Mr. Gates, XP sucks and you should rot in Hell!

The BBQ Pit
41

You must be moonlighting as a Microsoft trial lawyer. :slight_smile:

As far as antitrust law goes, a monopoly does not have to have 100% of the market – it simply has to have enough of it that the competitors’ share is statistically insignificant. And since Dell and Gateway and everybody else making Intel-compatable PCs is already locked into selling computers with Windows as the vast majority of their products, Microsoft definitely does have a monopoly on the market.

Splitting hairs between 100% and 99.8% isn’t going to reverse the courts’ findings of facts.

42

I bet you do hate it, but its valid.

You see, companys like dell, and gateway, and HP sell computers with XP to grandmas all day long, every day. And until Linux can be setup and run by someone who is totally computer illiterate and NOT WILLING TO LEARN, its never gonna kick microsoft out of the alpha male spot in the OS market.

XP can and does do just that. If it is run on standard hardware, like what Grandma finds on the shelf at bestbuy, it will run great and never crash. Someone like my parents(my grandparents are all deceased), can operate XP. It works right out of the box, you dont have to tweak anything if you dont want to. You see, your average user doesnt want to learn anything about his/her computer. They wanna use it like an appliance, like the TV, or the dishwasher. Most people out there cant figure out how to set the damn clock on thier VCR and you expect them to be able to handle Linux? Not hardly.

Yeah, I know, those people shouldnt be allowed near a computer, but guess what? they are the ones that put Microsoft over the top sales wise, and they are the ones who will keep them in power because they are in the majority. Linux has a long way to go before it reaches this stage. I hope it makes it. I Like Linux, I don’t really care for Bill Gates, or Microsoft. But I’m not kidding myself about its chances.

43

No, not really. Not as far as usability goes.

Grandma buys Windows because Grandma buys Dell or Gateway, and that’s all they offer. Maybe she’s got a grandkid who pushes her into a Mac, but that’s a minority case.

Grandma doesn’t buy an OS, she buys a computer. If that computer came with Linux (properly configured, just like Windows has to be properly configured from the manufacturer or it’s a nightmare), she’d use Linux. She’d learn what icons she has to click, she’d learn when to type and when to press buttons. KDE could be easily set up to meet her needs. She’d have no more to learn than with Windows. Linux can be set up to be as point and click as Windows.

I say this from experience: I manage the I.S. department at a company where 95% of the people working on computers all day long have never owned a computer, and had to be shown everything. I could start any of them on KDE instead of Windows, and it would be no more or less difficult. Likewise, transitioning them to Linux.

Ever since Red Hat 6.2, I’ve found it easier, faster, and less problematic to set up Linux than Windows–and that’s by setting a prepackaged selection, letting the defaults run and the hardware detection do what it will.

Besides which, how many grandmas set up and run the OS? They don’t. As you point out, average users want a device that works out of the box, which means pre-configured and straightforward. There’s no technical reason a good distro Linux couldn’t be offered this way today.

Likewise, Linux (assuming a good distro that aims for this kind of ease, which Red Hat and Mandrake do).

Perhaps as someone who knows Linux well and customizes it quite a lot, you’ve not noticed the tremendous gains in simple, default installation and setup in the majority distributions.

I’m not arguing that Linux will emerge on the desktop. I doubt it will in significant numbers, but the reasons are different. From a usability perspective, your average user wouldn’t notice the difference.

44

Sorry, but I must respectfully doubt your figures. When you consider Apple’s sales, Microsoft doesn’t have anywhere near 99.8% of the desktop computing market. Of course I don’t have any hard facts to back up this opinion. Maybe someone else does? If they have, say, 80%, is this by definition illegal? Or just a sign of success?

And no, I’m not a lawyer, don’t play one on TV, and I don’t even sleep with one anymore. Thank God! (that’s why I can afford to have such frightfully uninformed opinions)

45

It’s so easy to love a corporation whose production-level kernels (such as the one in Windows ME) cause General Protection Faults. Now, shouldn’t a kernel be stable enough not to fandango on core? Shouldn’t the OS’s core code be well-written enough to avoid causing massive memory faults? I guess MS kernels are made differently from other kernels. The air in Redmond must be getting mighty special. :smiley:

As far as usability goes: How can you use a system that loves to flash nice blue screens at you and lose files? How can you use a system that isn’t well-written enough to be actually used? I suppose the OEM installation on my friend’s laptop was flawed, or he’s somehow corrupting the kernel with his email and light word processing, or he’s offended the High Microsoft God somehow. We all know that for all Linux’s technical superiority, it isn’t a mature system. It isn’t an intuitive system.

I guess Linux isn’t mature enough to crash hard for no apparent reason.

I guess Linux isn’t intuitive enough to require long reboot processes after simple software installations.

I guess Microsoft will have a stranglehold on marketshare for as long as they can release Quality Software.

I guess Bill Gates can suck my fat choad.

(Damn, that felt good. :D)

(Note: Do not try to maintain a friend’s MS system. Walking him through a Linux installation will save you both time and effort. Now, if only my friend knew that.)

46

Can’t play games with Linux? What is Quake, a development environment?

Penguins with railguns.

Linux is ugly? If you think the Mona Lisa looks like a crack whore, perhaps. Enlightenment’s default look. If that’s ugly, I’m Oscar Meyer’s weiner.

Linux lacks a good windowing environment? Take your fucking pick, buddy. From the ubernerd twm to the visually stunning Enlightenment to the so-Windoze-like-it’s-embarassing KDE, you can set up any freaking interface you desire.

As for ignorant users killing their PC: Every fucking book says that only stupid mongoloid fucks smoking as much crack as they can lay their Thalidomide fins on run as root routinely. If you aren’t running as root, you can’t kill your PC. If you are running as a normal user, you would have to have some actual talent to kill a PC, short of taking a goddamn railgun to it.

47

Dead Badger, forgot my last point:

Other than that, I agree with you fully. :smiley:

48

I’ve been using computers since 1974 on a dozen different operating systems, and just this week had to install and use Redhat Linux for the first time.

Quite frankly, I think it sucks. I was using KDE, and I think it’s a horrible GUI. Windows beats it hands down for usability and aesthetics. But worst of all, Linux is SLOW. I set it up on a PIII/500, and it felt like I was using my old 286.

And the fonts are awful. The screen is far more difficult to read than windows.

And installing even simple applications is more difficult than Windows, and the minute you go out to the shell you are exposed to the merciless complexity of UNIX commands.

I found myself walking across the building back to my windows machine to do simple text file editing and web browsing because I found the Linux environment so painful.

49

Okay, sorry, I’ll qualify a couple of my points for the excessively pedantic:

You can hardly play any games in Linux. Quake 3 is what, 2 or 3 years old now? How much mileage can you get out of what was a poor game in the first place? You can get Unreal Tournament running, at three quarters the frame rate you had in Windows. Wheeee!

Re: stability. If you’d talked to me before I started using Win2K and XP, I would have agreed with you. No longer. I don’t think that having trouble installing DSL drivers and not realising that IE was set to work offline constitutes stability issues. I have had only one BSOD from win2K, and none from XP. I have now been using them for quite some time. I’m sorry to break it to you, but while Win9x was an unacceptably poor and unstable system, Win2K and XP are more than stable enough for me. If you haven’t used them, I suggest you don’t speculate.

FYI, my record number of crashes on Win9x was 12 in one day. On that day, I would have agreed with everything you say. It’s no longer true though. Deal.

Perhaps I used poor terminology when referring to windowing. You are talking about window managers, I am talking about X Windows, the underlying system. It is slow. It is ugly. It takes an illegal hack to get it to do fonts even tolerably (you got a licence for all your truetype fonts, eh?). It does not do alpha blending. And it’s the basis for every single system you so happily mention (I have used all three you brought up, btw). I don’t deny that within the confines of X, KDE does a magnificent job. But if you’re seriously saying that you can put KDE next to an XP or a Mac OSX computer and tell me it’s just as pretty, well I’m sorry but you’re nuts.

Yes, that’s a very pretty shot of enlightenment. But there’s not much on it, is there? Okay, we’ll ignore the bitmap, computers have been able to display those for a year or two, I think. And those are undeniably nice icons. But forgive me for being slightly picky, and saying that it’s not going to look like that most of the time, right? The reason that doesn’t look butt-ugly is that it’s not displaying fonts, it’s not displaying any windows. These are the things that, by and large, are not done well in linux. You may achieve some nice transparency effects (through a performance sapping hack, natch), but I just don’t think they’re generally as nice to look at, largely due to lack of alpha blending. This may just be taste, who knows. Moreover, just how long did that enlightenment env. take to set up, hmm? I’ve run enlightenment, and that’s not how it starts out life, I promise you :).

I don’t think you’re actually bothering to hear what I mean. Linux is a great development environment, one I use; but it is not a consumer OS. You say KDE is the ultimate baby system; well, great. Take Mandrake for example. Comes with KDE. Great. Comes with a package manager for easy installation. Comes with a control panel for easy administration. So how come the package manager crashed? How come the control panel reset itself? How come half the things it controlled didn’t work? How come I found myself, time and time again, at the command line logged in as root? This is not babying, and I am not an idiot. Either you choose to accept the system “as installed”, or you choose to run a high risk of fucking it up. This sounds suspiciously like certain accusations leveled at Windows.

And I never said I ran as root routinely. I avoid it like the fucking plague. Running as root is nuts. But the number of times you are forced to use root is such that the risk is huge. If you want to do anything more involved than web browsing (like, say, change the screen res), we’re off on a rooty adventure! Hey, go to /etc, change XF86Config. Got to be root, of course. And hang on, it seems to have no effect. Weird. Ah, that’s cos I’m on X 4.x, and that uses XF86Config-4. But the old one’s still here, of course, despite a lesser X never existing on this machine. What fun! Funny, apt-get under debian won’t run unless I’m root. What’s up with that? I don’t particularly want a package manager to have full access to my fucking machine. Oh, there we go - borked.

Bizarrely, the one thing I achieved with one hundred percent success was recompiling the kernel. Never fucked that up. But even then, do you not see how such a tetchy process might not be entirely conducive to the sanity of anyone with less time to spare for their computer than the average computer science student?

Do you deny that for some things, linux is unspeakably complex? Take startup, for example. What the haemorrhaging fuck are those RC levels about? Oh, but that’s okay, I’ve got a management tool for it clicks. Oh hang on, “you need to be root if you want to touch this.” Okay… “I wouldn’t touch this if I were you.” Um, right? So someone else knows best? Okay, this is all sounding very MS right here. So what have you actually achieved. You’ve got a substandard GUI (IMO), abstracted through too many layers of performance sapping software, attempting to protect the user from themselves. The latter is exactly what’s horrible about MS. So why is anyone going to move?

50

I agree with Badger. I love linux, have been using it for about 3 years. But I never run it in any window manager but Blackbox, which to me, is a thing of beauty. If you want a Windows-like environment, KDE and GNOME just don’t cut it.

There are still things that are too much of a pain in the arse to configure in linux so I’ll switch over to Windows. If I’m in the mood, I’ll spend a day configuring a scanner or printer to work with my router, but if you don’t have the time or don’t find those things fun, it is a big waste. Remember, computers are supposed to boost productivity. Spending two weeks configuring a rock-solid system is not always worth the extra couple of minutes it takes to reboot a crashed computer every other day.

Actually, I have a similar record to Badger for crashes on win98. Amusingly, they all happened during a time when I was backing up files in preparation for reformating and installing linux. Normally, you don’t have those kinds crashes especially on win2000. There is also something comforting about knowing that whatever bad things happen, they can usually be fixed just by rebooting or running Norton and not by spending hours reading Howto’s.

Thanks guys for tuning me into Opera. I tried version 5 and didn’t like it, but 6 is real nice.

51

Ah, but I wasn’t talking about the desktop computing market (computer OEMs to consumers), I was talking about the Intel-compatable PC OS market (OS manufacturer to computer OEMs). In that regard, Microsoft is definitely in the 96%+ range; the last figures I heard said that all varieties of Linux only accounted for 2% of the Intel PC market.

Besides, as many Microsoft apologists keep forgetting, Microsoft is not in trouble because it has a monopoly – they are in trouble for abusing their monopoly position and locking out competitors with illegal practices. Nobody would be giving Microsoft any flak if they had simply enjoyed their monopoly position and let the challengers give them a fair fight, but since Microsoft didn’t, they got busted for it.

At least you’re honest about it. :slight_smile:

52

So… using your logic, Apple would also be a monopoly, as they have full control over the G4 Tower and iMac market. Further, Ford Motor Co. is a monopoly, as they have full control over the Ford market. And Jack’s Fish Liver Oil Market down on the street corner is a monopoly, as it has full control over the Jack’s Fish Liver Oil Market.

:rolleyes:

Sorry, but Apple builds personal computers. Intel boxes are also personal computers. They are part of the same market. Microsoft is no monopoly. They may have used illegal business practices, but they are no monopoly.

53

I have to chime in as another person who would love to not support Microsoft but simply has to use Windows in order to do what I bought the computer for in large part (to play popular games). I own probably a hundred different DOS/Windows games and, while a handful will work under a different OS, most games simply do not work even under Mac OS, let alone Linux. I love Macs and I would use one if it were even mildly plausible to have a Macintosh gaming computer.

I hate Windows 98, but if I upgrade to XP, I’ll no longer be able to play (at least, without problems) quite a few of my games. XP isn’t supported by Black Isle, for example, and I have heard you can’t play DOS games anymore under XP. So, I’m stuck with this crappy OS.

54

Just downloaded the new security fix for XP and installed it. Resut: total bluescreen wipeout; won’t even open windows in safe mode.

Right in the middle of a very urgent project FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK XP.

This sent from my good old unreliable Mac.

55

No, goofus. The reason Microsoft is a monopoly – and your cockamamie examples aren’t – is because Microsoft does not own their own PC hardware manufacturer. Last I looked, Dell, Gateway, and Compaq were all separate corporate entities from Microsoft, and should be free to do whatever they want without fear of reprisal from the guys in Redmond. Unfortunately, they do live in fear, because Microsoft does have a monopoly, which it has gladly abused in the past to smite OEMs who don’t toe the Gates’ line.

(What is it with Microsoft apologists and the lack of reasoning skills?)

56

Just to trump the ‘lowest-spec-PC-running-XP’ argument, I’m running XP Professional on a 64mb Celeron PC. Doesn’t run any slower than Windows 98 (which the PC was shipped with), doesn’t crash anywhere near as often, and I’m in love with ClearType.

57

:rolleyes:

This is coming from…

Oh, never mind. The irony… oh, the irony.

There’s just been too many threads devoted to why Apple is better than the rest of the home and office computing world. I don’t want to incite another one.

rjung, I’m glad you like your Apple.

58

This has nothing to do with Apple vs. Microsoft, and everything to do with Microsoft vs. U.S. antritrust law. Please go back and look at Judge Jackson’s findings of fact – the ones that have been upheld through all the appeals, reversals, and hearings.

59

Exacatacaly!!! Dell et. al. make boxes!!! They can put ANY damn OS on those boxes they want, including Mac OS. They put on Windows because it sells. Consumers don’t give a happy horseshit if they are running Mac or Intel operating systems, they just want to process some words, spread some sheets, and mail some e. Distinctions between Win, Mac, Linux, etc., are no more important to most consumers that Ford, GM, or Toyota. And THAT, my dear Yorick, is why Microsoft is not a Monopoly. Just My Humble Opinion, of course…TRM

60

On a cheap homemade machine here. DSL hookup. Best I can time it with my own machine and the SO’s faster maching on the smae network. IE is about 1 second faster to load a page or refresh. Both machines on 98 SE. On animated radar sites, IE is clearly faster.

YMMV :smiley: