Why would anyone use Windows?

You aren't going to get this sort of question answered properly on an enthusiasts forum period.

Everyone on these forums is interested in computing so prepared to tinker with things and make the investment in time in making things work.

We build our own PC's and tweak settings etc. We don't goto Dell, buy a machine, unpack, switch on and use.

A lot of people however just want to be able to do just that. However you won't find them on an enthusiasts forum.

The power of Linux is in the flexibility that it offers to people that want to do things there way. However the vast majority of people just want things to work straight away, they don't want to spend time working out how to make the thing work.

A good example is I think Windows Home Server. Yes it's not perfect and if you are prepared to put the effort in you can get a lot of the funcionality from XP and then installing and configuring other applications to provide the extra functions that you want.

Or you can just install WHS and have it work for you. I know which route the majority of users will want.

This is also way Apple is blossoming. Whilst there are certain limits, ie no BluRay, etc it does work very well together as a system.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Because of the monopoly MS hold on the industry. How many machines that are bought have Windows already on them?

How many people love change?

The answer is within..
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Large vendors such as Dell and Walmart sell Linux based PCs but there is no consumer demand for them.

It is a tired old argument that people will flock to Linux once they discover it.
 
Appsenser said:
Large vendors such as Dell and Walmart sell Linux based PCs but there is no consumer demand for them.

It is a tired old argument that people will flock to Linux once they discover it.
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Only as of this year, and it is a moot point as it is an opt-in that is not well advertised. It is still a very much valid argument and is in no way tired. Mrs Miggins has used her PC for the last 5 years to check her email and make documents etc. Did she have the option to use Linux with her out-of-the-box PC back then? No. It came with Windows. In steps question 2 on her next PC purchase.
 
Can't run the software I need, the alternatives are far from great and aren't file compatible with people who do run windows. Given that, no point, it's not like web browsing / watching videos / checking email is a killer app for any OS and linux doesn't really do it better than any other OS.

Installing drivers, codecs is still hit and miss at times and there's still too much falling back to the commend line. I spend plenty of time working with unix at work, I've no problems getting it working but I don't want to, I want a computer which plays my music etc when it's switched on, not after I've compiled the drivers from source for something or another...
 
Because there is nothing that will manage a 250,000 file library of video, audio & images complete with 37 of my own custom fields (Of different data types too), filtering and expression language. Give me an app that'll do that and I'd be on Linux full-time in an instant :)

Cheers

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
Because there is nothing that will manage a 250,000 file library of video, audio & images complete with 37 of my own custom fields (Of different data types too), filtering and expression language. Give me an app that'll do that and I'd be on Linux full-time in an instant :)

Cheers

-Leezer-
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Why fix what isn't broken?
 
Games really are the only reason for me.. and the amount I play games is dropping more and more. Having spent the last year using Ubuntu as my workstation OS for my job, I really find few reasons to prefer Windows at all. Multiple desktops are handled so much better than the windows tools do it, even little things like how if you select text you can then paste it in to other stuff by middle clicking. All makes a huge usability difference. Every bit of hardware I have works happily with *nix too, no hassles or arguments at all.
 
leezer3 said:
Because there is nothing that will manage a 250,000 file library of video, audio & images complete with 37 of my own custom fields (Of different data types too), filtering and expression language. Give me an app that'll do that and I'd be on Linux full-time in an instant
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What are you using on Windows to do the job?
 
It may come as a massive shock to some but gaming is not as big a market as some people think. The monetary figures may be big but measured against the number of computer users it is not that big a percentage.

I used to be an avid gamer but I have become bored with it. The only game (I speak as an ex Quake, Unreal and WoW addict) that has taken my fancy in the last three years has been Spore but EA crippled it on Mac and introduced such restrictive DRM that you would have to be mad to part with your money.

'Nix does me fine as it is unrestrictive as I can mold it to what I want, it is free and, sorry Winblows fans, it is the future. At every release it gets better and better and what I do is fair, I put aside the money I used to spend on upgrades and donate to the developers that create such a great OS.

My main computer is a Macbook Pro running OS X and my old Windows PC runs Linux, running windows just feels horrible now. If it had any dignity left it would be put down by the vet. ;)
 
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Ubuntu is making good ground but still not there for me.

My installation of Vista Ultimate had all my hardware including TV card configured and just works out of the box. I want to like Linux and even have Ubuntu on my laptop but I imagine for 90% plus of the population they don't care and just will use whatever works.

I think OSX will be the biggest threat to the "desktop pc" scene in the coming years. Apple making good ground.
 
I'll give you an example of exactly why people (e.g. I) use Windows.

Earlier on I was bored, so I thought I'd give Linux another go. I've dabbled in the past, but nothing major. I hook up an old hard drive, download Ubuntu 8.04 and install it.

Installation went fine, booted to the desktop - so far, so good. Now I want to go online to download updates. Problem: my Linksys wireless card is seemingly recognised, but Linux can't initialise it. It seems there's no driver for it.

After some Googling, I learn that I should be able to use a Windows driver through ndiswrapper. The recommended method of installing it (using apt-get) clearly won't work because I don't have an internet connection. So I fetch my laptop and download ndiswrapper onto a USB stick.

I extract the ndiswrapper files. Now apparently I have to compile it myself? Not something I've done before, but I'm willing to give it a go. I run make and make install as directed, only to be met with a barrage of incomprehensible error messages.

I look in the install instructions to find this:

Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from the modules
directory. The command

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

should have at least 'include' directory and '.config' file.
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I suspect this is the issue. The problem is, I don't know what this means. Actually, the real problem is that I don't care what this means. I'm willing to do a certain amount of fiddling about, but I don't want to delve into the intricacies of the kernel source in order to compile this program. I just want to use the internet. Windows lets me do that straight away.

At this point, I have a few options:
  1. Drag my computer downstairs to my router so I can hook it up via ethernet and use apt-get. It's heavy. I don't want to do that.
  2. Buy a really long patch cable. It costs unnecessary money. I don't want to do that.
  3. Buy a new wireless card. Same argument as 2 applies.
  4. Spend hours poring over complex documentation in order to compile ndiswrapper in order to hack my wireless card to work in order to use the internet. I haven't got the time or the inclination for that.
  5. Press reset and boot Windows.
Guess which one I did? If I could see really significant advantages of running Linux, then as a technically-minded person I might persevere. But I consider my current OS - Vista x64 Ultimate SP1 - to be pretty good.

Anyone who believes that Linux is ready for the desktop when someone with fairly common hardware has to compile a package from source just to get online is living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
 
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i love linux but at the same time i'm no MS hater either and i personally feel linux is no closer to getting market share on the desktop than it was 10yrs ago ......maybe it's actually lost ground.

linux is great for users with a decent amount of interest in computing who like to tinker etc etc but for the avg guy on the street even Ubuntu is miles away from being close, it's all gravy at first but as soon as they get any problems it goes pete tong really quick because using Ubuntu gives absolutely no linux skills to diagnose problems and within a couple of hours banging their heads into the desk they're back with the old familiar windows to which you can teach you're granny to use.

until there's a lot more unification and less "our way is the best way" through the hundreds of distros about, linux is going around in circles.
 
@ Mattus, as annoying as your situation is - and I've been in a similar position myself - your anger should really be vented at Linksys not Linux. Your NIC works in Windows because the driver is provided by the vendor. It doesn't work under Linux because the vendor hasn't released a version or won't release the technical specs to allow the open source community to provide a working driver itself.

Imagine the same situation but with the roles reversed... imagine you own, for argument's sake, an Apple wireless Mighty Mouse. You connect it to your PC which runs Windows but it's not recognised, and there are no drivers anywhere that you can find. Chances are that you would blame Apple for not providing drivers, before criticising Microsoft. Yet, when it comes to Linux, people seem to consider it the fault of the guys creating the OS, not the companies creating the hardware.
 
Yeah, I appreciate that it's not the fault of Linux that the wireless card doesn't work. This seems to be one of the main arguments of those who say that Linux is ready to replace Windows.

Thing is.. imagine somebody less technically minded than ourselves. They're not really even sure what a driver is, let alone why there isn't one available for their wireless card. That person doesn't appreciate the distinction between 'nobody has bothered to write a driver' and 'Linksys won't allow people to write a driver'. All that person knows is that when they plug something in under Windows it gets installed automatically, and under Linux it doesn't work. And that's why people use Windows.

With all the talent and creativity in the open-source community, I can't believe they can't work around this kind of problem. Imagine I could just download a program like ndiswrapper (no compiling), and when I executed it, it would give me an ID number of the wireless card in my system. I could then go to another system, punch that number into a website and directly download a Windows driver which would work. Then I would copy it back onto the target system. Then I would be able to run ndiswrapper again, point it to the driver file, and everything would work. The program would give you instructions throughout, making it pretty hard to mess things up. If this were the case, I would be happy.

As it is, the Linux community seems to expect that anybody using Linux is comfortable with tasks like compiling their own software, and expects people to trawl the web for instructions for this kind of thing.
 
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