“You might be pretty happy with Windows XP. But Windows continues to suffer from more than its share of drawbacks: From the newer operating system’s incompatibility with older software to Microsoft’s well-known security problems, Windows still engenders a fair amount of user aggravation. Windows XP also subjects its users to the indignity of the Microsoft Product Activation service: You might have to ask Microsoft for a new key if you upgrade more than one or two major components.” Watch the match at PCWorld.
Linux vs. Windows: The Rematch
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Plus windowsXP is far from stable. We crash it out a couple of times weekly in the computer labs. Usually from doing routine things like visiting the advanced options buttons on screen preferences. Blue screen of death and all, it’s good to know microsoft keeps to it’s roots.
>Plus windowsXP is far from stable.
Please. WindowsXP is ROCK SOLID here! I haven’t had a single crash since March 16th 2002, which was the day I installed it.
>We crash it out a couple of times weekly in the computer labs.
Yeah, and I crash Linux very often here.
Today, I tried to install SuSE 8.1 for an upcoming review. It does not even **LOAD** to install it from the cdroms!! And I have installed more than 15 OSes in this very machine. SuSE just doesn’t load. (I am still in the talks with SuSE to find a way to fix the problems!)
more than anything else, “product activation” really irks me and has thus far turned me off the idea of using windowsXP. however, considering i ran away in horror whenever i had to use the terminal in BeOS and feel a similar unease in MsDOS, Linux still isn’t an option for me. it’s waaay too “tech” for me.
oh, and the price of winXP was a turn off.
maybe your labs are too cheap to have quality hardware. instead you have corrupt RAM that will crash any system
The Windows XP crashes are most times caused by bad system drivers. As the drivers are most times configured for best performance not for best stability. I found Windows .NET beta to use more stable standard configurations.
To the article: I don’t like it, when reviewers talk about Windows 9x. Thats gone a very long time ago. Windows NT is the line of interest. Btw. I just installed RH8, its by far the best Linux I ever tested. They now even use Unicode and got rid of obscure utilities and tools which where created in the 70s and have no use on today desktop 🙂 (e.g. xmailbox)
I forgot to say that Windows XP is of course still more advanced than any Linux System. Let it be usability or the technical basis. Only problem is that MS developers are too lazy, they should recognize that there OS works on so many systems, they should focus on security and some little things that are anoying. Also often their default config is not optimal.
Please. WindowsXP is ROCK SOLID here! I haven’t had a single crash since March 16th 2002, which was the day I installed it.
That goes both ways. I’ve seen XP crash on my roommate’s computer, and yes i’ve seen linux crash. But i’d say most crashes now days in either OS can be blamed on lame cheap hardware. People need to realize that cause walmart sells something cheap doesnt mean you need to buy it. You get what you pay for in hardware.
As far as SuSE not loading from CDROM, dont go and blame that on linux, thats SuSE’s fault, plain and simple, just like you said yesterday, it is the packager, not the coder’s fault for not making sure stuff works.
Well, I work part-time in a number of computing labs (Solaris, Windows XP, Mac OS 9.2 — I’m on the last of those right now), and while I’ve only seen one Solaris crash in the last month, we get at least one XP total crash (freezes for over 5 minutes, ALT+CTRL+DELETE not working, must manually power cycle) a day (1 per 40 computers per 4 hours) plus several other mini-crashes (ALT+CTRL+DELETE, kill Explorer and all “not responding” processes) in that same period. Mac OS 9.2, of course, is much worse in this regard. Note that all changes users make to a machine are rolled-back automatically, and generally these users just use Internet Explorer/Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Office. It’s not a great track record, but it is the best Microsoft has done (apart from Windows 2000). Still, Solaris — in my experience — crushes Windows in terms of stability.
We also have several RedHat 7.2 GNU/Linux labs. It’s generally very solid in terms of not locking up or crashing, but very flaky when it comes to printing, sound support, and the like, even between identical set-ups on identical hardware. Hopefully this will be better after we upgrade to a newer distro (probably RedHat 8.1 whenever it comes out).
Just my $0.02 worth.
usability is a point of view, not a fact.
technical basis…what technical basis? I’d like to know which technical points you think XP has that linux does not. Hardware drivers aside of course, although i think linux has more than good enough hardware drivers. They support the quality hardware, which is what i like to buy, i dont care for budget machines.
Since I don’t use Windows at all, I can hardly give my own view on the stability of XP. However, I just had a little chat with a friend of mine who’s constantly complaining that his XP box keeps crashing. He tried the normal sollution, a full reinstall of the OS. The problems didn’t go away though and frankly I can’t blaim him when he can’t find out what’s wrong. One doesn’t get much help from Windows when it just locks-up. Sure, Linux may have similar problems. X11 sometimes segfaults on my box but at least I’m dropped back to console and just have to punch in “startx” again. And yeah, most of the time I’m at least given some kind of hint about what whent wrong, and where.
If XP is “ROCK SOLID” for some of you guys, great! Just don’t take for granted that everyone’s having the same luck.
> As far as SuSE not loading from CDROM, dont go and blame that on linux, thats SuSE’s fault, plain and simple
Sure it is SuSE’s fault. Other Linuxes load fine here, it is only Suse’s that doesn’t load. But SuSE is a linux too, and when someone says “Windows Vs Linux”, he/she talks about linux in general, which includes SuSE.
Solaris is certainly more stable than both Linux and Windows XP, but it is also more useless in terms of desktop usage.
Including everything, even those crashes Windows Xp will end up the best choice for productivity. For regular home user tasks nobody can compete with Windows XP. People are comparing Netscape and IE but they never realize the integration of IE and the Office is far more stronger than anything else. You can copy OSNews website in IE and paste it to Word, and Word creates everything for you automatically. It is not just text, but the images, tables, everything.
By the way Windows XP is pretty stable. I have never heard my sister having a problem with Windows XP.
XP is a damn fine product, but in my experience, it is far from “ROCK SOLID”. I take care of XP boxes at work, on a variety of hardware, and own one at home. It doesn’t crash everyday, but it does cash frequently enough. What I like most about XP is the pleasant and extremely polished interface.
Linux? It isn’t nearly as useable at XP, but it is good enough. I even recommended, to my company, that we move to Redhat 8 last week and save on licencing costs. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think we would be fine. Anyway, Linux is improving every single day. Things will get much better sooner than later.
linux is constantly shifting, which causes many problems for distro-makers and their users. this can be alleviated by using a well-tested distro like debian. sure, gentoo is nice, but the cutting-edge, well, it cuts.
windows is often crippled by bad 3rd party drivers, which can be alleviated by buying from manufacturers with a good track record of providing quality hardware and software to match. microsoft have no great track record in security, but i think that has more to do with their reluctancce to admit problems exist, and the hangovers of many badly conceived APIs they must now maintain…
if i sit my sister down with a copy of linux logged into her own username she can sit and use it happily, write documents in abiword and play various games with no crashes or hangs, alternatively, leave her on a windows XP box and it has a tendancy to crash, regardless of what games she’s playing, open and close enough apps and games and eventually it will start to perform very badly and maybe even crash.
.net beta on the other hand actually seems to survive a little better in some ways!
Please. WindowsXP is ROCK SOLID here! I haven’t had a single crash since March 16th 2002, which was the day I installed it.
On the contrary. I already reinstalled XP 2 times on my wifes computer. The first time it just bluescreened at startup one morning. Some service failed to load and the screen instructed me to reboot to fix the problem, only to return at the same screen over and over again. The XP rescue thing didn’t get us too far. Reinstalling proved to be the fastest route to getting a usable install again. The second mishap was just unbelievable. After applying a windows update, the LOGIN screen refused to come up. Some error like a missing DLL needed for the login screen. This one I managed to fix by copying some DLL from the net (custom login screen). But at that point we lost all confidence.
So today my wife’s computer is running Redhat Null (soon to be upgraded to 8.0) with Windows 2000 under VMWare
workstation for SPSS. This setup has been running for 2 months now, rock solid!
Windows XP, rock solid? Yeah, if you tie a rock to it!! 🙂
-fooks
“and while I’ve only seen one Solaris crash in the last month, we get at least one XP total crash (freezes for over 5 minutes, ALT+CTRL+DELETE …”
First of all, who gives a damn about Solaris? Personally, I don’t know ANYBODY who has a Solaris box sitting in their living room.
As for stability, I’m going to pull a ‘Linux zealot’ here and say that if you have an XP box that’s crashing all the time, it’s because you’re too stupid to know how to use it properly
(Any Windows user in here ever heard that about Linux?)
Seriously though, most people I’ve heard complaining about stablitly in 2k/XP are usually running computers at work or in a school lab, running on low caliber Celerons and using parts (such as integrated video/sound) that are so shitty and cheap, they make Winmodems look state-of-the-art by comparison. Either that, or else they’ve got like 40 apps running in the system tray with no idea what most of them are for.
Anyway, get one of those fancy new GUIs up and running in Linux, and I think the stability thing is really a non-issue. I think veterans of each OS know how to tweak them and make them run flawlessly, though newcomers (like myself, who managed to crash Mandrake 9 in less than 30 minutes) might have some trouble.
In short, when comparing XP to the latest Linux distros, I don’t think stability is something that Linux has on its side anymore.
But the main thing I think people are overlooking in the article is this:
“You can get every conceivable utility for Linux, most at no cost, but many can’t match the best Windows or Mac apps. Premier Linux apps like StarOffice, Evolution, and The GIMP still provide only a subset of the features found in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Adobe Photoshop. What they do offer is more than adequate–unless you need one of the missing features.”
As for me, I just started using Cool Edit Pro 2.0 as an audio editor. (Upgraded from 1.2). If you put this app against ANYTHING that Linux has to offer, you will understand very quickly just one reason why I’m still using Windows.
Sure, WPA, DRM, spyware, etc is a pain in the ass and using Windows means that you have to dodge bullets, as long as I can bypass/work around them and keep using the shit for free, I’m happy
Hm, sad it’s sad somehow. Whenever Eugenia encounters SuSE, something goes wrong. Of course it’s SuSE’s fault, but still. I really like SuSE, works like a charm on several different systems over here.
I have been using Windows XP since the beta stage and I can honestly say that I have never, ever had a full crash. I have had a couple programs crash on me, but nothing major. I use my computer for many hours a day. I think most people who have problems with winXP just have it installed on crappy hardware. XP is rock solid
Use what is best for you. I have been using Windows XP since the beta days and I believe it to be a very stable OS. The only crash I have received is when I installed drivers for my Echo Mia sound card. That was to be expected as they were beta quality drivers at the time.
Most crashes in XP can be attributed to poorly written drivers or applications. The times that XP has crashed at least did not take down the entire system. I am also the IT guy for a local Realtor Association that uses Windows XP, Solaris, and a few other NT4 boxes. The XP machines have been very stable and our employees get more work done since switching from Win 98. The main point is it is not always the OS’s fault whaen crashing the system.
A bit off topic, but…
Have any of you posters used Mac OS X? I use it and like it and understand that quite a few Linux users who have tried it like it as well.
If you’ve used OS X, would you say it’s competitive, compared to WinXP or Linux? I care about the platform and am just curious as to whether it’s catching on at all outside the Mac faithful.
My notebook when running XP is pretty stable. I did have a recurring problem with the wireless network card. Whenever it was in and I booted it would show me the new ‘BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH’ and reboot. I uninstalled and tried again it worked once and then game over. It was a D-link card. Anyway that bad boy went back.
Apart from that XP was stable for me.
XP on the Desktop at home is terrible. I don’t use that machine, but it is a terrible Dell P4 1.6 and it has to constantly be rebooted despite installing again.
At work Windows 2000 is rock and I do mean rock solid (compaq). It has never crashed in over a year.
Admittedly, I’ve never tried the newer 10.2 version, but I did test drive the earlier versions (10.0/1) and wasn’t overly impressed. I mean, it was alright, but nothing just out at me and made me think “I gotta have it!”
But the big problem is that, unless you want to buy me one of those snazzy new iLamps, Mac OS X isn’t much use to me because it requires hardware that I don’t currently own and really can’t afford.
My PC gets upgraded in $300-$400 increments every couple of years, and spending $1,500+ for Mac is just too much for me.
This is especially true since, from the research I’ve done, Macs don’t offer me much I don’t have already, except for the ‘MS is evil’ zealotry that the Linux fanatics have been spewing for ages. Of course, it definitely excels over Linux in the audio department (something I care about), but there’s nothing really in that category that I don’t have already (as most of the top-quality audio apps are cross-platform anyway).
I have a dual proc via motherboard from Asus… Fairly generic hardware that BeOS, Linux, and FreeBSD all run on quite stably.
XP, on the other hand, locks solid (requiring a hard reboot) at least once or twice a week… The memory on the machine has checked every possible test I can think of…
In addition to those hard reboots, I get numerous applications that lock up that have to be killed from task manager, mostly IE (though MediaPlayer and Quicktime are common culprits).
I have a laptop that came preconfigured with Windows XP… Which spontaneously reboots at least once a day. XP’s crash reporting says that it’s a driver error. This is a $2000 laptop from Compaq that has never once caused any problems under Linux (though APM refuses to work).
I have a really hard time believing people when they say that they’ve never had a stability issue with XP.
Adam
Gawd, you are the such a Microsoft fan. You always defend them. Its been pointed out over and over.
I tell you what, give me your email address, check it with Outlook or Outlook Express and we shall see how ROCK SOLID your XP is. Sad excuse, you ought to just write the stories and not give us your opinion. This site would be better off.
“We talk about all OSes here!” “Im not a fan of MS”
Crash Linux often. Yea, right. You are telling all of us, the your Linux crashes more than XP. Whatever. I use to work in a NT server environment and the STANDARD FOR EVERY NT MACHINE was to never launch IE. It would crash the box half the time. “XP is ROCK SOLID” Gawd, you are sooo pissy.
Geez, I run XP flawlessly on one of them low rent celerons that you guys slag, no issues. Well, I did have one blue screen after I loaded an unsigned driver for a Midiman Oxygen, but I fixed that….
The fact is, both linux and XP require you to be an expert. To get linux up and running, you need to relearn how you use a computer-alot of people wouldn’t know a command line interface if they saw it.Yep, MSFT makes it easy, but easy can make you dumb.
Once you get it running, you need to know how to compile, how to start stop services, and do all the general house keeping and tweaking you need to get linux running right for you.
Now, XP is exactly the same in my opinion. Left alone, it’s more stable than before, but we are talking degrees here, not perfection. Sooner, rather than later, you are going to need to edit the registry, modify services, turn off system restore, or some other arcania that takes a shelf of books in Borders to understand. Why, pray tell, do you think there are so many sites dedicated to twaeking the XP beast?
So, pick your poison. One, you get infinite configurability at the cost of applications, and the other, you get infinite usability, at the cost of applications.
Which one? Take your pick.
I cannot say XP is rock solid. No way. My 2k box “just works”. ( Sorry Apple. ) It does crash on rare occasions, and it’s usually quite obvious what I did to cause it. New application, really mashing too many keys and crashing a game ( very rare ), odd bug in trillian. Mostly it’s apps, I don’t think I’ve found anything that I can point to as a driver.
Same hardware has crashed linux a few times. These were older versions of Redhat and Mandrake. I always manage to kill Debian’s package system before I get far enough to do anything that might crash something. It just seems to die, don’t really know why and I’m pretty sure it’s self inflicted. I never tried SUSE. It hasn’t crashed FreeBSD once. It will likely do so later this week just to make a point.
My friend has been running ME, 2k Pro, and XP. 2k was fairly decent. ME was just downright pathetic, just don’t get me started. XP has issues with IE. For the most part it works, but it hangs with IE fairly often. Usually it’s nothing that can be pointed at. However, this box will ALWAYS have some kind of hanging or crashing issue with Hotmail. Go figure. Usually we lose the ability to click on things within Hotmail, and everything else. Sometimes you can kill IE and get stuff back. Usually we have to log out the account and login again. Rebooting is not common, but has been needed.
This is with all the latest updates. Not exactly the paragon of rock solid here. Without a stable, reliable browser, this thing is useless. I can’t say it was more stable under 2k as it’s not my system. However, he seems to think it was. IF it’s a hardware issue, it’s a damned strange one to always have issues with Hotmail. If it were bad RAM I’d expect it to crash, which it doesn’t.
The video card was recently replaced, with an nVidia 4 MX card, so it isn’t likely to be a driver issue ( same behavior, different video card chipset and maker ). AFAIK all the drivers are XP supplied except the video driver.
Just so I can say it, this guy has a couple of Solaris boxes in his house for that guy who didn’t know anyone with one, as well as an Irix box, an old Netware server, and several older/ancient Macs as well as a few x86 boxes.
XP so far has NOT impressed me, other than the ability to have multiple people logged in and switch between desktops. I view that more as a novelty than anything truly useful. Before I was downsized, hate the term, the XP boxes we had were VERY tempermental compared to 2k Pro on the same systems. XP was the release version. The RC candidate box was just as stable until it was updated to the final release, then it got uppity.
Add in a bunch of other factors, and I see no reason to spend the money on XP. Given that there are several copies available to me to test/borrow/steal it, I haven’t even seen the need to bother. Knowing that it isn’t stable on systems that previously were stable ( as in no need to reboot weekly ) I can’t see why anyone would bother.
Slightly off topic here…
FWIW, no one I know really uses Linux. Most of the people I know bitch about MS, but run it anyway. I suspect that I’m really the only one I know who tries anything other than MS. Excluding my friend with the Mac laptop, and the other guys with the odd hardware they boot only on special days. It all boils down to the same problem.
G A M E S. Sorry, games drive the hardware market. With the rare exception of 3D graphic artists and such, gamers drive all hardware. No games, then no need for hardware, or that other OS. All the games we want to play run on MS. As long as there’s one game out there we all want to play that won’t run on Linux we will need to have MS on our drives. UT2003, runs Linux, Wolfenstein, check. Um, Warcraft 3, problem ( you can PAY to fix that, but it isn’t the same thing ), The SIMS ( same problem ). This is where it breaks down.
You’ll get Linux in the businesses, but until all the newest games run under Linux, you’re always going to have MS lurking on your drive somewhere. Gamers are THE vocal market. They demand the latest and greatest hardware and fastest drivers. They support the hardware sites and the reviews. If all reviews say game X rocks, then people buy it, and if the hardware that runs it only has windows drivers… Perhaps we need some really impressive Linux only games?
Anyway, as always, your mileage will likely vary.
Linux is a lot better than WinXP from a technical point of view. Architecturally, its clearly superior. Linux has a coherent design, while WinXP has a strange mismash of microkernel and monolithic kernel “design.” Linux consistently wins in benchmarks, and if you hit the VM or filesystem layers, Linux rules. The only things I’ll say about WinXP is that it has a few tricks to make the system feel faster (GUI in kernel space, scheduling tricks to give foreground GUI program more priority) and it has more features (useless for 99% of cases). Linux, OTOH, is a much cleaner system. Instead of thousands of API calls, it has hundreds. Instead of structures with dozens of parameters, it has structures with a few. This makes it much easier to optimize, much easier to stabilize, and much easier to play with in the interest of making improvements. In real world use, this is quite evident. If you run the system without much load, Windows XP’s GUI tricks will generally make it feel faster. The minute you start trashing the system, however, Linux holds up a whole lot better. That’s one reason (among MANY) I switched. I couldn’t stand my system having fits when running compiles or renders in the background. I’m piqued, though. Any specific reasons you think WinXP’s architecture is better? You don’t like the paging algorithms in Linux? The buffer-cache not to your expectations? What?
Are dangerous IMHO.
What you guys get tired of slashdot?
I can’t tell you how sick I am of all the he said/she said over Linux, XP, 2000.
Look, Linux has hardware issues. Winmodems don’t work. Fair enough. My soundcard has never worked. Go figure. So people can’t even get it installed right, or when they do, it’s so Fuxored that it’s unusable. Cest la vie.
Win 2000 had, still has, tons of driver and hardware issues. Look back over all the hardware sites, and you will see what I mean. I mean how many “How do I get my Nvidia MX 440 to run with 2k” posts do you need before you realize there are issues?
Xp is not the panacea either.
Pick one, use it, but don’t get religion.
Linux is still awsom as a file server or a web server or a development station or a replacement for an expensive unix workstation.
I’ve heard several people saying that Win98 was rock solid for them. An I can’t argue with that. But as we all know, it’s not the common behaviour.
I had a lot of stability issues when I tried out XP, and my friends has had a lot of them. But then again, I’ve heard many people saying that it’s been rock solid for them.
As I see it, it all depends on how you use the operating system and what you use it for, also what kind of hardware you run it on. But in the end all operating systems crash in one situation or the other. XP is a lot more stable than Win9x but it still crashes.
I can’t say that BeOS has been rock solid for me, but I am also a developer and I do a lot of beta testing, so that has a lot to do with it. There are two annoying bugs, or should I say limitations in BeOS that can make the app_server freeze or halt, but most users doesn’t seem to get them, since they aren’t developing or beta testing. Though, trying to zip hundreds of files in the same directory with Zip-o-Matic will probably make most systems freeze.
The difference I see between Windows and BeOS when it comes to stability is that I can expect when my BeOS system will crash most of the time, windows systems tend to crash randomly in a lot of cases. So with BeOS I can learn to live with it and to avoid it, while in Windows I don’t have a clue when it’s going to crash the next time, and I probably won’t find out exactly why it crashed either.
However, stability is not the reason I use BeOS, even though if it was as unstable as Win98 I’d probably stop using it
As for “Stop talking about Win9x, it’s old tech”. Well, a _lot_ of people still use Win9x, really. I use Win98SE myself when I use Windows (which is rarely). Why? Because that’s where my hardware support is, and it still gives me better media performance than Win2k/XP.
So just because WinXP exists doesn’t mean that you can’t switch from Win98 to linux or BeOS or whatever. And I think it’s a valid to argue about what advantages they will get from that compared to their current system.
Uh…*I* have a Solaris box sitting in my living room – an Ultra 5, to be exact. I also run many flavors of Linux, BeOS, and Windows 2000/XP/.net Server RC1 and I’ve run FreeBSD, QNX, and many flavors of Windows in the past.
Let me say, fully and totally unbiased, that Windows XP has been the most stable of all of the above. I almost never have problems with it, and the few times I have, it’s been directly related to a runaway app, and Explorer comes back from crashes almost about quickly as the Tracker with “Back on Track” under BeOS. BeOS was pretty stable, but I’ve locked up under Opera and Productive plenty of times. No Linux has ever been truly stable for me, but then, I’ve rarely set it up and not made it a desktop of some sort (my RH7.1 firewall was far from stable). Anyone who says XP isn’t stable has done something to it to make it that way.
Don’t hate, ya’ll – MS did a good job. Be fair.
I have WindowsXP Pro and I’m quite happy with it, in the recent months, I add only one crash caused by the driver of my TV card, this is a driver problem not Windows XP fault.
The only sloppy part of the OS is the explorer, sometimes it crash, and I have to restart it “by hand”, an easy thing which would be difficult for a “normal” user.
Linux has been quite stable too, but I had a few crash too and lost a ReiserFS partition!
I used to use Linux, now I’m using WindowsXP + Mozilla and cygwin: no need to reboot to play games and when a site doesn’t work with Mozilla, I can copy/paste the URL on IE.
Now if I wanted to do serious development stuff, I would boot into Linux of course.
Just my experiment: WindowsXP can be stable, all my problems with it, were caused by bad driver, or old firmware.
Now if only it could detect my disk can do DMA
(yes I could force it, but I’m a bit cautious).
I have a notebook I dual boot between XP and Debian (I use a Mac running OS X at home). XP seems pretty stable. I’ve only managed to crash to completely a couple of times. On stability, I think Linux and Windows XP are pretty close nowadays. This certainly wasn’t the case when most people were comparing Linux and Windows 98.
Things XP has going for it:
– It plays nicer with periphs (USB, DVD, PCMCIA).
– Much, much better power management via ACPI. My notebook is ACPI-only, and ACPI on Linux just plain sucks. The best I’ve been able to get is /proc/acpi/battery/0 to tell me just how fast I’m losing power. It’s so bad that I think I’m going to have to get an A/C inverter for my car for my nighttime warcha^H^H^H^H^H^H cruises.
– Sound support is better. When the notebook came out, I didn’t have *any* sound for about three weeks, until I found a patch on usenet. That said, the chipset that I’ve got works okay with 2.4.19 now, except for that little problem of hardware versus software sound controls.
Things Linux has going for it:
– IMHO, the software is better (galeon, gaim, pan, evolution, more up-to-date GIMP). (On a side note….does *every* windows program now have an icon they put in the systray?)
– It’s not Windows.
– Better security.
– No DRM and changes in the EULA for a security update.
I don’t think the stability argument is there very much anymore. Linux will have to win with arguments for security, value, and freedom.
OS X 10.2is finaly great. it runs fast in the gui with or with out QE. it is definatly what 10.1 should have been.
Like Darius, many PC users say they can’t afford a Mac. But I wonder…
You certainly can get a PC for less than a Mac, and if you’ve already got a lot of money invested in PC/Windows software, it makes sense to stick with a PC.
But for a first-time buyer or someone looking to buy a new machine who doesn’t have the issue of being heavily invested in PC/Windows software, is it really accurate to say that a Mac is too expensive for them? I mean, most people I know who have home computers also drive $35,000 SUVs. Can they really not afford a couple hundred dollars for a Mac? Heck, you can get a nice eMac for $1,000.
I’m not saying that this means a Mac is what’s best for everyone. I’m just saying that I’m not so sure their higher prices are the big sticking point that so many people make them out to be.
I’ve only played with XP for a period of a few days at most, so I can’t really comment on stability. Didn’t really like the “gui improvements”, always went back to 2000. I mean Windows 2000, i think, has probably been the best operating system MS has put out ever, it is the definition of rock solid for an M$ product. I honestly don’t think that XP offers that much more to warrant an upgrade. Is there anything added (Other than USB 2.0) that really makes it worth it? As far as games go, I’ve never had problems playing games and multimedia stuff on my Win 2k box (Things like Photoshop and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, for example). After hearing issues with registering your install and the hassle of upgrading hardware, and other things, I pretty much decided that 2000 will be the last MS operating system that I ever use. Unless something better after XP comes out, and hardware manufacturers quit making drivers for 2000, I’ll be the last one to upgrade to anything newer. I’ve had great success with pretty much every linux distro out there (currently running gentoo:)) and they’ve been solid too. With any operating system, I think the stability always fails first at the user level; how experienced they are with installing things like drivers and upgrades/patches, and the knowledge of what not to touch.
1 restore points if you install bad software
2 driver rollback
3 super fast boot time
4 updated HCL
5 integrated firewall (which is actually pretty good)
6 new/flashy icons (if you care..you can kill Luna too)
7 faster Explorer recovery
8 IIS 5.1
9 802.11 support
I’m sure there are others. These stand out for me…
You seem to be perfectly happy with Win2k so why bother?
Speaking of Win2k and drivers. Matrox never released drivers for the RainbowRunner/Marvel on Win2k, cause the driver was too hard to make so they gave up. I thought that dissapointing but also very funny
Hmm, 802.11, thats somewhat siginificant. Some of the other ones, like the firewall, and driver rollback, they are important, but overall they aren’t a “must have”. I guess I always try to compare the transition from NT4 to Win 2k as a fair comparision, from the previous to the present. Things that stood out there, like plug and pray, networking stuff, especially the network printer installation, heck of a lot easier in 2000. I’m not too fond of those kiddy icons in XP, and I really dislike Luna
. What I’m trying to say is that if you also look at the cost of updating, are those features worth the price that XP fetches? Boot time, and explorer recovery, sure it may save a few seconds of my life, but I guess a lot the features you mentioned aren’t a big deal, I really think stability is very even between the two. I kinda feel that XP is more of an aesthetics update to 2k, and throw in some dumbass prevention tools(driver rollback, and software) 
.
Well I’m on the XP is stable as heck side. I have 2 machines running it and have never seen a BSOD, I actully have wondered what it looks like if it’s differant than 98. My two computers have never crashed, also I am one who runs used hardware (not very crappy, just old and not very powerfull) and it doesn’t die. Even when i used unsupported hardware drivers XP was stable as can be. Beos was stable for me except for the more than daily net_server restart, but hey they had a button for that built in. My experiance running linux on these computers has been linux sucked, if it did run it was slow as heck, so trying to get a full comparison is hard , (everything was supported so thats not the reason).
I’m sure there are those who have issues with XP, i have yet to find anyone in person but there are always going to be freak hardware combinations in the infinite number of them out there that XP will have a problem. I’m not kind to my computer and would think i do more than enough to mess it up but XP seams not to care.
about buying a 35k suv but not wanting to spend it on a mac look at it this way. The SUV will still be going 20 years later and just as usefull, if you sell it after say 6 years your still going to get alot for it. Also a car is something you depend on and means way more to a person than a computer. A computer is a house hold appliance like a toaster to most people. There is no compelling reasons for most to spend alot of money on one. Also it’s scary that you can option a Mac to not even to extreme levels and be in a price near that of a very cheap new car. Computers for the home shouldn’t cost what a car does. Not saying this applies to most things just making a small point. People are going to be willing to spend money on things that are more important. A car is much more important than a computer for the majority of people, so you will spend more than the typical amount on one. But still doesn’t mean going nuts. It’s not like the person bought a 50k SUV.
I have three working computersin my home. One is a generic PC that uses Windows98. The second one is a stock Gateway 300s using WindowsXP. The third is a home brew machine using RadHat7.3.
Win98 crashed a lot because I use to do web programming on it. Too many different browsers opened at the same time.
The WinXP machine freezes all the time. I have not installed any software on it myself. Whatever Gateway decided to put on it. I mainly use the WinXP PC for Money 2002. Money2002 causes WinXP to freeze all the time. WindowsXP seems to be nice despite the freezings. I use a limited user account to do my work with Money. I have no clue why it freezes.
My RedHat system is my main PC but it does not crash often. Which surprises me because I am using it to learn about Unix. Mozilla freezes on some sites because of the ads. Once I clear the cache, everything works fine again.
So far, I would have to say RedHat is the winner in stability since I am abusing it but it doesn’t go down often. The times I do use WindowsXP, it frezes all the time.
Some people blame the hardware but from the experience I have had fixing friends computers it is the software that causes most of the problems.
I am happy with my computers if I can get my work done, have some fun, and have some security without too much annoyance.
I’m basically a Mac person, but have enjoyed great success with both the XP Public Beta and XP Pro. In my own situation, it is really stable. However, it is not hard for me to see how it could become unstable…lousy drivers, old software that shouldn’t really be run on XP, in some cases bad hardware…there are any number of combinations that can cause any OS to become unstable. In my own case, with all OSes, I am pretty conservative – I don’t install stuff I’m not sure of and I don’t try to push things too far. I do not work in an area that requires processor intensive software for the most part. So, that being the case, usually almost all of my OSes are stable.
That article – in the things they hate about Linux, they say you have to be an expert. Shame!! <g> Lycoris, Lindows, ELX and others do not require any expertise beyond installing Windows or OS X!
I know cheap hardware can cause problems, but I feel compelled to defend Wal-Mart and Microtel 🙂 On my Microtel I’ve run just about everything except what I can’t run, like OS X. I’ve put that thing through hell and it has stood up well.
SuSE will not boot: Eugenia, the first package I got from Lycoris, the CD would not boot. I tried everything, checked the device boot order, etc. Finally, I got them to send me another and it worked. I just had a plain old bad CD. I wonder if that’s the case with you and SuSE?
I received emails today that SuSE 8.1 and Redhat 8 are on their way – the fun will soon begin!!
“Mozilla freezes on some sites because of the ads. Once I clear the cache, everything works fine again. ”
hmmm-does the same thing exactly on Mac OS 10.1. Of course, app crashes don’t count, with regards to SYSTEM stability.
Moz is still my absolute favorite browser, though…
Wonder if it’s a java-related issue….
” So far, I would have to say RedHat is the winner in stability since I am abusing it but it doesn’t go down often. The times I do use WindowsXP, it frezes all the time. ”
I don’t use XP, but I find 2000 goes down if you even LOOK at it funny. And don’t blame the drivers– I just use generic Microshaft software on that box!
I think what most people don’t understand is that you have to look at it like this: Windows XP, for me and many other people, runs perfectly on my computer. For others, I hear about it “locking hard once a day, etc., etc.”
What’s the difference? The OS doesn’t change from machine to machine, so it’s… you guessed it: hardware, drivers, incompatible apps, etc.
It’s not the OS’s fault that your machine can’t handle it, or the hardware manufacturers for the hardware on your machine can’t write compatible drivers, or that your BIOS isn’t up to date to be compliant with the hardware abstraction layer and so on.
Just a thought.
I have had really bad experiences with XP Pro (retail boxed version) on my desktop and XP Home (OEM version my laptop shipped with). At the same time I bought my XP Pro boxed version, my roommate bought a copy (and some additional RAM, at my urging, so he could enjoy it).
He’s had great experiences with it. We bought it right after it was released, which was roughly a year ago. His machine is a Compaq with a Celeron 733 and a Voodoo card I added in for him. Pretty much a humble machine. I put the CD in and did an upgrade to Pro from 98SE and it seemed to go well but was an unstable mess after the first boot (his 98SE had been the same way, which made me suspicious of the Compaq machine itself, NOT the OS). Plus, his installation of 98SE was old and flaky when I did the upgrade. I saved all his settings and files as best I could, wiped the machine, and did a BIOS update and a fresh install. Other than having a few bizarre USB problems (again, Compaq’s fault since it’s a motherboard issue not fixed in the BIOS upgrade that was supposed to fix it) I don’t think he’s ever had a crash.
On my own machine, which I built myself one hand-selected high-quality piece at a time, it was a nightmare — it’s what finally pushed me into using Linux full time. I seemed to have a different issue every time I sat down. I *know* it wasn’t my hardware, I *know* it wasn’t drivers. I don’t have a clue what it was, to be honest. Maybe I’m just unlucky. I installed Linux, it worked great, and that was that. I could have most likely reinstalled XP and had great results with it, too.
My Toshiba laptop came with XP Home. Within a couple of weeks XP had clobbered itself to the point that I thought the hard drive must be bad. It would spontaneously reboot and then find dozens of disk errors next time it started (so much for a journalling filesystem, huh?). Took it in for service, only to be told there was nothing wrong with it and, quote, “sometimes this just happens”. A reinstall fixed everything. No big deal, no hard feelings. I’ve been around computers long enough to know that no matter what your OS, sometimes weird things happen, maybe from some bizarre combination of factors you’ll never be able to reproduce that no OS developer could ever be expected to plan for in advance. People seem to say, “I had a bad experience with Linux once. Therefore, Linux sucks.” Or ditto for XP. That’s just silly. I’ve had PLENTY of bad experiences with Linux. The Linux zealots who claim it is the embodiment of stable perfection are either the luckiest folks alive or just plain lying. Maybe what they should be saying is: when something awful happens to a Linux box, you have MANY more options for troubleshooting than you do on an XP box. That is true. But true or not, a newbie isn’t going to have a clue either 1) that those options exist or 2) how to do anything useful with them. Besides, is telnetting or ssh’ing into your Linux box to kill a crashed X server *really* all that different from rebooting a Windows box? Sure, the core system is still chugging along even if the X server is dead, but for a newbie that core system doesn’t matter: the desktop is what they care about.
The point is, Windows zealots can’t just say, “XP is better” any more than Linux zealots can say the opposite. My roommate loves his XP box, but he also has lots of fun playing with my Linux machines. It doesn’t have to be either/or. For me and my needs, Linux is better. For you and yours, maybe XP or Jaguar or one of the BSDs are better. That’s the great thing about choice, right? My biggest problem with Microsoft is that they try so hard to take that choice away. If only there was a middle ground somewhere …
I agree, Rob!
First, I’ll just add the obligatory “WinXP is very, very stable” comment – over the past 10 months I have only gotten a couple of bluescreens and this is because of sub-par uncertified drivers (the OS even told me this via the crash analysis tool). I feel that I just got exactly what I deserved for running so many unsigned drivers with suspect hardware and I don’t blame the OS at all. I’ve had no problems with any kind of lockups or freezes or explorer crashes whatsoever.
I think the main reason that I get such good mileage out of XP has a lot to do with little things that I take for granted that perhaps other people who have problems are not doing. I upgrade my drivers religiously. I am always downloading the latest patches from Windows Update. I know much better than to have “40 apps in the system tray with no f*cking clue as to what they are for”. Lastly, I have installed Norton Systemworks and have it run a thorough system tuneup automatically every weekend. This clears up a whole mess of accumulated registry problems and such as I go through periods of changing a lot of things on my machine. Even when my system has not been very busy, Norton still seems to find a lot of minor problems to fix. I balk at the idea of ever running Windows 2000/XP without Systemworks or something like it to keep it healthy over long periods of time if the system configuration changes frequently; I find it essential. I get fabulous uptimes because I know exactly what I’m doing with the OS but I can see why some other people are having problems.
Most crashes in XP can be attributed to poorly written drivers or applications.
Shouldn’t kernel provide a MP, RT and other stuff that avoid core of the os from hanging? I know X may fall a part, but I have never XPerience (;-)) console crash. So, system is still up & running.
“Shouldn’t kernel provide a MP, RT and other stuff that avoid core of the os from hanging? I know X may fall a part, but I have never XPerience (;-)) console crash. So, system is still up & running.”
The X server is not part of Linux in a literal sense. It’s an add-on component that sits on top of a running Linux system. X can be killed and “Linux” will chug right along without it.
You can’t compare XP to Linux in this way. XP is monolithic: the graphical interface IS the OS. There is no graphical component running on top of a discrete kernel, there’s a graphical system of which the kernel is an integral part. Since XP without the GUI isn’t XP at all, it’s not a fair comparison.
When XP’s GUI crashes, yes it takes the core system with it. When X crashes *when you are running Linux as a desktop machine* then your desktop is just as gone. The average XP user isn’t running a lot of background services like web, mail and ftp servers that depend on the “core system” remaining functional. To be fair, you must compare XP to Linux being used by the same types of users: they don’t give a damn about the core system. To them, that’s just semantics. The fact that the core system is still running is meaningless to a desktop user when the desktop in question is dead.
If the user’s primary concern is the desktop, what’s the difference between rebooting an XP machine to restore access to the desktop or “rebooting” your X server? That’s if you can get to a virtual console at all or maybe telnet or ssh in from another machine, which many home desktop users simply don’t have.
When it comes to servers, maybe Linux IS better than a monolithic system like XP, since Linux can crash and burn much more gracefully and in a more modular fashion than XP. But then, the BSDs, Solaris, and all the other well-designed Unix systems are just as good, if not better (for servers!).
Before anyone bashes me for not just screaming, “Linux is the best and everything else sucks!”: I use Linux only, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect OR that we should pretend it is.
XP really is rock solid. Every computer that I’ve seen crashing with 2000 or XP had one of those two problems :
– faulty hardware (quite often unexplained blue screen are RAM problem : faulty chip or overly agressive memory timings)
– faulty drivers
So far no OS on earth is safe from those. The big difference between Linux and XP here is that with Windows the graphic drivers run in kernel priviledge, which is faster but which also lets a buggy graphic driver take down the whole system.
We have 10 Win XP machines, and they keep crashing couple of times every week.
expensivelesbian: more than anything else, “product activation” really irks me and has thus far turned me off the idea of using windowsXP.
Well, unless it is every other day you change your processor, RAM, motherboard and harddisk, I couldn’t possibly see why you are holding off Windows XP for Product Activation…
chris: Only problem is that MS developers are too lazy, they should recognize that there OS works on so many systems, they should focus on security and some little things that are anoying.
Microsoft nowadays is focusing a lot on security, but it is very hard to change a company’s culture. Plus the architecture of Windows 9x/NT4/2000/XP doesn’t seem to have security in mind when being drawn out on the drawing boards.
Phil: {i]alternatively, leave her on a windows XP box and it has a tendancy to crash, regardless of what games she’s playing, open and close enough apps and games and eventually it will start to perform very badly and maybe even crash.[/i]
I think I have pin-point your sister’s problems with the GPU driver. What card and driver version is she using?
SICK OF YOU: Gawd, you are the such a Microsoft fan. You always defend them. Its been pointed out over and over.
If you call what she says about Microsoft “defending”, wow, I must be Microsoft’s best friend then.
I too never seen a crash. I had one XP crash, but it was cause because the hardware crashed and I was force to replace certain parts of my laptop (stupid HP).
Shadow: XP has issues with IE. For the most part it works, but it hangs with IE fairly often.
There are browser altenatives for XP. You *don’t* have to use IE. Yeah, sure, it would stay installed on your system.
Perhaps I don’t have these problems because I use Opera 🙂
IFightMIBs: – IMHO, the software is better (galeon, gaim, pan, evolution, more up-to-date GIMP). (On a side note….does *every* windows program now have an icon they put in the systray?)
Uhmmm, if you say gaim, pan, evolution and GIMP is better than altenatives on Windows, I could use the same arguments saying CyberDog on mac os or NetPositive on Windows is much better than anything on Linux 🙂
Besides, only annoying apps (hint: most of them made or inspired by AOL) place an icon on the systray
IFightMIBs: – No DRM and changes in the EULA for a security update.
DRM would NOT affect you if you DO NOT buy DRM material. Is that SOOOOOOOOO hard to understand? As for the EULA changes, it only happens between service packs (as oppose to security updates).
best thing you wrote in recent months. One that I at least completely support 🙂
—-
Besides, on the article. The article is that stupid I forgot why I even bothered to read it (then I Alt+Tab to this window and found out why).
For example, the author says that Windows *might* not be needed because of WINE. To my experience, if the software can run, it would have a lot of problems with it. Plus, it would be a lot times slower than Windows. And if it works perfectly, it is a super small app whom there is a Linux native altenative anyway.
I wouldn’t recommend WINE at this point.
Plus, on the UI. What that is *intergrated* into the kernel is the framebuffer/whatever-Microsoft-calls-it. Linux does have a framebuffer, only underused. You can delete explorer.exe and use ANY GUI you like. The problem is there is only few altenatives to it. (Object Desktop being my favourit among the lot).
What’s extremely funny is that the author claims standard KDE loaded in SuSE is less bulky than Windows’ XP default, LOL 🙂
Funny article, even though considerably pro-Linux, but does more harm to Linux than good.
I used to run XP on my duron box, but I could never get uptimes of more than a few days on it. It may be because I run a lot of things, all at the same time, and keep it all running. But I don’t want to have to shut down one program to run another, it would be too bothersome to have to shut down one thing and restart another thing all the time.
Once I installed FreeBSD I never had a problem, and later no problem with Linux either. I can also run many more programs easily, since programs like media players are nowhere near as heavy as in XP.
I also run FreeBSD and OpenBSD on a few older boxes without problems, many of which wouldn’t run XP at all(or too slow to be of any use. I still keep one win98 box around for games, but for me there’s no other reason to keep any windows OS around.
Linux is a lot better than WinXP from a technical point of view. Architecturally, its clearly superior
Bah, you obviously haven’t taken a course in Operating Systems then have you. The design of WinNT/2k/XP is much cleaner than Linux’s. I’m talking about the kernel here. In case you didn’t know the NT/2k/XP kernel is actually VMS, which is considered the best OS ever. Unfortunatly the Win16 API and Win32 API had to be added, which is in dire need of some housekeeping. The NT/2k/XP design is a more modern approach, Objects and inheritence play a big role. Linux however, still has technology from 20 years ago. Everything is a process (what’s a thread?).
NT good design, not very good execution. Microsoft is making very good improvements from each version. .NET Server is going to be very interesting.
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/home/atehrani/uptime.jpg
I’m a big fan of Linux and I try to use it both at home and at work (small company mostly using Windows but decent enough to make sure that IT decisions are compatible with my Linux box). I can configure a Linux distro to be really good on the desktop. Having said that, XP is miles ahead in terms of desktop integration which is normal they own it totally.
So why do I bother using Linux when probably I could do everything in XP? Plain simple. I do not believe in Microsoft monopolistic and arrogant behaviour and therefore do not want to spend 2 pence on their products (especially to finance a CEO that dances like a monkey on a stage…)
/Woollhara
Chalk me up as an OSX convert… It replaced my windows and linux box’s with one. It’s been extremely stable in that I haven’t had a single system crash in the three months I’ve been running it (and let me tell you, I really stress this pup).
Having used Linux and Windows, personally and professionally for many years, I can say this:
XP, while a stable OS does crash and can be lead to a crash under load conditions. But for the most part, many of the crashes are due to explorer interdependancies (e.g. you can consistantly crash xp by gui drive mapping to a 2k box that is a member of a non-present domain).
Linux, for the most part is a more stable os then XP, but still has issues. From a desktop perspective, it really boils down to the quality of the window manager being used since it can be argued that a window manager failure is comparable to a system crash in xp (you’ve pretty much lost your work).
Back to this thread. OSX has actually proved to be a cheaper solution for me.
Bah, you obviously haven’t taken a course in Operating Systems then have you.
Just to make it clear, I have.
The design of WinNT/2k/XP is much cleaner than Linux’s. I’m talking about the kernel here.
I’ll agree that the design is more modern than Linux’s, but I don’t think it’s cleaner, specially since they made the GUI part of the kernel since NT 4. Anyway, it’s hard to tell, since we can’t see the source of Windows kernel, but I don’t think their development model can make it that clean. Specially when some programmers in the Windows kernel only know the part they are working on.
Linux however, still has technology from 20 years ago. Everything is a process (what’s a thread?).
Hummm, perhaps you talk about something deeper, but as far as I know, Linux supports threads (since a long time ago), and the latest 2.5 kernel seems pretty good at handling them.
BTW: Though I agree VMS is a very good OS, I think that it’s not the best, at least not for everyone. It’s pretty hard to state that in an objective way.
I´ve seen a lot of messages about “XP rock solid” and stuff like that, ok, let´s check it: Take two computers, same hardware, install XP in one and Linux in the other. Then, install one thousand programs on each one (media players, graphic manipulation, p2p apps, mp3, cdburning, divx, office..). Once you got it, it´s time to talk about stability. And then, uninstall that thousand programs in linux and XP, and let´s talk about stability again (and speed).
My point is that in windows it´s dirty (lots of crap around the system), while in linux is quite clean (package management cleanly removes everything when you uninstall something. No spyware, no strange registry keys, not overall slower system).
So it all depends in what is going to be your use. In a company with tight policies about software installing, with XP with just Office and maybe a couple more apps installed, it may be rock stable (I’ve seen it, and it´s true). But, if you like to play around with your computer, install lots of applications, try new software and then uninstall it, it´s better and safer with linux. Definitely. As loong as you use open source software, you know what the apps are doing, you know they haven´t got backdoors, nor spyware, nor suspicius dlls. You feel confident with your system, and that is Quite A Good Thing (TM).
So, if you like to play around, give Linux a try, you´re gonna like it
.
The design of WinNT/2k/XP is much cleaner than Linux’s. I’m talking about the kernel here.
Well … when NT gets an interrupt, the interrupt places an event in one of two event queues (High Priority and Low Priority) and then returns execution to the interrupted process. Then, when the “event handler” process gets its turn to run, it checks these queues and handles events that it feels need to be handled at this point in time … usually by handling everything in the High Priority queue and starting on the Low Priority one if there is time left … I’m not sure that I’d call this clean. I DON’T know if Linux handles interrupts this way, but I don’t think so.
Apparently this dual-queue mechanism can also give you some odd behaviour when you have many interrupts come in at once, but I’m not sure how this’d manifest itself. Mind you, that last statement was only hearsay, so …
// http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/home/atehrani/uptime.jpg //
Uh…you’ve never installed a security update or a service pack in the past 373 days, have you?
You *_MUST_* reboot W2K after certain SPs and security fixes. No way around it.
At least for me.
What I don’t like about Windows XP is that the hardware support is even worse than Linux. It took an age before there were (unofficial) 3dfx drivers that had 3D acceleration. Also my gamepad (Thrustmaster) still isn’t supported by Windows XP. It works great with Windows 98, Linux and even BeOS.
With SuSE Linux, it even downloads and installs the Nvidia drivers with 3D acceleration while with Windows XP I need to do this manually.
Linux distributions are also updated more often, the lastest versions support almost all hardware out there out of the box.
” Take two computers, same hardware, install XP in one and Linux in the other. Then, install one thousand programs on each one”
Of course, this is not a fair comparison, because you’re playing on one of Windows’ biggest weaknesses (ie – DLL hell). Taking your approach, instead of installing a thousand applications on the Linux box, I’d have you install only one – WINE. And once you’ve got that up and running, try running a few dozen different Windows apps through it (one at a time) and see how much time passes before you bring X to its knees.
“You *_MUST_* reboot W2K after certain SPs and security fixes. No way around it.”
Yes, you’re right. And I can’t tell you how painful it is to have to reboot the box 2-3 times to install service packs and security updates. I swear, for some people, having to reboot their box even once in a 5 year span is like a catastrophic event.
And to the person that said ‘give me your email address and I’ll send you an attachment and use Outlook Express to retrive it’ ….
Along those same lines, let me write a perl script and you run it on your Linux box WITHOUT looking at the code or even knowing what it does ….
XP runs here on two systems without any crash. I ran several linux distro’s but they never could satisfy my needs. Always config problems, crashes or kernel errors. In 1995 running Win95 i heared the linux community saying, ok Linux has his little problems but they will be solved soon.
What do i hear now in 2002…..exactly the same story. If XP is such a bad OS , why is every OS trying to be compatible then with Windows???? Because it is so bad???
Other story is about the costs of Windows, ok there you have a point but tell me honestly, how many people of you paid actualy for Windows? So there you go, be honest when you attack an OS. Linux isn’t that great as everbody is saying, it is just an alternative which is trying to compete with the best OS which is still XP (2000 and NT included). There is one OS that really grapped me….BeOS!
This OS was lean, mean, fast and stable like a rock, but too bad since Palm bought it and declared it dead. But now people there is hope again because the BeOS community is giving it a life again with OpenBeOS. I hope this is going to work since this is the only community that is working hard to get their one loved OS back in an even better condition. The Linux community died years ago since the distro companies smelled money. They all build their own OS for their own price, nice community for their “Free OS”.
So till now (since Windows 3.11) there is one leader that does it all…….Windows now in his XP version!
I always see this pattern. XP works great for me! XP crashes like hell! I got audio to work fine on my XP system! I could never eliminate the audio glitches! I can edit video fine on my XP! I finally gave up trying to edit video on my XP Dell! And on and on.
Guess what, when a large percentage of the people can’t make it work, MS FAILED. I would say even 15 percent failure rate is too high. The 85 percent working — that doesn’t make up for the 15 percent failure rate.
I may as well face it; any useful tidbits of information in a Windows XP vs. anything else debate are inevitably dwarfed by the flood of FUD which follows them. 😛
Dekkard: I’ll agree that the design is more modern than Linux’s, but I don’t think it’s cleaner, specially since they made the GUI part of the kernel since NT 4.
Than Linux isn’t clean either, isn’t it? Frame buffer is an feature of 2.4. Sure, hardly anyone uses it, but it is still in the kernel.
The GUI, by its correct term, is in explorer.exe. The GDI is in the kernel though. (GDI around the same as Linux frame buffer).
Dekkard: BTW: Though I agree VMS is a very good OS, I think that it’s not the best, at least not for everyone. It’s pretty hard to state that in an objective way.
VMS is a way better design than UNIX (probably because it is younger). However, it wasn’t executed properly by Digital, and than later Compaq, then HP – it is good technology in the wrong hands. The same goes for NT.
VMS could have given UNIX a run for its money….. a sad story it is.
Nicolás: My point is that in windows it´s dirty (lots of crap around the system), while in linux is quite clean (package management cleanly removes everything when you uninstall something. No spyware, no strange registry keys, not overall slower system).
Actually, the problem is with the applications themselves. I wonder how it would be like if all Windows applications is available for Linux. Besides, NT-only software (like VMware, Maya etc.) don’t do stuff like that to the registry, only software for Windows 9x and Windows NT. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea myself. Perhaps things would get better when Windows 9x is trully behind us, and applications stop being selfish.
As for spyware – again, not the fault of the OS, but with the applications itself. And BTW, I once corrupted Mandrake’s RPM registry: it can happen to Linux (though fixing it was WAY easier than fixing a registry problem on Windows, and you can STILL use your system).
So blame the applications, NOT the OS. Don’t want these problems? Choose your apps wisely.
rockwell: You *_MUST_* reboot W2K after certain SPs and security fixes. No way around it.
Won’t be a problem after Windows .NET Server 2003, you won’t have to reboot.
For any patches.
Erwin: In 1995 running Win95 i heared the linux community saying, ok Linux has his little problems but they will be solved soon.
What do i hear now in 2002…..exactly the same story.
When some problems are fixed, others come up :-). From what I’m reading, your problem with Linux is with hardware. You can’t expect Linux to run on all kinds of hardware, it would be impossible.
Erwin: it is just an alternative which is trying to compete with the best OS which is still XP (2000 and NT included).
That so-call “altenative trying to compete” OS you are talking about had an 30% adoption growth in the desktop, and that’s not counting downloads. I respect your choice of OS, but what suits one man may not suite another. If Linux doesn’t suite you, I got a tip for you: DON’T USE IT!
It would be nice if the win32 subsystem were moved out to be in the same level as the other ones again.
I heard Windows no longer supports the POSIX subsystem as of XP.. is that true?
windows. Plain and simple: 90% marketshare.
Now, Linux zealots, go back to work.
My many boxen at home run winXP (2 of them), Win2k (2 of them), and Gentoo Linux (1).
They are all stable. Guess what ? They run on GOOD hardware. I once had a crappy celeron with crappy via board, onboard audio. Not a single OS would be stable on it.
The GUI, by its correct term, is in explorer.exe. The GDI is in the kernel though. (GDI around the same as Linux frame buffer).
Explorer may be the default shell (I use SharpE from lowdimension.net), but what makes the Windows GUI feel like Windows to me is the set of common controls… those are separate, in comctrl.dll and user32.dll, right?
Rajan r says:
“When some problems are fixed, others come up :-). From what I’m reading, your problem with Linux is with hardware. You can’t expect Linux to run on all kinds of hardware, it would be impossible”.
My problem is a hardware problem, sure if you want t that way go ahead. I am running with 3 diferent systems PI 166, PIII 450 and a PIII 800 and they all have hardware problems in you believing. Why can I run Windows and BeOS on all 3 systems without any problem? If you know BeOS for example you should know they have a ver small hardware support but it all works, so yourstory doesn’t go up.
Rajan r says:
“That so-call “altenative trying to compete” OS you are talking about had an 30% adoption growth in the desktop, and that’s not counting downloads. I respect your choice of OS, but what suits one man may not suite another. If Linux doesn’t suite you, I got a tip for you: DON’T USE IT!”
Like I said before, no Linux distro could satisfy my need, that’s why I am not using it anymore and only run XP on two systems and on the old PI 166 Windows 98 2nd edition. Oh yeah, all 3run crash free, it is just the guy behind it that cause the problems in Windows.
“maybe your labs are too cheap to have quality hardware. instead you have corrupt RAM that will crash any system”
Actually they are brand new Dells, maybe that means quality? The problem may be with the drivers for the ATI Radeons. Anyone else had trouble with the Radeon VE in winXP?
Still, Eugenia, your linux box may just have likely crashed from bad drivers. An operating system is just that, a system, if part of the system does not work right (bad drivers) then the system is not stable.
Though Darius, I’m not going to respond to your childish insulting comments, I do agree with you here:
” I just started using Cool Edit Pro 2.0 as an audio editor. (Upgraded from 1.2). If you put this app against ANYTHING that Linux has to offer, you will understand very quickly just one reason why I’m still using Windows.”
That is the only reason I’m considering resetting up my win2K box that died on me last week. I get a winnsystem32system file corrupt or missing error. The Recovery option does nothing. All I did was put in another NIC card, and then removed it when windows wouldn’t boot. That is unexcusable.
FreeBSD is working flawlessly though . . .
First rule to make Win stable:
Never launch IE.
Second rule – try to really remove IE (not just icon from desktop and menu) – and even Win98 goes very stable
Third rule – how to avoid Windows unpredictable slowdown – never launch MS Office. And better don’t install it.
DISCLAIMER. Sure, those advices aren’t applicable for such zealots as our respected editor-in-chief is
But for other people this is acceptable
I made the comment on WinXP to be more technically advanced than Linux. Some examples: I have no problems in WinXP to create a textfile with German, Russian and Japanese text in one file. I can even choose an Japanese Filename. And that with notepad. It seems so basic. Some people will say, Linux has Emacs which is so much better. But I have emacs on Windows too, it is simple, that most Linux boxes and applications can’t handle Unicode.
Next thing, all fonts in Windows look “by magic” absolutly fine. RH8 now has nice fonts in Gnome and KDE, but not in OpenOffice or in other apps. Then as allready mentioned, Windows has a standard clipboard. I can copy graphics and text from IE to Word or any other application. In notepad I get the text, in paint I get an graphics, in Word I get mixed text and graphics. Linux even does not have _one_ clipboard but dozens without any standard. Each application makes his own standard. And sometimes I can’t even exchange simple text strings. The whole filesystem in Windows should be more advanced. I can compress and encrypt files by default. If I am a programmer I can use features like sparse files, memory mapped files and other things which help to speed up advanced applications. I don’t want to make this list any longer. I just talked about notepad and paint and the IE, I am shure there are much more things not mentioned.
Btw. Linux is on the right track. The install of RH8 with 85 Hz gaphic does now even look better than the Windows install with mixed text and vga graphics in 60 Hz.
1)Windows is going to be proprietary hardware system, like MacOS. As it is unstable on some hardware, and rock-solid om another
2) Windows is still flacky in design – it is unable to handle hardware and drivers problems (written following Ms own rules and API – don’t shoot driver developers)!
3) When someone puts as big PLUS Windows wide hardare support – see above. This is fake, but not wide support. Most priceable thing is predictability – “this should hardare work, this don’t, sorry”. But seems that with briliant XP we had suspitios situation. “It kinda works. Most of times. Just don’t move”.
Hope MS will do really clean OS for 64-bit architecture, with legacy support only via TRUE emulation programmes.
“First rule to make Win stable:
Never launch IE. ”
First rule to make Linux stable – Never launch KDE or Gnome.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Linux is too hard to use because you have to compile from source every app you want to install.
(Hey, bullshit can fly in both directions, my friend!)
Liberte said: “The winner is . . . windows. Plain and simple: 90% marketshare. Now, Linux zealots, go back to work.”
Yes, and McDonalds makes the best burgers. Actually I think you could make a strong argument that whatever has the largest share is not the best available (because relatively fewer people are willing to pay for the best available). For example, there will always be more $149 Technics boomboxes sold than audiophile amps and speakers.
You may as well face it, simply labeling things as FUD or MS-bashing does not an argument make. Take on the arguments, please. Substance versus substance. You think someone is wrong, then explain why.
“(Hey, bullshit can fly in both directions, my friend!)”
But what he says is actually true and even proven. Check out http://www.litepc.com.
Windows 98 is much more stable without Internet Explorer.
And when IE crashes, it takes down the whole OS with it.
that to me sounds like usability features and convenience through standards, not a technical basis for why it’s better.
> You may as well face it, simply labeling things as FUD or MS-bashing
> does not an argument make.
I did not label any things as FUD or MS-bashing. It is also quite evident. With so many conflicting statements being bandied about by both sides, only an imbecile would claim that there is no FUD in this discussion.
If you are referring to the earlier thread in which you made a similar remark, rajan r replied before I did and pretty much covered everything that I was going to say. No sense in repeating things endlessly.
> Take on the arguments, please.
Fighting anti-MS FUD is like cleaning out a public restroom. Most people do not volunteer to do it, and after a while it just gets old.
> Substance versus substance.
FUD has substance?
> You think someone is wrong, then explain why.
I do not recall telling anyone they were wrong. I just stated that these discussions inevitably attract a lot of FUD.
*yawn* I guess I will slam a few FUD-producers before I retire for the afternoon.
> Plus windowsXP is far from stable. We crash it out a couple of times
> weekly in the computer labs. Usually from doing routine things like
> visiting the advanced options buttons on screen preferences. Blue
> screen of death and all, it’s good to know microsoft keeps to it’s roots.
Third party hardware/software problem. Most likely cause: a driver bug. If you think it is not, then explain to me how I can do the same routine things all day without a crash and duplicate this lack of crashes over months of use.
> more than anything else, “product activation” really irks me and has
> thus far turned me off the idea of using windowsXP.
More FUD has been spread about Product Activation than any other modern Windows feature. Common myths:
1. Registration is required.
Well, it just isn’t. Registration is not activation, and only the latter is required to continue using the software.
2. Product Activation uses personal information.
Wrong. Windows XP creates a hash value from certain IDs extracted from your computer’s hardware. The IDs – and anything else for that matter – cannot be determined from the hash value. There is no transfer of personal information involved in activation – you just enter in your product ID. The only difference is that Windows XP verifies your product ID and refuses to “activate” itself with IDs that have been duplicated.
3. You need to buy a new product key if you change your hardware.
Wrong. Depending on a) what you change and b) how frequently you change it, you *may* have to make a five minute phone call to Microsoft’s product activation line. This really only affects techies who change their computer parts and reinstall operating systems constantly.
4. Product activation is like a big brother!
Who cares? As long as you pay for your software, you have nothing to fear. Should we take the scanners out of stores because not everyone is a shoplifter? Should we get rid of airport scanners because not everyone is terrorist? Should we get rid of the Secret Service because not everyone is an assassin?
> we get at least one XP total crash (freezes for over 5 minutes,
> ALT+CTRL+DELETE not working, must manually power cycle) a day
That is either a hardware or driver problem. I can play games, defragment my hard drive, archive large files, download ISO images, back 20 GB of data across the network, etc. and nothing crashes. Those tasks that I mentioned are a lot more taxing on the system than the most hardcore web browing I can think of. 😉
> Just my $0.02 worth.
We do not accept FUD in place of cash, thank you. 😉
Seriously, while the fact that some people have stability problems seems to indicate that Windows XP is unstable, the fact that other people do not experience these stability problems at all indicates that it is a third party problem.
> If XP is “ROCK SOLID” for some of you guys, great! Just don’t take for
> granted that everyone’s having the same luck.
I do not remember anyone claiming that everyone who uses Windows XP experiences “rock solid” stability, but I do remember people claiming that Windows XP is a very stable operating system. It is. But if you put buggy drivers and/or flaky hardware in there, it will crash.
My Dad’s computer, with different hardware, crashes about once a week. Mine does not. The problem is the different hardware and/or its drivers.
> XP on the Desktop at home is terrible. I don’t use that machine, but it
> is a terrible Dell P4 1.6 and it has to constantly be rebooted despite
> installing again.
You should not have to suffer with such problems! I assume that you (or whoever owns the PC) has gone through the process of contacting support and running the Dell Diagnostics program?
If all else fails, send it to me.
> XP, on the other hand, locks solid (requiring a hard reboot) at least
> once or twice a week… The memory on the machine has checked every
> possible test I can think of…
Well, duh. If the other operating systems do not crash, then it is fairly obvious that the memory is not bad. The problem is most likely either the drivers or some application that has installed its own drivers.
> I have a laptop that came preconfigured with Windows XP… Which
> spontaneously reboots at least once a day.
There are two steps that will solve this problem:
1. Locate the customer service number.
2. Return the laptop for one that has been tested not to hard lock.
> Gawd, you are the such a Microsoft fan. You always defend them. Its
> been pointed out over and over.
LOL
> I tell you what, give me your email address, check it with Outlook or
> Outlook Express and we shall see how ROCK SOLID your XP is.
That is not the point.
> Whatever. I use to work in a NT server environment and the STANDARD FOR
> EVERY NT MACHINE was to never launch IE. It would crash the box half the time.
I certainly would not like to have that admin working for me. If they cannot even properly configure the machines to launch IE, they ought to be fired.
> XP has issues with IE…Usually we lose the ability to click on things
> within Hotmail, and everything else.
My XP does not have issues with IE. Nor does my Dad’s XP. You mean, “my third party hardware or drivers has issues with IE.”
“McDonalds makes the best burgers. Actually I think you could make a strong argument that whatever has the largest share is not the best available (because relatively fewer people are willing to pay for the best available)”
This statement is rather laughable. Do you know that Linux is FREE ? Well, not really free when you need so much TIME to learn how to use it and how to NOT break it…. But still faced to get a 100$ or 200euros windowsXP and a FREE linux cd people get Windows. OEM ? OEM sell what profits them. Most of the market is by small assemblers who could offer Linux. Guess what: they dont offer it!!!
You’d rather compare high end audio with Apple products than latest Red Hat Linux iteration.
This is kinda on-toppic, there’s an OS comparison for gaming at tomshardware.com
http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/02q3/020930/index.html
ive been personally getting more and more sick of windows myself… just spent the last week playing with linux and freebsd….
discovered that, for me personally, ‘nix alone STILL doesnt cut it…
maybe if i spring for a nice, shiny new mandrake 9 or redhat 8 boxed set i might feel differently
just takes way TOO long to make your system up to date if you have an old cd and dialup connection…
think im just gonna spend some time with some of the hobby os’es
I don’t have to buy it
I don’t have to type a serial number when installing it
I don’t have advertising that pops on my desktop
I don’t have to install an antivirus
I can have several kernels optimized for differents uses
I can boot easily from network without a hardrive
I can easily take my personals settings and put it on another box
I can edit most configurations files in a plain text editor
I can repair my system instead of reinstalling it
I can mount a partition in any folder I need
I can “pause” any application if I need more power for others
I can change the source code of my soundcard driver or the one of my GUI to make it acts as i wish.
Well and many others things.
As a PC user since 1985 I’ve tried many OS but I stopped it all
when I discovered Debian/Linux. Now instead of seeking for a
new OS I’m just tunning my installation knowing that I could still
use it ten years after.
On which hardware ? who knoes !
Uh…you’ve never installed a security update or a service pack in the past 373 days, have you?
You *_MUST_* reboot W2K after certain SPs and security fixes. No way around it
You are correct. However, I just installed SP3 and all the other fixes the other day. I don’t really worry about vulnerabilities, because I have a very strict firewall setup.
That screen shot is to tell you how stable Windows 2k can be.
Haven’t had the time to look at 8.1, since I am in the middle of a move. Look out for anybody trying to pass off as yadayada from rdu.bellsouth.net It aint’t me -@;)
There have been times when on certain machines you need to boot up with the 2nd cd instead of the 1st. The boot image on the 1st cd is 2.8 and that sometimes gives machines problems. As for a DVD install there have been issues with these on certain types of DVD drives. Maybe the issue has been resolved. Maybe you can tell me to mind my own keyboard.
–
Hope to catch you guys again from a different state in this great big united union of states.