What Keeps You Off of Windows? 2071
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'm cheap... (Score:5, Interesting)
Repeatability, Predictability and Orthogonality (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes me stick with Linux is the fact that when something does go wrong, there's a finite and small number of things that can generally cause the problem. I can quickly and easily narrow down what the problem is without having to understand the significance of lots of unrelated things. The 'everything is a file' mantra has some far-ranging consequences, at least IMHO, and it's the exceptions that cause most of the problems!
It helps that it's very stable, it helps that most of the config files are in ASCII, and almost always commented. It helps that there's a tremendous resource (man) available about just about every command, and of course it helps that it can be learnt piecemeal to a large extent. The K&R book starts off saying that they don't think 'C' is easily taught using a big book, that the smaller concept-driven approach works better. I think the same thing applies to unix. I don't think the same thing applies to the Win32 API. Perhaps with
To a certain extent this preference comes from learning unix (linux) before Windows - I know more about Unix than Windows, and I like what I learnt. Unix is a programmers OS, written for them, by them. I'm at heart a programmer ergo I like Unix
The old adage, "Don't fix what isn't broken" comes to mind as well - Unix has served me well in various incarnations, most recently Linux. It's not broken yet...
Simon
My default Linux install is just more USEFUL (Score:5, Interesting)
I find Linux to be much more useful in that I have a lot of free tools at my disposal just from the stuff included in the default install (Debian testing user here). KDE has a built-in free newsreader, there are a lot more useful command-line utilities (Windows has no builtin WHOIS lookup utility) and overall I prefer the aesthetics of the interface (both the GUI, which is far more customizable than in Windows, and the command line).
Most of it is a matter of personal preference, but the free and fast availability of easier-to-use utilities (apt-get install vs looking for a website that has a Windows utility that matches what I want) gives Linux a greater edge.
Moving Away From Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Well.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In order for you to switch to something it has to be cool or compelling in some way. And for most individuals, I don't think windows is. Maybe a couple years ago it might have seemed "cool" to switch from old UNIX stuff to windows, but I don't think many people perceive it that way anymore. And for home users, windows is probably what they've always used.
And Mac users probably wont switch to windows because they hate it.
Heh. Actually this post is story is kind of funny, I mean. It's just a chance to bash the hell out of Microsoft without being off topic.
Legal Software (Score:5, Interesting)
How about what keeps me on Windows? (Score:0, Interesting)
No reason to move (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not losing income because I am not using Windows
There is no software that I need (yet) that is Windows-only
I'll leave the posts about viruses, worms and trojans for others to comment on.
Re:More propoganda from a linux company (Score:2, Interesting)
It never occured to me to use windows... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had to use windows when trying to continue the work of another student in graduate school and that little escapade probably added a year to my Ph.D. I could run the same code on the mac, ibm workstations, the linux boxes, but I would have to stop and rewrite everything for windows... stupid.
OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows: The best terminal software ever written! (Score:1, Interesting)
BTW,
Linux, on the contrary, can at least make coffee!
Usability... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not as bad as the noisier Slashbots claim (it doesn't give you cancer or make the monitor explode in your face) but everything is just hard!
I'd rather be using Linux, and I'd much, much be rather using OS X and Office X. (Why can't the put the Mac Business Unit guys in charge of the whole company?)
It's simple (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no particular ill-will towards Microsoft. I'm just not gonna give them a goddamn penny. (Nor are most people; most people I know just pirate XP).
That's one reason. The other is that I feel boxed in on modern Windows systems. You can't do shit. I used to get the same feelings from Macs, which is why I used DOS back in the day.
Having worked in tech support I can see the value of desktop lockdown; but it should be a possibility, not the only way.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now there are tons of little options all over the place. Spyware/adware/viri install themselves in places you don't even know about. The bloat is incredible... one thing hangs, everything hangs.
Luckily, I got a unix shell account from my local ISP when I was 15 and started to mud [durismud.com]. So, I got to learn both really easy.
Re:One thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Staying off Windows keeps me sane. I have a bunch of PCs at home. A Linux server, a G4 Cube, an iBook.. One is an Athlon 1 GHz machine I use to play Counter Strike. When I use it, there's no problem. I boot it, start CS (or MTGO), quit CS, turn it off.
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.
This is why I like setting them loose under Safari on my Cube. They can visit sites loaded with IE exploits, ActiveX crap-objects and more and nothing bad will come to my system.
The fact that Windows is the big spyware/trojan/worm target is reason enough to keep me off of it. Of course, this is posted from a Dell WinXP box that I use every day at my job. Go figure.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you using Win2k server or desktop? The desktop version has a DNS server. In fact I'm not sure if even the 'normal' server version has a built in DNS server.
Setting up a DNS server in win2k3 enterprise server (which I got for free as a CS student, I'd never pay for a server OS) was very simple for me, much less of a pain then manually editing bind config files.
The only real difficulty is that most of the standard barer OSS servers need to be downloaded and installed separately, while they come preinstalled on Linux. It can be annoying to find, download, and install Apache, MySQL, Postfix, etc.
Honestly I find windows easier to administer, just because I'm more used to it. I prefer intuitive GUIs to text files for which you need to read gobs of documentation to figure out. The DNS server in windows is actually a good example of that. I was able to figure out how to configure everything I needed to do using just a few GUI screens. In contrast, I spent a few hours reading how to configure BIND when I used that.
Lack of Games (Score:3, Interesting)
An even better question might be... (Score:3, Interesting)
I love my Linux machines at home. I'd love 'em even more if nVidia would get their collective heads out of their asses and write some decent nForce sound drivers. But there's lots of great things about Linux, and my preferred flavor, Gentoo.
1) What, I don't have that piece of software? emerge foo. Poof, now I have that piece of software!
2) I _like_ typing at a computer. My Windows-using friends hate doing things like generating thumbnails of their digital pictures for web use or shrinking them. I just throw imagemagick at it and poof, the computer does it, like it should be. I don't have to make space on my screen for a picture, I don't have to go all pointy-clicky on widgets for resizing, I just type convert -scale 50% foo bar and I'm done.
3) I don't give a hoot in hell about Sasser or SoBig or any of the others.
But every once in a while, I get stuck rebooting and firing up the Windows hard disk. Turbotax and Taxcut don't exist for Linux. Still nobody's written a decent panorama stitcher fot Linux (or, at least, nothing half as good as Canon's PhotoStitch, and that's saying something...) How can I stay away?
-JDF
Options... (Score:3, Interesting)
Once You Go Mac . . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Weird... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not talking raw power, or admining 50 boxen, something that you'd want someone who knows the ins and outs of the system for. I'm talking easy basic server administration looking for a "good enough" result.
Even the individual server admin screens are pretty easy to follow. I needed to add a new virtual domain to IIS - something I can do to Apache in my sleep. Followed the linky to the admin page, right-clicked on the "Web Sites" folder, chose "New...". Entered a description, the folder, IP, port, etc. Chose the default "Read" permission.
Did that take me longer to do that it would have done in Apache? Absolutely. Was it faster than it would have taken an IIS wizard to accomplish the same task? Almost certainly.
It gets more interesting though - right click on the new website and choose "Properties." Hmm - performance. There's a checkbox/field to limit network bandwidth to this site. Cool. Not something that I need, but the exploratory nature revealed it and - I have to admit - I don't know how to accomplish the same task using Apache. I've never needed to, and I'm sure that I could figure it out with a lot of STFWing...
But, for lone box / untrained admin situations, I have to say that Windows Server is surprisingly, even remarkably, easy to use.
For this UNIX admin, anyway.
Oh, and as for DNS - on that same program (which starts by default on your administrator account unless you've disabled it), you can choose "Add role" and then "DNS server" and be walked through the entire process. Just a thought.
Re:One thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I should just start doing ASP.Net with Mono?
I've stayed off Windows (on OSX) for 2+ years now (Score:4, Interesting)
* Windows isn't as elegant and pleasant to use as other alternatives.
* Windows isn't as well integrated (hardware / software / OS) as alternatives.
* Windows (and some other OS') make me work on the OS before I can get to doing what I'm *actually* trying to accomplish.
* Windows makes me spend significantly more time on patching & security compared with alternatives.
I *do* use Windows2000 / XP / 2003 daily at work, and can say with certainty that it's more effort to manage by comparison.
Scientific applications (Score:2, Interesting)
speed in linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
I usually run KDE or GNOME (neither one seems to really have a speed advantage on the other) and sometimes XFCE (which does seem a little bit faster) on Fedora Core 1 and Mandrake 10.0 but running the same program (Open Office.org or Mozilla) it definitely runs slower in Linux. This is noticible both on my Athlon XP 2400 and my 450 Mhz laptop. Just basic things about the GUI seem to run slower (moving windows, etc).
Am I missing something here? Should I be messing more with the configurations? Are people who talk about the speed of linux using blackbox without any eye candy whatsoever? I know this is slightly off-topic, but I'll tell ya, the speed issue makes me more likely to start up Windows instead of Linux, and I'm wondering why people say linux is faster.
Re:Repeatability, Predictability and Orthogonality (Score:4, Interesting)
Several years later, I started taking classes at the U of MN, and was given a free shell account on a sun system.. I didn't know anything about it, they provided a menu system that would get me to pine, tin, and gopher. There was a unix shell menu option, and I started playing with that, at first, I had no idea what was going on, becuase I was used to DOS. I finaly got a book that was "Unix for DOS users", and had a nice one-to-one table of commands, and some unix basics. I had no one around to really teach me any unix stuff, as everyone was using windows 3.1 and then 95. I eventualy got slackware of a local BBS.. and later on a friend ordered a slackware disk from walunt creek.
after getting to college.. i just stoped using windows because if I left my PC in windows, I had to be in my dorm room to use it.. if I was using linux, I could telnet to it from computer labs all over campus and play with stuff while being social with all the geeks who didn't have their own computers.
These days, I just don't have a use for windows.. all my work stuff is Linux, and I think the only windows software I have to use is for uploading music to my NetMD.
Re:I live without Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
Too young to remember that they were found guilty of illegal trade practices? Ah, you see illegal trade practices as moral. Now I get it.
Transparency (Score:2, Interesting)
With Windows, it just isn't there. With Linux you can often solve problems using logic alone. The powerful command-line tools, the text-based config files, the structured filesystem layout... these things all make it fast and easy to operate on the machine. Some things may seem a little arcane at first, but rather than requiring rote memorization, you can actually understand what is going on.
Compare this to Windows, where the system rarely makes sense, and where even after you become an expert administrator you never really develop a good understanding for what is going on under the hood. Consider the solutions to common problems found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: As often as not you're asked to follow some complex series of steps editing registry keys that no human can possibly memorize, rebooting, clicking through to deeply nested directories to delete random dll's, rebooting...
Now if all you've ever used on Linux is one of the commercial distributions running Gnome or KDE, Linux may feel essentially the same to you. But for the serious sysadmin (the kind of person for whom a window manager is primarly used for handling 50 xterms), Linux is a godsend. Even something like a remote kernel upgrade (2.4 -> 2.6) from 2000 miles away isn't all that difficult. [For the sake of reference, in the Windows world this would be the equivalent of migrating from Server 2000 -> Server 2003 completely over the Internet. Even if it were technically possible, how many MCSEs would be comfortable attempting this on a live production server.]
In short, the thing that keeps me (and many others) away from Windows is the inability to really understand and have control over the machine. And it all stems from the fact that the focus with Microsoft ever since the DOS days has been to make the system as opaque as possible in the name of user-friendliness.
Ignorance, learning curve. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a Powerbook that kicked ass out of the box; both in terms of security and UI. I don't have the urge to play games on my PC's beyond MAME. (I have a PS2 for that). I got the OS [samspublishing.com] for my Linux box from the library [toaks.org]. It also installed without a hitch, and is loaded with help and man pages that are actually helpful and serve as manuals. Also, that book mentioned above is great.
I don't see the point in using Windows beyond the access to games--which doesn't interest me enough to risk trojans, zombification, worms, an obnoxious and backwards default browser that requires an act of Congress to remove, etc.
SansMS (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do I avoid MS?
Because I never had to submit to the Borg in the first place. My background is in graphic design and type design, and all the cool stuff in that little world was on the Mac OS, so I never had to get a Windows Machine. I *did* have to aquaint myself to the Borg Mind that is Windows, and when I was doing technical support in the late 1990s, I had to get *really* good at it (win3.1, 95, 98, NT). Everytime I found myself in the depths of the living pit of despair and mediocrity that is Windows, my love for that which is not MS only grew.
I still think the MacOS, specifically OSX, is superior to Linux, but I am also fairly well convinced that Linux OSs will be of comparable quality and ease of use in less than 5 years. Once the apps on Linux get GUIs worth using and looking at (which I also believe will be in the next 5 years), then Apple will have an interesting dilemma, but not half as interesting as what MS will face in the next few years in trying to get the travesty that is Longhorn out the door.
At first, I detested Windows because of its instability. Look at it sideways and the BSOD would come visit. Woof. MacOS v7 - 9 wasn't any prize for stability, but it did improve over time, and would often fail in a less spectacular way. Linux has always (to me) been more stable than either, except for OSX.
Another thing I dislike about Windows is its gamma. Looking into a windows machine is a dim and dingy thing compared to Apple. (I wish Linux were brighter as well...) And the OS has always been cumbersome, ugly and just plain nasty. Remember IRQs? What a load that was - just to hook up a freaking scanner or install a CD drive was often a nightmare in Windows.
So, let's see- it was ugly (still is, IMHO), unstable, unfriendly, and owned by a rapacious monopolistic enterprise run by an autistic geek [8m.com] and Monkey Boy. [ntk.net] It's an insecure system in continuous need of updating [slashdot.org], it's the source of continuous viruses and worms because of the Swiss Cheese nature of the OS and VB.
What exactly is there to BRING me to Windows? So I can trade .doc files with every other office drone?
So: that's why I don't use Windows. It's Just Not Worth The Hassle.
HW
Well, let me put it this way... (Score:3, Interesting)
So naturally, my Windows-install was not updated when the following sequence of events occured:
Needless to say, that Windows partition is now history. Some extra storage space always comes in handy.
Anyway, what keeps me away from Windows at this moment (the most important reasons, anyway):
It takes too much time to admin even just my own personal Windows system to keep it 'safe enough' to even have it on the internet: I'd need a firewall (Windows firewalls, even commercial ones, often have security problems themselves, read Bugtraq!), Antivirus-software (which costs $$$, takes huge amounts of CPU power/memory, slows down even a P4 to a drag, etc.), Spyware scanners such as Ad-aware and/or hijackthis, run Windows Update automatically or at least regularly and generally spend at least a day freaking around after a fresh install, turning off services (in Linux they are off by default), running Windows Update and installing all the crap mentioned above.
Then, to sum it all up: in Windows, I would not use IE and OE, because - oh well, I don't have to explain why if you have read the above.
So I would end up using Firefox, Thunderbird mail and OpenOffice just like I would do in Linux. So why would I bother to run those apps on Windows anyway? That software runs great in Linux, too...
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes Windows even worse to administer is the non-standard way Microsoft implements standards. Try getting Windows to integrate into a mixed environment. Many times you'll have to choose between doing things the Microsoft way (in which case nobody else can play) or a standards compliant way.
A quick example -- Microsoft doesn't implement IETF standard TSIG in their DNS implementation. So, your DDNS options are:
- Use MS DNS and workstations register using proprietary TSIG -- non-MS systems can't use DDNS
- Use MS DNS and have MS DHCP server make DDNS entries on workstations behalf
- Use non-MS DNS and TSIG from workstations -- MS systems can't use DDNS
- Use non-MS DNS and non-MS DHCP and have DHCP make DDNS entries on workstations behalf
We're not talking about oddball protocols here. DNS is a pretty fundamental protocol for a functional Internet.I don't use Microsoft for DNS or DHCP because they don't work correctly. The protocols which they seem to get right I don't use either because in my experience it's just a matter of time until they make them incompatible.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, the usability sucks. It's not only that the command line is poor, it can't be nicely used remotely without special software, or that most apps crash far too often. I could stand those.
What I can't stand is the braindead window-manager without proper support for sloppy-mouse, without ability to send a window to bottom (without minimizing them), the stupid taskbar that's mostly useless, and the fact that most Windows programs are simply awful for anything but the most basic tasks, and the lack of decent virtual desktops. I know you can fix most of these, but usually it introduces stupid problems because programs weren't designed for it.
Finally, I like the ability to plug devices into my computer and expect them to work. Generally, I've had less driver problems with Linux than with Windows. Finally, I don't like the idea of rebooting a system every ten minutes.
When forced to use Windows, I usually end up installing ports of the tools I use in Linux, so what's the point? Pay for software that just makes life harder?
Good Question - Here's my humble answers (Score:3, Interesting)
Another big reason is I hate fucking with Windows licensing, every time I upgrade my wife's machine I have to call that god forsaken toll free number and read in the longass "code" and then they read me back another longass code to "re enable" my OWN LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED copy of Windows CP, the CD is on her tower case, and the product code sticker is stuck to her monitor, I HATE being treated like some kinda pirate just because I upgrade motherboards or swapped sound cards/etc on a computer I OWN running software I PURCHASED.
Mozilla tabbed browsing - ok I know I can run this in Windows too but I still like Mozilla's tabbed browsing
One of my other "biggies" is a rather simple one, tabbed SSH shells on Konsole in KDE, I keep upwards of 30 shells open to various servers open at ALL times, having these in one window with tabs at the bottom is absolutely priceless, I've yet to see any other apps do this outside of Konsole and unless my memory fails, the default term program for Gnome also does this.
Email - I like Evolution it serves my purposes without being bloated or trying to "do everything" for me. Check my email, send my email, I'm pretty happy. I will let procmail do my filtering and sorting thanks anyway (yes I know Evolution does a lot more than this but it doesn't put it "in my way"). Also, last I checked there isn't one single email virus that will fuck over Evolution (or any other Linux email client that I'm aware of). But this point is really made in point #1 about security.
Stability - uptime on my box is 28 days, nothing awesome (I'm not shy about rebooting but just don't have too much). Windows while it HAS improved, still isn't that stable, my gaming computer, which has a barebones install of XP with just what is necessary to play the games I like to play, still manages to need a reboot about once per week or so. Nothing more aggravating than having to reboot when you really don't WANT to.
Re:I'm cheap... (Score:5, Interesting)
And as a student, I can get almost all of the software that I want for free, without having to worry about shitty licenses or any other issues.
More importantly, it gives me the ability to customize.
If my task is CPU/memory intensive (graphics), I choose a very simple window manager. Am I working on boring stuff like writing documents? I choose a window manager with bells and whistles to entertain me while am at it.
Do I have to repeat a task? All it takes for me is a simple two liner script to do it, while on Windows I almost always end up having to install Cygwin to do my tasks (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).
And more than anything, I get to mess around with the system the way *I* please -- if I do not like the messages during bootup, I can change that. And if I do not like the look and feel of my system, I just change it - at the bare metal level.
And another thing that pisses me off to no end in Windows is permissions. I have to be logged in as administrator to install the simplest of applications. WTF!? Whereas in Linux, I just get what I want and run (or sometimes compile and then run) the binary.
And more than anything, I philosophically disagree with the way Microsoft works -- yeah yeah, it's business and all is fair yada yada yada. But still, their practices are not honourable, nor respectful. And for that reason, I try to stay off all Microsoft products
Window's Woes (Score:3, Interesting)
My one, recent , experience with Windows was trying to get a peripheral (with Windows-only drivers) connected so I could use it. On a totally fresh install of Windows, I discovered that inserting an IBM PCMCIA-to-CF card adapter hosed the system so badly, I had to wipe the drive (the fault persisted across a normal reinstall of the OS). Funny how my all of my Macs (from a old 190 powerbook to a newer Pismo) handled the IBM adapter perfectly with no driver software, no configuration, and no hiccups, while software from IBM's former partner barfed chunks.
I've also watched friends, highly intelligent friends who are profession Windows developers, struggle with their systems -- accepting that they will have to reinstall (and probably reformat) at least once or twice a year. In contrast, in nearly 20 years of Mac usage, I've only been forced to reinstall the OS once (and have never been forced to reformat a drive).
I'm sure some have had spotless experiences with Windows and I'm sure some have had horrible experiences with Mac. But my experience has shown me that Macs just work and work well when compared to the alternatives.
I know I don't own the cheapest, most popular computers, but then I've never owned the cheapest most popular cars either.
I ditched Windows of OS X (Score:2, Interesting)
I was thinking "This is a bunch of money and I hope this f*cker works!"
Like most, I got tired of:
1) the nazi registration scheme for windows
2) the viruses, worms, spyware, and what have you
3) WINDOWS ARTHRITIS this just po'ed me
4) everything was a pain in the butt to administer
5) magical disappearing disk space
6) general flakiness
7) I ain't paying MS to help destroy the OpenSource movement
Why didn't I go with Linux?
-- I needed a laptop. There are few and far between Linux laptops.
-- I am so sick of fiddling with things. I want something that "just works." Sure I can get Linux to do what I need it to do, and often in ten minutes - but man. Come on. I don't want to fiddle anymore. I have been fiddling since the 80's.
Windows is Also Free .. but not the tools. (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason I don't like to do Windows is because after I have installed a $free_unix, I can do this:
It's thas simple. And it's all there, even without going through a thousand urls to download whatever program that just won't match these other operating systems anyways. And if I ever need some other piece of software I can have it in a minute by simply pkg_add -r'ing it. Simple convenience, I guess. Priceless.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:5, Interesting)
(sorry for this - I couldn't get it posted otherwise - even if I put this at the end) defeating1 lameness1 filter1 defeating2 lameness2 filter2 defeating3 lameness3 filter3 defeating4 lameness4 filter4 defeating5 lameness5 filter5 defeating6 lameness6 filter6 defeating7 lameness7 filter7 defeating8 lameness8 filter8 defeating9 lameness9 filter9 defeating10 lameness10 filter10 defeating11 lameness11 filter11 defeating12 lameness12 filter12 defeating13 lameness13 filter13 defeating14 lameness14 filter14 defeating15 lameness15 filter15 defeating16 lameness16 filter16 defeating17 lameness17 filter17 defeating18 lameness18 filter18 defeating19 lameness19 filter19 defeating20 lameness20 filter20 defeating21 lameness21 filter21 defeating22 lameness22 filter22 defeating23 lameness23 filter23 defeating24 lameness24 filter24 defeating25 lameness25 filter25 defeating26 lameness26 filter26 defeating27 lameness27 filter27 defeating28 lameness28 filter28 defeating29 lameness29 filter29 defeating30 lameness30 filter30 defeating31 lameness31 filter31 defeating32 lameness32 filter32 defeating33 lameness33 filter33 defeating34 lameness34 filter34 defeating35 lameness35 filter35 defeating36 lameness36 filter36 defeating37 lameness37 filter37 defeating38 lameness38 filter38 defeating39 lameness39 filter39 defeating40 lameness40 filter40 defeating41 lameness41 filter41 defeating42 lameness42 filter42 defeating43 lameness43 filter43 defeating44 lameness44 filter44 defeating45 lameness45 filter45 defeating46 lameness46 filter46 defeating47 lameness47 filter47 defeating48 lameness48 filter48 defeating49 lameness49 filter49 defeating50 lameness50 filter50 defeating51 lameness51 filter51 defeating52 lameness52 filter52 defeating53 lameness53 filter53 defeating54 lameness54 filter54 defeating55 lameness55 filter55 defeating56 lameness56 filter56 defeating57 lameness57 filter57 defeating58 lameness58 filter58 defeating59 lameness59 filter59 defeating60 lameness60 filter60 defeating61 lameness61 filter61 defeating62 lameness62 filter62 defeating63 lameness63 filter63 defeating64 lameness64 filter64 defeating65 lameness65 filter65 defeating66 lameness66 filter66 defeating67 lameness67 filter67 defeating68 lameness68 filter68 defeating69 lameness69 filter69 defeating70 lameness70 filter70 defeating71 lameness71 filter71 defeating72 lameness72 filter72 defeating73 lameness73 filter73 defeating74 lameness74 filter74 defeating75 lameness75 filter75 defeating76 lameness76 filter76 defeating77 lameness77 filter77 defeating78 lameness78 filter78 defeating79 lameness79 filter79 defeating80 lameness80 filter80 defeating81 lameness81 filter81 defeating82 lameness82 filter82 defeating83 lameness83 filter83 defeating84 lameness84 filter84 defeating85 lameness85 filter85 defeating86 lameness86 filter86 defeating87 lameness87 filter87 defeating88 lameness88 filter88 defeating89 lameness89 filter89 defeating90 lameness90 filter90 defeating91 lameness91 filter91 defeating92 lameness92 filter92 defeating93 lameness93 filter93 defeating94 lameness94 filter94 defeating95 lameness95 filter95 defeating96 lameness96 filter96 defeating97 lameness97 filter97 defeating98 lameness98 filter98 defeating99 lameness99 filter99 defeating100 lameness100 filter100
Installing a private certificate server, Linux version:
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change "<VirtualHost _default_:443>"
/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key
../ssl.crt
../ssl.key/server.key -x509 -out server.crt
Edit
to "<VirtualHost 192.168.10.200:443>"
[root@dts conf]# cd
[root@dts ssl.key]# openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024
[root@dts ssl.key]# cd
[root@dts ssl.crt]# openssl req -new -key
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New York
Windows is sort'a nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
But it is just little things.
I'm using VIM very much. I hate VIM, I hate Emacs, I love MSDevStudio. But. But under VIM+Bash I'm at least three times more productive.
Windows GUI is good and consistent. To some degree. I'm as a person who designed for two years GUI applications for Windows and knowing every input/output/message/control available I can say that Windows GUI is most advanced GUI ever created. But. But M$ itself stopped following itsown GUI desing guidelines, and I'm not taliking about dumb so-called "VB Programmers" and other commercial software developers who have problems doing simple window with two buttons right. This is really sickening.
Error handing in Windows is just awful. It has nowthing comparable to /var/log/messages. Once I have spent 3 month being not able to run one of the my development tools. It was really bad situation and no one have ever had any clue what have happened. I have used other machine with devkit installed, where my tool worked Ok. But after sometime it stopped working there too. After two weeks of games with regedit/etc it turns out that this application was Win16 application (Win32 has no required system call - but Win16 subsystem does) and when and size of evironment was giong over some limit Win16 subsystem was just stopping to work. With no error message whatsoever.
I can go on and on. For a long time. I've being long-time M$ user and developer. But once I (actually bit forcefully) switched to Linux - I was really amased: some things didn't worked, but most of other things just worked. Without reboots, without crashes, without asking tons silly questions. Just worked. Breath of fresh air after 6 years of WinNT 4.0.
P.S. w2k/xp really didn't changed this balance much since early year 2000 - the time I switched to Linux completely.
Atari (Score:5, Interesting)
A Recent XP - OS X switcher's opinon... (Score:3, Interesting)
I also love the fact that just like most llinux distros, mac comes ready for developers. I have a native bash terminal, java, gcc, and xcode ready to go. I can't say that much windows.
Also, other huge surprise, there is a -ton- of freeware/shareware available for os x, and i find most of it to be of high quality (i.e. adium, transmit, subethaedit, colloquy, etc, etc).
Now that I'm on a laptop with OS X, I really don't see myself switching back anytime soon, even with centrino options maturing somewhat.
Gut feeling... (Score:3, Interesting)
Many things...
Yes, I paid for Windows, so I do use it occasionally. After all, it is my right to. But when I use it something just doesn't feel right.
But I don't merely use Linux because it's _NOT MICROSOFT_. I've learned that there are some real advantages:
And my last point is probably my best one. There's a certain joy in using something that someone else created for you, not for personal profit or greed, but rather, as an act of giving back to the community that has given so much to them. I've benefitted greatly from using Linux, and I really look forward to the time when I myself will be able to give back to the community that has given so much to me. Linux is almost sacred because it is free from the influence of money; it was created for the purpose of blessing the users, not exploiting them. Linux is software the way it was meant to be.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:2, Interesting)
This may or may not be true, I'm not going to go count web pages. But documentation isn't about quantity, it's about quality. With windows, you can get resources about all common problems and concerns, occasionally get resources about not-common ones, and very very rarely will you get help with the most obscure.
But Linux documentation, like onions and ogres, has layers. The man page for simple usage and configuration, linux help sites for more complicated problems and example configs, mailing lists for horribly obscure problems that only the developers can really help with, and as an absolute last resort, the code itself, which answers all questions if you have a month to spend solving them.
And to answer the initial question posted...
I can have a web server, DNS server, firewall, mail server, and pop server in linux.
I can have a web server, DNS server, firewall, mail server, pop server, and X amount of debt in windows.
Then again, I read a study somewhere saying that my TCO is higher becuase I use Linux, so maybe I'm wrong? Or maybe the group doing that study got their software from the 'P2P outlet store'.
The source code and the right to work on it (Score:3, Interesting)
- you're allowed to review the source code
- something doesn't work the way you want? No problem, change the code.
- you added a great feature that would be worth sharing? No problem, submit a patch to the author and it's likely to be merged in the next version.
There's nothing similar with Windows.
Have a look at Internet Exploder
- the CSS support is totally broken by obvious bugs,
- this is known by almost every webmaster out there, and documented on a lot of web sites,
- plenty of people are skilled enough to fix the bugs. But they can't. And even if they could (technically, by disassembling), they aren't allowed to do so without breaking the EULA.
With Windows, you are totally passive. You can just wait and let Microsoft decide on the future of the software.
OTOH, directions taken in free software is mostly driven by users. By submitting suggestions on mailing listes, by sending patches, etc. Some software doesn't speak your native language? Translate it, send the result to the author and the next version will have your translation.
Send the same thing to Microsoft, it will go to
This is why I don't use Windows.
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:5, Interesting)
Doing my part to help Microsoft's decline.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a staunch supporter of A.B.M. (Anyone But Microsoft). If I am in a situation where I "must" use Windows, I use it only in the only way that can do the least harm to the world: as an insecure application launcher. I use it to run Cygwin, GVim, Eclipse, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and whatever else. I run the McAfee Anti-Virus, Spy-Bot Seek 'n Destroy and run Windoze update regularly. No windoze media player, IE removed from the desktop, always saying no to the
And of course, I make sure it's behind a firewall.
Re:Mac OS X - quality which Microsoft can never ma (Score:5, Interesting)
Much more intuitive IMO would have been an eject icon over which you can drag items (similar to how OSX's recycle can appears while dragging a disk). Better yet, what about a button on the case labeled "Eject?" I understand that purely mechanical ejects aren't feasible for performance reasons (floppies on PC's have to write immediately because of this), but why not have one that sent an eject request to the system, performing the same internal tasks as when you drug a disk to the trash?
Re:The fact that it is so difficult to administer. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the old shareware thing. People want money for crappy little utilities that may or may not still be available when the author gets bored. When people open-source (more specifically, use the GPL on) their software and release it, all they want back are bug reports and maybe contributions. This allows the software to improve and stick around even if the author loses interest.
I'm still lacking basic utilities on my pocketpc and wishing it were an iPaq so I could install Familiar Linux on it. I wish I had a clue about programming for Windows PocketPC or Mobile or CE or whatever the name-of-the day is so that I could maybe start trying to write stuff for it...
Re:My default Linux install is just more USEFUL (Score:2, Interesting)
9 years without using a virus or an anti-virus is an other incentive. The virus of the week always makes me laugh. Yes one day virii might hit the Linux user but for the moment, Windows is the easiest target for kiddies.
Last winter, I tried to give XP a shot... it lasted a week and I could not take it anymore.
Bottom line, linux is just more usefull.
It's a Hostile Platform (Score:3, Interesting)
Consequently, they make developent difficult. They obfiscate. They change the rules to mess up 3rd part software (1st party as well come to that) so that existing software will break.
It's a hostile platform.
Also, of course, there's the expense, the forced upgrades, the DRM, and the corporations staggering absence of anything resembling ethics. But mainly it boils down to one thing:
Windows is a hostile platform.
What makes me wanna leave Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
So where do I want to go? Not Linux. Sorry folks, too much tinkering and looking up how to do basic things. I've tried, lots and lots of times. Instead, I'd rather go Apple. I can go buy an Apple laptop right now, have everything ready to go, and get just about all the software I want to run for it. No more Windows rot. Installation of new toys such as iPods or wireless routers etc is painless. The stand by mode doesn't rot over time. I could keep going.
Windows is working just fine for me. But I am sick of being paranoid about making backups. I am sick of knowing I have to reinstall Windows every 6 months or so. On top of all that, I'm tired of explaining to people that I don't have the problems they've had. Most of all, I'm tired of going into over-analytical mode when the minutist thing happens.
Windows isn't the worst thing in the world to me by any stretch of the imagination. Moving to Apple would be a nice luxurious move for me. I can't really say that I'm being forced in that direction, though. Maybe one day the Linux community will figure out that usability really is an interseting aspect to pursue and I'll be able to be more 'luxurious' for free.
MCSE who prefers Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
Been supporting windows networks since nt4 was released. Taking the MCSE simply cos I have to support it day in day out.
Of recent improvements only the run as option and the gpo software control have an real use.
I love returning home to my gentoo laptop and my slackware server. I keep a win2k pc for gaming and thats it.
Linux is better suited to the corporate desktop and I'd be so much happier supporting a Linux only network environment.
Its ridiculous having to pay MS for CALs when all you want is storage and samba will more than suffice. It's better than NFS but MS are giving away Services for Unix with an NFS client. Why use a Windoze server for anything other than glorified LDAP/DNS boxes. And you can do that in a *nix environment.
Still Windoze admins are cheaper and more plentifull than *nix admins so who can blame ignorant employers for going doze??
Time (Score:1, Interesting)
I run a small business supporting computer networks for other small businesses. I typically install servers running Linux for my customers, though the vast majority of my clients continue to use Windows on their desktops. Therefore I must support them. I would not have the time to support and manage my own Windows computer or network server, as I am busy enough dealing with all of my clients Windows problems. That's why all of my computers and servers run Linux.
I've found that over the past few years I have been spoiled by the reliability of Linux and have a reduced tolerance for the instability of Windows.
The other thing that keeps me off Windows is the vast quantity and quality of administration tools availble to the Linux platform. I would never agree to remotely administer a Windows server located 2400 miles away but wouldn't hesitate to do the same for a Linux or BSD server... and I do!
branding (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things that annoys me about windows is that your machine becomes part of a very open and highly competitive marketplace. Every application you install wants to take over as much of your space as it can, and does its best to elbow out any competing applications.
For example, my Mum has an XP machine. She has a flatbed Epson scanner, but her Lexmark printer can scan too. Plus I got her a Canon digital camera. If you install the bundled software that comes with all these products (and you have to install at least part of all of them) your machine is a total pickle. Sometimes images pop up in one application, sometimes in another. They fight over who is going to control the printer. They all have a simple image editor, these editors are all completely different, and worst of all, they all have elaborate skins to emphasise their branding. The Canon one was the worst: my Mum is 70 and has trouble reading buttons where the button text is a fixed size rather small bitmap in an unreadable "futuristic" font and is (wait for it) dark grey on mid grey. In fact even working out which bits of the screen are buttons and which are decoration can be pretty challenging.
By contrast Macs are a delight to use because (almost) the only software available is made by Apple and actually (gasp) cooperates. And Linux, erm, well it's not a delight to use, but if you enjoy tinkering it can be OK, and at least most projects try to rub along discreetly.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Claustrophobia (Score:2, Interesting)
mostly a sense of claustrophobia, of having
the walls closing on me.
When I am put in front of a windows machine I
feel umconfortable, like somebody switched my
keyboard layout and messed with the mouse.
I have to change mindset: I am not the master,
but I am the slave, I have to abide to the
"logic" of the computer, if there is a problem,
I can very well not be able solve it, simply
because I cannot see where is the defect.
Computers should be a symbol of man ingenuity,
of his progress, not a tool to enslave them
instead..
I do not want the computer to think for me.
I have already the politicians and the TVs that
try to convince me they know better.
The simplest tasks become impossible.
The DOS prompt makes me want to scream, and the
programs, with tons of toolbars and options make
me dizzy.
I guess my past of heavy Amiga user helped me to
know what a real machine and a real OS could do,
but in general I can have the occasional wish to
use a program, like dictation software, or a game,
but it does not last long.
I can have Tribes II and NWN on my Linux Box, and
I can try out sphinx.
In general, I see MSWindows like an invaluable
tool that created the idea of the Personal
Computer in each home (now more than one), but
a tool that now has is time due.
It is time to move on. We cannot keep our
keyboards being modeled after some long
disappeared mechanical typewriters.
Is time to look forward, try at least the dvorak
layout, and spare money for a keyboard with
no staggering, install Linux on our family
Pcs, whenever possible, and support the OSS
community actively with financial support.
Best Regards
The four S's (Score:3, Interesting)
Security
Scalability
Source
If MSFT could provide those in any consistent manner, I would consider them an option. Until then, it's not even worth discussing.
Fear (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh well, its not like I really miss anything on Windows.
*Concerns* About Security? (Score:2, Interesting)
The issues with XP's security are factual: try installing XP on a computer you intend to connect to the internet. Go to windows update as fast as you can, and try to download the RPC patch as fast as you can. I can confidently guarantee that your machine will try to reboot itself well before you can even download it, let alone apply it.
I cannot fathom what horrible hoops people unfamiliar with computers must go through to get a new version of windows installed. Even worse, a machine sold with a 6 month old version of XP preinstalled. Unless they are blessed with a computer-savvy friend nothing less than a $50 or more visit to a computer store would help them.
Why don't I use windows? Because I wouldn't have any problem letting my parents upgrade OS X. Because I like to spend my weekends using my computer, not fixing it.
And damn it, because I prefer computers that don't have a boot process that still uses decade-old DOS graphics.
Why does it get so slow!? (Score:0, Interesting)
Considering that most of the income made by Microsoft from direct sales of it's OS are from bulk licenses used by computer manufactures; it would seem that Microsoft would be encouraged to not spend time making sure that there patches are efficiently programmed. They only have to gain if they are able to give the user the feeling that there computer is outdated and lacks responsiveness after installing required patches. It often would cause joe user to think that they need a newer computer, and so they go out and buy a new computer, with a new copy of Windows.
At any rate, my paranoia and sanity are kept in check by using linux. That, and between revitalizing older hardware (P3 1 Ghz), using OO, The Gimp, and Linux I have saved several thousands dollars easily.
So that's why I stay off windows.
Windows users... (Score:2, Interesting)
upgrade path (Score:2, Interesting)
Even though I am forced to work with Windows at the job, I just can't help smiling when I turn the Mac on at home. It's absolutely fun to work with. It's even fun to solve problems when they occur. And when I cannot solve a problem, I know there are helpful communities out there who share my enthusiasm for the platform and are more than willing to help, no questions asked. Compare that to the Windows world, where it usually is every man to himself.
Anyway, Windows never gets that smile on my face. The only expression Windows gets ony face is one of utter disbelief: how people can continue to use the products of a convicted monopolist, a company where quality and contents of products are dictated by the marketing department. A company that pretty much all the time lies to its customers - it would basically do and say anything to keep you as a customer. A company that innovates by aggressive takeovers, and manages to totally screw up the bought product while they're at it (got to love Frontpage). A company that is not afraid to use references to terrorism and nationalism to fight a competitor that they label is "free" without even understanding what that word means. That and its track record of bugs, security issues, and the malware and spyware that seem to thrive on it.
It's a strange in a way, though: I do not know how many times I cursed the Amiga back then when another bootloader virus had killed a set of floppy disks. I still loved it for all its faults.
Re:I live without Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
The goal of any business is to do what the business owners want. The goals are often stated in the mission statement. If the business owners are greedy swine then sure, the businesses goals will solely be to make profit. But most businesses are not that narrow minded. Most businesses have an agenda and the profit motive is secondary. For example, most businesses aim to provide a certain product or service. Other businesses have stated codes of conduct (eg, Google's "do no evil" rule). Any business you look at will have a similar set of profit unrelated goals. I guarantee you will have great difficulty finding any business whose single stated goal is to "make money".
If what you said was true (and it is not) then companies like Ford could just stop making cars and start playing hedge funds on the stock market. That's tying in with "making money". But that's not what Ford does. The goal of Ford is to make cars at an affordable price. Everything else is a secondary goal; including the profit motive.
Re:speed in linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows uses a hack (which I wish someone would do in linux) to make things seem faster - it gives the currently selected window processing priority. Compress 2 things (7-zip works best for this, with "ultimate" settings), then have one window focused - the selected window's progress bar moves about twice as fast as the unselected one's, sometimes three or four times as fast. Open a third app, give it focus, and both compressings go slowly.
This should be quite easy to do in linux, apart from one thing - only root can give a process higher than normal priority, or raise a process's priority once it's started.
If you manually choose which processes get which priority, you can make things seem a lot faster (although things in the background suffer)
I use linux because of the guitar software. (Score:3, Interesting)
Investment in reliability. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is exactly why I don't want to use windows. Windows is an investment just to get it to work reliabily. Put in the CD and it works, but a week later something goes wrong and you have to troubleshoot that. Then you have to troubleshoot this crap and that crap.
These two reasons are why I have always used Macs at home. I don't have time to invest in my machine. I pay a premium up front, but then it magically just works. It always works. It will continue to work. I don't have downtime because my internet connection hiccups. I don't have to update things every 30 seconds to prevent the next worm from bringing down my machine. I don't gradually lose performance because spyware chokes the processor.
Games? Bah... I gave up on serious gaming after Diablo 2. I play Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds by myself along with some hearts, spades, cribbage, solitaire and a few other minor games. someone's always making new versions of card games, and I can play them online thanks to a Safari browser that's more reliable and up to date than IE for the Mac.
Business software? Bah... I find my own tools from shareware and freeware, which are more reliable and easier to use than Microsoft's tools. Plus it's easy to find software that's free, and is compatible with Word's format if you need to find it.
The Mac hardware is an investment, but its an investment in reliability I'm willing to make. Yes would it be nicer if it was cheaper, but wouldn't everything be nicer if it was cheaper?
Re:I stay off of windows because it sucks! (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently got an LCD monitor and was forced to upgrade to XP to make it look half decent (2000's font rendoring is horrible on LCD monitors.) Wow was that painful. I don't trust Windows's upgrade tools (seem to leave things slightly broken with no way to back out) so I did a new install. It was the first time I had installed XP and it took a lot of time. Once it was done I was left with a shell of a machine that looked horrible (what kind of heavy drugs were the MS UI guys on) and had no working applications. I had to trick XP into using my old settings from my ntuser.dat file and I've had to reinstall or dig through and import registry settings for tons of programs. I've sunk tons of time into the upgrade and things still are a litte off. I install RedHat and Fedora a lot and I've just gotten used to having a working machine at the end of the install. Dealing with Windows again was annoying and frustrating.
Most of the machines I do work on are Linux boxes running various versions of RedHat. I put Fedora Core 2 on two of them after it came out and I have to say I'm impressed at the progress they have made on desktop usability. I used to think X was always going to be a little slow but Fedora is just as snappy as Windows. XP is seeming more and more like a clunky in comparison.
I don't like supporting an abusive monopoly as well but really I just need to get my job done. I doubt it will be too long before I switch my primary desktop to Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if XP was the last Windows I run on my primary desktop.
Re:As a developer... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) I much prefer a single root based filesystem. There's just
2) Symbolic links are incredibly useful.
3) Bash, I love it, period.
4) SSH / SCP via the CLI rather than a GUI.
5) Can optimize the kernel/OS image for each box/purpose meaning consistently superior performance to equivalent Win boxen.
6) SuSE provides me with a single DVD with (almost) all the software I need.
7) All configs are kept in real live config files, not hide-it, special key, binary value "registry keys", worst idea ever.
8) Ability to run headless boxes (did I mention that SSH rocks?)
9) Reliability, not just in terms of crashing but in terms of how difficult it is to corrupt a Linux install.
10) Win4Lin. It's an absolutely brilliant piece of software, except for games and a few DRM proggies, it can pretty much handle anything one would need Windows for.
That said, my only complaint is that you have to be careful when shopping peripherals, especially cutting edge stuff like WiFi cards. However, that's a blue moon type of thing and with a little research before hitting the stores, it can be pretty painless.
Norton ghost will solve that problem (Score:2, Interesting)
My friend does this every month, and he keeps his data on a network drive so its still there after he re-images.
Although linux might be a better solution
Re:One thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, money.
Many years ago, I started noticing when job shopping that the MS DOS (and later MS Windows) programming jobs never paid as well as the unix programming jobs. This didn't strike me as odd, as working on bottom-of-the-market jobs (whether fast food, auto mechanics, or software development) never pays very well. You're better off going with quality goods, and then you get jobs from people who are willing to pay for quality.
I did get tricked into working on DOS and/or Windows on a few projects. But in interviews, I've always been careful to tell them that my experience on MS systems is limited and not very recent. This encourages them to consider me for only the higher-quality unix (and now linux) job openings.
The Mac was always interesting for similar reasons. But the cost of entry was high before OSX, and I always had plenty of unix jobs, so I never invested the time and money that it took to deal with a Mac.
Way back when, I did some work on IBM mainframes. I'm sure glad that I managed to escape from that ghetto. Actually, this happened because the engineers where I was working wanted to bring in Amdahl's unix that ran on top of VM, so they could have a decent place to work on the mainframe. I volunteered to be the admin, though I knew little about unix at the time. It was such a relief that I concentrated on writing as much software for it as I could. I had lots of time to do this, as it took almost no adminning (unlike the IBM OSs). I managed to get enough resume material to hop to a real unix-based development job. Life has been a lot better ever since then.
Yeah, money. And achievement. It's great to be able to write software that "just works", and doesn't crash unpredictably somewhere inside a system library routine.
Re:I live without Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Not every industry is cut-throat.
I'm trying... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some simple reasons why the desktop switch won't work for me:
1) Application Support!
The work I do fits into 2 categories, artistic/creative and technical - mainly for the web, homebrew intranet apps, and the oddball video production.
I need Photoshop (Gimp, while mature, is not a good replacement). I need Premiere. I need IE (for testing purposes, I swear!).
I need to be able to encode to Windows Media A/V formats (the best in streaming for 90% of any web author's target audience - Quicktime doesn't have the install base, and Real is... well Real is Real!)
2) Game Support
While I don't play games much for Leisure, I do need them for work (www.gotfrag.com).
If they would all run under Wine easily, legally, and the first time without and screwing around, I'd be game in this dept - but they dont, and therefore I'm not. There's been a lot of progress here, but there are those of us who can't spend hours to get a game running.
3) Desktop Support
No matter how much I try, I still can't get used to KDE/GNOME. It's not that I'm adverse to using something without a start button (haha.. well, nevermind that in this case) - I love OS X, but the feel that KDE and Gnome exhibit is, well, a bit rough around the edges. Not to mention the problem of having to choose one and live with all of the repercussions of not being in the other.
In my opinion (as the average user), here's what Linux/BSD needs to be king of the desktop:
1) A standardized UI/API that the developers can get behind. Sorry, but someone has to champion this thing. Microsoft is GREAT at getting developers behind their UI design choices, KDE/GNOME haven't done so well. Apps need to feel right to all users regardless of settings, etc.
2) Commercial software developers have to have reasons to port their software. I don't have the answers here, but 9/10 software companies won't devote the engineering resources to port software unless they see the money in it. I think that one real shot here may be to work through distributors/VAR's to put the pressure on here, and show the sales potential (hopefully it exists).
3) DirectX. Native. OpenGL (and other fringe, unrelated libraries) are no longer useful. DirectX is the platform, and rightly so - it's the best out there. Linux needs it in the worst way, and having it would make porting games incredibly easy. Not to mention that many multimedia related desktop apps are using DX components too!
4) Developer Environment and tools support. Linux/BSD are doing well here. Eclipse is where it's at, everyone should rally around it with the proper plugins to make a fully universal IDE. It works on Windows, perfectly. It will allow more Windows developers to work at porting their software to other systems, because they can jump right in without re-learning the tools and techniques.
That's about all I have, but there's a long way to go. We're making good progress though.
One important note, Linux doesn't have to have a 70% desktop share to win, not even close. What does need to happen, is for MS share to drop significantly. If MS were to drop to around 50% of the market (with Apple, Linux, BSD, WHATEVER!! eating up the rest), it will force developers to port software, OR it will force developers to standardize their users on a single platform. While the 2nd will be messy, it will make them consider what platform to standardize on. Linux does have a lower TCO in most situations, hopefully by that point the masses will be more educated about it's requirements, and the do's and dont's.
Anywho, I can't leave Windows yet. Soon maybe?
What doesnt keep me off windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also a major factor is innovation. Windows seems to do very little, whereas linux is constantly evolving adding new features etc.
I also like the die-hard attitude. It's not a case of it doesn't work, oh well nevermind. It's it doesn't work, I know, I'll rewrite/port/hack it until it works.
Plus you are given decent control of your system and don't have to put up with menus etc. if you don't want.
Thomas
Re:Once you go Free, you'll never go back (Score:3, Interesting)
>
>Why can't you do the same in Windows? I've recently used Geoshell a lot and it was a real cool minimalist (much more so than KDE or Gnome) Explorer replacement. There are dozens more, and this community is actually thriving in these days.
Cool. I didn't know that there was so much activity in that area these days.
Last time I looked into that stuff most of these replacement shells were either glorified skins and/or ugly hacks that could cause lots of unexpected problems. Of course, that was still in the days of Windows 98, so I won't blame it all on the shells
Maybe I'll give it another shot. I still got to use XP every now and then...
>>If I would like to have feature X in program Y, I can file a wishlist or make the modifications myself if I can.
>
>Why can't you file a wishlist to an author of a Windows program? However, I agree about the modification advantage though, although I'm not experienced enough at Linux programming that I could use that freedom. I doubt many Windows users are either, so it's probably no advantage to many switchers.
True. Problem though is that while you may send a wishlist to large non-FOSS companies like MS or EA, chances are that it'll never even reach the developers. And even with medium sized companies your chances usually aren't good. Of course, there's lots of FOSS programs for Windows too. It's just not the norm, which in general makes these things a lot harder.
Unstable power management and unsecure internet (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mean to sound like an Apple switch ad, but I got jealous of seeing people on Macs never have the problems I did on my PC laptop. They were never the computer-savvy types either. They never had to bother with any technical issues, while I found myself constantly fixing my computer instead of using it. One of the Apple switch ads had somebody saying they got tired of "the operating system always getting in the way", and I was sold. I'm desensetised and numb to advertising like everyone else, but that line really snagged me.
My old laptop would constantly hang whenever I tried to shut it down or put it to sleep. I would have to unplug the AC power adapter and pull out the battery because the power switch wouldn't work. Now that I switched to a PowerBook, I just love being able to wake up my computer and be on the net, using a broadband connection, literally in a second or two. I can turn it on, get on the net for a brief moment, then turn it off.
With my old laptop, I would turn it on, go to the kitchen and start to prepare a meal, come back and hit return, go back to the kitchen to make sure I'm not burning whatever I'm cooking, then come back to browse the net. I remember timing it once and it was something like 15 minutes. That was average. Turning it off would be a similar experience. I couldn't just get off the net and leave the flat. It was like waiting for someone to get dressed to go out. I would shut down the laptop and wait a while until it would hang, because I wouldn't want to interrupt the power in the middle of a disk read/write process in fear of damaging the hard drive. And then I would unplug the AC and battery.
I also got tired of worrying about security vulnerabilities in software I used to hook up to the net. I was really glad to be able to stop using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. I knew there were other browsers, but I didn't have enough hard drive space to use more than one, because of the bloat-ware factor involved with upgrading to Windows 98 on a Windows 95 laptop. I couldn't get rid of IE because I was using Visual Studio, which required it. The security holes in OE were ridiculous, with email viruses able to infect your computer without you even having to open up an attachment. But I do miss being able to place hyperlinks in an email.
However, I can't say that I'm totally satisfied with OS X. It has great features, but doesn't have the technical feel of previous Mac OS versions at the filesystem level. I keep encountering strange bugs- garbage for permissions names when doing a get info, gigabytes of missing hard drive space on my external drive after using applications, and now the help viewer application won't launch in the Finder. I would know what files to replace on a previous OS version to fix these sorts of problems, but now it is more complicated with OS X. The OS arrangement on the hard drive resembles a Windows system more now, with the graphical front-end feeling more like a superficial facade, rather than a view of the computer's internal workings. It feels like a blind-fold. Application install processes place tons of files all over the place, making them difficult to remove. I remember the old days when, if you installed software that caused conflicts, you could just manually drag out a file in the extensions folder and re-boot. You could remove software and feel secure in knowing that you would end up with the same amount of free space that you had before you installed it. Now you just don't know.
And I preferred it when the file type was separate from the file name.
Re:I'm easy (Score:3, Interesting)
After all Visual C++ or
Re:One thing (Score:1, Interesting)
The registry has always struck me as a dubious trade-off of convenience and single point of failure, but the aspect you name might well be characteristic of any system that actively supports software with license restrictions: to some extent, the computer must keep secrets from the user in order to actively defend license provisions that a moderately hostile user might choose to violate. This information is opaque, difficult to move around, and 'brittle' by design.
It's easy to choose open source when the open source implementation is more mature than the commercial alternatives, but the above consideration means that given the choice between an elegantly designed and well executed commercial app, or an open source app of adequate functionality, I frequently pick the latter. In the long run I find I encounter more hassles from the commercial app's license-related design constraints.
Well.... As long as you asked... (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all I work as a programmer and so I'm fairly in tune with IT issues. The amount of effort spent to protect our users from viruses, worms, trojans, etc is enormous. The staff can barely keep up. It feels like we're playing ping-pong. No matter how many times we hit the ball back over the net we know that it's always going to get returned and it's only a matter of time before we miss.
The expense of the never-ending licensing fees is another. Server licenses, client licenses, Software "Assurance" fees for software that we aren't ready to upgrade but have to pay a big fee now or pay an even bigger fee later.
But mostly what keeps me away from Microsoft at home is their total disregard for the anti-trust laws. They put people in the above position and then keep them there by stifling their competition though endless sleazy tactics. They don't follow standards in an effort to prevent others from writing software that can interoperate. They make backroom deals with companies in order to fund bogus litigation while trying to hide the fact that they are the ones behind it. They lie about their competition. They pay politicians to write and/or support legislation that would kill their competition. The decision to break the law is just another financial calculation for Microsoft. If there is a big enough payoff they're willing to break the law. We don't need corporations that feel that they are powerful enough to disregard the law and play by their own rules. I think it would be much better for innovation if we were dealing with three smaller companies that had to abide by the rule of law like the rest of us.
I straddle both sides... (Score:3, Interesting)
WINDOWS:
I need the Windows box - no way around it - because I need applications like Adobe Photoshop (not an option to do without); Pagemaker; and Outlook to synch my Sony/Ericsson P900 phone (it has no PIM). Not Office: I use OOo only. Anyway, no way around the other apps. Also I quite like the integrated desktop: a font added works in all apps rather than in just some. The control panel is great. Media work (no "no quicktime" errors etc). The HP printer (Grr) needs a Win box. Etc.
Dislikes: I just had to reinstall Win on the laptop to bring running processes down from 38 to 19. Typical Win issues. Registry hell.
LINUX:
The desktop is great - a Redhat 9 box. No re-installs. Fast. Multiple desktops. I can (and do!) shell into it from work (using putty). Proper multitasking. Opensource so it is free (as in speech). All the usual Linux advantages. Very few virus attacks. Can you say "ROCK SOLID STABLE".
Dislikes: I never know how to set screen res (unless I go into Xfree86.conf manually). Fonts are haphazard and never work in all apps. Cut/paste is always a gamble. Installing a new app can take an entire evening and often does (can you say 'dependency hell'). The typical Linux desktop issues.
So there - each have their place.
Michael
Re:The only reason I have a WinXP partition is GAM (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always thought that if Linux created a competitor to DirectX (sort of a super SDL) it would easy things, especially if it worked on Windows (thereby gaining instant acceptance and at the same time making porting Win games to Linux MUCH easier just like the PC to XBox conversions.)
Re:Wrong question? (Score:1, Interesting)
I have an external Tascam usb sound interface, the US-122, with which to record music via midi, audio, and in order to make it work in Linux, let alone use apps like Cool Edit(which ain't gonna happen any time soon)is like pulling teeth.
I have been able to, with the help of a friend, make Slackware 9.1 see it, and play audio through the speakers from my synth, but nothing else. No midi, no mp3 or wav (xmms will not work)
So I am left with a dilemma.
You see, I love Slackware, I have found it to be the most powerful yet most simply elegant solution for Linux out there.
But I need to be able to reliably record multitrack audio at low latency and high resolution, burn cd's simply, and be able to LISTEN to music on my computer with xmms or a similar winamp clone.
PR sure would help, but until the killer apps are there, and most devices/peripherals just simply work when you plug them in, I would have to stay with Windows.
And I don't want to, but I desire the ability to make music more than the ability to not run proprietary and closed code.
Re:I'm cheap... (Score:3, Interesting)
>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)
Try an experiment. Delete your windows registry file(s) (assuming you can find them) and continue using your machine as normal, or reboot and do what you normally do. Does your machine require a re-install to make things run again?
Now delete your rpm/dpkg/emerge database. rm -rf
I'd say your answers would be yes for windows, no for linux. Why? Because the rpm/dpkg database is not used for much beyond package management. If you were to accidently nuke your
>I prefer Mozilla to IE. Always have.
Objectively? or subjectively?
For this I'd have to say security, standards support, usability, and features all contribute to making mozilla mail/browser better than IE/outlook. A fair question though.
>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).
Why buy a new machine if you don't need one? I think the 486 is a bit old, but I ran my website on a p2 with 128megs of ram for a couple of years and it ran just fine, including the latest linux distro. Think that w2k/w2k3/iis/exchange/sql server would have run on that machine? Doubtful. Course, that brings in that I couldn't afford to run the MS equivelant apps that I was running on that host (web/mail/database).
>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.
Man pages suck donkey balls, but most linux support sites (ie: forums.gentoo.org, etc) are pretty decent. A heck of a lot easier to find things than searching on MSDN that's for sure. Of course, if you're going to compare man pages to windows, you'd better factor in XPs wonderful built in help browser ("is the cdrom working now? click yes if it is..."). Sure it's blue and pretty, but I find it's answers as useless as man pages most of the time, and at least with man pages they give me a lot of information that I can sift through, instead of NO information at all.
That all said I disagree wtih some of the things that the original poster had as well, a bit too much of the Linux party line, but not all of the party lines are wrong, if you know what I mean.
Re:Wrong question? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, I tweaked my sendmail config, setup pop3, created them user accounts, made a simple cgi script to enable them to create more at will, installed and setup majordomo, created them a new directory for apache to serve, and didn't spend a dime. All they had to schill out was 10 bucks for the DNS. And the same weekend I setup a streaming radio station so I can listen to my home music at work, using icecast and mserv (ah, mserv... if only they'd iron out the bugs and make it easier to use...)
That is what keeps me off Windows. I'm bloody cheap.
me? it's just dumb luck (Score:2, Interesting)
The few times that I have had to use the Windows OS I get so indignant and pissed off that I embarrass those around me, so I try to avoid it. This utter disdain of Windows that I used to evangelize and now just imbue has kept me from honestly evaluating it and, for the most part, I honestly just feel badly for people that have it forced on them, which seems to be the majority of PC users.
However, this same reliance/insistence on the Mac OS has limited my exposure to Linux and BeOs, but thankfully, OS X has helped me appreciate the wily ways of the terminal...
0
Re:I'm cheap... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm glad someone said this. It seems like there's a big misconception about Linux or OSS in general not being well-documented. I recently wanted to set up a radius server for EAP-TTLS. The amount of documentation on programs like FreeRadius is amazing. I found four different walkthroughs for configuring EAP-TTLS using FreeRadius/OpenSSL.
I don't have a monitor hooked up to the server, which is fantastic. I telnet in via OpenSSH, for which there is also tons of documentation. It's also a DHCP server, which I found incredibly easy to set up, thanks to extensive information online.
I admit to not being terribly proficient with Linux but I've used it to varying degrees since my first copy of Redhat 5.1, and virtually every time I've thought "Hmm, I wonder how I..." I pretty much just have to google (or even yahoo, back in the day) for it a bit and there's all the info I need.
Stability, cost, ease of use, programming ease... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a windows machine. It just stopped booting one day. I couldn't get it going again without re-installing the OS. It's done this before. So I stopped using the windows machine, even after taking the time to re-install the system. I still have a mess of drivers I need to install to get the thing working right again, but why bother ?
2) Windows XP broke a chunk of win32 app compatability. I don't feel like buying new versions of those apps, or paying for XP, for that matter. Microsofts' inclination towards per-machine licenses and subscription-based licenses are spooky, too. I'd like to keep my costs down once making a hardware/software purchase.
3) Windows has improved in ease-of-use, but it's still a patchwork of utilities in many ( most ) ways, and there is a bare minimum of inter-application conformity and support.
4) Unlike many people, I want a computer system I can program without spending a lot of cash for a set of libraries and compiler.
5) It's not my first consideration, but the business practices of Microsoft make my stomach churn. I'd like to see at least a _few_ viable software companies out there, rather than one monopoly.
That said, (1) stability is my main reason. If my PC had never hosed itself to the point of requiring a system restore, I'd still be using it at least occasionally.
As it is, I've gone on to OS X with the purchase of a flat-panel iMac, and I haven't looked back... programming Objective-C with a powerful, freely provided IDE beats the hell out of Visual Studio
Tools should do one job and do them well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same for programming environments. My editor (emacs or vi) edits; may syntax checker (lint) checks syntax; and my complier (gcc) compiles. This ends up being a far more flexible environment than any of those GUIs that do one thing well (set a breakpoint) but suck at everything else (editing, etc).
Freedom (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I live without Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely nobody would question it's immoral.
One thing we've learned over the past 4 years is that we have many different ideas of what is "moral" in America. On copyright, on plagarism, on profit, etc, etc.
I am not sure that folks enjoy you imposing your morals upon them.
Profit vs. Production (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, many of the best book publishers from the first half of the last century made money to execute business. Victor Gollancz published the Lord Peter Wimsey books to make the money with which he underwrote his Left Book Club. In this country, Random House and Scribners were publishers that used the profits from their bestsellers to underwrite books that they wanted to published - some of which have become the classics of our literature. Nowadays, of course, those once-superb houses have all been gobbled up by corporations, and it's all astrology, diets, and self-help.
Obviously, it's easier for a privately held company to re-invest its profits in doing work that the owners feel should be done; but it's not impossible for a corporation to have a conscience - or a sliver of a conscience, in any case. The much-maligned automakers, I think, do have a commitment to building high-quality vehicles, however, bad they are at it; if they didn't, they would get out of the business altogether. And there are others as well. Perhaps fewer now than there once were; but they're there.
As for Microsoft, I find it hard to believe that its management gives a rat's ass about software; if they did, they wouldn't ship the crap that they do. But I'm not a billionaire, so what the hell do I know?
Re:Legal Software (Score:3, Interesting)
When you dig a bit into Windows systems, you find that they almost always have lots of commercial software that hasn't been paid for. The users aren't ashamed of this; they think there's nothing wrong with it. They know very well that the vendors don't like it, and most are aware that it's illegal. But they grin and shrug when you try to get them to justify their "theft".
On the other side of the Great Divide, you find the unix/linux crowd really concerned with "IP" issues and unwilling to pirate their software. Many of them even do things like pay RedHat or Debian for a set of CDs when they could probably download them faster and legally for free, because they think these small companies should be supported.
Not that either attitude is guaranteed in either camp. But it's interesting that software "piracy" is common and accepted among Windows users but not among unix/linux users.
Maybe this is why so much unix/linux software is given out free. All software developers want their stuff used. If you can't get a group to pirate your stuff, maybe you're reduced to giving it away for free?
You don't know how to use Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
net and echo and telnet have been around for longer.
So your complaint comes down to: Windows lacking a command line packet capturing tool. As a Linux user I personally prefer to be able to drill down into the contents of the packets, and see lots on screen, which I can do better with a GUI packet capturing tool like Ethereal or the one Windows comes with (if you want one, make like Linux and install ethereal).
Re:Profit vs. Production (Score:3, Interesting)
Wal-Mart is ALL about market share. They cut their own profit to boost sale with lower prices...
Of course, it's still not a 100% moral company (far from that actually) but it's a better philosophy of Buiness than what Microsoft is doing...
Re:Question about article summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Viruses will even propagate through the current Atari ST community, as small as it is these days. The nature of malware is that it propagates itself. What you are pushing is a Microsoft apologists fantasy.
The security problems that "plague" Linux and Apple are considerably less critical and tend to require human engineering to be a part of the "exploit".
As a Linux user, I have to be wary of problems that a PERSON might use to gain entry to my box. A fresh install of Mandrake, Red Hat or Debian doesn't have to worry about being immediately rooted by the latest bit of malware floating around the internet.
Also, the "common software" you refer to are all VERY optional and treated by current distributions as such.
what sticks me on unix ... (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, a little introduction to my environment. I primarily use Mac OS X (TiBook G4), and keep a Linux server running on the Internet somewhere. I use Solaris 2.6 at work (though it is now more or less a dumb-terminal for the Linux server).
What is unusual about me is that I actually grew up in the world of Microsoft. My first programming uses MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler) 2.0. I hacked the internals of MS-DOS, hacked the internals of Windows 95 when it came out (for the record, I also hacked Windows 2000 a bit later on). The internals (things like how to override system interrupt tables) were secrets that you don't find in many places. I read books written by other people who reverse engineered, and followed their examples to reverse engineer a lot of stuff. However, doing so violates the EULA. But what did I know? I was only 16. A stupid age.
I didn't find out anything about Unix (other than the fact that MS-DOS filesystem somewhat resembles it) until much later. I started using Cygwin on Windows 2000 and gradually became more dependent on the command line tools. One time, I messed up the system so bad, but I did fix it without reformatting my hard drive. It was more hacks through the registry and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. But then I decided to switch to Linux for something different.
At first, I kept a dual boot, but I just never switched back. So I eventually reclaimed the disk space too.
Linux was a very pleasant surprise to me, because everything I want to know (not necessarily I need to know) is available to me. I think that's a great beauty of free software. It's all about freedom of knowledge. I've spent too much youth doing reverse engineering, and I'm sick and tired of it (*). Also, as a yongster, I spent too much time on Windows downloading warez. We didn't have KaZaa back in those days. On Linux, everything I use is perfectly legitimate. And it's good enough for me.
(*) Incidentally, nowadays you can find more developer documentation about Microsoft products on MSDN website, which I would have very much liked earlier.
Now came Mac OS X. It's a nice hybrid of what Windows and Linux have to offer, at the same time. It has a nice UI, and it has the power of command line tools. You can configure a personal site using Apache through point and click (default in localhost/~user), or you can customize /etc/httpd/httpd.conf using vim or emacs. You can configure or compile a program from the command line, or you can use Project Builder (now Xcode) for a nice integrated development environment.
Nowadays I tend to use a lot of remote services like ssh (with X forwarding) or web applications, particularly because I usually keep my machines online, and then I go from one place to another without bring any computers with me. And it's a nice thing (very convenient) that I can use my computers without bring them around. It's what I call ubiquitous computing. I can do that without signing up to some ad-supported and soon-to-be-bankrupt free online services. I can setup whatever service that suit my purpose, instead of what some company thinks I need. Linux does that. Mac OS X does that. Windows is not quite there.
Even if you can run Apache on Windows, you know it never runs as good as on Unix because Apache is not designed for Windows. Even if you can run sshd with Cygwin on Windows, too many things just can't be done because Windows is not designed for sshd. There is Terminal Service for Windows, but you need a Windows Server edition to run it. But hey, I still want to use my machine as a desktop when I get home!
So if you want a punch line ... I use Mac OS X and Linux just because they work for me. I haven't used Windows for a good 3 years now, except where Windows machine is the only kind available to use, and I don't miss too much from it.
P.S., my friends are surprised when I'm able to remotely use my computer running Mac OS X or Linux from their Windows machine. I thank Microsoft and some third pa
Try these... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Make sure you are running the correct / best driver for your particular video card
2) Make sure your partitions are all something like ReiserFS with optimally tweaked settings (distro's like mandrake do this automatically for you). DO NOT RUN EXT3, it will cause your whole system to run super slow!
Other things you can do....
- go thru your startup services and turn off unnessary services (also remove from boot time)
- buy more ram, the less swap space is accessed, the faster your system
- use only 7200 (or higher) speed hard drives
- don't use KDE or Gnome, instead go with fast (but familiar looking for windows user) GUI's like IceWM
There's probably more.
why I don't use MS Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I started using Unix in 1982 and have found it preferable to everything else I've encountered. I have always had Unix available at work, and since I first installed GNU/Linux in 1995, I've had it on my personal machines as well. So basically I've only used MS Windows (and before it, MS/DOS) on personal machines before I knew about Linux, and occasionally when I have used somebody else's machine or had to write something in MS Word or something like that.
Unix gave me a powerful, flexible system. The command-line is much more powerful than a GUI, with history, aliasing, shell scripts, file globbing, completion, shell variables, loops, and i/o redirection. The Unix philosophy of combining lots of little programs each of which does one job well is extremely powerful. The programming environment is superior, as are many of the individual tools, such as emacs and awk. X Windows from the outset was vastly superior to MS Windows, both because it ran over the network and in its configurability and lack of idiotic restrictions. As I recall, until fairly recently in MS Windows child windows were constrained to be positioned within the parent. Awful! All in all, I have always found Unix to be more powerful and flexible and generally easier to use.
The superiority of Unix documentation is also important. The five volume BSD manual set may not have been as easy going as "Windows for Dummies", but it provided the information I needed to do my work. The various books on Unix internals and programming, starting with the Lyons book, provided real insight that was impossible to get for MS Windows. Most of the time I also had the source, first with BSD, then with GNU/Linux, which both provided the ultimate documentation and allowed me to make modifications.
Being used to a stable and practically bug-free system, I was simply appalled when I discovered how unstable and buggy MS Windows was.
An added attraction of GNU/Linux is the associated community and the ideals of the FLOSS movement. Naturally, there is no such attraction to Microsoft. (I should note that merely being commercial and proprietary doesn't necessarily turn me or other people off. I'm sure that Im not alone in having fond memories of DEC, a company which we felt was on the side of technical people and willing to work with us. For example, when the Microvax came out, our DEC rep gave me a copy of the architecture manual. When a senior researcher from Xerox PARC saw it on my desk, he commented that he, a senior Xerox employee, could only get access to the comparable Xerox manuals on a need-to-know basis.)
Microsoft's disgusting monopolistic behaviour has certainly added to my unwillingness to use Microsoft products, but that is a relatively recent development and just adds to my long-standing technical dislike for MS Windows.
What's most amazing about this thread... (Score:3, Interesting)
A few that come to mind for me include:
* The help system is downright insulting. How many times have you been presented with a checkbox of options and pressed the help key only to get instructions on the proper procedure to click a check box? Is that what Microsoft intended to dedicate the F1 key for? "To select one of the options click on the box" - Jesus!
* With few exceptions (i.e. Eudora), most applications take a Borg-like approach towards installation, assimilating themselves so deep into the OS that you can't ever remove them, and you most certainly can't copy an app from one directory to another (a common and painless procedure in Unix) without making the whole thing break, or worse, crashing the OS.
* And of course, every person who installs any new program has the added anxiety of wondering if the new application:
a) Will even install properly without freezing up
b) Won't disable or break other applications
c) Run rampant with unrequested file associations
d) Install some unnecessary "startup agent" that hogs memory and contacts the mothership
* I don't know a single Windows user who hasn't had to run Windows at least twice to get a proper installation, or any Windows user who hasn't at one point or another had to completely wipe their hard drive and start over when some ill-behaved application took the whole OS down with it. I have NEVER had to do this with any flavor of Unix.
* Users even live in fear of Microsoft Update, wondering if the next patch to fix their system will actually break it.
* Two words: memory leaks! They're everywhere, and nobody really seems to ever be able to fix things to the point where any decent continued use of the system doesn't eventually require a reboot to make the system not run like dog shit after awhile.
* Speaking of reboots... why? You don't need to do reboots with Unix except in the most major/dire of circumstances. Under Windows, 95% of most software, plugins or anything require a reboot.
* No symlink. Such a simple, wonderful feature of Unix that would obviously make Microsoft's OS's explode and throw shrapnel at the user.
* No respect for software autonomy. Microsoft's desire is to be everything to everybody. As a result each new iteration of their OSes tends to be more bloated and bundled with tons of crap you don't want, don't need, or can't extricate from the OS to make it run efficiently.
* No respect for develoeprs. Any developer for Microsoft OSes has to safely assume that each new version of their OS might completely put an end to their software's ability to run, versatility, performance and everything else. There's a reason why there's better quality software for the Unix community: no self-respecting developer that really cares about the future of his code wants to subject his work or himself to the uncertain future that lies ahead when developing apps under Windows platforms.
Myself and a friend of mine both came from the DOS world. We both developed commercial software. When Windows came along, I went to Unix; he went to Windows. I have systems I configured 8 years ago that are still going strong and doing their job; I have software programs that were written 9 years ago that are still viable and marketable today and in use online. OTOH, he's had to completely rewrite his code countless times; he's constantly battling with customers over tech support issues that are beyond his control, that don't have to do with his software. Sounds fun.
Re:Question about article summary (Score:3, Interesting)
in the same way that a PERSON found this hole, PEOPLE find holes in linux. now say you have a kid who's extremely good with linux and programming and finds this wide open hole. this kid, rather than thinking "let me post a fix or report this hole" decides to go and make use of the whole to gain root on several (or even just 1) linux box. or worse writes something to bounce through several linux boxes and use these linux boxes to cause damage to a network or another computer and then self-destruct after the big damage has been done. let's say this kid is so good, he can hide it completely. it starts off and does all the damage, maybe not causing as much "big" damage as he hoped, but ending with the self-destruction of several linux boxes, much to their owner/administrator's surprise. how is this different than windows? you have no idea how many holes exist in linux. you won't know unless (1) you look at the code yourself or (2) someone else finds them. while i admit that there is a much better chance of someone finding the hole and patching it in linux than there is with windows, the fact remains that there are still hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands or millions of these unpatched linux boxes out there. this can cause jsut as much damage as any hole that exists in windows.
i want to know how you figure that linux and apple (or any other non-MS OS) requires human engineering to exploit a vulnerability, but the windows vulnerabilities do not require this. even if it can't gain root access to the machine, most linux users have access to the internet, have access to run stuff. so the virus runs itself, it sends itself to any unpatched machines it finds. how is this different than sasser or blaster? they infect unpatched machines as soon as they're found.
and how can you say that a fresh install of mandrake, red hat, or debian does not have to worry about being immediately rooted? say you install from CD. you are plugged into the network but don't have time to download the patches that were released since the time the CD was created (or the distribution was bought, doesn't apply to debian). i would think that if a vulnerability was found since the time the CD was created, you do have to worry. the only thing that saves you is the fact that there are fewer users and people are less likely to write linux viruses. you have just as good a chance at being infected as someone installing windows xp from scratch while being plugged into the internet.
and the common software i mentioned is pretty common software. i know it's all optional, but they've all had major vulerabilities in recent years, especially ssh. telnet is also (at least last time i checked which was a while ago) automatically turned on in many distros, especially red hat, one of the more common ones.
and for the record, i am by no means a windows advocate. but i do work in a windows environment, i am a primarily windows user, and i do not fear getting viruses on my own machines. i do, however, work in a college where students bring their own machines from home. so i deal with the viruses. do i worry about it? no. does it make me feel that people shoudl stop using windows because linux is superior? not in the least. i don't consider linux superior by any means. maybe as a server, but on the desktop for non-savvy users, never in a million year
Re:Wrong question? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've spent many a man-hours trying to get things working with Linux, and at the time I was enjoying it. Now, I use my Mac, and I'm happy that it doesn't crash, and things work even easier than in Windows.
I still use Windows for things that I just can't do in either Mac or Linux, but when you think about it, that means "Games". And even then, a fairly limited subset there of.
Re:I live without Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
There are however businesses which make a profit to increase and stay in business so they can make more profit.
It's simply another strategy to achieve the ultimate goal of making more profit.
Why I am off Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
Should be: What keeps me on OpenSource (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux/BSD gives me the choice to do what I want with my computer. Nobody can EOL my software and nobody decides how things should work on my computer.
In other words: I'm free to paint the bikeshed whatever color I want.
Though I do tend to like the color on the FreeBSD bikeshed
Re:Wrong question? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, there was a recent article on groklaw where PJ was thanking somebody for writing her a script to automate some HTML sanitizing that she has to do... reading through huge messy HTML files trying to pluck out bad stuff is a huge pain (I was on the web-design club at my jr. high school, and I spent a lot of time cleaning the HTML generated by MS-FrontPage in notepad). Nowadays, writing a perl script to just pull out all the bad stuff is like second nature, it makes me cringe to think of all the time PJ lost because she didn't have that script sooner...
I wouldn't give up linux for the world. It's just too powerful. Every time I use windows, I find it to be frustratingly limited in it's capabilities.
Re:The price is the sticking point (Score:1, Interesting)
You generally get a whole lot of crapware, too. Everyone here thinks Microsoft software phiones home a lot; you should hang a sniffer on the network and see what Dell, HP/Compaq and Gateway (these are the ones I've looked at , I'm sure others do, too) software does!
And it is crazy how poorly some of it is written. Many, many of the crashes I see under Windows are associated with this crapware. I often wonder how much of Windows' bad reputation comes from OEM crapware, rather than Windows' own bad behavior.
I routinely take the Dells that my company orders and do a clean install of the OS. It makes my life so much easier.
Printing and Gaming on Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
I still have to go back to Windows for printing color photos to different types of photo paper [HPDeskJet712C]. We also have to use Windows for most of the purchased PC games and educational software. My wife misses the HP Copier application [scanner->printer] and PrintMaster [greeting cards].
I mainly like Linux and free software because I am frugal and because I don't believe in pirating software. I also like the filesystem choices and the rock solid stability that Linux systems provide. I also like being immune to the myriad of Windows viruses and worms.