Will be going to Linux for my desktop..not going to pay Winblows for upgrade.
** those in the tech media continue to get it wrong**
Mainly because those doing the writing are old farts that quit learning years ago.
Linux works as well or better than any windows distro to date, at a far less cost per seat.
For 99% of what laptop and desktop users do, Linux works better than anything from microsoft.
No, it is not the same, and a newbie may take a couple of weeks to get fully up to speed, but it is well worth going to school on the minor differences.
How is it anyone ever figured out Android phones or Ipads? They are nothing like windows, yet millions are sold and put into use every month.
I’m using Zorin OS 8 on this laptop and it installed like windows . Unlike windows ,when it updates it updates all software installed on this laptop , D’oh
While windows is the dominant home computer brand, out in the data centers making up all the servers we all interact with when we go online are tons and tons of Linux computers. While I use windows for my home computer so I can play games, I would not want to be stuck with one to do any software programming (unless I were designing an application specifically for windows, which is not the kind of programming I do).
ROTFLOL!
This article ends up making a compelling case about why “tech writers” are absolutely correct as to why Linux is completely unsuitable for the average home PC user, 99.9% of whom don’t even know what a folder is, much less what UEFI or a driver is.
As I used to tell people "If it was any better I wouldn't give it to you, If it was any worse, you wouldn't drink it"
Wrong!
It's the absolute truth.
And it is Linux which is at fault. It is advertised as being able to run on Windows, and then idiots like the author whine that Microsoft should have foreseen DIY programmers might write stuff in the future that might not work as expected. Maybe Microsoft and the chip makers simply retired their OUIJA boards early.
What a silly comment to make! Stuff people are writing don't work in Windows.
D'OH!
"The normal Menu button is missing!"
"The new fonts are ugly!"
"What happened to the background image?"
"I liked the old desktop layout better."
"My App/Game/Photo/Vid program no longer works!"
OK, so either stay with your current version of 'doze, add it back on yourself manually, or switch to Linux. And you think that paying over 120 dollars each time you "upgrade" to the next version of widows is actually something you absolutely HAVE to do?
On top of that, people then go out and pay more money for the newest version of MS Office, Photoshop, DVD utilities and burning software, and uncountable AntiVirus programs.
I will repeat that: they willingly PAY for all that.
However, an OS which comes in many, many flavours, is almost infinitely configurable, comes with many applications such as those previously mentioned already installed and if the default apps are not all there or to your liking, they are readily available online, but is not "Windows" but "Linux" -and totally FREE...
This is enough to make people complain that Linux is unuseable?
Words fail.
“...there are times where certain components aren’t as Linux compatible as others. What might surprise most people is that this isn’t a Linux shortcoming, rather, this is a limitation of what the individual PC was built for — Windows.”
The writer lost me here.
I am by no means an expert user - not even a talented amateur, but earlier this morning, I resized my partitions on the fly.
I am using Fedora 16 (Verne). I need to update, but this version has been my favorite and I’ve been slow to change.
Honestly, if I can do it, nearly anyone can/could. I taught myself Linux when my new laptop several years ago came with Windows Vista and it was the worst thing ever.
The Holy Grail from a user perspective is that he/she shouldn't know or care what the underlying OS is. We have a long way to go before that is reached but it's reachable.
I’ll stick to my C64 thank you very much.
While I agree about tech writers getting Linux wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s not entirely suited for everyone’s needs.
I love Linux. I have been an IT professional for the past 18 years. I have used Linux and Unix since the days of Windows 3.1. My home computer is a dual-boot Win7 and Linux Mint machine that these days, almost never boots into Linux for the following reasons:
1. Handling of large music libraries. I have over 2TB of music files, spread across 5 hard drives, and I have yet to find a Linux music app that doesn’t crash when trying to index these sources. That said, only Foobar2000 on Windows does a good job with all this, but it does work flawlessly. I also run my weekly public radio show off of a Windows laptop running Foobar2000, and it works all the time.
2. Photography. I taught myself photo processing in Photoshop many years ago, and despite knowing my way around Gimp, I can process photos in Photoshop and process RAW files in Canon’s Digital Photo Pro without much thought. There is finally a version of DPP for Linux, but even then, print support for my large-format printer is just not there.
3. Netflix. I haven’t looked into it lately, but last time I looked, there was no support for Netflix on Linux.
For me, it turns out that my more intensive use of the computer makes Windows a better bet for me.