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Ubuntu, Macintosh and Windows XP
LXer has an interesting look at the big three operating systems with some surprising results. From the article: "If you think that a Linux advocate cannot make an objective analysis of desktop operating systems, then you need to read this report. You may find yourself surprised with some brutal honesty that leaves out the free software philosophy."
Ubuntu, Macintosh and Windows XP
,etc. Then I started using the Mac as a production machine at a DoE lab.
Posted by tadelste on Mar 19, 2006 3:44 PM
Lxer.com; By Tom Adelstein
If you think that a Linux advocate cannot make an objective analysis of desktop operating systems, then you need to read this report. You may find yourself surprised with some brutal honesty that leaves out the free software philosophy.
All three desktop operating systems have admirable qualities. Each has some weaknesses. Attending a recent User Group Fair, I had another chance to see them at work. Having used and programmed on each platform provides some unbiased insights.
Background
I have owned several Macintosh computers. I had new world and old world bios machines including several older 6500s, 7600s, etc. that would not take OS X. I also had a blue and white, a beige workgroup server, Power Mac G4s, a Cube, iBook, etc. I remember making the transition from OS 9 to OS X. I liked it.
I used Microsoft from the DOS days to early Windows 2.0, 3.0, 3.11, Windows 95, 98, ME, NT3.51 - 4.0, 2000 and XP. I still have the licenses and media for everything since Windows 3.1. I managed large IBM networks with OS/2 on the desktop and LAN Server 3 as the server. I won't get into my NetWare experience.
I used Solaris, AIX and Linux starting with Slackware 3x. I even ran Red Hat on Sun IPCs, Sparc 5 and 10 workstations. I'm now using SUSE SLES and Pro, RHEL, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu for daily use on servers and workstations.
Each system has different programing architectures with OS X a little closer to Linux than Windows. OS X uses a UNIX architecture to run its internals. However, the OS X desktop interface does not resemble Linux or other UNICES which depend on X. You can use X on the Mac natively.
Windows has a completely different programing structure from OS X and Linux. Windows relies heavily on its user interface which has evolved over time. Programing involves using Windows shell extensions. XP uses the NT kernel to manage file systems, internals and communication with the graphical shell.
OS X and Linux use completely different schemes with kernel extensions and independent programs running inside the user interface shell. The UNIX shell runs independently in what kernel developers call userland.
UNIX and Linux programmers consider their programing methods preferable to Windows. Windows developers consider the interface extensions easier to use and providing for more rapid application development. Each have merit when you look at them objectively. Of course, Macintosh developers will say that since they moved to the UNIX method that they experience more stability.
Macintosh
I started with the first Mac configured as a desktop publishing machine. I remember liking it because it cut costs we otherwise spent on type setting and graphics, paste up
For personal use, I used the Mac for graphics, audio productions and developing web sites. OS X made a huge difference since I didn't have to reboot in the middle of working. I also knew my way around UNIX and that allowed me to use Internet applications I hadn't used previously.
I found the developers tools useful. I enjoyed the interface. I found myself exploring more of the system when I purchased "OS X, the Missing Manual". The same book helped me discover ways of using Windows and Linux I hadn't known previously.
Windows XP
I recall using XP for three months without having to reboot it. I don't remember that happening before. I started collecting Microsoft Certs when Windows 95 arrived. I had used Excel 5 and Access to develop financial tools. Later, I became a sysadmin and ran a couple of large NT networks.
XP appeared safe behind our firewall. After three months, my system became sluggish and prone to malware. I did maintenance on the system regularly including defraging the disk, deleting unnecessary files and checking the registry.
I liked XP better than any previ
Have you ever noticed that in the scheme of naming meat for the three big land animals is completely broke?
No, the system works as designed. For mammals, the English name of the animal comes from Anglo-Saxon, while the English name of its flesh prepared as food comes from French. See also sheep => mutton; deer => venison. But for species in other classes that extend Chordata, the English name of the prepared flesh is derived directly from the common English name of the animal: duck => duck; pheasant => pheasant; frog => frog legs; tuna => tuna.
I did my taxes this year with Quicktax under WINE. To my surprise and delight, everything just worked. Kudos to the sidenet-wine-config people -- this tool downloads and installs several key bits of software from Microsoft that many windows apps expect (such as IE).
No... I'll simply say...
You can't pipe program output, redirect to file, etc.
First, I can't recall the last time I needed or wanted to redirect output to a file from a command line app while I was doing development. Perhaps it's because I do a different kind of development than you do, but regardless, I would hardly classify XP is a bad development platform over something like that. Even so, you're completely wrong as it's very easy to pipe output in XP.
Search through source file relies on 3rd party solutions, and few of them have the ability to work with regular expressions.
Huh? Aside from the fact that hitting F3 in Windows will bring up a find dialog that can search the contents of files, Visual Studio (and virtually every other IDE that runs on Windows) has the ability to search with regular expressions.
Make sure you read the thread that he posted on the Ubuntu forums before feeling too sorry for this jerk. He had a problem, and people tried very hard to help. He refused to try anything anyone suggested and became very abusive. People continued to give him suggestions and try to help. He just got nastier and nastier. His experiences are bad only because he chose for them to be.
- fader
Because he posted a similar rant last time Ubuntu got mentioned. I just happened to remember it because I was shocked enough at his behavior to reply, so it was easy to find again.
The way he linked to evidence of his own jerkishness as if he thought it defended him, I think the guy really might honestly need therapy.
- fader
>When you consider more tax software
>companies are making their software
>available as web packages, which OS
>you are using becomes moot.
Yup.
Even if that weren't the case, judging a computer system by whether or not you can perform a task that one needs to perform roughly one hour per year is just silly. The author mentions a dozen application that are used daily, followed by the line, "and most importantly income tax preparation software." Most importantly? In what bizarro-universe is a home pc's most important feature tax prep software?
Even if there weren't several very robust online tax prep services, and if paper forms and human tax accountants weren't an option, it's hard to believe there are many potential linux users who don't have a friend or colleague who would lend them a windows machine once a year in order to do taxes. (Whether you're willing to give your SSN and banking info to a machine administered by someone other than you is another matter, I suppose.)
In passing, it's worth noting that of the other "missing" applications, only two that are genuine categories of software rather than specific vendor packages - PDF converters and legal DVD players - really have no place on the list.
There are plenty of ways of generating PDFs on linux. Having spent a fair amount of time generating PDFs from both platforms in recent years, I claim it's far easier to make arbitrary material into a high quality PDF using an unmodified linux install than it is in windows, even after paying hundreds of dollars to Adobe.
What's more, while there are no *legal* dvd players and there are a hand full of important codecs that are *legally* restricted in the US, it is trivial to install illegal software to satisfy one's every multimedia need. If linux growth were restricted only to those of us who claim it is ethically defensible to obtain an illicit copy of media playing software which is distributed for free to users of one OS but cannot be purchased at any price by users of another OS, in order to play our own legally purchased media on our own hardware, the linux community would never notice the difference.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that if you're trying to upgrade one package and it prompts you to upgrade a bunch of others, there are some dependencies involved.
If you upgrade package a package that depends on some library "libfoo" that also has a newer version out, there's a chance that all of the other packages that use "libfoo" will need updated as well. This is because OSS tends to do a huge amount of software reuse. Windows and MacOS [X] software doesn't do that to the same extent.
The reason you can't just upgrade thet first package and not libfoo and all the others is that it will completely break things. Instability is what you'll get if you're extremely lucky, but it's far more likely that all those programs will crash as soon as you try to run them, because you're using an incompatible older library.
The good news, though, is that Ubuntu only makes minor security or stability upgrades within a release. You won't see a package go from version 1.5 to 2.0 within a given Ubuntu release, specifically because it's newer and less tested. If there's an upgrade available, you can rest assured that it's extremely unlikely to break anything -- these are minor, well-tested updates. If an upgrade is available, take it! You may be at risk if you don't. The updates you see are guaranteed not to be bleeding-edge.
(NB: This isn't true of all distributions, but it is true of Ubuntu.)
- fader