Linux vs Windows: What Do I Choose?

[RiseAgainst]

Right now I have Vista and I really don't like using it. I am looking forward to Windows 7 but it could just be another bad OS. If anyone is using Linux or has in the past I am wondering if I should start using it. And which version, Suze, Ubuntu...

 

[cripto88]

I tried Ubuntu, problem is you cannot get a Liux version of every program/application, so
you have to dual run which is impracticable. I use XP I have no gripes with it really.

 

[cristo]

What about the third option?

 

[Дьявол]

I have experience with Ubuntu. If you are beginner, I would recommend you to start using Ubuntu 8.10. For first time, you may experience several problems with finding corresponding replace of the programs that you have used on Windows Vista.

The linux platform is more stable and it is free! All famous sites (google.com, yahoo.com) has linux installed on their servers. You got very friendly GUI so you'll use the Terminal much less than usual.

If you are game lover, you could also play Windows games using application Wine which stands for [W]ine s [N]ot [E]mulator.

Practically, you could do everything that you have done in Windows.

You could see this and this thread.Diablo.

 

[RiseAgainst]

What third option? Mac? I have used Mac before and I really don't like it.

 

[cristo]

What third option? Mac? I have used Mac before and I really don't like it.

Pff.. seems like you don't like any operating system!

 

[RiseAgainst]

Pff.. seems like you don't like any operating system!

Pff.. I didn't say I didn't like Linux, and the only version of Windows that I don't like is Vista, I liked XP when I had it.

 

[Дьявол]

Pff.. I didn't say I didn't like Linux, and the only version of Windows that I don't like is Vista, I liked XP when I had it.

RiseAgains did you read my #4 post?

Sorry for mentioning but Mac is expensive and "made up". Don't you like the feeling when you got something free?

Feel the passion of Open-Source! https://shipit.ubuntu.com/" Ubuntu 8.10 CD for free!

Regards.

 

[Montag42]

I agree that you should get linux, however I'm not sure which distribution. I think if you're just starting out, Ubuntu would be great, but i prefer Gentoo.

 

[shoehorn]

If you like XP why don't you install it instead of Vista? Personally speaking I avoid Linux like the plague, preferring instead to stick with OS X or XP.

 

[RiseAgainst]

If you like XP why don't you install it instead of Vista? Personally speaking I avoid Linux like the plague, preferring instead to stick with OS X or XP.

Why avoid it, I've only heard good things about Linux. And I can't install XP because I don't have the disk to install it.

 

[mgb_phys]

The only important question is - what do you want to do with your computer.

If you want to browse the web, send email = Linux is easy, works and you don't have to worry about viruses anymore.
If you also need to write the odd document then Linux will also work, OpenOffice is included (with Ubuntu) and is as good as MsOffice for everything a regular user will do. It can read and write office docs pretty successfully so you can handle things sent to you by windows users.

If you need to use a particular piece of software that is only available on Windows then use Windows (most Linux applications are also available for windows).

Frankly for "computing for grannies" = I don't want to know anything about updates/reboots I just want to web browse, Ubuntu is looking pretty good.
Download the Ubuntu CD and run it in live mode (just boot from the CD) it will run the entire system in memory - leaving your computer untouched. If you like it you can then install it instead of or alongside Vista.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, and I dual boot with WinXP. For the most part, I stay in Linux, and only go into XP when I really need to.

Ubuntu Linux is easy to use for the most part. Most things will work out-of-box, including things you might expect to be difficult, like printer sharing and wireless internet. A few things might take some effort to set up; I still haven't got my sound to work properly with Flash videos online (and many Flash applications simply don't work). However, this deficiency is due mostly to lack of effort; the inability to properly watch YouTube helps keep me from procrastinating, so I haven't bothered to fix it. ;)

Some of the main benefits of Linux are:

1. You have control over your computer, rather than the other way around. It feels really great not to be pushed around by the Man.

2. It can do almost anything Windows can do--there are tons of great programs you can download and install instantly for free. Even some really fun and beautiful games! And you also have the GIMP, which is a graphics program to rival Photoshop (and quite powerful).

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck. There are some other neat things, too, but I haven't explored this very much yet.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface. It is also VERY easy to write scripts for doing things on the command line, such as manipulating large collections of files, or what-have you. Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

5. If you need any help with anything, there is a large community of Linux fans on various messageboards who will have free, easy solutions. Whenever I get stuck, I just put some stuff into Google, and I usually find step-by-step instructions to do exactly what I want. The help available is usually better than what you find on Microsoft's website if you ever need to know how to do some obscure thing in Windows.

The main disadvantages to Linux are:

1. No workable substitute for Microsoft OneNote, with tablet features. There are a few attempts at imitation, but I don't think the developers on the project really understand what OneNote is for and how to use it.

2. You can't play most mainstream games, except by using Wine (a Windows emulator). I haven't tried that, so I can't say how good it is. I boot into XP if I want to play games.

3. There are a few multimedia software publishers who do not produce Linux versions: Adobe Photoshop, Finale, etc. (Both Mathematica and Maple DO produce Linux versions; I have them both installed and they work great).

 

[shoehorn]

Why avoid it, I've only heard good things about Linux.

I avoid it because it doesn't do what I need. I use my computers for email, web browsing, getting papers from the ArXiv, programming, and some reasonably heavy numerical work. Any time I've used Linux I've had to bang my head against the wall with driver issues, flaky software, and poor performance (and, given that I have neither the time nor the inclination to struggle with custom compilation of the kernel, this is a killer). Moreover, Matlab performance on Linux is atrocious, and there really is no comparable alternative to Visual Studio, which is my main development environment; in fact, nothing on Linux even comes close to Visual Studio and, as good and all as GCC is, Microsoft's compilers produce significantly faster code in my experience.

Finally, and perhaps bizarrely given all the bad press Microsoft gets in this area, I've had innumerably more crashes, glitches, and hangups when running Linux than I have when running XP.

I'm not saying that Linux isn't a good fit for some people. But for what I need my computers to do, Linux is just an utter non-starter in comparison to XP/OS X, and I can't see that changing any time soon.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Visual Studio is quite sophisticated, yes. It also costs something like $1200. That's fine if you program for a living; if you just like to tinker, it's a bit overkill.

 

[mgb_phys]

Visual studio express is free, pro costs around $600
It is by the far the nicest development environment I have ever used, including some IBM things that cost 10x more.

But Eclipse is still good, especially if you are doing Java, and the GCC compiler has always been better than windows in terms of the latest C++ standards compliance and performance.

In the 2005/2008 versions the C++ compiler has improved a lot - a result of MS hiring some outside people, especially Herb Sutter and possibly because c# is now their own proprietry language so they don't have to 'embrace and extend' c++.
I haven't done any high performance stuff with 2008 but it used to be that Intel's icc compiler and gcc were neck-neck and VC++ a bit behind. This is mainly because there isn't a big market for HPC on windows.

 

[vanesch]

A very long time ago, I was a Mac user and a UNIX user, but since about 10 years I've been dwelling in the world of windows. I do like XP. However, when I recently bought a cheap portable computer with Vista on it, I also installed Ubuntu on it in dual boot, and I have to say I work 95% of the time under Ubuntu. At my work I switch between XP which I need for some specific applications, and Ubuntu which I need for other applications.
Although at the office I've had some difficulties with printing and so on under Ubuntu (it is not supported by our computer department), at home everything runs fine. I print under Ubuntu on my portable using my local network and a fixed PC running XP to which a printer is connected. It was actually easier to do this under Ubuntu than under Vista!

I've had an occasional small problem with Ubuntu (the most serious being that one update messed up with my wifi driver ; the solution has been to boot under a previous version of the kernel, until a newer update came out in which the problem is fixed). Most of the time things work well under ubuntu.

As a development environment, I use code::blocks. It runs as well under Windows as under linux (and I even think it runs on a mac).

 

[daniel_i_l]

I used to have only XP on my laptop. About 1.5 years ago I installed the fedora linux distro as a dual boot and was very impressed by it. Since then, the only time I've needed to boot into XP was to play around with a program I wrote a while ago using windows - I eventually ported it to linux. Most of the people I know who used a dual-boot found the same thing, they almost never use the windows partition. I'm aware that this may not be the most representive group but it still shows something.

If you like programming and fiddling linux is definitely the way to go. If you just use the computer for simple things like web browsing then linux could be a lighweight solution. On the other hand, if you use the computer professionally - for an office enviroment, artwork, etc... it's probably easier to stick with windows.

 

[KnowPhysics]

i totally accept with daniel_i_l. for programming linux is the best way to go. but if you use computer for general purpose and if you expect easy user operation use windows. using windows is easy to the people who is new to desktops (like kids or aged peoples), if your desktops will be used by these peoples you can install windows.

 

[Sprinky]

I am currently using Fedora Core 10, since I severely dislike where Ubuntu has gone/is heading. It brags about being usable, yet the default installation package provides software you will most likely never use. I feel that Ubuntu is very bloated, and Fedora Core provides a nice system that requires little to no meddling, such as a Gentoo stage3 install, or an Arch Linux installation, which I frankly do not have the time for.

The Windows 7 Beta has been released, and I have heard that it is "What Vista was supposed to be." It has a brand new interface, and apparently uses less resources than Vista.

I would suggest giving Linux a nice, long try. I find that it feels great to have a system completely tailored to your needs, and I enjoy the package managers very much. I would recommend you start with something like CentOS, Fedora Core, or Ubuntu (Debian would do fine as well), and possibly move up towards a distribution that allows for more customization during the install process, such as Gentoo.

Another reason I love Linux is for the choice of window manager/desktop environment. I am currently using gnome, but when I do more than casual web browsing and emailing, I enjoy using a tiling window manager to work more efficiently (no more moving and resizing windows, and switching between them is also very easy) such as xmonad or wmii.

 

[x3qt0r]

Well..
If you are going to run windows exclusive softwares use virtualbox under ubuntu.

And install ubuntu 8.04 LTS .. its very stable.

 

[heldervelez]

Another option that I like more is the opensolaris, or solaris.
The zfs (new file system), dtrace and security features are at the best.
You won't need an anti-virus, 32 and 64 bit versions, server grade solid kernel, Gnome front end, free.
The not so good features ATI native drivers are not there and only X.org driver is available. Also I've problems with wifi drivers.
When I have a hardwired connection to the net I use opensolaris.
When I need Cuda (tu explore Nvidea card GPGPU programming) I use Linux (Debian).
When I need brook++ (ATI GPGPU stream programing) I use windows XP (that is speeder than Vista and windows7 beta).
In computers exposed to kids (they click anything dangerous) I will use Linux or Opensolaris for security.

 

[michinobu]

The only important question is - what do you want to do with your computer.

If you want to browse the web, send email = Linux is easy, works and you don't have to worry about viruses anymore.
If you also need to write the odd document then Linux will also work, OpenOffice is included (with Ubuntu) and is as good as MsOffice for everything a regular user will do.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by "regular". I've found Open Office and even Star Office (Sun's pay version of their free Open Office) to be irritating when trying to write equations. But, that might not fit with everyone's idea of how a "regular" user might use a word processor.

However, the fact that MS Word gives you so many options shows how superior it is to Sun's word processor.

It can read and write office docs pretty successfully so you can handle things sent to you by windows users.

Not usually ".docx" files, however. That requires a plug-in, but is available with Ubuntu Ultimate Edition's Open Office.

Frankly for "computing for grannies" = I don't want to know anything about updates/reboots I just want to web browse, Ubuntu is looking pretty good.

But, you have to be honest here. When you say that "Ubuntu is looking pretty good," you know that it's still not 'grandma-friendly'.

In spite of whatever improvements that Ubuntu might've seen, it's still a pain in the *** to upgrade your OS. It's not uncommon for packages to constantly get broken during download, and for upgrades to actually wreck the things which used to work on your system. Like, judging by the Ubuntu help forums, upgrading Ubuntu has had caused people's media players to stop working - due to an issue with GStreamer.

I like using Linux because its more fun for me to do things on it, instead of on Windows. However, Linux has faults that you won't see with Windows. Windows is just generally much easier to use. For example, one doesn't have to try to tinker with the system so that they can get on the internet. And, let's not forget that, in the event something should go wrong with Windows, the user has the option of getting help from Microsoft's paid staff available. Linux and Ubuntu don't have this luxury because its a volunteer-only project.

Ultimately, the choice between which OS a person should use, depends entirely on how they're going to use it. It's kind of misleading to have people think that Linux is capable of doing things that it's not. If for some reason a curious party hears about what Linux is and is turned-off by it, then there's a good chance that they wouldn't like Linux after trying it anyways.

 

[michinobu]

Another option that I like more is the opensolaris, or solaris.
The zfs (new file system), dtrace and security features are at the best.
You won't need an anti-virus, 32 and 64 bit versions, server grade solid kernel, Gnome front end, free.
The not so good features ATI native drivers are not there and only X.org driver is available. Also I've problems with wifi drivers.
When I have a hardwired connection to the net I use opensolaris.
When I need Cuda (tu explore Nvidea card GPGPU programming) I use Linux (Debian).
When I need brook++ (ATI GPGPU stream programing) I use windows XP (that is speeder than Vista and windows7 beta).
In computers exposed to kids (they click anything dangerous) I will use Linux or Opensolaris for security.

Yeah, XP is pretty good. It was the fastest desktop OS in its time before Vista, I think. Other OS's can outperform XP in some way, but XP generally allowed for faster desktop graphics than some of the other OS's.

 

[mgb_phys]

However, the fact that MS Word gives you so many options shows how superior it is to Sun's word processor.

MS Word gives you more options on each version because writing a letter has become 10x more complicated over the last 5years? Or because they have to add new features to get companies to upgrade. I wonder how we managed back in the primitive days of Office2003?

Not usually ".docx" files, however. That requires a plug-in, but is available with Ubuntu Ultimate Edition's Open Office.

Have you tried to get office2003 to read docx?

But, you have to be honest here. When you say that "Ubuntu is looking pretty good," you know that it's still not 'grandma-friendly'.

Everytime I go home I spend an hour fixing my parents windows install, it runs the virus checker and firewall that their cable company supplied. But still has a bunch of junk on it.
With linux even if they did click on every .exe email attachment they aren't going to do any harm.

In spite of whatever improvements that Ubuntu might've seen, it's still a pain in the *** to upgrade your OS.

Then don't upgrade! The nice thing about OSS is that you aren't forced to change everything so that a company can make it's quarterly sales targets. My wife's laptop runs Ubuntu 6 and has done since it came out. Other than installing a new version of Opera it doesn't change. Yes newer versions of Ubunut would do more but she doesn't care.

For example, one doesn't have to try to tinker with the system so that they can get on the internet.

I had to type in my wireless password.

And, let's not forget that, in the event something should go wrong with Windows, the user has the option of getting help from Microsoft's paid staff available.

I have an MSDN subscription with paid support and that even fails when asking questions about MSDN. Like why their license key generator doesn't generate valid keys for their own downloads - their suggested solution is to call the manual key verification number and explain that you have MSDN by the way.

Getting support from microsoft for why your brand X computer doesn't connect to your brand Y cable service isn't going to happen unless your name is Balmer and you are holding a chair.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Of course, that depends on what you mean by "regular". I've found Open Office and even Star Office (Sun's pay version of their free Open Office) to be irritating when trying to write equations. But, that might not fit with everyone's idea of how a "regular" user might use a word processor.

I find both OOo Math and MS Office Equation Editor to be poor quality and a pain to use. I use LaTeX instead, which is just as much of a pain but produces much higher-quality output.

But, you have to be honest here. When you say that "Ubuntu is looking pretty good," you know that it's still not 'grandma-friendly'.

For installation, I agree -- but then again I wouldn't generally have a tech-unsavvy person installing Windows either. Once installed... I'm not sure how much harder Ubuntu would be.

I bet it would be hard to find unbiased information on that! The number of Linux users who set up a non-tech-knowledgeable friend but are *not* Linux partisans must be small.

MS Word gives you more options on each version because writing a letter has become 10x more complicated over the last 5years? Or because they have to add new features to get companies to upgrade.

I vastly prefer Office 2007 to Office 2003. But I use OpenOffice 3 on my home computer. OOo Calc isn't as good with formulas, but it's good enough for 90% of what I do.

Have you tried to get office2003 to read docx?

There's a download for that, very easy to install and use. I haven't installed the OOo equivalent yet (didn't even know there was one!), but mainly because I don't see too many .?x files.

 

[michinobu]

MS Word gives you more options on each version because writing a letter has become 10x more complicated over the last 5years? Or because they have to add new features to get companies to upgrade. I wonder how we managed back in the primitive days of Office2003?

Granted, it's likely to be a marketing gimmeck from Microsoft, I still feel that MS Word is better than Sun's Open Office. Maybe the features that I like having with MS Word 2007 aren't necessary for most people, but being able to put equations into a document faster is a little nice to have because getting work done faster is always plus.

Have you tried to get office2003 to read docx?

No, but I wasn't talking about office 2003.

Everytime I go home I spend an hour fixing my parents windows install, it runs the virus checker and firewall that their cable company supplied. But still has a bunch of junk on it.
With linux even if they did click on every .exe email attachment they aren't going to do any harm.

Maybe because those ".exe" attachments were intended to be used on Windows? But, better security doesn't equate to easier use. There's a reason why your parents uses Windows, right?

Then don't upgrade! The nice thing about OSS is that you aren't forced to change everything so that a company can make it's quarterly sales targets. My wife's laptop runs Ubuntu 6 and has done since it came out. Other than installing a new version of Opera it doesn't change. Yes newer versions of Ubunut would do more but she doesn't care.

But, I want to upgrade. Like, if I want to get the latest ATI drivers for Linux (which never come with the live-disk download), there's no reason that I should fear something going wrong in my OS from downloading the latest drivers for my OS.
At least I know that, with Windows, if I had to download the latest drivers provided by my hardware's manufacturer will not affect any other part of the system - should the drivers reveal to have something wrong with them.

I had to type in my wireless password.

But, I don't think that you honestly thought that that's what I meant by "tinker[ing]" with the OS. Typing a password when using your wic on Windows is nothing compared to discovering that your wireless card's manufacturer doesn't support Linux or any UNIX system and that the only hope you have of getting your card to work on Linux is to download some free, generic driver that may or may not work with your card.

I have an MSDN subscription with paid support and that even fails when asking questions about MSDN. Like why their license key generator doesn't generate valid keys for their own downloads - their suggested solution is to call the manual key verification number and explain that you have MSDN by the way.

But, even poor service is better than no service. I understand that it's expected with an OS that is given out for free, but having tech support is still better than the absence of there being one.

Getting support from microsoft for why your brand X computer doesn't connect to your brand Y cable service isn't going to happen unless your name is Balmer and you are holding a chair.

I suppose that there's a chance that, when calling Microsoft's live tech support, you'll encounter someone who knows less about computers than you do. But, for those who don't even care about why brand X computer and device Y don't get along and so on, they might find Microsoft's tech support helpful. These people probably wouldn't like Linux because Linux has no support and its distributors provide it to people "as is", with no obligation to help you if their own software causes you trouble.

 

[Kittel Knight]

Two points:
- Some Linux distributions have support, like Suse and RedHat.
- It is not true you can install any Microsoft update without colateral effects...(I mean "destroying effects")

 

[shoehorn]

I've had twenty-three separate Ubuntu installations, going all the way back to Ubuntu 4.10 (I keep records of my various forays into Linux). Here's the run-down on how they fared:

• Four were "successful" in the sense that they kept working for longer than a month.
• One "failed" due to terrible drivers causing an ATI graphics card to overheat and die.
• One failed due to an unresolved/unexplained kernel panic.
• Ten failed due to system updates; Multiverse repos were enabled in these cases.
• Seven failed due to vanilla system updates, i.e., updates where none of the repos had been modified or altered.

So, in total I've had a an eighty-two percent failure rate with Ubuntu on perfectly standard hardware; of the failures, ninety percent were due to Ubuntu crippling itself when updating. This is, by any metric, pathetic performance for a supposedly stable operating system.

On the other hand, I've never had XP/OS X die due to an update. Make of that what you will.

 

[CRGreathouse]

On the other hand, I've never had XP/OS X die due to an update. Make of that what you will.

I've had Vista Business fail to update (to SP1), but never to die on an update.

 

[John Creighto]

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck. There are some other neat things, too, but I haven't explored this very much yet.

I don’t see what’s stopping you from finding or making such a text editor for windows.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface. It is also VERY easy to write scripts for doing things on the command line, such as manipulating large collections of files, or what-have you. Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

I’m pretty sure these technologies are available for windows. As for windows being batched oriented. Look up windows power shell. You can pipe entire objects from one app to another.

5. If you need any help with anything, there is a large community of Linux fans on various messageboards who will have free, easy solutions. Whenever I get stuck, I just put some stuff into Google, and I usually find step-by-step instructions to do exactly what I want. The help available is usually better than what you find on Microsoft's website if you ever need to know how to do some obscure thing in Windows.

There are plenty of support communities for windows.

 

[rcgldr]

You can still find Windows XP for sale at some online stores. The local Best Buy has a few copies, but doesn't advertise them on their web site.

 

[CRGreathouse]

1. You have control over your computer, rather than the other way around. It feels really great not to be pushed around by the Man.

I actually feel that I have dramatically less control over Linux than Windows.

2. It can do almost anything Windows can do--there are tons of great programs you can download and install instantly for free. Even some really fun and beautiful games! And you also have the GIMP, which is a graphics program to rival Photoshop (and quite powerful).

Yep. The situation is even better for me, since even in Windows I use many apps (the GIMP, Apache, LaTeX, OpenOffice, Pari, etc.) which are Linux-native. This makes it easier for me to switch between Windows and whatever Linux flavor I prefer.

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck. There are some other neat things, too, but I haven't explored this very much yet.?

I don't know about that. I use Crimson Editor in Windows, and it's quite powerful. It's true that Notepad doesn't select by column, but Word does -- as do many other programs, like Crimson Editor.

I would like to hear about your other examples, if you come up with some.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface.

What GUI/IDE do you use in Linux?

Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

But you can just as easily use Perl in Windows (or Python, or whatever you prefer).

5. If you need any help with anything, there is a large community of Linux fans on various messageboards who will have free, easy solutions. Whenever I get stuck, I just put some stuff into Google, and I usually find step-by-step instructions to do exactly what I want. The help available is usually better than what you find on Microsoft's website if you ever need to know how to do some obscure thing in Windows.

There are plenty of Windows support communities out there. Also, I find myself running into trouble with Linux more often than Windows, so I see this as a point for Windows rather than Linux.

1. No workable substitute for Microsoft OneNote, with tablet features. There are a few attempts at imitation, but I don't think the developers on the project really understand what OneNote is for and how to use it.

2. You can't play most mainstream games, except by using Wine (a Windows emulator). I haven't tried that, so I can't say how good it is. I boot into XP if I want to play games.

Fortunately these haven't been problems for me -- even though I have OneNote installed on my Windows machine, I don't use it. And I haven't played a graphical computer game (not counting Roguelikes) for years, so I don't miss that part of Windows when I'm on Linux.

3. There are a few multimedia software publishers who do not produce Linux versions: Adobe Photoshop, Finale, etc. (Both Mathematica and Maple DO produce Linux versions; I have them both installed and they work great).

Yeah, missing Photoshop really hurts. There's always the GIMP, but it's not nearly as popular... and still not as good, though it's getting there.

 

[John Creighto]

How well does Microsoft office run on Lunix and does Open office have the same macro functionality as Microsoft office?

 

[mgb_phys]

How well does Microsoft office run on Lunix and does Open office have the same macro functionality as Microsoft office?

MSOffice runs on linux using a compatbility layer called WINE. there are bunch of hoops to jump through and not everything works. See http://wine-reviews.net/microsoft/office-2007-on-linux-with-wine-install-guide.html

OpenOffice has it's own macro language very similair to Microsoft's VBA (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ/Macros) although MSOffice macros aren't compatible.

OpenOffice can also be fully controlled from Python.

 

[CRGreathouse]

OpenOffice can also be fully controlled from Python.

That sounds like a much better option than using OOo macros (or worse, using VB in MS Office through WINE). Is there a guide for this online?

 

[mgb_phys]

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Python

 

[signerror]

Right now I have Vista and I really don't like using it. I am looking forward to Windows 7 but it could just be another bad OS. If anyone is using Linux or has in the past I am wondering if I should start using it. And which version, Suze, Ubuntu...

I recommend experimenting, but without commitment. Use a dual-boot setup, where you retain Windows and have a linux installation on a separate disk partition. (Don't LiveCD; it's pointless). Linux is clearly worse as a home desktop OS: it has comparatively poor (but improving) hardware support, and of course much less commercial software inertia than the windows market (e.g., games).

Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE are the three popular distros. They are all good; I recommend Ubuntu (regular, not the KDE version Kubuntu), because it has the best documentation and support.

 

[signerror]

Sorry for mentioning but Mac is expensive and "made up". Don't you like the feeling when you got something free?

It is a very solid BSD fork. It is UNIX with a high quality user interface (derived from NeXTSTEP). It is expensive; Apple is very aggressive at marketing.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Thanks for the link, mgb_phys.

Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE are the three popular distros. They are all good; I recommend Ubuntu (regular, not the KDE version Kubuntu), because it has the best documentation and support.

How do you feel about Xubuntu?

 

[signerror]

I agree that you should get linux, however I'm not sure which distribution. I think if you're just starting out, Ubuntu would be great, but i prefer Gentoo.

Don't recommend gentoo to new users; that's cruel. Gentoo's package system is based on source tarballs, not precompiled binaries; to someone who does not want to spend hours compiling their own software (e.g., most users), it is a terrible system.

 

[signerror]

Most things will work out-of-box, including things you might expect to be difficult, like printer sharing and wireless internet. A few things might take some effort to set up; I still haven't got my sound to work properly with Flash videos online (and many Flash applications simply don't work). However, this deficiency is due mostly to lack of effort; the inability to properly watch YouTube helps keep me from procrastinating, so I haven't bothered to fix it. ;)

And you've made a strong case against linux as a home desktop OS. Perfectly ordinary things, like Flash videos, take "effort" to get working. The point of a desktop OS is to make things easy, to provide a convincing abstraction layer above and away from low-level details like sound drivers. As far as linux breaks this abstraction, and burdens the user with debugging software, it is a failure.

Some of the main benefits of Linux are:

1. You have control over your computer, rather than the other way around. It feels really great not to be pushed around by the Man.

A specious argument. You are right that open-source OSes like Linux and FreeBSD allow users to inspect their source code, to read and modify their system at the kernel level. This is also utterly useless to the 99.99%+ of computer users who don't even know or care to program, let alone muck around with a messy million-line codebase of C.

2. It can do almost anything Windows can do--there are tons of great programs you can download and install instantly for free. Even some really fun and beautiful games! And you also have the GIMP, which is a graphics program to rival Photoshop (and quite powerful).

Windows has a near monopoly on the game market.

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck.

Very misleading. Open source software is largely orthogonal to open-source opearting systems. The famous *nix text editors - emacs, vim - are also free and available for Windows, OS X, Solaris, all the proprietary UNIXes. They are not in any way tied to Linux; so they are not realistically an "advantage" for Linux. They are OS-neutral.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface.

Every one of these runs equally on every other OS. They are NOT TIED to Linux!

It is also VERY easy to write scripts for doing things on the command line, such as manipulating large collections of files, or what-have you.

It is equally easy on Mac OS X, which has the same POSIX shells and utilities as linux. (Again, it is partly a fork of the BSD codebase, and is a true UNIX). I understand that Windows' PowerShell is comparably powerful to the POSIX utilities, if different.

Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

Again, these run on Windows too! NOT A LINUX ADVANTAGE!

 

[signerror]

Visual Studio is quite sophisticated, yes. It also costs something like $1200. That's fine if you program for a living; if you just like to tinker, it's a bit overkill.

A scaled-down version is free for non-commercial tinkering.

http://www.microsoft.com/Express/

 

[signerror]

Another reason I love Linux is for the choice of window manager/desktop environment. I am currently using gnome, but when I do more than casual web browsing and emailing, I enjoy using a tiling window manager to work more efficiently (no more moving and resizing windows, and switching between them is also very easy) such as xmonad or wmii.

I love XMonad!

 

[signerror]

How do you feel about Xubuntu?

You don't need it. It is a lightweight fork of Ubuntu intended for very old computers. Xfce (the Xubuntu window manager, hence the 'X') is much less nice than Gnome (Ubuntu) or KDE (Kubuntu); if you have anything close to modern hardware, you will want one of the latter two. (However, the current incarnation of KDE is pretty weak (but it looks nice!), and it's pretty much something you don't want to use. It is a very nice concept, but the implementation is a notorious failure. Maybe a future version will fix the usability issues.)

I recommend regular, Gnome-based Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

 

[CRGreathouse]

I just found the 'lightweight' conceptually attractive, since I'll be using the computer for round-the-clock calculations and any resources not used by the window manager could be used to reduce compute time...

 

[shoehorn]

I just found the 'lightweight' conceptually attractive, since I'll be using the computer for round-the-clock calculations and any resources not used by the window manager could be used to reduce compute time...

Then why are you bothering to use a window manager at all? Skip the X-server entirely and simply ssh in and out of the machine as required.

 

[mgb_phys]

You can just switch over to another terminal ctrl-alt-f2 (to f8) X will still be running, you can go back by hitting alt-f1 but will be paged out of ram.

You can also set it to start in text mode by default if you want

 

[CRGreathouse]

Then why are you bothering to use a window manager at all? Skip the X-server entirely and simply ssh in and out of the machine as required.

It's going to be my only machine, so I'll want to be able to do normal things on it as well.

 

[shoehorn]

It's going to be my only machine, so I'll want to be able to do normal things on it as well.

Ah. Xmonad's a good choice for a lightweight window manager like this, although I tend to use http://www.modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/ .