What's Keeping You On Windows?

schnell asks: "Here's something I've wondered about for a long time. While it seems that the majority of Slashdot readers are no fans of Microsoft, recent polls show that 47% of Slashdot Users are using Windows as their main OS (and I bet that number is much higher in server logs). So I have a two-fold question: 1) Is it just the 'vocal minority' that favors alternate OSes over Linux and 2) if not, what's keeping you from 'putting your money where your mouth is' - why are you using Windows? My own situation is that I use an IT-mandated Win98 (ugh) laptop at work, but at home I'm Mac OS X all the way. While I did pay Microsoft for Office for Mac, I try to avoid filling their coffers whenever possible, so for all the family/friends who rely on me for computer recommendations I recommend Mac or Linux. Do people like using Windows? Are games the driving factor? Or is it just 'the right tool for the job?'" It's a perennial question, and one that is fitting to review every so often, if only to see how far Open Source has come, and how far it needs to go.

What keeps me on windows?

[Real World Stuff]

Why the Microsoft ads on Slashdot of course!

Brought to you by the Friday Burn!

porn

[tuanjim_2001]

porn is keping me on windows.

Cuz of all the warez

[gambit3]

Cuz most of the warez out there is for Windoze. ;)

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[comradebren]

i just want to help keep the economy afloat, and microsoft employees out of the unemployment line.

Virus protection

[clem.dickey]

Every so often a memo comes out reminding us that we must have the latest Norton Anti-Virus. NAV is not supported on Linux, so I have to power on the Windows box to update my virus protection. Except for that it stays off.

Re:What keeps me on windows

[sniggly]

And windows is stable as opposed to what, California around the San Andreas faultline?

I like the Windows community spirit

[elliotj]

I find the community of sharing amongst Windows users and developers keeps me very happy on the platform.

I'm not very technical so I have a tough time contributing to Open Source projects, but most Windows developers let me make monetary contributions to their projects. Each time I contribute, I get a nice CD and a glossy brochure. Those things make me feel special. I feel like they care about me and that I'm actually making a difference. It's like sponsoring a 3rd world child.

I really like how Windows has a single website where I can collaborate with the techincal team. They have a knowledge base that I can search with problems, and they offer great suggestions about other things I can do with my computer. I started out with just Windows, but now I have Office, games, instant messenger and so much more. All from one company. Beat that Linux fans!

So I guess I'd switch to Linux or the Mac if I thought their communities were open and accepting. But I find they're filled with fanatics who don't like newcomers. ROTFLOL! LOL! RTFM. What the fuck? Who the hell understands that crap?

Yep. Me and Windows. We're like peas and carrots baby. I love this platform!

Is there a 12 step program?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for me.. I don't have a windows problem. Really. It is for a friend..

You see, he loves Linux and uses it all the time.

But there is the gaming. He buys Windows and in doing so, *supports* Microsoft.

He is an F'ing hypocrite.

As long as Linux users buy Windows *or games for Windows*, they support Microsoft.

Re:Cuz of all the warez

[Anonymous Coward]

d00d go here [sourceforge.net] 4 sum 3l33t 0-second warez. they r so kewl they even haked the progz n got teh sorce code!!!@#!

Because of Clippy

[ChopSocky]

I just can't get the useful help and cutsy animations from Linux. Clippy is my best friend. I love Clippy. If you used Clippy once, you'd grow to love him too. I can't live or breathe without Clippy...

Re:work...

[Blimey85]

It would be the same for me except I work from home.

But it sucks when my SO gets home and wants to play network games. She doesn't understand that there is only a certain amount of computer usage that a human body should be subjected to in a 24 hour period. And that amount is considerably less if the poor guy (or gal) has to use an MS product.

Has anyone tried running Serious Sam on Linux? That's the only thing I've been booting into Windows to play lately. Now that I have my laptop for Quicken, Quickbooks, occasional IE use, and graphics... this machine stays in Linux pretty much all the time.

Corporate Standards and SO Pressure

[agrounds]

I have a Slack box on my desk at work for all my primary needs. It has all the tools I require to do my job and automate as much as possible. It is -in short- my life here. Sitting not three feet from it is my laptop running Win2K Server (server strictly for the network monitor). It's sole purpose in my day-to-day grind is to run Outlook 2000, the corporate standard, and grind out the Visio drawings for my PHB. We have no POP access to our exchange boxes, and no web outlook means no evolution+ximian connector. Thus the 2K stays on my laptop for email and Visio, and the real work gets done on slack.

Now home is a different story. The primary machine runs Win2K Pro, for games, but more importantly to serve as a buffer from my wife's wrath. You see, I loaded Gentoo on it once after a drive crashed. My wife came home, saw KDE, and my consoles piled up on it, and blew her top. I cherished the sexual side of our marraige enough to put Windows back on it, and relegated my Gentoo install back to the crufty machine. I may be a geek-at-heart, and I love linux as much as the next guy, but uptime/tweakability/power/toolset/zealotness is just no substitute for sex.

So.. in short, the reason I have windows on two out of four machines I use daily:
Work - Corporate Standard + PHB
Home - Sex

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[daeley]

While she doesn't do anything for me, there's a certain Mac chick [apple.com] that all the kids are blabbering about. ;)

Morons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you see that was MS trying to pry into our minds so that they can dominate the market even more-so!

You're supposed to answer "'cause I love the BSoD"

Re:porn

[Mandi Walls]

Time for a Porn-on-Linux HOWTO. (or Porn-on-OpenSource, maybe...or Adult-Multimedia...)

You send me your notes, I'll compile the docs.

Think the ldp would post it? I have hosting space, though, if necessary.

--mandi

ps. I do not want you to send me porn. or spam. notes on how to set up software you use for multimedia viewing on non-luser platforms only.

Those damn persuasive 'Switch' pages

[fyzix]

I used to use a non MS operating system until I saw MS' switch pages with that productive woman and that young boy. Sold me right away because I knew those were real stories!

I can't legally run Linux...

[Anonvmous Coward]

I inadvertently made an agreement with MS about that when I clicked 'OK' one too many times during the SP4 beta install.

Re:What keeps me on windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamer, Christian, geek, writer--what am I, a contradiction?

An asshole.

Re:because my family friend would kill me

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he should be more like my Dad and kick anyone's ass who doesn't agree with him. Man, what a great childhood that was. I can't wait to beat my kids.

E.U.L.A.

[jmoriarty]

I keep using Windows because of the EULA. Specifically:

5.23a - In the event that Leasee begins using another OS, Microsoft reserves the right to come into Leasee's home and immediately harvest all of Leasee's organs with a rusty spoon.

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[glassware]

The part I like most about X is the sophomoric smirk:

Me: Where can I get client software to connect to your server?
Sysop: No, you need X Server software.
Me: I don't need server software. I just want to connect to your server.
Sysop: Yes, but your client provides a display surface to the server, which is a client to your server.
Me: Huh?
Sysop: You see, it makes perfect sense; your client machine is serving graphics to the server! So your computer is a server, and the server is a client! It's all backwards!
Me: Yes.

Re:I'm a Lightwave dude...

[uberstool]

You might want to try being a particle

Re:Let's all say it together:

[Zordak]

I keep hearing this, and I have no idea what people are talking about. The font on my terminal is as beautiful as it has always been. Are all of you using those outdated green-on-black monochrome terminals instead of these slick new 256-color white-on-black ones? I can even change it to amber-on-black, which is a little easier on the eyes, in my opinion, and reminds me of that awesome Hurcules graphics card I used to run!

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[Tomun]

Java was meant to attrack "average" programmers

"Attrack" thats an interesting new word. Like a combination of attract and attack.
Is this like those blue lights that kill flies ?

The fact I'm a hypocrite

[Plug]

I'd love to run Linux on the desktop but every time I try I find an excuse or a reason why not to. These aren't very big excuses, but each and every one drives me back to Windows. And I feel really bad advocating Linux-on-the-desktop (and I'd feel even worse trying to sell it to people) if I can't even run it myself.

I'd like nothing more than to run Linux, if not for my conscience than to shut up the more rabid of my friends. You can build a list a mile long of applications that would have to work seamlessly under Linux before people would change (and yes Photoshop is at the top of that list) - but all that is doing is saying "I'm really not ready to make that committment yet, and here is what I am going to blame today."

Gnome 2 is a big step as well. But now it's another excuse to blame another application. "Evolution isn't GTK2 yet." "Mozilla isn't GTK2 yet." (You try making a new Galeon2 build work. And then you can blame sub-pixel anti-aliasing for not working in all your programs, if you like that kind of thing.

Red Hat 8.0 has blown me away with a desktop that finally looks nice and doesn't require the Microsoft fonts to do so. Even though I prefer Debian, I might install RH8 and try again. But still, I'll install it dual-boot for starters, and then I'll find myself needing to boot back into Windows for something, and not going back into Linux...

The reason I am not changing is that I am used to everything being nice in Windows, and I am not prepared to accept even small drops in 'niceness' for the incredibly large gain in karma that you get for being completely open-source.

Remember, running Windows isn't an evil thing. I'm writing this from Mozilla. I run (some) open source Windows apps. But when it's as easy to get warez as it is in the world today...

If we were in a totalitarian copy-protective state etc, you'd see GNU/Mozilla/Desktop/XConsortium/whoever Linux (as a whole) improve 100 times quicker than it is now.

Re:I Tryed to Switch

[Zordak]

As far as a text editor, Vim works nicely in both Windows and Linux. There may be a tiny learning curve.

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[errxn]

I have to say that yeah, Macs are cool and all of that, blah blah blah, but just what the hell is this "Switch" campaign trying to accomplish? To me, their ads do nothing but portray people who switched to Macs as complete idiots. For example, the stereotypical "Switch" ad:

"I was just trying to play some music and all of a sudden, it was like, 'bzzt' and there were like, all these screens coming up and stuff telling me I needed to, y'know, download these thingies and stuff. I mean, I don't want thingies, I just want MY VIDEO!

So I got a Mac, and it was just, y'know, like, 'whoop, bang!' I just got this little cable, and 'fzzzt!' VIDEO!"

[insert promotional pitch here, then back to idiot]

"My name is John Doe, and I'm a fucking moron who can't even utter a complete sentence."

Linux as a Time Sink

[dzigavertov]

Some of you may be like me, having a mixed network at your decorating-neglected urban manor. I can sit in the same chair, use the same monitor, and carpel-tunnelate myself on the same keyboard and mouse to use either XP or Mandrake (please feel free to flame me on this, I chose that distro was because I liked the star in their logo). Mostly, I work on the XP. The key word here being work, because I simply cannot accomplish anything on the linux box.

(Now, before you start cracking your knuckles in anticipation of crafting a response, please, read on.)

This is not to say that Angelica (the Linux box) is unstable or packed to the brim with nearly every possible application for my needs or even lacking an easy to use interface. The truth is that there is just too much tinkering possible with Linux.

How many times have you intended to play a single game of solitaire before returning to your coding only to discover that five hours later you have somehow decided that the best use of your time was to configure an apache server so that your (meaning only you, for there are no other home occupants that might find it useful) network would have an intranet?

Does it really help your productivity when a voice in the back of your mind is urging you to figure out how to change the block colors in L Breakout 2?

Granted, Angelica doesn't have all the software I need, she loads programs slower than an Apple II E preparing the cut scenes for Space Quest 2 (cursed Mandrake), and my windows machine appear on each other's network neighborhoods easier than two GameBoys linked for Mario Tennis - but ultimately it is the tinker factor that forces me to work in XP.

I'd love to write more, but I have to go fiddle with my samba config.

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[accessdeniednsp]

Three words for you:

RedHat Linux 8.0

(ok the last one was a floating point integer, but you get the idea)

It addresses every issue you pointed above. I challenge you to install RedHat 8. I'm certain that each of your points above have been addressed and a solution is available.

Happy Hacking!

Re:X has kept me away from Linux

[tuffy]

I hope you were joking. Not only are you wrong, it's also way simpler than that.

For Unix-heads, X11's client-server terminology is simple to understand (e.g. lots of different screens aren't connecting to a single xterm, but lots of xterms might connect to my screen - so my screen is naturally a sort of server). However, in Windows land, ordinary users are conditioned to think that their machine and everything on it is always the client and never the server; servers are magic things run in ivory towers that require expen$ive licenses to operate. Therefore, the notion that a screen might be providing services is a novel concept that takes awhile for them to wrap their brains around. Heck, even the trivial serving done by P2P programs is somewhat novel to the average Joe Windows user, so it's not surprising that X11's technology terminology might seem foreign to those unused to it.

Re:What keeps me on windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't take such a shitty tone, but you're attacking my intelligence and creditability here and I don't take that so very lightly.

but you don't have any intelligence or credibility to attack, what are you so upset about?