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What Keeps You On (or Off) Windows in 2013?
Five years ago today, reader J.J. Ramsey asked what's keeping you off Windows (itself a followup to this question about the opposite situation). With five years of development time gone by for Windows as well as all the alternative OSes, where does Windows stand for you today? (Is it the year of Linux on the Desktop yet?)
For actual work and play I use windows. Everything works best on it.
Every now and then I boot into the latest linux distro currently in favor and give it a spin. And I've always ended up disappointed.
There is no serious personal tax software to run on GNU/Linux (or BSD), and many websites, systems management GUI and appliances still require IE to access. Hideous state of affairs, I hate it, but there it is.
I know w/ Windows any new app or game comes out and it WILL be released for it. Yeah, maybe your favorite game is available on another platform, but what happens when you get bored w/ it?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If i hear that question again i'm gonna start swimming head first in concrete.
Then move your tax software to The Cloud(tm) like I did, when I prepared my federal and state income tax returns for both 2012 and 2013 in H&R Block At Home in Firefox in Xubuntu.
Off the top of my head:
1. Windows has a terrible interface, both Windows 7 and 8 have ugly, inflexible displays.
2. Windows still doesn't have proper package management. Which leads to...
3. With Windows every app has its own update process that takes up resources and nag the user.
4. Malware and adware is thick on Windows.
5. Windows doesn't come bundled with common tools I use, such as a compiler, OpenSSH, productivity suite, etc.
6. Windows seems to need to reboot almost constantly and takes a long time to apply updates.
7. Windows is expensive compared to most other operating systems.
8. Release/upgrade cycles are not at fixed/predictable times.
9. Windows lacks containers/jails.
10. Windows lacks a good, advanced file system like ZFS.
11. Windows has poor driver support, requiring hardware be bundled with driver discs that take a long time to load and include apps that nag the user.
12. I can't hack on the Windows source code.
So there's a dozen reasons, take your favourite.
For me Windows is just a gaming console for my computer. All my work I do from Linux and hibernate to switch to Windows to start a game, and then switch to Linux again do to web surfing and work. I guess I could try and install some games with Wine but since Windows comes pre-installed I can use it for the games.
I'm using Fedora Linux with KDE. Works extremely well. I use LibreOffice, Java development in Eclipse, Firefox, Skype, TeamViewer, and Latex for documents, letters and presentations.
For me Windows is just a toy system that is only good to start my games, since the AAA games don't target Linux. Lets see maybe it will change with Steam for Linux.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
I try to keep up to date with the three major desktop operating systems. Flexibility in skills (and philosophy) is a pretty good way to remain adaptable to future trends in technology. That, and each platform is interesting and useful in their own way.
I created this name 12 years ago because I was young, immature, and hated Microsoft with a passion.
(typical slashdotter at the time in 1999)
Windows crashed and DOS was horrible though slashdot had its loyalists I should not by 1993 create autoexec.bat files for Monkey Island and another to play Doom because of expanded vs extended memory?? WTF this is a 486 not a 8086?!
Around the time they were asked 10 years ago on what kept me off Windows questions
I tried Linux then and fell in love with the aspects of free software, tons of apps on cd (I was on dialup then), I did not have to pay $$$$ for compilers for game development, could get any gui I wanted, I could get paid a shit load of money if I had Unix on my resume.
I fell in love with FreeBSD. It was stable, never changed, just worked, unless I did something stupid to it. I started disliking Linux. It was beta quality and kept crashing compared to FreeBSD and Solaris. I felt it was the Windows version of Linux where crapware and hardware are thrown on it and it is not tested well.
I took a java programming course and gave up on FreeBSD as I needed Java 5 in 2004. I reluctantly started using XP.
Why in 2013 I stick with Windows
It works and no longer blows and sucks. For the slashdotters who have ran Linux for 10 years you have to ask yourself if your memories of IE 6 and WindowsME still apply today?
Windows 7 is stable, IE 10 is a modern browser and has 90% of Firefox's HTML 5 features, Office has its issues but it still is professional, and Adobe products are nice to have but they also exist on the Mac as well. Windows Server 2012 is ok. It is finally catching up and is finally VM ready.
Linux never just works and has problems with updates with my ATI and AMD hardware due to the lack of a stable ABI. It doesn't have Microsoft Office. Java is butt ugly as the fonts are broken in Debian/Ubuntu distros as the bug is 6 years old now! WTF. FreeBSD is out of the question today as 5.x and 6.x were horrible! I stuck with the 4.x all the way until 4.12 which was now quite stale by 2005.
My exwife asked me (no not flamebait moderators but her real opinion and words) why I use such an inferior system? My response was WTF Windows sucks, Windows blows, Windows is unstable, and went on and on. Her response was well you are the one who always has to reinstall your operating system. My Vista just works? Whose is better now?
She is right. World of Warcraft was a pain with Wine, then I had to get Ventrillo to work, and then Office. In the end it just is not worth it.
I keep CentOS around in virtualbox and VMWare. It rocks as a server
In 2011 after gnome 3 I gave up. Sorry guys. I put Windows 7 on and it just works. I have reinstalled it a few times but that is it. Compared to Windows 3.1 it is certainly tolerable.
http://saveie6.com/
I have about 100k lines of VBA code in Access that would be downright painful to rewrite in .NET, and completely unwritable on any *Nix platform.
I've run Linux since college. I dual booted Fedora Linux (it was Fedora core back then) and Windows xp on my Laptop. I was in the habit of reinstalling windows xp every 6 months. After one such install, I went to my C: drive to tweak something, and the files were hidden with the message that it was dangerous to change any files. I suddenly realized that message encapsulated everything I disliked about Windows. My computer was telling me I wasn't to be trusted with anything under the hood. I wiped out that windows install and have exclusively run Linux on my main machine ever since. Now I actually have control over my computer and what runs on it. It's also more usable than a Windows machine for IT and server administration. My two disappointments are that one: I am still running the proprietary video card drivers (though with the upcoming Fedora release, I'll probably run with the foss drivers), and two: Coreboot doesn't yet work with my mobo and processor combination.
A more appropriate question would be: why wouldn't I use Windows? Works great for both my business and personal stuff. No reason to spend a ton of money on Apple stuff, and no reason to spend tons of time with *nix stuff.
I don't respond to AC's.
In rough order of importance:
1) Games. I am a gamer, I'd rather play video games than watch TV for entertainment. I also find that the games I like the best are either PC only (like Civ), or better on the PC (like Skyrim). So a PC it is. Well, Windows is far and away the best for games. Any other platform has way, WAY less games. So all other things equal, I'd be on Windows just for that.
2) Pro Audio. I like to play with audio creation and production. This is something I could do on a Mac, though not with my prefered tool (Cakewalk Sonar). I couldn't do it on Linux though, the audio production software there is abysmal, and even if it wasn't all the samples I own are Windows and Mac only, and I do not wish to rebuy them, nor have I found any for Linux remotely close in quality.
3) Price. This relates only to switching to a Mac, but to get what I want, that being a tower unit with some good hardware, it would be monkey-fuck retarded expensive compared to PC hardware. I am not a rich man, so while I'll spend a good bit on computers, I can't afford to just blow money for no reason.
4) Hardware support. Linux in particular has issues with much of the hardware I choose to use. I really don't feel like compromising on that, I don't want to have to say "Man I'd like to use that, but it won't work on my OS." Thus far, no piece of hardware I've want has not had Windows support.
5) Ease of use. Perhaps it is just my lack of familiarity with it, or my somewhat odd requirements for use (like pro audio and good 3D acceleration) but I seem to be able to find an unsolvable problem in Linux rather quickly. When I've tried to use it at work I'll find something I can't get to work that even stumps the Linux guys. I feel like I have to fight with the OS to get it to do things, and often the solution is "Oh just write a script," or "Just modify the code and recompile," which isn't an option. I'm not a programmer and have no wish to become one.
6) It works. I'm not big on change for change sake. Were I to move to another platform, someone would have to convince me of the superiority. They'd have to show me what it is I could do there I can't do now, or how I could do what I do better. Even if it is just equal, I've little interest in changing.
That's my reasons at home. At work, well I'm the Windows lead, so of course I use Windows. I need to be familiar with it and be able to easily administer the Windows servers because that's what I'm expected to do.
I've heard this Windows thing has become better, much much better, since Windows 95. I've seen it on other peoples computer and it looks real nice. What's keeping me off trying this Windows thing is that I'm really happy with my computer as it is, I have the software I need and it's stable and I get what I need to get done. I've also got the impression that this Windows this is very limited when it comes to the command line (which I use all the time), multiple virtual desktops, good editors and so on. But I may be wrong, all these things and more may exist in the Windows world - I haven't really paid much attention to what's going on there, but I do have the impression that Windows has become a lot better since I switched.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Windows 2000 and Windows XP are rock solid and have software I want (or need) to use. What does linux bring to the table?
Windows 2000 is already owned, and Windows XP reaches end of support 10 months from now, after which point computer criminals will discover a defect that can be used to compromise a computer remotely, Microsoft won't issue a patch, and nobody else is legally allowed to. What GNU/Linux* brings to the table is that because popular distributions are both freely licensed and available without charge (assuming unmetered Internet access), you keep getting OS upgrades that are about as easy to install as Windows service packs. Canonical, for example, brings out a new long-term supported (LTS) version of Ubuntu every two years, and the five-year support lifetimes of successive LTS releases overlap by three years. And even if Canonical were to stop distributing Ubuntu, you could switch to any other GNU/Linux distribution and keep running all your applications.
* As opposed to Android, which uses the same Linux kernel as GNU/Linux.
I'm going to be marked as troll and care very little about it but:
There is something to be said about using an OS 90+% of the population uses. There are intangible and tangible benefits, like hardware working properly and to full capacity (not the lowest common denominator support Linux often boasts), like MS Office working well, saving you the effort of mucking about with Libre/Openoffice, Strange IE-only sites not being a issue, not worrying about updates breaking your system (updates are much more likely to break things under Linux), A stable video-editor (Linux has nothing compared to the windows side), being able to connect to a projector.
There is also the stability you get when you buy a complete desktop OS from the same vendor, with everything from the kernel to the UI because closely coordinated. This is better than the Linux approach of fiefdoms with everything being plugged together by the distros, praying that updating one package won't break another package because it's often impossible to test all the possible configuration variables.
When MS introduced UAC, discouraged the use of the registry (preferring a local approach to settings management), and separated the update manager from the browser windows and began offering a decent AV, all in vista, windows became a superior option. Linux offers litter benefit to the user because MS has largely addressed their problems.
Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
While at Microsoft for a meeting, Misty Silver saw and overheard some employees on Reddit. She looked at one of the employee’s screens:
“I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One,” Silver reported.
“Reputation management” is the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
http://au.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-comments-2013-6 [businessinsider.com] [businessinsider.com]
Linux is not a toy. If it were true, then Cisco, VMWare and dozens of other highly respected and expensive technology brands are foisting toys upon the world.
But even so, Linux on the Desktop will never be a "mainstream thing." But that's perfectly okay. Windows (and DOS before it) was always designed to be a desktop system... a non-critical desktop system. And of course, it has critical mass which is why "everything works best on it." But don't confuse that apparent fact to mean that means Windows is the best.
I do use Linux on the desktop and mainly because I can trust it a great deal more than Windows. And in today's ridiculous political climate? You'd be an absolute fool to use anything but Linux today. After all, if you disagree with the tremendous amount of government overreach lately (and the vast majority of us do) I can't imagine why you couldn't presume your Windows isn't compromised already. Seriously. It's mainstream news. It's not "conspiracy theory" any more. And it runs things nicely and well.
So why won't there ever be a year of the Linux Desktop? Well... that's because it's the desktop itself that's on it way out. And it happens that Linux is already dominating its replacements and Microsoft/Windows has already been soundly rejected by the consumer community.
Nope until 2008 IE 6 was the defecto standard. If something didn't work on IE 6 it was broken. If Firefox wouldn't render it then it was broken. If something was broken in Firefox but works in IE 6 corporate users considered it standard and proper.
Which is why in 2013 you still have software that only works with IE 8 that is being sold currently.
http://saveie6.com/
Nope until 2008 IE 6 was the defecto standard.
If that was deliberate, it gets the "funny post of the day" award.
If it was accidental, it gets the "funny typo of the day" award.
Your hobbies are valuable, and his hobbies are worthless?
Oh come off it. I thought in general society was getting beyond the "videogames are a waste of time," thing and I'd certainly think Slashdot would be better about it. If they aren't for you that's fine, but don't try and make it out to be something bad, like it is so much more valuable to spend time reading or playing outdoorsman. Nor, for that matter, do videogames have to be one's only hobby.