I’d love nothing more than to switch to Linux. But I’m trapped here in a windows shop. And the brain drain is so bad these days, that I am completely spent by the time I get home. Help!
I stopped reading when he said he prefers virtualdub on windows. Clearly he hasn’t reasearched the commericial/paid apps.
This is a perfect example of someone who thinks they’re competent to write about technology, but ends up parading their ignorance, instead.
I'd say that is a "yes." I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work, along with XP for mundane/routine office stuff. (company policy) But serious development is on RHEL. At home it is a combination of Ubuntu on a couple of machines, PCLinuxOS on another, and Debian on one. That's the beauty of Linux - try a distro. Oh, and you can keep/collect cast-off machines that others don't want. Even if they lack the horsepower/resources to run Vista or Win7, most Linux distros are right at home on them. I do use Win7 at home for a couple of things. So I'm not casting stones at Windows without having some familiarity with it.
So, do I dislike windows now? Yes.
I prefer the Linux user interface, though honestly I'm not sure about Ubuntu's unity just yet.
I prefer Linux's ease of finding/installing/trying applications (couple of clicks away). And just a couple of clicks to make them go away if you don't like them.
I prefer Linux's ease of working with devices. Installing a new printer last week and getting Ubuntu to recognize/use it was even easier than getting my son's Mac laptop to do the same. (even with a driver disk from HP for the Mac/printer)
I prefer not having to give up a fair amount of disk space and CPU cycles to an antivirus program to protect a fragile OS and application suite from the wilds of the Internet.
I prefer not having to upgrade or outright replace my computer every time a new version of the OS comes out. (typing this on a 6 year old Dell, that was at best middle of the road for performance when it was new)
I prefer getting updates and upgrades to the OS and applications automatically and in a timely manner.
I prefer the lack of crashes, blue-screens-of-death.
Being a certified computer-weenie, I prefer knowing what's going on inside the OS, rather than relying on some black-box solution.
I prefer the lack of onerous end-user license agreements.
In short, for me Linux works better than windows. That certainly won't be the case for everyone. But since Linux is so easy to try, I don't see why more people don't try it...some will like it. And that competition will drive windows, Linux, and Mac OS/X to be better.
So I used Linux for many years, developed both used-mode and kernel-mode software for it, ported it to various embedded systems, spend whole days single-stepping through its kernel in a hardware debugger, all Linux all the time.
But then, I got tired of it. At a certain point, you have solved all the problems, and you have seen it all. And you want things to just work. But they won’t. You start having to solve the same problems over and over again, and it gets tedious. And tiresome. And boring.
So I went back to Windows. On Windows, things just work. If they don’t, a quick Google session is usually enough. Even if not, reporting bugs helps. Even to Microsoft. They actually accept bug reports, react to them, and fix them. I wonder how many of those who keep whining and bitching about Windows all the time ever tried reporting their troubles.
Programming on Windows is actually more, not less, interesting than on Unix. There are some old quirks, but a lot of stuff that I used to think was stupid 15 years ago, actually wasn’t so stupid, after all. Just over my head at the time. And a lot of parts of the Unix interface that seemed to brilliantly simple ten years ago, turned out to be awfully oversimplified. And Windows has .NET! Just being able to write for the .NET platform should be reason enough now to return to the Windows platform.
Got a PC question....my PC’s running slow and occasionally freezes even tho I regularly defrag,disk clean,update and scan. I’ve heard lots of ads on doublemyspeed.com....are these online programs really that good? Is there anything i’m not doing to improve the speed/performance? I use Registry Mechanic and Avast to keep things clean. I’m running windows XP home ed. Any ideas? Thanks!
I am of the opinion that computers (and the software that runs on them) are basically tools. If someone wrote an article that said that “Just because I love my shovel does that mean I have to hate my rake?” (notice I didn’t say hoe LOL), that would be an absurd statement, at least in my view. The analogy is perhaps not an exact one but it gets the point across.
I admit to being a bit of a linux fanboy myself, but my rational side would say “just use the best tool for the job”.
I'm a retired engineer(computers). Been using Linux at home for almost 20 years. It works. It does everything I need. Never had a virus. Never had a data lose. Never had a security problem.
Before retiring, I had to deal with that POS(Windows). Never again!
Politics and sports are similar, once you pick a side, you tend to hate on the opposition.. just human nature. I try my best to avoid that.
Oh, you ain't kidding! One particularly egregious example: I was once doing some programming work with my laptop in a customer's facility. When I wanted to print, I naturally decided to use one of their networked printers and downloaded the "driver" (70MB!!). So then I install the thing, and it gives me all sorts of spyware and other feces-ware along with the driver. So I use Windows uninstall, which WAS provided, on the other crap, and it uninstalls the driver along with!!
They've designed their crap to actively PREVENT you from cleaning it out of your system, by taking the 2MB you actually WANT along with it! Crapware being provided with drivers has been a severe pet peeve of mine ever since and I make it a point to defeat it, even if it might be harmless in a given case, just on the principle.
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