The smell of newly purchased stuff… So, there I was, Hauppauge WinTV board in hand, Mandrake 10 installed and ready to rock! Little did I expect that it would come to this. But first things first.
Let’s begin with my background. I know computers, and quite frankly I know them pretty well. After 5 years at university, most of the time staring either into my 21″ Miro or into my too small chassis containing my old PIII 450MHz with various twists, and also as a network admin at my dorm with some 140 computers, I’ve come to know them pretty well. Most of the time at Uni my computer was running Windows 2000 and was happy with that, although I always loved to boot into my FreeBSD partition and feel the delight of total control as I tweaked and twisted my inits and rc:s. When I quit Uni and my trusty PIII died with a sigh I decided enough was enough. At Uni I used to reinstall Windows every 6 months or so, since I couldn’t keep from bloating it and I didn’t really feel like walking through the registers deleting old services all the time. Now I got rid of my Windows partition and installed FreeBSD to use as my only OS that, for now, ran on a borrowed PII 350 MHz. At first, I missed some of the nice things Windows had to offer, but soon enough I had forgotten all about it.
Time passed, I got myself a job, an apartment in a new town and a new P4 3GHz with 1GB speedy memory and 200GB hard drive, yummy! I didn’t think much of it, but did a fresh install of FreeBSD again. Some more time passed and although I thought FreeBSD is superb in almost every way, I’ve always been a music junkie, and some of the features ALSA could offer in the new 2.6 Linux kernel seduced me. I tried various Linux distros, including Mandrake 10, Slackware 10, Fedora Core 2, Debian Sarge and Gentoo. They were all nice and nifty, and I had just about decided to stay with Debian (since it has almost as good application base and tools with apt* as FreeBSD’s ports) when destiny took another shot at me. My job forced me to relocate to a new town, a new apartment and a new… no, wait! No Internet connection available! Not yet anyways. This, and the fact that Swedish Television announced that they are sending an entire night, twelve hours straight, devoted to rock and heavy metal this very Friday night got my wheels spinning.
Seeing an old friend
I don’t own a TV, much less a VCR. What to do? I’d really like to see this show. I went to the store and purchased a (reeaally) cheap Hauppauge WinTV board, and figured that I’d just plug it in and record the whole thing. I knew of tvtime and xawtv, and that xawtv could capture video, although I had never used it. Enter current time, and enter problems. I have no Internet connection, so I cannot download any packages to install the applications or libraries needed. Also, in my current move-chaos, I have left all my CDs and DVDs with packages and distributions in my other apartment, in another town. I found a Knoppix CD, which detected my board, and I was able to watch xawtv, but only in black and white, and it did not record. After ploughing through all my bags and boxes full of my belongings, the only thing I found that was of any help was my Windows 2000 Professional installation CD. After scratching my head to the bone I decided to give it a try. I mean, I work with Windows XP everyday at work, and I know that installation can be as simple as click-click-double-click. After all, I do have the installation CD that came with the WinTV card. Insert CD and fire up!
Now, I seem to recall Windows installations as a breeze compared to that of Linux or *BSD (yes, WinXP is more so than W2k) but I guess things change. Compared to SuSE, Fedora Core and especially Mandrake, Windows (both W2k and WinXP) is a walk on broken glass to install. I haven’t tried it, but I guess Xandros and Linspire are just as easy as the three cousins mentioned. If you take the time to read the instructions when it comes to partitioning and bootloading on a Slackware or Debian installation, then it’s not harder to install than any Windows flavor. Okay, Gentoo is a league of its own, but no one lacking severe experience in OS:es should ever try that at home.
Installation is finished, let’s reboot into our fresh system. Hey! What’s this?! I’m being greeted with a screen resolution from hell, and a 16-color display, some welcome! In Linux, I was at anytime invited into a nice 1024×768 or even a 1280×1024 display with millions of nice colors to view. Okay, let’s just change that in the nice Display Properties Settings Menu. Nope, no go! I have to install new drivers and reboot first. What drivers? The ones I can download from my none-existing Internet connection? Sure, I may have gotten a CD with all that with the display card when I bought the computer, but that is 250 kilometers from here, and no time to fetch it. Linux may not offer me accelerated hardware support with the built-in drivers (with some exceptions, I believe), but then again, Windows offers me nothing at all. Yes, again, WinXP has much better support for this, I admit, but if I recall correctly not even that was of any high quality.
Okay, I try to install the WinTV board anyway, it might give me something. Well, no, not really. The sound works fine, but there is nothing but a black square where the image should be. I guess it needs more colors to display correctly.
Score so far?
At this point, I’d say Linux and Windows are even. The exception is the unlikely winner Knoppix, who can show me b/w TV, with a 2.4.x kernel, running from CD, impressive I must add. Well, I have Windows installed and a messy apartment waiting to be cleaned up. Let’s explore my old OS and see if there is any nostalgia to be discovered. But alas, to my surprise, there is nothing to be discovered. We have… let’s see… er… Notepad and WordPad, nice for writing stuff like this, and then there is… uhm… Paint and Mediaplayer. Let’s face it, Windows comes with nothing! Not even if you consider that WinXP has a newer version of most of this, and some more tasty stuff, like Moviemaker. Sure, there is Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, so if I had an Internet connection I could browse the web and fetch some mails and viruses, since there is not even a proper firewall installed. Where’s the stuff I need to get my work done? Where is my Office suite? Where is my application for creating awesome graphics for my website? Where is my compiler? Where is my Instant Messenger? No, I don’t want that one, I want one that supports multiple IM protocols! Okay, so I don’t have a connection, but nevertheless, I’ll have one soon (I hope, I’ll be sending this from work).
If I only chose to install KDE or Gnome under Linux I was rewarded with all those apps, either by default or by installing them from the installation CD. I had OpenOffice.org, Gimp, gcc/g++, Kopete and Gaim and tons of stuff I really could use for my everyday work and entertainment. Using Windows I have to buy MS Office for almost the same price as the OS itself or download OpenOffice.org from the Internet, since it is not included on the CD. Same goes for the compiler, only the compiler from MS costs more than I make in a month, if I want all the stuff I have for free in Linux. The other programs have to be downloaded as well; the graphics suite, the IM and all the other stuff I want.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to download anything from the Internet after having installed it. Of course I download stuff, I do it all the time. I have to download the entire Linux distribution in the first place, since I never bought one. But the bottom line is this: I CAN use my computer for my everyday work (writing documents, presentations, spreadsheets and programming) if I install a standard distribution of Linux (one CD is usually enough) on my computer. However, if I use Windows, I either need to buy the extra stuff or download it from the Internet, since none of it really comes included on the CD.
This article is not about pointing the finger, but isn’t it a little strange that Windows creates a hollow shell for your “useable” software and charge you money for it, while Linux distributions come fully packed with all sorts of candy from the very beginning, and it’s free from the start? I’ll leave it to the reader to go figure.
But how about usability then?
Isn’t Windows more usable when it’s all set? Well, I used to think so too, but after having installed Windows on my machine again, I’d have to say I doubt it. It pretty much comes down to what distro you use. I’ll go for Debian when this is over, because it offers me the best mix of control and general usability. If you try out one of the major distros, meaning SuSE, Mandrake or Fedora Core, I think you’ll find it easy enough to manage and use your computer. With tools like Yast, up2date (or yum, when someone fixes a nice GUI for it) and Drake-tools, you can browse and search large repositories for applications and updates to install. You can even update your entire world, including kernel and userland. With Windows, there is the auto update tool, which pretty much works in the same way, but it only maintains your system as far as security updates and applications included in the Windows suite (eg, Internet Explorer). To maintain your other applications is your headache, not theirs.
As for using the computer on an everyday basis, Linux (or Linux applications rather) still has some way to go. OpenOffice.org is a killer, but the kick-ass spreadsheets with the kick-ass formulas are still done in Excel. Gimp and its relatives are great, but Adobe and its competitors on the Windows market still have a tight grip here. Same goes for most large and complex applications like AutoCAD, who’s still in the lead. Most other applications, like Internet browsers, mail clients, IMs, databases, blablabla are equally strong in the Linux department.
Hardware?
Yes and No. Windows in itself actually supports less hardware than Linux (the kernel). But in practice, windows supports more hardware, since most hardware manufacturers include a CD with their products with drivers and installation guides for Windows. This is slowly changing, more and more manufacturers include drivers for Linux, but the progress is slow. However, as we can see, my main concern was to get my graphics card and my WinTV board working. With Linux it worked to some degree, but with Windows it didn’t work at all, it didn’t even know what kind of device it was until I installed the drivers (this is true even for WinXP).
Conclusion?
Windows is a good product. For everyday use it’s stable (although not too secure, as we’ve seen) and easy to use. But Microsoft is a heavy colossus, and it moves too slowly to keep up with today’s development speed. Technologies like .NET will continue to shake the market to its foundations, but that is not enough to keep the actual users satisfied. I believe that lots of companies hold on to Microsoft merely because there are tons of custom-built applications out there that runs on Windows that are needed to keep the business floating. But we can see more and more users in the Linux communities, companies and governments decide to switch to Linux, despite the effort and initial costs it involves. Personally I would love to see the market switching to Linux today, but it’s a big operation, and it will take time and effort from those who decide to do so. Microsoft supporters keep giving us the “Linux is actually more expensive” argument, and I believe that this is a bunch of crap. Sure, initially there will be costs for education, time spent on installing, upgrading and maintaining a new system, but in the end there will be a positive economical effect. Why? Because logically, nothing can be cheaper than what’s free, right?
I’m not a Linux zealot, I use Microsoft products myself, but I enjoy it so much more when I get to work with Linux. I can even change the looks of my desktop as I desire, for free! =o)
About the author
Kristofer “Jalle” Jarl is nearly 26 years old, almost grown up, but far from mature. This Master of Science wishes he could spend more time on the snowboard or with a guitar on his lap than he spends on calculating signal strengths and qualities for a large telephone service provider. Someday he may even try to do something big with his own little firm, which for now lies sleeping somewhere in a box in his new apartment.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Are you use you selected the proper tv format? Default is usually ntsc, which would cause black & white picture on a european system.. The proper mode for scandinavia is pal b/g.
//his is besides the point, though. The point is that, sometimes – and a lot more often that the MS apologists on this site would have us believe – installing Windows can be a pain.//
Ok, props for your posting sig. That’s hilarious.
Now then.
It works both ways, compadre.
I recently upgraded a system to a nVidia GeForce 5900 Ultra. The system dual-booted Lindows OS 4.5 and Windows XP.
XP booted fine after the hardware install, albeit in low-res. I popped in the driver CD, installed new drivers, voila! Full 32-bit color, massive resolution, etc.
Rebooted the PC. Launched into Lindows OS. Got a low-res login. Checked the System Settings –> Display tab. “VESA” driver installed. No option to update the driver to anything else. No linux drivers on the CD-ROM. Crap.
Am I stuck? No, I can do the work of downloading drivers/configuring XFree86/etc. etc. on Lindows.
But– is doing so a pain, compared to what I just did in 5 minutes in XP?
Does Pinnochio have a wooden ass?
So, we must admit that installation issues are plenty on both sides. But, in my reply to the OP, he was trying to get a *brand new* vid card to be recognized from the install disc of a *four-year-old* OS. Come on.
I use both Windows XP and Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Actually I use Windows more, but that’s because I play my MMOGs that will only run in Windows, and I use some drawing apps like Corel Painter. (duhhhh) But I program in Linux.
However, there are some really BAD point about Windows…
1. After few weeks using Windows (beside me, my family use my pc), the registry gets screwed up and direct-x got messed up and I have to reinstall everything from ground-up.
2. As soon as I reinstall my windows (usually takes an hour…just OS itself!!), I hook-up into my internet. Then as soon as my pc is connected, well, my pc is infected by bunch of those annoying worms which make my pc automatically reboot within 5 minutes and making heavy load on my computer….yeah, you can do shutdown -a (is it correct???) command in cmd prompt to prevent my pc from rebooting automatically…but that’s toooooo annoying.
3. After installing Windows XP, then I have spend another hours to tweaking around services and settings to make my pc do 100% of its capacity….
And that’s true for RedHat Linux…they just install toooo many things and open up too many things as a default. (And that’s why I prefer Debian GNU/Linux, and even FreeBSD)
4. And of course, normal installation of Windows XP takes about 1 GB about harddisk….but….only OS + Web Browser + Mail client and few small utils like notepad = 1 GB. Wow.
And my base debian takes only about 100MB.
However, beside these things….I find Windows quite useful….especially for playing MMOGs of course!!!!
Anyway, I prefer Linux and BSDs because there are plenty of places that I can fiddle and play around.
PS: Ah…for the dreaded dependency hell…apt-get does take care of everything.
And…recently, the oft-feared DLL hell in windows is not bothering me as frequently as before.
After you get new hardware, it is highly wise thing to re-install entire Windows system, in order to get the maximum performance out of new hardware. And that’s especially true when upgrading video card.
(But you don’t have to reinstall after upgrading your RAM or CPUs of course!!!)
~(-_-)~
I’d like to back up Abraxas’s points on this. Windows installation is generally a giant pain. Examples:
1) It’s generally more verbose than most Linux setups. For example, it still prompts you with a network configuration window while most Linux distros will auto-detect your network.
2) It’s highly inflexible. Need to install the OS remotely? Well, too bad! No soup for you!
3) When hardware doesn’t work, it takes superhuman prodding to get it to work. If Windows decides it doesn’t want to associate your driver with your device, well, might as well get a new one. I’ve seen this happen twice, once’s with a USB WLAN dongle and again with a Playstation->USB controller converter. In both cases, the devices worked the first few times, but after awhile, Windows refused to recognize them.
4) Sometimes, installing Windows *is* a race against the internet. Remember Blaster? At school (where I’m connected directly to the internet), I booted my (clean) Windows install to do something, and within two hours the sysadmin had locked my ethernet port to keep my computer from spreading Blaster to everyone else. Without a good firewall, the average Windows network is a fricking hotzone!
5) When Windows bootup breaks, you might as well reinstall. I’ve had to fix boot failures on several of my friend’s machines, and that piece-of-s*it Windows “rescue” disk has never, ever, ever, been helpful. It doesn’t even have networking enabled! In each case, I ended up being able to salvage what data I could by booting up Knoppix and transferring their files over the net.
Most of the arguments going on here are totally pointless and some are even fairly moronic.
All OS’s have problems. Every single one ever written. Why throw these back and forth between opposing sides? It’s hardly productive and is far from an informative discussion.
There is no war between Microsoft and OSS. There’s a conflict between ideologies but does that mean you have to argue technical points? Both have their merits and we should be learning from each other rather than covering up the problems.
If you find a problem in a peice of software, do everyone a favour and submit a bug report. It might be something new that the developer hasn’t heard about yet.
To the author: Why didn’t you go out and buy a cheap TV?
😉
So you installed Redhat 9.1, which has never been released? And this Red Hat 9.1 gave you problems…
Thanks for bringing a good laugh to my day.
LOL. What a liar! Microsoft better spent some cash educating your sorry asses.
j d says: this guy is having a cry about not having many programs installed by default. can’t please all the people all the time…
He wasn’t “having a cry”; he was pointing out a difference. And he’s right.
Actually now I remember that I had the exprerience of this hardware problem.
I had an Asus board and when try to install Windows 2000 on it, for some reason serial/parallel ports would not work. I later learned that I had to upgrade my mainboard bios to get everything working.
I dont quite find this bad, it is a hardware problem, how can you guys blame the operating system for that. It is totally a mainboard company’s mistake.
Another thing is , Linux guys will probably know this that Mandrake was burnig some cd drives and rendering them useless. So If I would think like you I would never want to have an OS that can render my hardware useless.
Though I really think you can not blame an operating system for harware based problems. As in the case of Windmodems used not to work with Linux.
::Rayiner Hashem::
Thanks for the laugh; it reminds me of the time I tried to install my WLAN dongle on my XP box…. the only way that I knew it was working correctly was when I got an error message that it wasn’t working. go figure…..
Then again, Lindows 4.5 didn’t work out of the box with it either……
So I think I’m stuck on the fence with this whole issue.
1) It’s generally more verbose than most Linux setups. For example, it still prompts you with a network configuration window while most Linux distros will auto-detect your network.
Putting in your computer’s name is verbose ????
2) It’s highly inflexible. Need to install the OS remotely? Well, too bad! No soup for you!
This is utter BS. When I was a Lab assistant in school our admin had it so we could install NT remotely over the network, insert a floppy disk, boot and you would have windows and every application for a particular lab installed with no user interaction. This was in 1998.
3) When hardware doesn’t work, it takes superhuman prodding to get it to work. If Windows decides it doesn’t want to associate your driver with your device, well, might as well get a new one. I’ve seen this happen twice, once’s with a USB WLAN dongle and again with a Playstation->USB controller converter. In both cases, the devices worked the first few times, but after awhile, Windows refused to recognize them.
As opposed to linux distros where thinks might never be supported. For example Xvideo on my toshiba laptop using a trident cyberblade chipset, playing DVDs causes wired split screen distortion. There wasn’t a fix for that in 2002 and probably will never be. Oh before you go an say it is open source it will happens. I personnaly tried to hack the X source trust me it would take a few years to guess all the parameters to set Xvideo up.
Or How I tried for a month trying to get ALSA to compile on a kernel and use the get the damn TV tuner portion of a ATI All-in-wonder radeon to work. This was in 2002 as well and a google search reveals that not much has chnaged in 2 years. Except ALSA is now in the kernel. I am not willing to spend another week trying to get the damn thing to work
4) Sometimes, installing Windows *is* a race against the internet. Remember Blaster? At school (where I’m connected directly to the internet), I booted my (clean) Windows install to do something, and within two hours the sysadmin had locked my ethernet port to keep my computer from spreading Blaster to everyone else. Without a good firewall, the average Windows network is a fricking hotzone!
I have two windows machines and not one has ever had a worm infect it. I have setup my computer novice friends’ machines, with warnings o never to download certain software and use mozilla, none of them have ever had to worms of viruses. Note, I am not claiming that windows is immune to them just that as you suggested a properly configured OS, any OS can be more tolerant.
5) When Windows bootup breaks, you might as well reinstall. I’ve had to fix boot failures on several of my friend’s machines, and that piece-of-s*it Windows “rescue” disk has never, ever, ever, been helpful. It doesn’t even have networking enabled! In each case, I ended up being able to salvage what data I could by booting up Knoppix and transferring their files over the net.
This point I will concede.
By the way, I am not a windows proponent. I am infact absoulutely anti windows, I tried, evangalised linux from 1998-2002 and finally gave up for the above two problems (pain in the behind hardware problems) plus a few other issues I have ( like installing a gazillion new libraries for every application, eventually you are far away from your base distro enough that upgrades are a bitch).
I am now happily setlled with my OS X running powerbook. I have relegated windows to certain niche purposes that linux can never fill. 1) work with my tv tuner card 2) work on my fiance’s toshiba laptop reliably.
Oh I just remembered the term for windows remote installation. It is called unattended installs, just grep Google for the term there are various hits.
Here is one:
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=3773
>> As in the case of Windmodems used not to work with Linux. <<
Does make one wonder, on a global, *Worldwide* level, just how many millions of people are currrently trying/playing with/dual/multibooting Linux in *some* capacity, but are unable to get onto the Internet with it via their Win-modem and hence never show up on the Google stats (supposing they visit Google?) – instead of the regular 1-2 % jibes we could be looking at 5-7 % of PC users *Worldwide* are currently playing with Linux in *some capacity* – it’s pretty clear that the Google stats aren’t an accurate represention…….
If you’re judging an OS by its ability to view and capture video input out-of-the-box, then BeOS wins
(although, I’m not sure it would be any better than Win2k at having drivers for hardware created after its release).
“Another thing is , Linux guys will probably know this that Mandrake was burnig some cd drives and rendering them useless. So If I would think like you I would never want to have an OS that can render my hardware useless.”
To be fair, that was a problem with LG not following standard specs for a system call. Note that the hard drives were recoverable, too. But you’re right, it was a bungle. To MandrakeSoft’s defense, their QA department has less than 1% of Microsoft’s…
It is right that Windows NT/2000 series computers supported remote installations. It is called RIS (Remote installation services) for whose dont know.
Actually by preparing and installation disk you can install Windows on every computer without even touching to computer itself after you start the installation. (I mean not even entering serial number, network configuaration and stuff like that)
I dont know about this on Windows XP though, I mean It still probably supports unattended installations but I’m not quite sure it supports network installation.
“You know, no one answered my question about monitor mode in Windows either and no one answered my question as to whether or not there is an equivalent to kismet for Windows, but who’s keeping track? ;-)”
What do you mean by monitor exactly? As for Kismet you can use the software that kismet is based on, called NetStumbler which is for windows.
“I have two windows machines and not one has ever had a worm infect it.”
I hear this all the time in here, and so without sound like a Windows hating, Linux fanatic, I thought I would ask something. I’m guessing you know Windows security pretty well by this point. So what I’m wondering is despite the fact that you no doubt keep your machine patched and have never had a worm, do you feel you have nothing to worry about? I mean, do you ever worry about the fact that malware is getting more and more complicated, and more and insidious in it’s means of entry? Are you at all concerned about MS’s ability to keep staying one step ahead of the worm writers and such? Like I said, honest questions, no bashing involved.
Installing any OS without the right drivers is going to be a problem. Of course, when a 3-year-old Windows CD doesn’t include drivers for new hardware, that’s a mark against Windws, but when a 3-week-old Linux CD foesn’t include drivers, folks usually go on a “don’t blame Linux, blame the hardware companies” rant. Linux zealots can’t be wrong because they’re always right. Just ask ’em.
When I’ve installed XP on machines with new video cards, it defaults to standard VGA. Then I go off and get the right dirver for the card and install it. Seems pretty straightforward.
It isn’t Windows’ fault that you have a dialup link. Or, does using Linux make it go faster? I’d say pulling down, say, 80 megs of Debian updates would take just as long as pulling down 80 megs of Windows updates.
Doesn’t anybody know how to use the english language anymore? And whatever happened to the editor stepping in and correcting major grammatical mistakes?
I’d actually be willing to place money on a bet that says that at least 50% of you don’t know what I’m talking about. We certainly are in a sad state of affairs when we can argue about button order, but no one cares about communicating clearly with words.
It’s a widely touted misnomer that you cannot turn off Windows services. It’s a point-and-click exercise in XP Pro. (Don’t have XP Pro? Too bad…you bought the half-baked version.)
I think you missed the point. The fact is that Windows and Linux take a different approach to drivers. In the Windows world, drivers are commonly installed from the CD-ROM that came with the hardware. In other words, hardware manufacturers take on the responsability to offer Windows drivers, because they know that this represents the bulk of their market.
With Linux, it’s almost always the community’s responsibility to produce drivers. While this means that, occasionally, a driver won’t be avaible for the odd device (or that some drivers may be buggy), it does have an advantage over Windows: the “community” drivers can all be included on the distro CD. The point of the article was that, if you don’t have Internet access and the CD-ROMs with the drivers on them, you’re better off with Linux.
But of course, anti-Linux zealots will use this opportunity to bash Linux, as they always do…
Don’t have XP Pro? Too bad…you bought the half-baked version.
Another advantage of Linux – there is not “half-baked” version. The full version is the free version.
“Another advantage of Linux – there is not “half-baked” version. The full version is the free version.”
I hate to ruin your example, but with RedHat there kinda is… Sorta.
People why do we always have this stupid argument. Nobody ever turns sides because of these. And the article was really pretty silly. I mean it was basically:
Windows sucks if you don’t have a way to get drivers for it.
So what? That’s true for any OS, Windows just ships fewer versions than others. Do you really want them shipping a service pack every 6 months so they can keep up with all the latest drivers?
The lesson here is, that a $90 tv is a better purchase than a $70 tv capture card. Grand lesson.
MOVE ON!
IMHO, Linux really needs some equivalent to device manager for dealing with hardware. There should be a unified driver framework and a directory with a list of hardware by type and information about the hardware and the drivers associated with it. Of course it would be easy to make a GUI over this and have it be just as easy to use at the Windows Device Manager. The main problem with this revolves, like all Linux problems for me, around the X server. X also manages hardware and has its own driver framework. Perhaps the lowest level parts of X should be split off and put into the kernel so that there can be a unified driver system.
So what? That’s true for any OS, Windows just ships fewer versions than others. Do you really want them shipping a service pack every 6 months so they can keep up with all the latest drivers?
Uh, wait, that would mean Windows XP has been relesed in 1998.
It doesn’t support my soundcard, which I bought in 1999, and which works perfectly under SuSE 8.2. Oh, yes, I can download the drivers, but they constantly crash the PC. And it is indeed Microsoft to blame here, as a company that makes huge profits, they should care a little about their customers, don’t you think?
And oh, it neither supports my 1999 modem, just in case you want to know. So no, Windows isn’t perfect.
Quite funny, actually, that everybody looks forward to the day that Linux is “ready for the desktop”, mainly focussing on the installer, yet nobody wants to admit that the Windows installation procedure isn’t perfect. I don’t see how that goes together.
But Linux, well maybe Mandrake, but most Linux distros still have some configuration/installation problems. They might have more/better drivers than 2000 or XP, but sometimes they don’t have drivers available at all where 2000 and XP will almost always be supported by the manufacturer.
So Linux still needs more work, but its definitely very real competition that’s here to stay. And I believe each year it will be growing at a faster rate than ever before. More bug fixes, more security, more drivers, more support, more apps, more freedom and more free stuff. For what it costs it can’t be beat, er well, except maybe by BSD, depending on who’s side you’re on.
I love Linux, but this article is really “poor”… I can’t believe I kept reading…
But Linux, well maybe Mandrake, but most Linux distros still have some configuration/installation problems. They might have more/better drivers than 2000 or XP, but sometimes they don’t have drivers available at all where 2000 and XP will almost always be supported by the manufacturer.
There lies the problem: manufacturers. Do not forget when Windows XP was first released, it couldn’t support many drivers compared to Windows 98. Manufacturers have code sources from Linux distros so they can releae drivers. One of great example is NVidia. Therfore, the problem is the willing of manufacturers.
Funny, I’ve got an e-VGA nVidia 5700 Ultra — and I used it to install a fresh copy of Windows XP, no sweat.
Maybe your motherboard is crap.
I have a simple question for you. Can you read? Because Linux had no problems with my Abit NF7-S or my 5700 Ultra.
Ok, then … so … you don’t have the original drivers for the mobo … you’re having problems with the vid card … and therefore Windows sucks.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never said windows sucks. You people amaze me. I simply pointed out that Windows is not so easy to install as some people like to think. Linux can be much easier in such situations because the drivers are included with the kernel. Besides that I wasn’t having trouble with my video card at all. Windows was having trouble. Linux worked fine on the same setup.
What where the current distros on the September 9, 2002 when XP’s first Service Pack was released. Use a Linux distro that was released at/near the same date and try to install it on your x86 PC.
That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I bought Suse and WinXP at the same time. Suse installed without much of a fuss at all. XP did not. It’s not my fault that MS waits years inbetween updates of their boxed Operating System and it isn’t anyone else’s fault who attempts the same thing.
The point everyone is missing is that XP can be difficult to install. Linux can be easier to install on the same machine. Instead of rational responses, I am being attacked, called a liar, and am having words shoved in my mouth.
RE: Drill Sgt
What do you mean by monitor exactly? As for Kismet you can use the software that kismet is based on, called NetStumbler which is for windows.
You can put cisco cards, and others, into rfmon mode which allows you to passively scan wireless networks. Kismet is much more effective than NetStumbler because Kismet supports passive scans while NetStumbler does not.
RE: enloop
When I’ve installed XP on machines with new video cards, it defaults to standard VGA. Then I go off and get the right dirver for the card and install it. Seems pretty straightforward.
READ PEOPLE. READ BEFORE YOU MAKE COMMENTS. The install CD won’t even display ANYTHING. It’s a blank screen. No error messages. No other funky behaviour, there is just no display. This required that I install a different video card to install windows.
It isn’t Windows’ fault that you have a dialup link. Or, does using Linux make it go faster? I’d say pulling down, say, 80 megs of Debian updates would take just as long as pulling down 80 megs of Windows updates.
Again your poor reading comprehension skills come into play. It is imperative that you update Windows immediately if you want to be safe from worms. This is not the case with Linux.
It’s a widely touted misnomer that you cannot turn off Windows services. It’s a point-and-click exercise in XP Pro. (Don’t have XP Pro? Too bad…you bought the half-baked version.)
XP Pro is a waste of money for most people. It’s outrageously priced at that. I wasn’t about to install XP Pro when it wasn’t needed, especially at that price. It should be quite embarrassing that MS ships a crippled OS at that price.
This sums it up in a fairly quickly:
http://www.netstumbler.org/archive/index.php/t-6101
>It is imperative that you update Windows immediately if you want to be safe from worms.
It is imperative that you update any OS to be safe from malware. Linux included.
>This is not the case with Linux.
Case 1. A widespread hacker penetration of Linux computers in Stanford U. Google for it, and read carefully their statement. Bottom line: carelessly unpatched systems.
Case 2. A well known Linux advocate and security specialist got hacked through Sendmail. Why? He never applied Sendmail patches because he did not use Sendmail, then decided to run it for some purpose and as soon as he started it- got the worm exploiting old unpatched vulnerability for which patch existed for long time.
You should learn a platform of your choice before screaming “praise the Linux.”
>XP Pro is a waste of money for most people. It’s outrageously priced at that.
Oh,- you can’t afford XP Pro? How about XP Home for $50 when bought with new computer, preinstalled and properly configured.
Judging from the article and some comments, I am becoming a strong believer that people like you and article author should be thankful to Microsoft for selling preinstalled OS cheap, but retail version very much overpriced.
That overly high price should stop some people from pretending to be computer geeks capable of installing an OS by themselves.
It is imperative that you update any OS to be safe from malware. Linux included.
I never said otherwise but what are the chances of being attacked before you can update in Linux as opposed to Windows? I’m talking about the real world, not hypotheticals. I’m not talking about people who leave their systems unpatched. I’m talking about people who do patch their systems but just don’t have enough time to do it before they get attacked by a worm.
You should learn a platform of your choice before screaming “praise the Linux.”
It’s funny that you put that in quotes since I never said that or implied it. The only thing that may be taken the wrong way was that I insisted that the hardware worked on Linux when it did not on Windows. This was purely to show that the hardware was not defective, but it was taken the wrong way, obviously.
Oh,- you can’t afford XP Pro? How about XP Home for $50 when bought with new computer, preinstalled and properly configured.
That doesn’t help when you build your own.
Judging from the article and some comments, I am becoming a strong believer that people like you and article author should be thankful to Microsoft for selling preinstalled OS cheap, but retail version very much overpriced.
Huh?
That overly high price should stop some people from pretending to be computer geeks capable of installing an OS by themselves.
Amazing. Simply amazing. I’ve installed several different operating systems successfully so I don’t know what you are talking about. Even with the problems I encountered with Windows and Linux I was able to install them in the end. The point I was making is how much of a pain in the ass it can be.
Here’s a better site that describes the differences.
http://tipsybottle.com/technology/wireless/RedHat-Kismet-HOWTO-FAQ….)
“No, it doesn’t. You didn’t read the rest of the comments apparently.”
I’ve read all the post here, but couldn’t find a statement that you tried to run it in VESA-mode on linux.
“Maybe that’s because Linux distro’s release new versions quicker than MS releases SPs. By the way, SP1 doesn’t help much, you need SP2 to patch the current insecurities.”
And everytime they have a new release I have to pay for it?
How much support do I get for the money I spent on it?
IRC Suse gives you 60 days. Not much if you consider that you have to pay 90 Euros for a product they didn’t even develope themselfes.
“I never said otherwise but what are the chances of being attacked before you can update in Linux as opposed to Windows?”
Reread my first post an you know how to get online without having problems with blaster&co.
“That doesn’t help when you build your own.”
As soon as you buy a mainboard+cpu+harddisk you have qualified for an OEM-license. I payed 80 Euro for XP-Pro. And a Student-license costs 6 Euro with a pressed cd.
And everytime they have a new release I have to pay for it?
Nothing, if you use Mandrake.
How much support do I get for the money I spent on it?
How much support do you get from Microsoft if you buy a retail version of Windows XP?
IRC Suse gives you 60 days. Not much if you consider that you have to pay 90 Euros for a product they didn’t even develope themselfes.
Actually, putting a Linux distro together is a lot of work. But, as I’ve already pointed out, you can just download Mandrake for free…though, personally, I like to give them a bit of money every year to show my support.
Speaking of XP…it seems SP2 isn’t quite ready for release yet. CRN did tests, and 3 out of 5 machines didn’t work after installing it…
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml;jsessio…
As I sayed before I only have ISDN, so downloading ISOs is no option for me.
“How much support do you get from Microsoft if you buy a retail version of Windows XP?”
You still get the ServicePack-CDs for free
The $50 price with a new computer isn’t too bad, but I can’t afford a new computer right now. Also I highly doubt that this machine would run XP in any form at all. Home is totally out of the question, why would I let processors sit idle with a OS lacking a basic feature like SMP? Even if I could get a new computer right now, I’d have to use Linux to take advantage of it, theres still no 64bit windows for x86-64.
Linux is just the better choice for me. Slack from my experience is only a little harder to install than Win2k Pro (and really, how often do you install either of those?), and Dropline works quite nicely as a easy to update desktop. Perhaps not quite as fast as Win2k (although not by much), but a much better experience overall, as (at least for my hardware) the support is better, and I like Gnome’s UI more.
You still get the ServicePack-CDs for free
Upgrades is not the same thing as support.
Russian Guy
Good for you, you got a whopping total of two cases to support your argument!!!
Tell me, how many worms and viruses are currently “in the wild” for Windows? Now, how many worms and viruses are “in the wild” for Linux?
Just answer these two simple questions.
Ronald
It’s also light years ahead of all Linux distros
Light years? Really? Explain how you came to that comparison. Give examples, please. Because I use both Windows and Linux and in no conceivable way is WinXP “light years” ahead of, let’s say, Mandrake 10.X. In fact, in many areas, Linux is ahead. KDE 3.2.3, in particular, is a more advanced GUI than Windows, and Konqueror is better file and web browser than Windows/Internet Explorer.
Remember, you’re talking about the OS here, not the apps. You specifically said that “Windows XP Pro” is light-years (a hyphenated word, btw) ahead of “all Linux distros”, not “there are better apps for Windows than Linux.”
I’m sorry, but you calling anyone a troll is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
>I can even change the looks of my desktop as I desire, for
>free! =o)
there are lots of free desktop shells for windows.
i.e litestep
Including a few ports of blackbox, so you can get that linux feel on your windows box.
When you say windows doesn’t come with extra software…that’s probably because you paid for and are installing an OS and not the application software that goes with it. same thing would happen with a minial gentoo install.
Althought, you could create a windows slipstream cd, maybe put office on there, firefox, thunderbird, gimp…wow look at all the software that is also free for windows.
“Oh,- you can’t afford XP Pro? How about XP Home for $50 when bought with new computer, preinstalled and properly configured.
That doesn’t help when you build your own.”
Even when building your own, the price of Windows is still worth it. The amount of time I save though the ease of setup and configuration is well worth the money paid.
I wish people would stop saying this. “the admin this, the admin that”.
People don’t have to spend any time doing anything on Linux, because it is always “the admin” that will do it for them.
Where do I meet this “the admin” and does he have time to fit me in?
I think you are on to something. In windows environments you dont meet him, as the admin is supposed to be yourself. This is why management is led to believe that Windows is cheaper. In reality it is not. When you do the system administration you will not do any productive work.
In Unixlike enviroments with a sysadmin on the payrole the administration cost becomes much more visible. This means that it will be easier to detect and remove bottlenecks in the system. Problems will be handled more efficently as there is less risk that the same problem is solved over and over again by different users and you wont end up with a dozen solutions wher half of them are incompatible.
This line of reasoning works well at least in large organizations where there is enough to do for the person with the sysadmin role. In small organizations windows may be more cost effective since the sysadmin guy is able to handle 1000 users, and have salery requirements accordingly but this helps you little if you only have 10 employees.
http://fftv.sf.net
WIndows is still number one and will remain number one. Unless Linux really invent sometihng and quit copying stuff from unix and windows, it will always be way behind windows.
For one thing Linux is ahead of Windows in flexibility.
Try doing something like integrating your login database with your SQL based employee database in windows. Linux is also ahead of windows in security. I’m thinking of things like mandatory access control. The buffer overflow protection stuff that many people think will break windows applications when introduced in Windows XP sp2 is already part of many Linux distros.
And hello you all, who just think that its just cool to say bad about windows, you know what windows is competing against *free* linux and still linux share is not increasing? Now stop writing such crap on the name of articles and go do some coding for linux to make it worth competing against windows.
It is called vender lock in. If you have your data in closed file formats that only can be read by applications available on windows you can’t change platform regardless if the alternative is free. You end up paying through your nose using windows but can’t do a thing to make it stop. Switching to Linux is out of the question, no matter how free it is.
Secondly, if we talk about Linux on the desktop, there have not really been any Linux desktop suitable for ordinary Joe Users for more than two years or so. This means that there are not so many applications available yet. But now when things like drag & drop and copy & paste follow the same standard in all new applications we can expect that number to increase. Just like the number of applications exploded on the server side once the Linux server platform was resonable feature complete. Today there is no problem finding server software for Linux, the same will be true for the Linux desktop in two to five years from now. If existing companies like Adobe, Macromedia, AutoDesk won’t develop them, the free software community will. As the Linux toolkits get better and better cross platform abilities, these free applications will eat the bottom line for companies only developing for windows, giving them incentive to broaden their user base.
RE: Ronald
It’s also light years ahead of all Linux distros
Yeah sure. Where is 64-bit support? Where is support for other architectures? How many processors does Windows support? How about NX? LiveCDs? Logging? The list goes on and on.
RE: Anonymous (IP: —.rb.vcr.centurytel.net)
Even when building your own, the price of Windows is still worth it. The amount of time I save though the ease of setup and configuration is well worth the money paid.
That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. I just don’t agree at all. You would have to pay me to use Windows again. I just can’t fathom paying any more money for such a limited product.
Linux software is very good (sometimes amazing), and simply not comparable to professional software for Win, that’s a fact: no professional CAD (Catia is still no released afaik), no 3d Modeler (blender is great but low end), no Professional Video Editing Suite, no serious Sound editing/Mixing whatever program… list gets long.
If Blender is too low end for you, why not use Maya. There are also quite deacent CAD programs available. The problem is that they not handle common windows formats such as AutoCAD well, especially if you have done a lot of add on scripting stuff. But in principle you are right, the biggest obstacle for Linux in overtaking the desktop is the lack of applications. However the list is getting shorter each day either because software is ported, or free software gets more feature rich and better at import commonly used file formats.
2) It’s highly inflexible. Need to install the OS remotely? Well, too bad! No soup for you!
This is utter BS. When I was a Lab assistant in school our admin had it so we could install NT remotely over the network, insert a floppy disk, boot and you would have windows and every application for a particular lab installed with no user interaction. This was in 1998.
Yes, you could. But in my experience Linux is better at handling inhomogenous hardware in such networked installs.
This is probably due to the fact that in Linux all the drivers there is comes with the distro, and if it isn’t in the distro you are probably out of luck. While you often can solve the problem in windows by downloading a driver from the vender of whatever hardware that needs the driver.
This is no problem if you installs machines one by one, but if you install a classroom of them there will always be some machine that need extra attention. In Linux it usually just works. Of course you could solve the problem in windows by having the same hardware everywheere.
Installing any OS without the right drivers is going to be a problem. Of course, when a 3-year-old Windows CD doesn’t include drivers for new hardware, that’s a mark against Windws, but when a 3-week-old Linux CD foesn’t include drivers, folks usually go on a “don’t blame Linux, blame the hardware companies” rant. Linux zealots can’t be wrong because they’re always right. Just ask ’em.
I think that you misunderstand what Linux users complain about. It is usually not that new drivers are not included. If you get new hardware, your OS might not support it out of the box. It’s annoying but thats a fact of life we can’t do much to change. I also think that most Linux usrers are quite willing to forgive Microsoft for not having drivers for new hardware in a three year old OS.
Instead the complaint is that hardware venders doesn’t cooperate in either developing drivers themselves or releasing specifications so that other people can develop them like they frequently do to Microsoft.
On the other hand, Microsoft have a well developed update system, why not use that to automagically update the drivers when installing old but still supported OSes. It may not work with drivers for devices that hold the install media, but it would be a good solution for all other devices.
Now I just have to add some information, since you obviously didn’t bother to look for it yourself:
> Where is 64-bit support?
Right here.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/
http://www.planetamd64.com/ has the drivers.
> Where is support for other architectures?
Windows XP supports x86, x86-64 (AMD64) and Intel Itanium/Itanium II. In former times, there have been more architectures though. You can find Windows 2000 for SPARC and Alpha processors if I’m not mistaken, NT4 runs on half a dozen other architectures.
> How many processors does Windows support?
You want the absolute maximum? For Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, it’s 128 processors (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/high…). Windows XP Pro is licensed for two processors and Home for one.
> How about NX?
Supported in all WinXP 64 Bit editions and with 32 Bit Service Pack 2.
> LiveCDs?
Microsoft doesn’t consider them useful for Home users, but WinXP can be run from CD without problems.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/sa/support/winpe.mspx
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
> Logging?
Logging what? There’s the Event Log (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323006), Website and FTP logging (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/iis/htm/core/iienblg…), extendable logging support for IIS (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsserv/2003/d…) and possibly lots more I don’t know about.
Architectures: you admit it yourself: Windows XP only runs on i386 and Itanium, all other ports are either discontinued or still beta. Linux runs on many more: Debian 3.0 supports at least i386, motorola 680×0, sparc, sparc64, alpha, PowerPC, arm, mips, HPPA and the Itanium, and there already exist distributions for amd-64, including commercial ones.
Processors: great, 128 processors. We have recently seen that Linux scales to 1024.
Pity you. Just admit it, you can’t keep up with people bashing you with windows this windows that.
>>The point of the article was that, if you don’t have Internet access and the CD-ROMs with the drivers on them, you’re better off with Linux.
That’s an inane point. The fact that current Linux CD’s contain drivers for hardware released since XP was originally released has nothing at all to do with either OS. It ought to be blatantly obvious that you can’t put drivers that don’t yet exist on a CD.
If you don’t have net access and you don’t have drivers for your hardware, you have a problem regardless of the OS you use.
1. I believe you didn’t get around to shouting about that “blank screen” for several posts. People can’t read what you don’t write.
2. Yes, Windows needs to be updated, because it has been a few years since it was released. Install a Linux released when XP came out and you will also find dozens of security patches and code updates need to be applied. In any case, how do you intend to update Linux, once installed? By magic?
3. Your opinons about the cost of XP are just that: opinion. It is, however, a fact that services can be disabled in XP. Your assertion to the contrary was wrong.
4. In general, one way to gain respect and credibility is to address facts rather than shout and slander other readers.
ROFL. I never said Windows runs on more architectures than Linux, I didn’t even compare it to Linux. I only gave Abraxas the information he was missing. Why would I care if my OS can be compiled for microcontroller XYZ? Same goes for processor count. If you give me a machine with more than 128 processors, I’ll gladly use Linux.
Hardware vendors do not exist to “cooperate”. I’m sure they see creating and supporting drivers as an unwelcome cost of business. If they don’t create drivers for Linux, it is because they make the business decision that the return won’t justify the expense.
As for releasing specs, if Linux developers could use those specs to create drivers, then Windows developers could create Windows drivers and competing hardware manufacturers would have insight into that product. Neither of these possibilities are attractive to vendors.
From enloop:
Your opinons about the cost of XP are just that: opinion. It is, however, a fact that services can be disabled in XP. Your assertion to the contrary was wrong.
In WinXP: Run > msconfig
Go to the services tab and select Disable All. Reboot. Now that RPC and Plug and Play are disabled, how do you expect the computer to run now? I doubt very efficiently.
It’s amazing what people will do (or spend) to keep from having to buy a cheap, $100 television set!
[quote]
In WinXP: Run > msconfig
Go to the services tab and select Disable All. Reboot. Now that RPC and Plug and Play are disabled, how do you expect the computer to run now? I doubt very efficiently.[/quote]
Uh, dude, that would be like doing ‘chmod -R a-x *’ on /etc/rc.d or init.d. I don’t think that would make Linux very happy either. The key is to turn of the services which you do not want; not all services are bad.
any articles here that point out that linux is better than windows always ends in a slagging match.
windows zealots shout long and loud that their os is far better than any other.. here are some reasons
1: Microsoft is a successful company with excellent business practices.
2: Linux is controlled by communists
3: No-one uses Linux
4: All software ever created was written for windows
5: My games don’t load in linux.. (well a bit true I suposse)
6: If linux is used more then linux is totally insecure compared to windows
7: I am a computer expert because I know how to use windows
8: Linux is crap because I tried it but was too dim to do anything useful.
9: I had my windows installed with my pc, why would I want to change ?
10: linux is a big step backwards because it is only the equivilant of windows 3.1/windows3.11/windows 95
11: windows is not expensive because all the software is available on kazaa
I could go on but whats the point ? Everyone here can add their own urban myths about Windows and Linux, but this will probably be modded down as most people around here have no sense of humour.
BTW – Abraxas, don’t let them grind ya down!
i dont think ive ever heard of anyone having that kind of painless migration to linux….
when it comes to the install process, he’s right. linux has far surpassed windows. in fact, theres half a dozen different os installers in the linux world that are better then the windows one.
after you install it, what then? we get to configuration. gui user level configuration is comparible to windows, but quite honestly gui system configuration sucks in linux. that means you have to set stuff up the real way, which is with bash, vim and the /etc folder, and that takes some learning.
when it comes to applications out of the box, windows has by far the worst number and lowest quality apps in any os ive used before. beyond that, some are actually dangerous to use. first thing i do after i install windows is install bsplayer, firefox, and winamp. but alot of people who use windows dont know this, and end up using some of the worst software available for the platform.
when it comes to software, i find on average software in linux is comparible to software in windows. im a programmer though, so i use some of the best software available in linux (compilers, IDEs, etc) which your average joe wouldnt. but honestly, if given a choice between an 800$ copy of photoshop, and a 0$ copy of the gimp, i would take the gimp any day as i dont need the stuff in photoshop that makes it an 800$ app. thats just an example, but can be applied to most things in linux. whats there right now is either great, or at the least “good enough”. the problem comes if you are a graphics professional who needs that 800$ copy of photoshop. theres a reason jimmac still uses adobe products….
when it comes to software installation, it can either be pure living hell that will send you into fits of weeping and violence to your pc, or it is the easiest thing in the world and you wonder how anyone could use something as out dated and clunky as software installers in windows. you all know what im talking about, the incredable apt. the problem with apt is again, its not on every distro, takes effort and knowledge to set up on most distros. its “native” distro debian is one of the most painful for newbs that i can think of, only thing for frightening then debian for someone with no linux experience is gentoo. whats the most popular installation form? rpm. for my opinions on rpm, refer to the beginning of this paragraph 😉
now when it comes to numbers of software available, i really dont care. linux has way more apps for way more things then ill ever need. i dont care if windows has 300,000 apps available, and linux has 100,000 apps available, cause im only gonna have 20 or so installed at the most at any given time. quantity of software is a non-issue on linux or mac, but alwas seems to come up in these kinds of discussions.
last but not least, the system itself. linux is painful to learn, especially comming from a windows background. everything is different. (some shells look similar, but thats where it ends) learning windows took me about two months. i would say i was a “power user” by then. linux? i would say six months of much more intense focus then windows to lose the noob title. even now i would consider myself at a moderate level of knowledge at the most, and ive been using it as my main operating system for the last year or so.(my windows partition exists solely for blizzard games 😉 ) and i am a very technologically minded person. i pick stuff like this up really fast, and find it easy to understand and assimilate. however, ive now become used to partitions not being degragged, operating systems not being installed every few weeks, not having to reboot unless i do a kernel update rather then rebooting every time an app crashes, not having to worry about virii or spyware, having truly mutable and flexible UIs available, etc. i would say even with my level of knowledge of both, that linux takes far longer to learn, and will be the source of many headaches and frustration, but the effort pays off.
we see real innovation from the free software world. try and name one thing in longhorn (not counting .net) that is not a copy of either linux or mac. DRM i guess, but thats not a feature its a shackle. feature for feature, youve got everything that will be in longhorn and more in tiger, which isnt gonna take another three years. im not saying linux is that much better, but you do see significantly more innovation and improvement in the linux world then the microsoft world, and that is inexcusable for a company with the size, money, and market share of microsoft.
linux is not the silver bullet, the magical panacea. you pay a price to use windows, you also pay a price to use linux. with windows, the price is monetary. with linux, its knowledge. to say one is better then the other is quite presumptious, it depends on the person.
i dont think ive ever heard of anyone having that kind of painless migration to linux….
when it comes to the install process, he’s right. linux has far surpassed windows. in fact, theres half a dozen different os installers in the linux world that are better then the windows one.
after you install it, what then? we get to configuration. gui user level configuration is comparible to windows, but quite honestly gui system configuration sucks in linux. that means you have to set stuff up the real way, which is with bash, vim and the /etc folder, and that takes some learning.
when it comes to applications out of the box, windows has by far the worst number and lowest quality apps in any os ive used before. beyond that, some are actually dangerous to use. first thing i do after i install windows is install bsplayer, firefox, and winamp. but alot of people who use windows dont know this, and end up using some of the worst software available for the platform.
when it comes to software, i find on average software in linux is comparible to software in windows. im a programmer though, so i use some of the best software available in linux (compilers, IDEs, etc) which your average joe wouldnt. but honestly, if given a choice between an 800$ copy of photoshop, and a 0$ copy of the gimp, i would take the gimp any day as i dont need the stuff in photoshop that makes it an 800$ app. thats just an example, but can be applied to most things in linux. whats there right now is either great, or at the least “good enough”. the problem comes if you are a graphics professional who needs that 800$ copy of photoshop. theres a reason jimmac still uses adobe products….
when it comes to software installation, it can either be pure living hell that will send you into fits of weeping and violence to your pc, or it is the easiest thing in the world and you wonder how anyone could use something as out dated and clunky as software installers in windows. you all know what im talking about, the incredable apt. the problem with apt is again, its not on every distro, takes effort and knowledge to set up on most distros. its “native” distro debian is one of the most painful for newbs that i can think of, only thing for frightening then debian for someone with no linux experience is gentoo. whats the most popular installation form? rpm. for my opinions on rpm, refer to the beginning of this paragraph 😉
now when it comes to numbers of software available, i really dont care. linux has way more apps for way more things then ill ever need. i dont care if windows has 300,000 apps available, and linux has 100,000 apps available, cause im only gonna have 20 or so installed at the most at any given time. quantity of software is a non-issue on linux or mac, but alwas seems to come up in these kinds of discussions.
last but not least, the system itself. linux is painful to learn, especially comming from a windows background. everything is different. (some shells look similar, but thats where it ends) learning windows took me about two months. i would say i was a “power user” by then. linux? i would say six months of much more intense focus then windows to lose the noob title. even now i would consider myself at a moderate level of knowledge at the most, and ive been using it as my main operating system for the last year or so.(my windows partition exists solely for blizzard games 😉 ) and i am a very technologically minded person. i pick stuff like this up really fast, and find it easy to understand and assimilate. however, ive now become used to partitions not being degragged, operating systems not being installed every few weeks, not having to reboot unless i do a kernel update rather then rebooting every time an app crashes, not having to worry about virii or spyware, having truly mutable and flexible UIs available, etc. i would say even with my level of knowledge of both, that linux takes far longer to learn, and will be the source of many headaches and frustration, but the effort pays off.
we see real innovation from the free software world. try and name one thing in longhorn (not counting .net) that is not a copy of either linux or mac. DRM i guess, but thats not a feature its a shackle. feature for feature, youve got everything that will be in longhorn and more in tiger, which isnt gonna take another three years. im not saying linux is that much better, but you do see significantly more innovation and improvement in the linux world then the microsoft world, and that is inexcusable for a company with the size, money, and market share of microsoft.
linux is not the silver bullet, the magical panacea. you pay a price to use windows, you also pay a price to use linux. with windows, the price is monetary. with linux, its knowledge. to say one is better then the other is quite presumptious, it depends on the person.
As you say, to support or not to support Linux is a busines decision. However, if you do make the decision not to support Linux, you can hardly complain if you get bad publicity for not supporting Linux users.
And again, not having drivers for hardware venders making that decision is not a fault in the Linux kernel. It is just a statement from these venders that they don’t want the business of the Linux community.
There is no problem finding hardware that works for Linux so I consider it a vender problem. When I buy hardware I always checks if it is Linux compatible if it isn’t I don’t buy it.
It doesn’t matter if I actually intend to use it with Linux, you never know what OS you will run in the future.
The people who whine is often windows users that try out Linux for the first time and are upset that their no name hardware doesn’t work, not the experienced Linux crowd.
Hi, I wrote the article. I haven’t been able to keep up on the comments, since I didn’t have an Internet connection.
Sorry to see all those misunderstandings, though.
I pointed out some differences between Windows and Linux (distributions and kernel). I know the article was a bit of a nisch, because I didn’t have an Internet connection at the time, I still don’t, but I know MOST (not all) has got one.
FYI, the machine I referred to in the article is 4 years old, but it is still a little unfair to compare a 4 year old system with a completely new one, I know. Still, that was how I started out, the rest of the article was about Linux and Windows in general (including XP).
Windows installation is not hard, but it is more work than with some Linux distros nowadays. Fact.
With Linux I can install all the software I like from the CD, and when i find too old, I just use the package manager for the distro in question to upgrade it. With Windows I have to uninstall it, or at least re-download and then re-install every application for itself, sorry that I didn’t spell it out for everyone to see.
Kosta: “All the best softare is for win”?!? Absolutely wrong, but I already stated that some of the best ones are for Windows. “…do not go anywhere withoug your CDs” Thank you very much, but don’t call on me the next time you’re moving.
Blixel: Yes, I have used computers before, I was trying to add some “litteraturesque spice” to the article. Thank you for reading it! =o)
Wolf: English is my third language, and FYI Linux community has come up with tons of great apps and ideas before Windows copied them. But you saw them first in Windows, because that is what you use.
Enough with the fingers! I said in the article that Windows is a good platform, and I stick to my story! However, I have the guts to check around and see what is going on in the rest of the OS-world, and I like what I see.
Could everyone now please pay attention to the message in the article and not to some arbitrary phrases in it?
Hope you all lead good lifes, mine is coming together fine! ;o)
-Jalle
Logging?
Logging what? There’s the Event Log (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323006), Website and FTP logging (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/iis/htm/core/iienblg…..), extendable logging support for IIS (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsserv/2003/d…..) and possibly lots more I don’t know about.
I think the complaint was about the configurability of the logging facilities. E.g. the possibility in Linux to send log informaiton to name pipes (good for debugging), or send it to a line printer to make it impossible for an intruder to remove logged traces of his doings.
The actual log messages are usually much more human readable in Linux and can be used by people that are not fully trained programmers. In windows it is often just some error number or memory address. Not much help if you don’t have very good knowledge of the inner workings of windows, and most people outside Microsoft don’t.
“The lesson here is, that a $90 tv is a better purchase than a $70 tv capture card. Grand lesson.”
See aubject. Nothing to debate, except that your fallacy is BS. Cheap != shit quality, expensive != good quality. Otherwise people wouldn’t have PC’s, they’d have Apple and SGI computers because these are far more expensive (and therefore, ”by definition”, better). It all depends on price/quality, budget, and wishes of the user. There are more TV and DVB cards which *are* better [and most likely more expensive], but is that what you really ”need”?
Althought, you could create a windows slipstream cd, maybe put office on there, firefox, thunderbird, gimp…wow look at all the software that is also free for windows.
Can I create a Windows LiveCD so I can try it out before I buy it? Or give it away to people so they can try it? Or help the third world get legally connected?
Proprietary, commercial OSes only make sense for limited, specific uses. For general use, they make as much sense as proprietary roads and highways – and they give an unfair advantage to the company that produces them.
That’s an inane point. The fact that current Linux CD’s contain drivers for hardware released since XP was originally released has nothing at all to do with either OS.
Once again, in your tireless crusade to defend Windows, you have COMPLETELY missed the point. I never mentioned hardware that came out after XP was released. Let’s go back in time to the very moment XP was released, shall we? Linux still has all its drivers ON THE CD, while with Windows you most likely need the vendor’s CD. So, if you don’t have those CDs and no Internet access, you’re still better off with Linux as drivers will be installed and configured out-of-the-box.
Gee, the time and energy you guys spend in defending an anti-competitive, abusive monopoly…makes one wonder what you get out of it.
As for releasing specs, if Linux developers could use those specs to create drivers, then Windows developers could create Windows drivers and competing hardware manufacturers would have insight into that product.
Ever heard of reverse-engineering? If a driver exists, you can learn a lot from how it communicates with the OS. Not releasing specs has more to do with the general climate of unjustified paranoia that prevails among corporations today. Case in point: USB specs are widely available, and yet it doesn’t prevent anyone from making money from USB devices…
The fact is that specs, while often available, are not essential, which is why there are Linux drivers for the vast majority of hardware today.
I think you’ve all missed the point.
– The question of linux vs windows should never be application support, since almost every linux application (evolution being the only major exception I can think of) has a windows port. I think that it’s more important that all of these applications are free, and that they were written for linux first.
– In terms of crappy apps being written for linux, and there being more of them for windows, I beg to differ. Sure, there are more games for windows, but that has far more to do with higher education, and it’s tilt towards Visual Studio et. al. that has more to do with it than anything. I’m not a developer, but as far as I can tell, the difference between linux and windows is whether or not you can get away with sloppy programming. With linux apps, it’s pretty much a dog-eat-dog thing: either your app works, and you become the dominant appp, or it’s brokern and other people use it. It’s that simple. Also, anybodty who says there are more apps for windows, and has been looking for shareware recently know, that just isn’t true. there a way more apps, usable ones, for linux. The majority of shareware for linux is written to complete functionality built-in to the core of every linux distrobution.
– As far as needing an admin, to install apps or hardware, it’s becoming equally difficult to do on windows. I currently server 10-20 people, on a regular basis (on windows) keeping their systems up and running smoothly. My linux clients needs my help less frequently that anyone using windows.
– As far as the linux learning curve, and the installation of both OS’s; linux is easier to install and maintain: _seriously_. Even gentoo makes it easy to download and install apps, and even gentoo could be installed by a newby: the instalation instructions are far more detailed than a windows install, far more explanation is given. Someone said that no one installs windows, and they’re right. but by the same token, this only demonstrates with greater relief that the problem with linux acceptance has far more to do with rebates and OEM’s than it has to do with real quality, and market. creating a linux image for a computer doesn’t take that much more time, for an OEM, but apparently only IBM hasn’t sold out whole hog to Microsoft. Clearly kickbacks are the only reason to stick with the proprietary product. What’s more, if you want ease of use, instalation, and package install/uninstall reliability, use debian, and synaptic.
– In addition, It seems that hardware compatibility IS an issue for windows, since even huge incremental updates don’t include new and improved drivers. Obviously the 4 year product update cycle isn’t putting Microsoft on top anymore.
What “tireless crusade to defend Windows”? I use Linux. Do you believe taking note of reality amounts to a “crusade” or labels anyone as using one OS rather than another?
This is simple:
1. No CD can contain drivers that have not been written yet.
2. Linux distributions include drivers because, with rare exception, hardware manufacturers don’t release Linux drivers. Therefore, if Linux distributions did not include these drivers, these Linux distributions would, in most cases, fail to install themselves.
3. If someone releases a Linux driver today, it will never be included on any Linux CD created before today. Users will be required to obtain it from another source. This is directly analagous to updating Windows — or any other OS — with drivers released after the OS was released.
4. None of these facts have anything at all to do with the merits, technical or otherwise, of Windows, Linux, or anything else.
See? That wasn’t hard.
Sure, I’ve heard of reverse engineering. Given a choice, though, I’d use a driver written by someone who wasn’t dependent on reverse engineering.
I don’t know and I don’t care if “paranoia” colors the corporate environment. I’m just pointing to the common sense notion that businesses (they don’t have to be big corporations) have an incentive to not release their hardware specs if they believe doing so may benefit their competition. Whether you, or I, believe that perception is correct, or whether you, or I, might believe they have a moral obligation to release the specs, has no impact on reality.
This is probably due to the fact that in Linux all the drivers there is comes with the distro, and if it isn’t in the distro you are probably out of luck. While you often can solve the problem in windows by downloading a driver from the vender of whatever hardware that needs the driver.
In case you had bothered to read the linked article and do some research, you can put all the drivers on the server
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=3773
Also in this Series
• Advanced Unattended Installs
• Automatically Install Display Drivers
• Unattended SCSI Adapter Driver Installations
Uno Engborg
It was in the linked article. And this article was written in 1998. And for your kind information there is more hardware that vendors support on windows than on linux. So drivers is not and issue.
This is no problem if you installs machines one by one, but if you install a classroom of them there will always be some machine that need extra attention. In Linux it usually just works. Of course you could solve the problem in windows by having the same hardware everywheere.
Trust having done both windows and linux remote installs, this is the case with PC hardware regardless of OS.
I think the original poster claimed it couldn’t be done. It can. Wether it is easier on linux is open to debate. BTW, commercial Unixes have been doing remote installs painlessly for over a decade, no boot disks or cdroms.
On SPARC systems at the open boot prompt type’
ok boot net
or
ok boot net:dhcp
and you are done.
3. If someone releases a Linux driver today, it will never be included on any Linux CD created before today. Users will be required to obtain it from another source. This is directly analagous to updating Windows — or any other OS — with drivers released after the OS was released.
The reason it won’t be included in linux os because there will be a huge war as to which license the damn driver uses. And by the time, that issue is resolved the will have been two new versions that hardware:)
Of course, the driver will be in the Z generation of a distro rather than the X generation which is when the hardware was current. So in the end you would have the same problem as Anonymous mentioned.
Sorry coudln’t resist.
The reason it won’t be included in linux os because there will be a huge war as to which license the damn driver uses
this should be
The reason it won’t be included in linux is because there will be a huge war as to which license the damn driver uses
The reason you got black and white TV, I’m guessing, is the bttv module had been loaded for NTSC mode instead of PAL. You should be able to fix that and get colour.
No CD can contain drivers that have not been written yet.
For the Nth time, that is besides the point.
Linux distributions include drivers because, with rare exception, hardware manufacturers don’t release Linux drivers.
Indeed. However, the point that a couple of us were trying to make is that this constraint has in fact turned into an advantage, i.e. you don’t need the hardware vendor’s CD when installing Linux, which means that hardware can be recognized and configured at installation time. Anyone who’s used a Knoppix CD can attest to the merits of this method.
Well, it took some time, but you finally validated my argument.
If someone releases a Linux driver today, it will never be included on any Linux CD created before today. Users will be required to obtain it from another source.
Or wait a couple of weeks until their distro is updated…
enloop
Given a choice, though, I’d use a driver written by someone who wasn’t dependent on reverse engineering.
Agreed. Fortunately, some large hardware vendors (such as NVIDIA and Epson) have started to release their own drivers. Of course, you have to download them or install them for CD-ROM, so it’s not as convenient as having them on the distro CD-ROM, but it’s a start!
Raptor
The reason it won’t be included in linux is because there will be a huge war as to which license the damn driver uses
Don’t be ridiculous. There won’t be a “war” of any kind – if it’s not a free license (i.e. GPL or BSD), then it won’t be included, simply because then the distro wouldn’t be redistributable. Thus proprietary, closed-source, non-redistributable drivers must be obtained from the hardware vendor (or licensed redistributors) only.
And in the case you were insinuating that releasing it under the BSDL would someone spark a holy war, then I’m sorry to say that you’re either grossly misinformed or just full of it: there are numerous programs and apps on a Linux distro CD that are licensed under other licences than the GPL (BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.). Linux users don’t care about which license is used, as long as the licenses are compatible with the GPL. It’s only anti-GPL zealots that are obsessed with licensing wars, because of their own personal agendas.
It’s only anti-GPL zealots that are obsessed with licensing wars, because of their own personal agendas.
Are they, Now?? Didn’t you see the smiley at the end of the sentence?
Who is uptight now????
Regardless, licensing will prevent it from entering a distro was my point.
Quite intresting, however, I have used the redmond developments since it was well a black screen with a cursor. To be totally honest, I fail to see where Windows even comes close to the linux platform.
To be honest, if you spend thousands a day on either platform, you have some pretty dum users, who do some pretty dum things anyway, so we won’t worry about your developers.
I have done technical support across three platforms, and no matter how you spoon feed it, they are all easy for a user to botch up and its also just as easy to fix in most cases. I am currently providing support for a GNU/Linux distribution, and to be honest, I havn’t come across a user who couldn’t open a terminal and follow directions, which again leads us back to the “dum” users in user land.
Since the windows innovation people have decided it is no longer important to read any dialoge or do any research on nearly anything at all. It makes the interrnet and O/S development fairly useless. Regardless of the O/S you use, it is up to the end user to be educated enough to understand what dialoges mean and when to click yes and when to click no.
IMHO, I have to totally agree with this article. Software is by no means cheap. Windows provides a shell of an O/S, and the user has to foot the cost for anything else. Win XP is a revolution in development, but only one step in the right direction for M$ development. M$ Often fails to support old,exsisting, and new hardware out of the box, becuase they believe that it is the OEM responsibility to make the hardware communicate with the kernel on a hardware level. Linux standard often include support for all but the newest hardware out of the box, and while it may not be blistering 3d support, it is high resolution support nontheless. If anyone can claim that they have never had a problem with a device in windows, they are unequaled liars. While 80% of user do not install M$ 100% of user have to reinstall M$ at some point in time, other wise they get to pay the local shop a few hundred dollars.
Windows, does not contain all of the best software. I have found many applications that are written cross platform, of far better quality then windows applications. In fact, some of the biggest corprate software is ported from linux to windows. I.E Maya 3d rendering software is actually built on the linux platform and ported to windows. As are other features and applications. Windows has a user front end that makes it easy at best to navigate, however, if user fails to read anything, one sees the same problems that you would see on any platform.
Lastly, anyone, who can regergitate FUD, I.E. “linux rips of unix ad windows” have absolutely no clue as to the actual underlying of any of the 3 O/Ss. Unix and Linux are not the same, they are written in different languages, and at best the concept is the same. However windows also follows the same concept. To make instant claims that linux some how rips windows off, is bbeyond unintelligent, and simply out of the scope of even a development stand point.
As for linux development, Im no zealot, I just like to use it, I find it works better. The computer im using hasn’t been reset or had a virus in since I installed linux which is oh a year ago now. As for useless, programs on a linux distribution, I’d have to say that most ditributions come with a little excess, but not as much as someone here would like to claim. If you need a 48″ monitor to see your kmenu you must honestly have some shitty hardware. I have over 1500 applications installed and my menu take less then a quater of my 15″ monitor. *shrugs*
Oh well, its all opinion and experience I suppose. My final answer would be linux at this point. Its what I Like and its what works. I out perform every computer on the network that has windows, and I have lower specs then the other boxes on the network I work on.
It’s just beyond me though that user would take the skewed standard that M$ pushes. I mean Do you all really want your next O/S to have a minimum memory (ram) requirement of 1.5 gb just to start the installer, if you do, look at longhorn, and enjoy the 400$ you have to pay for you ram, I know Ill be just fine with my 256mb
Are they, Now?? Didn’t you see the smiley at the end of the sentence?
A smiley doesn’t make an inaccurate statement true.
Who is uptight now????
No one said anything about being uptight. Your statement implied some religious struggle preventing drivers from being included into a distribution, while in fact it’s very practical considerations that are involved.
Regardless, licensing will prevent it from entering a distro was my point.
Unless the drivers are released as BSD, GPL or any other free license, yes. Your conclusion was correct, but not your analysis.
Let me point out one very important fact that everyone thus far has overlooked.
Microsoft is good for the economy.
Before you flame me, look at the facts. How many antivirus firms are getting rich? How many MCSE’s are busy running around chasing down viruses and script kiddies every day? How many people, like myself, charge outrageous hourly rates to do onsite repairs and reinstallations of XP when it hoses itself? Quite a few is the answer to every question. So many, in fact, that most of the earlier posts, from people in the IT industry that claim Windows is flawless, are simply people trying to insure their job security.
If a magical troll appeared and forced everyone to install one of the Top 3 Linux distributions, where would all these paper MCSE’s work? They couldn’t adjust in time to save their necks. Not only that, but a small handful of experienced Linux admins can take the place of a whole Lakers basketball team sized Windows admin group. Save money? Most definitely. Even if you’re paying your Linux admins double the salary of the Windows guys, you’re still saving. On things like hardware costs, uptime, overtime pay for unscheduled (surprise) maintenance, seat licenses, you name it. Microsoft is losing the ROI war against Linux.
About the only thing Windows seems to be good for anymore is introducing you to frustration, or letting you play the latest shootin’ someone in the face games. I’m a fan of these games occasionally, and I’ll admit, at times I dual boot into XP. Linux has it’s fair share of games (thanks id) and will continue to for some time. For my own personal uses, it’s little more than Wintendo.
Well, that’s about all I have to say about this whole argument. Linux has it’s place (on my commercial webservers and my desktop) and Windows has it’s place (on my list of things that pay me ungodly sums to fix). Long live Microsoft, may the newest version be filled with more bugs and spyware exploitation holes than ever. My bank thanks you, and I thank you.
“Good for the economy” is relative. I mean, I could go out and break all the windows of parked cars on my street and claim it will be good for the economy, since garages will sell more windshields. However, that doesn’t create any new wealth, but rather simply shuffles the money around. There’s no plus-value in this, if you will.
Linux, on the other hand, allows to do more at a lesser cost, therefore there is a definite positive effect on the economy.
I know you were being ironic, but it had to be said.
I’m not supporting your argument. I’m pointing out the idiocy of attacking an OS because its installation CD does not contain drivers written after the CD was pressed.
I like using Linux, but the childish comments of most of the pro-Linux comments expressed on this site are enough to make me wash my hands of it.
I’m not supporting your argument. I’m pointing out the idiocy of attacking an OS because its installation CD does not contain drivers written after the CD was pressed.
And I’m repeating that this isn’t the point. The point is not about drivers written after a CD is pressed. The point is having drivers as part of the kernel, so you don’t need additional CDs. So everything’s installed right away. So you can make Live CDs…
Please read the preceding paragraph over a couple of times. I’m tired of repeating myself. Drivers distributed with kernel == good.
I like using Linux, but the childish comments of most of the pro-Linux comments expressed on this site are enough to make me wash my hands of it.
You have some nerves calling other childish when you don’t even listen to what they say. Or when comments read on an Internet board make you reconsider your computing habits. I must have read thousands of idiotic pro-MS comments over the years, that still won’t prevent me from occasionally using Windows (office computing notwithstanding).
Childish, eh? Look in the mirror, buddy.
Half of the things you mention are still in beta. It’s already supported by Linux.
Nah, I just don’t have as much time on my hands as some people on here seem to.
I guess no one can understand a simple fact in this whole thread. The point is not whether or not XP is better than Linux. I never even made any contentions that it was, unless you consider my little tirade about 64-bit, smp, etc, but that was just a response to someone’s ill-informed opinion that Windows is “light years” ahead of Linux (NASA doesn’t seem to thinks so, neither does the NSA). The simple fact that I pointed out was that it can be difficult to install XP under certain circumstances. Is it MS’s fault. No, not always. That doesn’t take away from the fact that it can be difficult. The MS users in this thread are the same ones that bash Linux for not having drivers to hardware that does not have open specs, yet they defend not having drivers on the CDs. If MS really wanted to they could release updated CDs with all the newest drivers in a much more timely fashion. Still I don’t hold it against them but it doesn’t make the problem go away. The MS users have turned this into a Linux vs Windows argument when I never intended it to be. They seem to be looking for fights to pick. Maybe you all can finally understand I’m not trying to bash your beloved OS. I’m just pointing out a misconception that Windows is always cake to install. It isn’t. It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is, or whether or not Linux does it any better. What matters is that Windows can be more difficult to install on certain machines than Linux is with the latest install CDs.