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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."
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!!"
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?
I had some randomly bad RAM not long ago, and both Windows and Linux failed with it at totally unexpected times. It may be an application crash, or the whole system may go down hard. The day when software can ignore dodgy hardware is still a long way off, although it is getting better at spotting it (SMART for HDDs is wonderful, saved my data twice by warning my prior to a disk crash)
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
If you want full Linux-installer-style partition and format control over a Windows install, it's there, and it's not that hard to find.
... no media under the installer, can't use drivers from another optical drive, external drive, network share, nfs, and I could just go on
I call BS, and big time. Let's see some crapness in the windows installer:
- no sata or raid support (wait, see next line),
- you can have sata and other "exotic" hw support with third party drivers on a floppy disk, and nothing else (just think of people like myself who doesn't even buy or have fdd for about 6 years now), which leads to
- you can't use, mount, read,
- you have only two choices for partition format, fatxx or ntfs; besides the goal for monopoly, how can one explain the lack of native support for other, high quality journaling filesystems
- no support for defining separate partitions for swap or user homes (that is Documents and Settings) - I know you can make these steps after a finished install, but why not during install ?
- network will be about the last things activated during the install process and still no use since you don't have no other terminals or guis or anything, you can't do anything but wait
- the installer gives you about 0 amount of information about the status of the install, in a lucky case you can see some filenames of dlls being copied, other than that nothing but some crappy images and blinking pixels
Don't get me wrong (I suppose you already did), I'm not saying the way the installer works is bad for the average user, I'm saying you have no other option, which is bad. Sometimes very bad.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
That might be the problem. I've seen quite a few instances where auto-updates applied an update that then completely takes a system down. I've seen systems come up but fail to ever get past a login screen. Hell, I've watched servers that were updated manually get severely messed up and cause downtime thanks to a Windows "Update".
Long story short- Automatic updates are just asking for trouble. I use auto-download, but manual install. At least that way I know if I'm getting a stupid Windows Driver update, a system update, or some other piece of junk update, and if the system bails on me I have a baseline to know if it was from an update or not.
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
You obviously don't support Windows systems for laymen.
In every instance that I've replaced someone's Windows-only system with a dual-boot Windows/Linux install, they've thanked me.
I didn't install Linux to computer illiterate family members but I did install Windows XP without any problems and they have no viruses, spyware, scumware, whatnot, to this day.
I usually have a "nazi" checklist like this:
- I am admin on the machine. No one else is. Yes it's a very severe limitation but it's worth gold. Before switching to these "nazi" rules, every month or two I had to clean up myriads of spywares and viruses. For the last 2 years, not one single virus, adware or spyware.
- Only root has execute rights on iexplore.exe.
- Firefox is default browser (thank $DEITY$ my mom's and sisters' banking sites support it well).
- Thunderbird is default mail client.
- OO.org installed (so far no complaints!)
- Autoplay disabled.
- SSH installed.
- Router used as firewall.
There are limitations like installing software, but I can connect remote to the machine and do maintenance and/or installs if needed. There was no antivirus nor antispyware installed, and for shits and giggles I did install one of each and no scumware was found on the machines.
And referring to BSODs, I yet have to see Windows BSOD on about 7+ PCs in my family that wasn't related to some goddamn piece of shit ATI video driver. The only other BSOD I had on one of our PCs was because of a bad memory stick.