“The operating systems debate tends to run on religious lines. In an attempt to shed some light on the issue, we assembled a panel drawn from various parts of the IT community (systems administration, systems integrators, market analysts, academia, and recruitment) and asked them to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various systems for different network services: mail serving, web serving, database serving, file/Print serving, application serving, network services, staffing issues.” So, which operating system is good for what exactly? Read what these professionals have to say at ZDNet Australia.
OS Wars: Microsoft vs Open Source
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
long live the smart people who work hard to deliver top of the line innovative products that are easy to use and not written simply out of hate. nothing wrong with getting paid for doing that too.
Great to see you advocating Open Source !
what does open source or free software have to do with hate? not everyone who makes that type of software cares about MS’s monopoly, and even if they do, alot of them develop for both closed and open software. as for me, i don’t care if software is written in hate or carebear love, wether or not i can afford it is the most important issue. i refuse to pay 100 dollars for a piece of software, much less 400-600 for something like MS’s latest office suite. i want software with licenses that respects my freedom, and by companies that are not a part of Business Software Alliance. and there is alot of good quality software that is free and/or open source. i have nothing against people getting paid for thier work, but it doesn’t neccarily mean i should be shelling out hundreds or thousands for software-really, a piece of software shouldn’t cost more than $50. i am not a pirate, i am just someone low on cash these days, and i am sick of people complaining that anyone who doesn’t pay for thier software is a thief-no, it usually means the people not paying for it are not using it.
I do think there is a definate move towards companies giving away entry-level versions of their software, calling it Community/Basic/Introductory or whatever, but which is actually very capable. They then charge x thousand pounds to corporates, this is a scheme which can only be good for consumers and I personally would like it to become much more widespread.
Open-source has its place in all this too, but lets be honest, unless you are a developer of some kind, there is very little quality open-source software available **YET**, but I have no doubt this will change.
Everybody to their own.
Personally I use Microsoft software exclusively at work, and Linux/Windows 50/50 at home, depending on what I want to do.
All this flaming and trolling is just getting a bit silly now.
Commercial “Closed Source” software could be made very good if company puts a lot of money and efforts into the development, but if quality conflicts with profit many companies choose profit. Unfortunately, we get to know about that only when entire network is overwhelmed by viruses or some other problem sheds a lite to a poor design somewhere in the code.
On contrary, Open Source could be checked by hundreds of independant programmers and if there is a bad design, it could be spotted and fixed before it causes serious problems. However, the problem with Open Source is that if there is nobody willing to invest a LOT of their time or pick up a bill for a project development. Then the project will just die out to the disapointment of many users. This makes it very hard to RELY on open source projects even if they are very promissing.
Ideally, if people would care about quality of the code, a company that sells software would make the code available for everyone to review and if somebody finds a bug in the code and reports it he or she would be awarded with $$ taken from the payroll of the programer who wrote buggy code. Even if amount is symbolic the scheme would give something to everyone: reliable software to users, and a great learning incentive to the students who would scrutinize every line of code to earn some extra cash.
Of couse, I am just dreaming. So somebody, please, wake me up…
It seems to me that MSFT is pretty much the only company that makes a significant amount of dough selling software. Oh yea– there are a few bit players (no pun intended): Adobe, Corel, etc. The rest are all services or hardware: AOL, Earthlink. MSFT recognizes this and is trying to move more and more towards services. Since MSN is really lame– even compared to AOL, and since “.net” will be about as secure as IIS or Outlook, they will fail. I guess MSFT won’t be around much longer. There’s so much FREE/cheap software that is so much BETTER than their overpriced drek.
I agree with tom. There is no money in consumer software anymore (with the exception of games). The only money to be made in software is selling expensive licenses of very specialized software to companies. Even Microsoft will have a hard time selling their products in the future. I see a tendancy that many coorperations are moving away from Microsoft products because they understand that there are open source products that are as good or better. And they are free. Even in Sweden (where coorperations are VERY Microsoft friendly) you can see this tendancy.
I disagree with both Tom and Phazer. When one starts getting into real world problems, there really isn’t a lot of open source and/or free software out there that is any good. Trust me, as a student of science on a limited budget, I wish there was. But there simply isn’t. I can think of three examples off the top of my head:
1. Find me a free and/or open source statistics package that is anywhere near as powerful as SAS, or Statistica.
2. Find me a free and/or open source spreadsheet application that has the capabilities of Excel (don’t tell me OpenOffice.)
3. Find me print drivers for Linux that can take advantage of expensive plotters and high resolution printers that are used to print the diagrams and such produced by these applications.
Sorry, but as much as the open source zealots would like to believe that Linux and open source software is ready to tackle real world problems outside of internet services, it simply isn’t there yet. The applications simply aren’t available. And the ones that are simply aren’t powerful enough for real world problems.
For every topic discussed in this article there was mention of numerous products for *nix operating systems, which was then compared to *only* Microsoft’s product offering. I know that it’s easy to forget that you can get server software for Windows NT/2K that wasn’t written by Microsoft, but you would think that the so-called experts would have remembered.
Why do you *HAVE TO* use MS Exchange as a mail server With Windows? You don’t – there are alternative products out there, such as DMail, Sendmail for NT, or imail. Who says you have to use IIS if you are going to run a web Server? Why not Deerfields WebSite? I can go on and on. The point is that these products are there, available, and stable.
On another point, the implication was made that Windows, and products such as SQL server are not suited to an enterprise environment. IMHO that is simply not the case. A *good* Windows administrator (and yes, I know that they are few and far between) can easily keep five-nines uptime with a Windows 2000 Server – as long as it is properly Administered and maintained. Same said for server products like SQL – if you know what you are doing, and do it well, then the only problem you’ll have is failing hardware. I personally have kept several Windows 2000 Advanced Servers running Active Directory and/or some MS server product up since their initial installation in early 2000- without a reboot. The key to it is not only to know what you are doing, but to use GOOD hardware. Too often, Windows 2000 Server is thrown on a home-built server with crappy hardware that doesn’t even qualify as good desktop hardware ($79.00 Dual-CPU motherboards with VIA chipsets come to mind).
Can I say the same thing about my Linux servers? Well, yes and no. The servers that are command line only are great. The ones running X to give me GUI tools to make administration easier? No. They suck. It doesn’t matter how good the hardware is – X Sucks, and as a result KDE sucks, and so does Gnome. In my opinion, to have a decent GUI, you need to cut out the middleman. Silly me, wanting to get out of the dark ages of computing, and use convenient tools. Not that I am arguing the power of a GUI over a command line – I find it to be extremely useful, but certainly not necessary for every single task, or even most tasks.
What about NetWare? All I have to say is legacy. Don’t need it anymore. Almost no one is making new software for it these days. And, while NDS is better than Active Directory in some respects, the reality is most desktops in a corporate environment are running some version of Windows, which works better with AD.
As far as usefulness, and power, I have to go with Windows 2000. As far as configurability, Unix is the obvious choice – *BUT* it is that same configurability that drives me nuts. It’s too configurable. I don’t want to RTFM – I want to use the product. With Windows, that process is fairly easy.
Now, I’m going to get a little bit off topic here, but I think it’s worth discussing. The uniformity of the UI in Windows-based programs is what makes the platform. Personally, I can throw a product that I have no experience with on a test machine and be using it and configuring it within minutes. Now, I’m not saying I am going to master it in that amount of time, but it is that easy. That is also the strength of other platforms as well – such as Mac OS, BeOS, and virtually every other commercial OS on the market. Most users can figure out how to use a program in very little time.
There is very little program unifomity in UNIX GUI’s. It can be difficult to figure out how to use a program. It’s up to whoever created it. Now this situation has gotten better in the last couple of years, especially with commercial products like Eazel and Ximian, but it’s got a long way to go. Linux ain’t for the desktop, and without a truly usable GUI, it ain’t gonna be in the server room forever. Some of us may have cut our teeth on the command line, but the kids coming up behind us to become the sysadmins of tomorrow are cutting their teeth on Windows XP. Unix GUIs need to catch up to the level of usability of windows, and the need to do it quickly.
Anyway, just my .02
Tom & Phazer : in your dreams ! 🙂 The consumer market is not different now than many years ago. Joe User still get his Windows & Office at home from a copy he got from his nephew, who copied it from his girlfriend’s brother who got it from internet. It always been the case, and nothing changed. Companies like Microsoft does the big part of their money from companies, organisations, and packaged PC (Dell, etc). As for companies, I worked for many hi-tech software development houses in U.S. and Canada, and absolutely *NO COMPANIES* have *ANY* plans to stop using Windows for an open-source solution. *NO ONE*.
IMHO Windows offer a wider and richer environment for software development, and cross-platform production.
Felonious & Simba are right on. I think anyone with at least some experience in the *real world* know that the open-source products are extremelly marginals, most often totally inexistant. And that will not change before a very LONG time. And clearly Tom & Phazer don’t have this experience.
I will quote Tom: “There’s so much FREE/cheap software that is so much BETTER than their overpriced drek. ”
Ok, I read often this kind of not-founded declarations. Now you’ll give me *REAL* examples and proofs of that.
By example, give me an office suite that is REALLY better than Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc) and explain me why ?
Or an IDE really better than Visual Studio / Code Warrior / etc, both for native and cross-platform development ?
Or examples of open-source software that do a REAL better work for printing needs than what you get under Windows and/or MacOS ?
Please, I just want to understand …
Felonious Hiddenbottom makes a good point about Linux. And that is that its greatest hinderance to being a truely useful workstation (other than the current lack of applications) is that the X Windows system sucks. It is a relic who’s time has long since past. It needs to be scrapped and we need to start over. Even if the applications for complex statistics, graphing, etc. were available, they would still suck under Linux because of the horrible X-Windows system. There is nothing wrong with the underlying Linux kernel technology. In fact, the linux kernel combined with a new interface that is not based on X could make an awesome operating system.
In my mind, the best solution currently available is MacOS X. It has the power of a UNIX core without the hinderance of a relic GUI like X Windows.
“There’s so much FREE/cheap software that is so much BETTER than their overpriced drek.
Ok, I read often this kind of not-founded declarations. Now you’ll give me *REAL* examples and proofs of that. ”
Yeah, and while you’re at it, find me one or more free/open source programs with the functionality of Cubase VST, Propellerhead’s Reason, and CoolEdit Pro (all audio apps).
The X Window System is wonderful. A network-aware window system? I like that.
“The X Window System is wonderful. A network-aware window system? I like that.”
Yeah right… The Windows 2000 window system is also network aware. But it isn’t hindered by the lousy performance of X Windows. Run an mpeg movie in X Windows and then run the same movie in Windows Media Player. Even with the accelerated drivers in X Windows, the mpeg video performance will be inferior to the mpeg performance in MS Windows.
“The X Window System is wonderful. A network-aware window system? I like that. ”
Just in case you don’t know, I’m running under WindowsXP and the whole GUI is 100% network aware. But at the same time perfectly clean with a very impressive speed (I can’t say the same thing for my KDE under Mandrake 8.2 that I run on the exact same machine).
here we have classic biased freaks who can not admit that the open source platforms are indeed superior to closed source counterparts in everyway. mail? qmail. web? apache. and etc for servers. as for workstations, if you *really* must run win32 software use wine or win4lin, simple.
“here we have classic biased freaks who can not admit that the open source platforms are indeed superior to closed source counterparts in everyway. mail? qmail. web? apache. and etc for servers. as for workstations, if you *really* must run win32 software use wine or win4lin, simple.”
I’m going to assume that this is sarcasm.
As far as Wine, been there… done that… Unstable as hell. Doesn’t run half the apps I need to run. The ones it does run crash on a very regular basis. The performance is also such that I can probably watch a two hour movie before they have even finished loading under Wine.
1. Linux could do much better if its advoates could rally around a few less flags. There is no unity. Part of the success of MS is that is it a single unified operation with a unified product, GUI, etc. Linux? How many window managers? How many distros? Linux has more splits than the Southern Baptists.
2. Who wants the hassle of Linux on the desktop when they can have the joy of BeOS?
3. It is very unfortunate that people have developed the attitude that good software (open source included) isn’t worth paying for. It takes a LOT of time to create a good application! Are we willing to tell Gobe that if GP3 is priced over $50, we won’t pay it? We should not expect or demand that developers give away the fruits of their labor unless they want to. Don’t become accustomed to getting everything you want for free. Things may change!
4. Some oss software is better than closed-source. Some is worse. So what?
Check out Gnumeric and tell us what’s missing. Do you need better charts? More types of chart? Is a key function you use missing (98% of Excel functions are implemented) ? Is there a type of statistical analysis that’s valuable to you? (We have several, but more can be created)
Hi Felonious,
I have another view of Netware being a legace not needed by anyone anymore. Our company runs around 60 servers, most of them are Netware. Netware is –
– easy to administer
– easy to use
– not so much resource hungry
– fine for printer and file-sharing and creating hierarchies of users and groups …
Noone develops software for it anymore? Come on – we use Advantage Database Server on it, and IIRC even Apache is available. But – the main point is – we don’t consider it being an app server! For emails we use either Linux or Lotus Domino (W2K), the same goes for webserving.
So, just my opinion …
-pekr-
“here we have classic biased freaks who can not admit that the open source platforms are indeed superior to closed source counterparts in everyway.”
I’m still waiting for someone to point me to the superior open source alternatives to the audio apps I mentioned previously
“if you *really* must run win32 software use wine or win4lin, simple.”
As for wine, what the other guy said. win4lin? Last I checked, it didn’t even support DirectX. But even if it did (as VMWare probably does), if I’ve got to launch Windows (or keep it running in the background) just to run the apps I need (that Linux zealots say superior alternatives are avaiable in the open source world), then what is the point? If I’ve got to run Windows, I might as well stick with Windows.
“2. Who wants the hassle of Linux on the desktop when they can have the joy of BeOS?
”
Geez, I hope you’re joking. As bad as Linux is, BeOS isn’t much better. Great OS, great GUI (so I’ve heard), but shit for application support. Again, what’s the point?
“It is very unfortunate that people have developed the attitude that good software (open source included) isn’t worth paying for.”
I agree, so long as the people writing the apps actually care about quality and not strictly in it for the money. When monetary gain overshadows the desire to do good work, then the quality of that work suffers, no matter what filed you’re in.
“Check out Gnumeric and tell us what’s missing.”
Easy: a simple way to program proprietary functionalities. Ok with Gnumeric we have the source code of the whole thing, that’s cool, but I want my function to be made very easily and implemented in a fast & clean manner. VBScript is great for doing that under Excel.
That’s an other advantage, IMHO, when we have one entity designing a family of applications (MS Office), they integrate each other so well that it’s a charm to use.
I’m not a big expert on Wine, so I have a lot of questions I want to ask. I frequently read things like “eventually Wine will support that”. At some point Wine seem to me more like vaporware than anything. It’s a kind of a very distant promise of Win32 compatibility, in work for many years, but still far to be really usable.
Am I wrong ? Is Wine can *really* be an alternative to use all my Win32 binaries (Office 2K, 3D video games, etc), and all this *now* ?
Thanks
simba, upgrade from your 486 might help, runs fine on my machine, get the update version, dont use the current cvs tree, simple.
steve,
win4lin is most likely a better option. wine is still in beta and maybe is not such a good option for a ‘stable’ enviroment.
“simba, upgrade from your 486 might help, runs fine on my machine, get the update version, dont use the current cvs tree, simple. ”
I am running a Thunderbird 1GHh, thank you. Wine sucks. Plain and simple. It simply won’t run half the apps I need to use. Obviously, you have not attempted to run any of the more specialized applications under it.
And besides, that still doesn’t address the issues that the performance of X Windows sucks (Wine can’t fix that), and also the fact that I can’t get print drivers for Linux to print the high res charts and diagrams that are generated by these applications, so I still have to use Windows anyway to get the printer and plotter support.
BTW, if I have to use closed source and commericial applications, the benefits of Linux are somewhat negated anyway. The cost of Windows XP is pretty damn cheap compared to the cost of Statistica for example. The OS is not the major cost involved here. It is the apps that cost so much.
“Check out Gnumeric and tell us what’s missing. Do you need better charts? More types of chart? Is a key function you use missing (98% of Excel functions are implemented) ? Is there a type of statistical analysis that’s valuable to you? (We have several, but more can be created)”
To be honest, I haven’t looked into Gnumeric. But one thing that would be important is that it can do regression testing that is more advanced than just linear regression tests.
To be honest though, even if it could do these things, I doubt I would use it. No offense, but I have no idea who the programmers are for Gnumeric. I have no idea whether they are qualified or not, and I would be willing to bet that 99% of them do not have a degree in statistics. What assurance do I have that the complex stats functions are all implemented correctly? For the type of research I do, math errors can be disasterous.
Yes, I know that I am going to be accused of spreading FUD because of that paragraph. But I just feel a lot more comfortable with programs that have been time tested, used by thousands of scientists around the world, and basically “peer reviewed”.
This is of course, one of the biggest problems of open source in the real world. There is no gurantee of quality, or that the people that wrote it are qualified to be writing it.
Bah…
Trolls, trolls and more trolls!
Trolls from Micro$oft…trolls from free/open source!
There are so many types (open/closed) O.S.es. and applications. Choose the better work for you. Dot!
If you want to pay a hundred of million US$ to uncle Bill, go on (if you have so much money)…
If you are a poor student like me, or like to look source code, use free/open source…
It’s simple!
BTW, if I sound like I am anti-Linux, and anti-open source, nothing could be further from the truth. I would much rather spend my money on doing research than on buying software to do the research. I use Linux, FreeBSD, and several open source apps when I can. For example, I do database work in MySQL and PostgreSQL. But there are certain taks where the software and/or drivers simply aren’t available to do what I need. In these cases, I have to use Windows and commericial software.
Maybe the day will come where that will no longer be true. But it isn’t here yet. And I don’t think it will be here for a long time. Linux and open source need better print driovers, a better GUI, and more applications before that will happen.
Geez, I hope you’re joking.
Regarding ease of use, not at all.
As bad as Linux is, BeOS isn’t much better. Great OS, great GUI (so I’ve heard)
So you’ve “heard”? You haven’t even tried it, but you are qualified to compare it to Linux? You really should download the free version and play with it for an hour. BeOS is pure pleasure to set up and actually USE compared to Linux.
but shit for application support.
Well, it isn’t quite that stinky, even compared to Linux. BeBits.com has lots of software that is actually usable, not like the tons of useless crap that most Linux distros install by default. Having Mozilla 0.9.8 is a big help. GoBe Productive is still great. I can do far more of what I want with BeOS than I can with Linux right now, and its GUI doesn’t crash on me 3 times an hour (like KDE). Yes, there are still some gaping holes. Time will tell.
Again, what’s the point?
Did anyone say there had to be a point?
I fully agree with all your other points. Well said.
“Find me a free and/or open source spreadsheet application that has the capabilities of Excel (don’t tell me OpenOffice.)”
Why not OpenOffice or StarOffice? There spreadsheets aren’t that bad. However, since you asked for answers other than that, I think Xess is the most powerful of all the speadsheets I’ve tried.
Well, from a game player/internet user/I-only-want-to-read-my-email standpoint, I think MacOSX is the best. If you want to run a decent environment on the cheaper x86 hardware and accomplish the same things, then Windows is better.
However, if you are like me and like to play around with everything, if you like to develop solid apps in a very stable environment, if you like doing web development with open tools, then Linux and the BSD family are the best.
It’s all about what you want to do and what you want out of a program or tool. For example, I like the simplicity of gcc, g++, javac, etc. I can’t stand the 2.2 Gigabytes necessary to install VisualStudio .NET (although I do use it as well) and how slow the program runs after it’s installed.
One final complaint: I absolutely hate writing programs for Windows! I do it, but I don’t like it at all. What moron sat up there in Microsoft and thought up all those retarded names for functions, classes and macros. VB is an underwhelming language to work with and Visual C++ isn’t. I was hoping that Microsoft might have learned something from mistakes made with C/C++, learned from the nice things about Java, and made C# the apex in clean programming environments. But NO!!! C# is chock full of all the same damn retarded naming conventions and inconsistancies that there other dev tools suffer from. I do like it better than Visual C++, but I was really hoping for something more. Instead of creating a Java-killer, they’ve created a more complicated (but more powerful) version of VB.
I really like how much “cleaner” developing under Linux and *BSD are. If programming for Windows is a necessity, then Borlands tools are much better than MS’s in my opinion.
Simba has been ranting about how only Windows works in the real world. I am of the firm belief that the world I live in is as real as any other, and I have seen many other operation systems work, for many different persons and organisations, in this very real world. I do not see why Simbas need for a statistics package should make whatever world he/she lives in more real than the one I inhabit, even though I do not require such a package.
Anyway, if it is true that only Windows works, then I am sure that will be obvious to anyone who tries using something else and fails. This proves that, ackording to Simbas logic, those who still claim that other systems work, will fulfill at least one of these criteria:
1. They have not actually tried any such operating system apart from Windows.
2. The operating system did only work in a fantasy world, but when they tried do something with it that has to do with the real world, it failed, but they are too stubborn to admit it. Hence they have no use for their computers as long as that operating system is used, but they keep them as souvenirs.
3. They do not live in the real world. This is demonstrated by the fact that they do not need the same types of application in their lives that Simba does. (This actually applies to most people that are usually assumed to be living in the real world, since most people actually dont use statistics packages or very unusual printer hardware, but that is not a part of the point).
So, since people are either lying about actually using any other os than Windows, or about being able to solve real world problems with it, or about being actual people living in the real world, one might wonder what the point would be in trying to convince them of the superiority of Windows. Weather they already know but lie about it, are to stubborn to admit it, or do not really exist, the effects of such attempts will be meaningless to achieve.
PS. I myself belong to the third cathegory, not actually living in the real world.
“Simba has been ranting about how only Windows works in the real world. I am of the firm belief that the world I live in is as real as any other…” (rest of rant and rave snipped for space)
Vincent… You went off on a rant and rave trip which was a total distortion of everything I have said. Did you not read my entire post? What I said was that most of the open source APPLICATIONS are not powerful enough for real world work. What I also said was that there is NOTHING wrong with the Linux kernel. I had some complaints about X Windows and about lack of advanced printing support, but I said that the Linux kernel was quite good.
I also stated that I think MacOS X is currently the best solution out there. Windows is not without its problems. So I never claimed the Windows as the only platform suitable for the real world. MacOS X is currently my platform of choice.
When I say “the real world”, I am refering to complex business and scientific tasks. Sure a lot of the open source tools out there are fine for writing letters, doing basic finances, and possibly creating budgets and keeping track of expenses and such. But when it comes down to scientific or enterprise level tasks, they tend to be lacking in capabilities.
So before you rant and rave next time, why don’t you read what I actually said? Never once did I say that “only windows works” as you claim. In fact, as I stated before, I currently think MacOS X is better than anything else going.
By the way… Vincent… You are correct in stating that the average person using Linux on the workstation doesn’t live in the real world. There are very few workstations in business that are running Linux (lets leave the server side out of it for not). The average person using Linux on the workstation is a hobbyist. They AREN’T doing real work on it (unless they happen to be programmers).
And as far as people being too stuborn to admit it, yes, many Linux zealots are to stubborn to admit that there are certain things that Linux simply doesn’t work well for.
“here we have classic biased freaks who can not admit that the open source platforms are indeed superior to closed source counterparts in everyway. ”
I rest my case… I am biased? Give me a break. I already stated that I use open source software when I can. But there are a lot of situations where I can’t use it. So who is the biased one here? The bias in this statement is glaringly obvious. And the funny part is that it is in the same sentance where he accuses others of being biased.
“To be honest, I haven’t looked into Gnumeric. But one thing that would be important is that it can do regression testing that is more advanced than just linear regression tests.
To be honest though, even if it could do these things, I doubt I would use it. No offense, but I have no idea who the programmers are for Gnumeric. I have no idea whether they are qualified or not, and I would be willing to bet that 99% of them do not have a degree in statistics. What assurance do I have that the complex stats functions are all implemented correctly? For the type of research I do, math errors can be disasterous. ”
I use Excel too but not for statistics! Excel is known to have a number of problems in handling statistics reliably. Just because MS built a function that they claim can perform a sophisticated test doesn’t mean that it accurately performs the test. (read http://www.agresearch.cri.nz/Science/Statistics/exceluse1.htm for an example of typical concerns from the statistics community)
You certainly can’t trust MS in this area anymore than you can trust that they are implementing security protocols correctly. You have to consider each program on its own merits and ask yourself if it gives you the results that are acceptable for what you need it to do.
“PS. I myself belong to the third cathegory, not actually living in the real world.”
The point you have to realize is that everybody’s ‘real world’ is different. For example, for Simba working in the real world means statistics. FOr me, working in the real world means music & audio (amoung other things). When I look at an OS, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the capability and availability of spreadsheets and statistics programs, because it’s not part of my real world. But for Simba, such apps are crucial. This is proof that NOT A SINGLE OS can be all things to all people.
Why can’t people (no matter what OS you use) simply admit that every OS and application is a tool, and people should use whatever tool works best FOR WHAT THEY ARE DOING.
As an analogy, you might buy a compact car to get back and forth to work because they are good on gas and easy to handle, but you wouldn’t want to try hauling a moble home cross-country with one. Computer platforms are the same way – each works better for some things than they do others. To say that one platform is superior in every way to another is just crazy.
I think Simba said that for him, Macs are the platform of choice. For me, it’s Windows. If I were doing mostly web/sql work, I’d be using FreeBSD or Linux. If a really fast and really sleek OS was most important to me, I’d probably run BeOS.
I never want to be quoted as saying that Linux is not ready for the desktop, because it depends on WHO’S desktop you’re referring to. For some desktops, it does everything a person will ever need. As far as my desktop goes, it’ll probably be a cold day in hell before Linux comes anywhere near it
“I use Excel too but not for statistics! Excel is known to have a number of problems in handling statistics reliably.”
I don’t use Excel for statistics much more advanced than computing standard deviations. For anything much more advanced than that, Statistica or SAS are far better and much more reliable. SAS is generally the program of choice around here.
But that brings us back to my original question. Find me a stats package for Linux that has capabilities anywhere near as powerful as SAS. They simply don’t exist. Therefore, I can’t use Linux for my work.
BTW, I am aware of Excel’s problems at doing standard deviations with very large numbers. Normally I don’t work with numbers that large. When I do, I don’t use Excel.
Ok, for application usage there is much, much more one can use on Windows than Linux but wait a minute!
MOST Win pro audio software is only written for Windows 9x, I have found this to be very frustrating as I refuse to install such a piece of crap code on my system. There are some but not many, great programs for Win2K/XP like Reason and Nuendo but the list is only slowly growing which I think is pathetic.
With regards to sound hardware I can run my Hoontech DSP24 C-Port on both Windows and Linux (using OSS). The usability on Windows 2k is much nicer than Linux. Matter of fact I hate trying to setup specific functions on Linux but I have the same capabilities on either.
Sound quality through the OS/Driver mix definately goes to Linux. The sound quality in playback kills Win2K hands down. I don’t know why but it does. As for applications for Linux, well there are some great Hard Disk recording apps available, not many but they’re there and some good editing and synth programs going through development. Now if I could get a Pro Tools/Reason setup happening on either I would be happy but neither platform can give me this.
Now for capability. Linux coupled with XFS and the low latency patches for the kernel kills Windows 2k/XP hands down. Almost gives the BeOS kind of capability. For handling large media files NTFS needs rewriting, period. The kernel in Windows also needs some great help and this was easily demonstrated by comparing Win2K to BeOS with multiple DivX/MP3 playback streams. BeOS remained usable and responsive but after half the streams were opened on Win2K the OS crawled like a dog shot in the head with a 12guage. It sucked and it really was sad to see.
As for the previous comment about Linux playing MPEG under accelerated XFree, I’m sorry but I find it is smooth as with Xine, as good as Media Player under Windows but make sure you aren’t using the low latency patches as in my experience, the video becomes choppy, I know not why.
Anyway My 2 cents. All I want is choice with software companies using an open programing language that allows users to install via install/compile routine on different OS platforms. Call is Nirvana but I think it is achievable and then if people want they can run it on Windows or Linux or BeOS or BSD or QNX or what the hell else they can think of.
Open standards are the key I believe and Microsoft is not into open standards.
BTW, Gnome isn’t that bad.
“MOST Win pro audio software is only written for Windows 9x, I have found this to be very frustrating as I refuse to install such a piece of crap code on my system.”
I agree about the 9x win family. But I never had any problem running 9x applications under NT/2K/XP. They are all build on Win32 layer. I suppose some very rare and complex apps can cause problem, in theory, but never witnessed any (I know nothing about sound apps, so maybe it’s why).
let’s not even mention graphics in the open source world. I have yet to see anything remotely approaching the usefulness of Paint Shop Pro or PhotoImpact, let alone higher priced alternatives. And don’t get me started on WYSIWYG editors
If you’re designing for the web, you’re not gonna go very far without some quality tools.
“But that brings us back to my original question. Find me a stats package for Linux that has capabilities anywhere near as powerful as SAS. They simply don’t exist. Therefore, I can’t use Linux for my work.”
They do exist. There are a number of projects if you look for them. R is available for a number of platforms. From the R project website:
R is `GNU S’ – A language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R is similar to the award-winning S system, which was developed at Bell Laboratories by John Chambers et al. It provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques (linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, time series analysis, classification, clustering, …).
http://www.r-project.org/
“They do exist. There are a number of projects if you look for them. R is available for a number of platforms. From the R project website”
And it can do everything that SAS can do? I seriously doubt it.
Besides, as I stated before, I don’t trust GNU software for critical applications since I have no way at all of knowing whether the programmers are qualified or not. I also don’t have the confidence that the application has been “peer reviewed” by other scientists.
And BTW, you are still ignoring the issue that even if I could use this software, it would be worthless to me because I cannot get print drivers for the high res plotters and printers that are used to print this stuff.
I don’t want to start a flame war over a stat package. I understand your point and realize that trust is earned. Which is why I also don’t blindly trust MS or another producer of software. I guess we each have to judge the value of such programs by our own standards and those of users in the field who’s opinion we trust.
That said, R is highly regarded within the statistics community. It is quite capable within its base package and has been extended far beyond statistics use with add-on packages written by users. Since it is available for Windows, Mac, and Unix platforms, I think the driver issue is also not a problem.
To say that there are no open source packages meeting the standards you set is simply untrue. I’ve used SAS and SPSS and other packages as well as R. I am by no means a super-user of any of these packages but believe (as do my colleagues) that R is of similar value and quality. AND Open-sourced!
Simba, I assume you are unaware that X11 is a specification not a product, and that an implimintation by the name of Xfree86 has been rewritten from the ground up. There is no real problem with performance at this level. Where does your argument lie with that X11 sucks? Xfree should be more than fast enough to display the frame rate of any movie. The performace of decoding is in the program or library decoding the said movie. It is not a function of X to decode a movie. I for one like the flexiblity of the X11 windowing system.