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Quote:
Myth #1: Linux is the operating system that "just works"

This myth is simply untrue, Windows is the operating system that just works.

I'm not disagreeing "just for the sake of disagreeing" but Windows is NOT an OS that just works. If I want to be real extreme I can go on to say that MacOSX is not an OS that just works.

To all these OSes I would have to say *how* good does it work? Linux has a high learning curve yet for many people "it just works." If Windows is what you call an OS that just works then why have a tech support staff? Go into any online forum and read the trouble shooting sections. Go to any MacOS forum and read the troubles people have with the supposedly "it just works" OS.

Different OSes work with variable levels of success. Different people have variable levels of skill, patience, and know-how.

This is the first time I've ever heard someone say that Linux "just works". In fact, I've heard much more stories about depedency-death spirals and driver hell. Did he mean to say OS X?

What did anything written under Myth #6 actually have to do with Myth #6?

8. Windows (2K/XP) is unstable

Yeah, I added this one, because this IS a myth and I'm tired of hearing it. Give me some decent hardware and a good set of drivers, and I can make Windows more stable than ANY modern Linux distro running KDE/Gnome. (Hint: If the DE crashes and you have to restart X, than counts! I don't give a shit if you can rsync into the box or not - that's irrelavent for a desktop discussion.)

"(Hint: If the DE crashes and you have to restart X, than counts! I don't give a shit if you can rsync into the box or not - that's irrelavent for a desktop discussion.)"

Hear Hear! To the average user, the desktop crashing IS linux crashing, even though WE know better.

"Thinking objectively you must realize Macs have the least hardware support, as well as the least diverse selection of software"

Not to split hairs here, but what hardware are we talking about here? Mac shares the same level of support on harddrives, memory, printers, scanners, digital cameras, digital camcorders, audio cards (especially high end audio like Digidesign, MOTU), even video cards (admittedly with some lag in market availability), network routers/hubs, firewire/usb2 external chassis. I'm open to suggestion on what hardware the author might be referring to?

quote:
If Linux had the market share of Windows, and Windows was the underdog you would be saying how great, and easy to use Windows is, and how it just works

I've had the same thought as well, and I believe this is already happening, with BSD. Linux is "the man" now for some people.

I would have to say, IMHO, OS X is the closest thing to "just works" using Linux, Windows and OS X on a daily basis. My USB HP printer would be a good example for myself.

Linux: gnome-print emerged & configured & print
Windows: use install disk & print
OS X: plug-in & print

The above was just my personal experiences.

Good Article!

Myth #1: Linux is the operating system that "just works"

False

Myth #2: Windows is insecure

True

Myth #3: Windows has better hardware support

True

Myth #4: Linux does a few things and does them well

True (linux does a LOT of things and does a few things well)

Myth #5: Windows is bad for the server

Oh so true

Myth #6: Mac is the best since it is as easy to use as windows, and has the stability of UNIX

Truish

Myth #7: Linux is ready for the desktop

False

I'm glad that somebody is trying to be objective. IMO Windows shouldn't fade away and die. Even though MS killed my lovely Amiga and apparently robbed me of BeOS without me even knowing until i was too late. I believe in diversity, which means that there should be room for Windows, Linux, my favorite FreeBSD and any other OS. Windows isn't that bad, I'm just fed up it thats all. Perhaps its because they killed Amiga and BeOS, I don't know.

Not very difficult when the hardware people give you drivers. If these hardware companies would do the same for other operating systems (instead of making the devs figure it out, sometimes for completely undocumented hardware), everyone would have tons of support for hardware.

the only Mac Myth and he makes it up?

umm....dude, there are enough Mac Myths that you don't have to make up one called "macs are better because *insert reason*"

Hmm... the myth 6 paragraph seems way way off. About the only point he makes is that Macs are expensive. But even then he gets it sort of wrong.

He says that you'd be better off building your own top of the line computer than getting a mac. Well, in THAT case the Mac is probably not that much more expensive. When you start putting all those high end parts in a PC, the PC too gets fairly expensive. The real issue is that there are no *budget macs*. Also, if you buy a lower end mac (like the e-mac or imac) it comes with things like built in screens and is in general not nearly as *upgradable* as a PC.

The most silly claim in myth 6 though, is that "Macs have the least software support." Considering Macs can run the majority of what Linux can run via it's BSD layer and can also run many Mac only programs or programs avaliable only for Mac and Windows, I'd say the Mac has good software support.

> At the risk of sounding predictable I am just going to come out and say it, "Try and run windows on a Mac."

You can. It's called Virtual PC. You can also run many Linux programs right on the OS X desktop under XDarwin.

> I would like to forewarn readers that i have had exceptionally little experience with macs, think 4 or 5 hours total.

Then why are you writing about them?

I *do* agree that many people champion one or the other operating system just to be contrary. That's not productive.

We run Windows XP and SUSE Linux in the office. I have a Mac at home. While I have a clear preference (OS X), each system has its strengths. You can buy inexpensive Windows software damn near anyplace, and to most users, the computer is its suite of applications. Linux is mature and stable. It's king of the server room and is ready for prime time for a lot of desktop users. Mac OS X is consistent, gorgeous, and a pleasure to operate. It supports key commercialware and lacks Windows' security bugaboos.

You can say something nice or nasty about any OS. Ultimately, it all comes down to user expectations.

I don't want to be picky but if you only have 4-5 hours of use on a Mac and you already know alot about how it functions, looks and works, wouldn't that say something about the OS and the user expirience. I would like to see anyone walk into a mall and be able to sit down at a linux machine for a few minutes without ever using one and then feel comfortable enough to review it. My point is, the Mac must have been ok. I have friends and family members who can't figure out Windows XP but can use my Mac with ease. Yes I know you can change the XP interface to look like 2k/98 but how will they figure that out if they can't even figure out the new start menu. I also really resent the comment people make about not being able to tweak Macs. This page http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch.html is a pretty good source of OS X info. It gets semi-in depth but it's still a good read. What could you possible tweak on an x86 machine that you can't on a current Mac? Maybe someone knows the answer.

>> The fact of the matter is Joe
>> average can manage to point and
>> click his way to installing a
>> piece of software.

Yeah right .. what you need is to get a tech support job, and then your eyes will open real wide. Believe it or not, Windows is an acquired taste. People use it for the same reason why they comfortably used DOS back in the day.

Nick,

Great article. You listed both positive and negative points with all three platforms. It's nice to see someone willing to objective by opening their eyes and mind before opening their mouth.

Cheers

This article is flawed in so many ways I don't even know where to start.

First of all when you say Linux doesn't 'just work' what on earth are you referring to? Operating systems can do many different things -- what application does Linux not 'just work' for? I'd say for a web/ftp server Linux 'just works'... if you have enough intelligence to spend a little time reading some documentation (which you would need to read for any operating system).

If the author is referring to the idea that Linux doesn't 'just work' for the desktop, then it's sort of difficult to take him very seriously seeing that he is running Slackware.

Someone get this guy a distro with proper package management and see if his opinion on this matter changes. Try Libranet.

And the statement that Windows 'just works'? I think enough people have already debunked that trash.

Sites with longest running systems by average uptime...

Just a few facts about Netcraft's uptime list;
none of them are running any Linux distribution
none of them are running any version of Windows
most of them are running BSD/OS (Unix)
some of them are running FreeBSD (Unix)

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

Myth #1: Linux is the operating system that "just works"

False. There is no OS like that, except embedded ones , but among desktop OSes MacOSX is very, very close...

Myth #2: Windows is insecure

True. Insecure by default. However if you try really hard you can make it more secure (but still far from being perfect)

Myth #3: Windows has better hardware support

True but this depends only on drivers. There is not that much interest in releasing propertiary drivers for Linux. That's the only difference.

Myth #4: Linux does a few things and does them well

Not really true. Linux does many, many things (is very scalable and flexible). Some of them does better, others worse.

Myth #5: Windows is bad for the server

Correct. Period.

Myth #6: Mac is the best since it is as easy to use as windows, and has the stability of UNIX

True, but maybe not for everybody. This depends on applications you have to use!

Myth #7: Linux is ready for the desktop

True! But still - not for everybody!

---------------
I have about 1 year experience with MacOSX, about 4 with Linux, and many more with Windows.

"if you don't mind buying Mac hardware, and Mac software updates, as well as using mostly Mac applications" Isn't this a universal statement of any platform?

"Platform Y is great 'if you don't mind buying Y hardware, and Y software updates, as well as using mostly Y applications'"

this dude should hook up with Rob Enderle

Nick: I think good of you to debunk a few myths. Largely many people know about these myths, but they are rarely stated. The problem is that once stated, you end up with bozo comments like the Dave guy above (you add a lot of real substance that deserves realistic rebuttal: Mr Dave offers no substance but merely drive-by slander). Any conversion over Windows and Linux is largely subjective and non-objective in my experience. There are a rare people who do see through the smoke and mirrors (on both sides) and acknowledge the reality of what the things are.

Personally, I've done Unix kernel work (and have BSD code to my name), but I still think Windows is a great OS for what it is and what it does for me now. However, Linux is moving ahead and I may need to revise my opinion in the next 2-3 years. Mac's, I have little experience with: but generally the experience has always been good.

Windows XP makes major steps beyond the mess of Windows 95/98 and the "industrialised" Windows 2000; and arguably looks like it is biting the tail of OS X.

I think the next 2-3 years are going to be very interesting: because Microsoft for once has _real_ and substantial competition from Linux, a real threat as opposed to the veneer of OS2; and I think OS X while a fantastic OS still has to cope with a relatively more expensive hardware platform which puts it out of the mass market - whereas Linux desktop could remove Microsoft from the important business space (i.e. the dell/gateway zone).

The really big issues for Linux now are some of the ones you mention, _especially_ reliable hardware vendor support, driver/security/bug update automation, etc. But I think these will improve substantially in next 2 years.

I hate to say it (as a BSD guy), but I think vendors will largely support Linux and Windows, and OS X where necessary. BSD is relegated to the embedded/server space, and mostly going to rely upon its own support base to do hardware work (other than that done for OS X). I don't think BSD will die, but it's market space is probably never going to reach that of Linux, Windows or OS X [ignoring the fact that it's BSD under the covers].

Myth #3: Windows has better hardware support

If you count the number of ported architectures,
Windows has 1/10 of the hardware support of Linux.

If you count the number of graphics cards that
works with 3D HW acceleration out of the box,
Linux (ok, ok X) has 1/10 of the hardware support
of Windows.

"If you count the number of graphics cards that
works with 3D HW acceleration out of the box,
Linux (ok, ok X) has 1/10 of the hardware support
of Windows. "

Please elaborate. There are 3D accelerated drivers available for ati's line of cards, nvidia's line of cards as well as matrox's. Perhaps you have bought into a myth?

But if you look under the covers you find that most of the Linux hardware support is done by people other than vendors, not always with documentation. Quite simply, if you look at any hardware peripheral on the market, it has a Windows driver. You _might_ find vendor drivers, possibly. Otherwise, it's up to someone to hack one up in their spare time, unless a major distribution decides to sponsor it.

Linux does run on more hardware platforms, granted. There seems to be more vendor support for this than there is for peripherals.

Things listed here just seem either crazy or obvious to anyone that seriously looks at things objectively.

#1 - WHO seriously says that?

#2 - This one does not some reitterating so I do agree.

#3 - He's crazy right? So Windows didn't autodetect and come with all his drivers. Big deal, it still has all the drivers. Pretty much any peice of hardware out there that you buy has a Windows driver. Many have Mac drivers, and a lot will get linux drivers. But you're out of your mind if you think that Windows having better hardware support is a myth.

#4 - I agree, but this does seem kind of obvious as well.

#5 - Agreed, but once again kind of obvious.

#6 - Nothing is really a "best". What's best depends on what you need to do and your own personal preference. I may vote for Macs, but well, I'm a mac user. If I was a hardcare gamer or needed to use an extremely wide range of commercial software I'd be better off with Windows.

#7 - Obvious, just don't ignore the developments that keep popping up. Linux/*nix desktops are looking better and better each day.

Macs may have a smaller choice in software compared to Windows, but of those choices you'll find better software to choose from. Os X applications are the best, most consistant, and user friendly applications in the world. Bar None.

Spend a week with one, and you'll find plent of third party applications to tweak your interface with usability features and plug ins. Its really great.

For me, the only problem I run into regarding hardware support in Linux is I get different results from every distro I try.

Red Hat / Fedora - detects all hardware but my video card can only go up to 1024 x 768

Mandrake - can't find my network card no matter what i try, but allows my video card to go to 1280 x 1024

SUSE - no network or sound, 1024 x 768 max resolution.

MEPIS - detected everything, current distro I'm using

I kind of hate having to decide which distro I get to use based on hardware support alone instead of what else the distros provide. What's even worse is hardware that worked perfectly in previous versions of a distro stopped working in later versions (Mandrake 8 had everything but sound, Mandrake 9 had sound but video sucked, Mandrake 10 had no ethernet) If they could all use a standard for hardware detection it would be great.

JS

I overall liked your article. But don't you think that the stuff you're saying about myth#3 contradicts with the one about myth#1?

some arguments made were kinda silly, like the stuff about the macs but you say so yourself that you don't have much experience with them so i'll forgive ye

i do agree with you though, that macs aren't for people that like to tinker, they're for people who don't want to tinker. that's the whole point about a mac. it's something that alot of people that slag macs off just don't get.

the thing about windows security: you have to make windows secure, with something like debian, you'd have to work at it to make it insecure.

@Darius
give me some decent hardware and a good set of drivers, and I can make Windows more stable than ANY modern Linux distro running KDE/Gnome.

i don't doubt that windows xp/2000 is stable and i don't doubt that you/anyone could make it more stable. but why do you have to say "more stable than linux"? that's just inviting a flamewar. i'm running debian testing (yes that's right testing, not stable), it's got the latest kernel, KDE etc so it's as modern as a distro could get and it has never ever crashed. i tell a lie actually, the only times it has crashed was due to hardware faulting.

[" I'm glad that somebody is trying to be objective. IMO Windows shouldn't fade away and die. Even though MS killed my lovely Amiga and apparently robbed me of BeOS without me even knowing until i was too late. I believe in diversity, which means that there should be room for Windows, Linux, my favorite FreeBSD and any other OS. Windows isn't that bad, I'm just fed up it thats all. Perhaps its because they killed Amiga and BeOS, I don't know. "]

i dont believe that windows killed beos, it was be inc that killed it, they should have started it open source, then linux would be where it should be - on the server. they had good concepts, they had in mind of making a desktop os, they just thought this would be enough for users to go out and buy it, and thought that a market share of more than 90% of windows would not stand between them and the users - well a wrong assumption. after they burned their startup money no wonder they went bancrupt, they could have used the money better and would still be a living company.

windows had nothing to do with it, apart of just being the dominant os at the time. hands down.

I think a more fair comparsion would be h/w support out of the box. The clear winner is definitely linux.

My:
-Pine Z100 webcam
-Epson CX3200 scanner/printer
-nvidia fx5600(depends on distro)
-Labtec headset mic

Work out of the box in linux but in windows XP I need to download drivers.

the author is trying to debunk myths based on people's personal computer experience with his personal computer experience? you do not debunk myths with anecdoctal evidence. you do it with controlled, repeatable experiments. some might require actual hardware testing, some might require a large cross-section of computer users either trying to do the same things on different OSs or even simply answering a survey.

his "myth-busting" comes down to "well, that's not true because i once saw a computer do X and Y and the one time i went on a mac, and did this and that"

this article is about as informative and useful as the myths themselves.

"Check out Netcraft's uptimes, the highest belong to FreeBSD and Linux."

I can hear the VMS-Admins laughing...

writing this from a g4 1ghz powerbook..

'windows is the os that just works'... simply not true... i use linux, windows and mac, windows the most, macs second... i can tell you that windows is FAR easier at many things than linux, but windows isn't a Just Works OS... corrupt registry, inability to uninstall a broken program, wonky bugs, crashing applications(fewer with xp, but not gone), and generally just quirky features. Windows is usable, and manageable, but not a Just Works OS by any means... I truly believe Mac is close(not perfect, though) to Just Works... it has room for improvement, but jumping between network, installing and uninstalling software, preferences, system settings... it is a cleaner and easier OS without sacrificing power.

"Myth #6: Mac is the best since it is as easy to use as windows, and has the stability of UNIX"

Calculate all the hours an IT department spent on fixing the latest windows worm( how many times a year, 2, 3, maybe 4?) spread that out over how often a year such occurences happen, maybe 1-5 times(give or take). now, times by 3-4 years, the average life of a mac... the cost of the IT departments extra work on fixing, reimaging, locking down, and cleaning systems from worms alone would have probably made switching to Macs profitable within the first 18 months. Macs are easy, clean, adminable, lock-down-able, and safe enviroments... if easy, security, uptime, and freedom from viruses is not worth an extra 50 to couple hundred dollars over the course of 5 years, then stick with windows.

Just because Win 2K/XP works for you doesn't mean it is stable. From what I had heard, I expected XP and 2K to be stable. They're definitely unstable (an OS that freezes more than once a day is certainly not, and the fact that you MS-zealots know how to tune it and make it stable does not help me).

They are so used with that myth they don't bother to speak...

"The fact of the matter is Joe average can manage to point and click his way to installing a piece of software. Linux suffers from too much diversity, and too much flexibility. I just know someone is going to bring up "apt-get," stop! Don't bring this up! For Linux to be ready for the average home desktop you have to get it to the point where a user will never have to see a terminal no matter what they want to do on their computer."

Linux actually is to this point, depending on the distro. I use SuSE, and have since 8.2. I have no reason to go to a terminal except for if I want to. Everything is point and click. To install software I have to double click, no terminal needed. To adjust any settings, I point and click, no terminal, etc.. Outside of that statement I will say really good article. It was refreshing to see an article neither for nor against, but accurately pointing out discrepancies.

Many "Myth #" are just irrelevant. Windows doesn't "just work" for me, because my main OS is a GNU/Linux and I know far more things about Unix than Windows, and particularly latest versions. Currently GNU/Linux just works for me, and if ever I have a problem, I'm not long to find the solution. Of course, if I had mainly used Windows recently, I would say exactly the contrary. But as a long-time GNU/Linux user, I'm usually lost when I have to look into Windows configuration panel, and installers I have used are far more painful than my apt-get.

The fact that it works or not heavily depends on your usage, and the OS you do know. 10 years ago, DOS was just working for me, better than the latest Windows. It's not that Windows is worse, I'm sure Windows is fine for people who use it everyday, it's just that I'm not used to it anymore.

...an OS that freezes more than once a day...


Now, there's a myth.

If you were speaking of Win 98 / ME I'd believe you, but 2000/XP? Please. I do all my Java development at work on a Win2000 machine, been so for the last 2 years; never once froze, bluescreened, etc. I compile, install, uninstall, have people going through my machine to connect to a VPN; nothing bad has ever happened. Can say the same for every developer around me too.

it is always a pleasure to read an articel written by someone who uses linux AND is objective... from time to time i start to think that my beloved linux is only populated by fanatics.

Mac:

Lets face it, I started with Macintosh. They suck on the hardware level, I always had trouble with some components and cost a lot. And backward compatibility? When apple releases a new OS "update"(8.0=>8.1 for example), you must buy all new versions of your soft,such as photoshop, cause they dont know what backward compatibility is. The Macos X file structure is as complex as a linux/unix file system(no more simple /system/preferences or /system/extensions). Have you ever tried to code for MacOS X GUI? Its in Objective C! hum.. thats so nice when your engine is in C++. You must learn a whole new programming language which does the same things than C++. And dont talk to me about the dockbar, the KDE desktop panel and windows are so much more functional.

Windows:

Lets face it. It cost a lot. Explorer is buggy and slow(konqueror is far better). Security? its not about security, its about common sense! A webpage should never never be able to install a Gator software on your system. Oh yeah... they keep backward compatibility but the registry-regedit stuff is the crappiest thing you will ever find in an OS. Its the perfect place to store virus, spyware and worm.

Linux:

Lets face it. Linux/KDE is the most functional desktop around. I have nothing more to say. Oh wait... its free and OpenSource.

>>...To the average user, the desktop crashing IS linux crashing, even though WE know better.

How's that supposed to keep me from rebooting the next time Gnome or KDE lock up my machine? Fat lot of good it does me to know that the kernel didn't do it.

i don't doubt that windows xp/2000 is stable and i don't doubt that you/anyone could make it more stable. but why do you have to say "more stable than linux"?

Completely agree with this. Windows experts may have something very stable, and newbies probably have something quite stable (probably with a little help, I didn't find it stable personnaly, probably configuration/driver problem). Same thing with GNU/Linux, no problem for experienced users, neither for newbies if people help them a bit.

The problem is that both those systems have zealots saying their OS is perfect and the other one just sucks, and they feel the need to say it everywhere thay can.

>>...To the average user, the desktop crashing IS linux crashing, even though WE know better.

How's that supposed to keep me from rebooting the next time Gnome or KDE lock up my machine? Fat lot of good it does me to know that the kernel didn't do it.

I'd be happy if linux had Windows marketshare, then MS would be gone and I could happily spend my time with my underdog of choice.

Seriously, I've never chosen an OS because it's an underdog, I choose things because I like them. It's that simple. I don't like MS nor Windows, I somewhat like linux, I love BeOS.

But as Bruce Dickinson once sang: Only the good die young, All the evil seem to live forever.

I’ve been using Mandrake since 7.2. URPMI has EXCELLENT dependency resolution, to the point that one could simply click "install packages", click a check box... and hit install. Windows is great, if you want to reformat/reinstall every six months and have a spyware war once a week. Mac is great, if you want 10% of the programs available for UNIX based systems. I’m not arguing your end point, but I am however arguing the fact that SOME Linux distros are ready for the desktop user. Do you think its far for the average everyday Windows user to have to pay some techie $60/hr to come run NAV and Spybot once a week? I don’t.

I have had this with both XP and 2K, but I'm not saying it crashes once a day on everyone's desktop ! Of course my experiments were short: if I were using XP/2K everyday, I'm sure I would have found the problem, and it would be very stable. And I do know that it's the case for most people. But it was my experience with out of the box XP (and previously 2K). I just mean the fact it happens for me or newbies doesn't mean you/your admin/experts can't find the problem and make it stable. The fact it's stable for you is not relevant in what I said. "XP/2K is unstable" is neither true nor false : it may be true, and if it happens on your desktop I would expect it's really possible to make it stable.

Win2K and XP stable.

Would you mind sharing this joke with community?

Well I can tell so far that updates (ALL OF THEM) and few registry tweaks (ALL TESTED and mostly taken from various WinTweak sites) do make system a bit more stable.

But that's not even close to what STABLE means. Either you're just used to Windows UNSTABLE and you think that this BETTER state is STABLE (which is far from it), or you could perhaps share your knowledge.

Here is a dare for you: Make a HOWTO and if you're successful then people might change their mind about Windows being unstable.

Hehe, well I find it hard to believe that MS can live forever. Forever is a very long time. And it is a matter of time.

"I can't afford a Mac!"

Its called an eMac...799.00 i have one and its a fantastic machine. by no means low end and unable to get the job done. go set up a dell with all the same specs (17" monitor too) and you wont be able to beat it....

people need to stop this macs are expensive stuff, yes the high end dream machines are, but for most peoples needs emacs are great. i do web design, video editing, photo editing, gaming...etc on my g4 1ghz emac and its very responsive.

"Remember what the word EDITORIAL means--it's an opinion published by the editors or publishers of a given publication."

You mean like the editorials John C. Dvorak has on just every other magazine on the world.

"When apple releases a new OS "update"(8.0=>8.1 for example), you must buy all new versions of your soft,such as photoshop, cause they dont know what backward compatibility is."

*** Kinda reaching a little eh, I mean OS 8.0 was out, what, seven years ago. You wouldn't want me to bring up Linux issues of seven years ago, would you?

Have you ever tried to code for MacOS X GUI?
*** Yes, I'm a professional developer

Its in Objective C! hum.. thats so nice when your engine is in C++.
*** What engine are you talking about? XCode is free and build C, C++, and Obj-C.

You must learn a whole new programming language which does the same things than C++.
*** If you think that C++ and Obj-C are the same, then you are just ignorant. And besides, Obj-C is just standard C with class support added and different memory management. It hardly qualifies as "a whole new language"

And dont talk to me about the dockbar.
*** It's called the Dock, if you gonna make a generic blanket statement, at least get the NAME right.

"I can hear the VMS-Admins laughing..."

People still using VMS for other than the sake of nostalgia?

Completely agree with this. Windows experts may have something very stable, and newbies probably have something quite stable (probably with a little help, I didn't find it stable personnaly, probably configuration/driver problem). Same thing with GNU/Linux, no problem for experienced users, neither for newbies if people help them a bit.

Actualy, you're wrong. Most of the Linux users have much cleaner machines than experts. With all of my friends I see the problem from Myth #1. They installed something when and after I prepared yum repository with a really simple click.

Myth:
Typical user does not know how to search for software XYZ. Typical user does not know how to compile.
Typical user isn't gonna have linux software thrown in the face (popups when browsing)
Typical user won't have access to pirated software on Linux

Fact:
I'm already decided that with FC2 I will try to make a point, click and install system on web page (just to get rid of friends calling me how to install XYZ).

The problem is that both those systems have zealots saying their OS is perfect and the other one just sucks, and they feel the need to say it everywhere thay can.

Zealots or no Zealots. As long as system does what it needs with satisfactory rate, that system just works. So in my case Windows DOESN'T WORK AT ALL (Satisfactory rate 0%).

Scary stuff, he had just been singing that in my earphones when I read your post...

What do you do when you think an opinion you have may be in jeopardy of being wrong?

Opinions can't be right or wrong. An opinion can be well-supported viewpoint or poorly-supported, but not "right" or "wrong".

"People still using VMS for other than the sake of nostalgia?"

If one Downtime a year is one too often for you you end up with VMS/OpenVMS.
I know some companies who still have their complete prodution run by a VAX with VMS.
And even this ******* Fiorina ***** can't kill OpenVMS.
It's sad seeing one of the best OS' ever developed migrating to one of the crappiest platforms today

I know, I know, I am just asking to be flamed, all the same I am going to speak my peace and be done with it. I find it amusing when i come across Linux support forum posts, where a newbie desktop user says something to the effect of: "in Windows I was able to point to this, and click on this, to get this done, how do I do that in Linux?" and they get a snotty response in the format of, "That's insecure and dumb, now open up a terminal su over and issue this command, then use the output to determine what format your distro uses for this, then you will be able to do this, as long as this isn't happening." You see, no one is accusing Windows of being intuitive, or especially easy to use. The fact of the matter is Joe average can manage to point and click his way to installing a piece of software.

Both KDE and GNOME have a GUI su frontend.

I am no security expert but if you tried to sell your web server to the Linux community on the basis that it "works in kernel space instead of user space!" you would be laughed out of the room, and possibly the state

Hmm...Ever heard of Tux? The webserver from Redhat.

Hardly worth laughing at.

I just know someone is going to bring up "apt-get," stop! Don't bring this up! For Linux to be ready for the average home desktop you have to get it to the point where a user will never have to see a terminal no matter what they want to do on their computer.

There is a gui program called synaptic, that allows you to use apt without any terminal. Just select a package and install it.

hello, why does it sound like everyone is running some sort of gentoo, slackware, debian or red hat (it may work on the corporate desktop but not on the home, not by a freaking longshot!) and then say linux is not ready for the desktop...

suse, mandrake, linspire (alltho i wish suse and linspire would create a free to download version, but i guess that will never happen (alltho i think suse ones had one)) and similar all aim for the desktop...

personaly i run mandrake as my distro of choice, and i get flames from the slack/gentoo/rh people for useing a linux with support wheels and flames from the windows crowd based on theyre red hat experience. mandrake have a nice little toolbox called mandrake control center that allow me to config everything from hardware to installing and updateing packages, all with just one request for root password. hell i can remount all my partitions and repartition drives from there to (kinda looks like partition magic that tool). hell i can even set up a nice little folder in my home folder, stuff it full of rpms, add it to rpmdrake and have the tool install from there with dependency resolving all without dropping to the console. but it you want to use the console your free to do so. most of the tools are mirrored as ncurse ones (ie useing ascii art to simulate windows and so on). urpmi (the backend for rpmdrake) is accessible and i do belive its about as powerfull as apt is. mandrake to me is a fully working desktop os complete with film and music playing software and office suites (and some games to keep your younger kids happy, just toss them frozen bubble and tuxracer)...

"People still using VMS other than the sake of nostalgia?"

Yes, yes. Why not?

"i don't doubt that windows xp/2000 is stable and i don't doubt that you/anyone could make it more stable. but why do you have to say "more stable than linux"? that's just inviting a flamewar. i'm running debian testing (yes that's right testing, not stable), it's got the latest kernel, KDE etc so it's as modern as a distro could get and it has never ever crashed. i tell a lie actually, the only times it has crashed was due to hardware faulting."

Right on. I'm using Debian GNU/Linux Sarge (Testing) with GNOME and it works incredibly stable. No crash at all. Uptime: ~19 days, since i started it.

Now, i've used XP for such purposes as well, but a huge problem is MSIE which crashed my Explorer regulary...

Interesting, because I've tried to find stuff on VMS and everything seems to eventually point to OpenVMS. Is this the same thing or simply an Open Source version?

> I don't want to be picky but if you only have 4-5 hours of use on a Mac and you already know alot about how it functions, looks and works, wouldn't that say something about the OS and the user expirience.

Not enough to write an article other than something like, "My first few hours on a Mac." But you're right that Mac's fairly rigid human user interface makes getting comfortable on an Apple pretty straightforward for someone who cares to learn.

My kids picked up the KDE desktop without instruction -- the basics, at least. I asked my 11-year-old what he thought: "It's just like Windows, Dad."

To my mind, the biggest challenge a truly newbie user faces their first time on a Linux box is a menu clogged with weird program names. I'm a fan of showing only what most users need. And since the "brand names" of Linux are different than Windows, descriptive program labels like "Web browser" or "Email" are probably best. More experienced users can add labels and programs as they go.

I can't imagine the confusion of a new user trying to make something of gobbeldygook like Klipper, Kate, Kopete, and so on (to pick on KDE, which is my favorite Linux desktop).

i started out on linux with mandrake and i have to say, it's the only "noob" distro that i'd recommend. it has lots of nice and easy to use GUI tools that can help you configure just about anything you want.

i'm using debian now though because mandrake is just too unstable. it used to crash on me every few weeks, the kernel would fail every few months. while it's pretty damn stable, it isn't very stable as it should be.

is urpmi really that good? could you upgrade from 9.2 to 10 without a hitch? debian can do this (from stable to testing) without breaking a sweat.

OpenVMS is VMS for Alpha-CPUs (and soon IA64).
The original VMS runs on VAX.

This is my take on things.
Windows Xp and Linux and even mac os x,who cares,to me the factor thats crucial is the applications i need.If the be on windows ,linux i use the respective OS,and get what i need to done.So yes i use both windows and linux,both have their good and bad points which i wont list because u are not reading this to take in a subjective opinion,u`r here to challange the "otherside".
Fair enough thats up to u all,i`ve been through all that years ago when it was "Amiga Vs 386/486 " etc.

So untill the new amiga comes out i`ll muddle through with these other terrible OS`s

Hey, we all know "to each their own". One cant write an articale without bashing his or her underdog. Use what you want, dont force others to see it "your way". Every OS is fun, thats why every OS is great.

exactly, that's what i say!

http://slashdot.org/~Milton%20Waddams/journal/

i'm milton waddams btw...

>>Correct. Period.

Windows is great as a server. One of my clients run terminal server for EVERYTHING (from SQL, office, about 15 3rd party apps and print server). Its a 2.4 Ghz with 1/2 gig ram and has no less then 13-15 ppl on it at any one time and it runs great!

and before you guys tell me windows cant do everything and im an idiot for setting it up that way its been running for two years (win2k), never had a fault, every couple of months i need to reboot (for patches or if a 3rd party app gets *stuck*) and its was the only way to update the network within a budget.

Also that myth about linux not working out of the box is crap. Lindows and Xandros are oh so yummy (i was shocked lindows booted with sound hehe). Fedora and Mandrake suck real bad. They install nice and easy but everything past that is a fucking pain.

Debian debunks that myth most of all. when i reinstall i install the sarge base then update to sid then install x11, gnome, gaim, openoffice, tsclient, gdm and xmms in one hit with apt-get. after a few dpkg questions i reboot and i've got a swish windowsy/macy desktop (running sweet sweet gnome) in minimal commands. (Plus upgrading is as easy as apt-get dist-upgrade)

It is nice to an article posted by a realist rather than just a comment. BTW 2k3 server is pretty good.

Really enjoyed the article, Nick, thanks. Too bad it's true, Linux isn't ready to butt heads with Windows, let alone Mac for anything other than standard internet noodling.

Myth #1: Linux is the operating system that "just works"

Well that part is untrue (And this is acutally a new one for me)

"Windows is the operating system that just works."

The only Windows that simply just works is a preinstalled Windows ... especially with XP installing drivers that are not bundled with the system - can be a trying experience and very frustrating since its apparently is very userfriendly to treat the user as a child.

"Windows is easy to get going. You put in one CD, install, boot, double click on Internet explorer, and download whatever programs you feel like. Then double click on the program, and 1, 2, 3 you are up and running. "

Sounds like a few more clicks than is needed installing XandrOS ...

Myth #7: Linux is ready for the desktop

"For Linux to be ready for the average home desktop you have to get it to the point where a user will never have to see a terminal no matter what they want to do on their computer."

Sounds to me that the author is comparing the latest Windows with Slackware 2.0 from the middle of 1990's

Re: "I wish suse and linspire would create a free to download version, but i guess that will never happen. All though I think SuSE ones had one."

SuSE has always provided a free version of SuSE Linux. Since Novell purchased the company they have limited the free version to FTP installation for SuSE Linux Personal. Basically they offer the OS with out all the extra goodies like support, additional software, etc that you find in the retail versions. It's a fairly fast installation with a cable or DSL net connection. Go to the downloads section at the SuSE site to access the free version.

Also, due to Novell complies with the GNU/GPL for SuSE Linux and recently released Yast as Open Source you can also distribute SuSE Linux for free. So if you check online P2P services you should be able to locate SuSE Linux Professional for free in ISO form. This lacks support and requires you to burn the ISO images to CD or DVD but gives you an oppurtunity to try out the OS and software included.

SuSE Linux Pro also includes a 64-bit version on DVD which may interest those with 64-bit processors. Definately something to consider when you compare to Microsoft's Windows XP 64-bit and Apple's OSX 64-bit, both of which have limited CPU support.

Both OSs are modern, with modern memory protection mechanisms and pretty good kernels. If Linux or Windows crashes on the desktop, then it's quite likely that the user made a mistake of some sort (bad application, misconfiguration, or screwy drivers). And uptime doesn't really matter for the average user as long as it's better than Windows 9X. Now, if you're comparing the OSs for their merits as servers, then it certainly is worthwhile to compare uptimes, but every major modern OS is good enough in this respect for desktop use, so give the "my OS is stable, yours crashes all the time" catfight a rest!

1) I teach "Computer Literacy" at the college level. Many of my students are just out of high school. Teaching people of all ages, who have very little "computer" knowledge, anything about computers is hard. Right clicking, when described logically, still baffles people. Computers are hard, Windows has massive mindshare but people may forget how hard it was to get familiar with it and how long it really took. Getting them to "embrace" that process all over again seem like a kind of madness to them.

2) I don't like Windows because a) Microsoft operates its business in a way that gets in my way; b) MS abandoned the CLI and I can't live without it (I hear this might be somewhat alleviated with .NET and Longhorn though); c) it's too expensive for what it is; d) their directory structure is impossible; e) Windows apps tend to hide configuration data and application data in a way that drives me crazy.

3) That Windows lets you do more easy-to-moderate level configuration through non-CLI methods is an advantage. That Windows doesn't let you do more advanced configurations at a data or configuration file level is it's disadvantage. Linux is catching up in the former and already rules in the latter.

4) There aren't too many things I can't do (easily) in Linux that I can in Windows: Quicken; Photoshop; CD label printing (really!). For that reason I have a Windows machine around.. soon I won't.

How's that supposed to keep me from rebooting the next time Gnome or KDE lock up my machine? Fat lot of good it does me to know that the kernel didn't do it.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will restart X. If it does not work (i.e. Keyboard Lock) do Alt-SysRq-R first.

Really, the only time X has ever crashed for me was due to less stable versions of the NVIDIA driver. I've never had a kernel crash, ever. I've had blue screens/spontaneous reboots on Win2K/XP about a dozen time. It's a lot better than Win9X, but not quite up to par with Linux.

There is a gui program called synaptic, that allows you to use apt without any terminal. Just select a package and install it.

You also have rpmdrake and MandrakeUpdate on Mandrake, which are GUI front-ends to urpmi.

Finally, one can't ignore other efforts such as Novell's RedCarpet, Xandros Networks and Linspire's Click'n'Run. There all make installing software on Linux much easier than in Windows.

One thing ppl have to agree, if Linux had the market share that windows now enjoys, or probably even 50% of it, we would have a world where ppl respected standards. And a sword wouldn't be hanging on my head right now for all these years of windows usage... It essentially gets to, "I am at the mercy of MS. I have no choices. No competition. And ironically, being a customer of MS, I am on the receiving end (I thought businesses work by treating customers as kings)".

>>Myth #7: Linux is ready for the desktop
>>"For Linux to be ready for the average home desktop you have to get it to the point where a user will never have to see a terminal no matter what they want to do on their computer."
>>Sounds to me that the author is comparing the latest Windows with Slackware 2.0 from the middle of 1990's

Correct me if im wrong but you've got to be kidding. If windows doesnt have a screen driver it boots in to vga mode and you install the driver in device manager. if fedora (x11) has no driver or the driver is set up incorrectly then you get a lovely white on black screen saying "no screens found".

people will always see text as a step backwards because they've been told forever that gui is more superior (macos back in the 80s and then M$ copying is more proof). just as most people would see setting pc's up uniquely on a lan with dip switches is a step backwards.

Hi,

I just read the article relating to the truth on Linux and Windows.

Well, i quite agree with the author.

For an easy daily use, windows equals MacOSX
Linux is powerfull for the users who really knows how to handle him..

I'l switching to linux for ma station (my lap is a small powerbook 12 inches, for the same size, you would have to pay twice the same price with a PC...), so i'm switching for linux mainly for two things: fed up with viruses under windows and for that: under linux, when i need an app', i just find it on the web and install it. No questions : Am I stealing the work of a windows-developper ??

Linux is free. It's not a matter of performances, or security or anything else. It's a philosophia:i can have a complete system doing a great job without to spend a penny...

And developpers are happy to share their babies with the others linux users.

So yes, Linux requires some involvment from the Joe average, but i think that the effort woth it.. I'll do it...

And fuck the RIAA and all the companies who want to controle my way of thinking, listening, etc in order to catch up my money....

Using Linux is a way to resist.

See ya and enjoy computers !!!

(post written from McOX, using Mozilla web-browser...)

MS Windows has relatively good desktop usability, plus good hardware support etc, there's no denying that. I have nothing against MS Windows in itself. Well, except rather poor security standards, some inflexibility, and high price.

But why is MS Windows considered the de facto easy to use standard for computing? Why is MS Windows (and MS Office) practically a monopoly? Why is MS often a hindrance to true free competition and development? Often because of more or less unethical MS business tactics.

Maybe someone considers this out of topic, but, you know, politics, ethics and economics do and should matter in the world of computing and IT choices too.

Summa summarum:
I don't want to support the MS monopoly, including and especially MS Windows. I could change my mind about MS, but not until I have a good reason to.

Being a relatively competent PC user Linux has met all my PC needs well for a long time already. It is relatively secure, cheap or free, open source and flexible. And, it also suits my sense of ethics better than the MS monopoly world.

Man whoever has a blue screen in windows should seriously check their drivers and or hardware. Only time I've ever had blue screens on windows xp or 2k was due to bad ram or bad drivers.

As far as I know, OpenVMS is the name VMS took when it achieved POSIX compliance.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/faq/vmsfaq_001.html

Suse Linux provided their distro via ftp download long before Novell bought them.

"There aren't too many things I can't do (easily) in Linux that I can in Windows: Quicken; Photoshop"

Both work using CrossOver / WINE.

"CD label printing (really!)"

Nero?

"Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will restart X. If it does not work (i.e. Keyboard Lock) do Alt-SysRq-R first.

Really, the only time X has ever crashed for me was due to less stable versions of the NVIDIA driver."

Interesting. So what you are saying is that when X locks up using the NVidia driver (which i experienced using Gentoo Linux only), Alt+SysRq+R and then Ctrl+Alt+Backspace gets me a console?

::people will always see text as a step backwards because they've been told forever that gui is more superior (macos back in the 80s and then M$ copying is more proof). just as most people would see setting pc's up uniquely on a lan with dip switches is a step backwards.

Really you need both. Most servers I've seen don't have X installed and it is easier to administrate a computer through a CLI then a GUI. With GUIs you have to try and remeber were the field is. I've done techsupport and just tringing to guide a user to set their dialer to 10 digit dialing via the desktop is far more slower doing it via CLI

In CLI you can issue command from anywere so just have to give a simple command they have to type.

This is why I think Windows sucks since its CLI is the suckest CLI ever, I mean come on you have to run Command.com which only gives you Dos. You get no text browser or text ftp services, not even a good text file manager installed with windows.

I don't how see how the business world can take Windows seriously with such poor text support I mean without Windows GUI you can't do anything useful unless you got old Dos programs at hand. You know how hard it is to get Dos onto the internet comparied to Linux without X.

This was a very good article, i enjoyed it very much. I will disagree with the a comment made in myth #7:

"...Personally I don't think Linux ever will be ready for the user next door, nor do I think it ever should. There can be some other open source project to make a desktop OS..."


I believe that it will, and might be very soon. I think linux will have to be ready for the average Joe, or it will be trampled by the behemoth microsoft empire, it has done it to others and it will do it to linux. For those that might no it can never happen....i ask how many of you use to sware by netscape???? Though a small example...but it still shows what microsoft is capable of.

About if it should be avaliable for average Joe next door, I dont know! I think it should be avaliable to all that would like to use it...the more the merrier! More users, more incentive for business to invest into linux, and more businesses could mean more productivity, by more productivity more driver support more software title made for linux instead of being a cheap port, but all of this is completely hypothetical.

Well i thought i might give my two cents and i will end with my favorite quote "in a world without walls, who needs gates and windows"

Interesting. So what you are saying is that when X locks up using the NVidia driver (which i experienced using Gentoo Linux only), Alt+SysRq+R and then Ctrl+Alt+Backspace gets me a console?

It might. If Ctrl-Alt-Backspace still doesn't kill X, then you should try Alt-SysRq-K to kill the current VT (propably VT 7 in the case of X). However, the few cases where I had to do this, I ended up with a miniature console on top of the screen with impossible to read small font. When this happened, it was better to simply reboot (the cool thing is that you can still logon and type "reboot" instead of power cycling the machine, and therefore fsck up your filesystems).

I'm wondering if the same kind of thing would happen if NVIDIA open-sourced their drivers and the eager Linux hackers had a look at the code...I find it annoying that the only thing that force me to reboot is a proprietary, closed-source driver...

You get no text browser or text ftp services, not even a good text file manager installed with windows.

Kindof off topic, but you should take a look at and compare IBM's old DOS shell, and Windows 1.0. The only reasonable differences I can remember is that Windows 1.0 was a tad more colorful.

It seems that Windows evolved into what it did today from what basically ammounted to as a text file manager. For whatever that's worth...

I have been reading articles and comments like this a lot lately. I find it very interesting when words like "objective", "biased", "fair", "unfair", etc. come out in regards to editorials like this one. When someone has something negative or a criticism about Linux or Free Software, whether it be a constructive one or not, people come out of the woodwork to say how "Finally! The voice of reason! Someone who isn't hindered by zealotry!" Then you get the Linux guys who are defensive and use remarks just as stupid as the original posts.

I think it all is ridiciulous. I appreciate the post above that mentions that there is more than just ancedotal evidence that is important here. Politics and ethics and freedom have to be considered. In that realm, I would pick Linux and Free Software all of the time.

What people like some who have posted here and those like Nick Petreley don't understand is that these flamefests and even many of the honest opinions really don't matter. If you aren't going to contribute something that is of worth you do have the freedom *not to use it*! Submit patches, clear and succinct bug reports, suggestions for improvments, wish lists.

Don't repeat something we have heard a million times. I guess I should follow my own advice. I probably won't read any more of these "Linux vs. Windows" "Linux on the Desktop" articles. They say the same thing. None of them are helping anything. If you think Windows or Mac OS X is better, and it isn't against your ethical and political sensibilities, then go ahead! I'll continue to use, and hopefully help, the Free Software I love and that enables me to be most productive I could be.

"For Linux to be ready for the average home desktop you have to get it to the point where a user will never have to see a terminal no matter what they want to do on their computer."
Windows isn't ready either. Point your way to resetting the TCP/IP stack. I believe the command is something like this (it's been a couple days):
netsh option another_option
How does one fix a boot record virus?:
boot on win98 floppy, fdisk /mbr
I'm sure you can click to rewrite the master boot record, but I think you may find your virus still their when you finish.

Windows security isn't all that awful, if you run updates and keeps useless ports closed by shutting off services you aren't using. However, I would argue that Windows should take the approach FreeBSD does of asking you when you install it if you want it on.

A list of OSes that don't just work:
Windows
Linux
BSD
Amiga
System 7,8,9,X and all previous Macs
MorphOS
SkyOS
NeXT
BeOS
Unix (all variants)
Any other non-ROM OS.

Sorry dude, but OS X does rock. It has some lil bugs here and there; I've noticed people complain and be confused. My biggest annoyance is that they have all those stupid lil animations (I know they turn off) that just heat up your lap top and waste battery. Just because the GPU is there doesn't mean you gotta run it at 100%. Gah, I want a powerbook!

/me looks around and notices several desktop linux systems. Remembers work where all those non-computer people are all using linux and windows as desktops. Thinks of all the software written for desktop uses in Linux (like Gnome and KDE). Gee, I think there are a lot of pretty smart people who disagree with ya bud. Just because it takes some work to get it working on a random system doesn't mean preinstall disks aren't easy for Joe Blow. Once again, try getting Joe Blow to load up your laptop with Windows; he doesn't know to go to the manufacturers site for drivers! To be fair, I did spend 3 hours today getting graphics accelerations, tex, acrobat, and speed step working on an asl laptop today. It would probably only take 2 on Windows .

I don't believe those people who claim here that they have to reformat windows once every 6 months or those to claim that they get a crash every day. I think this is just pure lies perpetrated by the linux community. I can't remember when I last reformated windows (have I ever in the last 8 years?). As for crashes, i.e blue screens, I've seen a couple (i.e less than 5 in 8 years, and most of then occured one after the other) but they were down to driver problems.

If linux had 95 percent of the market I think our problems would be far far worse. Linux is totally untested on the mass market with regard to viruses and spyware, god knows what would happen. As for support issues, I think these would go through the roof with Linux. I've tried three times to use Linux and every time I just got bogged down in setting up the OS rather than doing real work, linux is a fiddlers dream come true but a workers nightmare. And don't even mention intalling applications, it was hard work for me when I tried. Intalling apps on Linux requires a lot of knowledge, far too much for the average person.

If you were speaking of Win 98 / ME I'd believe you, but 2000/XP? Please. I do all my Java development at work on a Win2000 machine, been so for the last 2 years; never once froze, bluescreened, etc. I compile, install, uninstall, have people going through my machine to connect to a VPN; nothing bad has ever happened. Can say the same for every developer around me too.

Winodows is not stable, not even 2000 or XP. I have crashed both of them often on several different computers. Right now I have an XP partition on one (of seven) computers in my house and I saw the bluescreen the first day it was installed. I have seen it since many times. In fact I saw it on a laptop on display at Best Buy the other day and those computers only run one program displaying an advertisement on their screens.

Windows will work decently on a preconfigured computer but if you build one yourself it can be a pain in the ass. XP wouldn't even let me use my Nvidia card to install. Linux had no such problems. The Nvidia drivers for Windows borked the whole display. The Nvidia drivers for Linux worked without a hitch. 2000 somehow lost my soundcard driver inbetween reboots, which were often. I got lockups almost everyday with 2000. With Linux I have had a few lockups in X but not many and the only system crashes have been from faulty hardware.

The real problem with Windows is software installation/uninstallation. Windows users seem to think it is the best thing since sliced bread but it's not. If you are a tinkerer, like I am, and tend to try out a lot of different programs, you are in for a big surprise on Windows. Broken installs, broken uninstalls, dll hell; all resulting in instability. Dlls are what cause the most problems in my opinion. If you have the wrong one, and it's not versioned correctly, then programs can crash very easily. This happens often when you install and uninstall a lot of programs.

Windows isn't very good at multitasking without crashing either. I could never watch a video and do ANYTHING else on 2000 without serious hiccups. With Linux on the same maching I'm often compiling programs, watching movies, browsing with Mozilla, and chatting on IRC and Gaim. A friend of mine has a far inferior laptop than mine with 2000 but it actually does work rather well, much better than mine ever did. Of course he hasn't installed anything at all other than Photoshop, Corel Draw, and some plotting program. He doesn't even connect to the internet with it and he never does more than one thing at a time. Sure it can be stable then, but what use is it?

::A list of OSes that don't just work:
Windows
Linux
BSD
Amiga
System 7,8,9,X and all previous Macs
MorphOS
SkyOS
NeXT
BeOS
Unix (all variants)
Any other non-ROM OS.

Cool QNX is not on the list... QNX rockes |-)
Oh wait you said any other non-ROM OS, well QNX still rockes.

"If Linux had the market share of Windows, and Windows was the underdog you would be saying how great, and easy to use Windows is, and how it just works."

I'm sorry, but there is no myth about the anti-trust activities of Microsoft. I am quite certain that the dominance of Linux worldwide would be different than what we've seen of Windows; and I doubt there would be thousands of Linux dictators.

Some consider only the OS. I don't. I consider that which puts out the OS, and the reputation and quality of the individuals or companies behind a product. To ignore that is stupid. To keep such things in mind is only wise, because I always want to know if the product is going to have some kind of longevity, and just what kind of support it will be given in the long-run. I weigh such things against the dire warning about feeding monsters. Money doesn't deserve to go to those which are greedy or somehow horrible in disposition or actions.

Yeah, there are pros and cons to almost everything. But the preference of some for the 'underdog' often equates to a healthy distrust of those who are not, for the aforementioned reasons of blind greed for money and 'suits-selling-units' mentality.

Interestingly enough, I consider myself a Capitalist (i.e., capitalism being the taking advantage of opportunity, not people). If Windows and Linux were measured in political terms, Windows would be the Capitalist, Linux would equate to Communism.

Intalling apps on Linux requires a lot of knowledge, far too much for the average person.

apt-get install mplayer
yum install mplayer
emerge mplayer
urpmi mplayer

Yeah, real hard.

I can't remember when I last reformated windows (have I ever in the last 8 years?).

Surely you mean reinstalled Windows...reformat is something you do to a hard drive to wipe it clean.

As for crashes, i.e blue screens, I've seen a couple (i.e less than 5 in 8 years, and most of then occured one after the other)

8 years ago you were probably using Windows 95...are you claiming that you never had more than 5 BSODs with Win95? I'm wondering who is really "embellishing" the truth here...

If linux had 95 percent of the market I think our problems would be far far worse.

An unsubstantiated allegation if there ever was one...

Linux is totally untested on the mass market with regard to viruses and spyware, god knows what would happen.

Well, considering that you need root privileges to make changes to the system and that you can't have a file be considered an "executable" just because it has an .exe, .bat, .com, .scr or .vbs extension, we can safely say that the problem with malware wouldn't be as bad as it is today in Windows.

And don't even mention intalling applications, it was hard work for me when I tried.

You should try it again, I think you'd find that things have improved a lot.

Intalling apps on Linux requires a lot of knowledge, far too much for the average person.

With software such as rpmdrake, synaptic, Red Carpet, Xandros Networks or Linspire Click 'n' Run, installing software is a breeze. In fact, it is arguably easier (and faster) to add software using these methods than it is in Windows.

um, yet another comment on Just Works. its more an idea then anything, (notice the caps). sort of like a Good Thing, Just Works is the goal of many open-source apps, ive seen the term thrown around both the gnome lists and the lkml. now, what probably happened is zealots read this, and start using it as a description of gnu/linux as a whole... just a guess

and all you people with the apt-get and what not, stfu. it will work for 80% of what you want to do, but then your boned if something isnt in a repository. so what do you do? either make a deb/rpm, or compile from source, neither of which is something most would consider "easy".

last thing is linux on the desktop. personal beef of mine, linux is ready for MY desktop, and most likely ready for most of the desktops of people who post here. it sure as hell isnt ready for "Aunt Tillies" desktop, and that is what most people assume when they write those dumbass articles. its like, if a site has nothing better to do, do a "Is linux ready for the desktop?" article. been that way for as long as ive been using the OS.

Windows would be the Capitalist, Linux would equate to Communism.

So very wrong. You are not forced to do anything with Linux. You don't even need to be a part of it at all if you don't want to be. Communism doesn't afford you that option. You cannot opt-out.

Linux is actually very capitalist. It allows hardware companies to spend less time and money on software to use the hardware and more on the actual hardware itself. It is also very diverse and in great competition. There are many Linux vendors to choose from and their success will depend entirely on how good they are. The best support will probably win out.

Microsoft on the other hand is very anti-competitive (anti-capitalist). For them it's one choice for everyone, which sounds more communist than the situation with Linux.

Sorry about the rant but I'm sick of hearing uninformed views about how Linux is Communist and Windows is Capitalist. After all, Capitalism is about competition and without Linux there would be hardly any for Windows right now.

If someone were to tell me that if they did not do a clean install of Windows 9x every six or a dozen months, bad things would happen, I would believe them. If someone were to claim the same thing about Windows 2000 or XP, I'd say that they are either lying, or very unlucky.

Communism in the sense that everyone owns the means or resources (in the sense that they can use these things, modify them, etc.; in the shared manner Linux is known for).

Microsoft not Capitalist? Heh. It's helped itself more than once.

"Typical user won't have access to pirated software on Linux"

Actually there is pirated software for Linux. I'm not going to name the Usenet group, but it's easy to figure out.

it will work for 80% of what you want to do, but then your boned if something isnt in a repository. so what do you do?

I don't know, I've never needed a program that wasn't in the Mandrake repository or that didn't have its own installer. Really. Whenever I hear of a cool new Linux program, I usually check out if it's available through urpmi. It's always been in there.

The exception has been Crossover Office (which comes with its own installer) and a few games, which used the Loki Installer.

I think 80% is quite a low figure - it should be more like 95%, if not 98%.

it sure as hell isnt ready for "Aunt Tillies" desktop

Well, it depends on what Aunt Tilly wants to do with her computer. If she uses it for e-mail, surfing the web, word processing, spreadsheets, digital photo and keeping recipes, then Linux is quite ready for her desktop.

My girlfriend is a total non-geek, and yet she uses her Linux desktop daily, and she hasn't any problems with it, thank you very much. It always depends on what you need to do.

One of the best articles I have read in a long time.
Honest opinion, and a refreshing change from the standard shit about OS'es

"::A list of OSes that don't "just work":
Windows
Linux
BSD
Amiga
System 7,8,9,X and all previous Macs
MorphOS
SkyOS
NeXT
BeOS
Unix (all variants)
Any other non-ROM OS. "

MacOS 9 and below where ROM based OS' so they shouldn't be on the list if being ROM based is the requirement for being a system that "just works". And by extension OSX should be listed with NeXTSTEP.

Someone please tell me we do not have YET ANOTHER ONE of these articles? Whether an OS 'just works' or not is quite relative. I have personally used Linux for 4 years on the desktop. For someone to STILL say it is not ready for the desktop is totally laughable. Perhaps the "Linux is not ready for the desktop" troll will some day replace the "BSD is dying" troll. Oh wait, it already has.

Anywho, Windows 98, all of those years ago, turned me completely off of Microsoft. I couldn't believe then, and can't believe now, ANYONE in their right mind would pay for it, much less use it. Yes, I know 2000 & XP are assumed to be more stable. I have tried them both. The problem is, for 4 years I have become used to a modular system. I can substitute kernels, browsers, email apps, word processors & anything else I want. You can't do this on Windows, so why would I go back? Maybe you can remove IE & Outlook from Windows now, but you can't substitute various kernel versions in Windows as in Linux, CLEANLY.

Of course there are those who say, the mere fact I know of various kernels and can install them makes me some kind of guru, so of course I would find Linux easy to use. Tell that to my 60 something year old father, who had never used a computer in his life. He happily points and clicks his way through KDE as often as he likes. He wouldn't know a terminal if it hit him in the head. Yet, Linux is easy enough for him to use on his desktop.

Linux is used on desktops all around the world. Pointing and clicking through GNOME or KDE is no different than pointing and clicking through a windows GUI. Articles such as these are pointless flamebait, but I guess they increase site hits well enough.

"I don't believe those people who claim here that they have to reformat windows once every 6 months or those to claim that they get a crash every day. I think this is just pure lies perpetrated by the linux community. I can't remember when I last reformated windows (have I ever in the last 8 years?). As for crashes, i.e blue screens, I've seen a couple (i.e less than 5 in 8 years, and most of then occured one after the other) but they were down to driver problems."
2004-8 = 1996
Most recent version of home Windows: Windows 95
So, how is your 2GB hard drive doing? Since you have never reformatted you are obviously in FAT16...
And you have the gull to call someone a troll! I think maybe you should stick with Windows 95, you obviously consider it to be the perfect OS as you've used it for 8 years!

"MacOS 9 and below where ROM based OS' so they shouldn't be on the list if being ROM based is the requirement for being a system that "just works". And by extension OSX should be listed with NeXTSTEP."
Ahem, maybe the important parts are ROM based but not all the preinstalled extensions and such. My point was that if you can alter the OS you can mess it up, and if you can alter it it's probably because you may *need* to alter it; for example to run it on more than one set of hardware.
But sure, nit pick away. Miss the context for the individual parts.

I can substitute kernels, browsers, email apps, word processors & anything else I want. You can't do this on Windows, so why would I go back?

Of course, you're right. Since all Windows users HAVE to use IE and using other browsers like Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera is not an option, I guess we should ALL switch to Linux TODAY! Same with Outlook Express ... I mean, I have no idea how the hell I got Thunderbird on my system, I guess Casper did that while I was asleep.

Maybe you can remove IE & Outlook from Windows now, but you can't substitute various kernel versions in Windows as in Linux, CLEANLY.

Ya know, it's funny how people point out to Windows users that Linux is just different and it is to be expected that things don't work the same way, and then they bitch and moan when they can't recompile the kernel in Windows. HELLO?? Windows users a micro kernel, you nimrod. Talk about different. There are plenty of ways to optimize Windows ... recompiling the kernel isn't even necessary.

Chris: So, how is your 2GB hard drive doing? Since you have never reformatted you are obviously in FAT16...
And you have the gull to call someone a troll! I think maybe you should stick with Windows 95, you obviously consider it to be the perfect OS as you've used it for 8 years!

There are tools that can convert the filesystem of a partition on a harddrive to another filesystem. There are also tools that can copy a partition on a harddrive to another harddrive. There are also tools to resize partitions. And so on and so forth.

As a result he could very well have copied his old partition to another hard drive and then converted it to FAT32 and then later copied it to another hard drive and then converted that to NTFS.

I'm not saying he did this, but the tools are available and as a result he could have done that or something similar.

It is very difficult to compare windows with linux.
For one linux consists of different flavors (distributions) which are maintained by different groups.
This means that before being able to make CD auto runnable (like in windows) in linux there should be a widely adopted standard (not just a standard made and developed by a single company). Microsoft can set the rules for his familiy of operating systems. Redhad, Suse, Mandrake, can sets its rules for its own distribution, but it cannot assume that what it defines, will be followed by others!
Understanding this will make the all difference between appreciating the possibilities of different OSes. Linux on its own can or could never be in a monopoly situation as microsoft is. A particular distribution could hypothetically be in such situation, but not the linux familly due to the constructions and decision rules.
Also you can't inverse the roles monopoly linux versus underdog windows without taking the assumption that this would result in having more common applications running on linux than on windows.
One must know that all big applications where developped on windows because it was the common os. If roles where different those application would have been written for linux !!!
Take this in mind before comparing apples with pears.

"If Linux had the market share of Windows, and Windows was the underdog you would be saying how great, and easy to use Windows is, and how it just works."

I have said that so many times I wouldnt be surprised if he got that quote from me and it is so true.

" Myth #5: Windows is bad for the server

Throughout this article i have been more than fair to Windows than I probably should have been, but sorry Bill, you aren't going to snake out of this one. It's no myth, Windows is bad news on the server. Don't believe me? Check out Netcraft's uptimes, the highest belong to FreeBSD and Linux. There are a couple of Windows servers up there, but they are few and far between. "Yes this is true but uptime is not all that counts, if you are up for thirty days and then do a 2 minute reboot at 3 am I doubt the world will end." This is true, and this is the exact argument that Microsoft is pushing with there new server OS, they claim that since IIS (Internet Information Server, Microsoft's very own web server) runs closer to the operating system, it has faster response times and can serve up pages more effectively, than on a Linux system where the web server is running "far removed from the OS." I am no security expert but if you tried to sell your web server to the Linux community on the basis that it "works in kernel space instead of user space!" you would be laughed out of the room, and possibly the state. Yes you get a slight performance increase but you are still limited by the system hardware, and if you have an memory leak you definitely don't want the memory to leak all of your kernel's memory, that could bring down your system in a matter of seconds. While Linux does have security problems like any piece of software, if you make any sort of effort to patch it up you are tons better off than running a really secured version of windows, in either case crackers are glorified and if it was really that "easy," to break into a website yahoo would never be up, and neither would Microsoft.com. Update: Apparently the new Windows 2003 Server is not a bad competitor to Linux and FreeBSD according to a lot of people, but sadly I never tried it. "

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/04/04/most_reliable_hosting_... in March the most reliable Web servers were FreeBSD and Windows, FreeBSD had have, Windows had 4 and Linux only had 1. Note: This was Windows 2000 Server. Windows makes a good server OS, I have a few of them up and running at work and they do extremely well. I have been nothing short of pleased with their performance.

One of the things I have noticed is that advocacy for Linux has gone from technical merits to " Dont buy Windows because Microsoft is rich enough" or "Dont buy Windows because Microsoft is a Monopoly" People keep punding the message that Microsoft is some big evil corporation that doesnt care about anything but filling their pockets.

Myth #1: Linux is the operating system that "just works"

True. (All drivers are included i the kernel, easy to set up!)

Myth #2: Windows is insecure

True

Myth #3: Windows has better hardware support

False! (Windows HAD better hardware support, Linux over took it and is progressing at a increadable rate.)

Myth #4: Linux does a few things and does them well

True

Myth #5: Windows is bad for the server

Oh so true

Myth #6: Mac is the best since it is as easy to use as windows, and has the stability of UNIX

True

Myth #7: Linux is ready for the desktop

true

Myth #8: Win2k/Xp crashes just as any other windows.

True (it doesn't mattter if it has the correct hardware or drivers. If Linux can run without crashing on that exact same hardware then win2k and xp should do the same. Also I've seen both Win2k and xp crash on boxes that were built for the OS. So I guess no hardware or drivers are fit for M$ windows.)

Oh, Macs are expenive. Depends on what system you spec.
Mac:
8Gb 2x2Ghz procs ~ £6.3k
Branded PC with cool case:
2Gb 2x2Ghz procs, double the VRAM ~ £6.8k

I'd say the Mac was cheaper.

#myth 1.) Linux is hard to use and has a huge learning curve.

False! Whether it be SuSE, Redhat, linspire or Xandros. Each are easy to use and understand.

#Myth 2.) Windows is easy to use.

False! although it does depend on what the user is familiar with. Most people get fmailiar with windows just by constantly fixing it. They spend so much time tweeking it that productivity is low. Nobody cares in fixing the registry or tweeking dll files. They just want to get their work done!

#Myth 3.) There are no good or killer apps for the alternative platforms.

False! The fact is there are alternative aplications plus there are virtual machines and emulators that can help out such as vmware or crossover office that can help run that "special m$ or killer app."

Myth 4.) If Linux was as popular as windows it would be just as buggy and have just as many viruses.

Oh my FALSE! Because of how Linux or any nix for that matter, is built, viruses have a much harder time infecting and spreading through out the system.

Myth 5.) OSX is too expensive compared to windows!

FALSE! Even with a higher price tag. Your getting a solid machine that will last you for years and not have any repairs. That means you get everything you want and you don't need to fork over loads of cash to the tech help desk!

"I don't believe those people who claim here that they have to reformat windows once every 6 months or those to claim that they get a crash every day. I think this is just pure lies perpetrated by the linux community. I can't remember when I last reformated windows (have I ever in the last 8 years?). As for crashes, i.e blue screens, I've seen a couple (i.e less than 5 in 8 years, and most of then occured one after the other) but they were down to driver problems."





You see, thats the thing I just don't get with windows shrills. They think that this is all made up by the Linux community.

I came to know what windows does by my own expeariance of it. Those who use Linux, usually get so fed up with fixing windows constantly that reasearch to find a better alternative. That alternative for me was Linux.

I KNOW that to run M$ Windows properly you really should re-install it every 6 months. The reason for this is to keep the registry clean and the dlls files correctly alined. No old registry keys or dll files clogging up the system and causing crashes. Pluse if you patch windows regularly you will find that the OS slows down or some parts of it breaks. This can be included with patching av software and firewalls as well. So to keep it clean, yes a clean install every 6 months or face instabillity issues in the future.

I've used Windows3.1/95/98SE/ME and windows2000 and XP! They all do the same thing. Also it IS very important to scan check defrag the system. This keeps the performans up.

But in all honesty why go through THAT much work. My idea of a computer is that you use it when you want to to get things done or maby play some games, surf the internet. Not religusly visist MSDN , trying to trouble shoot another problem and take away time from your life.

I used to love windows 95/ME just because I could do so much with it. But now, after I discovered Linux. I realized that you don't have to be there fixing the machine 24/7. You can actually go outside and spend time with your loved ones!

one fucked up article. The whole part about Macs were simply the authors prejudice. More bang for the buck? Right now that is true, when Apple releases new G5's in a couple of months the tables will be turned. It's always been like that, one month (or more) the PC has the best performance, the next it's reversed. He writes that if he would have had money he would own a G5, well then.. why does he rant on about vendor lock, and superior x86 performance when he says that he WANTS one, It can't be much of an issue when he says it flat out - I want a G5?

Ironic that he speaks of "one size fits all" when he talks about Apple, when he later on himself says he is a tinkering kind of a guy, and acts like if HE can't build himself a Mac, then it's no good. He needs to realize himself that one size does not fit all, and just because he can't put a Mac toghether himself that does not mean that it's a bad platform for the rest of us.

And whats with that "you mostly have to use Mac software" ? Well, duh! You have to mostly use Windows software when you're on Wintel too. Besides, the Mac can use Linux Software (through the wounderful Fink) AND Windows software through Virtual PC. And btw, you don't have to pay for software updates. Stop spreading FUD.

Myth #1: If you get a alredy installed Gentoo linux with KDE and their graphical installer, I think the problem of managing the system isn't much more trouble than managing windows. At least not when comes to installing applications and uninstalling them. (likely to be better since you get more power over which components to add/remove. just try to get rid of Explorer in windows

Myth #2: If patched throughly, removed the "everybody" right on the root file system(s), turn on eventual firealls etc, then windows get to be pretty secure after all. however, it's mayor flaw is that most viruses/worms/attacks target it, and not linux/mac.

Myth #3: You had a good experience with your GNU/Linux ?
Good for you, but for long as hardware vendors _refuse_ to open up their standards so that those willing people who write the linux drivers can do that, windows is going to be the winner here. However, it's not linux fault that it cannot support all devices, it would've if their was more information available.

Myth #4: Not true. Linux, as the OS and not DE does most to everything with more perfection than I ever seen. However, the OS is not what makes out the experience, so it's all up to applications, and those are getting better rapidly.

Myth #5: In these times when everything attacks a windows machine they are bad for the server. Again, well configured for securety rather for usability they can be used. (this seems to me, as a soon-to-be MSCP (Microsoft Certified Proffessional) that changing the needed amount in windows to act securely if far much more work than installing a linux distro and securing it somewhat.)

Myth #6: Mac does some things well. really well. However mac works for me as Gnome does. it locks me in and makes me use only their tools and applications, removing my diversity and choice. The most commmon applications however are real killers. too bad I can't make the system "fit me".

Myth #7: Almost true. Linux is about to get ready for the desktop. and it's getting real close. but...
if y-windows become reality ( www.y-windows.org ) then I'm confident GNU/Linux will take over the desktopmarket completely within a year.

y-windows solves gtk/qt issues, unifies, standardizes while still allowing the users to switch the parts inside the system.

The only thing I think could slow the process of linux entering the desktop down is the hardware manufacturers who refuse to code decent drivers or give away specs so others can. (see nVidia)

I don't believe those people who claim here that they have to reformat windows once every 6 months or those to claim that they get a crash every day. (...) As for crashes, i.e blue screens, I've seen a couple (i.e less than 5 in 8 years, and most of then occured one after the other) but they were down to driver problems.

That means less than 5 blue screens in 4 years of Win 95/98/Me. And you're the one talking about pure lies of others, having crashes ? I have had crashes everyday with XP, don't know why, but if someone tells me they've had no crashes with 2K/XP during 4 years I believe them. But 5 blue screens in 4 years of 95/98/Me is the most obvious lie I've ever seen. Unless you used that system only 5 times in your life, or you were not running any software on it ?

"Just because Win 2K/XP works for you doesn't mean it is stable. From what I had heard, I expected XP and 2K to be stable. They're definitely unstable (an OS that freezes more than once a day is certainly not, and the fact that you MS-zealots know how to tune it and make it stable does not help me)."

And the fact that Linux works for some, doesnt mean its stable either. In the first few weeks after installing Mandrake 10, I had it crash more times than I have managed to get Windows XP to do so in the last year. I definately was not impressed. I could try a different distro, but really, I shouldnt have to waste my time doing so... By the way, the only tuning I have done for Windows is just a normal install and downloading the latest patches. I guess that doesnt help, since I am an MS-zealot... I guess I can blame Windows for working out so well with everything I need it to do for making me a zealot. Darn you Windows for working! Darn it all the heck!

His UT2004 experience certainly contradicts his first myth.

I'm late to this thread, but not too late to give you my opinion.

If you get a alredy installed Gentoo linux with KDE and their graphical installer, I think the problem of managing the system isn't much more trouble than managing windows

I had Gentoo up and running, and I must say, it was indeed the nicest Linux distro I have come across so far. But I still had to fiddle with kernel configuration options and different kernel versions to get things running - something I never had to while using Windows.

Then I bought myself an USB WLAN adapter, because I needed one. The chipset is even supported under Linux - but it ain't part of Gentoo portage. And, after fiddling with the atmel drivers and several different "wireless" packages for a while, cursing about Linux documentation scattered over thousands of web pages, and not getting the thing to work, I gave up. I reinstalled Win2k, started the setup.exe from the CD that came with the adapter, and installed Cygwin instead.

As for drivers, hey, Linux could have every hardware manufacturer in the world delivering drivers to your doorstep.

But right now, kernel interfaces are changing on purpose so that only open-sourced drivers can really keep up (look up the Linux Kernel Mailing List if you don't believe me), and the FSF is actively opposing available cross-platform driver architectures because they don't fit their "free software" propaganda (which, actually, means "free Linux software" if you read up http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/udi.html).

Again, you could have all the drivers you want delivered to your doorstep, ready-to-install binary packages including setup.exe for Joe Average. If only you could finally get out of your Utopia and accept that forcing hardware drivers to open source is not helpful.

"Again, you could have all the drivers you want delivered to your doorstep, ready-to-install binary packages including setup.exe for Joe Average. "

We could also be stuck with the legacy baggage that Windows had to overcome, or have you forgotten?

"If only you could finally get out of your Utopia and accept that forcing hardware drivers to open source is not helpful."

Freedom's utopia? Well I guess that explains why the world has so precious little of it.

"forcing hardware drivers to open source is not helpful."

I wonder if the owners of Aureal sound cards would agree with you?

So the argument seems to be this: most MS exploits are based on problems MS already patched, so it is false to say MS security is poor.

But wait a minute: if the software was secure, there wouldn't be so many patches of major holes in the first place. The fact that customers don't patch their systems in time to stop nasty worms is just further proof that security requires doing things right the first time, as much as possible, proof that the Big Hole+Big Patch methodology does not make an OS secure.

Furthermore: if we consider an OS secure just because patches are issued for all known vulnerabilities, then can we call any major OS "insecure"?

I'd take the pragmatic viewpoint that an OS is insecure if it is open to attacks in normal use, e.g. by average users with average behavior and a default install. That's another way of saying that we measure an OS's security by the number of insecure boxes actually out there, and how vulnerable they are---this is the factor that really matters when major exploits occur.

Caj

Ok here is a myth, well its still more than a myth but something that totally took me by surprise: "Users use windows cuz its easier and they panic when they dont see a START button"

My dad is a computer illiterate person, he knows how to boot his laptop and start his applications under windows. he came to visit me last week and my job consisted of fixing his and my moms laptop from all the nice windows... uhm... "add ons" (read: WORMS and spyware). Well My main box runs linux (mdk 10 amd64 for now but not for much longer). to make a long story short, he asked if he could check his email while i was fiddling with his machine, i said sure go ahead just open the browser on my machine. after 20 minutes i went to check up on him, he was surfing just fine and even using TABS.. i couldnt believe it, my dad had figured out how to use the browser and use tABS in 20 minutes .. then i asked him how he like linux. he said what? i just thought you hadd some fancy icons. suffice to say, after i told him about popup blocking, and he saw the power to TABS , he wanted firebird on his laptop. on a sidenote he is also now doing all his work in OpenOffice, which surprise surprise opened his word documents without a hitch (even places the graphics correctly) and his excel sheets still work fully with all the calculations.

Short comment at the end: I have used windows since 3.0 and dos WAY before that I used linux since 1997 and I have owned a MAc for a few months. I loved the OS X interface and the consitency of the apps, For standard desktops Windows is still the king but Linux ios gaining because people are getting fed up with pop-ups and spyware and worms.

Now the last thing i will say: HARDWARE SUPPORT!! windows might be nice but genereally it is NOT on par with linux or OS X. Misplace your Motherboard CDs, reinstall windows with new hardware and start to weep. Gigabit ethernet- no way, geforce FX 5900 good luck, framebuffer only. SATA controller and drivers: nope... so basically a nice new system (in my case Athlon64 3200+, 2x 120GB SATA, 1x120GBPATA, onboard GbitE, onboard Sound, onboard SATA,winTV card) is pretty much screwed. I had to install on the PATA drive. Now you all say yea but linux can only do that with recent distros. true but it CAN without external driver loading and downloading. Suse worked since v 9.0, mdk 10 installed without any hitches.. no problem at all, i mean EVERYTHING was configured and installed in 30 minutes.. including office and TV programs.. now, i timed a windows XP installation with all the drivers etc: close to 2 hours, and that includes office. I can see alreadyt the BUT's flying in, point is though that a lot of zealots dont give users enuff credit. I worked in hell-desk for years so i know how dumb users can be but they can also be very fast learning...

//Vic

@ BR:

> We could also be stuck with the legacy baggage that
> Windows had to overcome, or have you forgotten?

I consider having to "./configure && make && make install" and potentially recompiling my kernel to support new hardware to be the stone-age of computing. Which legacy have you left behind by placing this burden upon users, again?

> Freedom's utopia? Well I guess that explains why
> the world has so precious little of it.

Freedom of speech includes freedom for the opinion you don't like to hear. Freedom of choice includes the choice not to be free. Freedom such as you define it includes the freedom to fail miserably whenever you have something to do that isn't covered by the stock install of your favourite distro.

And, given the high resistance of the "community" to accept constructive criticism, it also means the freedom to suck heavily in the eyes of someone who needs his computer as a *tool* instead of a full-time toy for nerdy I-like-a-patchin' types.

> "forcing hardware drivers to open source is not helpful."
>
> I wonder if the owners of Aureal sound cards would
> agree with you?

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I rather have a closed-source driver that just works, instead of an open-sourced driver that can be made to work after reading pages of how-to, recompiling my kernel and trying hard for over two days.

"But right now, kernel interfaces are changing on purpose so that only open-sourced drivers can really keep up (look up the Linux Kernel Mailing List if you don't believe me)"

With the "implication" that there are no legitimite reasons for it to do so, and the "understatement" that somehow it's a ploy to "get those closed-source" vendors.

"and the FSF is actively opposing available cross-platform driver architectures because they don't fit their "free software" propaganda (which, actually, means "free Linux software" if you read up http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/udi)

Oh, now does anyone here find it a touch ironic that someone is complaining about utopias and "software propaganda" while using a free and open OS?

Anyway here's what he has to say "Cooperation with UDI is not out of the question. We should not label UDI, Intel, or anyone, as a Great Satan. But before we participate in any proposed deal, we must judge it carefully, to make sure it is advantageous for the free software community, not just for proprietary system developers. On this particular issue, that means requiring that cooperation take us a step further along a path that leads to the ultimate goal for free kernels and drivers: supporting all important hardware with free drivers."

Note that he doesn't approach the subject matter with the "wild-eyed zeal" that people accuse him of, but is looking out for the interest of the Open Source community. Solar, are you looking out for the interest of the Open Source community?

"It does not seem likely that Intel would offer a deal that gives us what we need. In fact, UDI seems designed to make it easier to keep specifications secret.

"Still, there is no harm in keeping the door unlocked, as long as we are careful about who we let in."

More of that caution. You'd think that with the SCO issue, and patents gone amock, let alone all the other messs that's been happening for the past twenty years in the business community, that people would be a bit more cautious, but apparently the fact that I have to write this post proves otherwise.

Maybe we will have "all the drivers we can eat" if we play by others rules, but we will never be able to call ourselves a free OS with a straight face ever again. Think about it.

Very good stuff!!!

BR: I wonder if the owners of Aureal sound cards would agree with you?

Solar: I have no idea what you're talking about, but I rather have a closed-source driver that just works, instead of an open-sourced driver that can be made to work after reading pages of how-to, recompiling my kernel and trying hard for over two days.

Aureal was a company that made sound cards and chipsets to be used by other sound card manufacturers. If my memory serves me well, they went under after they won a legal battle against Creative Labs. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

Anyway... So their wonderful sound cards (I liked them) no longer have updated drivers. (As far as I know)

As an owner of two Aureal sound cards I can say, "Oh well." I've had worse things happen to me and I definitely have bigger problems than worrying about my two sound cards not having updated drivers.

In the end, I can also say that there's probably advantages and disadvantages either way and even with updated drivers, I would probably no longer be using those sound cards in any of my good computers.

"I consider having to "./configure && make && make install" and potentially recompiling my kernel to support new hardware to be the stone-age of computing. Which legacy have you left behind by placing this burden upon users, again? "

I haven't placed anything on anyone. You have free will, use it. If you want to relieve yourself of this "burden" then of course you can use an OS that the manufacturers will support.

Anyway the legacy is all the code that was frozen in order to support legacy software and hardware. Weither you realize it or not, even OS'es need to progress, and that becomes harder and harder the longer one waits.

"Freedom of speech includes freedom for the opinion you don't like to hear. Freedom of choice includes the choice not to be free. Freedom such as you define it includes the freedom to fail miserably whenever you have something to do that isn't covered by the stock install of your favourite distro. "

Freedom also means that the hardware I purchase, is free from the dictates of an unfeeling corporation. Freedom means that everything on my desktop is MINE. No one can come back and say "I need more profit, your hardware is no longer supported". Freedom also means that I no longer have to play a game of "pass the buck" with tech support "Oh no the problem's with the other guy, call him. [lather, rinse, repeat]" Freedom means that I don't have to worry about my hardware being "limited" because one corporation has to appease another (Macrovision, DRM).

"And, given the high resistance of the "community" to accept constructive criticism, it also means the freedom to suck heavily in the eyes of someone who needs his computer as a *tool* instead of a full-time toy for nerdy I-like-a-patchin' types. '

You have a rather loose definition of "constructive".

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but I rather have a closed-source driver that just works, instead of an open-sourced driver that can be made to work after reading pages of how-to, recompiling my kernel and trying hard for over two days."

Funny you should say that. Here's the other freedom. The freedom to continue being able to use my hardware regardless of other changes. Like the company being bought by Creative, and driver development stopped. Kind of puts a crimp on the whole "just works", now doesn't it?

At least with the open-source driver you have a fighting chance to get it working. Can't say the same for your closed source "just works" driver.

@Gareth

What I'm opposing is that most of these "comparisons" almost always features an image of either an entusiast distribution like Gentoo LFS, Chainsaw or experimental like Fedora - or generally something that is on the same level af Slackware 2.0 was. Then the GNU/Linux is trashed for not being as userfriendly as the latest Windows ... and results in the image that Microsoft has patented terms like development and userfriendlyness - while everything else stand still.

How often does your sceendriver just dissapear ?

I like textmode programs and I like the command prompt, even the *NIX terminal ... but after installing a mainstream GNU/Linux I actually use the command prompt of eCS more than the terminal of Linux ... while I never use the console of Windows, because it is totally unusable, it is intentionally a disgrace.

@snowflake
"Intalling apps on Linux requires a lot of knowledge, far too much for the average person."

You make a generel statement - eliminating the mainstream distributions.

re :OSes that don't just work
AFAIR Tulip made a PC series with ROM-based Windows 3.1

@ vicious1
"Ok here is a myth, well its still more than a myth but something that totally took me by surprise: "Users use windows cuz its easier and they panic when they dont see a START button" "

Actually many users does freeze, unless they get the exactly same screen, that they are used to. Even another order of icons in the startbar (or whatever their kickerarea is called) can cause a brainfreeze with some people.

Having just spent two days uninstalling malware that was installed by inadvertent clicks in Internet Explorer, I have to say that I've never experienced anything of the like in Linux. True, I've wrestled with printers for two days, or had serious sound problems, but never anything that renders the system BOTH insecure and unstable in one fell swoop (and that can happen from ordinary user action like clicking on a link).

That said, all OSes have problems and strengths and it depends largely upon what you do with them as to whether or not you will encounter them. If you have great sysadmins who use well thought out firewalls, have disabled downloads and are otherwise vigilant with patches, your experience in Windows may be very positive. Likewise, if you are running Linux as root and don't set up a firewall and (add other silly things here), you may find yourself hosting a trojan or facing system crashes.

When all you have is a hammer, all you see are a lot of nails...

Stop feeding us the same caramel over and over... When Windows 2K/XP crash HARD, isn't because of bad drivers/hardware! It is SIMPLY a problem of Windows!

Of course bad drivers/hardware can cause problems to ALL OSes but stop spreading this M$ caramel of "2K/XP crashes=bad drivers/hardware"... Windows 2K/XP crash because of TOO many bugs in them... If it was simply a matter of bad drivers/hardware then why, oh, why THAT many Service Packs + Windows Updates? (SP1-4 for 2K and SP1-2 for XP) :rolleyes:

That M$ caramel tastes SO bad! If you like it, THAT much, EAT it until you will die or something but don't spread it anymore! :rolleyes:

Maybe Windows XP Reloaded will be better. Then again maybe XP Revolutions will be even better :p

What I'm opposing is that most of these "comparisons" almost always features an image of either an entusiast distribution like Gentoo LFS, Chainsaw or experimental like Fedora - or generally something that is on the same level af Slackware 2.0 was. Then the GNU/Linux is trashed for not being as userfriendly as the latest Windows ... and results in the image that Microsoft has patented terms like development and userfriendlyness - while everything else stand still.

Jah... exactly. But my point was that although cli is great people wont see linux as on the same *desktop* level as Macos and Windows until the command line is unneeded for day to day use (like macos)

i can't believe i just wasted my time reading this... maybe osnews should go for a higher standard of journalism.

this was just a list of generalizations labeled "myths" that usually are only true in this one users experience.

instead of letting "up & coming" web designers right articles on OS's, how about some IT professionals?

I just love people that claim that if they had a million bucks they would buy a mac, as if macs are toys for the rich. I work full time, go to grad school, pay rent, pay utilities, pay for my car and still dont make over a 5 figure income, (low 5 figure FYI), yet I am still able to purchase a mac.

Just like my grandmom in Greece told me, save your 10 drachma coins, soon you will have 100 drachma bills, save those and soon you will have 1000 drachma bills, save those and then you can buy whatever you want...

seems like simple savings rules, that my grandmother knows - and she did not even finish 4th grade, ellude the highly educated yet completely slanted people in today's world.

Solar, want to point out I do believe in evolution and commersialism as much as I want to believe in the utopia of freedom and socialism.

It won't change the fact that thousands of people have mailed nvidia asking them to supply drivers that fully support nvidias nforce chipsets. (I'm one of them, mailed them several times)

Hardware manufacturers have a choice of making binary drivers for linux, in userspace as the kernel allows direct contact with hardware.

Either way the major problem I have had (which now makes me bojcott nVidia) is the SoundStorm issue. As of Kernel 2.6 ALSA has been a solution nVidia could've easily made drivers for, still they haven't.

Still now, after _years_ are we stuck without decent drivers for the full capabilities of the SoundStorm chip.
Wouldn't you say it's nvidia's foult rather then GNU/OSS?
I mean, if the ALSA devs can make a driver that works to some extend (the i810 chipset driver), then why couldn't nVidia make a driver?

Is ALSAs API/Specifications changing too? (wouldn't think so)

May be GNU don't like it, but everage joe would probably be happy if such drivers came around.

I have said that so many times I wouldnt be surprised if he got that quote from me and it is so true.

Actually, we can't know that. The only way to know if this was indeed true or not would be for Linux to actually have 95% of the market, which will never happen. So in fact it is an unverifiable statement and therefore cannot be said to be true.

But don't let that get in the way of your Microsoft cheerleading...

There are too many comments to read, so don't blame me if this has been pointed out.
Myth 7 is fairly objective and accurate, but starting rom the last ten lines it starts to break apart.

"If Linux had the market share of Windows, and Windows was the underdog you would be saying how great, and easy to use Windows is, and how it just works." My first reaction was of anger and dismissal, "Linux is open source Linux uses protected memory..." But the more I thought about it the more it disturbed me because I knew it was true.

>> I'm not sure, but I think it was right here that I determined that you needed to get another hobby. Why do you feel so strongly that your ego is tied to an operating system?

The lack of facts, the lack of anything resembling rational thought, the completely pathetic spelling and grammar...I mean, the kid isn't EVEN a web developer yet.

"Nick Comtois is an up and coming web developer (at least he hopes) who has been using the Slackware distro of linux for the past 2 years and has never looked back, except for when someone hypes up another distro and I run off to try and come crawling back to Slack. I have done everything from application programming with C/C++ to web scripting with perl and php."

And he switches person perspectives from "Nick is a..." to "I am a..."

I mean, come on, who posted this drivel?

> Personally I don't think Linux ever will be ready for the user next door.

people used to think the same about freebsd -- until apple proved them wrong.

Windows will not install on half of my x86 computers.

If you buy computers that were designed from the ground up to run windows OF COURSE windows will work well.

"Windows is the operating system that just works"

what?!?!?!?!

Take it from a guy trying to get mpeg editing and dvd authoring working on his win 2k machine that this is simply not true. Or from the same guy trying to get the software that came BUNDELED WITH his sony DV cam to work on same win 2k machine.

Windows requires SO MANY little pieces of software to do anything, there never seems to be enough hours in the week to do anything besides word and email with a windows machine. Not to mention the fact that each step to do anything with windows costs about $60 a pop. Want to remove commercials from MPEG-2s that'll be $60. Want to put those MPEG-2s onto a DVD with menus, that'll be $60. This adds up quick. Not to mention the fact that windows 2k makes a 2.2 XP+ crawl....

Windows rarely works how I want it to, requires at least as much time to setup to work as Linux or FreeBSD, and I always end up with a poorer running less satisfying desktop.

"Jah... exactly. But my point was that although cli is great people wont see linux as on the same *desktop* level as Macos and Windows until the command line is unneeded for day to day use (like macos)"

But the terminal is uneeded for day to day use on mainstream distributions like SUSE, Lindows (Or whatever it is allowed to call itself this week) and XandrOS.

That Slackware, Chainsaw and LFS lives of the terminal/console doesn't make the entire GNU universe unfit for the desktop.

"That means less than 5 blue screens in 4 years of Win 95/98/Me. And you're the one talking about pure lies of others, having crashes ? I have had crashes everyday with XP, don't know why, but if someone tells me they've had no crashes with 2K/XP during 4 years I believe them. But 5 blue screens in 4 years of 95/98/Me is the most obvious lie I've ever seen. Unless you used that system only 5 times in your life, or you were not running any software on it ?"

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. BSODs do not exist in Win95/98/ME. They only exist in Windows NT based operating systems. I agree that Win95/98/ME "hang" very often, but they will never go to the infamous Blue Screen.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. BSODs do not exist in Win95/98/ME. They only exist in Windows NT based operating systems. I agree that Win95/98/ME "hang" very often, but they will never go to the infamous Blue Screen.

So then I just have had a version of Windows NT 95 and Windows NT 98? Because I know I had BSOD's on both those machines. I mean, heck, we can all remember our very first BSOD...

As an asside, for all those people who claim to not have their Windows machine crash, etc. That's nice. Now I know why logging into a Windows account took me well over 5 minutes this morning. I mean, I just love it when Windows rewrites network settings (not spyware, Windows did this). It's good to know that the machine doesn't crash. I guess if you build a OS that breaks itself, a crash really isn't a crash then, huh?

"Since all Windows users HAVE to use IE and using other browsers like Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera is not an option"

Comprehension skills are something you may wish to cultivate. One of the issues I have with Windows is that IE & Outlook CAN'T BE REMOVED. With Linux, I can REMOVE any browser or email app & REPLACE it with another. Installing another browser of email app, while IE or Outlook remain installed, was not discussed in my original post.

"There are plenty of ways to optimize Windows ... recompiling the kernel isn't even necessary."

Again, you may wish to brush up on your comprehension skills. My original post discussed REPLACING kernels, not RECOMPILING. Oh wait, you can't grasp simple concepts written in English, so of course you missed both points completely. Now run along and update your virus software, clean the adware from your system, then clean the spyware from your system & then proclaim how easy Microsoft products are to use.

>So then I just have had a version of Windows NT 95 and
>Windows NT 98? Because I know I had BSOD's on both those
>machines. I mean, heck, we can all remember our very first
>BSOD...

The Blue screens you get to see on Win95/98/ME are not the BSOD but they are also blue and tend to get shown when your machine hangs/crashes. Thats all in Microsoft logic.
A real BSOD show some stack/kernel information and is only on
NT. WinXP/2000 just reset or shutdown. Thats the new logic of Microsoft, so the users thinks he my machines reboots, must be the hardware because Windows is superB.

Apple and Linux are in the top5 of the fastest supercomputers on this world. You gotta just love Linux it runs from a wristwatch but also a giant supercomputer, it runs on x86 but also on ppc without many changes to the kernel.

is it my impression or is there a REALLY good reason why all os's at the top are bsd/os and freebsd? (besides being very capable operating systems, of course)



Operating systems we can usually work out uptimes for are:

* BSD/OS
* FreeBSD [but not the default configuration in versions 3 to 4.3]
* HP-UX [recent versions]
* IRIX
* Linux on Intel x86 processor, kernel versions 2.1 to 2.5.24
* Linux on ARM, M68k, MIPS, PowerPC, S/390, SH and SPARC processors
* NetApp NetCache
* Solaris 2.6 and later
* Windows 2000
* Windows Server 2003
* Windows XP

Operating systems that do not provide uptime information include;

* AIX
* AS/400
* Compaq Tru64
* DG/UX
* Linux before kernel version 2.1
* Linux on Alpha and IA64 processors
* Linux on Intel x86 processor from kernel version 2.5.25
* MacOS
* MacOSX
* NT3/Windows 95
* NT4/Windows 98
* NetBSD/OpenBSD
* NetWare
* OS/2
* OS/390
* SCO UNIX
* SunOS 4
* VM

Comprehension skills are something you may wish to cultivate. One of the issues I have with Windows is that IE & Outlook CAN'T BE REMOVED. With Linux, I can REMOVE any browser or email app & REPLACE it with another. Installing another browser of email app, while IE or Outlook remain installed, was not discussed in my original post.

Actually, my biggest gripe with KDE, is you can't get rid Konqueror for the same reason you can't in windows

Never used NT. s/BSOD/blue screen/ then, exactly the same thing for Joe User. OS crashed or requiring immediate reboot. I didn't know what's called "BSOD" was specific to NT, but I don't see how usual "blue screens" can be better than "BSOD". The blue screens I've experienced with 98 were certainly not acceptable for an OS (actually that's what made me change).

"When this happened, it was better to simply reboot (the cool thing is that you can still logon and type "reboot" instead of power cycling the machine, and therefore fsck up your filesystems)."

Right, that's great. I solved this by SSHing to the computer ordering it to reboot. This also works but one has to have a 2nd computer with SSH available for this.

"I'm wondering if the same kind of thing would happen if NVIDIA open-sourced their drivers and the eager Linux hackers had a look at the code...I find it annoying that the only thing that force me to reboot is a proprietary, closed-source driver..."

I agree. Unfortunately there's no other option: ATi and Matrox also only provide proprietary drivers

All though I use KDE every day I completly agrees with you, but Konqueror isn't a web-browser, it is uses KParts for different purposes like web-browsing and file management.
The problem is that the using KHTML in Konqueror is more or less locked in to the DE, all-though you can set another program for web-pages, it doesn't seem too work 100% of the time since not all web-pages is of MIME-type "text/html" (like a few web-pages asp and aspx) and becourse KDE has to check the MIME-type it takes to long opening links.
I just wish that the people behind KDE would go after the protocol HTTP or FTP for that matter, insteed of MIME-type.

"However, to Microsoft's credit, most of the time the crackers get their exploits from patches already released from Microsoft"

This is actually not entirely true. RPC DCOM was developed, Microsoft was informed, then it went public. I think LSASS had a similar history. MS itself is NOT discovering the biggest holes used by worms.

In some cases, perhaps there is reverse engineering of the patch. However, you need to cite a few cases to prove this, rather than quoting what you read from some MS official.

MS has some gaping holes in services that are running by default. Linux obviously has its own share of troubles, but many distros allow disabling of unneeded services and firewalling during the install phase.

Seriously! When will people get through their head that Linux is not A System. You can NOT talk about Linux and how usable it is.

Linux is one of:
1. A kernel.
A component of a system, interfacing only with system developers.

2. A gnu'ish collection of system components.
A complex name indicating certain desing choices among system developers. Still interfacing only with system developers.

A system/device should be judged on its usabililty merits once in its deployed state. In this category one MIGHT talk about the usability of Xandros, RedHat or Gentoo but it is still not deployed untill you speak of: "Sharp Zaurus SL-6000" or "Galaxis LinuxTV C" these are Linux systems deployed and ready for the general public.

"This is why I think Windows sucks since its CLI is the suckest CLI ever, I mean come on you have to run Command.com which only gives you Dos. You get no text browser or text ftp services, not even a good text file manager installed with windows."

Right on 2 counts, but there is a command line text FTP client that is installed by default in windows. Try typing ftp sometime, and you will see there is a text ftp service.

:Right on 2 counts, but there is a command line text FTP client that is installed by default in windows. Try typing ftp sometime, and you will see there is a text ftp service.

Opps my bad, I use the command ftp in other OSs but since windows doesn't have lynx or links or a PPP dialer I thought Dos just didn't have any ftp.

I know you can get dialers, text browsers and text ftp programs (other the ftp command) for Dos but they aren't there out of the box.

Another bunch of OS Myths, not all, but some of them... Windows is a bad Server OS, hey man thats isn't true, WIndows 2000 and 2003 is a great server, Windows Server System (all MS Servers) is even greater, you can't find nothing to come close to Windows Small Business Server 2003, it's the Server System out of the box, working perfectly and you need 2 clicks to setup it. For the multimillion number of small businesses thats the killer app, and no OS can come close to it, when you have a small business, you don't have zillion dollars budget for IT, and with WSMS 2003, you don't need it, it's just work out of the box. The other Windows Servers is great to, maybe you cannot use it allways to a mission critical jobs, but only 1% of customers need a mission critical OS, to the rest 99% of them the Windows Server 2003 is the best because the "do more with less" is the absolute true, and wheter you love or hate Microsoft, this is one thing that's not only true, but true X1000. BTW I have WIndows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, RedHat Enterprise 3 and Solaris in my working environment, and all of them have two sides, all of these Server OS-es are great products, but Windows Server need 1/2 the knowledge and 1/2 the money/time to operate, and thats the most important if you asking me. All of them are equaly secure or unsecure if you are a good administrator, there is no unsecure OS, there are onlu unsecure and stupid administrators. Less with UNIX (because they need more knowledge) more with Windows, but thats not the OS flaw its the flaw of the IT Department Human Resource... but that the one thing you cannot patch... not now and not in the future.

This must be a different meaning of the word "Debunked" that the one I am used to.

I'm no fan of DOS... but you have a CLI editor... just type
"edit" on the CLI. Also, on NT5 (i.e. Win2k) and up.... telnet runs in the shell.

:-)

You also have netstat.

And alas... for realwork you can by the MKS Toolkit or install the Cygwin stuff (in the 4 years since I started at an "MS Shop"... MKS or Cygwin have been my saviour).

LLTCLI

Long Live The Command Line Interface!

quack, quack, quack!

The first time I heard the term BSOD was in 1993. It was the "Black Screen of Death" which was something that afflicted Win 3.1 clients running NETX on a high traffic network. The screen would go black without an error message. From there the term morphed to describe any kind of error where the machine crashed completely and the only thing you could do was reboot. Win 95/98 can give a blue screen of death like "system error," etc., and you have to reboot.

BSOD is slang.

http://www.guiadohardware.net/kurumin/
more easy to install programs than windows, with the magic icons.

>more easy to install programs than windows, with the magic
>icons.


i just wanted to add:

more stable, more free, more open, more virus & trojan free, more scaleable, more fun, more platforms, more developers, more unix.

The only OS' i've seen that just work don't have much of a job. Think Coke machine.

for the most part, 2000/XP pro(home is useless) are relatively stable.

question: doesnt java work in a "sandbox"?
last night, a java app I had to use crashed explorer 4 times in 30mins, and yes, I was using Suns JVM(correct ver for app req), not MS

@Quack Actually when running the command prompt in NT it is not a DOS prmpt, but what is called a Windows console. Yes you can create textbased applications using the Win32 API's, just as you can create textbasd Java programs.

@Nic IMO - There are not much difference between XP Home and Pro ..

> My girlfriend is a total non-geek, and yet she uses her Linux desktop daily

so does my mother. she uses slackware. of course i had to install it for her, just as i had to install windows for her when she still used windows.
and she has zero problems using kde. in fact, she was very happy about not having to use double-clicks anymore (this has always confused her the most about windows: knowing if a double-click or a single-click was expected).

Most of you read the myth titles and don't even bother to read what it says and you end up making a fool of yourself because you can't read.

"in fact, she was very happy about not having to use double-clicks anymore (this has always confused her the most about windows: knowing if a double-click or a single-click was expected)."

You can do this in Windows as well. I never have been a fan of single clicking to open files, so I just leave as is or change to double clicking asap if its not enabled.

Don't you all think that its great that there are at least three really good choices of PC operating system out there. There are probably many others as well. Why not enjoy the choice rather than batter the differences?

Regards,
Peter

- > Linux has better hdw support since it runs cross-platform, (the same thing means Intel to AMD for Windows).

-> Windows is easier to install : so much so, that manufacturers give you recovery CDs (which usually blitzes the hdd in the process) instead of the vanilla-off-the-shelf, as they would never hear the end of it on the HelpDesks...
Also try installing XP/NT2000 vs Xandros, Lindows, Lycoris from scratch and YOU tell me which one is easier.

-> Linux will only be ready for the desktop when you never see a console. Well, I guess it's ready then, I've installed Xandros on most of my more recent units (Corel 1.2 on the others) and I never saw a console.
Wether it's for hdw detection, software install, ...etc.
PS: Installing software is actually EASIER on xandros than windows as we have the xandros_network, and you can just pick and choose and it does all the rest (1 click) !!!

Back to the GUI crashing thing. If you use Windows as a desktop & a server and the GUI crashes, I seriously doubt the "server processes" are still running. Linux IS different. Although I agree if you were using a desktop app - you've lost the data ... CTRL-ALT-BKSP might just reset X - but you data is nonetheless gone. Still +1 for gnu/linux.

Linux just works ... well it does for me !

Toodles !

Man, the bullets fly when you happen to bash APPLE!
And since I like to ALWAYS put in my 2 cents...here we go.

I think Apple makes a good machine when you pay for there top line. I bought an iBook a year ago (running Jag) and here are my impressions

1.) Hardware costs. Now I'm not talking about for the machine cause actually its was resonable. But I went for a memory upgrade and I ended up having to pay 200 buck instead of 100 bucks cause the 100 dollar memory that was supposed to work in a the mac didn't. I tried various other types and out of a 512mb stick, only half it would read. So, I had to by "APPLE" memory.

2.)OSX speed on my iBook. Now, Panter might be different, and if it is GREAT! but Jag on that iBook was horrible. If I had 2 apps running then opened up itunes, them moved the itunes window around the screen, my MP3 would "skip". And this was after my memory upgrade where I maxed out the ibook. I will day that linux ran AWESOMELY! I never saw debian fly so quick and the desktop performed well too!

3.) SMB leaving hidden files everywhere! I also noticed MAC SMB would leave small hidden files everywhere. WHY? (once again, theis might of changed in panther) Also had issues connecting with shares in Jag.

4.)Software from the non nerdy sense. I hear the arugment of software all the time and I hate to say it but most people are right, MAC is short on software. I say this because Joe user isn't going to know about installing FINK and using X. So from that stand point its limited. If you happen to be of Geek Sheek then you have no arugement with the case cause you should know of X and Fink and shame on you for not looking into your purchase.

5.)ONE BUTTON MOUSE.....I'm leaving it at that.

6.)Jag seemed to suffer of broken links. I would customize the aqua bar with a short cut to the terminal and what not and then after a couple of uses, the link would no longer work.


I will say that PPC is a good chip and that apple has great designs. Its just I think they need to look at there low end product cause though I did like the ibook I thought it would have a bit more "bawls" than it did. I like haveing firewire on my laptop though :-D. I have been thinking of getting a PPC hobby board and making my own "MAC" of sorts.

I have a USB printer and it just worked with WinXP. NO setup disk required, the drivers in the WinXP driver database were perfect for it. That's true of most of the USB printers I have attached to my PC. Eposn injet, HP laser, Brother Laser, Samsung Laser, etc. All worked just fine. But on my Mac dual-G4 box at work not evrry USB printer worked. Most did but the New HP A3 photo printer didn't. It needed a CD for installation. I guess some printers are just not in the OS X driver database yet. Same goes for Linux, some printers simply are not yet supported. And same goes for WinXP but a lot less often. Having a near monopoly on the desktop does have some benefits for the people who use Windows.

If you were speaking of Win 98 / ME I'd believe you, but 2000/XP? Please. I do all my Java development at work on a Win2000 machine, been so for the last 2 years; never once froze, bluescreened, etc. I compile, install, uninstall, have people going through my machine to connect to a VPN; nothing bad. has ever happened. Can say the same for every developer around me too.

You are out of your mind. I don't believe this for a second.. I work at a corporation with about brand new 30 Windows XP workstations (several months old). They crash all the time and freeze, what a nightmare. Of course, I've had this experience with my own XP machine for 2 years as well. I wouldn't say it crashed every day, but at least every other day I had to use CTRL+ALT+DELETE.

Then I got a Mac...

How does the Mac have the 'least' amount of software? Statistically, there are more Mac users than Linux users.

They don't make Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark XPress, MS Office, or really any major apps for Linux.. I imagine this will change soon.

Just for reference, all my computers are Macs or PC's with Linux

B.S., not a chance - if you are running linux as a multiuser system or server - somebody's desktop biting the dust is in no way equivalent to a system crash. The webserver will still be running the database will still be running, etc. If you're running a desktop system for a single user, it's still not the same thing - your system still finishes writing to disk so you don't corrupt your hard drive...

Perhaps to the casual user it might appear to be the 'same' thing, but to admins and observant folks it's most definitely not.

However, this is a moot point because the desktop doesn't crash as often as Windows (pick a version here) anyway.

Will

"This must be a different meaning of the word "Debunked" that the one I am used to." I'd agree. Not reading the whole article is probably resulting in a lot of flames about the "myths" list. from m-w.com, debunk is ": to expose the sham or falseness of <debunk a legend>"

This article is more like "OS myths examined", or something to that effect. The article is a bit choppy, and incomplete, but does make some interesting points. I'm glad he didn't add to much anecdotal "evidence" like "linux sucked at my shop" or "windows always crashes at work." Anecdotal "evidence" is not a sound logical argument, since installations vary so much.

I am pretty late in sending this comment. I am amazed though, usually an article that touches in with this kind of issue generates a lot of flames, and so far, at the end of this first page, all I have seen are frank and honest opinions! THIS IS GREAT! personally I love my Macs, I can't use Windows without pulling out my hair and given how often I use a computer, this makes it worth every 'extra' cent.

This is my comment then: 'cost' is not just what you pay in the beginning, but what you pay in upkeep, and how long it lasts in a usable state and how much time you 'waste' reinstalling and tweaking etc. and what your time is worth. If your time is worth nothing or you enjoy the tweaking, so be it, but if you actually have a job to do...

It is also learning curve and for that reason, most people will never switch platforms unless forced

I, as a few others have would also like to point out that you never refuted the myth of #6 because, it is trueish. Mac's just work for many newbies and luddites but also offer through the terminal an almost Linux like level of fexibility, customizability, power and stability. thus for many (not all mind you) of us it is the best.

There's a lot of discussion about the prevalency of spyware as an inherent flaw in windows. While this is true to an extent, it is not entirely windows' fault. There are many circumstantial variables, and, of course, user error. In the many years I have used windows, I have never had any spyware or adware that I did not (albeit inadvertantly) agree to install. When you install Kazaa, for example, you get Cydoor, but if people were to read the license agreement like they're supposed to, they would know that and be able to avoid it. Every time you click "agree," you could be signing away your soul. Granted, I never read them either, but you must admit that this particular problem is not windows' fault. You could argue that Linux users would be required to enter their root password, but if you were a newbie linux user installing something like Kazaa, and it asked you to enter your root password to install, you would do it, wouldn't you? Then there's the spyware that people install willingly, like that purple abomination, BonziBuddy. It tells you upfront that it monitors your internet activity to "help" you by presenting you with services you may be interested in. The gullability of the user seals the deal.

So that's my argument for the "compromised user" factor, which could occur in any OS. The next thing to discuss is the major circumstantial factor for the prevalence of adware in windows. Windows is the dominant OS. It's simply not very profitable to design adware specifically for Mac or Linux, because not many people use them. So, Mac and Linux get credit for being virtually parasite-free without even doing anything to deserve it.

One argument in Linux's favour is the lack of cross-distribution compatibility. This prevents easy installation of complex adware programs that aren't supposed to be there, but it's also one of Linux's most frustrating features in normal use (despite what people say, I've recently tried linux for at least the fourth time, and seen improvement in ease of installation for third-party programs and drivers that, while significant, is nowhere near what I would call "easy").

I regret that I don't know enough about the Mac to say it has no inherent advantage over windows in regards to adware; indeed, I would be glad if it did, since my next purchase is going to be a Mac; but if there is an advantage, I have not seen it.

In conclusion, I believe that any security flaws inherent in Windows play a relatively minor role in its adware/spyware problems. Feel free to prove me wrong, as long as it's flame-free.

A, OS is basically like Linux, (UNIX with a GUI), and OS X is easy to use, you 97% of the time have no interaction with the terminal, and it;s interface is nice.