life after Windows....

aracari wrote:
'Lou Ravi' wrote this:


Quite, I've been hearing for years now how Linux is going to take
over, that it's the best things since sliced bread etc. That's tosh,
it has a tiny market share, is not suitable for the average PC user
and will never be anything other than a minority OS for people who
like tinkering with their PCs.

That depends on whether developers get their act together and
bring it to prime time. It has the potential to become a serious
alternative to Windows.

Potental perhaps but then you probably could have said that about CP/M
(had GUIs really existed in those days). It may have the potential but
has been around for years now under ninety nine different versions and
has made really no dent at all in the OS market. It's all very nice to
dream but facts are better.

"aracari" wrote in message
...
'Lou Ravi' wrote this:


Quite, I've been hearing for years now how Linux is going to take over,
that it's the best things since sliced bread etc. That's tosh, it has a
tiny market share, is not suitable for the average PC user and will
never be anything other than a minority OS for people who like tinkering
with their PCs.

That depends on whether developers get their act together and
bring it to prime time. It has the potential to become a serious
alternative to Windows.

It does

But only if the geeks accept that the MUST be plug and play for absolutely
everything that a normal domestic user might reasonably want to do.

They don't seem to be so minded.

tim

"feather" wrote in message
...
On Mar 25, 7:40 pm, "tim....." wrote:
"Sam O'Var" wrote in message

...http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...h/features/is-...

Linux is free, easy-to-use

As someone who had to use this pile of poo for 9 months at my last job, I
can safely say that:

"it most certainly is not"

And I'm an experience computer user with a degree in Computer Science.

tim

oh yes it is !

--------------------------------------------------

look behind you

tim

Kcoc Syawedis wrote:

Andrew Miller, technology journalist and founder of thinkabouttech.com
is a self-avowed Linux devotee and typical of its supporters. "For 97
per cent of computer users, Linux is perfect. Nowadays pretty much
everyone is living in the cloud – with all of our data storage based
online – and Linux offers you absolutely everything you need. For
What a lot of ********! This cloud crap is a load of BS. who
stores all their data online etc? Most people store their
data on their computer, maybe back some of it up to a thumb
drive. For "97% of computer users" as he states, Linux would
be absolutely hopeless. Yeah it can run openoffice and open
a fair majority of Office doc's, and yeah you can browse the
web and view email with it, but what happens when you come
home with that shiny new game? what happens when you come
home with that new multifunction printer?

Don't get me wrong, I like Linux, and have it as a 2nd boot
option on all my PC's, but it is not a "97% of users" type
OS. For starters 97% of users expect to be able to just plug
and play - they expect to be able to go to the shop and buy
a new game, family history program, photo editing program,
printer, scanner, webcam, etc and have it JUST WORK. Windows
does this very well. 99% of software you put the disk in and
it works. A fair portion of hardware works out of the box,
and the remainder you put the disk in and away you go.

Linux however does this very poorly. The first limitation
with software is the range available. Lets take just one
category - photo editing. Windows you have the industry
standard - photoshop. You also have dozens of other choices
from publishers such as Corel, Magix, and more, and every
conceivable price point from tens of dollars to thousands of
dollars. Linux you have GIMP. Sure it is free but it also
has a dreadful UI. Put a beginner in front of photoshop
elements and they'll have meaningful results fairly quickly.
Put someone in front of GIMP, and even if they have a
reasonable amount of experience they'll struggle with the UI.

With hardware, while windows is very much plug and play, I
found Ubuntu to be horrid. It does a fairly good job of
picking up hardware that is in the computer at install time,
but does a dreadful job of making changes post-install. Eg
on one of my computers I changed my wireless card - Windows
detected it, I put my CD in, re-typed my wireless key, and
it was working. Ubuntu I just couldn't convince it to detect
and run the new card. I ended up reinstalling it, and during
the reinstall it detected the new card and worked.

Then there is the added difficulty of actually having to
make sure hardware you purchase is Linux compatible. With
windows it is a no-brainer - with Linux you have to browse
the web first, find out what makes and models are
compatible. Then you find out that because of the short
life-cycle of computer hardware, all the compatible models
are now obsolete. So you buy your new printer, and wait 6
months before someone manages to get it supported.

And of course if you want to use things like mobile internet
cards, then just totally forget Linux.

Linux has a lot going for it. In a server environment it is
fantastic. For the desktop though, before it can become a
viable windows contender the following things need to be
addressed:
* Hardware compatibility
* Ease of hardware installation, especially changes.
* Range of Software
* Ease of Software installation
* User friendliness of available software.
Most of the above can be overcome by advanced users, but
advanced users don't represent the bulk of computer operators.

--
Have you ever noticed that all legal documents need to be
completed in black or blue pen, but we vote in pencil?

William Black writes:

What do you run on your server?

FreeBSD. It's a real UNIX, not a fake one like Linux. And it runs very well
without a GUI.

In any case, suitability for a server is completely uncorrelated with
suitability for a desktop. In fact, if anything, being suitable for one means
not being suitable for the other.

Linux is used widely for servers mainly because of promotional hype. There
are other free UNIX-like or UNIX-descended operating systems that serve as
well or better than Linux.

aracari writes:

That depends on whether developers get their act together and
bring it to prime time.

That will never happen. If it were going to happen, it would have already
done so.

It has the potential to become a serious alternative to Windows.

See above.

aracari writes:

CP/M cannot be compared with Linux any more than DOS can be.

Why not?

Once you create a GUI, you essentially create a new op/sys.

The GUI for Windows NT was originally a replaceable subsystem. X Windows
systems on UNIX-like operating systems are also slightly in this category.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency to integrate the GUI further and further
into the OS to improve performance and add features, and eventually they
become one and the same. At the same time, stability and security usually
suffer, as do server applications (GUIs consume enormous amounts of
resources).

aracari writes:

But things get better all the time. I know a lot of people using
one of the distribs quite happily. Mind you, they rarely tell you
what they do with it!

Because most Linux users do almost nothing with their computers.

William Black writes:

The British government web site doesn't like Windows products for protecting
secrets when connected to the net, it does like Linux and Unix.

I know more about security than they do. Don't assume that governments know
about such things. They hire the same incompetent kids that other
organizations do, and so they make the same mistakes.

Unix variants can be 'locked down'.

Some UNIX variants are secure, but then they are not longer really UNIX.
Standard UNIX can be "locked down" in only a very crude way.

The real security was in Multics, the ancestor of UNIX. It was the most
secure general-purpose operating system ever designed. But almost all of the
security was stripped out when UNIX was developed.

Today, the Windows NT family of operating systems (all recent versions of
Windows) is extremely secure, and can be locked down tighter than UNIX, and
provides more security features and flexibility than UNIX.

Only a fraction of the built-in security features of Windows are actually used
by the average application or user.

Windows can't because you can't look at the source code.

You don't need to look at the source code in order to lock down an operating
system.

William Black writes:

Well...

Yes it is...

Nobody runs servers on Micro$oft software.

Well, nobody sane...

A great many servers run under Windows. It's not ideal, but it's easy to
configure and operate for inexperienced administrators. For experienced
administrators, it tends to be the other way around.

Windows is also useful as a server in a Windows-only network, and some server
applications, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, require Windows as the
server.