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Windows 8 Features With Linux Antecedents
itwbennett writes "As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0. So ask not 'did Linux have this first', but 'does Windows 8 do it better?'"
As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0.
Perhaps they're not jeering Windows for "copying" Linux so much as they are happy to show that the flexibility and community involvement in open source is starting to surpass those closed source equivalents? Isn't that what Windows used to gain so much marketshare? Supporting everything before everyone else?
My work here is dung.
Does it really matter?
Wow, that sounds hard! You have to do all that? Windows 8 must really suck!!!
In modern linux distributions, if there's an ISO on the media, it appears the same as any other container object, except the icon's a shiny CD looking disc instead of a manila folder. You click on it like any other container object, say for example a folder or an archive file, and it opens.
Why do you use windows if it makes you do all that crap?
That is why KDE and Gnome make this stuff easier. But there SHOULD be a way to do everything with shell commands, for users who are willing to learn them. Without that, I just don't have the feeling that I'm in control of the machine.
BTW, Windows actually has plenty of command line tools (made by Microsoft) which allow you to script much more than one might think without ever touching the GUI. Too bad a lot of the said tools aren't included by default and need to be searched for in various * Kit packages from Microsoft.
Coding etudes
The one that really gets me is updating.
On Windows:
* Run Windows Update
* Run a program that detects out-of-date software like FileHippo's update checker (or open all of your programs and see which ones annoy you)
* Download each program's update individually
* Run each of those (clicking through the damn wizard every time)
* Reboot your machine
* Watch as a "new update available" popup appears an hour later when you open a program
On Linux, pick one of the following:
* Click the update icon (Ubuntu, maybe other distros)
* Run 'yum upgrade', 'aptitude update && aptitude upgrade' or 'pacman -Syu'
"OMG Linux is so hard. You expect me to open a terminal and type two words??! It's much easier to spend an hour clicking 'Yes"!"
Right, because the command line is so unimportant that Microsoft came up with an entirely new command shell called PowerShell and OSX has full-on bash.
You know, the two major OSes pointed at consumer idiots have powerful shells. Go figure.
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BMO
It's not like Microsoft said, "hey, we invented an easy way to mount ISO's. Take THAT Linux! wait, you already have that? Oh well, our way is superior!"
It's more like Microsoft said, "Hey, we made ISO's easy to mount."
The rest of the crap comes from those who make a living trying to instigate fights between users in both camps.
Considering the commands were about mounting an ISO file, why the hell would I want 1) mount to automatically detect a filesystem inside a file; 2) mount it as read-only on a predefined location? I actually sometimes use files as raw devices for writing (for example, if I need to demonstrate how ZFS resiliency works, a couple of files and mount allows me to quicly show how it works instead of having to use physical devices)?
Every mainstream linux distro with gnome/kde will automagically mount a recognized device on a predefined location without any user intervention, and creating folders as necessary. I'm no expert, but not only Linux's udev seems to work quite well (and recognize a lot more filesystems than Windows), but automounter has been available for ages in almost all modern/relevant unix operating systems.