Mplayer on Linux handles most things out of the box. Windows Media Player is a joke in comparison. Whenever one of my videos I downloaded doesn't work in WMP or Winamp video modes on my Windows side, I try VLC or Mplayer - usually works (not always, people encode stuff in weird codecs.)
I don't use Windows Media Player for anything but streaming video - and I'm constantly looking for other tools (like the Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative I use).
Back when I had Windows 3.1, I had only 2MB of memory on that machine. Simply couldn't run it - it was too slow. I stuck with DOS because it was fast, and I couldn't completely see the benefit of a GUI if I couldn't run it.
Same situation with Linux for a lot of people. Only in this case it's because the OS is "different" and they don't want "different" - they want "the same but different". They want "free Windows." So because Linux isn't Windows, they continue to pay through the nose in money, time and viruses to stick with Windows.
It ain't rational, but it's a problem. Where I differ from the Linux desktop doubters is that I see it as a solvable problem, one way or the other. It's really not about whether Linux is "ready" for the desktop - it obviously is for a lot of people. It's whether large numbers of PEOPLE can be made "ready" for a Linux desktop. Totally different issue.
Why is it that Linux gets slammed for not having device drivers while Windows is KNOWN for viruses and unreliability? If not having device drivers is a "show stopper" to Linux adoption, why isn't Windows security and reliabiliy faults a show stopper? Answer is obvious: people got Windows first, they don't want to change. Has nothing to do with the actual merits of the two operating systems. Both systems have problems in fact - the issue of adoption is unconnected to real problems in either system.
As I constantly say: 1. Windows is CRAP. 2. Linux is ALSO CRAP. 3. BUT, Linux is FREE CRAP.
You LIKE paying more for lousy support, chinzy hardware, badly integrated software, and tons of commercial offers littering your desktop?
I just hooked up a client who just ran out and bought a Dell desktop, a Dell laptop, a Dell color laser printer, and a Linksys router.
The Dell desktop is adequate, but the DVD drive door is the cheapest piece of plastic I've ever seen - I give it a week or two before it breaks. Compared to the "bank door" feel I get from my NEC DVD at home, this thing is crap.
The Dell laser printer is a fucking joke. The toner cartridges are so cheap and plasticy that's almost impossible to get them in the machine without flexing and fiddling with them. Then, if the Dell sales person was so stupid as not to tell you to buy a second tray to handle envelopes, the only way to get an envelope printed is to fiddle with the rocker front panel menu button for five minutes to tell the printer the main tray is set for envelope, THEN go tell the printer properties on the PC the tray is set for envelope. My client was so pissed she called Dell and spent an hour trying to get them to tell her how to do it, since the manual is an utter joke - a hundred pages of information in five languages - on their WARRANTY! She could use her old printer for envelopes, but it's parallel and the Dell only has USB, so we'll need a converter cable (IF such a thing works with this machine - my boss at City College tried to get one for his Canon and he can't.) It took twenty minutes to get Dell tech support, then they referred her to the wrong department, she spent another twenty minutes waiting for the right one - and then Dell support had trouble walking her through the process since they evidently aren't sure how to do it themselves (although to be fair to them, she's one of these "anxious users" that are hard to support.)
Then they preinstalled the McAfee antivirus and firewall on the machine, even after she told them not to (she prefers Norton.)
They have NetZero (THEY'RE still around?), Earthlink and AOL crap on the desktop - which has to be removed from the Add/Remove Programs list to get rid of them. Not to mention MusicMatch Jukebox, which I left on, and a couple other media programs. Nice of Dell to sell out to the RIAA.
The desktop wouldn't connect to the Linksys, so we took the router back for exchange - still need to get that working wirelessly with the laptop. Took an SBC tech support visit to get the DSL working - that was partially my fault, I swapped the power cables for the Speedstream and the router and it caused the Speedstream to go berserk (hey, the power supplies LOOK the same and we were hooking and unhooking constantly trying to get the router to work! Sue me!) The SBC guy actually tried to configure the router, which surprised me since SBC doesn't support them - but neither he nor I could get it to work.
The laptop seems adequate, but I haven't done much with it yet other than get rid of the crap Dell sprinkled all over it.
Anybody who buys Dell over a white box local store machine is nuts. You want a nice standard-parts clone PC with NO proprietary customization.
Windows Vista outsells Linux RAID! Laura DiDio said so and you know she wouldn't lie!
We just did an independent study proving that a 10/100 Ethernet connection outperforms Gigabit in achieving small office business targets!/. even interviewed the author and confirmed this!
If you don't buy this machine, we'll stop selling to your country and pull all our employees out and tell George about you!
Wait until the next version! It'll be awesome! You'll be able to actually search the drive!
An alien smart enough to do anything remotely like this is smart enough to not bother with a planet full of monkeys - unless they want to convert us to something other than monkeys - in which case I say:
I for one welcome our new SETI overlords!
This guy should be worrying about what George Bush is listening to, not what the "aliens" are sending...
Business may have demanded this, but it was because the daily flurry of Microsoft vulnerabilities made patching a nightmare.
So business wanted a schedule - ANY kind of schedule.
Also, whether a new vulnerability is discovered after tha patch release date is irrelevant. Microsoft is criticized for having the vulnerability, not because they don't patch it until the next scheduled patch date. They are also criticized for having vulnerabilities go unpatched for multiple months - which is also a commentary on the doctor's "blessed Microsoft patch" comment. They are also criticized for having more critical vulnerabilities than OSS generally does. They are also criticized for having a monolithic structure that makes patching more problematic than in a Linux system - another point related to the study, since it was a proprietary system that made the patching in the study necessary, and which also relates to how long it takes Microsoft to issue a patch - because their vulnerabilities frequently affect large swaths of the (monolithic) system and so it's harder for them to patch safely - as the number of times their patches break stuff proves.
You can't blame the business community for anything other than exposing themselves to more Windows vulnerabilities by demanding a patch schedule - all the rest of the blame falls squarely on Microsoft.
Excellent request. Right on the nose concerning the MAIN issue: choice and flexibility.
However, while I wouldn't be surprised if the study ended up favoring Linix in that situation, it still wouldn't prove anything either way, since the environments are still so different that it would still be comparing apples and oranges. That's the REAL problem with this study and any others like it.
The only studies that can contribute to our knowledge would be studies of mixed Windows-Linux environments, and more so, studies of companies that HAVE switched from Windows to Linux and have measured their before and after costs and benefits. And even then, we would have to question the results applicability to any SPECIFIC company contemplating the change.
We should also remember that, even though I believe Linux and OSS in general are better than proprietary software, it is likely that the overall problems in the IT industry makes the difference a matter of a small percentage improvement rather than multiple factors, let alone orders of magnitude, of difference, i.e., Linux might be "twenty percent better" (whatever that twenty percent means) rather than two hundred percent better.
We need better hardware and software design and development and IT admin practices - but we're more likely to get them from open source methods than proprietary methods.
This is a red herring. I truly doubt that if you look at the "first responder" patches issued for a problem compared to the "blessed" distro patches released later that you'd see any significant difference. This is the assumption in the good doctor's comment - that the early patches are poor compared to either the "final" or Microsoft patches - and I see no evidence presented to back it up.
If for no other reason than I suspect the distros do a lousy job of actually testing ALL the patches for EVERY software product in their distro, for reasons of lack of time if nothing else, it is unlikely that you'll find any difference in patch quality. That would be assuming that the first responders are idiots in the first place. Most patches are issued for specific problems in specific products on specific releases of specific distros in the first place - the ones that aren't presumably are going to be the same in every distro anyway.
And there's a difference between a "patch" and ripping out the compiler and the libraries, for heaven's sakes.
Finally, given how often the "blessed" Microsoft patch breaks something, obviously being "blessed" by Bill isn't as valuable as it might appear.
Actually it IS a comment on the study - because the study took piss-poor IT decisions which favor the Microsoft way of doing things and imposed them on Linux.
More importantly, the study is attempting to compare two systems while the environments themselves are so different as to render the study almost meaningless.
You're right, though, the main result is to demonstrate how IT is totally screwed up.
We're not talking about "compatibility", let alone backwards compatibility, here. We're talking about closed source vs open source and how that limits your ability to deal with issues such as those raised by this particular incident.
The fact that the application is question was not compatible with the specific OS version in use was not the real issue - the real issue was being unable to deal with it without upgrading a critical part of the OS. Under Windows, an incompatibility is a SHOW STOPPER without a total OS upgrade. In Linux, there are ways around it. The method chosen in the study was either forced on the sys admins in question by the constraints of the study, OR was incorrectly chosen by sys admins who didn't know better.
This says nothing about the quality of Linux or OSS, and even more nothing about Linux vs Windows - except possibly to prove that using proprietary closed-source applications is the source of problems.
Now, some people will say, "Well, this is what happens in a real corporate environment - you have to do what management wants you to do. And the issue is how well can you do it in one OS or the other?"
But this is just begging the question. Worse, it's justifying piss-poor IT management decisions in the name of "reality", just biasing in favor of Windows and against OSS on the face of it. But you could easily find just as many bad decisions that result in Windows being screwed up than Linux. The point is that overall IT management policies and procedures have more to do with this study than either OS do. Which makes the study worthless as a comparison.
The study also does nothing to examine how Linux and OSS in general have great flexibility in meeting business application needs compared to proprietary solutions. In fact, the study, by requiring closed source binary RPMS for an application, demonstrates the opposite.
Hell, no sys admin - Windows or Linux - should have upgraded anything as significant as the compiler or libraries without backing up the system first so he could back out the changes if something broke!
The statement that "the RPM was broken so they couldn't undo their changes" right there tells you something was wrong with these guys!
At the very least, they were probably pissed that they had to use a 3rd party proprietary system that used binary RPMs only!
"In other words I think there are variablies for Linux that simply can't be included in the test because Windows can't even do it (for better or worse). These untestable, harder to quantify items are what keep me using Linux based operating systems."
Excellent point and better expressed than I did in my comment elsewhere, I think.
"Open software and your average american corporation have completely different ideologies."
It's not just ideology, too. More importantly, a Windows shop and a Linux shop are two totally different animals in almost all respects from an IT standpoint. Trying to compare the two from a functional standpoint using any sort of "standard" scenario is almost guaranteed to be an "apples and oranges" comparison. Much better is to compare cost/benefits from companies that HAVE switched, or those that are mixed shops - and here every report I've seen has favored Linux.
"Again, let me say that we chose components based on market share without knowing that these issues would crop up. That's why I think it's critical to apply this methodology in your own environment..."
Well, that answers some of my questions - you made a mistake in the setup which favored Windows; and IT environment controls many of the issues purportedly examined in this study, which was my point (stated elsewhere here) in questioning the value of studies of this sort.
Just as an aside, this problem in the study also indicates the problems caused by relying on proprietary software from third party vendors: "Many 3rd party commercial vendors only provide the binary RPMs".
Slashdot Mirror
"fictional land where penguins ride horses in the night with white pointy hats and burn microsoft users."
Where is this heaven?! Can I move there tomorrow?!
Death to Microsoft shills! Scumbag morons using Microsoft products should be executed!
Oh, wait, I'm using Firefox on Windows XP right now...let me reboot into Mandriva...
No, wait...Linux sucks! Yeah, that's it! Linux sucks!
...playing catchup...
Oh, wait, when has Microsoft ever NOT played catchup?
I mean, where did DOS come from (if you are old enough or educated enough to remember)?
Definitely true for video.
Mplayer on Linux handles most things out of the box. Windows Media Player is a joke in comparison. Whenever one of my videos I downloaded doesn't work in WMP or Winamp video modes on my Windows side, I try VLC or Mplayer - usually works (not always, people encode stuff in weird codecs.)
I don't use Windows Media Player for anything but streaming video - and I'm constantly looking for other tools (like the Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative I use).
Wow! I just took a look at what that thing does!
Somebody immediately redesign this thing for Mandriva and every other distro!
Fucking amazing! It installs EVERYTHING anybody could ever need that was missing from the default distro!
Install your Ubuntu, run this thing, you're good to go.
Fucking brilliant! I want it for my Mandriva!
Excellent point.
Back when I had Windows 3.1, I had only 2MB of memory on that machine. Simply couldn't run it - it was too slow. I stuck with DOS because it was fast, and I couldn't completely see the benefit of a GUI if I couldn't run it.
Same situation with Linux for a lot of people. Only in this case it's because the OS is "different" and they don't want "different" - they want "the same but different". They want "free Windows." So because Linux isn't Windows, they continue to pay through the nose in money, time and viruses to stick with Windows.
It ain't rational, but it's a problem. Where I differ from the Linux desktop doubters is that I see it as a solvable problem, one way or the other. It's really not about whether Linux is "ready" for the desktop - it obviously is for a lot of people. It's whether large numbers of PEOPLE can be made "ready" for a Linux desktop. Totally different issue.
Why is it that Linux gets slammed for not having device drivers while Windows is KNOWN for viruses and unreliability? If not having device drivers is a "show stopper" to Linux adoption, why isn't Windows security and reliabiliy faults a show stopper? Answer is obvious: people got Windows first, they don't want to change. Has nothing to do with the actual merits of the two operating systems. Both systems have problems in fact - the issue of adoption is unconnected to real problems in either system.
As I constantly say:
1. Windows is CRAP.
2. Linux is ALSO CRAP.
3. BUT, Linux is FREE CRAP.
You want a "well-known brand"?
You LIKE paying more for lousy support, chinzy hardware, badly integrated software, and tons of commercial offers littering your desktop?
I just hooked up a client who just ran out and bought a Dell desktop, a Dell laptop, a Dell color laser printer, and a Linksys router.
The Dell desktop is adequate, but the DVD drive door is the cheapest piece of plastic I've ever seen - I give it a week or two before it breaks. Compared to the "bank door" feel I get from my NEC DVD at home, this thing is crap.
The Dell laser printer is a fucking joke. The toner cartridges are so cheap and plasticy that's almost impossible to get them in the machine without flexing and fiddling with them. Then, if the Dell sales person was so stupid as not to tell you to buy a second tray to handle envelopes, the only way to get an envelope printed is to fiddle with the rocker front panel menu button for five minutes to tell the printer the main tray is set for envelope, THEN go tell the printer properties on the PC the tray is set for envelope. My client was so pissed she called Dell and spent an hour trying to get them to tell her how to do it, since the manual is an utter joke - a hundred pages of information in five languages - on their WARRANTY! She could use her old printer for envelopes, but it's parallel and the Dell only has USB, so we'll need a converter cable (IF such a thing works with this machine - my boss at City College tried to get one for his Canon and he can't.) It took twenty minutes to get Dell tech support, then they referred her to the wrong department, she spent another twenty minutes waiting for the right one - and then Dell support had trouble walking her through the process since they evidently aren't sure how to do it themselves (although to be fair to them, she's one of these "anxious users" that are hard to support.)
Then they preinstalled the McAfee antivirus and firewall on the machine, even after she told them not to (she prefers Norton.)
They have NetZero (THEY'RE still around?), Earthlink and AOL crap on the desktop - which has to be removed from the Add/Remove Programs list to get rid of them. Not to mention MusicMatch Jukebox, which I left on, and a couple other media programs. Nice of Dell to sell out to the RIAA.
The desktop wouldn't connect to the Linksys, so we took the router back for exchange - still need to get that working wirelessly with the laptop. Took an SBC tech support visit to get the DSL working - that was partially my fault, I swapped the power cables for the Speedstream and the router and it caused the Speedstream to go berserk (hey, the power supplies LOOK the same and we were hooking and unhooking constantly trying to get the router to work! Sue me!) The SBC guy actually tried to configure the router, which surprised me since SBC doesn't support them - but neither he nor I could get it to work.
The laptop seems adequate, but I haven't done much with it yet other than get rid of the crap Dell sprinkled all over it.
Anybody who buys Dell over a white box local store machine is nuts. You want a nice standard-parts clone PC with NO proprietary customization.
You mean he just keeps re-installing each version of Windows in sequence (95 to 98 to 2000 to XP to Server) over and over?
How else could he get bored - with a thousand or more variations of Linux?
You forgot obviously commercial advertisements masquerading as reviews by Chinese PR agents who can't speak (or write) English.
It isn't running Windows Vista! It's Communist!
/. even interviewed the author and confirmed this!
Windows Vista outsells Linux RAID! Laura DiDio said so and you know she wouldn't lie!
We just did an independent study proving that a 10/100 Ethernet connection outperforms Gigabit in achieving small office business targets!
If you don't buy this machine, we'll stop selling to your country and pull all our employees out and tell George about you!
Wait until the next version! It'll be awesome! You'll be able to actually search the drive!
"We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions..."
/. pedant, but c'mon, guys, a little editing won't kill you.
"Over?" I don't want to sound like a typical
Those with balls and no brains - like me...
And I already have a record with the Feds! (So I suppose it doesn't matter...)
"the wounded egos of the ineffectual and insecure."
George Bush In a Nutshell - new O'Reilly book!
Somebody with a bug in their ear.
An alien smart enough to do anything remotely like this is smart enough to not bother with a planet full of monkeys - unless they want to convert us to something other than monkeys - in which case I say:
I for one welcome our new SETI overlords!
This guy should be worrying about what George Bush is listening to, not what the "aliens" are sending...
"I didn't have a problem configuring it, I just couldn't quickly tell how it was configured."
Good point. Try figuring out how an entire Windows 2003 Server is configured - especially Active Directory.
Bring supplies for a long stay at the office...
Now break it and try to figure out how it broke.
Bring your wife and kids for an even longer stay at the office.
Uhm, not exactly.
Business may have demanded this, but it was because the daily flurry of Microsoft vulnerabilities made patching a nightmare.
So business wanted a schedule - ANY kind of schedule.
Also, whether a new vulnerability is discovered after tha patch release date is irrelevant. Microsoft is criticized for having the vulnerability, not because they don't patch it until the next scheduled patch date. They are also criticized for having vulnerabilities go unpatched for multiple months - which is also a commentary on the doctor's "blessed Microsoft patch" comment. They are also criticized for having more critical vulnerabilities than OSS generally does. They are also criticized for having a monolithic structure that makes patching more problematic than in a Linux system - another point related to the study, since it was a proprietary system that made the patching in the study necessary, and which also relates to how long it takes Microsoft to issue a patch - because their vulnerabilities frequently affect large swaths of the (monolithic) system and so it's harder for them to patch safely - as the number of times their patches break stuff proves.
You can't blame the business community for anything other than exposing themselves to more Windows vulnerabilities by demanding a patch schedule - all the rest of the blame falls squarely on Microsoft.
Excellent request. Right on the nose concerning the MAIN issue: choice and flexibility.
However, while I wouldn't be surprised if the study ended up favoring Linix in that situation, it still wouldn't prove anything either way, since the environments are still so different that it would still be comparing apples and oranges. That's the REAL problem with this study and any others like it.
The only studies that can contribute to our knowledge would be studies of mixed Windows-Linux environments, and more so, studies of companies that HAVE switched from Windows to Linux and have measured their before and after costs and benefits. And even then, we would have to question the results applicability to any SPECIFIC company contemplating the change.
We should also remember that, even though I believe Linux and OSS in general are better than proprietary software, it is likely that the overall problems in the IT industry makes the difference a matter of a small percentage improvement rather than multiple factors, let alone orders of magnitude, of difference, i.e., Linux might be "twenty percent better" (whatever that twenty percent means) rather than two hundred percent better.
We need better hardware and software design and development and IT admin practices - but we're more likely to get them from open source methods than proprietary methods.
You forgot one:
- Who didn't back up the system before ripping out GLIBC and then ended up with a broken RPM that they couldn't undo.
I mean, even a WINDOWS sys admin would know better.
This is a red herring. I truly doubt that if you look at the "first responder" patches issued for a problem compared to the "blessed" distro patches released later that you'd see any significant difference. This is the assumption in the good doctor's comment - that the early patches are poor compared to either the "final" or Microsoft patches - and I see no evidence presented to back it up.
If for no other reason than I suspect the distros do a lousy job of actually testing ALL the patches for EVERY software product in their distro, for reasons of lack of time if nothing else, it is unlikely that you'll find any difference in patch quality. That would be assuming that the first responders are idiots in the first place. Most patches are issued for specific problems in specific products on specific releases of specific distros in the first place - the ones that aren't presumably are going to be the same in every distro anyway.
And there's a difference between a "patch" and ripping out the compiler and the libraries, for heaven's sakes.
Finally, given how often the "blessed" Microsoft patch breaks something, obviously being "blessed" by Bill isn't as valuable as it might appear.
Actually it IS a comment on the study - because the study took piss-poor IT decisions which favor the Microsoft way of doing things and imposed them on Linux.
More importantly, the study is attempting to compare two systems while the environments themselves are so different as to render the study almost meaningless.
You're right, though, the main result is to demonstrate how IT is totally screwed up.
Maybe the Windows admins CAN'T do as much.
THIS is a real world concern that has been expressed many times.
Tell it to Office 97 vs Office 2003 users.
We're not talking about "compatibility", let alone backwards compatibility, here. We're talking about closed source vs open source and how that limits your ability to deal with issues such as those raised by this particular incident.
The fact that the application is question was not compatible with the specific OS version in use was not the real issue - the real issue was being unable to deal with it without upgrading a critical part of the OS. Under Windows, an incompatibility is a SHOW STOPPER without a total OS upgrade. In Linux, there are ways around it. The method chosen in the study was either forced on the sys admins in question by the constraints of the study, OR was incorrectly chosen by sys admins who didn't know better.
This says nothing about the quality of Linux or OSS, and even more nothing about Linux vs Windows - except possibly to prove that using proprietary closed-source applications is the source of problems.
Excellent summary in one paragraph.
Now, some people will say, "Well, this is what happens in a real corporate environment - you have to do what management wants you to do. And the issue is how well can you do it in one OS or the other?"
But this is just begging the question. Worse, it's justifying piss-poor IT management decisions in the name of "reality", just biasing in favor of Windows and against OSS on the face of it. But you could easily find just as many bad decisions that result in Windows being screwed up than Linux. The point is that overall IT management policies and procedures have more to do with this study than either OS do. Which makes the study worthless as a comparison.
The study also does nothing to examine how Linux and OSS in general have great flexibility in meeting business application needs compared to proprietary solutions. In fact, the study, by requiring closed source binary RPMS for an application, demonstrates the opposite.
Hell, no sys admin - Windows or Linux - should have upgraded anything as significant as the compiler or libraries without backing up the system first so he could back out the changes if something broke!
The statement that "the RPM was broken so they couldn't undo their changes" right there tells you something was wrong with these guys!
At the very least, they were probably pissed that they had to use a 3rd party proprietary system that used binary RPMs only!
"In other words I think there are variablies for Linux that simply can't be included in the test because Windows can't even do it (for better or worse). These untestable, harder to quantify items are what keep me using Linux based operating systems."
Excellent point and better expressed than I did in my comment elsewhere, I think.
"Open software and your average american corporation have completely different ideologies."
It's not just ideology, too. More importantly, a Windows shop and a Linux shop are two totally different animals in almost all respects from an IT standpoint. Trying to compare the two from a functional standpoint using any sort of "standard" scenario is almost guaranteed to be an "apples and oranges" comparison. Much better is to compare cost/benefits from companies that HAVE switched, or those that are mixed shops - and here every report I've seen has favored Linux.
"Again, let me say that we chose components based on market share without knowing that these issues would crop up. That's why I think it's critical to apply this methodology in your own environment..."
Well, that answers some of my questions - you made a mistake in the setup which favored Windows; and IT environment controls many of the issues purportedly examined in this study, which was my point (stated elsewhere here) in questioning the value of studies of this sort.
Just as an aside, this problem in the study also indicates the problems caused by relying on proprietary software from third party vendors: "Many 3rd party commercial vendors only provide the binary RPMs".
BINGO! Or perhaps, "DUH!"