Microsoft's Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits (Microsoft pulls a SCO in Asia)

Reuters ^ | 11/18/2004 | Reuters

[N3WBI3]

I have had XP and 2K spawn run away processes that required a reboot, this in addition to the crashes I ahve seen is why I fight almost anytime tehy want to put a windows box in my datacenter..

[N3WBI3]

Actually I am a Red Hat certified Engineer, so I am a little biased twords Linux. But if youre starting fresh dont count out BSD, Solaris, or OSX.

If you really want to give Linux a look check out Knoppix If will give you a good look at the KDE desktop running on a linux platform, if you like that look at Fedora.

[N3WBI3]

Ahh so windows is only good if you only use MS products. I enjoy my ford car with ford gas and ford oil. Hopefully the Ford spark-plug upgrade wont case a crash..

[Paridel]

I have three personal computers I use heavily... two windows xp (a desktop and a laptop) and a desktop running Linux. Of course I use a host of computers elsewhere, but since these are the only ones I am currently in full control over, they are all I'm going to comment on.

A little aside, I have my two monitors (one for linux, one for windows) side by side as if I were running a dual-head system. I use a little program called Synergy that lets me set share a keyboard and mouse between the two, and also shares the clipboard between the two machines. I used to use x2vnc/win2vnc but this program is a little slicker. I really do use and develop on both systems...

I typically have both desktops on all the time. I reboot both the windows xp and Linux machine about once every two weeks on average, not because they crash, but because I'm leaving for the weekend or a power outage, etc.

Windows XP is much much more stable than previous versions. Of course this implies that you know how to handle spyware, etc.

I do have programs crash on both machines. I normally to keep firefox open with 2-3 windows each with about 20 tabs. Typically after a couple hours it will leak memory, and eventually I will have to restart it, on both windows and Linux. As far as explorer crashing, this only happens anymore when I do one of two things: open a folder with a large zip file (one containing ~15k files), or open a folder with avi files that are damaged.

Incidental I have experienced similar problems with konqoror and nautilus on the linux side.

With a little work you can disable the thumbnail generation and treating archives as compressed folders on both platforms.

There are legitimate complaints about XP, but it is a stable OS.

-paridel

[Paridel]

When I was in Korea I was actually surprised by the amount of non-pirated software available. Sure, you could get pirated software, but it seemed like there actually was a good deal of legitimate users, which was a pleasant surprise.

However other Asian countries may be a different story. The last statistic I saw from Thailand showed that only 3% of businesses use legit software... and I wonder that 3% must come from branches of US companies using their own software...

I have a good friend from Thailand and his story basically backs up the statistics: pretty much all the software there, especially for home use, is pirated.

But that being said, there are a lot of people in the US that pirate software like their is no tomorrow. In I know quite a few people seem to have an attitude that it is morally OK for home users to pirate software, as long as you aren't using it commercially. Especially at colleges where even if you are too lazy to find it at least one person on your floor is guaranteed to have a huge binder full of pirated software and/or a very large network share.

I've had a couple of friend install software they downloaded off of some less reputable sites on the Internet, and then were shocked when their computers started acting up. Most of them don't want to blame the latest cracked software for their problems though. I couldn't get my one friend to stop using a program he downloaded until we ran a little experiment and monitored the network connections it was trying to open up. In fact he is pretty dumb so he probably still is using it just not telling me about it. It is scary how quickly people are willing to trade the security of their machine and data for a pirated copy of some stupid program.

-paridel

[monkeyshine]

You're kidding right? I run XP, it crashes regularly because of conflicts of some kind or another. Maybe you only have a few pieces of software and hardware?

[ShadowAce]

You're running cheap hardware and drivers.

LOL!! And you know that--how?

[Stratman]

Thanks.

Just as an initial question, is there a book I can get that explains the difference or what a Windows user must do if he changes to Linux? Is there a Dummies book (or something equivalent)? I love those books.

[ShadowAce]

I haven't really looked into this magazine yet, but TUX magazine claims to be for the new Linux user.

You could check it out and report back on its usefulness. :)

[ShadowAce]

Hmm. Never mind. It looks like it's not out yet. However, there are quite a few sites on the Net for new users.

Linux Questions

Just Linux

Linux Newbie Administrator Guide

Tuxfiles

Hope those help in getting started. There are quite a few more. Just do a Google search on Linux and newbie in various combinations.

[ShadowAce]

Yeah... and Microsoft later kinda issued a retraction.

Here's what the author of the orginial report said about that "retraction."

[N3WBI3]

I am sure there are books, and a long time ago when I Was making the switch I tried them and found them completely useless.

There is a Linux for Dummies book but the best thing you can do is get knoppix run it and try to do the things you normally do. Dont let a fan boy lie and tell you Linux/Windows is the best, there is no such thing as a best, there is only a "best for you". If you use visio, and project Linux is probably not going to meet your needs. If you do what 99% of people do (email, web, type up docs, ...) Linux will meet your needs just fine and knoppix will have the Linux apps (openoffice.org, mozilla, ximian) for you to try your hand.

The attitude of people on Linux forums has changed over the past ten years from RTFM, to a more supportive and helpful community. If you get going and have any question feel free to post on a Linux forum, or just ask any of the Linux users here on FR.

[Paridel]

I can't speak for someone else, but I have a pretty wide assortment of hardware / software in my XP machines. My desktop has 4 hard drives, a dvd-burner, cd-rw, dvd-rom drive, a whole bunch of crud hooked up via firewire / usb (scanner, printer, pocket pc, sometimes a calculator ;-) ). Also a video capture card, and another usb capture device, and a creative live drive /w remote control.

My installed software is about as varied. A full assortment of Microsoft software of course (visual studio .net 2003, office xp, frontpage, etc, because I fortunately am eligible to purchase these for almost nothing through a deal Microsoft has with UT). Then quite a few programs for processing video, I have been helping a couple relatives make dvds of their kids football and volleyball games. Then of course I play the occasional on-line game against friends from college every now and again when we all aren't too tied up with our various jobs, fiances, and graduate schools. I also do a lot of network and graphics programming, and I use both closed and open source development tools.

My machine works wonderfully for all of these tasks.

Now though this isn't quite fair because I have a degree in this field, and I put this machine together myself. So the fact that my system runs well doesn't necessarily mean that the average windows user machine is going to be similar. Part of the problem though is that people need to realize that they should expect more out of their computers today. If your computer crashes a lot because of conflicts than that is a problem, and quite likely there is a hardware or driver conflict in your system. I'm not going to claim that it is because you bought cheap stuff, I've bought products from "good" companies that were certainly not cheap that had buggy drivers too. Unfortunately it can be hard to figure out what the problem is even if you do know what you are doing.

All I'm trying to claim here is that there is no inherent reason for Windows to be unstable.

-paridel

[Paridel]

I picked up a copy of Linux Format (a UK magazine) quite some time ago and was fairly impressed by the instructions they gave for installing the various Linux distros and software included. Not specifically for beginners, but probably fairly helpful just the same. Honestly I wasn't expecting much, just bought it cause my broadband connection was down and I wanted the dvd that came with it. But I was certainly pleasantly surprised.

There really isn't too much you have to do differently, but the forums for various distributions can be very helpful when you run into trouble. I would recommend downloading a live cd like knoppix, mandrakemove, or the one from suse and just giving it a shot. It would only cost you a blank cd and some downloading, and you could see for yourself what the differences are.

-paridel

[Paridel]

I apologize, didn't realize you had already mentioned Knoppix, even though I read that post last night. But I definetly second that suggestion. It is also very handy to have around if you need to get data of a dead windows or linux installation.

To make up for that here are places to download both live and full versions of suse and mandrake:
Mandrade
SuSE

-paridel

[ShadowAce]

I apologize

Hey, no problem. The more mentions it gets, the better as far as I am concerned.

[Bush2000]

Uh...what do I say?? How about...WTF??? What on earth are you talking about? Wasted days, weeks, and months???

Give Linux a try. Then come back and report on how much time you waste. It'll be a hoot.

[Bush2000]

He's talking about his standard Redmond talking points, not reality.

Shouldn't you be at Medieval World, jousting or dueling or playing the drunken fool?

[Bush2000]

Look, Ballmer isn't just speaking to the Asians here; this story has been picked up world-wide. Remember how you guys squealed about Linus Torvalds' "hit man" comment in the LKML; Ballmer is using a public forum to threaten governments, and IMO that's not too smart.

There's just one problem: Ballmer never said any of this.

[Bush2000]

I have had XP and 2K spawn run away processes that required a reboot, this in addition to the crashes I ahve seen is why I fight almost anytime tehy want to put a windows box in my datacenter..

Sorry, not buying. Not from a Linux/Novell bigot.