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How Linux and Windows Stack Up in 2006
Jane Walker writes "How does Linux stack up to Windows in 2006? Experts weigh in on that question in these articles, comparing the operating systems' security, reliability and usability. Get insiders' views on Microsoft's proprietary stack versus open source software, as well as Windows-to-Linux migration tips."
Where's The Fucking Article? A link to a bunch of links...great.
Linux when it works is perfect. Linux when it doesn't is just weird and fucked up. I tried installing Ubuntu for a newbie recently, and sudo decided it just wasn't going to work. So I'm futzering around with weird commands and the Ubuntu forum for a couple hours, and yeah, my newbie was real pleased with her new system. Uh huh.
Now my home Ubuntu computer has decided (again!) that flash doesn't need sound. No more Youtube for me anymore...
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I'm a computer geek who regularly uses Windows. Yes, I know, boo, hiss, whatever. My software development happens under Windows because that's what I learned on, that's where most of the market currently is, and that's what I've got a job doing. I'm not going to stop working for a company I like doing what I enjoy just because I happen to do my work on Windows.
In any case, periodically I load Linux on an alternate hard disk in my machine to play around with it and see what I can get going. I do like to keep my knowledge of it up in the event that I run into it on the job (I also do field work from time to time), but I also like to see how far it has progressed. At some point in time, I really would like to use it as my core operating system, even if I still have to drop into Windows when I work.
Recently (about a week ago), I decided to try a couple of different distributions. They all seem to suffer from one problem -- the USB keyboard no longer works when it hits the installer. "You forgot to turn on legacy mode for USB in your BIOS!", is the first thing most people would say, except that I haven't forgotten to turn it on. It works perfectly fine for the BIOS-based boot menu. I even triple checked it, thinking I was missing something. I tried numerous options to try and get the damn thing working, to no avail.
Yes, I could get a USB to PS2 converter and yes, it does work fine after that. But that's not the point -- I shouldn't HAVE to do that. Critical things like that will kill any interest your average user will have in the operating system. But, for what it's worth, I was very pleased with what I saw after I did finally get it loaded. It's come a long way from the operating system I tinkered with 6 or 7 years ago.
``I don't think a regular user could switch their machine from Windows to Linux with one CD and a reboot yet... right?''
It depends on how fancy you want to get, and on your hardware. Certain distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) make it very easy to install the system while wiping everything that was there off the harddisk, and they do a good job at autodetecting a lot of hardware.
Things get more difficult if you want to set up a dual-boot system, preserve (some) of the data that was on the harddisk before the Linux install, customize what apps are installed, run Windows or Mac software, etc. etc. Whether or not this is beyond the reach of any particular user is mostly up to how much this user knows and is willing to learn; i.e. it's not particularly difficult to wipe OpenOffice.org off an Ubuntu install and install Koffice instead, but it does take a certain amount of effort and knowledge.
As for hardware not being supported, there are certain classes of hardware that are problematic. Most generally, any new or unpopular-with-developers hardware that doesn't adhere to some standard and for which no specification is publicly available. In particular, WinModems (software modems), wireless network cards, and video cards (specifically, the hardware acceleration features) tend to be problematic. Having said that, in each of these classes there are plenty of devices that _are_ supported, and, of course, there are devices outside these classes that don't work. Also, sometimes things fail to work in Linux because they are broken, although they happen to work in Windows; e.g. I had a laptop once whose USB controller didn't work due to a wrong value listed somewhere in the BIOS; it (sort of) worked under Windows, but it took some patches to the Linux kernel to get it to work there.
Searching the web to see if your hardware is supported is a good idea, and I recommend anyone buying hardware to consider Linux compatibility even if they don't want to run Linux; if you ever do want to run Linux, at least your hardware won't prevent you from doing so.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"Linux" is not a Personal Computing platform. It's a kernel that's wedded to the GNU toolchain, which is meaningless to most end-users and young developers starting out. Its a boon for people who 'do infrastructure' (including managed thin-clients) or gizmos with custom UIs. But thin-clients != personal computing. This only looks like a platform if you're a sysadmin or systems-oriented coder.
To anyone just wanting to run their PC, get user-oriented applications on CD or downloaded as a file... or experiment with some code that their teachers and pals across town can download as a file and run... "Linux" (nee Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, etc, etc) feels like a big headache. Your friends are trying out "Linux" too? Well, you've probably got to learn packaging, dependencies, repositories, etc. before you can expect your experiements to run at all on anyone else's system. The fragmented distro scene is like chlorine against budding application developers needing platform stability in order to express their creative urge.
So in the crucial desktop PC space, Windows and Mac will continue to have a considerable edge.
People here often forget what makes the PC experience special: The uniformity of a platform aimed at *their* needs (not just those wanting to experiment with new encryption and packet-switching schemes), primarily the ability to install apps and drivers at will (and before you issue the kneejerk response, no Mac OS does NOT suffer by advancing these essential platform qualities).
Anyone wanting GNU/Linux + Whatever to shine as an alternative for PC users should get behind the new LSB Desktop spec. that is due this December/January. At least then ISVs (not just system hackers) will have something uniform to target as far as APIs and other features are concerned, and we should see more creative and wonderful applications that can draw end users to the platform.
To those who don't care or hate the idea, perhaps because of the notion that elitism is what keeps GNU/Linux good and secure, I suggest adopting a tolerant and polite attitude instead; No one will be forcing you at gunpoint to use distros conforming to LSB Desktop. The desktop PC needs a workable free alternative, and we're looking to geeks to either help or get out of the way.
Every time someone mentions blue screens, the Microsoft guys say "Oh, XP is stable for me, it never crashes!". Yet they still mention this "compile from source" which is so 1998.
Most of the applications I use today are available in one of the Debian or Ubuntu repositories, so a simple click in synaptic or adept will install it for me, including all the necessary libraries. I have also a few other apps, such as Google Earth for instance, that aren't under the repositories, but it has been a long time since I had to compile anything.
You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing. Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux. Where is the simple way to look for a software to install, searching by category? I need a software to edit a video or to manage a network or to do scientific calculations, where is the simple interface where I can find it and install it with a few mouse clicks? Without knowing beforehand the name of the software? Let's face it, the closest equivalent to Synaptic or Adept in XP is Google!
Besides, even when I had to compile stuff in the past, it was much simpler to type "./configure; make; make install" in a console than trying to solve all those "missing vbrun.dll" problems one often got when trying to install software in MS-Windows. I may be out of date myself here, because it has been a long time since I did this, but I remember that even in 1998 automake/autorun were easier to use than solving all the incompatibility problems between windows applications and DLLs.
``It's still much, much easier to deploy applications on Windows, even when you're using the GNU toolchain.''
./configure && make && sudo make install mantra (which isn't necessarily more complex than your average Windows installer), and there are often front ends to the compilation that ease the process.
For you or for users? Installing and maintaining software that is packaged for distributions can be easier than it is on Windows, and so much software has been packaged for Debian and Ubuntu that I feel the claim that "software installation and maintenance is easier on Debian than on Windows (or OS X)" is justified. On the other hand, packaging software for various distros can put an enormous burden on the developers.
Going the other way, providing software that can be installed on many different Linux distributions is a piece of cake for the developer. As long as you stick to a few sensible conventions (like not assuming things that tend not to be true across distros), users should be able to install your program without too much trouble, once they have all the necessary dependencies in place. Of course, this effort might still be too much for would-be users.
Other alternatives are targetting only a select few distributions (see also my other post about "the Linux OS" not existing), and/or leaving the packaging in the hands of the distributors - arguably, it is their job. Also, it's not uncommon for users to post step by step instructions or even creating binary packages for installing software on distributions that don't include that software.
``With windows you're guaranteed binary compatibility on a majority of systems''
Yes, but this comes with a hefty price tag. For example, binary compatibility will be broken the moment another hardware architecture comes along (AMD64, anyone?). It's entirely possible that this has kept PCs from evolving past x86 for so long - with actual drawbacks; various other architectures have been more performant, more affordable, etc. at various points in time. And that's just the hardware side; I'm sure many people can point out bugs and vulnerabilities that have persisted because of the need to maintain binary compatibility with some flawed earlier system.
Also, binary compatibility isn't completely achieved on Windows, either. Think of DLL Hell, for example.
``with Linux, it's pretty much expected that your users are advanced enough to be able to compile from source.''
Which doesn't have to be very advanced at all. For a lot of software, a single command suffices; often, it's the familiar
Also, if a user wants to run your software on an operating system that you do not support, is it your fault or theirs if the installation isn't easy? With the source, at least they _can_ make it work.
``Ironically, Windows with mingw et. al. seems to be a more hospitable environment toward deployment of open-source software than "Linux" is.''
Some companies (at least Google) actually develop their software against winelib, and then create a Windows binary that works on Windows and any x86 Linux distro with Wine installed. Although I dread the ugliness of win32 programs on Linux, it does solve the binary compatibility problem.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's the same thing when people say "XP is rock-solid for me" and I answer "I get plenty of blue screens in XP", they say "the problem is in the device drivers".
Distributions like Ubuntu, Mandriva, or Suse, which have powerful installers, usually get all the hardware working automatically. Other distros, like Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware normally need a bit of fiddling to get all the hardware working. But if you compare Linux with Windows, hardware which is not quite kosher will give problems in both systems. The difference is that in Linux it will be hard to get to work in the first place, in Windows it will install easily but crash the whole system later.
Given a choice, the best option is always good hardware, but if I have to live with crappy hardware I'd rather have a system which I can configure to work with the troublesome hardware than with a system that will get the hardware working only to crash on me.
"You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing. Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux."
And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 available for Linux? The best media player, the best burning software? How do I know how stable they are? Will they have the functions I need? These aren't hits against Linux at all, but it's a lot easier for me to ask the guy next to me what he uses to burn CD's rather than look it up online. And while Linux continues to hold a very small part of the market, Finding what apps to use in Windows will be an easier thing.
Installing in Windows just as easy as installing something on Linux. Frequently it's a heck of a lot easier to set up due to gui set up, rather than having to use config files.
I've used Ubuntu, and tried to get it up and running on various computers with various levels of success. Even with its package manager I had to trudge through the forums to find out what program does what. Not to mention the fact that in order to replace my Windows setup I need to add repositories that aren't in there by default. I know why there no there to begin with, but it's a pain to add them for every install, and every tutorial I've seen just uses the command line anyway. I know you see it as easier, but I personally don't. I've had plenty of times where I install software with the package manager, and it either doesn't install right, or completely. Resulting in an hour + spent finding out what went wrong. How to fix it, ect.
I love the idea of open source software. I use FireFox, OO.o, InkScape, OpenVPN, VNC, all terrific programs, but using Linux as a desktop OS just is not there yet. I've been following it for only 5 years now, and I admit it's come a LONG way in just 5 short years, and I honestly believe that sooner rather than later Linux will become my OS of choice, for myself, and the friends, and family I help pro-bono. But as it stands right now it still has a very critical last 10%-15% to go.
I wish it could have been rip-roaring to go in time for Vista, but it looks like that won't be the case... I'm looking at Vista as a large black cloud looming menacingly off in the distance. I wish Linux, was there to replace XP as my OS of choice.
``Let's face it, the closest equivalent to Synaptic or Adept in XP is Google!''
Which, of course, runs Linux.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Config files? No, on Ubuntu it's just point and click. Ok, type in something to search, but on the whole, less clicks than Windows installers.
It says what it does right in the description. What more information did you need?
You don't have to use the command line, people just like it because it's more straight-foward. You can add them through Synaptic (forget where, not in front of my ubuntu box, sorry) or you can get EasyUbuntu, which will install mp3, flash, etc, as well. Or you could get Mepis.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I've had the opposite experience. Linux is great when it works. When it doesn't, it's always been broken in a sane way. I can diagnose the problem and fix a config file and be pretty confident that the problem isn't coming back. I may not have understood the problem beforehand, but after I get a handle on it the solution is obvious. Windows, on the other hand, has never made any sense when it breaks. I suspect that Windows is as rational and fixable as Linux underneath, but it's even harder to figure out the obscure tweaks that may be needed to fix it, which leaves you with solutions like "install the driver again and hope it doesn't break this time" or "try reformatting".
i dont want to sound like an asshole or something but
./configure; make; make install is not the way to go ... etc
./configure && make && make install is better assuming you are root when you compile things ./configure and output the options to a file
./configure && make && make install are fine for most packages but for importants programs like mplayer,mencoder you should .... therefore first consult the configure options and read the documentation and for :D
if configure fails it'll still try to make it
(and offcorse want the program to end in the your PATH)
best thing tho is to first read README INSTALL and then
So you can consult them first before making the thing
take all of your time you have to compile xvid, h..., Nvidia XvMC support,
a lot of people doing all that is just hardcore!
when my friends see me compile mplayer altho i have frontends of mplayers installed on their pc's
and they use it daily they say damn you're a geek and damn GNU/linux is hard but then i always
remind them of the fact that some guy did even more hardcore shit than i did to get to compile those win
binaries that they are all using
and then they all shut up
The Linux pride, or simply pride, campaign of the open source movement has three main premises:
* that all people of all computing orientations should be proud, not ashamed, of being young white middle-class Linux-geek men;
* that computing diversity is a gift to young white middle-class Linux-geek men;
* that computing orientation and operating system type are inherent, unless of course you dual-boot Windows and FreeBSD and are therefore only fooling yourself.
Pride Parades are held worldwide, wherein young male white middle-class Linux geeks of all colours, ages, operating system types and backgrounds can walk down the centre of the main street of their city and commemorate the original Stallmanwall printer driver riots.
Many parades still have at least some of the original political or activist character, especially in less Linux-positive settings. However, in more Linux-positive cities, the parades take on an installfest-like character. Large parades often involve floats, coders, Mountain Dew, venture capitalists, and amplified music; but even such celebratory parades usually include political and educational contingents, such as local politicians and marching groups from open source institutions of various kinds. In some countries, Linux parades are now also called Linux Pride Install Festivals.
Even the most festive parades usually offer some aspect dedicated to remembering victims of Stallmanwall and anti-Linux FUD. Some particularly important Linux parades are funded by governments and corporate sponsors, and promoted as major tourist attractions for the cities that host them. Other typical parade participants include local Linux-friendly churches such as Emacs Community Churches and BSD Universalist Churches, PFLAB (Parents and Friends of Linux and BSD), and the nerd employee associations from large businesses.
Though the Stallmanwall riots themselves as well as the immediate and the ongoing political organizing that occurred following them were events that were fully participated in by BSD users, X11 people and future Sun founders as well as by white middle-class male Linux users of all races, genders and backgrounds, historically these events were first named Linux, the word at that time being used in a more generic sense to cover the entire spectrum of what is now variously called the Red Hat, SuSE or Debian community.
By the late '80s and early '90s, as many of the actual participants had grown older, moved on to other issues or passed away, this led to misunderstandings as to who had actually participated in the Stallmanwall riots, who had actually organized the subsequent demonstrations, marches and memorials and who had been members of early activist organizations such as the Linux Liberation Front and Linux Activists Alliance.
But eventually the language caught up with the reality of the community and the names have become more accurate and inclusive, though these changes met with initial resistance from some in their own communities who were unaware of the actual historical facts. Changing first to Linux and BSD, today most are called GNU/Linux/X11/KDE/GNOME/Mozilla/gcc (GLXKGMg) Pride Parades. But only by the sort of geeks even the other geeks don't want to hang out with.
Remember: just because you have a personal coding output of zero doesn't mean that you can't take full credit for the programming genius of others for a lifestyle of Slashdot, caffeine and masturbation.
And believe me, you haven't lived until you've seen twenty Linux geeks clad only in silver jockstraps.
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Linux_Pride
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It seems like Linux is now becoming a major competitor to Windows and Mac on the desktop. It hac come a long way. With the advancment of binaries like .deb, .rpm, .bin, and scripts it is getting easier and easier to install things on linux. Wine has gotten so that most Windows software with exception to some games and programs that need drivers will run. I can easily run IE, WMP, Shockwave, the latest Flash, Outlook Express, Office, and the like. More and more hardware vendors have been supporting linux. The winmodem problem seems to have been solved not by the development of drivers (though that has happened) but by the spread of broadband and ethernet. WiFi support has improved. Gaim has IM covered. Firefox's spread has helped linux be able to read more web pages by discouraging IE only pages. OOo has goten good at dealing with office documents. iPods work. Flash and Java and MP3 and Real are all supported. The only real problems are legal DVD support and legal WMA and Quicktime support. There are games on linux. What is missing, we need OEMs.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I totally agree with this, most, if not all, of my experience is problems like this that can be clearly diagnosed and then fixed. Any other problems are also almost always related to hardware/drivers. In response to the original request for the "one CD switch", Ubuntu is definitely what you're looking for, you burn the one liveCD, boot off the CD into an Ubuntu that is very similar to what will be on your hard drive, and then you run the installer using a shortcut on the desktop. 6 (I think) separate pages to fill in (keyboard layout, time zone, partitioning, what to use each partition for, user name, and confirmation of the whole thing), and then it installs, asks you if you want to put grub in your Master boot record, you say yes, and you have a shiny new dual booting system. Say no, and you end up with Ubuntu on your drive but no way to boot it until you set up a bootloader to boot it up. You're asked to give you a chance to verify that the installer correctly detected the other OS on your drive.
I have no links but I switch on average one person a week from windows to linux
The only panic is how they get on the internet
A dialout modem is sheer panic....most of the time I will switch over to a known good modem
Only once did I hit a network card that didnt work and that was a Davicom
and then mostly the 2nd most feared thing is their printer....especially an all in one monster
I've been lucky and never had to make an all in one work just print....or talked them into
buying a laser printer.
I love it when someone say's but I need to use Autocad or Photoshop and I say
"Oh you own a legal copy do you" and 99% of the time they freak because they don't hehehehe
To be fair, the registry isn't nearly as prone to outright corruption when you're running it on NTFS 5 than it was in Win9x with FAT.
Of course, like you say, it's such a monstrosity... you can't actually walk through it and notice a problem like you can with config files.
The registry wasn't a bad idea (it's basically a standardized config file format with more efficient read/write and mutual exclusion), but the way Microsoft used it (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, anyone?) made it a mess.
http://outcampaign.org/
This issue *is* common, it's the real reason Linux isn't making big inroads and it doesn't look like it's going to be fixed anytime soon.
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in /tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
No sig today...
I'm sure Windows is pretty easy to diagnose if you know your stuff, but I've found it much harder to get a handle on because I'm never sure what it's doing or how to make sure I've configured something as completely as possible. This is mainly because Linux is a more open system. For example, on Linux I can edit xorg.conf and be sure that I'm in control of what X is doing. If I'm trying to change my video card driver in Windows, I don't have a clue what Windows is doing underneath. The best I can do is coax it through the driver update wizard or something. Working with Windows's screwy wireless networking system is another exercise in "what the hell is really going on".
Windows may be easier for newbs, but I don't care about that. A system that tries to do the right thing is all right but I (like you, I think) would rather just tell it the right way and know for sure that it's going to do it that way.