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Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04
Barence writes "PC Pro has performed a comprehensive test of Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 10.04. They've tested and scored the two operating systems on a number of criteria, including usability, bundled apps, performance, compatibility and business. The final result is much closer than you might expect. 'Ubuntu is clearly an operating system on the rise,' PC Pro concludes. 'If we repeat this feature in a year's time, will it have closed the gap? We wouldn't bet against it.'"
I remember hearing about this "Windows" thing back in the early part of this century and that it and another OS called "OS/2" were once competitors. I like antique software. It shows our humble beginnings.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
I have Windows 7 on our gaming boxes just to keep things simple...but I run Ubuntu on our laptops, for size and speed considerations. We also run Ubuntu on our HTPC.
They have their purposes...I couldn't imagine exclusively using only one or the other.
Living With a Nerd
My wife got a Win7 x64 laptop and none of the older Canon hardware (printers and scanners) supported this OS. After 2 hours of trying to make it work with all sorts of hacks posted in the bowels of the internet support forums, I tested the devices on my Ubuntu desktop. They worked fine.
The only app that she uses is Picasa and that works on Ubuntu. So I installed Ubuntu on her laptop and it works great. In the last 10 years, we've come full circle. If you want hardware support, you need Linux.
I just wish that I could have paid less for the laptop without the Windows tax.
Keep marketing linux as a "replacement" for windows and you guarantee to always fail. Market it for what it is - better for many types of situations, but definitely not a rsimple eplacement for windows any more than osx is.
Otherwise you're fighting the battle on the other side's home turf - and they're bigger and more entrenched.
And when people try ubuntu and realize that it is not necessarily a matter of it being a replacement os, they tar all linux distros with the same fail.
the games won't work on Unbuntu without trying to use Wine
Since when do SWF games such as FarmVille and Tetris Friends not work on Ubuntu?
In case of tl&dr, here's the summary:
Ubuntu wins by 3.04.
Go back to your Cheetos and WoW.
Trolling is a art,
Eh, more technically literate than the general population for sure.
Maybe that puts into perspective what you're up against.
> And your typical home user won't want it. Wrong. I have a very large family, most of whom are very typical home users, mostly computer illiterate - web, email, videos, and the occasional spreadsheet. My mother wants to surf the net, check her email, watch news video and view whatever pictures and video kids send her. She was always getting viruses on her Windows XP box, and after years of trying to keep her up and running I finally installed Firefox to get her used to the browser, and then a while later installed Ubuntu. I used a theme similar to XP, she loved it, and my workload dropped about 90%. She doesn't know Linux from Windows from a bag of frogs, and doesn't care as long as it works.
12:50 - press return.
Oh sorry, does the population not meet up to your exacting standards of technical literacy? Do you think everyone should be able to build a computer form components, write a simple program, debug a make files and so on? If so, then you are dreaming.
It wouldn't take me long in looking at your life to find something you are not literate at. Being a Linux geek type, I'd look at cooking first, my guess would be you can't even put together a simple meal, much less bake yourself a loaf of bread, something that would be required to be considered "literate" at food preparation. Now you shouldn't have to, unless you are a chef, however it is just to demonstrate that we aren't all good at everything. Even that would just be the basics, you are up to the "Run a make based installer," there. Far more knowledge and skill is required to truly be a culinary expert.
Most people are good at the areas they need to be, and the areas that interest them. The rest, they leave up to someone else.
Same shit with computers. Most people are not at all literate. They have never seen a command line and shouldn't have to. If you can use a command line to do installs, well guess what? You have a good deal more literacy than most of the population. You are no computer grand master but then that wasn't what was being talked about.
The reason computers have grown in use is not just because they are useful, but because they are getting easier. The more someone has to know to operate them, the less people that can do so. Yes, using a commandline requires more knowledge, especially since things there aren't guided. In the GUI you can have plenty of hints and directions in a commandline you need to know what to do already. Is it hard? Well not sometimes (other times it is) but even then, it is still memorizing the commands that must be executed.
You just have to accept that being technically literate means understanding the basics of something and being able to trouble shoot a bit on your own. It does not mean being able to do everything, it does not mean being an expert at things. Technically literate doesn't mean "Competent programmer," or "Expert technical support."
Unfortunately Valve say there are no plans for a Linux version of Steam.
But Steam runs in Wine and so do a surprising number of Steam games; I was playing Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 at the weekend in Ubuntu, for example.
And given the vast variation in Linux distros, you're probably better off releasing Windows games that are Wine-compatible than a Linux binary that won't run on Ubuntu 12.04 or Redhat 6.3.
Every commercial Linux app I've seen has a deb available for Ubuntu/debian these days or at the very least a loki-type installer. Installing is as simple as double clicking on the file and typing in your password. Less of a hassle than Windows IMHO.
It's also nice that the package manager in Linux keeps everything up to date. Having 5 or 6 updaters always running in the background is a waste of resources and a massive security hole. That's a non-starter.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
I also have to deal with a confusing variety of distros
You really only have to deal with the distro you choose.
poor documentation
There's man pages, info pages, --help, and if you need your hand held just google it.
asking how to do something in Linux that you could do in Windows
Try asking on a Windows forum about something you can do trivially in Linux sometime.
And downloading and installing software, even using the built-in installer, is a confusing nightmare.
Ok, now you're just trolling. There's a pretty GUI app installer for every distro.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
> I have to say that Adobe Flash is horrible on Linux, it uses far more CPU time and its not as smooth either.
Flash is no worse on Linux than any other platform. This includes Windows despite all of the nonsense about how
the new versions of Flash allegedly are better at supporting things like PureVideo. I was trying this out for
myself just last night and was sorely disappointed by all of the hype that led me to believe that Windows would
do better in this regard.
It does not use far more CPU and it is not any less smooth.
Linux is also far less likely to completely freeze as Flash is having it's usual problems.
Yes, I decided to go back to playing Hulu in Linux because doing so in Windows 7 was becoming painful and annoying.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In my previous job I ran a 32 core SGI box to run fluid dynamic simulations. Of course, with Linux. Would not trust Windows for a moment on that setup.
My point is your case is very specialised and so is mine. We are happy about our respective setups and none is disputing that fact.
The point of this article is about comparing Windows and Ubuntu for a 'normal' user.