and here i am using windows at the moment...lmao...
boy is this a learning curve...
for all you guys that grewup with windows and moved to linux, imagine what it is like for me at the moment..i'm a linux hack and going to windows is like puttin chains on my legs...nothing works right, damm thing crashed today and all i did was try to cut and paste..(oh yeh, that dont work with mozilla) and there is no tabs in IE, you got to open a new window or use the back key...i tell you what, if windows didnt do this work so well i would just delete this partition all together...
mind you, my ups setup was easy but i cant change anything on its settings, glad i did that in linux first..and yes i have tried everything that is written about changing those settings, to no avail...now tell me, where do i go for advice on windows, well i dont as i have found very little help...must be such a good os that they dont need to have a support site at microsoft..and as for inbuilt help, it would be good if it gave you any..and recovery dont work, it just reinstalls...
but alas, its my own fault, i had a need for speed that linux is not optimized to yet...but linux will be there soon i have been told...and no its not the os but the fact that the person doing the optimizing is a windows user not a linux one...

SO THERES A GOOD LAUGH FOR YOU!!!!!
linux user having to learn windows, now i know why people move to linux, dam is it hard to use windows...

ps, took about 8 hours to get everything loaded then i needed more, arrrgggghhhhhhh...
the whole of linux distro's takes me maybe 1 1/2 hours to fully functional with a bit of tweeking in that...

wraithe,

I feel your pain. My girlfriend uses windoze. I have yet to get samba to work. If you want some speed, try Gentoo. It takes a while to install but when you have a good set of USE, CFLAGS and LDFLAGS, it will fly. It's the install that gets you though. They also have their own forums for support. It's forums are here: http://forums.gentoo.org/ How's that for easy.

I'm not switching to windoze either. Her's has crashed twice this year. We're not even half way through yet.

I just installed windows xp today.Its actually been a little while since I used it proper. I worry I might be getting a little rusty. It took me 3 failed installs to figure out what was going on. I was attempting to install to a harddrive from an older computer that was configured with a drive overlay program(you know, to get older computers to recognize older harddisks). I was genuinely worried that the harddisk might have been failing or there was some issue with the bios. I installed Ubuntu just to be sure. Sure enough it worked. The whole time Windows was failing to install was because the install disk was not writing to the MBR for some reason, which I managed to fix with a simple fixmbr.I feel so stupid now. But at last I greet you from ubequitous green start menu with the teletubies backdrop. The world's best operating system, Windows XP.

Today I read another Linux vs. Windows comparison (against Vista this time) and it caused my to write the following entry: http://ghent.blogse.nl/log/cyber-thi...emovethis-html

It discusses the uselessness of L<->W comparisons and the two major weaknesses of linux.
I've been thinking (and talking) about this for years and it's related to this thread so I wanted to share this with you.

PS: clicking the link wont work, copy and remove the anti-spam part.

Actually, the link did work too. :O

I'm not sure I am with you on your points though.

Do continue. I'm listening.

Well, there are some things that you can compare. Uptimes and stability would be two. You could compare Open Office and M$ office. I have read that some beleive Open Office is better. You can also compare how efficient one is over the other. Linux will run on a lot of machines that windoze will not, with a GUI even. You can also compare the costs invloved with M$. I have read where that is a bonus to switching to Linux.

The list could go on I'm sure.

in my opinion, a common trap which people fall into when discussing 'windows vs. linux' is not to define what they mean by windows and linux. when one says linux, does one mean the kernel, or linux kernel + gnu-tools, or linux kernel + gnu-tools + kde/gnome/another, or does one mean a whole distribution, or does one mean linux kernel + gnu-tools + every program ever written which will run on them? similarly, ms office is not a part of windows. should one say that ie is a part of windows? as far as i know, it is difficult to deinstall...

Linux requires too much configuration. And as soon as something changes, it is very easy for the configuration to break. I don't want to take the effort to reconfigure things once they break, I really don't. Along with compatability, those are my biggest problems with Linux right now.

Other then that, Linux's current state looks pretty good.

I call that flexibility. I call that suppleness. Its configurable to what you want it to be. Thats how i would like my system.

It's called "freedom to do as you please with your computer."
Please explain.

If changing or upgrading things is breaking your configurations, then your distro is broken.

i've never had a configuration "break" in linux, i'm not even sure what that means. things can change sometimes, like when an application upgrades, but i wouldn't call that "breaking." it's usually just adding increased functionality or a better way to do something, and you sometimes have to make some minor adjustments (e.g., xorg 6.x.x -> 7.0.0, apache 1 -> apache 2, etc.). but if you just let things run, they're not going to break on their own (or else as rkelsen says there's something wrong with your distro or setup).

the truth is, there are tons of things you have to configure in windows, too, but it's "masked" by all the pointing and clicking you have to do in the gui, so it doesn't feel so much like "configuring." but it is. configurations actually seem much more prone to breakage in windows than in linux, like when the registry gets corrupted or some spyware screws up something, or who knows what -- dll errors, crashes, etc. what a nightmare.

have just installed suse 10.1 on a toshiba satellite from 2002. everything works (as far as i know. it's possible the internal wlan wouldn't work if i had the optional internal wlan card for it, but it works over a pcmcia card, so i'm happy enough)

There's a huge difference between being able to change things if you want to and having to spend hours fiddling with things to get it to work at all.