XP is garbage

Is that what you concluded from the title of my thread?

John

I do like Linux. I like the CLI, and I like X. I don't like the inconsistencies, and the quirks.

I would really like to see a commercial company like IBM or Novell perfect desktop Linux. They are doing well at making the install easier (as long as things go well with your hardware, which is 95% of the time, not too bad) but not so well with including only solid bug-free apps in the distro.

And they have a tendency to perform experiments on the users, by installing truly beta-grade cutting edge packages because they add the features folks want, but are quirky.

The worst thing is that serious problems may surface only after investing large amounts of time into using a particular app. My Mozilla is now a disaster because it appears it gets into trouble with very large email folders. It bogs down even plain web surfing. And other wierd things happen. Upgrading, deleting index files and recreating them, etc. etc. doesn't fix the problem.

Agh.

I have to get to work...

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:20:53 -0700, Chris Carlen wrote in Msg.

This configurability is exactly what I think is keeping Linux from gaining more desktop popularity. The look and feel of Windows isn't configurable, so it works in the same lame way everywhere, which is a great plus.

I'm very happy with firefox on Linux. I've used Opera before, but Firefox seems to be even better.

That's because it's hard to admit that the advantages of a better system are its main obstacles against wider acceptance.

Linux/Unix already is that, except that to really unleash its power (and to fix things if they break) you need to get somewhat familiar with its mechanics, which can't and shouldn't be expected from a normal home or office user.

Linux will only ever make it to desktops in offices where there is a sysadmin to keep things running, or with people like me who actually know how things work. Which means that Linux is dead for the mass desktop and always has been.

--Danial (happy Linux user for 15 years)

I thought Microsoft was part of the American Constitution, and you swore loyalty every July 4th?

On 11 Apr 2005 18:23:10 -0700, JeffM wrote in Msg.

....because there's a UNIX-like kernel throbbing under the hood.

--D.

The configurability isn't a problem, and can always be there under the surface waiting to be exploited. It's the lack of a standard default configuration. LSB isn't enough. The distros shouldn't have 268.76 different configuration tools, and recompile the most important apps with custom hooks into their deviations from LSB (or where LSB just doesn't restrict them). And then top it off by not shipping a functional media player. Then KDE comes along and tries to do everyhint their way on top of the distro's way. I have a Yast printer configuration tool and a KDE configuration tool. Ridiculous. How do I know if I do something in the KDE one it won't muck up what was done by Yast? I don't.

Yes, there is no comprehension that users don't care about technology or philosophy. They want to get their work done. When I had time to tinker I though Linux was the coolest thing around. When I just want to get my work done I wind up hating it, like I did Windows.

Yes, by understanding it after the appropriate (large) investment in time you can make it work, 99% of the time. But that isn't enough. I can do that quite well. Trouble is, I don't have time. I want to spend time getting my work done, not getting Linux to do my work. If Windows can get the document printed without a 4-hour fuss hand editing .ppd files then I'll just switch to Windows. I don't care at that point how evil and rotten MS is or how poorly Windows is coded, or even how insecure (what do I care I'm behind a firewall anyway) it is. Rather it offers the one simple thing I want--the quickest results. That is the perspective of a user, and the one which the Linux community just doesn't grasp.

BTW, I fired up MS Office for the first time in many months the other day to edit some simple document from my boss. Within minutes I was mired in a maze of peculiar quirky and likely buggy behavior. I have been known to open a Word document and have Word crash within seconds, on a system that functions perfectly running all my non-MS Windows apps. Go figure. Truly, MS Office must be one of the few programs in the world that are more crappy than even OpenOffice and typical Linux software.

Interestingly, the best software I run are *commercial* apps for Win or Linux, excluding those from MS. AutoCAD, Eagle, and LTSpice are my faves.

Good day!

It is a conclusion I am reaching with great sorrow.

Yes, this needs to be appreciated.

Well XP doesn't seem like much of an improvement over Win2k, which I hace to say actually deserves a B+ or so. That's a major compliment coming from myself.

That would really annoy me, more even than the stoopid quirks I'm learning to live with.

Good day!

I've found the networking side works better (read: faster) under XP, but other than that, W2k is just dandy with me. I have applications running that just sit there and do their stuff for six months at a time and if no-one fiddles, the PC's just keep humming away. I haven't tried them under XP for a while now - even the device drivers for the I/O cards wouldn't work, so stuffed if I'm going to bother.

What I can't figure out is why they change the 'feel' of the OS every time. It's never intuitive anyway, but once you get used to whichever one you like (or are stuck with), then fine. Then MS come out with an 'upgraded' OS which is only intuitive if you've never used MS software before!

Ken

Or on your car exhaust.....

Ken

Linux is as bloated as windwoes. The latest versions of Slackware barely run on my P166 128M laptop.

Using a crappy, cheapo desktop that you have to modify with a text editor is stupid and totally unproductive. Of course it will be leaner and a bit quicker, but its also totally unusable to all but the most hardcore users.

If Windows had ugly, stripped down desktops that were as nonfunctional and impossible to work with as IceWM to replace its dopey interface, it would scream as well as anything out there.

I have been wanting to see linux run anywhere as near as quick and nimble as Windows or any of my OS/2 installations on the same hardware, and it has yet to happen. I have spent too much time with hdparms, setting up all kinds of switches, turning off services, and recompiling kenels. It helps a little, but I have never seen linux run appear as fast as OS/2, or even windows2K on equal hardware. In the scheme of life, if you spend fifty hours tweaking a linux distro, and it doesn't run a whole lot faster than windwoes, its a waste of time. Especially when you get to do it all over again when the next revision comes out and obsoletes half of the apps you have downloaded.

I like the idea of linux, I think it had the potential to take a bite out of redmond, but the inability of the community to listen to other users without going off the deep end as if they had been slapped upside the head has caused irreversible damage, and contributed to the bad reputation, and the splintering of the whole package.

When someone completely buries the underpinnings, and creates a user interface that is logical, useful, fairly customizable, and applications become pretty much universal, and when the community gets over itself, and begins to name archive files something useful and recognizable, so that anyone can tell what is going on, and when it can be run from the desktop without having to go under the hood, Linux will jump back into the mainstream consideration. Even after all these years of anticipation, it is still just a hackers OS. For those who bother to hammer on it, and tweak and tune, I certainly admit it is a wonderful environment. I spent over twenty years hacking on OS's and had a great time. Now I need to be productive. Linux doesn't make me productive. How many different partition managers multimedia players, and text editors do we really need?

JB

Yes, you certainly are, and a perfect example of the community that can do no wrong, and gets the nose out of joint when someone disses their beloved operating system.

Keep it up. Such an approach is bound to bring in one or two new users a year......

I don't think its so much that linux is a bad thing, but its supporters really need some counseling.

I prefer Jay's answer to that one.

Ken

Well, I couldn't operate a lot of our stuff under W98, but I like the cut of your jib. I don't get the 'latest' OS until it's been through several updates, hotfixes and service packs. And plenty of bitchin' and whinin' on NG's, so I know where I'll stand. And then only if the inevitable pain of change is less than the pain of continuing to put up with what I've got.

Cheers.

Ken

I don't mind them getting it wrong each time, but wrong *differently* each time is a pain in the butt! At least I could get used to it if the errors were consistent!

Cheers.

Ken

It helps a lot that LTSpice is primarily the work of one guy (Mike Engelhardt) who appears to be both a good programmer as well as someone who cares deeply about the quality of the software he produces. The problem with Windows, Word, etc. is that they're too big for any one person to code primarily by themselves, and in my experience it's very difficult to get, say, 10 programmers working on 1 program to be as bug-free as the "1 programmer/program" result.

Windows itself undoubtedly has thousands of programmers...

Let's take a look at that position..... Several hundred million users, and you. You don't have problems, odds are some of those several million users do. Therefore, the perception is that some people don't have trouble, while many, many more have lots of troubles.

Why do you think that just because your system is without any problems, everyone else's must also be that way? I have used win2K SP2 for years, and it next to OS/2, it is the most reliable system I have ever used on a PC. If you are trouble free, knock on wood, because that is an anomaly for sure.

If you look at what they had to do to make XP out of Win2K, you will see that, by design, XP will be more unstable than Win2K. Given the number of installations, an occasional one will probably be fine, but many more will suffer due to the inherent flaws created by turning a robust server into a game machine.

I have used XP on a number of machines. From this perspective, it is not as robust and reliable as Win2K. Everyone will see different results, so its rather rude to imply that some people are doing anything wrong.

Some folks swear that Win98SE is the best OS, and for them, it may well be.

Everyone's mileage will vary.

But if you remove the desktop from windows, it will scream as well. Its not the OS that is bloated (although it is rather poorly knitted together, its the GUI.) When its time to compare, you have to keep it apples and apples. What makes windows slow and clunky is the desktop. The same thing applies to linux. When you take away the"eye candy" GUI, linux picks up dramatically. So the advantage of linux is not "its speed" but the fact that you can run it without the GUI. Few want to do command line work, and few OS's have such incredibly inane file naming conventions as *nux :-)

Neither of those run the CAD programs I am forced to use. Plus, where do you live that there are no taxes, and no social security/medicaid deductions? :-)

JB

"Chris Carlen" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@news1.newsguy.com...

That's not the Chris that I know ;) But I agree totally. Linux (+ apps) grows bigger and bigger, becomes the same 'bloatware' as windows is. What we see on the outside of our computer, the screen and printer, suggests that it is all pretty simple and should be able to work perfect. But it is so incredibly complicated to make it all happen. Third parties adding hardware and drivers that have small flaws, end-users that install all kinds of crap software. Maintaining backward-compatiblity even back to the old dos stuff. What can you expect. The fact that it even sort of works, is a miracle and nothing less.

It would be nice if Microsoft stopped adding features and focussed on improving reliability. In a way they are already doing this. But it's not only Microsoft. Try installing one of those HP multipurpose printers with build-in scanner and cardreader. What a load of junk is that. Or look at Acrobat reader, what happened to that lean and mean reader? Yes there are alternative readers, but they don't work 100% either.

A perfect OS only opens your eyes wider to other misery in life.

I'm not complaining. Many days I don't need to reboot my windows PC. If I am going to do a lot of work in Protel, I know I will have to reboot once or twice, often *after* closing Protel. It's not that bad.

When people are unable to come up with their own rebuttal, and have to resort to quoting someone else, it usually means that can't think for themselves. - Me