Reflecting on the last two months of W7

[dangerstat]

So as you may (or may not) know I'm a Linux user through and through. But for the last couple of months I've been using the RC of Windows 7, more as an experiment than anything else. So I thought I'd share what I've liked / disliked and more importantly why I'll never go back to Windows again.

Likes:
[1] Simple and fast install
[2] Soooo much better than Vista (and in fairness an improvement on XP)
[3] Very stable (didn't crash AT ALL)
[4] Gaming
[5] Networking & Drivers (everything worked)

Dislikes:
[1] Windows powershell is NO WAY a replacement for a Linux terminal it is SHOCKINGLY poor. IIS is not a patch on Apache (no pun intended) and just generally it's shocking platform for any dev work.
[2] Disk management system is woeful
[3] Lack of free software (that isn't "trashware") just finding a utility to convert media types is like learning how to avoid crapware
[4] BluRay support was horrendous.

Overall I thought Windows 7 was a nice, stable and user friendly operating system for someone who is not a power user (no Linux fanboi here). A real step up from Vista and generally a good everyday OS. However for any developer the thought of using Windows 7 for anything more than an experiment must be out of the question. Even base functionality (grep / sed etc..) is sadly missing in W7 and the attempt to use windows powershell to get around this is a massive mistake. Powershell is crap, and quite simply there is no way I could use it to do anything meaningful. I've never missed yum/apt-get so much in my life.

The reason I conducted this experiment was mainly to justify my comments to others when I said "You should really use Linux it's by far and away better than Windows" when I was confronted with "Yeah but when was the last time you used Windows, Windows 7 rocks". Well I can say with total confidence now that Linux is the better operating system, but I'll conceed that Windows 7 is a viable platform.

So this is my last attempt at using Windows. And I'm a little sad to see the back of it, but equally excited to get back to Linux.

Dangerstat's verdict "Linux is officially better than Windows."

N'uff said.

 

[dangerstat]

Why's it soooo much better than current day Vista? It's extremely similar.

Well no it isn't. Approaching it from "a user's perspective" Ubuntu / Debian (latest versions) boot significantly faster. They have a excellent text manipulation routines built in (grep / sed etc..). They have excellent stability (unlike Vista). They have completely in built package management systems with access to thousands of free and preconfigured binaries. They have inbuilt (and STABLE) server software (essentially the LAMP config). They have access to better file systems (ZFS is now available to most linux distros I believe).

Would you like me to continue?

 

[dangerstat]

I don't think Linux can legitimately claim ZFS as a benefit - due to licensing issues, it has to run in user space via FUSE rather than in kernel space as in its "native" OS (Solaris). I'm by no means an expert in such matters, but from what I gather it's a bit of a hack and not an ideal way to go about things, at least with such a sophisticated, complex and resource-hungry filesystem.

This is the only thing that bothers me. Hate windows degrading almost as much as reinstalling everything and losing settings I forgot about.

A college I was in had something interesting, you could only save data to allocated drive space on the network, anything on the computer itself was erased on restarting and it would return to exactly the same state every time.

I've forgotten the name of the program they were using, is it just some kind of backup system?

Some good coments lads. I think that that Linux (FUSE based or not) supporting ZFS and the like is positive plus for Linux, infact supporting custom FS's via FUSE is a plus.

I installed W7 with a completely open mind, ready to accept windows being better that Linux, and that was the entire point for me.

In terms of Vista (SP2 or not) I found it woeful. And honestly that's as an open minded as I can be, it just met none of my needs in an OS, but feel sort of so many.

 

[dangerstat]

..while i agree with your overall conclusion this is a bit unfair.. bluray support on linux is completely broken at the moment. There is no way to play a bluray disk without ripping and decrypting manually first (and even then its a bit hit and miss).

No I agree. I guess one of my biggest reasons for going over and trying W7 was to get problem free BluRay playback. And W7 couldn't even install the BD drive correctly