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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."
As many as it takes? (I'll leave it up to you as to whether I'm trying to make you fed up or cheering on the success of Linux)
You're pondering how fed up you are with the success of linux.
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.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Geesh, it even says it on the top of the page.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
like "First Post"
But this insight came out instead.
To the end-user, Windows has "security through obstruction", which annoys and gets disabled. To that same end-user, Linux has "security through obscurity", which stays out of the way.
Yes, I know, open source, all the flaws are right there for everyone to see, not obscured at all. That's not what the end-user sees. The end-user just knows that it's more secure because that's what their geek friend told them; they never see why, they never care why and they never need bother with it. This is a good thing. What doesn't annoy them enough that they go out of their way to disable... I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.
Let's review what we've learned so far this year:
Linux - driver issues. Vista - driver issues.
Linux - learning curve. Vista - learning curve.
Linux - secure until you work around the security in the name of convenience. Vista - secure until you work around the security in the name of convenience.
Linux - annoying until you learn it. Vista - annoying until you learn it AND disable the security features.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
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.
...But I'll take XP on the desktop over Ubuntu (or Linux) any day. Ubuntu 7.10 is a pain to install, setup and use compared to XP. Few things I need "just work" in Linux.
Before you suggest it, I'm a hardcore geek from way back. Waaaay back. But these days I simply don't have time to spend all day and night just getting an OS to work. I have a wife and kids now, not to mention actual work to accomplish.
There aren't enough hours in a day/night leftover for ploughing through howtos, or trawling usergroups, for the info necessary just to, say, get 7.10 or Mandriva 2008 to connect to the LAN.
On the server, *nix rules, but on the desktop it has a very long way to go before it can compete with XP on an even footing. Vista? Dunno. You couldn't pay me enough to use it.
Yes, I know, I'm going to be modded troll or flamebait or accused of being an MS apologist or fanboy by some raw-nerved *nix zealot. How dare I say such things? Gasp! Shame on me.
They absolutely can be compared like they were cars.
Vista is like a short bed gasoline pickup truck. You can perform most day to day tasks with it, but it gets horrible gas mileage and can't handle edge cases (4 passengers, seven foot long cargo) very well at all.
A distro like Ubuntu is more like a VW Golf TDI that can transform into a panel van or 18 wheeler when necessary. It's obviously superior in every way, but people complain about stupid stuff like gas stations that don't sell diesel and how hard it is to get through a 10' tunnel when you're in 18-wheeler mode.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Darn Firefox plugins, I missed a classic bit of irony
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you _____ fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a _____ (a _____ w/_____ gigs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my ancient _____ running _____, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this _____, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that. In addition, during this file transfer, _____ will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even _____ is straining to keep up as I type this. I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various _____'s, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a _____ that has run faster than its _____ counterpart, despite the _____'s same chip architecture. My _____ with _____ megs of ram runs faster than this _____ mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that _____ is a superior operating system. _____ lovers, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use _____ over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
In my experience there's really no reason to run Norton antivirus, unless you enjoy giving your operating system the equivalent of 300 pound cell mate named Bubba. Between Avast!, AVG, Clamwin, Panda, and any other free antivirus software out there, there's got to be something to replace Norton.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
I, for one, was once at a point where I was quite frustrated with my (Windows) experience. Only because people bothered to mention alternatives did I eventually discover that OSX and Linux solved many of the problems I was having.
As you can tell, I'm now a Linux user, so as you say my opinion is inherently biased towards enjoying Linux. So perhaps I gloss over some of the troubles I had along my migration path to Linux. Yet despite that, the experiences (both positive and negative) of people who have legitimately tried multiple operating systems are valuable to others. In fact, it's rather difficult to claim that the majority of Windows users are actually using "the right tool" because very few of them are aware of (much less have evaluated) the alternate tools out there. For many of them, their needs might actually be better served by a non-Windows OS.
I can understand a dislike of evangelical attempts to convert people... but there's nothing inherently wrong with describing, or even advocating, an alternative.
At work, I got a shiny new machine. Since we need to certify some of our products with Windows Vista, we designated it the Vista certification machine. So far, so good.
We use the MKS Toolkit software suite to simplify several tasks while developing on Windows. Everything seemed to work fine, until I had to use patch to apply a diff to some sources. As soon as I typed
patch -p0 foo.diff
at the command prompt I got a pop-up window from Vista asking permission to run the executable. If I answered "yes, go ahead" instead of running the program in the same command prompt window it popped it up in another command prompt which promptly disappeared. And, apparently, did absolutely nothing to the files that were supposed to be patched. Experimentation shows that even
patch --help
pops up the dialog and fails, so it isn't a permissions problem on the files to patch. So I say to myself, "Myself, we're a revision or two back on MKS Toolkit, and this is not the Vista-certified version - let's try another patch.exe." So I go get the GnuWin32 version of patch.exe. I put it first on the PATH, and try again. Another pop-up. I answer yes, and not only does patch run in a window that disappears, but it GPFs as well.
At this point, I'm pissed. But suddenly the penny drops. I rename the MKS toolkit patch.exe to ptch.exe and type
ptch --help
which produces a nice help message. Trying on the original diff causes the required files to be patched correctly.
Apparently the Windows Vista User Access Control considers patch.exe to be a forbidden executable name. I investigated further and the only way to disable this functionality appears to be to completely turn off UAC, which I did immediately.
But there you have it - Windows Vista's vaunted security is about as logical and effective as banning water bottles in carry-on luggage.
More generally, poor programmers try to make programs so simple that only simple things are possible.
Good programmers, and I'll point at Apple IPhoto chaps just because I saw one lately, make the things people actually want to do easy. In tis case it was having three sliders, labeled "lighten shadows", "darken highlights" and "brightness". Doing those adjustments is downright hard, but the good developers found that is what real live humans wanted to do, and did the work to make it easy.
Linux programmers, go thou and do likewise!
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
You may want to give Gutsy Gibbon a try. It has a new GUI-based screen configuration utility that handles dual screens. http://www.ubuntu.com/files/GutsyImages/Screen-and-Graphic-Preferences.jpg This is a feature that I've been waiting for :-) Yes, mucking around with xorg.Conf isn't too hard, but this makes life easier for new comers.
Gutsy Gibbon isn't "there" yet as far as being a perfectly consumer-friendly desktop system. It's fairly close -- I'm using it right now, in fact -- but it still has a ways to go. Yes, Compiz is nice. It also has a habit of causing MPlayer to go haywire. Things always seem kind of sluggish. Sure, my machine is a bit old, but even XP wasn't quite as sluggish. It's not unbearable though. Close. But not there yet.
Ipod? Works pretty well. Basic copying of files works nicely (albeit with a few GTKpod kinks here and there). Mounting and un-mounting usually work automatically without any extra prodding after plugging it in. Usually. Smart playlists are dodgy in GTKpod. Giving Amarok a try, so we'll see. But still... Not. Quite. There. Yet.
Program installation? Well, Synaptic/apt-get are great. You got the right repositories in there, and you know what you're looking for -- works like a charm. Can't see my mom learning how to add repositories and public key signatures. Close. But not quite there yet.
On the other hand, it's leaps and bounds ahead of where Linux-on-the-desktop used to be the last time I went down that path (SuSe 7.something? Mandrake something-dot-something?? Few years ago, anyways...). So progress is definitely being made. It all depends on your personal threshold.
For me, Ubuntu has proven to be quite - QUITE - sufficient. I'll probably be sticking with it for everything except ArcGIS. For all the "moms" of the world, though... I just don't think it's quite there yet. Give it a few more years and it might just make it.
Then we just need a good way of marketing it...
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
I believe this behavior is done for two reasons. One: so it can edit pictures non-destructively (as in none of your original data is destroyed, very important to those of us who might use the same picture multiple times and edit it differently for different occasions). Two: to avoid the issue of loss of data through compression. Almost any slashdotter can tell you of the ability of jpeg to destroy pictures after repeated compression.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Simple mathematical transforms, however, can be stored. EG, if you have set the three sliders to "25," "10" and "15," those numbers can be stored (say, 0.5KB of metadata) instead of the resulting file, and then reapplied every time you want to see the changed version. Photoshop calls them filter layers. Much easier on the hard drive and RAM -- but taking that approach means you have to manually export the resulting file to send it to a friend; not necessarily the best approach for consumer software.
You should try it out by grabbing the DVD Install/LiveCD off of bittorrent here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/dvd/current/
Disclaimer: My download will get faster if you do this.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Intriguing. My experience has been that Apple marketing convinces the end user that they have provided all they need. I see this attitude from several of my classmates, who can't seem to understand that changes in program requirements set forth by the professor require them to change their code. "What? You're making me change my program? But I already wrote it!" The rest of us quietly make the changes and move on with our lives.
Here's the thing though: we see a return on our investment, if you will. Meet the prof's specs, get a good grade, eventually get a degree and a good job. Apple and Windows developers tend to see a return on their investment: Please the end user, they buy the product, money in our pockets, move on with life.
what's the return for a Linux developer? "You flaming tightwad, why doesn't the software you spent the last two years of your life working on do XYZ? You should be more considerate of your end user!" It's of no relevance that the program already does A-R, and that even the big boys of the commercial world are just now getting L and Y working properly. How often have YOU voluntarily donated to the developers of the free software you use? What's the incentive to continue developing that software?
I guess the whole point is: We're working on it, just give us a little more time.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
I don't know where you shop but 500 GB hard drives are $100-$110. Anyway, disk storage isn't the (only) problem. Those bits have to be written and read to/from the hard drive (slow performance), stored in memory, sent over the network, sent over the Internet, sent to USB drives, stored on backups, etc. Unneeded / excessive bloat is never a good thing. Attitudes like yours are why computers that are 50 times "faster" than they were 10 years ago perform the same or slower. Have you used Vista?
"She was already using Firefox / OpenOffice / Gaim so for her the differences were pretty nominal."
And that's the key. Switching operating systems is a big deal if it means switching your entire personal software collection at once, and that's what a lot of people try to do and fail. They switch, get culture shock, and retreat back to XP.
If you can figure out which applications you use and then convert yourself to a FOSS program, one by one, then by the time you have finished you can install Ubuntu Gutsy and the rest of your problems will be restricted to driver issues. I don't know why I didn't think of doing it like that earlier, it seems so obvious now.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I'll tell you what I have contributed to open-source projects so far: very little. Why? Because, as a developer, I first have to make enough money to contribute that money to open-source projects, or enough money to have the time to contribute my time to them. In both cases, the problem is that I have only just begun to break even using my open-source tools, and so I have neither the time nor money to contribute much... yet.
I fully intend to contribute more to open-source, when I am in a position from which I can do so. Until then, about the best I can do is say, "Keep going! You are doing a Good Thing!"