Computers and cars
 

:) If you are a car fan you'll like this.

Your computer running on Windows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1mAe697koY

Your computer running on Linux

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRsV6YpLsKA

Good analogy :-)

:~$ Thanks
;)

I always perceived Linux as a solid off-road vehicle and Windows as some fancy automobile. (Attention: the word “fancy” in the previous sentence isn’t compliment at all – I didn’t used it in a positive meaning not even once in my lifetime.)

In the other words: Linux is a tool for the adult people while Windows is a toy for big boys and big girls. That’s my point of view.

I’m sorry but all those Ferrari look horrible. Ugly automobile for bald nouveau riche with oversized stomach and his blonde beauty with oversized mouth, breasts, and hips.

So I appreciate your intentions but I deplore the realization. (Just try to imagine red Ferrari bogged down in a muddy hole and Chevy pickup speeding on the road – that’s the right analogy.)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder-

I would rather see it this way:
Windows is a family car, a car that can suit all your every-day needs, but with the price of being average on most fronts.
Linux can be what you want, from the 30 tons truck (reliably lifting the heavy stuff in server and HPC environments) over the station wagon (like most desktop systems) to single seat motorbikes, fast, small, but for one user only (like on tablets/phones).
And if you want you can even built something like this with it. ;)

Indeed.

That’s the point.

***

(We all missed Mac OS.)

I'll just leave this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_The_...e_Command_Line

I just started to read “In the Beginning... Was the Command Line” by Neal Stephenson. Very interesting reading. Thank you for the link.

Neal Stephenson called Linuces “tanks” in order to distinguish them from Windows NT called “off-road vehicles”.

As TobiSGD said: “Linux can be what you want”.

I still perceive my Slackware Linux as off-road vehicle (hybridized with an amphibious vehicle and a helicopter so I can not only drive it everywhere but also sail and fly using it). Moreover it’s personalized so much that almost no-one would be capable to use it without the solid investigations. It isn’t a drawback because only I use it.

On the other hand Linux Mint that I set up and then install on my family members and friends machines is a family car similar to Microsoft Windows but by a long way much better.

Neat article!

I hope you mean that link Essay Homepage including link to download the full text that leads to the essay rather than the Wikipedia article.

Ah; the Reliant Robin, saw it on "Top Gear"
http://www.topgear.com/uk/

Neal Stephenson wrote:

I discovered the third kind of the people:

The disappointed ones who think that Microsoft systems are limited and don’t allow the user to use the full power and the all possibilities of the machine.

So far I got to know at least one such a user: me.

***

Now I think I’m the subset of the latter group mentioned by N. S.

The funniest paragraph from “In the Beginning was the Command Line” so far:

I bought just one program in my lifetime: English-Polish and Polish-English Collins Dictionary by YDP (Young Digital Planet). It has horrible Windows interface but I use it in Linux with ydpdict interface written by Wojtek Kaniewski (I contributed his program a bit).

Did you finish reading this yet, w1k0? I'm rereading it, again. I do every couple of years or so. The funny thing about this is, although Neal had abandoned the Mac OS in favor of Debian, after a data loss situation, he did return to the Mac OS, when the BSD-based Mac OSX arrived:

http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1...-wit-and-humor

Oh well. Although it's a fine OS, it's still not open source!

I did not finished that reading yet. After a few days I got stuck in the middle of the text. As it turns out the twenty-four hours long day and night is too short to do everything I would like to do. Thank you for recalling me that reading. I will continue it from now on.

Thank you for the link to the interview with Neal Stephenson as well. I will start to read it in a moment – after inspecting my LinuxQuestions.org cockpit.

Weeks old forum, but suddenly today I get 2 notifications about postings here. Well, I never play with my notifications settings much anyways.

Too funny though that I've been trouncing through a Windows GUI development and having little success.

Their environment is a nightmare. It is so difficult to even get started. Whether it be day one, two, or seven, I'm little closer to even 10% of my intended target application.

Earlier this year I had to learn Android programming and create an app, something real not just Hello World. At least once I got my mind wrapped around that I was able to translate my knowledge of C, C++, and other languages, to be able to grasp Python and understand the programming architecture that they have for that OS. I got the app done, as expected.

I've done Windows console stuff, and actually quite a few Qt GUI applications. But in using the system resources, like a COM port, or dealing with the speakers, etc you many times need to know the exact resource name in advance or need the registry to look it up, so it was a minor hassle with not having been programming "in" the Windows library, or toolkit environment. So we decided to do this UI totally within Visual Studio, using C#, because the customer wants something that can run on Windows 7 or Windows 8, recognizes the classical PC directory architecture, or a network drive if they have one mapped, etc. How hard can it be, eh?

Pain in the backside! They abstract stuff soooooo much it's insane. Sure there's .... some .... method to their madness, but boy it's so overdone and so abstracted that it takes 5 times as long just to decide how to do what you want to do, because you're half afraid that you'd be hamstringing your application by choosing method A versus methods B, C, D, or E.

I get it, they need these tons of capabilities, but wow they deploy them so horribly and documentation is a series of rat holes because it's all hyperlinks. You never know if you should follow some or skip them, so you get too confused as to whether or not it was relevant. No one wants to click and follow and lose where they were, so they open another window or tab. And I've found circular documentation threads where in reference, concept B refers back to concept A which led you to the concept B in the first place.