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There have been many debates over which OS is better and why. This isn't one of them.
I've created this thread to defend Linux a bit and not bash Windows. I want to defend it from many clueless ignorants who believe some stupid myths they've read somewhere and are highly offensive towards it. I'll try to show that Linux is in fact a user friendly OS, even for people considered to be 'computer illiterate'.
Note: From this point on, by Linux I mean the major mainstream distributions like openSUSE (my distro of choice), Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva etc. and not the minimalistic/hardcore/specialized distros that can be found out there.
Also, I'm going to look at everything from a perspective of an average person, unaware of all the intricacies of their OS.
The most basic arguments against Linux are:
a) you need a considerate knowledge about computers and Linux itself to be able to use it well
b) the UI and OS itself is unintuitive and complicated compared to Windows
The basics
Now, to go into the detail why above statements are false...
This WAS true long time ago. Right now, out of the box Linux is easier to install and operate than Windows. The GUI for the installer has been added which guides you through the process with ease and simplicity. It even has some advantages over Windows installer:
- it automatically divides the disc into 3 partitions (you can, of course change/set everything, including the filetype but I'll be talking only about the default settings): root (system) partition, home (user) partition and swap partition.
It's great for most people as in case of system reinstall you're not going to lose any of your vital data and unlike in Windows, swap is a completely different partition instead of a hidden file on your system partition.
- you are able to select one of many different languages for your OS.
The next major difference is that after a quick and easy process of system installation you're logging in into a fully operational OS with multimedia players, advanced graphic manipulation tools, pdf readers, games, torrent support, browser, cd/dvd burning tools, rss feed reader, discussion group reader, full office suite, mail client etc. right away. Basically, all the things a typical user might want, are already in there. And you don't have to install any drivers, yay! (You know all the discs with drivers that come with your computer when you buy it? You can just throw them out)
More advanced stuff
Now, that the system is installed, most people tend to add some new software to it to extend the functionality because of their line of work or other personal preferences.
You know how in Windows, to get some additional software you have to find the version you want on the internet, download it, then get through a setup installation wizard etc.
In Linux most of that is solved with repositories (which are truly an awesome thing). All you have to do is enter the software management screen, type in the keywords (partial software name etc.) in the search field and it's going to display all available things meeting your search criteria. Then you just select the things you want (install/remove/update), click on apply and all the things are being done automatically (including installation of dependencies).
Another big thing are security updates and bugfixes. In Linux you are automatically notified about them, you can review and install them with just 1 click and (surprise, surprise!) in 99,9% cases you won't need to reboot your system (technically, your Linux can run indefinitely without reboot, the only thing requiring that are major changes to the kernel - installing proprietary GPU drivers etc.) which are things average users do not do. I'm mentioning all that because Windows won't ask you about that, it's just going to install the updates and force you to reboot (with auto-update turned on, and that's the default setting).
Summary
To sum it all up, I can just use my wife as an example. She's your standard 'Partition? WTF is that?' user. She's been using Windows for most of her life and never even heard about Linux until I installed it for her.
It took her about 2 hours to find herself within it, configure the desktop and applications to her needs and just a couple of days to familiarize herself with most important stuff.
For the past couple of days she was forced to use Windows again (had to borrow a laptop from my father for her to have internet in the hospital) and she was raging all the time about how slow it is and how it lacks the most basic features she needs, how she had to download and install a lot of stuff and finally, how it was constantly nagging her about 'Do you really want to launch this application?'.
In her eyes (and mine too), modern day Linux is a much better choice for your average everyday user. Something being overlooked a lot.
 
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LInux Rapesd Windows anyday. First post <3. Anyway. Linux is better IMO because it has so much more freedom with open source software. Also Linux is free and runs faster thatn Windows. Downside is that Windows has all the games.
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Nice writeup. I have a question though, I've read about running windows inside of linux using virtual machines like virtualbox. I'm curious if there are any limitations to what you can do inside of windows.. for example, how about bw and iccup?
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On March 10 2010 20:15 Alphonsse wrote:
Nice writeup. I have a question though, I've read about running windows inside of linux using virtual machines like virtualbox. I'm curious if there are any limitations to what you can do inside of windows.. for example, how about bw and iccup?
Did you mean inside of Linux?
I don't have any experience with virtualbox or anything like that, but I've been using WINE quite extensively and right now it runs A LOT of windows apps (read: games) without much effort/problems.
You can check out what runs and to what extent here:
http://www.winehq.org/
Note: some of the stuff there wasn't updated. I've run into things with silver down to garbage rating which run super fine on my machine and I didn't experience any of the problems people who provided the review did.
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Yeah WINE runs sc but no b.net  . I guess I should give the virtual machine thing a shot some time and post my results. That's pretty much the only thing that stops me from using ubuntu as my main os.
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i don't think there should be any limitations for VMs
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The problem is not with arguments for or against Linux. Especially with arguments as silly as yours. Why care so much about installation - a process that most people won't even experience?
Why care so much about rebooting - a process that apart from taking only a minute is not as common as you make it out to be. Besides, there are a lot of updates for Linux that force you to at least log out and restart X which is pretty much the same thing as a reboot only a bit quicker.
From my friends and family the people who know what Linux is don't use it because they can't use most of their favorite programs and it has a tendency to need a little more maintenance than they'd generally like and the people who don't know what Linux is don't use it because it didn't come preinstalled on their computers.
On my laptop I use Windows most of the time because Linux doesn't support some of its hardware and draws more energy too.
On my PC I use Windows most of the time because Linux doesn't support quite a bit of software I want to use even if it means I have to cut back on some of the nice features it offers. A few little inconveniences are better than not being able to do some things entirely.
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I use linux at home, since i am a programmer, so it suits my needs.. I use windows at work, and the only thing that bothers me with linux is that games dont play well ( unless its opengl), and that drivers are not supported that well.
Back in the days when i was playing a lot of games, i had windows, now i ll get second computer for movies and some games  <- w7 , and real work on linux.
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i like the degree of control linux gives you but windows is just way too far ahead in terms of usability. even for the most obscure windows programs it's as simple as run installer -> finished. for linux you have to go through readmes and junk if you find that it doesnt have an installer and while that's all fun and dandy when you have spare time sometimes you really just want / need things to work.
that being said i really like how robust the default file manager was with ubuntu and gnome is so minimalistic and customizable. oh and they have virtual desktops which is sooooo useful if you just have one monitor.
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Linux can get frustrating when it runs programs badly or messes round with drivers. I just use windows...
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Canada9720 Posts
for the majority of programs, it's:
yum install app
apt-get install app
etc. nothing easier than that.
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
It depends a lot on what you do with your computer. Want to play games? Use Windows. Working with Flash/Photoshop/Illustrator/3ds max/whatever other proprietary program not available for Linux but crucial to your job? Use Windows. Skype user? Better use Windows.
Also, it does rarely work out-of-the-box as easily as you say. Have you ever tried running Fedora or OpenSUSE on a modern ATI card (HD 4xxx and up)? Even in Ubuntu you need obscure hacks to make it work properly (until such time as Ubuntu updates X server - now go figure how to do your hacks again). I had random issues with wi-fi, sound card, touchpads etc. on various machines. Nothing really irreparable, but do you really expect your average user to spend all day trying to figure out how to fix the bloody touchpad?
The problem is not even in Linux itself, there is nothing wrong with it, but that most hardware/software developers don't give a shit about supporting Linux.
I don't think Linux is the better choice for the desktop yet, unfortunately.
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On March 10 2010 20:34 Alphonsse wrote:Yeah WINE runs sc but no b.net . I guess I should give the virtual machine thing a shot some time and post my results. That's pretty much the only thing that stops me from using ubuntu as my main os.
Wine does run b.net, via both iCCup and blizzard. There is a problem in that the graphics don't get cleared before being drawn over, which makes things messy. (My workaround is that I have my workspaces hotkeyed so I just have two empty workspaces, one running SC, and I flick between them with the keyboard to clean the cruft. I love those multiple workspaces, even when they're not just compensating for some other brokenness)
Ugly cosmetic glitches aside, wine+sc over bnet/iccup does work for me, and once in-game it's more or less indistinguishable from Windows.
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If this blog is NOT about Linux vs Windows then don't call it like that.
I am open towards both Linux and Windows (not so much Mac). Currently I only use Windows though. Imo it heavily depends on what you want to do with it. No current OS is best for everything.
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On March 10 2010 21:59 spinesheath wrote:
If this blog is NOT about Linux vs Windows then don't call it like that.
I am open towards both Linux and Windows (not so much Mac). Currently I only use Windows though. Imo it heavily depends on what you want to do with it. No current OS is best for everything.
It is about Linux vs Windows but not in a sense used most often (let's bash the other OS). I'm not saying anywhere in it that everyone should quit using Windows and just jump on to Linux.
And I really don't understand so many people here bitching about poor hardware support in it... I've yet to experience a SINGLE problem with that and I tried it out on various computers with various configuration. There MIGHT be some problems with certain ATI cards (I didn't experience any with Radeon x1950 Pro) but that's ATI's fault and their crappy drivers (even on Windows I used third-party drivers for ATI cards). With nVidia you can have the most recent whql drivers with ease. In openSuse there's even a '1-click install' on the website (awesome feature of openSUSE, most software that isn't in the repositories has the 1-click install version on the net).
Oh, and Photoshop works flawlessly under Linux. The problems come when you need to do something in C# since Mono is a bit behind.
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Funnily enough, I just installed fedora 12 on my laptop yesterday. However I've had 2 major problems with it.
-Getting my wireless card to work. Had to trawl though loads of stuff, obscure firmware updates etc. Put on the wrong stuff first which completely stopped it working, even when I booted into windows. Now its sort of working.
-Nvidia drivers. Complete mess.
After about 30 hours of messing around with stuff, I do have it working, and hopefully stable (but I'm not too sure about that) But considering the amount of effort I had to put in I completely disagree with it being perfect and amazing out of the box. I do intend to go on using though, and I do like it.
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Any OS is easily sufficient for tasks like surfing, office work, or software development. What draws me to Windows is that many applications don't exist for other OSs, and of course gaming. Linux or MacOS may even be "better", but if there is no software for them, what use are they?
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I'm surprised nobody mentioned how bad OpenOffice is. I like Linux more for software development, command-line tools, and the like, but I care about Windows applications (and drivers -_-) a whole lot more.
On my previous laptop I dual-booted, but since I'm no longer hacking/compiling wireless drivers for school-related work, I get by on Windows with MinGW. All my simulations run on a Linux-based cluster anyway.
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I don't think "the most basic arguments against Linux are:
a) you need a considerate knowledge about computers and Linux itself to be able to use it well
b) the UI and OS itself is unintuitive and complicated compared to Windows"
I think the most basic arguments against Linux are:
a) My hardware doesn't work (bad driver support).
b) Progam XY doesn't work and there is no Linux equivalent / the Linux equivalent is not as good.
I like Linux but can't use it because of a) and b).
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On March 10 2010 20:41 Samurai- wrote:i ll get second computer for movies and some games <- w7 , and real work on linux.
This is what I do. I have my nice new computer with nice new components for playing games (and entertainment more generally), and I have my great little fanless solid state mitx box running archlinux with a bunch of text-based crap (mmm, ratpoison) for work. Work for me just means reading and writing papers, so vim and tex and gv are about all I need.
Also, needing to physically switch between computers (and turn the other one on) is a little barrier that helps me stay on task when I'm working.
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On March 10 2010 20:06 Manit0u wrote:
(...) and not bash Windows.
But why shouldn't we, when it obviously is stupid?
The next major difference is that after a quick and easy process of system installation you're logging in into a fully operational OS with multimedia players, advanced graphic manipulation tools, pdf readers, games, torrent support, browser, cd/dvd burning tools, rss feed reader, discussion group reader, full office suite, mail client etc. right away. Basically, all the things a typical user might want, are already in there.
I'd like to add that, unlike Windows' starting set of programs (Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player etc, overall much smaller than in Linux), Linux' one actually contains very good programs, some of the best available, not some garbage that you will want to replace ASAP.
edit: blah, smileys appearing out of nowhere
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On March 10 2010 22:46 deconduo wrote:
-Nvidia drivers. Complete mess.
Huh?
Go to nVidia website, choose if you're running 32bit or 64bit Linux and your card type, download, su, init 3, sh nvidia-file-name.run, click next, next, next, done, reboot, login as root, sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia, init 5, TADA!
There are of course easier ways to do this, but that's probably the best one I've ever used.
Edit: And you only need that for gaming really... Otherwise you're good from the get go.
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On March 10 2010 20:19 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2010 20:15 Alphonsse wrote:
Nice writeup. I have a question though, I've read about running windows inside of linux using virtual machines like virtualbox. I'm curious if there are any limitations to what you can do inside of windows.. for example, how about bw and iccup? Did you mean inside of Linux? I don't have any experience with virtualbox or anything like that, but I've been using WINE quite extensively and right now it runs A LOT of windows apps (read: games) without much effort/problems. You can check out what runs and to what extent here: http://www.winehq.org/Note: some of the stuff there wasn't updated. I've run into things with silver down to garbage rating which run super fine on my machine and I didn't experience any of the problems people who provided the review did.
Wine:
The version of wine maintained by most distributions does not run the anti-hack launcher, but will let you use a modded gateway for Bnet. The Bnet interface in wine fails miserably as well because of lacking pixel shader support, and while this issue has been known and reported gazillions of times, the developers at wine never bothered to do anything about it. Thus, you often need to do stupid things like "rub" your mouse all around the screen to get the graphics to update and use hotkeys (or blindly click) to find where buttons are. In game, since you're not using the launcher, you won't have lan latency so it sucks.
Vanilla BW, however works great in wine.
VirtualBox/VMWare Player:
Neither of these free virtualization engines do a great job with 2d/3d graphics acceleration, furthermore, there is a significant delay in the event buffer for when you press a key, move your mouse. For most games, this does not present many issues, but for a game as apm intensive as BW, these limitations make the game virtually unplayable.
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On March 11 2010 00:21 Manit0u wrote:Huh? Go to nVidia website, choose if you're running 32bit or 64bit Linux and your card type, download, su, init 3, sh nvidia-file-name.run, click next, next, next, done, reboot, login as root, sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia, init 5, TADA! There are of course easier ways to do this, but that's probably the best one I've ever used. Edit: And you only need that for gaming really... Otherwise you're good from the get go.
Yes I found a guide which showed me how to do this eventually. But you're saying that a typical new user should know how to do this?
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On March 11 2010 00:30 deconduo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 00:21 Manit0u wrote:On March 10 2010 22:46 deconduo wrote:
-Nvidia drivers. Complete mess.
Huh? Go to nVidia website, choose if you're running 32bit or 64bit Linux and your card type, download, su, init 3, sh nvidia-file-name.run, click next, next, next, done, reboot, login as root, sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia, init 5, TADA! There are of course easier ways to do this, but that's probably the best one I've ever used. Edit: And you only need that for gaming really... Otherwise you're good from the get go. Yes I found a guide which showed me how to do this eventually. But you're saying that a typical new user should know how to do this?
The typical user I mentioned in the OP does not install the proprietary drivers and even if he does, he does not update them.
Under Linux you don't really need to install the GPU drivers anyway. It only enables some really advanced stuff and unlike in Windows (don't know how does it look like in w7) you have access to all the resolution/refresh rate settings right of the bat. You really don't need full 3D acceleration to run office and browse the web, do you?
Edit: Oh, this also reminds me about the person who mentioned that OpenOffice sucks compared to MSO. OpenOffice has worse calc (excel) but better everything else (which was proven many times over), in addition, it can read/edit most of the .docx files (being the only non-MS software that does that) which doesn't mean much as MSO 2007 is illegal and they have to revert back to their old formatting.
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What distribution are you guys using? The newest stable GPU driver from nVidia afaik is 193. If you're using ubuntu, you should be able to get that from Universe... otherwise, nVidia website is pretty straightforward download.
To install, what package manager are you using? apt? yums? The commands for each are slightly different, but the guis for the package managers are totally straightforward.
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On March 11 2010 00:38 love1another wrote:
What distribution are you guys using? The newest stable GPU driver from nVidia afaik is 193. If you're using ubuntu, you should be able to get that from Universe... otherwise, nVidia website is pretty straightforward download.
To install, what package manager are you using? apt? yums? The commands for each are slightly different, but the guis for the package managers are totally straightforward.
openSUSE and YaSt/zypper.
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On March 11 2010 00:27 love1another wrote:
Wine:
The version of wine maintained by most distributions does not run the anti-hack launcher, but will let you use a modded gateway for Bnet. The Bnet interface in wine fails miserably as well because of lacking pixel shader support, and while this issue has been known and reported gazillions of times, the developers at wine never bothered to do anything about it. Thus, you often need to do stupid things like "rub" your mouse all around the screen to get the graphics to update and use hotkeys (or blindly click) to find where buttons are. In game, since you're not using the launcher, you won't have lan latency so it sucks.
You're somewhat wrong with the bnet interface. It's not pixel shader support that's lacking (Starcraft doesn't need any shaders, and wine supports shaders reasonably well), but something called a Device-Independent Bitmap engine. The trouble with this thing is that it requires a huge change to parts of the architecture of WINE, and so trying to merge any fix into it in a way that doesn't break dozens of applications is tricksy, to say the least. Far from the developers 'never bothering' to fix things, there HAVE been people trying to write patches to create a DIB-engine for wine, but the guy in charge has so far vetoed them being merged into the codebase, which tends to discourage them from trying. But yes, to the end user, Starcraft bnet does suck under wine.
Also the antihack launcher works for me - I use unmodded wine that I compiled myself from the winehq site, and not the version 'maintained by most distributions' (presumably 1.0.1, the last 'stable' version - if you're on Ubuntu, get the one in the package misnamed wine1.2 for a newer version).
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On March 11 2010 01:11 Aim Here wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 00:27 love1another wrote:
Wine:
The version of wine maintained by most distributions does not run the anti-hack launcher, but will let you use a modded gateway for Bnet. The Bnet interface in wine fails miserably as well because of lacking pixel shader support, and while this issue has been known and reported gazillions of times, the developers at wine never bothered to do anything about it. Thus, you often need to do stupid things like "rub" your mouse all around the screen to get the graphics to update and use hotkeys (or blindly click) to find where buttons are. In game, since you're not using the launcher, you won't have lan latency so it sucks.
You're somewhat wrong with the bnet interface. It's not pixel shader support that's lacking (Starcraft doesn't need any shaders, and wine supports shaders reasonably well), but something called a Device-Independent Bitmap engine. The trouble with this thing is that it requires a huge change to parts of the architecture of WINE, and so trying to merge any fix into it in a way that doesn't break dozens of applications is tricksy, to say the least. Far from the developers 'never bothering' to fix things, there HAVE been people trying to write patches to create a DIB-engine for wine, but the guy in charge has so far vetoed them being merged into the codebase, which tends to discourage them from trying. But yes, to the end user, Starcraft bnet does suck under wine. Also the antihack launcher works for me - I use unmodded wine that I compiled myself from the winehq site, and not the version 'maintained by most distributions' (presumably 1.0.1, the last 'stable' version - if you're on Ubuntu, get the one in the package misnamed wine1.2 for a newer version).
Sorry :p It's been a while since I read the wine bug reports page. But this is 100% correct.
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things that are next to impossible on Linux unless you put in MANY hours of work (add PPAs, edit configuration files manually, learn how to work with crude GUIs etc.):
use Flash (Youtube etc.) (they work, but video is choppy and performance in general is much worse than in Windows), some pages like livestream.com don't work at all for me.
video editing
screen capturing
getting hardware to work as well as it does in Windows (my printer Canon MP550 doesn't work as well (doesn't scan), neither does my Webcam Logitech Pro 9000 (it works, but in Windows the quality in Skype is much better)
fancy stuff: Desktop effects (configuring these is a pain), Gnome DO, Docky, everything else
and, of course, games (most work, but, again, performance is much worse)
and seriously, do you think procedures like Go to nVidia website, choose if you're running 32bit or 64bit Linux and your card type, download, su, init 3, sh nvidia-file-name.run, click next, next, next, done, reboot, login as root, sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia, init 5, TADA! will help people convert to linux?
on the other hand you're right about average users. I installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's computer. she doesn't play games, she doesn't use hardware that isn't supported, she just wants a word processor and a browser. Not having to worry about viruses is a huge plus. She never asked me to give her her Windows back.
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On March 11 2010 00:27 love1another wrote:
VirtualBox/VMWare Player:
Neither of these free virtualization engines do a great job with 2d/3d graphics acceleration, furthermore, there is a significant delay in the event buffer for when you press a key, move your mouse. For most games, this does not present many issues, but for a game as apm intensive as BW, these limitations make the game virtually unplayable.
use Xen, it's way better than these two
On March 11 2010 02:20 distant_voice wrote:
things that are next to impossible on Linux unless you put in MANY hours of work (add PPAs, edit configuration files manually, learn how to work with crude GUIs etc.):
use Flash (Youtube etc.) (they work, but video is choppy and performance in general is much worse than in Windows), some pages like livestream.com don't work at all for me.
From what I know, flash works quite bad in Ubuntu and similar distros. If you are particularily interested in flash, perhaps switch to some other, preferably non-Debian based distro. Should be better. Also, I assume you don't have PulseAudio sound driver enabled, right? 'Cause it really fucks flash up.
Still, I have no idea why would you be unable to use livestream. Even on my Xubuntu with quite bad comp specs and net speed it works fine.
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I love Linux but I can't figure out for the entire time why internet is so slow on my ubuntu (karmic) I tried everything but nothing works. now I use Windows for using the internet and linux for programming and stuff.
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@distant_voice:
use Flash (Youtube etc.) (they work, but video is choppy and performance in general is much worse than in Windows), some pages like livestream.com don't work at all for me.
- with openSUSE 11.2 I had no problems at all, it even automatically installed flash and java for me when I first launched the browser (had to agree to the license though)
video editing - I don't do that so can't say anything
screen capturing - as above (unless you mean taking screenshots which is a lot easier than in MSW)
getting hardware to work as well as it does in Windows (my printer Canon MP550 doesn't work as well (doesn't scan), neither does my Webcam Logitech Pro 9000 (it works, but in Windows the quality in Skype is much better) - depends on the hardware, perhaps it's because I choose my stuff carefully but like I mentioned, I didn't have any problems with that
fancy stuff: Desktop effects (configuring these is a pain), Gnome DO, Docky, everything else
and, of course, games (most work, but, again, performance is much worse) - can't speak for Gnome as I'm an avid KDE user and desktop effects are easy to set up there, especially that currently some parts of compiz have been made an integral part of KDE (window decoration, on-screen effects, window behaviour etc. etc.).
Edit: And I don't want to convert anyone. Just wanted to show my view on the case.
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On March 11 2010 03:27 imDerek wrote:I love Linux but I can't figure out for the entire time why internet is so slow on my ubuntu (karmic) I tried everything but nothing works. now I use Windows for using the internet and linux for programming and stuff.
That's strange, usually it's the other way around.
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so you're saying if users build their systems having in mind that they'll want to use Linux Linux is great? Well so is Windows...
if you only want to use all the features Linux has out of the box you'll have a great experience (but that's the same as in Windows). the problems begin once you want to do something that hasn't been smoothed out yet. then you're in trouble.
video editing: I tried to use a lot of programs, and finally stumbled upon Cinerella. it's a very powerful program I'm sure, but the GUI is so obscure it's nearly unusable compared to Adobe products.
And by screen capturing I mean recording videos of your screen. there are some tools for that too, but none of them record 30fps in a good quality out of the box. Fraps on the other hand does an awesome job for me in Windows.
I hate how lots of Linux discussions here revolve around how you should configure Wine. I don't use Wine anymore even though I think it's a wonderful project. If you really want to make the switch to Linux you should look for programs that do what you want them to do and that run natively. There are undoubtedly many great programs out there, e.g. GIMP, Songbird, Amarok, VLC, Evolution, Gnome DO and its plugins, Tomboy...
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You know what, Linux is great. I use it all the time as a software developer; the one issue that I have with Linux is that a lot of drivers aren't fully developed yet. I had to compile a driver for my Realtek wireless card on Linux and I'd have really frequent disconnects. It got to the point where Linux was almost impossible to use. Now, I run Linux through virtualization (vmware) and Windows 7 and network bridging solves this problem beautifully, as the Realtek drivers for Windows are much better.
Linux is great because it is very stable and fast. I have give Microsoft some credit because Windows 7 has come a long way since the clunky feeling of Vista, but in the end, aside from gaming and some applications, almost anything you can do on Windows, you can do on Linux.
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On March 11 2010 03:42 distant_voice wrote:
And by screen capturing I mean recording videos of your screen. there are some tools for that too, but none of them record 30fps in a good quality out of the box. Fraps on the other hand does an awesome job for me in Windows.
For screen capture you could take a look at 'recordMyDesktop', a nice little piece of software with many cool features.
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The title is pretty misleading.. why is this called 'Linux vs Windows' when all you've done is sum up some of the nicer parts of Linux?
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On March 11 2010 04:57 Espers wrote:
The title is pretty misleading.. why is this called 'Linux vs Windows' when all you've done is sum up some of the nicer parts of Linux?
Some people like to call it 'marketing' 
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The only thing windows is, is a game loader.
else you can do most things well enough with a little effort on linux
but windows i just let's face it friendlier to people as most linux builds don't have defaults already set for known file types.
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On March 10 2010 20:45 mahnini wrote:
i like the degree of control linux gives you but windows is just way too far ahead in terms of usability. even for the most obscure windows programs it's as simple as run installer -> finished. for linux you have to go through readmes and junk if you find that it doesnt have an installer and while that's all fun and dandy when you have spare time sometimes you really just want / need things to work.
that being said i really like how robust the default file manager was with ubuntu and gnome is so minimalistic and customizable. oh and they have virtual desktops which is sooooo useful if you just have one monitor.
Did you read the OP?
You dont need to read any man pages unless you need to develope something, or need something really special.
And if you need it, al man pages are alredy there, and the comunity is so fucken awesome, that any problem can be solve by just being good mannered.
And I use skype in linux, it kick ass, is way more stable and faster than the windows version. And i didnt need to config a shit, just installed it (I downloaded a deb package from the skype site and double clicked it... of course i could get it from repositories, but who cares, i wanted the last version.)
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On March 10 2010 22:45 Manit0u wrote:
And I really don't understand so many people here bitching about poor hardware support in it... I've yet to experience a SINGLE problem with that and I tried it out on various computers with various configuration. Oh, and Photoshop works flawlessly under Linux. The problems come when you need to do something in C# since Mono is a bit behind.
"I have yet to experience it" is a very flawed argument to prove that something does not exist If you want to experience what people are talking about, get an ATi HD4800 series card and try to make it work in your SuSE with proprietary drivers.
And be honest, have you been using Photoshop, trying to stay on the latest version, extensively under Linux for any considerable time? "One can make it start if they try hard enough" is hardly equal to "it works flawlessly".
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I always wanted to try Linux but since i got a legit Seven pro 64 for free i just feel too lazy now.
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Does it run all programs and games properly? That would be my main concern and why I'd never want a mac even if it is superior in other ways.
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haha
windows is a much, much better operating system at the moment (and for the foreseeable future)
Like others have outlined already, unlike Linux, Windows "just works". That means at worst i have to run an installer and i'm good to go. My experience with gutsy ubuntu (fairly recent) was fraught with editing text files, searching for guides on how to do things and recovering my data when i inevitably fucked up. These weren't minor things too, these were show-stopping problems, like wireless not being consistent, my ati gfx card not functioning properly (and it wasn't even blacklisted!!) and my external hardware just plain ignored.
It's a friggin' nightmare. Choosing my hardware carefully? Screw that, I can use windows and it just works. Worst case scenario? Run an installer. No hours of googling, none of that bullshit.
And this comes up over and over and over again. Want to run a game? Get ready to spend hours figuring out why the fuck it crashes at the menu or runs at 2fps. Want to find some windows equivalents? good luck, the majority of them are unfinished, unpolished and not nearly as functional.
In the end I got it all to work. I'm a very patient person.
Then I wanted to try a new game. I wanted to run some new software. I got a new printer. And I realized: fuck, i have to go through this again?
So I went back to windows. 8 months well spent on linux, but it's not anywhere close to being usable for anyone that doesn't have time to read guides and google for hours on how to fix your stuff. Sorry to burst your bubble >.<
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The lack of applications is what kills Linux for me. OOO is a piece of crap, and there is really no good alternative to MSFT Excel. Flash on Linux is terrabad as well (not great, but better on Windows).
For average users, Windows is definitely, by far, the most suitable OS.
For developers (like me) who still use 3rd party applications, Mac is superior.
For devs who only do dev, Linux is probably better.
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On March 11 2010 09:32 JeeJee wrote:
haha
windows is a much, much better operating system at the moment (and for the foreseeable future)
Like others have outlined already, unlike Linux, Windows "just works". That means at worst i have to run an installer and i'm good to go. My experience with gutsy ubuntu (fairly recent) was fraught with editing text files, searching for guides on how to do things and recovering my data when i inevitably fucked up. These weren't minor things too, these were show-stopping problems, like wireless not being consistent, my ati gfx card not functioning properly (and it wasn't even blacklisted!!) and my external hardware just plain ignored.
It's a friggin' nightmare. Choosing my hardware carefully? Screw that, I can use windows and it just works. Worst case scenario? Run an installer. No hours of googling, none of that bullshit.
And this comes up over and over and over again. Want to run a game? Get ready to spend hours figuring out why the fuck it crashes at the menu or runs at 2fps. Want to find some windows equivalents? good luck, the majority of them are unfinished, unpolished and not nearly as functional.
In the end I got it all to work. I'm a very patient person.
Then I wanted to try a new game. I wanted to run some new software. I got a new printer. And I realized: fuck, i have to go through this again?
So I went back to windows. 8 months well spent on linux, but it's not anywhere close to being usable for anyone that doesn't have time to read guides and google for hours on how to fix your stuff. Sorry to burst your bubble >.<
Perhaps you were using bad distro?
Distros I've used listed by increasing amount of problems I've had with them:
openSUSE < Mandriva < Ubuntu < Kubuntu
It's not like all of the distros are the same thing in a different wrapping you know...
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On March 11 2010 16:44 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 09:32 JeeJee wrote:
haha
windows is a much, much better operating system at the moment (and for the foreseeable future)
Like others have outlined already, unlike Linux, Windows "just works". That means at worst i have to run an installer and i'm good to go. My experience with gutsy ubuntu (fairly recent) was fraught with editing text files, searching for guides on how to do things and recovering my data when i inevitably fucked up. These weren't minor things too, these were show-stopping problems, like wireless not being consistent, my ati gfx card not functioning properly (and it wasn't even blacklisted!!) and my external hardware just plain ignored.
It's a friggin' nightmare. Choosing my hardware carefully? Screw that, I can use windows and it just works. Worst case scenario? Run an installer. No hours of googling, none of that bullshit.
And this comes up over and over and over again. Want to run a game? Get ready to spend hours figuring out why the fuck it crashes at the menu or runs at 2fps. Want to find some windows equivalents? good luck, the majority of them are unfinished, unpolished and not nearly as functional.
In the end I got it all to work. I'm a very patient person.
Then I wanted to try a new game. I wanted to run some new software. I got a new printer. And I realized: fuck, i have to go through this again?
So I went back to windows. 8 months well spent on linux, but it's not anywhere close to being usable for anyone that doesn't have time to read guides and google for hours on how to fix your stuff. Sorry to burst your bubble >.< Perhaps you were using bad distro? Distros I've used listed by increasing amount of problems I've had with them: openSUSE < Mandriva < Ubuntu < Kubuntu It's not like all of the distros are the same thing in a different wrapping you know...
It's great if it works for you. For a lot other people, though, it doesn't.
I reckon most of the animosity towards Linux comes from actual bad experiences and not some myths that need to be debunked.
As for your list, openSuSE is actually the one that caused the most problems for me. The installer wouldn't even give me mouse support and after putting up with all that I wouldn't call the first days of using it a smooth ride, either. Granted, a lot of the issues I ran into were probably more related to KDE4's unpolishedness but nonetheless, it's still part of the distro and gave me a harder time than I would have liked. Don't even get me started on the load of bullshit YaST and the package manager are, though I admit the latter had improved quite a bit from earlier versions.
Not all distros are like this. I ran through most of the popular ones and a lot of them are working really well. My favorites are Ubuntu (needs the least amount of tweaking) and Gentoo (portage is just awesome) but despite all that they still miss out on some things. I really love Linux but as I already said in my earlier post, I miss a lot more by not using Windows than I do by not using Linux.
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Guess it's just a personal experience/needs then.
If not for DoW II I'd never even consider looking at Windows again.
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Canada9720 Posts
i won't dispute that windows is definitely better for users who are in between software developers and grandmas.
but on either edge, it's better. for programming, i find no environment as enjoyable or productive as linux.
those of you speaking of bubble bursting: you don't know anything about linux. personally, i hope users who aren't programmer stay the fuck away from linux forever so i don't have to read posts like jeejee's anymore
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On March 11 2010 16:44 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 09:32 JeeJee wrote:
haha
windows is a much, much better operating system at the moment (and for the foreseeable future)
Like others have outlined already, unlike Linux, Windows "just works". That means at worst i have to run an installer and i'm good to go. My experience with gutsy ubuntu (fairly recent) was fraught with editing text files, searching for guides on how to do things and recovering my data when i inevitably fucked up. These weren't minor things too, these were show-stopping problems, like wireless not being consistent, my ati gfx card not functioning properly (and it wasn't even blacklisted!!) and my external hardware just plain ignored.
It's a friggin' nightmare. Choosing my hardware carefully? Screw that, I can use windows and it just works. Worst case scenario? Run an installer. No hours of googling, none of that bullshit.
And this comes up over and over and over again. Want to run a game? Get ready to spend hours figuring out why the fuck it crashes at the menu or runs at 2fps. Want to find some windows equivalents? good luck, the majority of them are unfinished, unpolished and not nearly as functional.
In the end I got it all to work. I'm a very patient person.
Then I wanted to try a new game. I wanted to run some new software. I got a new printer. And I realized: fuck, i have to go through this again?
So I went back to windows. 8 months well spent on linux, but it's not anywhere close to being usable for anyone that doesn't have time to read guides and google for hours on how to fix your stuff. Sorry to burst your bubble >.< Perhaps you were using bad distro? Distros I've used listed by increasing amount of problems I've had with them: openSUSE < Mandriva < Ubuntu < Kubuntu It's not like all of the distros are the same thing in a different wrapping you know...
i have said i used ubuntu's gutsy
and at this:those of you speaking of bubble bursting: you don't know anything about linux. personally, i hope users who aren't programmer stay the fuck away from linux forever so i don't have to read posts like jeejee's anymore
fun fact i used to program for a living. and like i said, it's not like i used linux for a week or 2 and declared it garbage. i stuck it out for the better part of a year then declared it garbage.
i'm just stating the truth of my experience; sorry if it hurts.
actually maybe garbage is harsh. let's say unpolished.
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