dduardo said:
xPAGANx, just a couple comments:
1) What about remote exploits that don't require user interventions? Ex. RPC, Blaster and Zotob.
2) You, as an end user, may not see the difference between IE and any other browser, but if you do any type of web development you would know how crippled IE is.
3) Blame developers for choosing directx over opengl. ID, creators of doom, uses opengl, and I'm able to play all they games they produce.
4) I haven't had to deal with dependencies for the longest time now. Installing is as easy as:
emerge <package name>
or using the point-and-click version called porthole.
5)I use Linux for a very simple reason: Windows = software lock-in, Apple = hardware lock-in, Linux= No lock-in.
To start with, I am looking at this through the typical users eyes.
1. I will agree there was a little problem there. The problem has been addressed and corrected. If people left automatic updates on there wouldn't really be a problem. Much more often than not, the patches are available before the attack. Don't make any rash claims that Linux doesn't require security patches, because it does. I will agree that there are not as many though. Look at the user base though. Vastly different.
2. As far as IE being crippled, I am not really aware of that. Maybe you could enlighten me. I realize it is more susceptable to collecting garbage on the net in careless hands, but how is it crippled? I have used it exclusively for quite sometime now. I feel it is the most widely supported browser out there for surfing the web. With other browsers I occasionally experience anomalies. At work we have applications that run off ActiveX so I certainly do not have a lot of options.
3. Why blame anybody? It's not the developers fault for choosing a technology you can't use. Some games are designed for Windows. What is wrong with that? I am not anti-Linux by any means so don't take me the wrong way here. For the average person Windows is what is at home, and what gets their software running. My parents would not have a clue what to do with Linux.
4. As I stated package management has gotten a lot better. Installs are still dependant on either the command line, or another utility. Windows apps have installers that "Autoplay" which is a convenience for most people.
5. You are right except that Linux has limited software compared to Windows. Same goes for Apple. If you want the most options, Windows is the way to go. If you can settle for what is available Linux/Mac are fine. I like both Linux/Mac, but really it frustrates me when I have a limited scope of software. Most really polished software is for Windows or Mac. Yeah it is a little jab at open source, but I really commend anyone who contributes to the open source community. It is a great thing. There are a lot of great open source apps out there. Most apps just don't have the man hours involved for a real shine.
Installing Linux can be both easy and a total whore depending on the system you are loading it onto and what distro you are using. I have used a variety including Red Hat, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware and Suse. I would rate Suse as being the easiest to get running smoothly. Red Hat and Fedora are fairly straight forward as well, but I give Suse the edge. The early releases of Fedora gave me significant problems with some of my hardware. Gentoo... wow... That distro can be a serious whore. Several releases (of Gentoo) would not even compile correctly for me. On another X was missing dependancies. On another release my mouse wouldn't work right despite my futile configuration attempts. Maybe my mouse just sucked lol, but still none of the other distros gave me any issues.
Slack is easily my favorite distro. No extra crap. Suse is nice, but I can spend a long time sorting what I do and do not want.
I have had both positive and negative experiences with Linux. It is a good OS to know, but for use in the home the software market is too small.
Ohh and Moonbear... Sorry for jacking your thread. ;)