to that particular contract.
With Word this involved a bunch of mailmerging with the horrible Telemagic database with a bunch of Macros to create the document. With OpenDocument I can generate the base document itself from the database using any language of my choice. I can even add my own XML namespace so I can denote sections of the document that
were generated automatically and those that were added by the user.
The power of OpenDocument is not just in the ability to switch Office suites although that is obviously nice. It's in the ability for application developers to author and manipulate documents in powerful ways that simply aren't possible with macros or mail-merges.
OSS, through it's openness, is threatening to transform computing just like the PC transformed business. It's fucking awesome.
Simon.
Yeah, its on topic because you copy and pasted it from the article. Shame the mods modded you up instead of RTFA.
'The average Windows user tends to be less than satisfied with Windows. And that's no surprise, either, given the rather woeful state of its default applications.'
Not quite. The article has lots of great links and tools, but the majority of windows users are perfectly content. This is another great example of how someone's zealiot attitude ruin what could have been a great article.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I would guess that familiarity is one of the keys. My brother likes Windows because he can always count on an app looking somewhat like all the other Windows apps. That may or may not be true, but the impression is what counts for him. He also likes how everything installs relatively easily. All he has to do is download a program, click on the icon, and it is installed. He tried the copy of SuSE I gave him but was overwhelmed when he started getting messages about broken dependencies. I am not bothered by them, but he found the whole experience frustrating.
I know there is yum and apt, but my brother (and I assume this is true for people like him as well) has been using Windows for so many years that moving to another platform is equivalent to losing a pet animal: It is something he is just unprepared to consider.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I do. I play a lot of games on it. I do tinker with Linux because I'm always fascinated about learning "other" things. Frankly, I do not understand why folks "fight" over this. If somebody is happy and contented with what they are using then leave them be. If you are able to present an alternative that they eventually like and use then great.
Whoa wait a minute here....
They're less statisfied because of the woeful default applications, unlike Linux you have to buy/download all your additional tools.
However when Microsoft tries to bundle things with the OS to solve this problem (think IE), they're demonized for being a monopoly and trying to leverage their OS to cut out the competition.
So which is it? Do we want an all-in-one OS and application suite or do we want a distinct separation of the OS from it's applications to prevent abuse.
I am NOT defending MS. I'm personally on the side that they're exploiting a monopoly. However this means you can't expect everything to "be there" when you're finished installing Windows.
Just a random ponder.... I wonder when M$ or others will accuse SuSE or RH of trying to stiffle the competition by bundling apps with the OS.
</devil's advocate>
As much as I like Unix-style systems, they aren't for everybody. I think we all need to be less of a [platform-x] advocate and more of a [platform-thats-really-best-for-the-particular-use r] advocate.
To a lot of people, not having to even think about compatibility issues. They aren't "computer people", they just need to use this computer as a tool. They might not even like computers. For those people, as long as Windows is dominant, Windows may be their best choice. They don't want to use Linux. They don't care. They don't even care that it exists. I think that Mac OS would be better for them as far as usability goes, but not for compatibility, which, for them, is likely more important.
I don't like spending a lot of time with a washing machine; if the one I have works, and accepts the detergents I can buy at the store, then it's fine with me... although some clothes-cleaning experts may be more picky. :-)
If you want a dedicated terminal emulator replacemet for the truly sorry Windows telnet and HyperTerminal programs, Simon Tatham's PuTTY is an excellent choice. It also includes a solid scp (secure copy/ftp) client.
Cygwin in particular is what keeps me from chucking the whole thing and running Linux. I get all the command line scripting and Unix-like tools without the bother of having to figure out how to make my employer's mail client work on Linux.
At the very least I'd like to see compelling evidence supporting the statement. "The average user" is probably frustrated with computing in general, "the average user" hasn't tried any other operating system, and in my experience, when "the average user" tries another platform, the initial frustration spike caused by evertyhing being slightly different, is enough to see them run back to suckle at the Microsoft's corporate teat.
I sometimes feel I'm in a silent majority here, who actually acknowledges that all their average user friends except the arty kid, not only user windows, but haven't even considered anything else.
Windows itself isn't actually better in this regard (the operating system isn't necessarily better for gaming), but the net effect of its popularity is that more games are written for it.
I myself am not an avid gamer; I still play my Sega Genesis every now and then, and some freeware arcade games on my Mac. I spend most of my home computer time working with digital photography, writing, web browsing, and programming, all of which work great on a Mac. If I were an avid gamer, then a Mac probably wouldn't cut it for me.
Bingo. But the topic becomes integration versus bundling. There is nothing wrong with providing a tool, such as including a web browser, chat program, mail program, graphics program, word processor or so on.
The link is not between the operating system and the applications, but the act of choice.
The key to Linux is that inserting a CD doesn't give you every tool you could want, but rather you need to tell it what you want by selecting "hey- I need productivity tools" and clicking it. You need to go "hey I need to dialup to the Internet" and install modem and PPP tools.
Contrast that to windows XP that offers _NO_ choice to software installed. If you think there is choice, you're thinking of Windows 2000 or 98 where they let you check off whether you wanted media player and outlook express (be it that it may only hide them, it still does the same end effect for the user). Windows XP installs do not prompt for software inclusion (maybe if you start tweaking INF files...).
Media player just shows up as the default media player and takes over associations from time to time. IE pops up for a Web URL and has an icon on the desktop by default. An install of XP doesn't give the user a choice to say "you know what- FireFox is the browser for me. no thank you " and then install FireFox. It doesn't give you the option to decline installing media player. Sure you could go through a nest of confusing (to a new user) menus for Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/remove components | system components | media tools followed by a very full dialog of information.
Given that, there is a degree of tools that are necessary and don't really compete with their counterparts. Notepad is a good example, as well as calculator. These are handy tools that don't mean a lot, and if you do need a powerful solution, you'll get UltraEdit or similar. These are arguably a part of the O/S that may or may not need removing.
So where am I getting at? The key reason why Microsoft got in trouble was it's INTEGRATION (IE as a part of the OS) and LACK OF CHOICE (media player installed by default) and not the fact that it was bundled on the CD. It's that no matter what a user thinks, IE is installed. That no matter what you say, you're getting a copy of media player that will always come up from time to time. That the user is not INFORMED that "hey- I have the option to install media player... maybe there are better/other players out there I should research and find something that is faster".
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
this lasted until i got a dvd drive/burner. dvd functionality in winxp is null -- then i put os X on my mac and now the win XP box gathers dust while the other 3 os x machines are the ones that get used. the bundled apps with os x are very cool (without trying to "dominate" the market). (for an extra bonus, dig through the applications directory in the osx10.4 dev folder. some real gems in there.)
so yeah, i LIKE to us os x, while i use winXP when i HAVE to (usually when i'm cleaning malware off my friends computers).
maybe vista will "catch up", and perhaps even be better than os x, but to do that, it'll have to be an exceptional experience indeed.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Well put. These are two programs the average user would actually use. Cygwin? If I put that on my mom's computer, she'd probably hit me.
I like windows. There.. I said it. Will anyone on /. actually continue to read my comment? Only time will tell....
And it's not just because I'm an MS fanboy either. It's a good operating system.
It's stable. It has gone BSOD on me a few times, and that was because I had a bad HP print driver that was bringing it down. I never feel a need to reboot it because its "getting sluggish". The programs that crash on my PC most frequently are Mozilla Firefox followed by Microsoft Outlook. In fact, I prefer when Outlook Crashes. It just restarts and repairs itself and I pick up where I left off. When FF crashes, I usually lose 10-20 tabs that I was looking at and will never recover.
The software is good. Despite /. popular opinion, MS Office is good software. I tried using OpenOffice once, and it was just as good. But the Mail Merge interface sucked, and that was an important feature for me.
It's faster. My 1.8ghz Celeron laptop with 192MB of ram runs Windows 100x better than Linux. Fedora Core takes significantly longer to start up and feels more sluggish when running applications (I use gnome, the FC default environment).
Easier to install applications. I think that's a given. Linux needs a better package installation system, period. Yum and apt are good, but they don't hold a candle. Windows' automatic updates are far superior to RHN
Configuration Utilities. They're just better in Windows. Period. The closest that I've ever had to get to a command line for Windows Administration is the "ipconfig" utility. Windows doesn't have nasty configuration files. I've only HAD to enter the registry to fix something (which is nasty) once.
Even when there is a GUI configuration tool in Linux, I have a hard time finding it in FC. There are at least two different interfaces to configure network adapters, but only one of those two interfaces can start/stop the network card. It just doesn't make sense.
As a disclaimer, I am not a sheltered Windows fanboy who has only ever tried Linux out for 5 minutes. I do all my my development for CS classes in Linux, and I am no stranger to the command line. I *do* run Linux on my laptop, but the most common way for me to interact with it is by running an X server on my windows machine and an ssh connection to the laptop.
I am convinced that Open Source development is a superior model, but I am not convinced that Linux is a superior system simply because it is an open source OS. At least not on the desktop.
Mac equivalents include WhatSize (free), OmniDiskSweeper (commercial and no reason to buy it, as WhatSize clones it completely), and even the Finder.
The problem is that I spent a long time on hibernation, and while I could sometimes get it to stop properly, it almost never restarted properly.
For sleep mode, Linux would usually work; but again, not always. I have far fewer problems with Windows than I did with Linux.
For the network: I know that Linux will do DHCP. That's how mine was configured. My complaint was that if I managed to make the laptop go to sleep on network A, and it woke up on network B, I would have to manually do the ifdown/ifup dance. Windows seems to assume that if it has gone to sleep it needs to renegotiate the network config when it is woken up, which is a safe assumption much of time, and a harmless one the vast majority of the time.
I'll admit that I don't mess around with changing my display resolution much; except that when I am docked at the office, it seems silly to be stuck in a 1400x1280 60Hz display if I have a 1600x1400 85Hz capable monitor sitting right in front of me. And that, plus the real, full-sized keyboard, is the only necessary justification for docking; anything else is just gravy.
Regarding the CDRs: the unfixated disks require something called DirectCD (part of the Roxio suite of products) in order to read; nothing else has been able to read them on any platform I've tried. I was stunned too.
And I've tried WINE. I even paid for CrossOver. And there are still some things that don't work under it (the Cisco switch management applet thing is the current gate).
The point of all this is that yes, I could do much (perhaps all) of my list on Linux; however, I'm not an 18-year-old living in my mom's basement anymore. I have a life, a wife, and a child; I no longer have hours and hours on end to fiddle with this and tweak that or whatever. If I can get things done without the fiddling and fussing it works much better for me, and for my employer.
But keep hacking on this stuff. Once it all "just works", I'm sure I'll come back to it because I really hate Windows. I just need it right now.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.