“During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Linux stands on its own as a user preference.”
Becuase I don’t like it when things are too easy. There’s a lot to be said for the learning experience of running a Linux install as your main OS.
Its the other way around for me. I don’t like learning how to do the same thing over and over and over again. With Linux I can learn how Linux works and then find a distro that does things the way I like it. I don’t get that kind of choice anywhere else.
Linux has lots of great dev tools available at no cost.
It is true, but most of this tools also available on windows. And there are far better commercial developer tools for windows.
It is true, but most of this tools also available on windows. And there are far better commercial developer tools for windows.
Really? Doing my numerical research in one of those extremely inflexible point-and-click IDE’s sounds more like a nightmare to me.
Really? Doing my numerical research in one of those extremely inflexible point-and-click IDE’s sounds more like a nightmare to me.
A tool like Visual Studio is as flexible as you want it to be. Nobody is forcing anything on you. But please tell all the java developers that were developing on linux and Emacs how much they “hate” the switch to Eclipse, IDEA, or NetBeans and all their whizbang features…on linux.
Really? Then you will know answer I’m looking for.
Here is one for you. I NEED crossplatform, I don’t care about better.
Name one crossplatform (more than windows, let’s say at least 3 basic platforms. Linux, Windows, OSX) commercial developer tool. Java (is the only one) has the same tools, while .NET sorry, can’t be counted. MS never implemented .NET running on other systems. I dare you to name other crossplatform tools, where you can run native application in other OSs.
If it is not: commercial, crossplatform and one and the same product from one company, then don’t even try to mention it. p.s. I already named Java
Second thing, having development preinstalled is far easier than installing it. Windows come with zero by default.
Another one, I’m ex-developer for Windows software who is far more content now (I don’t use those tools anymore) than before with MSVS, Delphi and others.
I am a linux developer, I am linux user and developer from 1995. I created business software with wxWidgets+gcc+various development environments (I tired emacs, and other text editors, IMHO the best is the KDevelop under linux), but creating similar software with many forms without decent RAD tool is very slow and boring job. Now I use Kylix, it is far better, but Borland stopped the development, and the FOSS alternative (lazarus) is only a funny joke but not a real developer tool. And more the 90% of my customers want windows application. In this case the platform-independency is not too important aspect for me. And the .NET development is easier and more interesting then java (better language /C#/, better developer tools, etc).
What is the point of telling what I haven’t asked? Parent was so proud about commercial and better programming tools.
But then again.
Kylix? Joke. Your app looks just like it survived second world war (Qt2, yeah I know about FreeCLX, but that roject is just Borlands face saving). And developing with tool that already had its “cease and desist” (maybe you should consider starting development for OS/2 too). Second Delphi and Kylix is like night and day. It is not same product.
Lazarus? Yes, I agree, bad joke. Although some people seem to like it. Not me, though.
platform-independency IS the only important aspect for me, next is deployment, followed by memory handling and speed (if needed) and which language or tool is only on 4th position.
Ehmmm, Qt designer is integrated into kdevelop now, so your RAD tool is there.
Qt4? Made by one company (Trolltech), works on the three specified platforms and allows both open and closed source development. It is however a little expencive if you’re using it for clossed source development.
And Java is nice too, it’s a very nice programming language 🙂
And there are far better commercial developer tools for windows.
Okay…
I want vim with syntax highlighting and konsole and screen and virtual desktops, compilers, libraries, etc. And I want it all for free. Now show me where I can get it easily. It comes preinstalled on Linux.
Oh, also need a ssh server, NFS and X11.
Commercial developer tools don’t look any better than vim to me. Are all the pretty buttons supposed to help me code better? I need tabbed terminals and space to work. I guess those tools do offer some workspace, but they make me feel closterphobic, like I’m trapped inside a Windows(tm).
You got it — as soon as you port and compile thousands of libraries, utilities, applications to windows, than the platform gets better. Now if you could also port and use a decent filesystem on windows it’d be even better. And then, you could separate the gui and the kernel and replace it with a superb, robust, mature one such as BSD or Linux or Solaris. Then you could play with real-time Un-Windows and a gui that doesn’t crash the OS. Then you could standardize API’s and protocols in OPEN FORMATS so that developers don’t keep chasing an unnecessarily moving target (isn’t the speed of technology fast enough?). Just think, by the time we throw out all the Windows features and port everything to Un-windows, we’ve got a decent system. Oh wait, we just created GNU/Linux and OS-X.
-tbostick
Well, if the free tools are not good enough for you, there are plenty of commersial tools for Linux as well.
However, it seams to be far longer time between major releases of windows than of Gnu/Linux, and most of Gnu/Linux is developed using free tools, so I would say the free Linux tools seam good enough.
However, it seams to be far longer time between major releases of windows than of Gnu/Linux, and most of Gnu/Linux is developed using free tools, so I would say the free Linux tools seam good enough.
IMHO the new distro in every half year is not too lucky thing. There is not too revolutional difference between X and X+1 version of Mandrake(driva), SuSe, etc, but if you want install only one binary package from the X+1 version you must upgrade the full distro, because this app probably will depend 10 library and this libraries are depend from other 1000 library. But if you upgrade your X version distrib to X+1 probably you will found many new bugs, many old app cant run/build on the new distrib, etc. The most important missing thing in the FOSS the well-designed, stable API. It is not a too big problem is you use your linux at home or for hobby-OS, but in enterprises it can be a very problematic. The only one hope is the Java, because java is not designed by community.
I agree. That was the reason I started exploring Linux in 1995. Fair enough , now its not the case , the windows platform does possess nice tools for free or at little expense.
The other reason I moved across was because it’s a great learning platform. A lot the OS’s internal workings are exposed to the User.
About two weeks ago I dumped my XP system for Mandriva. No regrets at all.
The future is open source unix implementations. Eclipse, bash,C++,Java,Ruby,OpenGL,OpenOffice,etc. Code and data move freely from one platform to the next. Consistent set of tools.
The only thing I wish I could do while I’m on my Linux box is force myself to forget OS X.
Eclipse, bash,C++,Java,Ruby,OpenGL,OpenOffice,etc. Code and data move freely from one platform to the next.
This things are totally different things. You can call C from java or ruby, but if you want call java code from C++ or Python, probably you will need .NET. This thing is very consistent, but the linux is the total chaos. Different widget sets different desktops with different look&feel and API. Qt, GTK, FLTK, Motif, KDE, GNOME, ICEWM, there are many small redundant project with strong dependency hell. You need the xxx version of lib, but the lib need zzz version of the other lib, but there are many applications what are use it. You must reinstall your linux every half year.
My understanding is that calling anything other than java from java involves unsupported hacks…
Which means, by the standard, it’s impossible.
Some language, *cough* python, .net, c (asm) *cough* support calling more base languages as part of their standard; and that’s why they’ll become popular and others will likely become only a part of history. Well, it’s one reason.
“You need the xxx version of lib, but the lib need zzz version of the other lib, but there are many applications what are use it. You must reinstall your linux every half year.”
That’s only true in cases where source compatibility is broken (which doesn’t happen much). You do often need .so.x version of some lib for binary compatibility (if you aren’t willing to rebuild), but some libraries *cough* gtk *cough* have kept binary compatibility for years.
There’s an easy solution, used all over in Mac and Windows, and Unix, proprietary programs: It’s called static building. You build the library code needed into the program. It’s probably one reason Microsoft wants to push .net (a huge standard lib), a reason why they standardized on c++ (the STL) and not c, and several other things: Customers don’t want to waste half their memory on the same code 85 different times.
Dependencies are a part of computing. I’d much happier being able to use a machine with 256MB of RAM and having dependency problems solved correctly rather than a cheap hack (static building) and buying twice as much RAM.
This is a naive complaint anyway. Stable programs are going to be found in most distributions. The programs which people want to use that aren’t in their distribution are more comparable to stuff found on cnet for Windows: And if you’ve ever looked for software there, you know you’ll waste hours trying to find one with a license you can handle and a gui that isn’t broken.
This is not meant as an insult to people who maintain small projects which haven’t made it into distributions (hey, I’m one of them), I’m comparing the user effort in getting their program not the final quality of the program they get.
I am insulting the programs on cnet though, there’s a lot of really bad “freeware” out there!
“The only thing I wish I could do while I’m on my Linux box is force myself to forget OS X.”
Yeah, because Linux is to MacOS X what a child’s drawing of a car is to a BMW 740.
MacOS X is Unix done RIGHT. All the power, made simple. But of course the free software commies don’t want to have to pay. Well, you paid for your hardware, right? Why not for the software that makes it run? And get this-if you BUY a Macintosh you GET the OS for free! Wow! So it IS free after all!
Free like in beer, maybe, but not “libre”. Don’t bash me, I like OS X, but that doesn’t make the system “free” as in “open source” or as in “do what the heck you want with the system” (Copy & pass it on for example)
The only thing I wish I could do while I’m on my Linux box is force myself to forget OS X.
Cracktackular, innit? All that power + all that convenience.
I can’t say I did it because Linux is better than OSX (or Windows). Frankly, I can’t afford other OS + the machine to run my file/web server. To each its own. I hope MS won’t be banckrupt before they ported all the games I like. Otherwise I’d be in some pain. I don’t quite care on which OS my fave games/apps run as long as I CAN RUN them and run them good.If it is MS today,then tomorrow will be something else. The story will never change.
Neverthless, I use 3 OS’s and I am extremely familiar with all 3 of them.I can’t say which one I use most, definitely, in the weekend is Windows,during the week, I should say all 3 of them gets a third from my time. At work we have Windows only (from where I telnet to couple Solaris machines) , but that’s about it.
I’m rather fortunate when it comes to games, either they run with ScummVM or are FOSS or have a FOSS equivalency but then I like adventures, turn based strategy and old style RPGs. All games the industry isn’t that willing to provide anymore.
On the other hand, since I’ve gotten into programming Windows is cramping my stile. The choice is obviously even if I have not completed the switch fully yet.
To each his own.
After reading the examples the reasons seem to fall into three categories:
1. People who have a Unix background and want to run a Unix like operating system on their own machines.
2. People who want to tinker with their system.
3. people who are just plain curious about something different.
I guess all three applied to me
I would add:
4. people who hate microsoft business practices – a perfectly legitimate reason.
5. people who want to learn a *nix like environment – sort of covered already.
6. people who are fed-up with the adware/spyware that is so prevelent in windows.
Same here, but the clincher was this(4th category?): I wanted reliability.
i am an american citizen that lives here in rio de janeiro. my wife (yes, brasileira) and i opened a lanhouse and also began teaching basic computer skills for the less wealthy. linux meets all my requirements and the people love it, especially the cost (or lack of cost).
why?
because its the unix philosophy… “use the best possible tool for each job.”
And when it comes to creating video dvds, as soon as you want fancy eye candy, chapter menus autogenerated from cue scenes in movies, or even menus at all (or subtitles or more than one audio track) WITHOUT writing long, obfuscated xml files in vi (or any editor of choice, of course), nothing on linux (or any other unix) comes even CLOSE to dvdlab on windows.
for anything else (except for TWO games), i use linux. because its just better. I yet have to see a MUA with imap capabilities as good as kmail, gpg integration as good as kmail, and general PIM functionality as good as kontact with all its plugins. Now, if i could get my palm to sync properly… which is, in fact, a moot point because i use a conduit that exists only on windows…
And when it comes to creating video dvds, as soon as you want fancy eye candy, chapter menus autogenerated from cue scenes in movies, or even menus at all (or subtitles or more than one audio track) WITHOUT writing long, obfuscated xml files in vi (or any editor of choice, of course), nothing on linux (or any other unix) comes even CLOSE to dvdlab on windows.
Which works very well on linux under Wine. Use it all the time for dvd production on linux. One less reason to boot to Windows
>>because its the unix philosophy… “use the best possible tool for each job.”
I agree 100+%. I’m typeing this from my Wintel rig atm and next to it is an old Duron 900 256MB-RAM running Damn Small Linux LiveCD and crunching Folding@Home 24/7 off a usbFlash key.
Linux makes an excellent OS for specialized tools like F@H and if power management and cpu throttling on my laptop worked better I’d run a Live version when I’m out with my telescope. Linspire has certainly made it a decent home computer with its included licenced sorenson quicktime codecs, wma codecs and even a legal dvd player ($5 w/CNR subscription) but it still has a way to go and probably never will be “all there”. Because there will always be some new whiz bang feature Windows and/or OS-X can do first or better. That’s just the way it is because those are commercial products with R&D budgets.
>>because its the unix philosophy… “use the best possible tool for each job.”
I agree 100+%. I’m typeing this from my Wintel rig atm and next to it is an old Duron 900 256MB-RAM running Damn Small Linux LiveCD and crunching Folding@Home 24/7 off a usbFlash key.
Linux makes an excellent OS for specialized tools like F@H and if power management and cpu throttling on my laptop worked better I’d run a Live version when I’m out with my telescope. Linspire has certainly made it a decent home computer with its included licenced sorenson quicktime codecs, wma codecs and even a legal dvd player ($5 w/CNR subscription) but it still has a way to go and probably never will be “all there”. Because there will always be some new whiz bang feature Windows and/or OS-X can do first or better. That’s just the way it is because those are commercial products with R&D budgets.
many averaje joe people switch to linux because of they get tired of windows, spyware, price vs free cake etc.
then after frustating 3 months to install modem or printer or wireless and ANTI-USER-FRIENDLY installations of linux system they switch back to good old WORKING windows again.
speak for yourself, i have used linux here in brazil for 14 months.
Most stay according to the Linux forum I mod, we get countless people wnating to switch. People always claim Windows is easeir to setup printers/wireless but most distros have a inteface thats easy to configure printers just like Windows. What people dont talk about it how Linux dont need to install drivers from disk, it just works, nForce, VIA chipset AGP support ring a bell because WIndows dont have support for that by default.
Average joe dont know how to install windows from scratch, install chipset drivers, sound drives, display drivers, so your comment about “good old WORKING windows” is null. If you dont believe me then when I used to work on tech support lines why did people ring up asking how to install there printer/scanner ect..every 10minutes?
Windows is only easy when you know how and average joe dont know how. Linux is just as easy and alot of the time easier.
“Average joe dont know how to install windows from scratch, install chipset drivers, sound drives, display drivers, so your comment about “good old WORKING windows” is null. If you dont believe me then when I used to work on tech support lines why did people ring up asking how to install there printer/scanner ect..every 10minutes? ”
Bingo!
Many of my family members approach me with computer issues. All of them use Windows. I’ve only seen one of them attempt an OS install (actually, it was really an upgrade from Win98 to Win2k). They were almost frustrated to tears.
In the end, I don’t see how most people, if they had a PC that already had an “easier” Linux distro (ex: Ubuntu, Knoppix or Linspire) loaded and drivers configured, would have any greater issues administering their PCs than with Windows. In fact, in some cases, these users may fare better because many people don’t do what’s necessary to properly protect against/remove spyware and viruses.
This is exactly my case.
I was just slightly above “average joe user” before I got into linux. Nearly 7 years later, it’s my main system on my desktop and laptop. I use Gentoo but, for those who would worry about modem, wireless, etc. Suse and Ubuntu have some of the best out-of-the-box hardware detection I’ve seen.
More and more, these concerns are going away.
Amen. Linux is neat, and it’s great for certain things, but most people won’t understand it because they haven’t had five years of programming and tech in college.
If you want a computer which a) WORKS and b) is not mired down in spyware and viruses, get a MACINTOSH. Linux is a geeks-only toy and will never be anything more than that.
i have to disagree with your comment abour linux being a geeks-only toy. as i posted the first time, i am teaching basic computer skills to many people here in rio de janeiro, brazil…i promise you these people are from being geeks.
It’s a trade.
You trade a set of booring problems (virus, spy-ware, ad-ware, shareware, expensive badly supported software).
For a set of fun problems (manual configuration, tricky drivers, unfinished open source software).
For the record my primary OS is Mac OS X, which I “switched” to about 3 years ago from Windows 98. I also am currently running (as I type) a Linux box on the PC that used to run Windows 98. I have NOT personally used Windows now in nearly 3 years (December will be three years). I actually like Windows, however I am living proof that you can in fact live without Windows and still get your work done.
1 – The price is just right… 🙂
2 – Became curious about that Unix thing in the early nineties, when I was cutting my teeth in DOS 3.3, Clipper, Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.
3 – Performance: Even if X is somewhat slower than GDI, you can open several apps at the same time and rest assured that your computer won’t start to crawl.
4 – Tweakability (Is that even a word? :-)): It can look whatever I want, perform any task that I desire and just the way that I want it to do.
5 – Some of its apps are the best of their kind, like Bash, Amarok and Mplayer.
6 – Its reliability, even if that other operating system has improved on this area too.
7 – Bulletproof: I’ve seen Linux running on machines that Windows would refuse to boot, namely because of faulty memory modules.
I’m sure that there are other reasons that keep me hooked on this thing that I can’t recall right now, but I’m sure that other people will bring them up. Suffice to say that on top of that comes the pleasure of run it; its so much more fun to run than anything else that I tried.
DeadFish Man
What stupid reasons …
1. Is your time worth anything?
2. Fair enough. I tried Linux for the very same reason.
3. Don’t spread FUD. Windows doesn’t slow to a crawl with multiple apps open — unless you’re starved for RAM. I find Windows XP to be both faster and more responsive than any other modern Linux distro.
4. Granted, Windows isn’t really as flexible here, but then again it’s not an all-in-one solution for every computing task. Neither is Linux.
5. Hahahah! Bash I’ll give you, but Amarok? Mplayer? Ever heard of iTunes? Winamp? Media Player Classic?
6. Windows has a single point of failure — the Registry. Linux has multiple inter-dependant points of failure — break one thing, and it could affect anything without you knowing directly. Pick the one you prefer.
7. That doesn’t prove anything. It just proves that Linux accessed/used the hardware in such a way that the faulty memory module did not cause problems right away. In my experience, Linux is much more finicky about good-quality hardware than Windows is.
1.) Some people enjoy doing things other call “work.” We all have to relax and do something we enjoy now and then. You sound like a manager I’d never want to work for who’d triple productivity and make everyone unhappy at the same time; hence losing all productivity in the long run.
3.) Again, most proprietary programs are going to ship with a lot of base code including; over and over. Thereby, you end up using more RAM. They also have a greater tendency to include a large number of features you’ll never use which get loaded into RAM anyway (it’s hard to make real money on small programs).
4.) No, it’s not.
5.) WMP is probably, by mass opinion, the worst program Microsoft ships. It’s a dog, it advertises to you, etc. Amarok actually has a number of features itunes lacks: Better dynamic playlist support, lyric lookups, etc. At the samer time, Amarok has a nasty tendency to crash when you use said features. A better iTunes clone is Rhythmbox, it’s pretty stinkin’ close.
6.) Contrary to your belief: Most programs in Linux don’t interoperate that much. If Linux has a single, theoretical, point of failure, it’s the filesystem: Since that’s the level of interoperation. Breaking my Apache config isn’t going to kill MySQL, it’s just going to make it inaccessible via web pages (duh). Also, the Windows Registry is also not a singular point of failure (it was in 1995 though). Now it’s probably 5,000 singular points of failure. The Registry is supposed to work with broken registry files, but anything in the broken files is lost.
7.) You’re totally right about that. There’s one cure to a bad memory module: A new memory module. In this respect, I think Solaris, or now Minix 3, probably end up taking the cake. Not that this matters on the desktop, heh.
1. Fair enough — but at the same time you’ve admitted that using Linux is equivalent to what some people consider “work”. Therefore let’s not propagate the myth that Linux is free then, shall we?
3. Uhhh … are you trying to say that Linux applications are loaded with tons of useless features that constitute bloat? Let’s see … default install of Knoppix with the UI loaded takes up something like 180 MB of RAM. The same on Windows XP is about 100 MB. Let’s compare it another way: Windows XP will be usable on 128 MB of RAM as long as you limit yourself to 1-2 open applications. Fedora Core/Ubuntu are *unusable slow* with 128 MB of RAM.
5. Who mentioned Windows Media Player? I didn’t. BTW, that’s great about Amarok — but hey, all of those awesome features are a little useless to me if I can’t use them. Amarok is supposed to be one of the best apps in the Linux world? Wow. That’s reason enough to stay away.
6. I didn’t mean an Apache config so much as I did a corrupted library or whatnot. I remember one of my experiences with Fedora Core once … I uninstalled all traces of CUPS, and bam, GNOME stopped working. Why? Because something in GNOME was dependant on a CUPS component. Why? I don’t know. Why didn’t the uninstall routine know enough about the system to keep the critical library around? Why was GNOME even dependant on CUPS in such a way as to prevent its operation when that library was removed?
7. Pretty much. I don’t care what OS you’re partial to — using a bad memory module is just asking for trouble.
1. This is a strang thing from a Windows user – I abandon Windows a couple of years ago – mostly because of all time I was wasting with it – With both a kid and a wife also using the system – I was always having to fix something – or clean something out! I can just use Linux for ages and ages. I guess you just don’t count the time you spend doing the little things Windows requires – but count the up front setup time. Any systems manager of both Windows and Linux will tell you which system requires the most work to keep it running well – hands down Windows!
3. Three – the number one reason I get perfictly good computers donated to my agency is that they have gotten just too slow – So people who do not know that this is just a natural occurance in Windows will discard the computer thinking that something is wrong with the computer, when in fact a few hours invested in Windows maintance would have fixed their problem (see my response to #1). I will install linux on the machine and it will never slow down again.
5. As a Systems Admin I can tell you while the biggest area of failure in Windows is registry it is by no means the only one! Even if it was the only spot of failure – when failure happens so often it still is nothing to crow about. I admin a system that now uses about the same number of Windows and Linux desktops yet 80% of my time is spent fixing Windows machines. Most of the time spent with the Linux machines is the anual prevenitive check up. I will take the Linux that can fail anywhere over the Windwos “only fails in the registry” any time.
7. Fact is the that Linux will often boot where Windows can’t make it! I have a very nice laptop with Linux on it – Got it free – seems that it can no longer boot Windows any way at all — Had a compaq a few years ago that we could not get to boot up as well – the recovery disk would reload the base system – but the system just kept locking up at boot up – installed Linux it booted just fine… about two week ago home computer which was dual boot had a harddrive failure it seems that Windows blue screened when trying to boot – Linux booted to a non-gui propmt – that permited us to get the few items added aftet the last back up off onto other media. Add to this I have yet had a system that failed to boot Linux that was able to boot Windows and the picture is complete.
Note – I said that my home computer WAS dual boot – I had kept the orginal Windows just incase and installed SuSe as a dual boot – wound up booting Windows so rarly that when the new drive was installed – I could see no reason to waste the space on Windows.
6. people who are fed-up with the adware/spyware that is so prevelent in windows.
There was a news item last night here in the UK, which said 50% of all the infected (owned) machines on the net are here in the UK.
Bill Gates was interviewed after a pre-amble about phishing and the threat of organised crime. See the irony?
…well, Mr G. said security is the responsibility of the user. MS were doing “what they could” to help !!!!
Why is it like this in computing? Ford can’t sell a dangerous car and pass the buck to the owner when they start running over grannies!
MS ARE responsible to some degree. It’s their OS which has no privelage system, no protection of important system files, and no decent firewall, let alone anti-virus and anti-spyware.
They sell XP as an “internet” product, I say it’s not internet ready. If you put an XP machine on the net without 3rd party products to secure it up it gets infected in minutes!
They have the resources to stop all this madness, so why don’t they?
“people who are fed-up with the adware/spyware that is so prevelent in windows.”
Spot on.
Also, I don’t fancy having to support three licenses for each of OS, Anti-virus and Office suite (getting more expensive than the hardware by this time) – and still not have a photo editor or a draw package – when I can get just one Kanotix (or Knoppix or MEPIS or even Kubuntu) CD to do it all for no cost – and I have two photo editors (Krita and GIMP) and two draw packages (Karbon14 and OpenOffice draw) included in the zero price!
Do people switch to Linux ?
Do people eat different types of apples?
is a reason for me not to dump Windows — and games + movie-ripping/copying. Though it is not like I do that about every day. Otherwise, I use Linux… I made sure I got all the same stuff like FB, FF, OOo and 1-2 other things on both systems and so I normally don’t mind in which system I am currently working for 98% of the time.
Movie ripping and copying works like a charm on linux, as one would expect. Games works fine when they are ported to linux, but unfortunately many aren’t. Some works in wine but quite a few doesn’t.
Remote desktop is not a special thing for windows – you do realize the same thing can easily be achieved on Linux?
So, we’re back to the games – probably the main reason for dual-booting
Remote desktop is not a special thing for windows – you do realize the same thing can easily be achieved on Linux?
I was about to say the same thing when I read that comment. Rdesktop is a perfect drop-in replacement for Microsoft Remote Desktop and there are several nice front-ends for both KDE and GNOME. I used it for years to access an accounting package at my last job and use it today to access a trouble ticket system at my current job.
Now, this comment gave me something to think about… It’s possible that a few users are delaying (or avoiding) a trial of desktop linux just because of lack of knowledge of the software available. A friend of mine is very involved with emulation and a huge fan of NeoGeo titles. xmame plays some of those titles but not all of them, specially best sellers like the King of Fighters series. When I showed him gngeo – http://m.peponas.free.fr/gngeo/ – on my machine, running these games at the same speed of NeoRAGE X (the fastest/best(?) NeoGeo emulator for Windows), his jaws dropped on the floor.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of something like Klik and Click’n’Run for brazilian portuguese speakers, as those are what I consider the most user friendly approach to present software titles to a newbie. Something along these lines would be very successful around here and I certain that it would helps to make Linux more widespread, too.
DeadFish Man
Boys.. what are you on about. Yes, I am aware of Linux remote sessions, both ways. Only, it is not quite the same. MS remote desktop will only transmit the screen coordinates — it is veeery fast, almost like sitting in front of it. If I do a VNC/derivates connection to an XP machine, the entire screen will be compressed and transmitted so it will work cross OSes. This is a difference like night and day. And that is even from my fast cable modem connection to my fat company line. I got a Transgaming subscription for a long time now, out of support, but don’t use it. My well equipped machine is still choking on today’s games and not everything is well in wine (and transgaming) land… it’s nice you are enthusiastic about stuff, but you have to be realistic about things and take them for what they are… btw, I am the original poster to this, and this posting of IPs by Osnews is pretty useless anyway — it doesn’t show my IP but the one of my provider’s proxy…
*sigh*
RDP seems to work by compressing rectangles of the screen for updating and then transmitting them. It compresses and sends over a binary protocol.
VNC works the same way X11 works locally. Updating rectangles of the screen, and then transmitting them; except it compresses (if you spend more than 3 minutes setting it up correctly).
RDP is a little faster. Binary protocols always are, and I think VNC is done by some sort of text translation and then an utf protocol. If you have any business doing remote connections you’re going to have the connection to support it, otherwise both are miserable. The line between when each one gets miserable is pretty slim (like a 256Kb upload against a 512Kb upload).
And if that’s the problem, just run the app you wanna run, not your whole desktop. I do it almost every day..
“it doesn’t show my IP but the one of my provider’s proxy…”
Registering an account isn’t hard. In fact, it’s no harder than explaining you are the same person but you’re behind a proxy. But the real trick is, people will believe the user account
.
Boys.. what are you on about. Yes, I am aware of Linux remote sessions, both ways. Only, it is not quite the same. MS remote desktop will only transmit the screen coordinates — it is veeery fast, almost like sitting in front of it. If I do a VNC/derivates connection to an XP machine, the entire screen will be compressed and transmitted so it will work cross OSes. This is a difference like night and day. And that is even from my fast cable modem connection to my fat company line. I got a Transgaming subscription for a long time now, out of support, but don’t use it. My well equipped machine is still choking on today’s games and not everything is well in wine (and transgaming) land… it’s nice you are enthusiastic about stuff, but you have to be realistic about things and take them for what they are… btw, I am the original poster to this, and this posting of IPs by Osnews is pretty useless anyway — it doesn’t show my IP but the one of my provider’s proxy…
Man… What are you talking about? Rdesktop uses RDP, the very same protocol used by MS Remote Desktop! It is the same speed across both applications. Why did you bring VNC into this discussion is beyond me.
Also, as pointed out by other posters, *nix have its share of efficient remote administration utilities (besides VNC, since it doesn’t float your boat as it seems): One of the reasons that some people despise X11 so much these days is just that it is a network protocol aimed at remote system administration and a very good one while we’re at it. In my previous job, we used it to manage a GUI administration utility (thus, the need of X on a server… :-)) for the webmail system from Brazil on a Solaris cluster in Miami and it worked flawlessly and fast.
Besides that, NoMachine’s NX received a lot of good reviews from people used to Citrix Metaframe and MS Terminal Server. All the reviews that I read stated that NX speed is on par with both aforementioned solutions. the NX client is free (as in beer; I believe that there is a OSS version in the works) and just in case you don’t want to purchase NoMachine’s server and services, you can use the KDE’s FreeNX project instead (albeit this one seems to be on its early stages and might not be as reliable as its commercial counterpart).
Regarding games, I can’t argue with you the status of gaming on Linux land since I’m not much of a gamer person. The kind of game that I like works perfectly fine on emulators (Xmame, gngeo, zsnes and the likes), otherwise I’d resort to a game console anyway. However, there is a misconception that wine will cause a significative performance drop during game play. WINE IS NOT A EMULATOR. It “just” implements the win32 API on top of X and POSIX, so while there will be a slightly performance drop on your apps, that’s due to wine translating win32 API calls to POSIX/X API calls. Therefore, in the cases where your application works with WINE, chances is that it will work fine. Actually, some people reported increased performance when playing certain games using Transgaming’s Cedega.
Having said that, I stand by my assertion that what is holding some people from trying Linux on the desktop (and even for other purposes) is the lack of knowledge of software available to the platform.
DeadFish Man
People were using VNC before Windows XP came out… People were using remote connections before Bill Gates dropped out of College
(well, I assume so, but I suppose I have no absolute proof of that).
Games work fine. Doom3, UT2K4 anyone? Oh, those less popular games… I suppose Gamecube is not a console because Halo doesn’t run on it right?
You might look into ssh as well. VNC is a bit cludgy (so is remote desktop, try it in 256Kb restriction). But you can forward X over ssh (ssh -X user@host), that way you’re just opening one program at a time instead of a whole screen.
Also, if you’re looking for logging into your current desktop state. Gnome supports this via the built-in vino application. KDE supports it via built-ins as well, you must turn it on for both. And for any other X platform, you can use x11vnc to do it.
Philosophy
Power
Flexibility
Knowledge
Comunity
Tools
Freedom
Actually I ended up using Linux or BSD because I never really got around to switching to Windows.
As a youngster I used an Amiga, but when I was studying to be programmer, I saw X11. Ever since I’d been trying to get X11 on whatever computer I was using at the time.
These days I use Linux because the plethora of binary dists make getting a usable workstation easier than building it with BSD. YMMV, but thats how mine goes.
I think MS gets a bad rap at times, their OS is pretty good for games. I’ve heard it has good development facilities, just lousy tools. Again YMMV.
“6. people who are fed-up with the adware/spyware that is so prevelent in windows.”
IMO people who aren’t computer literate enough to deal with that aren’t going to have much luck with a complex OS like Linux. If they can’t take basic precautions when browsing or downloading software and can’t deal with a few 3rd party apps, how are they going to deal with compiling software and editing config files?
We should be fair to the users.
They do understand to take precautions, like any other tool using your computer takes time. This is a fair assumption.
But they should never, ever have to learn how to compile software and edit config files. You take a 5 year old game in windows, put it into any version of the OS, (and no, 3.1 doesn’t count in 2005) and it’ll work. Compiling is for suckers.
Adoption requires two things:
1) That the users are happy
2) That they their applications work. They couldn’t care less what OS they are on. Particularly as most large scale applications are now web based.
So this is good news for alternative os’s, all told.
quote”Adoption requires two things:
1) That the users are happy
2) That they their applications work. They couldn’t care less what OS they are on. Particularly as most large scale applications are now web based.
”
I now use debian and centos because I was unhappy with my ADSL connection being swamped with viruses (force trojen and many others). Microsoft although good in ease of use isnt much good for normal day to day tasks.
Squid improves my network speed by 20% overall. Open office is just as good as microsoft office for my needs. Distributed workloads. Low memory usage so i can leave my $1200 AMD loud MATX to come out to play on the weekends and just use my quiet modded ipaq v733 tower.
Sure my NEC multisyncV520 only runs at 800×600 But that is only because I cant quite get it to work at higher res(debian).
Linux has much more bleeding edge software than any other platform and its low cost, free speach.
DIA is the best program out
Adobe acrobat is the best reader out
OS independent i just need to be able to buy food instead of software.
Linux is a viable operatingsystem that you dont need to steal….anything
You take a 5 year old game in windows, put it into any version of the OS, (and no, 3.1 doesn’t count in 2005) and it’ll work.
Even though it was more a problem of DirectX, I believe, this isn’t exactly true. I remember the game, Forsaken, wouldn’t work the first major update of DirectX after the company stopped supporting the game. Too bad I can’t get it running in Wine either
>>But they should never, ever have to learn how to compile software and edit config files. You take a 5 year old game in windows, put it into any version of the OS, (and no, 3.1 doesn’t count in 2005) and it’ll work. Compiling is for suckers.
You must be a typical Linspire user that plagues their message board with questions for the rest of us that know how to do just that.
One of *nixes philosophies is to give the computer back to YOU. Compileing is the best way to do that because the software gets built specifically for your hardware when you do that.
That doesn’t mean that package management programs should go away at all but comments like yours are so wrong it shouldn’t go without a rebuttel.
Free-market choice. Stability. Reliability. Ease-of-use. Take your pick. The reasons can go on and on.
I went completely Microsoft free at home in October of 2003. It is a decision I have not regretted in the least. It led to a nice job working for a local university’s IT department.
Someone recently sold me their “old” Microsoft machine. It was crippled by spyware and adware it crawled. That lasted for about when five or six minutes. My trusty Linux now roars on this 3 GHz box. <Insert Huge Smile>.
I was bored with Windows, and I had been using it for just one year.
I fell in love with linux immediately (it was Mandrake then, but after that I have tried virtually every distro)
It is now years since that first time: I haven’t become bored with linux, on the contrary: there is always something new to learn, something new to try.
My reason is that I simply don’t like Windows. I don’t think it’s bad or anything, I don’t have anti-MS sentiments or more of that stuff: I simply don’t like it.
I cannot easily put the “close” window-button on the left side. I cannot set “doubleclick-titlebar = minimize”. I continiously had issues with having to wait minutes after the desktop had appeared before any apps would open (it refuses to process clicks, and then all of a sudden, all the clicks were processed *at once*, re-installs didn’t help). And more of these little annoyences.
For me it’s just a case of best-tool-for-the-job. Linux/GNOME and Linux/KDE give me better tools than Windows can. Simple (for my desktop computer that is. my laptop is an iBook).
Few things I miss:
-DVD support: my DVDs always play choppy, no matter what. No, don’t start giving links, I’ve done everything there is to do, all FAQs, all guides);
– No decent vertical preview pane in Kmail or Evo– the vertical preview pane in Outlook 2003 is the *best* way of reading emails).
DVD support: my DVDs always play choppy, no matter what. No, don’t start giving links, I’ve done everything there is to do, all FAQs, all guides)
You’re the second person I’ve seen mention this on here and it seems strange. For like 5 years now, I’ve actually been booting into Linux to watch DVDs because I prefered how they looked.
Perhaps we can try to help you. Can you provide us with some details about your OS? If it’s Debian- or Fedora-related, I don’t mind lending a hand to get good DVD playback on your system.
Harfooz
– No decent vertical preview pane in Kmail or Evo– the vertical preview pane in Outlook 2003 is the *best* way of reading emails).
Please suggest that to the KMail developers
(If you already haven’t)
It is only through feedback and even persistent – that they will listen.
But they will listen – believe me.
That is where and how non-programmers can help.
By joining the users mailing-lists and asking for requests.
Most of them won’t even know what you are talking about – but then would realize what great idea it is.
As against Windows, its security. If your customers are writers who exchange a lot of drafts with all kinds of people, knowing they can do it safely. If they are banking or shopping, same.
As against Macs, price. Powermacs are way too expensive. The all in ones, you can’t buy the bits as you need them.
So I have got them generic base units, carried on using their existing screens till they had the pennies to buy nice big and now much cheaper flat ones. Put them on Mandrake or Suse. Gnome if they were mac users and liked spatial browsling. Strict instructions about backups using drag and drop. Decent keyboards and optical mice for a fraction of the apple cost.
So far, touch wood, no lost files, no security problems, no system crashes, no rsi. Just works. And, as a bonus, when you get asked how to do some odd thing, it turns out that mostly it is already on the machine. For instance, project management the other day. Well, Planner is already on. Or a dtabase for notes. Yes, Gjots or Kjots. Or recipes – Gourmet. Or a library catalogue – Tellico.
Life is a lot simpler.
I’m a Unix user and graphics developer. I recently switched from Mac OS X to Debian GNU/Linux, since the latter gives me a better Unix environment with nicer tools, and at acceptable performance. Tiger was not usable for real work on this machine.
My switch hade nothing to do with MS, or OS politics in general. I chose Debian because it does what I need better than other systems.
This perfectly truthful and honest posting will probably take a bad moderation beating – because my attitude will certainly be despised
I have a deep disrespect (at least since the glorious Mac IIfx-days) for people voluntarily using MS products. I think their self-elected mediocrity and inability to handle challenging thoughts is disgusting and I want to be as far away from their mindset and businesses. While there may be an odd exception, Windows users are likely less intelligent than Linux users and less beautiful than Mac user(esses). For similar reasons, model scouts scout at airports, not at railway stations.
Now that Apple have sold out and put form over function, and Be has fizzled out, a migration towards Linux seemed the best way, and I really feel right-at-home in GNOME. Lacking the odd codec, not having a certain game, or not being able to connect the latest $20 webcam doesn’t really disturb me – I’m used to that from long times on the Mac. All I need to make money is there, for free, and the going development rates for Linux are higher than for Windows – I can keep my sportscar habit going.
So I switched to Linux for social reasons.
On the other hand, I do support Linux these days, for political reasons, to help breaking what I think is the major barrier to get freedom back into computing and associated fields. I file bug reports, send patches upstream and help illiterate relatives with their installation woes.
“I have a deep disrespect (at least since the glorious Mac IIfx-days) for people voluntarily using MS products. I think their self-elected mediocrity and
inability to handle challenging thoughts is disgusting and I want to be as far away from their mindset and businesses. While there may be an odd exception,
Windows users are likely less intelligent than Linux users and less beautiful than Mac user(esses).”
troll! Don’t feed him.
1. People who have a Unix background and want to run a Unix like operating system on their own machines.
2. People who want to tinker with their system.
3. people who are just plain curious about something different.
4. people who hate microsoft business practices – a perfectly legitimate reason.
5. people who want to learn a *nix like environment – sort of covered already.
6. people who are fed-up with the adware/spyware that is so prevelent in windows.
2, 3, 5 and 6 all applied to me. I like to try new things, but the virus and spyware protection that was needed was getting unwieldly. As for 1, my only previous experience with Unix was in high school with the computer lab’s ICON computers. In regards to 4, I don’t hate their business practices enough to use that as a reason for switching, if I did that then there would be lots of other things I would have to not use so I wouldn’t seem hypocritical.
I’ve been using Linux now as my main OS for around 6 months and as secondary for about 6 months before that. I tried Linux for the first time in the mid to late 90s with Redhat 5 or 6 and a couple of other distros and been trying it off and on pretty much every year. Linux has come a long way since then.
Windows is still on my system, for one reason, some of my favorite games, mainly 3D ones. They don’t work in wine or winex for me because my video card only has DirectX support, no OpenGL. As soon as I can get a decent ATi or Nvidia card, I’ll be happy.
1) As of Ubuntu Breezy, Linux fulfills all my home needs, which include browsing, emailing, IMing, occasional document creation and music/video playing.
2) Linux is infinitely more stable for me than Windows. Once in a while I get X lockups before I get to gdm (i think because of some sort of a race in initialization process), but Reset button fixes it. Otherwise it’s solid, and no application has ever crashed the system as a whole for me. In XP, I run firewall, don’t open suspicious attachments etc. But after a few rounds of installing and uninstalling applications it becomes unstable anyway. I have a decent hardware (Intel i915 with integrated A/V, Seagate SATA HD) so I wouldn’t attribute Windows problems to it.
BTW, Linux allows me to set font size for apps and desktop to my liking. Try to do that properly in Windows – you’ll be surprised how shitty is MS implementation in this respect.
3) Unfortunately, the apps I need for work are for Windows (Trados, SDLX) and don’t run under Crossover/Wine (Trados installs in Crossover, but USB dongle doesn’t work, so no go for me). Word hangs with Trados template in Crossover, too. Therefore I don’t see me fully switching to Linux soon.
4) It’s hard to explain properly, but Linux has a soul while Windows doesn’t. Windows is boring though OK and definitely more polished as a desktop environment than say Gnome 2.12 I use.
Temcat
I switched 5.5 years ago in order to solve a problem. At the time, I was using dialup. For some reason, Windows 98 would freeze after connecting via dialup within 15 minutes, consistently. I got tired of it. Note that I kept the system fully updated, didn’t get viruses and checked for spyware regularly.
Anyway, I switched to Mandrake 7.0. It wasn’t perfect but I found I could connect via dialup, forget I was connected, fall asleep and wake up ten hours later and still be connected. It took me 3 months before I realized you never have to shutdown a Linux box.
Initially I stayed with it because it solved my problem but also because it offered customization not possible on Windows. Writing/creating my own themes was relatively easy, no matter which window manager of DE I was using at the time. I could use KDE, GNOME, Windowmaker, etc, not to mention the thousands of packages of software freely available. I know there is much free software available for Windows as well, but I have yet to personally experience any spyware infested free apps on Linux as you find in the world of Windows “freeware.” At one point, this was in the KDE 1.xx days, I had kvoicecontrol setup to open apps and surf web pages on voice commands, something not possible on Windows at that time. (Or if it was possible I had never heard of it.)
I eventually realized installing recently developed apps or beta apps on Mandrake required compiling. I didn’t mind that at all. Configure, make and make install is not rocket science, after all. What I did mind was constantly having to discover which foo-dev-mdk-rpms were necessary to install before an app could be compiled. So I left Mandrake and switched to Gentoo.
It was only then that I began to learn the true meaning of a customized system. I had two machines setup as an openmosix cluster at one point, which would split compiles between both boxes. Do that on Windows without spending thousands of dollars. And this, to me, is the entire point of Linux. You can customize the system and set it up exactly as you please. No company dictates user interface, installed apps, or anything else about the system really. I don’t have to worry about any one app attempting to take over my system or mime types, as was often the case in Windows.
I know my past experience has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of Windows presently. I know nothing of Windows presently having not used it in 5.5 years. However, Gentoo offers everything I need and maximum control over my system. I don’t have to depend on any Linux distributor packaging my favorite apps. (Kubuntu dictates Kaffeine, which is STILL crashing on Kubuntu – read the forums, and doesn’t yet offer Kplayer.)
And I, of course, was not now nor have I never been a Unix guru. I didn’t even know when I first installed Linux I was using a system based on Unix. I use it strictly for desktop purposes, using only the apps which I need. I don’t see how I will ever be able to go back to Windows, simply because I can’t set my system up exactly how I please, as is possible with Gentoo.
Originally, Linux solved a problem. Today it allows a level of customization not possible in any other system of which I am aware.
I actually switched from Windows 2000. I was on dialup, which worked under Win2k, but I noticed that latencies were an annoyance. I had gotten used to DSL and T1 lines before moving to an area where broadband wasn’t available. I expected dialup to be slow, but not painfully so. I had even purchased an external hardware modem trying to get the best possible experience.
When I tried Linux on my box for the first time, I was very happy that I had the external modem. It was easily recognized by the system, and I had didn’t have to do any setup or worry about drivers like I did in Windows. I don’t know what was wrong with Windows, but in Linux my connection to the internet was much faster and more reliable.
Now, I’m using a very fast cable connection. I still can’t stomach dialup on Windows, but with Linux at least it’s bearable.
There was definitely the curiosity factor. One of my friends even had a Linux computer for years because his dad is a programmer. Every once in a while I would ask him about it to try and gauge if I thought it would be interesting enough to tinker with. I didn’t have days on end to try setting it up, and I wanted to know that it would be useful for doing something productive (that I knew how to do; I’m not a programmer) once I did get it set up. So, I didn’t even bother with it until a couple of years ago.
After my first install, I was hooked. I couldn’t quite do everything with it. So, I kept dual-booting into Windows, but rather than becoming frustrated with the shortcomings of Linux, I started becoming more irritated by the sortcomings of Windows. Linux has continued to progress, and I don’t think I have any major gripe about it now.
I continue to use whatever OS is available to me, but I would prefer to install and use Linux over any other at this point. Linux is at a point where I can have control over my computer when I want it without feeling like I have to jump through hoops to get things done.
How many people who switch to Linux actually STAY with Linux after they see what a massive kludge it really is?
In my experience the odd person would is brainwashed by the “Start” menu rant about Linux. How many is difficult but MOST do stay with Linux and leave on the duel boot, since only the odd application stops them from moving to Linux fully.
You can be sure that lots of people have moved to Linux considering how the distro’s ftp sites get hit, and the IRC is the best place to see floods of people using or moving to Linux. People move away from Windows because they realize what “a massive kludge” it really is, not the other way around.
many people stay. many people don’t. enough people on both sides. anyone can keep it’s own assumptions.
i stayed.
as more and more people will stay some other non bloated os-es will come to the today’s position of linux. linux will be main stream as osx and windows.
at some point we will just forget about linux being hard or not.
everything will be too hard for average user but average joes at that time will be happy enough with their fridges full of beers reading their emails and displaying photos of cousins from flickr.com
Trying != Switching
I know at least over 20 friends of mine that switched in last year. I don’t know anyone switching back. Most of them were first dual-booting, next they just bought PS2 and formated Windows to gain space.
That should take care identifiying most common Windows usage.
what a massive kludge it really is?
??? Well I don’t understand this. When I look at my Windows installations I only see this (most of these errors are not MS, but more or less related to the fact that there is no HIG spec):
After installing JUST basic drivers and software on Windows
– your tray is usualy about 8-12 icons and small icons as that are unusable by default
– Start menu looks like post war chaos, why does every software have to create its folder for his application (even when you install something that is not application like printer driver or codecs)
– Desktop is full of icons
– File System layout is everything but good
– People designing control panels should be shot on sight
– Damn is that desktop ugly
– Every application draws differently, windows different colors, every button is customized to its drawing (but all more ugly than default provided with Windows)
And at this point I haven’t even begin to install development tools. You don’t want to know what I think after that.
p.s. Not even a single point (except probably fs layout) doesn’t apply on Gnome FOR ME PERSONALLY.
> ??? Well I don’t understand this. When I look at my
> Windows installations I only see this (most of these
> errors are not MS, but more or less related to the fact
> that there is no HIG spec):
You are right, but most of these are minor problems and/or can be corrected by a few mouse clicks. There is no excuse for the crap you find in a windows system… but how serious are these problems compared to:
– hardware not working
– can’t read my files because no NTFS write support
– Many programs not working and no alternative (don’t even start discussing wine, it simply crashed)
…
If people don’t switch, they usually have reasons (and note that the fact that Joe User wants his computer to “just work” should actually come as an advantage for Linux, because Mr. User doesn’t care if he’s running Windows or *nix).
– Morin
Speaking from my personal viewpoint, intentionaly ignorant. Not to provoke or troll, but to give you better answer. Conclusion at the end.
but how serious are these problems compared to:
– hardware not working
All my Linux machines working perfectly, except my dualboot Notebook. Windows screwed hybernate and bluetooth needs reinstall every once in a while. Linux works perfectly on the same laptop
And by the way, damn Windows install doesn’t even start on my G5 or G4 or PS2 (Linux works like a charm). Whom do I bother for hardware support? And my TV tuner which worked fine under 98 is not installable anymore in XP.
– can’t read my files because no NTFS write support????
NTFS? Why would I need NTFS, to have unused space?
And if there is no write support why would that disable read support? If you need read support try knoppix. NTFS Read is working as a charm, write not. But my windows install can’t see my portable ext3 formated harddrive (or my ext3 formated USB key).
– Many programs not working and no alternative (don’t even start discussing wine, it simply crashed)
1. I don’t use wine. why would I need that? To start running software I don’t want to run?
2. Which programs do not work on Linux for me? You have to tell me because I seriously don’t know. But I do know what everything doesn’t work for me when I boot in Windows (every 2 months I boot at least once in Windows on my laptop)
3.1. I agree that most of Windows software isn’t working as it should. My laptop and its Windows install is a clear example of that
3.2. Yeah, I agree with that. I’m still searching for some windows software to mimick my usual app on linux (that is when I don’t have my laptop with me and client uses windows, both very rare but it happens). There is simply no alternative for them
4. Which alternative I’m searching for, seriously? I don’t know. I have everything and more. Although, in the past I was searching for games, but then I bought PS2 and all my need and wish for windows vanished in a single moment.
Conclusion:
About everything you named except hardware.
If you wan’t something just like you’re used to, you’d be better staying where you were.
About hardware
You should at least have compatible hardware for the OS you want to use. “Any machine” is just as bad on Windows as on Linux or OSX.
p.s. Not even a single bug in my windows is fictional, it simply doesn’t work for me, but since I practically don’t use them I don’t even care.
depending on what the user is working on. Win-XP and Vista are a step in the wrong direction for many users mostly because the design changes from Win-2k suck, and the vendor lock-in/lock-up stuff are a real turnoff. Users want generic hardware and software compatibility, and the flexibility that goes with it. Not everbody sees the world of data and electronics the way Bill Gates does all the time.
I switched because of gnome.
This spring I upgraded my computer and windows started bluescreening on boot. I used an ubuntu live cd to get a web browser so that I could try to google for a way to get windows working again. While I was using the live cd I fell in love with how well thought out gnome is. I ended up installing ubuntu instead of fixing windows.
Linux and open source software is always my first choice as a server. For a small business, and for a person who provides solutions for small businesses (as well as larger ones), the cost savings are huge:
1. No client access licenses, so no costs incurred for putting new employees on the network.
2. Better performance. Samba, especially for any SME around and above twenty users, just performs several times better on the same hardware.
3. Use Kolab as a groupware server. Even factoring in Outlook/Kolab plugin costs it is still far, far cheaper than anything Microsoft based.
4. The ability to do any sort of remote, out of office, VPN network access you can think of. There are no per user or connection licenses for that either.
5. No big hit in costs as your business expands. Something like SBS is limited to about 75 users, but you’ll hit that buffer long before you reach that as you continually spend money on adding people to you network. Buying separate 2003, Exchange etc. is prohibitively expensive.
6. You get most of the software you’d have to pay extra for even after getting your Windows licenses. Anti-virus software, anti-virus scanning of your e-mail, CMF and application servers, database servers, source control systems, remote monitoring of the network etc.
7. a) I have no desire to see a server infected via a virus in the same way as desktops. I simply don’t have the time for that crap and neither do you. Chop it.
b) I also have no desire to run around like a complete tit wondering why something is inexplicably not working on a server and then realising it’s the anti-virus software causing problems and slowing everything down.
8. If you’re a person who are kidding themselves in IT by going through point and click wizards, forget it. You’re not going to provide a solution of any quality whatsoever, your customers will be dissatisfied and they will be looking for another provider quite quickly – who will probably sell them yet another Microsoft based thing! This goes for any technology you use, but many people think that Microsoft is what they should ‘just go out and buy’. People like me have to routinely save these people from their own mistakes.
I manage to make extremely good money with open source software (and some proprietary) because I can use it to manage a lot of companies that pay extremely good money, but I don’t need to run around like a headless chicken, employ lots of not-very-good people, continually buy (mostly Microsoft) software for no reason whatsoever and completely wipe out any potential profit with meaningless costs or any prospects for further expansion. That’s why most all-Microsoft (or all-*insert vendor here*) solution providers can only ever get to a certain size, or why many of these silly people whine that small businesses want things for free or that they’re not making anywhere near the kind of money they though they were going to.
My reply? “Change your f***ing software!”
I wouldn’t say that I hate MS, but I certainly don’t like them. And, it isn’t for defensive reasons. I don’t really care what MS says or doesn’t say about a competitor. MS is a business, and most businesses (and all politicians) sling mud at their competition to some degree. I don’t respect them for it, but let’s just say that I’m used to it.
What I don’t like about MS are their monopolistic, anticompetitive practices. They aren’t out to help the consumer at all. I don’t care how much they preach about listening to their consumers. They don’t do anything unless they think it will help them earn the most money possible. Now, once again I realize that they are a business and businesses are motivated by money, but there comes a point when breaking the law and throwing ethics out the window can become a bit irritating. They became and maintained their monopoly through illegal tactics.
As a monopolist, they have been able to dictate to some degree what will and won’t happen in the industry and what consumers will and won’t be able to do. They don’t share well, and they don’t help the consumer unless they perceive either an opportunity to make money or the risk of losing it (SP2 for Windows XP with its increased security was more of a PR move to stem the flow of criticism than it was to help the consumer).
Now that they have received their slap on the wrist, they still hold a monopoly. The only way to keep them somewhat honest is for there to be competition. Most of their products have stagnated for several years, but now that they have some more competition (in just about every area of software design), they are on the verge of releasing a slew of new products.
After n “Linux” installs, I never succeed to put a “Linux” to work correcty (printer, modem,…)
“Linux” may be a good “OS”. It is to complicate for me.
I switched so I would never have to pay for something like an archiver or text editor or search for a product key again.
I like using software that the authors are happy for me to use; not having to jump through hoops to use it.
Indeed.
I recently bought a DVB-T card, and installed it in a dual boot system. The Software that was included for the card was Windows only. I installed the software and it asked for a product key. This was pretty pointless as the software does not work without the hardware being installed !
What do these producers think ? That I was going to clone the card just so that I could pirate the program ?
When I thought about it though, if I lost the key, then I would have to get in touch with the manufacturers, either on a premium rate telephone line or give them my email address,( which they can sell).
Windows users are used with this. I am not. I only keep a dual boot for games that need Windows.
I booted into Linux, and set up the card, run a scan for channels and that was me happy using freevo. a 5 minute job. no keys, nothing.
1) No registration/activation with Linux or the software, I have seen enough people having to re-install for a variety of reasons and they have to go through various hoops in regards to registering the OS and the various applications. Some companies give 800 numbers, some do not; while some are staffed 24 hours and others are not so well staffed. That is a whole lot of time and money to get your system back in working order.
2) The ability to install it on more than one home machine with paying for additional licenses.
3) Package management: The ability to update your entire system in one shot. Start the upgrade process and go out for some pizza and by the time your back; your system is fully updated. Rather than:
a) Update the base system.
b) Search various companies web sites for various patches to update your system. This gets more time consuming as you add more applictions over time.
c) Installing new versions of existing software on your system. Otherwise its, un-install then re-install.
All this takes a great deal of time; I have to take a pass on it.
4) The ability to customize and change your desktop. If you want a full blown GUI; then you have your choice of Desktop Environments. Want something smaller? Go to dozens of Window Managers. Check out:
http://www.plig.org/xwinman/
5) No registry; just flat (text) configuration files. This would be a personal preference.
6) Choice of distributions; aka one size doesn’t fit all. Want a fully automagical experience or do you want something that is very spartan. My personal preference is having a very lean system with no configuration wizards.
7) The file system is less prone to fragmentation. If fragmentation does occur; copy files to a new partition make a new file system; copy files back.
8) Fewer viruses
9) Malware???
All, in all, less maintance for the average user; but there is a small learing curve; however, IMHO it is a small price to pay (for some people).
“If you want a computer which a) WORKS and b) is not mired down in spyware and viruses, get a MACINTOSH.”
Oh no no no no no. Absolutely not. In my opinion, the Mac UI sucks. Sorry, but I prefer my customized KDE setup any day.
Has anyone ever believed the word of a pundit and not lost their wallet?
Probably, but everyone gets a lucky guess sometimes… The more “pundits” I read, on technology, the more I wish I’d gone to school for journalism so that I wouldn’t have to use my brain.
Then I read a good editorial in a respectable newspaper and I realize few are lucky enough to get such cushy jobs: I then resign myself back to my computing theory courses.
Why do people switch to it? I break it down like this:
70% – media hype and relentless preaching/pushing by the OSS zealots
20% – curiousity
10% – an actual determined need
Of the combined 90% for the first two, I think 99% of that group switches away from it once they realize that it is crap.
Been running Linux past 3 years now(multiple distros) (on 2 computers)…why? I like the modularity of the system…and of course couple of another things i am not gonna mention here…(flame)…anyway for me it is working very good!
IIRC, my reasons for switching were mostly out of:
1.) Curiousity.
2.) Vague software interest.
3.) The development tools.
The interesting reasons lie in why I’ve stayed and not switched over to a BSD or Solaris. Mostly in the end that lies in two things:
1.) The GNU core utils. I loathe Unix core utils, they’re weak, and low on options. No chown –reference eh, why not? Because you’re too hung up on hate for “–” flags, good reason.
2.) Loyalty. GNU/Linux has served me well, I want to contribute back. It hasn’t slowed down in 3 years, or left me stranded. I’ve got no reason to leave and a thousand to stick around (don’t take that literally).
One thing that’s stuck with me lately about free software in general: The Caveats and Bugs section of documentation. It’s so … honest.
i switched to linux because i wanna have full control of my own computer. you use windows, you let microsoft control your computer.
I haven’t seen any programming environment that can best Linux/Unix. When you install Linux, today, you install a programming environment. On Windows, I have to install some silly IDE or something Visual Studio. On OS X, I need Xcode to write anything worthwhile. On Linux, gimme a shell terminal, gcc, any of those modern high-level dynamic languages and a simple, intelligent text editor, and I will create something out of nothing.
The people interested in Linux/Unix are technically oriented. And when it comes to a technically oriented operating system, it doesn’t get more technical than Linux.
As a bonus, this bad boy called Linux handles load like no mans business. I haven’t seen any desktop operating system that handles load better than Linux, period.
… I was mainly curious about Linux and started dual-booting it with Windows XP about 2 years ago, without expecting very much …
to my own surprise I started using Linux more and more, booting into Windows only when absolutely necessary, and now I’ve started wondering if it’s really necessary for me to keep Windows – can’t even recall the last time I booted into it.
Linux is just more fun, I guess, and it’s getting better …
How long will it take closed source to catch up? kinda says it all doesn’t it?
I began switching to Linux back in 2000 (IIRC), it was a Suse. The reason was that I was fed up by Windows and all its flaws and was looking for a development plattform where I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel again.
Transition ended somewhere mid 2001 and I’m proud of that great project (and I don’t mean Linux, but GNU plus BSD) I select Gnu/Linux or a BSD depending on the target system – in the end the userland is the thing which makes the computer actually usable and fortunately all open unices share almost the same code base when it comes to the userland.
Now I’m writing from Windows, just because I wanted to play a game (hey, it is Friday
and I don’t want to reboot), but it became so alien to me, that I can’t use it actually any more.
Nothing against Windows, NT is a great system with a very bad officer, but that is a point for an another (endless) discussion.
Gnome, KDE and XFCE provide very great desktop environments, off them XFCE is my favorite. Respective you might have your favorite environment – that was one of the points more advanced over Windows in my eyes. Yes, those nifty desktop customizers for Windows exist(ed?). IIRC Starsomething was very popular back in 2002, but those are(were?) no performance bombs and weren’t really usable.
As people state that the applications are inconsistent because of those different widget sets – the difference between GTK and KDE/QT is far less than between w2k/xp/.net styles and in my eyes WinAMP’s and several other applications’ GUIs didn’t look really consistent.
XP/NTFS has great rights management, but Microsoft doesn’t use it and/or won’t use it in Vista, too. Especially KDE/Gnome (I mean distro DEs, dunno how it is with raw sources) and MacOSX (although i didn’t use it much, beat me if I’m wrong) show that proper rights management doesn’t mean cutting off comfort. Microsoft’s strategy/ignorance lead that only several applications (especially OSS ones) can run with user rights – take an average proprietary app (especially a game) and magically you get messages regarding user mode.
Viruses and other malware wasn’t a big problem for me on Windows – after over ten years of MS-OS I had the feeling and never needed to use firewalls or avs. But that wasn’t the case with those users I served back in old days. Click and pray was their style. IF and only IF Suse/Ubuntu/RedHat/Debian/insert your distro will remove the executable flags … well … I’ll look for a different distro or will modify Gentoo to become binary incompatible
And the main reason was the development plattform – with such a choice of devtools, development environments and everything what belongs to this category (including libs) such open projects as Gnu/Linux are a heaven for programmers. Remember I talked about reinventing the wheel on Windows? I’ll show an example: you have a favorite ftp client, it satisfies you, but you found a nasty bug or just see the mission to translate that application or miss something. What can you do? Nothing.
The relatively only open development on win32 is currently (as I see) P2P (I mean win32-dedicated projects) everything else is either cross-plattform or ported on all kinds of flavors. Microsoft made its operating system incompatible and so the dev scene there is cooking its own closed soup.
Yes, some applications are available only for Windows and that takes time until the market focuses also somewhere else. The point is: Windows market is already satisfied, selling a new product is very hard. If a movement towards an other plattform exists, a new market is open – those who try too early, go down (Borland/Kylix) – those who come too late cry (in terms of being loud) (Microsoft with its efforts on Google, Music and all their new “products”)
I made my choice and I’ll make my choice again if I see a more interesting opportunity. If you don’t control things, they control you. Just make sure not to have the wrong feeling about controlling something, it will turn badly at you!
“Why Do People Switch to Linux?”
In other news, why do people start thinking for themselves rather than allow themselves to be f–ked in the figurative ass by a convicted monopoly?
As i see it, in a couple of hundred years (maybe even not that long) there will be no need to charge for stuff. and i do mean stuff as in ALL stuff. Pretty much everything will be automated and people will work with what interests them, maybe not more than a couple of hours a week, if necessary. Some will do more than they really have to (over-achievers and people with mora than an interest in what they are doing).
(What we need to worry about is in fact how to spend our every day increasing free time, and overflow of food – so we wont become lazy and fat! In fact that is already starting to happen in our part of the world. US anyone?)
Linux, and open-source in general fits nicelly into this picture. Who knows – maybe even windows will be open source by then (strange thought though.. hehe)
Or as i said, we (evolve nowhere, blow ourselves up and yada yada…) will die.
Because I like it.
I don’t need to provide some sort of justification for my personal preferences, and I really don’t give a rats ass if you share my sentiment.
I like what I like.
What made me switch was software activation. I had once lost valuable data due to copy protected software being abandoned by its maker.
So I just wanted to make sure that never happened again. Sure Microsoft have the right to protect their IP, but to me, protection of my IP have higher priority.
If I had continued using Microsoft I there would always be a risk that you at some point in time would hear:
– Sorry Sir, we don’t provide activation keys for that product anymore. May we offer you an upgrade?
An upgrade that I most likely would have to pay for, and even then, what makes it certain that the software I use to read my files will run on that new version of windows.
I have never regretted it, I have much lower costs for system administration. Linux just works.
Because I don’t like having:
* to ask permission to re-install my OS.
* to clean my PC of advertising and malware
* to update all of my software manually
* others access my files without my knowledge
* to pay to ‘lease’ my software
* an environment that tells me how everything should look/feel
* a convicted felon anywhere near my goods
Around 98 I was in grad school and had no money, so the computer I could afford was hopelessly obsolete. Windows NT would start crashing and I could not upgrade. I did not know if the problem was the hardware or the software. Anyway, I decided to try Slackware 4 (after a very slow install of RedHat 6), and the machine was extremely stable. I never went back. Goodbye to frustration. To this day I use “old” machines and am more productive than my peers who spend thousands upgrading and protecting their machine against virus and adware, etc.
I switched five years ago since I wanted to upgrade my windows 2K box but I didn’t have the money for an upgrade. I went from making 70K at a web development company to 30K working at a local hospital after my company went down. I was also sick of flakey application performance on windows and having to pay for all the application upgrades became impossible. Linux literally kept me in the game. I use it at home for personal work and some business stuff.
I have similar cross-platform requirements; in my case, only Mac OS X and Windows at this stage, but Linux is quite likely for the future. So far I’ve been doing this quite happily with REALbasic. It has some quirks, but it does the job.
As far as platforms go, it’s Mac OS X for me personally (I have a long history on Macintosh) with KDE complementing the experience. Often, I’m running both the Mac OS X desktop and a KDE desktop side by side on the same machine, and I have to say it works quite well. I’ve looked at Linux distributions on several occasions but so far haven’t seen any that outshine what I have now. Should that change, I’m open-minded enough to give it another go…
Just for namesake, I asked ubunutu to ship the cds. But the cds really arrived! So what to do? Use them as a tea/coffee coaster, or put it to use.
Well, I searched for 2nd hand hdd, and have installed it.
Now while i am writting this, I am upgrading my ubuntu 5.04 to 5.10!! What more do you want?
I love my win98se. So I will not ditch 98se. But ubuntu is cool. I like their naming convention.
~A.
If your roots are in *nix you thrill to the very idea of a free workstation/server for the asking. It’s like a long ago and far away magical dream come true.
95 % of the computer population running windodo was already enough for me to go elsewhere.
Linux was there and I took the train, if this train was sometime in late, he always brought me safely where i wanted,
So the question for me can be Why Do People Switch to Windodoooo?