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Microsoft Free, One Year Later
madgreek writes "Last year I wrote of my switch from XP to Ubuntu at work. Now a year later, I am back to reflect on one year of being extremely productive at work using (almost) nothing but open source software in a Microsoft world."
I'm sure that many people will point at his failures (IE6 for some activeX websites & visio) as proof that linux is still not ready for the desktop. But these apps aren't available for the Mac either & few are suggesting OS X is not ready for the desktop.
Unfortunately, what's preventing business's adopting Linux or OS X is the fact that the various 'solution providers' & VARs make more money reselling Microsoft products.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Linux has a Visio Clone: Kvivio. Import the Cisco Symbols from DIA and you are all set.
There are several good alternatives to Visio for diagramming on Linux (some of them actually more convenient than Visio IMO).
But the 2008 version of Visio may be a hosted application like Gliffy. It's a slick, Flash-based, collaborative application, and you can incorporate diagrams into any document by URL (as an image), including into Google Docs.
... a computer.
Film at 11.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I really fail to grasp why corporations (NOT individuals) fail to understand the ramifications of such EULAs and MS software contracts.
Negotiating a seat deal with MS leads to a very nasty possible outcome: invasion by Business Software Alliance. If you refuse, you invalidate all your licenses... and they always find something "illegal". It's one thing to switch because of some perceived wrong or being high and mighty, but a corporation is a corporation. When it comes to software, they literally open themselves up for heavy liability if they accept MS and other COTS software.
GPL means something else too: if you dont create software, you can ignore any "bad side effects". Only violators who refuse to share source are gone after. Usage is truly free of legal ramifications.
Protip: You're not the first person to use linux for a whole year.
*Gasp*
Naturally I haven't RTFA, but I would think there would be a lot of file format problems. I'm using Vista (pre-installed) and it's not a rare occurrence for someone to happily send me some text file from Microsoft Office that I can't open without spending a few hundred dollars (or looking at a garbled version in notepad).
IP Finding
Then go install OpenOffice on your vista box and discover that it can read more document formats (and more variations on MS's own formats) thatn MS's software can.
Is he a Micro$oft worker ?
We used to use Windows at our corporation + only open source programs. It was quite natural to move from Windows to Ubuntu, because it was the only commercial program that we were using. We have been happy since. No license hazzle.
the audio skipping sounds related to a pulseaudio problem people were having.
Updating to the latest kernel in hardy-proposed fixed that for me.
... and my coworkers still have no idea that I switched to free software.
You missed the part where he is running KDE, not Gnome. KDE is a more mature environment in almost every way (accessibility being one of the notable exceptions, I use Gnome on tablet PCs for its better onscreen keyboard and cursor manipulation functions).
If all you want is to read .doc files, skip all the bloat and use Abiword.
I suppose all the 'Year of Linux' people will come out and say 'This is the year of Linux' and so on and so fourth.
Linux has had many years, and for what it has been up against, an illegal government coerced monopoly with more and more stress being put on it from every direction, it has not disappointed me in the slightest. With a dignity I hope that I have a tenth of when I die, Linux users and Linux developers have fought, and some died defending the vision of Linux and the FSF to preserve a future where some of us still do control how our computers are used.
To that end, every year Linux stays alive and relevant is the year of Linux. You see, Linux is fighting constantly a war against complete eradication. Not just Microsoft, but many software vendors, hardware makers, governments, and yes, a malevolent user base hate Linux, and every minute of every day seek to find ways of eradicating Linux from this world. A world where Linux is quarantined into certain sectors like server environment, is a path to extinction like Netware.
As far as Linux in the social arena. Linux as a social movement in its aspect as a social reform movement need not die out. In the Internet world, Linux is a symbol of transparency, of honest behavior, and accountability. Without Linux we would all be staring at a dark Palladium filled future.
So, in the name of the secular Linux social movement for transparency, property rights, freedom of speech and what not. Try and see what you can do to prevent Linux the OS from going into that quite good night. Develop. Write code, fix drivers, create new ideas. That driver for that hardware, that new application may be the driver or the program that changes history.
Yes there are aspects of Linux that are difficult. So, lets make sure this year isn't the last year of Linux, the year Linux became as obscure as DR-DOS, and Amiga, and the Z80. because, I'm sorry, but some things have to be fought for.
I find Linux more capable on the Desktop than Microsoft. There are often times when MS's (using XP) internal burning software is inadequate - like burning images. I don't know if it's fixed yet, but for a long time XP just would not burn an image with its built in software and you had to use something like Nero. Never had a problem burning an image running any linux distro. Same with mounting .iso right from the harddrive as a cd-rom. It usually required some pay-for software (Alcohol 120%) in Windows, while a 2 minute search yield a few command lines to do it in Ubuntu. I know I'd rather save the money.
A typical mainstream Linux distro is ready. It's often superior in many ways to MS, as MS seems to deliberately makes their OS do almost nothing useful beyond the basics it seems (or was it that Monopoly ruling that caused this?) It's now just 3rd party apps for most people. Web Browsing has reversed itself (there are enough people who wouldn't switch from Firefox due to plug-ins they can't get in IE).
On the Corporate Level, solution providers are slow to change if they're an MS only shop. I even know the university/college level has problems. Blackboard and other such garbage.
I suspect the oncoming economic shitstorm may finally get corporations to really tighten their belts and that company-wide OS licenses may just not fit in the budget anymore looking ahead 5 years in some places. I just hope the current/next generation of purchase managers learns from the past and looks to do away with vendor lock-in in so many areas as much as possible.
A two minute search on Google yields CDBurnerXP as a freeware CD burning tool and Daemon tools as an image mounting tool for Windows.
It might not be free as in speech, but it sure is free as in beer.
Jean-Francois Im's blog
I think the headline should be written as "Microsoft-free, ..".
MagicDisc is another great free image mounting tool for Windows.
I'll keep that in mind for the next time my girlfriend have a "headache".
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
It's not capitalism at all. It's binary blobs in the kernel. The two are orthogonal -- plenty of very profit-driven companies have discovered that it is useful to have Linux support, and it is far less work to do so when you release source and let the community maintain it. Oh, and the drivers end up better, too.
Oh, and this is just hilarious: The wireless card stops running after 2 hours. Ubuntu makes a fine server, but geeze does it suck cocks as a desktop. WTF? Why does your desktop have a wireless card?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Google for "read ISO Windows" gave this link as the first hit. It has a link to an ISO mounting utility from Microsoft:
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2004/01/15/58918.aspx
Personally I'm very wary of installing random non-open-source apps on my desktop. I feel a lot better about something that is in the main Debian repository and more or less gpl compatible.
Hell, check out that daemon tools page you linked:
"Dear DAEMON Community,
it come to our attention that someone released a fake DT PRO version that is
contaminated with trojans and viruses, among the fact it is only a DT Lite and
not a PRO version!
We cant underscore enough how important it is that you always download from our
official sites and affiliates!
Nowadays, and with the popularity of DAEMON Tools, it is not unusual to see such
attempts to harm others (and, after all, also our reputation).
Rest assured: we double-check all uploads to our official sites and frequently check
them further to make sure you get no harmfull viruses/trojans!"
Frankly just googling and then downloading stuff that looks like it could help is bound to lead to a malware infested computer. One of the very clear things that good Linux distros have over Windows is the use of a centralized software repository.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
few are suggesting OS X is not ready for the desktop
While I wouldn't say that OSX isn't ready for the desktop, I would say it might not be ready for the corporate desktop.
One of the places Microsoft has put a lot of effort is into large-scale enterprise systems management. Features of Windows like Active Directory, Group Policy, WSUS, etc are what corporate clients really care about. They want to be able to easily and centrally manage users, permissions, operating system updates, and software restrictions. Unless/until there are tools that allow you to do these kinds of things with OSX and Linux, I think you'll see some hesitation on the part of large corporations.
I know you can do some of this stuff for Linux (user management with LDAP, customized package repos, etc) but I don't know about OSX. I do know however that there is a big difference between "ready for the desktop" and "ready for the corporate desktop".
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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A major problem is that many companies have aging Access / Visual Basic applications and other custom made applications that are tied to Windows. WINE is an option of course, but some of them are probably so badly programmed that even Windows have problems running them...
I don't know how old CDBurnerXP is (I'm talking about an experience I had with Windows when switching to the very first iteration of Ubuntu when Linux finally stuck) but Daemon tools plain didn't work for me back then.
Unfortunately, what's preventing business's adopting Linux or OS X is the fact that the various 'solution providers' & VARs make more money reselling Microsoft products.
It's not just the Microsoft products that keep businesses using Microsoft products...it's the business processes that are wrapped around the existing software. Upgrades are expensive, but less expensive than conversions to new software (and processes). There are also costs (and questions) regarding conversion of legacy data.
Until businesses can migrate to systems that are agnostic to specific processes (and applications) , it will be difficult to show a positive return on investment for the large expense.
You can do it with OS X server if you so wish.
In all honesty though, neither Linux nor OS X is really that great in a corporate environment (I'm in a design house - a lot of Mac systems). There's too much mucking around trying to get things to work. At least windows has all the stuff prepared and integrated and ready to roll. I haven't found (haven't really looked either) a distro that integrates in a server/client set-up like this yet. If there was one I might well go to it.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Am I the only one who misread the title as "Microsoft is free, one year later"?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
A lot of warehouse computers use wireless because of cabling issues. It's not that uncommon.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Read the article THEN moderate.
Funny, a friend of mine had a similar experience with XP SP2 the other day. After it fell over he tried to reinstall it. Turns out windows didn't include the drivers for his network card, sound card, video card etc... and since this is a a rather old box he couldn't find the CDs with all the drivers on them. Kinda sucks when you can't get on the net to search for them. Anyway, I gave him an Ubuntu CD and it booted fine , got him on the internet without installing a thing, and allowed him to download the drivers he needed to his ipod (the guy is addicted to his windows games ). After 48 hours since the first attempt at installing windows he had his system back up an running, with a little help from ubuntu.
Of course he probably has a couple of pets on the thing now seeing that it took him quite a while to even get it into a state where it would accept updates and we all have external IPs.
For reference, on the latest Ubuntu I have my 3D acceleration ( on both screens ) and wireless on the laptop out of the box. My main gripe is the flash plugin for firefox crashing every now and then, but I'm guessing that is really adobe's fault.
Knowledge is power:
- Windows Reskits have cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe - very capable tools for recording media
- D-Tools is free and is an excellent tool
I have multiple machines running Linux and Windows (this particular laptop I am posting a reply from is a Linux only Thinkpad) and Linux is not really more desktop capable. I am playing the devil's advocate here: good for you if you managed to figure out that Linux works better for you.
It doesn't work better for everyone. I need Photoshop (Sorry, I am not too bright to use GIMP), I need a couple of my RTS games that I play casually and I need my Windows Rhapsody client. I use wine for Photoshop, Caesar3 and I use Vmware + Windows 2000 for Rhapsody. I also need Windows to watch streaming Netflix and I'll be creating an XP image in the near future just for Netflix (Netflix supports only WinXP and higher).
So now do you get an idea? Linux isn't desktop ready because a majority of the rest of the world isn't ready for Linux. This is a 100% Linux laptop and still I need to rely on wine and Vmware to use the applications I really want/need.
My first Linux distribution was Redhat 5.2 and it's been quite a journey - Ubuntu 8.04 for me is the closest I've seen to a perfect Linux desktop but as much as I love it and use workarounds to keep using it fulltime, the distribution isn't there yet. Linux *isn't* there yet. I want it to be and I'll rejoice the day I have to stop using my workarounds.
I love using my Linux laptop over my windows machines at home (one's a high end gaming machine, the other's a pretty decent Windows Media Center box) and I love using my Linux machines at work (5 boxes running Linux and one Windows notebook) but I do keep windows around for Windows does tasks that Linux cannot do for me yet.
I usually bash Microsoft and Windows freely but I also do acknowledge Linux's shortcomings. If you believe otherwise, well, there is this certain cliche about ignorance and bliss...
I also gave up windows entirely around the first of this year. I had been running debian on one system and windows on the laptop up to that point, but more and more I was using debian for almost everything. Visio was a big deal for me too, but I am getting used to using Dia. Visio is better, there is no doubt, but Dia is adequate, and I am slowly converting all my drawings to Dia. I sure wish there was something that could read .vsd files.
The other thing that kept me on windows so long was that I could not get my work's VPN to work on linux, but I was trying to get it going on Fedora. It seems to work ok on Ubuntu. Thankfully, the wireless drivers also work well on ubuntu, so at this point, I have very little need for windows.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Before, I used IE only to access a major Philippine bank online. But only a couple of months ago, it has now become accessible to Firefox in Linux. It seems more big companies are taking note of alternatives to Microsoft here in the Philippines.
Still thinking "warehouse" falls outside the realm of "desktop", but I concede the point.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you want to compare raw out-of-the-box functionality, then I agree with you-- a default no-frills XP install is practically useless compared to the average default Linux install, which mostly gives you what you need, though there are exceptions.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
It might have to do something with the fact that I am a non-native speaker of the language but I read the title thrice...
/sharonstone> I kid.
Was it:
1. Microsoft Free (a year ago Microsoft was released from prison after making a deal with DA which included the real scoop behind flying chairs)
2. Microsoft Free as in Pick Your Free Tibet Joke
From the article, towards the end he mentions he uses XP and enjoys it as well but also mentions All I can say is that for the last year, I have been using Open Source exclusively and I am loving it!...
Quick, someone hire him?
I switched over to Linux around SuSE 6.0 days and to be honest I have never looked back. I now use Linux 100% at work and at home after doing a LPIC-101/102 course at my local college. This leads me into another funny story were I now have a whole branch of the company were I work at now running on Linux. The company has a Windows/OSX/Unix technical support contractor and because Linux has been so rock solid for us he didn't even know we had a branch here. This was simply because no one has ever rang him for help (and yes I have been away for weeks at a time).
From the private journal of madgreek:
... Just six more hours... Maybe I can pass the time by playing a fun, modern (and by "modern" I mean something slightly newer than nethack) game on my Linux bo- Uh.. Nevermind. I'll just talk to Eliza in emacs until this cruel, horrible torture is over.
Day 365, "Microsoft-Free":
I'm so glad this sham is over. I can't *wait* to get back to using a fully-featured OS with productivity applications capable of handling actual, real-life, grownup business needs.
Oh, and I can't wait until I don't have to f-ing hack my own drivers for new "cutting-edge" (and by "cutting-edge" I mean 2-year-old, in common use my the majority of PC users) hardware.
To be honest, I actually didn't even *use* Linux except to boot, start a VM, and run Windows to actually get the Grown-Up Work done for the last nine months.
Exactly. A Linux distribution is the OS plus userland applications.
The Linux OS itself doesn't provide any of the functionality the GP talks about.
Amnesty International
He's just lucky that his company hasn't discovered Sharepoint yet. Once every important document that you need is locked up on a sharepoint server, than even OpenOffice isn't enough to work on them properly.
It's Microsoft's best lock-in tool in years.
Because he has absolutely no idea what he is doing. I'm sure his wireless card drops his connections because he lives in an apartment building with 30 routers all within 20 feet, each fighting for the same 11 channels. And what's up with not getting two monitors going? You really have to struggle to mess that up. Maybe he's using some Acer POS monitor that is semi-defective (I've had that problem) or trying to do it under VESA emulation. If you get a $40 Nvidia card with dual heads, you can install the Nvidia driver pretty easily. If you are clueless, you can let the driver do a virtual screen and run two monitors that way. Or if you have more than a handful of neurons, you can set up your Nvidia card as two separate devices and dual monitors can be supported just like with an iMac (for proof, I've posted the relevant part of my xorg.conf file as a reply to myself with my Karma bonus turned off). Also, gnome is stable. My semi-computer literate brother has been using gnome with breezy badger for about 2 years now. He hasn't had any problems. Basically, the GP is either trolling or has been proactive about hosing his otherwise good system. Even lifelong windows users who don't give a flip about *nix can switch to ubuntu without any effect on PRODUCTIVITY. I've seen it done more than once with old computers. The only people who should have a problem are gamers (voiding the productivity argument), ms windows developers, and corporates who get told what they can and can't run on their desktops.
Just callin' it like I see it.
and couldn't be happier. Some background: I've been using Unix (real Unix, mind you) and fake-Unix (Linux) for the last 15 years, through college, grad school (PhD), and now industry work as a software engineer. I'd been through a lot with Unix. It's good for what it does: server-side code and client-side software engineering for writing that server-side code. I've spent and will continue to spend many years using desktop Unix, including using Motif, CDE, twm, fvwm, 4dwm, KDE, gnome, and a slew of other interfaces and tools. I've spent more time on vi/vim than most of you have spent watching porn.
Nothing on Linux today approaches anything near the user experience and breadth of applications that Windows or Mac OS X provide.
Don't delude yourselves. OpenOffice is just as good as Office! Gimp is just as good as Photoshop! Yeah? Is your tricked-out Honda Civic as good as that BMW down the street too? Of course it is. People and corporations are just too stupid to know it.
This is the year of desktop Linux! Yeah, well this is the year just as much as 2002 was and as much as 2015 will be. But the Linux community is working hard on improving the experience! And don't you think Windows and Mac OS will move forward as well?
The Linux desktop experience today in 2008 has the appeal, driver support, and aesthetics of Windows 98. Oh wait, Win98 did have driver support.
Take Linux for what it is: a tool on which to get your work done, just as Windows and Mac OS are other types of tools with which to get your work done.
DT Pro is the version that you have to pay for, thus getting it for free from some shady website should at least make you think twice, in the same way that you probably shouldn't download kernel sources from untrusted websites without checking the MD5/SHA checksum.
I haven't been infested with malware in the last decade, although this is only anecdotal evidence.
It is indeed convenient for installing various software packages --- which is sorely lacking in Windows --- although the usage of a centralized software repository does not guarantee that the binaries will be free of defects/malware either, since someone could poison the upstream source of software(which already happened in the past) and the maintainer would have no clue.
Jean-Francois Im's blog
Section "Monitor"
identifier "Generic Monitor"
vendorname "Generic"
modelname "Flat Panel 1680x1050"
HorizSync 31.5-90
VertRefresh 60
Option "DPMS"
modeline "1680x1050@60" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -hsync +vsync
gamma 1.0
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
identifier "monitor1"
vendorname "Generic"
modelname "Flat Panel 1280x1024"
HorizSync 31.5-90
VertRefresh 60
Option "DPMS"
modeline "1280x1024@60" 108.0 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
gamma 1.0
EndSection
Section "Device"
identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV40? [Unknown nVidia Card]"
boardname "nv"
busid "PCI:1:5:0"
driver "nvidia"
Option "LogoPath" "/usr/local/lib/nvidia/Cloudy.png"
screen 0
EndSection
Section "Device"
identifier "device1"
boardname "nv"
busid "PCI:1:5:0"
driver "nvidia"
Option "LogoPath" "/usr/local/lib/nvidia/Cloudy.png"
screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "NVIDIA Corporation NV40? [Unknown nVidia Card]"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
Option "LogoPath" "/usr/local/lib/nvidia/Cloudy.png"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
depth 24
modes "1680x1050@60"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
#
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
Option "LogoPath" "/usr/local/lib/nvidia/Cloudy.png"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
depth 24
modes "1280x1024@60"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
option "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection
And how joyous it would have been if IE were not so tightly integrated with Windows following that theory.
However, wanting certain capabilities bundled with the OS is not necessarily asking for it being integrated with the OS.
>Unless/until there are tools that allow you to do these kinds of things with OSX and Linux, I think you'll see some hesitation on the part of large corporations.
>I know you can do some of this stuff for Linux (user management with LDAP, customized package repos, etc) but I don't know about OSX. I do know however that there is a big difference between "ready for the desktop" and "ready for the corporate desktop".
Cant you taste the problem with those 2 statements? Second one negates the first one on Linux point.
Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment. Centrally managing huge server farms, pushing updates and son on and so forth... Can be done with Linux.
Linux Free, One Year Later and post it to /., do you think it would be posted?
Wooh, this is news.
Next week, how I used Macs since 2003 at work.
What a revolution !
You did not search hard enough.
For image burning there is ImgBurn.
For image mounting there is Daemon's Tools, though it is ad-ware bundled (but you could just not install it at all)
Whoop de' f***ing shit.
I convinced my boss to let me use Kubuntu at work instead of the standard Solaris X86/Win XP pair we all get issued with. I find the the silly little things are the biggest time savers, like tabbed terminal/console sessions on a dual head kit, means I can kick up several jobs at once ( I'm an Oracle DBA by trade ), work on scripts and deal with other sundry tasks all at once. A standard x86 3Ghz/2GB box, nothing special. It's standard company hardware, so unlike my colleagues Sun kit, the Windows desktop guys always have spares for me if/when I need them, most of the Windows support guys are secret penguin users at home, so I get the support and encouragement on the quiet! I am just about to convince one of my Solaris SA colleagues to dump his desktop kit and go with the future.
At home I too use 95% Kubuntu and XP for the kids edu-games, trying to virtualise the XP or get the kids games running under Wine, which is a lot better than it used to be. Tried to convert my Missus from her Apple/XP pair. but she can't as she does a lot of Photoshop stuff, which GIMP can't quite handle just yet, but I'll wait another year or two and drop some more hints.
I truly believe we are right on the very brink of finally delivering a linux desktop that actually works for the average user, another 18 months and one more release of *buntu and we'll be there. I have nothing against distro's, I like tinkering, but at the end of the day I just want to use it, no matter what I hit it with, spent way too much time with Red Hat 5.x and 6.x trying to get stuff working, now I just want to "wash'n'go" with my desktop, *buntu gives that in spades!
Why is it that the *nix users seem to have BSOD issues on an infinitely higher rate than the rest of the world?
I've got 4 computers and if I see one BSOD a year, it is usually fixed by a reboot or tightening the RAM/PCI devices/etc. Yet the *nix people are like 'well, my windows computer BSOD'd on me 7 times again today, blah blah blah rant rave blah'.
Not to mention the fact the most of the time, BSOD errors are caused by faulty third party device driver applications or faulty hardware, neither of which are really MS's fault, imo.
I tried to go Linux free from 7 months, but ultimately the various shortcomings of the software used under Linux and Linux itself (apparently I had a driver problem that made my internet connection work quite slow), drove me back to Windows XP. I do, however use OOo, Gimp, Firefox and Thunderbird.
I would compare Windows to the communism of 50 years ago, Linux to democracy.
...
...
;-)
Indeed Windows is easy... if you fully accept the rules of the party (MS):
- the party decides what is good for you, what you should do and how you should do these things;
- the KGB/BSA fights all misbehaviors to the line of the party;
- the party makes sure you cannot live without it by make you an hostage of applications/file formats;
- if something is missing... well, you don't have it;
- if a product is bad... well, use it anyway;
-
On the other side there is linux/democracy:
- you have to fight and work for your own life;
- you have to decide in front of all possible (software) choices you have in your life;
- if something is missing you have to create it;
- if you think a product is bad, you can develop another one;
-
So it's up to all of us: let them decide for you or be adult and responsible.
Lots of people don't want to run an ethernet cable through their walls.
Not a sentence!
god knows i tried to switch. ubuntu just doesn't work with my card. 6.10 was too new for me to bother, 7.04 and 7.10 were something like "ok, maybe the next version will work" in 8.04 i tried really hard, but no luck. still no GUI, entered terminal and tried to reconfigure xorg, only to encounter the "debconf has locked smth" bug. i dug deeper, killed the process, only to find out they nerfed dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to keybord settings only. I edited the xorg.conf manually, only to discover the fucker rewrites the file with default settings after i reboot. the "only free software" policy is really hurting the ease of installation. nvidia drivers, flash player, mp3 support, the like. maybe 8.10 will be better
funny pics
Yeah I see what you mean. To give a couple (better) examples: a lot of hot-desking environments use wireless. Open plan area's for call centres. I've seen a lot of cube farms using it in rented buildings because they were not permitted to run cabling. Was just that the first thing that came to mind was a warehouse I once worked in.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Your kidding me right? img burn for windows is one of the best iso ripping and burning tools I have seen, and it's completely free. team that up with daemon tools and your good to go. If your going to say windows has problems, please do a little research first on free software for it. and no I'm not a microsoft fanboy, i've got a tribooted macbook, and i'd say the easiest to mount and burn isos is windows.
it come to our attention that someone released a fake DT PRO version that is contaminated with trojans and viruses, among the fact it is only a DT Lite and not a PRO version!
Tried any bootleg copies of Microsoft compatable software lately? In Linux, malware is the exception. In Windows, you better have your AV up to date as malware, trojans, and viruses is pretty much standard on the shady side of town.
The truth shall set you free!
Works for me. Take your troll elsewhere.
On the other hand, he may have an AMD/ATI card, and in that case I can sympathize. I managed to get a dual screen setup going, but it still won't do accelerated 3D and it fills up the xorg log file with error messages to the tune of 1 GB/day. Dual screen on an ATI card under Linux is a huge hassle.
Linux *isn't* there yet.
Are you implying something is there yet? From what I've seen, Apple is closer to "there" than MS. Especially with Vista. MS may be close, but they are headed away from target. At least Linux and Apple are headed in the right direction.
The truth shall set you free!
Well, Linux is still a little slower, buggier, and less clean, for me. Though I do dual boot and love a lot of what Ubuntu x64 offers.
For burning cds I highly recommend infrarecord portable, which is free, open source, and as good or better than any other burning program I've used, just this side of Nero.
It's one of many great apps at the portable apps site.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The Linux OS itself doesn't provide any of the functionality the GP talks about.
Of course there are exceptions. The first that came to mind was burning ISO's. In linux right click on the iso. In Windows, search for an application...
Time to duck..
The truth shall set you free!
i've been using linux exclusively for 8 years now. i win! whats my prize?
The productivity answer could more easily be defined as "are you capable of finding a replacement product?" rather than "can you continue to run Microsoft products?" If you tend to want to answer the latter question, then the entire experiment is a failure from the get-go.
If instead you find that you are able to get the same functionality out of your computer as you were before using software that performs the same tasks as their Microsoft counterparts, then what's the issue? From my perspective, Visio and ActiveX are niche applications that have zero impact on my computing, and are easily replaceable by a multitude of similar tools that are both reliable and sophisticated.
Ironically, I have many OSX-only applications that are the bread-and-butter of my job (computer animation and video). Unfortunately, with the exception of Blender, there are currently no open source alternatives that can replace them (and, yes, I have looked).
As for interoperability, nobody ever notices that I use NeoOffice for OSX to handle Word and Excel compatibility.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Even though my main job is middleware systems administration on a bunch of Solaris and Linux servers, my personal computer at work is an IBM Thinkpad Z61t running Windows XP. I'd love to have Linux on that machine, but where I work we depend on too much Microsoft technology (more than just Word, Excel, Visio and Outlook). We use Livemeeting for most conferences, Microsoft's Office Communicator (with desktop and application sharing) and Sharepoint for all of our collaborative work.
Short of converting the entire corporation over to Linux (quite a large corporation at that), there's no way any one person or group could do so. You just wouldn't be able to inter operate with the rest of the corporation.
No matter where you go... there you are.
Kivio is clearly better.
Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment. Centrally managing huge server farms, pushing updates and son on and so forth... Can be done with Linux. On Windows, it is fairly easy to define different groups of people and say something like:
Group A get this desktop when they log in, it's very locked down - they can't even right-click - and there's only one application there to run. They may only log into a subset of PCs. (Think of the sales staff in a call centre - they may well have a PC set up like this)
Group B get this desktop when they log in. It's rather less locked down, and there are three applications. They may log into any PC they wish.
Group C get this third desktop when they log in. It's not locked down at all and they can run anything they have there, but they can't install their own software.
Lather rinse and repeat until you've set up groups which deal with the people lowest in the corporate hierarchy (who you wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch, let alone a PC) right the way up to the top.
Now, while this level of control may not be necessary (or even desirable) in smaller organisations or places where all the staff can reasonably be expected to have a certain amount of computer literacy, there are lots of businesses where it is.
I accept you could script all this without too much trouble in Linux - but AFAIK no current desktop manager has the facility to be configured centrally on a per-group basis out of the box. You'd spend just as long hacking the desktop manager to work as you would defining the policies themselves.
is there a program that works like yum / apt under windows?
An OS with no bundled applications is rather useless from an end users point of view.
Most people expect the OS to come bundled and pre-configured with applications like a window-manager, file-manager, text-editor, http-reader, cd/dvd-tools, other file-managing tools (copy, move, etc), configuration-managers, tcp/ip-stack, bluetooth-stack, etc, etc.
Why does Windows come with less powerful applications bundled than most other OS's, then?
MS also sell (or license, which isn't exactly the same) applications, which is why they only bundle the minimum of what they can get away with while still keeping competitors at bay.
If you want to have full productivity using Windows, they want you to also pay for the applications needed for this.
A free OS bundle doesn't need to keep the full functionality back in order so sell other software.
They can ship with everything needed for full productivity bundled.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I have been M$ free for many years. I used to run Linux on my desktop but now, because I move from country to country a lot, I switched to a laptop and chose a MacBook Pro. I have no problems in staying M$ free but I think I will stick with OSX in the future rather than return to Linux. I can still do all the Linux stuff, including RTS games etc. that people say do not exist (although I prefer games like Civ and Neverwinter Nights). I can also get all my work done without trouble.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Kivio is NOT capable of reading/writing visio file format? In fact, none of the "visio clones" can do that. If OOA was smart, this is the one place that they would expand some effort. It is SORELY lacking. In fact, any of the companies that are pushing OOA, would do well to decode the format, and then write a GPL (or berkley) library for interacting with said format. The clones would incorporate that quickly, and Sun would most likely jump on creating a clone as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I've always been a little curious why, when Windows crashes or something isn't available for the latest version, it's the drivers that are to blame, but when the same device doesn't run in Linux, it's Linux at fault.
Whats preventing many businesses (larger firms) is that most have a huge amount of software written in-house.
Porting that in a live business environment would be a nightmare (though there would be the benefit of not having to "upgrade" to the new version of windows every time it comes up - enough work there...)
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
This is where the boundary of OS and Application gets fuzzy.
Would the burning functionality of (eg) Nautilus be considered part of the OS since the entire Gnome environment can be removed and the OS is still functional?
However mounting an image with "mount -o loop image.iso" would be considered a part of the Linux/GNU OS.
Unicode in Slashdot
As far as I can get the applications I want to run with WINE, I consider Linux desktop ready. WINE is technically a 3rd party app but easily enough available. Ubuntu actually has it as part of the distribution.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Upgrades are expensive, but less expensive than conversions to new software (and processes). There are also costs (and questions) regarding conversion of legacy data.
There is some of that, though I'd argue that it's ultimately more expensive long term to stay locked in at the process level. Data conversion, I assume you mean file format conversion. Access db's, linked spreadsheets, that kind of thing. Those can be tricky. Luckily the trend toward the browser as a software front end is making that less of an issue.
I've used Ubuntu almost exclusively at home with no problems exchanging data with MS users. The biggest obstacle to large scale utilization of Linux commodity desktops in the enterprise that I see is just a lack of understanding. Linux doesn't have much of an ad budget right now. There will still be some users who need Windows only software for task specific applications which can be managed with a Windows kiosk here and there and some users will prefer Mac. But staying locked in to the Windows/Office/Outlook on every desktop these days is just insane. I think a lot of companies do it simply because the devil they know is better than the devil they don't know.
I'm wondering how practical it would be to do away with internal networks all together? Be interesting to try. Where the local network is nothing but a pipeline to the internet and print sharing. All the traditional network services are provided as web services. File storage, productivity, collaboration, messaging, email. Theoretically that would allow you to connect any client OS with far less of the client management overhead. We're not really that far from that now when you think about it. I could see a lot of advantages. Users could interact with the business environment the same way from anywhere. The office, home, Starbucks...wouldn't matter. Windows, Linux, Mac...wouldn't matter. Then you could treat every client as dirty, and with Windows that's a pretty safe assumption.
Until businesses can migrate to systems that are agnostic to specific processes (and applications)
That's not that hard, either. Just takes commitment to move that direction. To make your business environment OS agnostic. The technical steps aren't that hard anymore. Just seems like we're duplicating a lot of effort right now in enterprise networks.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have used Linux as my only desktop, at work, for the last 9 years. Yes I am a developer and as such I bet I don't count or something. Anyhow, All developers at my current work and at the last one used Linux. There has been many complains over the years that we are not a 100% Windows compliant, complains from 100% Windows users of course. I can't see myself developing using Windows, how could I use Windows? It is surly not a 100% Linux compliant. And it's Linux that has the tools I need.
Bottom line:
Linux is Desktop ready, but not for people in ties. And that dist that became TieReady I wouldn't use anyhow.
So what?
I find this Microsoft fixation ridiculous. Why don't we hear more about Samsung free or Canon free or Adobe free? Computer free, anyone?
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
It is also possible to authenticate against an open ldap server (actually osx uses open ldap) and setup kerberos. The LDAP schema (i suck with ldap) has two fields that are used to push down policies. Apple uses an XML format to describe all the policies which can be used even without OS X server.
The reason I feel that OS X is not ready for big environments is that it's inflexible. You can only hack around so many "features". For instance, we had a hack that's worked for 10.4 to bind to a Novell eDir server on campus without using Novell's schema changes for Mac support. We do not control the Novell servers. However, this appears to be broken in Leopard (10.5).
For the most part, we've had good luck migrating from a windows and mac environment to Mac only. I work for the computer science department at a university. I did not make the decision to migrate as I would have chosen BSD or maybe Linux based on our needs.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Good point. The linux community needs to target startups. If the businesses start with linux, maybe they'll get tied to FOSS. This will create a demand for linux software, and we might see replacements for some of the aging windows software so many businesses use.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
So you're accusing others of being infantile, yet you're making fun of someone over semantics when you actually know that he's using the expression correctly.
We say "on the desktop" for home use, even though pretty much all of us have desktops at work. You should know this by now, considering your UID. I'm actually betting you DO know it by now, so I'll let that speak for itself.
I had no choice but to "buy" Vista when ordering my laptop from Dell UK.
I did manage to return the Vista + Office works to Dell for a refund (as stated in the Vista licensing agreement) and received £120 for my troubles.
I encourage everyone who has been forced to buy Vista to do this.
Speaking as someone who's had to administer many many machines at once, I can't say I consider Linux as a viable solution until I could:
- Lock-down user desktops with varying levels of security restrictions depending on their login Organisational Unit (i.e Accounts, Developers, etc)
- Auto-mount specific network shares
- Centrally configure a patch management system (WSUS equivalent) for each workstations' software updates.
- Deploy & install automatically software packages depending on OU.
- Set automatically firewall policies
- Brand each machine with company screensaver, etc, etc.
All that I can do in Windows and much more....the policies are defined on the AD; you join the AD, and your machines magically become assimilated according to the will of the Administrator. Any option you can set on a machine level, can be overridden at the domain level, and that is real power. And that's before we even start on software compatibility & application support.
As far as I know, this is impossible in Linux, hence it's not business ready IMHO.
Note: Don't read this as "I think Linux is shit" because I don't think that; just that there really are areas, shockingly, that Linux really isn't as good as Windows in. This is one of them.
throw new NoSignatureException();
is there a program that works like yum / apt under windows?
If there is, it would be rather pointless since the whole basis of yum/apt etc. is the large trusted respositories that they rely on, and these do not exist for windows software. I suppose there's no reason though why a 'trusted' company (Mozilla foundation?) shouldn't set up Windows repositories of some sort containing all the important FOSS stuff.
This is a 100% Linux laptop and still I need to rely on wine and Vmware to use the applications I really want/need.
That's all very well for you, but I still need to rely on Linux for my audio software, which just plain doesn't work in Windows. So, Windows isn't ready for the desktop either.
I made the switch from XP to Heron a couple of weeks ago. Now, I may be overlooking something since I am not as skilled a user when it comes to Linux yet, but the feature I miss the most: Visual Studio's Integrated Debugger. (KDevelop's) GDB is much slower, requires a lot more memory, needs to fix code completion (I almost always have to go through the header hierarchy looking for the function definition I need), needs mouse hints when hovering over variables, and a couple of other things.
If you want to "taste a problem" then try converting a corporation to Linux desktops (as opposed to say running a corporate web server). There is a reason it's called "vendor lock-in". Not only do you have to retrain thousands of people you also need to manage user access as good as windows for large numbers of people quickly with fine granuality. This is before you even think of rewriting tens (if not hundreds) of millions of lines of windows style glue.
"Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment."
Agreed (or at least it does where I work), however it's still along way from breaking the MS 'lock' on the corporate desktop and there doesn't seem to be any 'killer app' to drive the corporates toward a Linux desktop (unless your counting Vista). .
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It mentioned Ubuntu after all. The biggest linux meme around.
Yes, it's a simple distro, yet other 'easier' ones exist including Mepis which now use Ubuntu repos but plays mp3s out of the box and most videos as well as having an easier system setup process (no I don't use it so don't go into the whole 'my preference' thing, I use Sidux).
Why do we not hear about alternatives.. it's all "unbuntu, unbuntu, ufuckingbuntoo'. Hell a few years ago it was Gentoo which was on the opposite extreme. Try different distros people. Don't get stuck in the 'people say this is best so it is' because I can almost guarantee it won't be for your purposes. Research.
Heck, they keep telling their workers they can't expect a job for life, then the complain that you have no loyalty.
They tell you that you can't expect to work there forever but when you do a jobsearch at work, they either
a) shit themselves that you're leaving
b) shitcan you for thinking about leaving
I think if that was the only thing keeping me on MS's suckware, I would find a way around it.
The main reason businesses run Windows is the same exact reason most home owners run Windows, because it is the default OS. They never give it much consideration to begin with, it's just what comes in the box.
The fact that this monopoly has been allowed to continue all these years is outrageous, really. If 90% of people owned Fords, it would mean that either Fords are way better or that they have unfair competitive advantage.
The Microsoft monopoly in the OS market is the single greatest problem in technology today and the negative effects of the monopoly cascades in every direction.
Visio became popular, not based so much on its merits, which I'm sure it's a fine piece of software, but more because MS leverages the Windows monopoly to push software of every sort. People then used Visio and the closed, proprietary formats of Visio and now because they have so much work stored in these formats it is a deterrent to considering an alternative OS. The problem comes full circle.
So there's my anti-Microsoft rant for the day
FAQs are evil.
That just sounds like anti-piracy FUD to me. "Don't download the PRO version from torrent sites, you'll get viruses and trojans and it's not even the real deal!"
I've always found
So, when Dell et al take Windows, plus lots of shitty, trial-ware, bloated userland applications running at startup it's called a Windows distribution!
The neighbours would notice holes in the walls and extra cables to their routers otherwise.
Seriously, you fucking idiots, why did you mod this down? And offtopic as well, cock smoking, hippo minges. Read the grandparent, then mod this shit back up. FFS.
Try incorporating new features into an OS after going through Monopoly investigation. Last time it was Netscape that got them in trouble with bundling iE, this time it could have been Roxio or Ahead.
Not like MS didn't deserver it before.
i got ati to give a portion at the top left of my screen to the tv, but when I play movies fullscreen, they go fullscreen on the tv, taking up the top left of my monitor, leaving the rest black. I don't know how to split them up into separate screens like the above nvidia post. If I use the real drivers, fglrx or whatever, iget a full white screen after gnome boots too! but open ati drivers do just fine.
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
And how joyous it would have been if IE were not so tightly integrated with Windows following that theory.
Except IE is no more "tightly bundled" into Windows than the equivalents are into OSX and KDE- and GNOME-based distros.
I may be wrong, but I was taught that there is a division between an operating system and the applications that it runs. The OS is supposed to handle things like IO and memory, while the real functionality comes from userland applications (often third party) interacting with the OS.
This distinction is basically meaningless outside of the academic world. Even within it, the lines are very blurry. Does a network stack count as part of the OS ? For which protocols ? How about a command line shell ? How about a GUI shell ? How about just the windowing system ? Where do shared libraries like glibc fit into the picture ? Etc, etc.
There are some things basically everyone can agree are "the OS" (memory management, process scheduling) and there are some things basically everyone can agree are not (word processors, video editing tools). But there is a massive grey area between those two ends of the scale.
Installing updates stopped my ubuntu from booting!
Oh my god
...there is no sig...
I have been basically Microsoft free for a decade. I am not saying that I don't have a Windows box at home, but simply that I rarely use it apart from games. Much of what I find easy to do with Linux is difficult or expensive to do with Windows. Granted, I work in science which tends to be 'nix based, but I have long found Linux to be a more powerful and more versatile operating system. Microsoft has made great improvements in Windows in the last few years, and it is perhaps an adequate mass market operating system, but I have long felt that it was Windows playing catch-up, and not the other way around.
It's integrated into the OS and into many of its applications. Many things won't work without it. Like Windows Update, Steam, Active Desktop and just about any app that integrates IE to view webpages.
You can't really remove it without crippling the rest of the system.
There are partial solutions for this. For instance, sometimes I need flawless Office document im/export. OpenOffice just doesn't cut it with its imperfect import/export filters, so I bought the commercial Wine version from CodeWeavers. The latest version, 6.0, is listed in the compatibility database as being able to run Visio 2003.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Wouldn't it be easier to just start a topic called 'Please add Microsoft bashing threads' rather than wait for someone to jump up and claim they just saved...I mean that they managed to use linux for the two applications they need?
Not like Microsoft is going to get a fair shake here. On the other hand, I get a good laugh reading the posts (what, about every 2-3 months?) as everyone tries to convince themselves how 'ready' linux is to take over the desktop.
Keep up the good work.
As a desktop user he survived the switch from Microsoft to open source save for the few exceptions listed in the article. Someday I like to see an article about a programmer in a Microsoft ocean (Visual Studio, CE/.NET, Silverlight) who has successfully used alternative open-source tools like MonoDevelop, C#/Mono, Moonlight for a year.
The last time I checked Microsoft got fined for bundling software.
Perhaps linux is being Anti-competitive? In all fainess I love Linux but the hypocrisy of the EU is unbelieveble.
You obviously have never used CDBurnerXP before.
:)
Its installed on all my uni's lab computers.
God its awful. Give me XP's burning software any day.
Or hey just fuck them all and use k3b.
Windows comes with less bundled software because the anti-microsoft hypocrites claim that when microsoft includes extra apps that it is an anti-competitive action.
Linux as a desktop Operating System was ready years ago. I have had Linux working perfectly on my Thinkpad since Mandrake 9.1.
WOW!
So what?
It is still a dual boot Thinkpad in which I rarely boot into Linux because I can not run CAD or Maple both required for work. Engineering programs I need are Windows only. Wine is a joke in that I an experience users not a developer still is to difficult which is I suspect Microsoft's doings for interoperability by the common user. Combine the fact that there is no compelling improvement in performance - performance being defined as being able to do what one wants not speed tests - by the addition of Linux and the unfarmarality of the operating system it is not supprising that most people simply stick to XP instead of installing Linux.
I started using GNU/Linux nearly 6 years ago. I had dabbled occasionally before that, but went back to Win2000, and when I first installed there were odd times when I dual booted into Windows on my old hard drive (mobile phone software, Half-Life 2 etc.).
:)
Now, I use GNU/Linux exclusively. Everything I do at university I do on Linux (and every single maths lecturer at Edinburgh University, or Heriot Watt University - also in Edinburgh - uses Linux). When I did my master's degree in Quantitative Genetics I never used or needed Windows. In my PhD I'm looking at the role of badgers and tuberculosis in cattle, and I use Linux, mostly doing simulations in C. The one time I needed a program that was Windows only (for calculating inbreeding coefficients), it worked perfectly in Wine. Even down to the same error message
So that covers being Microsoft free at work and university. How about home and non-work stuff?
I can use the web no problem, flash works (there's the odd time it fails, but I hardly notice), email, IRC, etc. are fine. I can play all my DVDs, CDs, music, anime collection, episodes of House I downloaded with Bittorrent. Admittedly the games front isn't very exciting, but I can still play a few reasonably fun games, I got Half-Life 2 working (granted buggily), and my Wii covers the rest. I'm not sure what else I need it for, but when I do need to do something I can usually find a Linux solution.
My flatmate used his Linux laptop to generate a 3d-movie from scratch to use as the menu for a horror film he took part it. All the editing for the movie was done in Linux. He's also pretty good with the Gimp, but I've never used it for anything particularly interesting so I can't comment.
Result: after 5 years, my knowledge of the command line is still fairly minimal, other than for re-encoding the odd movie into a VCD for a friend, and editing some config files. Things still go wrong, but I've never had a problem I couldn't fix, provided it was fixable (forums are brilliant), and my flatmates helped me at first when I got stuck. My completely non-techy fiancée uses my computer, and finds GNOME's interface easy to use. I am officially Microsoft free, and I don't look back. Also I build my own computer from components, so no Microsoft tax.
So yes, I think it's perfectly possible. It needs some patience though, and help from friends. Pre-installed Linux is definitely a good thing. However, if you gave a completely non-techy person a computer without Windows installed, and asked them to set it up themselves from scratch, they might find it difficult too.
I run my own translation agency, and have not used a Microsoft product for 8 years. Everything I need is available to me in Free/Open Source alternatives, and, I am more productive, and have lower overhead. I used Fedora/RH for about 6 years, then switched to Ubuntu, but now use my in-house selfrolled distro (which is also, of course, available to the public), Linguas OS - gnu/linux for translators (www.linguasos.org). I wouldn't use Microsoft of they paid me to do so. Just the time I save not dealing with viruses, malware, crashes and other stupidity probably saves me thousands of dollars (and countless headaches) a year.
-- tonybaldwin.me
So, if Windows suddenly becomes the minority in the consumer OS market, are we going to have people here trumpeting the "year of windows on the desktop!!!one!1"?
Oh sure, Linux has it's place in the desktop realm, but so does Windows. I mean come on! I have to manage my Linux clusters from Windows ONLY! (VMware ESX)
http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/install/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=install&file=install_requirements.4.4.html
It's called win-get: http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/ Of course, I know nothing about it, since I use Linux, but, it does exist.
-- tonybaldwin.me
I have not found the process of setting up dual monitors using my nvidia cards easy for any linux distribution I've used. In ubuntu, I can't use the built-in video configuration to achieve this, I have to find, install, and use the nvidia control panel and play with it for a while (not too long) before I get my two screens.
I'm not claiming it's hard, but it is still something of a black magic that I would never expect my wife or my mother to be able to do, and even I hate having to do it.
Otherwise, the only reason I keep windows around is for gaming. I only have to use windows at work for about 5 minutes a week, the rest is on ubuntu.
I tried switching to Ubuntu this year too and my results were different.
I was entirely unproductive in achieving any entertainment with games. WINE was a lot of work to get things playing and even then they didn't quite play correctly. Steam was a pain in the arse, so was WoW. I didn't even bother trying once Age of Conan came along.
On other applications, things were generally fine, I've kept Ubuntu running on basically a glorified Gmail + browsing box. I've also got a Mythbuntu PVR running. I still use BSD and Linux in server situations.
But for desktop, for me at least, if it's inconvenient for games, regardless over whether Microsoft is an evil empire or not.. it's just a no go as a Desktop OS. Games are what separate it, otherwise it's just a browser box and I can do that without a desktop at all.
Maybe other folks get more mileage out of Gimp vs Photoshop, though I doubt that too unfortunately, My take on Linux after all these years is still that the desktop experience unfortunately lacks.
Wishful thinking isn't cutting it. I wish it would.. er, okay now that's just going in circles.
Dude, I've been running strictly Linux and other open source, at home and at work, for over a decade. More like 15 years now. Now it's even company supported. :-)
--
The early bird catches the worm. The worm that sleeps late lives to see another day.
In my experience, it's often the people at the top that I wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch.
Stupid flounders!
??? My wife and I have exactly the same hardware. She runs XP and I run Linux. My machine performs as much as 4 or 5 times faster on a routine basis running the same apps (openoffice, firefox) or similar apps. I open applications and get right to work while she's left staring at a spinning cursor and waiting for her machine to stop locking up. Furthermore, her XP can't handle more than one or two applications running on the desktop, while I routinely run as many as 7 distinct applications while working without any noticable deterioration in performance at all. (It might help that I made my own light distro, with a fluxbox wm and other features that keep it light and fast).
-- tonybaldwin.me
for over a year now and I far prefer it to XP, even though XP did have many qualities I was comfortable with. I think the fundamental aspect of a Linux Desktop is that you have far greater absolute control over what is happening beneath the surface of the GUI. The only applications lacking in Linux are Indesign ( I have Scribus but there is no comparison) Photoshop and Dreamweaver and none of these have alternatives with the appropriate professional edge. Having said that I have been using photoshop and indesign in VMware and I think they work fine - there is a very slight decline in speed but this is made up for by the fact that Ubuntu boots in about One minute (when I do reboot it, I just hate to see that uptime number go down) and XP boots into VMware so quickly it's photons are in danger of hitting those from it's shutdown. Now that alone is worth the very tiny amount of technical effort require to set up VMware. I haven't migrated Dreamweaver yet - just so many tedious passwords and settings to work on - but I will.
Honourable mention must also go to the rather idiosyncratic but peerless MS Acess - the little database that could. Adobe Premier while a tad bloated is also rather useful and slightly better documented than the equally peerless cinelerra - which I do like but often feel you need a brain the size of Manhattan to use it. The only thing that prevents me turning our laptop all Linuxed-up-to-the-max is that it has a wifi that defeats human reason - had it working about twice so far and just got bored. Also my partner has an iTunes account (spits) and that particular worst-piece-of-garbage-ever-written has sadly no real substitute - Amarok needs an iTunes Store account but I guess chances of that monopoly breach are slim. And no, I won't be running iTunes in Vmware - I have telephone directories I could be reading.
I should also mention the unremitting geek-joy of remote desktopping my main pc from my tiny ipaq while lying in bed watching CSI and then running MS Access in Vmware (fortunately you can zoom in!).
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Maybe they went *nix because of too many BSOD issues, while happy Windows users see no reason to switch?
Personally, I had my share of Windows problems over the years, despite choosing reliable hardware over cheap crap where possible. Currently I have two programs that reproducably crash my AMD dual core under Windows 2000, taking down the entire OS:
-Day of Defeat: Source and
-Teamspeak.
Updating BIOS and drivers does not help, Memtest shows no errors. So I have little hope to fix this under Win2000.
Things like that were my biggest reason to try Linux once a year or so. It is not quite at the point where I consider Windows redundant (mostly due to games), but thanks to WINE making nice progress it's getting closer.
BTW, Day of Defeat: Source runs crash-free under Ubuntu 8.04 and WINE since WINE 1.0-RC2. The performance still sucks, but once that is fixed I'll have my first Windows game that runs better under Linux
C - the footgun of programming languages
5? Informative? It's just FUD with a non sequitur example. Randomly downloading an executable and expecting it to be as advertised is not what this is about. He found free software for Windows, thus dismantling the OP's argument. What you did was to compare a software repository in Linux with anything randomly downloaded from the internet. That's not only inaccurate .. it's stupid.
Your example is furthermore flawed because if you'd downloaded DT from the original site (or any other repository you might trust, like Softpedia or FileForum) you wouldn't risk the trojan. There you have what you could call your precious "centralized repository". Add a rogue/unknown repository for, I don't know, MP3 support in Fedora and you're about as safe as you are downloading programs from the evil innertubes! Having a warning from the authors in the authors' site as an example of the benefits of "centralized software repository" in Linux vs freeware on the internet is *facepalm*. It's like saying communism is superior to capitalism because "it's centralized planning and thus perfectly safe and fun for the whole family". Yes. I can use stupid analogies too.
The "centralized software repository" you like is just convenience. Someone compiled software so you don't have to. It's not safe, nor is it for the greater good of the users. Don't find what you want/need in the main repo? You either do what the poor Windows users do and download a package from some evil random website, or compile yourself from some evil random website with sources. Difference being...?
Well, there is one thing. Microsoft isn't allowed to add too many freebies in it's OS because of monopoly allegations (Media Player in Europe for example). Linux just copies stuff they like from the Windows platforms and call it something funny//witty/similar and often get away with it. It's a "port" and not a "copy".
The OP argued about free software in Linux versus, what he believed, were only commercially available software in Windows. He's wrong, and your argument is too.
/* Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana */
.. and I have no idea why my CR/LFs didn't work. My apologies.
/* Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana */
Then you can use Infra-Recorder, a random open source application. :-)
I recently installed linux on my p, unfortunately i deleted my entire partition (must have done something wrong ^^), includign windows. Since i'm a gamer, that was bad :P.
But now my other pc, a very old system, runs linux. It boots and runs twice as fast compared to when it had XP.
Especially xonsiderign the cost of xp and mcirosoft forcing people to buy vista, i'm a linux fan from now on. Just too bad linux can't really run the games, but who knows what's on the horizon :)
so because you can burn an iso easier in *nix makes it business ready for the desktop? you'll need more leverage than that considering most business users don't need to be burning anything, much less iso's.
I work on the UNIX team in a large corporation and I can't get even them to switch to a linux desktop.
It's like everyone is afraid of even looking at something they're not familiar with.
Until you can just turn off linux and not have to type in command line prompts sometimes to reboot the bloody thing because the volume was unmounted incorrectly it will never be ready for mainstream.
It's integrated into the OS and into many of its applications. Many things won't work without it. Like Windows Update, Steam, Active Desktop and just about any app that integrates IE to view webpages.
In most circles, modularity and code-reuse are considered *good* things.
You can't really remove it without crippling the rest of the system.
And how much stuff that depends on khtml or WebKit do you think would keep working if you just ripped them out ?
The "tightly bundled" argument is basically complaining because a piece of shared code is being used exactly in the way shared code is supposed to be. I fail to see why it is a valid complaint.
, since someone could poison the upstream source of software(which already happened in the past [slashdot.org]) and the maintainer would have no clue.
True, but once the upstream project discovers the problem the distro repo. maintainer can release the fixed version as an update, which will automatically apply to all users of their distro.
With random Windows apps I'd have to keep checking their websites or news sites myself to keep track of these issues, or any other security issues with the app. And then manually download it.
The current method adopted by many Windows apps of each having their own 'update manager' process running in the tray is not a sustainable in any way.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
And my verdict is: "Move along, theres nothing to see here."
As in >97% of the arguments against haven't been issues in this century. The newbs ain't helping by keeping alive zombie FUD.
I've been MS free since 1995. Work was novell networked at that time. This is both home and work. My wife and kids use Linux (here at home) as well.
:)
Life is good. My needs as a S/W developer are different than most. My wife and kids have learned to be creative in their ways. My kids (thanks to the public schools) can cuss fluently in both Linux and Windows
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
D oyuo have it on plain text at the bottom? If it's HTML formatted (which I think might be the default, I dunno), you have to put markup in for that kind of stuff.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
As far as Microsoft is concerned, yes with some limitations:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=18&y=10&p1=3071
But driver supply for 3rd party hardware is starting to dry up.
Considering DOD and TS, they run fine on my old P4 under Windows 2000, same patch level. So it could be some unfixed driver issue or maybe a flaw in Windows 2000 that only shows up with a dual core processor.
But I refuse to use a Windows version that requires activation, so it is Windows 2000 or Linux. Linux might win that contest soon...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Remember when ppl would complain when asked to RTFM? now it's "I don't want to click the updater, or do a simple google search!" The biggest boon to Linux in the past 5 years is the support coming out of forums IMO.
"drink deeply the illusion of your safety"
If all you do is push around documents at work (word processing), write/answer email, and browse the web, then you can use anything you want as long as it's not a problem with your boss. However, many of us here on these boards do things more platform specific... whether it's admin a bunch of Linux servers or write/maintain Windows or OSX platform software. If you are tied to doing something more platform specific, it's just more work to install some-other-OS that you won't use except maybe as a host OS for some VM software that you'll use to run VMs of your platform. IT doesn't necessarily want to support you (or let you support yourself), either.
It would be "bad" for me to just decide to switch OSs at work for the fun of it and it would buy me practically nothing (in fact, it would probably result in a huge problem) even though we already use VMs for 100% of our 'real' work (I only use the host for word processing, email, and surfing the web). The 'badness' would come from our IT people having support issues and probably numerous issues with security assessments and such that the IT people are (ultimately) responsible for. It'd just be too much hassle and I'd be singled out as 'that ass who is trying to be self-cool by going against the grain'.
I actually just did the same thing about 4 weeks ago. I installed UBUNTU on my laptop just to see how much I could use it and avoid windows. My results: 1. One of my VPN connections doesn't work because a client does not exist for Linux (SonicWall) 2. Evolution Exchange Connector is absolutely horrible and unusable (it crashes constantly and locks up). Seems to me that this is the biggest obstacle to more general Linux use, I have to use Exchange and until I can effectively use it in Linux I cannot get away from Windows. (OWA in FireFox is just as bad, but maybe I could do the IE/Wine thing...) 3. I have not had the occasion to use Visio yet, but that will hurt when the time comes. 4. I had a very difficult time getting my wireless card working. However now that it works it is solid. But the things I needed to do to get it to work would be very intimidating for the average person. On the good side... I was very surprised at how easy it was to get things like RDP clients, plugins for FireFox( multimedia, FLash etc) and other things up and running. I like the overall feel of it it is very friendly and easy to use. I was able to find my way around quite easily. Thanks My 2c.
Can I write an article now, headlined: 'Microsoft free, ten years later' ? Seriously folks, it's been that long.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Linux has a great advantage over Windows for startups; it's Price. There's no Capital involved in licensing numerous machines to run Linux, whereas Windows costs £££s.
Unfortunately it also has a big downside, compatibility with everyone else running Windows. If and when we get open standards in place (that MS also supports), then you'll see takeup of Linux not only from startups, but also from businesses looking to reduce costs. It's also the reason that Microsoft will never introduce full standards compatibility until it's forced either by law or until OSS produces a real competitor (c.f. Firefox).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
In Windows, you better have your AV up to date as malware, trojans, and viruses is pretty much standard on the shady side of town.
Citation?
I mean, yeah, if we take a Linux box and a Windows box and give them to the kind of bozos who surf for porn and click on all their pop-ups, the Linux box is going to get way less shit on it... but normal people who have Windows machines who don't do crap like that and also don't run antivirus, etc. don't end up with that shit. Maybe ten years ago, but now, not so much.
(Although I have to admit: "Linux on the Desktop: Get your Web-Porn On" would be a pretty bad-ass slogan.)
for visio there are challengers out there Javascript only Flowchart.com flash based Gliffy.com
Infra-Recorder,however, is the awesome. I high recommend it to all my friends who are still using legacy operating systems like windows.
These threads are always fun to read.
/rant
If an app crashes on a Windows box, it must be Windows fault. If it crashes on a l/unix box, it must be the app's fault.
If an app that runs on Windows has a price tag attached, it must be Windows fault. If an app that runs on l/unix has a price tag attached, the developer needs thier head checked.
If an app comes comes preinstalled in Windows it's bloat (and Microsoft's fault, even though most of the adware/shareware/freeware has nothing to do with them). If an app comes preinstalled with l/unix, it's a feature.
Yes, Windows is not free and it's not open source. When viewed purely as an OS, it certainly isn't perfect. But please, for the love of God, how is it Windows' fault that *any* other application is not free, and most app/security problems because of poor 3rd party coding? Yet every time this discussion rears its head, people trot out a list of free alternatives to applications that have absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or Windows (as an operating system) as a reason for how much better thier lives are in Windows free world.
If anything, it's the community that should take the blame for the lack of free/open source software on Windows, not Microsoft.
*Disclaimer: I have nothing against either Windows or linux and use both. This rant courtesy of having had to work with some very rabid linux fanboys in the past. The kind that would regularly spend hours, or even days, fine tuning whatever shiny new app they'd discovered for thier linux box - and then turn around and use it as an excuse as to why thier actual work isn't done (and no, they were not sysadmins).
It's very easy to separate:
If you can interact with it, it's an application. If another computer can interact with it, it's an application.
The OS's purpose is to administrate the computer's ressources and manage the application's access to the ressources.
Just google ffs Daemon Tools
I've had a strange trip on finding what was 'there'. I went from Microsoft (dos to xp), to linux (ran the gauntlet over the years, redhat, fedora, gentoo, debain, ubuntu), and just last month found my sweet spot with apple.
I've actually explained OSx as a *nix that works as advertised. While ubuntu was almost flawless without messing with it, the key word there is almost. There were minor annoyances that were always floating to the surface. After switching to my mac, I've found that none of those are there. My sound works perfect, my wireless is perfect, my multiple monitor support is perfect, All my favorite apps exist on mac (including all my old linux apps), and mac has some great features ubuntu didn't have.
I'll still keep a linux workstation at home and keep up to date. Windows is gone from my house, I sold the last copy I had of it with my last computer. But going forward, I think I'm sticking with apple. Unless their DRM gets 100% unbearable.
I can't help but feel that sooner or later someone will come up with a real package manager for windows which makes installing quality open source software just a matter of a few clicks, as it is in Linux.
Once this happens, and the appropriate compatibility layers abound and are used widely, people on Windows will begin to depend on open source apps regularly, simply because they are the ones which are easily available and do the job. Then, windows itself will be irrelevant; just another platform.
A two minute search on Google yields CDBurnerXP as a freeware CD burning tool and Daemon tools as an image mounting tool for Windows.
It might not be free as in speech, but it sure is free as in beer.
Both these programs are must-haves in any Windows PC. They're light, useful, and free.I have not found the process of setting up dual monitors using my nvidia cards easy for any linux distribution I've used. In ubuntu, I can't use the built-in video configuration to achieve this, I have to find, install, and use the nvidia control panel and play with it for a while (not too long) before I get my two screens.
Yeah that's what gets most people I think. Ubuntu ships some apps to change some settings, but they don't actually work. It's not that linux isn't ready for the desktop, but little things like this really annoy users. Lack of polish as they say. 90% of problems I see mentioned are all due to X configuration issues really, graphics drivers etc. Ironically, or unsurprisingly, this is also where windows has the most problems (mostly in the form of nvidia drivers crashing windows then).
Personally I'm of the opinion that if the ubuntu devs can't get the little configuration windows right, they should point people to the x.org config files and just document how to edit those. It might seem a little harder for the end user (you'll have to read a bit more documentation that's for sure) but at least it won't be a black art anymore. Assuming you can get it to work, and don't run into any of the myriad bugs with the new accelerated architecture.
The OP also mentions wireless. I've seen similar problems in feisty where the wireless drivers seem to get "confused" over what network they're in. Never did manage to track this down, but I'm of the opinion there's some timing bugs in the NetworkManager code, somewhere. Was hoping this got fixed in hardy actually.
I don't understand why this is a troll. It is a valid point. MS can not do what apple and linux does because we would indeed outcry monopoly.
I'd also like to add that there are a few different conventions in Linux that might require that you train your users. However, this is consistant with just about any new operating system or software tool. But again... it's another cost businesses have to deal with.
You're cancelling out your own argument. For your point to be valid you need to be comparing the operating systems out of the box, not with one of the stripped down.
I suspect the oncoming economic shitstorm may finally get corporations to really tighten their belts
You are wise to see this, but I do not think the full magnitude
of what is coming has struck home even with you unless you
follow the Peak Oil movement and Putin's statements since
the attempt on his life.
The World is poised on the edge of a paradigm shift.
World wide imports of oil dropped for the first time in
modern history by 100 million barrels in 2007, the decline
began in 2005.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
This is not due to lack of usage, but lack of supply.
Go to google video and watch the 80+ min. copy of Crude Awakening
and you will see most of what is coming.
The part about Putin being upset takes a little imagination:
http://politicalinquirer.com/2008/03/15/putin-assassination-attempt-foiled/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-55
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
Keep in mind the kh-55 is an older design and rumor has it
that it was modified with stealth tech from the downed F117
during the war in Serbia.
I found some caves in a low fallout zone west of the major
metro area, and when it looks like it is all going to go
haywire I am going camping...near that area.
Good Luck !
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Because he has absolutely no idea what he is doing. I'm sure his wireless card drops his connections because he lives in an apartment building with 30 routers all within 20 feet, each fighting for the same 11 channels.
Even though the rest of your answer was dead-on, I take issue with the part that I quoted.In my case I also have my media center / headless server connected via wireless because my dsl modem is next to my door (that's where the POTS line is), and I don't want to run cables on the ground/walls/under doors all over my house when it's much easier to just use wireless.
In any case, in my appartment building I have almost no wireless interference from other routers and I've always been able to use my internet connection to it's limits without any loss of signal quality.
So what I mean is, for some people it makes a lot of sense to use wireless, even if it is for a computer that never moves.
That, or I also "have no idea what I'm doing".
I prefer InfraRecorder, as it has a IMNSHO a superior interface, and is actually open source. I always wondered why CDBurnerXP is more popular, or why so many people haven't heard of Infrarecorder.
http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=572739&cid=23649597
The problem is that nobody knows about it, and it doesn't come with Windows, and since it isn't iTunes or BonziBuddySpywareGetVideoPlayer2000, few will even be interested in it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And what, pray tell, is your audio software?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You don't need Safari to update OSX and you don't need Firefox to update Linux. You need IE to update Windows. Well, there was that handy AutoPatcher thing...and on that note, IE is also a key part of the copy protection system.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're kidding right?
I just got done replacing Windows on my in-laws machine with Ubuntu because I was sick to death of them getting a bogged down, clogged, full-of-crap install.
And they are computer idiots. And they had anti-virus but they're so conditioned by the crap they just click "go away" when it tells them it has to update.
And now, they are happy with their computer.
Anecdote, sure, but your "normal people" comment was nonsense.
Years ago, when we said "operating system", we meant what today is called a "kernel". Of course, the OS came with enough utilities to organize and execute programs. And there were often extras thrown in.
Then software in general, and OS's in particular, became products that competed. This meant having lots of features became important to the vendors. "OS" came to mean as much, if not more, the stuff that goes around the kernel. When people ask "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" they aren't talking about the kernel, which has been excellent for many years. What they're really asking is, "Does any Linux distro add enough of the right features to make it usable for mass desktop usage?"
As you say, that's been true for years. In fact, you get more out of the box -- far more -- than you do in any proprietary system.
But, we've come full circle. We used to be focused on the hardware, because it was fabulously expensive. But now hardware is incredibly cheap, which recreates the problem: because it is cheap, there is lots of it, in great diversity. That means managing it is a big problem again.
Linux contributors do a positively amazing job at supporting the vast diversity of hardware out there that users might have, especially when you consider that the hardware vendors do this for Microsoft. But amazing is not the same as consistent enough for some newbie to grab a linux install CD and reliably experience open source bliss. Taking a kernel upgrade from your distro often means having something break, which might mean messing with BIOS tables, or building your own custom kernel, or doing without. The first two aren't that hard to do technically, but most users without support will do without and be unhappy.
As it stands, there is no reason an enterprise couldn't go Linux on the desktop, so long as it regulated the hardware in use so it has good Linux support, or that they efficiently deal with any problems that come up. Likewise, consumers who buy Linux preinstalled from somebody like Dell ought to be pretty happy with it. But the dominant user model, where somebody downloads the installers and puts it on their own machine, is not a good one for most users.
Until vendors of hardware make Linux a priority, there are only three ways that Linux works on a desktop: (1) A sophisticated Linux user doing self-support; (2) An IT department with a small number of standardized hardware configurations; (3) Linux preinstalls supported by the manufacturer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It is not about technology or OS vs apps: it is marketing and perception. In the companies where I work,no one in charge cares about linux. I don't know why,but none of the arguments offered by linux people are getting any traction.
If you keep doing the same thing, you get the same results.
This is not about technology, it is about psychology and advertising and stuff like that.
Hell, check out that daemon tools page you linked:
"Dear DAEMON Community,
it come to our attention that someone released a fake DT PRO version that is
contaminated with trojans and viruses, among the fact it is only a DT Lite and
not a PRO version!
We cant underscore enough how important it is that you always download from our
official sites and affiliates!
Nowadays, and with the popularity of DAEMON Tools, it is not unusual to see such
attempts to harm others (and, after all, also our reputation).
Rest assured: we double-check all uploads to our official sites and frequently check
them further to make sure you get no harmfull viruses/trojans!"
Frankly just googling and then downloading stuff that looks like it could help is bound to lead to a malware infested computer. One of the very clear things that good Linux distros have over Windows is the use of a centralized software repository.
So what measures are the open source community taking to ensure that nobody host bad versions of their software?
The Daemon tools problem was caused by people avoiding the trusted repository, in favor of some other site.
Dev 2: Great idea! Hey, in the next version lets combine the chat client and registry editor!
Dev 1: Oh, and the speech recognition with the disk defragger!
Dev 2: Now that's slick coding! Let's stay late and brainstorm again tomorrow!
Dev 1: Aw man, I can't stay late tomorrow, I have to go home and combine my car and my clothes dryer.
Dev 2: Oh that is gonna be so badass! I have to
stop by and see it on the weekend!
Also you might want to check the definition of modularity. A quick Google search turned up this: A quality of a system where it consists of various parts which separate cleanly and fit together well. High modularity costs some design time but pays back well through clarity, elegance, maintainability and flexibility. Separate cleanly. Can I separate the update functionality, or Active Desktop (ugh) from IE?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If your definition of "desktop-ready" is "works exactly like Windows", then no non-Windows OS will ever be there. There will always be Windows apps that will not work for Linux. This isn't a "shortcoming" of Linux, and it is not the job of developers to make Linux completely compatible with Windows applications.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
I too switched entirely from XP to Linux (Ubuntu) about a year ago, both at home and at work. The amount of work involved was quite substantial, but definitively worth it in my experience. I feel much more productive and in control than a year ago, plus I enjoy it much more.
What helped me in my transition is that over the years I had been using more and more open source and cross platform applications. Also a number of internal tools at work are in Java.
At work, it is full stream Microsoft with Exchange (but with IMAP available), DFS, MS Office, Remote Desktop, etc... Yet, I managed to integrate nicely my box into it. No virtualisation needed, I just have wine for a single engineering application (a vhdl simulator) which is available for Linux but with a different license, so I had to stick to the same network license. I do hardware design. Xilinx software is fully available under Linux. I just remote desktop to a windows compilation machine every few months to change my global password (used for server access, mail, etc..) as otherwise I don't notice when it expires under and then I am kicked out, and have to tell the IT dep that I forgot to change my password... (they still do not officially know that I run Linux). I am the only Linux desktop around and it does not cause any problem. I ask to pass me the occasional Visio diagram exported in pdf, and I do mine with Dia: not perfect but good enough. For the Exchange specific stuff (calendar, etc) I use the web interface.
Why did I swtich to Linux? Ethical reasons. I care about freedom and future. I don't want to live in a corporation-centric private world.
gp was referring to a "two minute google search" for cd burning/iso mounting software. You cannot determine a "trusted repository" in that time -you obviously trust the Daemon tools official site because you have more than "two minute google search" knowledge of cd burning/iso mounting software for windows.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Yes, System Management Services (SMS) is reasonably similar, but it's only deployed inside of corporate firewalls AFAIK. Some third-party alternatives are also available, but seem to be fading now that Microsoft has decided to own that category, too.
SMS isn't useful outside of a corporate environment, because Microsoft lacks the massive repository of free applications that make apt so danged useful (and fun - installing a new Ubuntu and selecting Applications -> Add / Remove gives me that "kid in a candy store" feeling every single time :-).
Ardour, and a bunch of softsynths. In particular, there is no Windows replacement for the softsynths, and nothing really like Ardour.
Windows will be ready for the desktop when (1) I can change my hardware to suit my needs without needing a new key, (2) I can install all of the applications I use on a daily basis from a single dialog, and keep using the system without performance issues while they install, (3) I can install a working OS on my thumbdrive along with my documents, and carry it with me when I travel to use on any PC, (4) the user interface achieves some semblance of consistency and usability, and (5) plugging in a new hardware device doesn't require that I load a special CD first.
Linux is ready - when will Windows be ready?
Is not having ActiveX a failure or is the fact that ActiveX is not a W3C standard the failure? Considering the security record for ActiveX, I'd suggest that ActiveX was the failure. However he should still have IE so he can test code on multiple platforms. It's just Microsoft's fault that they are the only browser manufacturer that isn't cross platform.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If you look at the APA writing style handbook, it'll tell you that conventional wisdom need not be cited.
While we are on the subject; Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel and ImgBurn will both work off a pendrive. Lovely.
I would like to get some help with proposing the solution that Madgreek has chosen for my (very large) organization. I'd rather not go into too many details about my workplace itself, but it suffices to say that it is a very large, bureaucratic place, and I am but a very small, very junior cog, working in a helpdesk. My organization is stuck in a Windows/M$ Office mold, but I think that going to Linux/Open Office would be very beneficial, especially with the recent budget crunch we've been having. I'm looking (and can't seem to find any information through google) for the savings, both in dollars and cents as well as in saved downtime due to malware in switching. Please don't send replies with the usual flamewar-type answers. I'm wanting to show how FOSS can provide equivalent or better functionality with minimal end-user impact, and just saying how great $flavor_of_Linux is won't help me convince the higher-ups that it'll work at least as well as their Windows boxes.
suse enterprise can do alot of that.
What exactly does he *do*? I'd like more details on what day to day tasks that he was doing with MS software specifically are replaced by open source solutions. Email? Web browsing? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Presentations? Sure, those all work.
I've recently moved full time to Ubuntu at home, but my needs there are light. I don't have time for PC gaming anymore, so I found myself mostly just browsing the web and using email (which is also via the web). I want to get into some more PHP/MySQL development, so I figured that environment would doubly work at that. And aside from some normal quirks in getting everything set up, it's been fine. The package update/management system is taking getting used to, as I'm finding I don't like being at the whims of others on when I can update my software, but I'm working on it.
But converting fully at work would be a different story. We're a software service provider, but it's built on Microsoft technology and tools (classic ASP, IIS, SQL Server, VB6 and .NET). I use OSS tools mostly where I can (Firefox, Notepad++ for text editing, OpenOffice), but I don't know how I'd necessarily do what I need to do without SQL Server Management Studio and the Visual Studio IDE (prefer 2008, but I still have to use VS6 at times). I'm sure I could probably find some OSS tools at least for the database management, although I don't know if they'd work as well. The IDE...I could probably even find some alternatives to them, but I doubt they'd work as well, either. A VM might work, but then what would I gain?
I guess my point is, sure, I think Linux can work in some corporate environments, where workers are basically [electronic] paper pushers, or who work [browse] on the Internet all day. But I think a lot of the replacement value comes with the availability of cross platform tools for what you do, independent of the OS platform at all.
I find http://cleansoftware.org/ to be great to give to those running Windows who want malware-free third-party applications.
FTWS: "CleanSoftware.org is a resource to help Windows users find the best free daily-use software, free from nasties: adware, spyware, harmful/intrusive components, and threats to privacy. This is a small collection of software we have used personally. Most of these titles have been our favourite software for years, and highly endorsed."
Wubi
http://www.mhall119.com
What you are calling gray areas seem to be easily placed in the OS category. You mention a bunch of "tools" (network stack, CLI, GUI, etc.) that are the embodiment of a computer system or help keep the system running, which to me is the definition of an OS.
This is Slashdot, we use '\n's.
http://www.mhall119.com
But 99% of the free (as in beer) software for Windows which provide all the necessary function (burning files, ISO, music tracks, VCD tracks, etc.) are all...
Which brings you back to the original claim of the poster :
- Windows XP can't burn ISO for him.
- He found what he needed for free and with freedom under Linux.
- And you basically brought that piece of Linux, still free and freedom, back to windows.
All this proves, once again, the superiority of opensource software.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The current method adopted by many Windows apps of each having their own 'update manager' process running in the tray is not a sustainable in any way.
As a recent full time linux convert, I'm still not sure I'm adjusted to this, nor like it. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 at home now, but still use Windows at home. It's become normal to expect whatever utilities to come with their own updaters, and I don't see why this should be a problem. In fact, I kind of prefer it. It doesn't have to run in the tray, but if it checks on the application startup, then great.
It annoys me to have to wait X amount of time for someone else to decide that I can update the software on my machine. This is fine for whatever updates for things I don't necessarily use a lot but are on my machine. But for things I use every day (Firefox, Filezilla, Pidgin off the top of my head), I don't like having to wait. Why am I still on Firefox 3b5 when I've been on RC1 on Windows for a few weeks now? Why is the Filezilla in the packages 2-3 versions behind the latest? On Windows when I'd run a program, it would check if there's updates, let me know, and I could go get them.
It's nice to have the management all in one place, but it breaks if it isn't kept current.
Usually you trust your distro's repositories, and maybe a small handful of others.
http://www.mhall119.com
hmmm...maybe I should switch back to ubuntu...is there something specific I need to apt-get to have this functionality? does this require some kind of usb attachment or something?
-- tonybaldwin.me
I've been making the transition away from Windows myself. I still use it, but slowly I'm migrating everything to Linux or OS X. Right now, all I use Windows for is playing games and surfing now and then. This is coupled with the fact that the Windows machine is quite old and if it ever died, I'd have to buy a new one because there are no more retail parts for it. Ebay is my only option for parts. A new machine also means Vista which I am trying to avoid. I've used Redhat since 2.0 and I'm impressed with the progress; however, I decided to use a Mac instead as my main now. In my opinion is is a bit more polished and I can do everything in it that I can do in Linux anyway. I have no hesitation with using Linux as my home server though.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I use fluxbox, because it doesn't devour cpu resources like KDE...but, you're right...KDE is vey user friendly and a mature environment...I used to use KDE...never liked gnome, xfce, icewm.... I like jwm....that's nice.
-- tonybaldwin.me
If they are running Windows, they are already taking the chance of running a malware infested computer. You don't have to download free/beer software for that. It just increases the chances even more.
If his argument were for desktop readiness, maybe he would have "canceled out his own argument", but he isn't arguing for that in this case. He's responding to a claim that Linux is slower, buggier, and less clean than Windows.
Furthermore, it's not as if he took the one and only standard distribution and took off all of the extras he could--he rolled his own, probably from scratch. The fact that you can't do that on Windows doesn't make it an unfair comparison, but rather shows one of the advantages inherent to F/OSS: you can redistribute/repackage it any way you like (provided that you follow the terms of the license).
What you are calling gray areas seem to be easily placed in the OS category. You mention a bunch of "tools" (network stack, CLI, GUI, etc.) that are the embodiment of a computer system or help keep the system running, which to me is the definition of an OS.
There are numerous examples of OSes that have no need for any of those things. Hence the reason they're a "gray area" (although they are definitely closer to the black (or white) end of the scale).
How about shared libraries ? 99% of Internet Explorer's (and its equivalents on other platforms) functionality is basically just a shared library.
Maybe it's ready if you are a professional blogger and your business consists of word processing and web browsing, but in an engineering environment there is no way I could ever switch to Linux:
* My company uses Solidworks and Cosmos for CAD and FEA. While Pro/Engineer is available for linux, it is not 100% compatable with Solidworks (imported files cannot be edited parametrically), and SolidWorks does not play well with Wine. Plus my company would never shell out for Pro/E when we already have a SolidWorks site licence. Don't even get me started on Cosmos.
* My company uses proprietary CRM and MRP products for documentation control, inventory tracking, customer conversations sheets, job orders, and purchase reqs. Both systems require hooks into Microsoft Office, so neither play well with Wine. I'm not going to convince the company to switch to open source alternatives, as the migration costs would be astronomical.
I've been using Ubuntu since January 1st of this year as my desktop.
Sadly, I'm still stuck with some old Windows development in Visual Basic, and I still have to support tons of Windows customers, so I have a VMWare copy of Windows available to me and open most of the time.
As an avowed Linux fanboy, I'm still not 100% sure it's ready for my customers - woops - I'm not sure my customers are ready for it.
I have customers walk in to my office, look at the dual (stacked) monitors laid out with four rotating (Compiz) desktops and ten different applications running without a crash or even slowdown, and they are fascinated... but scared of trying to learn something new.
I think that's the real key to getting Linux adopted in the normal world - showing the advantages to people, giving them a reason to use it, and teaching them how to use it.
It will be a long, painful process, but it can happen.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
You don't trust anything that's not open source? You have some serious trust issues.
Even if something is open source, it's not exactly hard to add snooping code either in the source or in the official download. Most code in an open source project is barely looked at anyway, people in old or popular projects often find quirks from several years ago that nobody noticed/knew about.
The OS is supposed to handle things like IO and memory, while the real functionality comes from userland applications (often third party) interacting with the OS.
Not quite. What you're talking about is the kernel. But in both the Windows and Unix worlds, the referring to the "operating system" has *always* meant the combination of kernel and the userland necessary to drive the system. On the Unix side, this means scripts, a shell, login, etc, etc. In Windows, you get a GUI, the Explorer shell, etc.
That said, I agree that there is another class of optional applications (eg, koffice/openoffice) that aren't traditionally implied when referring to the "operating system". And anyone who's installed a barebones Unix system (eg, Solaris) understands how equally useless that is, as compared to a barebones Windows install.
Dunno about KDE, but GNOME runs just fine without either Epiphany or Firefox. Except, of course, for the whole "not being able to access the web" and all that, but I guess you could install Opera if you wanted to prove your point.
But, where's the Windows (or OSX) equivalent of "apt-get --purge remove firefox" for IE and Safari? keep in mind that when I say "remove" I mean "remove", not just "erase the pretty icon".
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
The reason I feel that OS X is not ready for big environments is that it's inflexible. You can only hack around so many "features". For instance, we had a hack that's worked for 10.4 to bind to a Novell eDir server on campus without using Novell's schema changes for Mac support. We do not control the Novell servers. However, this appears to be broken in Leopard (10.5).
Leopard 10.5.2 had a lot of LDAP breakage that appears to be fixed in 10.5.3 which was released last week. The update took care of some problems I had using Leopard with our Linux LDAP servers. Still, I'm going to wait and be sure 10.5.4 doesn't turn around and break them again before we allow Leopard in more than token quantities here.
Free Linux (like Ubuntu) has a huge downside for the corporate world: no centralized support (aka someone to push the blame to). My company refused to even acknowledge Linux until companies appeared and charged hundreds of dollars for it (in support contracts).
My main problem with adopting Linux at work is that I would have no network access (we use proprietary software that is licensed for Windows only). I could sit on one of the QA machines, but I can't get e-mail documents, etc from them (need to install software and those machines have VMs and get cleaned often).
For burning ISOs of DVD and CD, you can download the Windows 2003 Resource Kit which includes the command line tools dvdburn.exe and cdburn.exe. This also allows burning of dvd ISOs on Windows XP, which I /think/ cdburnerxp can't do.
I think people use this argument due to IE's poor reputation. IE has always sucked, but I think it's gotten better recently. I wouldn't know, because I mostly run Ubuntu and I havn't given the new IE a chance on XP. Oh, and it's just fun to bash Microsoft whereever we can
I don't find one OS to be more capable than the other on the desktop. You mention disc burning and ISO mounting, but neither is part of the operating system. Although there are nicer tools for image mounting available for Linux and Unix OS's.
.NET framework.
I'm actually the opposite of the author. I've completely dumped Microsoft products at home (save for the Xbox 360) in favor of Mac and Ubuntu. At work we're a Microsoft shop. I'd prefer open source, but quite honestly where Microsoft has us is with their development tools and the
computer idiots are computer idiots and they will have problems regardless of the setup.
now you get to support them when they jsut click "go away" on the updater service for their ubuntu install, and possible have something that could lead to a complete hack of the system.
its no different except you probably feel better about supporting the linux install because you prefer it.
That is actually your mistake in choice of repository or distribution. I'm not trying to make you feel dumb, but you should research what flavor of Linux you are installing and what version of software it will be running. Plus, if you install via windows, there is no guarantee it will tell you when an update is available and if the update is available there is no buffer to tell you that it is well tested. It is sad to say that too many people just accept "update" when it pops up on their screen. Not saying this doesn't happen with repositories, but at least the buffer exists that GOOD repo managers are taking the time to look into what packages they are pushing out.
Thanks for making my day!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yes, you are correct..
Unfortunately, what's preventing business's adopting Linux or OS X is the fact that the various 'solution providers' & VARs make more money reselling Microsoft products.But it is not just windows ubiquity that makes this possible. It is the fact that MS has invested billions of dollars making the end to end application chain and development tools work pretty seamlessly. I don't like MS at all and think they are very very bad actors, but you must admit, that VBA for all its security problems, allows you to bring together lots of analysis tools fairly simply. which in turn allows developers to build business tools without having to re-invent the wheel, fairly rapidly, with a pretty clean interface.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Better yet, compare the systems after a period of time of average use. I think we'd find the XP system starts degrading over time and normal use.
Now, that is what I'd call a killer app :)
Rethinking email
It doesn't work better for everyone. I need Photoshop (Sorry, I am not too bright to use GIMP), I need a couple of my RTS games that I play casually and I need my Windows Rhapsody client. I use wine for Photoshop, Caesar3 and I use Vmware + Windows 2000 for Rhapsody. I also need Windows to watch streaming Netflix and I'll be creating an XP image in the near future just for Netflix (Netflix supports only WinXP and higher).
Personally, I would've gone with more traditional staples, such as Excel support, but then again, I'm (probably) in a completely different professional field than you. But I fail to see how Caesar 3, Rhapsody, and Netflix are related to business desktops, at all.
The "tightly bundled" argument is basically complaining because a piece of shared code is being used exactly in the way shared code is supposed to be. I fail to see why it is a valid complaint.
I think it holds water if you view it as a problem with the integration of Explorer with the Windows kernel, as opposed to it being a dependancy for so many programs out there.Coming from my Gentoo background, I find it frustrating that so many programs have Firefox listed as a dependancy (and refuse to compile without it) when I prefer to use either Epiphany or Opera. But this issue is mitigated WRT Windows+Explorer because Firefox is not integrated with the Linux kernel.
Provide even one anecdotal example of clicking the updater in Ubuntu resulting in a "complete hack of the system" or just STFU.
My productivity is much better using Linux IMHO. M$ just seems to get in my way and there is always a frustration factor. I have given my windows installs the pet name of HAL. "I'm sorry Dave, I just can't do that."
I'm sure Linux isn't for everyone. But it has made me a much better hacker and my systems are heavily customized to do pretty much everything a computer is able to do. Home automation is one of my future projects.
Again, IMHO M$ is just a platform for individuals that have limited computer skills and don't mind being limited to the software designers limitations.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You still don't get updates automatically or integration possibilities with other applications.
The definition I follow is as follows: ... are for the user to manipulate the logical data on a storage device. Text editors can fall in this category also, so they can be part of the OS.
An operating system is composed of two major components -- a Kernel, and a collection of utility applications. The OS kernel is utilized by other software to provide coordinated access via a stable API to the underlying hardware resources. The bundled utility applications are provided to facilitate user interaction and manipulation of the underlying hardware and logical constructs that are contained within the hardware. So utilities such as ls, cp, mv,
The gray area is with utilities such as ftp, telnet, minicom, etc. They provide user access to logical data constructs that are accessed through the network hardware, so they can be reasonably considered OS components. But a web browser does essentially the same thing as ftp (allows access to the http protocol instead of ftp protocol), but many people consider a web browser to be an application and not an OS utility.
Now a level higher than OS is an Operating Environment. This is what I would classify most Linux distributions, along with Mac OSX -- they include the Kernel, Utilities, and an integrated set of applications that allow a user to do useful work (not just maintain the system's data structures).
I'm not smart enough to know. I was just lending a lesser-educated view to the discussion. But, to me, it seems that Shared LIbraries fall under file management, which falls squarely in the OS function category. I'm probably wrong though.
So will infaRecorder. It's available for the portableapps suite.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
There's a very simple yet elusive solution to the problem as you present it. We have to figure out a way for solution providers and VARs like myself to make as much or more money selling Linux and open source. It's not like we make a huge margin reselling software anyway, that's not really a huge factor.
It's a tough sell to a lot of businesses to explain that, yes, your software costs are going to be close to zero but you're going to have a huge up front investment in order to make the switch. That's assuming that apps are available for linux to replace their existing Windows apps.
The real reason businesses aren't adapting Linux and OS X is the classic chicken and egg - not many software developers want to write and support for a tiny market share, let alone one where they don't make any money on software licensing, and that market share won't grow unless more software developers write for and support it. Consider also that a lot of businesses got off of Mac in the late 80's and 90's for the exact same reason - the apps they needed to do business were PC/Windows apps. Those guys are not going to be easily sold on going back to Mac.
I think you missed his point. He wasn't saying it's not bloat, he was saying it probably has nothing to do with MS since, and I quote:
most of the adware/shareware/freeware has nothing to do with them
I mean, have you ever installed XP off a retail or corporate disc? There are virtually no apps installed. Most of the crap people complain about when they rant over free installs is actually installed by OEMs.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
I find the centralized software repos to be one of the big turn offs for Linux. Most of the things in the repositories are stuff the average user has no knowledge of and almost no way to gain knowledge about.
Someone should look at downloads.com for a model of how to present software to end users. It has ratings and reviews from the cnet editors and visitors, screenshots of the products, they test the binaries for malware and offer multiple download sites usually including the makers of the software.
If something like this existed for Linux, it would go a long way to getting more people on board.
Have you ever installed a windows version that didn't come from Dell/HP/Sony etc.. ? They are the ones that put the bloatware in your PC. An original Windows installation is remarkably clean.
My ubuntu installs all updated to RC1 of Firefox last week.
So... why are you still on Firefox 3b5?
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Do yourself a favor and pick up a Squeezebox. The Windows Rhapsody client was one of the last reasons why I would boot Windows. (Even though you can listen to Rhapsody.com in Linux with a Firefox plugin, it isn't as robust as the standalone client.)
The Squeezebox plays nice with Rhapsody, and the SqueezeCenter server (used for listening to your mp3/flacs/etc.) runs much better on Linux than Windows.
Your XP/Netflix partition could also be short-lived. Netflix is working on getting many more hardware partners for its streaming service.
So saying a clean, full install doesn't have bloat is kinda moot, because most people don't install that way. I agree though, that the XP full version is clean, when stripped
My other point is that other OSes don't have the bloatware problem at all, regardless if it is prebundled or installed from full. So just because SOME versions of XP are remarkably clean, Microsoft remains the only offender in distributing bloated OS garbage via their business model with hardware vendors like HP/Sony/Dell etc.
Just curious. Does suspend and hibernate work on that laptop once the proprietary graphics driver is installed? Perhaps I will try the latest ubuntu if it does.
And have you ever used said utility? The read performance is abysmal at best making it all but useless.
(Disclaimer so one can understand any biases I may or may not have on the issue: I dual-boot WinXP 64-bit & 64-bit lenny, usually sticking with lenny except when gaming)
I find it interesting that you believe computer idiocy to be the norm. While I agree that an average person is no where near the average /.er's level of computer literacy, my personal experience finds that most people aren't computer idiots. I know very few people who just click "go away" or who click on pop-ups. And those who do are either computer idiots or are set straight after being told once.
Also anecdotal, sure, but choosing one set of computer idiots does not represent the general population.=
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
One year free of Microsoft ? What's the big deal ? I've been Microsoft free for about 7 years or more now. I started using Linux with Redhat 5.0 (that was their buggiest release in their history btw AFAIK). I've also tried Debian, Slackware, Corel Linux (remember that one ?), Mandrake (when it was still Mandrake and not Mandriva), Progeny (a now defunct offshoot of Debian), Arch Linux, Suse, and Fedora. Right now I have Fedora 9 on my laptop computer and the computer lab in my apartment building runs 20 diskless terminals with an earlier version of Fedora and only 2 computers in the lab run Windows. I'm not in charge of the computer lab and I never use the window machines in the computer lab. Granted, alot of my Microsoft free years have also in the past been with FreeBSD and NetBSD even but right now I just use Fedora Linux and I don't miss Microsoft windows at all.
1) Microsoft sells licenses to HP/Sony/Dell to install Windows on their PCs
2) HP/Sony/Dell sign deals with 3rd parties to install trial/crap/adware/shortcuts to broadband providers to subsidize the computer cost, allowing them to have sub-$300 specials
3) HP/Sony/Dell may also sign a deal with Microsoft wherein the hardware manufacturer gets money to install Microsoft Office Trial on the machine.
4) HP/Sony/Dell sells trial/crap/adware/shortcut-laden machine to consumer
Setting (3) aside, what does Microsoft have to do with the bloat? Also, as a one-time owner of a MacBook, I remember some crap pre-installed that I didn't need or want, such as iWork trial, GarageBand, multiple shortcuts and references to
...it can read more document formats (and more variations on MS's own formats) thatn MS's software can. Open? Or open and display correctly?There is a difference. I've had a big problem with the latter.
Well, in the Ubuntu world, this is usually the case. Is something exists and is popular enough, then it's in there (one of the things I love about Ubuntu). However, sometimes you can still find those missing drivers by digging up the right website, downloading source, compiling a kernel module (while crossing fingers for compatibility) etc.
But for many, that's a little beyond their skills, and for most, it's a big pain in the ass. Still, there have been times when I've had *more* luck getting some lesser-known, older, or obscure piece of hardware working in 'nix than windows, and sometimes they work better (yes, I'm looking at you and your shitty windows drivers, Creative).
I guess the real reason that things "just work" in 'nix is because somebody else has also dealt with the headaches gone to the trouble of making them do so, but more and more contributors to this effort seem to be appearing, which means that drivers are much more forthcoming than they used to be.
This story is yet another anecdote, but I notice that the theme is "I can almost do entirely without Microsoft." Let me provide another perspective. I've been using FreeBSD on my office desktop (as well as the machine for my departmental server) for, oh, about eight years now (it's been so long I'm not quite sure). My computer is, and has long been, entirely Microsoft-free. I use KDE for a desktop, OpenOffice, various browsers (mostly Firefox and Opera). I am old-fashioned enough that I use emacs for most of what I do (even for reports and correspondence, using LaTeX), but I have access to Lyx, OpenOffice, etc., if I wish.
This is not a home computer. Until a year ago, I was head of an academic department in a large university (I was in that position for 13 years). Doing that job required dealing with the usual ocean of Excel spreadsheets, Word files, etc., from administrators mostly living in a heavily Microsofted world. Where possible, I communicated to others with PDFs and plain-text email; where necessary, I sent them .doc or .xls files produced by OpenOffice. This was for a department of about 25 faculty, with four staff, 30-odd graduate students, uncountably many undergraduates, and a total of around 70 computers (mixed environment--*nix, Windows, Macs).
Now, FreeBSD is not likely to be anyone's first choice for a single-user office desktop, and I'm not proselytizing for it (though I've become perversely attached to it: my computing history goes back to 1968, when I had a job writing programs in 1401 Autocoder, if that tells you anything). I actually use Ubuntu on my (equally Microsoft-free) laptop. My point is instead that it's perfectly possible to meet the needs of a real office job using nothing but free software, and indeed has been possible for years. And even using FreeBSD.
The main problem isn't "works exactly like Windows", it's a double standard a great many people have. Windows is judged far less harshly than Linux by many non-techies, and this extends to open source apps as well.
For example, I had one user almost scream at me that Thunderbird wasn't showing linked images in his email messages and to remove Thunderbird and put him back on OE. He couldn't stand that behavior. When I pointed that he didn't have Thunderbird and was using OE, then he told me, "Never mind, it's OK."!
Sadly, this is not an isolated case. A hardware vendor I know tried putting on OpenOffice.org (OOo) on new computers for free when the customer didn't buy MS Office. He quit due to people's double standards. They expect him to support OOo for free and called constantly, but these same people are willing to pay for MS Office support when, on occasion, they do call for support.
I'm writing on my MacBook Air. I really don't think that OS X is all that it's cracked up to be, although it will stay on this laptop. Yes, it does what it says it will, but I don't think that it's nearly as flexible as your average Linux distro. For example, using pgp/gpg with mail is *not* trivial. And I use Firefox over Safari for the add-ons like noscript. The main thing, for me, that linux really has over anything else is it's use of centralized software repositories, and the ease-of-use of several of the clients built around those repositories.
Searching for mac software that does what I want, is good quality software, and for a reasonable price has cost me many hours of searching, before either buying something overpriced, buying something cheap that doesn't work, or using an open source app that I'm used to on Linux. I don't have to do this when I'm on my opensuse box.
Like I said, OS X is good enough to keep it's place on my MBA, but only because I don't really want to install too much on it. I really only want the apps that I know that I need, in hopes of not getting distracted playing with the latest and greatest.
I think it holds water if you view it as a problem with the integration of Explorer with the Windows kernel, as opposed to it being a dependancy for so many programs out there.
There is no "integration of Explorer with the Windows kernel". Explorer is a user space application, just like its equivalents on other OSes. Always has been.
Perfect and almost perfect are relative to each user. OSX is far from perfect for me because of the following:
1) Games...there really aren't any. I'm a gamer and I need my games.
2) Hotkeys. This shit drives me nuts and it's not easy to fix. Jobs thinks he knows best so all those hotkey like cut and paste he had to change. On Win and Linux they function pretty much the same as each other.
3) Interface kinda sux. Sorry but I just don't like the way the whole open close, min-max window deal works. Unfortunately, Jobs once again knows best and doesn't let you change it.
4) No backspace key on Macs. Once again, Jobs thinks he knows best. Sure, I know about holding shift-delete (I actually own a MacBook) but I don't want to hold down another key just to fucking backspace!
So the Mac is FAR from perfect for me. It's got some cool stuff to be sure but I doubt it will ever be great for me as long as Jobs' ego is too interested in telling me what's best for me. Consequently, Linux is a much better fit from my perspective. Your mileage may vary.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Anecdote, sure, but your "normal people" comment was nonsense.
If you assume idiocy is normal, sure. One of my in-laws has the same problem -- it's because he clicks on everything stupid in sight. Thankfully, he now owns a Mac and when he manages to somehow get viruses even on that, it's the Apple store's problem and not mine.
However, I also know lots of very non-technical people with Windows machines (and Macs, for that matter) that don't ever get virii.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
> The Kodak was an easy one. The instructions for Windows entailed installing the software FIRST (bad things can happen if you plug it in first apparently) and then doing stuff with the camera.
Yeah, if you plug in the camera first, Windows will just use the camera wizard to extract pictures for you and you won't install all of the manufacturer's crapware in the process.
There is a social side of this issue.
First, for IT managers it's always safer to go with Microsoft. If anything goes wrong and it's a Microsoft product, the CEO is much less likely to raise hell, after all, "it's Microsoft" they have come to admire and envy as a legendary business.
Secondly, for employees - from accounting to distribution - it is a major self-interest to work with "industry standard" software, it looks way better on your resume.
Thirdly, for a mid-large company it's an image issue that they want to project to their business partners by sending them "standard" Office documents. There is a perception that there is less chance for incompatibilities and it prevents "what, they can't afford Microsoft?" rumors.
Probably a lot quicker than for a similar closed-source app. Besides the openssl story you linked to isn't about someone inserting malware into an open source project, it's about a security hole someone accidentally introduced. So yes, it's bad that there was a hole in the first place, but no complex software is without security issues, and at least it can be quickly pushed down to users.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Some of my favorite applications were written for Windows XP and run fine under Vista SP1, but don't now and probably never will run under Linux. The spectrum extends from the infradig Konfabulator (Yahoo! Widgets) to middle-of-the-road stuff like SmartGo and Many Faces of Go to the ultracool iTunes and DVD movie players. OOo, of course, is the exception, not the rule. Ubuntu (and everyone else in LinuxLand, I presume) offers about a billion small projects, competing with a score of other distros trying to making sense of it all for average users. Hopefully, considering Ubuntu's near-readiness for prime time (hell, it even recognized my Dell trackpad and my USB wireless mouse by Microsoft, straight out of the box), consumers (as opposed to yoozers) will clarify this situation by sheer Darwinian frenzy in the near future.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
You have some testing repo turned on? My ubuntu is uptodate (with the default repos) and I'm still on 3b5.
But why don't *they* let me install the only things I want during setup, hmm?
You can. At the very least you can disable the install of GarageBand, not sure about iChat though.
I write bullshit
In my experience, it's often the people at the top that I wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch.
Old joke. But my experience suggests that the people at the top don't want their computer broken and don't have time to mess around waiting for IT to fix. So they seldom screw with it that bad when it's working.Those in the middle, however, who have enough power over their own PC to be dangerous, enough time to wait for IT to fix it but not enough knowledge to avoid breaking it are the ones you really want to look out for.
You DO get to install only the things you want to install by selecting custom install instead of easy install (or whatever it is called). If you are trying to imply that OSX is anywhere near the same galaxy as the Windows bloatware experience, then you are just crazy.
Would we? I don't know about you, but my Linux distro came with several alternatives (KDE and Gnome, Firefox^W Iceweasel and Epiphany, etc) available, making it easy to install and uninstall all of them, and not all of them are products of the distro's devs. If MS did this for Windows, how could you possibly cry monopoly?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
I know what you are saying. Lucky for me, all your reasons are actually reasons I like the mac.
I gave up gaming on computers, it simply is not worth it. I use my xbox 360 and wii for that now and I'm having a much better experience. No drm that requires me to shut down tools just to play a game, no constant upgrade mill to get the latest graphics, etc. All my favorite windows games run on mac anyways (either via wine/cider or native)
I actually like the hotkeys much better on mac. Sure it really pissed me off at first, but the fact that they are so constant across programs rules (command-, for example). Sure it would be nice to be able to remap them, but that is not an issue to me at this point my hands do what they are supose to do on each OS.
I love the interface, i'm finding that I no longer work with apps fullscreen on linux and windows now. I'm more productive now as well (I think it is because i'm not constantly switching windows to read documentation and such. I also love that I can close the app but leave it running (like itunes). A simple command-w and the app is gone but still running, very nice if I know I'm going to use it again but don't want to clutter up the dock and very nice for programs that I use headless (like iTunes). But as you said, it's a personal thing, not a technical one.
As for backspace, I know exactly what you are saying, which is why I use a external keyboard (the apple one) when I'm at home. Although I think you have it backwards, delete is backspace and function-delete is what we think of as actual delete. But on my fullsize keyboard at home, you have both keys (just named delete and a funny icon and delete) in the places you would expect them as a touch typer and they work exactly like every other OS (only backspace says delete on it). Not an issue to me, but I can see how it throws people off.
My real pet peeve is the home/end keys. I am very programed to use home/end as a programer. They do not function as expected. They function more like page up/page down. It has been hard for me to replace this with command-arrow right/left. There is a way for me to change this, but I have decided to learn to deal with it.
As for software, yea repo would be nice (although for most open source software there is macports and the like). However I find that with sites like http://www.macupdate.com/ http://osx.iusethis.com/ and ttp://www.versiontracker.com I have no problem finding all the software I need.
I think it is just like migrating from windows to linux, you have to give up your thoughts on how things are done and learn the (insert os here) way.
Did you even read into that ruling at all? Microsoft got fined for using their monopoly position to push their non-OS product with their OS. Now, tell me how this is done in Linux when, for example, my distro came with multiple window managers, GUI shells, web browsers, etc, most of which weren't even written by the distro devs?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
but I have a dell logo pasted over the apple, because I cannot stand the average apple user and so I don't want to advertise the apple logo in case some idiot apple user comes up and starts raving about how cool steve jobs is and isn't the apple iphone the greatest gadget in the world etc etc. I can't wait until linux comes up to speed so I can ditch this laptop that seems to attract drooling idiots every time I use it in public without the fake dell logo.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
At least Mac OS X has OmniGraffle, which apart from the silly name is a viable alternative for Visio, i have been told.
What I was getting at is, regardless of WHO is at fault for bloatware, it ONLY exists to (in practical terms) on the Windows platform. It might not be Windows fault, but the average user doesn't care. Just like the glut of adware/spyware/viruses on Windows might not always be windows fault, it just doesn't exist on other platforms, for WHATEVER reason.
All of that functionality except the virus testing is available on freshmeat.net, which points you to home pages - which hopefully have links to official download sites.
Of course, download.com sounds a lot nicer than freshmeat.net. But whatever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It looks like the parent has the pre-release repo enabled. I had it disabled and I am still on firefox 3 beta 5. when I enabled it there was a bunch of updates including firefox 3 rc1.
DOS is a bad copy of Unix. (Witness: pipes, redirection, ports as files, all of which suck horribly compared to the real thing and generally use temp files, esp. on DOS) Microsoft was a member of the Motif WG and helped define the look of Unix. Linux is a copy of Unix, too. Microsoft had Xenix before they had anything like modern incarnations of Windows NT. Moral of the story? If anything, Linux is more "Legacy" than Windows NT is today. Of course, it sucks much less, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
OK, I'll feed the troll.
Citation?
Here is a refrence to 500,000 Windows victims in one shot.
http://www.astreet.com/article.php?sid=353
Care to take a guess on how this software got installed on that many PC's?
The truth shall set you free!
Okay, time for me to eat some downmods again.
Linux may be headed in the right direction. I actually believe microkernels really ARE the future, not because they offer better performance (in most cases they don't) but because they offer additional stability and protection. But that's a debate for the ages.
I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't quite have it, though. They took NeXTStep, an OS which was fairly snappy on a Turbo Slab (We're talking a Motorola MC68040@25MHz here... basically a pissed-off Quadra or something) and turned it into OS X, which is unresponsive on a Dual G5. I know, because I've used both personally.
I also had the opportunity to sit at Linux, XP, and OSX at the same time for over a year. XP ran on a P4 2.4 or so, Linux on this Compaq nw9440 (Core Duo, Quadro FX1500) and OSX on the aforementioned Dual G5. Linux displayed the most visual glitchiness (especially when doing the eye-candy thing), XP was most responsive, and OSX crashed or hung the most. I'm talking locking up to the point where I can't use force quit. Sometimes I couldn't even ssh in... which the average user can't do anyway.
XP is snappy on contemporary hardware. It boots quickly and provides a usable system quickly, at least on systems with at least 1GB RAM. This is a reasonable minimum for the modern Linux desktop, as well.
Now, I agree with you that Vista is a gigantic step backwards in many respects; obviously Microsoft has crufted up their operating system beyond all recognition. But then, what does OSX represent? We're talking about going from a primitive little system with only 2d acceleration (and not much of it) to these gigantic PCI-bus monstrosities (compared to any NeXT hardware, anyway) with 3d accelerators, yet the system is less responsive? Something just doesn't wash here.
I've more or less stuck with Linux over the years, with some long stretches of using XP. I don't believe in dual-booting (over the years I've discovered that it's a major PITA) so Linux was relegated to my servers at that time - I mean, I'm not crazy. But honestly, I'd still rather run XP than OSX, and I've run every minor (10.n) version since 10.1 at some point and on something. I've run XP since it came out and I feel it's Microsoft's finest effort - you can turn off the additional cruft not included with 2k if you don't want to use it, and XP runs more software from more Microsoft operating systems than any other flavor of Windows. It supports fairly expansive systems (though nothing like Linux) and uses a share of the computing resources with which I am comfortable.
Not, of course, as comfortable as I am with Ubuntu.
There are other reasons to support Linux over Apple; simple freedom of choice (it's Apple's way, or get the heck out of here, but Linux means different things to different people) and the Free nature of the software are both worthy arguments to me. And I understand if you despise Microsoft, but honestly I think a world in which Apple was in charge of my desktop would be even more restrictive than the one in which Microsoft is currently predominant. And I will of course reiterate that I'm not down to spend a hundred bucks for a new point release every year. Apple makes major API additions in each point release, and after just one or two of them, nothing is being updated for your version of OSX any more, so you are forced to upgrade whether your version is still under security maintenance or not... at least, if you want to do more than run iLife. I don't have this problem. I can install DSL, turn it into Debian, then turn it into Ubuntu if I want. If I took leave of my senses I could install Fedora from that install, if it amused me. No lock-in, no problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not everyone is an idiot. I worked for a company which was pretty much all on SunOS (4.1.3_u1 and 4.1.4 at the time, but we were just putting in some 5.5 or something) and I got them to add in some Linux systems as glorified X terminals. With a 19" viewsonic they provided a much cheaper way for an engineer to run magic (or, from one of the SS20s or the Ultra 1 or 2, whatever else) on a nice monitor than even buying a used SS5 (at the time) and with more processor power and faster ethernet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's another consideration, but not just from the user-side of the keyboard. In a network staffed with MCSAs, MCSEs and MCTS-certified support folks, it's going to be as hard as pulling teeth (and almost as painful) to re-train your IT support team who have become comfortable in a Windows-only shop. My organization experienced this with an ill-advised migration off of Novell NetWare 4.11/5.1 to Windows NT 4 way back in the 20th Century (most of us were CNA/CNE certified and had extensive Windows desktop experience, but nothing at all from the server side). Our programs had spent thousands of dollars on our Novell training, and then spent even more thousands (perhaps $millions) on re-training all of us to be Microsoft Server Administrators/Systems Engineers and licensing all the new Windows NT servers, then upgrading to Win2K when that came along, and then Win2K3 a few years later. We haven't yet upgraded to Windows Server 2008, and are now in the process of virtualizing a portion of our server farm with VMWare as a cost-saving measure (long overdue, in my opinion).
If management could be convinced that it's worth the money to convert to Open Source in the server room, they might be better able to understand a migration to Open Source on the desktop, but right now, our major focus is on persuading them to take a baby step and consider using thin clients on the desktop instead of full tower Intel PC boxes as a way of cutting down our hardware and support costs. This promises a much greater financial savings than the server virtualization proposal, but both of them together would be a fantastic way to stretch our limited budget. You'd think the bean counters would be forcing this on us, but they only seem to want to renew all of our Microsoft Premier Support contracts every time they expire, and upper management is apparently committed to remaining an All-Microsoft All The Time partner, regardless of the costs.
So where are those in the default Windows install?
Maybe not
I'm completely sure that helps. Also: Is hers running out of the box with whatever crap your computer sales company put on the machine? Windows is atrocious unless you do a clean install yourself.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I guess it depends on who is in your personal circle of "most people". :)
In my experience, most folks are too old to have grown up with them, and think of them like the TV - it should "just work" for a few years without having to worry about anything.
And that's what Ubuntu has given me, so far.
The most irritation thing about Windows isn't that it doesn't come with lots of software pre-installed.
Actually, it would be quite irritating if it did since I want to select my software for myself so that I don't have useless crap installed, like Moviemaker or Outlook Express.
The irritating part is that in Windows, I have to manually track down all the software I want on tens or hundreds of webpages around the world, download them, in some cases unpack them, and then install them. One by one. Every time. And then keep them updated manually, one by one, all the time.
They could add a utility that let people download and install freeware without having to look for it, download it and install it manually and that would automatically update all of them.
No one would be crying monopoly.
Unless they only add their own software, which also would make it rather useless since MS have a rather limited freeware-portfolio. And some of their freeware is actually adware, like MSN Messenger.
(One would think that the wealthiest software-company in the world could afford to not have their software and search-engines rendered almost unusable by ads)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
MS also has a free iso mounting tool that worked just fine when I needed to make a live linux usb.
link
open source modern art: laser taggi
Well lets look at it from what has happened in the past.
Microsoft supplies IE, but you are free to easily go get any other browser you want. The internet cries out against microsoft.
Apple supplies safari, no outcry
Ubuntu gives us firefox, no outcry
Now lets look at media player same thing.
Microsoft has never stopped anyone from using the software of their choice, but by shipping software with their OS, people cry monopoly. Unless you are suggesting Microsoft ship 3 or 4 different versions of each type of software they want to include, that would just be silly.
Try "ddd".
Anyway, I generally DON'T like debuggers. Except for a very limited purpose. I don't code in an "explorative" fashion.
If using "print" statements can't "debug" your program effectively, perhaps it is time to re-examine the design? Or, are you trying cowboy-coding?
The limited purpose(s) of debuggers:
1 - quickly gaining deep understanding of an algorithm. Here ddd (and possibly others) can help -- will display data structures graphically.
2 - quickly gaining limited understanding of someone elses code (for quick changes). Sort of a "dynamic grep" facility. For this, I like breakpoints that allow me to insert program modifications in place. See point 3; I generally use DTrace for this activity these days. Especially if I don't have source code.
3 - capturing complex interactions (if a tool like "DTrace" isn't available).
But for your own code?
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
The difference between a security bug and malware is minimal. We can discern intent here by the fact that the Debian packager contacted someone upstream regarding the patch, but had they not, would things have been any different?
Using this as an argument that ubuntu is difficult is stretching it a bit. I just changed to a dual DVI video card (asus w/ATI chip set) for a windows xp box at work (controlling a TEM) and I had to go through the exact same process. We had to wait about 10 minutes for the driver software to copy over and then it was a few reboots before we got both monitors going correctly. Installation of the card correlated very strongly with the complete failure of a 19" LCD after a couple of days. The process wasn't straightforward. "Special" configurations and driver changes are never easy, even though they should be.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I have nothing to say about Apple, only Linux, don't need to bring them into this.
But as far as Linux goes, you can't point to a single example of a distribution using their position to push their own browser (or media player) onto you. You won't find any distribution that attempts to lock-in the user by pushing a proprietary browser with non-standard behavior (and don't even get me started on ActiveX) that is only usable on the one platform. Sure, Ubuntu's installing Firefox by default, but it's not using that installation maliciously at all.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Malware is software deliberately designed to do something malicious, a security bug is just that - a mistake that someone's made that inadvertently opens a security hole.
What 'intent' can you discern from the actions of the Debian packagers? That they're being responsible by checking their changes with the upstream project? They did their jobs correctly so the issue got found sooner than it would have otherwise.
This discussion was about people deliberately inserting malware into open-source projects and/or software repositories, which the Debian-OpenSSL bug clearly is not an example of.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
centralized repositories are good but limitating when installing an app that is not in the repositories is a pain in the arse.
Swithed back from linux to windows due to driver issues, my next box will be linux only
That, and she's not careful about downloading suspicious "freeware" and what not, which, of course, IMHO, is just one more reason that Windows sucks. Much of what is available for "free" is likely to cause problems.
-- tonybaldwin.me
Yes I have tried them. Although I don't disagree that some bootleg Windows software has malware embedded in it I will disagree with your implication that it is prevalent. I don't install everything under the sun but of the nice stuff I've downloaded and installed I've never run into something that also gave me a trojan or worm. I've seen stuff in newsgroups where someone replies to the thread stating the attachment had a trojan but I guess I got lucky that the stuff I pick doesn't have any malware. I don't run AV either. I'm probably playing Russian roulette but my point is that not every bootleg is intended to be a pathway for malware to get on your machine. Of the 10s of DVDs of software I have, none of the apps have malware embedded in them.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
A true "port" would be impossible for the Linux developers, because in order for you to call such software a "port", they would require the original source code to port from. If anything, it's a reverse-engineered knock-off that happens to be open source, and unless the software is heavily patented (which many decry as evil), or the developers actually used the original source without permission, your rant would be valid. The implication you're making with "get away with it" is that developers can't be permitted to see something cool that Microsoft or Apple makes and then try to build something similar or better on Linux. With an attitude like that, one may wonder how we got past using stone tools.
Put another way, Microsoft is limited in how much they can use their huge share of the desktop PC market to their advantage; e.g., the EU looks askance at anything that would prevent competing software from having a fair shot of selling or being used. Desktop Linux, having no such dominance of market share, does not have the limitations placed on a convicted abuser of a monopoly.
I would devote the time taken in writing rants to taking a deep breath and thinking about how effectively I can convince the poster, whom I'm convinced is wrong. If the best you can do is taunt, you would best stay clear of debates.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
A while ago I discovered InfraRecorder thanks to PortableApps.com. It's free as in beer speech.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
http://fluxbuntu.org/
Is that out of the box enough for you?
You're right -- an apt frontend that had that functionality would be really cool.
One of my main problems with just installing stuff from various sources is having 100 different pieces of software checking for updates in different ways, that's just ridiculous.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Thanks for the wall of text :)
I very, very rarely come across something that I can't get from the official debian repositories. The non-free repos take care of most of the codec issues.
You're right that these apps are compiled by someone else. The nice thing with repositories is that if something is found to be malware it will be automatically updated for me on my next apt-get update/upgrade. I don't need to go to the particular vendor's site and download an update.
Also there is some degree of accountability and ease of reporting-- if the Debian repos were found to be poisoned with some amount of malware I'd be aware of it from being on a single mailing list (and probably this would be fixed/removed with a daily update before I'd even know about it). On the other hand, if one of my shareware apps on my windows box turns out to be malware I may or may not hear about it. I probably only would if either it were huge news or I was signed up to a lot of windows security lists and actually read every single report, which frankly I don't have time for.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Jobs thinks he knows best so all those hotkey like cut and paste he had to change. On Win and Linux they function pretty much the same as each other.
Funny. I just spent a few hours figuring out how to get KDE to use Mac-like shortcuts, because the Apple key is so much more ergonomic than the control key. Really -- no stretching your pinky, no lifting your hands. Your thumb is almost touching the Apple key anyway.
Either way, you're wrong. Apple's Lisa used the "alt-v" "alt-c" "alt-p" combos before Windows even existed.
Sorry but I just don't like the way the whole open close, min-max window deal works. Unfortunately, Jobs once again knows best and doesn't let you change it.
Why would you want to waste screen space? The min-max window deal works very simply, and it works well. It makes the window as big as it needs to be to not have any scroll bars. Any bigger is a waste of space.
4) No backspace key on Macs. Once again, Jobs thinks he knows best. Sure, I know about holding shift-delete (I actually own a MacBook) but I don't want to hold down another key just to fucking backspace!
I'm not sure what to make of this complaint. The Apple Pro keyboard I use at the office (on a Linux machine) only has a delete key in two spots -- the backspace spot and where the "regular" delete key goes. But the "backspace" delete works as a backspace key, since it is a 104 key keyboard anyway. I have a wireless keyboard at home, and delete works as backspace there too. The only time I have any issue is with the wireless keyboard (which is an 80-something key keyboard) while using Vim remotely. On the other hand, this issue definitely drives me up a wall when I run into it.
I thought Microsoft products had always been free...
thanks, but the program isn't FOSS... on the download page only the binaries are available. but thanks anyays. and yes i'm a linux convert thanks to the awesomeness of fedora, just can't use it on my laptop for the shit storm of lack of drivers
Microsoft offers a iso burner for CDs and one for DVDs. It is in the Windows Server 2003 (Resource Kit|Support Tools) which can be downloaded from microsoft's website. the program names are ... inventively enough cdburn.exe dvdburn.exe
Yea! I remember the last time I used windows and I was all like... F*** the way these home and end keys work. I want them just like a Macintosh. "It pisses me off that "Gates "locks down "XP" so much and doesn't allow anywhere near as much customization" so I can't go get my jollies about flipping around the default keymaps~
One huge step towards freedom from Microsoft, One small step towards complete freedom.
Absolutely nothing has changed, I'm starting to wonder if there is even a Windows Vista team anymore.
Learn about Programming (C++ ASM) and Web Design and Development (PHP, CSS, Photoshop) from InfernoDevelopment.com
When will people finally realize that Linux is not only ready for the Corporate Desktop it blows away anything else!
Thin Clients, Centralized Servers, utilizing the power of X for running the apps you need that are windows based if necessary, (anyone who has set up Virtual Box integrating the client into the host, or seen Parallels knows what I am talking about), compiz fusion and 3d acceleration ready, custom ap delivering. Holy Crap Linux can be sweet!
For Example: http://davelargo.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html
I am not affiliated with the City of Largo, but this is a great example.
While I like Unix/Linux, I chose to switch to Mac OS X on Apple hardware because I was tired of endless driver problems. So what I am talking about here is one year Windows free using Apple instead. I am an independent developer and I don't have to interact with other people at work, just clients and their needs. At the point where I switched, I kept one Sony VAIO notebook on Windows XP in case a client forced me to deal with a Microsoft file format and I had no choice. I certainly wouldn't want to have to go buy a new machine just if that happened. Well the year has gone by and never once did a client ask me to use Windows. The machine has been out and running once to reprogram my Logitech remote control. I also did have to get it out once to download a file from the Microsoft TechNet site that would only download with IE, and I refuse to load IE on my Mac.
I have been programming in gnu c++ and python. I use the Wing-ide Pro on my Mac for python programming. If I have to deal with a .doc file, I use the Pages app that is part of iWork. The things I use my Mac for are pretty normal. I read my email, I browse the web. I watch podcasts using Miro (which I like a lot).
I have become comfortable with manipulating pictures and sound files on my Mac. When I want to play games, I jump on my console. Some third party programs I purchased and like are BBEdit, Transmit, Yojimbo, VMWare Fusion (for Unix/Linux/and Solaris). I have some pro audio hardware/software that is Macish. My Strat and Martin are Mac compatible, as is my Marshall stack. OK I am dropping some names that imply I have some style and like nice things.
During the last year I have spent no money on anti-virus software for my Mac. Life has been good day after day. No blue screens. No virus infestations. There are some program I want to use that work differently than programs on Windows, but that doesn't bother me. I have not had any trouble with email. I bought some things from Apple that I changed my mind about, and they gave me my money back. That is more than I can say for Microsoft.
All around I am a happy man for my choice. Am I still mad at Bill Gates? Yes, the business with Monsanto and the seed bank has me upset. But I don't buy Monsanto products so I don't regret any past decisions on that basis. I am sured that many people are not in a position to switch because of their work situations, and I am sorry for them. For anyone that does have the option, I recommend giving it a try. One last thing... I walked away from Microsoft in the face of Vista. As it turns out, I haven't missed anything important from that decision. Vista doesn't have anything going for it that competes with the Mac OS X to a measurable extent. If I could go to a meeting, it would be time for my "chip", and I could nod knowingly at others who understand what I know now. There is life after Microsoft.
Even though there are a few details that Linux is not ready for, hence why i STILL dual boot, it is good to see one more person say "SUCK IT, MICROSOFT! We CAN work without you."
"That's right...I said it."
I can't stand people that bitch about ratings on other comments.
/. geek bitch.
Stop being a whiny
You can in fact download and install the latest up-to-date versions of these applications. The reason for your problem is that Ubuntu cannot afford to update packages in its repositories until it has tested them and able to mark them as stable. Some applications can go through this process quickly, others which rely on a number of other shared libraries cannot be marked stable so easily, they have to test the updated libraries, and then test the other applications that rely on those libraries, and this can take a while.
On GNU/Linux, sharing libraries and re-use of code is usual, whereas on Windows it is common to have several different versions of a particular library for different applications to use. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, Namely stability vs speed of updating.
Debian - Ubuntu's parent distribution - is renowned for having ancient versions of its packages, due to its rigorous testing. On the other hand, it is also the most rock solid distribution available. Since it is mostly used on servers, (and I personally know a number of older hackers who would only run Debian), having up to date versions of applications was far less important than knowing that the machine would never crash or be hacked.
This is not to say that whatever the distro recommends is necessarily suited for everybody.. for example the latest standard install for a bittorrent client is an application called "transmission".. it works ok, but I didn't like it.. I prefer bittornado or deluge... how did I find deluge ?? I did a search for linux bittorrent clients in google when I didn't like the performance of transmission.. lots of people writing on what "they" thought was good.. I then searched in Synaptic (could have done it from the start) and there it was.. tried it, and liked it better.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I wasn't going to reply to this, since I can see where you're coming from (to misquote your sig - "Perception is greater than reality"), but just bear in mind:
Correlation Causation.
Windows as a target for bloat has nothing to do with it's technical merits and everything to do with its market share.
And since you're in a betting mood, I'm betting that if preinstalled linux distros become more common you'll start seeing the exact same bloat creep in. Not because it's linux, but because there's money involved. (And for bonus points, I'd be looing at preinstalled Firefox plugins as the beginning of the end for linux's bloat free honeymoon).
My primary desktop is running XP, my server runs fedora, and my thinkpad dual boots xp and fedora, with fedora the default. Regardless of whether or not Linux (moreso the OSS software that comes with the distro) is ready for desktop use or not, I think it's quite clear that it's not ready for the average user, and lets face it: the ones making the key decisions in an enterprise regarding application/services are not generally technically inclined. Furthermore, an enterprise requires support, and if they can't blame someone else for a product failing, they're not going to use it (at least where I work). Back to the point... The fact that I can hand an XP disc to my girlfriend who can in turn install the OS, drivers, and get everything working, gives some pretty decent props to MS. Every time I have set up a Linux distro for desktop use, I've always had to manually tweak my X config, find proper kernel mods for various peripherals, etc, and sometimes have to compile a custom kernel before everything works. There is no way my girlfriend could/would deal with all of that. The average user doesn't have the patience/willingness to get a fully FOSS desktop working, period. Like it or not, the ability of the general public is what's going to determine what is or is not "ready" for the desktop, and IMHO, right now, most Linux distros are far from friendly to the GP user.
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If an app comes comes preinstalled in Windows it's bloat (and Microsoft's fault, even though most of the adware/shareware/freeware has nothing to do with them). If an app comes preinstalled with l/unix, it's a feature.
Adware is a red herring. Vista is bloated, even without Dell's manhandling.
Who chooses what software is installed by default by Linux distributions? Directly or indirectly, the user.
"There" is where the software is. That would be Windows unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you feel).
The simple fact of the matter is there is infinately more software, both free and commercial, available for Windows than any other OS.
My point is that Linux and/or MacOSX distros are less likely to go with the crapware marketing model that Microsoft thrives on because those like-minded groups of people tend to have different cultures than Microsoft. Some people/organizations/corporations actually have other goals other than the bottom-line.
If Windows had a centralized software repository, they'd get sued by someone.