Slashdot Mirror
A Continued Look at Linux vs Windows
Rogier van Vlissingen writes to tell us Paul Murphy has an interesting writeup on his blog about the continued Linux versus Windows debate with regards to some of the recent insights provided by various groups. From the article: "Disinformation comes in three major forms: innocent mistakes, intentional disinformation (aka FUD), and (self) delusion. Delusions are easily the most dangerous of these. In the IT context the most common delusion is simply that what we know is right in general or applicable to some specific issue when, in reality, it isn't. We know, and we act accordingly - with frequently catastrophic results."
who is paul murphy and why the fuck do I care what some blogger has to say? /. has gone from a blog reporting on news to a blog reporting on blogs. Why bother?
This kind of stuff is always an oversimplification. We are going to see these things forever. For instance the very nature of this discussion is already ignoring FreeBSD, Mac OS X, etc. and thats before they even get into their arguments about why linux is better then windows.
How do you compare Linux to Windows when there are hundreds of different linux distros that do things differently as well. It seems that the authors of these comparisons don't truly understand that this question can't be answered. Yet we will continiously see articles pop up that says one is better then the other and of course it will sway one way or the other depending on which OS the person who did the study is partial towards.
When I read the SI study, I was *horrified.* The paper was uninformative, the methodology was flawed, and the analysis was unsupported.
My favorite quote though from the article is this:
This is absolutely correct. Treat Linux as if it were Windows, or vice versa, and you are asking for real pain.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You're reading a Slashdot article...about a blog...which is criticizing a report...which is pretty obviously another paid-for-study.
Gah.
That's so many orders of removal away from meaningful content that it's amazing.
Plus, the argument is about the technical merits of Linux versus Windows. You know, I like Linux. I think that it's a pretty nifty system. But, I have to be honest. I think that the technical merits of Linux comprise a pretty small chunk of the real-world benefits it has over Windows.
I think that the biggest reason that I'd rather have a Linux box running something is just that the cluefulness factor of Linux folk tends to be significantly higher. Thus, the chance that the guy writing the software and adminning the machine actually knows what he's doing is significantly better. I know a couple of Windows hackers that I'd call competent, and one that's really good, but of all the Linux hackers I know, I can't think of even one that really doesn't know what he's doing, and most of them are extremely good. It's not that the Penguin is the end-all be-all, it's that his adherents are damn knowledgeable.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
that MS is first and formost a marketing company where its second place position is heald by the legal department which also partakes in chess (the idea of sacrificing your own to obtain an advantage worth more then teh sacrifice). Third place at MS is not even innovation but rather imitation or buyout ...
When you understanding this, you understand MS. To understand MS you know that what was once something ignored by MS, then laughed at by MS and then lied about by MS.... there is something of history in teh direction of open source software.
To compare Windows to Linux is like comparing carrots to meat and potatos....
Oh yah. "Real" reporters and "news" sources are never biased. Right.
...Goofus and Gallant!
Goofus would rather turn on his computer and be a corporate tool for Microsoft without giving a second thought to how much richer the world would be, intellectually speaking, if everyone spent a little more time actually learning how computers worked instead of learning MS specific pointy clickety stuff.
Gallant spends time learning about how to utilize the resources in his PC as efficiently as possible, sharing his knowledge with anyone who will listen and helping people to help themselved by using Linux as the primary operating system and open source applications for true productivity.
Goofus doesn't care how much bandwidth he uses while downloading internet pr0n with his insecure P2P client that has trojaned his system and turned his system into a spam bot while at the same time complaining about how slow his system is because it's over six months old.
Gallant is a polite internet citizen. "Wow. This ISO download of Fedora Core 5 is going to take me good long time to download. I've got 25 meg down available right now, but my neighbors on the cable system might need to download some things too. So I'll lower my downstream during daytime hours to half a meg and only go up to 2 megs between 2:00AM and 4:00AM".
Goofus thinks that pirating software is cool because it saves him money that he can use to fill the tank on his gas hog SUV. "Haw haw!! Adobe thinks that we're all suckers who will pay them what they ask for their crap program! I'll show them! I'm gonna fire up Kazaa and get it for free! I'm a revolutionary who's stickin' it to the man"!
Gallant respects software licensing: "No Jim Bob. You see, even though I no longer use Windows, I am well aware of Microsoft's licensing requirements and you can't just take that copy of Windows and install it again on your cousin's PC because it's a license violation. If your cousin wants Windows XP Pro, he's going to have to buy the legitimate upgrade copy from a valid retailer".
Goofus doesn't care about other people's property or privacy: "Hey... looks like that hot neighbor Jolene's PC is accessible in Network Neighborhood. Well, well, well... Let's have a looksee at what's ono her hard drive. Oooohhh... C:\Private\JPEGs\XXX\Me, Branden and Rand Partying. That looks like a keeper"!
Gallant warns his neighbors that their machines might be insecure: "Sorry to bother you Jenna, but I noticed that your computer is readily accesible to anyone else in the apartment complex. If you want I can show you how to make it secure". Jenna: "Why thanks Gallant! I'd like that. By the way, if you'd like I could make us something for dinner when you come over. It's the least I could do". Gallant scores.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Sure there are billions of blogs that are basically worthless. But there are also blogs that are doing real reporting, that are good sources of info.
Yes blogs are more biased. But they wear their bias openly on their sleeve. I greatly prefer that to a writer that pretends (even to him/herself) that they have no bias and writes what they think is "Objective" but always has a slant. I can read a right-wing blog and know where they are comign from. I can read a left-wing blog and knw where thety are coming from. If you range widley you can get a pretty good picture of what is going on, and a lot of interesting stories that the real media just pass right by or else make light notice of.
Furthermore blogs are often more accurate because they are (if the blog has a decent reader-base) correctly quickly. I've been involved with a few stories that have gone in the paper over the years and EVERY one of them had major facts wrong. Those are the ones I know about, how am I supposed to think that newspapers or other media get the other facts right as well?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder, is this an example of delusion that the author referred to? Do you really know enough about low-level kernel resource management and subsystems to judge that the unix architecture is superior? Or is this just something you "know" to be true?
Maybe I'm way off base and you have very specific reasons for believing that the unix architecture is fundamentally better. But almost everyone I talk to who complains about the "architecture" is really complaining about tools, like shells and programs (e.g., PHP, Perl, etc.), and is relatively clueless about the OS architecture (disclosure, I think the modern NT kernel is pretty well-designed, even if the default tools are sub-par.)
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I see the same problem when dealing with students who come from a Solaris or Linux background -- usually they get tripped up in IP address configuration, which is very different on Mac OS X than it is on a standard Unix system. The Mac OS X way is much more dynamic and self-configuring, but this means that essentially ifconfig(8) is only useful in a read-only mode and cannot be used to write changes.
My respect for Paul Murphy is only increasing.
--Paul
I sincerely doubt that the general /. reader dos not know of the alternatives. Actually I'd bet most of us has made up our minds and are more than willing to engage in a flame war to show our view.
:p
But lets face it:
Windows vs Linux is like my butt! Its divided, and no mater how shity one side thinks the other is, it's not getting rid of it.
www.aleo.no