Vista Vs. Gutsy Gibbon 806
ricegf writes in with the account of one Rupert Goodwins writing in ZDNet UK. Goodwins has 7 computers running various versions of Windows and Linux, and explains why he chooses to do most of his work on the Gibbon. "So here's the funny thing. I've used Windows since 1.0. I've lived through the bad times of Windows/386 and ME, and the good times of NT 3.51 and 2K. I know XP if not backwards, then with a degree of familiarity that only middle-aged co-dependents can afford each other... Then how come I'm so much more at home with Ubuntu than Vista? It boils down to one abiding impression: Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way... Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way."
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
My take on it (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I connect my HD which had Ubuntu Edgy installed on it, boot up. X complains about the video card so I change "nvidia" to "ati" in xorg.conf, type: startx, and 2 minutes latter I am reading my mail in thunderbird.
But you know, I'm sure Vista would perfectly well manage me changing ALL hardware except the HD, running on a P4 with 384MB SDRAM, and be up and running without even a reboot. Oh, and does Aero support virtual desktops yet?
Seriously, given the price and system requirements, Vista is a joke.
Different experience here (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I was able to get out of it. That's not really the point. The point is I had to do a bunch of command line hackery just to see the login screen for the first time.
A few years time... (Score:3, Interesting)
In a few years time, even Photoshop will be on the web.
Most of the rest of us will be running Macs or Linux boxes, unless you're a store that needs cash registers. Or webbing in via a PS3 or 360 (or successors thereof).
Windows computers are the mainframes of the consumer computing space. They'll be around for a long time but it'll not be because people want to use them.
Bah, I consider Ubuntu more broken than Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I hate to say this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Note: this was an OEM disc, supplied by Dell itself, so I would have to wonder why it wouldn't work..
Linux does a hell of a lot more than Windows does (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And your point is? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. I have been telling people for years that Linux is where the future is. Mostly they've politely ignored me, but I have long felt that the main point has been made: each of those people has heard someone say good things about Linux. That sort of thing sticks.
Today I walked into a meeting room for an organisation with which I've worked off and on for years, many of whose employees have heard me praise Linux on various occasions. On the blackboard from the previous meeting was a list of bash commands. I asked someone what the meeting has been about. He broke into a grin and said, "You'll love this; we've decided to move to Linux instead of Vista". Obviously, they didn't just do this because of me. I was doubtless just one of many bricks in the wall. But the wall got build, though it took several years. I have a great deal of confidence that that story is going to be repeated so many times over the next decade that we'll eventually get bored of hearing how someone else has made the switch; it'll be an everyday occurrence. Even though it doesn't look like it, I believe Linux has already reached critical mass: the chain reaction has just started, and it's only going to get faster.
Ubuntu gets out of the way (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite all the talk of new user friendliness with Ubuntu Gutsy I've yet to see it. My MXL USB Mic doesn't just work when I plug it in. I have to fiddle around with settings for a while. At work, I can't just easily interface with our Active Directory(yes its MS, but its what we use). Sure I've gotten all that working, but it took me a lot of searching and tweaking. Vista may have driver problems, but I've never encountered any major ones. With Linux however, every install is a new driver issue. When it comes down to it, Vista just works. Yes, I can get Linux working with everything, but I don't want to have to spend all that time on an OS when I can just use windows.
Also as a gamer I'm also unable to permanently switch to Linux. Wine works for some, but its just not good enough. I love Linux, but for now it just isn't ready to be my permanent OS. Despite all this trouble with Vista I hear about, I've yet to experience any of it. It runs perfectly on my machine.
When Linux has a dominant share of the market place, and games are put out strictly for Linux, then I'll switch.
Until then, Microsoft will still be king.
Two words why I absolutely cannot work with Ubuntu (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, yeah... I know there are dual screen solutions for Linux, but none of them work correctly! Either my cursor will become garbled up, or the system will simply crash on reboot. Just an all around pain. Automatic, simple multiple display support would do wonders for Linux, IMHO.
Re:I agree (Score:1, Interesting)
Here, we have three notebooks running Vista (purchased with Vista) and one older machine wiped and loaded with Vista and they only give those prompts for things you would expect like App Installs, running regedit, etc. My wife and kids almost NEVER see a UAC prompt. I see them several times a day, because I hack around on the system. But 2 or 4 a day is not "10 at every boot".
Quit making this stuff up, or learn to use the OS and don't load crap programs.
Re:Aside (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I used to have a job cleaning viruses and spyware and such off of students' laptops at a university campus, which gave me a lot of insight into what not to buy and which AV programs not to trust. There were soooooooooooo many students, faculty, and staff who had entrusted their box entirely to Norton, and it was just an epic fail every single time—even when it was fully up-to-date. The whole of the entire computer security industry would be in Defcon 4 about some virus that'd been out for a week and Norton would still be on its smoke break. Weak.
"Avast!"? Sounds awesome, if a touch nautical.... What struck me the most when I was working at Resnet was how many free programs there were that were extremely effective (especially if used together), almost always catching files that Norton missed entirely. Side note: it's really scary that a lot of these antivirus programs were web-based, and somehow Windows is perfectly okay having web applications that are capable of deleting files, analyzing the content of local files, accessing the registry.... Really scary. Way to go on that security model thing, Microsoft!
Re:I agree (Score:3, Interesting)
Were you using a disc from circa 2002? A lot has changed since then. XP has had a lot added and fixed since then. If you are using an up to date slipstreamed XP SP2 disc, the patch process doesn't take unduly long.
(c.f. Ubuntu less than 1 hour for a fully loaded OS+apps)
Were you using a disc from circa 2002? I dare ya, grab a Ubuntu Breezy Badger disc as your starting point, install it, and then patch it up to Gutsy. See how long that takes you. I bet it would be faster, to boot from the Breezy live CD, and use it to download Gutsy in its entirety, and then install from that.
so I'm pretty sure XP is of no value to me from the 'enjoying using the computer' viewpoint unless I need to run some Windows-only software.
Because you need to install your system from scratch on a regular basis? Might I recommend some basic backup and restore software?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big advocate of Ubuntu too. I've even got my Mom using it. But these anecdotal comparisons are stacked. And for every "I installed Ubuntu in an hour while XP took 4 hours" anecdote there are a dozen, "my Ubuntu Live CD won't even boot". (I had that very problem with my 8800GTS.) And I spent HOURS with the wifi on my Mom's laptop before it would finally connect using WPA. (c.f. XP SP2, which worked out of the box and was connected to the wifi within 2 minutes.)
Both OSes have strengths and weaknesses. My Mom is on Ubuntu quite frankly, because the WinME she had was worse than death, and really, both XP and Ubuntu were good upgrade options. Ubuntu won out based on price more than anything. She was already using Firefox / OpenOffice / Gaim so for her the differences were pretty nominal.
Re:Another one (Score:3, Interesting)
But Ubuntu wont play DVDs out of the box either. The task was to see how quickly and easily Ubuntu and XP could each be made DVD capable.
Gutsy Gibbon isn't QUITE "there" yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ipod? Works pretty well. Basic copying of files works nicely (albeit with a few GTKpod kinks here and there). Mounting and un-mounting usually work automatically without any extra prodding after plugging it in. Usually. Smart playlists are dodgy in GTKpod. Giving Amarok a try, so we'll see. But still... Not. Quite. There. Yet.
Program installation? Well, Synaptic/apt-get are great. You got the right repositories in there, and you know what you're looking for -- works like a charm. Can't see my mom learning how to add repositories and public key signatures. Close. But not quite there yet.
On the other hand, it's leaps and bounds ahead of where Linux-on-the-desktop used to be the last time I went down that path (SuSe 7.something? Mandrake something-dot-something?? Few years ago, anyways...). So progress is definitely being made. It all depends on your personal threshold.
For me, Ubuntu has proven to be quite - QUITE - sufficient. I'll probably be sticking with it for everything except ArcGIS. For all the "moms" of the world, though... I just don't think it's quite there yet. Give it a few more years and it might just make it.
Then we just need a good way of marketing it...
Re:I hate to say this... (Score:1, Interesting)
New Laptop, replaced Vista with Ubuntu 7.10 (Score:4, Interesting)
Problem is, the laptop didn't come with any sort of optical media for Vista. HP puts a partition on the hard drive that is there to allow the user to recover and restore, and they provide software in Vista to burn 2 restore DVDs "just in case." I burned the restore discs and hoped for the best... But as it turns out, Vista's flavor of NTFS doesn't resize properly in GParted (either refuses to resize, or resizes and then becomes unbootable without volume repair). Without genuine Vista discs, I was unable to do any repairs after an abortive attempt to resize the Vista partition, soooo...
I turned the laptop over to the tender mercies of the Ubuntu 7.10 installer off of the Gutsy DVD. Amazingly, sound and networking worked with nary a hiccup, suspend and resume work the way they should, and even the media keys across the top of the keyboard do what you'd expect them to. About the only thing I'm missing support for right now is the SD card reader. (Chipset seems to be unsupported, will have to research.) There's a built-in webcam and stereo microphones in the lid, and I'm going to experiment with them to see if I can get them to work, but it's not a major priority for me.
I would have preferred to keep Vista around -- not because I really like Vista (as I work with XP daily at the office, and Vista really doesn't work the way I think Windows "ought" to), but because theoretically there might be some games or the random app that might not work right / be available under Linux. But this morning, as I started throwing more and more packages on the laptop, I started to realize that maybe this is a blessing in disguise. By Vista not wanting to share and play nicely, I've been forced to decide between Vista and Ubuntu. It wasn't even much of a choice.
Still, it would've been nice to keep Vista around in a small partition, just as a security blanket. But if I can get WoW working under Wine (and reports say that it should actually run pretty well, providing my graphics adapter can keep up), it'd be tough to say just what I'd really need Vista for.
Re:Ugh iPhoto (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Another one (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Excuse for a bit on command line interfaces (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to find the things first, select them and individually choose to display the details - that's the very time consuming thing to do with a GUI if they are spread all over the disk or you have a non-trivial number of answers to the query. When you have a string of tasks dependant on other tasks there are better ways and you can do it on the command line in windows with the right tools too. The *nix example would also have to find the files first and pipe them to "du -s" so would look a bit more complex - but sometimes you save a lot of time by writing instead of pointing at pictures.
The other example forgot about the word AND which makes it a bit harder to do the normal GUI search as would other operators but I think google desktop handles it better than the default - bad example since I'm making the point of dependant tasks. Doing one task and then another can be time consuming in a GUI instead of a command line.
Piping one command to the next gives more more flexability than you can easily put in a GUI - that is my point. The idea (expressed by others but things here are leaning that way) that an environment has "failed" as soon as the user ends up on the command line is something I disagree with. The thing is useful.
Re:Another one (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in '99 I didn't use Mandriva, but I did use Mandrake. Tried a few versions, but after 10 I decided to check Debian out.
Debian was a little trickier to set up, but maintaining the system and installing packages was so much simpler. None of the sadistic insanity of rpm.
Unfortunately I found myself wanting to run bleeding edge stuff on Debian and that really sucked, so after hearing a bit about this "Ubuntu" thing, I switched. I haven't lokoed back.
Don't know where Mandriva is up to now, but I do know that Ubuntu has the best of the ease of use school (like Mandriva) with the best of sane package management (Debian) and that has me sold. That and the fact that Mandriva is a stupid, stupid name.
By the by, if you really want to pay money for commercial codecs and extra software badness, XandrOS is really worth a look.
Re:That's because: (Score:5, Interesting)
I fully intend to contribute more to open-source, when I am in a position from which I can do so. Until then, about the best I can do is say, "Keep going! You are doing a Good Thing!"
Re:I agree (Score:1, Interesting)
"And this is Microsoft's fault, or of the companies who create applications that think they have the go of the entire box?"
Programs like, erm, Microsoft's own Visual Studio 2005 (with the Vista patches) which has to run as administrator? Which means drag and drop doesn't work with the file explorer unless that too is run as administrator. Which means other apps need to run as administrator if you want to interop with those, which negates the whole point of non-privileged accounts in the first place.