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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."
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 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
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)
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.
"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.
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 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!
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/eabf0ee8a408c3518 7d0c3661384c615/index.html
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.
Making Windows Usable for Old Linux Farts
Still shows that making Windows workable is rather hard task.
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."
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
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.
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 ...
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
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".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
"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
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
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...
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.