Because Shiny Things Are Fun - The New New Windows v Linux Thread

Originally Posted by Larry Webb XavierP - Where is your opinion - you started this

As a mod, I don't have to have an opinion, merely a justification Seriously though, I have no axe to grind with Microsoft or Windows. I actively used every version (incl NT 3.51 and 4.0) and, for the most part, they ran without crashing and gave me few problems. I just prefer to use Linux at home - needs fewer resources and has the programs I need - but I don't have any issues with using Windows in a work environment, I use the tools that I am provided.

Windows 7 is better than Vista, but it's still Windows.

Just one standout feature that I don't like are "libraries". They are basically collections of the contents of various folders, and are designed to organize the files you have scattered across the whole drive. But I see three problems:

• They're confusing.
• You're forced to use them for your documents, pictures, etc.
• Your files should be organized in your home directory in the first place. I see Libraries as a silly workaround. Linux really beats Windows here because Windows apps often store user-created files in obscure, app-specefic folders outside of My Documents. Linux, on the other hand, forces apps to store stuff in your home dir because that's the only place where they have write permission.

Originally Posted by TobiSGD You don't need to buy it, Microsoft offers a 90-day evaluation of Windows 7 Enterprise.

I'm not even interested enough to try that.

Originally Posted by MTK358 I agree, I never had problems of Windows constantly crashing. The occasional misbehaving program sometimes crashed it, but still nothing serious or annoying. But Linux still amazed me by not crashing even once since I switched to it. Actually once it did, but it was my fault, I accidentally deleted the entire /boot directory .

Oh, I crash Linux fairly often.

Well, actually, it isn't ME that's responsible. It's Windows. Windows 7 Pro in particular.

You see, I run Win7Pro in a virtual machine hosted in Linux. Sometimes Win7 goes nuts...sometimes it crashes. When it crashes, and I try to restart it, sometimes it says it has to go through its startup repair procedure. When it does that, sometimes it fails to repair itself and locks itself up. And, incidentally, locks the Linux host up as well. Usually after a time or two of that, I just delete the VM and roll in the most recent backup. Nice thing about virtual machines is that they're very easy to back up.

So, naturally, it's all Windows' fault!

Why the hate against Windows? If it wasn't for my Windows I would never be able to see outside. Windows keep the cold out and the heat in during the winter and the cold in and the heat out during the summer. Next people will say how much they hate doors or refrigerators.

Originally Posted by MTK358 I agree, I never had problems of Windows constantly crashing. The occasional misbehaving program sometimes crashed it, but still nothing serious or annoying. But Linux still amazed me by not crashing even once since I switched to it. Actually once it did, but it was my fault, I accidentally deleted the entire /boot directory .

Deleting /boot caused your system to crash? I can see how it would stop you from booting but how is it going to cause you to crash? If you delete /bin or /sbin, then you got issues. That I can see causing a crash but not /boot.

Maybe we have a different meaning of "crash"?

If there were no Windows, there would be a lot of unemployed window-cleaners, too.

Originally Posted by TobiSGD Try msconfig in the Run-dialog.

Thanks for that. Still didn't clear everything up, but maybe I just didn't look hard enough to find all the stuff that wants to run...?

Originally Posted by dalek Deleting /boot caused your system to crash? I can see how it would stop you from booting but how is it going to cause you to crash? If you delete /bin or /sbin, then you got issues. That I can see causing a crash but not /boot. Maybe we have a different meaning of "crash"?

It worked fine a few hours afterwards and I was oblivious to what I've done.

Then, everything just froze and the keyboard LEDs started flashing.

Originally Posted by MrCode Thanks for that. Still didn't clear everything up, but maybe I just didn't look hard enough to find all the stuff that wants to run...?

Try this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb963902.aspx

Originally Posted by MTK358 It worked fine a few hours afterwards and I was oblivious to what I've done. Then, everything just froze and the keyboard LEDs started flashing.

That's odd. On Gentoo, /boot isn't even mounted by default. The only times you need /boot is when grub/lilo is loading the kernel and when you need to put a new kernel in /boot.

Is it possible that you could have deleted more than just /boot? Maybe /bin instead? I can see /bin causing a crash. They do both start with a "b" and tab completion can be a bad thing at times. o_O

Didn't there used to be a thread "What OS would Jesus use?" or something like that? Someone should start that thread. There's no way that thread would degenerate.

While talking about Windows, you might give me some recommendations. As some of you may have read, recently one of my hard drives had a major failure. I got myself new drives and implemented a backup solution - a rsync script to automatically backup certain directories to external HDs.
I warned my Windows friends (99% of people I know use Windows) and recommended taking some action to save their data. Now I got myself into trouble as I have to do it for them

Do you know of any (ideally open-source) program for windows that would run in the background and make daily backups of certain directories?

Cygwin has rsync.

http://www.cygwin.com/packages/

Originally Posted by dalek That's odd. On Gentoo, /boot isn't even mounted by default. The only times you need /boot is when grub/lilo is loading the kernel and when you need to put a new kernel in /boot. Is it possible that you could have deleted more than just /boot? Maybe /bin instead? I can see /bin causing a crash. They do both start with a "b" and tab completion can be a bad thing at times. o_O

It was Fedora 11.

Anyway, it had nothing to do with wildcards/tab completion. I was blindly following a YouTube video on how to mount a flash drive, and he said to mount "/dev/sda1" (I had no clue about the naming scheme at the time). I mounted it , saw some strange files, and stupidly ran "rm -rf" in it even though I had no idea why my flash drive would have all this weird stuff in it. Turns out it was the /boot partition, not the flash drive.

I guess the guy in the video had IDE drives, so that if he pluggen in a USB storage device it showed up a /dev/sda. But I have a SATA disk, so USB devices I plug in are actually /dev/sdb here.