Why would anyone use Windows?

bilko100 said:
I think fus is wrong when he says only a minority of PC users are gamers,there must a majority of people who play games.
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Hardly, most people just want browse the web and send email these days. I don't play games, haven't since I was about 16. Sure there are a lot of people who do, but there are a huge number of people with PCs these days so it's still a fair bit less than 50%...
 
Your all speculating and picking numbers out of your ass. Does anyone have any real, surveyed statistics about how many people use PCs for gaming?
 
GarethDW said:
@ 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.
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But you can see their point, linux is still a niche operating system on the desktop. To develop, maintain and support a linux driver would be virtually double the work (and cost) in development and support. When the percentage of people using linux probably isn't greater than 5 and it's a £30 wireless card it's not business sense to.

The argument is circular in the end, linux isn't popular because it requires so much effort to get drivers working, if it was more popular drivers would be more readily available and easier to use. Something has to give to break the cycle.

Personally I don't think linux can make it as a desktop OS without a lot more work. It's still too much a command line unix derivative, even the good GUI environments still sit very much on top of that whereas the GUI is inseparable from the kernel in Windows and OSX (as far as the user cares). The result is you still have to drop down to the command line for moderately complex tasks, when does the average home user have to do that in Windows?

It's not a bad OS and it's tremendously powerful for some things, but despite having a big Xeon workstation running Redhat under my desk at work, for day to day stuff I still prefer my Windows box...
 
JimpsEd said:
Your all speculating and picking numbers out of your ass. Does anyone have any real, surveyed statistics about how many people use PCs for gaming?
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Very difficult to say, what exactly are the criteria?

Played a computer game in the last year?
Play computer games regularly? (What's regularly etc?)

Do console games count? (Probably no in relevance to this thread but yes in most surveys).

What counts as a game? (Surveys are horribly skewed by office workers who think minesweeper counts as a yes)

A quick google suggests that 40-50% of households buy computer games regularly but thats fairly meaningless on it's own.
 
JimpsEd said:
Your all speculating and picking numbers out of your ass. Does anyone have any real, surveyed statistics about how many people use PCs for gaming?
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Or if you really want the best answer easily available, a nielson report from 2006 reckon there were 117m active gamers in the US, of which 65% were PC gamers. The US population at 2000 census was 280m, PC ownership was 76% according to a pew research document in 2007, so of 212.8m PC owners, 76.05m were active gamers which is 35.73%

Of course this is wildly inaccurate given the statistics vary in time scale a little and it can't answer how many of the people who aren't gamers share a computer with those who are.
 
I don't use Linux because I have loads of programs on my PC. Many of these programs don't work on Linux and probably never will.
Simply put, that's why
 
tl;dr

but I use windows for gaming, because it's much easier to configure my multi-monitor setup, last time I checked there were no linux drivers for X-fi (admittedly, that was ages ago).

also many people don't pay a penny for windows, so linux being free is no incentive to them.
 
I dont use Linux because I cant be bothered. Ive used windows since the windows 3.11 workgroup days. Why would I then go and install Linux just to make it look and work like Windows so that I could then use it. Not to mention I have to worry about driver issues and whether they exist or not.

Oh and also I would not be able to play any of the games that I own.

I see no point in switching to a limited OS just to be cool on the internet (which is how I see all the hype about linux, because I have tried it).
 
xiphrex said:
I see no point in switching to a limited OS just to be cool on the internet (which is how I see all the hype about linux, because I have tried it).
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It's far from limited, there's an awful lot that I can easily do with unix which I can't do with Windows at all, but that alone doesn't make it a desktop OS.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
What are you using on Windows to do the job?
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J.River Media Center ( http://www.jrmediacenter.com )
Hugely complex to start with, and once you start adding custom fields, calculated fields and large amounts of scripting (This is using a plugin mind-you), there's nothing I can find that comes remotely close to what I need.

Before anyone even asks, I've tried Wine/ Cedega/ CrossoverOffice, and no these don't work. The size of the library and it's variety block out anything I've found to date.


With regards to 'fixing' things, I much prefer the Linux environment to that of Windows, and have invested a large amount of time and effort modifiying Windows to run in more Unix-like ways for when I need to use it (The laptop, server & two audio/ web client machines run Linux), so please don't start raising that point. Windows may work, but my preference lies with Linux.
For reference, my default Windows desktop-


I also much prefer a decent command-line interface for doing may things, while this may not be quite so idiotproof, in general I find it provides much more power and flexibility. Each has it's own place, and IMHO Windows has moved too far into the hidden options route. (OSX is a horrible example of this 'Our Way Or Not At All' methodology, ugh)

-Leezer-
 
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masterluke said:
Nothing recent about that!

Linux isn't perfect - but IMO, most people can do most\all of what they need to on either platform with a little effort.
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No nothing new but seems all the more present since vista, i use xp pro with suse on a seprate hard drive, suse recognises all my hardware straight away, windows... different story but both has there pros and cons, i do like suse tho
 
Dogoid said:
wow, your seriously up your own arse.
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It's just Karma.

For those that remember when the Amiga was demoed at CES in 85.
Microsoft (and other mainstream) ..

"Why does anyone need 4k colours and stereo sound to write a letter ??
Must be a games machine.....

A Toy"
 
It's attitudes like that which are most counterproductive to the goal of getting Linux onto as many desktops as possible. The mindset that Linux is far too good for you if you engage in 'trivial' pursuits like gaming and going on Facebook rather than recompiling your kernel every three hours is so offputting to people considering Linux - but then again, that's the effect you elitists usually desire.
 
Monkeynut said:
What are they? Not poking you just interested.
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Well there are of course all the games I play but aside from that major things like Adobe Lightroom, Traktor DJ Studio, and frankly loads more which I presume don't work on Linux but can't be bothered check.

I think it's absolutely fantastic there is a free OS out there which is very useful for lots of people, just not for me and my requirements
 
Mattus said:
It's attitudes like that which are most counterproductive to the goal of getting Linux onto as many desktops as possible. The mindset that Linux is far too good for you if you engage in 'trivial' pursuits like gaming and going on Facebook rather than recompiling your kernel every three hours is so offputting to people considering Linux - but then again, that's the effect you elitists usually desire.
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Who here do you think has that attitude???
 
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