Originally Posted by dakoder

Hi everyone this is a personal story and I am very very BIASED due to too many BAD things happening under windows. I am sure I am not the only one here with a similar story.

I have been programming in assembler since the very early 80s and have enjoyed the freedom of the hardware on the BBC Micro (6502) ZX81 (z80) and the Amstrad 1640 (8086).

I decided to stay with the 8086 as it was similar to the z80 and was supported by some big names in the business and wanted to keep in with the emerging technology.

when the 386 became available I then purchased A86/D86 and enjoyed playing with protected mode code (db 066 changed the context of the instruction), I just loved computers and enjoyed pushing the technology further than it was designed to.!

Then win3.11 came along and I was frustrated because win3.1 was being heavily developed with some great apps but caused the computer to slow right down to the point of being unuseable. I stayed with DOS and used 3.1 for things like desktop publishing etc.
I loved the fact that you could boot into DOS and then run win3.1 by typing win by choice, I just thought that the windows GUI would get better and DOS would be heavily developed, I did go and bye 4 megs of RAM and a sound blaster 8 bit specificaly so that I could play DOOM, which I also used to help identify hardware as I was building systems as part of my business.

win 3.11 once booted up, played the standard small piano intro and then reported that there was no sound card, I never did solve that problem.
then there was the error report :---
'NO KEYBOARD FOUND OR PRESENT, PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE', you may find this funny but as an engineer and programmer I found this irritating to the extreme.

win95 came along and caused no end of problems for me, as I had become accustomed to accessing the hardware, even my beloved SOFTICE would not work under the GUI, none the less I soon found a way of getting around this and once again enjoyed the freedom of the IBM PC and the associated hardware,

LINUX came along and I installed it, the GUI was great but there was no instruction book, the DOS prompt did not work and I had no one to ask for help, my text editor and assembler would not run and there was no LILO so I got rid of it and forgot all about it as I needed a working PC for my business.

win98 was easier to crack and DPMI was standard so PMODE by TRAN was abandoned in favour of my own minimal DOS extender and again enjoyed the freedom of the PC.

when XP came along and DOS was officialy no longer supported I cried while rocking myself to sleep at night. it was at this point I gave up programming on the intel platform.

when VISTA came along I was a beaten man, I gave up and reinstalled win98 and used that for many years, I started programming micro controllers which had no protection systems and were fully documented I was like a dog with two tails.

then recently I had a reason to start using win xp again due to my work this was the point I decided I would never touch a PC again, I am so fed up with the blue screen of death and then being told it is was my fault!!! bloody windows, you have no idea how close to insanity I became. then something wonderful happend... I was introduced by a friend at university to debian a couple of years ago and have used this every day, I stopped using windows, I installed DOSEMU and I have found my love of computers again and this is why.


1.... (I have only had to hard reset a frozen linux a couple of times in the last few years !!) that is a sign of a professional and competent OS !!!!!!

2.... (I no longer swear at the PC or get frustrated with it, when things go wrong I am calm and understanding)

3.... (I have not lost any of my work or important files since using LINUX).

4.... (when something goes wrong it is always my fault, something I have mis-typed or not understood properly or simply have not been root when I should have)

5.... (NASM has given me back my love for assembly language and I am busy porting all my code from A386/D386 to the LINUX platform)

6.... (I no longer need to crack my computer, the info is there free to be used by anyone, the whole system is OPEN, I am the master of my PC and not a SLAVE anymore)

6.... (I have read many books on the whole UNIX movement and I feel inspired by the pioneers and the people involved and their ethos on life. It was once said by a very generous man

IT IS BETTER TO STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF EACH OTHER THAN TO STAND ON EACH OTHERS TOES

I now use mint8 as it installed with no problems and runs perfectly (just like any other distro)... I hated the linux shell but have now grown to love the depth and rich content.

I now use NASM, in fact I am just learning to use the xwindow system under NASM. I am so pleased with LINUX and the fantastic technically minded people behind this technology the whole linux movement is probably the most profound thing we have done as humans and the repercussions of the GNU movement will propogate from now until the universe goes cold, as for DOS, I still use it under flatmode for complete and utter control of the hardware when it is interfaced to my electronics, (under DOSEMU I run a few of my own apps which I will port over the next few years)

I use winxp for PIC stuff (MIKROELEKTRONICA) if and when this is available for linux I will stop using XP.

I love LINUX because I now use a computer in a way that feels healthy, under windows I was constantly foaming at the mouth complaining at the amount of time it took to open up a simple PDF file let alone have several apps open. when I plug a USB memory stick in so that I can backup my files, I am given at least 20 options from downloading any pictures to playing songs, but opening a folder for copying files is the last option, and that can only be done after the multiple windows have been closed offering to scan the USB stick for viruses to telling me the stick is corrupted and would I like windows to sort it out for me...
The diskdrive on my laptop is so hot you can fry an egg on it, the laptop is too hot to have on my lap yet under linux the hard drive is cold as is the laptop. I can't even begin to add up the wasted hours I have spent over the last 20 years due to windows.

I really enjoyed the early days of the IBM PC. ALLEY_CAT, shareware and the 1.44 floppy full of crap such as BLUE_BOX, overclocking the cpu, the DEMO scene, the days of DUNEII, XWING and DUKE NUKEM 3D and the emerging internet, particularly EXCITE with the chat rooms, poking around with sky cards.
I love DOS, as an assembler programmer I have no need for more than 32 megs per app, if I need more I boot up raw and use flatmode to get the 4 gigs, windows nearly destroyed me, as an electronics design engineer I understand how hardware works and I just hated watching my laptop destroy it self from thermal overload while it tries to chomp through binary instructions that take so long, it was like watching a small bird with a broken wing wriggle on the ground unable to fly.

One day under windows, while waiting for the hour glass to go away I calculated that my laptop had chomped through the same number of x86 instructions as there are seconds since jeesus was crucified, why ?

I am not alone, any professional person out there who requires the use of a computer in a reliable way will always turn to linux, under windows your just asking for trouble.


how many times has someone run a datalogging session using rented hardware costing thousands of pounds each day (items like a ring laser gyro for example) and after three days of logging data the windows PC decides to to an auto update over the net and then restarting the PC by dumping all the precious data ? I just don't see linux doing that.

My jaw still drops to the floor every time I invoke apt-get install blah

The reason I have ranted on about all this is because I was born just a few years after the transister was invented, by the age of 14 I was using the 741 op amp and at 15 I was designing hardware for the BBC micro, I have seen all sides of the story, I have grown up with this technology and nothing has pissed me off more than the windows OS.
I spent several days tracing a serious BUG with one of my apps, it turned out that the 'MSD' microsoft diagnostics program (DOS 6.2 I think) reported the state of the gate A20 back to front, if the A20 line was active MSD said it was not, This type of thing has not changed over the last 20 years, I don't trust microsoft products and I am not alone.

DOS6.2 is a usefull OS, it allows for CDROM, easy BIOS calls and DPMI, the hardware is real and not virtualised.

WINDOWS, will always be a popular OS with the ludites, there is lots of money to be made developing for windows.

LINUX, MAC's, UNIX and the like will always attract the power users, people who know what computers are capable of, people who are willing to put in the extra mile on the basis that the OS they are using will NOT let them down.

Computers are deterministic state transition systems and as such they should perform the same task in the same way every time, under LINUX, MAC etc this is true, under windows this is NOT.

As far as I am concerned over the next few years I will have forgotten all about my deep trauma of using microsoft and will be so busy using LINUX that the wholw MICROSOFT versus LINUX will be a faded memory.

windows will continue to be used by ludites just as VOLVO cars will be driven by the inept.
LINUX will be used by technical people just as motor bikes will be driven by the skilled.



Graham

If I have upset anyone I am sorry, but now that I have typed all this stuff it seems a waste to simply shut the browser down.

Originally Posted by Absent Minded

Fact is that most people don't know there is anything other than Windows or Mac. Many if not "most" of the OEM's and hardware venders have been "Locked-In" by Microsoft to support ONLY the Windows platform and are penalised if they don't adhear to Microsofts demands that they provide/support only the Microsoft OS with their products. This prevents many OEM's from selling computers with another OS such as Linux/Unix/FreeDOS/etc. as they will not be able to compete in the market any longer if they are having to pay the much "Inflated" licincing cost (with the penilty) that Microsoft demands if you won't agree to only put their products on your hardware. The result is that nearly all computers are sold with just the Microsoft OS on them and that is all the general public sees. As someone that had to get out of building computers specifically for this reason I understand other businesses plite. With the most basic of computers being sold for a mere $300 (USD) including mouse, keyboard, monitor, MS Works and MS Windows it is impossible to compete when Microoft jacks up the OEM licencing price to $250 (USD) just for Windows alone. It would litterally cost most OEM's in the millions if not billions to offer other competing OSs'. The only other way to go is to not offer any Microsoft products on your hardware. Again, this is a hard sell as Windows is all "most" people have ever heard of and the majority of people will not buy something they have never heard of before hand. It is not that Microsoft has the best OS, the best support or even supports the most hardware. There have been many, many good OS's that warrent much more praise and respect than Windows but to understand just what happend and how things unfolded spend a day reading the history of what happend tothe computer industry on places like Wickapedia and other online encylopedias, news articals and the like.

AM

PS. If you find spelling errors and typos in my writing you may keep them :-)

Originally Posted by mattvdh

in regard to inflated licensing fees: In the past, MS would cater to any hardware company and sign driver certifications for fairly cheap, but this caught up with them. People would go out and buy crappy hardware and install it in their PC and when it doesn't work they curse *MS/Windows that their hardware didn't work. Why should MS support such companies that taint their reputation, and also add-fuel to the mac users arguments about hardware compatibility issues. Windows Vista/7 was a kick to the nuts to a lot of users because MS had to start cracking down on the types of hardware it wanted to support but it's truly for the best. This isn't necessarily a scheme to make more money, this was set in place so that the end-user has a high quality experience using vista/7. Sure Linux may support older hardware, but is it guaranteed to run smoothly? no, nothing is guaranteed with Linux because the open-source policy also has its flaws just as well as closed sourced does.

Originally Posted by Quakeboy02

In the OP's case, it appears that he considers Linux as a tinker-toy sort of OS, fit only for casual computing and single tasks.

Originally Posted by onebuck

Hi,



Good prose but do you even know about some of the M$ business tactics around CP/M, DRDOS and even plagiarism back in the 80's?

Please give examples of your; "Sure Linux may support older hardware, but is it guaranteed to run smoothly? no, nothing is guaranteed with Linux because the open-source policy also has its flaws just as well as closed sourced does"?

I'm sorry but everything with M$ is about profit.

Originally Posted by Quakeboy02

It's hard to understand the motivation behind people that come to a Linux board and expend this much energy putting Linux down. In real life, I don't know people like that, or at least it's easier to remove them from my personal space.

There's also the implication that is made by the troll: usually that Linux, being OSS, was written by high-school students on weekends and summer breaks. This is irritating and just downright insulting to the highly skilled people who contribute their valuable time to make Linux freely available.

In the OP's case, it appears that he considers Linux as a tinker-toy sort of OS, fit only for casual computing and single tasks. It's hard to tell whether he actually is this ignorant about Linux, or whether he's simply posting to piss people off. If the latter, then he's obviously succeeded.

I'll say it again: this thread belongs in Non-*nix General, since it is: 1) not in any way, shape, or form, a question about Linux, and 2) exists merely to piss people off.

Originally Posted by damgar

I had one just the other day. Vista laptop about a year old. Personally I don't think MS makes a bad OS. Just an unreliable one. I got rid of my last windows install on my laptop when after 18 months the network settings went all gobbeldygook and left a tower climber 300 feet in the air while we just couldn't connect to a new AP. I ran a live CD to check the hardware and found out that Ubuntu just rocked it on that laptop. Whatever people may say about Ubuntu and Network Manager, in my life... in my job that machine just works and it has from the live CD to update after update. In all fairness though, nothing runs MS software like windows does.

Originally Posted by mattvdh

I work with MS guys all day who hate on 'Nix and I defend it every time because they don't understand the value 'Nix can offer. And no, I don't think it's made by high school dropout hobbyists, I just said that I don't respect that Linux doesn't have as strong of quality control (as MS/Apple) with drivers and general hardware testing. This is where a billion dollar corporation is at a huge advantage because they have the money/power to test out every piece of hardware on the market to ensure the end-user is getting a high-quality experience.

Originally Posted by dv502

Anytime someone struggles with linux, the first thing that comes to their mind is linux sucks.

Well fine, if that's their final judgment on linux, then stop whining and don't use linux again.

I personally do everything in linux and I can do more than simple tasks.