Ditch Windows for Linux?

desaparecidos

croo wrote: »

Eh..
* Read the source code,
* give a copy to a friend,
* put it on a machine other than the one I bought it on [most windows versions are OEM and so can only be run on the hardware it was purchased with],
* experiment with lots of copies in Virtual Machines without needing to spend a fortune on licenses,
That's before I get to the everyday things like be confident I can browse securely online.

*Read the source code?????? buhahahahhahaha!!!
*Who needs friends?
*Vast majority of people won't need to do this
*Again, vast majority have no need for this. The types that do might have an MSDN account or just take advantage of the 30 day trial period to do experimenting or just pirate a copy.

desaparecidos

d'Oracle wrote:

Apart from playing games and Windows specific stuff.....what?

NoDrama wrote:

Provide some examples please?

Come on, that's just a silly question.

D1stant

desaparecidos wrote: »

Funny thread, starts off looking like the answer to the title is, "yes, ditch Windows for Linux" but then cold hard evidence shows us Linux just isn't up to it. If you have to waste time reading blogs and forums and using the command prompt to get a basic installation fully working then something is wrong.

What can you do on Linux that you can't do on Windows? Nothing.

What can you do on Windows that you can't do on Linux? A hell of a lot, and easier.

If I didn't put Linux on the machine I would have had to buy a new one. So its really well justified in my case. I've always suspected some kind of conspiracy between Intel and Micorsoft whereby Intel release a faster chip that is need to run the next fat OS, but user experience is a contant

If I compare Window 3.1 running on a 386 processor (I'm old!) with Vista running on Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz × 2... I don't see any difference from a user point of view. Takes the same time to boot, same time to copy files, open docs etc

With this install of Mint, the machine boots and loads browser and IM in 40 seconds

If your even a little bit technical, Linux wins.

mathperson

Why are using vista for your comparison. Everyone, microsoft included, knows vista was crap and had performance issues. Windows 7 requires less resources than vista and has none if the performance issues. But there is a disadvantage in your situation as you would have to buy it new.

mathperson

croo wrote: »

desaparecidos wrote: »

What can you do on Linux that you can't do on Windows? Nothing.

Eh..
* Read the source code,
* give a copy to a friend,
* put it on a machine other than the one I bought it on [most windows versions are OEM and so can only be run on the hardware it was purchased with],
* experiment with lots of copies in Virtual Machines without needing to spend a fortune on licenses,
That's before I get to the everyday things like be confident I can browse securely online.

You couldnt name one thing that actually involves using the os.

Heres things that you get with windows, stuff that actually matters -
- Ability to run massive range of applications, applications that are industry standard with nothing even close to comparable in the open source world.
- Massive amount of open source software, almost all the best open source software for linux is also on windows.
- By far the best hardware support. No issues with getting hardware to work as the drivers are written specifically for windows by the companies that make the hardware.
- Ability to run all games.

Linux cant compete with windows on desktops/laptops, however it is excellent on phones where the issues i mentioned above arent a factor. In fact i think linux will win out in the phone os battle and it has a big future there. And this will have follow on effects that lead to some big improvements down the line for desktop linux. So linux for phones and maybe down the line it can compete with windows on the desktop but in todays world windows is by far the best desktop os.

croo

mathperson wrote: »

You couldnt name one thing that actually involves using the os.

Heres things that you get with windows, stuff that actually matters -
- Ability to run massive range of applications, applications that are industry standard with nothing even close to comparable in the open source world.
- Massive amount of open source software, almost all the best open source software for linux is also on windows.
- By far the best hardware support. No issues with getting hardware to work as the drivers are written specifically for windows by the companies that make the hardware.
- Ability to run all games.

Linux cant compete with windows on desktops/laptops, however it is excellent on phones where the issues i mentioned above arent a factor. In fact i think linux will win out in the phone os battle and it has a big future there. And this will have follow on effects that lead to some big improvements down the line for desktop linux. So linux for phones and maybe down the line it can compete with windows on the desktop but in todays world windows is by far the best desktop os.

All OS do things like support hardware & run software, I was looking for the difference.
And those are things that Windows cannot do!

How you can list "Massive amount of open source software" as a benefit is beyond me.

I've never had issues with hardware on linux. I have been asked, on numerous occaisions, to help friends & relatives install windows and it is always a nightmare. I just did two laptops a couple of months ago. It took me about two days for each - had I not had ubuntu on a USB key I would not have been able to actually start the machines (windows had crashed & hung on restart) and look at what hardware was installed.
Windows is easy to install when you get the machine pre-installed.

I have plenty of games that won't run on windows. They were written for ataris & playstations but this is the type of BS you read in linux forums. Why won't my game [designed for windows] run under linux? I don't play much games anymore, if I did I think I'd just get a console like most other kids.

What is this massive range of industry applications that nothing can touch?
The only thing that comes to mind is Office but then a huge amount of money from people like you was spent buying its standards a few years back. In my experience, most people know next to nothing about how to use the MS office apps most could use open/libre office and be perfectly happy. Is MS office ubiquitous? Yes, but MS spent massive amounts of their monoply money making it so. That doesn't make it more productive.

Johnboy1951

I find it sorrowful that our educational institutions insist in some cases that particular proprietary software is used or that projects are submitted in some proprietary format, when there are alternative software applications & open standards available.

Within the last week I had occasion to install Win 7 and Adobe Premiere on a PC so that a student of multimedia could complete a project. The less said about the origin of those the better.

The student was capable of completing the project in full without using those pieces of software.
But the institution/lecturer insisted that no other means of generating the result was acceptable.

When I asked about this, I was told it is common practice.

To my way of looking at it, this is not education.
This is a means of promoting particular proprietary software, to the exclusion of alternative proprietary software or open source software.

It is long past the time when our educational establishments took a good look at what they are doing and why.

Seems to me it has nothing at all to do with education ....

BTW: It was interesting to note that open source software, running on Linux, was used to prepare the source of the project before it could be used in the project.

D1stant

mathperson wrote: »

Why are using vista for your comparison. Everyone, microsoft included, knows vista was crap and had performance issues. Windows 7 requires less resources than vista and has none if the performance issues. But there is a disadvantage in your situation as you would have to buy it new.

Well Vista is what the machine was loaded with, but the same goes for every windows release I have ever used from windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, NT, 2000, etc

If Vista was crap why was it released? Because MSFT invented the upgrade game and there are enough lemmings that blindingly upgrade, are disappointed but believe that the next release will be better

This has been going on for 20 years!

Cork24

I dont like the new Ubuntu

mathperson

D1stant wrote: »

Well Vista is what the machine was loaded with, but the same goes for every windows release I have ever used from windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, NT, 2000, etc

If Vista was crap why was it released? Because MSFT invented the upgrade game and there are enough lemmings that blindingly upgrade, are disappointed but believe that the next release will be better

This has been going on for 20 years!

What are you talking going about...every single windows release except Vista and ME were big improvements over the previous version. It is common knowledge that microsoft had a dud on their hands with Vista but did an excellent job on Windows 7.

mathperson

croo wrote: »

All OS do things like support hardware & run software, I was looking for the difference.
And those are things that Windows cannot do!

How you can list "Massive amount of open source software" as a benefit is beyond me.

I've never had issues with hardware on linux. I have been asked, on numerous occaisions, to help friends & relatives install windows and it is always a nightmare. I just did two laptops a couple of months ago. It took me about two days for each - had I not had ubuntu on a USB key I would not have been able to actually start the machines (windows had crashed & hung on restart) and look at what hardware was installed.
Windows is easy to install when you get the machine pre-installed.

The issues of crashing and hanging and slowdown over time with Vista and XP have ceased to exist with Windows 7. And it is trivial to install.

I have plenty of games that won't run on windows. They were written for ataris & playstations but this is the type of BS you read in linux forums. Why won't my game [designed for windows] run under linux? I don't play much games anymore, if I did I think I'd just get a console like most other kids.

Why are you bringing different platforms in to it? Linux and Windows both operate on the PC platform. Every game written for the PC platform works on windows. How many work on linux?

What is this massive range of industry applications that nothing can touch?
The only thing that comes to mind is Office but then a huge amount of money from people like you was spent buying its standards a few years back. In my experience, most people know next to nothing about how to use the MS office apps most could use open/libre office and be perfectly happy. Is MS office ubiquitous? Yes, but MS spent massive amounts of their monoply money making it so. That doesn't make it more productive.

What applications? Photoshop, Illustrator, music production and editing applications such as Pro Tools/Cubase, video editing applications like Premiere and After Effects, all the best development tools such as Visual Studio/Expression Blend/etc.., SQL Server, all the applications written by hardware manufacturers for interfacing with their products (eg Samsung Kies for Samsung smarthphones), all game engines and game creation tools, then there are tons and tons of industry specific products that are made for the Windows platform precisely because it is the industry standard OS... And there are Windows versions of just about all the main open source applications on Linux. So with Linux you are limited to a very small subset of applications. Why would anyone want to limit themselves to a subset of the available software I will never understand.

One thing I cant understand with Linux is why there is no decent assembly IDE in this day and age. For an OS that is supposed to be more technical and is often studied in computer science I cant see why one hasnt been written yet. There is a program called Nemiver but I couldnt get that to work after trying it on a few different installs of Ubuntu and Mint on different pcs. So I went through an entire book on assembly using gdb which was painful. And then once I finished that and started doing some shellcoding I went back to Windows and was able to use Visual Studio for assembly - panels for viewing stack, registers, multiple areas of memory, threads....etc...Someone needs to write something like this for Linux as it is not right in this age to have to use the terminal for this stuff.

D1stant

mathperson wrote: »

What are you talking going about...every single windows release except Vista and ME were big improvements over the previous version. It is common knowledge that microsoft had a dud on their hands with Vista but did an excellent job on Windows 7.

QED

p.s. Do you work for MSFT?

d'Oracle

desaparecidos wrote: »

Come on, that's just a silly question.

Just trolling then?

PrzemoF

Yes, folks you're right: ms applications are unreal. I found out sometime ago that outlook has an option to make attached image look like it was projected in 3D on a metallic surface. This is a must-have for every single mailing application and since the discovery I no longer can live without it.

Most of the apps under windows try to do everything for a simple reason: interaction between 2 applications created by 2 different companies is non-existent. The ammo in the fight are closed proprietry file formats and getting less for more. Example: old adobe software allowed me to batch print pdfs form command line. It was working and bullet-proof solution. The option is gone from new version. I can do batch plotting from windows (select & print), but in the result half of the pdfs are not printed and if pdfs are too big then the plotter is loosing some of the content of the drawings (i.e. the pipe is there, but the piperack is gone). Any advice? If I had that problem with linux I could:
- fill a bug report
- try to downgrade
- try to fix the code (yes, I could do it)
- try a different file manager/windows manager
- make a simple batch file to plot a pdf, wait 10 seconds and plot a next one (command line, of course).

With windows all I can do is plot pdfs manually one-by-one: waste of time and money.

Anyway, the new ubuntu is out there: time for some tests .If you're using windows right know try to go to ubuntu.com, download it and test - livecds are perfect for that,

conor.hogan.2

Live CDs or Virtual Machines. Personally I prefer Vms, I hate having to restart.