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OS Combat - Ubuntu Linux Versus Vista
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek pits Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista in a detailed comparison. They run down a number of points for this comparison, including installation, hardware support, software, and backup. For IW, backup was a crucial feature. As a result, the conclusion are unusual for this type of review because it straddles the fence. The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"
The obligatory link to the ad free, one page print version.
As long as Microsoft operating systems got nothing compared to BASH, Linux > Windows.
:)
and no, you can't work with cmd like you work with Bash, and I'm an advanced batch scripter, Bash is just much better and much user friendlier.
There are many other things that makes Linux better then windows (any version), but I will let Microsoft answer the Bash thingy and then I will write some new problems to them why Linux is much much better
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
If this really is combat, how can the Blue Screen of Death be defeated?
:-)
What has Linux got that's anywhere near as dangerous?
Reading through the article Ubuntu really should have had the edge over windows in the end, e.g. Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways but you get a hell of a lot more packages with Ubuntu than you do with Windows. but his summary puts them on equal par.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I installed Feisty this week and it's the first time I install a Linux distro and everything works. Wireless, Video, everything. Finally restricted codecs, drivers and other restricted software is 2 clicks away. Ubuntu is definitely shaping up to something much more user friendly than other/previous. I didn't had to hack any text files nor recompile anything, VMWare Player installed and 3d driver too with a few clicks.
Microsoft = Evil = -1 Linux = Not so much Linux Wins!
Developer of Heap CRM and Torch Project Management (WBP SYSTEMS)
but the fact that the author complains that their printer requires a special driver lets you know what irks them. I know its a bit fanboi-ish to say that if people think they are equal, then Linux (Ubuntu) wins. The general populace has forced many to believe that Windows *IS* the standard to judge Linux against, and now 'it's a tie' is the verdict. That is clearly a win if you look at it as how the competition shapes up against the Windows flagship.
Personally, I installed Ubuntu 6.x to see how it feels, and I'm pleasantly impressed. A couple of hours and everything I need is working fine (YMMV). I know that most of the users that I help would be good to go with Ubuntu. A great many people don't want or need all that an OS can provide. Hell, some of them probably don't need anything more than email and a browser, but that's another story. I think that Redmond needs to be getting worried soon.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There are pluses and minuses to every OS.
Each user has to decide what is right for his or herself.
Uh-Duuuuuuuuhhh!
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
Come again? Vista has nothing like the Ubuntu software repository. Just because the two look a little similar in the screen shots doesn't make them the same.
Ho hum. It tries to be balanced, bless it, but its clear the reviewer is just going to go back to using Windows once it's all done. It fails it.
Before we get a bunch of people chiming in to say "but XXXXX is easy in ubuntu, you just open a terminal and type..."
I KNOW.
But the audience this is intended for has no intention of using a terminal. Broadly speaking, they are of the opinion that desktop computing should be easy enough that any idiot can do it without having to spend ages learning the nuances of some command you type in.
They are of this opinion thanks to 20 years of GUI R&D in home computing, from the earliest Apple ][ right the way up to Vista today. That's the whole point of the GUI. You don't have to like it, but at least accept that a lot of people do.
As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost.
Damn those linux people for not reverse engineering HP drivers into a more user-friendly package.
Frankly, I don't understand what the problem here is: I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Not only that, but I can use the LiveCD for web browsing or what have you while the install is going. No dice for Vista (AFAIK).
Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it). No hunting down drivers from a now defunct company, or having to sell my sou^H^H^H^H^H^H^H register to a website that says they have the driver, only to find out they were lying.
Linux has all the security of Vista, minus the UAC.
Ubuntu may not have user-friendly backup out of the box (I wouldn't know, I use ssh+rsync), but the repositories for it have a plethora of options that are free.
And if you are in it for teh shiney!!1!!!!111oneoneone, then Ubuntu can cater (at least on a basic level) with its desktop effects. On top of that, you get immediate (or as near as can be) security updates, and even better a method to upgrade (quite flawlessly, from my experience) to the next version.
Oh yeah, ummm, Ubuntu = free (as in beer, choice, and ideology), Windows = $$$+DRM.
So, why the fence sitting?
Your right. it's not the feature count that matters. It's little things like does it have Bash (or for me Perl) that are disprortionately large factors. On the other hand, I'd be kidding my self if I thought there were a lot of perl and bash users out there. it's spit in the ocean of devil spawned end users.
Linux shoul dnot try to play microsoft's game of putting up feature charts and trying to claim them all. What matters to the user is how good a tool it ends up being and that things like consistency of use, intuitiveness and in fact hiding stuff from the user that they don't need to know about.
Windows does a better job than Linux at seemlessness. That is you can configure a lot more things in the gui, and expect them to actually work, before you have to open the hood an dive into the scarey bits. On the other hand things like KDE and GNome, do expose a lot more raw power in a very accessible gui way than windows. For a certain class of user, windows just dumbs things down too much.
For me the sweet spot between power and seemlessness and data hiding is Mac OSX. My mom, who really can't operate a 3 button mouse, is able to use it. Yet Me a power user loves it too. I have hundreds of linux machines yet my desktop machine is nearly always mac osx.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Looks like my non-attempt at karma whoring was just a little faster than your non-attempt. That's a lot of non-whoring going on...where's daveschroeder when you need him?
Ubuntu wins in the Office category because it comes with OO.org, but you'd have to add it to Vista after install.
It's a tie in the multimedia category despite the Ubuntu codecs having to be added after install.
And there are more instances of such inconsistencies.
Do I detect the hint of bias?
[Of course this has to be modded down on Slashdot......]
Ubuntu may not have something called "shadow copy", but if you use LVM, you can create snapshots to get the same effect. I don't know if the Ubuntu installer lets you install to LVM partitions, but it's definitely possible with Linux. It's how I do my backups.
Sick of people knocking on Gentoo's greatness in completely unrelated
The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"
This is only the conclusion for the backup portion of the review. I looks like the submitter didn't make it to the last page. The actual conclusion?:
Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without.
I half expected to see the Ubuntu and Vista development teams engaged in some sort of firefight -- blood, gore, explosions, and the like. Imagine my disappointment.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Right now it really depends on the expertise of the users. The Granny test as it were, is vital to the expansion of Linux from the hobbyist/geek ranks. More and more, computers are sold as appliances to people with little understanding other than the net is cool. To these people, a command line is an anathema. Compiling source code, hell.
Those people are where the expansion of Linux will ultimately come. While that may make us geeks gnash ("lazy stupid people hate command lines!"), the Granny principle is what has allowed the Wii to outsell everything else of the new generation consoles. Yes, the price of the Wii is cheaper, but Linux is free.
The article is also right about compiling source code to install a program. That has to go if you want mass penetration. If mass penetration is not wanted, then it is time to stop talking Linux on the desktop. Ubuntu is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step.
A tie! This is a big frickin' deal, people! Remember "Linux will never work on the desktop"? And now quasi-mainstream press says it's just as good as Windows Vista?
The Ubuntu team should be very proud.
If the author means that Beryl has all the same effects that Aero does, then I'd agree. But if he's implying that Aero has all the visual effects that Beryl has, he's lost his f-ing mind.
http://www.mhall119.com
In Vista, the package manager is mainly for removing programs unless you are talking about adding a windows component. Ubuntu's package is far superior in this case. It displays available programs in categories and you can also filter for support level such as "Open source applications", "Ubuntu supported", "Any {damn} application", etc..
Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways
:)
Not even that. I mean, in Ubuntu I can install applications with it, in Windows I just can uninstall them. I think I find Ubuntu's solution much more useful then
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I've never understood this need for backup software. I call it "a partition separate from the install partition". That way I can reinstall/reformat the install and keep all my files intact. Just keep a copy of all the *.exe's you install in a folder named "Software Installs" and drag/drop any save games or something over to your "Saves" folder.
Its a tie, given the fact that Vista doesn't run as many games and legacy apps/software as XP does. That could quickly change though, when SP1 for Vista is rolled out and/or once the next few updates of Wine come out.
Seriously. Because Vista is a horrible upgrade if you can do it at all, a memory hog, more open to virus attacks, etc., and expensive to boot. Contrast with the Linux memory model which is much cleaner, less open to attacks, and hello -- you can install it on multiple machines with one CD. Vs. the per seat model favored by M$. Consider that just our medium size IT department would have to spend $20K+ to upgrade to Vista, not counting any new machines where older machines can't support it -- vs. the cost of one Ubuntu install per workstation type, burn the correct images, and begin the migration process. Of course it is not so easy given all the documents extant in the company, but $20K can buy a lot of migration scripts.
Maybe the Ubuntu folks will finally end up (with Apple) being the David that finally bring downs Goliath for good.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
On photo editing
"50-50 -- Vista for its Picture Gallery [> F-spot]; Ubuntu for having a better native image editor than Paint."
Now, maybe the Picture Gallery does edge out Fspot (I've never used it, but author says for example bulk import is backgrounded, and tagging scores of pics at once is easier) but is this comparable to how far Paint falls behind the gimp?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I wanna change, but I probably spend more time playing games (on XP, not going for Vista, until Direct x10 is near standard) than anything else. This article is obviously geared towards different priorities, but there are reasons (if very few for a certain one) for each OS.
I would be interested in switching to some form of Linux on my work-priority Tablet PC. Are there any flavors that support tablet-laptop hybrids atleast as well as XP tablet edition?
Demented But Determined.
I thought most people liked zsh more..
You may wish to check out the compatibility of your tablet against this website: http://tuxmobil.org/tablet_unix.html
The reviewer keeps commenting 'but Ubuntu 6.10 doesn't do this'.
I'm getting the impression he cut and pasted his review of U6.10 vs Vista rc 1 from late last year...
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
This guy is a Windows fanboy - grudging respect is as good as we can hope for.
I am running both of them, switching for time to time, since I have to build the software. But then just shutdown Parallels and back to work on my iMac... I do prefer Linux/Unix over Windows, though I have to say that still the winner is... OSX due to *how things fits together* in that simple way. Hope that one day Gnome/KDE people will pay attention on that.
If you want a secure Linux, you do need the equivalent of UAC - sudo.
"Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without."
That is the author's final conclusion. But, but, that says that Linux works better for everyday computer users, and Windows is full of the "polish" that "some people" enjoy. I find it odd that the author, as a self-professed Vista fan, would give these definitions. I thought that the draw of Windows was that it "just worked" and people would make the switch if Linux supported all their "day-to-day stuff". You heard it here folks! Linux's time has arrived!
Feisty looks pretty keen, I'll have to see about upgrading my Edgy box.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
i installed ubuntu last night on my laptop. i'm pretty impressed. tho it was a hassle getting direct rendering going, i can let that go since it's an ATI card, and a laptop. nonetheless, it works. it automatically downloads the divx codec; on windows i had to go out and find the installer and run it. my movies play, no problem. it doesn't look half bad either, tho i think i'd prefrer the xfce desktop to the gnome one.
it also didn't use the pretty graphical installer, once again - probably due to the age of my laptop. the curses based one worked just fine.
The summary states both OSs are a tie but I've totalled up the points and Windows wins. Just another example of the huge Linux bias on Slashdot; while sometimes it's deserved (no, I'm not an MS fanboy) the editors usually try and alter a summary to put Linux in a more favourable light.
"Oh boy"
Except that this does nothing to protect you from drive failure.
Arguably feature wars are bad for the state of the art since they favor disorganized shopping-list programming rather than coherent (**cough** Apple **cough**) design, but at least they beat stagnation.
This could be fun. On the one hand, MS is the past master of adding checklist features to bulk up for these kinds of review. On the other, it's hard to crank features faster than a swarm of geeks.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
When he says he is retracting the points, he is not blaming Ubuntu, He is just saying the distro loses points because getting the printer working was a complete bitch. Getting my Laptops wireless card working in Ubuntu was a PITA too. I know who's fault it is, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier, because I don't care whos fault it is, I just want it to work.
Every time someone says "X hardware doesn't work under Linux" we get a dozen comments explaining how that's not Linux's fault, which completely misses the point. No one outside of Slashdot cares in the slightest why it's broken. If X works in windows but not in Linux, then for people who require X Windows is better than Linux. That's why I'm so happy Dell are going to start shipping Linux PC's. Dell do like to sell you a lot of extras when you buy a PC (TV card, printer, digital camera), and Dell has the muscle to pressure the manufactures of those devices to create linux drivers and software that "just works", and they'll do it because Dell is a big enough customer that it's worth their while.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
From the article: "Vista's Add/Remove Programs panel probably served as the inspiration for Ubuntu's software management console."
So it was Windows Vistas add/remove program panel that inspired the Debian team to develop Apt years ago! I always did wonder where they got the idea for building a package manager.
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
Windows beats Linux for usability for your grandma and your 14 year old niece.
Linux beats Windows for power users.
Can we move on?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
In my opinion, vista should have been blown out of the water for the simple fact that file management in Vista is bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeding slow. You can judge by my over use of the 'e' that its extreme. : )
And their review of the same pairing.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Personally, I prefer to have automated, incremental backups of all my documents: I use Deja Vu on my Mac to inrementally backup all of Documents, Photos, Music to an external hard drive at 18:30 every day. You could use cron to do that, but it would require more knowledge than your average user has.
'There are still too many places where you have to drop to a command line'
For the average user there is never a need to invoke the command line. They browse, email and edit documents and view/listen to multimedia.
'Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without''
The average user can't tell the difference between the Vindows GUI and a Linux desktop.
'download and compile source code''
Using the default updater and you never get to see source code, unless you are trying to install some obscure application that don't come with the distro.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Now we can finally settle this which-OS-is-better debate once and for all!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So, when Leopard w/TimeMachine hits, this backup heat will be covered and everyone can get on with life...? Finally :)
This disturbs me as the person who has written the article had not previously used Ubuntu until he/she decided to write this article. Ubuntu, I can firmly say, has been around significantly longer than Vista. Granted he/she could have said the "Windows" Add/Remove.
The section concerning Image-Editing/Picture management being a tie also seems to give more credit to Vista. The fact of having GIMP alone blows vista out of the water let alone the several picture managers available on Ubuntu.
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
So, why the fence sitting?
I think it was reviewing both purely on a practical basis (i.e., "can both OSes do this? Which one does it better?") without any philosophy or question of cost getting in the way. Doing so puts them on equal footing and no "well, it doesn't do this as well, but hey, it's free" rationalizing occurs. If anything, this review just strengthens the point that Ubuntu is just a hair away from a free total replacement for non-gamers (or not-too-selective gamers).
Something that Ubuntu (and most other distros) should get a big credit for is package management. It's not just about adding and removing programs, it's about having a coherent universe of packages which are all managed and patched in a consistent way. By missing this the reviewer did Ubuntu a great disservice.
you want the ooo shiney!! setup Beryl (http://www.beryl-project.org/)
Then you can have the shiney, wigglely, bendy, fill in word ending in 'e' here)
It take a little bit of editing your xorg.conf file but I got it running on ubuntu fiesty with an ati card to boot. And I am a linux noob. There are a few walk through on the beryl site for those interested.
but shouldn't Ubuntu win out, all other things being equal, simply because it's free (as in beer)? Come on, last time I checked, not too many people (that I know, anyway) could afford a fully-enabled Vista ($400 retail), but everyone can afford a fully-enabled Ubuntu ($0 via ShipIt).
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
Then repeat the above procedure for any distinct disk.
/home and /usr/local are like beduins, always folding up their tends and schlepping over to the next dune (er, distribution) with little attachment to the dune they just left behind.
This includes but is not limited to: another internal disk, an external disk, a DVD-R or a flashdrive.
Once a particular file or set of files isn't dependent on a particular workstation, "backup and recovery" is easy. My
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Backup wasn't weighted any heavier than the other sections in this subjective, unsubstantiated, OSNews-quality "analysis" that IW put out. The article was more of the same "linux gets the job done, but windows is more polished" crap.
Did anyone else get the issue where they trumpet their bold move toward the internet? I'm glad in my heart that they couldn't afford to continue printing their trash mag, but we can all now look forward to more "anonymous readers" spamming slashdot, digg, and other sites with links to Information Week's quasi-journalism. Just FYI.
Also, when did the "SKU" fad start? Seriously. Why was the word "versions" not used there? What about "offerings"? I understand IW writers using it, because of their desperate need to sound enterprisey, but other people have been using it too. On the bright side, they managed to get through a whole article without gibbering about "service-oriented architecture," so maybe they are improving.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Change "separate partition" to "separate hard drive". You can make the change in Linux without the need to update your backup scripts -- just mount the separate hard drive under the existing backup path, and you're good to go. You don't even have to worry about keeping the same filesystem, etc. You may or may not need to update your Windows backup job when doing the same thing under Windows (and there's only one filesystem type to choose, so nothing to "worry about" there either). They're both about equal here.
Several times in the article, Vista gets points docked because the built-in program for doing something isn't as good as some package Ubuntu includes (Paint and OpenOffice are two examples). The problem is that Ubuntu is allowed to include these type things with the distribution while Microsoft *cannot* include similar functionality by law and/or threat of monopoly.
Example:
- The equivalent of Ubuntu's inclusion of OpenOffice would be the inclusion of the same (or Office). How quickly do you think the EU and everyone else (particularly those companies who have their own competing product) would complain and get that stopped in its tracks?
- Similar argument for Paint vs The Gimp or any other similar product?
Docking points for something that isn't allowed by threat of law shouldn't be allowed in a review.
$20K really isn't THAT much money when you start weighing in the possible shortcomings that the article points out. In billable man/woman-time, $20k is about 2 months of work. As someone who runs the IT department for a small company, I can say without a doubt that I've spent that much time just researching and trying the different available linux options, figuring out how to configure network settings on each (yup, it's quite different between RedHat and Ubuntu), trying to get printers to work right (good luck on non-postcript network printers), etc. We don't run Windows because it's not efficient for the development work we do, but for a lot of companies with no current Linux experience, that $20k will get burned up in a hurry.
Yeah, except sudo actually works to keep the average user safe. Unlike in Windows where the average user (read: pretty much every Windows box I've ever seen) runs as root all the time.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
you get a hell of a lot more packages with Ubuntu than you do with Windows
...
He's just comparing the manager itself not the actual packages
As far as packages/software goes I think Windows wins that one because most people are interested in packages that are NOT available on Linux i.e. Office, Photoshop and just about every game (and no, openoffice, gimp and freeciv are not just as good).
Don't get me wrong I've been using Debian testing on my desktop and notebook for over three years and love it but the quality of desktop applications for linux still needs some catching up to do.
Wow! Where do you buy your uber-reliable HDs that never fail? How do you use your system to recover the document you were working on all week, but then you flubbed a keyboard command and deleted it? How do you get your files back if there was (god-forbid) a fire in your house? ... I get the impression you're kind of missing the point of backups.
Comment of the year
TFA didn't seem to mention security. To most people, security means buying a copy of McAfee or Norton. Eventually their computer is overrun with something and they have to re-install. Has Vista solved that problem? How long, for instance, can you leave an unprotected Vista box connected to the internet before it is pwned? How long can you leave an unprotected Ubuntu box?
I would be inclined to give my granny Ubuntu because I won't have to return in a month to remove a bunch of viruses.
What games? With a little patience, most games can be run in Linux.
Note: I am looking to help this person make the shift to Linux, I'm not arguing that Windows games "just work" in any distro. It does take some jerry-rigging and trial-and-error; however, there are many good guides and it's completely worth my time to help someone figure it out.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
The author apparently forgot one important point: you also don't need to pay for antivirus/antispyware tools on Ubuntu. IMHO, that serves as a tiebreaker for Ubuntu.
Let's also not forget what you can do now with Parallels and VMWare while happily running Ubuntu as your main OS.
I didn't much like the suggestion that Ubuntu's email client (evolution) was inferior 'cause it couldn't perfectly import yr Outlook data (whose fault is that?).
Then he got to "Word Processing" and apparently decided to compare OOo to OOo (gave Ubuntu the win for being preinstalled).
There was an old misunderstanding, i.e. "Windows hardware support is better..."
And a weird conclusion: "The very best thing about Ubuntu, in my opinion, is the fact that you can boot the CD and try it out in a totally non-destructive way"
Sorry, the very best thing about Ubuntu is not that you can use it without actually having to use it. The best thing is that you own it and control it. And, as a sidenote to that, you likely won't ever have to buy any new software (or hardware) ever again in your life.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The article should take into consideration the cost of each product. Simple fact:
1) You pay for Vista at a store (or OEM stuff)
2) Ubuntu sends you a CD for free
Also, they reference the 'Granny Test' (the ones that think the "internet is broken" whenever their dial-up doesnt work). I know my Grandma would try something for free before forking over the $'s for something she's unsure of.
Now could I get a link to a serious comparison? How about one that actually verifies the total cost of implementing either? license, compatibility, training, and hardware - wise? Also include the total software cost required to use any of them to the total extent ? I actually heard that Vista does not come with microsoft office, so what is the cost of the actual software needed to run a vista PC?
Also if we were going to do comparisons of meaningless things, could we do it in a serious manner? Not in a "I checked the screenshot and these are my opinions" manner?
I am specifically talking about:
All right "gtfo" Reviewer. Considering that ubuntu's package manager and vista's add/remove programs are outstandingly differente what the feck does this conclussion come from?Can vista allow you to add repositories to the Add/remove programs dialog? Is it actually aware of what a repository is? Does it actually install software that is not in the vista CD, but actually downloadable if you really need it? Is that Add/Remove dialog actually more than an "Install those worthless windows programs that are not installed by default, else uninstall whatever you added to this computer" dialog? Seriously, this review was going pretty well until I found this disruptive minimization on the comparison on "Software Installation".
Not saying that the package manage is actually better than the usual way to install stuff in windows, but seriously this oversimplification of facts is awful.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
In other words:
Ubuntu: Minimal - You can try the entire OS without installing or touching your hard drive in any way.
Full - You can install the OS for free, perpetual and unrestricted.
Vista: Minimal - You can "try" the OS by installing it fully, but 30 days, if you're a software pirate.
Full - You can pay for and install the OS, agree to a machiavellian license agreement, and run it for as long as Microsoft lets you without remotely disabling your system.
Why is it comparing Vista's 30 day no-activation period post-install to Ubuntu's LiveCD? It just serves to show the dramatic difference between the philosophies of the OSes, but tries very hard to make them look similar.
A swap of a SATA cable and my Win XP machine becomes an Ubuntu 6.10 machine. I need to be able to support Linux but don't need it very often.
I was shocked that my network connection Just Worked on first install. But my screen was at the wrong resolution, and I had no 3d acceleration. Time to install nVidia drivers.
A day later, now with experience with run modes and editing config files, I had nVidia drivers installed and my 3d app worked fine. It turned out to be simple, but there are an overwhelming number of bad-advice posts to be found on googling for help. This is A Big Problem.
Google a windows problem and you'll find some easy-to-understand magazine editor to explain it, or something on Microsoft's site. Google a linux problem and you get geek-speak. And most of it is bad advice. Usually the bad advice...
"edit the conflabulating confic spec generator and type '@*$&T IU H@U HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the third prompt"
is answered with
"No, don't do that! You'll gaspulate the modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode!"
so you avoid those. Eventually you end up typing '@*$&T IU *^HC* HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the *fourth* prompt, because nobody had a heart attack over that suggestion. But then your modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode is fubar, anyway.
Anyway, I eventually found a suggestion that looked more elegant than the rest and didn't involve editing any conflabulating confic spec generators, wiped to drive and started from scratch, and the nVidia drivers Just Worked.
If I had the power to Make It So, I'd purge 90% of the online linux discussion, because most of it is crap.
That's what RAID 1 is for.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
I think the author is a little pre-disposed of his results here:
...2 months?). On Windows I see my installed software, on Ubuntu I can also download and install millions of software packages.
First page:
-I need to load extra drivers for Vista before I can even install the thing I have to use another computer to download it on a USB stick, I go through a simple installation procedure for both systems, I can run Ubuntu in Live or Repair mode or install it, I don't know how to save things like settings to the hard drive for re-use in Live mode, it has memory and media integrity and backup tools though. I can restore a Vista backup and run Vista for free... for 30 days...
Result: Well, Ubuntu has a slight edge, but only because of the live mode.
Second page:
-I need to load extra drivers for Ubuntu because I have a cheap-ass printer, I can just download them, but djee, I have to look for them and read how to install them on my machine. I forgot all about the STORAGE drivers on the previous page, but anyway, I have to do the same for Windows, but I don't seem to mind as much. I plug in some stuff, it works on both machines. I try cheap-ass rebranded Lexmark scanner that doesn't identify itself properly and it doesn't work.
Result: Well, Windows works simpler with Plug-n-Pray hardware although I have to go through the same actions on both systems. Stupid hardware manufacturers make trouble.
Third page:
-The Synaptic interface (that has been around for years) seems to have been ripped off of Vista (that has been around for
Result: It's a tie
[verbatim quote]:
-Ubuntu's default e-mail client is Evolution, which contains calendaring and contact management; it's not hard to switch to another client (like Thunderbird) if needed.
-Vista's default e-mail client, the newly-designed Microsoft Mail, sports a calendaring application but is, on the whole, still highly limited.
Result: Windows, but only by a hair.
[/verbatim quote]
Page 7:
[again verbatim]
-Ubuntu's Konserve program is a simple directory-to-directory backup that works across a variety of media, including FTP.
-Vista's backup tool has been derided for having some terrible limitations
Result: A tie
[/again verbatim]
Total result (this is again a verbatim quote):
Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I, too, would have to give Ubuntu the edge. Sure, the evaluation has them about even, but one of these can run you hundreds of dollars; the other is "equivalent" in quality but doesn't cost one red cent. In this case a tie means Ubuntu wins on cost effectiveness alone (at least according to their comparison results).
This space for rent!
Having your system and user data on separate partitions, or better yet separate drives, is certainly a start, but you're still carrying all your eggs in one basket. If the drive that the data is on fails, or you accidentally run "sudo rm -rf /home" then you're still screwed. And you don't have versioning, which a lot of people want.
I agree that whole-disk imaging probably isn't as big a demand on Linux as it is on Windows (probably because you have to constantly re-install Windows, which is a worse PITA than installing Ubuntu as I can personally attest, and it has all sorts of activation crap), but transparent backup is still a big deal.
Personally I think the best thing is just to set up an old machine somewhere with two hard drives (again, one for system, another for data) and make sure you can hit it via SSH, and then write a crontab for your workstation that syncs your ~/ to it every night via rsync. It's like three lines of shellscript, plus maybe 10 minutes to set it up so it doesn't need a password. You can scale it to as many users as you have room for on the backup server; the only limitation is that without doing complex rotation on the server there's no versioning, but it does give you a nice physically-removed copy, and does it all over an encrypted link, and even does some slick stuff to reduce traffic. To my knowledge, Windows doesn't ship with anything like rsync built in, and forces you to use clumsy GUI tools to accomplish the same thing. (My office uses some proprietary product which shall remain nameless to do the same thing...and it's totally crappy compared to what I can do with rsync and shellscripts.)
If you want to do versioning, it gets a little more complex, but honestly for home users, having a single "oh shit" copy of their data, somewhere safe (safe from their house burning down or the computer getting stolen), is probably sufficient.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not in Vista. That's the entire point of UAC - even an admin account doesn't run as root, it needs user intervention ("Cancel or Allow") to elevate priveleges. Exactly like sudo.
I like Ubuntu just fine but I have to use Kubuntu (for the uninitiated, few as you may be on Slashdot, that's Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome). I find it hard to recommend the regular Gnome Ubuntu to anyone when they could be using the KDE Ubuntu. But that I suppose is just personal preference.
Still, every time I hear someone complain about the usability of Ubuntu I point them at Kubuntu and all the complaining stops. It should probably be mentioned a bit more.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
Lots of people don't know it exists. Ask a user what their favorite shell is, and it's a good test to see if they are a power user, whom will always answer "zsh". Bandwagon users, and traditionalists who don't keep track of new developments will answer something else. And, fellow command line users, before you flame me, try zsh. It is better in every way than all other normal shells. Command line completion of makefile targets and filenames over the network with scp pretty much sealed the deal...
Yeah....
1. The beautiful thing about a *nix install is /home/username Backup everything in there and when you hose the system/upgrade/reinstall it's all there. Everything. Sadly, the popular ubuntu/kubuntu installer cannot handle a proper install where /home sits on it's own partition. It looks like it will, it gives you options, but those options just error out later. You need to download the alternate installer.
Windows users like to claim something like this occurs, but as a desktop admin that just migrated another wonky drive last week, license restrictions bugger up the whole thing! The whole system snapshot thing just doesn't work for similar reasons. My employer has our licenses in order and WGA throws a hissy-fit when you switch drives. I know, why don't I image a drive???? I shouldn't need to do this AND pay for the privilege of fixing Windows. We pay extra for Windows and it just doesn't work as advertised.
2. I baby sit a Backup Exec 10d and I've done a mixed bacula backup system and I find bacula the better solution.
Sadly, _actual_ use never gets into these articles.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Heck, you should see the people out there now claiming that Microsoft should sue Firefox for copying IE's idea of tabs! The MS vs Everybody thing has been that way since day one.
Do ubuntu zealots use default brown 'diarrhea' theme?
http://www.ubuntu.com/files/u3/desktop-tn.png Looks more like broken toilet than a desktop to me.
RAID 1 doesn't protect you from user error, such as deleting your home directory accidentally or file system corruption. Nothing replaces the need for backup solutions, whether they're user initiated or scheduled incremental backups.
Over all I thought the article was pretty well balanced. The author clearly stated he loved Vista at the beginning but made an effort to be honest. As much as I like Linux I think in some areas it was too biased towards Ubuntu.
1. Software. He praised Ubuntu for Gimp and OpenOffice but you can download Gimp and OpenOffice for Windows. Ubuntu makes it easer to get a lot of free software but a lot of the best FOSS applications are available for Windows.
2. Printing. Printing on Linux is a pain. It has been a pain since day one. But I know of more than one person that has had printing problems with Vista. I would call printing a tie.
3. Ubuntu has issues with detecting monitors. What is worse is they don't give you a nice easy interface to let you MAUNUALY select what monitor you have. The suggestion from the wiki? Manually edit your xorg config file. If you mess it up then you loose your screen and have to go in to the command line and fix it. I still don't have it working but I made a copy of my xorg config file before hacking it. NOT a user friendly way to deal with the problem.
4. Ubuntu is having some issues with Wifi. A lot of people are having problems even when their wifi card is in the kernal and worked under the last version of Ubuntu.
As I said I really like Linux but I just don't think that Ubuntu 7 is as good as everyone seems to think. I have had more luck with OpenSuse and CentOS than the latest version of Ubuntu. Yes it has a great community but I just don't get it. I am going to try the 32 bit version on my desktop to see if it is any less problematical. I tried it on my notebook but the WiFi problems are a show stopper for me.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Techie Granddaughter?
Why would granny want to use a laptop that her feminist lesbian granddaughter (who she is ashamed of) gave her. Stop giving free software a bad name, woman.
While I'm willing to give this guy credit for trying, he really should have been compairing Plan 9 for Bell Labs to vista, because its Obvious that Plan 9 wins hands down.
Once more into the breach dear friends, once more.
As soon as you mention a command line for which there's a GUI equivalent in Linux you have branded youself as the prime model of micro$oft astroturfing zealot troll that you are. If you dare to compare the Linux GUI apps for installing and removing programs with the equivalent MS-Windows programs, at least you should also mention that Ubuntu has 20000+ packages available at a single click of the mouse.
But when all else fails, when your shiny GUI stops working, what do you do? In Linux you open a terminal window, look into
Clicking the Ubuntu logo takes you to ubuntu.com, while clicking the Vista logo takes you to... ubuntu.com
It take a little bit of editing your xorg.conf file
Say no more!
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Control Panel/ Add remove programs
Add New Programs or Add/Remove windows components lets you install new apps under windows.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
But those packages don't come out of the box on windows (and they code ££) and he was testing windows vs Ubuntu out of the box.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Many people won't migrate to Linux if no drivers are available for their hardware, and many hardware manufacturers won't provide Linux drivers if there isn't enough demand for them. Ditto for ports of popular software titles (Photoshop) and games.
And while you waste away the hours getting your wireless set up, I can click on my wireless connection, select my neighbors network and BAM! I'm online. Or, I can walk into the local store, plop down some money for the latest video game, take it home, put it in the drive and BAM! I'm online with my friends enjoying myself. Or if there's any number of other programs I want, I can use those too. Yes, Vista is graphics intensive and requires some ROBUST hardware to run with all of the eye candy. I've heard this argument before. "Why do I need all that? It's too much bloatware!" Ok, well, I guess DOS 6.22 was ok, but I really kind of like the new looks. If eye candy were not important, wouldn't everything run from Command line? I don't like DRM, and that alone made my choice. However, you just aren't able to argue the ease of use of Ubuntu VS. Vista. When you have an OS that doesn't care what hardware you use - there's probably a driver for it, and you have another that does care, requires major rework for many drivers, and won't run the latest games and off-the-shelf software, there really isn't a comparison to be made. Yes, I run both, and I enjoy them both. But when I want to just relax and play THE latest first person shooter, or RTS. . . well. Duh.
When you clic on the Ubuntu logo on first page, you go to ubuntu.com. The same for the Windows Vista logo :)
No sig for now.
I'm sure ubuntu is taking notes (if not working) on overcoming all the aspects that are pointed out on this article.
The thruth is that there is a false sense of security when paying for software. Is the average desktop user ready to implement a free operating system over a paid and fully advertised one?
LC
I have a couple of Win2k boxes, an XP box, a couple of ubuntu edgy eft boxes, and a Fedora 4 or 5 box at home, some used as desktops, some as servers. My 17 year old utterly non-geek daughter got an HP laptop recently, with Vista Home Premium (whatever that means). It was slow, rebooted occasionally of its own free will, and refused to see a shared printer on a Win2k box or see any of the shared directories on any of the other boxes. I wrestled with it for 20 or 30 minutes, to no avail. Granted, I could have gone online and researched it and figured out the stupid trick, but for what? To make a Windows box see a printer on another Windows box? Isn't that why people resist using Linux, to not have to dig around for every stupid little thing?
Yesterday I set her up with Ubuntu Edgy Eft. Everything went smoothly, just moronically pushing the OK button to very reasonably selected options. Updated all the software, and installed more stuff than she really needs, all in about an hour and a half with a single reboot. Setting up the printer was as easy as it ever has been in Windows, easy, painless, fast. The network server browser immediately shows not only the other linux boxes, but all of the Windows shares as well, and copying files was nothing more than a mouse-driven copy/paste.
Wake up, folks. Linux is ready for the desktop. It will pass the test with most middle-class college-educated grannies, at the very least. The Aunt Tilly's of the world will soon realize that spending hundreds of dollars on software is no longer a requirement.
We are there, people! Hallelujah, we are fucking there!
For both: Office apps work, I can do clickety fun with file management and search. Blabbity blab blab ad infinium.
If accessibility to great games had been on the list Ubuntu would get creamed. When a distro comes along that can cater to game developers, then the desktop war is won.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
What about the firefox users who claimed opera stole the tabs?
It has been pointed out that the /. crowd is probably not the intended audience for this particular piece. I think it is intended possibly for two sets of users - the general, non-technical home user and the corporate IT department. These are the areas where Linux has the greatest potential to expand usage. In both cases, to varying degrees, the desire is for a system that "just works" and can be supported efficiently. Ubuntu has made great strides in these two areas, but isn't yet the M$ killer everyone wants it to be. The thing that hinders corporate acceptance more than anything else is Excel (and Outlook to a much lesser extent, only by virtue of being bundled in all flavors of MS Office). I say Excel because it is used for everything and while my experience has been that OoO's spreadsheet is probably 95% compatible, it doesn't render everything flawlessly and if you are talking about production schedules, financial calculations, inventories or what have you, that 5% margin of error just doesn't cut it. (I have a couple of users using OoO as a pilot project). As for home use, for general stuff like Internet browsing or email, I no longer see any compelling case for Windows. Games, on the other hand, is a glaring weakness. Cedega/wine is a step in the right direction, but ultimately, IMHO, only native Linux games, whether FLOSS or no and readily available, will make Linux a compelling option.
You know, I think Apple might be onto something with their complete lack of any sort of package management built in (you can get a third party tool). I think the ideal situation is one where you don't need special tools to remove software. You just dump it in the trash. Though some software will inevitably spew files all over your system no matter what OS you run.
:P
With that in mind, I think that the Linux style of having EVERYTHING as packages probably detracts from user-friendliness. I mean, it is nice for power users, but most people just want to find that Yahoo game that was installed, and remove it. Then again, maybe they don't. Sometimes I wonder if users ever delete ANYTHING.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
As if anyone actually WANTS to go to Add/Remove Programs to install an application. When in the life of Windows has anyone used that feature to "Add" a program? I never have. That's what the SETUP.EXE is for. Sheesh.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/jerry.html
Apparently "jerry-built" and "jury-rigged" are the correct phrases. Apparently the one you want is "jury-rigged."
It came as a surprise to me as well.
Additionally, from the article: "I've wondered for a while why Microsoft doesn't just include Word 97 or one of the other out-of-support-lifetime versions of Word as an installable freebie with Windows."
I think we can all agree this guy's opinion is worthless if he's too stupid to realize that microsoft only makes significant amounts of money off of two products and even then only by locking people in to them. Word 97 is still way more than most people need and would kill probably 90% of the ms office revenue if it were given away.
In either case, both windows and Ubuntu suck. Ubuntu has the advantage of an admirable aim (easy to use Linux), they just fail at the implementation.
The Farewell Tour II
This is not a joke. I am being absolutely serious. I did an experiment...
Installation:
I formated the drive on my 2 year old son's computer. I then gave him an Ubuntu disk (5.10)and told him to go install it on his computer. I then repeated the experiment with Windows XP. He was successful in his attempt to install Ubuntu. I came back 20 minutes latter and he was playing Klotski. When I tried to do the same with Windows, he simply could not get through the install.
Winner: Ubuntu. Ubuntu is noticeably easier to install than Windows.
Updates
At 3 he is currently running dual boot, as there are 'must have' apps on each of the platforms. On both platforms, he does his own OS security updates. He only does software upgrades on Ubuntu, as there is no way he is capable of hunting down installing application updates on Windows.
Winner: (Security) Tie
Winner: (Applications) Ubuntu
Accident Proof:
In 2 years of running Ubuntu, he has not broken the install once. Yes there have been spare links strewn around the desktop, but the install was still stable. In 2 years of running Windows, he has broken the install twice to the point of needing to reinstall.
Winner: Ubuntu
Ease of Use:
Once the OS was up and running, he had no trouble figuring out how to load and shut down his programs on either platform.
Winner: Tie
Conclusion: Winner - Ubuntu
I have been using my son as a yardstick for determining whether a person is an idiot or not. I don't expect people to be computer experts, nor do I expect them to know everything that I know. I do, however, expect an adult to be able to grasp anything that even the brightest 2 year old can understand. I don't think that is too much to ask.
This experiment may or may not still be considered relevant, as both Windows and Ubuntu have seen updates since I did it. I would be interested in hearing the results of this experiment being performed by others. The two things that I would want to see changed would be to up the age to 5 or 6, and to use Vista and Feisty.
I like ubuntu and my 13yr old installed it by himself (and got connected) with no problems. However, installing the java plugin for firefox was a PITA and not something a normal user could do like creating symbolic links for the plugin to the java install directory. Does it really need to be that difficult? It wouldn't install automatically from firefox. Maybe there was an easier way, but from what I can tell, you have to do it manually. Also, a lot of the instructions on the Ubuntu website referred to old apt package that were not found.
I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it)
Good for you. Here's my experience with Feisty Fawn (Kubuntu)... On my laptop, a Dell Latitude D820, I can't get wireless to work, making Ubuntu useless. On my PC, everything works fine when I boot from the CD, but when I try to install, the installer freezes at step 4 (Partitioning) with no way out. So far I have spent a few hours trying to resolve these issues, with a Linux expert friend helping online, without any progress. I'm sure if I put in enough time and effort I'll eventually get it to work, but otoh Windows already works.
Maybe I'm unlucky but every year or so I, a Microsoft-loathing Windows user, try Linux and each time end up with increased appreciation for Windows. I don't *want* to whine about Linux, but feel compelled to every time I read a Slashdot user proclaiming how easy Linux is nowadays. Maybe it is for you but don't just assume it's as troublefree for everyone.
All I have to say is ask any linux user (ubuntu or otherwise) if they are considering switching to windows and see what they say. Then ask some windows useres if they are considering swapping to linux. I think the results will speak for themselves.
Not to mention that Synaptic in Ubuntu allows you to find lots of new apps to begin with, and keep everything up to date.
Backups, we don't need no stinking backups!
So, when I click on "Add New Programs", it comes up with a list of thousands of programs that I could install? No, you say? I know you were refuting the GPP's point, because you technically can add a program through there, but you almost never do in practice. All programs have their own installers. The Ubuntu package manager takes care of finding the program you want, getting it and installing it. Windows will just install whatever disk or install.exe file you point it at. There is no comparison.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
That's a debate... certainly Linux power users agree with you, but a lot of the real world much prefers the Windows system where you go get the CD or download the exe for your installations, and you just use the "package manager" for uninstall functionality.
Of course Windows has bastardized this a bit with the "Windows Features" section.
With my current hardware, Vista works a lot better out of the box. It doesn't support all my hardware correctly out of the box, but it supports it enough to where I can actually do something to get it to.
My 8800GTS and 30" monitor are part of the problem. The other part of the problem is what I want to use for a bootloader.
On first boot of the LiveCD, I have to specify a resolution just so I can get the status/loading graphics. After it then boots up, it mis-syncs with my monitor and I have to change to a terminal window and edit xorg.conf to specify the Vesa instead of nv for the driver. The current driver Ubuntu uses is an older driver that sees I have a Nvidia based card, but just doesn't work with the hardware. It's just a PITA to deal with. I know the reasons why Ubuntu uses the driver they do, but it'd be nice if it could see that you had a network connection and download the appropriate one.
My other problem is the way I want to boot. I like using Vista's bootloader instead of GRUB to manage everything. Why? That way if I ever need to fix Windows, I don't have to worry about it clobbering GRUB and having to reinstall it. I use it in conjunction with EasyBCD. I install GRUB to the installed linux partition and use EasyBCD to specify where it is at. Trying this with Ubuntu just keeps me at a grub> prompt. I've experimented with Grub2 with the LiveCD and the alternate install CD, etc. Just can't get it to work the way I want it.
The only Linux distro I've tried lately that works out of the box is Sabayon (based on Gentoo). It comes with the appropriate Nvidia driver, works at my monitor's native resolution, and lets me customize the GRUB install appropriately/correctly. Comes with all the necessary media drivers, etc. Some of them probably not technically "legal" for the US, but still was easy to deal with.
Yeah, Windows only has 1 free version of Minesweeper, but Ubuntu has 34!
Come on, "lots of free software" is just not important to most computer users, who spend almost all their time on a few standard applications: Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, number/data crunching, and building presentations. And in this area, any OS not supported by Microsoft applications (that is, any OS except Windows and Mac OS) loses ground because of compatibility issues.
Did you save money and get the Dell wireless card instead of the Intel? If so, serves you right.
It may not be completely hopeless: you can try ndiswrapper to use the Windows driver.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Personally I found gentoo easier to use and less buggy than Ubuntu and windows seriously sucks when it comes to anything server like.
I drew my conclusions based on his review and his take on the whole vista vs ubuntu thing and I think he had a slight bias to Vista in terms of out of the box performance and let ubuntu slip with some of the configuration nasties (though Windows is a pig/impossible to configure if it doesn't work straight away)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The price of the product.
If windows can just barely beat it then it is not worth the money your paying for it.
They are right that some install stuff dropping to terminal needs to end. It is a single blocking point to full adoption for a lot of people.
The issue is that in Ubuntu (and Linux in general) the entire state of the system can be captured and restored by copying plain files/partitions. With Windows this is not possible. The registry has a magic format and many files are unreadable while the system is running. So you have to put yourself at the mercy of a special backup program. I have not used Vista, but the XP backup facilities are abysmal but unavoidable.
I manage many OS, and I can say I love shadow copy. No need to break out the backups when a user fat fingers a file. It's a beautiful thing. As Ubuntu, I suppose you could use LVM snapshots to get a similar effect, but it would probably take some work. I'm just starting to look into LVM snapshots.
Actually you can Add programs using Windows Add/Remove Programs, have been able to since NT 4 as far as I know.
The only reason I know though is because you pretty much want to (have to?) use it on a machine running Terminal
Services. Using it this way in Terminal Services sets up a multi-user environment for the program where as your
typical "setup.exe" did not back then. This is also how you restriceted access to a program to just an Administrator
as well.
These days a good installer asks you "Do you want this for you only or all users" or some such and sets up a decent
user environment in "Documents and Settings" or "Users".
Most people don't even think about using Add/remove Programs because every program for Windows wants to do it for
you. Some installers work well and have a lot of good administration features, some don't. I personally prefer the
consistent if not always quite as friendly aprroach that a Linux Distro uses (apt being my favourite!). I would
like to see more consistency accross distributions but just comparing Ubuntu to Vista I'd say Synaptic is a much
better option then the myriad of interfaces and choices that Windows users deal with whenever they want to install
a new program.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Remastersys Made for Mint, works with all Ubuntu-like systems. sudo remastersys backup = Backup your system. sudo remastersys dist = Make a distributable copy of your installed system.
GIMP is definitely more powerful than what's available on Vista, but I think GIMP not as easy to use for basic functionality. If you're a graphics artist then definitely gimp is better, if you're trying to crop and touch up some photos and such you'd be better off with Microsoft's image editor or Picasa or something similar.
Until software developers realize that power isn't everything and can design an interface that satisifies the power users as well as not scare the beginner there's going to be a nice niche for simple tools. And on a basic computer aimed at average users, I'm not sure you want to put the high powered tools on it.
-
Q
I've used linux heavily and I've used windows heavily, and I'll never put linux on my desktop again. Sure, it's geek-points or whatever to have it that way but Linux breaks in more wierd ways and makes baby jesus cry. I think Linux has a ton of usefulness server-side, but client-side it is still crap due to the vagueness of information required to ensure applications run. No business in their right mind is gonna deal with the amount of mental upkeep involved in supporting several thousand packages (everything in linux is a lib remember?) on every single machine! All you have to think about is normal user requirements in windows (package #1 = Windows, #2 = Office, #3 = A/V) vs the amount of crap you had to remember about Linux packages. Linux actually has so many you can't even possibly know them all or know all the ones you need. Does that make sense? Linux client-side is an administrative nightmare and that's the #1 reason for it to be #2 to anything Windows. Joe-user, and businesses don't care about inperceptable performance differences and right now that's the only difference between Vista and Linux on the same hardware. Linux has to get into the less than ten packages to keep track of category before it will ever look tasty to the management on the desktop. - Mind
But Linux has a spell-checker too!
The only justification desktop Linux has for existing is as an alternative to Windows. Why should anyone except a hard-core hacker bother with an OS if it's harder to use and creates all sorts of compatibility problems with files shared with Windows users?
Linux will always be around as a server OS, as an embedded OS for devices and appliances, and as a toy for hackers. But Ubuntu (along with other desktop-oriented distros) wasn't developed for these purposes. It was developed to compete with Windows for ordinary computer users. If it can't do that, it's a failure.
I agree, but as for defacto tools, as least Ubuntu provides options. I prefer Picasa under Linux for most basic tasks anyway.
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
Ubuntu doesn't support my wireless nic so Vista wins. Ubuntu doesn't support my soundcard so Vista wins. Ubuntu is nice but like most Linux distros the hardware support is lacking :(
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I'm going to call you on the insulting tone. There was no reason for that at all. Of course, that's the basic problem with open source advocates. Calling people idiots when you're trying to get them to see your point of view isn't really productive but it seems to be the only tool in the box for about 80% of you.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
How do I install Word from that screen? Or at least Open Office and Apache?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Even more bizarre and misleading, from TFA:
"Add/Remove Applications lets you search the entire directory of applications recommended for Ubuntu -- dozens of programs in 11 categories -- and install them with little effort."
I've looked around, and have yet to find "Add/Remove Programs", perhaps because I haven't switched to the more Windows-like interface, but "dozens of programs" seems more than a little misleading for the number of packages available in Ubuntu repositories.
Would it be a tie if you consider the cost factor? Vista is one of the priciest operating systems and not to mention all the additional applications that you need to purchase before you can do anything useful.
Linux actually has several implementations of this (and has had them for years), but Ubuntu has chosen not to activate them in the distribution. I think that's the right decision for Ubuntu. But if people should come to like this feature, all Ubuntu needs to do is turn it on.
I am a complete linux novice. This past Monday was the first time that I had used it beyond using telnet to connect to someone else's server and perform a routine task or two. The majority of my experience deals with windows XP/2000. I decided to partition my drive and load ubuntu, XP, and vista on the same box. It took me about an hour for XP to install, and another two hours and a dozen reboots to get all of the basic necessities (drivers, browsers, office, etc.) running and ready to use. Vista took me about 90 minutes to install. After working for another 3 hours to try and get it to recognize my video card and connect to my network, I gave up on it and decided to install ubuntu. I started the installer, got up to get a drink, came back, and it was done installing and ready to use. I am still tracking down things like the odd codec and driver for XP. Vista still does not work at all. Ubuntu was fully functional immediately and I had learned how to do pretty much everything that I wanted within a day or two of googling around (assuming that I had to even google it, with the giant repositories at your fingertips). I am certainly no linux fanboy, but my own experience with ubuntu has seriously made me question the logic behind using a windows operating system at all.
This is my backup solution for Windows:
o Defrag
o Zero out the free space on teh HD (InvirtusFreeSpace is good for this)
o Reboot into Linux live-cd
( Mount external USB HD formatted with EXT3 or the like )
' dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=5M |bzip2 >/mnt/usb/bkp-xp-hda1-20070101.dd.bz2 '
--Advantage: No open files, and you can restore the system from a bit-by-bit backup state.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Yes there are instances where things don't work out of the box on Linux, but there are instances where it doesn't work on Windows when the hardware is even additionally "designed" for it. Such as in my example.I have seen Ubuntu Linux with Beryl using a Vista-like theme and Vista with Aero running side by side..
The difference between the hardware was that the Ubuntu system was running two year old hardware and Vista was using very new hardware. The Ubuntu system performed just as well.Use your brain. I can't view pictures in the command line, can I? A command line isn't always the best concept when it comes to a interface for the user. I certainly wouldn't want to use a command line to draw pictures or make a website (can you imagine typing for html work? That would be hell annoying. This is why we have terminal editors even.
The reason why we have GUIs (and TUIs) is not for eye-candy specifically but for usability. Eye-candy is just icing on the cake.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
WAMP setup on Vista: 5 minutes, working perfectly, and took my old mysql database and started running right away.
/etc/apache2 directory with the intent to start over, with default configurations. What happened? apt-get install/remove/whatever in all its configurations must have had a history, because it wouldn't reinstall any config files, even if they didn't exist! I had the worst time getting the defaults back (having to download individual .deb files among other frustrations).
LAMP on ubuntu? 4 hours, and a lot of googling. Now, I should add that I deleted the
On windows, I've never had this kind of problem. A setup.exe file just plain makes sense, and seems to work better than my short apt-get experience.
Linux has ugly colors by default (making it look plain ugly), and is no where near as smooth as vista, let alone all the terrible names that techies name their open source software. The startup screen has a ton of ugly verbose code, and x has crashed several times already, necessitating reboot. Sudo sucks even worse than Vista's "run as administrator", and is painfully intrusive. Pretty much no user can escape a need to use the terminal window in linux at some point in time -- something that regular people won't accept.
I'm running a Vista/Ubuntu 7.04 dual boot laptop, and while Vista's definitely had its share of frustrations, ubuntu is as beta as an os can possibly be. All this slashdot pro-desktop linux talk got me excited, but I've been overwhelmingly disappointed.
--
I should note that I've been running linux servers (debian, redhat, and slackware) for 7 years. For servers, I'll never touch Windows, but for a decent desktop experience, I'm extremely disappointed that it's all I've got.
Maybe in a year or five, linux will be alright, but why the hell is ubuntu 7.04 considered production-ready?? Vista's problems are with drivers and legacy support. Ubuntu has serious bugs and issues that affect a smooth desktop experience!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What about them? I remember a handful of trolls, but no widespread belief that Firefox invented tabbed browsing.
And it's not like Opera invented it either.
Additionally, these prompts should usually only appear when starting a configuration application, some application that needs low level access or when granting a configuration tool temporary rights to change items, it should never appear in the middle of using a normal user application -- like I've seen on Vista.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Factor in the type of hardware required to run these systems, the cost of OS licenses, the time required to find device drivers, required software licenses (such as anti-virus), and so on, the divide between the two systems widens dramatically. For me, it takes more than shadow-copy functions to make up for the cost factor alone. And I'm not so sure that a decent back-up utility would be that difficult to implement in Ubuntu. Both Vista and Ubuntu are amongst the top choices around right now but one is more readily available to 90% of the world's population than the other (at least without violating any ULAs - Vista sales in China speak to this point). Ubuntu specifically and linux in general will continue to eat away at MS's market share on this point alone. Granted, MS has special pricing available to counter this, but free is really, really tough to beat.
"There is nothing so American as our national parks.... " - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Because I already know it's somehow biased. TIE?!?
/. readers, and I'm sure my knowledge and experience is horrifically limited compared to other /.ers, but still there's a pretty clear win here in this battle, and I'd like to run through the list real quick.
I've run Vista and Feisty Fawn. I've installed them both on a few machines. I've also been using other OSes for > 10 years.
Now, that's a small modicum of experience as compared to many
Installation:
1. Vista: Total pain in the neck. Took forever, installed lots of random extra crap that slowed my machine(s) down. Many of my old apps and games stopped working.
2. Feisty: Breeze. Very fast, I could even surf the web during installation. Very clean initial install, minimal wasted resource stuff installed. Most old Linux binaries still work, but coming from Windows XP, many of my old apps and games stopped working, however, more than were broken by Vista.
Initial Setup:
1. Vista: Word Pad. Terrible CD burning interface. Windows Media Player is still bloated and >>>>>>> than Aero, seriously. I'd like a better Nintendo 64 emulator. Mupen works well, but it lacks many features and some of the speed and compatibility of 1964 on XP. I'd like a 3d chess game. There are several free ones out, just grab it, clean it up, release it with the OS. Make it easy to play online against a friend via GAIM. Make ekiga easier and better. Actually iChat pretty much ruins all the open AND MS offerings in this department, which is tragic, because SPEEX is free, and better than the codecs that even iChat chooses to use, so (what were they thinking?!?).
I wanted to like Vista, I did, but it's such an obvious downgrade from XP in so many ways: Networking, Games, DRM, speed, stability... It seems like the only thing they got right was eye candy, and they are so far behind Ubuntu at this point that it's ridiculous. Especially since Ubuntu is FOSS, I mean, couldn't they have just grabbed all the compiz/beryl stuff and applied it natively via DirectX or something (what were they thinking?!?)? I really honestly don't know who's in charge at MS, and why they chose to shoot themselves so clearly in the foot with this release. They were already falling behind Linux in key areas: IE vs Firefox, Paint vs Gimp, WMP vs (just about anything, really), and now with the added DRM, more difficult security measures and networking setup.... It's like they WANT to lose all the desktops or something. I do miss Windows Live Messenger though. That is one app that they almost got right, at least as far as video conferencing goes. I look forward to getting a VM up and running so I can still use it in Ubuntu.
I want to stress again that Ubuntu is a great OS. I've been using it for > a month now, and it is fantastically easy, beautiful and fast, even on much older hardware than I currently own. I got beryl running nicely in 256 mb of ram, on a geforce 4, and Athlon (not XP!). Even on that ancient hardware it is much better and faster than Vista on a core 2 duo with 2 gb of ram, and an 8800 GTS. Hopefully somebody somewhere repackages Feisty to include better default apps and colors, because I think the time for Linux on the desktop has finally arrived, and there are A LOT of positives for humanity if FOSS wins this war.
All that being said, though, for most of my clients I'm still recommending XP SP2. The reason is simple: Games. They want San Andreas. They want WoW, CoD, and Outrun. Wine is just not good enough yet, and I wouldn't recommend Vista to people I actively dislike, much less people who are paying me. For those people who don't care much about games, I am install Ubuntu, adding beryl, and setting it up so on first boot they have Tvtime on one cube side, Mupen64 on another, Rhythmbox on a third, and Firefox on a fourth. The average end user thinks I am a wizard, but it's really all very simple in Ubuntu, now if only they could lose evolution and the shit brown.....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
> This disturbs me as the person who has written the article...
The original article yesterday talked about Ubuntu 7.2 (it is now fixed to 7.04 after someone obviously mentioned about it to him). So it is quite obvious that the author has very little knowledge of Ubuntu. (Those who are familiar with Ubuntu can pretty well list all the released version numbers, as the release cycle is 6 months, every 4. and 10. month of a year and version numer is year.month )
Blame the application developer. It only appears when an application tries to do something requiring elevated privileges.
Granted maybe he should have used a better unit, like "almost two kilodozens" ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Check out the Wayback revisioning file system for Linux. "Anything you can do, I can do better!" :)
http://wayback.sourceforge.net/
*Darb
This sig intentionally left blank.
sudo doesn't run by default whenever someone runs a program called "install.exe". Even if install.exe doesn't need the permissions, Windows "helpfully" elevates it. If that's not a mis-design, I don't know what is. And I guarantee you someone is going to start calling their program executable install.exe so that it runs with higher privileges.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I don't understand how an OS can be evaluated by its applications.
"And so... this OS is much better because word processing is so cool, and graphic editing is amazing, not even talk about browsing the web!"
Is it just me? but what does Paint or OpenOffice has to do with the OS? Shouldn't people ask.. "Opening a big picture took..." or "the rendering of the Blue-ray movie was poor". Do I care if the installation window was pretty? Should that be a parameter to be taken into account?
In this case, I bet a good comparison for several people would be: "This OS showed much better reproduction of the deck when playing solitaire".
If you are on a properly-configured Windows network, the "Add New Programs" option will find available installs on said network.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
This is the worst review I think ive seen. Does this guy even know how to use linux. The final comparisons were just ridiculous.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Nice euphemism: "patience" for "hassle". Why do I need the extra hassle?
Is the article's author retarded? And no, I am no trying to be a troll...
How does it come that after comparing pretty equal WiFi support, bloody Internet Explorer with good Mozilla Firefox, useless Outlook Express and complete PIM solution Evolution is Windows Vista the better system?
How is it possible that Multimedia support is a tie, when Windows supports only Windows Media and MP3 by default?
Why is Windows rated as OS with better hardware support, when Windows without external drivers (note that we are talking about out-of-box support!) does support only a tiny bit of HW supported on Linux?
I suggest the tag "fud" for this Slashdot article.
Quickbooks is the main economic anchor application for Windows. It keeps small businesses tied to MS. At present, a new service from Intuit called Quickbooks Online threatens to untie Quickbooks from Windows. All that has to happen is to remove dependence on ActiveX within Quickbooks Online and Ubuntu -- and other Linux distros -- will take off in a big way.
Seastead this.
Well in another case multimedia handling, he clearly disfavoured Vista:
Vista reads natively MP3, the most popular compressed audio format, Ubuntu doesn't by default, yet he put both on par..
"Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system"
xfsdump seems to be at least as good. Does Ubuntu officially support XFS?
When Windows gets kioslaves, I'll believe in seamlessness. If Vista has an equivalent, I'm willing to give it a shot.
Perhaps the following will explain this tendency:
Serdar Yegulalp:
SC is far from perfect, it is performed on a scheduled basis just like a conventional backup. We had a customer's file store configured for noon and 17:30 checkpoints, for quite awhile and it came in handy on a couple occasions, sure beats digging out a tape and performing a restore. Recently one user spent several hours in the evening revising a document, the following morning the document was accidentally over written by another user. Because it was outside of the window, they lost those hours of work. We scheduled 23:00 and 04:00 checkpoints to improve the odds of saving late night sessions.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
...it's also a rational yardstick considering how overwhelming is user experience with Windows.
That entrenched network effect is precisely what keeps Microsoft in their position of dominance. Unfortunately, it also means that for something better to come along that's judged as such, it will first have to beat Windows at its own game.
Lynx might have run rings around IE6 in some ways (such as lack of security vulnerabilities), but that didn't mean it would supplant that out-of-standard monstrosity. It took Firefox to make serious inroads in IE's dominance, simply because it could do virtually everything IE6 could do and better, plus things it couldn't.
Ubuntu's a very good step-or 20-in the right direction. But yeah, if it can't do what Windows can do in certain areas, you'll always hear more bitching than if Windows can't do what Ubuntu can. At least, until Windows is no longer the dominant OS line.
Kythe
I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on a machine running windows (very nicely) and I get crashes in firfox, moving documents between SATA drives, using F-spot, remote sessions with NXServer, and other random times. I don't mean nice crashes either. These crashes kill responses to any input be they keyboard, mouse, video, ssh, telnet, etc. Sorry, Linux doesn't "just work"...
Buy supported hardware. Well supported printers work great on Linux, with setup being completely painless. (i.e. less painful than inserting a driver disk even). This Linux works poorly with unsupported hardware stuff was old in 2002 - you don't complain about Windows not supporting PowerPC processors. You can replace every single piece of poorly supported hardware for less than the cost of office - and the supported hardware is usually nicer anyway.
This is really embarrassing. It doesn't always happen, and it's not hard to fix, but when it does happen it means that someone's going to have to edit a dreaded config file. This was supposed to get fixed in Ubuntu 7.04, but it got put off until 7.10 because the X.org guys are working on it.
This is one specific card, not some widespread wifi issue. I agree that losing support for a piece of hardware is pretty lame. Still though, this is an issue with a specific piece of hardware that is now not supported in Ubuntu 7.04. There's no reason to mention it in a review / comparison at all, aside from perhaps "No OS supports all hardware. Make sure your hardware is supported before installing any OS."
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
There is currently no way to make "Ghost" copies of volumes on dymanic disks and then restore them. Norton Ghost and some others can imagine the partitions, but only restore them to basic disks.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So if I go through a dozen configuration files I might get my game to work worse than on Windows? Gee, I can't wait!
Seriously, most of us have a computer with Windows already or know how to use BitTorrent well enough to get it; price isn't an object. Don't get me wrong; some of use linux every day at work at love it, but would rather spend our evenings gaming or hanging out with people rather than further OS dabbling for a worse result.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The reviews I've read on Ubuntu that are the most insightful are written by those with very little prior knowledge of either environment: as such they reveal their expectations about those products, expectations that reflect more of the 'average user's' needs than that of the expert.
I've been a daily Linux desktop user for 8 or so years, but only now am I seeing reviews by people that start with "I really like how in Ubuntu I don't have to websites to download and install software" and howtos that begin with "So you've just installed Ubuntu and want to change your theme?".
These are very good signs. People are actually trying out this stuff and getting there on their own. The software is working. Our ideas are good.
neither are really ready for mission critical apps
what about a real comparision like
debian vs xp
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I've been reading since late 1999 how close Linux is to be the "next" popular operating system for the masses. How ready Linux is to be the next operating system for my grandma. I, myself, use Linux (sorry, GNU/Linux) and I find it very useful for certain tasks, and certain applications. But, does it work out of the box? well, sometimes. Does Windows works out of the box? Well, sometimes too. But for what my mom would be doing with a PC, yes, it mostly works out of the box. If I have to say which operating system will be the next "desktop operating system", I'm gonna have to say that if such thing exist, it will be Mac OS. Mac it's just getting to popular, to into the mainstream. That's all you need. Forget about functionality, it's all about the media. Mac OS is just one of those few things that works as advertised (in my experience.) Anyways, just talking about my experiences. Cheers ;)
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
2: Kontrol center has an excelent support for printers for a few years now. You can install, reconfigure and remove lots of kinds of local/network/virtual printers just by using wizards on a GUI. I know that Ubuntu is Gnome based, but it is hard to imagine that only KDE made it.
Rethinking email
Computers don't exist simply to run Microsoft Office.
Take "creating textual documents". Sometimes a word processor like OOWriter is appropriate, but other times there is a better tool. Sometimes you want a desktop publishing program like Scribus, or a document processor like LyX. You may even really want an HTML editor like Bluefish.
Or image editing. Microsoft office really doesn't do that. Ubuntu comes with GIMP by default, but also provides tools OODraw and Inkscape for when a raster image editor is not appropriate.
Number/data crunching. Sometimes you want a spreadsheet like OOCalc. Sometimes you want a high end toolkit like Numeric Python or even a Fortran compiler.
Sure, you can get tools for most of these tasks on Windows. Sometimes those tools even have features that the Free Software programs that come with Ubuntu don't. Even ignoring software freedom for a moment (which is never a good idea), each one of those programs for Windows requires an expensive single seat software license. If one person wants to legally use Windows, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and Illustrator (for example), that'll cost almost $3000 at full retail. Sure, maybe you can get discounts. On the other hand, maybe that person uses other software occasionally too - and that doesn't even consider later upgrade costs. With Ubuntu, you get very similar functionality to all of that built in at zero cost - for every user in your organization.
Maybe some of the Windows stuff is more feature packed - but with Ubuntu, every user gets all of it automatically. You never have to think "I only use photoshop every two weeks, is it really worth getting the license for *my* desktop?"
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I know this is pretty off topic here, but indulge me for a little while.
Why is it that hardware support these days is so much more tricky than it was in the early days of home-brew computers and for a while afterwards? In the book iWoz (no, I'm not an apple fanboi, I just like technical history) Woz talks about writing the drivers for the floppy drive on the Apple II(it could have been the first apple, so correct me if I'm wrong). The floppy drive manufacturer provided the specs so that anyone could use the hardware. These days you're locked into using the manufacturer's drivers.
Almost all hardware manufactueres shouldn't really care if you use their drivers or not. I'll say that video cards, and maybe audio cards, get a pass on this one, because the better the drivers are, the better position they are in for their industry. I would think it would be most advantageous for the manufacturers to say, "Here are the specs, and here's our driver." That way if some other OS needs a driver, then the manufacturer doesn't have to write the driver for it, and the OS developers don't have to reverse engineer how to work with the hardware device. I'll admit that I'm no OS developer, so maybe that's the way it is for most things, but it seems that you hear a LOT about Linux developers having to reverse-engineer drivers.
Why is it that hardware support has to be such a hit or miss? Woz's floppy driver was actually faster than the manufacturers, because he realized you could just push the needle once and let momentum carry it across, instead of stepping over each track. I think that's a good example of a win-win situation.
Okay, mod me off topic.
Ubuntu doesn't by default, but *does* now prompt you to install the codecs -- and it works like a charm. 2 or 3 clicks and you're up and running with your MP3s. ;)
Technology tips and tricks.
Bash has fancy completion like that, too. I've used it for years. 'make ' to see what buildtargets there are,
'less --' if you forgot the spelling of the colour options, or 'ncftp ' to see your saved FTP sites.
True. But we already have the Linux experience in house anyway, and the amount we spend on Windows security issues in terms of head count would be enough to pay for an added Linux resource not even counting the original $20K.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Works yes no .NET 1
Windows 1
Office 1
Can Backup 1
Can Recover 1
Is Free -1
Score 5 - 1 = 4
Works yes no
Ubuntu 1
openOffce 1
Mono 1
Can Backup 1
Can Recover 1
Is Free 1
Score 6
With a score of 6 OVER 4, Ubuntu is the better choice.
"It either Words, or it's Broken." - Unknown
You hit it right on the head. On Windows, backups are a big deal. You need special tools for it (sometime tools even install drivers at kernel level), you need patience, and luck (most tools fail often - not every time, but a lot more than any one would accept on another system).
On Linux, it is often harder to configure a pre-built backup solution than to roll your own. And that even including GUI solutions, that you'll still need to tell what to backup and how often. If you just want manual backups, plain old 'cp' (or any GUI alternative) can do the work. If you want to fit your data on CDs, there are tools for that, but they won't tell you that they do backups, they just fit stuf on CDs. There is almost no tool exclusively for backup, and the ones that do exist are rarely used, because we don't need them. Will the author complain next that there are too few anti-virus software for Linux?
Also, who said that backup configuration should be done on a GUI? When was the last time you saw a "average user" (i.e. that kind that is supposed to not know how to use a CLI) wondering about backups?
But, if you are backing-up to disk or SAN, you should take a look at rdiff-backup (it is at Etch, I don't know about Ubuntu). It works just like rsync, but create easier to recover images.
Rethinking email
Granted maybe he should have used a better unit, like "almost two kilodozens" ?
OK I'm now officially looking for an opportunity to use "kilodozens" in conversation.
"Buy supported hardware"
Tell me what printer says works with Linux on the box? Actually I have a supported printer and it does work just fine. Finding a supported printer is a pain. And actually you are better off getting a printer from 2002. The latest and greatest may or may not work because no one has had time to test it. A less then brand new printer is usually a safer bet. I am looking at it from the point of view of an average user. BTW a lot of printers also don't work with Vista which I did mention. Why should I throw a printer that is still working in the landfill for sake of Vista or Linux? Printers don't really go obsolete. Printers should last for years and office printers do. Lack of Linux printer drivers is an issue. And yes more printer makers should provide drivers, but it is still a pain.
For the monitor problem Ubuntu should adopt SAX2 it works very well but I have one more suggestion for everyone. Auto detection is nice but let me also select my monitor from a list a lock it. Auto detection can have a fit with KVMs and I use them KVMs are home and at work. One of the things that drives me crazy at work is that Windows doesn't auto detect my flat panel so on boot up I have to unplug the monitor cable from my KVM and plug it into my Windows box. The nice thing is it seems that Suse fixed that in an update. I don't have to play swap the cable on the Suse 10.1 box on boot up any more.
And I don't think this is one specific card. I have seen a lot of people complaining about WiFi not working in 7 and not all of them are using the Prism card that my Thinkpad does. I think it is a bug in the Wifi manager because I can see my WAP but I can not log on to the network. Again it worked fine in Suse 10 and 10.1 and it worked under Ubuntu 6.
Notice that you jump on me about the printing issue yet every Linux user knows that printing is a mess. Why do you think there is a site called Linuxprinting.org? This isn't a problem that is limited to Ubuntu. When I shop for a printer I always ASK the salesman does it work with Linux even if I know that it doesn't. Every Linux user needs to start asking so the people that sell things like printers or scanners that we are their and we do spend our money or not based on it working with Linux.
Linux is a community as such it will not get better unless we are honest about problems. Ubuntu seems to have become a sacred cow. My take on Ubuntu is that if you are one of the people that the install just works for then you are golden. If you have to tweak anything it is a royal pain. Ubuntu doesn't suck but I think it is over rated compared to OpenSuse and probably Fedora.
The real overlooked Linux has got to be CentOS. The latest version has a lot of desktop friendly additions and has the stability and testing of Red Hat Enterprise addition. It does lack Ubuntu's frendly marketing but it looks like a rock solid project if a little dull.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Indeed.. I got fed up with a supposedly supported card and finally just bought a D-Link WDA-1320. It works.. like a champ. WEP and WPA no problem (though I'm having problems with WPA2).
This goes for security updates only. I don't want new versions or anything that isn't security motivated. Installed automatically that is. I'd like to be able to review the others to see if they are worth upgrading to.
I guess I could comment out anything other than the security-repository in the sources file and do a dist-upgrade via cron but that's just an ugly hack.
Is the feature that I'm looking for out there or should I go file a feature request at launchpad.net?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
This is exactly my experience this week with Ubuntu. I decided this was the week to try Vista and Ubuntu. I installed both 64 bit versions and i found that Ubuntu actually had more drivers for my pc hardware than Vista did :) My network card had no drivers in Vista, but Ubuntu did. I found that quite funny.
:)
:(
Anyways After installing Ubuntu i found out quite quickly that ATI's driver was only giving me 1280x800 as a max resolution. While that is an ok resolution, I wanted to run at 2560x1600, which is the native resolution of my 30inch HP monitor. ATI's XP driver had no problems doing this, but in Linux the driver hated me. I did infact try to edit the xorg config file and all it ended up doing is giving me a virtual desktop size of 2560x1600, even though i did edit it where the monitor rez and refresh lines were in the xorg config. So i was puzzled.
Well anyways i wanted to check out Beryl, so i tried to get it working but X kept complaining about some thing in the ATI driver and i never got it to work.
I ended up then just playing around with the installed software, and checking out the package installer. Linux has improved since my redhat running days... and i think it has come a long long way but in the end i decided that it was still not worth the difficulties of learning the "finer points" of linux. By "Finer points" I mean the difficult, hacky stuff that isnt exactly ui friendly etc. I used to run bbs's with dos, qemm, desqview back in the day.. i can deal with configs and all kinds of pc problems but in the end i figured that while linux is a nice platform, putting up with the difficulty of converting isnt worth the effort because the apps are not there yet. Why put up with the difficult times, when in the end, the apps arent there to run?
Windows is easier to setup and get going and has more apps...
Vista is nice. I ended up liking its ui and how the search is integrated into the desktop. I'm no DRM fan, nor a microsoft fan really. Vista 64 ended up running ridiculously slow on my pc, using 100% cpu to do render Aero, is just silly. I tried the 32bit version of Vista and things seem to be running smoother but CPU usage is still higher than XP and for all the stink about moving the gui to the GPU, it really does use way too much main cpu. Frankly XP is faster off the main cpu than Aero is off the gpu.
I think Linux really has a solid future. It's been around for a long long time and it continues to evolve quite nicely. It is still behind in terms of user friendly usability. It's still a coders os... and thats fine... But it also needs to get even easier to do tasks. Frankly the silly program names also make it very difficult to guess which app does what
Linux needs to keep evolving, but at a faster rate. I wouldnt be terribly broken up if Vista was the end of the road for microsoft.... that is unless Linux doesnt improve. Linux isnt there yet for me.... but i do think it will be shortly. More and more people are running linux and i think it is gaining ground...
It just lacks the app support
Anyways... I'm in Vista32 on this computer... and XP on my workstation... because the apps are there, and they network easily to each other and have drivers for my printer...
They accidently left the Vista connected to the internet, so by the time they finished loading the OS, it had more apps installed and running than the Ubunto had available.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary."
Shadow Copy is a very cool feature, but it's only available in Business and Ultimate. That's $199.95 or 279 or AU$379.00 or £189.99 - and that's for the upgrade version. Per computer.
If you already got a version of Vista with your computer, you can upgrade to Ultimate for $199 (from Home Basic) or $159 (from Home Premium to Ultimate). (You can't upgrade to Business.) Your precious files are a mere price-of-iPod-Nano-and-five-albums away.
Somehow, that fails to impress me.
Patience, like waiting for Wine to catch up? It'll never be able to play the latest games until they aren't the latest anymore. Rise of Nations is four years old already and it's barely playable. I'm not slamming Wine (it's incredible) and at least I have native UT2004 (giving my 50% of my favorites games), but Linux will never be there for the latest games no matter how much jerry-rigging you do.
The author seemed to be a bit miffed by the fact that a printer wasn't instantly recognized and configured. While I understand the frustration this causes, he seems to put the blame squarely on Ubuntu's shoulders, and, at the same time, praising vista for it's ability to cope with it. When are people going to realize that the reason why certain peripherals will not work with Linux is not the fault of the Linux community of developers, but the manufacturers of the peripherals who are not allowing or even refusing to assist in the development of proper drivers for Linux. I think the Linux community has done a superb job of handling this, so far, and Ubuntu Feisty definitely illustrates this hard work.
I've even written a brief article about how Ubuntu is better than Windows for Your Mother. The two key things the TFA seems to completely gloss over:
1. What do you get on a fresh install? On Windows, you get jack-all squat. A bug-ridden web browser, a word processor (Wordpad) that is next to useless, and an unbelievably ass-tacular media player (WMP). That's about it. Pray you don't need this codec or that.
Ubuntu? Comes with just about everything the average user would ever need or want. AIM, IRC, decent media player (I prefer Audacious and VLC but Totem works fine, really), fully functional office suite including email, slick web browser, PDFs supported natively, the works.
2. Want to install something? In Vista you have to either buy a CD, or google around till you find something that looks promising, download it, install it, and end up with fifty thousand icons all over the start menu and desktop, and god only knows where it'll install the files. Not to mention the bullshit startup helpers and systray crap hogging resources in your system. Pray you don't need this or that obscure nonsense to get it to install or run properly.
Ubuntu? Crack open Synaptic and within one or two clicks you can have just about anything you could possibly want, all dependencies taken care of for you, sorted into a nice, neat menu system even your grandmother would understand. (She can figure out that a game is in "Games", but she won't remember that it's in Programs > Sierra > Atari > Unreal Tournament > Play Unreal Tournament. Not that your grandmother's playing Unreal, but whatever.) No screwing around, no systray nonsense, no startup helpers, no icons littering your desktop.
All that's just for starters; read my little article if you really care about my opinion. Suffice to say that I, for one, would feel perfectly confident giving an Ubuntu CD to my own mother and trusting that she could handle both installing and using it without much questioning of me. Whereas I'm helping her figure Windows out once or twice a week.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
We've had this argument over and over: Microsoft Office doesn't do some things as well as some alternatives — but it does them well enough to suit most people, who just aren't interested in all the extra work it would take to move away from this de facto standard. You may think I'm wrong (and I honestly wish I were) but the ultimate arbiter here is the marketplace — and it says I'm right.
For years now, I've been listening to arguments like yours. I even held down a job for several years (documenting development tools for desktop Linux applications) that was based on the assumption that people would use alternatives to Microsoftware if they were available. The logic of the marketplace has shot this argument down over and over and over. Yet zealots like you keep proposing it. Getting to be a bit of a bore really.
It seems like he'd be less biased if he didn't assume that the windows way of doing things was somehow the correct way of doing things.
I think the ubuntu devs have done a very good job, in that respect, of copying the windows/mac philosophy of usability. Just like with those two platforms it is very easy to use as long as you want to do what the developers want you to do with it in the way they want you to do it. Too bad none of them ever take into account speed or comfort when designing their systems.
The Farewell Tour II
Not in Vista. That's the entire point of UAC - even an admin account doesn't run as root, it needs user intervention ("Cancel or Allow") to elevate priveleges. Exactly like sudo.
No, it's not exactly like sudo.
Sudo actually provides some level of security by requiring a password.
Asking the user to click a stupid button all the time does zero for security and a lot for annoyance.
I agree that Serdar dropped the ball on that one. However, he's known to be partial to free/open source stuff, so it wasn't shilling on his part anyway.
It's a pretty good comparison article compared to what we usually see.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
The Ubuntu package manager takes care of finding the program you want, getting it and installing it.
Lets not forget "configures" in there as well.
Also, Ubuntu has 2 interfaces for its package manager, and it doesn't have programs in it that can't be uninstalled (see: corrupted Norton A/V, spyware). Frankly a comparison between the two is a strain on my better judgement. I think out of the thousands of people who read slashdot, maybe 4 of them ever "added" a program through Windows add/remove programs (and I don't include Windows Components). A more appropriate comparison would have been how programs are competantly removed by a program manager.. in which case it would be fairly even... but then again I haven't confirmed/denied that Vista has the same problem XP had with corrupted/malicious programs refusing to be removed from add/remove programs.
Same sorta thing for me. I use:
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Serdar is not a Windows fanboy. He's partial to free/open source software. I read his stuff all the time on Techtarget newsletters. I'd say his comparison is about as fair and balanced as you're likely to see from somebody who probably isn't a full-time Linux user - which by definition would be biased as well.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That isn't spewing files all over the system. That is personal data related to the application all put in one well known place. Even Linux package managers dont' clean up any of that stuff. Do Windows unintallers? The only Windows programs I've seen actually clean up user information is when that user information is (wrongly) stored in the C:\Program Files\ structure. I suppose SOME uninstallers will ask you about saved games and such, but then you start complicating things. Each program has its own uninstaller and you get a lot of inconsistency for users. I think the important thing in making a system user friendly is keeping it simple. Uninstall = Trash. Easy.
The Finder works for me. Part of periodic house cleaning. No big deal. Everything is usually very clearly labeled.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Again, Serdar is not a Windows shill. He may not be completely familiar with Linux, but he's partial to free/open source software and recommends a lot of free stuff in his columns for one of the IT newsletter subscriptions I get.
In all, I considered the review pretty fair considering.
His reference to Add/Remove is probably correct, except he said "Vista" when he meant "Windows". Windows Add/Remove DOES predate Ubuntu and any other Linux. That was the first thing I thought when I first saw Kubuntu's Add/Remove.
And he said GIMP was better than Paint.
You all know I hunt down and kill Windows shills as much as anybody here, but Serdar isn't a shill.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
In terms of resale value, you can get a lot more on the black market for your used Vista CD than your used Ubuntu CD, so Vista has a better Total Value of Ownership.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I suggest you give CentOS 5 and OpenSuse both a look. I haven't setup CentOS5 but I had good luck with Fedora 6. I live with OpenSuse 10.1 at work and it is a fine workstation OS. I have not tried to set up multimedia on it but I do have flash working just fine. I would also suggest sticking to 32 bit for now.
:)
I do think every Linux Distro should include joe but then I bet every Linux user has an editor or tool that they think should be installed by default
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Finding a supported printer is generally as easy as walking into a store and saying "I'd like an HP printer." HPs are almost universally supported.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
In other words, friendly ... but maybe a bit too friendly.
According to a quick peek in my package cache, 1777 dozens of packages are available for install.
Don't you mean 1337 ?
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
How can something be almost universally supported?
I suggest you look at this page. http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=HP
You will find that most do work perfectly but a lot "mostly" work, a few don't work well or at all. A lot of Epson printers are also supported and they have even written some of the drivers themselves... And open sourced them as well.
The trick is to find which one will work for you. I want a color laser because I hate buying ink.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I started using this backup software by R1Soft. It can take consistent point-in-time snapshots of an ext2/3 file system similar to Microsoft's volume shadow copy. It even has a whole system that tracks changes to hard drive blocks and can send changed blocks to a remote backup server. So these tools do exist for Linux.
Ok, I'm a dumb user. How do I properly configure a Windows network (whatever that is), why do I have to, and why should I care? I just want some nice apps.
With Ubuntu I just search for a term (say, "RSS"), check a box, and whoopie, a nice application gets installed in no time. If you've ever searched for a Windows app, let me tell you that the web is so full of crap, that a package manager is LOADS better than that.
Yes, I even tried Vista (though I haven't touched an XP for years; I've been running Mac OS and recently switched to Ubuntu for everything). I think I won't ever install a Windows again. Yuck^3.
While it may be convenient that OpenOffice.org comes installed with Ubuntu, it can be installed on Vista. I dont really see this as a good point to argue on. If you are going to compare Ubuntu to Windows and you mention OpenOffice.org, you are entering Office territory. An interesting comparison would be Ubuntu + OpenOffice and Vista + Office 2007. Personally, I prefer Office XP or Office 2007. Using either OpenOffice or Office 2003 gives me a headache.
These sorts of comparisons are pointless. People don't run an OS just to run the OS. The point of an OS is to be a platform for apps, and allow you to interface with your hardware. If your OS won't do that, it doesn't matter how good it is.
..in Ubuntu I can install applications with it, in Windows I just can uninstall them. I think I find Ubuntu's solution much more useful then.. and that doesn't even take into account that removing programmes in Windows doesn't completely remove them, which can be SO annoying!
I think a very telling example of what's happening to Vista and how it rates on the coalface can be seen at the BBC website on the Vista related 'talkback'. If you read the 'most recommended' posts, they are invariably strongly anti-Vista, pro-Mac and pro-Ubuntu/Suse Linux. If Vista is such a popular OS that is selling like hotcakes, as alleged by MS, then how come everybody hates it (not just on Slashdot). Everywhere I go at work people are bagging it and looking to buy PC's with XP and talking about how to dual-boot with Linux. Others are just giving up and buying Mac's (but that road, I believe, will eventually also lead to Linux adoption).
If I were a Microsoft shareholder, reading such reports on BBC and other relatively unbiased websites would make me very nervous.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
There's been a lot said, and always is a lot said any time anybody starts comparing Linux (any flavor) to Windows (any flavor).
The fact is, the Out of box experience is different and is designed to be different between Vista and Ubuntu. I also think that many reviewers and many slashdotters hold Windows to a higher standard than they do the various Linux distros. Any hardware incompatibility in Windows is a serious flaw; the same incompatibility in Linux draws a response of "well we can't have drivers for everything - buy compatible hardware". Any configuration issue in Windows that can't be handled easily by clicking a button is roasted by all comers; a similar configuration issue in Linux is touted as "easily fixed by editing xxxx.txt file". If Windows includes any full featured utilities such as backup in the initial installation, Microsoft is accused of monopolistic practices and discouraging third party innovation and competition; a Linux distro includes many apps/packages and is praised for including them - never mind that 90% of them are patches, obscure utilities, dependencies, and god-awful applications that noone would review favourably next to their payware counterparts.
So I think the expectations are totally different and thus difficult to objectively compare, thus why you have so many heated opinions on why one is better than the other.
What I do know is that in my personal experience with Linux, I got along with it plenty well. Sometimes it took me a little longer to get something done on it than it did with Windows, but I can attribute that to the fact that I've been working with Windows for 20 years. However, when I put my wife, who is not so experienced, on the Linux machine, she had an immensely hard time with it. Sure, she could get email and browse the web without too much trouble. But when it came to things like accessing pictures off of a camera and editing them with GIMP, she found Windows and a simpler photo editor to be much easier to handle. I got tired of helping her out every time she couldn't figure out why Linux didn't handle something a certain way or why her USB card reader didn't mount when she plugged it in. Since I gave her Windows about 3 months ago, I haven't had to deal with any of that.
Again, if we hold Linux up to the same standard as we do Windows, for the average skill level of computer user, then we can objectively compare where one falls short and where one pulls ahead.
I mean, Christ... Back when Firfox 1.5 was released, you had to wait for the next major release of Ubuntu, because it was "too much work" to integrate a package of the new Fx release with the then-current version of Ubuntu.
I still don't know how long it took for GnuCash2 to make it into the repository, because I uninstalled Ubuntu before it happened.
Synaptic/Apt isn't all roses.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Deleted
- Click the "Get new programs online" link
- Click "Microsoft Office"
- Give Microsoft your credit card number.
If you prefer Openoffice:- Click the "Get new programs online" link
- Click the "Business & Office" category
- Scroll to "Openoffice"
- Click "Download now".
Really not difficult.What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
It sucks worse than Quickbooks. Yes, I know... Hard to believe...
Seastead this.
they should not compare ubuntu to vista, they should compare ubuntu to windows 98
because you know - linux is today only as old as windows was in 1998
that's one of my most important reasons to use linux... it has come to a point where it is about even with vista in 9 years less... it takes no genius to conclude that linux will leave windows far, FAR, FAAAAAR behind quick...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Back in the real world, admittedly, no, when you first open "add/remove programs" it doesn't come up immediately with a list of thousands of programs you can install. In order to see that list, you need to click "Get new programs online" (which opens in your default web browser, not necessarily IE). Admittedly, clicking something is apparently an incredibly onerous task in Windows given the number of compaints about UAC we see here; but I'm not sure it in itself is enough to dismiss the feature entirely out of hand...
And yes, they have all the major open source apps for Windows there; including Openoffice, Firefox, and the GIMP.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
No you didn't have to wait till the next release of ubuntu, they offered the package in the backports repository however this repository isn't turned on by default for fear of breaking things. See this
Out of the 10 programs you mention, 9 are available for Windows. None require an "expensive single seat software license" because they're all free and open source. The only one that doesn't is Bluefish, and trust me there is no shortage of freeware HTML editors for Windows.
The only way I can think of your logic being in any way valid is if you have someone who has some moral objections to using open source apps; as if, just because they have bought Windows, they would now feel some sort of compulsion to not use free applications. Which is a load of crap. Using Windows doesn't force you to use only paid closed source apps any more than using a crystal glass forces you to only drink mineral rather than tap water.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I've bought several Samsung laser printers. They have Tux logos on the box beside the Windows and Mac icons.
Unfortunately WiFi is another story. At least the Intel chipsets are pretty much universal in laptops these days.
Man, not only was that an awesome description of what windows does, but you actually spelt "hemorrhage" correctly (although I prefer it with more A). You get +2, Funny from me (well, you would if I had mod points).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
"FINAL FINAL FINAL UPDATE:
A backport will not be done for Firefox 1.5 because of compatibility issues with introducing a new browser, both to the rest of the Ubuntu Breezy platform and to users with heavily customized Firefox setups." -- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=96595
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Its a tie.
I have years of experience dealing with both Windows and Linux. They can both be a PITA under certain circumstances.
Windows wins in the games department. My arcade machine (air gapped from the internet) runs XP.
Linux wins in the security department. It is too easy for your Windows machine to be 0wned if you click on the wrong website. Part of this is IEs integration with the OS, as well as the general Win32 architecture itself. Linux's advantage here comes from its Unix heritage, where it is designed to run untrusted code by end-users.
Everything else is a wash. Once something doesn't work right, it is a royal PITA to fix it in either one.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Vista solitaire
Klondike solitaire
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Raid (any level) does NOT protect you from anything other than hardware failure.
If an app b0rks and starts filling your HDD full of zeroes then you have a nice redundant array of zeros. A lot of people I know have RAID controllers on their machines and have NO backup regime... scary..
You still need to protect yourself from data corruption!
I use backuppc running on a Ubuntu powered NAS box to back up my win and lin systems.
Burma?
I've used every version of Windows since 3.1 (except Vista) and I've used several distributions of Linux (including Ubuntu). Although I haven't used Vista yet, I've heard nothing but bad things about it.
You may very well rephrase "Ubuntu just as good as Vista" as "Vista as bad as Ubuntu".
I'm not trying to troll, really, I just think everyone needs to take a step back, and at least try to be objective about their chosen platform.
Dude, relax.
:(
Yesterday I downloaded KUbuntu7 and
- it didn't detect my graphics card, a GForce4Go, not exactly an obscure made in Hongkong piece of junk
- after manually switching to "nv", nothing worked
- it found my Wifi hardware, but didn't see any of the 8 or so public networks I have
Looks to me like nothing changed much from five years ago, when a random distribution wouldn't find the USB mouse, nor the soundcard. Those work now, but hey, it's only the graphics card and network card that don't work properly, so let's just give another five years ? Again ?...
Frankly after all the "hallelujah these days it Just Works!" on slashdot I was expecting a much better experience
apt-g[tab] in[tab] bash-c[tab][enter]
(heh, I never knew it supported apt package names...)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
i tried to install Unbuntu on a Thinkpad t41p a couple months back. this is a $3000 from june of 2003. nice quick install. system came up and did not support WPA-TKIP. WPA-TKIP was shipping in 2004. Give me a break (windows xp service pack 2 supports this just fine). I put Vista on it, no problem.
There was a couple page howto getting WPA-TKIP to work on the laptop. If I want pain, I will actually go with UNIX and use Solaris X86.
But then we all know where all the spyware/adware/viruses/etc is. People like downloading an exe from a random website, but since they never verify that the file is what it claims to be, they get hit with malware that some redistributor in the chain chose to add to the package.
Does the new Feisty (64-bit) support my Logitech QuickCam Messenger?
That's the main deal winner or breaker.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...they want their complaints back!
Usually from my local hardware store, but I doubt they are more reliable there than anywhere else.
I try to avoid deleting useful stuff. But if it's important enough, I keep more than one copy of it, on disk, on my usb-thumbdrive, on my gmail account, or some combination of them. Note that this is extremely rare, as most of my stuff is either easy to recreate or re-download, or simply not that essential. The accumulated work involved in the management of doing real backups is greater than the accumulated work involved in repairing such "disasters".
If there was a fire in my house, my files would not be my first priority.
Nope, like most people using a personal home computer, he simply doesn't have anything important enough on his computer to worry. It's only data. Unless loosing the stuff on it also means you loose your income (or something more important), it's not really essential.
Backups is, for most people, an unnecessary complication. Most people are intelligent enough to keep multiple copies of their masters thesis, even without backup software, and that's about the most important thing normal people keep on their computers. Even then, months of work on a masters thesis can usually be rewritten in a few days from your notes. Companies that need their financial records, customer database, inventory list, etc, have a more pressing need for backups.
Downloading random setup.exe files from random websites is the #1 reason for the botnet mess that Windows brought upon us.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
All mono apps are complete crap, mono and it's silly trojan example programs should be in a non-free repository.
And that exposes another failure of the Windows package manager (well both maybe?) ... you as a program have to put yourself into the list, Be interesting if Windows kept a nice list of every binary, and supplementary information about it like When installed, when ran, if it was theirs, who was claiming it as theirs, a short description of what it did etc. I'm sure the malware people would just lie about themselves, but it may still make them easier to track down.
You never gave a good reason why you abandoned linux after your attempt - I'm not saying you should have one - but it'd be nice if you could write your thoughts down somewhere so perhaps someone could attempt to solve your problems - or perhaps someone already has and it just needs more attention.
Well i intended to dual boot vista and ubuntu to get a sense for both. I really did want to run linux and keep it going. I'm still quite tempted right now to try again. the problem really is that If i were to put up with all the difficulties of resituating myself to learn all of the tricks to configing linux when the gui doesnt work, or i have some driver issues... IF i were to put up with all of that, in the end i dont have as many apps, or the same apps that i like to run. I used to run Redhat a while ago and it was hell installing things that required a dependency that had 200 versions. I just went mad. I ran it for a good time too but i had to eventually come to a realization that i had wine installed, and mplayer ran really poorly... and why dont i just run windows and not have these issues?
;) I'm a 3d animator and modeller working profesionally in games, film, television and print. All of my tinker time goes to those crafts and skills...
.
The idea of linux is appealing to me. Freedom is something i wish on us all. I admire the linux community for their ability to pull together for a cause and that is democracy. That is humanity at its best saying, we pride ourselves on our ability to be different and still highly capable. I admire that... and i want to be apart of that....
but i cant. It's not that i dislike linux at all. It is the fact that Linux still has its rather difficult areas that i dont want to invest time in learning because i'm 31 now. I'm not that 16 year old bbs sysop anymore
I cant afford to play with my OS all day. And i find it hard to find good solid help when you get a problem in linux. I mean its no different than say trying to find a solution for a windows problem, except you usually find more people with the same problem in windows, than in linux because of the number of users of windows. Googling answers is frustrating for linux. Its frustrating for windows solutions as well... I'm not saying its a breeze for windows. It's just i can read a solution for windows and say "ah.. i know what it is... i know where it is... " and i can go fix it.
Linux... i had no idea how to get X to use my 30inch HP monitor at 2560x1600. I googled for help on why my ATI driver wasnt displaying anything higher than 1280x800 and i found ZERO solutions. So i then searched on how to edit the config for x to allow higher resolutions and i found something.. but it didnt work.
Beleive me, its in me to tinker with this stuff but i have to at some point say... I have to do other things... and get work done and so forth. I'm not a GAIM fan either, i'd rather run Trillian in windows... I'd rather run newsbin pro in windows... I'd rather have the ease of use of installing codecs and things in windows. I have no idea how to compile things in linux and the thought of it scares the hell out of me cause i would have ot figure out how.
My command line knowlege in linux is terrlbe. Yes years ago i used to dial into shell accounts and multi task within the shell and use bash and everything but.. i STILL am not that great with the dam command line commands and syntax... nor do i know what most of the commands mean or do.
I just feel that there is a lot to overcome when using linux coming from a windows background. The major thing being ease of use. Linux still is not that easy. It is a much better GUI experience that it has ever been. It is a very nice os in general but also very very complex. I welcome the complexity, as long as it is can also be used easily. I guess OSX is considered this
Again my intent was to run Vista and Ubuntu on a dual boot... but i quickly realized that i just cant get ubuntu to render its gui at 2560x1600. I'm sure someone here can figure it out but i had to abort. I wanted to get this pc up and running again because its my surfing pc. I get my im's from work and emails and stuff on this pc. I work on a quadcore pc workstation for my work. I keep this pc running for communications.
I had vista and ubuntu setup to dual boot. I
My girlfriend runs Ubuntu, and when she wants a "screenshot" of something in the repository, she's bright enough to do a google search.
Read that however you like. I'm sure someone else has already asked what a screenshot of libfoo looks like.
lvm supports snapshot, use that for an online filesystem backup which can be reverted in case of data loss.
from the man page:
They enable consistent backups and online recovery of removed/overwritten data/files.
Actually, Bluefish does run on Windows, if you have Cygwin.
Don't get me wrong. I'm trying to put Ubuntu on a USB key and get it fully functioning in the event the OS becomes unusable. Setting that aside however...
No, we aren't at the promised land. We are many steps closer but still many critical steps away. Can Joe-user go to the local electronics store and purchase a piece of hardware he knows will work with linux without any geek knowledge? No. Can Joe-user go to walmart and purchase a computer with linux installed instead of Windows or OSX, probably not. Can Joe-user go to the store and buy software that is linux compatible? Not really.
My point is, linux needs commercial support from major software and hardware vendors including *gasp* Microsoft. Why MS? Just for their wonderful office suite which is pretty much the standard. Open office is certainly a great free alternative, however, it is many steps behind. Linux also needs a big leap in support from printer manufacturers and other consumer items like digital cameras, web cams, etc. Linux communities are doing a great job trying to get more support for hardware and software (wine), but people don't like waiting or being told that they can't use something because there's no vendor support for their platform. The products, especially newly released products, need to work out-of-the-box for linux.
When I can comfortably go to any best buy, circuit city, or whatever big electronics store normal people go to for their computer needs and finally see a good amount of products labeled "linux supported" then, and only then, will I think linux has made it to the desktop.
Good thought. Not really having worked with Subversion, it never really occurred to me.
One question: how does Subversion handle binary files? And if you have a really big binary, and only one part of it is changed, does it analyze the file before uploading and only send the changes, or does it resend the entire file? (E.g., an MP3 file where you changed an ID3 tag, or a disk image / ISO that's only been slightly modified.)
I've always been intrigued by Subversion but so much of what I do isn't in the form of text files, so I've never been quite sure whether it would be a good match or not.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It wasn't a tie. The submitter mistook the "Backup / Restore" (the final category) conclusion as the overall conclusion. Ubuntu and Vista are considered a tie when it comes to backup and restoration. Yippee.
The overall conclusion from the article is "The Last Word: Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without." -- Not entirely explicit, but I would interpret this as being in favor of Vista.
I have discovered all sorts of programs through searching in synaptic. And, unlike in windows-world, I can install them being certain that they don't come bundled with spyware and riddled with nag screens. When I ran xp, I would take recommendations from PC mag and the like, only to find that the description was hopelessly hyperbolic and that I had installed total crap with tentacles of steel. Check out the shit that Kim Kommando flogs every week for a few examples.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Aren't you one of the people claiming normal users should never touch a command line? If so, what do you care about what the power users are using? If some car nuts are arguing over the best kind of high performance air filter, do you butt in and tell them that is why you can't buy the same brand of car? And if you want to insist on getting involved, are you really so thin-skinned you can't take a bit of argument? How do you deal with political discussion, or go anywhere online?
There is a long history of competition in OSS. If you can't deal with it, then you don't really appreciate the strength of OSS. Emacs vs vi, KDE vs Gnome, zsh vs bash, those arguments can go on forever. You get opinionated users, which I guess turns you off, but that competition spurs development. Zsh vs bash is a perfect example, as they are quite competitive (but I'll never say bash is better!) Is it really better with Windows, where everyone just uses the Microsoft app for everything, and their isn't any discussion or competition at all? "Cmd.exe, the best bundled Windows shell!"
You use sh?
I for one would like to see a review from someone who doesn't use Windows OR Ubuntu. I would like to see a review done from a person who has never used a computer. Then we'll have results. Yeah, a Microsoft guy does a review and it's not gonna be biased? This article is funny.
Why now? Why ubuntu but SUSE?
While vista have some compatibility problems, but surely it will get support from vendors.
However, Linux seems to refuse support from vendors, take ZFS for example, it is difficult for us to findout that a license problem would prevent linux to have zfs.
OpenSource is about freedom, not force other to do software your way.
If the license is bad stop using it.
If GPL is hurting the freedom, drop it.
Free software and opensource is about freedom, Life also.
Donot forbit yourself and others by GPL, DROP it please.
I can pretty much download a package and I will be asked if I want to install it, I can say yes, and if the package does not ask for silly dependencies, it will be installed without a glitch.
I think many people still complaining about this have not used Linux for a while or try to go to the least explored corners and then claim that all Linux is like that...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The company could have a repository, which could be added to the user's machine with a script or as part of the deb package when the application is installed....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What kind of lame off point response is that? First off, that was random and had nothing to do with what I said. Second, you said "that Windows brought upon us". That is beyond laughable. I'm sure Windows had everything to do with it. No, don't even go there. You will not convince me. I am not that naive.
/.
What the hell. You're actually suggesting we install a program using some method other than it's own installation?
I really don't see the logic in 80% of the responses at
As I read the article, I came across a problem in the basic layout of the test.
See, the writer is doing a comparison based upon how closely Ubuntu is *emulating* Windows. Every area is pretty much summed up by"windows task emulation score", so of course Vista wins.
But there are dozens, no, hundreds of things you can do with Ubuntu that you can't do with Windows as well.
So a fairer and more proper test would look at them as blank slates. Have a list of 20 or so functions that are generic, like multiprocessor support, cut/paste between applications, file/directory manipulation, and so on. Things that any OS, be it Mac, PC, *ix, or even something like and old Amiga or VMS could manage to get top scores in.(in theory at least).
I tire of "comparisons" like this. It's like trying to compare a car to a BMW 3 series handling-wise(which it probably won't win) instead of looking at the overall picture and the other things it may or may not offer. I smell yet another Cedega comparison coming up soon. And yet another example of poor analytical skills.(ie - I can name several *ix or Mac only games than Windows doesn't have - perhaps we should try to run them on Vista and then bitch and complain about how it doesn't run them?)
I am arguing that a controlled app repository with a unified installation/deinstallation and update method that actually works is preferably to Window's mess of hunting down applications all over the web, each with its own methods that may or may not work. Especially since a huge number of setup.exes are spyware and similar crap, so that a non-expert user has little chance to survive without being infected.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
1. I would recomend getting OpenSuse. It detects my 21" LCD with no problem frankly I think the hardware detection is much better than Ubuntu.p ositories
2. Us the 32 bit version.
3. After you do the install go here http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Re
Add Packman , Mozilla, OpenOffice, and anything else that interests you. Then you can install just about anything you want. BTW none of this requires the command line.
I just installed 10.2 and I am really impressed. I selected Gnome to compare it to Ubuntu. I think it looks a lot better than Ubuntu but everyone has their own opinion.
Ubuntu is nice because it fits on one CD and is super simple to install.
If you want to install the ATI or Nvidia drivers it is a little easer in Ubuntu using the "restricted Driver manager" In OpenSuse you need to add nVidia's repository. While not hard you do need to look it up on the Opensuse website.
OpenSuse seems to have better hardware detection. And I think the Gnome interface is better looking that Ubuntu's but that is a matter of taste.
It does take longer to download the DVD iso for OpenSuse than the CD ISO for Ubuntu and you do have more choices then with Ubuntu.
I say try OpenSuse 10.2
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I couldn't help but notice when I googled the name of the author, Serdar Yegulalp, and the first couple of items found were... Windows 2000 Power Users Moderated and edited by Serdar Yegulalp, former Senior Technology Editor of Winmag.com, with over ten years of Windows experience under his belt. ...
www.thegline.com/win2k/ - 26k
PC Magazine - Author Bio
Serdar Yegulalp is a former Senior Technoloy Editor with Windows Magazine (also Winmag.com), and has been writing about and working with NT and related ...
As he is an editor of Winmag.com, I can't help but question if he was biased.
You can also see here that he is a member of the Windows Power Users group ... again making me question whether his review is biased.
I found it at http://www.ubuntutribe.com./ They say they are developing a movie called Ubuntu Tribe. A love story between a window and a penguin. There is a trailer too. ;)