I've had the opposite experience. About the only app on Windows that has been better than its Linux counterpart is Office, and that's a general statement because there are some things I've found OpenOffice to do better.
On Windows, though, up until recently you had to pay for a ZIP file program (or suffer through a nag screen to use one)... add to that FTP, a general purpose text editor, a graphics package, CD/DVD burner, etc. That means that when the free ones offer enough similar (or better) functionality, I consider them "better".
I'm quite happy with my linux alternatives. However, I will agree with you that we need some serious work in terms of UI usability. KDE seems to be doing a decent job in general, but there is still more work to be done there and tons more work to be done elsewhere.
Heh, call it a crazy combination of laziness and determination. The laziness and determination kept me on Slackware, because I started back in the days before it took a huge leap in version number.
Actually, I about did an LFS install myself because I was very pissed off with the state of Linux package management. That's what caused me to finally stop siding with all the people that have never tried Gentoo and babble on about how it sucks because Gentoo users are ricers, etc.
I sat through a Stage 1 install for a few days with an open mind. When it came to, it was very fast. I can't at all say that it was faster than the Slackware install it replaced (though it felt so), but what really sold me on Gentoo was Portage. It took about a month after that for me to finish nuking all of my Slackware installs for a shiny new Gentoo cluster.
Gentoo gives you three "stages" to choose on installation that basically represent whether you want to compile from source or unpack binaries (which is what other distributions do). Stage1, for example, starts with a very minimal set of binaries, bootstraps a compiler, and then compiles the entire system from the ground up. You end up with every program being compiled locally on your system.
It gives you the opportunity to customize compiler and linker flags, but more importantly, specificy which standard options you want turned on or off for the entire world. The result is a very customized (if you so choose) yet minimalist system.
And things like USE="nptl nptlonly" let you build a system that uses 2.6 NPTL exclusively.
I could try to individually respond to comments all over, but I think it would be easier just to give my opinion here.
First of all, running processes under separate UIDs/GIDs, while obvious, is a great idea. What makes it so effective in our world and ineffective in Microsoft's is that our implementation of this concept was not an afterthought.
The standard filesystem layout is well thought out, but forking UNIXes have broken things somewhat. Ce la vie; people have different opinions.
It is somewhat irritating that writing portable software isn't more automatic, or rather that it can take a lot of consideration. But we can't force old vendors to adopt new ideas that will break their own monolith, so we're stuck. Ce la vie. GNU libtool/autoconf/automake is a decent hack.
People bitch about hardware compatibility a lot, but that really only applies to certain architectures like x86. I can't speak authoritatively on this, but I'd be willing to bet that (for example) Linux has *far* better hardware support than Windows - it's just our impression that it doesn't because our new multimedia products don't necessarily work natively. In general, this can be fixed - fix the vendor, or choose another.
One complaint I do have from an administrative standpoint is that many UNIXes don't see the need to improve on their userland. After years of becoming accustomed to the GNU userland familiar to anyone with GNU/Linux (and getting what you might call 'spoiled'), I find myself really hating, for example, Solaris. GNU tools add lots of sensible extensions; other vendors should consider doing the same.
Package management would be another bitch. If your vendor doesn't supply you with up to date packages, or if you want to make some decisions yourself (and subsequently compile the software), you can create a big mess out of your filesystem if you're not really careful about what you install and where you let it go. Fifteen billion props to Gentoo on this one - I recently started using Gentoo, and hell if that's not the way to solve this problem.
One annoyance could be the number of overlapping standards and ideas (for example, esd / artsd / jackd / oss | alsa / oss).
All of these things are to some extent the result of people having different ideas. I can't *really* bring myself to whine about any of the above. Different ideas equals innovation. Trial and error, the OS evolves.
It would be swell if programmers thought about security a little more before they busted out into code. Sure, the occasional mistake will happen, but an entire system of cruft always seems to end up trying to being secure thanks to a bunch of hacks, which is a really shitty way to do something.
Note that I don't for one moment endorse the next generation CS-grad-ish idea of doing away with manual memory management by "moving on" from C.
We should vaporize Sendmail and BIND. Numerous better, faster replacements exist for both of these tools, yet the Sendmail/BIND remote holes seem to get installed and enabled by default on far too many systems.
In general, though, it's hard to argue with UNIX. There are tons of flavors, and there are exponentially more choices. If you're like me and think that Solaris is a big fat joke, you can try one of the three freely available BSDs. Or you can be one of those penguin lovers like myself and enjoy you some GNUs-not-UNIX along with a dose of uberKernel.
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Hmm... I see. Half-Life 2 would be such a tease.
I've had the opposite experience. About the only app on Windows that has been better than its Linux counterpart is Office, and that's a general statement because there are some things I've found OpenOffice to do better.
On Windows, though, up until recently you had to pay for a ZIP file program (or suffer through a nag screen to use one)... add to that FTP, a general purpose text editor, a graphics package, CD/DVD burner, etc. That means that when the free ones offer enough similar (or better) functionality, I consider them "better".
I'm quite happy with my linux alternatives. However, I will agree with you that we need some serious work in terms of UI usability. KDE seems to be doing a decent job in general, but there is still more work to be done there and tons more work to be done elsewhere.
chase dot venters at gmail dot com. Thanks!
Heh, call it a crazy combination of laziness and determination. The laziness and determination kept me on Slackware, because I started back in the days before it took a huge leap in version number.
P3 550E. 256MB RAM. Gentoo, plus X, KDE, KDevelop, OO, etc.
Actually, I about did an LFS install myself because I was very pissed off with the state of Linux package management. That's what caused me to finally stop siding with all the people that have never tried Gentoo and babble on about how it sucks because Gentoo users are ricers, etc.
I sat through a Stage 1 install for a few days with an open mind. When it came to, it was very fast. I can't at all say that it was faster than the Slackware install it replaced (though it felt so), but what really sold me on Gentoo was Portage. It took about a month after that for me to finish nuking all of my Slackware installs for a shiny new Gentoo cluster.
Gentoo gives you three "stages" to choose on installation that basically represent whether you want to compile from source or unpack binaries (which is what other distributions do). Stage1, for example, starts with a very minimal set of binaries, bootstraps a compiler, and then compiles the entire system from the ground up. You end up with every program being compiled locally on your system.
It gives you the opportunity to customize compiler and linker flags, but more importantly, specificy which standard options you want turned on or off for the entire world. The result is a very customized (if you so choose) yet minimalist system.
And things like USE="nptl nptlonly" let you build a system that uses 2.6 NPTL exclusively.
I could try to individually respond to comments all over, but I think it would be easier just to give my opinion here.
First of all, running processes under separate UIDs/GIDs, while obvious, is a great idea. What makes it so effective in our world and ineffective in Microsoft's is that our implementation of this concept was not an afterthought.
The standard filesystem layout is well thought out, but forking UNIXes have broken things somewhat. Ce la vie; people have different opinions.
It is somewhat irritating that writing portable software isn't more automatic, or rather that it can take a lot of consideration. But we can't force old vendors to adopt new ideas that will break their own monolith, so we're stuck. Ce la vie. GNU libtool/autoconf/automake is a decent hack.
People bitch about hardware compatibility a lot, but that really only applies to certain architectures like x86. I can't speak authoritatively on this, but I'd be willing to bet that (for example) Linux has *far* better hardware support than Windows - it's just our impression that it doesn't because our new multimedia products don't necessarily work natively. In general, this can be fixed - fix the vendor, or choose another.
One complaint I do have from an administrative standpoint is that many UNIXes don't see the need to improve on their userland. After years of becoming accustomed to the GNU userland familiar to anyone with GNU/Linux (and getting what you might call 'spoiled'), I find myself really hating, for example, Solaris. GNU tools add lots of sensible extensions; other vendors should consider doing the same.
Package management would be another bitch. If your vendor doesn't supply you with up to date packages, or if you want to make some decisions yourself (and subsequently compile the software), you can create a big mess out of your filesystem if you're not really careful about what you install and where you let it go. Fifteen billion props to Gentoo on this one - I recently started using Gentoo, and hell if that's not the way to solve this problem.
One annoyance could be the number of overlapping standards and ideas (for example, esd / artsd / jackd / oss | alsa / oss).
All of these things are to some extent the result of people having different ideas. I can't *really* bring myself to whine about any of the above. Different ideas equals innovation. Trial and error, the OS evolves.
It would be swell if programmers thought about security a little more before they busted out into code. Sure, the occasional mistake will happen, but an entire system of cruft always seems to end up trying to being secure thanks to a bunch of hacks, which is a really shitty way to do something.
Note that I don't for one moment endorse the next generation CS-grad-ish idea of doing away with manual memory management by "moving on" from C.
We should vaporize Sendmail and BIND. Numerous better, faster replacements exist for both of these tools, yet the Sendmail/BIND remote holes seem to get installed and enabled by default on far too many systems.
In general, though, it's hard to argue with UNIX. There are tons of flavors, and there are exponentially more choices. If you're like me and think that Solaris is a big fat joke, you can try one of the three freely available BSDs. Or you can be one of those penguin lovers like myself and enjoy you some GNUs-not-UNIX along with a dose of uberKernel.