well i've been wanting to close it for months, but there's no real *reason* to.... maybe if someone opened a poll on it's life....

hm... someone could start an irrelevant topic on religion or politics and it'll close within 3 more threads

Hey all....

Ok. Here goes.
I'm not anti anything. Open minded I am. That is the key to everything. Everything. If you don't at least take the honest time to try something, then how can you criticize it?

First of all, people need to realize that a computer isn't a toy. It's a tool. A computer was created to do what we humans are to lazy or stupid to do on a redundant basis.
Linux is a tool. Not a festering neon distraction of colors and BSOD's.
Every copy a huge file in windoz? Can't do anything else can ya?

The main problem with computer users is they think they are smart. Most IT departments now a dayz are nothing but windoz geeks. Took a course or two and all of a sudden u r certified. And u bad mouth unix thru & thru.
The reason why most windoz users hate *nix is because you actually have to learn sometimes... geeez. What a pity.

I've got 5 different boxes running SuSE8.0, 3 SuSE7.3, 2 RH, 1 Solaris8, 2 SPARC (solaris8), and 3 Microsloth Wintendoz.
Now, my wintendoz are nothing more than a toy box. That's it. Games, and maybe a few multimedia peices of software.

The reason I hate (not anti, simply hate) microsloth is due to the lack of knowledge they seem to get by with.
I don't care how good u think u r with code, if you don't know hardware, u don't know code. This is redmond's problem. If billy bob would have kept the original idea for the PC, he prolly would be able to rule the world by now.
But he is greedy. And he knows it. And u know it.

So, everyone who can plainly talk bad about Linux, needs to re-think their position. Mainly u bad mouth the penguin cuz it isn't as pretty and cluttered with junk from a $300 overpriced OS which was re-built from an old BSD kernel (research it and see it's true).

If MS thinks open source is bad and wants to close it, then how will they ever continue their work?
You really want to sit there and tell me that billy bob's team really thought of the new XP login manager by themselves? Ever hear of unix? Next time u log in to an XP box, watch the cheeze login grafx.

I know I'm ranting now, but hey, it was asked.

Dude - R u meaning NT is rebuilt from an old BSD kernel?

NT came from and old OVMS Kernel. That old Digital clown, Cutler is his name, was the main programmer/developer for OVMS.

He left Digital in '88/89 for M$ to develop NT whose kernal is very similar to OVMS. (The two were compared by remaining OVMS dev/engineers at which time M$ and Digital quietly came to an agreement)

They just epoxied the kernal tight and layered millions more lines of code on top of it, XP is now approx. 45 million lines of code, whenever they need to come out with new versions or fixes.

I use to work at Digital. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

-c-

Sorry, I think you misunderstood me. I said that some companies hire 19yr old kids to be Windows systems admins and expect Unix admins to have at least 4 years of college. That should not be the way systems are run, treat you systems like toys they will run like toys.
Windows reboots after installing software and/or drivers because most users do not know how to restart a service. What would happen to microsoft's tech support lines if services had to be restarted every time something is installed? Normal users dont want to know that much about their computer systems! They want to install a program, have the system reboot, and have the program work.

I dont think Windows is better, I just know my way around the system (including the registry). I started working with Linux in January 2002 and got lost pretty quickly (took me a day to figure out how to change the desktop resolution). I found this site where I could read questions posted about Linux and learn some things, at the same time I found Winders bashes, so I decided to defend M$.
BTW, (thanks to many questions posted to this site) I now have a Redhat 7.2 system configured and running apache. My wife (who is all Windows) uses MSFrontpage to edit her web pages, then saves them via Samba to my Linux web server. I look over the pages and make sure all the hyperlinks work, then post them to our web host.
See, Windows and Linux can play well together. Good kids, here's a cookie

Opps... sorry, ur correct. i misunderstood.

in reply to ur latest post re: defending M$, i should tone down my anti-M$ feelings a bit i guess....

Having been an IT manager the two things that bug me most about the industry are the arrogance of both M$ and Unix system admins who look down their noses at users. (And they both do)

A vast, vast majority of computer users have a job to do that isn't being a super unix system admin or watching/waiting M$ apps and OSs to work slowly or bomb into blue screens.

The new MacOS X is unix based, did you know that?, and Wal-Mart is now selling systems that they call "Lindows", (anyone seen those yet? Check out Wal-Mart's web site and search for "lindows") whose claim is to run windows apps flawlessly.

That, to me anyway, is a light in the window, nice metaphor eh? pointing the way to tru user friendliness.

I wish us all luck,

Cman2k

I've been using computers since DOS 5.1 (ok, I was 4 or 5, but I knew the commands). Other than DOS, I haven't seen a MS product that I really liked until XP (win and office), of course I probably wouldn't like those if I had to activate them. I have tried some Linux, but I don't want to risk destroying my Windows stuff, and as a gamer (although mostly console) I'd keep Windows so I really haven't actully used a working Linux system. I do program some, but I do most of it in Java so it's not Windows dependent to run.

I'm anti-Microsoft in the way they use their monopoly to stop Linux (which I would use if everything that was written for Windows worked under Linux) and mess up the HTML standard. I really can't say I'm anti-windows. Some of the versions 9x/ME are bad, but I have no problems with XP pro, which I'm typing this under.

Okay, I have to put in my two bits two.

I use windows for 90% of my client side stuff. Anything server related is linux. Linux is hosting our web & database at the shop.

rdaves mentioed that linux is hard to use, and difficult. I agree. But don't blame linux for that. Consider modem manufacturers. Most of them build windows-proprietary modems (not real modems, really, but half-hearted modems). These manufacturers won't give information out to linux developers, so linux devopers are forced to decompile or interpret the windows drivers. This makes progress slow.

The fact of the matter is that microsoft and hardware companies have strong relationships. There is a lot of hardware that is "windows-only" -- microsoft makes money making drivers that do work that hardware should be doing while the manufacturers save money because it takes less time and money to build the merchandise.

Even if a hardware device isn't windows only, many manufacturers won't release enough information to the general public (linux dev's) to quickly build a suitable driver. Linux developers are forced to improvise, and it takes time.

It's sort of a one way street. Microsoft is developing connectivity software to linux machines (using NFS, NIS, etc), while they're trying to make SMB/CIFS so cryptic that linux developers won't be able to do the same.

Hardware manufacturers need to become more involved in supporting linux (just building drivers would be a big step). That would give linux developers more time to work on the gui, and the nice things that make an OS easy to use.

If you want an easy to use linux gui, Mandrake is probably the best. You have the GUI's to help you, or you can edit files manually, do everything the hard way. Either way, you've got an option.

Anyway, that's how I see it. Anyone agree?

I'd just like to say that I don't like what MS does as far as business pracitces go and of course I use win2k for games and what not but i'd like to say that all though im anit-ms im not totally anti- Bill Gates. He does a lot to give back. Scholar ship programs, disease research and things of that nature and he seems to be very compassionate about such things. So although I dont like how MS is run, I still think Bill as a person is pretty decent from what I have seen so far. If anyone knows different feel free to post.

I don't think so. I mean, I do kinda admire the man for his acquired skill for mauling the english language and American Laws so much that even our own Law makers don't know what to think.
That's kinda kewl. But billy bob doesn't "give" anything back to the community.

Everything he contributes, has pretty much been forced upon him by courts. Just like this latest battle. After he dumps a few million dollars into the governments Law fund, all of a sudden the charges are almost completely dropped and not even a smak on the rist is given in exchange.

No. Not anti M$, only hate what they are trying to do to the computer world. Seems that billy bob is the first instigator of the forgotten fact that, a computer is a machine. Not a toybox. Granted it's far better than ANY (YES ANY) gaming cosole out there, but still not meant for it.

So, obviously everyone here posting knows enough to be considered a "non-typical-putr-moron" so maybe we can finally drop the big debate.

It's kinda like religion, or politics. It will never end.

So... how about a new topic.

L8rz

ViriiEetr

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...000/760103.stm

It is a fact that Bill Gates has given billions of dollars to charity. Whether you like his business practices or not is a different matter. I personally blame the US government, because in a capitalist economy it is the role of government to legislate such that business behaves properly - it is not the role of business to behave how it thinks the government or citizens might "like" them to.

Look. I don't want to start a debate about this that and the other... but your wrong.
The business should mold to the standards of the government. Why else is there a government?

And if you read the articles partaining to his "noble" charity contributions, you'll see the truth. You don't have to belive me, and you don't have to read it.

And name 1 business in the world that "thrives" because of listening to its government. If everyone did that, there would be NO profit. Especially in a capitalist house.

...which is precisely my point. Business can't anticipate what the government believes to be proper standards unless it legislates to that effect. I.e. There is nothing wrong with a business abusing a monopoly position because that is in its rational self-interest - the onus is on the government to ensure that monopoly power is not obtainable.

I have just provided a link to one such article suggesting that he contributes much to charity - I would be happy to be stand corrected if somebody can provide a different source.

Every business has to listen to its government because of law. If a business breaks a law, it is prosecuted. It is up to the government to provide a legal framework in which businesses operate - in the case of Microsoft, the governments of the US and other countries have failed because they have not provided and/or enforced a legal framework to ensure that open standards are followed, or that anti-competitive OEM agreements are prevented, for example.

You are quite right that in an ideal, perfectly competitive world, there would be no "profit". However, this is impossible to achieve and so "profit" will always exist. Besides, firms would still continue to operate even if it was impossible to achieve abnormal profit (revenue is greater than costs) as long as they achieve normal profit (revenue is equal to costs). This is because although they do not have abnormal profit, their employees will still be earning wages and therefore living life comfortably.

I hate Windows as an expression of M$ bad business practice.
The most people in the world believes on the 1st commandament: You will not have any other Software vendor but Micro$oft !!! Nothing existed before and nothing will exist after!
The more intelligent ones say that perhaps there are better software but we must use this because it is a standard "de facto" and it is the only way to communicate with everyone, and in the name of this they accept stronger and stronger limitation to their freedom and their privacy. And the infinite loop continues and feed itself.
Linux must grow up quickly, becoming more easy for common users and winning the battle of the choice of OS on commercial PC: we all have do do something to help this process go on, to save the whole humanity.