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Switching to Windows, Not as Easy as You Think
rchapman writes "Mad Penguin writer Simon Gerber has published an amusing review of Windows XP as seen from a Linux users point of view. He really makes you feel like you are trying to use Windows for the first time after exclusively using Linux. The article covers everything from the hideous installer and its lack of partitioning/formatting capabilities to the utter wasteland that is the Windows desktop, devoid of useful applications and everything in between. A fun read."
I've read at least 5 different versions of such "reviews" over the last 5 years.
Bullshit. It IS possible to partition and format the hard disk in the installer. Is this so old or is it simply inaccurate?
Windows, properly set up and configured, is NOT the BSOD nightmare it used to be. It's entrenched and will be a very hard slog to fight against. For those wanting to change, there's a super-polished, UNIX user friendly, open-source running contender in Apple's OS X.
How many of you own Apple notebooks? How many have blown away OS X to put a PPC linux distro on there?
The fact is that Windows isn't that bad, and Linux is going to do a whole lot better on the desktop if we want to make inroads there. Linux is already taking over places where the user experience is negligible or tightly controlled, for example, in the embedded, RTOS, and industrial worlds.
Fun article, but Microsoft moves forward, too. If Vista is a marketing success, then MS will dominate for a long time on the x86 desktop.
..don't panic
http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/20 33216&from=rss Not sure if the author of the new one got the idea from this.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
How about doing a review from the perspective of someone who has never used a computer before - then lets see which one is easier to use (hint: the answer will be Windows XP by a massive margin).
This "review" is flawed in so many ways it's not even funny - of COURSE a UNIX nerd is going to hate Windows, and vice versa. In fact it's even worse than the various Microsoft "independant" TCO studies, because at least they try to hide their bias.
is neither easy, nor amusing. It's the same from BSOD to BSD.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I must say, I am not particularly impressed by Windows XP. To be fair, it has made great strides forward in both stability and usability. Security is improving, but still has a long way to go
How would a newbie to Windows realize great strides in both these areas? Answer me that Jack!
I was typing one day, at work. Just typing, tapping the hours merrily away, and suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, my computer rebooted.
Ellen Fleiss, is it you?
Who is the intended audience? Casual or Power-users? I doubt my Gran would be particularly interested in MBR's and partitions and what not...
All you have to do to switch to Windows is buy a new PC. They all come with it installed out of the box. They also come with all the software most people need either already installed or available to buy at your local Best Buy/Circuit City. I set up my non-tech parents like this over a year ago and have only had to help them twice when my dad accidentally told his firewall not to allow his browser to connect to the internet.
The only support I've had to do to my own computer is fix the bootloader everytime Ubuntu decides to override it and I forget to back it up. Sometimes I think we spend a little too much time nit picking things and tweaking systems to get that extra percent performance increase.
Time for some coffee.
The article covers everything from the hideous installer and it's lack of partitioning/formatting capabilities to the utter wasteland that is the Windows desktop, devoid of useful applications and everything in between.
Someone has already mentioned the fact that you CAN partition and format drives in the installer, so thats wrong for a start.
And what is Microsoft supposed to do about applications? If it bundled Microsoft Office in with Windows, the anti-competition people would be on their backs the day it hit the shelves. They have no choice but keep the OS relatively free of apps - too many partners they don't want to piss off and the anti-competition people just waiting with multi-million dollar fines! Look at the shit they are having to go through here in Europe with Windows Media Player for example!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"devoid of useful applications"
You are moaning that Windows is by default "devoid of useful applications ".
Of course it is! Remember the fiasco any time Microsoft try bundling anything useful with Windows? It ends up in an anti-trust trial! Of COURSE Microsoft aren't going to bundle anything useful with Windows any more.
I thoguht that was what a Linux user would want? Choice of their own applications, not MS's choice.
I like to keep one of each.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
I had a similar experience, and it cost me days to install XP on a new computer wher Ubuntu installed cleanly. That was about 6 months ago, and the Ubuntu disks had been fresh from my letterbox (fee & all!) whereas my "spare" copy of XP was already a few moons old. So maybe that's why it stymed an old geek like me about SATA drives. Still haven't got Internet going on this "XP" thing, since it can't find network card drivers (not sure I want to). Maybe the M$ release cycle is just uselessly slow for today's hardware market?
Just because a summary says something doesn't mean that the article says the same thing. The article acknowledges the presence of a partition tool but bemoans the limited features of the tool.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
You have to endure 2 hours of nagging from Windows before it fucks you?
You can patch a kernel but you can't install Windows.... that's pretty sad.
It really isn't all the painful... the only painful part is having to reinstall it every three months!
To start with, you've to install tons of apps that the operative systems don't includes itself. And due to that stupid microsoft rule that existed for years ("installer must be executables delivered by 3rd party apps") I've no way to automate the download and installation of those (yes, I know about msi, I also know MSIs can be slipped in the installation CD. I still find no way of installing AND automatic its update like apt-get update & upgrade does. And LOTS of installers are not using MSI still. Shame on you microsoft, for forcing people to create docens of different, incompatible, buggy, installers)
FTA:
...
Worse, the Windows desktop was ugly! I mean, uglier than usual. The local account I'd used before joining the domain had seemed nice enough. That is, except for the blue and green colour scheme, which is too similar to Linspire for my liking.
Linspire... formerly Lindows...? I wonder where the resemblance came from?
I mod this article -1 Troll.
Before it goes to far out of hand, where the slashdot hidden windows expert points out workarounds for his problems. This is how people write about Linux in Windows Rags. They go by their first impression and give there ratings from a 1 Day Point of View. When you move to a dramatically different system Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, VMS... You find that things are not easy anymore. You they are no longer logically laid out Nothing works anymore and all your comfort apps are no longer there. You need time to think like the designers of the os, knowing the ls is short for list, or Dir sands for directory, or My Computer allows you view your mounted network drives. If you know only windows Other OS's feel weird and wrong the same if you know only an other OS. I say we should stop with these rags from peoples first impression and go with a better one showing the differences and explaining their strong and week points and not give judgement of what is better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Once again, you have to download the binaries and install manually, by double-clicking on the install file"
Call me old fashioned, call me Mr-I-Want-To-Avoid-Trojans, but I don't
actually like systems that download binaries AND run them without
prompting you. When MS does something like this everyone jumps up and
down but this guy seems to think it would be a good thing for Linux to
exhibit this sort of behaviour.
Err , no, it isn't.
By default, windows comes with only a few games. Most Linux distos come with far more. By default, windows includes a simple editor (wordpad), but Linux distos include multiple office suites, vi, emacs, joe, and other editors. Does windows include a graphics package like gimp -- NO!. It is a void landscape....
How many of you own Apple notebooks? How many have blown away OS X to put a PPC linux distro on there? The fact is that Windows isn't that bad,
Nice question, Mr Windows defender. How many have blown away *any* version of MacOS and installed PPC Windows on the same machine? I bet thousands of times more PPC machines went from MacOX->Linux than MacOX->Windows.
But since you mention Apple, I think there is a serious point that could be made here. It's not too hard to find people who have been primarily Mac users most of their careers. I'd love to see a study of whether they prefer Ubuntu/Fedora vs XP or Debian/RHEL vs Win2003Server.
For some reason, I found this bit quite amusing:
From a GUI point of view, it may even edge out over Linux.
"Whenever I launched Firefox the program would run, but I couldn't type anything into the address bar. The menus were all frozen, too."
Are you saying that no XP user can use Firefox?!?!?
Well, probably I'm writing this post only in my imagination...
I remember struggling with the inadequacies of Windows when I had to switch to that OS after Amiga went bust. It was hard and extremely annoying, but eventually I knew enough to administrate both Windows 95 and the Windows servers in the business I worked for then.
I also found Linux hopeless to use and work with the first months after I installed it, but again, business dictated I learn it, so I did. I like Linux more than I like Windows, but it's apples and oranges, really.
For Windows types who want more Linux-style functionality, some friends and I are hacking around a basic sort of window-manager replacement for EXPLORER.EXE (XP only at the moment). Should anyone be interested in this, drop me a line at ed [dot] ropple [at] gmail [dot] com.
Semi-offtopic, but it does relate to one of the article author's bitches about GUI design...
After using Windows XP Home for about 2 years, I finally got sick of it and installed Debian. After 2 months or so of using Debian, I have to say there are things I miss from Windows. It is easier to use, which isn't all too surprising, but it just gets tiring having to edit text files to get sound working or to get Firefox to play videos and wireless networking... don't get me started on that. And say what you will, but I've had a few applications crash on me (which is likely due to a misconfiguration of some sort, but see my ease of use comment above) which made the system run weird after which I would reboot. I'd like to think of myself as a proficient computer user and Linux can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes.
And as a side note, putting all zealotry aside, I'd put windows and Linux (Debian at least...) on about the same level in terms of a normal desktop machine... Which pretty much both get their asses handed to them by Apple with OS X (which I've used on a regular basis in the past). OS X has a pretty interface, is easy to use, has all the big commercial applications that I'd want to use, and I've only ever had problems when using Microsoft products while using it.
And yes, I did RTFA and I know my post is somewhat off topic, but I'm getting tired of people acting like Linux is the best thing for all purposes. As a mostly casual computer user that uses his computer mainly as an entertainment device... let's just say there could be some improvements.
The section about it being devoid of useful applications makes my blood boil. Windows is an operating system which allows you to run applications. It is not necessarly something that has to come shipped with a million and one applications. Perhaps we have become complacent because every Linux distro comes shipped with a ton of applications. It would be simple enough to make a Linux distribution that has a similar number of default installed applications as Windows.
The other problem with this statement is the way everyone cries foul when Microsoft default installs an app with Windows and then complains that a Windows default install doesn't have any applications. Make up your mind! You can't have it both ways.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
You guys seem to be devoid of a sense of humor. You like to dish it out, but you can't take it. Are you so bitter because you are slaves? Inquiring minds want to know.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
The debate between Linux and Windows is silly.
I like Microsoft because the stuff just works and I don't have to think about it. Everything has a unified interface for the most part and even if I don't know exactly where something like the hardware manager is, chances are I'll be able to find it with a few clicks...4 clicks as the article states (or you can right-click on MyComp and click Manage...2 clicks).
Now if I didn't know about lspci...how do I find out? Read the documentation? Newsgroup search? Sure can't find it just by clicking around the OS.
The point is, we all know Linux is god and Windows is the devil. Enough is enough. If you want an OS and software that just works, which 90% of the real end users want, then Microsoft/Windows is perfect. If you want an OS and software that is much more configurable and "free" and you're willing to spend a lot more time figuring it out, Linux is perfect.
I use both OSs, Windows for all my family's PCs, and Linux for my web server and other miscellaneous things. I don't have any problems with Windows at all. Never have to reinstall, never have BSOD, never slows down. Then again, I maintain them well...and no, I don't spend hours a day maintaining them. I also spend time maintaining my Linux box. What happens if you don't maintain either OS? Guess what, they both start crapping out.
Enough already.
The article was a send-up of all the "trying out Linux" articles that Windows power users have been writing for the past several years. You get to hear what difficulty they have getting used to a different way of doing things, but of course they call if a "problem" instead.
/. post?
Same here, except in reverse, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The article is showing how asinine it is to flame an OS when you don't know what the hell you are doing, and have no experience with it.
You DID notice the "It's funny, laugh!" icon at the top of the
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
amen brotha!
wasted time reading this nonsense, pff
With more articles like this, we could neglect impact of Microsoft advertising machine (aka FUD spreaders).
I would also add one fact here:
If you have non-standard IDE controller or SATA disk, you MUST use ancient technology called "floppy disk" to install even the latest Windows XP (SP2) version!
Last semester I had a course about dos/windows (was called introduction to the computer world). I almost failed the course (I passed it only because the teacher was nice enough to understand and let me pass) because it was all about batch files, dos command and how to configure windows gui. I never used windows so I found it really difficult to finding a documentation that isn't as good as man pages. Windows/dos may be as difficult if not more for a linux user than it is for a windows user to use linux. When you are used to the power and flexibility of linux (or any *nix) it is so hard to understand that you can't just use loop as you are used to (in my case the fact that I can program in asm is what saved me because I understood goto in dos) Just as an example here is one question I had: What is the space taken by a directory on a floppy? (because I'm used to so many filesystem I just couldn't remember how fat16 worked...)
coral cache these things already.. i won't actually "get" this story until the /. flood dies down and the server comes back up.
As of now the link is dead. =/
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/eabf0ee8a408c3518 7d0c3661384c615/index.html
I did the "convert" recently. Here's the ( true ) story: I became involved in computers in 1977, when a friend of my dad gave him the "SDK-85" which was intels 8085 SBC development-kit at that time. I soldered it all together and had "a computer" - whatever that was - at the age of 13 ( note, that i am german, so at the age of 13, hardware manuals where not *that* easy on me ;-).
I moved to the US in 1980, getting in contact with the infamous Apple ][ ( I just *had* to write it that way ;-), which got me *really* started.
Went back to Germany 1981, got myself a Sharp MZ80K ( yes, at that time, being in Germany ment 3 years behind in IT-technology ... ). After an Apple-][ clone in 1982, a PC-clone, amiga 2000 and atari-ST quickly followed. My first contact with UNIX was 1984 at my university, were I went for
computer science. Good Hooked (TM) immediately. Not, that UNIX only got a high-level language compiler+editor+utils in the base system by default, if also got shell-level prgrammability built-in. A revolution to me.
I became a Unix-addict ever since, never looked at other things. ( Bot even VMS, which was quite popular - for good reasons - during my "high time" ).
I've been a "professional" since 1989, going through various UNIX-dialects, starting my own company in 1994 on HyperSPARC and Solaris. Went quite good. Been a consultant since 2000, fairly successful since then.
I have never been biased towards Microsoft, since I *never* got in touch with their software products ever since. Remotely DOS ( Turbo-Pascal ) for one single project during my school/student time. I knew of course, what windows was all about, read a lot, saw some in private space with the guys i hung out with, but really never touched it.
Now, this is 2006.
Last year ( we all recall 2005 ... ), my girlfriend "claimed" my old notebook for her personal use ( online-shops, ebay, ... you probably know what i mean ).
At that time, i had my first day using ( installing ) windows on *any* machine ( Compaq M300 ), and at the very next day, i was "hijacked" by my dad, configuring windows XP on his new Acer Centrino Laptop.
Following My Path(TM) to computers, it obviously went weird. With the Acer Laptop, any Idiot could get the machine up and running in literally no time. Microsoft keeps the promise there.
The machine came preinstalled with some version of Win XP ( don't ask - i don't recall ), but finishing the install and customizing it, as automatic and/or easy.
With the M300, which got Win2000 - which it apperantly was desinged for - it was a bit trickier. No problem either, since HP ( ex-compaq ) has a good website on these "legacy hardware".
At that point, Windows was installed on both machines, all ( yes, all - i found visiting MS-sites numerous times puzzeling ) patches were installed.
For reasons not to be explained, i have a fairly strict setup .wrt. firewalling, in order to get to my machines. Windows - out of the box - was unable to cope with "some parts" of my network.
That was the point, were the adventure started. To cut a long story short, i gained the impression, that windows was in *DEEP* *TROUBLE*, once you took it beyond the stuff, you could do with the GUI configuration.
Second, once you learned some "mystic trick" from some Win-Guru, you were mostly safe.
However, here are my $0.02 of admin-"issues", i've found in windows:
1. no way of doing "tail -f "
essential for admins.
2. No way of hand-crafted scripting through boot-up ( No /etc/init.d/ whatsoever )
3. No GUI display redirection. Your GUI config sucks ? start an xterm remotely, go watch /var/log/messages et al.
4. although i have found *excellent* documentation on microsoft.com, much of it is hidden behind MS-isms - stick to "standard naming of standard problems" here.
Conclusion: MS - stick to standards. No real news here.
Unix-addictsP: read the docs first - some is good, some is crap.
just my $0.02
I thought I was early, but you slashdotted it as I got to the second page. That ALWAYS happens.
How in the 9 hells did this idiotic diatribe get modded up? "He must be retarded"? Yes, that's insightful.
I'd like to see an ape try to figure out how to use Windows. It'd probably work great for opening up bananas.
The title says it all. I make 100% of my living away from the Wintel platform, and I am surprised at how much it still sucks. I am a man and I believe in the 'throw money at it' style of problem solving, and how the market leader (dominator?) avoids fixing their OS which is the primary place to run the rest of their SW is ...Hella funny.
straight out of the box it is a goat after six hours of install and patching to get the OS and office to the point where the goat won't eat every last scrap of your life ( and send all of your data to some undisclosed IP in saipeng - or wherever) It is a goat when you try to run a non MS app. ( Games aside)
I think the real question is if this goat came out tomorrow would you, could you give this to your wife, wour mother or your sister.
Don't blow sunshine up a goat's ass it is still a goat.
--Shaddup and support your local PBS station Plan for it
XP was released a good couple of years ago; of course modern Linux distros have prettier installs, they've had that time to improve them. I remember installing Slackware 3 from floppies, or the debian install I did about 5 years ago; completely text-based. I expect that Vista's installer will be rather prettier and more user-friendly than XP's one.
But so what? 90%+ of users will never see it. They buy their PC from big ODMs like Dell or Compaq and Windows comes preinstalled. If for whatever reason they need to reinstall it, they'll use the recovery CD that everyone seems to ship these days.
Sure, people like me will buy OEM copies of the latest Windows OS the next time we upgrade and it makes sense to do so, but we are very very much in the minority.
Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps the reason so much effort has been expended by each distro on their installers is because they don't come preinstalled, aren't likely to in any great numbers for a long time yet, and so they *must* have a slick, easy to use installer?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
When doing anything like this or ANY task you must always "empty your cup".
http://home.inreach.com/golanty/emptycup.htm
Otherwise like this person you will not learn anything.
Well, I can't read the article because the server it's on is currently on fire, but I can say I found the parent quite amusing.
I think that just about says it all. But since the parent "ape" mentioned the start menu...
7-Zip, Accessories, Adobe, AVG Free Edition, BitComet, FileZilla, GIMP, Last.fm Player, mIRC, Mozilla Firefox, QuickTime, Real, Rio, Soulseek, Startup, UltraISO, Weathercast, Winamp, WinRAR, X-Chat 2, Adobe Reader 7.0, Google Talk, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player
Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Preferences, System Tools, Help
Now you tell me which is better organized?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Have you ever seen the average "start menu" of an average Windows machine? Once I go to "Programs", I get a list that fills the screen (or scrolls on newer versions) of vendor names! Makes it almost impossible to find ANYTHING unless you already know what piece of software you're looking for! The only way to get a usable programs menu in Windows is to completely reorganize it manually.
Paragraphs. Know them. Love them. Use them.
Making Windows Usable for Old Linux Farts
Still shows that making Windows workable is rather hard task.
What really steams my clams about XP after ditching windows in '99 is that the shit doesn't really work any better than linux, IMHO. EXAMPLE: last night I tried to install the drivers for a happauge wintvdvr card. I was following the manual that came with the card... I used their CD, no-joy. I call the friend from MS, to bitch and he says it's because happauge clearly didn't follow MS's rules... they 'offer' classes (I don't know, but I'd guess they're expensive as hell) to help vendors... His solution? Go to the website and download the drivers directly.
My point? What the hell is the difference between this and linux? Oh, right... I get to pay for the privilage, AND I get to use the manufacturer's code/servers to download the drivers.
What more could a user want? Windows is so easy to install that when something goes wrong you simply reinstall it! All the warnings about destroying your files is no problem because after answering those cute little pop ups about firewall, anti-virus, automatic update, etc., you haven't had time to create any files. I don't see what the problem is? Excuseme, I have to go defrag now.
Okay, I understand that this is a "moving over to Windows having never used it before" artice, but seriously. A move from one operating system to another never used is going to be like that no matter what. The majority of these complaints are unfounded or just flat out wrong. "Anyone who complains about a Linux partitioner obviously hasn't tried installing Windows." So having just one partition is more difficult than having 3 or more? FAT32 and NTFS are the only hard-drive filesystems XP supports if we leave out FAT16, which I hope you wouldn't want to use. If you do make more than one partition, all you have to do is try to browse to it and the option to format it apears like magic! The first release of Windows XP in 2001 doesn't support drives larger than 137GB. I'm sure that the Ubuntu release you were installing wasn't from 2001 was it? It seems Ubuntu 5.10 was at a final release on October 13, 2005. Windows XP with SP1 does support larger drives however. Slipstreaming SP1 into a Windows install is easy as cake given the information how to. "I was not given a choice in the matter. It adjusted my desktop..." Well obviously if it didn't install your video-card drivers it's not going to be able to do that. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that your video card is probably newer than the Windows XP release. They were support to include drivers that didn't exist yet? So they left the window in there that asks? You only have to deal with this ONE time; before you've installed your video drivers. "After a long download, a lengthly install, and a reboot, we were in business." I'm not sure what kind of computer you are using but drivers usually don't involve a lengthy install of any kind. The only ones I've seen that involve long downloads are sound and video drivers (keep in mind this is only on occasion). The entire network setup problem wasn't the fault of Windows XP but the network administrator for not configuring the DHCP server and Domain Controller correctly. Roaming profiles was obviously enabled on the Domain Controller for his account, why? Who knows. Why did he go into such detail explaining how difficult it place his computer in a domain when it wasn't even the fault of Windows XP? No, it didn't load his roaming profile the second time, it loaded the local copy which it had created upon failure to load the non-existant roaming profile. I have yet to get the second page to load so I'll end it here.
I have been recently using Suse 9.3 for about a month consistently, and when I needed to go back to Windows, I had great problems:
...Microsoft updates. In Windows, I had to visit many different sites in order to download and install updates.
1) no virtual desktops. Virtual desktops play an important role in good productivity.
2) no modern C++ compiler. I have VC++ 6.0, but I couldn't port my code from gcc over to msvc.
3) no decent command line. Some things are much easier to do in the command line; for example, searching for files, then selecting some of them due to search criteria, then zipping and sending them to a specific folder. Doing this in Windows is not as easy and intuitive as in Linux.
4) problems with not being admin. In Linux, I can do many more things without being admin than in Windows. Linux feels safer (and most probably is).
5) bad update tools. When I configured YAST for online update, I could select from thousands of packages to be automatically updated, as well as their dependencies. No such luck with Windows, as the Microsoft update site only has
6) drive letters are problematic. I have setup my projects to drive E:, but somehow Windows decided to give the drive a different drive letter once I reconfigured the partitions. Then my project broke. I had to replace all drive references in all the project files.
Of course the above are my personal issues with Windows...but since I haven't had any problems with Suse 9.3 yet (even my USB 2.0 drive was recognized and mounted without me doing anything), I see no reason why Windows should be considered 'better' any more.
Jeez. Relax, ok? It's a joke. Irony, sarcasm, whatever. You know... A mocking of those articles telling how Linux is hard to use and inferiour to Windows.
You'd know that if you RTFA. But I must admit, it may be kinda of hard as that site went down faster than anyone I've seen slashdot link to earlier.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Switching from Linux to Windows is like switching from girlfriend to wife.
Nah, that's bullshit. Windows goes down on me all the time.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Heh. This article is just about as full of bunk as the articles we see published by Microsoft on how Windows is innately superior. He makes a huge fuss about windows XP not having an apt-get alternative, and goes on a veritable tirade about having to search for applications online. What if the version on your apt-get service doesn't match some kernel patch / update / out of date library you have installed? You're pretty hosed, and have to look for the files online anyway. Now, obviously, if you have out of date libraries on windows, it's not going to work either.
... twitchy... and loses some performance on high CPU count systems)
He also states that Firefox "would not run" at all. I don't know about any other slashdotters, but I have never had trouble getting firefox installed on a windows, linux, Mac OS X, or Solaris system. I have never heard of any of my associates (personal friends and work buddies) have trouble with firefox, and as I work at a small tech support firm, you'd be pretty surprised how many systems we see. Admittedly, most of the systems we deal with are windows or Mac OS machines, but I have never seen one that will not run FF out of the box, as it were.*
*Possible exaggeration. Still. I think there is something else wrong with his system.
As for complaining about command differences - Well, duh. Obviously the key commands are different. That's not a valid excuse. I'm sorry, expecting Windows to use the same key shortcuts and have the perform the same tasks on a DIFFERENT OPERATING SYSTEM is insane. That command would not work on a Mac OS X system. I don't try to use Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a mac. It's a new shortcut, get used to it.
Regarding the inability to kill a process - last I checked, typing Ctrl-Alt-Delete will pop up a nice task manager window (above all others) that you can easily use to monitor and kill various processes - including the windows GUI - explorer.exe. He does have a point, in that windows XP is not built upon a console that users can readily access. You can't terminate the GDI interface to my knowledge.
Random restarts are often symtoms of more serious problems - and, in a remarkedly boneheaded move, Microsoft "removed" BSODs in Windows XP and higher by making the computer restart when it encounters a situation that would BSOD the system. You can disable this so-called feature.
Anyways, I don't want to trail on too long, so I'll boil it down to these points:
- He's a linux power-user complaining that Windows != Linux.
- Linux has merits (see below) as well as Windows (which he denies).
- If every install went like his, Windows XP would never work. Nobody would use it. Microsoft
is a monopoly, but they are not holding a gun to your head and making you use Windows. If it
was truely broken to the point where nobody could do anything, nobody would use it. Simple as
that.
And, for the wrap-up, an apples to oranges comparison from a person that's used both:*
*Disclaimer: This is not complete. This is not unbiased. This is not made by an expert. This is not ment
to be used as policy. This is not literal truth. This is not guaranteed to be accurate. This may be based
on old data. Did I miss anything?
Linux Pros:
- Customization. You can get a linux distro designed for anything. See "Linux on a dead badger."
- Reliability. Despite what microsoft says, a linux system with 30 applications running will, on
average, stay running longer. Mostly due to better memory management. An average desktop linux system
with a competent user at the helm will stay up between 2 and 6 months, going down for updates or the stray bug.
- Scalability. Linux has better scaling capabilites than Windows, although Solaris scales better than
all of them. (Linux gets
- Ability to easily compile software. I really, really, really like this. Especially now that I'm using a 64 bit aware OS, I miss the ability to recompile apps for performance.
Linux Cons:
- Poor "ease of use". Do not te
That's page 1, and I guess it's better than nothing, but what about page 2?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
In response...
1) There most certainly virtual desktops. You can download the desktop manager powertoy from microsoft directly. No, it doesn't come with the OS directly, but it is there.
2)You didn't look hard enough.
3)The windows command line is just as capable as the Linux command line, if you read the documentation.
4)True, Linux does _feel_ safer.
5)I'll give you that. Then again does SUSE provide the updates for all software not their own (serious question, I don't know).
6)You can set the drive letters back in the disk manager.
...I was a little puzzled last week when completing a new system install (Small Business Server) when Windows kindly told me that it had all the information it needed, so I should press 'Finish' to *start* the install.
AT&ROFLMAO
I started a wiki to help out those who, like myself, are Linux users who for some reason or another (mostly work-related) need to do some work on Windows:
http://win4.leenooks.com/
(although my hosting provider's networking seems a bit slow at the moment... might be slow to load:-( )
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
I started doing some development on Mac back when OSX was released. I hadn't ever really used it. I had used Windows and Unix for years. I figured that since so many people billed Mac as more user friendly than Windows I'd wouldn't bother with books or tutorials. Well I booted it up. I needed to do some system things. There were a few folders on the desktop, a sparse menu. I couldn't find anything that would allow me to change preferences or anything more than create folders and start applications. Took me a long while before I realize that colorful little Apple at the top was a button. Once I figured that out, things moved much faster.
We all have our biases and they often hinder us when moving to a new environment.
--
Q
The guy was lucky. I'm here re-installing all/most of visual C, just because I entered a wrong product key.
I've never had to enter these pesky numbers in any Linux installation I've ever done.
Furthermore, Windows apparently still works with CD/DVD's! All Linux installations I've done over the past several years were over the network (with one CD to boot). Why can't Microsoft follow Linux distributions a bit more? would be a whole lot easier, not to have to chase the CD's and Licence keys from around the office.
Why do I want to partition my disk in Windows XP? It seems to be taken for granted that this is a weakness of the operating system.
The original article written here http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/20 33216 and credited at the end of the posted article is just a much better send up.
Appart from being much the same article this article shoots itself in the foot a bit. I think the reason why so many people have taken it seriously is because of this fact.
It details a lot of things that are different in Windows compared to Linux but his Linux alternatives all sound somewhat more complicated. From the more complex partitioning to the editing of config files and even the classic mention of recompiling the O/S. It all makes it sound like Linux is actually more complex than Windows which makes the sarcasm of the piece make a lot less sense.
Is he saying sarcastically that the daft Windows users moving to Linux articles are actually correct and it is more difficult? Or is he just stupid and genuinly believes all this stuff?
The newsforge article only mentions Linux as being totally easy it does everything for them, without mentioning command lines and command. Makes the sarcasm much more clear cut.
anything is hard until you are used to it... how hard it is for you depends on how much you want/need to learn it. I really wanted to learn linux because windows was BORING. I started with redhat 5.2, found it was interesting and learned more because i had the desire to. My daughter has learned to use Linspire because i won't hook our windows computer up to the internet... she learned because she needed to, to talk to her friends on IM. My wife has learned very little of linux because she is used to windows and has little time or desire to learn something new.
Now that i use linux (and yes it was a learning curve) i find when i have to use windows, it is a re-learning curve i go through to do administration (its amazing how little you have to administer when you keep it off the network/internet).
I prefer gnu/linux, will use windows for gaming (only), but i also have the desire to experiment (have tried bsd but my hardware is not detected by half).
Maybe when linux goes mainstream, bsd or plan9 or something will be my new interest. who knows, but i'm sure i'll find the desire to learn it.
But you can be sure that MANY will not have the desire.
It's all about desire... i mean how many would leave their computers and learn about the opposite sex (or other humans for that matter) if not for sexual desire!
Ummmmm....donuts!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Switching to Windows: Intended for the average computer user:
1) Get a blank Hard Disk or create a new partition. Use partition magic or get a friend to do it
2) Boot the windows CD and install
3) Install firewall software
4) Get updates from Microsoft or a friend
5) Install other programs
Its not that hard. I run a tri-boot system at home, with Windows-Work, Windows-Gaming and Linux. If I had to switch over from Windows to Linux, the main issues is not just the changes in interface, configuration style (init files etc), but finding replacement programs for things I am using under Windows. Like all my games, EndNote, Wakan/KanjiQuick(Japanese Writing), RatDVD and CDisplay for my manga viewing. Sure, there are similar tools available under Linux, but some features are missing, especially for rare programs like CDisplay. One can see that this reverse situation is arguably worst than going from Linux --> Windows. Sure, you may have to pay some money to get the software you need, but, at least they are available.
It all comes down to a popular OS always having more variety of software, paid or open source, being developed for it. Personally, I think most computer users will end up dual-booting Windows (Vista) and Linux as time goes by, unless emulation becomes easy enough (for the average PC user) and fast enough to be a viable option.
Now, let me go play som WoW, followed by a reboot to do some programming in Visual C then another reboot to start up my FTP server under Linux T_T
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
Hiya, I'm a long time windows user and I just installed my first linux (in a long time anyways), Ubuntu.
The install went well enough, the problem I am having is that for DNS entries, 192.168.0.1 always comes up when I boot up, even after deleting it from system->networking. Any idea why that is, or how to fix it? I don't think its bad DHCP cause the other windows boxes on the network don't do that.
Do you know what file the DNS entries are held in?
Thanks
p.s. mod me up, down, or sideways, my karma is so excellent it really doesn't matter.
Yeah, no shit. I'm always amazed at how each Windows vendor installs their software under Start->All Programs->Company Name->Product Name->Start Program. That's insane! It's no wonder people put application startups all over the Windows desktop — you can't find anything you want!
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
No comment.
5)I'll give you that. Then again does SUSE provide the updates for all software not their own (serious question, I don't know).
Yes it does.
Like many distro's SuSE will update (in one go) any package installed from its repositories and via it's package management tool. So that will include all the open source packages they are permitted to supply and several proprietary ones they have permission to distribute. It's one of the advantages of Open Source. SuSE are permitted to distribute updates for software they did not write - even to adapt them to ideally suit their distro. MS cannot do this - they are not allowed to (unless they choose to use Open Source applications of course).
In short things like browsers, office suites are all updated from the same repository*. This would be like MS Update updating things like Acrobat Reader, Virus Checkers and other non-OS software at once. On my Debian system it means I can use the Synaptic tool to updte all my software at once - including non-OS applications.
MS has some catching up to do here. I'm not suggesting they provide updates for third party packages but AFAIK MS doesn't even allow you to update all of its software from a single tool. Office update requires running separately to Windows update IIRC.
* If you have installed/built an application from scratch it's unlikely to be updated by the distro because the package managament tool has no idea of its presence.
Partitioning one drive is stupid, because a malware infection could just hose the naster table. The solution is to ship two drives per system, so such an attack would be harder and recovery easier.
page 2 is hered =5937&page=2
http://madpenguin.org.nyud.net:8090/cms/?m=show&i
Like hell. On a Linux-only machine, they're also there to separate /home from the main distro so that if you have to reinstall it's a piece of cake to re-link the home directory. Obviously, there should be a swap partition too. Anyone installing a linux distro should be doing this.
Depending on the situation, splitting off /var, /usr/local, and/or /etc can make sense too.
Setup on a fresh Windows install is not that easy. The correlary to this is that Linux isn't that hard to install now either.
The last 3 machines that Linux went on worked "out of the box" (pop the disk into the drive and follow the on screen instructions). I could have cut down the number of screens I saw and "Next" buttons to hit if I was doing this dozens of times by using other mechanisms. The last time I helped my parents through a reinstall was a nightmare mostly because they thought they had all of the drivers when in actuallity they didn't. It really isn't there fault due to the fact that every vendor has their own driver set that is scattered in a giant stack of CDs I know is sitting on a self next to the machine. They know the disk is in there somewhere if only they can find it... Hey wait, isn't this what technology is supposed to solve?
I haven't tried it yet, but I have this sneaking suspicion my parents can figure out the latest installs for Fedora and SuSE. When it comes to reinstalling Windows XP I just tell them to call support. It isn't that they can't figure out how to install XP but finding all of the components and doing it in a safe manner is a chore.
But it's red! That's all I really care about.
I am trolling
Is he saying sarcastically that the daft Windows users moving to Linux articles are actually correct and it is more difficult? Or is he just stupid and genuinly believes all this stuff?
He's trying to make a point -- that a good deal of disorientation (not all, mind you) from people trying Linux from the first time is the fact that they're going from an OS that they have maybe a decade of experience in using to one that they have no experience using. They learn to adapt to the flaws in the product that they know, and can easily identify any missing or hard-to-find features in the new product.
It's not that surprising. In System 7 days, I remember that any Windows user using Mac OS would complain bitterly about that OS's shortcomings -- and visa versa.
Now, a lot of that article was ranting, but it's got some reasonable nuggets. Windows still has better support for unusual hardware, just because the vendors are going to write their driver for Windows first. On the other hand, those drivers don't come with the OS -- you have to locate and track them down, and hope that the vendor is maintaining them and still exists. Linux distros, on the other hand, tend to have driver support already in the OS a much larger chunk of the time -- aside from a few special cases (some wireless Ethernet chipsets and Nvidia's binary drivers are probably the most prominent). Product keys *are* a pain in the ass -- I listened to a pissed off guy at work yell at a series of people at Microsoft for over an hour because something was wrong with his product key. It *is* still more of a pain in the ass, in my experience, to get specificially the video card working with a copy of Windows. A good chunk of the time, I see people installing Windows sitting in 640x480 until they install their video drivers (which requires knowing what's wrong, knowing what to do to fix it, knowing what the manufacturer of their card is and what the model is, and where to look). That's not as trivial as it seems -- my housemate had no idea where to look when she went looking for her current drivers and saw something like four video-card related packages, some of which was related to multiple desktops and so forth. And she *built* her computer.
The fact that OEM Ethernet chipsets seem to often not be supported out of the box under Windows does suck. HP or Dell machines just never seem to fully work after a new reinstall until you go poking around on the OEM's website for driver downloads.
Many of the people here probably pirate copies of Windows software for home use, and so often don't consider what "normal" people wind up having to pay. If they don't, prices can add up. Office is hundreds of dollars, Photoshop hundreds more. If you want even basic features provided by Linux distros, like profiling, when you do development, you apparently have to buy the expensive Enterprise Architect version of Visual Studio. Virus checking software plus service costs more (and doesn't even apply under Linux -- no viruses). Partition Magic costs money. Ghost costs money. CD burning software costs money (granted, Windows finally has some very rudimentary burning software built into the OS). Newsreading software costs money (unless you like having ads on your screen). Instant messaging software is free, as long as you can stand having ads on your screen. PDF creation software costs money. WinZip costs money (granted, there's 7-Zip, but most people still seem to use WinZip). Illustrator costs money. MATLAB (granted, not as general-purpose as the above, but my dad uses it) costs money. All of these have Free, open source alternatives that are part of all major Linux distros, no additional installation required.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Long story short, I've been running Gentoo on it since it showed up at the house some time ago. Now, there was some drive weirdness -- I think the boot drive was actually hdd with another drive present but unused on hdc, and the CDROM was on hdb with hda empty (??) but the point is, Gentoo installed and ran just dandy.
For work reasons I now need to install Windows 2000 on the box and I've now rebooted half a dozen times, reformatting drives all over the place and still haven't managed to get the damn thing to boot. Why? Well, it looks like the BIOS is toast because it keeps reporting different sizes for hda (I've changed the cables to where they should be) every time I boot, and -- not surprisingly -- the drive is just totally useless to boot from. Windows won't install unless it can write an MBR to the drive, it seems.
So -- even though I know the hardware isn't working quite right, at least Linux could work with (or, more to the point, around) the problem whereas Windows just pulls up a blank. Nothing I can do about it, either -- I've tried all the configurations that were worth trying. Next, it's time to try using a separate PATA controller card and spend another hour or so to see if Windows likes that any better ...
I still remember losing a day and a night, and going through 3 Dell techs checking the server because of bad ram...
....
Yes, we tested the ram of the server many times, they even changed it twice.
It was only after 20+hours of checking that someone had the marvelous idea of checking the ram ON THE RAID CONTROLLER. And yes, it was faulty...
Guess what...there were no tools allowing you to test it directly on the controller, you have to reseat it on a computer and then run memtest or whatever....
Also, your video card do have RAM... Any tool to check that RAM ?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Thank god someone said this! I go into gnome or KDE and have things sensibly subset into various usability categories like "Office" (which stores word processors etc) or "Internet" (which stores messengers or file sharing programs or browsers), and there's a clear distinction between the administrative menu and the programs menu. I don't understand how this isn't a very clear, well organised system that anyone can use, as opposed to "let's dump EVERYTHING under weird names in the start menu!".
I installed Adobe CS2 the other day and had to spend five minutes working out how to reorganise everything into one folder. Because there's actually several subsets to the start menu: there's the global one and there's your personal one, and you have to learn how to navigate between the two within the filesystem to be able to reorganise the menu effectively. But there's no HINT of that being the case until you start to wonder "Huh, why does the start menu folder in the file browser only have four programs in it?"
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
This is probably very off topic but...
There was a joke going around in the mid-1990's that was about what you would have to do to a Cray supercomputer to convert it into an IBM PC. It involved taking most of the extra terminals and putting them in an infinite loop and disabling extra CPU's, etc. It was really quite funny(to a geek anyway). Problem is, as it is always, I had the only copy I've seen in ages stored on a hard drive that went bad the day before I was scheduled to back it up so I have no recollection of the exact text. It was the 90's..backup wasn't cheap for anything over 100mb and I had GB's to do..floppies were not the answer..heh. Anyway, I don't suppose anyone knows where the text to that is? I've searched with no luck.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Let's leave well enough alone. It's basically the same as this.
"Devoid of useful applications"? Isn't it always a big gripe when Microsoft attempts to prepackage apps with the OS? So then MS is also evil when it *doesn't* prepackage apps with the OS? That's quite an interesting position.
Whoever thinks that the "Start Menu" in modern X desktop environments is "unorganized" is smoking some serious crack. In Windows, the Start menu *comes* organized into distinct categories - Accessories, etc... but it *never* stays that way. Each application you install insists on adding a root level menu with shortcuts to its help and uninstall functions.
By contrast, each X app you install (or get with your distribution) *is* organized cleanly into one of the categories, and the only icon present is the only one you typically use - the application itself!
If you want "Help", you can visit the help menu of your application or help center of your desktop distribution. If you want to uninstall something, you can use your package manager and/or its GUI, and unless it smokes donkey balls on the weekend, the installation will be clean and successful time and time again. (This is directly contrary to uninstalls in Windows which are problematic, leave stuff behind and bitch unlegibly for no reason)
Yuo can reassign the drive letters in Windows XP's very well hidden partition manager (it's one of the MMC snap ins). Non-HD drive letters can be reassigned in their Device Manager properties.
1) There most certainly virtual desktops. You can download the desktop manager powertoy from microsoft directly. No, it doesn't come with the OS directly, but it is there.
A number of people make virtual desktop software for Windows, but it's generally slow and universally buggy (some of which is not really its fault, but because the software it is managing is not being written for a world with virtual desktop managers, and because that software cannot be fixed because it is not open source).
2) no modern C++ compiler. I have VC++ 6.0, but I couldn't port my code from gcc over to msvc.
You can install gcc-mingw. VC++ 6.0 is kinda broken WRT a number of C++ features, but there are newer Visual Studios out there (which, unfortunately, got slower, less stable, and lost features like profiling). I'm not a big fan of VS, but honestly, if you can live with the not-so-great virtual terminals in Windows, you can use gcc just fine.
3)The windows command line is just as capable as the Linux command line, if you read the documentation.
I can think of *many* ways in which cmd.com is much less powerful for basic usability than even a vanilla bash. command.com has no job control. Cmd.com doesn't have double-tap-to-list-completions tab completion. Cmd.com's scripting language is about as rudimentary as you can get and still have a scripting language. Just for basic use of the command line, it's extremely helpful to have a colored prompt, as I do, to be able to visually locate the last line -- cmd.com lacks this. Seriously, your statement is just not true. Type "man bash" on a Unix box -- cmd.com can't do much of anything on there.
4)True, Linux does _feel_ safer.
No, he's right. It is a pain in the ass to run as non-admin in Windows. There are lots of workarounds -- user switching is slow but better than logging out, and you can use run as, which given enough time put into it, can at least give you a rudimentary admin environment.
5)I'll give you that. Then again does SUSE provide the updates for all software not their own (serious question, I don't know).
Yes, and this is one of the major user-visible benefits of Linux distros. You install it, you enable automatic updates, you forget about it. On my Fedora system, bugs across the board fix themselves overnight and features show up. I don't need to shut down (the sole exception is in a kernel upgrade, and even then the new kernel starts being used on the next boot -- but I can keep using the old one as long as I want).
6)You can set the drive letters back in the disk manager.
Drive letters are still a really awful legacy of DOS.
On the up side, Microsoft apparently did recognize that they're a bad idea, and does provide some mechanism for arbitrary mount points of drives these days, with a unified file namespace, but it still isn't the default (and I've no idea how to use it).
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
A contractor who sat on the otherside of the cubicle wall from me used to be pretty lound and I'd overhear him quite a bit. He hardly used Windows - Linux pretty much exclusively however, the client we were placed was a Windows shop.
He used to do nothing but bad mouth Windows but when it came time for him to do work it came down to the simple truth of - he didn't know how. He didn't know enough about Windows to even accurately bash based on experience but everything he said was something he would read here on Slashdot.
If you use Linux alot - Windows seems foreign. If you use Windows a lot, Linux seems foreign. Go work on a Mac for 2 years ONLY without ever touching another computer then try to switch to something else without doing any research first. You'll hate everything! Not because its worse but because it's "different".
Once sony online releases a linux version of everquest2, I'm there! ...and no... I don't want to have to screw with wine!!!
Switching from Linux to Windows is like switching from girlfriend to wife.
Nah, that's bullshit. Windows goes down on me all the time.
Wouldn't be that Windows is the girlfriend that goes down on you all the time, but you end up marrying that Linux, which only goes down on you once a decade?
4. although i have found *excellent* documentation on microsoft.com, much of it is hidden behind MS-isms - stick to "standard naming of standard problems" here.
Yeah, I've never figured out *why* the hell they do that. The language of man pages is that of RFCs, and the language that just about everyone (except Microsoft) uses. Microsoft has a special set of terms that they make up just for their own products. Apple doesn't do this. Sun doesn't do this. Why does this happen with Microsoft? I try describing this to people, and it's tough to do, if they've never read anything other than MS's documents.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
If they bundled WMP, realplayer and winamp - again equivalent to your typical linux distro - there would be no problems.
There's a very good reason why Microsoft shouldn't bundle third party add-ons. If Microsoft bundles realplayer and winamp, most people would expect to be able to ask Microsoft for support if winamp causes a problem, or WHEN realplayer causes a problem. A disclaimer might absolve them (might!), but it's still a huge pain in the ass, and something of a black eye.
Now allowing OEM's to bundle whatever they like... that makes sense. But let's be realistic.
although i have been using unix on servers for over 10 years i only switched over on the desktop a half a year ago.
things i miss about windows:
universal copy and paste w/ out having to click on klipper
out of the box full duplex sound for all my applications
wonderfull tools like openperl ide, sqlyog, etc...
click and install everything. no dependencies. why do i have to upgrade Kpilot to install Evolution ? i don't use a palm pilot ?!?! why can various versions of libraries live along side each other. why does the desire to install one piece of software force me to upgrade my whole system ?
stupid KDE bubbles that won't turn off.
you get the point.
next time i am going to go w/ winxp on the desktop, vmware to run my own linux wkstn, and secure crt to do all my work in.
frankly w/ all the free/oss software available on windows including AV, and anti-spyware there is no reason to endure the inconvenience of a linux desktop.
sorry, but that is how i feel.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
I'm a stupid fucking nerd who is too arrogant and lazy to learn everything because i'm too fucking busy telling the world how SMART I AM.
I use linex!
I agree that the Start menu in Windows is set up terribly initially. But configuring it is pretty easy. First, you switch to the Classic style if you're in XP and then you make folders in the Start Menu folder that are categorized, like the ones in Gnome and KDE are. Then plant shortcuts to applications that fit each category in the category folders. The downside is that unlike Gnome or KDE, you manually have to put newly installed apps' shortcuts in the right folder, it's not done automatically.
My university did just that and made it a group policy, so all machines on the IATS network have all of the apps sorted according to usage: office, graphics, mathematics, statistics, drafting, etc. It sure made it a lot easier. And since the machines are all centrally-controlled, new apps are put into the right folder once on the server(s) and then all of the machines are updated.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Here's the other apps that keep me from running Linux exclusively:
:D
Ableton Live
Tracktion 2
(sundry VST plugins - yes, I know you can run them on linux *sort of*) - While linux has come a long way in music, it's still not there.
Maya
Lightwave
(blender is no replacement, sorry)
But, since OSX gives me these applications *and* my *Nix command line, I'm all happy now.
Thinking outside my Head
When served a fat turd on bread and a roast beef sandwich, we should show the difference and explain the strong and week points without judging one better than the other.
Windows XP needs dozens of third party add-ons which cost hundreds of dollars before it's remotely useful. It does not even come with a spell checker, does it? M$ has been riding the heals of other people's work forever. Most of those other people got tired of it and started writing free software, so you that you can have everything you want on a single CD that auto configures itself, preserves your current OS and installs itself in 20 minutes or less.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wonder if their server happens to be running Windows.
From the standpoint of a company that wants to promote their product and company name? The Windows one. ;-)
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Let's face it, the point of this article was not accuracy, it was to make fun of Windows users who try Linux and promptly give up because they can't get used to it. The article is clearly biased against Windows, so don't expect the author to treat it fairly.
Personally, I'm a Windows user, both at home and at the small business I run, a PC sales and repair center. I spend most of my working day removing viruses and spyware from my client's PCs, so I know enough about them to keep my own XP systems clean (Firefox, scanning incoming e-mails for viruses etc.).
At my business I have a PC running Server 2003, connected to a standard ADSL line via a router/firewall. it runs a web server, e-mail server (smtp & pop3) and provides VPN access so I can log in remotely. It also runs my EPOS sofware and hardware (till printer, customer display & barcode reader) in an LUA user account. I have no problems with it, it stays up at least 30 days at a time, rebooting only if required to do so after monthly Windows updates.
At this time I see no reason to move to Linux, especially as I have almost no knowledge of it and frankly, no incentive to learn as I can do all the things I need with Windows. For this reason I will continue to pay the £199 a year to receive the MS Action Pack and regular copies of new MS software for no extra charge.
Actually, in the last 20 years, the most likely reason for a machine to "go bad" is a hard drive failure. Separate partitions aren't going to help you much if your head don't move.
This is not my experience at all. I have known a lot of people who have reformatted their hard drives, and it wasn't as the result of a physical problem with the drive (bad sectors, etc.). In fact, pretty much anyone who is just reformatting is not going to be doing it as a result of a hardware problem, because a bad hardware problem is going to hose the drive.
Many Windows users I've met reformat annually, and I've even heard some admins recommend this as SOP, to the point where people think a low-level reformat is a basic maintence activity. It's also the path that a lot of helpdesks recommend when they can't figure out what else is wrong with your machine, or if it's just "acting weird." Back up your data, reformat and reinstall.
The only Windows machine I use is a corporate issued one, and so far the latest one hasn't had any problems (five months and counting, knock on wood...). However I have some family members who insist on using Windows, and they seem to just get 'clogged up' from stupid programs they install, viruses and spy/adware, spy/adware removers, antivirus programs, etc. Most people have no idea where to begin cleaning that stuff off, and the easiest way to go is just to reformat. Cleaning off a computer could take several hours of a skilled person's time, reformatting might take longer, but a user can do it themselves and they've nobody to blame but themselves if they lose a document because they didn't back it up.
Anyway, my point is just that I think people reformat drives (under Windows anyway) constantly, and it has nothing to do with hardware failure. It's mostly due to bad user practices and a poorly designed OS.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If you are on the field and you must install windows for non-professional customers - you know that starting windows can be a pain. The reason is not so much windows itself - but how windows comes with a pc these days. First of all: you can choose your linux language at any time. You cant do that with windows. This means: many phone calls until you get the right language. 2nd Preinstalled windows always womes with crap soft preinstalled. 3th. You buy a pc but there is no useful software installed - compare that with Suse 10.0 or Ubuntu. 4th. Your pc is like a magnet for viruses whenevr you go to the internet The only domains where Linux loses are a.: difficult to install new software b. not so many working sofware packages available c. bad support of ext files & multimedia in general: dvd / playing wmf files etc. With OpenSuse and Ubuntu I think we now have a good availability of userfriendly linuxes. If we can fix the multimedia & install problems - Linux may get a lot of new users! If you look at the desktop I think that linux is even easier than windows xp.
Why C:\Program Files, dammit? Why can't I choose it to be D:\Program files, or maybe just D:\PROGRAMS ? It requires a registry search and replace to move my program files to the partition of my choice.
Again, this is a problem not of simplicity, but of Microsoft taking the decisions for you.
He's probably publishing the article on a Windows PC because the page i /.'ed. Huh huh huh... Standard lame comment when something about Windows is posted.
1.) video card apps provide limited virtual desktops. nvidia does at least. still MS is lacking in this area.
3.) monad is being made for a real competitive shell for windows. a beta version was released and had security issues.
6.) Windows has volume management and mountable volumes just like linux. you can set up a partition to be mounted in C:\new-partition\ if you want.
i've found much of what exists in linux exists in windows. its just that windows has the effect of dumbing the user down. making him not want to search for answers.
Well, Windows feels to me like a girl you just met. You don't know what she will be doing the next minute, you are to nervous to try anything in case the result will be desastrous, there is one misunderstanding after another and you're quite sure you don't get her into bed this evening.
I wonder what he means by this ?
"Disclaimer: Kudos to NewsForge for the idea, and Microsoft for the inspiration. I also
declare that all events described in this piece are factually correct, they really,
honestly happened. Just not necessarily all at the same time, on the same computer. "
So basicly fiction?
Julien. ^_^ http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/
I upgraded my sister's desktop for Christmas with a new motherboard and CPU, keeping as much as I could from the old K63-450 like the graphics, network and sound cards. It had 98SE on it, which was discovered to not be capable of doing iTunes or her new Shuffle, or MS Office 2003 she needs for grad school. (Compatibility with the 2003 in the labs and professor's machines and all that...) So we picked up an XP Home upgrade as well.
Most everything went well. Except for the SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 card. XP doesn't seem to want to recognize it's there. It worked in 98SE fine. But I can't get it to want to install drivers from CD, it keeps saying there's no harware isntalled for the driver to work with and the installer exits out.
Argh!
I have to download a driver update to try and mail her a CD because the thing was too huge for her dialup to get. It made it to 89% of 40some megs and died. What the heck makes a driver download for a sound card that big?
But that doesn't describe typical Windows users, and we all know that. Proper care and maintenance of their machines isn't something they're even aware of, except as a mysterious voodoo that their "computer guys" have to do from time to time.
There are two people in my life who use computers regularly, and know nothing about them: My wife and my mother. Neither are computer literate, and both need my help whenever something happens that they don't understand. But only one of them, my mother, needs regular assistance with crashes and misbehavior, and it's because she uses Windows. My wife's laptop has literally never crashed, and the only maintenance I perform on it is the occasional OS upgrade. It's configured to install security updates automatically, and this has never affected her ability to work in the slightest. And she doesn't need to know about cleaning up spyware and adware, because she's never had any.
Until adware and spyware is no longer an issue on Windows, the BSOD will not be a thing of the past. Your personal experience with Windows - as a computer-literate Slashdot reader - will differ a great deal from the personal experience of a typical user.
I've installed XP on hundreds of machines and have never come close to the experiences of this idiot. (I won't even get into what can go wrong on X86 partitioning using Solaris, RedHat or Suse)
Here's the suggestions. Read carefully these are really tricky to understand.
1. Before I ever tried installing Solaris or RedHat. I learned something about them and about what can go wrong. You might want to do the same with Windows.
2.Read The Fucking Manual. Apparently Linux Users and Windows Users have something in common, none of 'em can read!
Because that is what the article is about. INSTALLING windows on a clean machine. I bet you a months salery that a user installing windows on my P4 machine will have a lot more trouble then say Suse or Mandrake (or whatever it is called now).
Even the newbie users can make sense out of Windows text only early installation part he is going to be fucked pretty soon. No not because his new windows XP install will get infected before he can patch. In fact he will very safe indeed. You see my gigabyte network card does NOT have a driver in Windows XP. You gotta download it. How do you download a driver if you got no network driver?
Linux of course comes with the driver in the kernel.
As for actually using the desktop, well considering how many times I am asked to fix peoples windows computers I would say that not that many users can do it.
But frankly I don't care that much. As long as I am free to choose my OS you are free to choose yours. Mess with my choice however and your machine will be owned as fast as only a windows machine can be.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you read TFA, you'll see that this is an attempt at humor.
A very very lame attempt at humor.
Finding out what hardware you have is a difficult process under Windows. With most Linux distributions,it is often as simple as typing lspci
Of course. lspci. Duh. Any idiot would know that.
Openoffice or Staroffice can replace Micosoft Office today so the majority of things in the business world are taken care of. Get replacements for a few others and companies will be able to convert large numbers of users. And just like before with Microsoft, once it is used at the office users will take it home and use it there.
While OpenOffice is excellent and I use it for almost everything, it's not a replacement for MS Office for many companies. The advantage of MS Office is the ability to create apps on top of it with Visual Basic, etc. Whether or not you think this is the best technology in the world, it works well enough for many companies and OpenOffice has nothing like it. In fact OpenOffice still lacks a true replacement for Access, a key MS Office app.
> the utter wasteland that is the Windows desktop,
> devoid of useful applications and everything in between.
Add applications like streaming video or Internet browsing, and you scream bloody murder. Remove them, and you scream bloody murder.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Backup and restore with Ghost is a piece of cake, do it on a regular basis for many different versions of Winders, no need to reinstall OS. Keep all of my data in a separate \files directory for all applications and I can backup just that then use a current Ghost image to put the OS and Apps back in about 40 minutes, then just restore current \files directory. I Ghost anytime I add a new app, both before and after just in case.
you know, i get this is supposed to be sort of humorish, but it's pretty well worded fFor non-geeks to kinda get the idea. I showed the article to my wife -- who is geekish, but not a computer expert by any means -- and she read through it pensively, then paused, and said "Oh! that makes sense ... yeah, why cant you do all that stuff in windows, like in other systems?" I think she understands a lot better why i complain about windows.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bill???
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
It's a downloadable add-on. You can choose nView, or any other download.
You can download either Cygwin, MiniGW, or the MSVC Compiler Toolkit (along with the Platform SDK).
Besides - porting system-specific code from one compiler to another is always difficult. As an example, try porting "Fortune" to Windows. This will require some cheap and quick hacks, since function prototypes in the main C files use system-specific features.
The only thing you will miss out with the toolkit is the MFC and ATL - something that can be implemented by the user.
Searching for files is done by pressing Winkey-F. If you need to hunt down specific files by another special search creiteria, you can click one of the search options. If you need greater control over that, then you probably need a better organization system.
These problems are usually associated with improperly written software. They can occurr under Linux as well - although in that OS, there are some programs that unconditionally refuse to run as root (without reason.)
The biggest culprits are copy-protection systems for video games, and installation of new programs.
That is correct - although this is generally caused by company rivalry.
Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> Right Click F: -> Change Drive Letter and Paths.
BTW, a properly configured application/project doesn't use hard-coded paths. I'm not sure how do use relative paths instead, but I have no problem when I move project folders around
In any case, both Windows and Linux are primitive. They still have a legacy base that keep on coming back from the graveyard (e.g. Dos drive letters, or Unix man pages.) The only way to fix this problem is to redesign a new operating system from scratch - good luck getting market penetration since neither OS/2 or Beos are around anymore.
Gott ist tot.
This should make it pretty obvious that switching operating systems, whether it be from microsoft, linux, apple etc isn't going to be easy.
Its the same idea as learning a foreign language. Did anyone find learning a new language easy? It takes time and experience to be comfortable with.
Register the editry.
If I have a very large consumer drive (say, 300 gig) - is it better to keep it as one large partition, or break it down to several small partitions for speed or stability increase? What about if I have a consumer RAID? I mean, is it valueable for me as joe consumer to start partitioning the large drives that come as standard now?
Horns are really just a broken halo.
This guy is full of it.
... Uhhh ... pci[enter] no... fuck it. Google where are you.
I can do the EXACT same thing with LINUX. I can install it on some system and have all kinds of problems, simply because I don't know what I am doing.
The fact of the matter is, BOTH operating systems are way to technically difficult to install. You have to "know" your environment the second even ONE little thing goes wrong, or else all hell breaks loose. You know how long it took me to find the damn "lspci" command? Sheesh, I was looking for an hour. I didn't even KNOW if Linux had this ability, after I realized it MIGHT, then I had to find the thing. At least with windows you can graphically navigate to the most obvious place.. "Control Panel"... makes sense.. "System", yeah!, "hardware" Oh yeah!!, "Devices" RIGHT ON!. Linux =
I've installed Windows on at least two dozen machines, sure sometimes there is a problem, but nothing like this guy is talking about.
There are some basic ideas and steps you need to know to fix "drivers" and such, once you know them its a snap. The same goes for linux.
My point is Windows is NOT more difficult or screwed up than linux, and vice versa. They are both pretty horrible, but personally I give WINDOWS the hands down on being slightly less horrible as far as install-experience.
- Voxel
P.S. If the guy had been using the latest version of Windows XP (Service Pack 2 Disk), then his 200 gigabyte drive would of detected fine. When you use a linux distro, you do use the latest version don't you?
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
3)The windows command line is just as capable as the Linux command line, if you read the documentation.
ROFLMAO-- You ever READ the bash documentation?? Get a life, M$ command line is for kids and noobs. Capable my ass.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
On my Chaintech mobo, if I install Service Pack 2 for XP, the whole system locks up during the shutdown, and if reset it bluescreens on boot, every time.
I rebuilt it and tried that again; same result. That box has sat on Service Pack 1 forever as a result.
Recently I upgraded the mobo to a Gigabyte with an AMD dual-core. I'm afraid to try again with SP2; I don't have a clue how to go about trouble-shooting the problem if it happens again, I'd just be reinstalling everything again.
I'm not a computer dope; I do system administration, UNIX security, and SOX compliance for a Fortune 100 company that every single one of you has heard of. But Windows? THAT'S hard.
My Ubuntu partition on the same box works great. Even a security fix that leaves the box non-bootable is easily fixed, and I know exactly how to go about troubleshooting even brand-new problems.
What does this have to do with tiny violins?
I'm not sure if anyone's said it yet or not, but...
WHY the FUCK ARE YOU SWITCHING TO WINDOWS?!
Windows, properly set up and configured, is NOT the BSOD nightmare it used to be.
The article doesn't say anything about BSODing. It discusses real problems that most people installing and using Windows XP have run into. It compares these to some Linux distros. It notes where Linux comes out on top, and where it doesn't. Yes, the article can be called biased since it was written by a Linux user, but that just makes it much the same as all those Linux reviews written by Windows users. Sometimes the view from the outside is better.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I find one of the most amazing things in life is one's ability to completely ignore objective facts while claiming to be objective by objectively stating subjective opinions.
/gasp, a wireless network card, take it home and plug it into your linux machine without doing any research.... just walk in and buy random models and brands. What do you have to do
Sweeping, generalized comments based on specific shortcomings, especially when it comes to operating systems, seem to carry the day. The simple fact of the matter is software, without regard to function or origin, is most always flawed in one way or another, and has shortcomings that another piece of software doesn't.
It's of little consequence to most "people", we'll call them users, that the very thing they defend based on ideological grounds is also flawed. Case in point, linux vs. Windows , a debate that will never end.
The simple fact of the matter is, they're both here to stay. And they both have their uses. Whether one is "better" than the other on technical grounds matters to very few people. There are countless examples of this throughout technological history. Betamax vs. VHS, diesel vs. gasoline engines, linux vs. windows, internet explorer vs. mozilla, so on and so forth. The simple fact of the matter is, whatever people are comfortable with, that's what they're going to stay with.
That's not to say people can't be comfortable with more than one thing. Many users are comfortable enough with both Windows AND linux. I, for one, use both on a daily basis.
And to say things like "the only place where linux really lags behind windows is..." may not be the right approach to this debate. The fact of the matter is their are pro's and con's to each side of the debate.
What the leaders of the linux community most probably realize, and the users (and in some cases devolopers) do not, is that linux makes its place in computing. The place will be decided by demand. They don't choose to push their product into places users don't want it; it's based on demand, and they're fine with that.
From what I can tell, those defending open source and linux based on ideology are sewing the seeds of their own destruction, for it can lead to nothing but complacency. Many, not all, are saying "it's already good enough", when it's not. Not recognizing the shortcomings of software and addressing them by saying "it's not that hard, they should be able to figure it out" just doesn't work on complex software projects.
The reality of the situation is, Windows is the dominant force of the two today. It may not remain that way, but if it's going to change, many things need to happen. As it stands, USERS demand Windows machines because USERS use the computers. It's familiar, and when its setup by someone else with the knowhow, they have nothing to learn or change. It's just easier to not learn something new. And they're comfortable with that.
The fact is, we support nearly 1000 dual boot Windows XP / Linux machines, and linux is used a very, very small % of the time. And i'll just say it's not the history majors that are target users; this is at a top 5 engineering institution in the US. UNIX is nearly completely phased out on the desktop front (solaris, HPUX - gone), and is not going to come back. Very few people use Apple OSX. 99% of the desktop hardware budget is PC hardware. Why? Because users DEMAND more windows machines. With the phaseout of traditional UNIX vendors on the desktop, should we consider some linux only machines? No way users would allow it. They'd ask "why isn't windows on so and so PC?"
Odd - we do the right thing by supporting both, but Linux is almost never used. Weird? No. All of the engineering applications that drove HP and SUN purchases in years past have migrated to - get this - Windows. And this is in the academy, where the user community it highly intellectual.
Go out to best buy, grab a video capture card or
I am a long-time LINUXhead and now MacOS user. I recently had to purchase my first Microsoft Windows machine to run some optical design software (it is a Dell box running XP Pro). I was flabbergasted at how counterintuitive XP was, how difficult it was to set up networking properly, at how non-configurable it was, and and at how many annoying little gizmos popped up to distract me from doing real work. Jeez, I don't know or care whether my antivirus software is updated, or have to delete a zillion pre-installed AOL@HOME icons, or read and ignore a Symantec sales pitch disguised as a "security report". I just want to mount a remote SMB volume and run my optical design software and be left alone. In short, Microsoft Windows really is that bad. The awful depth of its badness is virtually invisible, however, to most computer users -- because to them, that's just how computers are. They've never learned anything else and don't know any better. They're even proud to be able to get work done in the tricky, distracting, frustrating environment that is "a personal computer" (really just Microsoft Windows). That is the real shame. If those people had been weaned on Macintosh or even one of the more recent Linux distributions like Fedora or Mandrake, they'd never put up with such crap.
"The first half is text based, consisting of a blue screen with white text. Not exactly pretty, and not particularly functional. It spent a long time 'copying system files' before it asked me any questions. Copying them where, though? I had an unformatted hard-drive in this machine, so I suspect the RAM."
:)
And just how does this differ from something like Knoppix
"In order to get the hardware working, I had to visit the Intel website and download the required drivers. Finding out what hardware you have is a difficult process under Windows. With most Linux distributions,it is often as simple as typing lspci. Not so under Windows. Instead you have to open up the 'Control Panel', find your way to the 'System' applet, look for the Hardware tab, then launch the 'device manager'. That's a lot of clicking, for such a simple task!"
"Buhu, I hurt my hand clicking and I prefer to open a console and write commands."
"I wanted to know what was happening, so out of habit I hit Ctrl+Alt+F1. Of course, this was a no go. It seems that virtual consoles aren't enabled in Windows by default. In fact, subsequent Google searches seemed to suggest that Windows doesn't come with this functionality at all! Your GUI is all you get. Perhaps new and inexperienced users would not need this functionality, or even notice it was missing, but I'm sure Linux 'power users', attempting to switch to Windows, will miss it."
Well, duuuuh, Windows doesn't have virtual consoles. And I'm pretty sure that new and inexperienced Linux users doesn't need the Ctrl+Alt+F1 functionality, or even notice it's missing.
"Okay, so I was finally logged in. There were icons all over the desktop. Icons I certainly had never placed there. With a growing sense of trepidation, I opened 'My Documents', a folder which should have been empty. It wasn't. It was full of my boss's stuff. I double-checked the profile information in Active Directory to make sure I hadn't inadvertently typed in the wrong profile path. I hadn't. Windows had simply magnanimously decided to swap my own My Documents folder with that of another user in the system. Now that is a truly disastrous bug."
No, that's a stupid admin.
"No matter. Time to see what software we get with a standard Windows install. Not much, as it turns out. I wasn't expecting a lot from a single CD install, but the complete lack of applications was rather scary, considering the normal price tag on a copy of Windows. Microsoft did include a text editor, but I don't know why. It had no options for syntax highlighting or automatic indenting, let alone 'advanced' features such as whether or not to use spaces instead of tabs, and if so, how many. This renders it rather useless for anything beyond basic editing of config files, and given that Windows config files all seem to be in binary formats anyway, it's hard to imagine why they even bothered including it. I'll stick to vim, thank you very much. There are versions compiled for Windows."
OMFG, that the great thing about Windows. People don't have to mess around with config files!
"Windows' only drawing program, 'MS Paint', is so basic it would turn even the most accomplished digital artist into little more than a kid with crayons. In a similar fashion, the default e-mail client 'Outlook Express', is barely functional, and the web-browser, 'Internet Explorer' is famed for its ability to destroy your entire computer."
Yes, you're right. Install GIMP, Firefox, and Thunderbird. Problem solved.
"The Windows command-prompt is called 'cmd', and it uses old DOS commands you are probably not familiar with. However, this is not likely to be much of a problem, as it is extremely limited, and not particularly worth using. Very few Windows programs are scriptable, anyway. Again, this appears to be an area where Microsoft have made our choices for us, deliberately neglecting an area of functionality they do not expect or want people to use."
The point of Windows is tha
I use Linux primarily but I support a large number of customers using Windows.
There are two key issues that people often miss here:
1) familiarity and
2) productivity
Most people are familiar with Windows, hence it seems more user-friendly. For those of us who are more familiar with Linux, Linux is quite a bit more user-friendly.
The second issue is more subtle. Of everyone I know that uses both regularly, everyone that does not depend on Windows-only tools is more productive on Linux. This is, I think, a strong indication that on any *objective* measure of innate user-friendly design, Linux is actually more user-friendly than Windows.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Unlike the author, I've managed to avoid using windows since I started using computers in 1983ish, I admit I played in DOS a bit (debug.exe for hacking fun) and obviously have seen and used win31 then 95, 98 .. XP a little bit. But honestly for not more than a few hours a year on average. When I got a new PC it came with XP sort of already installed (well it had to run through some sort of extract from disk install), I gave it a go (for a laugh) and was shocked at how lost I was, the complete lack of normal cmdline tools I live with left me feeling quite unable to do anything useful at all.d mesg/soffice, that's gui (X) and cmdline together, trying to work without knowing what the equivalent tools are was not easy and in many cases I realised that there was nothing (other than cygwin*) at all, the equivalent had to be done with clicks and points and "Find.." menu options. It's what others are used to so nobody is complaining, never mind that I'm 10x faster than a power windows user at some of these things.
I know this is a personal think for me, but it just re-itterates what this "joke" article is trying to say. It's basically not that funny. Windows out of the box is horribly inadequate, and adding a media player and browser that force what server infrastructure rules the planet (WMV can only be streamed from windows, if they bundled a player like xine they could do wmv AND realmedia, and realmedia can be served from non windows) is not what I mean. I mean sed/awk/ps/su/xterm/xclipboard/find/xwd/xdpyinfo/
Anyway, this is just a rant now and the article is old so I'll post anon and just be happy I vented!
*this just turns windows, in to a unix box, only slower, more expensive and less reliable
Mod parent troll! Driver installation supports CDs, as well as any other source you can browse to (even network shares). Of course an older version of Windows doesn't support things that just came out requiring proprietary drivers and software! And of course HD and network are supported in the box.
i'm starting to be curious.
one day i think i'll try it out and actually install it on my computer, but - after reading this article i'm a bit put off again.
maybe i wait a bit longer before i take the plunge.
anyone else who tried this before?
some of my friends keep talking about this Windows software.
but then again, not sure it will support my hardware and all?
what's your experience??
what's the best Windows distro? any source distros available?
how about package installers for Windows?
And the thing that blew me away wasn't during the install. It was immediately after.
I thought I was being prudent about security when the first thing I did after installing windows was plugging in my ethernet cord and running windows update. Little did I know . . . In the time it took me to run windows update I had already been infected with 6 pieces of malicious software. Thankfully the google pack install comes with norton antivirus, or I probably never would have noticed.
I now understand why so many windows users get their boxes owned. If you don't pay attention to updates, you are fucked.
...tell us what you really think.
You really are clueless.
Go browse Dell or HP's site, and note of 3rd party software that they bundle.
For example, Dell's default "office" suite that they bundle is Corel. Dell bundles MS Office only if you explicitly select it and pay extra.
HP bundles iTunes as the default music player. For "office" functionality, HP's default bundle is MS Works, but you can alternatively choose Corel or MS Office. Dell and/or HP bundle other 3rd party apps from Sonic and the like.
Microsoft isn't preventing OEMs from installing any 3rd party apps that they want to.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
As a jaded Win / Mac user, the value I get from this article is that is points out idiosyncracies that I usually take for granted, and therefore never notice when using Windows. Thank you.
"Upon further investigation I discovered that a tiny black thing had fallen off the motherboard and hit a tiny, round white thing with copper wires running around it. Curious, I sticky-taped the little black thing back onto the motherboard, in approximately the same place it had been before it fell off, and tried the power switch again. Nothing. At this point, the idea occurred to me that maybe my computer was broken."
Hmmm.... must be a Computer Scientist.
(feel free to mod this as flame bait if you can't take a joke, software geeks.)
Ummm, let me add Quickbooks to the list. Not some replacement program that says it will import a QuickBooks files...but an actual Intuit Quickbooks for Linux. Also, a terminal server and clients built into Linux would just kick M$ butt. I have to hand it to M$, Terminal Server is cool, but if you want to use it legally, the licenses issue is a nightmare. But if we could get some programs like Quickbooks, TurboTax, etc., on the Linux desktop and have EASY intergrated terminal services similar to Remote Desktop...without the license hassel, it would hit Microsoft hard in the business market.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Well, I must say that I really despise articles like this one. The kind "Im a Linux user, so let's bash on Windows". I am a Windows and Unix user (IRIX) and in my work I also use Linux (Red Hat), so Im quite used to working in different OS environments. Why does every writers of articles bashing Windows says that "I had to reboot because it freeze", "It does not detect my hardware", and so on... I do not know what kind of Windows does this people use, but I work with Maya and other highend 3D software packages and my Windows XP NEVER crashed in two years. All my hardware (including a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000) works great. When I tried to install Linux on my PC, only Fedora detected my video card (and I tried a lot of them).
Problems with Firefox? Gimme a break... You're the first one that I know with that kind of problem.
According the subject of Windows being "devoid of useful applications", that's subjective. For a lot of people that's better than get an OS (read Linux) with 5 text editors (at least), 3 browsers (or more) and so on...
Windows desktop ugly? Coming from a Linux user this is rather funny...
I do love Linux and I wish the best of luck for it's future, but this kind of mentality only afects the embrace of Linux in the mainstream.
All those windows desktop managers with different projects like Oxygen, that will lead to nowhere. Even Linus has already foreseen it.
And it's better not to talk about driver issues in Linux...
I don't recall my Divine Comedy that well...
The other problem with this statement is the way everyone cries foul when Microsoft default installs an app with Windows and then complains that a Windows default install doesn't have any applications. Make up your mind! You can't have it both ways.
No "everyone" doesn't do this. Different people are complaining about different things.
I have had to change to Windows XP after using only linux, solaris and dec unix for the last 8 yrs or so due to my RSI (speech recognition software being only for windows). I did have win nt installed on my computer as an alternate os to play games for some time before that but the only MS OS I used significantly earlier was DOS. The GUI for WinXP is utter crap, without virtual desktops or multiple desktops. It doesn't even rival the enlightenment from 6 years ago!! How do people keep track of 20+ windows on this GUI?? (My usual number, for web surfing, reading lecture notes, programming etc.) Further, no alternate GUIs seem to be available. The computer seems to crawl once more that 10 programs or so are running (not CPU intensive ones), a problem I never had on linux. Annoyances.org was helpful to some extent but for a serious user, WinXP Pro is not even close to any of the unices.
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" - Albert Einstein
Intuit won't write Quickbooks for linux until they really think there is a market there. What is wrong with a replacement package, assuming it provides the same or similar functionality?
As to terminal server, there are many ways to achieve that with linux today. rdesktop, vnc, x windows, LTSP, and other solutions are available under linux. And in most cases no licensing hassel!
Haha, the article reads like the writer has a massive inferiority complex regarding his OS of choice; I couldn't get through the whole thing I was laughing so hard. I used to take sides in the debate, but these days I have to just laugh when reading stuff like this... The battle's really nothing more than Usability (at the expense of functionality) vs functionality (at the expense of usability). Different strokes for different folks.
:)
Crap like this is the best: "With most Linux distributions,it is often as simple as typing lspci. Not so under Windows. Instead you have to open up the 'Control Panel', find your way to the 'System' applet, look for the Hardware tab, then launch the 'device manager'. That's a lot of clicking, for such a simple task!" And proves that it's nothing more than Usability vs Functionality. Sure for someone that knows linux "lspci" is a simple command to remember; but ask your parents, or children if they know what lspci does; then ask them if they know how to click a mouse button.
"3) no decent command line. Some things are much easier to do in the command line; for example, searching for files, then selecting some of them due to search criteria, then zipping and sending them to a specific folder. Doing this in Windows is not as easy and intuitive as in Linux."
/etc/fstab".
Searching for files is done by pressing Winkey-F. If you need to hunt down specific files by another special search creiteria, you can click one of the search options. If you need greater control over that, then you probably need a better organization system.
But how can the OP search for files and "[zip] and [send] them to a specific folder" with Windows-F?
"6) drive letters are problematic. I have setup my projects to drive E:, but somehow Windows decided to give the drive a different drive letter once I reconfigured the partitions. Then my project broke. I had to replace all drive references in all the project files."
Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> Right Click F: -> Change Drive Letter and Paths.
That seems at least as complex as "man mount ; edit
If read that page you linked to literally, then yes, it does appear that there will be no security hot fixes after mainstream support supposedly ends, but if you take a look at their Service Pack Roadmap page, you'll see that SP3 for XP is planned for AFTER the mainstream support cut-off date. So take off your 'I hate Microsoft' glasses and think logically for a second. Microsoft currently offers no alternative to XP, and judging by the way they operate there might not be one by the time mainstream support supposedly ends. There is no way they could end support at the date they have listed. The date they have listed is a date set according to XP's release date, with the assumption that there would be an alternative for customers to switch to long before that date.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I thought I was being prudent about security when the first thing I did after installing windows was plugging in my ethernet cord and running windows update. Little did I know . . . In the time it took me to run windows update I had already been infected with 6 pieces of malicious software.
Putting a machine on the Internet for any length of time without a firewall is not being prudent about security. After a fresh install, you turn on the built in firewall first, then plug in the ethernet cable and then immediately connect to Windows Update. Alternatively, you can hook up to a broadband router doing NAT.
Thankfully the google pack install comes with norton antivirus, or I probably never would have noticed.
Hopefully you reformatted after this, and did the above. Once a machine is compromised you can never be completely sure of its security again.
I now understand why so many windows users get their boxes owned. If you don't pay attention to updates, you are fucked.
That and a lack of understanding about security. Even the most basic security measures involve always running a firewall, which unfortunately Microsoft didn't seem to understand since they included one and didn't switch it on by default until SP2.
Anyone installing a linux distro should be doing this [partitioning their drive].
/var, /home, /usr/local, /etc, etc. They'll never benefit from it, and will only ever notice the partitioning scheme by the hassles it creates.
I strongly disagree with this. Almost no one should be doing this. Even the swap partition isn't necessary anymore. In this day of fast disks and larger memory capacities, a swap file will work just fine.
But under no condition should your average user partition his or her
In other words, partitioning adds unnecessary complexity. Your average user should not partition unless absolutely necessary (ie: they want to multi-boot).
Why do you think Mac OS X doesn't partition the OS in the old, anachronistic UNIX way (although you still can, if you really want to)?
'nuff said.
...as does your wife with me. ;-)
What is it with you people?!? Even the editor of the article, acting like a Linux veteran acts like an eight year old school kid. Funny how the writer seems to go "blind" when he tries to install and use XP. Also prejudice rules a lot in the article and somewhat makes it childish experience. I suppose as more people write these stupid articles, more people will have prejudice towards us, open source, linux etc. GROW UP!
I don't agree with your last statement "Ease of learning is as important as ease of use." You only have to learn how to do something one time. You might do that task hundreds or thousands of times. So, ease of use to me is much more important.
For the record, I use Kubuntu on my 2 home computers and Mepis on my computer at work.
God is imaginary
The process would be like this (like apt):
Does anyone know of anything that exists currently? Cygwin is sort of like this, but doesn't include near the variety of apps available in a Debian repository.
He conveniently skips discussing things such as Windows Scripting Host and that the Windows Shell is scriptable, along with most COM applications (and they're plenty), when discussing scriptability.
I'm not sure what problem he's having with installing Python either. Python's poor installer error messages is hardly a Windows problem anyway.
I also don't see what he means about the Windows UI being "pretty". He must have horrible experiences from Linux in that case.
Anyway, I wonder what would've been thought of this review if it bashed Linux and was written by a huge Windows fan.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
How about doing a review from the perspective of someone who has never used a computer before - then lets see which one is easier to use (hint: the answer will be Windows XP by a massive margin).
There are some exceptions, but by and large, Linux these days is far, far easier. There are two major aspects that makes this true. First, is the driver issue. Generally, if Linux can run it, the driver will arrive with the install CDs. There are some exceptions, nVidia drivers for instance have to be acquired after the install, and the system will then inform you the pristine OS kernel has become polluted by a proprietary bit of code. If you use a Canon printer you are probably SOL. Canon keeps the interface information close to the gravy stains, so linux support for Canon printers is generally pretty poor, but with HP and Epson available, who cares? With Windows you will need CD after CD for the drivers alone, and you'll have to reboot after installing each and every one. Linux is simply far easier here.
The other aspect is applications. Windows of course comes with a few wimpy but useful apps, and they expect that you will have and install your own industrial strengths applications as needed. This has it's pros and cons. A linux distribution on the other hand may have over a thousand apps accompanying it; everything from games, CAD and OO to little utilities like convert. This too has its pros and cons.
You can do almost anything right out of the box with a linux distribution. The gotcha is that you need to be able to identify and locate the utilities and apps you need on the CD or DVDs, and the descriptions available are pretty opaque. With Windows and its discrete applications and utilities, picking and choosing is much easier, but you will probably need to reboot after installing, which is just silly. All in all, the only way to make linux simpler would be to provide a better catalog of the available applications and their uses. With windows, the first thing is to get rid of multiple required reboots and separate drivers.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Tod ist Gott!
Try Gentoo for the Windows user. 4 Days to compile and install. 2 Minutes for WinXP. Lets meet in the middle and use suse/fedora/mandriva, whatever.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Fuck these guys above trying to think up comebacks.
Yours is one of the funniest posts I've seen here in months. Good on ya!
The author states not all of this happened on one box, or at the same time for that matter.
In other words, it is a work of fiction.
Oh, and that Ubuntu Cd is how old compared to XP?
Using a distro closer in age would make for better results as far as hardware goes.
The next thing you want to do is install cygwin. The whole thing. You may have to play with permissions on /tmp, but in the end you will get X to work. I do most everything in emacs and xterm running through an X server in cygwin on my Windows XP machine at work. Copy and paste works as expected.
Once I was able to find an older machine that was being decomissioned, I installed Gentoo and XFCE4 on it. I share a single mouse and keyboard between the two machines using Synergy. I even copy and paste between them. So while I admit it's much more difficult than setting up Gentoo, it is possible to make a Windows box into a productive machine. Good luck!I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
http://www.ss64.com/nt/mountvol.html
/S /B c:\*.html > c:\filelist.txt /F "delims=" %i in (c:\filelist.txt) do "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -tzip c:\myhtmlfiles.zip "%i" /s /q c:\filelist.txt
/etc/fstab"."
/?
But how can the OP search for files and "[zip] and [send] them to a specific folder
dir
for
del
"That seems at least as complex as "man mount ; edit
But a little less complex than....
mountvol
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I bought an HP zv6015 notebook last summer since my commute got suddenly longer when my company moved. I tried working with Windoze XP (Home Edition) for about two weeks before I wiped the disk and installed Linux.
It wasn't instability or anything like that. It was the absolutely gawd awful organization of the administration toolset and the, "We know better then you," unhelpfull tools once I found the right tab within a tool within a menu.
I've been happilly running Fedora Core 4 on the beasty ever since. I get a real 64 bit OS with SE-Linux (gave me a reason to learn about SE-Linux) and a built in firewall that does what I tell it to do. This means that the box is about as hard to crack as possible for running a publicly available OS. Setting it up was a piece of cake once I got beyond the Windoze specific "features" that made even installing Linux a pain and now the only maintenance I have to do is run "yum update" from time to time. I kept a copy of Windoze on a 10GB partition since that is the only way HP pushes out BIOS updates.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The way I see it:
You pay Windows to get the job done.
All Linux wants is your time.
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
On both Digg and Slashdot feedbacks there is a vehement feedback on this issue. I thought the tongue in cheek attitude of the author was great. I thought his writing was satirical, but all the same it was accurate and not exaggerated. I am a professional sysadmin, and have dealt with both windows and linux desktops and servers on networks for many years. If I were a better writter I think I could have written this article! It was great.
It's funny where he says that when he first installed Ubuntu, he had sound, 3d acceleration, and internet access; I had none of those three. However with Windows I had all of them. Personally I think it's all just luck of the draw with hardware; I've had 3 different sound cards and every time I attempt to switch to Linux I end up having the one sound card you _don't_ want to have with Linux.
hi
It's a downloadable add-on. You can choose nView, or any other download.
With Linux, there is no need to search, download and evaluate third-party software for such a functionality.
You can download either Cygwin, MiniGW, or the MSVC Compiler Toolkit (along with the Platform SDK).
Neither of those can be used with the Visual Studio 6.0 IDE though. Whereas in Linux, not only I get a fairly modern compiler, but support from it for every IDE. And don't tell me about using DevCpp or Eclipse, because DevCpp crushes regularly and Eclipse is slow and a bad UI.
The only thing you will miss out with the toolkit is the MFC and ATL - something that can be implemented by the user.
But MFC/ATL are thousand lines of code!!! are seriously proposing for one guy to sit down and implement it for Mingw32, for example?
If you need to hunt down specific files by another special search creiteria, you can click one of the search options. If you need greater control over that, then you probably need a better organization system.
I need greater control, but it's not a matter of organization, it's a matter of utilisation. With Linux (and Unix in general), the command line is a programming tool: it allows me to do more work in less time. With Windows, I have to use my hands (moving the mouse, clicking etc) outside of the keyboard, and I have to focus on really different UI cues each time I click, whereas in Linux, once I got the hang of it, I can type in the command line very quickly what I want. The command line is like talking to the computer...the easiest and most direct way to program it.
These problems are usually associated with improperly written software. They can occurr under Linux as well
Of course, but the count of 'improperly written software packages' in Windows is greater than that of Linux.
Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> Right Click F: -> Change Drive Letter and Paths.
I see it is easy in Windows. But it is easier on Linux:
void
That's right, I don't have to do anything with Linux.
BTW, a properly configured application/project doesn't use hard-coded paths.
We don't live in an ideal world where programs are written without assumptions. Furthermore, I was talking about the tools, not the actual contents of my projects: Almost all apps have some kind of directory parameter (one or more), and in Windows most apps insist of using drive letters (VS for example).
In any case, both Windows and Linux are primitive.
primitive != old. Something may be old, but it works. For example, the latest developments in programming languages are going back to the roots - LISP, that is.
They still have a legacy base that keep on coming back from the graveyard (e.g. Dos drive letters, or Unix man pages.)
But Dos drive letters is a thing that causes problems, whereas Unix man pages does not.
The only way to fix this problem is to redesign a new operating system from scratch - good luck getting market penetration since neither OS/2 or Beos are around anymore.
OS/2 was a beast of an operating system, very non-elegant and difficult to use and program.
BeOS was a fairly modern, object-oriented operating system based on message passing, but it was not sufficiently different: you still had to mess with files, for example. And it was faught vicioucly by Microsoft with anti-competitive tactics (for example forcing Dell not to install it in their machines - if they did, they would lose the Microsoft contract).
As for supporting new hardware, windows Me actually installs fine on the SATA disk, so it's not like windows couldn't support it. However, the graphics card doesn't work with Me, even with official drivers, and neither does Civ IV.
My point is that Gentoo is windows far superior when it comes to installing. Sure, it happens that it needs a helping hand, but when that happens, I have a full set of tools to help out. And my distro of choice being Gentoo, I opted for the hard way myself, so I really can't complain. I need the features Gentoo provides, since my linux partition is not just play :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.