Why not Linux

Trojan

Linux makes me think. Windows does not.*

Don't make your users think - get out of the way.

* there are lots of exceptions, but in general this holds true.

Worztron

GNU/Linux aka Linux is awesome.

excollier

Linux is a little like Marmite.....you can't force people to like it.
Enjoy it for what it is and let Windows lovers do their own thing too.

Worztron

excollier wrote: »

Linux is a little like Marmite.....you can't force people to like it.
Enjoy it for what it is and let Windows lovers do their own thing too.

I never mentioned forcing anyone. All I ask is people give it a try with an open mind. Many people use Linux on non-PC devices and don't even realise it.

excollier

Indeed.

PropJoe10

My main use for Linux is to make use of old machines that otherwise would be destined for the rubbish dump. I still use Windows on my main rigs but find Linux brilliant on some older machines I have. Everything has its place.

Xennon

For the day to day user it shouldnt matter whats under the bonnet, Windows Linux BSDs , at the end of the day they just want their GUI to work. They also want the GUI to be familiar so that they dont have to go looking for their version of Word etc. Interesting concept a GUI standards......

If you want to know why the Windows Desktop is still popular you might want to check out how they integrate themselves into Education, schools get tons of discounted stuff from MS (Teachers get rewarded for MS usage). MS push themselves massively in colleges aswell so that the teachers who graduate only know about MS kit. Linux is seen as for geeks and servers.

The MS Office suite is far more polished than Apaches or Libre Office is, and to be fair its one thing that MS have always done well.

PrzemoF

Xennon wrote: »

[..]The MS Office suite is far more polished than Apaches or Libre Office is, and to be fair its one thing that MS have always done well.

<rant>
:eek: Yep, especially if you want to i.e. add a cell content in excel to header. Or when an excel tick box stopped to work without any reason (after working for last 2 years, no upgrades done). Or if you try to insert image/pdf in a word document and it breaks formatting going back 13 pages. Or when font rendering on the screen looks right, but on the printout is bigger by 20% breaking formatting. Or when a simple VBA call causes hard crash of excel. Or when copy & paste tells you "That command cannot be used on multiple selections". Or when automatic row height stops working after a manual change and there is no way back without VBA... I can keep going for a while - I just finished a non-trivial excel spreadsheet with VBA "logic". Please don't say that MS Office is far more polished than LibreOffice.
</rant>

excollier

PrzemoF wrote: »

<rant>
:eek: Yep, especially if you want to i.e. add a cell content in excel to header. Or when an excel tick box stopped to work without any reason (after working for last 2 years, no upgrades done). Or if you try to insert image/pdf in a word document and it breaks formatting going back 13 pages. Or when font rendering on the screen looks right, but on the printout is bigger by 20% breaking formatting. Or when a simple VBA call causes hard crash of excel. Or when copy & paste tells you "That command cannot be used on multiple selections". Or when automatic row height stops working after a manual change and there is no way back without VBA... I can keep going for a while - I just finished a non-trivial excel spreadsheet with VBA "logic". Please don't say that MS Office is far more polished than LibreOffice.
</rant>

But surely you get all this splendid functionality for only a few hundred Euros........bargain.
Oh....you also get intentional lack of compatibility with any other office productivity suite. What more could you hope for??
Polish the turd, eh?

On another tangent, take a look at this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihxJjqvOaOo

Worztron

excollier wrote: »

But surely you get all this splendid functionality for only a few hundred Euros........bargain.
Oh....you also get intentional lack of compatibility with any other office productivity suite. What more could you hope for??
Polish the turd, eh?

On another tangent, take a look at this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihxJjqvOaOo

LibreOffice/OpenOffice does all that I need in an office suite.

Pretty much all groups have idiots. The guy in that video is letting them win unfortunately. He also generalised with lines like "the Linux community" instead of specifying with the "the trolls of the Linux community".

Having dealt with many Linux forums over the years - I have come across just a few trolls. The people are very friendly and helpful.

What I love about GNU/Linux is that it is community driven rather than merely corporate driven. And also of course it is largely FOSS (Free and open-source software) instead of proprietary.

excollier

Try opening a .odt document in MS Office....hence MS Office users see anything produced on open source as 'faulty'. It seems to be a deliberate (and understandable) ploy by MS.

I wish there was a "smilie" for tongue in cheek.

Worztron

excollier wrote: »

Try opening a .odt document in MS Office....hence MS Office users see anything produced on open source as 'faulty'. It seems to be a deliberate (and understandable) ploy by MS.

I wish there was a "smilie" for tongue in cheek.

This comes to mind.

Warning of 21st century digital dark age: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/warning-of-21st-century-digital-dark-age-1.2104439

Tom Dunne

Xennon wrote: »

MS push themselves massively in colleges aswell so that the teachers who graduate only know about MS kit.

All big-name IT companies, such as Cisco, Oracle, SAP, etc. do exactly the same. It's not just Microsoft who have agreements with colleges/universities.

PrzemoF

OSI wrote: »

[..]
Office Open XML. Been standard on office for a while and is supported by every other viable office suite.

You should read how internal MS "standard" has been pushed through(*) ISO. It's a very interesting story. It has been pushed (*) through 2 years after ODF has been approved if my memory serves me right.

"OpenXML was designed from the start to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are encoded in binary formats defined by Microsoft Corporation. The standardization process consisted of mirroring in XML the capabilities required to represent the existing corpus, extending them, providing detailed documentation, and enabling interoperability"

Much more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML

(*) pushed through explanation:

"If ISO were to give OOXML with its 6546 pages the same level of review that other standards have seen, it would take 18 years (6576 days for 6546 pages) to achieve comparable levels of review to the existing ODF standard (871 days for 867 pages) which achieves the same purpose and is thus a good comparison. Considering that OOXML has only received about 5.5% of the review that comparable standards have undergone, reports about inconsistencies, contradictions and missing information are hardly surprising"

Another side of the same story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_response/

Worztron

Tom Dunne wrote: »

All big-name IT companies, such as Cisco, Oracle, SAP, etc. do exactly the same. It's not just Microsoft who have agreements with colleges/universities.

Unfortunately it's one monopoly after another.

CiniO

bpb101 wrote: »

This is just something i cant understand. Why do people not use linux?
yes there no call of duty and other mainstream software but that because of market share.
People who use windows and mac. what wrong with linux that you wont use it.

These days there is very little in linux(depending on the distro) that requires a lot of knowledge about linux or IT
is it just the hassle of formating your new dell or hp.

Give your reason below and ill poll it

While thread is 3 years old, I'll still answer OP's original question.

I don't use linux, because there's hardly any point now - using Windows is easier and simpler.

And to put some background - I started using linux straight once I discovered it. That was 1998. I started with Red Hat 5.0. Then quickly moved to Slackware, and then Genoo for years.
At those times, Windows was really crap. Win 98 was such unstable system that you needed to have iron patience to withstand working with it. I didn't. It hanged on me all the time and doing anything was a nightmare.
Linux was different. Everything was simple, stable and logical. Once properly configured, system could work for years without reboot and hang down.

Yes - there were disadvantages. Software only working in windows - I had to find substitutes. Websites not working. And other silly stuff. But that was nothing comparing to dealing with Windows at those times.

However times have changed, and to be honest over last 5 years, I haven't seen much progress in Linux systems. Yes - they are still stable and great, but unfortunately Microsoft finally reached a goal with Windows 7 making is stable and efficient. Windows 8 and 8.1 is even better - fast, stable and efficient. And it works out of the box. To make my linux work as good as Win 8.1 it would require a good bit of work for me. I'm just too lazy now and don't really see the point.
So I'm back to Windows for the last few years after using Linux as main system for about 15 years.

PrzemoF

CiniO wrote: »

[..]
However times have changed, and to be honest over last 5 years, I haven't seen much progress in Linux systems. Yes - they are still stable and great, but unfortunately Microsoft finally reached a goal with Windows 7 making is stable and efficient. Windows 8 and 8.1 is even better - fast, stable and efficient.[..].

This is the most bizzare statement about linux/windows I've ever seen! Are you from K-Pax by any chance? :eek:

Johnboy1951

CiniO wrote: »

...

However times have changed, and to be honest over last 5 years, I haven't seen much progress in Linux systems. Yes - they are still stable and great, but unfortunately Microsoft finally reached a goal with Windows 7 making is stable and efficient. Windows 8 and 8.1 is even better - fast, stable and efficient. And it works out of the box. To make my linux work as good as Win 8.1 it would require a good bit of work for me. I'm just too lazy now and don't really see the point.
So I'm back to Windows for the last few years after using Linux as main system for about 15 years.

Why would you consider it unfortunate that, in your opinion, MS has finally got their OS sufficiently good that it is working properly for those who pay for it?

syklops

To make my linux work as good as Win 8.1 it would require a good bit of work for me.

To be honest, times have changed and Linux has improved greatly in recent years. A few years ago, reinstalling linux on my laptop and getting everything back the way I wanted it would take a day, now it takes a couple of hours max. Wireless works out of the box. Sound works out of the box, ACPI works out of the box. Even more advanced graphics hardware can be installed quickly, usually by simply installing a couple of packages. Flash is installed with a single command.

I installed Fedora on my work laptop about 3 weeks ago. From blank hard drive to fully working system, was maybe 2 hours including installing numerous tools like metasploit, virtual box etc.

excollier

syklops wrote: »

To be honest, times have changed and Linux has improved greatly in recent years. A few years ago, reinstalling linux on my laptop and getting everything back the way I wanted it would take a day, now it takes a couple of hours max. Wireless works out of the box. Sound works out of the box, ACPI works out of the box. Even more advanced graphics hardware can be installed quickly, usually by simply installing a couple of packages. Flash is installed with a single command.

I installed Fedora on my work laptop about 3 weeks ago. From blank hard drive to fully working system, was maybe 2 hours including installing numerous tools like metasploit, virtual box etc.

Try that with Windows.....

Seifer

excollier wrote: »

Try that with Windows.....

And you would achieve the same result.

Had Ubuntu on my laptop and it was perfect for browsing and watching films but then it died. Desktop is for gaming so it's gotta be Windows; not that I have any issues with Windows.

excollier

^^ with all the softwares (Office, Adobe reader & Flash, 7zip,anti-virus) and drivers installed? System updated?

Seifer

excollier wrote: »

^^ with all the softwares (Office, Adobe reader, 7zip,anti-virus) installed? System updated?

Does MS Office some standard on Linux? If you want it then you have to install it on both systems. Chrome functions as my pdf viewer. Prefer Winrar but yep that takes 2 minutes. MS essentials anti-virus, yep. You realise Linux is going to pull system updates after an install too?

All comfortably done in two hours as above. Wireless works out of the box too.

Ha, you edited to add drivers. Everything standard has been plug and play for years. I've had more drivers issues on Ubuntu than I ever had on Windows.

excollier

Well when I mentioned Offfice, and adobe etc. most Linux distros come with these (Libre office, pdf readers, flash, drivers, zip tools) as standard, included in the install, without having to search for them.
What about the endless re-boots when bringing a Windows system fully up to date? Most Linux distros only need to pull in one set of updates after install and rarely, if ever, need a reboot at all.
I have yet to have a driver problem with Linux, on several different computers. Maybe I have been luckier than most.

PrzemoF

@Seifer
You know that installing something on linux takes one command if you know what you want to install? And you can do a whole set of favourite software if you wish in one go. On top of that you can script it and force update. Try to do that with multiple programs on windows (i.e install and later update adobe reader, antivirus, some office package and so on)

P.S. is there a way of copying ~100 files of one type from ~100 nested directiories to one directory under windows?
I use fedora in virtualbox and all it takes is:
find . -iname '*.dwg' | xargs -I {} cp "{}" DWG/
I'd probably spend half an hour doing it manually with windows

Seifer

excollier wrote: »

Well when I mentioned Offfice, and adobe etc. most Linux distros come with these (Libre office, pdf readers, flash, drivers, zip tools) as standard, included in the install, without having to search for them.
What about the endless re-boots when bringing a Windows system fully up to date? Most Linux distros only need to pull in one set of updates after install and rarely, if ever, need a reboot at all.
I have yet to have a driver problem with Linux, on several different computers. Maybe I have been luckier than most.

Well I'm just informing you that you can get a machine from blank to ready to go Windows install in two hours or less.

PrzemoF wrote: »

@Seifer
You know that installing something on linux takes one command if you know what you want to install? And you can do a whole set of favourite software if you wish in one go. On top of that you can script it and force update. Try to do that with multiple programs on windows (i.e install and later update adobe reader, antivirus, some office package and so on)

Not really sure if you were talking to me but here's a handy tool for installing everything in one go if you wish: https://ninite.com/
Now you're going to say but it comes standard as part of Linux so I'll say it takes 5 seconds to open a browser and you get a nice useful GUI to use.

I'm not getting into the Windows vs. Linux debate; just calling out a falsehood that was being implied by someone it sounds like hasn't installed Windows in awhile.

syklops

excollier wrote: »

Try that with Windows.

I think when you said "Try that with Windows", to many on this thread it sounded like you were on the Pro windows track of Cinio.

excollier

Pity we couldn't organise a contest to install Windows vs Linux Distro to an Identical blank computer with all softwares ( an equivalent set, relevant to the OS) and drivers and fully updated - just to see the truth of the matter. I could be a tie, who knows? Maybe even Windows might win.

syklops

excollier wrote: »

Pity we couldn't organise a contest to install Windows vs Linux Distro to an Identical blank computer with all softwares ( an equivalent set, relevant to the OS) and drivers and fully updated - just to see the truth of the matter. I could be a tie, who knows? Maybe even Windows might win.

I for one couldnt care less.

Xennon

excollier wrote: »

Pity we couldn't organise a contest to install Windows vs Linux Distro to an Identical blank computer with all softwares ( an equivalent set, relevant to the OS) and drivers and fully updated - just to see the truth of the matter. I could be a tie, who knows? Maybe even Windows might win.

My experience is install Mint, about an hour, maybe 2 and you have a usable box..Windows....seems to take a day by the time you have everything on it that you want, and have it updated.