Ahahahahahahahahaha....that would make a good .sig

Just to stop this thread from fading... as it has taken me so long to catch up!

I see three issues for this - choice, usability and upgrades.

Windows lets me do most things, some harder than I want. Linux takes some effort to do some things. Increasingly I seem to have less and less choice with windows, and as I learn Linux I realise I have lots of choice. How often do I swear when those stupid wizards in windows tell me they can't fix the problem and that I should consult the system administrator (at home, that IS me).

When windows is working, it is usable. When it is not working properly it is so hard to work out why it is not working. When my kids use the computer I often have to correct something 'cos they broke it. I am about to do another re-install of windows98 on my PC which is now out of date after only 4 years. With Linux I can separate out what each user can do, and I can did into the depths to find the problem. It cannot do games yet, which is what my kids want. The hurdle I see with Linux is that users don't really have a definite list of what their PC should be doing (certainly home users, and when work PCs have restricted software, users complain they can't change their wallpaper or play music CDs like at home). The consequence is that windows, and a lot of Linux distributions have become so bloated. This makes them harder to set up. There is much talk of making Linux more like windows - crap - it should be made more modular so it does the tasks people want it to do, and does them well.

Most people will tell me I really should upgrade my PC. A year ago, I pulled out my first PC from storage - a 486 running windows 3.11. It still worked wonderfully. I installed Linux and set it up as a server - it is at home so does not have a heavy load, but allowed me to play around with web programming. When my Grandad died (sob) I got his tool kit so I could mend my car. How old was the set of spanners, who knows? They still worked then and they still work now. There is no reason to upgrade them. How old is Notepad? It still works as a tool for editing config files, etc. So much of windows based software is geared to continuing development, and therefore requires continuing income streams. No wonder M$ has the policy it has. With Linux, there are so many good tools out there, and it is so easy to use several tools to do what you want. You would have to upgrade Linux to close security problems, or to use new hardware, but so much does not need to be upgraded. We must break the mentality that groups the tools with the operating system it uses. That includes the use of bloated tools - how much does MSWord do and how much do most people use? My Win3.11 system had a Desk Top Publishing package. I could write an article and save it as text. I could run it through a spell-checker and then a style checker. I could lay it out in the DTP package, and join it with graphics, etc. I did this for a while with a local newsletter.

To make Linux acceptable on the desktop, we must ensure that it its installation really does give users what they need. We must teach users that their PC is a collection of tools, like the toolbox in the garage. We must focus on usability based on the end results, not on how much it looks like windows.

Am I anti-M$ ? depends. They are off my preferred suppliers list. They are not a contributor to my happiness or profitability. I just have to accept that they have a grip on my life that is hard to break. Still, where there is a will there is a way.

Joe

M$ has this policy because of their illegal monopoly, they have 90% of the desktop, mostly because of the actions that they have already been found guilty of. What are they going to do to keep the income stream that they have enjoyed from going down the tube now that they no longer have "new" markets to target? China has given them the finger and Korea has decided to go for a local company that has a Korean language linux distro, the rest of asia will follow suit and that dosn't leave many new markets for bill and his cronies. The only choice left is for them to gouge as much as they can from the suckers....er....customers.... they already have and one way of doing that is with .net....but the banks might have something to say about M$ attempting to take a slice of every online transaction. M$ is at the top of the hill now, but there is a slippery downhill slope ahead of them and their own policies are going to be accelerating the ride.

I've been using puters since the days of dos 4..unfortunatly I was only interested in games so windows felt like the best option..I've been working on a internet helpdesk for 2 years now and after 1 year of supporting windows as far as internet goes I switched to linux..I'm sick to death of its impossibility to trouble shoot, bla caused and illegal operation and will be shut down...error in explorer.exe windows will now close..and just because you switch off the computer while its online windows will corrupt it tcp stack and tell you nothing..nothing like that happens in linux..if you switch of the comp while online you just have to delete the pid file for ppp..
Maybe its because I've only seen the worst of windows bhut I curse it everytime it gives me stupid errors and fixing that will make something else break..
Then again I shudder at the thought of guiding people through linux command line...thats one thing about ms..it used to be pretty similar in look and feel..

here's my two cents

once you've used linux and get used to it's stability and flexibility there's no going back. to claim to be an enterprise class os you must have a stable , secure base which ms does not. (i'm talking about NT 4 and 5 here).
i've seen so many BSOD's on production web servers and database servers that i've sworn off windows as a server.

That said 98 and it's later cousins are firmly seated as end-user
desktop oses and the users are resistant to change.
as an admin it's my responsibility to cater to the users but i'm pissed when i have to do a reinstall , a backup-restore cycle etc etc cos windows screwed up when there is a much more stable , secure , not to mention prettier alternative.

i absolutely hate micro$oft. they are a damn silly joke company, and their operating systems are crappy and suck nut-sac. they are taking advantage of a country(neigh, planet) that runs on computers. why does software cost money again? i forgot....

i like any operating system that is good at what it is supposed to do, and open source software is a good idea because software can be ported to more than one platform, and ignorant users are not taken advantage of.

I do not totally share your opinion fatpig.

First off, software does not need to be free, as someone or group works very hard at programming and troubleshooting a program should be compensated. If they want to give it away, great! But I dont feel it is required. However, I do not like paying for anything, software included, when I dont receive a quality product.

I expect errors, problems and security vulnerbilities in software, including Linux, but I do not expect the same things to pop up every time! M$ never learns from their mistakes, and never bothers to even correct much when they obviously could. And when they do fix something, alot of times they charge the consumer for their mistake. As a result, paying their price-tag for software is rediculous.

Second thing is simply this... M$ is not truly taking advantage of anyone. The consumer is allowing them to get away with everything because they will not show them they know alternatives exist. They simply accept things as they are and fill Gates pockets with more cash. People simply have lost their ability to stand up for themselves, which is probably why our government gets away with so much, but that is a whole other topic.

I agree with Shadowhacker a bit.

When you buy Microsoft products or others and they fail on you, or have bugs, etc, yes you should be able to complain about it. You paid for something and you want quality out of it. If you didn't recieve the quality you expected and they promised, they the company need to fix it or give your money back.

But of course a company wants to have a monopoly in a way though. Our world is driven by money, the more you have, the more power you have and so on.

Now with Linux, its free, or well in most cases. Some people buy it but that is a different story. Now when my computer crashes using Linux or any other open source FREE products, there is no reason to ever complain that is sucks or b***** about it. Its free, its got equal or better quality than the stuff you buy. So that is why I hate it when people complain that something free sucks, there is not reason to.

That is like a free ISP, their servers go down.. oh well, its not like you can call them up and complain, they are giving it to you for free and would probably laugh at you for doing so. Its not like they owe you money back for being down.

oh well... my two cents.

hear this! i am anti microsoft but using windows at work.home i have red hat on my computer, text mode and i listen mp3 using mpg123 hihi

Actually I make my choices elsewhere.
I have a Windows partition on my machine for occasional use. But my
Linux partition hasn't been stopped in 71 days so make that very occasional.

As I said in another place MIcrosoft is
like GM in the 60's and 70's. Their
offerings are flashy, feature filled and buggy as hell. The smart folks look elsewhere for their OS and applications.
There are a few applications I miss on Linux, like the new Dragon voice recognition system, the prepress products and so on. But day after day I make do with Linux Slackware and I do less whining about my OS, my mail client
etc. than the Win bound folks.

But to each his/her own.

John Culleton

Well for most people around here they didn't pay for windows either. I myself have never bought windows and just use what I have that comes with the computer

I can admit that I have never bought Windows, and I didn't have it preinstalled on my machine - I built it myself (the machine, that is).

It does annoy me the way people presume that they didn't pay for Windows, just because it came pre-installed on their computer. Do they not realise that the company from whom they bought the computer have charged them for their copy of Windows anyway? And how often do they supply installation CDs? More often than not, I have found friends who think they've got the installation CDs for Windows, when all the store have actually given them is a 'rescue' CD, that just happens to blank the HDD (and therefore wipe their courseworks) and put back their own copy. Arghh!

Oh, BTW, that was not meant as a flame, Scotty.

Good to see that this thread is still going. Let's keep it up!

I like Linux

Having one man and one company control the ways and means of the most powerful medium to ever be devised is asking for trouble. But hoping that the millions of "common man" users will ever see the light is totally futile. Christ, 30 years ago I was positive that decriminalization was just a couple of years away and now it's 2002 and its worse than ever. The laws will go the way that the money tells them to go (as always) and Bill has billions. He can sway america with ads and most americans will lap it up and say "thank you sir may I have another". Let them stay ignorant, and let us stick together. Create Linux businesses and Linux jobs and maybe, just maybe, WE can turn the tides.

something to think about

this was the same kind of stuff people were saying about IBM when the first PC's with windows and mac OS were coming out.