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Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) is a faster desktop OS than Windows 7:

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/vista-windows-7-ubuntu-904-and-910-...

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/linux-vs-windows-7

Ubuntu/Kubuntu comes with vastly more and significantly better quality desktop software, it is cheaper and faster to run, running it on as many machines as you want carries no risks with respect to license compliance, it runs on a vastly wider array of existing desktop hardware, it supports a significantly wider array of data formats, it even has more desktop "bling", and if you are prepared to stick to installing software only from open source repositories, it is guaranteed to get no malware.

So while it is perfectly reasonable for you to say that Windows 7 is better for you, such a view can hardly be called universally objective. It just doesn't stand up under any objective criteria whatsoever.

Edited 2009-11-03 02:50 UTC

That's precisely why I said for me.

The majority of the review is also very positive so it's not as isolated a point of view than just mine.

But those individual "me's" add up to a lot of "us".

Edited 2009-11-03 02:47 UTC

Saidth the Tux Radar.



Tux Radar is objective? Well I've got some objective reports from our objective friends at Microsoft Research that you just gotta see! ;-)

Graphs without error bars, boot times 3-7 times longer than what I see, and reporting Vista to be faster than 7 makes me suspicious of those tests. OTOH, as for speed, beating stock Windows and desktop Linux would be like winning the Special Olympics; both tend to be behemoths.

Cost, licensing, and legacy hardware support are better with Linux. Modern hardware support is better in Windows, as is application selection. If Linux was uniformly better then it'd be more mainstream. If Windows was uniformly better then desktop Linux wouldn't exist. Any criteria that finds Windows deficient in all regards is simply not in touch with reality.

and no one cares about them not being in a repository. I personally hate the repository system since it creates a delay after the developer has released a critical update. I prefer going to the developer's website to get the latest version directly. I don't want a middle-man.

As for boot time who the hell cares when you can't boot into an OS that doesn't run mainstream software like MS Office and Itunes.

My ipod boots up immediately but that isn't a good reason to use it as a desktop replacement.

Why do you push Linux advocacy so much on this website anyways? You really think the people that read OSNEWS aren't aware of Linux?

In what reality?

Software available for desktop Linux comes nowhere near to what is available for Windows and OS X. I've been using all three for a few years and there is no way I or anyone I know could fully switch to Linux. 99% of the people agree

Now, if only the Ubuntu team had done any form of q/a, I could've actually enjoyed that desktop software you're talking about.

As it stands now, I'm using an Intel video chipset. Meaning, no Ubuntu/Kubuntu, because the Ubuntu team failed to test their release on the most common brand of video chips.

Fail.

You can throw all the URL links you want at me about Win7 vs Ubuntu, but even Windows XP is better than anything Linux can do now, in terms of just working without any hassles.

I have used all the OS flavors, and Windows is on top for a reason: everything supports windows. With Linux, when you buy a new laptop, you have to make sure if everything is supported, otherwise you will have to spend hours setting up everything to work right, by reading random internet forums where people have had the same problems.

Ubuntu is getting better and better all the time, but I have probably spent hundreds of hours tinkering with things that don't work over the years, when I could have just used windows and not had any problems.

And now, with Microsoft releasing a decent operating system (unlike Vista), Linux is going to have an even harder time being adopted.

And what kind of (universal?) objectivity can you expect from a review at a linux-biased site like tuxradar.com?

Two things stood out reading the tux article(s)...

1) They're heavily slanted towards the penguin (duh).

2) They're not that familiar with the UI changes in Windows 7, or they're just being misleading.

Yes, I've personally found that Ubuntu 9.10's boot-time speed improvements have leap-frogged it ahead of Windows 7 (the previous record holder) - which makes Windows 7 a "legacy: platform for me now, lol.

My personal experience is Windows 7 is nice for desktop stuff and gaming, and probably quite good for other non-power users, but not as good for development, high-performance and portable computing.

Faster only if you think boot speed equals desktop speed. And if you are a fanboy. But I can assure you that even if it boots faster (I can't say that, but let's assume), it's by no means faster than 7. I double booted Ubuntu 9.10 an Windows 7 for about 2 weeks and nothing in Ubuntu seems faster.

Ironically Microsoft Word 2007 starts much, much faster with wine then Open Office Org starts native.



Are you planning to be a comedian? Or are you acting just like a simple fanboy?

What's better? The fact that Network Manager is broken? The fact that pppoeconf stalls? The fact that various programs are crashing?

Or the fact that Open Office can't open a .doc or .docx document whitout breaking it? The fact that gimp sucks when you compare it with Photoshop? The fact that you can't find professionally written software? The fact that 99.99% of largely used software does not run native on Ubuntu?


I only need my OS to run on one machine.



Can we laugh? Are you refering to mips and arm as "desktop hardware"? Because if you talk about x86 and adon cards, windows suports much more hardware than any other os.


I want an OS, not a whore. If you are in for "bling", you can use Mac OS X.

Citation needed please.

Since when are citations needed for a personal opinion?

But then again, it's not like Linux was ever intended to compete with Windows in the first place.

Maybe not originally, but there are certainly many distributions currently targeting the desktop as an alternative to Windows.