http://www.osnews.com/story/4123/Why_Windows_Isn_t_Hell_Or_Why_Linux_Isn_t_Bliss Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:15:23 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? No offence, but a 6 years old kid know more about computing than the author, now every guy with internet access can right an article. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The bootup is not slow and if it is your probably running services you don't need. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Very well said. Too bad this editorial will be shot full of flames, no doubt. Or the Mac Lackys will immediately say something like, "Well that's why I use a Mac..." Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The bootup is not slow and if it is your probably running services you don't need.

Okay...what's your bootup time and what distro of Linux are you using?

Not that I believe this to be a big issue, since Linux is meant to be run for long stretches at a time. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Okay...what's your bootup time and what distro of Linux are you using?

I am using all sort of Linux distros. Boot time is between 45 seconds to 2 minutes. Depends what's gets loaded. In a very clean distro, like Gentoo, I get boot times of only 20 seconds.

Then again, WindowsXP also loads in about 20 seconds, and BeOS in 8. ;-) Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Then again, WindowsXP also loads in about 20 seconds, and BeOS in 8. ;-)

You forgot DOS in...ummm 1 :p Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "The bootup is not slow and if it is your probably running services you don't need."

You're right, but don't forget I'm talking about "the masses" here. They nor have the skills to edit, nor the knowledge which services can be shut down. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? slow news day Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Windows is not without its bad points.
For one, you bring up windows updating, windows update is a lot simpler to use than most Linux distro update programs, but the updates themselfs are known to break things, and having to click through an EULA every so often for an update sucks.
Linux will not unify its desktop as you suggested, one of the wonderful things about Linux is the choice, and a standard distro by Suse/SCO/others was created - United Linux.
Sorry if this comes off as a troll, I use both OS's every day so i'm not saying one sucks and the others gonna save the world or anything.

PS. My slackware-9 setup boots to a gdm prompt in a comparable time it takes windows to get to its login prompt. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I guess bootup times depend on the distro you use. On my laptop, Slackware 9 is as fast as win2000 to boot. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You're right, but don't forget I'm talking about "the masses" here. They nor have the skills to edit, nor the knowledge which services can be shut down.

You are right, what about the masses that dont know how to turn off the messenger service on Windows 2K/XP and messages popup on their screens about they just won a million dollars? Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most distro's have a gui which will allow them to select which services run on boot, and they generally have a good description of what the service is. (And others are plain obvious, a desktop box doesn't generally need pcmcia drivers loading) Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > WindowsXP also loads in about 20 seconds
Not 100% true. Yes... when you boot WinXP, you see the mouse curos very soon, but usually WinXP still loads some stuff. Of course, it depend on what apps load at start up. Until Windows is really useable, it takes another 20 seconds. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Not really. It really boots fast and is usable at the same time here. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The obligatory Mac/Apple flamebait topic to get people warmed up...

For yet another tepid and limp Linux/Windows "review"/"editorial" from someone with insignificant industry experience.

I guess it's getting close to the end of the month and rent is due. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This article is not near perfection. It's a bunch of flames deserved from both sides.

But the interesting point is that geeks gets concerned with the least interesting point which is boot time. Why not fight back the Windows Update comparison? Why not comment on GUI unification? C'mon, and when I read the first post I knew at some point someone would shout the default "but linux is supposed to have 10 years of uptime so slow boot time is no big deal". Then, again, people lost their focus on the subject of the article: desktop linux. When you have to turn on the box to check an e-mail quickly, it's a real pain to wait amanda or the ethernet to warm up.

Having too many incomplete choices is also the same as having none.

Today, we have this good choices: LindowsOS 4 rocks as a desktop enabled OS that is still thousands of miles away from the Windows XP ease of use. And maybe RedHat/SuSe + Ximian Desktop 2 is a good workstation OS. So, forget Gentoo, forget Slackware, forget Mandrake and let's focus on those distros. There's nothing good on having dozens of dozens of uninteresting distros that people assembled just to show up to friends "look, I wrapped up cool new distro". duh. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Boot up time is very much a non-issue. In slackware w/ edited init script I could boot from lilo to X in under 15 seconds on a 233 MX Gateway laptop. Gentoo is almost this fast of a booter too.

This guy cites too many diffrent Linux distrobutions as a problem, but it seems to me his lack of trying different Linux distrobutions is the problem. There is no golden distrobution where you get an extremely fast desktop, good server, great hardware support, easy to use, install any program without thinking about, do everything without playing give and take distro. But if you understand what you need you can pick a distro that is very well suited to you. Which I think is very much diffrent from Windows and what you suggest which is pretty much one size fits all. I believe trying to make one distrobution fit everyone is a terrible way to try to create a good operating system, and it's one of the reasons why I can't stand to use Windows anymore.

As a side note could someone register "Linux XP" and "Linux Longhorn" as a trademark and not allow anyone to use them...ever? Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? that is so true, Linux will never become widely used until there is some co-operation between the various companies. The Open Source Desktop is so fractured that creating an application that will run on all distributions is a nightmare, installation isnt standardized and for every application seems to be different. The truth is until Linux comes together with a standard desktop environment, installation format and better hardware support for mainstream hardware it's never going to take off. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "This guy cites too many diffrent Linux distrobutions as a problem, but it seems to me his lack of trying different Linux distrobutions is the problem."

Mandrake 8.1-9.2 beta/Suse 8.2/Redhat 8.0 (downloading 9 right now)/LindowsOS 3.0-4.0/Lycoris DesktopLX build 75/Debian 3.0rc1 and some smaller ones.

I've tried some okay. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Compared to Windows 2000/XP it is veeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy slllllooooooooowwwwww!

Also, XWindows is slower than frozen catsup. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How do you measure boot time. I think my PC takes a 10 - 15 seconds just to go through the POST.

I get boot times of only 20 seconds
That's about the same amount of time it takes OpenOffice to start up. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use linux because freedom is important to me. Even if Windows was better I would still prefer linux. I don't want to be dependent of only one company and open sourcecode is a big
difference.

This is also the reason why I don't use Mac OS X, Be OS, OS/2 or anything proprietary operating system.

I see articles like this and I think that many americans still not understand the "free" in "free software" concept...

I don't care if MacOS X is more "sexy" or Windows GUI is more friendly. M$ is a predatory monopoly and I will not feed it. Even when I buy my hardware I don't pay M$ taxes. I choose my chinese notebook because it came without operating system. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "I see articles like this and I think that many americans still not understand the "free" in "free software" concept..."

Hey man, I'm not American, I'm Dutch!

And I'm not dissing Linux/Open-Source... I said it just ain't the right thing (at this moment) for the "masses"(like that word somehow Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Well, I think Linux is not all "bliss". Linux would be all "bliss" if we forget the slow boot-up/shutdown times, if we forget the lousy hardware support for, let's say, Ati products"

The "lousy" hardware support is in most cases directly the fault of the vendor. Especially in ATi and NVidia's case. Both ATi and NVidia produce their own Linux drivers now. ATi's Linux drivers are currently very subpar in my personal experience. ATi and NVidia also refuse to provide any real detailed hardware information regarding their newest series of products which makes it very hard to not have "lousy" support. You want to complain about lousy support? Go talk to the freaking LOUSY VENDORS.

Disgruntled ATi Owner Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thom sez:
I think the major Distributions should all "join hands" to create one version of Linux, with one desktop, a uniform look, with one update system and so on.

OK, how are you (or anyone else) gonna _make_ them do that? Like Linus says, trying to make Linux developers do anything is like herding cats. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I really don't know what everyone is talking about regarding ATI drivers. I think ATI support is better than nVidia. I think most people fail to realize that there is an ATI DRM module built into both XFree and the kenrel.

What's that you say? You have an All-In-Wonder?

GATOS

Check it out. In my opiniont gatos provides better tv support than ATI's own drivers. (In windows XP with the latest drivers and MMC, there are a few channels I can't get, but in linux w/ gatos drivers and xawtv, every channel comes in crystal clear.)

Try some opensource drivers. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Wow, my spelling was horrible. Please try to excuse those mistakes and figure out what I meant. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? im not very linux savvy, as in i need a graphic environment and am pretty much unable to do serious stuff from a command-line. i tried 3 linux distros on my pc for the past 6 months, and i just dont get how linux can possibly be ready for 'normal' users (after all those articles saying linux is ready for the mainstream desktop). i, personally, came to hate kde and gnome: slow, vaguely unresponsive, weird crashes left and right. yes, u understand this is not rolled out by a 50k employee company like microsoft, and its fine that way, but considering my level, this means i dont have much other choice than sticking to windows, like it or not.. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm really tempted to time my boot time (that requires a reboot, not happening soon, i can assure), i'm fairly certain it'll beat my father's XP Dell box. I have plenty of services running, and he's treated his box like most normal users would, so in my mind it would be very fair. But of course the hardware makes a big difference. My scsi disks eat his [ultra cheap] ide disks for lunch speedwise.

I really dont mind linux boot times, what i dont like though, is the time it takes to get into GNOME and KDE. My GOD! It takes less than a second from the time i press 'enter' at XDM till i have my ion window manager loaded. But when I use my friends' boxes and hvae to load one of the DEs, I _hate_ having to wait for them to load, over 15seconds is unacceptable, especially if it's a 1ghz+ box with 512mb RAM. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Honestly, who really wants Linux for the masses? I mean why is it an OS has to be usable by people who don't want to think a minute about how computing actually works.
Linux is great at what it does and keeps improving rapidly. But the idea of a dumbed down Linux is just crazy. I am sick of all this Linux needs to do this... nonsense. If you don't like it don't use it. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am a Mac OS X and windows developer. I have installed Red Hat and FreeBSD for testing, but do not target them because of the small market. I hate windows. Apple proved that Unix can be made usable by the average user. I guess that is what Lindows is supposed to be, but it tries too hard to be like the Windows I hate. But it will be a Lindows type distribution that brings more of the Masses to Linux. As a programmer I prefer my Linux Machine over my windows one. But if I was to recommend an OS to a friend, it would be OS X or Windows not Linux. Linux/FreeBSD is just to complicated for the average user.

Most of my friends are techincally advanced, yet nearly all abandoned Linux very soon after installing it. Not because it was malfunctioning, just that it was not worth their effort. I do not know of anyone who uses it as a primary desktop system.

I disagree with the author about windows not being hell however. I view it as nearly as bad as Linux for management (but not for installing programs and running them) most useres end up replacing their Windows system every couple of years because the prices have gotten low enough that when the instabiltity gets critical thay just dispose of them and "upgrade." Linux may confuse them, but when the computer is under $500, why not replace it when you have problems. If Mac and Linux users took that approach, they would each have 20% Market share. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maybe Linux users tend to exaggerate its virtues, but I think a lot of us feel that we're part of a movement that actually stands for something good. This undoubtly can lead to zealous behaviour.
I mean, how cool is it to brag about the greatness of Microsoft? Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Not really. It really boots fast and is usable at the same time here.

Yeah Windows its sooo good, I just had an erection while I was using media player, tell me if Linux can do that. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The article was very good and basicly dead on.

For boot times he's right, I have never had any distro boot on any of my computers in less thena few minutes, nor have a seen it on any others. Using all sorts of hacks to get it booting fast doesn't count, its the out of the box setup that does. And for differances in times between distros, one more reason for their to be one distro.

"I see articles like this and I think that many americans still not understand the "free" in "free software" concept... "

What you miss is people know what you are talking about. But majority of people realize it simple doesn't matter. And a few people who get bent out of shape about software being "free" doesn't matter to the rest. Also if it is simple the miss understanding of the word free thats the FSF and GNU's problem. It's not the worlds fault those groups highjacked a word that is used for one thing and try to twist its meaning into something it doesn't do well. Stick with open source for open source and free for as in no cost. Don't use free to mean opensource. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with the first statement, disagree with the second. Linux isn't perfect, but it's what it represents to me-- free as in freedom-- that is as important as what it can do. Windows is increasingly becoming tied to its maker, who wants to attach its bloodsuckers to our necks and pump us dry.
"Linux is gonna bring back Elvis", "Windows shot president Kennedy"
Yes, both of these things warp the time-space continuum, and so they are incorrect. But nothing will persuade me that Bill Gates isn't the devil of Hell, and that Microsoft isn't the whore of Babylon. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Bugger. Are these editorials freely coming in from some forum somewhere or by e-mail? Cause I seriously want to make one too Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What's the point of all of this?

To create a computer terminal so easy the most retarded human being could easily use it without breaking it and, God forbid, without thinking?

We seem to be coding for the lowest common denominator instead of asking people to pick up a book and learn a little about computers, like how to use a mouse and type on a keyboard.

The keyboard just eludes some people. Is that because they can't count to 104?

Personally I think we should make fun of anyone who can't use Windows and help anyone who wants to learn *nix by pointing them to where the manual is. We didn't have anyone there to hold our hands. Why does everyone else deserve this type of education? Because all of a sudden computers are relevant? Education is expensive! And this ain't communism, folks. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Goes a bit further than what is said in my post "Linux for the masses" but I totally agree with you. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Micro$oft may have 50K programmers, but Linux has millions.

In any case, each computer sould be set up to do what it is indended to do, and in the best way. Many people still use NT4 because it works and is reliable. It does what they want it to do. When I have a new job for a computer to do, I consider whether an existing computer can handle it. If not, I look at Linux on yet another computer. Other people have gone ahead of me, and most problems are well solved many ways. Linux lets me choose what is best for my situation.

If there is only one choice, you have to make your situation fit the choice. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First thing, I've yet to see a post from Marcelo that doesn't bash the US in some way

Secondly, Linux is fine if you have the time to spend with it. In fact most OS are fine if you have the time to spend with them. From what I can tell, most people that are new to linux think it blows because they have no idea how anything works. Further more when they try to learn they get overwhelmed because to do the one small think they want, they have to learn about 6 other big things first. The same thing happens in windows too, linux people are used to the whole configure once, run constantly. They aren't used to having to constantly check for viruses, clean out outlook express spam, get rid of spyware - so it annoys the hell out of them. Then there is Apple... being an Apple user I can tell you, everyone hates us. If its not because of Steve, then its either, our hardware, our OS, a one button mouse, or the people in the Apple store wear khakis. Again its the same thing people don't want to spend the time or the money to get used to something new. They want drop in replacements, that are "improvements". Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? all of you suck. this article is right. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "I mean, how cool is it to brag about the greatness of Microsoft? "

About as cool as bragging about the virtues of Linux: not at all cool. Aren't you paying attention?

And what movement? Anybody who thinks Linux is a movement, is an idiot. A community, yes, a movement, no.

Does anybody really believe that something so mundane as an operating system is as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., or Poland's Solidarity?

Shake the rocks out of your head. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? They aren't used to having to constantly check for viruses

Eh, most virus scanners will run in the back and scan/update by themselves if you wish. Don't like the overhead of a virus scanner running in the background, then what's the alternative? Linux running VMWare of Win4Lin? Ha!!

clean out outlook express spam

I wasn't aware the spam was exclusive to Outlook Express? When the hell did this happen?

get rid of spyware

If you don't want spyware on your machine, then don't install any. How hard is that? Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use Linux, WindowsXP and MacOSX (used BeOS too). I don't understand what's so important about boot time, it's true, at least for my pc (P4 2.8. SATA RAID0) that WinXP boots much faster than Linux (and MacOSX on my 600MHz iBook) but Linux boots fast enough 30s (after grub was loaded) to not be annoying, win takes about 5s after loading grub. As for hardware support, both WinXP (Home) and SuSE Linux 8.2. (Pro) required me to insert a floppy with the drivers for my SATA RAID controller at the start of the installation. Drivers for WinXP came with the controller, the Linux drivers had to be downloaded from the vendors (Promise) site. The same was the case with drivers for my ATI Radeon 9800Pro. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I currently use Libranet 2.8 / Sid (Debian Unstable). I agree with some of the problems you mention with Linux, but I strongly disagree with your solutions.

"lousy hardware support"
This is mainly a product of low market share. As more people use Linux, hardware support will improve. Linux distros could certainly improve things by using "standard" kernels or at least making sure their custom kernels don't affect drivers. This will also get easier as the underlying pieces of Linux mature and change less. The Linux Standard Base should also help out here ... eventually.

"distributions suddenly have to be paid for"
"some distributions suddenly get discontinued"
These are realities of using any software that is not dominant (read monopoly). I doubt SUSE or RedHat are going anywhere so you are probably safe with them. Also, Debian (or Debian based distros) is another "safe" choice here.

"the crappy way software is installed"
This is one of the worst Linux problems, IMHO. Though Debian's system (apt) is really good for doing Windows Update type stuff, it is heavily dependent on the public repositories. This will never work for commercial proprietary software (such as games). Linux NEEDS a way of easily installing applications across distributions (both from CDs and over the net). Projects like autopackage may (or may not) be the answer to this.

"twelve different applications for one task"
This is a problem, but I think the distros are starting to address it. Some distros (RedHat starting with v8.0, Ximian XD2) have started choosing "best of breed" applications for individual tasks.

I think the idea of creating one standard desktop Linux distro is HORRIBLE. Currently both Gnome and KDE are improving BECAUSE of the competition, not in spite of it. Certain parts of distributions do need to be standardized for the purpose of making application installation easier (see LSB). Also, the major desktops are learning to play nicely together ala freedesktop.org. We aren't there yet, but things are improving.

So, in summary... Is Linux ready for the Desktop (of the average PC user)? NO. Is Windows better than Linux on the desktop now (again average PC user)? YES Given this, the kneejerk reaction is to standardize Linux. However, if taken too far (one desktop) we are pretty much throwing out Linux's advantages so that it can compete with Windows. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Finally, some constructive replies.

But anyway, standardizing Linux doesn't mean "throwing away it's advantages". As I stated, the normal Distributions should still remain available.

Secondly, for hardware support, it's kind of the same as I stated in the article: My opnion is that it's not: more Linux users ===> more drivers, I think it is: more drivers ===> more Linux users. Simply put, that is. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you care about good driver and application support, easy installation, and want a computer that never crashs or needs to be rebooted, use OS X. OS X is easier to use than Windows or Linux (and easier to fix) and doesn't get screwed up. And you can do way more on OS X. Also Mac has a friendly community which don't make fun of you when you need help - unlike the Linux community. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux is far from perfect. It just happens to get the job done for some people. Strange, it works best for people who read the manual(s) and think about what they are doing and what they want from their computer.

Windows has many strengths. It gets the job done for some people too. Strange, it works best for the same category of people. A monkey couldn't accomplish more in Windows than in Linux. And if it would, would we care?

It is often said that Linux is the alternative. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I think people say that meaning 'an alternative OS', not 'an alternative Windows'. Or do they mean the latter? Because if they do, they would be much better off buying Windows. OSes are not easy to clone. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That article was a load of crap, and I'm not just trying to be incidiary.

"Open-source flow?" Look, guy, a lot of us didn't like Windows before Linux existed. We continued to not like it while Linux matured. And we still don't like it. We're not treating Poor Old bill unfairly, or acting like sheep. Windows-hater isn't synonymous with Linux-Lover, nor is the reverse true.

"Linux XP?" Uh, yeah. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Micro$oft may have 50K programmers, but Linux has millions. "

And where do you take your numbers please ? Look at the kernel/OS contributors list. The *real* programmers who *really* give something to the Linux core. One or two hundreds. At most.

It's not because an open-source software is used by millions, that actually that same number really give any advancement to the source. Dream on ! Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Quote from hmmm:

>What's the point of all of this?
>To create a computer terminal so easy the most retarded human being >could easily use it without breaking it and, God forbid, without thinking?
>We seem to be coding for the lowest common denominator instead of >asking people to pick up a book and learn a little about computers, like how to use a mouse and type on a keyboard.
>The keyboard just eludes some people. Is that because they can't >count to 104?

What's wrong with having computers the average Joe can just walk up to and use or be taught to use with a relatively short training period?

I don't disagree with people needing to learn how to use computers, but much of the problem with computers these days (not gonna pick on any single OS here) is that you have to spend more time getting them to work optimally (chasing driver conflicts, fighting viruses, etc.) than you do actually using them. I'm pretty good under the hood of a computer, but for my car, I gas it, change the oil, and take it in for regular tune-ups by a QUALIFIED SERVICE TECH. I don't need to be a mechanic to successfully use my car to accomplish daily tasks. Why should you have to be as good with computers as I'm sure most of us on this list are just to use the damn things?

'Course, if we fix that issue, then we might have to fund grief counseling for all the arrogant boobs who hang their self-esteem on in-depth knowledge of an computer OS (note that I'm not picking on any particular OS here)... Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Someone please listen to this man. This is the "mainstream desktop" target and he is lodging a very legitimate complaint! Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm definitely going to write a part two of some sort. I guess it seems not everybody quite got the essence here. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You seem to have aknowledged that if services were shutoff
then it would boot much faster, but say that joe sixpack
doesn't know how to turn them off. Well in that case I guess joe six pack doesn't know how to turn off, norton very bloated suite of tools, MSN, quicktime,media player, adobe, office and the 20 other programs he/she downloaded. because it requires thumbing though either the programs properties/msconfig/startup menu/registry, ect. in which case windows takes minutes b4 being useable. Be fair here please.

Which brings me to the next issue, you say windows is easy to find in the file system well personally I don't think throwing everything in one folder is 'well orginized' I call it one folder as in 'windows' dir but inside that is a mess (system, system32, NT, etc)DLL's and dependancys are scattered in windows dir or program folders,registry an advanced user would not have problems with this but an advanced user would also not have problems with reading how unix file system works. If you took 20-40 minutes http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.2/index.html#TOC
you'd see that it all makes sence and would immediatly know where to look for things.

And the last think I can remember you saying was package management, redhats new beta has yum installed in it. If you think its harder to type 'yum install ' then to open a browser,
search for your program,
download it,
click though its install sheild anwsering questions
then spend time doing it all over again when you want an update or 'need' an update. Then I say your standards are set a bit too high.
BTW don't say okay 'now' they have yum but before they didn't. well up2date had the ability to fetch new packages from the internet but you're only limited to a few thousand apps (the ones that came on RH CD's)Now the
app support should be much larger I expect.

Linux is by no means perfect, windows is better at alot of things like hardware support which you mentioned. This
is why I do not like these articals the authors are usually great on only one of the systems and get tons of things wrong. like "yeah but windows blue screens" (thats like a once a month thing if that on XP) or "X on linux is slow" (Try booting up fvwm it'll load in 2 seconds.) Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? that pirating software isn't for everyone.
It is illegal. Even if the "Law Enforcement" can't go to your house and see what is on your computer.
Windows is all about software pirating. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? When will people stop posting crap articles to make it sound like they actually have something to say. Use whatever OS you like, no matter what someone else says you will always go back to what you like best. I use Linux in the office for dev, Win XP and OS X home for dev. They all have their strengths and weaknesses but they all server a real purpose. So if you have something to bitch about, try and fix it if you otherwise just stay quiet and put up with it. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Personally I think we should make fun of anyone who can't use Windows and help anyone who wants to learn *nix by pointing them to where the manual is.

So that's the kind of thing you say to your Grandmother? You're too retarded to use Windows? Get a life? I don't really know if you get it or not, but technically savvy people are not the majority. In fact, you owe most of your happiness and well being to people with little to no computer experience that work at places that do not require them to use their computer in a complicated manner. So, the next time you try to get some sort of service rendered, make it clear to those who are helping you that you think that they're retarded and that although they are willing to offer you services, such as making dealing with your car easier, or putting food on the shelf so that you don't have to hunt it, that you feel that they should read the book and screw themselves when it comes to computers.

It's amazing how many people think that we should all be free to see source code and yadda yadda but how few actually think that everyone should be free to enjoy the benefits of that. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > On my laptop, Slackware 9 is as fast as win2000 to boot.

You mean "as slow as win2000", right?

Sorry, could not resist. :-)

Koki Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Do people understand that an Operating System is just a tool. There are a bunch of different operating systems from AIX to Solaris to Windows XP to 2003 Server to FreeBSD to Shades of Linux to QNX.

Each OS has its strengths and weaknesses. A good IT person will choose the right OS for the job. No one OS can do every single job but they are all strong for certain things.

Do you want to program? Create a router? Play 3D games? Host a game server? Web server? File/print server? VPN? Firewall? Groupware? Run Databases? 100% uptime? Real Time OS? Embedded?

A good IT person or programmer will choose the right platform for the job. The backend database is DB2 running on AIX therefore we could easily use Linux and apache to make a web based front. Or the DB could be MS SQL and it would be easier to use IIS 6 with ASP.NET

Do we want to just setup a straight firewall? OpenBSD is about as secure as you are going to get right out of the box.

The point is, choose the right OS for the job given the rest of the circumstances. In your dream word you would be able to redesign the entire network using straight Cisco running only Linux. But get real. Often you are put into situations where you must choose the right OS to perform the most cost effective solution that yields the best results.

A good CompSci person will be able to understand most of the OSes and choose the right tool for the right job. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Tha's the Linux advantage, you can customise it at maximun, Windows by the oter hand you need to buy more software to tune it up like Norton sysutils. Pointless to spend more money in a OS to make it faster when you already payed for it. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Forgive my rash and radical stance, but the masses can go to hell. In fact, the only reason I'm in support of Linux' growing acclaim is for increased hardware support. Politics, economics and zealotry banter can go a blazes, for all I care. In fact, I'd hate for the masses to use Linux, I'd prefer large corporate entities deploying it in their work environment instead.

Blah, blah, blah, the masses don't want to use the command line, the masses don't want this, the masses don't want that. What's so hard in typing

install package

or

update system

at the command line? No, the masses would rather prefer...

And when did Linux become a slave to the masses? If the masses can't spend the time, the effort and the sacrifices to ponder upon a new and different digital culture, then the masses don't deserve to be blessed with Linux' benefits.

And who are the masses? A bunch of opportunist looking for shortcuts in life? Give me a break. Heck if Linux was such a chore, then the masses can stick with Windows or MacOS. I don't care! And then I hear Linux is not ready for the masses. Have you stopped to ponder and realize it's the other way round.

I am pleased with Linux' technical developments and I hope Linux/GNU and free software users continue to make their projects even better. Please do not be bothered by the so called masses. Superior coding, extensive testing, creative solutions, and implementing intuitive free software programs should be our fundamental priority. We should do this so that the general public acknowledge our superior works, not to please the masses or any one group of people. Stop whining and start acting.

Regards,

Mystilleef Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My 600Mhz Pegasos running Morphos 1.3 boots from cold to a fully functioning desktop in 3 seconds flat.

Beat that Lintel/Wintendo losers! ;-) Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? as the saying goes: "the masses R asses" Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "And then I hear Linux is not ready for the masses. Have you stopped to ponder and realize it's the other way round."

Let's imagine a fictive person. This guy is really a pain in the ass. He is anti-social, pessimistic, but, he does want the people around him to like him. He simply doesn't understand what should change.

What would you advice this guy? "Stay the way you are, everybody else should change!" Isn't it more realistic that HE should change, and not the 5.999.999.999 other humans in the world?

Think about it. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree.

Too many ppl are trying to get everyone to run linux but
if that happened it would probably ruin it for those of us who like control.

Personally I think the future is linux/free OS's and I kinda like being one of the few with that skillset. I don't want an MCSE paycheck, I like my RHCE one.

-----------
Side note, anyone who says linux is not ready for the desktop has NOT worked in tech support or had any friends with a computer. When I go over to fix someones PC, the bios is shot with errors, there are 60 icons on the desktop, and taskbar because they think removing them deletes the program. I have news for you, WINDOWS is not ready for the desktop either! Recently a client did a directX 9a windowsupdate and it completly ruined his box, all the data was gone I couldn't even recover with a forensics disk. It has to be shipped to someone who specializes in this sort of thing. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Funny that the story below this one was "Bill Gates : 5% Of Windows Machines Crash More Than Twice A Day" Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Where do these people come from, who say that the Linux desktop is a good desktop? It's fine if you like xterms and xemacs (oddly enough, I do). It blows for anything else.

The freedom to run important apps trumps GNU freedom. If you can't use your computer, you're not free. The person holding a class over the internet or child learning about biology just doesn't have time to learn how a commandline works. If you gave them hard-to-use GNU software, they'll do nothing with it. They'll feel stupid, worried and frustrated.

I don't care about bootup times. XP is fast. Linux zealots argue numbers, because that's all they can quantify. They can't talk usability or needs.

Now, do I agree Linux distros need to enforce a single interface? Well, competition is fine, even if it produces results that take a long while; some distros will suck at UI, but others will soar above mediocrity. Teamwork isn't the only way to get results. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If the masses can't spend the time, the effort and the sacrifices to ponder upon a new and different digital culture, then the masses don't deserve to be blessed with Linux' benefits.

If you can't spend the time to study medicine and prescribe elixirs for yourself, you don't deserve to be blessed with health.

Don't forget, your GNU future is hitched to the support of the masses. Otherwise you don't get the nice driver support. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ----------------------
First thing, I've yet to see a post from Marcelo that doesn't bash the US in some way
-----------------------

OK, excuse my mistake. The author of article is dutch and I think he is american.

Americans lives in "another world" and (generally) have money to spend buying top-line hardware and paying M$ taxes. For us, Apple hardware is very expensive, almost nobody here uses MacOS X and almost nobody paid for your Windows.

I have a brazilian friend living on USA and he says that americans generally buy PCs from Dell, Compaq, HP, etc and they come with a lot of bundled software. Very few buy hardware parts to mount your own computer. Here in Brazil and many countries, we mount our own PCs or we buy them from little shops. These PCs come with pirated copies of Windows, MS Office, etc.

OK, linux is for geeks but it is spreading like fire here and the rest of world. There are many reasons: freedom of USA, freedom os a single vendor, no license fees, nationalism, hardware recycling, etc. We are using it on many desktops even with all problems.

I still don't understand why linux have not success in USA like outside of it... Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hey,

You know, without wanting to be read as rude, I'm beginning to get tired of this stuff. Every day there is a new flame war or polite skirmish about GNU/Linux versus Windows versus etc. It seems to me that everyone involved is viewing it all from their own habitual viewpoints (like ppl do).

When the initial comment (I'm sure sometimes intentionally controversial) appears, everyone slips into a kneejerk reactive mode. At best we might see a cautious defense of the family jewels... again and again and again (recursive?).

Being a moderately knowledgeable user of Windows, GNU/Linux (all sorts), BeOS (my greatest lost love) and... er, my Palm M515.. I enjoy reading OS News and follow it daily. I enjoy reading the frequent reviews and help stuff. I enjoy reading the political machinations of the computer industry, and whether the new version of Windows will have twin overhead cams. It's all great stuff.

But these chronic and treatment resistant strains of OS intermittent-explosive disorder are really beginning to put me off bothering. I think maybe we need a seperate forum specially for ppl to argue about the ideology of their precious OSs. I grew out of it some time ago, although from time to time I would read such a site.

I think the phenomenum is akin to a sort of sociological study of computer OSs, or perhaps a tribal confrontation by proxy or something. Whatever the truth, I don't think it fits neatly into my enjoyment of computers anymore. Don't you guys ever get tired of repeating the same stuff all over?

Of course, like any self-respecting person I do abhor the MS Evil empire, and I dearly love the idea of the GNU/Linux ideology. But I really think the roots of these thoughts have little to do with computers and OSs. Its more akin to philosophy or morality or something that's difficult to fit into bits and bytes.

And I guess it happens in all sorts of fields, like whether VHS or Betamax was best and isn't it awful that the better technology lost out to marketing; and are Fords really better than Holdens, etc, etc.

And NO, I am not complaining about the original article. I am referring mainly to the string of responses. I gave up half way through in the promise that the subject would very quickly be left behind, that everything said would be repeated ad nauseum, and that nothing would be even remotely achieved by the wasted time and words.

Before any of you suggest it, yes, I will henceforth resist that vague urge to look at any responses to articles advocating one OS over another.

In fact, don't even bother to respond to these words, because I probably don't want to know about the flame war I am provoking in writing them. (Well, maybe a peek).

Good article. Look forward to more. Throw me a frickin' bone here. (Pauses to think) Maybe I'm in the wrong place here... this IS the Fence Painting Techniques web site, isn't it?

Mmmmm. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Does anybody really believe that something so mundane as an >operating system is as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., >or Poland's Solidarity?

>Shake the rocks out of your head.

I have never compared Linux to Martin Luther King, but English is not my native languaghe so maybe I don't understand the subtleties of the word "movement".
But I feel that Linux and any software that can change the stronghold that Microsoft has on the market is in some way revolutionary.

And just because you don't share my views you don't have to behave like an asshole. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here we go.

I use my OS/2 computer as much as any computer. the only time I've had to reboot it in the 11 years (since the beta of OS/2 2.0) is when I installed a program or installed new hardware. I use it at least three times a week running things like Links golf for DOS as well as working on spreadsheets, documents, e-mail, faxing, a full purpose work horse that also happens to be the computer that stores most of my work files for this and other computers.

BeOS - I don't use it as much but probably could. The interface is fast but is not as satisfying as my Jaguar Mac or OS/2. In the last four years it has never "needed" to be rebooted. I didn't even have to reboot when I changed from dial-up to DSL to dial-up to DSL to cable-modem. All my other OSs HAD to reboot for this during that time.

Mac OS 9 1st generation iMac. Light work on it because it was slow even with OS 9. But it never crashed on me. The limiting factor on programs on this computer was lack of really good games that it could run due to hardware (CPU and memory) limitations.

iMac Janguar (10.2.6) but started with 10.1.5. It has never crashed on me and I do all the same work as on my OS/2 computer. Obvious with Mac versions of software. All is good and getting better.

Mandrake Linux/SuSE/Mandrake - None of these ended up being worth my time to get them fully up and running with all the software I do for work and play. I am a tech person so I know HOW to do it. I also don't get behind a car and push it to the store either. That's the experience I had with these. I've only got so many hours in the day to **** with things.

Lindows since 3.0 "just works". And that is especially true with Lindows 4.0. The only software I don't have for this is GPS software. Maybe not the newest games but I keep entertained and with OpenOffice it does all the work I need to do.

Windows 98 sucks. It takes four '98 computers to do the same thing I can do with Mac OS X or OS/2. Pros. Runs faster than XP or 2000. Has it ever run more than 3 days without a crash? How about even one day when used for more than an hour? Don't think so.

Windows 2000. Too many crashes. Not enough hardware compatibility.

Windows XP (I support over a hundred of these at work too) sucks less than 98 but is more filling. eXtra Propriatary makes everything cost too much compared other OSs and it is only getting worse. Never had it run for more than a week without crashing. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, your perspective is wrong...

Operating Systems do not support hardware, the hardware needs to support the OS.

Though in fact, these are the same things...

No ATi drivers in Linux is because ATi doesn't make them... That's not the fault of the Open Source community...

And by the way, what moron buys ATi... Even if ATi had Linux support, I'd still buy nVidia because they are working on FreeBSD support...


NOTE: That I do confirm the long boot times with Linux... Though when lots of software is installed (not only services, but all software), Windows tends to get slow. Linux has no such problem... It's boot time fully depends on the services... Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Micro$oft may have 50K programmers, but Linux has millions. "

Let's just take one example of a large Linux application:
Xfree86, 13 core developers are listed.

The many eyes theory doesn't work, has been proven not to work, and yet people continue regurgitating it. The simple fact that the majority of applications for Linux have their source open for viewing does _NOT_ magically mean that huge numbers of people are looking at it and checking it for errors.

Open source projects generally involve small core teams which hack on the code daily with occasional input from 3rd parties who:
a) Found something wrong, fixed it and actually sent in a patch (Most of the time once someone has fixed their personal copy they don't bother sending the fix upstream)

b) Are poking around in the application source for amusements sake because the application exists in an area they are interested in.

The kernel might have a few hundred independents hacking away at it (Because it's interesting work) and has some companies hacking away at it as well (Because they have a vested interest in it improving, and wish to influence the direction it takes) which is all well and good. What you aren't taking into account is the multitude of packages around the place (Most of GNU is in this category) which have a few developers (And in a few cases just a single maintainer) hacking on them intermitently.

Are there more developers hacking on the Linux kernel than the Windows kernel? You'd have to take a survey, but my guess would be yes.

Are there more developers hacking on the Windows apps/libraries than the Linux core apps/libraries (Hint: Think of the GNU packages that are required to run a Linux machine)? IMO, yes.

One thing I can say with absolute certainty is that Linux does _NOT_ have anything approaching a million developers looking at the core system. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, that's how some people view it as, and I sorta do so also. As a tool. But it isn't this way for everyone.

Is a car just a tool? Some people spend their lives around cars. If a car was just something to get from point A to point B, then we'd have no real need for Ferrari's or Corvette's.

Point being, some people take this stuff real serious, possibly because it's what they like, or it's what they've been working on for most of their lives. It's exciting to them, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I am pretty sure if everyone believed that the OS is just a tool, the OS in general wouldn't be as good or come in as many varieties as it does today.

Now on the millions of Linux developers vs. Microsoft developers... Are you kidding me? Seriously, Linux might have millions of programmers working from everything from the kernel to KDE screensavers. It seems you forgot all the programmers working for companies like Adobe, Macromedia, and programmers who work on freeware, even GPL'ed freeware just for Windows.

Microsoft would then have the same, if not more developers than Linux. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,

I've been reading on this site for 2 weeks now. And I have to say this, you guys are retarded. Don't want to be rude here. You flame wars are useless. It is all a matter of personal choice. You want to use Linux? Fine do it. You don't like it? There's plenty of choices out there.

Now for my personal opinion about all those flame wars. I've been using Windows for a long time. Now at home i mainly use various flavours of *nix. Gentoo Linux and OpenBSD mainly. Now for those that way that Linux doesnt boot up fast, as so many said, it all depends of which distro you use, and what services are loaded by default. I agree, it's not everyone that can edit the config files with a text editor. But if you use RedHat for example, there's a nice GUI app to do it.

I believe Windows as it's good side too. If you're a gamer for example, you kinda have no choice but to run Windows (don't tell me about WineX because a lot of games don't run well on it). Now if you're more of an artist, chances are you have a Mac and run OSX.

I don't see what's the big fuss about it. You guys should start to respect others. If you give someone a PC, someone that never worked with one, if you have Linux with KDE, or Windows, he will have to learn anyway. a GUI is a GUI, it's made to be easy.

In some instances *nix is a good choice, in others it's Windows. It all depends of who's going to use it, and for what purposes.

my 2 cents Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I like the unified GUI idea as an option. Maybe a set of guidelines that all distro's could abide by, maybe call it "KISS" mode. It has to be an option that can be enabled or disabled, I'd use it for clients and disable it for myself.

A KDE/Gnome/Etc desktop can easily be customized to make it ultra simple. Currently, ultra simple is the WIndows look the masses have been conditioned to since 1995.

I've setup "KISS Mode" for a few clients. Basically I give them a "My Computer" Icon by creating an icon on the desktop (actually a directory) that looks like a computer. Inside I create the removable drive links, I change home to look like a Hard Drive and I call it drive C:, if they have network connections then all the network directories are mapped in different colors, but they look like hard drives. This makes it very simple for the truly lazy. C: Drive is Silver = home, Drive N: is Red = network data drive, Drive P: is Green = public drive. The description I place in parenthesis P: (Public).

I create a menu entry of "Main Applications", I put in what they will use. If they venture out of there, fine, but all the stuff they need is now super simple and familiar.
I write company specific "magical" scripts to make their life easier.

Windows Update isn't perfect, either. I've hosed IE using it in the past. I've seen it hose other things after it was run. It can't be truly automated either. it doesn't always notice when you need an update. Lastly, I don't like MS getting into my system. I've read the EULA's MS provides and they are scary.

I use Mandrake, and urpmi like apt, depends on the mirrors. I keep up to date and add/remove mirrors once every couple of months. I use a script and ssh to send this new mirror list to all of my clients servers. It saves me so much time. The clients are all updated automatically every evening.

Boot time isn't an issue, imho, unless you have to reboot often.
Windows requires more reboots, hence the concentrated effort to speed up boot time for XP (as compared to 2K). The problem I've found is with Heavy use ie; CAD, 3D Modeling, Image manipulation and plotting, Windows requires a reboot more than once a day.

I have deployed Linux/KDE on the desktop for several clients, in my organization, in my my home, at my in-laws, at my parents and at my friends. It does work very well as a desktop os. It is even better when tailored to a users needs. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Boot times are dependent on hardware.

Computer A has a 500 MHz Pentium 3, 64MB RAM, 66Mhz front side bus speed, and 5400 RPM hard drive.

Computer B has a 3Ghz Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, 400Mhz front side bus speed, and a 10000 RPM hard drive.

Will Windows XP boot up in the same amount of time on these two computers? Will Linux boot up in the same amount of time on these two computers? Does average joe user care about the hardware dependency when it comes to boot up time? No, he just blaims the OS.

Windows has just as many text editors as Linux does. The difference in the two is that you have to go fetch the different text editors for Windows where as most Linux distros install several for you. Even though you really don't need to, you can go to places like Download.com and get many alternatives to any program Microsoft bundles with their OS. The argument that Linux has too much choice is bogus. How many ZIP programs are there for Windows? Media players? Web browsers? Tweak UI programs? The list can go on and on.

Just use the OS you like best on the platform you can afford. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Let's stay legal here

Linux - $50

equivalent windows system
Windows - $200
(think this is too much ? linux has unlimited users)
Office - $250
(same argument as above)
Paint Shop Pro - $50
"Classics" game pack - $50
(not that any of these things even begin to compare to what's in a normal distribution, but let's ignore that)
3D design software - $500
Vector drawing software - $100
Database software - $100
(and access does not compare to stuff like mysql/postgresql)
Development environments - $500
(let's ignore you that get 3 very good ones, not one, and linux IDE's do not compare to 'personal editions')
Version management software - $2000
(the cheap versions)

If you paid less than $3750 for your software, it either does not even come close to a linux distribution, or you "stole" it. It's that simple. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Also Mac has a friendly community which don't make fun of you when you need help - unlike the Linux community.
What linux community have you been to? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? yeah the Gentoo community is so friendly and helpfull. This is one of the major reason I kept using linux. Because people are helpfull, and there's a lot of online support. Compared to windows. Ever tried to find something on microsoft.com? even the techies sections (don't remember the actual name) bites a lot. But that's the problem of every major corporation webpages i guess. too much stuff to put on, bad web designers. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ok those people who say you need to read the manual are stupid. I figured out Mac OS X and Windows without ever looking a a manual. I really never learned much from reading what i did of Windows manuals. First of all I download Linux off the internet so there really is no manual except for some documentation on the system. The Linux documentation isn't even that great, it's better than the Windows documentation but still not good enough.

Seriously Linux developers take a good look at Mac OS X first because it proved that you culd make an easy to use OS based on UNIX and did this in a few years time. In this respect Apple has BLAZED really fast ahead of any other OS, it's the easiest to install apps on. What Linux needs is one group to make a UNIVERSAL INSTALLER for all Linux apps across all Distros and provide a way to install any app on this installer, if you wanna spend extra time compiling your apps then thats fine with me i just don't wanna spend time doing stuff thats much easier to do on every other OS.

Seriously the author is right. No software company ever got anywhere saying if you buy our stuff now it will eventually get better, thats what Microsoft is doing essentially.

I like Linux but the fact that it takes me longer to set it up and it's harder to do simple stuff like make a shortcut/alias to a app on the desktop deters me from using it more. I like how Mandrake Linux 9.1 has gotten - much easier than Red Hat. Those of you saying if you spend hours reading and tinking with it you'll find this stuff out are being ignorant. It didn't take me long to figure out the essentials on Mac OS X or Windows. Eventually i got into tweaking the components of the OS but Linux shouldn't do that. MAKE THE ESSENTIALS OF EVERYDAY USE EASY then people will get into tweaking the components of the OS. Linux wants people to do this the other way around which is sad. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? or did i just miss it.

-xp, redhat, freebsd, os-x user. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ok, one thing, install Gentoo Linux, the installer is REALLY easy. it goes like this "emerge packagename". it calculates all dependant packages, fetches them all on webservers, compiles it all. Now, if you want to update your system you do it with only another command "emerge sync && emerge -u world". This updates ALL of your system to the latest. Try to do that in windows.

as for a universal installer. it is already there. source code. which is also easy, one command "./configure && make && make install". I mean, i figured this out in less than 10 minutes after i got my box running.

and don't take me wrong, i'm not dissing windows. Windows has a lot of good too. Example, The Gimp for Linux is so far from Photoshop, it's not even funny. Linux has a lot of work still, but it's getting there without the billions of dollars that microsoft put into "research and development". Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well Darius your right, spam does is not unique to Outlook Express, but show me an and actively used outlook express w/o third party software to block spam that doesn't have some spam in its inbox. I think you'd be hard pressed to find one. While you can install other mail applications that have spam filtering, it would always be in addition to Outlook Express - unless there is some magic way of deleting that you know of?

As for spyware, if people knew not to install spyware then Brilliant wouldn't have this great P2P network to server content over now would they?

Windows AV programs that run in the background as tonic processes don't equate to linux running win4lin or vmware. I'd venture that most linux d00ds consider themselves above running windows, virutual or otherwise, whenever possible. So its not really a utility you run all the time - only when you need certain apps. I don't think windows users consider AV programs to be as unneccessary to everyday usage, or they would be running them when they need too as well. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most users don't need version management software and development environments, most home users wouldn't even know what they are. Also there's a lot of opensource and freeware software available for Windows, including OpenOffice, GIMP and numerous games. Plus most PCs come with Windows and a bundle of software included for not much extra cash. For most people buying Windows and all the software they need is a lot less expensive than you make out.

For me the money saved by using Linux doesn't even come close to making up for the days spent trying to get it working. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I mainly use Linux, but occasionally I have to use Windows.
My question is: If I have a damaged video file, whatever format, can someone show me to a player that can play the clip, the way that mplayer and xine in Linux can?

I have tried the Windows Media Player and bsPlayer and they just refuse to play the file, they are also much slower in playing regular files than mplayer and xine is so I would be very greatful if you could point me to a decent player.

Surely a multi-billion company can give me a great multi-mediaplayer so just tell me were it is, ok? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have used LindowsOS 4.0 and although I liked it, it did take 3 minutes and 55 seconds to get into KDE. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Honestly, who really wants Linux for the masses? I mean why is it an OS has to be usable by people who don't want to think a minute about how computing actually works.
Linux is great at what it does and keeps improving rapidly. But the idea of a dumbed down Linux is just crazy. I am sick of all this Linux needs to do this... nonsense. If you don't like it don't use it."

Finally something that makes sense! I don't like Linux so I don't use it. Simple as that. All I want to do is be able to read and reply to e-mail and to look for porn.


"We seem to be coding for the lowest common denominator instead of asking people to pick up a book and learn a little about computers, like how to use a mouse and type on a keyboard."

Yea and I blame it on the people who invented GNOME and KDE. They spoilt it for the rest of us who could do it with the shell.


"And what movement? Anybody who thinks Linux is a movement, is an idiot. A community, yes, a movement, no."

Here's my 2 cents: Any Linux community which likes to bash at Microsoft is a movement.


"And when did Linux become a slave to the masses? If the masses can't spend the time, the effort and the sacrifices to ponder upon a new and different digital culture, then the masses don't deserve to be blessed with Linux' benefits."

Yeah! Screw Redhat and Lindows for making Linux a slave to the masses. It was so good before and now we are corporatized! Slept with the prostitutes of customer satisfaction! Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This article is nothing but FUD. I'm sick of hearing the "I use Linux, but Windows is better" garbage. The thing with Linux is that it doesn't trap you in to one proprietary format. There isn't some CEO somewhere saying "let start charging for updates, because the people who need the updates will be forced to pay" Sure there are CEOs looking to make a buck (RedHat, etc), but if you take them away, you still have the ever-growing open source community, and you still have Linux. What happens when Microsoft begins charging for a 1 year subscription for thier software, and everyone who doesn't renew...

What the fuck ever, people won't ever care until it happens. Just keep using windows and enjoy paying out your asses in the future so that you can have your stupid little "windows update" and uniform GUI. OH by the way, why dont you add up all the boot time in XP for AFTER you log in. They just rearranged some shit to make it feel like it boots faster. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? as my other one got rightfully modded to oblivion. ;-)

Anyone spending even a little time on osnews knows that there are quite a few ppl on both sides who fly off the handle.

ppl should work extra hard at not turning everything into a platform war.

As a user of many different systems, I enjoy reading info about macs, linux, freebsd and windows.....as I use those plat forms. I don't enjoy seeing the flamers immediately coming out and bashing whatever platform happens to be the subject of the article.

I also enjoy reading the stuff about aix, solaris, beos, etc. I don't use them, but it's nice to be kept abrest of developments.

everyone have a good weekend. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Everything in windows is to restricted .It is easy to use but not flexible as Linux. Even its file format is to restrictive. This is not the case with linux. Even the desktop in Windows doesnt allows to change and Even if the freeware software for changing desktop is available, there is no gaurantee that it will work. OS should mean freedom.
Freedom to work without depending on the File Formats. I think these File formats in Windows have created a big hell especially the Office XP suite. You cannot use the .doc file without loading the Office XP. I think file format should be independent on what Application U Use Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As we all know windoze crashes 95% of the day Sat, 26 Jul 2003 02:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I say leave the masses to windows, because the masses have very different requirments from your average techo user. I'll give and example to illustrate my point.

In Australia your average PC users buys a mid range $2000 PC from the computer corner store (Most people don't trust the sub $1000 internet "starter" boxes and that sorta thing), he doesn't need he kinda hardware included in the box, but he really likes the fact that when he gets it home he just plugs it in and turns it on.... there's windows (A system he is probably already familar with because he has used it at school/work), it also has Office installed, it usually has an anti-virus program running in the background which it also came with, that's it that will be his computer until either he decides to buy a new one in a few years time or he manages to destroy the installation in some way or another, if he does destroy the installation he usually can just take it back to the shop to have everything fixed.

At some stage he may also want to install a game/some other application in which case all he has to do is insert the CD and go through the install proccess or open the install on the disk which he just downloaded, either way it is a very simple procces.

Now what advantages would Linux offer this kinda computer user?
- Flexible configuration? Were talking about the kinda user who will not delete icons from his desktop because he thinks it uninstalls the program, he doesn't care about how configurable it is. BTW. He will notice that Linux boots slower than windows though.
- Choice of which application to run? Why should he care if he can choose between multiple desktop environments, this kinda choice is more likely to confuse/annoy him than make him happy about the system.
- Applications such as apt-get? The average user is to petrified of the command line in windows to go near it, why would it be any different in linux?
- Price tag? Common this is the same sorta user who is willing to pay $2000 for a machine with a hardware speck he doesn't really need, anyway more likely than not the PC corner store will still charge $2000 for the PC and just pocket the extra.

My point is, why is everyone worrying about how much appeall Linux has for the average user? Linux fells a niche for a group of technically savy users, who prefer it over Windows/Mac OSX, so why not leave it at that, Linux will cause my pain than happines for the average user. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Folks! There is a very good reason why Windows generally have a shorter boot time than Linux: reboot. It is imperative that users reboot their machine often thoughout the day to keep the machines running at their best. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? btw. don't flame me, I skipped a good portion of posts because they centred around freedom and other ideological BS.

Linux will not move forward until linux advocates and developers realise that the average user doesn't give a flying continental about your so-called "freedoms", a person uses a computer as a tool. Read and repeat.

The average user DOESN'T read these websites as they neither care or want to care about information technology, they have much more important things to be concerned about.

Linux's problem is the communities inability to accept that there is a problem and actually address it. Here we are in 2003, 8-9 years ago I started using Linux and I was promised that "one day" the copy and paste issue will be resolved. Here we are 8 years later (btw, I have dumped Linux and bought an eMac) and the issue has not been addressed, why? because we have two bit programmers going, "no one is going to tell ME what to do", and so, the ego ends up coming before actually solving the problem.

At the end of the day, sure, Linux will move forward on the server, however, unfortunately, until there is a unified front in the desktop "battle", people will still see Linux is some obscure operating system sitting on the fringes of the IT world for geeks, hackers and people who have waaaaaay to much time on their hands. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In my opinion, Linux is far from being ready for anything else but niche geek markets. The Linux is ready for desktop is a marketing lie IMO, sorry.

I tried to switch to linux about once or twice a year in the last five years, I haven't tried in 2003 though. I mainly tried redhat and mandrake distributions since they are supposed to be more friendly to end-users (although most of my friends would certainly not call me an end-user).

The first thing I noticed about Linux distros is that they are loaded with hundreds of useless junk applications, some of them are buggy, others only work with KDE, or Gnome, or do not work with my harware, or compete with each other etc. The first time I installed linux, I needed about one day to get a dial-up connexion running and my scanner never worked, when I succeeded in having my sound card running, it never produced the sound quality I had in windows, the same with all my peripherals (webcam, monitor, graphics card...). My conclusion was that you had to first choose linux and then the hardware, too bad I already have working machines and do not intend to buy new ones.

Then there is the file structure. I was an amiga fan for years, so for me both the windows and Linux file structures are baroque and esoteric, or, to put it simply, a bloody mess. It is less a problem in windows since normal users don't have to use the command line, but with Linux, I always had to get *very* quickly hacking config files to get my hardware working more or less correctly or to install software...

Then there is the UI, I found both KDE and Gnome lacking of consistency to say the least, the icons are now very nice but eye-candy is not really my idea of a working UI. It is also very slow, I read somewhere that this is because of the design of XFree86 which was not created for the desktop but for client/server interactions, I don't know but Linux UI never really felt "snappy" to me, windows XP UI is also very slow compared to win98.

But the one thing that annoys me most and makes me come back to Windows everytime is the software install/uninstall procedure. Sorry but I still have not understood what is the normal linux procedure to manage software. The one major thing missing is a clear and STANDARD installation/deinstallation procedure, last time I tried a Mandrake I never succeeded in replacing the outdated stock Mozilla version by a newer build for instance, some files are RPM others are TGZ, others are sources, when you compile them there are often problems with "dependencies", which I guess are missing files somewhere in the cryptic structure or a missing parameter that I'll have to set in one of the hundreds (thousands ?) of configuration files. When will there be a simple standard way to install a new software package ? like for instance dragging and dropping an icon in a folder, or clicking on an installer wich will popup a wizard...

I don't particulary like Windows but it works fine and does the job and XP is as stable as 98 was unstable (which is probably the reason why I didn't try Linux since I updated to XP). I'd like to have a solid alternative to MS, preferably open source, but I couldn't find a single Linux feature that is really decisive to an end-user, most if not all end-user opensource software is available on all platforms, even windows. Installing software in Windows is clear and simple, uninstalling is just a click. I sorely miss the times I had an amiga, it was so simple and yet so powerful, now with Linux and Windows I have to choose between power and simplicity...

My 2004 computer may be a Mac finally, apparently their new OS is more in the spirit of my old amiga, powerful but targeted at human beings... Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm using LFS (Linux From Scratch) and it boot at 8 to 10 seconds, very fast. Let people choose what the best for their daily work. If the problem is boot time, easy of use, consistency look and many other, IMHO it depends on the each user's character.
I was using Windows. And many years gone by I found that Windows was not suit to my needs. I hate it because of BSOD, unstable, unrobust and many disanvantage. But I admin that that Windows has many support because the company who support Windows can make money from it. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "If you care about good driver and application support, easy installation, and want a computer that never crashs or needs to be rebooted, use OS X. "

This is all fine for now. OSX meant a complete overhaul of all drivers. MS tried this with XP and maybe 2k but i'm not sure. They wanted signed drivers and so forth so old drivers would die off.

But currently OSX is the first gen of that OS. So every driver was ment for it and it only. When apple comes out with OS11 or OSXI or whatever they do, then the fun very well may begin. OSX drivers might cause issues in OSXI maybe there will be no OSXI drivers for something that had OSX drivers and people try to make it work. Then Apple will have the same problems as windows. Sure one can hope that the drivers would be transparent to such change but old drivers allmost never handle new OS's very well. Or you have the windows situation were most work, but some don't and you get issues. Or the driver just works a bit less with time. A win95 driver works with 98, 98se but gets shady with ME and doesn't work with 2k or XP. Apple is only ok for now since the threw out everything from their old os and started over, now the crud can start to built for another decade and see how it's doing then. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I totally agree... An operating system is nothing more than a tool to get a job done. you use whatever suits your needs the most and is available.

I run a few different operating systems here and they all do different jobs.

For me there's no politics involved. I don't care how "evil" Microsoft is or how holy and right Linux is, or how much quality goes into a Mac.

I just use what works... I don't care where or who it comes from nor the politics behind it. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Similarly, Linux did NOT succeed because of any simularities with Windows.

In other words, there's a market for something different. There are people who need what Linux provides and Windows doesn't.

Let Linux succeed on its own merits. If you try to make it like Windows, it will fail. Stop trying to compete on MS's turf. MS knows it can win there.

Make your own turf and do what you do best.

100's of distro's are great.

100's of pizza places are great. I like all kinds of pizza and would NOT want them all to band together and create a common pizza because people can't take the time to learn and try new things.

Silly, just plain silly. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Another pointless linux doesn't run like windows article.

1) I happily run a linux desktop here without problems. (What am doing wrong??) ;-)

2) Linux bootup time isn't a factor since you don't need to switch off or reboot your linux box. (It's never been slow here BTW.)

3) If you can't write your own device driver and the hardware manufactures don't supply one - don't blame linux. PS thanks to everyone who "freely" contributed code to support multiple hardware architectures and devices.

4) If you're happy with windows then why do you need linux? Linux isn't a windows clone no matter how you dress it up.

5) IMLTHO if you're new to linux or have used it for a few years and find it problematic. Then it's probably just YOU!

Learn to use it and love it for what it is.

regards
rob Sat, 26 Jul 2003 05:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? just give up, who cares about what is good and what's not. it's all about what works for you. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 06:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? " if we forget the "geek" image of Linux, if we forget the fact that some distributions suddenly have to be paid for"

So, and So? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 06:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Windows XP does several interesting things to boot faster, that Windows 2000 does not do. (It's probably safe to assume that Windows 2003 does these things too, but I couldn't say 100% for sure.)

1. Instead of initializing all of it's peripherals in series, it does XP does it in parallel and asynchronously.

2. Windows XP watches page faults and captures traces of what blocks get loaded from disk during bootup. In future boots, it uses that trace data to load those blocks before they are requested. It actually does this with regular programs, too.

Read more along those lines here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/xpkernel/default.asp... Sat, 26 Jul 2003 06:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hey you guys, my liux boots in 5 secs and is now up
for 5 years without any reboot. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 07:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Does anybody really believe that something so mundane as an operating system is as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., or Poland's Solidarity?

I really believe that having the choice to use software (i) other than that produced by a single source (who (in the most important case), on the one hand, has been found to have violated important laws and, on the other hand, is a large supplier to government) and (ii) the source code of which can be viewed and modified,* is, in the medium to long term, an important protection against certain governmental and other abuses of power.

*I know everyone always says "but most people don't have skills or time to do so", but what is important is not that a particular person can do so, but that others with the skills and time and same general interest to do so. Think about the role of rights organizations. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 07:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? To me, it's a miracle how every tiny article on OSNews.com, or any other tech-site, ends up in people shouting all sorts of nonsense at each other like "Linux is gonna bring back Elvis", "Windows shot president Kennedy", "Linux kept the cold war cold" or "Bill Gates wants to buy the moon and charge people for looking at it". Do these people really know what they are saying, or are they just going with the Open-Source flow?

I mean for heavens sake this is pure SHIT Sat, 26 Jul 2003 07:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux probably isn't ready for Joe Sixpack. I feel too many distros are bloated. But it's about choice. Maybe somebody should come out with a simpler desktop. Maybe that's what Lindows is doing. More power to them.

The problem with the word "better" is that it's a relative term. Better than what? Better for what?

I personally hate Windows. I've lots of good reasons for that. I also support 50 Windows PCs at work. I keep myself sane by using Linux on my PC and some of the servers.

Yeah, let's improve the use-ability. Let's improve the installation procedures. Sure. Fine. But let's not make it so easy that users stop needing geeks. I need the work.

There's a thing here. What happens if Linux becomes easy to use? Is that a good thing? Not necessarily. To get it so that my grandmother can use it, means it has to be dumbed down. Made less powerful. Is that good?

Yeah, let's fix the configuration problems. Let's write some Tcl/Tk scripts to front end stuff.

But there's no need to rush any of this. We are here for the long haul. Linux has all the time in the world to get better. Microsoft is the one who has to hurry.

So my point is - if you want a better, simpler desktop, feel free to work on it. If you want a better installation method, we're all ears. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Linux lets you improve things.

If you feel XP or W2K is better, hey, go to it. Personally, on my PC, XP runs like molasses compared with either the RedHat 6.1 or the Slackware 9.0 I also have installed on it. But your mileage may vary.

Linux isn't about the desktop.
Linux is about freedom.
Anyone who thinks freedom to choose software isn't important, isn't thinking very hard.

Perspective, we need a little perspective. The entire airline reservation industry uses the most primitive interface to book seats. Yet airlines fly millions of people every day. No GUI needed. GUI would only get in the way.

But cut-and-paste would be nice. I get around it, but it would be nice. I'm not leaving vi for it anytime soon, but it would be nice.

Seth Sat, 26 Jul 2003 08:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "... freedom and other ideological BS." ??????

Well, i don' t know about you, but I value MY freedom very much...

That's the one of main reasons why I use Linux.

others are that I LIKE it very much and I THINK that it is better.

I think it's little bit unfair to compare linux with windows.... They are so different. Still i do it anyway :-)

I have been using linux as my main os about one year now. first, when i compared these two, i was thinking that: I can do this on windows, why i can't do on linux.
now, when comparing, i think that: Hey I can do that on linux, why i can't do that on windows... :-)

Main thing that i think that are missing in windows and which are in linux are Bash and KDE. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 08:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard)
If you haven't even tried the installation method that a lot of people think is the best, you have no business slagging off Linux installation methods. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 09:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? After 15 or so posts, interesting.

Let me expand on what I said.

Lets look at the new linux user, like a new person to a religion, they are extremely hardcore and zealous about their belief and any one who dares challenges them are slandered as Microsoft supporters.

Lets give them 8-9 years to calm down and get out of the rafters then maybe they will post a coherient sentence based on reality rather than cheap indeological rhetoric.

I admit, back in my days as a yongster, I was a hardcore Linux supporter believing it could take over the world. I have seen the real world and anyone who thinks that Linux can compete on the desktop are really deluding themselves to reality.

If the issue was mearly a crappy interface then fixing it up wouldn't be so hard, however, there is a heck of alot more to be fixed up that just that.

Crappy hardware support, crappy GUI, crappy software availability and crappy Graphic Interface Layer.

I won't compare X with GDI+, however, I would compare it with Quartz. instead of bitching over the scematics and name calling, how about look at successful Graphic Interfaces and create something which builds upon them.

I am running MacOS X 10.2.6 right now, and the responsiveness and clarity of it beat anything that XFree86 could put together. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 10:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Average users do need graphical software installers. Would you open a terminal just for typing "apt-get program" everytime you want to install something? I wouldn't.

Someone here said "If you need a graphical installer, develop one". The problem is, as soon as you have the skills to do so, you don't need it anymore, so you wouldn't waste your time, because you don't get paid for it like at Microsoft. So I don't see any chance. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 11:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com


Uhhh... why is bashing linux a no-no? i think he spoke VERY fairly... Sat, 26 Jul 2003 11:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Average users do need graphical software installers. Would you open a terminal just for typing "apt-get program" everytime you want to install something? I wouldn't.

Someone here said "If you need a graphical installer, develop one". The problem is, as soon as you have the skills to do so, you don't need it anymore, so you wouldn't waste your time, because you don't get paid for it like at Microsoft. So I don't see any chance.

You have just answered your own question. As soon as you have the skills you don't need a big bloated gui for eveything. That what learning to do things effectively is all about.

There is nothing faster than typing apt-get install . Why wade through endless lists of programs when you just need one (and it even installs supporting programs and libs).

BTW If you're obsessed by the GUI way or no-way, why not use Synaptic or Kpackage.

Hope you learn to be productive,
rob Sat, 26 Jul 2003 12:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux would be all "bliss" if we forget the slow boot-up/shutdown times,

3 s more than Windows XP here.. an then I run more services in linux.


if we forget the lousy hardware support for, let's say, Ati products (Ati being the number two in graphics cards!)

Well... My Radeon 7500 M works fine here...


if we forget the "geek" image of Linux

Oh, you're out of real "issues" or what?


if we forget the fact that some distributions suddenly have to be paid for, if we forget that some distributions suddenly get discontinued

All MS OS'es costs, and all are being discontinued


if we forget the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard).

So then why don't you run apt-get?


You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, if we forget the great hardware support, if we forget the uniform look of all the programs,

These are all very subjectal points.


if we forget InstallShield and look-a-likes, if we forget the clear structure (Program Files, My Documents etc, and of course this only goes for the not-so-technical end-user), if we forget Windows Update (still beats the Distribution-specific update tools, in my opinion).

Are you trying to mock us!?!? You honestly think these creations are good??? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 12:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Interesting article, someone talking some sense for once.


There's a thing here. What happens if Linux becomes easy to use? Is that a good thing? Not necessarily. To get it so that my grandmother can use it, means it has to be dumbed down. Made less powerful. Is that good?

Why does making a system easier to use make it any less powerful?

It's not as if it hasn't been done before, NeXT, OS X, BeOS are all easy to use but the power is there if you want it.

So, Linux does not need to be "dumbed down". What it needs is a layer where everything is easy to use, graphical and command lines are never even heard of. Underneath that layer the system can stay as it is. That way both geeks - and the rest of the world - can be happy. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 12:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? IMHO, Linux is as easy to maintain as W2Kpro. Both of them need geeks on call. For big organisations that is fine, Linux has arrived. For the home user, not yet.

To install Linux at the moment you do have to be somewhat aware, but Joe Sixpack is not going to think of doing so, so that is OK for now.

Mandrake 9, with which I am familiar, is dead easy for a knowledgable newbie to install new software on. The Mandrake wizards are easier than the Windows Installer, for applications shipped on the Mandrake CDs. For the first few months that is fine. As they learn the newbie can add more download sources to the wizard. A few months later they can do the configure/make/make install type of source code installation. A few months on and they can handle the other stuff.

Yes, for Joe, a newbie install option with standardised apps and services would be good. One choice for everything. Once he learns a bit he can install other stuff, or not, as he wants. Lindows is not a good path, IIUC, no good upgrade path to a "full" installation. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 14:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Did you saw the ARK Linux instllation?

You can play Tetris while Installing, NO JOKE!!!! Sat, 26 Jul 2003 14:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Three stories in a row on windows?

PROPAGANDA TRICK. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 15:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Funny that the story below this one was "Bill Gates : 5% Of Windows Machines Crash More Than Twice A Day"
And even funnier, look at the story that comes after this.

Were you setting us up, Eugenia? ;-)

-----------------------------------

To all:

You can argue back and forth about Linux versus Windows, but it still comes down to your individual needs, and the software you use, period.

For example, I use Windows 2000 at home for one of my workstations. Now it is a major pain to install Windows 2000 + security patches + updates + .NET framework (I usually skip this part), etc... This requires me to literally spend a whole day getting my Windows 2000 system up to speed. Once I get it there, I install the few apps I work with and leave it that way. I never log in and work as "administrator", and I never give my ordinary login permission to install. I then work from behind my FreeBSD firewall and I install Zone Alarm. I never use Outlook or Outlook Express. Why do I bother to use Windows 2000? 1. I need to support my web apps in Internet Explorer, so I need a test station, and 2. There are two Windows applications I really love: UltraEdit and Terragen (OK, CorelDraw also...). That's pretty much it. Other than that, I really don't care about Windows either way for my home use. I usually have no problem with the typical viruses, because I don't run the vulnerable software or services.

Now, on My FreeBSD and Slackware test dev stations, I feel far more freedom to play around with installing/uninstalling applications, recompiling the kernel, playing with different window managers, etc... I can usually with minimal work get my FreeBSD system booting far faster than a comparable Windows one. Ditto for Slackware, although I can't say the same for RedHat or Mandrake. But, I fit the profile for a *nix user.

At my day job, however, its a far different story. Non-tech people use Windows ranging from '95 to XP. They use Outlook Express, they exchange Word documents with the outside world, they run default services, and they hardly ever bother doing the Windows update, because it is such a pain on their slower older machines. I, as the IT director and lead developer of this small company, am seriously considering a mandate that we move to Linux or FreeBSD desktops. This is because I am sick of reading about a new vulnerability every other day, and having people tap me on the shoulder every other hour because their system crashed, or couldn't connect to the network, etc... These are facts that happen, not uninformed opinions about my OS preference as a geek.

Now, you might think I am crazy for considering this move. But, our company's main job is to sell a web-based application service. We can quite easily use Mozilla for all the customer service interfaces I have built. We don't need to exchange Word documents with the outside world, because OpenOffice supports .RTF format quite well, and our documents don't need to be that complex. Our people use Excel a lot, but after a few comparisons I have made between OpenOffice spreadsheet (in the latest 1.1 beta), and Excel, I am impressed. Also, there is always Gnumeric.

The benefit I get from switching everyone to *nix desktops is that I can run a cheap, easy thin-client network, while still allowing people to boot into Windows occasionally if necessary. But mainly, I no longer have to run to each desktop to fix a problem, nor do I need to worry about the latest Windows vunerability. With this approach, I can just get on with my job, instead of spending half my day on crisis response.

Yes, I could tell the boss we need Windows Terminal Server, and I would immediately be shot down because we quite simply don't have the money. And anyways, there have been quite a few vunerabilities that will affect Terminal server too. Plus, I somehow suspect I would get the same number of taps on the shoulder... If we had that kind of money, I would probably want the whole office using Mac OS X, but that's just me ;-).

For other companies, this formula might be completely reversed, and in fact it would be more expensive to move to *nix desktops. Fine for them. So, you see, It's not simple. There is no one system fits all, and that's the way I like it.

But I'm glad that Linux is giving Microsoft some cause for concern. Ditto for Mac. It would be a pretty boring world if everyone drove a Ford. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why has no one mentioned that when Windows boots up to the login screen it hasn't really finished booting?

It takes at least another 10-15s after initial login for the computer to become useable.

Boot up Windows then without logging in shutdown it down again. You're guaranteed a very long wait. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 15:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Interesting review of LindowsOS 4.0 -- http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10639 Sat, 26 Jul 2003 15:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Similarly, Linux did NOT succeed because of any simularities with Windows."

How much progress on the desktop do you think Linux would have made if it didn't have Windows like DEs such as KDE or GNOME? How about if it lacked OpenOffice, GIMP, etc. and just had console apps like vi? How many home users would have even bothered to try it if Linux didn't have an easy to use graphical installer and configuration?

If Linux/opensource programmers hadn't copied features from other OSes and application we wouldn't even be discussing Linux on a desktop. I doubt anyone except a few hardcore geeks would know it even existed.

Yet Linux zealots are still spouting this rhetoric every time someone criticises Linux. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Darius,
>If you don't want spyware on your machine, then don't
>install any. How hard is that?
I agree with your sentiment. That's one of many reasons
why I don't use Windows XP. Perhaps you're familiar with
the way it keeps track of what media (music/video/dvd) you
use and reports it back to Redmond? Have you read the eula that comes with the windows media player update?

I'm sure that you were familiar with the phone home (no,
I don't mean for help) feature in Windows 95 & 98, you know the feature that told Microsoft what was on people's hard drives, the feature that Ralph Nader sued in federal court over?

Please don't say that was then this is now. Fact is, YOU don't know if Microsoft has stopped doing that phone home stuff, --- UNLESS --- you happen to work at Microsoft and
have inside knowledge.

I must admit though that you and all the other users of Microsoft OS's have my mixed respect --- anyone who can use an OS with over 80,000 known worms,viruses,trojans, etc., is either very brave ... or very foolish in their
trust of a single profit motivated corporation to keep
their data protected even from the corporation itself. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > You have just answered your own question. As soon as you have the skills you don't need a big bloated gui for eveything. That what learning to do things effectively is all about.
> There is nothing faster than typing apt-get install . Why wade through endless lists of programs when you just need one (and it even installs supporting programs and libs).

> BTW If you're obsessed by the GUI way or no-way, why not use Synaptic or Kpackage.

> Hope you learn to be productive,
> rob

*lol* I thought we were talking about the ease-of-use of Linux. The point is, if you have to learn C++ in order to be able to use Linux with ease, well, think about the rest yourself. The general public doesn't consist of programmers.

And for the being productive part: Not looking at the fact that most people don't want to build their OS but to use it, why should I be "productive" by programming something in a year a Linux geek would need a week for? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Okay, after a night's sleep and a day at work, and reading 50+ posts, I'm finally able to give some response here.

For starters, and I'm seriously getting pissed here: I DO NOT FAVOR WINDOWS OVER LINUX! Read the article carefully and you'll notice. All I'm saying is that Linux die-hards very often have a tunnel view; Everything oss is good, and if it's not oss, it's not good. Period. That's, with all due respect, not a very intelligent way of looking at software, now is it?

Some replies to posts I found interesting:
-""the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard)"
If you haven't even tried the installation method that a lot of people think is the best, you have no business slagging off Linux installation methods."

Agree, kind of bad choice of words. What I meant is that I've only been able to use apt-get for a short while, so my findings weren't very representative. A matter of statistics. Sorry if this confused you.

-"Uhhh... why is bashing linux a no-no? i think he spoke VERY fairly..."

Again, I'm not bashing Linux, I'm just saying what's wrong with it, from my point of view. Bashing is when you scream all sorts of negative nonsense about an, in this case, OS. Kind of like many of those Linux die-hards do when talking about MS.

-""If we forget the fact that some distributions suddenly have to be paid for, if we forget that some distributions suddenly get discontinued"
All MS OS'es costs, and all are being discontinued."

Of course, that's true, but you know the deal when it comes to MS. I think it's more unfair to suddenly have to pay for something you've been using free for years, than knowing for sure you have to pay a sh*tload of money every 4-5 years or so.

""You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, if we forget the great hardware support, if we forget the uniform look of all the programs,"
These are all very subjectal points."

What did you expect from an opinional (is that a word?) piece?

"Three stories in a row on windows?
PROPAGANDA TRICK."

For the last time: my article wasn't pro windows... ow forget it, you can't cure a blind man.

As I said, a part two is in the making.

I will not rest my case. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? By the way, the article was written in MDK 9.2beta1 using Kate.

See, I use Linux a lot, and I like it. I don't hate it. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I will switch from Windows to Linux--when Linux is ready, and it absolutely isn't, unless you buy a ground-up machine with all the proper hardware (esp modem), and the main motive is to get away from the shitty company of MS and Gates, who I think is slightly insane--obscene wealth and guilt therefrom did it to him.

No matter how you try to avoid it, how you justify an interest in Linux, your switch to it will hurt MS in someway. When you zap TV channels you "hurt" the advertisers whose garrish loud commercials you want to avoid--and you hurt, very very tinily, the whole "advertising model".

CEOs everywhere orgasm over the thought of having a fraction of the power and influence MS has. All those people EARNING A LIVING on the myriad abstruse flaws of this OS. Step on these bugs--with your commercial choices. Hey, I can always write on a REAL laptop, that is, a one dollar pad of paper--but Linux is my best choice for an escape from this madness. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "For the last time: my article wasn't pro windows..."

Yet, you dind's say any of the flaws of Windows and lot in Linux. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 17:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ""For the last time: my article wasn't pro windows..."

Yet, you dind's say any of the flaws of Windows and lot in Linux."

That's simply beacuse the article wasn't about that. The first part was about the attitude some linux die-hards have (oss=good, css=bad, evil, the devil!), the second part about what should happen to Linux in general (as far as I'm concerned).

I'm getting the feeling here people only read what they want to read. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 17:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think you need to write in a more inpartial point of view, maybe you tried to told us something we didn'd get cause the sense of the words.

Words like:

"You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, if we forget the great hardware support, if we forget the uniform look of all the programs, if we forget InstallShield and look-a-likes, if we forget the clear structure (Program Files, My Documents etc, and of course this only goes for the not-so-technical end-user), if we forget Windows Update (still beats the Distribution-specific update tools, in my opinion). "

and words like:


"Well, I think Linux is not all "bliss". Linux would be all "bliss" if we forget the slow boot-up/shutdown times, if we forget the lousy hardware support for, let's say, Ati products (Ati being the number two in graphics cards!), if we forget the "geek" image of Linux, if we forget the fact that some distributions suddenly have to be paid for, if we forget that some distributions suddenly get discontinued, if we forget the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard)"

You sound like a pro-microsoft in the firsth part an like a Linux basher in the second part.

You just need to chose the right words so we can really understand you. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 17:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have chosen those words very carefully. As I said, part one was about me trying to contradict the view some Linux die-hards tend to have (MS=evil, always wrong, etc. Linux=heaven, good, will bring world peace etc.).

I cannot help that when I say "parts a and b aren't that good" you immediatly assume c through z aren't good either.

A tip when reading articles, reviews etc: don't try to read more than the author wrote. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 17:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I understand that part, but you need to release that this forum is read it by people who really use Linux as their main OS and had found on it a very stable and better OS than Windows, don't you spec cheers from them.

Your article is from a point of view very particular (your own), but everybody has one.

Just take it like a constructive review. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 17:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You could say I'm an expert user

No,I wouldn't : an expert user would know how to speed up his boot process, or would have used apt-get already. Or he would know some of the alternatives like urmpi or up2date. And most importantly, he wouldn't write idiot articles about Linux on the internet. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How many people are going to write this article? And do they all think they're the first? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How much progress on the desktop do you think Linux would have made if it didn't have Windows like DEs such as KDE or GNOME? How about if it lacked OpenOffice, GIMP, etc. and just had console apps like vi? How many home users would have even bothered to try it if Linux didn't have an easy to use graphical installer and configuration?

If Linux/opensource programmers hadn't copied features from other OSes and application we wouldn't even be discussing Linux on a desktop. I doubt anyone except a few hardcore geeks would know it even existed.

Yet Linux zealots are still spouting this rhetoric every time someone criticises Linux.

-----
No, you missed the point. The point is that Linux has a different purpose than Windows. And that has succeeded in fulfilling that purpose.

YOU are measuring Linux's success by how similar it is to Windows.

I am measuring Linux's success by how useful and fun people find it. Linus created Linux for fun, to learn from, and because he needed it.

Linux was useful and fun LONG BEFORE Gnome and KDE hit the scene. I've been using Linux and FreeBSD since 1994 and even back then, it was useful and fun.

Linux, *BSD, Apache, KDE, GNOME, etc. have always been successes because they have a fun, free and open development environment. There is a market for this.

Is this Linux zealotry? No. It's freedom zealotry.

Open source is a success! Why not enjoy it and haves some fun! Stop raining on our parade. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I totally agree with you (yes! I like Linux! It's a miracle... I'm gonna state that a few more times, maybe it'll get through... eventually ), but, you have to agree, some critisizm can't do no harm, now can it?

And I still believe I made some reasonable points in this article. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i partly agree with the author. it's been proven time and time again that standardisation is the way forward. i think that having many distros is healthy but i think all the distros need to agree on ONE package format and ONE API for programming guis so graphical programs don't need to be 'frontended' to KDE or Gnome. redhat's theme for both KDE and Gnome was really smart. it seems that linux is growing alot but the growth is too unorganized. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think people are so hard on Linux because it's ALMOST completely freaking cool. Right now if you don't want to give MS any more money and aren't a geek, pretty much the only game in town is Apple.

---

God help me, I just bought an older iMac cheap off of eBay, the copy of YDL 3.0 + Manual is ordered, and the goal is to see if I can get it up and running, play a CD, surf the web, and pitch and possibly write an article on the whole experience for OS News.

---

Last night I was clicking around in my applications folder, playing around with some of the programs that were installed when I installed bsdmall's Office Applications for OS X, a slew of *nix programs + a flavor of X Windows to run them in.

A lot of the programs have real potential but are half baked. Abi Word can't print, nor can I copy and paste between it and Aqua. Open Office is a resource hog (but I can copy and paste), I can't make heads or tails of the Gimp (I find Photoshop easier and more intuitive!).

But anyhow, I opened up a program called Dillo. An alpha release webbrowser that crashed on me twice (hey, it's Alpha) but was incredibly freaking fast. Like, Safari or Opera on the PC fast. It was a really nifty little browser and I liked it enough to see if there was an updated version. There was.

Problem #1: Which flavor do I download? Darwin or BSD?

And I had this sinking feeling that when I finally picked one of them, it wasn't going to end up on my desktop, waiting for me to double click it and =poof!= handy dandy program icon waiting to take residence in my apps folder or dock.

Problem #2: Where would the download end up on my hard drive?

Problem #3: How the hell do I install it if there's no little icon waiting for my loving double click?

Problem #4: Can I even install it or will I have to convert it into something a PPC processor can make sense of?

I'm sure that if I spent about 45 minutes with google as my co-pilot and/or David Pogue's guide to OS X, I could've answered those questions.

Needless to say, I didn't download. If this isn't an arguement for a *nix standard package and gui install procedure, I don't know what is. Cute, fun looking program, but I had no clue as to how to get it up and running on my comptuer.

Almost completely awesome.

Almost. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? //You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, if we forget the great hardware support, if we forget the uniform look of all the programs, if we forget InstallShield and look-a-likes, if we forget the clear structure (Program Files, My Documents etc, and of course this only goes for the not-so-technical end-user), if we forget Windows Update (still beats the Distribution-specific update tools, in my opinion).

If you confront Linux addicts with the disadvantages I just named, you always get the same reaction: "When Linux becomes (more) mainstream, those problems will disappear."//

I believe Mandrake to be even easier to install then Windows. You also forget that for every piece of 3rd party software that you want to install after the initial install requires a reboot. Just check the boxes for the programs you want installed during Mandrake's installation and not only is your hardware automatically detected but you already have all the programs you need.

If you use something like KDE then you will not only have a fully integrated Desktop but, you will not be lacking in tools either. KDE by default provides more integrated programs then Windows does.

Installing using apt or portage is ten times easier than Install Shield. Two words: no rebooting

The clear structure you speak of is not so clear. I think the Unix structure is much more intuitive. I believe this is just merely your preference and not based on any real flaw. I always hated Program Files because you would often run into some company name as the name of the directory and it had nothing to do with the program and you would have no clue what it was for. If you have enough programs on your computer it can be very confusing. If you want to know where your executable and other important information is on Linux then just do a "whereis". Makes sense to me.

I also hate Windows Update. You cannot download everything at once. A lot of update must be rebooted before you can download other ones. They often break your system or make things unstable. Updating is very easy with apt and portage or even urpmi.

When people bring up your points they don't get the "When Linux becomes (more) mainstream, those problems will disappear" routine from me. The problems you speak of are not there. Your statements are not true. They are not fact at all. Maybe you should get out there and actually use some of these features. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? //The article was very good and basicly dead on.

For boot times he's right, I have never had any distro boot on any of my computers in less thena few minutes, nor have a seen it on any others. Using all sorts of hacks to get it booting fast doesn't count, its the out of the box setup that does. And for differances in times between distros, one more reason for their to be one distro. //

Mine boots in about 15-20 seconds without any "hacks" whatever you mean by that. So I'd say the article was dead wrong not dead on. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The article contains two of the familiar flaws that often are made when challenging enthusiasm for Linux.

The author writes "...You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, " but whenever someone demonstrates a computer with Windows XP installed on it that behaves terribly with crashes and many user interface elements that simply do not work properly, the Windows fans response is always something like "it works when installed by someone who knows what they are doing". So one has to be an expert to install Windows properly. So much for ease of installation

Then, "...if we forget the great hardware support". but again, when it is demonstrated that a computer behaves terribly with windows, the response is usually something like "don't expext it to work with crappy/obscure/old hardware". Yet the same computer runs fine with a live-CD version of Linux. So much for hardware compatibility.

Then, "...if we forget the uniform look of all the programs". This is the one area that surprised me the most about Windows XP. Using the DEFAULT (Luna) desktop scheme in Windows XP, Microsoft's own programs show a shocking inconsistency between programs. Look at the way that menus are rendered in Wordpad, Outlook and Windows Explorer. Each one is different. This is not even third party software. These are programs that were released for that very version of the operating system! Incredible! But not only this, take a look at the way that scroll bars are rendered in Outlook. Depending on the pane, the scroll bars have a completely different look! Inconsistency within one program itself! This is not in a old version either. This is in the Office XP version! Again, incredible! Open the command prompt in XP and the complete window is rendered like no other window. Again, the program was release for XP, by Microsoft! So much for uniform look of all the programs.

So lets recap. Windows XP lacks:

hardware compatibility
ease of installation
uniform look of applications

So what is left to make Windows the supposed superior operating system? Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? And then there is that tired out old chesnut...

The author writes "...twelve different applications for one task, they do not want to choose between six different Window Managers, even though all of them are quite good. I mean, do you line up six tv's in your living room just because they look a bit different from each other?" But wait, the last time I checked auto manufacturers have controls arranged in many different ways. How is it that people manage to deal with this and end up owning and driving only one car? A Honda has it's windshield wiper controls very differently than a Cheverolet. The controls for the sunroof are also very different. Does this mean that everyone needs to own a Honda and a Cheverolet? The last time I bougt a car, I test drove several and bought the one that I liked best. Similarly with software, I try out several and keep the one that I like the best, discarding the others. Why do some have such a problem with this?

I revel in using my Linux box at home where I can choose the text editor, web browser, email program and software developement environmet of my choosing. I wish I could do the same at work, but the IT department just blindly supplies me with whatever Microsoft creates, without even going through a selection process.

I have never understood the aversion to choice. Some wish for their every living moment to be micromanaged by others I guess. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Bill Gates wants to buy the moon and charge people for looking at it"

You really don't think he would?

"Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed"

I guess you have been lucky those couple times you have done so? I've probably installed Windows over 500 times, it sucks, two words for you, "Corel Linux", I've never seen anything easier than that (and this was on a Compuqe with weirdo chipsets and an SMC 8000 NIC).

"if we forget the great hardware support"

After changing the main circuit board, modem, sound card and video card of a Compaq Presario 5900Z (500Mhz AMD) and spending about 50 hours I got XP properly installed. The original mainboard was an Asus OEM board, Lucent Winmodem, OEM Sound Blaster PCI 64, Generic S3 Virge Video (it was not a REAL Compuqe with oddball parts from deepest he11) the external HP USB CD-Writer also never worked again, same goes for the scanner. This has not been completely atypical of the thirty something XP installations I've done so far. (okay a few went well)

"if we forget the uniform look of all the programs"

Uh, except for many of these new programs have some dumba$$ "skin" that you can't remove.

"if we forget InstallShield and look-a-likes"

You mean those glorified batch files which won't uninstall half the time and fail completely about 1 in 30 times, that often won't let me install stuff where I don't want it because that partition is nearly full?

"if we forget the clear structure (Program Files, My Documents etc"

I would like to get rid of "My Documents" permanently. I don't keep anything there. I use a data partition. I also install my apps to a separate partition. "Program Files" serves only to make the path longer and for me to occaisionally need to type C:Progra~1etc., that's bullsh1t! /usr and /bin make a he11 of a lot more sense to me. I am sick of this A:B:C: sh1t too! hda0, hda1, hdb0 is well... logical?

"and of course this only goes for the not-so-technical end-user), if we forget Windows Update"

I definitely don't want "Windows Update". I want a downloadable patch that I can test the effects of on a machine that exists for that purpose, then install to 100 desktops with a network login script entry. "Windows Update" broke the terminal client used to access the accounting system server, I had to reimage a dozen desktops.

"thousands of miles away from the Windows XP ease of use"

I've used well over thirty different operating systems since starting with CP/M in 1981 (Windows = 5 "Operating Systems"; 3.X, 9X, NT, 2K, XP). Currently the greatest percentage of my work week daily mileage is with NT 4 but about 25% is QNX, weekends are a different story. XP is the most difficult to use operating system I have ever encountered. It's easier because stuff is harder to find, there's a cartoon dog in my way and the "Start" menu is all different? I can set up a two machine p2p network in two minutes on NT. I gave up after 40 minutes trying to p2p an XPH to an XPP. Burning the data to transfer to CD was more convenient.

Boot Times? I have a fresh out of the box HP Pavillion 502n (1.3 Celeron, 256Mb) that takes over two minutes to boot XP (including after logging in). Yes, I can turn off services, get rid of crap like Messenger, edit the Registry, remove stuff from the "Start Up" folder, etc. but this is at least as complicated as Linux.

Okay, maybe you don't favor Windows over Linux, but at the very least you believe Microsoft marketing material.

Even if you hate Linux, even if you love Windows, that does not mean Windows doesn't suck. I've been using it since 3.1 was new, it hasn't gotten better, just different. Oh, and if you bang on it hard enough you CAN make a 9X box stable. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My friend, I did not say XP was superior...

*a long, deep, VERY deep, SIGH*

-Installing Windows is, espacially compared to any Linux distro (except LindowsOS, as far as I know), easy. No mounting options, no boot loader configurations, no package selection... And look at this from a newbie's point of view. Give a newbie a copy of MDK (in my opinion the best distro, I like MDK a lot, typing this in Opera for MDK) and XP. He'll say installing Windows is easier.

-About the hardware support? Well, I've installed about every single version of Windows since 3.11 For Wrkgrps, on a lot of different configurations (not only my parents/my own pc's, but also friends pc's, family's pc's etc.) and in my experience I never had any trouble. BUT, I do understand taht it won't be easy on all systems. Just a matter of statistics (therefore not buying me a new PC, it has been going well for too long now )

-And then the uniform look. I never noticed the inconsistencies you talked about (and trust me, I pay attention when I install something new), but I can imagine you're right (why lie? ) On the other hand, I've been using Server 2003 for while now (not a single unexpected reboot, only when fooling around with LiteStep, LS users know what I'm talking about;) ), It's on a tie right now with my MDK install...

But please, I never said Windows was superior. I'm working on part II of the article as we speak (yesyes, again in Kate, in MDK) and I'll try to clarify some issues.

BTW, your post was constructive. Finally... Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Compaq? HP Pavilion?

Pre made pc's are known to be unstable, slower, (and more expensive) compared to custom made pc's.

And these days ordering a custom made pc is easy (at least over here in The Netherlands). At my expert computershop, even a complete idiot (a friend of mine for example, no offence to him though can assemble one. Just speak with the people who work there (they's pretty honest) and you cannot fail (since they'll do the assembly work).

Constructive reply though. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What about having to *trick* Windows into doing something? You know, lying to a wizard to get the desired effect and other underhanded methods when you just know better and Windows won't listen. When you must resort to voodoo.

With Linux you say "jump" and it jumps, yes it may fall and break it's leg but if you knew better and that it would be okay when it landed, you are done. Linux obeys. There's none of this "waving a dead chicken in the right place" stuff.

I'm not going to mention the half dozen ways of installing a printer driver, a random two of which will work for any given printer. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Pre made pc's are known to be unstable, slower, (and more expensive) compared to custom made pc's."

Hi, yes you are right except for the more expensive part (i.e. the crap Dell and Gateway sell for $500). I used those examples because they are typical of the garbage people buy, then bring to me to fix. One would think that Compaq's very intimate connections with Microsoft (the VMS - NT thing and others) that Compuqes would run Windows BETTER than a "cherry picked parts" machine. Also, this low - end Acer junk from all the big manufacturers runs Linux better than Windows as often as not. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ""There's none of this "waving a dead chicken in the right place" stuff. ""

This explains everything, you need an albatross. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Albatross? But those are so hard to find these days, please email me your source. Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This last piece again underscores the fact that this forum is not oriented toward actual computer professionals, but hobbyists. For example,

Special Contributor Thom "Slakje" Holwerda wrote:

"In 2001 I bought my own computer" [note: speaks volumes]

"if we forget the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard)" [note: so he has "heard"?]

"I think the major Distributions should all "join hands" to create one version of Linux, with one desktop, a uniform look, with one update system and so on." [note: thus expressing a fundamental ignorance of the nature of Linux].

None of this, of course, is to disparage Thom "Slakje" Holwerda's offering--he took the time to write his (largely) unqualified, uninformed comments and it stands on its own merits. *The problem* is that this forum reflects the nature of its "editor" not its contributors, who is--at best--a crass, unlearned person that has *no business* pretending to be the editor of anything, let alone the "editor" of a technical forum dedicated to operating systems.

No responsible editor, let alone literate, restrained person, would ever respond in such a manner on a public forum:

By Eugenia (IP: ---.client.attbi.com) - Posted on 2002-09-13 22:14:15:

"Why don't you fuck yourself El Al?"
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1737&offset=60&ro... Sun, 27 Jul 2003 05:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Posted on 2003-07-26 22:34:57 by abraxas:

//The article was very good and basicly dead on.

For boot times he's right, I have never had any distro boot on any of my computers in less thena few minutes, nor have a seen it on any others. Using all sorts of hacks to get it booting fast doesn't count, its the out of the box setup that does. And for differances in times between distros, one more reason for their to be one distro. //

Mine boots in about 15-20 seconds without any "hacks" whatever you mean by that. So I'd say the article was dead wrong not dead on.


What's your hardware? 2 GHz + 512MB RAM? Sun, 27 Jul 2003 06:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Interestingly I wonder why most people find Linux v.hard to use.
I have tried it on many occasions, easy to install, easy to setup adsl connection. BUT! :-) I am no programmer and if it isn't a properly packaged rpm, I cannot understand why it should take me ages to install software!
The problem with Linux is that it is a programmers OS, it has nothing but pain for those of us mere mortals.
So, even though I would like to dump windows, I will continue to use it, due to its ease of use, I have never needed to read a thick manual on how to use windows!, installing is dead easy, software installation is v.easy compared to Linux. People like that idea of Linux, they just don't like the hard work. Am I lazy? Maybe, but I want an easy life, I want to get a software package, click install and viola! Sun, 27 Jul 2003 09:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "if we forget the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I've heard)."

I can't believe that somebody who doesn't know the power of APT is writing articles for OSnews that critisizes Linux. That's like letting the owner of a Hotdog stand run a french kitchen. Most of the RPM based Distro's that come out these days, has ways of dealing with dependencies. Either APT, URPMI or similar Apps are used, or services such as Red carpet are utilized, Installing software has allready become a centralised task in Linux that windows can only dream of. I hate having to go out on the net to find apps manually (Hint:Windows...) Not so long ago, I had to find and copy DLL's manually from the Win32 folder to get a relatively popular App running. In other words. Dependency hell works fine on Windows...

I guess the good "scribes" are on vacation. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 09:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I installed an adsl modem last week on my machine and i had to install it 3 times before it was properly installed! last night i had to install quicktime 6 times before it properly installed! badly installed packages are more prevalent in windows than linux. i admit i did have problems with rpms in mandrake, that's why i changed to debain Sun, 27 Jul 2003 09:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Guys, guys, please first browse through the posts before commenting. If you did that, then you would've known I already replied to the "or so I've heard" question. It was kind of an unlucky choice of words, I explained that already. Please, take time to read the comments, before dissing someone.

And about the "in the 2001 i bought my own computer". Look at the "my own" words. We have had computers in this house since 1991. That's too late for you in order to be kind of experienced? Well sorry, I was seven at the time, much earlier and I would've been a friggin' baby! Read before commenting... My god...

And then you reply to my "join hands" suggestion. Read the last paragraph of my article. I'll post it here for you:

"Of course that kind of takes away the essence of the Open-Source concept. Open-Source is all about letting everybody not only use the software, bu also letting everybody improve the software. This has led to a diversity in the available software. This is a good thing, if you are an expert willing to put time and effort into your OS, but if you are not, than Linux just isn't for you, at this moment."

For the last time: If you read an article, READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE! Don't just read what you want to read.

And the you call me unqualified. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 11:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sure if you only use mandrake. I bet you never heard about CRUX linux or ARCH linux. try them and see what booting is. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 12:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Windoze has always tried to be friendy to Joe-user,wheras Linux seems to pride itself on it's complexity,and that is why it remains a 'geek OS'.The Linux crowd needs to apply the concept of KISS (Keep It Simple,Stupid).The only other OS that I have seen do this to any degree was BeOS (I'm not gonna get into Mac because it requires it's own hardware)and it did it to the point of surpassing Windows in many ways,A simple concise file-tree and an intuitive drag and drop GUI.Linux in it's present form is like finding your way around in a large foreign badly layed-out city,full of narrow alleys and dead end streets,and the software installation is attrocious.and who thw hell,other than the true geek,wants to see that verbose boot mumbo-jumbo describing all the system calls,etc.I mean it's fun the first time but it gets old fast and shoud be able to be switched off,once a user sees evrything does indeed work.
The multiple window managers are also an example of bloat and IMO X-windows should be abandoned in favor of something nice and lite like Photon in QNX(which IMO would make a hell of a nice desktop OS with some more software and a more BeOS-like software installation)Linux is way more easier to install for the average person than say FreeBSD but once you get there it's still a bloated mess.I have said this before and will say it again ,It's too damn bad that BeOS was crushed under the wheels of the M$-opoly before it really had a chance to get off the ground,It was way cheaper than Windows to buy (less than some of the Boxed Linux distros)every bit(and maybe more so)as user friendly,and given a few more years of professional development(i'm not talking 'bout a bunch of college kids with a website hacking on a 3yr-old unreleased version,that seems to rival the new Amiga OS in postponing a release date)would have been a serious contender for the M$ throne
Linux is just too scatterd and bloated with unnecessary stuff to ever be in it's present form. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I actually own a piece of low-end Acer junk and trying to run alt OS's on it has ,to say the least,has always been an exercise in patience ,if not futility.I think this is why I use it for a tryout platform for alt-OS's,if it will run on the proprietory built-for-Windoze98-Low End Acer it will most likely run on anything,BeOS failed miserably at this(no USB keyboard and mouse support,altho I rigged a serial Mouse up and had mouse and joystick and sound,so it worked for a jukebox and to play a few games)Linux passed this by and stalled out on the Acer win-modem and the Acer USB scanner and the HP712C printer. But the software installation was so easy in BeOS and the interface was oso slick ,it made me go get a box that would run it. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In response to my original post, the author writes...

"-And then the uniform look. I never noticed the inconsistencies you talked about (and trust me, I pay attention when I install something new)."

Are you saying that the menus have the same look in Notepad and in Outlook? Again, I am talking about the default XP theme (Luna). But it gets even more interesting if you go into the desktop settings and change the selection colour. Then look at the colour of the selected menu item in various programs(Outlook and Notepad for instance). Some programs have the selection colour entered in the control panel, come programs have a faded version of the selection colour, some programs use the selection colour only as a border around the selected menu item, and other programs still ouse a completed different colour entirely. Once again, all Microsoft programs meant for Windows XP. No third party programs, no old versions.

Are you telling me that the window border for the Command Prompt looks the same as the window border in Outlook? I suppose it could be true that both my computer at work and at home have something strange about them that causes this. But that goes back to the ease of installation. Sure, the process is eaay. But the end result is not. Again I mention the response that the Windows enthusiast give when shown a poorly behaving Windows XP system. They almost always say something like "You have to know what you are doing and it will work every time" The only possible interpretation of this is following the instructions that are given when installing Windows XP is not enough. Appearantly there must be more esoteric proceedures necessary to make it work properly. Unless of course, it just does not work properly in the first place. It is one or the other. It cannot be had both ways.

Then...

"But please, I never said Windows was superior"

The statement is not made explicitly, but the author's article unquestionable implies it (possibly unintentionally). Read the article again as if reading it for the first time and tell me that the objections to Linux and the lauding of Windows (although false from my experience) does not imply Windows superiority? Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In another post I said something like:

"If I say parts A and B aren't good, it doesn't mean C through Z aren't good either."

I'ts just the way you look at it. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Author = closed mind and he won't admit his article is 90% wrong. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, despite the lad being dutch and despite him not being a Linux wizz, he does point out a few problems with current distro's.

However, my personal opinion is that the diversity of open source is what gives it it's strength. If you don't like one desktop? Well, take another. Thats one of the ideas i've founded Morphix on (and the one-tool-one-job idea), and people like to be able to choose (within limits, ofcourse). Trying to bring uniformity to Linux (like UnitedLinux has tried) just doesn't work. There are too many different desktops, to many different communities and too many different types of update systems to just throw all into one. That being said, APT & synaptic is truely the pinnacle of package management, closed or open

Anyway, there are decent parts in the article concerning the problems, but the ideas aren't very useful from my point-of-view. Does sound like some of my ranting 3 years ago among the debian-ranks, but sometimes ranting/writing isn't enough: If you want something done, help out! There are too many people that take distributions for granted. Find one you like, and make it better. Even submitting bugreports or suggesting tips helps out. Don't ask what your distro could do for you, ask what you can do for your distro Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? For the last time if you want to compare Linux to a MS "product" compare it to c:windowssystem32 not the entire windows package.

True, there are probably about 1000 OSs around that consists of the same software packaged in diffrent ways, still they are OSs in their own right. The problem is that the brand Linux is flawed, people think Linux is an OS.

An OS is NOT a Linux distribution it is an OS built on top of Linux. One could market the RedHat OS as built on Linux if you would want to emphasise stability and network performance but thats it, Linux does not have a package managment system, Linux does not have a GUI, Linux is nothing more than a common codebase for building kernels.

What the other packages are concerned. They are also a commmon codebase that happens to compile into a reference implementation. OS makers are not supposed to just provide the compiled code, they are supposed to integrate the code into their product in a consisten way.

If one compare RedHat 9.0 to MS Windows XP one shoul hold RedHat acountable for the problems, not the Linux community!

Just my thoughts. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 17:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ofcourse, but I'm not gonna say "Operating systems based on the Linux kernel developped by a group of people, initiated by Linus Torvalds" every time.

But, you're right . Period. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 17:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Its not an Open Source philosophy to argue which OS is better. Mac zealots have been doing it since before Linux existed. VMS vs Unix wars were legend. Apple II vs TRS-80?

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of computing history will know that this is just "par for the course".

Also, your TV analogy is all wrong. While nobody chooses 6 different TVs based on interface, I _WOULD_ choose a TV that gave me 6 different remote controls (interfaces) vs one that locked me into a remote control (interface) that I didnt like. Get it? Sun, 27 Jul 2003 17:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It amazes me how much people seem to lack a basic understanding of technologies. Might I suggest that _everyone_ read Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte. In it he very articulately explains the reasons that _protocols_ are important. Not interfaces. Standardize the protocol, and the best interface will win.

In particular, check out:

http://www.linuxbase.org and
http://www.freedesktop.org

Both aim at different parts of the compatibility issue. So buy only LSB compliant distributions. And use only freedesktop compliant window managers/operating environments. Support the standards and let the best implementation one.

This is a FAR better solution than one, single distribution. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 17:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Surely this depends on your disk and processor. Also dont forget that Lindows loads a _lot_ of windows libraries and compatibility libraries. I can guarantee you Lindows will boot slower vs Windows or "pure" Linux on each and every machine you can find. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 17:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I would like to correct your TV statement, it is not a case of having lots of different types of TV in your house, but in your local shop. A user doesn't have to use them all, and during the installation of even Mandrake as you will know, they give you the option, so select the one you like. Job done, who wants to be offered one option, when you can have more than one option?

Linux isn't slow at booting up, thats a fact, the user has the option of selecting which services he/she wants to start at bootup, these also are offered at bootup in Mandrake.

Mandrake is a very bad distribution to use as a representation of linux because it is the slowest distribution by far that I have used. It is far ahead of other distributions in bulk and at no expense. Gentoo, Debian and Archlinux to name 3 are very quick distributions and Archlinux in particular has a reletively simple installation too, all of them have a package system which is cleaner and quicker than that of Mandrake, supporting local and remote packaging.

Whats this lots of tools to do the same job? There arn't that many and besides, it caters for different people, those who prefer console or gui over eachother, and of course so you can pick the one for your 'specific desktop environment' so you don't have to 'pick even more types of application'.

I don't want to sound offensive, but before you write another artical like this one, do more research because you have selected the worse linux representation to compare to windows (which yes, doesn't have many options).

I think if you did your research more indepth and includes all comparisons that are to be made, with no hidden information or information that you do not yet know, you would discover that Linux is much better than Windows in lots of ways. I do agree with you however, that Linux has some things to do before it will catch on like Windows has, but do some _research_ into the popularity of Linux and how it has grown over the last, o say 5 or 10 years. Microsoft in all its size and power now see's Linux as a threat, so maybe Linux has already caught on, and as it simplifies more people will use it, but with more and more people these days becoming computer literate, will it need to simplify to the point that windows has?

Please contact me about this issue, if you have read the comments that is.

P.S. I have been using windows products since I was 8 (I'm currently 15) and have been using linux for no more than one and a half years, so I do have Windows experience with all versions that have been released. I thus can make an opinion fairly, because I have also used lots of linux distributions, unlike you I feel. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 20:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Great article.To all the folks who hated the article...get a life.Linux is great,if you know what you're doing.If you're a first time user,it's hell.It has the look and feel of a beta version of any MS OS.Buggy as hell,unfinished and difficult to tame.Unless Linux whishes to remain a "geeks only" OS,it had better get up to par.Bitch and moan all you want about Windows and Microsoft.The fact is,the have a good product.It's simple to use and stable enough.Face facts,no matter what OS you run,there will be an issue or two.Even the perfect PC,matched with the perfect OS...The user will find some way to screw it up.
Linux is like an underground OS,whereas Windows is truly a polished product that is well-marketed and simple.Who the hell has time in the real world to fight with a PC?
K-I-S-S = Keep It Simple Stupid.Linux ain't simple. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 22:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This article does make a few good points. One that Linux does need some installer support for programs, and that at times Distros do give too many choices. That's why Lwindows is there. Gives you 1 of everything, and Click and run makes installing simple. Never used it, but reviews say it's really simple to use.

As for the bad, I see the unification of all distros bad. I like choice, and having 1 overbearing company (aka: MS) control my OS entirely, makes Linux less appealing. Having to pay for Linux, neccessarely, is impossible since it's GPLed. It would also mean the source isn't freely distributed, in which case I'd stop using it. I like to be able to play with the code, see exactely what's happening, and if I need a feature for something, implement it.
I also like to choose my desktop enviroment. KDE is good for some things, while a simple xinit is good for others.
What this article proposes is a change in the basic philosophy of Linux, and a loss of everything that makes it unique (it'd make for a hell of a reason to switch to hurd (when if that ever comes out)).

It's exactely like people making KDE/Gnome/(insert yours), look just like MS. Do something new, this isn't Windows, it's Linux, and if you look at someone which isn't used to computers and put them in front of a windows you'll see just how bad the design really is.

My 2 cents, though, I doubt anyone will read this. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author uses some very good points. Yet, I disagree with some of them from my own experience.

Not all users flame windows. I must admit, if I tend to use windows a lot, I can appreciate the fine directory outline, the ease of use, and the fact I can play a lot of games I can't play @ linux.

Also, my windows 2000 professional boots twice the time my gentoo box needs to boot. And it's a standard install, so (like others suggested) I just think you start up too much. If you haven't at least recompiled your kernel and tried to stop programs you don't need from starting up, your linux is indeed slow.

Your 'lousy hardware support' comment is not something I agree with neither... I have three computers running linux, and another two computers wich I installed (computers of a friend) and NONE of them had hardware linux couldn't handle. If linux has crappy hardware support in you eyes, it's because the manufacturer of the hardware refuses to aid programmers in making drivers for linux. That's something that CAN'T be reversed, like you suggested. Cooperation from hardware manufacturers will come only if linux gets more popularity.

About the geek image: I recently installed a computer near the tv for viewing divx. My mom wanted to check her mail on that computer, so I started gnome for her and she managed to check her mail without my help. Installing linux, that's the hard part. But most users let their local computer seller install windows for them and don't know how to do that themselves too. Once redhat is installed, it's probably as easy to use as windows. Problem is most computer vendors aren't likely to learn linux, but maybe someday, there will be a costumer who will want linux on their machine... (like in big offices today where IBM installs linux on the server and the administrator just configs it)

Some distribution indeed have to be paid for. But that's SOME. You don't have to pay for all the distributions, and you get ALL the software for free. Yesterday, I went to a computer store and saw Microsoft Office on the shelf for 250 euro or so... I recently installed OpenOffice on the pc of a friend who had SunOffice. It practically IS the same software, but SunOffice costs 50 euros... I don't want to pay that much just for costumer support. And costumer support for linux is being worked on (www.linux.be for instance). I think it's a crappy thing too that you have to pay for vmware or winex. But at least you can use them for free.

The crappy way software is installed? Mandrake and Slackware are two distributions where that is the case. You ever tried Red Hat with their rpm's? Debian with apt-get? Gentoo with emerge? No... I don't think you have enough knowledge to compare linux to windows. You can just compare MANDRAKE to windows. That's a world of difference. (btw, you can install apt-get on other distro's too )

I agree that windows is easy to install. Though it still frustrated me that, on a pc wich didn't supported ACPI, it BSODded. On a pc with an old cd-drive, it BSODded and I didn't found out untill a year later, when the cd-rom drive broke down and I replaced it and installed XP again (later that month). And also, I think mandrake is even easier to install. And mind me talking about knoppix (wich doesn't even need installation at all).

Maybe windows supports hardware better than linux. But did you ever have a driver that erased your RAID configuration and wiped out 80 gigabytes of data? No, I don't think you ever did...

Why do you think Install-shield is so positive? It just does the same thing as a Red Hat rpm-install, a Gentoo emerge or a Debian apt-get. No, I was wrong, it doesn't, sometimes, a program starts with: vbrun5.dll is missing, exiting, or something like that.

I sincerely think that the linux directory structure is better organised. Configuration files go in /etc, system critical files go in /boot, user programs go in /usr, system programs go in /sbin, home directories go in /home. And if you don't like your directory structure, you can always go on and symlink yourself a new one in your home dir, or start with LFS and choose everything yourself. What if you don't like the windows structure. I guess you're stuck with it then...

About the windows update, I never had something that was easier than 'emerge -uD world'... You just don't know all that, because you only tried Mandrake (thoroughly).

"they do not want twelve different applications for one task": and windows provides one easy application? NOT! I know a couple of ftp-programs, some download accelerators (or who do you call that stuff), some browsers, some office-suites, a lot of IM clients, ... Microsofts just installs some for you, the 'standard' ones. Kde does that too, it installs an office package, a standard browser, ... I don't see any difference between linux and windows there.

"They do not want to choose between six windows managers". I would... And why do you think the phenomana 'skins' have that much succes? I've met several users who switched to windows xp because 'it looked prettier'. So I've switched from KDE to gnome (because of the better arrangement of menu's) to fluxbox (because it was more functional) to waimea (transparency, hmmmmmm). I think it's a good thing there are that many window managers. If the performance of windows was bad, wouldn't it be great if an user could just switch to a window manager with less fuzz, and that way, clear up some mem? Unfortunately, the only alternative they know is buying some new mem...
And btw, do you run six window managers AT THE SAME TIME? I would buy a new tv if it had more options, or if it had a clearer view, or if the menu was easier to handle (remote control instead of buttons on the tv). You should make that comparision...

The power of linux is that it's costumizable. In my opinion, making a distribution is what EVERY user should do... Only the user knows exactly how he wants it and where he wants it. Distributions are just an example. And a way to gain idea's and experience to create your own distribution (LFS), but without the distribution part. The power of linux is the variation. One window manager fit-all would be a terrible waste. A beginning user will want KDE, but someone with more experience will want something else, a programmer will want something with lots and lost of terminals, a graphic artist will want something pretty, and so on. You can't just combine all that in one window manager. The versitaillety is the power of linux.

You are impressed of lindowsOS... Wich computer do you use? In my opinion, a 486 could make an excellent desktop pc. Just use it as an x-terminal and run gdm on a more powerful computer. I think lindowsOS is a nice attempt, but it won't be populair because it depends too much on wine, and it just is too much windows. If you have windows, you'll stick to windows, and if you don't want windows anymore, you won't use lindowsOS 'cause it IS almost like windows, without the option to play games.

As a conclusion, I want to say I don't WANT linux to become populair. There are also many negative points about popularity. Linux virusses would appear. Friends would ask for help (now, I can just get rid of 'em by saying: I use linux, I don't know windows). And also, you wouldn't be special anymore. Isn't that what we all want to be. Our little bit of individuality and freedom of choice? Sun, 27 Jul 2003 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "I actually own a piece of low-end Acer junk and trying to run alt OS's on it has ,to say the least,has always been an exercise in patience ,if not futility."

Note that I wrote "as often as not". Whether due to killing time, or just curiousity I often do an installation of some random OS (BeOS, Solaris 8, some Linux distro, etc.) on a box that I'm about to reformat the drive anyway. Sometimes it goes well on these new, cheap, junky computers often sourced from Acer (IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell, eMachines, etc.), sometimes it doesn't go well. It seems about 50 - 50 chance (not scientific, just an estimate). Interesting, the few bits I've seen branded Acer were of decent quality. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ..and some people who aren't.

Bullitt: [1]

And what movement? Anybody who thinks Linux is a movement, is an idiot. A community, yes, a movement, no.

Does anybody really believe that something so mundane as an operating system is as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., or Poland's Solidarity?

move-ment (muv'-m&nt), noun, plural "-s
1 a) An occurence of great socio-political significance that only happens in the 20th century AD to peoples of African descent, or Polish nationals.

Err: [2]

The many eyes theory doesn't work, has been proven not to work

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-985221.html

jief:

You flame wars are useless. It is all a matter of personal choice. You want to use Linux? Fine do it. You don't like it? There's plenty of choices out there.

I couldn't agree more! Well said, jief! This article was written in a very objective bent. No, it wasn't perfect, just like eveything in existence is imperfect[3]. But the need to respond to this article with anything but respectful disagreement is nil. Anyone who responded to this article with a flame[1] is a moron!

JK:

Most users don't need version management software and development environments, most home users wouldn't even know what they are.

End-users have the exact same need for version management software and IDEs as they do for regedt32 or drwatson.exe.

"Similarly, Linux did NOT succeed because of any simularities with Windows."

How much progress on the desktop do you think Linux would have made if it didn't have Windows like DEs such as KDE or GNOME? [2]

How much progress on the desktop do you think Windows would have made if it didn't have an Apple like DE such as MacOS?

It's not halfway daft to deride Linux for "copying" from Windows, when the only thing MS didn't buy/borrow/steal was and is "Clippy":

http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.shtml


ILTBT,

Good Grief

------------------------------
[1] Congratulations! You are a moron! Or at least you were for the duration of your moronic post. Moron.
[2] Almost a moron. Watch your giblets next time.
[3] Except Anita Blonde. Anita Blonde is perfect. Sun, 27 Jul 2003 23:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Guys, guys, please first browse through the posts before commenting. If you did that, then you would've known I already replied to the "or so I've heard" question. It was kind of an unlucky choice of words, I explained that already. Please, take time to read the comments, before dissing someone."

Didn't feel like reading 141 posts to comment on a mediocre article.

"Of course that kind of takes away the essence of the Open-Source concept. Open-Source is all about letting everybody not only use the software, bu also letting everybody improve the software. This has led to a diversity in the available software. This is a good thing, if you are an expert willing to put time and effort into your OS, but if you are not, than Linux just isn't for you, at this moment."

I'm not an expert and definitely not a programmer, but still Linux is 101% useable for me. I'm not actively participating in software development except for occasional bugreporting, but that doesn't make the software any less functional for me than the equivalents in windows. Your conclusion is misleading.

For the last time: If you read an article, READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE! Don't just read what you want to read.

I see nothing in my post that indicates that I didn't read the entire article, Please specify. I didn't freely "interpret" your article for a convenient bashing. but took the article for what it is. Polemical. When writing from that angle, things are bound to heat up... Duh.
If you can't take the heat, don't light the fart...

"And the you call me unqualified."

That's right dude. Mon, 28 Jul 2003 00:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If I was to complain about any one OS having slow boot times, I would complain about Windows. I have both Linux and Windows and generally neither are slow at either booting up or shutting down. However, I do have one strange problem with Windows. Sometimes when I try to logon, Windows 2000 gets stuck for about 5-10 minutes saying something about loading security profile. It is a stand alone computer so it is strange that it does this. It also does it sometimes when shutting down saying something about updating security profile. It doesn't do this too often, only about 1 in 20 boot ups, so it isn't a big deal. However, it is extremely annoying when it does it. Mon, 28 Jul 2003 04:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just wanted to say some stuff that I have not seen before.

I use windows xp at home on my own built computer and its very stable, it crashes once per 6 months in average. I install lots of apps/games/utils, both final and beta. I usually dont run my computer for more than 12-16 hours at a stretch since my computer is just to noisy But I know it can be very stable, for instance when I was on vacation(went to work again today) I had it running for 4 weeks at home while I was away and used remote desktop to control it, works perfect! Sofar I have used linux on several occasions and I really like linux but I dont prioritize it enough to hand it a hdd to run right now My experience with linux is that is cool but not very usable and hard to configure and its SLOOOOW but I have only used the default xwindows gui that comes with redhat 8.0(I dont remember how fast xwindows was the last time I tried a couple of years ago) I think its unfair to compare linux and windows by my own experience since I have almost 15 years of experience with ms-dos and windows and only a couple of weeks with linux.

aaaah Im sure I didnt make too much sense here but I just wanted to bring forth some things that werent here before. Mon, 28 Jul 2003 05:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Forgot to add that at all the times I used linux it were unstable. At the time when I was running msdos-win9x and linux, linux was more stable altho not by much. In the last years when I have been running win2k and winxp, windows has been far more stable than linux. I guess linux just doesnt like my computers Mon, 28 Jul 2003 05:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am getting sick and tired of reviews or editorials like this saying that the only way Linux will succeed is if it has a unified look or way of installing programs or if the distros team up. My response to this is that linux/oss is developed by volunteers(*mostly, i know some people are paid*) in their free time. As a result the developers are going to program what they want to program. If that's a way to unify the look and feel or installation methods then that's great but if it's yet another editor or wm b/c they just aren't satisfied with the way the other 100 or so similar apps work then they have the right to. These developers that aren't working on a unified look and feel or installation method aren't doing so b/c they don't care about it enough to do something about it. If it bothers *you* soo much then why don't *you* learn to program and work on these things that linux needs to succeed or at least hire someone to do the work.

The way I see it, if you aren't doing anything to fix the problem then you have no right to complain. This doesn't solely include coding, it could be something as simple as filing a bug report(*bugs don't get fixed if the developers don't know about them*).

So my challenge to you is if these problems bother you enough, then learn to program and work up a solution to the problem. If the solution is even marginally good it *will* attract attention and help from other developers that may be interested in this problem but didn't have the initiative to work out a solution and they will improve upon it. You never know, it may cause a paradigm shift in linux/oss. Mon, 28 Jul 2003 08:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? To be honest I only read the 15 comments on page 1 and the comments on this page. In the past I've wallowed through enough of these topics to see what's out there.

Mr. "mufasio" 's response (the last one I read just before posting) exactly sums up one of the key problems: "It's all the user's fault!" and "They should change stuff they don't like."

If regular users had the time, skills, and inclination to change those things they wouldn't be users, they'd be contributors. If the goal of the Open Source community really is to make GNU/Linux a complete, viable solution for an average user then the community needs to step up and show some leadership to solve the remaining issues.

There are many great projects that have shown the leadership (Apache, Samba, KDE, Gnome, Oppen Office, etc.) needed in bringing expected features into the mainstream Linux OS experience. It's those projects, the ones that really step out with vision and improve a major feature of the complete expierence that really help drive acceptance further into the mainstream.

When the missing needs have been addressed by stong solutions acceptance more mainstream use will follow.

BG didn't build MS by saying "That's a great idea, but DOS is perfect for all my needs; why don't you write something to do that?" Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think many people will agree with me on this, its not the job of "the community" to do anything nor is it the job the user to do more than "use" the system. FACT: Many applications in the Linux world are not finished and contain inconsistencies.

I don't condone all of the practices or methods of Lindows, but from what I've heard, it sounds to be like a huge leap in the right direction. Whatever that means. They are attempting to make software consistent and stable for their implementation of Linux. This is definitely a good thing. Many purists hate what Lindows does, but personally, I'm considering trying it out.

On linux vs Windows... I don't think this comparison can be made. The comparison should be, *some specific kernel* + *some implementation of X11* + *some specific window manager*. Is the linux kernel more stable than the windows equilivalent? Absolutely. Is a linux-based GUI as stable or as quick as windows on all hardware? Absolutely not. The problem (in both windows and linux) usually is drivers. Linux stability doesn't stretch to the X server. Crappy hardware will bring down either OS. I've been in situations where a linux box was unrecoverable because X locked up and took the keyboard and mouse with it. (It was impossible to ssh in, at the time, to do anything about it so.... reboot!)

I see the OS as a tool. Use the right tool for the job. If you are doing multimedia / digital photo work, it pains me to say it... get a Mac, otherwise use win2k. If you enjoy doing sys admin work more so than getting things accomplished, run linux... if you enjoy developing software (like I do) run linux and accept the fact that you will have to do a little bit of seemingly unnecessary sys adminish work, but its worth it, trust me! If you enjoy video games, get win2k or a console.

I say win2k, because just about everything runs on it... winXP does nothing but waste resources. I used to run winXP and then wisened up after several months of dealing with incomplete drivers and older software that just didn't quite work anymore.


Just my 2 cents... Mon, 28 Jul 2003 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux may be a good server OS.

It will never be a good desktop OS. (In terms of working _with_ a computer, not _on_ a computer)
If it really wanted to be a good desktop OS, it should have taken a different path ten years ago. I think a lot of people still haven't realized this. Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments