Linux as an everyday OS ?
- Thread starter Sputnik II
- Start date
JonRohan said:
OMG
Lol 
You haven't a monkeys of doing that. The main example I can think of in this department is IE- There are plenty of workarounds etc. that were first implemented to get around bugs and then became the 'norm'.
I don't think you can deny that much of Windows has been hacked & hashed to maintain backwards compatibilty, and this in turn causes future apps to have to work within the confines which this creates.
What you can argue about however, is the overall effect that this has on the OS, and the user experience as a whole- I totally admit that you will find more Windows programs to be coherant to one standard in UI, shortcuts etc. than in a Linux distro, but the fact remains that this is because this is the way that the framework of Windows forces them to do it, rather than the 'best' (Highly subjective I know) way to do it.
-Leezer-
leezer3 said:
Indeed. With the .NET framework Microsoft are really ensureing that users are tied into there software. Although saying that the .NET framework is rather good.
I use Linux servers at work and really appreciate how it works, the stability it can offer etc. But IMO its just not ready for everyday use by Joe public, this of course, is partly (as you;ve stated) due to the domination and marketing from MS.
Some linux people, forums and users I have found to be rather snobby sometimes. Thinking that Linux is best for everything, which of course it isn't.
Soldato
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I keep trying out ubuntu every release and it's getting better and better, but there are still things that don't work quite right in it. I haven't been able to get my wacom tablet working, nor 'draft' print on my canon ip4000r, (but can get well decent HQ prints). VMware, and wine supply any windows thing I *need* (but haven't found any yet).
My geforce 3 will do the cool XGL + stuff but it seems in a bit of flux at the moment, AIGLX + XGL ,compiz etc, new nvidia drivers might work, but I may need to upgrade to a 6200 get these effects. I don't want to do any hacking, I want it to just work.
The other thing is that I am running a 14 month install of 2k patched up running very nicely and it's loaded with apps, servers, personalisations, software, I have workflows set up and to switch just seems like such a hassle when I have a good setup as is.
The deciding factor for me willl be when no support for win2k, new apps won't run, no more patches etc. The the option will be longhorn or linux. I'll take Linux, and by then I expect ubuntu will be more than ready for my (desktop) needs.
My geforce 3 will do the cool XGL + stuff but it seems in a bit of flux at the moment, AIGLX + XGL ,compiz etc, new nvidia drivers might work, but I may need to upgrade to a 6200 get these effects. I don't want to do any hacking, I want it to just work.
The other thing is that I am running a 14 month install of 2k patched up running very nicely and it's loaded with apps, servers, personalisations, software, I have workflows set up and to switch just seems like such a hassle when I have a good setup as is.
The deciding factor for me willl be when no support for win2k, new apps won't run, no more patches etc. The the option will be longhorn or linux. I'll take Linux, and by then I expect ubuntu will be more than ready for my (desktop) needs.
Man of Honour
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I'm in the position (probably unusual) of having use both at work (well, Solaris and Windows anyway)
Personally I need both for my job and I wouldn't want to make do with one, I have Windows and OSX at home and wouldn't want to do without one of them there either
Personally I need both for my job and I wouldn't want to make do with one, I have Windows and OSX at home and wouldn't want to do without one of them there either
Soldato
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I use Ubuntu 6.06 at home and XP/Ubuntu 6.06 at work. I try to use Linux whenever I can to speed up my learning of it though.
Have 2 machines running linux only they are used far more than my windoze box.
Sadly needed for games though. Cedega is proving a mission.
Work well you have to suffer at least some windows though I have a triple boot FC4, RH9 WinXP cause some things you just can't do in windows.
Sadly needed for games though. Cedega is proving a mission.
Work well you have to suffer at least some windows though I have a triple boot FC4, RH9 WinXP cause some things you just can't do in windows.
I probably ought to say upfront, I'm not a complete linux/GPU obsessive, unlike some of my colleagues. I use different OSes on different environment (from WinXP, PocketPC, Symbian, Blackberry OS, Linux, etc). If I think a piece of software is worth the asking price, i'll pay it happily. I happily paid for Windows licences until recently, but, now-a-days, I believe the price/performance of Windows vs Linux isn't enough to make me buy Windows anymore.
I have a Windows XP licence at home, and used to boot into it to play games. And will likely do so again in future when I buy something which I have to run in Windows.
At present, however, I've not booted into it for months, as the only game I've been playing is World of Warcraft, which I can run happily under Linux.
I use a dual headed (Nvidia cards) Ubuntu box as my primary workstation in the office (I'm a technical project manager for a firm selling IT products in the Finance industry).
I have a 2nd box which runs XP, and Outlook 2003 (use synergy and the Linux box keyboard and mouse). I've tried using Evolution on the Linux box, but as it ties into the companies MS Exchange server via the Outlook Web Access system, it's inherently slower at retrieving email than the windows box, enough that I prefer to hang onto an XP box for my mail (admittedly, if I came to the company anew, and used Evolution from day 1, this probably wouldn't be an issue, but i'm used to the speed of Outlook on XP now so it's tough!)
My main applications on the linux box:
* Firefox - despite the numerous posts above, I rarely come accross a site I need to use, which operates poorly under firefox. All our internal web-based applications (and there are a ton of them) work perfectly well.
* OpenOffice 2 - I don't get the "it's a workaround" thing at all. Yes, it's a "clone" of MS Office from a few years ago, I realise that, and have no real problem with it. I can generate the same documents in it that I could in MS Office 2k3, plus I can publish everything in Adobe Acrobat from the button at the top, which is great when docs need to go out of the company). If I used Spreadsheets in a more hardcore way than I do, then perhaps I'd want Excel, it is undoubtedly the best spreadsheet around, but I'm not an accountant, so I don't. I find most non-accountant style spreadsheets people knock up in Excel would be better off as a database or other application.
* Emacs - fabuluous editor, never a moment when there isn't a session somewhere on my system, though admittedly takes some time to really get to grips with it, and to teach yourself to really understand its capabilities.
* Bash Shell - The power of the bash shell is something most people fail to realise, and is the main draw for me away from my XP box at work
* Wine - I run OpenWorkbench (think free MS Project, which happens to integrate marvellously well with CA Clarity, the online project management system use by my firm) under Wine, as I've not found a native linux port. It works fine, however, which is nice
* Eclipse - Only just started using it, not sure i'll be migrating to it from Emacs or not for my perl/phython/php/c/java development.
* Rhythum box / VLC media players (or whatever runs, I'm not too fussy so long as the tunes or video pops up).
At home, I use largely the same software as above, plus:
* Google Picasa (hoping they release a PicasaWeb for Linux, as am not a massive Flickr fan, and would like to decomission my own Gallery server, etc).
* Wine running World of Warcraft
* The Gimp / XSane for importing piccies, sorting them out, etc.
Cheers,
Gav.
I have a Windows XP licence at home, and used to boot into it to play games. And will likely do so again in future when I buy something which I have to run in Windows.
At present, however, I've not booted into it for months, as the only game I've been playing is World of Warcraft, which I can run happily under Linux.
I use a dual headed (Nvidia cards) Ubuntu box as my primary workstation in the office (I'm a technical project manager for a firm selling IT products in the Finance industry).
I have a 2nd box which runs XP, and Outlook 2003 (use synergy and the Linux box keyboard and mouse). I've tried using Evolution on the Linux box, but as it ties into the companies MS Exchange server via the Outlook Web Access system, it's inherently slower at retrieving email than the windows box, enough that I prefer to hang onto an XP box for my mail (admittedly, if I came to the company anew, and used Evolution from day 1, this probably wouldn't be an issue, but i'm used to the speed of Outlook on XP now so it's tough!)
My main applications on the linux box:
* Firefox - despite the numerous posts above, I rarely come accross a site I need to use, which operates poorly under firefox. All our internal web-based applications (and there are a ton of them) work perfectly well.
* OpenOffice 2 - I don't get the "it's a workaround" thing at all. Yes, it's a "clone" of MS Office from a few years ago, I realise that, and have no real problem with it. I can generate the same documents in it that I could in MS Office 2k3, plus I can publish everything in Adobe Acrobat from the button at the top, which is great when docs need to go out of the company). If I used Spreadsheets in a more hardcore way than I do, then perhaps I'd want Excel, it is undoubtedly the best spreadsheet around, but I'm not an accountant, so I don't. I find most non-accountant style spreadsheets people knock up in Excel would be better off as a database or other application.
* Emacs - fabuluous editor, never a moment when there isn't a session somewhere on my system, though admittedly takes some time to really get to grips with it, and to teach yourself to really understand its capabilities.
* Bash Shell - The power of the bash shell is something most people fail to realise, and is the main draw for me away from my XP box at work
* Wine - I run OpenWorkbench (think free MS Project, which happens to integrate marvellously well with CA Clarity, the online project management system use by my firm) under Wine, as I've not found a native linux port. It works fine, however, which is nice
* Eclipse - Only just started using it, not sure i'll be migrating to it from Emacs or not for my perl/phython/php/c/java development.
* Rhythum box / VLC media players (or whatever runs, I'm not too fussy so long as the tunes or video pops up
).At home, I use largely the same software as above, plus:
* Google Picasa (hoping they release a PicasaWeb for Linux, as am not a massive Flickr fan, and would like to decomission my own Gallery server, etc).
* Wine running World of Warcraft
* The Gimp / XSane for importing piccies, sorting them out, etc.
Cheers,
Gav.
Following up to myself.. bad form! 
Forgot to add, my mother & step-father use a solely linux PC at home (ADSL, wireless router, Ubuntu PC), have done for the last few years (distro hasn't always been Ubuntu, was Debian for quite a while) until recently they've not known any other "common" OS, as mums office computer was a weird terminal thing, and step-dad didn't have one. It's rare that i've had calls to sort something out (their users are restricted enough it's hard for them to break much!), and the few times I have, I've used SSH to fix it fairly quickly. I've never needed to do a rebuild (the move to Ubuntu came due to a complete PC rebuild at my house).
They use the web (firefox now, mozilla and then gecko previosly), openoffice, skype to call me at home, and the gimp (admittedly they sometimes struggle with anything more than their "normal" uses of it, they're now playing with Picassa which they like, but find the interface a little odd). Email is managed through GMail for my domain, which is nice.
It amuses me (and aparently her tech-support at work!) that, since mum has started having to use an XP based PC in the office, she often complains that the interface "doesn't make sense / isn't what i'm used to".
My father, on the other hand, has always had a Windows XP box, and doesn't like the feel of a linux box, so he stays on Windows. I've done numerous virus/spyware cleanups, and system rebuilds for him (Note, i don't avidly subscribe to the Linux is more sable/secure philosophy, IMHO this has yet to be proven, as Linux comes more into the mainstream on "thicko" desktop boxes, more hacks will be attempted).
Recently, however, he's started using Firefox running under VMWare Player (actually an Ubuntu OS image which maps a folder onto his FAT32 hard disk for any downloads, and auto-boots into Firefox), and is quite happy doing it (and, touch wood, hasn't got himself into any new trouble as yet).
I guess what I'm saying here is that, the whole argument about difficult to use comes largely from what you're used to, not due to windows being inherently better, and that so far, my mother & stepfather have benefitted from being on the more obscure linux OS
Gav.
Forgot to add, my mother & step-father use a solely linux PC at home (ADSL, wireless router, Ubuntu PC), have done for the last few years (distro hasn't always been Ubuntu, was Debian for quite a while) until recently they've not known any other "common" OS, as mums office computer was a weird terminal thing, and step-dad didn't have one. It's rare that i've had calls to sort something out (their users are restricted enough it's hard for them to break much!), and the few times I have, I've used SSH to fix it fairly quickly. I've never needed to do a rebuild (the move to Ubuntu came due to a complete PC rebuild at my house).
They use the web (firefox now, mozilla and then gecko previosly), openoffice, skype to call me at home, and the gimp (admittedly they sometimes struggle with anything more than their "normal" uses of it, they're now playing with Picassa which they like, but find the interface a little odd). Email is managed through GMail for my domain, which is nice.
It amuses me (and aparently her tech-support at work!) that, since mum has started having to use an XP based PC in the office, she often complains that the interface "doesn't make sense / isn't what i'm used to".
My father, on the other hand, has always had a Windows XP box, and doesn't like the feel of a linux box, so he stays on Windows. I've done numerous virus/spyware cleanups, and system rebuilds for him (Note, i don't avidly subscribe to the Linux is more sable/secure philosophy, IMHO this has yet to be proven, as Linux comes more into the mainstream on "thicko" desktop boxes, more hacks will be attempted).
Recently, however, he's started using Firefox running under VMWare Player (actually an Ubuntu OS image which maps a folder onto his FAT32 hard disk for any downloads, and auto-boots into Firefox), and is quite happy doing it (and, touch wood, hasn't got himself into any new trouble as yet).
I guess what I'm saying here is that, the whole argument about difficult to use comes largely from what you're used to, not due to windows being inherently better, and that so far, my mother & stepfather have benefitted from being on the more obscure linux OS
Gav.
Soldato
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i dont use linux at all but i can understand the change. As a Windows user all my life and then getting a mac laptop its been a bit of a change. An easy change tho as mac os is a great thing to just use. I still don't quite feel in control of it tho but all that will come with time.
I have windows installed but i don't use it at all any more. Only installed it for the games BF2 , HL2 etc and also learn japanese but thats about it. Havent booted into in absolutely ages.
On a side note does any one know how i can make my OSX partition the default so it boots straight into it so i dont have to be here and hold down alt when i turn it on ???
I have windows installed but i don't use it at all any more. Only installed it for the games BF2 , HL2 etc and also learn japanese but thats about it. Havent booted into in absolutely ages.
On a side note does any one know how i can make my OSX partition the default so it boots straight into it so i dont have to be here and hold down alt when i turn it on ???
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In system Preferences go to Startup Disk and select your OS X partition.zhx said:
I've just started using Ubuntu 6.06 at work in a dual boot with XP Pro on my laptop. I'm pretty impressed with Ubuntu and Linux in general and if I wasn't a gamer I would be tempted to ditch Windows.
I'm trying to do my "one man IT department" job using Linux and free software but its not perfectly possible. For development work I use Dreamweaver and there isn't anything close under Linux that I have yet found. Likewise, whilst OpenOffice and Evolution is fine evn with my Exchange 2003 server, its just not MS Office and some of the features I routinely use I'm having to either not use or find workarounds for.
Hardware support is pretty good on the whole, but the ATI drivers in my laptop are having a real hard time with external dual montitors and extended desktop.
Also, to get Linux integrated within an Active Directory environment is far too time consuming and not really workable if I were to try to roll out many machines. Centrify looks like an interesting product for that though.
All in all, Windows just works and is easilt understood. Doing things in Linux often requires a different approach and sometimes using the command line. I'd be delighted if I could take the best of both and get an IDEAL_OS (tm) but I haven't found one yet. That said, my ideal OS at this point would contain more features of Linux than of Windows.
I'm trying to do my "one man IT department" job using Linux and free software but its not perfectly possible. For development work I use Dreamweaver and there isn't anything close under Linux that I have yet found. Likewise, whilst OpenOffice and Evolution is fine evn with my Exchange 2003 server, its just not MS Office and some of the features I routinely use I'm having to either not use or find workarounds for.
Hardware support is pretty good on the whole, but the ATI drivers in my laptop are having a real hard time with external dual montitors and extended desktop.
Also, to get Linux integrated within an Active Directory environment is far too time consuming and not really workable if I were to try to roll out many machines. Centrify looks like an interesting product for that though.
All in all, Windows just works and is easilt understood. Doing things in Linux often requires a different approach and sometimes using the command line. I'd be delighted if I could take the best of both and get an IDEAL_OS (tm) but I haven't found one yet. That said, my ideal OS at this point would contain more features of Linux than of Windows.
GICarey said:
Sad thing is - because of hardware support, optimizations, availability of drivers on any modern system and most of all - linux coding community - all the things you mentioned would run faster on Windows with cygwin than on Linux with Wine....
And that's the current reality - Linux used to be very light, very fast server platform that would beat the heck out of NT in any environment, it had light desktops, simple, working apps. You load up today's KDE and yes, it comes with loads of apps, yes it looks, well, different, but between constant chase to make even more ugly loking Crystal lookalike theme and insisting on things to behave like Windows Blinds on steroids the thing weights a tone, needs more libraries than George Bush to write speech on his own and no matter how much resources you throw at it it will be a hog and a greedy pig. The lightining fast desktops on Irix or BeOS tought people nothing. MacOS is example what can be done on the same X and background OS. Unpack any new distro - what do you see - we can make it look like Longhorn, and here's office app to emulate Office. Well. To be honest - thanks - I'll have real Longhorn and real crystal on OSX if I want one. And without any jerkiness. Linux had three major advantages:
- It was free
- It was light and fast
- It could do so much more
Less and less of it is free. Certainly the professionally done, checked and verified stuff. It's no longer light and fast. And you can do all the "more" under windows now...
Back to drawing board or in few years time I - as a linux admin - will have to do MSCEs to find any decent job...
v0n said:
kde isn't linux. linux is as fast, light and flexible as you want it to be. a server install without an x server is still as fast and light as it ever was, if not faster. if you looked at some wine benchmarks you'll actually find that games run as fast, if not faster, in wine than windows.
v0n said:
What the hell are you talking about? Linux != KDE... KDE is just a desktop enviroment. Linux can always be faster/as fast as the other operating systems because you can recompile your code with optimizations enabled. These are disabled by default in most programs because it can cause problems, but you have the option to change this.
Every server admin worth their salt should be able to admin headless box's no problem, so gui really does not apply to the server market.
Look at gentoo or arch linux for example, they are brillient examples of light weight distro's. The point is linux gives you choice if you want to install a bloated desktop enviroment like KDE you can, but likewise you can install fluxbox/xfce.
You want security? use selinux/grsec, something windows servers have always been lacking in.
I find it really annoying people take one look at a couple of distro's, decide they are not what they like then whine about it. The user has unlimited freedom, hell build your own distribution (its not that hard with things like linux from scratch to base it on.
JonRohan said:
Sort of, .NET (well CLI/C# - http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm) has actaully been standardised. Mono had been used in the latest version of Gnome base for instance. I can see this trend continuing, since GTK has always been a pain to write apps in.
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Whilst this is a bit of thread-drift, i'll respond anyway..
That's not strictly true though, is it?
You definitely need to select the correct hardware at times to get the best performance (or even, for some items, any driver compatibility at all) running under Linux, but as computer enthusiasts (as most people reading these forums will be) it's not much more work that we currently expend selecting the right kit for our Windows boxes.
The driver situation is changing, NVidia look set to release some OSource drives, and the non OS build-at-home accelerated stuff operate fairly well at the moment.
As for running under cygwin on Windows? Why on earth would you want to do that? Firefox, OpenOffice2, Emacs, Eclipse and The Gimp can all be obtained compiled natively for Windows, which if you're performance obsessed will give you a boost over running under Cygwin!
That's not to say I don't think Cygwin is great, I use it for pretty much anything command-line based in Windows as it blitz's the windows shell, but if you're working under Windows, use native win32 compiled apps for crying out loud, don't run them under X in Cygwin!
You're talking about the KDE or Gnome environments, not Linux. And if you're truly a Linux sys-admin, you'd know what you're spouting is bull! There are numerous desktop environemnts which run over X, and you can select which ever one suits you! If you like the prettiness and Windowsishness of Gnome/KDE, use them, but if you want something fast, get fluxbox/xfce & customise to suit how you work. Prior to installing Ubuntu I had Fluxbox with a bunch of GDesklets, which was grand. I'm now in Gnome (and, to be honest, whilst it's certainly bloted, you cant tell on a decent modern system, it feels as snappy as XP)
The free thing to me is a rubbish point. Start from your requirements, and work towards the lowest cost system suited to them. In certain circumstances, that's going to be windows (being Windows could easily be a requirement. It certainly has to be for my firms customers as all our software is Win32 based), in others, it's not.
Light/Fast, Linux certainly can still be (hence why I can have a full linux distro running on a 200mhz PDA, even running an Apache server!), it all depends on the distro you choose to use / build. As a sysadmin, i'm sure you've used LFS?
Doing so much more. I don't see that this has anything to do with the OS, an OS doesn't DO that much as far as end user features are concerned, it's the apps built onto it which DO things. The more apps are ported to different OSs and environments, the better, IMHO, as it breaks down this obsession with one OS or another. It does seem tho, that it's generally the Open Source software which is first to be ported from Linux to Windows, often because people who use OSource at home are forced onto a Windows desktop in the office, but want to use the apps they prefer there (For example, I didn't used to have a Linux box at work, and so instead used Cygwin, and a number of open-source apps compiled for Win32 operation on my windows box to simulate my home PC as closely as possible - exactly the opposite, in fact, of what sooo many Windows users moving to Linux try, and the reason Gnome/KDE is like they are!)
Sounds like, as a linux admin, you need more Linux training to get a decent Linux admin position, or, if you dislike the OS enough, perhaps the switch to Windows and a few MCSEs will do you some good?
v0n said:
That's not strictly true though, is it?
You definitely need to select the correct hardware at times to get the best performance (or even, for some items, any driver compatibility at all) running under Linux, but as computer enthusiasts (as most people reading these forums will be) it's not much more work that we currently expend selecting the right kit for our Windows boxes.
The driver situation is changing, NVidia look set to release some OSource drives, and the non OS build-at-home accelerated stuff operate fairly well at the moment.
As for running under cygwin on Windows? Why on earth would you want to do that? Firefox, OpenOffice2, Emacs, Eclipse and The Gimp can all be obtained compiled natively for Windows, which if you're performance obsessed will give you a boost over running under Cygwin!
That's not to say I don't think Cygwin is great, I use it for pretty much anything command-line based in Windows as it blitz's the windows shell, but if you're working under Windows, use native win32 compiled apps for crying out loud, don't run them under X in Cygwin!
v0n said:
You're talking about the KDE or Gnome environments, not Linux. And if you're truly a Linux sys-admin, you'd know what you're spouting is bull! There are numerous desktop environemnts which run over X, and you can select which ever one suits you! If you like the prettiness and Windowsishness of Gnome/KDE, use them, but if you want something fast, get fluxbox/xfce & customise to suit how you work. Prior to installing Ubuntu I had Fluxbox with a bunch of GDesklets, which was grand. I'm now in Gnome (and, to be honest, whilst it's certainly bloted, you cant tell on a decent modern system, it feels as snappy as XP)
v0n said:
The free thing to me is a rubbish point. Start from your requirements, and work towards the lowest cost system suited to them. In certain circumstances, that's going to be windows (being Windows could easily be a requirement. It certainly has to be for my firms customers as all our software is Win32 based), in others, it's not.
Light/Fast, Linux certainly can still be (hence why I can have a full linux distro running on a 200mhz PDA, even running an Apache server!), it all depends on the distro you choose to use / build. As a sysadmin, i'm sure you've used LFS?
Doing so much more. I don't see that this has anything to do with the OS, an OS doesn't DO that much as far as end user features are concerned, it's the apps built onto it which DO things. The more apps are ported to different OSs and environments, the better, IMHO, as it breaks down this obsession with one OS or another. It does seem tho, that it's generally the Open Source software which is first to be ported from Linux to Windows, often because people who use OSource at home are forced onto a Windows desktop in the office, but want to use the apps they prefer there (For example, I didn't used to have a Linux box at work, and so instead used Cygwin, and a number of open-source apps compiled for Win32 operation on my windows box to simulate my home PC as closely as possible - exactly the opposite, in fact, of what sooo many Windows users moving to Linux try, and the reason Gnome/KDE is like they are!)
v0n said:
Sounds like, as a linux admin, you need more Linux training to get a decent Linux admin position, or, if you dislike the OS enough, perhaps the switch to Windows and a few MCSEs will do you some good?
See, and this is exactly what's wrong with linux scene today. I provide you with, what I think, are current issues and problems and you fob me off with "if you were really linux admin". In case of critique slap the guy in the face...
Look, it's simple really.
"Headless server runs faster" is not really a serious answer. Why would it be valid argument in discussion about desktops.
"In works fast in certain hardware configurations" is not a serious answer. That's how most of unix giants ended up dead.
"My 200Mhz Cyrix server works like a charm" is not a serious answer. That's how the boys still playing with their Amigas got stuck in last century.
"You can have blackbox, fluxbox and it runs fast" is not really a good case. Windows desktop is bloated and fast, linux desktop can be either minimalistic and fast or fully featured and much slower.
Once again - no matter how personal you gonna go against me - the truth is - thanks to linux coding community having their heads stuck up their a-holes and padding each other on the back the current situation is - at this day and hour there is very little that XP box with cygwin or Interix/Unix Services for Windows (whichever way you want to go) can't do faster, easier and with better interface than linux box. As a desktop it looses to all, as a server it begins to loose as well. And any amount of tea bagging me across forehead with "you should get some linux training" won't change the fact I've seen it before. It's the fall of SGI and Sun once again. And once again the industry hardheadedly responds - "that's not true, look - if we strip it to bare minimum - see how nicely it runs". Not the point. Shortsighness is worse than a plague....
Look, it's simple really.
"Headless server runs faster" is not really a serious answer. Why would it be valid argument in discussion about desktops.
"In works fast in certain hardware configurations" is not a serious answer. That's how most of unix giants ended up dead.
"My 200Mhz Cyrix server works like a charm" is not a serious answer. That's how the boys still playing with their Amigas got stuck in last century.
"You can have blackbox, fluxbox and it runs fast" is not really a good case. Windows desktop is bloated and fast, linux desktop can be either minimalistic and fast or fully featured and much slower.
Once again - no matter how personal you gonna go against me - the truth is - thanks to linux coding community having their heads stuck up their a-holes and padding each other on the back the current situation is - at this day and hour there is very little that XP box with cygwin or Interix/Unix Services for Windows (whichever way you want to go) can't do faster, easier and with better interface than linux box. As a desktop it looses to all, as a server it begins to loose as well. And any amount of tea bagging me across forehead with "you should get some linux training" won't change the fact I've seen it before. It's the fall of SGI and Sun once again. And once again the industry hardheadedly responds - "that's not true, look - if we strip it to bare minimum - see how nicely it runs". Not the point. Shortsighness is worse than a plague....
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never worked in a scientific computing environment then I take it?
I cant really imagine producing papers in latex under cygwin to a high standard tbh, also any code compiled under gcc in cygwin would only be executable by people with cygwin on their machines, which lets face it is an even smaller sub-set of users than Windows or Linux.
I cant really imagine producing papers in latex under cygwin to a high standard tbh, also any code compiled under gcc in cygwin would only be executable by people with cygwin on their machines, which lets face it is an even smaller sub-set of users than Windows or Linux.
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