Among the few things I’m proud of in my life, not having had contact with Windows when I first “met” a computer is somewhere around the top. Indeed, the first computer I used ran Unix, and I have been using Unices myself for some time. A Quick History
Although I’ve started out with Unix, I have been a Windows user for a long time. That is, since around the days of Windows 95. Before that, I did have an HC (a Romanian-made, Z80-based Spectrum-ish computer), but I couldn’t afford a computer of my own.
I won’t go through the Windows 95 bashing part again. It was nicknamed Mac ’84 at its time, and for a good reason. It was slow, bloated, full of bugs, and as soon as I began to understand its inner working (as far as you can understand from a closed-source OS of course), I immediately thought it was going to take several ice ages before it would become the clean, ideal operating system it was advertised as.
When Windows 98 was out, it didn’t change too much, and the Internet Explorer beast didn’t do much to help. In fact, tearing off IE from any system I was using became a general habit for me. When everyone was commenting on what Windows 2000 was going to bring, I was already a happy FreeBSD user.
The last version of Windows I used consistently was Windows 2000. I did some serious programming work on it, and did enjoy using Visual Studio as well. I still meditate on whether I’d give emacs away for VS if I had the chance to. With a number of exceptions, I was quite happy with Windows 2000. It was, indeed, a stable operating system, nicely polished, secure and, unlike its predecessors, slightly faster than a drunk snail. Nevertheless, I didn’t use it as my home desktop system, but only for work. However, I was simply dragged out by the *nices I was already too accustomed to. I did use Windows XP sporadically, but I can’t think of the last time I used it for more than three hours. I never used it as my home system or for doing serious work on it. Therefore, you could say that I’m mostly new to Windows XP.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to help her with testing a program she wrote. Having had the inspiration of purchasing Windows XP with my current computer (I thought you’d never know when you’ll need it), I was able to start immediately. So off I went, wiping out one of the partitions I normally use for backup. I freed up 15 GB of space on my 2.6 GHz Pentium IV. The rest of the system was filled with 1024 MB of RAM, an nVidia GeForce 5600 and an integrated sound card. I also tried to use a HP LaserJet 1020 USB printer, an UMAX USB scanner and some no-name USB keyboard.
Beam me up, Scotty!
I admit that the first screens I saw during the install procedure were no surprise for me. Before getting to the cute, cuddly, graphical part of the install procedure, everything is essentially how it used to be 20 years ago, back to Windows 1.0, except that it doesn’t ask you for install floppies and it has something that tries to act like a partitioning program.
On one hand, I admit to be quite happy with it. I’m not a fan of cute installation programs and I don’t run away from text. As long as it does its job, it’s fine for me, and I am yet to meet someone who says everything should be GUI when installing Windows. On the other hand, the “as long as it does its job” part is somewhat to be disputed here.
Indeed, compared to other operating systems, Windows has a rather primitive install program. The partitioning program is very limited (it can only recognize FAT/NTFS partitions, and can only create or delete partitions), and there are very few things you can customize. There is no option to select which parts of the operating system you want to install (although you can uninstall some of them later). Still, this is hardly much of a problem itself, since Windows is not as modular as you would expect in the 21st century. There’s basically a whole pile of things the installation program throws on your hard drive, much of which you don’t need. Some solutions, like 2000lite from LitePC, do seem to exist, but there is some extra effort which could have been elegantly avoided by simply allowing the user not to install some components. Of course, the space taken up is not such a big hassle most of the times (let’s be serious, you won’t be installing Windows XP on an 800 MB drive) and you can disable the services you don’t need. But there’s little practical reason for this situation.
Another thing Windows doesn’t quite do at installation is be nice enough to detect all your hardware and provide drivers. Of course, this is hardly Microsoft’s fault, it’s a matter of licensing. But still, regardless of whose fault it is, you are still stuck with installing most of your drivers after Windows has been installed. Except for installing the binary nVidia drivers, I’ve never done this on any other operating system. Yes, it’s a magical feature Microsoft has been advertising since Windows 95, a Holy Grail called Plug’n’Play, though that was hardly PnP.
The First Boot
I have a 21″ screen and I must confess that the first time I booted into my freshly installed system, I managed to understand why there are so many people switching back to the Classic theme. When it’s big, Luna looks even more ugly than when it’s small. I switched back to the Classic theme with no regret — and not from nostalgia, but simply because of the few traces of good taste I still have. I don’t know who designed Luna, but I do hope he’s not working for Microsoft anymore.
Aside from that, the first impression I had was quite favorable. The interface is clean, the desktop is not cluttered with icons (does anyone miss “Connect to Microsoft Network” and “Network Neighbourhood”?) and there’s an overall impression of consistency.
Indeed, compared to the TCL/TK, Athena, Motif, Qt, GTK and wxWindows hell from most Unices, the Windows interface has an overall feeling of consistency and through-thinking. Some HCI guidelines were surely used and abode almost thoroughly, both in the system and in most 3rd party applications not distributed with Windows. This means that an user will rarely find himself in trouble searching for the Copy command or trying to find how to open a particular windows inside a program. Compare this to the interface hell of programs like Gimp and you can clearly see who wins this set.
This is arguably the result of a real “cult”. The Windows interface hasn’t changed significantly since Windows 95. Fortunately, they did manage to realize that having a 1 px margin between the Start button and the edge of the screen is very bad. While some people doubt it’s the most usable and ergonomic interface, being the standard one and, with the exception of the cluttering taskbar, quite bogus-free, few people are too unhappy with it. I was comfortable with it myself, despite being a WindowMaker user for a very long time. For those who would do anything to get rid of it, there are alternatives, like the LiteStep shell.
Two for the Drivers
Judging from the fact that Microsoft managed to put the Start button one pixel down, it seems that this was an important issue and I was not the only one who found it awkward. Therefore, I can only conclude that I am the only bastard who thinks that having to restart your computer after you install a driver is something not even the Flinstones were confronted with.
Turning Irony Mode off, I still can’t help wondering why this is still happening. We are living a time when even hobby operating systems support loading modules on-the-fly. In my case, installing drivers in the last few years have been a matter of obtaining the module (or compiling it, which is trivial) and loading it with one command. Having to restart every once in a while is no big deal usually, but in my case, Windows only managed to recognized my graphics card. So: drivers for my network card, USB drivers, TWAIN drivers for my scanner, printer, drivers for using the extra keys on my USB keyboard and drivers for my sound card. That makes 6 times I had to restart my computer, not counting the seventh one for DirectX.
On the other hand, unless the peripherals you are trying to use are fabricated somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, the drivers are often better than their equivalents on most alternative operating systems. In some cases, the difference is only incremental (compared to OS X for example), but in other cases it makes a huge difference. For example, you will find that some printers work erratically or have some missing options when using CUPS. You’ll hardly find a printer that doesn’t behave correctly due to driver problems on Windows. In this case, being the operating system most people use does have its advantages. A hardware company can afford not to support Linux or Zeta, but not supporting Windows is not a good way of making it out of a niche.
Changing the system’s configuration is quite simple to do using the Control Panel, but I have found the range of the options in there quite restricted. Most of the options are hidden in the Registry, and the Registry is simply the worst thing windows has to offer.
Plain-text config files have a lot of advantages. I can grep them, I can edit them on-the-fly, even non-interactively with sed if I know what I have to change without looking at them, and since there are separate files you are sure that none will become too big for the system to manage well. Compared to this, I find it hard to realize why someone would actually prefer a big, binary file, which gets corrupted and makes all other programs behave erratically or stop working as soon as one program handles it the wrong way. The Registry is effectively what some experts call an SOP (Single Point of Failure). That is, a part which is sufficient to bring down the whole system if it is damaged.
Furthermore, since there is no way to recompile the kernel, the options you have when trying to adapt a system for a specific purpose are quite limited. This is part of the reason why there are so few embedded systems running Windows compared to those that run Linux and derivatives. This also means that there are no ways to fine-tune your system to the point where you can fine-tune systems like FreeBSD or Gentoo.
Moving further on
The next step I took was installing the basic software I needed. Going through installing ClamWin and Opera was easy, but then hell kind of broke free for me.
For one thing, I was accustomed to having a number of utils available when installing my system. I’m used to having a few archiving tools for handling tar, gz, bz2 and zip files, and being able to uninstall the programs I no longer need by using something as simple as a package manager.
This proved to be a major problem when moving to Windows. First of all, I often found myself having to install yet another program for an easy task. Before installing Emacs, I had to download WinAce. After installing an mp3 player, I also had to install the OGG/Vorbis plugin manually. Installing an older ear-training program I have used required me to manually install the VB6 runtime. Installing LyX also meant manually installing MiKTeX. You get the pattern.
I haven’t had to deal with manually resolving dependencies for many years now. Again, this is mainly a problem of licensing, but no matter whose fault it is, installing software is still slowish. On most Unices (and not only on Unices), installing a program is simply a matter of selecting it from the package manager and pressing OK. On Windows, I have to find the project’s web page, download it and any dependencies it may have, then install them separately — and installation is interactive, too.
On top of this comes the fact that the Add/Remove Programs… dialog is not always “updated”. Install programs can bypass it, meaning that I still got stuck with some files and registry keys that I no longer wanted. This is, however, eased by the fact that each program has its own directory, in a MacOS-ish style — although not nearly as polished as the system in OS X (which literally renders a package manager useless in most cases).
All these combined mean that it’s quite easy to end up with a cluttered Windows installation. But this is by far the smallest software-related problem with Windows.
The thing I hated most was that I simply had to manually install everything I needed, and this is no small list. Only the development tools I needed took about 50 minutes to install, and this is simply because you have to supervise every single package being installed. In addition to this, Windows literally comes with “nothing” installed — except for a few easy games, a set of rudimentary system tools and a few basic programs (like Internet Explorer and WordPad).
The hard part is realizing what exactly is that 1 GB of files Windows XP spits on your hard drive, when it doesn’t essentially install anything meaningful. Take the example of BeOS for example. The Developer Edition installed about 2 GB of files as far as I can remember, but that included several development tools, a dozen of games or so, some word processing tools (including a competent WYSIWYG office suite), a complete set of basic Unix tools, multimedia-related software and full documentation. By comparison, the only “serious” piece of software installed by Windows XP is Media Player, which I didn’t use at all since I installed VLC.
On the other hand, Windows does offer the widest range of software available for an operating system, as far as I can tell. There are free tools for just about anything, from games to compilers, and freeware (but closed-source) programs are often truly excellent and could even be commercially successful. By comparison, there are still areas where other operating systems are struggling to catch up. The only OS that offers a comparable amount of software is Apple’s OS X, but with Apple switching to Intel, much of the software is confined to running through Rosetta, which is very slow.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t help reaching the conclusion that in its default installed state, Windows is pretty much useless. Its initial configuration is very bare in terms of what it offers (not in terms of hard drive space). For example, after installing OS X, you get a good e-mail client, a good photo management application, a competent web browser with tabs, a handful of little utils, a serious CD burning module (the CD burning feature in XP is pretty much of a bad joke, really), a capable and complete set of administration tools, plus a set of basic development tools like gcc. When installing a Linux distribution, you can make up a complete desktop system right from the installation procedure. In Windows, this isn’t the case. You need to install everything manually, because by default you only get a very bad web browser, a rudimentary set of administration tools, a resource-hungry Media Player and… that’s quite about it. This is, literally, an operating system that Just Works (TM) — because it does little else than booting up.
Shell Shock
One of the things that has always made Unices so popular and admired was the shells out there. In fact, most operating systems today have some sort of a competent CLI interface. This is for two reasons. Firstly, in order to offer a way to automate repetitive tasks. Secondly, because you may expect to login remotely, without having access to a graphical environment. And thirdly, because there are cases when you will simply discard the GUI, like when running a web server.
Windows sticked to cmd.exe, which is essentially a slightly polished version of command.com. Command.com itself is little more than a CP/M shell clone. So essentially, cmd.exe offers the same facilities which computers were offering 25 years ago, on Z80-based machines. Needless to say, this is very painful, and has had two consequences.
First of all, there are almost no Windows-based quality CLI tools. These are only meant to be used in extreme cases, like rescuing installations. The shell itself is so bad that it makes no sense to make CLI tools — almost nobody would use them anyway.
In extenso, if you want to run Windows on a “passive” station, for a file server or an e-mail server, you will need both a VGA card and a monitor. You may dig out the monitor in the end (maybe by using VNC), but you’re still stuck with the VGA card since Windows won’t run otherwise. However, this means there’s a serious resource consumption. My current file server runs on a 233 MHz Pentium MMX with 16 MB of RAM. Windows XP won’t even install on it, but it does run FreeBSD 6.1 (which, ironically, is even newer than Windows).
This restricts Windows to a number of computers with the necessary resources. Although the requirements are fairly modest by today’s standards, you should realize that it’s impossible to surf the web using Windows XP on a 166 MHz Pentium — which will, however, happily run Slackware.
Speaking of restrictions, this also applies for multitasking and multiusing. I never came to understand why having a multiuser OS is so interesting until I realized that I cannot do my work while my girlfriend does hers on my computer, logged in through a VNC session. That’s because you cannot have two users logged in simultaneously on a Windows station. As for multitasking, the scheduling algorithm used by Windows XP is quite primitive. As a result, having 25 windows open in 6 virtual workspaces (an usual event on my Unix stations, since I rarely turn off my computer so I just leave everything running) makes my Pentium IV struggle evidently.
Restrictions also apply to other things. For example, Windows cannot read partitions like ext2/3 or ReiserFS without 3rd party drivers. Now, if it’s safe to assume that most people won’t use them on their computers, it is surely not safe to assume that I will reformat my USB stick using a primitive system like FAT32 so that I can use it on Windows stations. This kind of dictatorship (see below) made me sick enough.
Micro Dictatorship
The details above by themselves were certainly not sufficient to convince me Windows XP is not a worthy alternative to what I having been using for many years now. Unix systems have their own limits, like poor hardware support (in most cases), poorly-documented software, lack of standardization on some issues and so on. However, after only two or three days of using Windows, I ended up having a lot of minor annoyances springing up.
For example, the anti-virus had to scan for viruses. This implied looking up through a whole pile of files, without making assumptions. This is a rather resource-intensive thing, but it’s also necessary. My initial reaction was quite unprofessional, I’d say, when I realized that the antivirus was crawling through my music collection. I obviously thought that’s useless — OGG files are surely not executable so there would be no way to hide a virus in there. Then I realized that, if you want, you can really make Windows try to run an OGG file as an applications. This would obviously be impossible on Unix, since my OGG files have their executable flag set to 0. The scanning added up to the whole maintenance thing. Without a decent scheduler, and since all applications were interactive (i.e. the defragmenting program asked me which drive to defragment, for example), I had to do the maintenance myself, a thing I’ve never done on Unix.
Then came the problem of the interface. I’m used to having the Minimize button in the upper left part of my Windows. I simply don’t care that Microsoft’s UI experts believe most users would prefer it the way it is now, I want to move it, which I can do in just about any X11 window manager, and, as far as I can remember, even on AmigaOS or OS X, with third party tools. I couldn’t find a similar option on Windows.
Installing drivers also proved to be problematic. If Clueless Sue doesn’t know what type of printer she is plugging into her USB port, I certainly know, because I purchased it and I don’t need Windows to “search for drivers”. I already know not only what printer I have plugged in, but I also have the driver CD, so I just want a dialog box that asks me for the driver. No wizard or anything else.
What I’m willing to point out is that if you want to do something that Microsoft has not tried or does not recommend, you’re out of luck. The system will not only often act unexpectedly, but also consider you so dumb that it will try to stop you. For example, when clicking on the Windows folder in My Computer, you will be warned that those files are sensible and you should not alter them. Right, I couldn’t tell that, I was absolutely sure my operating system was called Microsoft Doors. This adds up to other similar small things, like the annoying “Drive Space” alert (as if I didn’t have a My Computer status bar to tell me how much space I have left) or the “End Now” button in the dialogs about not responding processes, as if I had clicked the Close button of an unresponsive window because I wanted to be asked a question.
In the end, Windows simply didn’t prove flexible enough compared to what I was used to. Computers and operating systems are tools for me, and I don’t adapt to my tools. I adapt my tools to my needs. However, I did learn a few valuable things.
The Checklist
First of all, I found the Windows experience much, much better than what it used to be a few years ago. I haven’t seen a BSOD during this week, which is a serious change compared to the days when I saw at least one a day. Windows XP is quite fast and requires fairly less maintenance.
However, compared to what I am using most of the time (Linux, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OS X and Minix), Windows proved to have three major flaws.
First of all, what’s in the box is hardly what it’s advertised to be. You don’t get a modern operating system, packed with useful features and exciting prospects. You get a rather primitive system, both in terms of architecture and in terms of basic tools. And it’s certainly not modern — the architecture hasn’t changed significantly since the first versions of Windows NT, while other systems have evolved dramatically (compare what Ubuntu is now to what Debian was 10 years ago, even at the kernel level). The much-advertised multimedia experience is pale compared to OS X and, in some ways, even to BeOS. And, for the last ten years, Microsoft has constantly advertised the improvements in Windows security and how much more secure Windows is when compared to Linux, OS X or Unices. However, I’m yet to suffer from spyware and viruses on these systems.
Secondly, Windows proved to be too much of a hassle to maintain. Windows Updates, defragmenting, virus checking, spyware checking, system checking for registry problems and other similar problems are simply too much. On the other operating systems I use, the only thing I supervise are system updates, and that’s because I want to know what it installs and maybe bypass some updates. Quite about everything else is scheduled, and requires no attention from me since the process is completely non-interactive. As a consequence, I don’t even think I can name more than 5 arguments of fsck — since the tools itself is free, all my computers use roughly the same cron file, which I just copy-pasted around, so I only looked at them a couple of time.
And finally, Windows proved to be too inflexible. There are a lot of things I can’t configure, and those which can be configured are accessed through a cryptic Registry which you have to very careful with.
Nevertheless, I’m not willing to imply that Windows is not good. In many cases, it is the right tool for the job. If I was a web developer on a tight budget, I’d rather use a low-end PC to run Flash and Dreamweaver on Windows instead of spending much more on a low-end Mac for the same reason. It still remains the right tool if I wanted to play games and I couldn’t afford a games console. And there are countless other scenarios. So I’m not willing to bash Windows here. But I do want to point out a paradox.
Despite being, essentially, quite rudimentary, Windows manages to be an incredibly bloated operating system. In time, you run across all kind of features you couldn’t care less about, but at first you simply realize that a freshly installed system filled 1 GB of your hard drive with what seems like nothing at all. This makes me think that Windows XP is probably a patched-up version of Windows 2000, built over an aging codebase, adding new features without bothering to remove those that were not necessary. And, considering that Vista is just as bare in its initial setup, but four times larger, I can only guess what Vista is patching up.
It’s hard to speculate on what will happen next. Microsoft built a monopoly on the basis of the users’ computer ignorance and not-so-competitive business practices. However, this is hardly what I’d call a solid foundation, and when a spark for decline is given, the whole thing can crumble easily.
I’m not exactly an anti-Microsoft guy (I admit I’ve seen Windows 2003 running very well on some servers, and if I needed a domain controller I would use Windows). I’m not a Unix evangelist either — my only gospel in this field is the Right Tool for the Job. Windows hardly proved as a usable tool for mine, let alone as being the Right one. However, I do believe that promoting rudimentary tools (like Internet Explorer) to industry standards only for the sake of corporate business was a major obstacle for progress. In some ways, Windows was like the Spanish inquisition, quickly destroying, reducing to underground or banning to third world countries anything that didn’t fit in Microsoft’s view. Therefore, I do hope for that spark I was talking above to come sooner.
About the author:
I’m a student and part time journalist and software development from Romania. When I’m not fiddling with computers, I’m usually singing or reading something.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
There was no achievement involved in having your first computing experience be Unix instead of Windows. There is nothing to be proud of.
Of course there is. I, myself, had XENIX on my first computer and yes I take some pride in the fact that I had to actually RTFM and learn to use a computer rather than the point,click,pray approach most people are forced into when starting with Windows.
Edited 2006-10-23 15:46
No it isn’t. I loathe that kind of elitism.
Edited 2006-10-23 15:45
That is not elitism. Please learn what the word means before mindlessly spitting it at people. I’ll give you some extra help on this one.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/elitism
Fsckit, your point is obvious but some are getting wrapped up in the particular word you used. It would be better to say that you are very pleased rather than proud.
According to definition 2, it actually could be called elitism. Consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group. The group would be those who used Unix before Windows.
I envy you. From about ’86 to ’02 I always had the sensation that I was missing out on the true computer experience because I had almost no Unix access. I finally made the switch to Linux in ’02.
No elitism, just attitudes of affected superiority.
I think what he is trying to say that learning the ‘hard way’ is a good experience because you are forced to understand more. That extra experience pays dividends later. It’s a rough way to start, but like it or not, you get an edge because of it.
Of course there is. I, myself, had XENIX on my first computer and yes I take some pride in the fact that I had to actually RTFM and learn to use a computer rather than the point,click,pray approach most prople are forced into when starting with Windows.
If you’re going to go down that path then I suggest you have nothing to be proud of. After all, you didn’t write the Xenix kernel, you didn’t write the compiler. You’re just another user, despite any false pride because you typed some words in a terminal instead of pointing and clicking.
So you are proud that you couldn’t figure out how to use a computer on your own, and had to use a manual?
I’m not getting the connection. How does reading the manual != learning on your own?
How does reading the manual != learning on your own?
I’m not sure, but most people seem to think that computers need to be simpler than toasters and that a chimpanzee should be able to use one.
Learning how to use a computer to it’s fullest potential is frowned upon, because it shatters the myth that pointing and clicking is more than enough to reach that potential.
People don’t like to be outclassed, but geeks show them otherwise. Deep down they hate the geeky kid who cleans up after their malware infected mess. They know they can’t get by with just clicking and that they are dependent on the ones who know more than just click.
So any signs of elevated skill level will bring out hostility.
I’m not sure, but most people seem to think that computers need to be simpler than toasters and that a chimpanzee should be able to use one.
Yes, it is a shame that you don’t have to write a bash/awk/sed script to run your TV/VCR/DVD/Microwave.
Learning how to use a computer to it’s fullest potential is frowned upon, because it shatters the myth that pointing and clicking is more than enough to reach that potential.
How dare people have other interests than reading source code and scripting manuals. And how dare Ubuntu script kiddies not know how to write kernel modules.
People don’t like to be outclassed, but geeks show them otherwise. Deep down they hate the geeky kid who cleans up after their malware infected mess. They know they can’t get by with just clicking and that they are dependent on the ones who know more than just click.
Deep down they’re laughing at geeks who don’t have the ability to understand that most people think of a computer as a tool, and nothing more.
So any signs of elevated skill level will bring out hostility.
And of course angry geeks shouldn’t be surprised when their “elite” bash scripting skills don’t get them the respect of einstein.
P.S.
This comes from someone who was programming Linux professionaly (even did some kernel work) for eight years. Sorry, but I recognize the real world that is separate from false geek pride world.
Yes, it is a shame that you don’t have to write a bash/awk/sed script to run your TV/VCR/DVD/Microwave.
Not a very good analogy, unless you’re TV/VCR etc happens to have precisely the same functionality as your computer, as well as liability. Not that they asked for this level of CLI interaction. They just said that it shouldn’t be ‘just point and click’ without expectation to spend time learning how the system works. A perfectly reasonable comment. Why did my phone come with more literature than my laptop?
Deep down they’re laughing at geeks who don’t have the ability to understand that most people think of a computer as a tool, and nothing more.
and what’s wrong with expecting people to learn how to use their tools safely and efficiently? To risk misrepresenting you as much as you’re misrepresenting the person to whom that was addressed: should we be let free on the roads in cars without lessons or supervision?
Edited 2006-10-23 17:03
Not a very good analogy, unless you’re TV/VCR etc happens to have precisely the same functionality as your computer, as well as liability. Not that they asked for this level of CLI interaction. They just said that it shouldn’t be ‘just point and click’ without expectation to spend time learning how the system works. A perfectly reasonable comment. Why did my phone come with more literature than my laptop?
Using the command line and RTFM’ng doesn’t teach you how the system works.
and what’s wrong with expecting people to learn how to use their tools safely and efficiently? To risk misrepresenting you as much as you’re misrepresenting the person to whom that was addressed: should we be let free on the roads in cars without lessons or supervision?
Wow, a car analogy – haven’t heard one of those before. Please tell me the last time that someone was killed because they didn’t have lessons or supervision on their desktop
Using the command line and RTFM’ng doesn’t teach you how the system works.
Perhaps not, but for some tasks it’s a heck of a lot easier to use the command line than to point & click repeatedly.
It’s true that I could ask other people how to get done what I want to get done, that I could ask them questions instead of reading the manual, and they might answer my questions more quickly & thoroughly. But I’m also wasting time that they could spend on other issues. In the meantime, I’m kept dependent on others, rather than learning important problem-solving skills, such as how to solve some problems on my own. Manuals help me grow more independent.
Reading the manual won’t teach you how the system works? Wouldn’t be much of a manual if it couldn’t.
Using the command line and RTFM’ng doesn’t teach you how the system works.
The latter might give you some idea of how to use whatever it is you’re trying to use.
Wow, a car analogy – haven’t heard one of those before. Please tell me the last time that someone was killed because they didn’t have lessons or supervision on their desktop
Who said anything about people being killed? You seem to like taking comments and completely misrepresenting them. It’s just a complicated piece of machinery, like a computer. Why shouldn’t (complicated) pieces of machinery come with manuals that you’re supposed to read? Like my phone. Or toaster for that matter. Or lessons that you’re supposed to take? Like a car.
You’re exaggerating every argument anyone makes. They say reading the manual is great and everyone should do it because it aids learning.
Then you say that people shouldn’t have to use awk/sed: Where did that come from? Graphics designers likely read the manual or take a class to become proficient with a program like photoshop, is that a bad thing? Or is it beneficial that they learn the power of the program by having someone tell them; instead of hacking it out like they’re writing a missing manual.
It seems to me you’re setting up a straw man.
You’re exaggerating every argument anyone makes. They say reading the manual is great and everyone should do it because it aids learning.
Great, then they should pick up a book on the linux kernel and C programming because it aids in learning and “knowing your system”. The turtles going down don’t stop at a bash prompt.
It seems to me you’re setting up a straw man.
No, I’m just past the young-geek phase, whose self-esteem is dependant on maneuvering around a bash prompt.
Now you’re attacking the messenger.
I don’t see how knowing how to program in C and understanding Linux aids in the use of applications.* It sounds to me like you’re doing exactly what I just said you were doing, exaggerating to setup a straw man.
*I’m a C programmer and I have a vague idea of how a kernel works.
So you are proud that you couldn’t figure out how to use a computer on your own, and had to use a manual?
Don’t sound like a fool. If you never make the first step of “admitting you have a problem” you will never be anything more than just another user for whom the machine works by magic. RTFM is the most important skill a computer user can learn.
edit: forgot to quote.
Edited 2006-10-23 16:17
Don’t sound like a fool. If you never make the first step of “admitting you have a problem” you will never be anything more than just another user for whom the machine works by magic
Most likely, the microprocessor that runs your computer is pretty much “magic” to you.
RTFM is the most important skill a computer user can learn.
I must be a genius, because I never RTFM for my browser or most of the software I have on my system.
No, you are just apathetic. To use software, all you need is your intelligence. To use software well, you need to consult with the wisdom of others. Whether your interests lie in that direction is a different matter.
No, you are just apathetic. To use software, all you need is your intelligence. To use software well, you need to consult with the wisdom of others. Whether your interests lie in that direction is a different matter.
Wisdom of others? If I need a freaking oracle or FM to use a browser then it’s crap software. I expect to RTFM (or hyperspec) if I’m programming in Common Lisp.
See, this is just ridiculous. You choose a piece of software that’s considered largely universal (everyone knows about it) and saying you don’t need a manual for it.
Of course you don’t, you’ve used it for years. But what if you didn’t know what a URL was? What if “http” wasn’t part of your vocabulary (even though you, the typical user, don’t know what it means). People like this exist. They can either have someone tell them these things, or they can read it in some piece of literature.
Of course there is. I, myself, had XENIX on my first computer and yes I take some pride in the fact that I had to actually RTFM and learn to use a computer rather than the point,click,pray approach most people are forced into when starting with Windows.
Taking in pride in being *able* to learn to use the software is something I can understand. But why take pride in the fact that you *had* to learn? An accomplishments are something to take pride in, circumstances are not.
I, myself, had XENIX on my first computer
My first work computer in 1975 had DEC RT-11 as its operating system. My first home computer bought seven years later ran CP/M (Gary Kildall who wrote CP/M had originally worked on the DEC operating systems). Great not to have started with MS eh?
I didn’t get to Unix (SunOS 3 and an early AIX) until 14 years after starting with DEC operating systems. I only wish I had got to Unix systems earlier. I use Ubuntu at home now, it just works.
Edited 2006-10-24 02:15
Your style of article, “Section an identical Windows and Unix experience and point out the negatives for windows and positives for Unix”, never has, and never will convince people to use Unices over Windows. People want a computer experience to be seamless, intuitive, and simple; unix has none of these qualities.
People want a computer experience to be seamless, intuitive, and simple; unix has none of these qualities.
So what about MacOSX?
Edited 2006-10-23 15:36
People want a computer experience to be seamless, intuitive, and simple; Windows has none of these qualities.
(write a stupid comment and get a stupid answer)
“people want a computer experience to be seamless, intuitive and simple” — I classify windows to be beginners-friendly, not user friendly.
Take a sweex USB/serial converter.
Windows:
1) install hardware.
2) tell windows you have a driver as windows doesn’t understand the well known pl2303.
3) install driver
4) reboot, as the software tells us so.
5) see that the device doesn’t work, install usb to serial software
6) reboot as the s/w tells us so.
7) see that it doesn’t work. take out the plug, reinsert
8) yes we have our driver.
linux:
1) plug in the device.
same story for a lot of cameras, storage devices, mp3 players……
Edited 2006-10-23 16:54
You’re kindly leaving out the multitudes of hardware where the story goes like this:
Windows:
1) Plug in the device.
Linux:
1) Plug in the device.
2) dmesg
3) See it wasn’t detected.
4) Break out Google.
5) Read forum posts for 30 minutes.
6) Find a reference to an obscure HOWTO on some guy’s site Apache index listing.
7) Follow the 3-year-old HOWTO, using trial and error.
8) Finally get the device working at 11 PM after buying it at noon.
9) Feel a sense of smug satisfaction that you are, after all, using the superior operating system.
Funny. When I try to install my scanner and printer on Win/OSX,it requires hours and hours of work, since HP and Canon’s drivers for my equipment are borked for OSX (as in, they won’t install, forcing me to download 3rd party software), and for Windows they just require a massive download and tedious installation procedure, as well as an uninstallation procedure, since a lot of pointless utilities are installed alongside the drivers (and you can’t opt out).
On Ubuntu, I can plug them both in, and they just work.
Point: it depends on what hardware you are talking about. The biggest problem with Linux hardware today is i.e. changing videocards. In that respect, Linux is still stuck in the stone age.
Edited 2006-10-23 19:09
Depends on the linux distribution. In Fedora it’s typical a matter of plugging in the card and start, and it will be detected automatically.
uh, um, WHY do people still bring these lame-ass arguements?
Windows:
1) Plug in device.
2) Windows doesnt recognize device
3) Pop in Driver CD
4) Install drivers
5) Reboot
6) Device conflicts with another device (haha, just kidding)… ^H^H^H^H^H^H^HH^H the device works
Linux:
Pretty much the same as with windows, cept the chances of it being recognized are higher.
This isnt 1995 anymore, Linux has come a loooong way. If you have a pc thats 5 year sold or newer, then most likely, most of your hardware will be seen on installation. If you have some obscure piece of hardware then it can get a bit interesting, but thats the SAME problem windows has.
Before I get flamed for being biased, I use windows XP on my main tower and Debian on my ghetto piddle tower.
You wouldn’t go into an Apple store expecting everything to work on your Windows box. You wouldn’t go into a PC retailer and expect everything to work on your Macintosh. Why would you go into either one and expect everything to work under Linux.
I did my research before buying a Linux box, and every bit of hardware works once it is booted off a Linux installer or live CD. I don’t need to use dmesg, Google, forums, mailing lists, how-tos, or the midnight oil just to get things working. In fact, I barely even had to touch Google in order to do the research.
Now if only I could say the same thing about Windows, which can hardly be considered as stable unless I download the latest drivers from ATI.
Indeed, yet you entirely missed the point.
The point was the process one has to take when a piece of hardware DOESN’T just work out of the box in Linux.
You can expect to have that sort of trouble with poorly supported hardware on any operating system. For example, I have a LocalTalk printer. It works very well under Mac OS X and it works fairly well under Linux. Unless I buy third party software, it will not work in Windows XP. It will work under Windows NT 4 Server and Windows 2000 Professional, but you will have to dig rather deeply into Microsoft’s documentation just to figure out how to set it up. But it would be silly of me to blame Microsoft or their operating system simply because it is difficult to setup a printer that they were not even interested in supporting.
People want a computer experience to be seamless, intuitive, and simple; unix has none of these qualities.
Clearly you are not familiar with Mac OSX !
It is Seamless, intuitive and simple to use.
and it is the most secure Unix there is BSD
Mac OS X isn’t really Unix, nor BSD. It’s Unix- and BSD-like. But that’s all.
Mac OS X isn’t really Unix, nor BSD. It’s Unix- and BSD-like. But that’s all.
Split hairs
Leopard will be POSIX
BSD is a flavor of Unix
but 3.5>V
Don’t worry, splitting hairs is what the zealots resort to when they don’t have any more points to make.
OS X > *
PC-BSD is great for ease of use, security, & stablety
HELLO!! MacOSX!! PC-BSD!!
Mac OS X! SUSE! Linspire/Freespire! Xandros! PC-BSD! Many more…
Windows has come a long way since the days of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Likewise, so have *NIX based operating systems. My biggest problem with Windows remains its uber restrictive licensing. This was bad enough in previous iterations but now we have to contend with Windows Genuine Advantage (and its bigger, scarier brother lurking in Vista.) While I never advocate software piracy, I do advocate trust in your customer and the giving of some leeway. One should never be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
On page two, the abbreviation of a Single Point of Failure is SPF, not an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). I found that “typo” funny
Needs to be fixed though. Reading on…
Edited 2006-10-23 16:01
Actually SPF is ‘sender policy framework”. Personally I think people should stop abbreviating things that were never meant to be abbreviated and just speak english.
Personally I think people should stop abbreviating things that were never meant to be abbreviated and just speak english.
Have you ever done work with US Military contracts?
I swear they make the acronyms then come up with something that loosely fits after the fact. For the given example, most of the contracts I’ve seen use SPoF so they can say “ess-pawf” (yes, in that accent).
Very nice article, the only problem is that is a bit late to review WinXP.
The only part I dont agree is the maintenace thing. I’ve just updated winxp once, when I installed the OS. I run no antivirus (I just dont use IE and Im behind a router).
And you can change the position of the windows minimize buttons with “windows blinds”.
I run no antivirus (I just dont use IE and Im behind a router).
That’s the silliest rationale I’ve ever heard. Do you use email? Have you EVER allowed an ActiveX control to run? Do you have Java installed? Do you ever run applications you’ve downloaded from the internet?
Do you use email? Yes, just take care, is not that hard.
Have you EVER allowed an ActiveX control to run? Why I should do that?
Do you have Java installed? Not a problem with it yet.
Do you ever run applications you’ve downloaded from the internet? I try to avoid the freepornxxx.exe’s and the like.
OK, good luck with that.
Why you’d want to try to outrun virii that DO exist vs. protect yourself is beyond my comprehension.
Think of using an A/V app like using a condem. You don’t HAVE to, but why risk it?
Think of using an A/V app like using a condem.
AV is NOT like a condom. Condoms prevent infections from the get go.
AV is more like antibiotics. For AV to be effective you already need to have the virus active in your memory. AV can’t fight something that isn’t already there.
It would be nice if something like a condom could be written for OSes.
You’re forgetting On-Access scanners. They prevent infection (to some extent). Combine with a firewall and something like Lavasoft Adaware, and of you go.
My machine is clean, and I have javascript turned on, running activeX plugins (only after being prompted and only on sites I trust) and a lot more.
If only an AV were so effective as a condom… The right prevention technique is common sense.
because it feels better without
sorry, i had to
You will be very surprised and angry when some worm slips through router, firewall and Windows defenses, it happens. I was like this until msblast, sasser and similar made my computer a self-restarting piece of machinery. Then I switched to Linux. I still have to fix my parent’s computer with Windows XP even though it has automatic updates enabled, it’s behind router, has a firewall and antivirus app (and after some education my father uses p2p apps to download porn
).
Edited 2006-10-23 16:50
If msblast “slipped” trough your hardware router you obviusly had something bad configrated on it.
I know windows can be full of viruses of 10 minutes if you dont take care, but if you DO take care, it doenst have to.
You are right, I logged into that router and it seems that someone enabled DMZ for my parent’s computer IP (I’ll have to ask them next time I’m at home
). I was wondering why did that previous infection happen…
“That’s the silliest rationale I’ve ever heard. Do you use email? Have you EVER allowed an ActiveX control to run? Do you have Java installed? Do you ever run applications you’ve downloaded from the internet?”
Don’t open attachments in emails. Don’t install ActiveX controls from untrustworthy sites. Disable Java applets. Don’t download apps from P2P networks. Keep your system updated.
These simple rules coupled with Firefox and a firewall means you won’t need an antivirus.
Edited 2006-10-23 16:53
“These simple rules coupled with Firefox and a firewall means you won’t need an antivirus.”
and still we have to fix those machines….. how come ?
I know that this is a good base, but be aware of the flakey part that runs under your fingers, Windows.
I have seen those interesting ads (on this site btw) that I know not to touch but people do and they get infected quickly. We’ve done some studies on ow fast you can be infected and what it takes to get rid of infections. YOu don’t really want that on your own system.
We use VMware and roll back the image if we cannot fix a known problem. Most of us don’t.
The most flakey part is the lack of common sense.
Avoid certain sites and certain applications downloadable through p2p-networks.
That’ll do quite a trick.
yes I know but the real life example is that people don’t. So the trick doesn’t work for most.
Boy, I can’t believe this is a site filled with supposed techies. Good luck with your method.
In the meantime, your computer is *still* vulnerable dude! Just hoping a virus never lands on your PC is completely naive and absolutely laughable. Being behind a router and not using IE is NOT a suitable replacement for AV software.
[i][sarcasm]
You’re perfectly safe, just never open any attachment in email, install any ActiveX control, use a java applet, download from p2p.
Also, never use a torrent, never use an ipod (they just shipped with Windows viruses), never use a USB thumb drive that has touched another network or computer, never install a database server or an app that opens ports for remote connection. In fact, don’t use your computer for anything meaningful at all. Better yet, just shut your PC off and it’s perfectly safe!
[/sarcasm]
…And AV Software is not a guarantee of security. If it’s Norton, you might even get some exclusive trojans just for Symantec.
I work with several AV products, and you’ll be surprise about how a machine with zero problems and zero cleaning events can be infected. If you think you’re protected by using an antivirus, good luck for you. You’ll need it.
Btw… My windows installation is almost 2 years old, without antivirus. And without incidents.
“In the meantime, your computer is *still* vulnerable dude! Just hoping a virus never lands on your PC is completely naive and absolutely laughable.”
I’ve been “hoping” that a virus never lands on my PC(s) for many years and, guess what, it never has. The only viruses I’ve come in contact with were those on other people’s machines that I was hired to remove.
Any knowledgeable and responsible computer user can stay away from viruses. I challenge you to uninstall your antivirus, and if you follow the rules I gave in my original post (which everyone should do anyway), you’ll never get a virus, period.
But anyway, I know I can’t convince you that it’s not needed and you can’t convince me that it is, so there’s no reason to debate it…
Look, I’m not trying to convince you AV protection is needed, I just think it’s silly and reckless not to have it installed on Windows when it’s there, low level, and free. I hope you don’t get a virus, but why you’d rely on yourself to never slip up rather than simply installing some unobtrusive app like AVG Free to guard your box is beyond me. It just seems pointless to NOT run AV software.
Not getting a virus is easy if you remove all the functionality of a PC, which you’re advocating, if I’m reading your responses right. You’ve eliminated quite a bit of what I do on a computer with your anti-virus rules. 99% of the time, they are safe actions, and the rest of the time, I’d have AV software to protect me.
That said, I use a Mac, so there’s no challenge to uninstall AV necessary. My platform isn’t at risk, even when I do all the things you have to avoid.
It’s simple: If you don’t have a computer, you don’t have a problem.
Using Firefox(but patched iexplorer is also fine), regularly patching vulnerabilities in XP, not running executable attachments, and generally taking care not to execute suspicious stuff is enough to stay clean. To allow antivirus to crawl your system each time you run an exe file, is not really the best solution
And even if you get infected by some really nasty one, you can download a trial and clean it up, or find instructions to remove it manually. I had to do this a few times (e.g. MS-Blaster got removed this way).
You haven’t updated XP since it was installed?
In that case I hope you installed XP within the last week – if not I’ll recommend you perform a system check.
Writing a very personal review, stressing your own views on and needs for computing in this comparative way is a bit pointless – sure you stress your subjective take on the matter, but then it is really not applicable to anyone else either. I would have preferred a review focused on FreeBSD, or perhaps a comparison between FreeBSD and Linux instead.
I’ve run Linux systems for seven or so years, and enjoy the benefits of a UNIX-like OS in both private and professional settings. I too can not stand using Windows anymore. But it doesn’t matter how much I talk about the pros of *nix, many cons are usually so technical or insurmountable for non-techies that there is no point in doing these comparisons. Why would someone who have learnt to control spyware be interested in switching to get rid of spyware?
From what I have seen, it takes genuine motivation, curiosity and creativity from the switcher to stand relearning how an OS can behave and use a *nix OS. What you can do is simply to support the n00b while she has decided to take her first few baby steps and give suggestions tuned to her interest – throw Sabayon disks with 3D game demos at gamers, dyne:bolic disks at media artists and KnoppMyth disks at movie buffs. Show something ubercool, and let them come to you when they feel ready trying it out themselves.
You say in the article: “In many cases, it is the right tool for the job. If I was a web developer on a tight budget, I’d rather use a low-end PC to run Flash and Dreamweaver on Windows instead of spending much more on a low-end Mac for the same reason.”
Yet I find it hard to believe that a web developer earning his money on such projects would really want to use an inferior tool just because of maybe 200 USD. If you compare the overall pricing of buying the computer, the display and not to forget the most expensive part of the equation, the _software_… You’ll need Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop etc.? And then buy a 399 USD PC to use it on? Come on. If you spend a couple of thousand dollars on equipment, anyway, and buy software that brings computers to its knees, you’ll want a decent computer, not some plasticky fall-apart-when-i-look-at-it piece of sh*t.
I managed to not to choke reading a couple pages of the article’s drivel, but I think I’m completely full.
Its time for the author to get out of his parents basement and learn something useful, like carpentry. He certainly doesn’t have a really great grasp of how to write an article.
Hint: Add content
Morglum
it’s recognizable.
The author just told his personal story about having to install hist workstation together with the tools he needed to do his work.
In our hearts we all know thta installing windows can be a battle. Yes, of course, there are laptops that have a CD at hand that installs everything. People seem to forget that those ISO’s are produced by the maufacturer and you know what ? They have taken quite some time to get all the drivers, tools, whatever before they could press the CDs.
And still you have that basic windows machine, that machine without a compiler. Without a reasonable text editor (what, you mumbled notepad, wordpad ?), or even without a reasonable office suite.
If I would have to make my laptop (Amilo D1840W) a windows machine, it would take experts hours and hours. Installing SUSE 10.1 is putting in a DVD, start the thing, select a few things and then wait. That’s it ! No more waiting, endless rebooting.
And don’t forget what happens if you now have your XP harddrive ready and move it to another system. STOP_error galore and MS will tell you on the phone to reinstall. Oh well. All the people bitching here that the author is wrong: write your own review, or better yet, try it yourself before you start bashing around….
there was an elementary mistake which shocked me: the part about the virus scanner reading .ogg file, the author say this isn’t necessary because they are not executables.
This is quite naive..
There have been quite a few case of error in decoders where specially crafted JPEG or other format would be used to trigger a buffer overflow in the player.
So antivirus software is supposed to detect what are essentially format errors in data files now? Why, because certain particular applications using those files are badly written and will fall victim to bugs which in turn become security problems? How about fixing the bad app and be done with it?
You can see I hope why AV is considered bloated, and AV scanning itself a bad security practice. Where does it stop? It doesn’t. Blacklists grow and grow and add more and more stuff and never take it out, because you can bet that once Symantec added that file format check for JPEG’s they will keep on doing so forever in all future editions. Instead of fixing some simple matters once.
Nice article, no one here knows anything about what it’s like to switch operating systems. I really have no clue what installing XP is like. Thanks for the deep insight. Wasn’t a complete waste of time to read the article. You really should be proud of not running windows especially in this web sites user base. You are an elite minority here. I hope you get the cookies i sent you for being so cool. I think you should write more articles that have never been written before like “Linux on the desktop” or “Windows has bad security” or “OS X vs Windows XP” (sarcasm intended)
While the author tries to somewhat keep a fair view of his personal experience, I really don’t think it is a fair assessment of windows xp.
It’s important to keep in mind that windows xp is, after all, a 2001 product. It isn’t supposed to magically find new drivers to newer hardware.
– The installer is easier and simpler to use than previous versions (the recurring NT nightmare of incompetent technicians). Also, unattended installation is also somewhat easier, and broadly used. In fact, the installation process is so simple that any average IQ newbie could install it. Try that with 2001’s unixes.
– The driver model is quite more advanced than the credit its given. There are a ton of drivers that usually works provided with the base installation, and new drivers can be installed, made active and even versioned (with the driver rollback feature) whithout rebooting. There are several exceptions, such as AGP drivers and things like that. Those exceptions also exist on unix – there are some situations when kernel recompiling is required.
– The luna interface is downright ugly. With the windows classic, you get an uncluttered desktop and actually usable space even at 800×600 (in 2001 17″ and bigger monitors weren’t that common), and you could actually change the resolution, refresh rate, etc without needing to edit some crazy files and restart the GUI server. Also, you get some very nice and useful fonts and decent AA even on low dpi settings.
– The registry is a PITA, but it isn’t supposed to be messed with except for advanced users. My guess is 98% of windows users doesn’t need to be messing around the registry (manually or with tweaking tools). The registry is a point of failure, but I had zero problems with windows xp – on several hundred machines. Something has definitely improved.
– While I agree that the modularity isn’t windows strong point, I also think it was never meant to be. Windows is designed as a desktop product (since 1.0), so some modularity would be helpful but its not a key issue. There are other products more appropriate to those kind of needs.
– XP comes with some crappy ZIP support. It’s not ideal, but there are several options, like 7ZIP. My guess is if MS tried to bundle that kind of software with the operating system, they’d be sued (just like they were sued because of IE). Also, dvd playback and some sound formats require extra drivers. AFAIK, just like fedora. The VB6 runtime problem its not a problem – blame the software maker, it should had embedded the runtime on the installer.
– The Add/Remove programs feature is as good as the program uninstaller you’re trying to remove. AFAIK, on *nix is common practice not to remove files created by the application, so if you uninstall MySQL, you’d still have the database files on disk.
– I agree that a clean windows installation isn’t very useful. But then again, MS has a whole line of software products to fill that gap – and their objective is to make money with software. There are a wide range of free software options, probably more than you get using OSX.
– A 2001 browser is a quite bad browser, even ignoring the security holes. Try running Netscape 7 and you’ll see.
– The lack of a decent CLI can be a problem for advanced users – but you can do more than running command.com compatible batch files. You get a somewhat more funcional (and lethal) tool, Windows Scripting Host, that allows execution of VBS scripts. We all know how that worked for windows, so imagine if you got some bash and/or perl on the base system. Also, most users never need to use the command line – you can actually work without needing it, just like on MacOS.
– If you’re running windows as a server, you might want to have a second read at the EULA. There are several limitations on using windows XP as a server. Yes, you’d be way better with a samba server – and its quite faster, too. On the VGA subject, AFAIK, many linux distros by default don’t allow headless install (I think it’s needed a custom kernel, but I can be wrong), and many of them will fail when you try to use some older adapters, like Hercules or CGA adapters, perfectly usable for text terminals. About the pentium@233, your problem is RAM. Windows is quite demanding, not only because of the GUI, but because it’s designed to be used on newer machines. Comparing it to FreeBSD is unfair – unless you install X+KDE or similar and use it as a desktop.
On a 166MHz machine you can surf the web. I wouldn’t recommend installing SP2, but if you have at least 128Mb of ram it won’t be a total nightmare. And yes, I’ve tried it.
– The multiuser support is somewhat rethorical, but VNC is not multiuser. You can actually have several people logged in on the computer, but only 1 of them using it. Once again, if you want it, you’ll have to buy a new version of windows (2003) and pay some terminal services licenses (which btw are quite expensive). If unix works for you, you probably are better of with freeNX and your unix of choice.
– Why sould MS be eager to provide filesystem support to 3rd party filesystems that eventually wouln’t support some features such as ACL’s and encryption when users needing those kind of features are an exception? And why should I want to use a journaling filesystem on a pen drive? It could be useful, yes, but not without its cost.
– ClamWin is not an “antivirus” because it offers no realtime protection. Its a command-line virus scanner, and a quite slow one. The OGG files might not be executable, but may contain exploits to some players. Not that long ago, there was a problem with jpeg handling. Those kind of vulnerabilities also appear seldom on unixes. Also, you try to execute an ogg file just as easily as on unix.
– Believe it or not, the mainstream windows user is that dumb – some people actually deleted parts of the operating system because it was using space or because some files dind’t have an icon. Also, you can configure start menu so it won’t show “My computer” as an explorer view, but as a cascaded menu – so to see how much space is available you’d need to go to properties. It is also very common people that can’t understand storage units, so if they see 26Mb free on the system drive they don’t know if its little or much.
Windows XP has some major flaws (being the most evident the poor security record), but advanced users can skip some hassle like antivirus, anti-spyware stuff and defragmentation. Its easy not to catch viruses and spyware if you know what you’re doing. Defragmentation isn’t that useful if you keep about 20% of the drive space free.
I do agree that people should use what they find more suitable for them, and what makes them more comfortable. In my case, its windows on the desktops and BSD on the servers. You shouldn’t try to run Windows XP and expect it to be like an unix. It’s not. Its nor better or worse – its different.
It’s important to keep in mind that windows xp is, after all, a 2001 product. It isn’t supposed to magically find new drivers to newer hardware.
It’s also important to keep in mind that Microsoft decided that a big release every five years or so was a better approach than smaller incremental releases. As of today, WinXP is still the latest supported version of Windows that I’d get if I bought a new PC. So you could almost say that lack of support for newer hardware was a design decision.
Try that with 2001’s unixes.
Here you go: http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/01/Mandrake_71.pdf
That’s the version of Linux I started with. Nice graphical installer.
While I agree that the modularity isn’t windows strong point, I also think it was never meant to be. Windows is designed as a desktop product (since 1.0),
It’s also a server product and that’s where it’s lack of modularity can hurt. It sounds like they might be doing something about that though.
The Add/Remove programs feature is as good as the program uninstaller you’re trying to remove.
The menu choices are the worst part, I’m having to constantly fight the menus to get them in a usable state. You’d think they’d enforce some kind of standard of usability. Will this be coming with Vista? Anyone know?
A 2001 browser is a quite bad browser, even ignoring the security holes. Try running Netscape 7 and you’ll see.
It still has better standards support than IE7. That was when browsers started getting good. I preferred Mozilla to Netscape 7 at that time and when it came to CSS support it was second to none.
Actually, most of 2001 linux distros didn’t run on my 2001 computer… And yes, it was fully “compatible” with linux.
Mandrake and Nice on the same sentence can’t really make sense, but that’s ok.
And btw, windows XP is NOT a server product. And I didn’t understood why something working as a server has to be modular. There are some cases, yes, but then again there are some other products. When you buy a server appliance, is it modular? Generally no. When you buy a router, is it modular? Well, if you spend some big bucks on top-of-the-line models, yes, maybe. When you buy a cellphone, is it modular? I don’t think so – software is seen as a part of the base package. And while you may argue that software and hardware are different business, the main channel of distribution of windows xp is via OEM licensing – making the software a part of the base package.
About Add/Remove, yes, I’ve had some problems, most of them with shitty or badly tested installers. I didn’t understand what you mean by “usability”, but I guess it could be better.
Actually Netscape 7 is from 2002, not 2001. You might have missed that. And its based on Mozilla 1.01, so the actual rendering engine is quite similar. You may prefer whatever you like, but NS7 and Mozilla 1.0 wheren’t that good compared to IE – not even on CSS support.
Actually, most of 2001 linux distros didn’t run on my 2001 computer… And yes, it was fully “compatible” with linux.
It did on mine, but you sentence doesn’t make logical sense. How can it be fully compatible and not work?
Mandrake and Nice on the same sentence can’t really make sense, but that’s ok.
Yes, horses for courses.
And btw, windows XP is NOT a server product. And I didn’t understood why something working as a server has to be modular.
I know, in my head I was thinking of Win 2000/2003 when I was raising server issues. Those are the ones I’m familiar with using.
About Add/Remove, yes, I’ve had some problems, most of them with shitty or badly tested installers. I didn’t understand what you mean by “usability”, but I guess it could be better.
In terms of programs being installed by company on the menu rather than functionality. That and the uninstall programs cluttering up the menu.
Actually Netscape 7 is from 2002, not 2001. You might have missed that. And its based on Mozilla 1.01, so the actual rendering engine is quite similar. You may prefer whatever you like, but NS7 and Mozilla 1.0 wheren’t that good compared to IE – not even on CSS support.
I’ve been on the cliff face of browser CSS support for years, and IE6 has always been bad even compared to very early versions of Mozilla. That’s one thing Mozilla has always had right and it has always been light years ahead of IE6. Just do a bit of research and you’ll find that is the case, IE6 took over from NS4 as the pain in the proverbial for web development.
The fact is though that Mozilla was perfectly usable and available in 2001. It certainly worked fine on my NT4 128MB machine at work. Long before Netscape 7 repackaged it. I’d switched away from IE6 even then, out of necessity, it just wasn’t a very good browser to develop with.
This is an interesting and thoughtful article to me. Of course in a way it is self-defeating: no one who wants to run the kind of set-up the author wants (emacs, sed, a host of unix or unix-like tools, etc.) would choose Windows as a platform in the first place. But then the author is perfectly aware of that and is writing something of a “what if …”
However, the article did remind me of three very useful things. First, just how bare-bones Windows actually is. You get the OS and a very small number of apps and that’s the lot for your top dollar. No wonder these folks rake in so much money. Second, if you want to run Windows then you have to run it the Windows way as the OS simply cannot handle any other way (for example, the command console is fanatastically limited). And third, just how old Windows really is. Considering its age, it actually performs pretty darn well and XP is certainly extremely stable in most situations. The let-down is security, of course.
Just my 2 cents, but I run WinXP for games and a bit of light surfing, perhaps. It is very good at both, ime. But for anything else, I run Linux. The author alludes to a huge burden of legacy spaghetti lurking inside Windows. Yes, it will be interesting to see what Microsoft eventually decide to do about this.
Then came the problem of the interface. I’m used to having the Minimize button in the upper left part of my Windows. I simply don’t care that Microsoft’s UI experts believe most users would prefer it the way it is now, I want to move it, which I can do in just about any X11 window manager, and, as far as I can remember, even on AmigaOS or OS X, with third party tools. I couldn’t find a similar option on Windows.
I want the X to be at the top right corner of the screen when the window is maximized. ( http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1la1.png )
Now I’ve tried quite a few window managers (at least 11 that I can remember right now) but NONE of them has this FUNDAMENTAL feature. I don’t care if some Linux UI “experts” never closes their windows, but I want to be able to close mine.
That’s a horrible idea. Windows should be difficult to close, at least difficult enough that doing it accidentally is unlikely. By putting the close button in the corner you make it much more accessible…
I’d say having the minimize in the corner would be a better idea.
In the mean time, you might look into alt+f4, it’s easier than moving the mouse.
Eehh..?
Unless you’ve done something really weird, the X will be in the top right corner in KDE and Gnome and with many different WM’s. So it will also be in Windows. The problem is the small gap between the maximize/restore-button and the close-button. It should be twice as large (at the very least) and the distance should be customizable in order to handle large resolutions (1600*1200 on a 17″-monitor).
Unlike in Windows there’s always a 1 pixel border. When there’s no border you CAN’T miss it because you can’t move the mouse too far.
Hmm… Is that with the Luna theme? Because with Classic there is a 2 pixel border on top and a 2 pixel border to the right of the close button. That is – if you have the taskbar in the bottom. Obviously I don’t.
And with the right theme you don’t have borders at all in Linux.
Because with Classic there is a 2 pixel border on top and a 2 pixel border to the right of the close button.You’re measuring the glyph. I am talking about where I can click. If I click on those two pixels it acts as if the button is clicked.
is where it really shows it’s an article to bash Windows. OMG it has a registry!
OSS fundies always make me laugh. Just like Homer does.
Even Microsoft has acknowledged that the Registry was a mistake.
That’s why we have something today called “Documents and Settings”.
From an architectural point of view the Registry is a disaster. A single point of failure, as it was stated.
However, Windows has quite a few nice features, incl. an indexing service for the last 7 years, yielding the users with the knowledge with a tool equivalent to the indexing in SkyOS and BeOS.
Even Microsoft has acknowledged that the Registry was a mistake.
The registry problem was fixed long ago. Pointing it out, as a problem, right now is complete stupidity. Too bad the author used it in his/her excuses. Of which they are all very poor.
Of course, from an architectural point of view the registry is a disaster. But the problem is kinda non-existant nowadays. The only problem is that some programs leave small bits of info into the registry. And that is a very minor problem in itself as it won’t affect boot performance at all nor consume more memory.
Actually it isn’t solved. At least not if you rely on older software. They can still screw up things, even though Microsoft has reduced the risk greatly.
Which is can occur in what percentage? 0.000000001%? At those odds, I’d say it’s pretty much fixed.
I’ve seen plenty damaged registries. And the damaged HDs and the stubborn people who insist on clean their registry database using obscure software or doing it manually.
>The registry problem was fixed long ago.
Was it? Difference is now that Microsoft educated many developers not to bloat it much. Remember for example what ICQ IM app did to registry:) But really, I still find registry misteriously growing in size during XP OS lifetime.
Not to mention that pre-SP2 versions of XP often ended-up with a completely corrupted registry blob in case system was too much overclocked (yea, they didn’t do any integrity checking, but just assumed cpu/memory operations will always give correct result).
Only with Vista they are introducing stores. Maybe this is the beginning of end for registry. Stores provide isolated (for writing) configuration space for each application, much like config files. Also apps by default aren’t allowed anymore to mess with a whole registry, but just the User part of it. IMO linux should take similar direction (like stores) if communities ever decide to go beyond simple text config files.
is where it really shows it’s an article to bash Windows. OMG it has a registry! OSS fundies always make me laugh. Just like Homer does.
You must be easily amused. If you read the article through you’d have seen that the registry is just one remark among many. There is a lot more to it, both good and bad about both Unices and Windows. For instance, it acknowledges the unity of the look and feel of the XP interface when compared to all the graphical toolkits in use on Linux, or the wide diversity and quality of software and drivers available for it. How’s that for bashing Windows?
Everyone will switch eventually as MS and other Mega-Corps take away more and more rights from “consumers”… That is, unless they get OSS outlawed (which I wouldn’t put past them).
Remember, corporations have no requirement to morality, only to profit and they are required to do whatever it takes to make higher profits every quarter; they don’t care about you, I, or anyone else.
Everyone will switch eventually as MS and other Mega-Corps take away more and more rights from “consumers”
Yes, the Vista licence where you can only install to two computers sequentially is a disaster. I plan to not buying Vista only because of that.
Windows is not as intuitive as is commonly stated; some learning is required. Even the “I don’t run AV on Windows” guy had to learn what precautions were in order to minimize the risks of not having AV on Windows.
The registry… Oh dear God why…
The “XP came out in 2001 so it should not be expected to have more recent drivers” comment needs to take into account 1) there are more recent versions of XP which are not much better 2) there is no reason why such things could not be included when new discs needed to be made.
Anyone else notice how for more than a decade the next version of Windows is going to solve all problems? I grant XP is far more stable than previous versions, but it took them six years to go from Windows 95 crash fest to XPs relative stability. Vista will, no doubt, be more secure than previous editions. And look how long it has taken them to (presumably) get things working well in that regard. What I’d like to know is why people get hyped for the next Windows when its main feature which people praise is that it does something less terribly than its predecessors.
Learning is required with every operating system. Security is a process, and while a more secure operating system might be a good start, it doesn’t make everything magically secure.
The fallacy of the unprotected windows connected to the internet makes a good article on some forums, but I find odd that most of the worms on the wild infect code that shouldn’t be active in the first place – like file and printer sharing and windows network client.
Learing the quirks of the system is necessary in every operating system – not only on windows.
About recent releases of windows XP – AFAIK, the recent releases include bug and reliability fixes, and rarely one or two improvements. To add new drivers to the codebase costs time and money, and even some manufacturers don’t certificate their drivers. Also, the main distribution system for updates is downloading them, so more drivers – more bandwith, and more bigger updates. The thing MS should have done (it seems to be working with Vista) is to activate driver search on their website so the Add New Hardware Wizard could actually search for the driver online.
I find it funny that you put Win95 and XP on the same line. They have almost nothing in common, except some GUI familiarity and application emulation. If you want to compare XP’s stability, compare it with NT 3.5 and 4.0.
Its common practice for the software companies to promote the new release of their products as the second coming of christ. If the actual release takes almost as long as the second coming, you may start to be annoyed.
I dind’t read any blind evangelism about windows on this thread – but I’ve read a lot of misconceptions of people that seems to think if you don’t run windows, you’ll be safe.
“I find it funny that you put Win95 and XP on the same line. They have almost nothing in common, except some GUI familiarity and application emulation. If you want to compare XP’s stability, compare it with NT 3.5 and 4.0.”
Nothing in common except that when you want the latest games, applications or heck, you just go and use somebody else’s computer, Windows 95 and XP *were* the Operating System.
Actually.. No. When W95 was popular, usually the application executable was different than NT line (NE sig instead of PE), because often the application used a different API (printer enumeration, as an example). For those people who liked pirated games and NT, that was a problem cuz most gamerips available were stripped from NT code.
The fact remains – W95 and NT/XP are different operating systems. The WX line “died” with WindowsME. As an analogy, you probably won’t consider IBM’s linux offer as a new version of OS/2.
Well, you are not really right.
Windows NT and Windows 9x are two different kernels with the (almost) same API.
Writing applications working for both 9x and NT>=4 was and is a non-issue.
It was mostly on driver level the differences occured. Like the difference between Fedora and Ubuntu.
As XP is the successor to both 9x and NT, I think that my remark is justifiable, although I should have included NT in the mix as well. NT 4 was more stable than 9x, but it was more limited insofar as what could be done with it; that isn’t Microsoft’s fault, but that of third party software companies. I did get a load of blue screens with NT 4, though.
I agree wholeheartedly about the lack of magical security .
Considering the relatively low cost involved, considering other companies put out different revisions of their hardware, which I would hazard is much more expensive proportionally, I still think that the lack of newer hardware support in newer shipping copies of XP is a perfectly valid criticism. If they wait several years between major revisions, that is their business, but XP is still their current release and so seeing how it stacks up against other current releases is not unreasonable. If they don’t want to include more up to date stuff, again that is their business, but they shouldn’t be able to avoid criticism because of it.
As you said, learning is required for any operating system. But my comment was directed towards the “Windows is uber-intuitive” crowd. My inital version actually did carry an “all OSes require learning” bit.
About the fanbase’s reaction to the second coming comment I made, it was just something which came to mind, not necessarily prompted by anything in particular.
Very enjoyable and tongue-in-cheek. A review with some wit thrown in.
Can relate to some of his problems and can’t understand some of the personal reactions. It’s a OS FFS, not your mother or girlfriend.
More witty articles please
1) the new windows powershell is coming to address his shell complaints
2) IE7 is out with tabs
etc etc
As sa long time windows user I admit my point can be biased, but as a desktop OS windows XP is a fairly bloated OS, luna desktop theme is ugly, tons of useless services, tons of useless new API.
But the keyword is backward compatibility, win32 programs mostly work the same way since windows 3.1, this require far less work when updating a program, and you can even with some efforts runs DOS program with windows XP. this may seem quite stupid as you don’t want anymore to run Apple II programs on your shiny new Mac OSX, but most compagny have been slow at upgrading “mission critical” software, while hardware were much easier to replace.
But with windows you are mostly sure that old software would work on today OS ( not without pain though ), such things is less common with Mac OS as most of API were broken when updating OS9 to OSX (Mac OS classic emulator disapeared with 10.4 ).
The Other Thing that come to mind when thinking to windows is hardware profusion, of course it induce confusion too. But as a closed source widespread desktop system, vendors happily provide drivers, for the better or the worse ( raid drivers are not quite common for mac OSX). Plus Low level Kernel API stability (since windows NT4 )has helped a lot for develloping drivers.
However since NT3.51 windows NT OSes have growed around the NT codebase, bringing more and more “feature” even if XP is in some task fastier than NT4 for example, it introduce itself some bloat.
Even if the author miss some point about windows, he is right about the right tool for the right job, however as windows being widespread as a desktop OS it is a target of choice for malware, and virus aren’t as most people think the mostly common malware as today (think of zombies for botnet), that are not new with nix like OSes (good zombies aren’t very visible, think rootkit
), but as there is more and more bandwith available, widespread desktop os are a good target for trojan (good administrator don’t look into them too often, and bad admin leave admin right to there users wich give most of the security problem).
10 out of 10.