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

And when I say "the minority running Microsoft" I mean Microsoft executives.

Disclaimer:
Following text represnets my own opinion, which may or may not be "correct one". The opinion is based on years of programming, and using both windows and linux operating systems and software. The opinion is final and most likely will not be changed as a result of forum discussion. Which means there will be no discussion. Read at your own risk and take it or leave it.

Originally Posted by Kenny_Strawn They are entitled to their opinions, but just because they may feel a sense of insecurity with Linux (which is really an irrational phobia) doesn't mean they should troll about it on LQ, a forum dedicated to Linux users. If they want to troll about how much they hate Linux they should do it on some Microsoft fanboy club (such as Linsux).

I always thought that purpose of threads like "Linux vs Windows" is to provide complete, unbiased information about powers and weaknesses of either operating system. And this information was supposed to be useful for people thinking about new operating system or for the people looking for a way to improve their favorite operating system (when they have ability to do that). When there is a criticism of your favorite operating system, it normally exists for a good reason. However, when you ignore the criticism, you don't address existing problems, and as a result you are simply pretending that everything is good when it is not. This is very close to religious fanatism. Believing that "everything is good about your OS" won't make OS better. There is no perfect operating system.

If you do a little search for "why I hate linux" or "why I hate opensource" articles, there are certain opinions that make sense, even if they weren't written yesterday.

Also, AFAIK, linux fanboys outnumber windows fanboys 100 to 1 (windows doesn't have many fanboys, which is good), although windows users obviously outnumber linux users. The reason here is that windows is frequently used by people that aren't really interested in politics. However linux users, especially newbies sometimes tend to go berzerk when they heard even a hint of criticism of GPL/OpenSource/Linux, etc, which doesn't improve Linux reputation nor quality of software.

Now, addressing your previous post about registry:

Originally Posted by Kenny_Strawn Because there's only one file to infect, versus hundreds. That means that malware can infect

The purpose of registry is not to make it difficult for malware to infect the computer. Malware with root/admin privileges can do whatever it wants (for example, it is possible to nuke entire filesystem, install itself into boot sector, hijack system calls, etc), so having a mere thousands of files won't make much of a difference (30 seconds instead of one to process everything). Plus there is more than one file and they are protected from being written into. Same thing with editing the configuration - to edit both registry and plaintext you need a certain software and browsing filesystem directories isn't really different from navigating registry tree in regedit.

Registry provides API for storing application settings. It is a generic standard abstraction mechanism available for every app. It isn't supposed to be human-readable, and it isn't supposed to be easily editable as plaintext file. The API is available for every application, it is documented and well-tested. By using registry programmer saves time and avoids reinventing the wheel. Also, the registry is threadsafe. Plain text files are not thread safe (think what will happen if two instances of program will decide to save configuration) and prone to human error (it is human nature to make mistakes). Application isn't supposed to know how registry works - it calls API functions, implementation is hidden, and because of this it is possible to completely change implementation of registry in future versions of operating system, and everything will work as usual. Using registry is a good programming practice because you don't reinvent the wheel and use well-tested code, and the calls are thread-safe. The beauty of such system is that behavior of system calls remains fixed, even if actual implementation is radically different. As long as API behaves according to specification, every APP depending of the API will be working, always. When API changes, however, it is possible to write proxy dll that provides old version of calls.

Originally Posted by XavierP The New New Windows v Linux Thread

I think it is a waste of time.

Reasons:

• The old thread was around for years, and never come to any conclusions. AFAIK same thing applies to all other threads all over the internet. This is something to think about.
• No user has complete knowledge about either operating system (even developers). Typically, everybody has used some portion of operating system and knows only that part of system. Loudest people refuse to see flaws and their own OS, and they also refuse to see good points in opponent's OS. There is already a ton of info on the subject, it is ALL biased in one way or another, which isn't helpful at all.
• For every argument, there will be always a counterargument. When there is no counterargument, people will make one by twisting the facts, and presenting incomplete information. When they can't (or aren't skilled enough to) do that, they'll launch personal attack. To my experience, most people don't care about finding truth or improving their knowledge, they simply want to prove that they're right and that they're using "right" operating system (although it doesn't really matter).
• Some people never change their opinion, no matter what. But they will keep trying to change yours.
• When you tell something useful to somebody, this person will be replaced by army of newbies in a few months, and those new guys won't know stuff you already told to other people. Even if you tell the same things to them, they (in turn) will be replaced by even more clueless people. No point in that.
• You don't get paid for participating in such discussions and after the 3rd time it gets boring.
• Opinions are mostly biased and it is almost impossible to find objective information.

In the long run OS doesn't matter - it is all about software, not about operating systems. User needs browser, IM client, video/music player, and some specific software related to user's interests (games, office suite, modeling, art software, etc). According to my knolwedge, any user can work on any operating system as long as it is properly configured and there is somebody(probably "you") maintaining it. There is not much of a difference between linux and windows desktops, when people can find applications they need. Unfortunately, in reality almost every normal user is dependent on some commercial windows app that doesn't have and will never have a complete equivalent (which will make maintaining his/her personal machine into your personal hell). Examples include Microsoft Office (openoffice doesn't have table drawing function, for example), Photoshop (Gimp lacks advanced color channel support), 3dsmax (you can model in blender, but if you model for a living and can buy 3dsmax, wasting your time (time==money) learning new app might not be a good idea), visual studio (the closest thing is Kate, the rest (including Eclipse) doesn't come even close) or an ancient game that properly works only in ancient version of wine which requires a human sacrifice in order to be properly installed on any system with automatic package management.

Anyway, compared to Windows, Linux has certain weaknesses (I assume that everybody here knows strength of linux and weaknesses of windows):

• There is no centralization. This is a weakness. Chaotic evolution might be good (sometimes), but to make OS take over the world, you definitely need some people that are interested in that, and get paid for doing that (Free Software Foundation doesn't qualify). Linux needs an evil corporation (Ubuntu folks don't qualify) backing it up, otherwise it has no chance of dominating desktop PCs.
• There is no visionary. When you make software, you need to know where the project is going (otherwise you'll waste time, which is the most valuable resource in the universe). For that you need at least one person with a "vision" in his/her mind - this person should know what the project should look like when it is finished (or at least he/she should have a good idea about that). You'll need that person, because when you know what you want, you write/program it in one day. When you don't really know what you want, you'll program same thing in 1..5 years. With linux it looks like nobody has a real idea what the final version should look like. Stallman isn't really a visionary - IMO, he cares about his "cookies for everyone" idea, he doesn't really care about users of software, or the quality of software.
  I think that it is more important to have solid product that properly functions, no matter what license the product uses. It is perfectly fine to pay few thousands bucks for a commercial product when this product works well and does exactly what you want.
  Another problem is that even flagship opensource products sometimes suffer from very "noobish" mistakes. For example, in the latest version of mozilla firefox it is still possible to resize options dialog in such way that some controls will be clipped by window. The bug has been around for years, and it is a bug normally made by GUI programming rookies.
  Also, FSF spent too much time developing GNU Hurd - in my opinion, that was quite enough time to build financial empire and (using profits) hire an army of programmers to write the whole thing. The HURD was in development since 90s, so I would expect it to make a debut at least in 2003. The guys are late, which means they have either business or management problems.
• Constant evolution. This is a really, really bad. Typically it means that every project keeps adding new features (along the new bugs), without really fixing old ones. Which means there will be no final version of the product, ever.
  As a power user, I don't need that. I want to install os once, and keep using it for the next 50 years without ever updating it, encountering a bug, suffering from the vulnerability or changing the hardware. Unfortunately, the whole industry (software devs, including opensource project, and hardware manufacturers) seems to be inclined to keep user racing for new hardware and software, and keep updating. This is a bad practice, IMO - people tend to keep adding features instead of fixing bugs.
• License: AFAIK, you can't make money by writing GPL software. You can make cash by offering services, by selling merchandise, by selling documentation, but you can't really earn cash by actually writing code (donations doesn't qualify). Programming skill takes a lot of time to develop, and should be rewarded. IMO, working for free is a bad idea, and skill should be rewarded, always. And I'm not talking about programming for hire here - programmer should be able to write a code and turn it into a business asset. Unfortunately, GPL doesn't look to be compatible with that idea. Plus, viral nature of the license, makes such code less useful (BSD folks and OGG/Vorbis/Theora earn much more respect from me - I have reason to be thankful when people allow me to use their code without pushing their ideology onto me).

Anyway... it is a pity that people worry too much about Linux, Windows, software Licenses in general. Hell, some folks even take using linux as serious as religion. From my point it is a waste of human resources and is bad in software development. If you took all the time spent writing previous thread, turn it into development time, then it would be probably enough to write a new OS kernel from scratch. In my opinion, people have lost the big picture. Software and software development isn't everything, and people tend to forget that.

Originally Posted by Sumguy Read the license/user agreement. It periodically reports on your SOFTWARE (every 90 days, if memory serves...) and it will shut down and disable your 'puter if it SUSPECTS you of having any pirated software or DRM violations- and you are AGREEING to this when you click "Yes" on the UA.

It reports to see if your version of Windows is LEGIT OR PIRATED. Nothing else. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that Microsoft can detect any form of DRM infringement unless it is using their WMDRM protocol which never really took off. And even so, it's easy to be rid of it. And I fully agree with DRM management and everything. It's a price we have to pay for people illegally downloading software and/or music/movies. If I were a famous musician, I wouldn't want anyone stealing my music and neither does the company that invests MILLIONS OF DOLLARS into recording it. Thus, DRM is a necessary evil. Microsoft makes a centralized DRM management system that all of the software that needs to "phone home" can be sent off in one easy call. If this is what you are talking about, then this has to do with the developer of that software and not Microsoft. And yes, I've read a copy of the Agreement, I've printed it off and it's in a filing cabinet.

I just booted up Vista tonight fore the first time in months, to use my Magicjack- I felt like I was in HELL! The Vista just seems to get slower and slower...even when it hasn't been used in months- and it was just such a pain to do a few simple things, which would be a breeze in Ubuntu. The Vista also makes my CPU fan scream almost non-stop.....and just selecting a program to allow through the Windows Firewall was showing 100% CPU usage!

How terrible is your computer and what have you been doing? If you have a lot of system processes going then yes, this will happen. If you let your computer make the decisions for you then you will use 100% CPU. The only time I've ever been at 100% was when I was rendering something for Blender. This can happen in Linux too.

And Kenny, you do force your opinions on people and frankly it's really immature. You are the Linux Nazi here. No one is being controlled by an outside entity, even if they are using Windows. You have the ability to COMPLETELY shut Microsoft out of your computer once Windows is up and running while still having internet. There are things that I don't agree with when it comes to Windows, however it is a necessary evil we will forever put up with just like Fast Food.

And SigTerm, I love you for posting this. It seems like you are one of the few who actually has common sense.

"neither does the company that invests MILLIONS OF DOLLARS into recording it."

If you really beleive that it cost that much to record a album(CD) you are truly behind the times. Why do you think so many artist have gone to producing their own stuff? Recording and building the master CD can be done for well under $1000. After that they can be produced (even at 250 CDs per run) for well under $2 each(including case and covers). The reality is that most artist see less than 1% of the profits a CD makes. The artists make the vast majority of their money by touring. Unfortunately you need to be being played on the radio in order to have a big tour. The record companies pretty much decide what gets played on most radio stations so the artists are pretty much stuck.

Originally Posted by lazlow "neither does the company that invests MILLIONS OF DOLLARS into recording it." If you really beleive that it cost that much to record a album(CD) you are truly behind the times. Why do you think so many artist have gone to producing their own stuff? Recording and building the master CD can be done for well under $1000. After that they can be produced (even at 250 CDs per run) for well under $2 each(including case and covers). The reality is that most artist see less than 1% of the profits a CD makes. The artists make the vast majority of their money by touring. Unfortunately you need to be being played on the radio in order to have a big tour. The record companies pretty much decide what gets played on most radio stations so the artists are pretty much stuck.

aGreed. The multibillion-dollar music industry hogs most of the profits, not the artists. Hell, I even regret that rampage against an artist (I'm not going to say her name) here on LQ because I know that she's not profiting from most of her success. The big music corporations (Disney, Hollywood Records) are. That's what I hate about the whole media industry: they don't shed much capital but have a good tendency to turn $1,000 into $10 million in the blink of an eye and then not pay anybody else. Just like M$!

It was an over exaggeration for the music industry yes, but for the movie/software companies that's not that far off actually.

Movies MAY cost millions but they bring in billions. They scream and holler whenever a movie does not clear multiple of cost at the box office(usually only counted from us markets). Then there is over seas distrubution, TV sales(first pay per view, then premium, showtime, hbos, next network) followed by DVD sales. Bascially you have the same percentage story as you do with CDs, only the starting and ending figures are larger.

yea but we live in the 21st century and that explains everything (.)

Originally Posted by Kenny_Strawn Completely (a)greed. I would rather be able to use the computer I paid for than have the company who programs my OS be Nazist and use it for me. It should be the same for everyone.

Even when I was a Win-D'ohs newbie, I always felt like MS should be paying me for all the time I spent removing all their bloatware and tweaking the OS so that it would run reasonably clean, without 18 million unnecessary processes and all kinds of un-needed junk in the system tray. I can't count how many hours I spent over the years doing that...not to mention maintaining their crappy OS, and cleaning it from all the junk it picked up because of their built-in lack of security.

Luckily, I discovered Linux.......which is FREE, and yet allows me to do what I want to do...to have control over my 'puter, and to dispense with all the maintenance and tweaking, etc.

It seems that it should be the other way around...the one that is free, you'd expect to have to do more work to, and have fewer options...and the one you pay for, you think would work better and be less problematic....but somehow, we ended up in this bizzaro world, where the free one is better....but the crappy high-priced one is more popular. Something is terribly wrong there...and I can only attribute it to unscrupulous business practices and the ignorance of as large percentage of consumers.

If for no other reason, I'd use Linux just so as not to enable MS's nefarious dealings! (And bear in mind, I'm not one of those commie "profit is evil" types- I think people should be paid for their ideas and services, as much as the free market will bear......but in my opinion, what MS does borders on organized crime)

Originally Posted by soppy How terrible is your computer and what have you been doing? If you have a lot of system processes going then yes, this will happen. If you let your computer make the decisions for you then you will use 100% CPU. The only time I've ever been at 100% was when I was rendering something for Blender. This can happen in Linux too.

I do have kind of a crappy low-end Compaq..... 3Ghz....but all low-end crap. But....still, the Linux works great, while the Vista is a lot slower and more resource-hungry- even though I run a very clean system (i.e. nothing un-necessary running...only about 3 items checked in the start-up in msconfig- etc.) -And of course, the Vista has gotten slower and hungrier over time (it's now been on my 'puter for 3 years....and I know most people usually reinstall MS systems at least every 2 years- this is unacceptable to me. In fact, before I switched to Linux, I'd have to reboot my 'puter at least once a day, as Vista would become too memory-hungry....even if the only thing I was doing was browsing the web. It did work pretty well for the first few weeks though.....

By contrast, my Ubuntu probably works better today (6 months) than it did when I first installed it.

Just to make it clear windoz 7 isn't that bad I have it on my gamin comp though runs much slower then my linux box. The reason it seems fast is because they took after linux on how they do things
or how we do rather or so says my linux teacher....

You know, the one good thing about Windows7? The fact that it checks for pirated Windows OS every 90 days and can disable your 'puter, may just be a boon for Linux! I hear that 70% of all 'puters sold in China come with Linux installed- but that the ChinESE usually install a pirated version of Windows instead. If MS has found a way to truly deter piracy.....that just may mean that the ChinESE will keep the Linux that comes with their new 'puters- and hence, the ranks of Linux users will increase exponentially! Am I right?

Hell, some folks even take using linux as serious as religion

Absolutely.Couldn't agree more.
Thanks SigTerm for a well written and considered reply.

Very nice post, sigterm
now to wait on a cognitive dissonant reply to it from K_S

I have win 7 and mainly don't like it thoughmy mom lives for it, the major change was there win update which its now more like the linux though it won't update your programs unless its windoz programs. The start bar is not horrible but there is no need for it I think they added it to lyre it different and that's all on that. The major fault is the resources out takes up 2 gb ram is to much even if it is for indexing still too much