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After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad
mrcgran writes "Sys-Con has a look at some advantages of using Ubuntu over Windows. 'My recent switch to a single-boot Ubuntu setup on my Thinkpad T60 simply floors me on a regular basis. Most recently it's had to do with the experience of maintaining the software. Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure. Well, Ubuntu takes Linux where I've long hoped it would go — easy to use, reliable, dependable, great applications too but more on that later. It has some elegance to it — bet you never heard that about a Linux desktop before.'"
who do i thank for that?
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I'd flag this as off topic, but that's the worst, adblock plus-evading website I've come across in a while. If that's the destiny of the web, then thanks, but no thanks, from me.
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Print version. The page is really ridden with ads (including a popup and a flash video).
I've been using it at work for the past several months, it accomplishes everything I need. I miss Trillian, Gaim is a mediocre substitute IMHO. I've been very impressed with how good the experience has been, I have yet to find myself thinking "Damn, I wish I had my windows box back."
Now, I'm looking forward to UbuntuDupe's post about how Ubuntu sucks because nobody helped with his troubles using Ubuntu, despite his tantrum on the forums.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
...or the user?
"...a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure."
If a Linux sysadmin can't use Linux on the desktop, it must be a terrible desktop OS! Right? Right? *looks around frantically*
Come on, man. There are plenty of people who have been using Linux as their daily desktop. That would be why there have been so many "desktop" versions of Linux over the years.
"Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu."
TFA reads less like a comparison of two OS's than an Ubuntu sales pitch. Granted, I use and love Ubuntu, but I like my side-by-sides with a little less bias from the get-go.
Linux better than Windows for sysadmin tasks!
News at 11.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
I'm not sure if the writer was intentionally attempting to jinx the Windows install, but who in the right mind still installs or recommends Symantec/Norton when great products like Kaspersky now exist?
Ever try removing Norton from a system? It's like pulling wisdom teeth!
I understand that virus protection wasn't the main focus of the article, but he did make reference to it, and in the defense of Windows and giving the article a bit more of a balanced test, the testers should at least make sure they are using good 3rd party products.
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
"...along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu"
I find sys admins often don't make the best user-friendly assessments of desktop software and OSs, especially from average Joe's point of view. No offense to the author, who makes many valid points, but I'd rather see a comparison of Ubuntu, Vista, and OS X from a school teacher or small business owner.
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
...long with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Right. Can you imagine the response had someone said "As a long time Windows server admin, I'm in a great position to assess Vista". Seriously, how many more articles about long time linux users "discovering" they love this or that distro are we in for?Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
If you typed all that by yourself I'm impressed, especially since you wrote it standing up (I hear you're chair-hostile) and I don't care what anybody says about monkeys and typewriters.
I will get bashed since slashdot is linux fanboy heaven but this is my experience. Ubuntu will not become mainstream until most isntals work with no command line needed what so ever. i have tried ubuntu on my laptop and on a p3 450 hp comp and both required command line help to get the basic system working.
For system admins linux might be good but if 30 min of fiddling with the command line to just get the system working is needed then it will not become mainstream.
Also on that hp comp ubuntu takes n15 min to boot up. I am not lying. Xp on the same machine is much faster.I tried getting help on some linux boards and all I got were nasty replies.
So there is a lot of things that have to be done before linux becomes mainstream and really fights microsoft.
Go ahead and bash me all you want butthis is true.
FTFA:
"2) Vulnerabilities - Windows is like Swiss cheese with so many vulnerabilities that it's sick - you can't connect XP to a public Internet connection (i.e., behind a router is OK but direct to the net isn't). Ubuntu? It's Linux - no worries."
I call bullshit on the author being a Linux admin. I'm not trolling and this certainly isn't flamebait, only truth: "It's Linux - no worries" is a load of crap and everyone here knows it.
From TFA:
That's FANTASTIC! Who is this guy and what's his IP?
Yes, MS sucks, Windows sucks, bugs galore and all that, but all nontrivial software is going to have bugs, and some of those bugs will lead to vulnerabilities, and some of those vulnerabilities will lead to viruses, attacks and so on. The reason that there aren't a lot of Linux viruses/attacks prawling around the net is because the Windows population is orders of magnitude larger than than the Linux population, making the choice obvious for any would-be parasite. Maybe Ubuntu is way better software than Windows in any number of ways - ehm, I mean, of course it is, but if it were to sweep Windows clean off the face of the Earth and take its place, you'd be installing Symantec for Ubuntu and worrying about script kiddies, trojans and the like. If Ubuntu is better then it'll be harder to exploit, but exploits will happen - the perceived calm right now exists because too few people are trying to attack the platform.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
2) Vulnerabilities - Windows is like Swiss cheese with so many vulnerabilities that it's sick - you can't connect XP to a public Internet connection (i.e., behind a router is OK but direct to the net isn't). Ubuntu? It's Linux - no worries.
3) Thanks to #1 and #2, I'm free from products like Symantec and Norton and the dollar expense, the complexity of administering them (those pop-ups are annoying and a productivity hit), and wondering when they expire next. Wow, I wonder where I've heard this before. Sheesh. Yes, Linux has a better security model than the typical "make everyone administrator" model used on Windows systems, but this does not make Linux magically bullet proof. As for not needing anti-virus or anti-spyware software for Linux.. you don't need them for Mac either. Why is that? Cause no-one could be bothered writing a virus or some spyware for such a minuscule amount of the market.
But look at what happened with Firefox. Initially, just like Linux or Mac, no-one bothered trying to break the security. There was no hacks to get around popup blockers, etc. Now Firefox is just a little more popular and the threat landscape has changed.
This isn't to say that Linux can't be made more resilient to viruses if and when they finally show up. It can, and, more importantly, it probably will. Just don't go around saying that Linux is immune to viruses and spyware. Especially, don't go around claiming that this stuff is impossible, because that's exactly the kind of challenge that blackhats go for.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Whenever these discussions come up, I like to forestall some of the repetition by posting my list of wins for OS X, Windows, and Linux. This is a list of the things each OS does better than some others, not a list of problems. Feel free to post and suggest other items, but please know what you;re talking about. I hate getting posts from people who clearly have never used two of the OS's in question and are simply assuming their favorite OS must do it better.
OS X Wins:
Windows Vista Wins:
huh?
/have/ to pay for Windows, but you don't have to pay for Linux (you can if you want!), and there's probably more commercial software (but not much less free software) for Windows.
1) buy all the thing
Yeah, I bough all my hardware, theft is usually frowned upon, even if you are using FOSS...
Or were you talking about software?
*Looks at The Gimp icon on his desktop*
*Looks at the Open Office Icons*
Yep, paid *so* much for those! They cost me all of $0.00, I'm gonna go broke!
Seriously, finding free software for Windows is trivial.
2) install them ( each app in another way )
Yep, I have to install stuff to use it. Darn. Whoda thunk.
Oh wait, I install stuff if I use it in Linux. Sometimes by the package fetcher, sometimes by a downloaded package + manager, sometimes by source. Oh, looks there's lots of different ways there too.
In Windows it usually just involves wisards with extremely similar interfaces, where if you want you can put in the CD and keep clicking "next" until done, only having to agree to a EULA. But like Linux, there are the oddballs where you have to go outside of the norm.
3) update them, after paying for the possibilty of update Windows
Yes, because if you have Linux installed, with Xorg 6.9, you will *never* have to upgrade to 7.x to use version 7.x! It's *magical*
Seriously, every complaint in your rant is *just* as applicable to Linux as it is to Windows. The only caveat is that you
Some people find that Windows and some of that commercial software over the free alternatives. I know, having had a lot of experience with both, I prefer Windows to Linux, Corel Photopaint to The Gimp, etc.
It's all a matter of what you use, how you use it, and you method of looking at and solving problems.
Also, there are some games that will run in windows but not Wine, that's another reason some people use Windows...
People won't always agree with you, get over it.
(And if you try to counter me with that one - I never once said people shouldn't use Linux, I simply said that there are reasons not to use it, which may be valid for some users).
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Because I find that systems/network tools are one of Linux's strongest points. I mean let's see what I need for doing the systems support part of my job:
--E-Mail: Check. Linux has Thunderbird, which is what I use under Windows.
--Web: Check. Again, same thing as I'd use under Windows (Firefox).
--SSH: Check. Maybe the command line SSH client isn't quite as pretty, but it works in ever way as well.
--Remote Desktop: Check. Not as slick as the Windows one, but doesn't lack for anything important.
--Text editor: Check. I like UltraEdit better, but there are plenty that work fine for Linux.
--Ability to map SMB and/or NFS shares: Check.
That's pretty much it for the major tools I need. So long as I can check on the problems that need solving, and get to the servers that they need solving on, that's all my system needs to do for that part of the job. Linux does that just fine. Hell, so does Solaris.
However that doesn't carry over to other areas necessarily. A good example of where it doesn't is media production. The tools for Linux are sub par at best in my experience. In theory it might be possible to do what I need, but in practice I have never been able to figure out how and it is just too much effort. For Windows I just install Sony Vegas and go, it makes everything easy. In Linux it is fighting with many different tools, some of which are quite hard to get compiled (no binary distribution) none of which seem to be able to do everything that is needed.
So picking an area that Linux is strongest at isn't necessarily that useful, especially when talking Linux on the desktop. I mean I've known sysadmins that use Solaris as their desktop OS, doesn't mean that anyone would suggest it is intended for prime time desktop usage. Also, sysadmins are (or at least should be) more able to deal with some of the problems you'll encounter. Dropping to a command line it something a sysadmin should be able to do. A normal user? Not so much. If it isn't pointy and clicky with everything spelled out, it may be past their competence.
Qalculate (qalculate.sourceforge.net or even apt-get install qalculate-kde or apt-get install qalculate-gtk) has an RPN entry mode and seems to be quite the nifty desktop calculator besides.
You're right. When 99% of computer users out there hit a snag with Windows they have their local Linux user come over and fix it for them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My son installed Ubuntu 5.10 just before his third birthday. I had him do it just as an experiment. I wanted to see if how easy it was to install was just my imagination or not. No, it was not. He was not able to get through a Windows install on his own right after that. The reason was that he could not read yet. Of course, with Ubuntu, you don't even have to know how to read to get up and running.
Ubuntu, so easy a 2 year old can install it.
Linux expert gives linux positive review and shuns windows on a linux site, as reported by linux-associated news site. Story at 8!
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
A page on "linux.sys-con.com" finds Linux superior to Windows! Pardon me while I climb back onto the chair I just fell out of.
After our warranty ran out on our ThinkPad T40, I decided to give Ubuntu a try, and am so far very pleased with it. The install was pretty straightforward, configuration was smooth, and we had no hardware/driver issues to speak of. Connecting up with our wireless router was a breeze, and really the only glitch has to do with our CUPS-enabled printer.
Frankly I was glad to find Ubuntu this easy to install and use because I thought our laptop was done for. Like the author, we had a corrupt Windows partition, and had to start from scratch. After we got everything installed and configured (less than an hour), I was on the deck working on docs and getting things done.
Anyone with a T40 or similar should give some serious thought to at least trying out Ubuntu. While it won't do everything a Linux admin would want, it's more than enough to keep users productive.
- Jack
Based on my visit to that site, I can only assume that the developer studied at the Myspace College of Web Design.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
has it already been 12 hours since the last "Ubuntu is great!" article?
Just um, how often do we need to see these, anyway?
"Ubuntu" is an ancient african word. It means "I can't configure debian"
I'm pretty certain it was late 2001.
And this guy has only been using XP for four months?
Call me unimpressed with his "great position" to evaluate software.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Jesus! Look, I'm just going out on a limb here, but I'm going to assume that your son will have acne and a completely exaggerated fear/awe of women by 5.
OK. The desktop metaphor; you work with documents, files, folders. That isn't what happens on Windows. On windows, you deal with menus and applications then you have to go search for your documents and folders. I can see why it happens, each application needs to make itself the centre of your attention so that you remember to go buy it again when it's time to upgrade. It's job is to make itself far more important than all of the other applications. So it hides your files and documents away and you have to access them through the file->open menu within the application and it sticks an application icon on your desktop... Doesn't make any sense within the desktop metaphor. That's why Windows sucks as a desktop. You can change it of course, and I have, it makes it more usable but it's a pain.
Ubuntu gets it more right than Windows. The applications themselves are less important, partly because they're mostly free, they get out of the way. Then you have the folders right there on the desktop so you can access the documents themselves directly. The application becomes just a tool to work on the information, which is what it's supposed to be. Ubuntu is actually easier to use than Windows. The metaphor makes sense.
Deleted
Yes, Ubuntu won't let us use all the other shit we've been locked into by distasteful business practices, so let's keep our blinders on and pretend that anything different is bad, because it's not what we already have...
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Reformat and reinstall the internet.
Engineering is the art of compromise.