I think there's a quiet majority of people out there who are perfectly happy with Windows but they don't tend to talk about it, whereas you do tend to get a lot of outspoken Mac and Linux users who are willing to both champion their platform as well as bash Windows at any given opportunity.
I think there's a quiet majority out there who's never tried anything but Windows, and think of their computer as nothing more than a tool, completely oblivious to such abstractions as operating systems.
I don't see many problems with Windows apart from it doesn't like moving User documents/data to another drive. The resulting clutter from that is all down to me though. I haven't had an complaints with Vista.
I'm warming more to Ubuntu now (although I only use it as a development platform on a laptop, I'd probably prefer it even more on the desktop) but I really don't see the "horrors" in Windows.
That was pretty much what sold me, I was 30 something hours into a Solidworks project that forced me to use Windows, and the machine BSOD me at 4am the day it was due. If you rely on a machine you have to have faith it will work during crunch time.
I feel more comfortable in Mac OS, though. I've used Ubuntu a few years back and prefer that over Windows as well.
Some people just resist any kind of change - they're used to Windows, they aren't going to try anything else, because they think (and they might be right in theory) that they don't need anything else.
I think most seniors can just about already switch fine to Ubuntu.
Applets - they don't suck as badly anymore!
There is an alternative, but it's not all sunshine and green grass either side.
/opt and /usr/local are generally unpackaged guff.
I use Linux/Mac/Windows every day and have no trouble switching between them. If you are suffering under either Mac or Windows, it's your fault, not the OS's fault. If you're suffering under Linux, it's because you aren't enough of a moron to be a full time computer geek like me.
That means you don't know anything about platforms (agnostic = no (a) knowledge (gnosis)).
I think you meant: indifferent =)
(I have tried multiple Linux distributions and OS X)
Windows accelerators are pretty good; far and beyond OS X, in my non-expert experience with the Mac. I can't say much for Linux because it's pretty much all terminal :-)
Oh, the Mac mouse acceleration annoys me to no end.
More edits. Actually I can't say that about Linux. It's terminal because it complements my useless cmd.exe in a VM. The Linux accelerators are about the same I guess.
To each their own, but I concur with the GP.
Powershell is a huge step forward for Microsoft. I've been using it for about a year now and so far I'm very impressed. I'd even go so far as to say I prefer it to bash for certain tasks. The concept of passing objects around is, while strange at first, surprisingly intuitive and powerful.
If you're currently using a combination of windows + cygwin (as I was) I'd strongly suggest picking up a copy of "Powershell in Action" and giving powershell a shot for a couple of weeks. I'd be surprised if you don't switch to powershell.
I'll concede that overall powershell still has some significant obstacles to overcome before it's better than the linux command line, but just like when windows xp came out and people stopped making legitimate complaints about window's stability - with powershell released now, I think we'll start to see the same trend with people complaining about the windows command line - these complaints will no longer be legitimate.
Windows feels fragile, and often is when you try to do anything difficult. How to bring an ethernet adapter down then up with a script in Windows? Very difficult, WMI calls and such.
In Linux? A line (really, a few characters) of script. Just one of the differences I've run into recently.
netsh interface set interface name="Local Area Connection" admin=disabledPerhaps that last bit should read "Use the current version of Windows, it has fewer known bugs."
As software gets larger and more complex the tendency is for more bugs to be introduced. Open Source mitigates this problem by allowing everyone to inspect and fix it.
Windows has an interface for doing what you asked. It had a bug / didn't work as described so they fixed it. Your company wont buy the fix, but that doesn't mean the fix doesn't exist. It means you can't take advantage of it, sure.
But saying Windows doesn't support it is deliberately misrepresenting Windows to make it look bad. It's spreading FUD, and it's wrong.
Plus, why did you bring WMI into this? You can't seem to do it with WMI: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394595(VS.85).aspx "If you are not using DHCP, you cannot use WMI to disable a network connection". Were you just bringing WMI into it because it sounds scary and complicated and so would help shore up your FUD, or is there a way and this MSDN article is wrong?
(But you can do it by scripting the shell: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=619 or by using Devcon to disable a hardware device from the command line: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272/en-us )
Thats one of the biggest things that Linux has going for it, if something breaks, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY THE FIX!
You can A. Fix it yourself; B. Get the latest source which probably has the fix (if it's a problem anyone else is having); or C. Filing a bug report and have the community fix it usually within a day, or even hours or minutes for really simple fixes.
Sure, Linux isn't for everyone, but for corporations and small businesses looking to save money, it looks better every day!
Think of this example. Company ABC has Windows XP deployed throughout their company. They need to upgrade some hardware, but the new hardware only has drivers for Windows 7 and Vista. Their only option (assuming a lot) is to upgrade to Windows 7 or Vista. Let's say that they have 1,500 desktops that need to be upgraded. I'm not aware of the details of VLK license prices, but let's say this will cost $150/workstation, including labor to install it. Roughly approximating, this comes out to at least $225,000. This doesn't even count the amount of money they will spend battling incompatible software and hardware issues, after the upgrade. -------------------------------- Company XYZ is using Linux Kernel 2.6.17, they have a problem with a piece of hardware that only has drivers that work with the 2.6.28 kernel. Company XYZ is a software development company, so they can just use their internal software developers to backport the driver from the 2.6.28 kernel to 2.6.17. They are already paying the developers a salary, so it won't cost them any more cash, maybe just a bit of productivity on other projects. This amounts to a huge savings over what Company ABC had to spend to fix a similar issue.
Consider it 'real option' that is available with Linux but not with Windows or OSX.
I can see not getting new features put into XP, but fixing BUGS should be free.
Bug fixing takes time, costs money. Linux + surroundings are unusual - the major projects are subsidised by our purchases from unrelated companies.
I didn't pay for bugs, I paid for software. If it's buggy and they don't want to support it, they should sell it at a discount. If they charge me for a complete product, but the product is buggy, they owe me more software.
It took me hours of research to do a simple down/up in Windows -- something that took me 30 seconds of research in Linux.
And you yourself illustrate all the odd and very long things you have to do in Windows to do a simple down/up of the NIC, and to get it to work correctly.
While in Linux, I can just do "sudo ifdown eth0"
All in all, I prefer the 30 second way, versus the five hour way.
By your very use of evidence, you proved my point. Cool.
But didn't know about DevCon. Thanks.
I could counter that in the scope of all possible operating systems there's no reason disabling a network adapter should be a simple thing and that you're picking on it because you considered it an easy thing in Linux' favour.
I could counter how much better it is to type "tracert" on windows than "traceroute" on linux, or that windows PPTP setup wizard blows Linux out of the water, or that there are uncountable things I've spent hours reaearching on bob platforms because they aren't as simple as I want them to be.
Or I could say "yoruban wax potato parachute"; I suspect any of the preceeding would result in further argument about how I'm proving your point.
I set out to counter your claim that x is too difficult in windows, but this further back and forth - it's not going anywhere, is it?
And those who haven't used tablets before don't know what you're missing out on :-)
Vista is really a "tablet-aware" OS; when you pick up the pen, all the penabled functions come alive. When you hold down the secondary button, an indicator appears. And you have the screen rotation buttons, on screen keyboard, excellent handwriting recognition, and the journal app, which, despite it's lame (non-svg) format, does a decent job.
Jaunty was awesome up until the point of dual head. My video card is partly to blame, because on xorg I can't set two screens of different resolution, so my second monitor looks terrible, not to mention the logout required. In terms of tablet functions, you have to readjust the coordinates after you add the second monitor. On Vista, everything works with close to no intervention, and plugging in another monitor, everything still works as you expect.
That's not to say Jaunty wasn't hella impressive; it was. But I'm talking about built-in features, and in this respect Vista is still ahead. Anyhow, back to ubuntu on the VM.
Perhaps a project manager needs MS Project, or an architect needs AutoCad or something but for the "teenage girl" demographic you would be hard pressed to find any particular application they absolutely needed that doesn't exist on Linux, or there isn't a ready counterpart (eg Adium instead of MSN Messenger). They're just not used to it and dislike anything unfamiliar, since computers are basically mystic black boxes anyway.
I think for many typical users it's simply a matter of preferring something they (mostly) know how to use.
It's now more likely that she would Google "MSN for linux" and be successful. That's relatively new. It still leaves her less likely to having the messenger. That likelihood is not 0. Not even on windows. There are plenty of 14 year old girls out there that don't have MSN Messenger on Windows even though they 'couldn't' overcome some sort of hurdle.