Vista Vs. Gutsy Gibbon

ricegf writes in with the account of one Rupert Goodwins writing in ZDNet UK. Goodwins has 7 computers running various versions of Windows and Linux, and explains why he chooses to do most of his work on the Gibbon. "So here's the funny thing. I've used Windows since 1.0. I've lived through the bad times of Windows/386 and ME, and the good times of NT 3.51 and 2K. I know XP if not backwards, then with a degree of familiarity that only middle-aged co-dependents can afford each other... Then how come I'm so much more at home with Ubuntu than Vista? It boils down to one abiding impression: Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way... Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way."

Comments

I agree

[LinuxGeek]

My laptop came with Vista and installed Ubuntu right after purchase. I use Ubuntu much more than my legally purchased windows copy, probably about 10:1 in favor of linux because vista pops up dialog boxes for way too much stuff. For instance, every boot creates about 10 dialog boxes that need to be confirmed. My cpu monitoring app, norton antivirus, etc... all have to be given permission to run, it really pisses me off. I haven't found a way to give permanent permission to those apps without turning UAE off, which strips out some very necessary protection. FU Microsoft.

Re:I agree

[Miltazar]

This is definitely not a popular opinion around here but here goes. I've used Vista, along with every other Windows OS ever to haunt our doorstep. I've also used many Linux distro's including Ubuntu Gutsy, Debian(personal preference of the Linux variety), Gentoo, Fedora, Redhat, CentOS, etc. I've been using Vista both at work and at home for about half a year now, and I have absolutely no problem with it.

Despite all the talk of new user friendliness with Ubuntu Gutsy I've yet to see it. My MXL USB Mic doesn't just work when I plug it in. I have to fiddle around with settings for a while. At work, I can't just easily interface with our Active Directory(yes its MS, but its what we use). Sure I've gotten all that working, but it took me a lot of searching and tweaking. Vista may have driver problems, but I've never encountered any major ones. With Linux however, every install is a new driver issue. When it comes down to it, Vista just works. Yes, I can get Linux working with everything, but I don't want to have to spend all that time on an OS when I can just use windows.

Also as a gamer I'm also unable to permanently switch to Linux. Wine works for some, but its just not good enough. I love Linux, but for now it just isn't ready to be my permanent OS. Despite all this trouble with Vista I hear about, I've yet to experience any of it. It runs perfectly on my machine.

When Linux has a dominant share of the market place, and games are put out strictly for Linux, then I'll switch.
Until then, Microsoft will still be king.

My take on it

[BlueParrot]

Some time ago I accidentally fried my motherboard, so, time to get a new computer. My dad's job was throwing out an "old" machine. The new machine was a bit worse than my original one. It didn't have DDR2 memory, it used a Radeon 9200 rather than my nVidia card, the CPU was an old Pentium 4 rather than my faster AMD chip, and the integrated soundcard I had never heard of.

Anyway, I connect my HD which had Ubuntu Edgy installed on it, boot up. X complains about the video card so I change "nvidia" to "ati" in xorg.conf, type: startx, and 2 minutes latter I am reading my mail in thunderbird.

But you know, I'm sure Vista would perfectly well manage me changing ALL hardware except the HD, running on a P4 with 384MB SDRAM, and be up and running without even a reboot. Oh, and does Aero support virtual desktops yet?

Seriously, given the price and system requirements, Vista is a joke.

Different experience here

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a complete reformat of my system for Gutsy. Installed from the CD, and ended up with the black screen of death on restart.

Of course, I was able to get out of it. That's not really the point. The point is I had to do a bunch of command line hackery just to see the login screen for the first time.

Re:I hate to say this...

[rustalot42684]

That's odd. My experience was actually quite the opposite: When doing an reinstall of OEM Vista, I had to spend 2 hours poring through howtos, manuals, etc, getting drivers and trying to get everything to work, but installing off the Kubuntu 7.10 alpha 5 worked flawlessly. I'm not going to flame you, because if that was your experience, that was your experience. But it's quite different than what happened to me.

Note: this was an OEM disc, supplied by Dell itself, so I would have to wonder why it wouldn't work..

Re:Aside

[mstahl]

Agreed. I used to have a job cleaning viruses and spyware and such off of students' laptops at a university campus, which gave me a lot of insight into what not to buy and which AV programs not to trust. There were soooooooooooo many students, faculty, and staff who had entrusted their box entirely to Norton, and it was just an epic fail every single time—even when it was fully up-to-date. The whole of the entire computer security industry would be in Defcon 4 about some virus that'd been out for a week and Norton would still be on its smoke break. Weak.

Between Avast!, AVG, Clamwin, Panda, and any other free antivirus software out there, there's got to be something to replace Norton.

"Avast!"? Sounds awesome, if a touch nautical.... What struck me the most when I was working at Resnet was how many free programs there were that were extremely effective (especially if used together), almost always catching files that Norton missed entirely. Side note: it's really scary that a lot of these antivirus programs were web-based, and somehow Windows is perfectly okay having web applications that are capable of deleting files, analyzing the content of local files, accessing the registry.... Really scary. Way to go on that security model thing, Microsoft!