In China Linux and Microsoft cost the same (effectively that is).
If you’re a mobile user with smart devices, well the Linux ain’t even in the ballpark.
I got hosed by spyware last summer. I ranted about it in the Pit; I believe the thread was called “Fuck You, Adaware”, because everything was running fine for 7 years on the computer without incident until the moment I ran Adaware.
7 years, you ask? You bet. I am running a P2 300 with 64 megs of memory. When I bought the computer, it came with Windows 95, which is what was still on it as of last summer. This allowed me to be able to support older systems, and more importantly, allowed me to write efficient code. (Ever written an app that worked in 30 seconds, only to see it take 30 minutes on the end user’s computer? I did once, and ever after I have kept my computer as old as possible.)
So during the next 3 weeks I tried as hard as I could to salvage my Win95 system, but Adaware had killed it. So I got WinXP. Popped in the disc, and picked “Install”. The install came up and informed me “This will take 45 minutes.” I clicked to begin, went and watched some tv, came back in 45 minutes, and it was done. That was it. All set, no problems. One mouse click.
So, what exactly are you talking about with regards to how difficult XP is to install? I would have agreed when I installed Win2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and also the other machines I installed 95, 97, and 2000 on, but XP was the nicest install I experienced since I installed DOS 3.3. (Damn I did love that version of DOS.)
This is precisely my experience, too. Network card, two graphics cards, USB card, onboard sound, scrollwheel mouse, card reader, nothing fazed it. Every Linux installer I’ve tried has hiccupped on at least one of these. Printers, alienware MIDI-USB adaptor, USB modem, ancient graphics tablet, and of course SP2, all install-wizard procedures.
So you managed to get the license key and the administrator password in there without using more than one mouse click? Did you use the keyboard at all? Or worse, did you not even set an administrator password?
Personally, I love my linux at home, and I love my Solaris server at work. I fought tooth and nail to get that Solaris server into work, and now it’s the most reliable, stable and capable machine we have - and it’s running on the oldest hardware we have.
It feels unfortunate every time I’m forced to boot into Windows because of some stupid-ass requirement by a website I deal with that only Internet Explorer will work. We need more non-proprietary standards, and I think we will see growth of open source operating systems. Hell my mother the bumbling computer idiot has managed to figure out ‘Click the hat.’
Really? I don’t know anything of the sort, nor does my attorney, nor do my client’s attorneys - especially if one is dealing with a municipality, who generally seem to only accept contracts for software with full indemnity.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111705,00.asp
First Google hit. Go to the MS website if you need more info. I’m not going to post a link to what MS gave me since 1) it’s in hardcopy and 2) I’m not putting my corporate documents on the web. However, even if it has no teeth, it doesn’t matter. Why?
That is irrelevant. If the SCO case is laughed out of court tomorrow it is still irrelevant. The point is that corporate counsel are starting to feel that a risk now exists where one was not recognized before. Read my post again where I mention $3M in lost business, where the client had money in-hand, had the will to go, and was prevented solely by the fear of possible, potential, indemnity.
Do you have some sort of problem reading my posts?
I most vehemently did not say or imply that I had any fear of these being real concerns, but that they were concerns that were impacting the industry and were going to in the future.
Nor did I say or imply in any way that Novell and IBM were “fly by night operations”. You know better than that, or should.
I am instead offering first-hand testimony of lost work, lost sales, and directives from my company based on what I classifed as an “(IMHO nearly nonexistent) issue of suits”. I also am not “being scammed” - I’m telling you that my customers are and my company is. You on the other hand are telling me it “isn’t a big thing at all”. Hello? $3M in lost sales? Over a non-issue? Not a big deal?
I know this is GD but let’s try not to make things up here. Besides the fact if you had read my post instead of just responding with the pro-Linux party line, you might have noticed that I’m on your side (as evidenced by my side-rant on the suits in general).
But I’m also in the industry and I’m aware of the real threat of legal action over what is (almost certainly) an unreal risk.
I’ll post one more thing just because my lawyer sent it me just now. It’s from the MS site so it obviously says the message they want to say, but there are nonetheless some facts in there which are both important and compelling.
(emphasis added)
(emphasis added)
Now, E-Sabbath, since you have problems understanding what I write, either due to me being unclear or you not being able to understand, let me summarize my position in a few bullet items:
- I personally do not feel it is a real risk.
- Legal counsel of my company and my clients do feel it is.
- The reality of the risk is unclear and undetermined. But lawyers do not like subjecting their clients to unclear and undetermined risks.
- Until this is resolved, which it may not be anytime soon, this is hurting and will continue to hinder Linux deployment in corporate environments.
- I have personally seen this indemnity risk, real or otherwise, applied to hinder deployment of open source, freeware, and shareware products.
Okay, you got me there. I did indeed have to put in the license key.
I also had to set up my admin account, set my wallpaper, my fonts, and any number of other custom settings. But that’s not install. The claim was that the install is just as difficult, if not moreso, than Linux. The install is seemless. You can spend as long as you want in Windows configuration, as you can (I’m sure) in Linux.
Did you have to tell it which partition to install on? Because I’ve never, ever, installed Windows without having to either tell it ‘install here’ or to actually format a partition to put it on.
And is your average computer idiot supposed to understand the difference between NTFS and FAT32 and know which one they should use? Do they know when they need to delete a partition? Create a partition? Format a partition? What’s the difference between the quick and normal formats? When should you not use a quick format?
Other than the default drivers, which for video are often VGA and don’t allow high resolutions and color depths, especially if you have an add-on video card, you still have to install drivers for your specific hardware, including the motherboard, after the installation completes. Drivers for SCSI devices and SATA have to be installed.
I have never had a Windows installation get it all right without a lot of input from the user, so in that sense, it was no better than installing Fedora.
You need to pass a test to drive a car. There is a limit to how stupid a person can be and still use technology. I don’t understand why installing an operating system on updated hardware is some kind of “ease” benchmark. It’s the dumbest benchmark I can think of, actually. Everyday use is a good benchmark. Installing programs? Well, that’s an ok benchmark for a long-term idea of “ease,” but generally I use my computer, I don’t spend all evening installing OSs, drivers, and software packages. I can’t even remember the last time I did install a program.
I didn’t buy my car because it was so easy to build. Why would I? That isn’t how you use a car. And if my car needs work, I take it to a car guy who knows such things. It just so happens that in my time, I’ve learned to change the oil, and it just so happens that in my time, I’ve learned to install an MS OS and build a computer up from its components, but neither of those have shit to do with using a computer.
Er, cite? Considering I can still take Mac applications written in 1984 and run them on my MacOS X 10.3 iMac today, I don’t think the “backwards compatability” problem is as bad as you paint it. This is especially notable given that Apple has made major changes to both its hardware base (680x0 → PowerPC, original MacOS → BSD UNIX) in that time.
As for ease of installation, it’s hard to beat the typical installation process for Macs these days:
- Drag application icon from CD to hard drive.
- Eject CD.
Huh? I’ve installed XP with anything from ten-year-old video cards through to brand new NVidia ones, and always had all capabilities available immediately.
Una, I forgot about that upgrade to their Volume License. You’re entirely right.
http://www.osriskmanagement.com/index.shtml
OSRM is the equivalent, on the Linux side. However, the first three actions, removing the code, replacing the code, rewriting the code, are all in your hands, or the hands of your designated support staff, as a trivial action, on the Linux side.
Still, I understand your legal department’s position. I’ll just have to wonder if you use any non-Microsoft products, and how indemified you are there.
It always struck me as a bit of a tempest in a teapot, indemification, as if the code is infringing, I don’t believe you’d have any issues. The company that wrote it has the issues, not you.
My friend, that is what scares me. I manage development of custom engineering software for clients all over the world, and there is pretty much no indemnity that we offer - not even $1 worth. This has never been a problem before, and then with the SCO action all of a sudden we started getting letters from corporate attorneys saying “please provide your business case for putting us at risk using your software. Thanks!” OK, I fib, they never say “thanks”. 
And yes, my company is seriously considering banning outright, on pain of termination of employment, the presence of any software that does not carry the same indemnity as MS.
In fact, E-Sabbath, spurred on by our conversation I asked another IT person today in my company, and discovered that a purchase of 38 Linux licenses from Redhat had been nixed by our coporate lawyers, and instead they are all going to be 2003 Server machines. I think that’s a terrible policy and a chilling trend, but I fear that it is growing, and may really end up hurting Linux in the end - perhaps killing it off even, keeping it a niche item like the Mac.
E-Sabbath, I agree with you very much so on the realities of the risk, but corporate legal doesn’t operate under the same realities.
Merkwurdigliebe:
I assume you were using the Marillat repository? That one has different versions of mplayer, such as mplayer-386 and mplayer-586, and mplayer is an empty package depending on all of those. That is an unusual practice, and never happens in the official repository. However, it still should not have been difficult, because you only had to choose the appropriate item from the list it presented to you.
GorillaMan:
What are you talking about? Synaptic is just another Apt front-end; it should have access to all the packages Apt-get has access to.
I have a 4 gig hard drive. How many partitions do you really think I need?
I believe I chose the “Use all available space” option. Most users could handle that.
I would agree with that up until XP. All of your complaints are the same complaints I always had. But XP is a seemless install process. It sounds to me like you’re projecting previous version’s faults onto the current version, which is unfair.
I say that because it also sounds like many in this thread are doing the exact same thing to Linux; projecting previous version faults onto the current version. Although I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never used (or desired to use) anything to do with Linux. I can write nifty software in virtually no time that can programmatically do all sorts of cool things inside other apps like Excel and Word. The bonus, from my point of view, is that my programs would work on 95% of all systems out there with no tweaking, since they all have the same applications.
I personally love that Microsoft imposed some standards on computing. It was annoying beyond belief back in the days when every company had its own unique set of hardware, OS, and applications. It gave me nothing but headaches to try to keep straight everybody’s incompatible configurations.
I dunno if it will, but it will not die if it doesn’t. It’s development and use seem to be motivatied by the type of people who love the fact that if it is broken, they get to fix it. Supplanting Microsoft is a secondary consideration. Linux will be probably still be around when something does replace Windows, even if that someting is not Linux.
I would have to agree that the ease of installing something that is not already in the distribution that you have selected is a little bit harder than the same action in windows. There is not a lot of software that does not make it into debian-unstable, or debian-testing farily quickly, though.
I have installed every version of windows since 95, on a variety of hardware. The process has not become significantly easier, or harder since then. The most recent install of debian on my current box was just as easy. Ellis Dee and GorillaMan, using older hardware makes the install of a new OS easier, not harder. No matter if you are using Linux or Windows. The problems arise when you have hardware that is newer than the OS that you are installing. At my last job, most of what I did was install windows 98, 2k and XP using a Ghost image 30-umpteen times a day. If your network card or video card was released since that release of Windows came out, and uses a new chipset; then you are going to have to download and install new drivers, trust me. That said, I would agree with erislover’s asessment that these concerns are not really the concerns of a user. They would be the concerns of their technicain.
I cannot say anthing about the fear that the SCO lawsuit has instilled in the business community, other than I would agree that it is a false fear. That does not stop real people from being scared of it. I can only hope that it will fade with time as people come to their senses. (I am supposed to find out whether I get my first job using Linux on Tuesday, so I surely hope so.)
EllisDee, MS “standards” have not helped the interoperability of all these different systems, and have limited your choices. Office document formats are the easiest example of this.
As for backwards compatibitliy, dosbox on debian has allowed me to play Aces of the Deep with sound without rebooting for the first time since my father bought a Win95 box in well, 1995. Microsoft did work hard for backwards compatibilty, but only for a few certian applications, such as SimCity. They did not structure their OS to actually be backwards compatible by default. I don’t really blame them, but they really aren’t as backwards compatible as they can sometimes be presented as being.
Wow, that is really wide of the OP, sorry. In my defense, the thread has been that way as well.
You’ve gotta be putting me on. I can’t even change the resolution on my GeForce under a new XP install until I’ve specifically installed the drivers for that video card.
I don’t know. I do know that I’ve got four hard drives and an accumulation of over 200 GB storage, and I also know that it’s unwise to place the OS and the data storage on the same partition. Preferable is to have them on separate drives.
Which is a bad idea. You go to reinstall, what do you do? Wipe out all your data?
Nope, I’m talking about XP. The one that I have to install daily at work. The one I just installed alongside Linux on my home desktop. It still messed up the drivers and continually loses USB devices. It’s like the OS just forgets that they’re plugged in. I haven’t encountered that problem with Linux.
GeForce 2 & 4 running happily here in the state XP installed them, with all resolutions available. (It’s an ‘includes SP1’ CD, which perhaps makes the difference?)
Yes, that would be the difference. That cd was released after your GeForce 4 chipset was initally introduced. Microsoft was able to include a refernce driver on it.
To each their own. I never upgraded to a major revision of a Mac OS without having to replace at least some software, and my experience with the OS9 “Classic” environment on OS X has been far less than satisfactory.
However, Mac has always been at the forefront of being able to transfer files between the two systems. Far less than perfect, but still mostly usable.
What I’m trying to say here is, if there were an enterprising Linux company who could come in and say:
“Here is your new OS, which works better than Windows, runs faster, and takes up less space on the hard drive. You can install it on your existing hardware, so you don’t have to buy new machines. Here is our UltraOfffice Suite, in which you can open your existing .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc. files and work with them as though nothing had ever happened. If your worker’s are familiar with MS Office, they will be at least as proficient on UltraOffice inside of a week and a half, and will have found that UltraOffice enables them to be more productive than MS Office did, due to its more carefully designed user interface.”
Then I think that company would find receptive customers, because Windows, with its shitty performance and productivity-sapping security problems and their required fixes, is overstaying its welcome.
Mac COULD be it, except for the current necessity of hardware investment. Yes, their next major OS release could be the one that you can intall on an Intel machine, but then again OS X was reputed to be that OS nearly ten years ago, but theat functionality never materialized.
A good part of the Linux community doesn’t seem to be interested in the opportunity the current situation presents.