OS Combat - Ubuntu Linux Versus Vista

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek pits Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista in a detailed comparison. They run down a number of points for this comparison, including installation, hardware support, software, and backup. For IW, backup was a crucial feature. As a result, the conclusion are unusual for this type of review because it straddles the fence. The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory link to the ad free, one page print version. [informationweek.com]

Feisty is neat.

[dc29A]

I installed Feisty this week and it's the first time I install a Linux distro and everything works. Wireless, Video, everything. Finally restricted codecs, drivers and other restricted software is 2 clicks away. Ubuntu is definitely shaping up to something much more user friendly than other/previous. I didn't had to hack any text files nor recompile anything, VMWare Player installed and 3d driver too with a few clicks.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has an answer to Bash

http://www.microsoft.com/powershell [microsoft.com]

Re:There's nothing to compare

[metlin]

What about Monad Shell [wikipedia.org]?

Not Bash, but definitely a good shell. Besides, you can always install Cygwin on Windows.

That is not the correct conclusion

[schabot]

The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

This is only the conclusion for the backup portion of the review. I looks like the submitter didn't make it to the last page. The actual conclusion?:

Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without.

Aero vs. Beryl, Similar?

[mhall119]

I was tempted to compare Vista's Aero interface to the Beryl window manager (which has a similar palette of visual effects)

If the author means that Beryl has all the same effects that Aero does, then I'd agree. But if he's implying that Aero has all the visual effects that Beryl has, he's lost his f-ing mind.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[Knuckles]

Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways

Not even that. I mean, in Ubuntu I can install applications with it, in Windows I just can uninstall them. I think I find Ubuntu's solution much more useful then :)

Re:Bias

[Knuckles]

It's a tie in the multimedia category despite the Ubuntu codecs having to be added after install.

Last time I checked, XP could not even play avi files using the DivX codecs (i.e., 90% of P2P) without hunting down a codec package. Media Player just said "can't find codec". Has this changed in Vista? Because In Ubuntu 7.04 it certainly is automatic.

Re:Feisty is neat.

[Das Auge]

And that's why I like Ubuntu. It really does just work. For me, anyway.

I've tried Linux several times:
1997: Slackware - Back in the day, this was like brain surgery.
2000: Redhat - PRM hell.
2003: Suse - Several hardware problems and crappy UI.
2006: Ubuntu - Here and loving it.

I loaded Ubuntu with the thought that I could just boot to XP whenever I wanted (dual boot). I haven't logged back into XP yet.

Ubuntu does everything I need "out of the box". The only thing that I added to it was Crossover. It's inexpensive and make managing Windows apps easy and centralized.

I still don't think that Ubuntu is 100% ready for the desktop just yet, but it's damn close.

Re:Obligatory

[john g the 4th]

Apparently "remastersys" wasn't included in this review. 1 command, with like 2 options.. can backup a system to a liveCD/DVD in a relatively short period of time.

Re:Feisty is neat.

[The Warlock]

I've found that Linux "just works" better on older hardware. I mean, I'd always heard that said, but now I'm starting to really feel it. Three years ago, I had to compile the drivers for my wireless card directly from source, and that was a couple months after I got the laptop. Before then the drivers just didn't exist. I had to install the closed-source fglrx drivers to get 3D support, and that was back when ATI's installer program did nothing but horribly corrupt your xorg.conf (or, wait, it was XFree86.conf or whatever back then, right?)

Now, everything, fucking everything works right on a fresh install. I even have open-source drivers with 3D support. I can use Beryl without fglrx causing my system to crash every day or so. I'm about ready to get rid of my Windows partition for good (as soon as I can kick this C&C habit). It's really nice. Now I just worry that when I inevitably get a new computer everything will break again.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[lazarusdishwasher]

If I understand what I have read correctly while pretending to be a network administrator during the day, you can use group policy to make programs appear in the add remove programs area. You can also put in automatic privilege escalation to allow non administrators to install the programs.

Re:That's a start.

[oliverthered]

even better (if you want versioning)
Setup a second machine or even drive with a subversion repository and do a checking of home every night/ time you logoff switch off the pc etc...

That way you won't loose a thing, even if you accidentally change the contents.

That's funny

[alexandreracine]

When you clic on the Ubuntu logo on first page, you go to ubuntu.com. The same for the Windows Vista logo :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[fm6]

Yeah, Windows only has 1 free version of Minesweeper, but Ubuntu has 34!

Come on, "lots of free software" is just not important to most computer users, who spend almost all their time on a few standard applications: Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, number/data crunching, and building presentations. And in this area, any OS not supported by Microsoft applications (that is, any OS except Windows and Mac OS) loses ground because of compatibility issues.

Linkage

[john g the 4th]

Remastersys [linuxmint.com] Made for Mint, works with all Ubuntu-like systems. sudo remastersys backup = Backup your system. sudo remastersys dist = Make a distributable copy of your installed system.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple things like inserting a buffer in a vanilla cyg-win to firefox will not do it : firefow www.slashdot.org & will not be opened, cause cyg-win doesn't even recognized where firefox is (/bin/.. isn't available on windows.. so where will it take it from?)

Allow me to introduce you to this neat little thing called "$PATH". You may have encountered it on Linux.

Amazingly enough, if the Firefox binary or a link to it is in $PATH, Cygwin can launch it!

The simplest way is to ln -s "/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Mozilla/Firefox/firefox.exe" /usr/local/bin/firefox. It's not rocket science, if you have the faintest clue how to use a Posix-like system.

(Then again, if you're so dumb that you don't even know that Cygwin does have /bin, /usr, and so forth, you probably don't understand symbolic links or $PATH either.)

Re:There's nothing to compare

[just_another_sean]

(FWIW Windows won't update randomly installed software either.)

Hell Windows won't always update it's own software. GDI+ vulnerability anyone? I was amazed that the fix for that involved directing you
to a website that says look through the list of hundreds of programs that may be vulnerable and decide for yourself if you need to do anything.

It held your hand a bit more then my short description might suggest but it certainly isn't something my Mom would bother with. She'd read for
about thirty seconds and then call me.

Re:There's nothing to compare

[dosquatch]

Has anyone ever actually used Add/Remove programs to, you know, ADD a program?

Actually, yes. On NT4TSE if one did not install programs using this method, there was no particular guarantee that those programs would work correctly when users remoted in.

Author's bio

[mangu]

The reviewer constantly falls into the same old trap of basing their comments of Ubuntu on how "Windows like" the particular feature is

Perhaps the following will explain this tendency:

Serdar Yegulalp: [pcmag.com]

Serdar Yegulalp is a former Senior Technoloy Editor with Windows Magazine (also Winmag.com), and has been writing about and working with NT and related technologies since its 3.51 release. He writes a weekly newsletter dealing with Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP issues, entitled "Windows 2000 Power Users", at www.win2kpowerusers.com.

Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now?

[Mattintosh]

I have to edit the registry every damn time i reinstall Windows. That's why I'm a Ubuntu user now.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Atapi\Parameters\EnableBigLba should always be set to 1. It's just stupid to have to change that before formatting my now-modestly-sized 160GB secondary HD. But nooooooooooooo... Microsoft has to go and stink up the joint by making "easy for retards" software that is simultaneously counter-productive for anyone who isn't a retard.

Ubuntu doesn't do that. It's "easy for retards" in that you can just plop one of the LTS discs or an iso burned by a geek friend (or even a fellow retard) into your CD drive and 30 minutes later have a working machine. It's also not counter-productive for the rest of us since 99.99999999% of what even a knowledgeable user needs is ready to go from the start. 48-bit LBA is only one example. The installer attempts to use it by default and if it fails, it falls back to older stuff. The only thing I've had to use a CLI for so far in Ubuntu is non-included-on-the-cd software that isn't in a repository (e.g. VMWare Server and a self-compiled version of OpenTTD).

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[LWATCDR]

"Buy supported hardware"
Tell me what printer says works with Linux on the box? Actually I have a supported printer and it does work just fine. Finding a supported printer is a pain. And actually you are better off getting a printer from 2002. The latest and greatest may or may not work because no one has had time to test it. A less then brand new printer is usually a safer bet. I am looking at it from the point of view of an average user. BTW a lot of printers also don't work with Vista which I did mention. Why should I throw a printer that is still working in the landfill for sake of Vista or Linux? Printers don't really go obsolete. Printers should last for years and office printers do. Lack of Linux printer drivers is an issue. And yes more printer makers should provide drivers, but it is still a pain.

For the monitor problem Ubuntu should adopt SAX2 it works very well but I have one more suggestion for everyone. Auto detection is nice but let me also select my monitor from a list a lock it. Auto detection can have a fit with KVMs and I use them KVMs are home and at work. One of the things that drives me crazy at work is that Windows doesn't auto detect my flat panel so on boot up I have to unplug the monitor cable from my KVM and plug it into my Windows box. The nice thing is it seems that Suse fixed that in an update. I don't have to play swap the cable on the Suse 10.1 box on boot up any more.

And I don't think this is one specific card. I have seen a lot of people complaining about WiFi not working in 7 and not all of them are using the Prism card that my Thinkpad does. I think it is a bug in the Wifi manager because I can see my WAP but I can not log on to the network. Again it worked fine in Suse 10 and 10.1 and it worked under Ubuntu 6.

Notice that you jump on me about the printing issue yet every Linux user knows that printing is a mess. Why do you think there is a site called Linuxprinting.org? This isn't a problem that is limited to Ubuntu. When I shop for a printer I always ASK the salesman does it work with Linux even if I know that it doesn't. Every Linux user needs to start asking so the people that sell things like printers or scanners that we are their and we do spend our money or not based on it working with Linux.

Linux is a community as such it will not get better unless we are honest about problems. Ubuntu seems to have become a sacred cow. My take on Ubuntu is that if you are one of the people that the install just works for then you are golden. If you have to tweak anything it is a royal pain. Ubuntu doesn't suck but I think it is over rated compared to OpenSuse and probably Fedora.

The real overlooked Linux has got to be CentOS. The latest version has a lot of desktop friendly additions and has the stability and testing of Red Hat Enterprise addition. It does lack Ubuntu's frendly marketing but it looks like a rock solid project if a little dull.

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Ubuntu is having some issues with Wifi.

Indeed.. I got fed up with a supposedly supported card and finally just bought a D-Link WDA-1320. It works.. like a champ. WEP and WPA no problem (though I'm having problems with WPA2).

Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge

[Master of Transhuman]

Again, Serdar is not a Windows shill. He may not be completely familiar with Linux, but he's partial to free/open source software and recommends a lot of free stuff in his columns for one of the IT newsletter subscriptions I get.

In all, I considered the review pretty fair considering.

His reference to Add/Remove is probably correct, except he said "Vista" when he meant "Windows". Windows Add/Remove DOES predate Ubuntu and any other Linux. That was the first thing I thought when I first saw Kubuntu's Add/Remove.

And he said GIMP was better than Paint.

You all know I hunt down and kill Windows shills as much as anybody here, but Serdar isn't a shill.

Linux backup software

[krappie]

I started using this backup software by R1Soft [r1soft.com]. It can take consistent point-in-time snapshots of an ext2/3 file system similar to Microsoft's volume shadow copy. It even has a whole system that tracks changes to hard drive blocks and can send changed blocks to a remote backup server. So these tools do exist for Linux.