What Keeps You Off of Windows?

J. J. Ramsey asks: "schnell has already asked the question What's Keeping You On Windows? It seems only fair to ask the opposite question. For those of you who have elected to not use Windows, what keeps you away from it? Concerns about stability? Security? Dislike of Microsoft's business practices? Or are you simply a fan of your chosen platform and just don't care about Windows one way or the other?" Might recent events sway your decision to keep Microsoft's premier software offering off of your computer?

I live without Windows

[Quebec]

What keeps me off Windows is mainly because I don't want to be
locked-up in some savage immoral decommoditizing scheme.

The practice of scrambling and obfuscating the standards to insure
the failure of the competition is so much a threat to my eyes that
losing some compatibility and some discutable features for not dealing
with this is more then acceptable.

Death to close source, death to DRMs, long live the Open Source.

One thing

[DougMackensie]

Sanity

I stay off of windows because it sucks!

[titaniam]

A couple of months ago I finally made the switch off of windows xp and onto Fedora Linux on my home machine. For years now, I have been using my home computer as a thin-client, doing most of my work via VNC and SSH on a remote server connected to a T1. That way, wherever I am my real desktop is available and stable and right how I left it with dozens of my windows open for various applications for months at a time. So I was already using Linux for most things. I would use windows on my home machine only for web surfing (firefox), gaming, digital camera hookup and its ability to suspend. Then I made the mistake of connecting to windows update... Suddenly all my programs started crashing, the windows on the desktop would pick a stacking order and not be convinced to alter it, and the new and improved active-X made all of my favorite games (diablo) unusable. So I said screw it, and made linux my default boot. I no longer game, and only need to reboot to windows when I have to upload pictures from my digital camera. And when I do boot to windows once a month, I make sure I am offline. My next laptop will have linux pre-installed so I guess USB support will be there and my need for windows will be gone. Oh yeah, I occasionally boot windows to see how crappy my various websites render under IE. So final answer: I keep off windows because it sucks. Also I do not want to support an abusive monopoly.

The Cost

[blackhelicopter]

It costs too much in buying it, maintaining it, getting new anti-virus software, fighting with it... I just don't have the money and more importantly time...

Mac OS X

[pmj]

Mac OS X.

Quick

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mod this article flamebait!

The price is the sticking point

[Wellmont]

The price, almost absolutely the price....it is just to expensive to keep up with windows releases for a college student. Microsoft is really doing a disservice by selling software for hundreds of dollars and sometimes even thousands.

As a developer...

[Pivot]

I find myself much more productive in a Linux / Unix environment. Linux is just much more user friendly for me.

Well...

[xcham]

Shoddy business practices, nerve-wracking battles with the Control Panel (I'd much rather deal with /etc thank you) and a long history of instability crises. That and UNIXish environments are much more conducive to development work, I find.

I do know that WinXP is much less crash prone than stuff I was using years ago, before I made the switch, but I just use what works. GNU/Linux is a pretty good power user's desktop platform. And of course, the price is right.

The only reason I have a WinXP partition is GAMES

[Assmasher]

GAMES GAMES baby. I'm 32 but I still love to play the games. Yes, I have some games on my MDK9.2 partitions, but they mostly suck (sadly.)

If games came out on Linux at even roughly the same rate as WinXP boxes, I'd NEVER LOOK BACK (except at work where I have to [currently] use XP.)

Nothing really. Especially fonts.

[Stupid Dog]

What I really like in Windows is the font system. It's simple. Drop a font into the fonts folder in control panel, and it will just work. And it looks good. Unix fonts are a pain in the eyes, and blurring them to death with font aliasing does not please my eyes either. In fact, bad looking fonts are the killer argument that _prevents_ me from running a Unix as my main OS.

Re:More propoganda from a linux company

[mrwonton]

The irony in them asking their readers why they use Linux and not Windows? I don't think thats irony, but thanks Alanis.

Well of one....

[FerretFrottage]

my fear of heights and for two my lack of suction cup tipped fingers.

And seriously for 3, it's the stupid license model. I buy an OS for family/non-commerical use and I can only install it on one machine. No thanks, even Apple allows for a family license; sure they still charge you, but at least they give you some break. Maybe MS has changed their stance on this, but I doubt it.

And for 4, I do a serious HW upgrade about every 12-18 months and I'm expected to re-activate. I've heard the MS has made it possible to do this with out a lot of effort, but the fact that any is required or expected of me at all really turns me off from their product(s)

Usability among many other reasons

[drgonzo59]

Among the obvious reasons such as security and stability I also like the usability aspect of linux. I know, I know, Bash me all you want. For me, Linux is more user friendly than Windows. I like the command line, the config files in plain text that I can edit, and the choice of window managers (I use BlackBox, I like its simplicity). As someone said, "the only intuitive interface is the nipple, everything else is learned" most people consider Windows user friendly because they were trained to use only windows.

Control

[Khazunga]

Thinking about it, the word Control sums it up. I keep on Linux, because I know what the system is doing, why it is doing it, and I can fix it if my setup doesn't behave. Every one of my windows boxes degrades over time, and I have no idea why. Before I switched, I'd love the feel of a freshly installed windows box: snappy, clean, everything in place. Now, my linux install keeps on and on feeling like the day I installed it: fast, predictable, secure.

So, I keep on Linux, because I like retaining control over my computer.

Bugs

[vadim_t]

The biggest problem with Windows is that once it breaks it's really hard to fix. A few times Win2K was left unbootable, and it took me a week to figure out how to get it to install.

Linux, while it may be less intuitive is at least trivial to troubleshoot once you understand how it works. Windows though... it just freezed during the logo screen with the progress bar. You can't really get any less informative than that.

Besides that, stability. Not having to worry about the exploit of the day, spyware, and what every program will do with my registry is also very nice.

Re:Consistency

[abh]

Apparently reading the articles is too much to ask, but could you read the post at least?

He's not asking about switching to Linux... he's asking about why Linux users don't switch to Windows!

Microsoft Software as a Whole

[artlu]

I am a hardcore Mac user back from the old days, but I gave up on Apple for a few years. OS Lineage for me: Mac->Win3.1->Win98->Debian->Debian->XP->OSX. However, my mac is not perfect and some mundane CPU intensive tasks such as Stock Streamers, just run better on XP. Recently, I got the sasser virus on my XP laptop before I knew what it was, and then, I did a clean install. Because of work (Oracle Programming and Stock Stuff), I am still forced to use windows, but at home, my windows laptop is never even touched.

On the other hand, if you look at Microsoft Software as a whole, there are some great applications. I absolutely love the new office for OSX, and microsoft Project for windows has virtually no competition - even from Oracle. Truly, XP has come a long way from the 98SE crash fest, but the fact that Microsoft leaves the systems wide open is never good.

Im not an M$ fan, but you have to admit, that if they get their act together, we could be in for some trouble. Even from my OSX world.

On a side note, I want to plug a new site that I just made live. If you are interested in Day trading or the stock market check it out: Group Shares.com [groupshares.com].

Thanks,
Aj

My reason: Customization Options

[Gortbusters.org]

Ok, the reason I use Linux primarily [at home] is just the options it provides (for free).

- Evolution for getting all of my personal mail and OO-ximian for all of my office needs (very simple at home).
- Gentoo to compile and make my old hardware still useful
- Less chance for viri/worms and it's easier to see what's going on, or what was installed. Same goes for adware and spyware.
- Theme options are much better, much more choices and all for free. All windows themes require clunky third party packages that are slow, and some of them cost money (i.e. the ones you would really want to use).

For a development environment, I don't see a big difference other then that Linux is our production system and developing on Windows just means more testing. There are some nice development tools, but work won't even pay for them so that's not a reason to use linux over windows (or vise versa).

At work, I do use Windows -- because everyone else does, and every time I try to switch (OO, ximian connector, etc).... there are always little wrinkles that I don't have time to deal with. At home, I have more flexibility.

Oh yes, I also now use Xbox for all my gaming so I don't care if linux game support isn't that great.

Bang for the Buck!

[Interested Guy]

My OS desisions are based soley on bang for the buck. I keep a windows box around because I can devop simple data apps in Microsoft access faster than I can with anything on Linux.

I use linux mostly. Because I can't beat the bang for the buck on most every other application. I love using Quanta plus.

All of the other bonuses are nice. I like the freedom to look and figure out how something works. (or doesn't work)

I like the added security of evading the Worms and Viruses that plague Windows. Most of the plagues are avoided with a small amount of expense and a fair amount of common sense, so those are not a determining factor.

For the public Good.

[h4rm0ny]

I stay off Windows where possible, because it is better for society to have a strong competitor to Microsoft. Without the choice of other OS's Windows would be a poorer and more expensive product.

Furthermore, OSS ensures greater trust is possible. We can verify the source code. With Microsoft, we cannot do this and without a strong competitor they would have less incentive to keep things clean.

I use Linux, in short, because it prevents too much power accumulating with one small group.

Also, it's free and more versatile.

Pain in the ass to tell users...

[flatface]

Ok, I -do- use Linux, but when I first switched, I tried telling everyone who came to me with their Windows problems to switch to Linux. This was a few years ago. I tried this for a while, I even converted a few people. But in the end, for all the work it took me to tell people how to use the command line, use Google, and basically figure shit out for themselves, telling them how to fix what they did to Windows was much easier. There are way too many ignorant people out there who just can't handle the learning curve as well as most Linux users. Yes, my neighbours might have me come over once every two months to wipe their computers clean of viruses/worms/spyware and run Windows Update, but it saves me the hassle of telling them what to do each time. And I can't just write them a list either-- They have to have it told them to do in layman's terms.

So what keeps (most) users on Windows? The inability to handle the learning curve needed to use Linux. Don't get me wrong-- I love Linux to death, but it does have its own set of problems. Yes, I can fix most of them on my computer. No, I can't expect my grandmother to fix them by herself.

Windows subject to breakage

[jdray]

I run Linux to avoid viruses, keep from having to reboot all the time, have some control over my computer without having to figure out what to click on, and have a choice on my interface. Actually, the last thing is what really keeps me; I like being able to choose KDE over GNOME, or just using the shell. And, for that matter, once I've chosen a GUI, I like to be able to configure it the way I want to. Heck, if I want it to look like a Mac, I can have that, too, or some hybrid.

The biggest thing, though, is the openness. I don't read C code well enough to be able to delve into the bowells of the kernel or the GUI, or even modestly complex applications and have a chance of knowing what's going on. But there are people who can, and I know where to look to find out what they think. There's a certain safety that I feel when I run Linux that I don't feel when I run Windows. It's public safety, and it's maintained by the neighborhood watch.

Gaming Platform

[CHaN_316]

Windows is my primary gaming platform. I have no gaming consoles, so, if you want to play games, you have to go Windows, for better or for worse.

Several reasons

[gurps_npc]

1) Price 2) Viruses that target it 3) Bugs that they delay fixing 4) Anger at their arrogance and refusal to support a company that mistreats their customers 5) Less Hangs on Apple/Linux

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Tasks that are trivial under Unix, have thus far eluded me. I still don't know how to set up DNS under Win2K.

"I know how to do it" does not equal "This is trivial."

Setting up DNS on UNIX is quite complex. Whole books have been written on the subject.

Setting up DNS on Windows Server is no more complex than it is on UNIX. Whether it's simpler is a matter for argument. Personally, I think it's much simpler. But at the very least, it's no more complex. Just different.

But let's not talk about things like setting up DNS, a task that one person in a hundred thousand will have to do once every five years. Let's talk about things like sending and receiving instant messages.

Re:Mac OS X

[alfredo]

Me too. I only mess with the system when I want to, not when I have to.

Anyway, windows is butt ugly.

Re:I live without Windows

[October_30th]

savage immoral decommoditizing scheme

Immoral?

failure of the competition

The goal of any business. Nothing wrong here.

Ah. I see. You see business as immoral. Now I get it.

Corperations

[Nicholas Evans]

Every time I start windows I'm helping an evil corporation that has been proven to use anti-competitive business practices maintain it's monopoly. Not to mention you really don't know what's in windows. Frankly, I feel safer using opensource software, because people with a practiced eye can peek into what I'm using and tell me if I have any backdoors open for the NSA/CIA/LEP.

Re:Once you go Free, you'll never go back

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I use linux, but only as a server. I'd use it as my desktop, but the fact that I can't get my expensive $3,000 LCD monitor to work on it and can't play videogames on it is preventing me from switching to it on my desktop.

If I could at least get the monitor working, that would be enough for me to switch. It just really sucks having a $3,000 1920x1600 dpi monitor and a $500 video card but only get a 1024x768 resolution in linux.

No usable shell.

[mo]

I'm doing a lot of network debugging and the lack of a proper command line is just infuriating. For example, I've got a laptop with two ethernet ports that I plug into various machines to sniff traffic and test network configs with commands like:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.2
route add default gw 192.168.0.1
ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0 up promisc
tethereal -i eth1
dhclient eth0
httpd -X &
echo -ne "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n" | nc localhost 80

Now, granted this stuff can all be done on windows (and a lot of the commands are ported to windows) but a lot of it requires clicking into random dialog boxes. It's so much faster to hit control-r 'dhcli' and get a previous command, or even roll a few common sequences into a shell script (or a one-liner that I just hold in the history buffer). Perhaps this is just my ignorance of windows command-line abilities (it seems everything I want to do on windows is done by the 'net' command for some reason), but there's just so much more depth with a real unix shell.

Mac OS X - quality which Microsoft can never match

[markv242]

Ever since I switched, I realized just how much more intuitive the Apple designers / engineers really are. Microsoft has adopted the shotgun-like style of "throw a million options in front of the user and let them decide" when, 99% of the time, users don't want to decide, they just want their damned machine to work.

Honestly, who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea: "Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Hardware / Next / Uninstall/Unplug a device / Next / Unplug/Eject a device / Next / Select device / Next"

...when the Apple engineers tell you: "Unplug the device from your Macintosh."

reasons

[thomasa]

1. Reasonably low cost
2. Part of Open Source Movement
3. More Stable then Windows
4. Different from Windows
5. More flexible then Windows
6. Cutting edge software
7. OpenMosix
8. Faster than Windows
9. Better Security then Windows
10. More transparent More understandable
11. Does not profit Bill Gates

I'm easy

[veg]

I like an easy life. Free from Application errors, licence numbers, bugfix delays, unexplained crashes and unpredictability. Linux, BSD, Darwin and Inferno behave as they should, as one would expect, and according to the manual. If they don't, then it's a bug and it gets fixed.
I like knowing my systems are going to stay up, and if they should ever fail, which in general they don't, I'd like to know they'll be fixed asap without me having to take the blame and pay.

Open source makes the world a better place.

might sound weird

[Anonymous Coward]

but its for the GUI that I keep away from Windows, the so-called ease of use of Windows is easy to use coz its been fed to most users since they started to use computers.

I prefer to use fluxbox with an easily configurable menu that I get by clicking at on the background of my screen.

All the icons and systrays items and taskbar are pretty useless to me.

Also lets not forget the mention the ease of use of multiple desktops something windows hasnt even been able to put in yet.

Here's the short list...

[Foofoobar]

- lack of cross platform compatibility
- OS lockin through products or development languages (SQL Server, C#, etc)
- poor security
- poor stability
- code bloat/ excessive functionality
- lack of choice; choices are forced down your throat on install
- no built in firewall or other security features
- closed environment that cannot be modified
- want to do everything for you

I like choice and Microsoft doesn't. That's pretty much it.

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[Emperor Shaddam IV]

Thats because Linux/Unix admin is usually:

man "something"

vi /etc/conf/somefile

restart daemon or reboot and then check the logs.

While Windows is:

Search microsoft.com, if your luck
Otherwise, buy a Book.

Go to Control Panel, Click, Open, check, click, click, open, open, open, click, tab, type something in, reboot, Go to Control Panel, Click, Open, check, check. Reboot

And "Pray" everything works! :)

If God intended use to use GUI, the bible would have had Icons.

Re:The Cost

[Gortbusters.org]

True that.... You can download Linux for free and get all of your power applications (evolution, open office, dia, gimp, [the list goes on...]). Do some security configuration and then you don't have to buy virus scanners, or adware removal tools, or spyware detectors, or pop-up blockers, or any of that shit.

If you want games, it's cheaper to just play on the console -- yes, give MS some money for Xbox becaues Xbox live rules, but that is certainly better than to having to constantly upgrade video cards, and new versions of windows, and directX versions that may screw things up.

If you want to take it a step further and theme windows, then there's more money to get a decent theme desktop program (and even then it starts to slow things down).

Re:The price is the sticking point

[fornaxsw]

Since when do college students pay for software?

Just like a poll...

[LynchMan]

I would choose either the 'All of the Above' option, or CowboyNeal as a saftey guess...

Workflow

[cloudscout]

I'm not really 'off' Windows. I use Windows PCs and manage Windows networks daily. Linux systems as well. Most of my actual work, however, is done on a Macintosh. Even my Windows-related work is typically accomplished from my Mac using standard VPN tools in combination with Windows Terminal Services and/or VNC.

It is the solution that works best for me personally. I am rarely in the office which means that portability is a key factor and I enjoy the portability options of Mac OS X over those of Windows or Linux while maintaining a fantastic 'middle ground' to communicate with and manage these other platforms.

My favorite, albeit tired, phrase is "Use the right tool for the right job." For my job, a PowerBook running Mac OS X is that tool. But, like any good carpenter or mechanic, I have more than one tool in my toolbox. I just happen to use some more than others.

Re:I live without Windows

[John Courtland]

The goal of any business is to profit. Not to make the competition fail through shady practices. If the competition fails because you made such a good product, that's one story. If they fail because you illegally cornered the market using underhanded licensing tactics, that's another all together.

Not price for me

[Snjit]

Its most definately not price for me. I shell out the $$ for each distribution because I believe in supporting them (SuSE in this case). I use it because:

1) It works great on older hardware saving me money and upgrade pains.
2) Unlike Windoze when I install a distribution I'm not only getting an OS and desktop platform I'm getting 99% of all the applications I need all at once.
3) Its reliable with uptimes in the months (I do stupid things occasionally otherwise it would be longer).
4) Its secure. My email is not my enemy and there is nothing on the system running that I haven't turned on myself.
5) Its multipurpose; desktop, server, dev environment, games machine, network monitor, firewall, you name it.
6) It can be modified/configured to do things the way =I= want to do them. Not the way I'm forced to do them.
7) Choice!!!

S'njit

Re:One thing

[Cromac]

The problem comes from my friends. One morning, I sit down in front of my PC, boot it. Something comes up full-screen, immediately. I've been spywared. By no fault of my own. My less-than-savvy friends have just cost me an hour of my time downloading, updating and running AdAware/SpyBot S&D.

That's not a fault of Windows that's your responsibility for allowing your friends to use your machine with an account that has permissions to do such things.

Would you blame Ford if your friend borrowed your car and wrecked it?

My reasons...

[DarkDust]

...today (back fives years ago when I switched I was just annoyed by Win98 and curious):

Windows...

• has no virtual desktops
• has no useable shell
• has no standard toolchains
• has no network-transparency (like with ssh/X; this is one of the most important features I'm missing on Windows)
• has too many obscure/intransparent things going on (with the registry beeing just one such thing)
• too often does things it thinks I want it to do while in I don't want it to that (Windows sometimes treats its users like small children)

I know almost all features I miss on Windows can be "upgraded" with some tools, like an X server for Windows or SSH daemon for Windows. But it's not always working like it should. For example, since Windows has no native support for virtual desktops like X Window has all virtual desktop tools I've seen under Windows had some flaws and didn't satisfy me.

A few years ago I really hated Windows. Now I just don't care ;-) I don't have to use it, only rarely at work, so I really don't care what Windows can or can't. I've become a real fan of the Linux/UNIX architecture and acquired very intimate knowledge, so I don't think Windows will ever start to appeal to me again as everything I need is present in Linux/FreeBSD. Especially since KDE 3.2 is really good now and OpenOffice as well.

Well, I'll give an honest answer

[digitalgimpus]

My reasons:

- Slow bloated feel
- Awkward UI
- Buggy
- Insecure, always virus concerns
- Expensive
- Everything takes 10 clicks.

Mac OS X showed me how great an OS can feel
- Smooth slim feel
- UI feels right (can't explain it much better than that)
- never crashed
- software update is nice and elequent, pretty secure.
- inexpensive ($129 isn't to bad)
- minimal clicks.

Overall: Higher quality, gets my vote every time. Windows is just an inferior product.

Strategic advantage.

[Soko]

If you count on Windows, you are at the mercy of Microsoft and thier business model. They will try to make you and your business so depandant on them that you can't go in any direction but that which they tell you - you become thier cash cow.

Concientiously deploying thier solutions, however, means that they become just another vendor - who you can turf at any time for something better, if and when it comes along.

Realising what amount of control you give a vendor ultimately keeps control of your business where it belongs - with you.

There are probably more than a few businesses that woke up to the fact that Microsoft had an inordinate amount of control over them when they introduced Licensing 6.0. Once it sunk in that Microsoft was actually capable of exacting an annual tribute from them (and actually willing to attempt this), the ultimate damage was done. IMHO, Microsoft's huberis is killing Windows, not the worms.

*goes back to finishing the deployment of 2 brand new Linux servers...

Soko

virii and worms

[spir0]

sure they exist for other platforms, but they're not as prevalent as on windows.

before windows XP, I would have said stability, but that is getting better, no matter how much we hate to think so. perhaps once windows is stable to a workable level, they will work on security, but I'm not holding my breath.

I've always been a linux/unix geek, and after trying OSX 2 years ago, I haven't looked back.

Re:The price is the sticking point

[KrispyKringle]

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. While my current desktop was custom-built, previously--and probably much of the time in the future--I bought and will buy machines from an OEM. It's simply faster, easier, and generally as cheap, if not cheaper (of course, with your own custom build, you get what you want, you know the components are good, and so forth). But I don't really enjoy hardware enough to get a thrill from building a machine.

Anyway, when I get an OEM, I get Windows. Additionally, at my university, I can get Windows licenses for free (site license) with minimal hassle. So price is hardly a sticking point (of course, I have become used to free software enough that having to mess about with license authentication and so forth is still a big hassle).

On top of that, I know literally nobody, I think, who does not pirate (other than myself). So if the vast majority of students are willing and able to get Windows for free, legally or not, why do some choose not to? Perhaps you are unwilling to pirate Windows, and I commend you, but likely it came with your computer (and if not, the educational version of XP is under $100).

I personally use Linux, FreeBSD,and MacOS X because I prefer the environment. I've been working on Windows machines in the lab I work in, and it's painful. For development, I've heard VisualStudio is supposed to be great. But I'd say give me grep and Emacs any day. I've tried Cygwin. It's installed here. But it still just isn't really the same.

I think security is my number one concern, but it's a concern with Linux, too. Despite the zealotry, Linux security is hard to do well. Sure, you don't have to worry about worms as much, but in all honesty if someone were deliberately aiming for my machine, can I be sure it would hold up? Probably not. That's not to say one can't do Linux security; by dint of being open source, I have a plethora of options like PaX, GRSec, and SELinux to choose from. But I don't personally think many Linux users are as ``secure by default'' as they might think.

Stability might be a close second, but I've had some complaints with OS X (which I've only been using for a few months) and my experiences with WinXP show it to be a big improvement in that regard over previous versions.

Familiarity, then, is what takes the cake. On a UNIX-ish system, I am at home. On Windows? ``Where can I find the button to do this?''

Re:One thing

[autopr0n]

Yeah. I go insane when Windows starts freaking out after a month, and I think I need to do a re-install. It wouldn't bother me at all that Windows breaks so quickly if the place I work wasn't an ASP / VB shop. As it is, when Windows freaks, and I need to re-install, I have to install tons of apps. Work keeps me on Windows, and is a frequent reminder why I stay off Windows at home.

What are you doing to it, installing spyware? My main win2k install was actualy done in 2000. None of my other machines have ever been reinstalled, and they've been running fine.

Viruses, spyware, drivers, flexibility, AA fonts

[dizzyduck]

Viruses and spyware. I like being able to click links and open random emails with abandon. I can do this with Mozilla/Evolution. And should Mozilla get infested with some sort of spyware thing like Internet Explorer is on my university computer account, I can just backup my bookmarks, rm -rf ~/.mozilla and be on my way. I don't even know where to begin in fixing IE.

Drivers. Strange as it may seem, it's a lot eaiser to get things working in Linux (provided it's actually supported).

Infinite flexibility. I have a D-Link USB radio jobbie. My computer is set to turn on at 5:50 every morning in the BIOS. In my crontab I have the following commands record Jono and Harriet's breakfast show on Heart 106.2 (great show - listen to it!)

• tune the radio,
• unmute the line in,
• start recording at 5:55
• stop recording at 9:05
• shutdown the computer at 9:10

I can't even imagine how to do that in Windows.

Better looking fonts. All my apps have AA fonts. The web looks so much more prettier in Linux.

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[thehun101]

The trick with linux is knowing what that "something" is. I have spent many hours searching the web and my manuals looking for a simple command in linux just because I didn't know the correct command to use or even the linux terminology for it.

However in windows I have always been able to "Click, Open, check, click, click, etc" until I find what I am looking for. It usually takes less than a half an hour the first time I do it.

I am now somewhat proficient as a linux user, but I am still lacking as an administrator.

-the Hun

Hate Pirating

[magictongue]

I would say that I'm cheap (or perhaps I just hate wasting money) and I don't believe in pirating software. Most people that I know who are loyally committed to Windows pirate a great deal of their software. It bothers me that someone would dismiss Linux and praise Windows but will not pay for Windows or Windows apps. Also, if a "free" application is just as good as a "non free" application its logical to pick the free version. Even when the "free' version is not as good it still makes sense to pick it if it meets your needs. Let face it, I eat more ground beef than filet mignon even though the filet mignon is better. It is simple economic logic. I bet if someone could end all pirating of software it would not be long before the majority of people where using Linux.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:One thing

[It'sYerMam]

"permissions"

This is windows!

Newer windowses do have methods to prevent some (not all) of this, but older windowses, and if you need your account to be able to install things (No su in windows) then it has to be an admin.
It's one thing when your friend takes your car out for a spin and smashes it into a tree, another when it falls apart as soon as he takes the wheel.

Re:It's simple

[pclminion]

I don't feel like I should have to pay a bunch of cash to some a-hole in Oregon or wherever just so I can use my own goddamn computer that I paid my own goddamn good money for.

I think that hits the nail on the head (it's Washington, by the way, not Oregon). Something as fundamental as an operating system shouldn't cost anything. It is a requisite for computing.

How would you react if you walked into a car dealership and the dealer told you you had to pay extra for the car battery, that it didn't just come with the car? It would be ridiculous. You can't use a car without a battery, and you can't use a computer without an OS. Charging for it as if it were a seperate product, a seperate application, is simple highway robbery.

Yes, what I'm advocating here is tighter integration of the OS into the hardware. When you buy computer components, they shouldn't just sit around useless until you pay out even more money for an OS. It should be built in. Upgradeable, interchangeable, yes, but built in.

Microsoft argues that the price of their operating system reflects its true value, that an OS is really very valuable because it is required to make the system work. Yet a car battery is also required to make a car work, and it is one of the cheapest components of the car! So clearly, whether something is a requirement or not does not reflect on its value in any direct way.

People are beginning to wake up to this deficient argument, so now Microsoft's strategy is to bundle as much extraneous software as possible with the OS, and then claim that the extra value lies in the bundled software. But this is like selling a car battery than comes with, say, a matching riding lawn mower. Nevermind the fact that you don't need a riding mower, it's simply a way to get you to agree to pay much much more than what the product is actually worth. And of course you don't have the option of refusing the lawn mower -- you're going to pay for it anyway.

So the reason I don't use Windows is because I refuse to be forced to buy a riding lawn mower when all I really want is a car battery. Yeah, I'm forced to use a battery that most people are unfamiliar with, and which is somewhat persnickety, and doesn't work in as many types of cars as the Microsoft battery (in case you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about Linux here), but now I'm getting what I really want, instead of what some corporation in Redmond thinks I want.

some good reasons

[jonastullus]

well here's the reasons i can come up with in 5 minutes:

1. scripting: i LOVE scripting! without some nice bash/perl/python scripts and the heavy usage of piping, bash variables, etc. an operating system would be more of a hindrance than a help!

1b. automation: automation together with scriptability is just the greatest. schedule some event for tomorrow, start anything in a screen session and connect from somewhere else lateron, convert all your filenames into something else, schedule backups, schedule reboots, *you name it*.

1c. remote access: any OS that doesn't allow remote access which differs in no way from local access is crap (hmm, hopefully remote sound support comes soon for X). windows incapability to allow transparent and easy remote access is one of the main reasons of not using it for anything but desktop. having a windows server and being responsible for administrating it remotely (as you most likely will, if sitting in some basement ain't your thang) is the most horrible nightmare imagineable!

2. transparency: i just trashed one of my file-systems (i WAS actually my fault). but linux/unix allowed me to repair what was left and most of all give me the CHANCE to spend as much time as i wanted! with proprietary systems you often have to rely on shoddy support (if you have any).

3. community: this has actually little to do with a specific system, but the open-ness of linux/bsd produces a better community. in free/open software there is so much know-how available on the internet with most of your questions already answered, and if not capable individuals in forums, IRC, newsgroups!

4. fixeability: windows give little choice when it comes to fixing bugs. the little you can do in the registry is most likely to trash your whole system (which you then will have no chance of reviving!). you CAN very well destroy a linux system, but much of the configuration files can be saved.

5. security: windows just sucks when it comes to securing against trojans, virii, worms! with A LOT of effort you can clamp everything down to a state where a w2k/wxp system can be called secure, but with stringent (it could be better) user separation of unix, compromising one service does not necessarily mean compromise of the whole system, as it does in most cases under windows.

6. extendability: in non-windows OSs (i.e. linux/bsd) you always have the chance to go further. if the system isn't secure enough, configure SELinux. if you would like some additional feature in the kernel, patch it. if you want perfectly configured mutt/exim/fetchmail/apache/cyrus spend hours over hours and get it the way you want!

7. choice: having the choice of several programs for one job is often a nuissance and will likely take you a while to figure out which one is best suited. but this inconveniance still beats having less choice (as you DO under windows!).

8. price ;-)

9. modularity: nobody is forcing you to update to such and such, update your operating system to install an office suite or anything like that. with the compile-from-source approach, almost any program should run under almost any posix-compatible OS (if written with compatibility in mind) and therefore put no pressure on the users as to what OS to use!

9. freedom: the certainty that you will NEVER have to do with anything less than you have today. the good feeling that a free-software community is building software for the future which will not be obliterated in a 5-year-cycle. sure, the bazaar model has its drawbacks, but the freedom from monopolistic enterprises which try to force you into dependencies (i.e. the MS Office format) should clearly be more important than the little comfort you gain over free alternatives (with notable exceptions of course).

i surely have forgotton many reasons (as well as not mention some drawbacks of not using windows), but the above should cover it for now ;-)

Re:What keeps me off?

[banzai51]

Steve fucking Balmer: a man whose wobbling, flabby, sweating body is a testament to corporate greed

Ahhh, so you are evaluating your software based on looks of the people in the company? Wow. Can it get any more closed minded than that?

Re:I stay off of windows because it sucks!

[PhoenixFlare]

Then I made the mistake of connecting to windows update... Suddenly all my programs started crashing,

Perhaps there was a specific issue with one of the patches and another piece of software you had installed? I find it extremely hard to believe that your entire system would begin to constantly crash for some unknown reason.

If you're savvy enough to use SSH and VNC and all that, why didn't you at least educate yourself about the updates a bit before installing them?

Yes, some of the patches have caused problems that were not disclosed or known beforehand, but this is relatively rare, and you can generally either uninstall the patch or fix whatever issue it has caused.

the windows on the desktop would pick a stacking order and not be convinced to alter it,

This is so inane, it's funny. What, you couldn't figure out how to move through/around your various program windows? Give me a break...You sound like one of those people that equates everything they don't understand about computers to ghosts or magic or something.

Windows may have some odd quirks, but unless you're infected with a virus or trojan or have some extremely rare issue that i'm not aware of, your program windows do not pick screen positions and refuse to move.

and the new and improved active-X made all of my favorite games (diablo) unusable.

Utter rubbish.

First of all, what you're referring to in this context would be DirectX, not "active-X".

Secondly, your claim that it suddenly made all your games stop working is even more laughable. More specifically, i've been using Diablo, Diablo II, and Lord of Destruction under 3 different versions of DirectX (including the most current) over the years with absolutely no problems at all. So have thousands and thousands of other people.

I cannot recall more than one or two old non-DOS-based games that do not work now, and several that new DirectX versions actually improved.

Oh yeah, I occasionally boot windows to see how crappy my various websites render under IE.

God, could you be any more determined to ignore and twist the facts to suit your ranting?

I'll help you out on this one - if you don't like IE, try this [mozilla.org]. Works as good or better than IE for pretty much everything except Shockwave and Flash. There's a Windows version of Mozilla, too. And Opera.

So final answer: I keep off windows because it sucks. Also I do not want to support an abusive monopoly.

Judging from the complaints you bring up, I find it extremely hard to believe you have used Windows recently, if at all.

Feel free to respond, I have a feeling i'd enjoy it.

Whats keeping me off windows?

[SeanTobin]

My motherboard!

No, seriously. Earlier this year the hdd controler took a dump to the point where windows wouldn't run. I've tried: 98SE, ME, 2k and XP. Not a single version runs. I end up with "Hardware failure: contact your vendor for support" or something similar. On safe startups it dies immediately after MUP.SYS. I've been through new ram, video cards, hard disks, bios flashes, network cards, and HDD low level formats.

Anyway, I had a gentoo partition on it for a while, and I run mandrake/debian/redhat on various servers so I'm not quite jumping in the deep end here. The reason I was running windows was really for games and the 'it just works' factor. I know if I get a device somewhere, or a game, or some app I know it runs on windows.

Now, I know the arguments against all the above... if you want to game, get a console. Buy only hardware from linux-friendly manufacturers.. and I agree although the reality is that it doesn't always work that way.

Now, to get my computer functional, I installed several distros (all of which seem to work flawlessly despite windows claims of hardware inadequacy). I didn't feel like installing gentoo all week (I'm not knocking gentoo! I ran it for a year or so and liked it), and fedora lasted almost half an hour before me getting mad at it, so I went back to my old standby... Mandrake 10. I booted knoppix and saved the community iso to my ramdrive, burned it, and installed from the ftp official sources. An hour later I had a copy of Mandrake and it was my new desktop - permenantly. Albeit by force.

Now, I tried to go back to windows a few times on another partition with no success (and yes I mapped the partitions around with grub to be windows-friendly).. And it failed.

So I had a choice.. stick with linux (by force) and learn to love it in a desktop environment or shell out for a new motherboard.

Setting up the system was simple. Sound, mice, usb printers, nvidia graphics drivers etc... All that went well. The next task was clear - getting games to work.

Now, I have a collection of several hundred cd's and numerous floppies dating back to the days of the original Mechwarrior and Starflt (and I still have the code wheel). After a weekend of wine and compiling the winex cvs several different ways, I ended up with a grand total of 0 working games. This was very disappointing.

I struggled for about another two weeks with some mmorpg's I played and had just about finished with the withdrawl pains since I was unable to play them. Still no luck.

I was hard-set against paying $15 for a transgaming subscription, mostly because of the lack of it being free (in either sence of the word).

At one weak point I threw out my cc# and ended up with a nice little minty-fresh RPM. The installation was easy.. no config files needed to be setup (although I tweaked them later) and it made all the directories I needed. The interesting part was... most of my games actually worked. I've been going through KOTOR for the last week on linux, and aside from some mouse irritations it mostly works.

Now, I'm not an advocate for Transgaming, and I recommend using wine/x if at all possible, but for anyone thrown into the deep end it can ease some of the pains.

And now, my home system is linux and its staying that way.

Re:I live without Windows

[Short Circuit]

There are two reasons to have a free-enterprise economy. First, people can earn a living on merit. Second, consumers get decent products at a decent price.

Unfortunately, some (though admittedly few) controls have to be in place to gaurantee the latter. The FDA exists so that we don't get fed shoddy food and medicines. The FCC exists in part so that radio stations don't fry all the electronic equipment within a ten mile radius. The FTC exists in part to keep both consumers and shareholders from getting shafted.

Re:I'm cheap...

[cshark]

I prefer Linux because I can do more with it.

I like KDE better than Windows XP. It's a better desktop with more features that are easier to tweak and fix if something goes wrong.

I'm starting to play with XFCE. I like that too.

The command line actually has real unadulterated power under Linux!

I like the fact that there isn't a central monolithic registry that can take the entire system down.

I prefer Mozilla to IE. Always have.

My kids like the games that come with KDE and GNOME. They're colorful and fun, and they whine when I tell them they have to use the XP box in the other room for homework.

I like the fact that my nine year old can't break it... no matter how hard she tries...

I like the fact that my wife can't install software on my desktop when she's not logged in as me.

I like Linux because I never have to worry about the status of my license, or installing it on multiple machines.

I like the fact that I can set up a grid or a series of thin clients throughout my house without much real work.

I like the fact that my internet connection is faster under Linux than it was under Windows XP. It's a real kick. If you have both running side by side, try comparing them sometime.

It's nice that Linux will run (granted with a little work) on my prehistoric 486dx2.

It's nice that Linux doesn't have 19 system processes that report to the Microsoft mother-ship for no good reason at all, that can't be turned off.

It's nice that there's so much useful documentation on Linux out there. No matter what problem I'm having, the Linux community has documented just about everything incredibly well. And they never ask how helpful they were when they were no help at all. That's nice too.

Linus is slightly less evil than Gates.

And the fact that it's free, or at least mostly free doesn't hurt either.

It's more fun

[Scholasticus]

A lot has already been written about various reasons for not using Windows - stability issues, control, viruses, cost, customization, and so on. I agree with all these reasons, but I'll add another which I don't think has been stated: I stay away from Windows and use Linux because it's more fun.

I have fun tinkering with my OS. You can't do a lot of that with Windows, but you can with Linux. I'm not a developer, but I can still get a kick out of compiling my own kernel, editing a config file, or trying out a different window manager. I know a lot of people don't find fun in these things, but I do. This isn't my only reason for not using Windows, but it's important to me.

Re:Once you go Free, you'll never go back

[Gorath99]

Pretty much my story too. I've used MS since DOS3. Never really got into *nix, as for a long time I had no way to try it out (no internet) and once I did get a chance to try it out on a Solaris machine, I found it sorely disappointing (CDE annoyed the heck out of me and I didn't know any of the CLI commands).

Then about 18 months ago I had to work on a Redhat desktop for a couple of months. I took some time to learn to use the CLI commands and eventually got hooked.

When I installed Mandrake at home, I set the machine up to boot into Windows by default. After only two weeks or so I noticed that I pretty much always chose to boot linux instead, so that became the default. Stayed that way ever since.

Why do I keep away from Windows? Two things mainly.

1) Pretty much everything I do except playing games and making PowerPoint presentations (OO.org is great, but Impress presentations don't always look perfect in PowerPoint, which I have to use for the actual presentation) can be done just as easily or more easily under linux.

2) I'm in charge of linux. Linux doesn't try to dictate how I should use my computer. If I don't like the windows manager, I can choose another one. If I would like to have feature X in program Y, I can file a wishlist or make the modifications myself if I can. If I want to get rid of some program I dislike, linux won't try to stop me. Etc. etc.

And of course the price is really nice too, but that's not as big a selling point to me as those other 2 points, since I can get cheap/free copies of Windows programs for most things that I need to do (student license for MS-Office, eclipse, JDK, MiKTeX, etc.)

Re:One thing

[txviking]

What keeps me off Windows ?

The fact that I have no idea what kind of trojan horse of timebomb windows might be. In a world of open network, I have the feeling that it is my ethical obligation to know what my computer is running. And if I am unable to check that out myself, that there are independant experts that can check it out.

I believe it is too easy to trust one corporation. We don't even do that with governments. There are checks and balances, separation of powers etc. Where are the separation of powers and checks and balances concerning Windows ?

I believe in self-determinism. In my own decision when to upgrade my hardware (not because some software has an exploit and it is not fixed anymore, and the new version does not run on it). I believe in self-determination without a nanny that needs to be informed when I change my hardware configuration. I believe it is nobody's business, to put cpu-ids in my text-documents.

I believe in ownership. I believe it is my right to own what I buy. To sell what I own, and to fix it when it is broken, or to go to an independent garage to fix my software instead of the manufacture from where I bought it from

I believe in my right of protection from illegal search and seizure. I do not think anybody needs to know what my hardware is, or what software I have on my machine when I put in a patch.

I believe in the freedom of speech. I do not believe it is anybody's right to forsake my ownership of something that I bought and paid for, because I use it as a tool to opine something that is not liked by somebody else who in return can legally use the EULA to revoke my right of ownership for what I have paid for.

I believe in the right to use my possesion to make a profit in my business endeavors. I do not think that if I buy something, I can not rent it out for money.

This are only 7 of many issues that I have with Windows. I don't care if Windows would be the best product in the world, far ahead of anything else. I would have an issue with what I have to sell of my soul (or rights) to enjoy it. I am very happy, that I have a choice and can choose to use something else that does not deny my inalienable rights that are dear to me

However, like with lots of things, this is my choice, and I would fight for the freedom of others to choose differently while I hope they would stand by me in the same way to fight for my freedom of choice in this issue

Re:Mac OS X - quality which Microsoft can never ma

[dasmegabyte]

Actually, what ticks me off is that Windows makes it easier to unplug a device incorrectly than it does to do so correctly.

On Windows, if I want to eject my iPod or my camera, I have to click unplug device. Then I have to click the device i want to unplug. Then I have to select the device. Then it tells me I'll also be turning off the filesystem on the drive (duh). Then is asks if I'm sure. Then it tells me it ejected okay.

That's 4 windows opened. If I just pull the cable, I only get one window. Guess which one I do?

On Mac OSX, if I jack the plug on my iPod or my camera, I get a single message telling me I did something stupid and probably screwed my file system (whcih, on the camera, i probably did). If I drag it to the trash, or click the eject button over the volume in the finder, and i'm not using a file on the drive, it ejects and doesn't even give me a window. It becomes LESS of a hassle to do it right!

Development

[bltfast32]

I use it because Windows is completely closed. I love programming and Linux makes it easy to screw around with (screw up?) anything.

Heck, Windows doesn't even ship with QuickBasic anymore. They've certainly made it clear you aren't welcome to explore (unless you have several hundred for VS.NET).

Too bad too; I think a lot of youth are missing out on the excitment of programming because of this too. I don't think MS is really interested in fostering more programmers. They have the ones they feel they need.

So anyways - like I said before I started rambling. I love to program and I'll never run out of possibilities with Linux so I love it. I'm like a kid in a candy store.

It motivates me to participate and grow.

BTW - I can relate to 'easier to diagnose problems' argument too.

Re:Once you go Free, you'll never go back

[IAmMaxHarris]

Wrong.

I used Linux exclusively (starting with Slackware, running kernel 1.2.3) over a five year period from 1996 until 2000.

The quality/stability of Windows 2000 won me over.

I switched to Windows 2000, and never looked back. Gone are the installation headaches, poor user interfaces, lack of integrated features, poor documentation, and politics of free software. I'm more productive with Visual Studio, SQL Server, .NET, and Windows Server than I ever was with Linux, MySQL, vi, and gdb. I don't have to waste time worrying about which toolkit to code for, or how to hack around some mind-numbingly bad design (like X).

The cost of software licenses is not something I care about: even Microsoft's retail prices add up to far less than 1% of revenue at my company. And if I didn't have their software, I'd be much less productive than I am now. So their stuff pays for itself.

Re:One thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, pedantic much? I mean, sure, there's a level of fault that I give myself, but that's why I don't expect these same friends to fix the mess they made.

But hey, who even said that a locked down 'user' account (not even Power User) would have been any less dangerous? Spyware could still install itself to any folder within that users own Documents and Settings folder. Registry keys under HKEY_USER could still be modified.

Simply put, by not being the target of all these worms and trojans (spyware is a trojan) then my life is that much easier.

No More Windows

[Ridgelift]

I don't use Windows anymore because Linux is more fun.

Re:I live without Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

• Being able to do a network boot (fully diskless workstation) served from a RAIDed fileserver over a gigabit LAN
• Being able to tweak the system beyond belief
• Having everything 'just work' once it's set up
• My work environment is in Linux as well

Notice that I haven't said anything about cost. In fact, I probably spend more per year on distro stuff than I would if using Windows.

For many of us, Windows can't do what's required.

Microsoft won't allow me

[noldrin]

Microsoft refuses to allow me to run MS Windows. This is because I can't agree to their EULA.

Really ? I went free, then went back. way back.

[bmajik]

I "went free" a long time ago. I first used UNIX as an 8th grader and was running linux .98 when i was in 10th grade. I stopped using MS products as of Win 3.1 (and after dabbling with OS/2 2.1/2.11) switched completely to linux.

For a year or two.

Then i bought a sparc IPX with sol 2.4, then an SS10 with 2.5.1. Then i went off to college.

With these two real machines i had no need for linux, so i stopped caring about PCs in general. I had real hardware and a real OS that ran basically as long as i left the things turned on. At college i had 2 sparcstations but no PCs.

My junior year of school i bought an SGI i^2 high impact (i wanted a fast 24bit gfx console, and sun didn't have any available unless you got an ffb, which were very expensive and UPA only, or a ZX, which i bought, and was dirt slow)

Finally, in my senior year of college, i got a PC again. Why ? my sgi got rooted :) A friend gave me her old p166mmx machine. I bought two $10 ethernet cards and put openbsd on it. That machine is still my openbsd firewall/filter/"stuff" machine. In march of that year i bought a $400 machine and put win2k RC on it to compete in a windows CE development contest. (note i hadn't used any MS stuff in years, apart from a friends machine or the occasional lab computer).

In may of the same year (2 months later), i started work full time at Microsoft.

Not much changed at home - my main box was still my SGI for a number of years, with my ss10 doing web and mail hosting, the obsd box doing all firewall duties. I sold the sparc IPX back in college.

I built a duron 600 file server and put obsd on it. This was when UDMA 100 drives were fairly new; i put two in that machine and discovered a bug in the oBSD IDE driver, which i submitted a minor patch for (and which was subsequently re-written, but im in the comments somewhere :)

At work obviously i was using w2k, xp, server 2k3, etc. I had a linux box in the corner for some occasional tasks that were actually faster to do in unix even with the penalty of moving data over and back again (i am something of a fan of awk)

I found that W2k was refreshingly nice compared to 3.1, 95, and NT4. I'd say that W2k was the first real OS MS released. Usable enough to not get in the way. Certainly no more than dicking with linux sound modules got in the way.

Curretly, that duron 600 is my main xp workstation, the p166 still runs openbsd, and the ss10 has been powered off for 6 months. The $400 w2k machine still runs w2k as a dedicated machine that has daemontools images of the various car-repair and parts-db stuff i use (via terminal server).

The point of all this long windedness ?

everything post w2k is good enough to use as a workstation, IMO. For a given task, there's a number of tools that can accomplish it. In my case, i screw with computers enough at work that i'm just not interested in hassling with them at home. That means that my home technology choices tend to revolve around "easiest", where easiest caters to my current skillset and world view.

That means i use an XP machine for all of my web surfing and emailing, and putty from there to a unix machine to irc (i hate graphical irc clients). The oBSD machine hosts email and web (because both are super easy to setup there, and i have no fears about making an obsd machine internet-facing.. it just works like it's supposed to)

What's the point of all of this ?
I could really care less what OS i'm using. It either meets my requirments or it doesn't. I'll use the one that meets the operational profile for what i'll use the box for with the least amount of my effort. If i gave a crap about spending lots of time at home computing, i'd probably have something more modern than a duron 600 as my primary workstation.

Re:One thing

[iserlohn]

Good for you. However, if you have been upgrading hardware or installing software, Windows does break, and more often than not, the breakage is hidden somewhere deep down inside the system.

The main problem with windows, as I see it, is the over dependance of the system registry. Corruption of the registry is fatal to the system. Even if the registry is not currpted, there are tons of keys hidden deep down within the heirarchy , many of which is not obvious what they control, and a lot of them auto-generated values with some arbitarty ID as keys! You can't get any user unfriendly than this.

Evan though the system configuration files of Unix and Linux system are diverse in format and not unified or centralized, almost all configuration is in a text based format that is easy to read and for the most part, well documented. If you run into a setting which you need lookup, you can mostly do it with a "man config.conf".

Missing topic

[Ra5pu7in]

What keeps you dual-booting your system? I have some software that simply isn't available to run with Linux or requires a long delay from the release of the Windows version, so I have a Windows boot. I can't stand the security risk of Windows so I have a Linux boot. When I am gaming or handling CAD/CAM stuff, I log in to Windows. When I am surfing the net or checking email, I log in to Linux.

Re:One thing

[rjstanford]

But hey, who even said that a locked down 'user' account (not even Power User) would have been any less dangerous? Spyware could still install itself to any folder within that users own Documents and Settings folder. Registry keys under HKEY_USER could still be modified.

Which is 100% true on UNIX systems also. It just happens to be true that most spyware type apps (the vast majority of which are actively and willingly downloaded by their end-users) are written for Windows. If more people were using UNIX, you'd get these apps for UNIX as well. There's no technical superiority here, just user frustration (ie: this app (which has bad side effects) isn't available for my OS so I can't download it and see the pretty cursors (or whatever)).

Re:I live without Windows

[Phillup]

Sounds to me like you can't tell the difference between morality and legality.

They are not the same.

Re:One thing

[quantum bit]

But hey, who even said that a locked down 'user' account (not even Power User) would have been any less dangerous? Spyware could still install itself to any folder within that users own Documents and Settings folder. Registry keys under HKEY_USER could still be modified.

Same issue with any OS. Malware could easily run under a user account -- in Windows most doesn't (fails horribly if Program Files or HKLM isn't writable). Of course the added bonus here is that if one did, when your friend logs off and you log back on under your user account, that crap they installed under their account isn't running anymore and can't touch your files.

Plus it's a lot harder for spyware to hide out inside a user profile directory -- no mess of DLLs in System32 to camoflauge itself with...

Why do you eat vanilla ice cream?

[NitsujTPU]

Why not chocolate, or some other flavor? ...it's about the same question unless you really have a reason. I use Linux because, as a student, I needed a lot of the things that it gave me, and now, I just find it more convenient. What keeps me off of Windows is the fact that I use Linux, and that I'd have to buy a license for my computer. ...since I'm going to graduate school in the fall, I'll be skipping that license.

Pointless question.

[copponex]

You guys have painted yourself in a corner. You say that Linux is cheaper than windows, but when you consider the time spent trying to get broken libraries, drivers, and programs to work, you're wrong. I paid $90 for my OEM copy of Windows XP, and that was three years ago. That averages to nine cents per day.

Now, as far as a *server* is concerned, Linux is usually a better choice. Until Linux is easier to use than Windows, it's not going to put a dent in desktop marketshare. So, if you *really* want that marketshare, you'll stop being ricers [funroll-loops.org] and start developing a UI on top of the kernel that

1) makes it easy to install/remove programs, and provides an easy way to run Windows executables.
2) makes it easy to install/remove web plugins, like flash.
3) makes it easy to install/remove drivers.
4) provides a sane way to manage libraries.

If you can't manage these simple tasks that are the basis for the existence of an operating system, then how in the hell do you expect to get any customers?

Re:One thing

[Phillup]

My main win2k install was actualy done in 2000. None of my other machines have ever been reinstalled, and they've been running fine.

Congratulations. Not everyone is so blessed.

What keeps me from running Windows?

When I turn it on, I wonder if it will actually boot.

When I turn it off, I wonder if it will actually shutdown.

In between the two, I wonder what the hell it is doing.

Simple... I want my computer to do what *I* tell it.

Reasons, oh reasons

[Luyseyal]

• Linux is cheap. Though, even if Windows were distributed gratis, I would probably only use it for my son's games.
• Linux applications tend to have a sort of orthogonal stability where if something breaks, it's easy to tell what broke (and possibly why). It's also trivial to find the developer or bugzilla and complain.
• Windows isn't cool.
• About the only things I noticably miss are:
  1. Shockwave,
  2. decent cross-platform multimedia websites, and
  3. children's games
• tuxpaint -- my kid loves this one
• It does IP masquerading, loadbalancing of multiple Internet connex, and intelligent firewalling, while still managing to run my desktop.
• Client Access Licenses for home users, experimenters, and tinkerers? You're kidding, right?
• There is a proven, reliable license authority for OSS software. If I wonder about a license, I go to OSI and look in its list of OSI-approved licenses. With Windows, I have no clue what I get or don't get, what's enforceable and unenforceable, etc. and as a home user, I'll be damned if I'm gonna hire a lawyer to install a damn piece of software.

There are probably more, but that is sufficient to keep me off Windows for the foreseeable future.

-l

Re:One thing

[Tony-A]

That's not a fault of Windows that's your responsibility for allowing your friends to use your machine with an account that has permissions to do such things.

I think that's the best argument for Linux over Microsoft Windows that I've ever seen.

Re:Consistency

[xSauronx]

I stop mine when I want to play one of the many games that isnt supported under linux.

And spare me the short list of supported commercial games with linux clients, spare me WineX, and spare me lesser games people made for linux...Im playing Lineage 2 today, and perhaps an RTS game in the next couple of months, and undoubtedly a FPS that may or may not have linux support. It doesnt have *enough* of the games *I* want to play....unfortunately, as I like Linux much more than windows any day of the week.

I can't find the "I am not an idiot"-button

[rainer_d]

It's as simple as that.

Far more to it than that

[AllenChristopher]

Competition also opens up new markets. The whole online music thing was really kicked off by Apple, right? There were others first, but Apple made it a daily reality.

If Microsoft had CRUSHED Apple years ago, that wide-open market wouldn't be there for Microsoft to grab... they'd have to have thought of it themselves, implemented it, gotten it to sell.

The advantage of competitors is that your competitors do some of the foot-work for you, take some of the risks for you. What you want to do is wait until the copmetitor has made a new product work, then beat their product.

Of course, that's what Microsoft is so good at...

Re:One thing

[Hizonner]

If Toyota sold a car that would prevent my friends from wrecking it when I lent it to them, whereas Ford cars were easily wrecked by non-expert drivers, then, all other things being equal, I would buy the Toyota.

UNIX Command line

[Hyperbolix]

Having worked for an ISP for some time now, I have grown accustomed to using vim, sed, awk, grep, and a variety of other tools. I utilize command shells for practically everything (force of habit,) and I am actually more error prone in a drag/drop environment than using a command line. I'm extremely unhappy with the quality of the Windows 'cmd' command line interface. At this point, the only use I have for Windows is to play the everpopular first person shooters, for which I dual boot. I dislike the lack of remote control in windows. I'd really like to be able to SSH in and do everything from a command prompt that I could do with the normal interface, but the Windows XP Telnet interface is crippling. There is something quite inflexible about Windows, and I find it disturbing. When I leave home, I must check to make sure my dual booting system is running in Linux (the default,) or I won't be able to access it from elsewhere. Diverse filesystem access is also lacking, as I can access my NTFS partition read-only from Linux, but I cannot access my EXT3 partition at all from Windows. I think that just about sums it up.

Windows free for 3 years

[bryanthompson]

I've been off of windows for 3 years. I have 3 Redhat machines and just bought a PowerBook last week. The main reason for me to not swtich from Windows was that I couldn't give up all of the games. These days I have one windows machine that I use for Battlefield.

The main thing keeping me from going back to windows is that I realize that I don't need windows to do what I want. I'm happy coding java in vim and NOT having lockups. The alternative software is getting better, and for most everyone OpenOffice or AbiWord will do whatever they want. Evolution is one of the best email apps I've used, except for Mail.app now. But, it's just that I know I don't have to use windows that's keeping me away from it.

I bet there's a lot of people here who would seriously switch completely to Mac or Linux if they could give up their games, or get different games. Frozen Bubble is only really entertaining for the first few weeks. As far as doing real work like websites and java, anything BUT windows is the way to go.

Re:What keeps me off?

[killjoe]

Maybe no looks but it's a metaphor. Balmer, Gates, Alchin etc are very slimy people who run a slimy company that does slimy things.

To me the fact that MS paid ADTI to write a book sliming Linus and open source is reason enough to shun them. Add to that funding SCO, paying the likes of Enderlee and DiDio to publish bogus research and the thousands of other sleazy tactics.

To me It's important to support companies who act ethically. I realize that every dollar I spend can either make the world a better place or a worse one. I don't buy GM modified food, I don't buy Microsoft.

Re:I'm easy

[killjoe]

I don't think you can understate the freedom of not having to keep license numbers handy.

I work in a large corporation and we have to get requisitions for every purchase. If the requisition is for over $500 it has to go to further up the chain. If it's over a $1000.00 it has to go to the CIO!. It's a royal pain in the ass to get anything, it takes weeks sometimes and you have to fill out a ton of paperwork.

If I need something I always look for an open source alternative first. No requisitions, no begging, no justifying why you want to spend $500 for some software, no hassles. Just go get it, if it does what you need then you are done. If it does not do what you need then you fill out the paperwork and try to get some piece of software approved and pray it works.

Re:One thing

[Gortbusters.org]

Hey, spyware/adware gets in under the radar of normal usage.

Ever go to a non-techie's computer... it's probably infested with this shit. This is not the fault of the user, it's the fault of things like the browser or outlook [express] or whatever that makes these things so easy to do.

I've never installed something unknowingly using linux, or even firefox on XP for that matter.

Re:I'm easy

[maja33]

Same here. I loved my athlon/win98 but for reasons of stability I had to partition my hard drive and install two copies of win98. One for 'serious' work and the other one for games, internet and new programms.

When the drivers of my USB cable modem corrupted the tcp/icp stack of windows I installed SuSE 7.1 (thanks to C't magazine coverage) with 2.4 kernel and never looked back. I decided that I'm just too stupid for windows.

I can follow clear directions, modify text files and understand a little about the syslog but the registry and windows mysterious behaviour are beyond my understanding. SuSE (and Mandrake) recognise my hardware, understand my Internet settings, comes with all the programs I need and gives me timely securtity and bug patches.

Re:Mac OS X - quality which Microsoft can never ma

[as400tek]

I am with you on this one. I still have a windows PC, but it rearly gets used. I have to use one at work, but that is changing. MacOSX is right on, I am not going to say bad things about MS, I am not going to go and tell you they crash and suck, I just like MacOSX more, and that is all I have to say about that.

Re:I live without Windows

[polemistes]

The goal of a business is to make a profit, preferably the largest it can.

In my business, the only goal is to create something so good that people will make sure I continue doing it, often by giveing me money.

Re:I live without Windows

[shaitand]

You might have missed it, the law said what Microsoft is doing is illegal.

Surely nobody would question it's immoral.

Wrong question?

[john82]

Rather than ask amongst Slashdot users "What keeps you off of Windows?", perhaps we should ask the rest of the computing public a much more interesting question.

What keeps you off of Linux?

The first question merely allows us to puff out our collective chests and bleat for the rest of the assmbled throng. Then we nod appreciatively at our confirmation of the "obvious". Tell it brother!

But why don't more people use Linux or BSD (and their collective assortment of redheaded step-children)? What aren't we doing right that there isn't greater acknowlegement of the beneifts outlined in countless posts here. The question is not that far removed from the ease with which some snake oil salesman from the land of de Tocqueville is able to con the masses about Linux and Open Source.

Open Source and Linux need a really good PR guru that can get our voice heard. A few shouts in the wilderness ain't doing the job.

Then again, maybe we need to spend more time on improving this mouse trap so the world will beat a path to our door.

Data Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

For me its simple:

I want to own my data. Now and in 5 years.

Look at XAML. Look at .NET. Soon all apps will be running off of a global app server that Microsoft owns. If you don't pay, then you cannot access the data in your files because the data is in a proprietary format that only a Microsoft has an app to read and display. Open-Source writes a parser/reader? No problem, change the app on the global server to slightly tweak the format.

Pay to access MY data?!?

Never.

Re:I live without Windows

[shaitand]

You've got it backwards jack. Business exists to make profit. Their other stated goals are merely how they go about making profit.

Ford's goal is to make affordable cars so they can sell them in larger numbers, thus cutting out competition and making more money.

Since when does the marketing literature (ie stated goals) have much to do with reality?

Re:I'm cheap...

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Linux because I can do more with it.

Quantify?

I like KDE better than Windows XP. It's a better desktop with more features that are easier to tweak and fix if something goes wrong.

Something goes wrong enough to where this is a feature?

The command line actually has real unadulterated power under Linux!

I like the fact that there isn't a central monolithic registry that can take the entire system down.

Unlike when your RPM database gets corrupted or when RedHat inadvertantly puts the wrong information on glibc and everyone upgrades and is left with a machine that you can only reinstall the OS on (the shortest path).

I prefer Mozilla to IE. Always have.

Objectively? or subjectively?

My kids like the games that come with KDE and GNOME. They're colorful and fun, and they whine when I tell them they have to use the XP box in the other room for homework.

As opposed to the 1000s of games on the Windows box that all their friends are playing. Could be that you have only the default 5 games installed on the Windows box and they are tired of them and that's why they don't want to use those?

I like the fact that my nine year old can't break it... no matter how hard she tries...

Nothing that a good glass of water can't fix... but that is just a general hazard to the machine. Also, don't leave yourself logged in as root.

I like the fact that my wife can't install software on my desktop when she's not logged in as me.

Heh... you like the fact that your wife can't do what she wants unless it's with your permission...

I like the fact that my internet connection is faster under Linux than it was under Windows XP. It's a real kick. If you have both running side by side, try comparing them sometime.

I have... objectively and with real benchmarks. They are so close to the same it doesn't matter. In fact, on some HPC problems, using I/O Completion ports, Windows was markedly faster than Linux. Since then, the stacks have improved on Linux and they are about equal.

It's nice that Linux will run (granted with a little work) on my prehistoric 486dx2.

Why? I guess it's nice to be nostalgic but I replaced all of those machines with machines that are a bit faster. As far as creep, Linux suffers it as much as Windows, just a couple years behind. One time, back in the day, Linux could be installed on my Pentium 60 with as little as 8M of RAM. Today, minimum recommended is 128M with 256M being "better" (see SuSE web pages, since I was just there earlier today actually *buying* a 9.1 distribution from them, for this example).

It's nice that Linux doesn't have 19 system processes that report to the Microsoft mother-ship for no good reason at all, that can't be turned off.

Proof of that which exists today? or are you still living in 1995?

It's nice that there's so much useful documentation on Linux out there. No matter what problem I'm having, the Linux community has documented just about everything incredibly well. And they never ask how helpful they were when they were no help at all. That's nice too.

Heh, yeah... those wonderful 'man' pages. When there is documentation, it is completely dry when having simply one example of a very common use would answer 90% of all questions about it. Linux documentation (and even Unix documentation for the most part) is seriously lacking. It's written by engineers for engineers. No examples, just lists of the 200+ command line options for every program with almost no direction of which ones are useful together.

Linus is slightly less evil than Gates.

Who cares, neither of them kill babies and eat them raw. I don't idolize either of them, they are just humans like me, not a god, and not worthy of religion.

I've been using Unix since around 1986. I started using Linux back in the pre-1

Re:Far more to it than that

[shaitand]

"The advantage of competitors is that your competitors do some of the foot-work for you, take some of the risks for you. What you want to do is wait until the copmetitor has made a new product work, then beat their product.

Of course, that's what Microsoft is so good at... "

Umm well yeah, what you want to do is wait for the competitor to make a new product and then beat it.

What Microsoft does is the same, except that instead of beating it, they leverage their monopoly (given by ibm, not earned on their own merit) to push into the masses a competiting ALMOST compatible product that is just different enough as to not cooperate with the competitors whatsoever in ways that make the competitors product appear broken and buggy.

THAT is what Microsoft is good at. I've never known Microsoft actually release a superior product in order to take over a market.

Re:I'm cheap...

[Trinition]

do not give me the batch file crap, batch does not do regex or any of that stuff, nor can I pipe my outputs and inputs

Actually, you can pipe inputs and outputs in batch. However, batch is in fact dead. Years ago, Microsoft devised the Windows Scripting Host to replace it, and it is very very nice. You can run it in GUI mode or command line. It supports RegEx as well as any scripting-enabled COM component (including a lot of standard Windows calls).

Re:Hate Pirating

[ArbitraryConstant]

I can get Windows through no cost to me through university. I have my OpenBSD firewall running on a seperate machine. I would use Mozilla.

But it's too damn much trouble to maintain. All of OpenBSD, Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS are less annoying to maintain.

While it's easier for a non-savy user to click through a few windows or call tech support, equivilant maintenance tasks on those other OSes are either less time consuming or not needed. They might be harder to perform, but they take less time.

I might consider VMWare if I needed Windows for work that someone would pay me for. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Pretentious sounding reason but true

[inkswamp]

My reason for steering clear of MS can be summed up with a saying. I have no idea who the original author is, but it reminds me of MS's unethical business practices:

"Every consumer decision is a political statement."

Says it all.

Re:I live without Windows

[plugger]

Are you equating lack of education with laziness?

Perhaps if there were nothing but well paid professionals on the planet, you might realise where your food comes from, who packs it, who drives it to your local store, and who takes your garbage away when you've finished with it. Or are they too uneducated to deal with your trash?

Some musings..

[schmiddy]

I was at a LAN recently.. brought along an old Linux box to fiddle with, like I normally do. Got a chance to play a lot of fun games on other boxes though, like BF1942, Diablo, etc.

Anyway.. I started musing about going back to Windows after seeing everyone else's tricked out Windows-basesd gaming rigs. I realized just how -nice- a good desktop OS like win2k can feel. (I despise the eye candy in XP, and most people don't know how/why to turn it off.

First off, I think Firefox looks nice in Windows than Linux. I could never get anti-aliasing to work right, and for some reasons my fonts usually look crappy, even when I install the Windows TTF fonts.

Windows is, I still think, a good OS for a few things -- word processing (I use OpenOffice, and it's good... but I wouldn't want to have to do more than a few papers here and there with it), games -- no question there. As well as using p2p software.. just download eMule, your favorite BT client, Kazaa Lite. (Yea, there are equivalents in Linux. ) Put everything you want in the quickstart bar, maybe add some skins.. etc. And it will all look quite nice, and behave responsibly. You won't ever have to worry about hacking around text files to get a program to compile, messing with dependencies. gpoing through a 20 step process to get binary-only drivers fron Nvidia/ATI to work so that you can play a few games like UT natively, or a handful under Wine. Don't even get me started on Wine.

Having said all that.. I'm still on Linux. Here's why. First of all, I don't mind messing around a bit in Linux to get stuff to work. It's educational. I feel like I'm really learning stuff when I set up Apache the way I want it. On that note, I think Windows is a terrible choice if you're thinking of running an FTP server, web server, etc. I honestly have no clue how I would go about setting up IIS, although I imagine it's probably easy. I honestly don't know much about the guts of windows, because you're not encouraged to. On the other hand.. Linux encourages you to be able to mess with stuff like init.d config, all the config files in /etc, and so forth.

And here's another point. I can only begin to imagine how many Windows users have spyware and other crap installed. Any sane Linux user would consider this a serious problem.. it's essentialy a root-exploit from installing malicious software as root (i.e. Admin).

The free software paradigm in Linux works wonders. I trust every open source program I download, even though I'm not going to personally check the source. Yea, I'm sure it could be possible for some knucklehead to hide some malicious code in a program, but I can't remember the last time (ever?) an OSS project had that happen.

In Windows.. it's easy to do things the wrong way. Click on those popup ads telling you your computer is broadcasting an IP address, accidentally clicking "Yes" when some popup ad asks you if you want to trust software from Foo Company. Having a hole in IE exploited, and your browswer homepage changed. Being constantly forced to revert to Administrator, if you're smart enough to be running as an unpriveleged user. In Mandrake, when I made the mistake of logging into KDE as root, I was reminded many times, both by KDE and the programs (i.e. xchat) that I was doing the wrong thing.

A final note. I think every "power" Windows user needs to pirate many hundreds of dollars of software in order to have a working system -- FlashFXP, WinRAR, Newsbin, maybe AdAware/ZoneAlarm Pro,BPFtp server, CloneCD, Nero, the latest games, etc. In Linux.. you actually feel good about just using the software that some kind soul has made for you.

Re:Well, I'll give an honest answer

[DeckardJK]

Its hard to compare OS X and Windows. I'm sure its nice and all. I've had limited exposure to some different Mac OS's.

As soon as I can run OS X on my PC, I'll give it a try, but you can't say its inexpensive when you have to buy the computer to go with the OS.

Maybe Windows is an inferior OS, but for price/performance/options thats the only way I can go right now.

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[Bad Boy Marty]

Actually, what I find is that it is harder to become an "expert" in Windows, and even when you do, Windows is so user-friendly that it is actually expert-hostile. Add to that the fact that so few administrative tasks are automatable, and any single one of those tasks takes more mouse clicks than it would take keystrokes to write a program to do it. Well, that's how *I* define expert-hostile.

Of course, now that I sometimes use Windows for work, I can't even imagine running Windows without either ActivePerl or a complete CygWin.

Re:Hate Pirating

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet if someone could end all pirating of software it would not be long before the majority of people where using Linux.

Or it wouldn't be long for the software houses to set a more realistic price for private use.

In all reality, the software houses know that people pirate and in a lot of ways it's a benefit to them. If Joe's going to use Word at home then he's going to like using it at work. But Joe's never going to pay $200.- for Word.

They have no incentive to end piracy for home users, because the home user is never going to pay the price. In other words, what you have done is given the exact reason why 'someone' is not ending it.

Re:One thing

[shaitand]

In terms of the home directory yes, although there is nothing as bloated, nasty, and fragile as the windows registry on a *nix system ;)

The flaw is actually in the browser, most spyware comes from browsing the web with internet explorer including the nastiest of it. Freeware and Shareware are responsible for less than 1% of spyware overall.

Now I would never call the browser part of the OS, which is better defined as the kernel. But it is certainly part of the distribution. In the case of windows there is no way to remove IE. Thus it goes full circle and is in fact a windows problem... just not a permissions problem.

Re:One thing

[4of12]

Which is 100% true on UNIX systems also.

Don't know about UNIX systems where you live, but none of mine have /etc/rc world writable:)

Re:I live without Windows

[Phillup]

No, I did not miss it.

It seems to me that the poster of comment #9370151 is trying to justify immoral activity by saying it is legal.

As in: The goal of any business is to profit.

My point is that, while the actions of a company may be legal... that does not mean those actions are moral.

Re:I live without Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Found innocent.

Good God

[Noexit]

As if we don't get enough of this on a daily basis already.

Its simple..

[naelurec]

From where I am sitting, it costs more and offers less.

• Significantly reduced command line
• Lack of many modern GUI interface items (shaded windows, customizable task bar, mouse gestures, advanced hot key support, ability to define certain windows to stay on top/below others, yada yada)
• no centralized app management (FreeBSD I can have it notify me what apps are out of date, easily install new apps, etc.. how about Windows?)
• Limited hardware compatibility (particularly 64bit systems, non i386 based architectures, etc..)
• Restrictive EULAs
• Bastardized versions (Ie XP Home having reduced network functionaility)
• Spyware, Viruses, Adware, ad naseum..

Granted, thats the short list. Ultimately though, for me, I have realized that Windows simply restricts what I can do.

Using basic tools found on *nix, I have been able to create lots of very useful utilities that interact with me via email. Its great as I routinely check email so it makes sense to have as much information delivered via email as possible. Virtually everything can be redirected to email which is very nice -- how bout Windows? Seems like I have to check a handful of different application GUIs to collect the information.

Bottom line -- the flexibility is the key point. Granted, I'm sure if I spent a few hundred more on development tools, I could probably do many of the same things on Windows, but why?

Re:Question about article summary

[jedidiah]

As much as some people like might to whine about the theoretical security problems of Linux, the fact still remains that it is WinDOS boxes that get rooted and turned into spam gateways.

End users shouldn't have to be neurotic about applying security patches and they shouldn't have to fear email attachments.

This is strictly the Microsoft engineering mentality at work.

Fortunately, we have Linux and Apple.

How about....

[msoftsucks]

Confusing and distorting stardands so that only M$ products work. I refuse to purchase applications that will only work with IE. I will tell any ISV who does this that they are automatically cut from the selection process because they aren't following open standards. There are web standards - follow them. Don't like them - change them officially so we can all use them.

All the security holes that M$ has known for over a year and have yet to fix

All the spyware that I get due to ActiveX

All the viruses

The licensing extortion.

The phone-home spyware installed by M$

Requirement to be an administrator to do anything useful. On a Linux box, I rarely run as root. Keeps my machine totally stable. With Windows, I need to reinstall every 2-3 months because something has corrupted my machine. I have better things to do than constantly having to reinstall the OS.

Making money. M$ has pretty much taken the oxygen out of the Windows market. They leave no money on the table for their ISVs. If an ISV does have a big hit on their hands, they buy them or they release their own crappy version that competes with the ISV. Within a short period of time, that ISV is dead. Being a M$ partner is deadly to your health.

Re:I live without Windows

[John Courtland]

Incorrect assumption. When someone starts a business, they don't say, "oh, I want to lose money, but help people." Well, not unless it's part of a bigger picture in order to get tax breaks... Regardless, a business makes money. If it doesn't, it will no longer exist. That's all you should conclude from my statement, no more no less.

Just beacause I state something simply, doesn't mean there isn't more to the picture. A lot of slashdotters seem to fail to come to this conclusion, and it's pretty damn annoying.

Wow, 1084 comments and counting.

[What'sInAName]

Wow, I haven't even bothered to read any of the other comments, and I'm sure I'm going to add nothing new here, but the reasons keep growing by the day.

I started my computing career on an Apple //c, an incredibly open archetecture, and I just got used to being able to twiddle with things any way I wanted. I still remember a few of the hex codes for assembly lang. instructions (Ex: 0x20 = JSR, 0x60 = RTS,...)

My Apple broke and for a few years, I didn't have a home computer (gasp!) Of course, at the time I was working as a programmer, so I got plenty of computer time. I quit my job and went back to grad school and decided I wanted a computer. By this point I had heard about the *BSDs and this thing called Linux, and since I decided I loved Unix so much, I thought that I would give Linux a spin.

Of course, I had a dual boot machine at this point. I liked playing with Photoshop (this was in the days before GIMP) and a few other Windows apps, but I couldn't help the feeling of being... restrained. W95 was fun to play with at first, but I was frustrated by the fact that there was only so much you could tinker with. I was a math grad student, and so the fact that TeX was installed by default helped me to stay in the Linux environment most of the time. I played a few games in Windows, but for the most part, Linux was my choice. Viri were around at that point, but they were a relatively minor nuisance, compared to today. And spam? Hadn't really been invented yet. Ahhh, to be able to go back to those days....

Well, to cut a long, rambling post shor.... well, never mind, way too late for that. (Note: Quantity of single malt scotch is directly proportional to length of posts/e-mails.) At this point, it works like this: Every time I turn around, I find another reason not to use Windows. At the end of the day, as much as I love Linux, I'm still not one to slobber over it and denounce Windows; it just seems so childish to do so. On the other hand, I love Unix/Linux so much, and administering said systems, that I've decided to make a career switch to system administration, despite all the outsourcing/bad economy/whatever.

Linux is great technology, and it isn't just the technical part that is great. It's the people. The people I know who are into Linux and Unix are , by and large, enthusiastic about what they do, and that just makes it so much more fun for me. There are of course Windows admins/users like this, but I've met so many pissed off/frustrated ones that it just brings me down.

Oh well, that's my 2 cents (ok, more like four bucks) worth.

Re:What keeps me off Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

At work:
Engineers with mucho WinXX expertice who do not want to start over at the bottom.
Masive installed base of WinXX C++/C/TCL/VB code.

At home:
Confusing installs.
Lack of hardware support.
Lack of turn-key support of the major PC sellers.
(I have installed Red Hat three times, and I still have not figured out how to surf the net[USB WiFi]. SBC does not support Linux yet.)

Re:I live without Windows

[Captain Splendid]

When someone starts a business, they don't say, "oh, I want to lose money, but help people." Well, not unless it's part of a bigger picture in order to get tax breaks...

I don't see why business has to be about money and nothing else. Of course money's an important consideration, but what about providing the best goods/services/whatever, or committing a certain percentage of resources to charitable causes? What about starting your own business and forsaking steady pay for doing what you love?

Not to mention there's making money and then there's making obscene amounts of money and wasting it. Companies laying off workers while simultaneously awarding mutli-million salaries and bonuses to their CEOs are, as far as I'm concerned, failures.

Regardless, a business makes money. If it doesn't, it will no longer exist.

Unless the government bails you out or takes the hit (too many instances to bloody mention.)

And then, you've completely forgotten to take into account businesses that have been wiped out by greed, adverse tax law, predatory competitors or government regulation, and not because they weren't making a profit.

Flexibility, freedom, philosophy

[VE3MTM]

I use Linux for three main reasons:

- Flexibility: I can configure my computer to work exactly how I want. In addition, I use Gentoo, which allows further control. Yes, this adds complexity; it doesn't work "out of the box", so to speak, but that's fine with me. No one dictates how it looks or feels. For the record, I use parts of GNOME with Enlightenment.

- Freedom: I am a programmer. If I can't make a program do something I want it to, I can always open the source (another advantage of source-based distros, by the way: it's easier to modify the source for programs than with binary distros, because you have the headers for everything). To date, I have patched 4 programs, and submitted the patches for 2 of them.

- Philosophy: I can't explain why, but the whole philosophy behind the open source movement appeals to me.

I would say "price" as an advantage, but that's really a non-issue, since *ahem* I have never bought a copy of Windows (Microsoft tax excluded).

Re:As a developer...

[molarmass192]

Ok, you're playing Devil's advocate, so I'll concede on the lesser Cygwin/MinGW and putty points, but I have to rebuke a couple of your points:

1) C:\ != /, no way man. Show me how to map a drive as a subdirectory of C:\.

5) My personal experience says different. When I optimize a kernel for my VIA C3, it's noticeably faster than a generic i586 kernel. It's hard to put a number on it by I'd guess in the 20% faster range, at least when I use GCC on that box. I'll concede that WinXP does something similar with CPU specific HAL DLL loading. As for X, I haven't perceived any difference in GUI responsiveness between Linux and Windows since XF86 4.3 came out in early 2003.

6) You missed the point, I don't mean search, gather and burn it yourself. I mean you pay $60, get a DVD pre-stamped with everything you need on it. The equivalent would be an MSDN DVD will everything on it, which simply doesn't exist. As a side note, I used to have an MSDN subscription back in the day. You'd get like 50 CDs in a white binder, it was great for bragging if nothing else.

7) The point is that I don't like the way application configuration is detached from the application. Under Linux, I know if I tar up my home directory and move it from box A to box B, I know my app configs will move with me.

8) By headless, I mean no GUI running at all, no resources wasted. This is impossible under W2K, W2K3, and WinXP. My web servers, database servers and file servers do not need to waste their cycles managing a GUI. That said, most people don't run web servers, database servers, and file servers.

Anyhow, I fully realize that I'm in the minority of power users and at least 90% of the Windows users out there could give a rat's ass about my 10 points. If I was a lawyer or an MD, I could probably care less too, but I'm an admin/dev/arch so sadly I don't have that luxury.

It's funny you mention the second class citizen thing. I used to push Linux like mad a few years ago. However, I eventually realized that the things I found important (my 10 points) don't mean sh*t to casual users. That eventually lead to me reverting most of the "forced" installs I did to XP. I'm completely level headed about it all now. There's a place for Win and a place for Lin.

Re:Question about article summary

[rizzo420]

in windows 2000 and windows xp, logging in as administrator is not the same as logging in as root. you cannot kill certain processes, you cannot delete certain files, you cannot do certain things. the main issue with most viruses that exist for windows is not that they have admin access, but that they propogate. the majority of "viruses" do not even fit the classic definition of "virus" in that they don't harm a computer. they're worms, they're designed to spread fast, causing only harm to the network because of all the traffic, not the computer itself. also, the security issues that microsoft tends to address are those that allow a remote attacker to gain admin access. this is the same issue that many popular pieces of software for linux have dealt with (ssh is a good example). no matter how you look at it, you have to keep a linux box patched and up-to-date or else you'll eventually run into some sort of issue, unless you're behind a good firewall. see my example in my last post for reasons. i'm not saying windows is better, but i'm definitely not about to say linux is better either. the fact remains that in order to have a truly secure system, you need to keep up-to-date with patches. i'm sure more holes exist in linux than we know about because there are far fewer people using linux than use windows. as an operating system itself, windows is no less secure than linux.

hey, down here

[mugnyte]

I've read all the 4/5 posts so far, and I haven't seen anyone comment directly about this, but I've seen it stated emotionally:

Under MS, people have a loss of controlling free and independent programs that they've chosen, written or can wrap their minds around. The NT kernel is documented (not freely), but the services, runtime dependencies and so on, are still a mystery to people. Most of them cannot be replaced with a better version you or some other smart programmer changed and released.

Under Linux, due somewhat to the novel time we're living in, there is a wealth of question/answer documentation about many daemons, programs aor options. Config files can be hacked and rehacked. This doesn't mean there's less complexity, but I think the complexity is more componentized under Linux. Linux may be a monolithic Kernel, but if you look through the history of MS's OS progression, you'll find many many things going into the "OS" that simply don't need to be there (culminating, famously, with a simple web browser being "an integral part of the operating system").

Today, MS strives to have one of the most "approachable" OS's on the market. They provide a platform for market dynamics with their OS. This is to allow endless vendors to install and provide additional services - some before you know it. They suffer, however, from a chosen userbase that then doesn't know what is on their box or how to manipulate it. So one of the myraid of issues is the "install", "play nice with..", "uninstall cleanly" cycle that MS leaves up to the user and vendor. Some past endeavors (think "plug and play database") have tried to cure this, but wrapping your arms across an entire living market is a moving target.

Linux, coming from a technical birth, strives to be approachable, but in the end it caters to the tinkerer in each of us. Even finding the "ps" command in a manual can be a world of discovery for the newbie tinkerer. Even without knowing how the guts work, one can ps for processes and look them up by name. In this way, it harkens back to "computer as tool" instead of "computer as appliance".

MS wants to sell you an appliance that has the largest set of behaviors to provide this market: Vendors selling goods / users consuming services / playing games / advertising channels sold to the market / digital rights management to allow any set a procedures to deliver content. MS wants to build the market and decide how users/businesses participate in it.

Linux provides none of this. It relies on its users to participate in the market by writing free tools, but not really define such a market. PGP didn't make a revolution, nor PNG images, nor any pretty desktop display. However, they are all great tools to allow people to get stuff done - without succumbing to a vendor-decided ruleset. The Linux movement strives to allow people or businesses to participate in the market without any vendor acting on their behalf.

Re:I live without Windows - OT but he's wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he don't have it backwards, jack. He's got a little historical perspective, is all.

When "corporations" were originally being invented, they would be set up with "charters", which said what the corporation's primary and secondary goals and mission were.

Corporations still have charters. But it's in fact a relatively recent development that the profit goal is popularly considered to override all other stated goals (as opposed to being one among them, and not the primary - of course profit is necessary, but do you live to eat, or eat to live?).

Some corporations retain this (Apple, arguably, among them; possibly Ford now that a Ford is back in charge and the silly Frenchman - with views like yours - who brought it to the brink of disaster by moving into fields unrelated to cars, intending to increase profits, is out.)

Look into a little history sometime. (Why this change - conceptual, ideological, and legal - is an interesting question.)

So, stop mistaking concepts for reality.

Re:I live without Windows

[t1m0r4n]

They have blocked OEMs from putting out useful products (e.g. dual-boot computers).

You list this, I assume, as a bad thing. Selling dual-boot boxes is just silly and confusing. Back in the day, a cousin of mine was an OS/2 fanatic. He talked another cousin into buying a computer with Windows and OS/2. When I inquired how the recient liked OS/2, the reply was "I've opened that _program_ a couple times, but I couldn't figure out what it's supposed to do". I highly suspect that far too many geeks would recommend Linux dual-boots, and the results would be the same. Ignorant users would assume they knew Linux because they had it on their computer, although they never really understood what it was, found Windows far more useful because it did Office and games etc, and they would just disregard Linux in the future. I find it far better to let them find Linux on their own because of Windows problems, or go with an all Linux system with plenty of training.

P.S. Just started reading this thread, and I couldn't help but wonder. There are ~1,400 comments, yet I doubt there are 1,400 readers of slashdot who use Linux exclusively at home. I find it kinda funny.

Re:I live without Windows

[t1m0r4n]

If they're unemployed, then they're obviously not the ones who are growing the food, driving the trucks, and removing the garbage.

Actually, the stupid and lazy people don't collect unemployment. That is for the smart and lazy people. Level of education has nothing to do with being smart or stupid, but I'm quite sure, the better educated you are, the better you will be at milking the system. And don't get me started on corporate welfare... As this is a somewhat MS related thread, I'll try to bring it back on topic. Just how much tax money ends up at Microsoft? Answer: mucho dinero.

Re:I live without Windows

[realdpk]

"I don't see why business has to be about money and nothing else. Of course money's an important consideration, but what about providing the best goods/services/whatever, or committing a certain percentage of resources to charitable causes?"

You can provide the best services and give away money all you want, but when a competitor comes in and doesn't, and you start losing business, you'll have to cut back and possibly close and/or sell out.

Re:One thing

[TheoMurpse]

while I agree with your statement you want the computer to do what you tell it to, i'm tired of ppl ragging on Windows for instability

i have windows xp...i have had it on this box for 2 years, since i ordered it from dell...2 ghz p4, 256m ram, xp home

so much hardware added:
extra HD, video capture card, new 5.1 surround sound card, firewire card, etc

i'm trying to show my computer is not some gimpy setup that is unconfigured

i hack my registry all the time for kicks

i run a webserver, mysql, constantly python, perl, php...this computer stays up for a month before i reboot it -by choice- not by necessity

my computer has been severely fuxored with, but yet it runs like the day i bought it...much better than any linux distro i've experienced (gentoo, redhat, debian) in user friendliness....altho i do run debian, too

now to make my post on-topic:
why do i stay off windows?
when i'm off windows, it's to familiarize myself more closely with how operating systems and disk operations work...i'd never learn what partitioning really was w/o linux, what the MBR was w/o linux, etc.

so to sum up: windows is not as unstable as ppl say, and linux teaches you so much (which is why i use it some now)

so don't get all pissy please

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[Pionar]

heh, those are the same complaints I have for linux.

Mozilla always hanging, having to restart X (the bad ctrl-alt-backspace way) every 6 hours or so, getting java to even do anything at all, lack of plugins for mozilla (come on, no shockwave? weak!)

Plus, the apps don't make the OS. XP has been just as stable as my Linux box was. Last time the machine rebooted was due to power failure two weeks ago (UPS kicked in and shut it down after 5 minutes since i wasn't there). 3 weeks before that, it crashed due to a classmate's mistake (we were in a group project for a programming class and he put an endless loop in on accident).

Hell, XP is more dependable than my cable box!

Re:Wrong question?

[SplendidIsolatn]

What keeps me off Linux, I'll tell you, and no, I'm not trying to put this off as flamebait.

I have been a computer geek type since I was old enough to sit and type. I have been working with computers for over 20 years in one fashion or another, so while I might not be a guru on them, I know what I'm doing. So when I built my own computer in the fall of 2002, I decided to install Mandrake Linux (what was available at the store) to give it a whirl. Biggest mistake I ever made.

First off, the 'easy' installation took me hours to do, then it decided to keep freezing once I got it running. Then one thing stopped working after another, and I was spending more time trying to figure out what was wrong than spending time using my computer. I deleted the installation, put Windows XP home on the PC, firewall, anti-spyware, hell, I'll even download firefox or something. My windows PC WORKS FOR ME AND DOES WHAT I NEED IT TO DO. Nothing anyone could say about Linux after my experience with Mandrake will change that. I have a working PC that maybe crashes once a month. I can live with that and buying WinXP rather than spending hours cruising through message boards to figure out why my modem drivers weren't working correctly (and yes, I had to do that)

In short, Linux might be right for some people. For me and what I wanted, it was wrong, and I don't plan on going back. To the Linux zealots (not Linux users), add up the amount of time that you've spent having to 'tweak' something that you wouldn't have to do in Windows (and downloading patches doesn't count -- I do that while reading Slashdot). Multiply those hours by whatever dollar emount you choose and see what value you've had to spend on Linux. It's probably a lot less than an XP install.

Sorry if this offends any Linux people, but my experience is my experience and I can't change it.

Peace

Re:What makes me wanna leave Windows?

[NanoGator]

"Huh? If everything is running so smoothly why do you have to reinstall it every 6 months?"

The fundamental back breaking flaw in Windows is the registry. Every few months, it gets so bloated that even simple tasks take a long time to get through. Why? Because Windows has to scan through it, find the data it wwants, and load it in. It eventually becomes such a tangled mess you MUST start over with it.

Even the most dedicated MS Fan boy will acknowledge that.

Re:Wrong question?

[digitect]

My family uses Fedora Core 2 at home as the sole OS. Here's a list of broken things that would keep me from convincing my work (Architectural firm) to use it:

• Broken printing. I always feel lucky when printing Just Works. Using it with image viewers and file manager thumbnail collections seem a distant fantacy.
• No CMYK support. (Yeah, it's related to printing, but there aren't apps that can even managing it for authoring, let alone output.)
• Poor/non-existant GL support. (Even possible given proprietary hardware?)
• No serious 3D CAD application. This is a huge industry hanging out in Windows before it can adopt Linux. IMO, PythonCAD [pythoncad.org] is the best Free CAD software effort at the moment, but it is hardly Alpha and at least five years away from serious CAD work.
• Slow GUI. Linux still feels slower than Windows, regardless if the processor work is twice as efficient.
• Flakey sound support. Like printing, I'm always pleasently surprised when my sound works across applications and levels seem balanced.

That's the big item list for me. If all these ever get solved, the Windows platform will either be down for the count or headed there.

Re:Wrong question?

[debest]

You're not wrong. Linux, as much as it is developing quickly (and it is, if you're feeling the urge just download a newer distro sometime and try it again), it still doesn't stand up to your criteria. You still have to hack with your system to a degree that Windows does not require.

Your comment on the time required to tweak something is also spot on, in so far as these activities are generally rare in the Windows world. The tweaking, however, is *exactly* what most Linux users get a charge out of. Using an OS which is infinitely customizable, with dozens of options for most any type of application you can imagine, is appealing to many people (present company included).

Re:I live without Windows

[AmbyVoc]

While I consider dual booting silly and confusing too, I couldn't help but notice your post scriptum and comment on that.

How many computer users would there be in this world? How many do you think use Linux? And how many do you think post more than one comment on threads like these?

I suppose if there are as many Linux users as li.counter.org suggests or more there would surely be a chance there'd be atleast 1400 Linux users reading slashdot. And while I do not use anything else but Linux on my computers and always keep a bootable Linux live-cd handy if going somewhere else I believe there are others too. If I know a couple of those here in Finland I suppose there are more of us linux-only folks all over the world. Do not forget those 140000 at counter.li.org are just the `registered' amount of users and not the whole bunch. Most of us don't even know such a site exists.

Why do we have to "choose"

[ccdotnet]

I've been using DOS/Windows since MS-DOS 3.x and BSD since the early versions of FreeBSD.

I use BSD on my servers, and WinXP on my desktops. BSD does a better job of hosting my domain names and web sites, handling my email, and securing my perimeter. XP provides a dead easy to use desktop, with wider peripheral support (and game support).

Nothing I've read in this thread has convinced me that Windows would do a better job on my servers, nor that BSD would do a better job on my desktop. That's for today, who knows about tomorrow.

I think I'm fairly typical of tech-literate computer users. What makes me atypical of /. users is that I can't get sufficient rabid about one platform or the other.

No-one twists your arm to religiously stick to a PS/2 or GameCube or PC for your gaming needs. Why then do we have to choose a single platform to host our other applications and services. Horses for courses.

Re:Wrong question?

[Averron]

Next time you retire an old PC, dont give it away -- keep it around and mess around with Linux. If you want an easy experience, try SuSE 9.1. I am very impressed with it.

The reason that beats all others by lengths (imho)

[Qbertino]

OSS OSes, Linux in my case, are free, open, stable, secure and allways give you the possibility to solve problems. We all know that. Yet there is one thing that comes with OSS that lots of people don't think of conciously, one which I think weighs in bigger than all the rest. Linux is open and thus there is no comercial interest in making it obsolete. On the contrary.
Entry: The single biggest reason for embracing OSS/Linux and never touching Windows again:
I never again will have to learn a new OS and how to handle it.
I repeat:

I will never again - in my entire life - have to learn a new OS and it's wayabouts.

Or the other way around:

All I learn now on Linux will most likely never become obsolete.

Just think about that one for a minute.

Thinking about it, this could be a reason why MickeySofts death may even be inevitable in the end.

Re:I live without Windows

[jsebrech]

I don't see why business has to be about money and nothing else.

Well, corporations, when founded, sign a charter with the public (the government) outlining what they will aim to do. Theoretically corporations could be disbanded if they did not abide by rules in the charter. However, in practice, no corporation ever gets disbanded for shady business practices, no matter how bad they are for the public, and lots of corporations don't even get fined for screwing people over.

Ofcourse, the entire problem is that corporations got the courts to say they are equal citizens over a century ago. The flaw in that is that corporations don't die, ever, so they can keep gathering power and resources as long as they want, making them inherently superior to humans. Because of that over time you've seen corporate power grow. The only way to avoid corporations dominating the people is by giving them less rights than you give humans, and it will require a huge populist movement to roll back that decision.

Re:I live without Windows

[hesiod]

> So are you saying that anything is all right so long as you do it for money?

You are a fucking idiot.

He said:
> > Just because I state something simply, doesn't mean there isn't more to the picture

Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer.

[Pionar]

Oh, I'm not saying that Linux sucks or anything, I really like it. However, I was pointing out that some complaints about Windows can be made about Linux, too.

And the shockwave thing, it's not a deal breaker. However, I do use shockwave from time to time.

One thing that sucks about windows is a lack of a cron-type app. Windows scheduler or whatever it's called is weak.

Another thing is the lack of a viable, native, free scripting language that is actually being worked on. I hate having to install python or perl on every Win machine I work on.

Re:I live without Windows

[vsprintf]

First it's something rather silly to debate about to this length.

Indeed. The rest of the world, including the tax authorities, believes that there are nonprofit businesses, but that doesn't fit with your personal, very narrow definition. So, obviously, you are correct, and the world is wrong. Forgive the rest of us if we're slow to recognize your omniscience.

Re:Wrong question?

[dustmite]

Your comment on the time required to tweak something is also spot on, in so far as these activities are generally rare in the Windows world.

In my experience this isn't true - what is true is that people just tend not to notice when they waste a day "tweaking" issues in Windows, they just accept it as normal, but become very 'aware' when having to spend a whole day on some issue in Linux. Often our jobs require using Windows, so when something doesn't work right in Windows we just accept having to blow hours or even days getting it to work without a second thought (e.g. it took me hours of googling for info and fiddling with obscure registry settings before Win2K would finally set the MTU for my 3g wireless connection, but because it's just part of the job, hey, that's how it goes). Once my Windows boot sector just corrupted itself somehow (no trojans/worms/viruses and no abnormal crashes or unclean shutdowns, no idea how it happened), I spent several hours trying to get it to repair the boot sector using the repair tools on the Windows CD, but the fixes wouldn't "stick", I could get into Windows in a round-about way but the next time I rebooted, it wouldn't boot again. I ended up spending several days reinstalling Windows and all my applications. But hey, it's all 'part of the job', so I take it in stride.

But when I spend even just a few hours on a weekend struggling with some issue on Linux (or e.g. trying to get my coLinux installation to see the Internet because my VMWare network devices are somehow interfering or because Windows can't give me a local IP if the network cable is unplugged and coLinux needs it), well, that just damn irritates the hell out of me, because it's my limited weekend time that's being eaten up.

And so we apply this double standard. When we have to waste time tweaking or repairing screw-ups in Microsoft's products, it's OK, but if Linux isn't 100% perfect and run 100% smoothly all the time, it's immediately crap.

Many of the hassles we have with Windows we have years on the job learning to work around, and become "experts" on 'tweaking Windows', so purely thanks to all that experience we know exactly where to go when we need to e.g. modify the virtual memory settings, configure the display refresh rate, etc. We also learn a lot of these things from our colleagues, gaining from their experience and long struggles. We know Windows so well, we just think that Windows is easier to use. If things were switched around, and I had as much experience on Linux, and all my colleagues had as much experience on Linux, I guarantee you that we/they'd know how to get around and set things up very quickly in Linux, would not think twice about blowing a whole day at work on setting up something, and would hold the "foreign, strange" Windows OS to different and unreasonable standards, complaining bitterly every time we had to spend a few hours figuring out to set the MTU size, while knowing from experience exactly where to do the same in Linux.