Why do you put up with Windows?

[dduardo]

This article was just posted on slashdot:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL

With all the problems associated with windows why do you still use it?

 

[graphic7]

This article was just posted on slashdot:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL

With all the problems associated with windows why do you still use it?

At the moment I only have one Windows workstation. Thankfully, I'm not in possession of a Linux workstation. Windows allows me to play games, use my webcam, etc. Not to mention lots of other propiertary software, and my Matlab and Mathematica licenses are for Windows only.

I basically run Windows wherever Solaris or FreeBSD will not run or don't fit the job at hand.

And until another OS supports all the stuff I need to do, Windows will stay on that workstation. Linux is not a solution.

 

[dduardo]

What about OS X?

Are you sure you can't transfer those licenses to Unix? Matlab runs great on Linux.

 

[graphic7]

What about OS X?

Are you sure you can't transfer those licenses to Unix? Matlab runs great on Linux.

I have OS X on my Powerbook. I probably could transfer the licenses, but it sure wouldn't be to Linux.

 

[franznietzsche]

I use windows for games and that's about it.and i hate rebooting into it for that. Makes me feel dirty.

I would never switch to Mac though. No reason for it. Anything a mac can do i can do on Linux, for less.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

On a day to day basis I have very few problems with Windows and I'm a gamer, publisher, designer and developer.

 

[gazzo]

One word; vmware. :shy:

I feel so lonely without my webcam working on Linux =( But meh, small price to pay for the ultraultracoolestsuprimeuberelitenessuberstable feel of Linux.

 

[graphic7]

Modified my word

ultraultracoolestsuprimeuberelitenessuberstable feel of Linux.

You're joking, right? :rofl:

I have a word for Linux:

akernelunderacommuninistlicensethatispoorlymaintainedthathardlyevergetsanyuptimeforptracevulerbilities

Cool - that's pretty relative and subjective
suprime - I guess you mean supreme, but no, Linux is not supreme when it comes to OSs.
elite - Only l33t hackers apply to this. Are you proud to be using that kind of OS?
stable - What makes you think this?

Yes, Linux is better than Windows. Does that mean Linux is the greatest OS? No. In fact, it's not much of a compliment to say Linux is better than Windows.

Psst, the Linux fanboyism is on a rise today.

 

[graphic7]

I use windows for games and that's about it.and i hate rebooting into it for that. Makes me feel dirty.

I would never switch to Mac though. No reason for it. Anything a mac can do i can do on Linux, for less.

You're comparing hardware to software, which you must know is not a valid argument. You are aware that you can run Linux on a PowerPC? You must mean that anything a PowerPC can do an x86 can do it for less?

 

[dduardo]

communist license? poorly maintained? hardly gets uptime? trusting windows more than Linux?

Who do you think you are? Scott McNealy? Bill Gates?

 

[dduardo]

Yes, Linux is better than Windows.

Now we have a flip-flopper?

 

[graphic7]

communist license? poorly maintained? hardly gets uptime? trusting windows more than Linux?

Who do you think you are? Scott McNealy? Bill Gates?

The GPL is rather controlling for developers, and the maintainers of the GPL (RMS, for one) aren't exactly role models. Poorly maintained? It is. Have you taken a look at the kernel mailing list ever? You have developers that can't integrate kernel patches correctly. Hardly gets uptime? Correct, you have to recompile the kernel every so-in-so months to fix a security vulerbility thanks to that professional development cycle the Linux kernel developers have. Trust Windows more than Linux? Yes, when something breaks in Linux I cannot cry to someone. And no, the hack-it-yourself-fixit-attitude will not prove very useful in a production environment.

 

[graphic7]

Misunderstanding of quote.

Now we have a flip-flopper?

You've taken that out of context.

 

[faust9]

The GPL is rather controlling for developers, and the maintainers of the GPL (RMS, for one) aren't exactly role models. Poorly maintained? It is. Have you taken a look at the kernel mailing list ever? You have developers that can't integrate kernel patches correctly. Hardly gets uptime? Correct, you have to recompile the kernel every so-in-so months to fix a security vulerbility thanks to that professional development cycle the Linux kernel developers have. Trust Windows more than Linux? Yes, when something breaks in Linux I cannot cry to someone. And no, the hack-it-yourself-fixit-attitude will not prove very useful in a production environment.

Rubbish! Plain and simple rubbish. You have to download windows updates and reboot every couple of weeks or so. My Gentoo box updates itself once a week without a problem.

When something breaks in Windows who do you wine too? Do you wine to Bill Gates who then responds "That's not a bug, that's a feature!"

Rubbish! How many windows flaws, buffer overflows, vulnerabilities and the like are there and least we forget the mall and spyware. How many virii are their for BSD systems? I wonder... Oh, no need to wonder there are none.

 

[graphic7]

Rubbish! Plain and simple rubbish. You have to download windows updates and reboot every couple of weeks or so. My Gentoo box updates itself once a week without a problem.

When something breaks in Windows who do you wine too? Do you wine to Bill Gates who then responds "That's not a bug, that's a feature!"

Rubbish! How many windows flaws, buffer overflows, vulnerabilities and the like are there and least we forget the mall and spyware. How many virii are their for BSD systems? I wonder... Oh, no need to wonder there are none.

This is Linux bigotry that I'm not going to even going to reply to.

My problem is that someone has the nerve to create a subjective thread about Windows when the moment someone replies back about Window superiority over a certain OS, they get more and more of this bigotry. I'm not even going to bother with the ad hominem attacks.

 

[dduardo]

The GPL is rather controlling for developers, and the maintainers of the GPL (RMS, for one) aren't exactly role models. Poorly maintained? It is. Have you taken a look at the kernel mailing list ever? You have developers that can't integrate kernel patches correctly. Hardly gets uptime? Correct, you have to recompile the kernel every so-in-so months to fix a security vulerbility thanks to that professional development cycle the Linux kernel developers have. Trust Windows more than Linux? Yes, when something breaks in Linux I cannot cry to someone. And no, the hack-it-yourself-fixit-attitude will not prove very useful in a production environment.

1. So is the BSD license any less communistic?
2. I'm sure there are just as many people on the bsd side having trouble merging patches into their kernel.
3. Redhat and others provide binary patches for the kernel
4. That is why you buy support from redhat, ibm, novell, etc.

Who do I go cry to if I have problems with openbsd?

From what I see, each has their own problems and it is the big companies like IBM that try to make the operating system(AIX, Linux, etc) cohesive.

 

[franznietzsche]

You're comparing hardware to software, which you must know is not a valid argument. You are aware that you can run Linux on a PowerPC? You must mean that anything a PowerPC can do an x86 can do it for less?

Its a perfectly valid argument. If running it costs me more to do something on a mac than it does on my x86 linux box, it costs more. There should be no doubt as to what i was talking about. Not very complicated to understand.

akernelunderacommuninistlicensethatispoorlymaintai nedthathardlyevergetsanyuptimeforptracevulerbiliti es

And you accuse me of OS bigotry?

Please, try to argue that I am communist because i use linux. I would love to hear that flawed logic. There is nothing communist about the GPL license. I noted nothing in there about equal pay for unequal work. I just noticed lots of things implying that there would be no overpriced software that isn't worth crap. Red Hat Enterprise charges for its distro, it does not realease a free one anymore, nothing communist there, is there?

GPL is controlling for developers? How? It says you can't take this source code that you didn't write, change it and sell it. Real controlling. Not anything like microsoft's licenses where you're paying out the arse to use anything.

communist license? poorly maintained? hardly gets uptime? trusting windows more than Linux?

Who do you think you are? Scott McNealy? Bill Gates?

QFE.

I use linux largely as a developmant platform for theoretical physics work (running computer simulations). Windows could never meet my needs on my budget. Just paying for the compiler's i would need would be prohibitively expensive. All i need is a command line compiler and simple text editor. That and an OS which does what i need it to and then gets the heck out of my way. Windows does everything it can to get in my way, including lending itself to getting diseased. Its wateful of system resources too. And it has to reboot FAR more often than linux (in my experience).

 

[Kerrie]

I want to use Linux over Windows actually, but I am not as savvy on how to load it or even use the two OS so that we can play games on it. I also do a lot with Word and Excel so it becomes necessary to use Windows for those applications unfortunately.

 

[dduardo]

Kerrie, have you tried to use Openoffice?

Main website: http://www.openoffice.org/

Download: http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.4/index.html

Give it a try and see how you like it. I no longer use MS Office since OO does everything I need and maybe it will do the same for you.

Also, what games to you play?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Give it a try and see how you like it. I no longer use MS Office since OO does everything I need and maybe it will do the same for you.

I used OO up until the time when I created a proposal doc for a client and when the client opened up the doc in ms word it didn't convert correctly and looked messed up, that was not a good impression.

For all those who think Linux doesn't have their fair share of vunerabilities, a few years ago I played around with red hat and would get patch/security alerts several times a day. Linux itself is very secure, however Linux is so dependant on 3rd party components and those components are usually not secure.

 

[dduardo]

I used OO up until the time when I created a proposal doc for a client and when the client opened up the doc in ms word it didn't convert correctly and looked messed up, that was not a good impression.

For all those who think Linux doesn't have their fair share of vunerabilities, a few years ago I played around with red hat and would get patch/security alerts several times a day. Linux itself is very secure, however Linux is so dependant on 3rd party components and those components are usually not secure.

1) Thats exactly why I export all my documents to pdf before giving them out. It is more portable that way.

2) 3rd party software for any other platform can be just as insecure. The problem with windows is that everytime you download a patch you have to reboot the machine. Everytime I download a patch for linux all I have to do is restart the process. This is of major importance in mission critical operations.

 

[graphic7]

2) 3rd party software for any other platform can be just as insecure. The problem with windows is that everytime you download a patch you have to reboot the machine. Everytime I download a patch for linux all I have to do is restart the process. This is of major importance in mission critical operations.

And when a kernel vulnerbility comes out, such as a ptrace one, what do you do? Last time I checked the procedure was 1) recompile the kernel and reboot or 2) apply the binary patch and reboot. Note that both of them have `reboot' in them.

I can understand why an Enterprise-level OS, like Windows would want to reboot after an upgrade. Most of the time when patching Solaris and AIX, they almost always ask you reboot even if it is a system service and not kernel level. The reason for this? Rebooting makes sure that nothing unexpected can happen or can keep happening. IBM, Sun, or Microsoft can't test every variable in an environment after a patch is applied. They ask you to reboot because they've tested it and they know what to expect, instead of what might not be expected.

If I were patching a critical system, I know I would follow the patch instructions to assure that the environment is clean. Doesn't SuSE or RedHat ask you to reboot after applying any sort of patch?

And no, rebooting is not highly important in a production environment. The objective of a production environment is to make sure everything works like it should. Losing 500 days of uptime on a critical system is not that big of a loss if it insures that a) the system should work better b) the system should get even higher uptime for the next reboot.

 

[dduardo]

I think they only ask to be rebooted after downloading kernel patches or major system upgrades. I actually find this is safer because if you install a patch and it messes up your services in such a way that you can boot again, then your in trouble. If you just restart the service and it doesn't work, then you can easily debug the problem on the fly without resorting to failsafe modes. Redhat also provides rollbacks, so if the patch goes bad you can easily go back to your previos system setup before the patch.

 

[graphic7]

And for me to be politically correct:

Solaris, AIX, etc. either ask you to go into single-user mode or single-user mode/reboot the system. I would expect the same from Linux. In FreeBSD, when remaking your world, you go into single-user mode. For those of you that don't know what single-user mode is: it shuts down all networking and the only processes that are allowed to run are owned by the user root. Basically, this renders the system as useless as it being down for a reboot.

Uptime is important in a mission critical environment; it's not highly important, though, and neither is patching. Most enterprise environments have regular patch intervals which range from 6 months to a year, in which patches are applied then. Only in extreme cases do you patch early and reboot the system.

If you have a few Windows systems behind a firewall do you have to patch immediately when a patch comes out? Of course not. And if you're just a typical home user, the last thing you should be concerned about is rebooting.

 

[graphic7]

I think they only ask to be rebooted after downloading kernel patches or major system upgrades. I actually find this is safer because if you install a patch and it messes up your services in such a way that you can boot again, then your in trouble. If you just restart the service and it doesn't work, then you can easily debug the problem on the fly without resorting to failsafe modes. Redhat also provides rollbacks, so if the patch goes bad you can easily go back to your previos system setup before the patch.

Is that a feature of RHEL and/or Fedora?

 

[dduardo]

It is part of the RHN, which can be used with both RHEL and Fedora. You can create a free account for personal use. On the client side this system is called up2date.

Suse has a similar system with YasT2

 

[BoulderHead]

This article was just posted on slashdot:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL

With all the problems associated with windows why do you still use it?

Because it's familiar, dear, and valuable. However, I do plan to stop using it in the near future.

 

[graphic7]

1. So is the BSD license any less communistic?

No, it's not. In fact, if I were to write any open-source software I would write it under the BSDL.

I do have a problem with the GPL, but the maintainers of it and most of the followers are the ones I really have a problem with. With each open-source license coming out, you can always find them creating a bunch of trouble over nothing.

Take the CDDL, which is essentially the same as the Mozilla/Firefox license. RMS comes out with an interview serveral days (possibly a day later) after the OpenSolaris dtrace release stating how Sun was not `being truthful' with the open-source community, when indeed the CDDL is the exact same thing as the Mozilla/Firefox license. Do you see the Linux zealots complaining about the Mozilla/Firefox license? No, of course not. Do you see them complaining about the CDDL? Yes, but why? Is it because OpenSolaris is going to give Linux a run for it's money? I'm not even going to bother answering that.

The BSDL allows anyone to take my code and do whatever they want to with it. That's true software freedom, but no, you have these GPL hypocrits running around and spewing their garbage. With the GPL, any software under the GPL must stay GPL'd. What's the point in that?

 

[graphic7]

Its a perfectly valid argument. If running it costs me more to do something on a mac than it does on my x86 linux box, it costs more. There should be no doubt as to what i was talking about. Not very complicated to understand.

It was not a valid arguement, and I pointed out why. I also understood your argument, however, the correction was needed.

And you accuse me of OS bigotry?

You're muttering this Linux garbage, therefore, I am.

GPL is controlling for developers? How? It says you can't take this source code that you didn't write, change it and sell it. Real controlling.

That is controlling. Read your statement a few times over and see if it dawns on you. Yes, the Microsoft license is more controlling than the GPL. Does that make the GPL anymore less controlling? No. Someone needs to read through the list of logical fallacies, but I'll spare the ad hominem attack.

Keep in mind we're talking about why people use Windows. Licensing/freedom != technical superiority. Linux could be under the BSDL and I still wouldn't use it.

 

[dduardo]

It doesn't have to stay GPL. The only requirement to change the license is consulting the orginal auther.

The reason why the GPL is this way is to encourage contribution to the orignal source code. Otherwise people will just take the code, make major improvements and give nothing back.

 

[graphic7]

The reason why the GPL is this way is to encourage contribution to the orignal source code. Otherwise people will just take the code, make major improvements and give nothing back.

In RMS's (and almost every other Linux zeoloat's) argument the other day he stated the CDDL was bad because it prevents people from ripping code out of OpenSolaris and reusing it (perhaps porting it to Linux). See something ironic here?

 

[dduardo]

Yeah, we all know linus wants to port dtrace.

 

[graphic7]

Yeah, we all know linus wants to port dtrace.

That just goes to show how ignorant the man is. There's a better technology out there, and he won't even take a look at it. In fact, he relies about "3rd party accounts" to tell him how good OpenSolaris is. It also shows that he's quite political/religious.

In fact, I'm sort of glad he isn't into porting dtrace. That just adds one more feature to Solaris to make it more superior to Linux.

 

[dduardo]

I would actually try OpenSolaris when it is released, but it has even worse driver support than Linux. Nvidia only supplies accelerated drivers for Linux and FreeBSD.

 

[faust9]

The BSDL allows anyone to take my code and do whatever they want to with it. That's true software freedom, but no, you have these GPL hypocrits running around and spewing their garbage. With the GPL, any software under the GPL must stay GPL'd. What's the point in that?

The point is to prevent company 'A' from simply taking code, modifying it and not returning the modifications to the code base to improve the original piece of work (Microsoft and the BSD IP stack for instance). Why not give the original creator of code freedom to do with the code as he/she see's fit? GPL does this while BSD simply says "hey you want it--take it. If you make it better, well then keep that secret so no one else can benefit."

If you are a developer and don't feel like writing a chunk of code and would rather cut and paste from a GPL'd piece of work then the original creator of the work should get credit should he/she not? GPL says develope your own code from scratch if you like. If you do then license it however you want. If you decide to use a piece of GPL'd code in your project though you must agree to abide by all of the terms of the GPL. Again, if you don't like it don't use GPL. Sounds pretty simple doesn't it?

If you don't like GPL don't use it. If you develope software and prefer BSD or any other IP scheme then feel free to use what you like.

Oh, RMS is not a Linux Zealot BTW. In fact I'd say he's the exact opposite of a Linux zealot. RMS only cares about the FSF and GNU. He harps about Linux as much as he does about plan 9 or solaris or aix.