Best: --------------------------------------------
#Package management tools (Emerge, Yum, Swaret and apt-get):
The number one reason to dump Windows. In Windows and Mac you have to update and install
every friggin program manually, all i need to do in Slackware is write a simply script that
"swaret --install <what-ever>" and go to a friend, study GLX or whatever. Saves ALOT of time.

#No reboots
In windows you have to reboot for every stupid driver you install, very annoying! With Linux you
only need to reboot when installing a new kernel (and in Fedora Core its as easy as "yum install
kernel"

#Open Source
You can - if you want to - look at the source and modify it yourself.

#No evil FUDs and MS shit
Im so tired of all the evil tricks MS pulls, FUD bullshit, killing BeOS, you name it!
I wish to live long enough to see that damn company fall to pieces.
I don't see any of that in the Linux world.

#Different Distros
There is a distro for everyone. If you don't like the way Windows is made, though luck.
With Linux you choose the distro that fits you, if you are a noob go for Xandros or Mandrake and
if you are a pro go for Slackware, Debian or Gentoo.

#WMs
XFCE is nice, and Gnome is okay. Ive never tried installing another skin in Windows but ive
heard that its hard.

#aTerm
Transparency is just soooo cool .

#Scripts
In Windows you have to do everything manually, in Linux you can write a script that takes care
of everything and go watch a movie while the system updates, compiles, download, what-ever.

#Works on many platforms
You can't run Windows on Alpha, SPARC et.c.

#Supports alot of FS types
Windows lack of built-in ReiserFS support keeps annoying me. This shows how much MS cares
about there customers.

#Gazillion of programs
I once tried "man /usr/bin/ *"
Geez.... never going to use 95% of all that software but it doesn't hurt .



Worst: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#Bad hardware support
Not Linux programmers fault, but still a major drawback

#Dependencies
Arghh!!! All those pesky dependecies! I don't know about Emerge but there aren't many libs
in swaret.... I have to manually search, download and install most dependencies.
The most annoying thing with Linux.

#Some stupid command-line tools
If i type "tar blah.tar.gz" why doesn't it just unpack the shit? Why should i type zvxf or whatever
when its obvious what i want to do, same goes for rpm.

#Stupid KDE bloat
Slow, ugly, full of bugs, consumes a huge amount of RAM.
Can't understand why people use it. Use gnome or XFCE.

#Bad documentation
I still haven't found any good GLX programming tutorials, Win32 has better documentation.

#Hard for noobs
Its much easier to install Windows and win32 drivers and programs. In Linux you have to chmod,
compile, edit the conf-file et.c.

#Most games are made for Windows
Sure, UT2004 and Neverwinternights rule, but most games are Win32 and DX only
(Cedega costs and Wine is crappy and annoying).

#Slow boot
XP boots much faster then all the distros ive tried. Ofcourse you have to reboot windows all the
time but still :P .

#Software incompability
Software packed for Fedora Core doesn't always work with Slackware. Stupid, there should
be a standard for all Linux software.

#Software layers
All these window-toolkits like gtk, qt et.c. slows up the system.
It should be:

Hardware <-> X-server <-> program

And all middle-layers should compile out.

#No CTRL+ALT+DELETE
Okay, i can surive without it but sometimes software does crash. And NO xkill and
gnome-system-monitor are not what i need.

#System Monitors
None fo the system monitors for Linux ive tried have matched sysinternals.com´s proccesexplorer
and tcpview.

#File managers
All linux file managers suck, Konqueror is KDE bloated software and Gentoo and endeavor
are ugly.

#aTerm
Transparency is just soooo cool .

And true transparency is even cooler, such as my translucent menus these days

#Scripts
In Windows you have to do everything manually, in Linux you can write a script that takes care
of everything and go watch a movie while the system updates, compiles, download, what-ever.

I'm pretty sure you can still use batch files in Windows. . .

#Bad hardware support
Not Linux programmers fault, but still a major drawback

Actually, Linux supports more hardware than any other OS, last I heard. . .

#Dependencies
Arghh!!! All those pesky dependecies! I don't know about Emerge but there aren't many libs
in swaret.... I have to manually search, download and install most dependencies.
The most annoying thing with Linux.

Hahahahaha. I never even used swaret when I was on Slack, my method consisted of installing a new package, seeing what it complained about not having when I tried to run it, installing THAT package, and trying again until it worked
Emerge is a HELL of a lot easier. Takes care of everything.

#Some stupid command-line tools
If i type "tar blah.tar.gz" why doesn't it just unpack the shit? Why should i type zvxf or whatever when its obvious what i want to do, same goes for rpm.

What happened to "You can - if you want to - look at the source and modify it yourself."?

If you only had two options with tar - tar and untar - you'd loose a lot of functionality that tar has built in. How, for instance, would you preview what the tar file will unpack to? How would you choose between bzip and gzip?

It's an easy enough fix, tho. Like you said in "#Scripts" - just write a simple script called, say, "untar", that will unzip and unpack a tarball, make it executable, and put it in /usr/bin or some such.

#Stupid KDE bloat
Slow, ugly, full of bugs, consumes a huge amount of RAM.
Can't understand why people use it. Use gnome or XFCE.

It fulfills it's purpose as a more Windows-like GUI.

I don't like Gnome or XFCE either. Use FVWM.

It's all a wonderful part of the choices FOSS gives. As you say, "There is a distro for everyone". And a windows manager, and a browser, and. . .

#Bad documentation
I still haven't found any good GLX programming tutorials, Win32 has better documentation.

So write some. I'm sure they'd appreciate it

#Hard for noobs
Its much easier to install Windows and win32 drivers and programs. In Linux you have to chmod, compile, edit the conf-file et.c.

This is a good thing, IMHO.

Clueless users are the single biggest cause of viruses, spam, chain letters, and most other computer problems. People should be encouraged to be informed users, software should not encourage ignorance.

#Slow boot
XP boots much faster then all the distros ive tried. Ofcourse you have to reboot windows all the time but still :P .

XP takes a lot longer to boot than my distro. Boot time can be drastically improved by turning off unused services and compiling a decent kernel, I've found. Slack never did impress me with its boot times, tho. Gentoo is way faster.

#Software incompability
Software packed for Fedora Core doesn't always work with Slackware. Stupid, there should be a standard for all Linux software.

There is, it's called source code

#No CTRL+ALT+DELETE
Okay, i can surive without it but sometimes software does crash. And NO xkill and
gnome-system-monitor are not what i need.

Hey, I've got CTRL+ALT+DELETE. And CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE too. And I can also telnet in to my locked-up PC and kill the problem from there quite often.

#System Monitors
None fo the system monitors for Linux ive tried have matched sysinternals.com´s proccesexplorer and tcpview.

I've yet to find anything that beats GKrellM, personally. . .

#File managers
All linux file managers suck, Konqueror is KDE bloated software and Gentoo and endeavor are ugly.

I'm sure you realise that that's a FAR from exhaustive list. I quite like Rox as a file manager, myself. . .

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

How do you make the menus translucent?

Yes but try installing a driver, setting up networking, change the resolution et.c. with a script...

ATI cards? Webcameras? Hardware MPEG decoders? I don't think so.
But ofcourse you can't run Windows on Nintendo Gamecube, MIPS, SPARC et.c.

Yes, I don't have time for manually hunting down dependencies. Without tools like emerge i would go back
to windows.

Im not saying that you shouldn't be able to use all those advanced tar flags, im saying that when i was a
linux noob i wondered how the hell i was supposed to unpack the .tar.gz file or install the rpm-file,
when i typed rpm <package> it just showed me a million of options i didn't need.

It sure does, including the resource wastage and all bugs!

FVWM, Fluxbox, Ratpoisen and all those others Blackbox-wannabees that look and works almost exactly the
same gives me claustrofobia.

Im going to write a NeHe tutorial on loading modules, putting all graphics-API specific code in them and
making portable engines.

But never the less some people will never care, and do we want them to buy MS stuff instead of using Linux?

I find that hard to belive since XP starts loading all stuff at once instead of loading everything in a serial
fashion like every distro ive tried does. Also XP optimizes all data on the HD so the first 2 or 3 boots take
longer then averege. Got any numbers? How long does it take to boot Gentoo?

Even though i am a programmer i hate compiling other people software since 50% of the time it doesn't work
because of some missing/miss-placed header/lib.

Im not talking about rebooting the computer, im talking about getting a good procces manager when
pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE

GKrellM just shows the CPU and Netload and such, i want a list of procceses and tcp and udp-connections.
Just go to www.sysinternals.com and take a look and you will see what i mean.

Ive tried alot of file managers for Linux and ROX sucked.

No CTRL-ALT-DEL? Try CTRL-ALT-F1 and use the CLI to kill the locked program

How do you make the menus translucent?

FVWM + patch. . .

ATI cards?

are supported. . .

Webcameras?

are supported. . .

Hardware MPEG decoders?

No idea, don't use them. . .
Support for all the latest hardware used in PCs might not be the best (tho I've not yet had any problems) but the fact still stands that Linux runs on far more hardware than Windows et al

FVWM, Fluxbox, Ratpoisen and all those others Blackbox-wannabees

Heh. You've got that the wrong way round - FVWM predates Blackbox by a long way

Since FVWM defaults to a largely blank screen, and is almost endlessly customisable, what si it that makes you feel claustrophobic?

But never the less some people will never care, and do we want them to buy MS stuff instead of using Linux?

Yes. It stops the forums getting bogged down with "I installed Linux and don't know what to do now." type messages.

Even though i am a programmer i hate compiling other people software since 50% of the time it doesn't work
because of some missing/miss-placed header/lib.

Funny, I've installed two entire linux distros, LFS and Gentoo, entirely from source without the slightest trouble. . .

Im not talking about rebooting the computer, im talking about getting a good procces manager when
pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE

Ahh, with you.

So what's wrong with the CLI tools. . . ?

i want a list of procceses and tcp and udp-connections.

A couple of aterms is all it would take to be able to display that information, what's the problem?

Something I quite like to do is have a completely undecorated transparent aterm for some tasks - makes it look like the text is appearing on the root window. . .

There always was, is, and will be ( as long as software is open ) a standart:
In other words source code. And best package management for source code is freebsd ports. Source code can be optimised for your very own system and is far easyer to use for me than windows wizzards, they are so ugly (to use not look and feel) . But thats just my oppinion.

EDIT:
Maybe off topic, but:
Just visited sysinternals, and saw first ad. It says something and then: recover lost administrator passwords. How is that? If system would be secure, there would be no way to recover passwords. this just represents the flaw in system.

hmm i have a dual boot on my gaming box just to see if i could set it up a while back. i learned a lot doing this as it was a struggle for me. in the end i am running winXP pro very stripped down and an extreemly clean msconfig startup. only have my antivirus, memturbo, and vid/sound drivers and nothing else. so extreemly clean. i also cleaned out all of the services i do not need running in my XP system.

then i did a full desktop install of Whitebox to include the OO suit, samba, apache, and a few other services that i do not use, just to test out some bloat with a Gnome desktop.

get this, windows boots in 18sec, whitebox boots in under 13seconds. you tell me what is faster to boot?

system hardware:

P4 2.4G 800M/hz FSB
1G pc3200 ram (kingston)
Asus P4P800 Deluxe MB
Seagate 80G sATA drive
ATI 9500 128M vid card


it also takes about 5-7min less time to install whitebox then it does to install XP, this does not include any patching from either yum, or windows update, this is just to the first login screen of each install.

[edit to add]

in all to me the only real disadvantage linux has over windows is its direct support for games, but as you mentioned that has nothing to do with linux and everything to do with the game makers.

the hardware support is there for the most part, but you do need to keep your eyes open before you buy something. software support is there, the apt-get/yum managers are way better then anything i have ever seen in the windows world.

as for linux not being for a newbie, heck windows is not for a newbie when you boil it down why do you think there are so many problems in the windows world?

if you put a windows system next to a modern GUI in linux the average EU will not be able to tell the differance. they will click on the nice little icons on the desktop and go forward from there. nothing hard or fancy about it.

now to install, configure hardware and software, etc... neither OS is particually kind to the newbie. the documentation for some linux software is not written the best as it neglects to tell the user EVERY little step like windows documentation will in their README files, but the info is out there if you search or ask questions.

in all i am liking the power that is linux more and more i just wish prgram manufactures like Adobe and others would start making native releases of their popular software. PageMaker 7 is one of the programs that is keeping me tied to windows as is Quickbooks Pro. yes QB can be run in Crossover office, but PageMaker can not, at least not well enough to be of use to me.

same goes for games. yes more and more are being directly supported and IMHO that is a good trend. i look forward to seeing more games and programs directly supported for linux over the next 5 years i fully expect it too.

just to add a best worst for you:

windows worst:

driver bloat. HP all-in-one device = 170M ziped driver set.

linux best:

total size for all drivers under linux roughly 10M

----------------------------------------------------

to top it off HP does not seem to understand that there is no differance between win2k pro and win2k server when it comes to the driver set, yet it will tell you, unless you know the work around, that it can not install a device that is supposed to be 100% windows 2000 complient to a win2k server. very annoing, you do not have this problem in linux.

KDE uses
CTRL + ESC to launch a process manager
CTRL+ ALT + backspace terminates X

That's not what I meant that's for if it's really bad locked up. Try it you'll end up in the command line which is always good

I'd rather crash out to a black screen with white text that responds, then a blue screen with white text that doesn't

I dont agree with all you bad points.. but here are my only complaints about linux as an OS.

Screen savers,
why is there 15,000 annoying 1st grader drawing like screen savers? I dont need all the crappy ones along with the good ones.

Printing,
Why do i have setup my printer in every application i want to print from??

Modems,
Not that I use a modem any more (thank god) but figure out something for winmodems

Why? Broadband makes them obsolete

some people are as lucky as alll I was stuck with a modem up until Dec. 03. I could not use linux because i had a crappy winmodem... and I did not want to shell out 100 bucks for an external hardware modem.