Back to the original topic.. I agree with Stephanie. Microsoft is more of a monopoly than anything because in everything else we have a choice.. Burger King instead of McDonald's, Pepsi instead of Coke, etc. While the average person has no choice of PC operating system and isn't even aware of it.

Although I do think a lot of Windows' crashing is down to being careless at using it. For comparison, my PC doesn't crash THAT much using windows (being reasonable). The family PC in the other room is so full of spyware, viruses (like MSBlast recently, which I had to get rid of) and other crap it takes about 5 minutes to load AFTER booting up.

It's like a proper playground conversation.

To add to the original conversation, I have nothing at all against Windows. I like it, I like that it's user-friendly - in the same way that I like that Linux is more user-friendly. It's not a monopoly (although MS would like to be a monopoly!) but many of their practices leave a lot to be desired. In the same way that McDonalds leave a lot to be desired - hiring/firing practices, franchise practices.

But, as said above, this is just one in a long line of "I Love/Hate Windows" threads - maybe, if a mod has nothing better to do, they could search LQ for all of them and merge them into one long, rambling thread.

Ugh. I'd rather chew broken glass

Yeah, somehow I didn't think any of the mods'd be up for it.

Hmmm....
I think , it would actually be quite a fun li'l (one-shot)project ;
Merge all those threads into one , make it sticky and attach the label to it :

Well Mega, maybe someone'll suggest you to Jeremy

All in favour, click the right mouse button!

This is the usual anti-Windows rhetoric. It's not always bad enough to demonize the product your preferred product competes with but also to demonize the users of that product. This emotional argument plays on people's insecurities (i.e., they will not be stupid once they use Linux or BSD).

Never eating at McDonald's again sounds like a pretty great idea to me; I've already been doing this for many years now--since I was served raw Chicken McNuggets disguised by the cooked breading. The more people can break the power of large and impersonal corporations with no little or no regard for the common welfare, the better. I'd like to see the power corporations wield brought back down to proportion, but I can only see their growing power eventually crushing the state itself, making all of us citizens/indentured servants of the corporation we're employed at rather than citizens of a nation or of the world as a whole.

You're right. Windows XP hasn't crashed for me once yet; and, when I used Windows 98, the hard drive and other physical parts died before the operating system ever did. Of course, Windows 98 occasionally did freeze, but it wasn't really very often at all. Of course, I'm also very vigilent about what programs get run on my computer, especially since Windows programs have more capbility to do damage to the OS itself than *nix programs.

Windows is, indeed, more user friendly than the GNU/Linux distributions I've tried, even Mandrake. It's improving, but there's still work to be done. I can't see why there aren't more people working solely on improving usability for free software, especially with the various desktop environments. Everyone seems to want to program something, but no one sees the importance of just designing better dialogue boxes, user interfaces, etc. Improved usability will not kill Linux's power, make it less secure, etc. Those are fabrications told by those who are satisfied with the command line and don't consider the needs of others.

I won't argue with you on the spirit of your post, because your voice is what many people new to Linux feel. I've been there, and, I bet the moderators have been there too. There's a tendency to blast MS for every step, misstep, or take every word that comes out of their mouth as a total and complete lie.

Why? Simply put (perhaps too simply), MS has fooled/cheated most people out of a choice. Not just that, but they've done it so well that the majority of computer users aren't even aware there is another viable OS choice. Once people realize that there are other, albeit sometimes imperfect, options out there, they tend to get militant for a while. That fades with time, though. What you'll learn is, like any other conversation or thing you read, to separate the emotions from the facts.

With that in mind, your points:

--Windows is for idiots.

Windows tends to be for people that don't really care about computers. If Linux was preloaded, they'd use that. If computers only came with DOS, they'd use that, provided it offered an easy to use menu system. Not everybody that has a computer wants to learn about every part of the operation of one. You have a valid point, but you're ascribing it to the community at large, which isn't necessarily fair.

--I can't use Windows because Microsoft is a monopoly.

"Won't" is a better term. Linux users range the spectrum of humanity. Some are against capitalism, most are against unfair competitive practices, a few are probably simply jealous of B.G. and MS's success. Anyone who states this is probably using it to express deep-seated feelings about how they beleive the world should work. At the same time, your argument is a little off base. You have a fair number of choices of where you want to eat, what you use for transportation, whether or not you want cable, and even your source of electricity/gas. Of these, the last is most appropriate, as most people don't bother to consider alternative solutions because they inherently beleive they are ineffective compared to their cost, or are simply too much hassle, akin to most people's view of the Linux option.

--Windows (2000 and above crashes because it sucks)

Well, sucks isn't exactly the best way to put it, but it's reasonably true. The previous poster was correct, Windows should be able to deal with anything thrown at it, within reason(and I mean hardware failure or intentional crashes). If you install a new peice of software, and the computer won't boot or crashes afterwards, Windows is the problem. Your OS should protect you against these problems, as that's the purpose of having a multi-tasking OS in the first place. MS can't guarantee that other software is perfect, but they should be able to guarantee that the only thing that fails is that software.

--Windows is too user-friendly

I disagree with this argument on a number of levels. I'll be the first to argue that the modern Windows interface looks a little too Fisher-Price(TM) to me. My problem, and I think many will agree, is that Windows only appears to be user friendly. Wizards are wonderful, but if you've ever tried to do anything outside of what MS wizards expect, you'll agree that you have to know a lot more than a user friendly system should expect.

Yes, Windows allows you to do a little more if you understand the registry, but how many people do? On a deeper level, many people can edit the registry, but how many people can edit the registry to fix a problem without a copy-paste type operation? Most people that do work with the registry do so because they saw the fix on a website or in a class. There is no way to blindly fix a problem with software/hardware without outside help from MS or the software/harware provider. With Linux/OSS, this is entirely possible, as you have access to the code, and understanding how it works is usually one of the tenets of it's design.

Linux can be hard to use, but the more you use it, the easier it becomes. On the other hand, each version of Windows seems to prefer to make it's users less knowledgable about the system. This is a fundamental flaw, if you ask me, as it makes each user/admin feel "dumb" with each succeeding version, whereas someone that's used Linux for a number of users is seen as a true guru, not just with Linux, but computing in general.

One thing you should keep in mind is that the Linux community is free in spirit, whether it's this site or others. In that respect, the onus is on the reader to separate the wheat from the chaff. Remember one of the pillars of true freedom is the freedom to be wrong.

Also, yet a related point, if you want to be taken seriously by the community, you should strive to make your points without potentially inflamatory remarks. This doesn't mean being politically correct, it means avoiding unnecessary swipes at unrelated segments of society. You are, whether you realize it or not (in real life as well as online), measured by your choice of words. "Gayer" isn't necessarily offensive to homosexuals, but it's something most people would attribute to an elementary student.

I hope all this helps you to understand the Linux community (even the extreme edges of it) a little better, and I mean no offense with my comments towards you or your post.

I think the points you made are straw men you come up with so you will have no problem knocking them down.

Try Windows charges companies a per-seat license fee for computers even if they run another operating system. That's a fact, not a myth. It's their strong arm tactics that turn me, a lot of other people, corporations, and even entire countries off.

For a large company with several thousand computers, they can save money by donating millions to open source projects instead of paying MS license fees. That is what is happening with UserLinux, GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, etc.

a whole load of exellent points made but 1 in favour of windows vs linux/nix not mentioned.
the lack of RTFM attitude.

I don't tell anyone RTFM but, Gill what OS provides the manuals like Linux? Their are so many good ones that if someone reads them they can usually find what they need

tricky kid, read into the context of my "gayer" comment, and you will clearly see that I am not using the word gay as stupid

okay carbboy, but by those standards, if even a single company is in the market, it's not a monopoly

McDonald's dominates most the fast food industry world-wide
G.M. owns Cadillac, GMC, Buick, Saturn, SAAB, Pontiac, Hummer, OPEL, and Chevy, a significant percentage of the total cars in America

But in the OS market there is MicroSoft, SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, Macintosh, Unix, Free BSD, Solaris, Red Hat, Debian, Lindows, Redmond Linux, IBM, FreeBSD, and so so much more

Which one of those has been bought out by Microsoft?

My cable is a monopoly. I have comcast, they charge high as crap, and if you don't like it too, bad. Since comcast controls all the wires, there cannot be any competiton

There are no competivitive prices with my power because there is nothing to compete with

I kind of agree, in the sense that I read RTFM as "rewrite the F* manual". At the same time, like I posted above, you can't base your attitude towards Linux on some putzes idea of how much you should know. (Okay, I didn't post that above, but I should have.)

On the Windows side of the argument, if you ask a question, a good number of people will tell you to take classes and get certified if you "really want to know". This secretive attitude pervades MCSE and more advanced levels of certifications. Granted, they usually pay good mony for that information, but on the other, sharing information shows that you know much more than your user, because you aren't afraid that they might steal your job if they know one or two things.

More than a few small company sysadmins won't even document system information to the company's ownership, for fear that if they don't hide it, they will be compromising their jobs. They'll walk in, fix your problem, but if you ask them what went wrong, they'll avoid the question. From my side of the fence, when I get called in for a problem or to provide a solution to a client's need, the biggest obstacle is often the system admin that's scared of losing his job. We provide all sorts of "free" information, but more often than not, the sysadmin wants to keep things the same, in an attempt to enjoy the free ride.

To this type of sysadmin, problems are the bread and butter of his position, so there is little incentive to fix them. One place I visited (an RIAA member...which caused all sorts of mental dilemmas for me ), shut down their systems several times a day to patch their servers. It was a small place, but can you imagine a large corporation shutting down all IT activity just to do backups, patches and upgrades?

The admin had no reason to improve his system, as it provided him with reasons why they should spend money on the IT budget. In his case, he was pissed because they weren't jumping to provide him with Win2003 certs, so as far as he was concerned, any problems they had were his superiors fault for not having the newest "improved" software.

If this was the only one, or the only way I'd seen it, it would be one thing, but this is pretty much standard, especially in small companies with only one or two IT people.

Once again another Windows vs Linux thread... once again people are making generalizations about one side or another. People who use Windows aren't all idiots, and it doesn't always crash. But yea, some flaws were made in early versions. I myself don't like the Wizards that are all over in XP. Things do work though; my system doesn't crash because I know what I put on it and I know how to get to the problem and fix it. I had have windows running for weeks without it crashing. Sadly, sometimes all problems can't be fixed, like drivers for instance.

Linux, you say is "all so perfect", "you can throw anything at it." For most of the time yes (One good point is when your updating stuff, no need to restart ) Yet I have had the kernel lock up on me before, that was mainly drivers. Nautilus is still buggy and GAIM still sufferes from the Cut-and-paste bug. Yet, it was cool to edit gtkpod source code and sort of hack a fix into it; it couldn't read the lengths of VBR mp3s and so I borrowed code form libmp3 and fixed it. Me being a programmer of most languages except C or C++ (well, I know a little) that was great thing. Had the source not of been available for both of those things, I would've gotten fustrated and booted back into windows to sync my iPod

Need I say, I like the console. You make powerful scripts for doing things, not only to that extent, you got powerful tools that make things quicker to do. Though, I wish, simple stuff like, sound and other hardware to be configured using some sort of GUI tool (be it graphical or text based) to configure that stuff, not having to go through a conf file and all that. It isn't hard to edit stuff, but, you wish it would work seamlessly.

With 2.6 coming out, I hope it will make it easier for desktop users and most of all developers to get more multimedia-wise and better improve stuff like Gnome. As for now, I'll stick with Windows for my desktop and games.. but for my server stuff, I'll stick with FreeBSD. I only went towards it because 1) RedHat was leaving 2) I heard it was stable alternative that can run well on a low end system 3) It package mangament seem to be simple (by god it is ) 4) Its free and I can run Apache, PHP and Mysql

Thats enough ranting for now...

First of all, show some respect and spell our names correctly. I don't recall having a space in my name and I don't recall crabboy being carbboy.

Second of all, I'm not here to argue what words you use, I'm telling you not to use particular words in your posts. I can really care less what or how you intended that word to be used, just don't use it to describe something that it is not by its actual terms.

I am only defending those that might find your particular descriptive "terms" offensive in nature or derogatory as our rules indicate. If you do not like our rules on this site that all other members abide by, along with the moderators who enforce them to make sure they are being followed, well then, don't post then or use this site.

I myself am not gay, but if I were, well, I would find your use of the word "gayer" offensive and discriminatory against me.

That is all. Keep it clean and follow the rules, that is all I am stating. If not, this thread and any future threads that don't follow our rules in place will be closed immediately.

Regards.

PS. If anyone wants to argue this any further regarding this issue, email me or the site admin.