the anti-linux args (from AWT thread)

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

This is an attempt to pull the discussion about Linux out of Cas’ AWT discussion and into a thread of its own, since I can’t bear to go through all those messages more than once.

Apologies if I’ve missed the topic somewhere else.

To pick up on a couple of comments:

[quote] Well, I hate to fan the flames, but I have to agree with Cas 100% on the Linux issue. Linux HAS come a long way… but it is still entirely not practical to actually use on a daily basis by anyone other than a linux expert.
[/quote]
Not true. Maybe Windoze users find it difficult, but there’s evidence the same isn’t true for computer newbies (just one reference I’ve read):

[quote] I have a degree in computer engineering, and in general have no problems with computers. Except for Linux. I find the failure rate for ALL applications in the linux space extremely high. This is both a fault of the applications themselves - in that it seems the bulk of linux apps have an unusually large number of bugs, and in the fact that configuring a linux system to do what you want is next to impossible most of the time.
[/quote]
I’d like to know what distributions of Linux you’ve tried and how old. I’ve been using Redhat (ages ago), Mandrake (up until recently) and Gentoo (now). I have never found the failure rate that high, I also haven’t seen as many bugs as you claim, and nor do I agree that configuring a Linux system is that difficult. Redhat was a headache, I admit, but I was running Mandrake on a laptop without ever having configuration problems (and laptops are usually the difficult area for linux). Of course, Gentoo, being a system for more experienced users, does require more knowledge, but that’s something I accept for its other advantages.

There was another response to that comment:

I couldn’t agree more. I estimate my productivity has gone up about threefold since getting away from Windows. Plus less system crashes are also helpful. That said, reading the AWT thread has sent my productivity back down again… :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote]In black and white, for me, I could totally have ignored Linux, and I’d have lost <1% of my profits.
[/quote]
Assuming your porting costs to linux are $0 (because the work has already been done), and your profits are $1 million, would you still be happy to lost 1% of your profits (i.e. $10000)? Personally despite the fact I had a million in profits, I’d still be keen to see the extra 10 grand.

[quote] One of the biggest problems, as I see it, is that the user interface to Linux is basically appalling. It’s not even a patch on Windows 3.11 in terms of consistency and usability.
[/quote]
Bollocks. Balderdash. Rubbish. Pick your simile. Windows XP is a hideous monstrosity compared with KDE. And if I had to use Win3.1 again I’d go nuts in about 2 seconds flat. It’s all a matter of opinion isn’t it?

[quote] How do you install an application on Linux?
[/quote]
Depends on the distribution – which I admit is one of the flaws if consistency is your goal (and it should be to attract the end user)

[quote]Where do the icons go when you’ve installed the application?
[/quote]
Into the menu structure, in most cases. In a few cases, not.

[quote]Why do windows not pop to the front when I click on them?
[/quote]
Works for me.

[quote]Why is it that when I go to try and use someone else’s Linux machine it behaves so radically differently that it’s like another operating system?
[/quote]
Because you can tweak the desktop/gui so it behaves exactly as you want. Why is it so important that everyone -must- use their computer the exact same way. In a corp, I’d say this is important – in which case most of that can be locked down.

[quote] What I would like to see is the Linux community abandoning X and Gnome completely and moving towards a proper client desktop that behaves in a single, consistent fashion, and this needs to go in the very core of the kernel.
[/quote]
You cannot be serious. While we’re doing that, let’s make Linux less secure as well, so that it’s as flawed as Windows. The kernel should (and will) remain its own separate component at the core of the OS, as it should be. I can’t see why this is a bad thing.

#2

[quote]This is an attempt to pull the discussion about Linux out
[/quote]
Good move; I wrote a response there and then thought better of it, because it would just have strengthened the thread-jacking :).

Just some thoughts and observations: …

Windows is either trivial or impossible to install, depending on your hardware. I say this having done sys-admin for windows professionally - you really are at the mercy of your hardware manufacturers and/or their relationship with MS. I’ve seen brand new PC’s even as recently as running @ 1.6Ghz that literally would not install windows OK :(.

Linux is typically either trivial to install but then damned hard to keep working, or a PITA to install but then easy to keep working. This accounts for much of the arguments and counter-arguments in the thread, that made it seem like people were coming from two different worlds (usually they are, since your distro usually does on or the other of these!). This is almost entirely due to the lack of standards on e.g. where the config info for linux is stored; every distro that moves closer to adopting the work of the linux standardization project (can’t recall name or URL off top of my head) is helping to fix this.

Once that’s done, unfortunately it’s only been designed as a really small step (because the warring distros etc wouldn’t tolerate a big step), and the same will need to be done for e.g. X. No matter whether you use KDE, Gnome, or neither, applications cannot perfectly install themselves into e.g. the start-menu - again because of the lack of a standard definition even of what this menu is, let alone where it’s stored on disk, or what it’s hierarchy is. E.g. last time I looked, Mandrake continues to break each successive version of KDE by altering KDE’s own standards on where these files are located, wasting lots of KDE.org’s time with frustrated users who upgrade then find they’ve just lost their desktop, and complain to KDE.org, and then have to manually wade through undocumented configuration info (because the folks at KDE used not to have any idea what the heck Mandrake had done…) to try and fix things again :(.

I have, on average, more crashes with linux on the desktop than with windows (OTOH linux servers - especially with no X installed! - are arbitrarily stable IME, unless you run a piece of crud like Samba; nb: I can crash anyone’s linux samba client connection in 30 seconds + however long it takes them to get around to browsing the samba file shares, using just notepad and a windows PC, forcing all connected linux clients to REBOOT before they can carry on using their samba FS; depending on mount point, they may be forced to reboot immediately :()

Also, linux has an annoying problem that you can’t always kill processes. When a process ignores “kill -9” what do you do next? I’m still looking for a solution to that (FS problems, and whenevre Mozilla gets into an infinite fast-memory-leaking while loop are the main times I need this…). I never found an NT/2k/etc process I couldn’t kill when I needed to - usually the worst you need do is kill the entire desktop, and nowadays that restarts automatically after a few seconds.

Note that I never used win9x (because it was too abominable), and have got NT-4 and 2k tuning down to a fine art ( 35Mb - 45Mb RAM usage on startup, quick startup times, and very few crashes). These days I use linux as my main desktop, and mozilla alone (stable versions only!) will crash linux completely on average once every 3 days, unless you’re careful e.g. not to visit too many websites (!). In comparison, OpenOffice has never crashed my linux PC in years.

Linux being more stable than windows is partially true, but partly a myth; windows instability is mostly due to flakey hardware and/or hardware drivers (and the same problem causes linux to crash too - I’ve seen it often enough :frowning: - although the linux drivers tend to be of a higher quality). Linux stability is only guaranteed if you don’t run any X stuff, no fancy multimedia, games, etc. If you stick to IP tools (firewalling, apache, etc) it’ll be rock solid. Use it as a full-fat desktop and you’re suddenly back at the mercy of hardware drivers and bad applications…

[quote]Windows XP is a hideous monstrosity compared with KDE. And if I had to use Win3.1 again I’d go nuts in about 2 seconds flat. It’s all a matter of opinion isn’t it?
[/quote]
I think many people suffer problems with linux’s GUI’s that they feel are a GUI problem but linux people feel are a system problem. E.g. the lack of integration between the desktop and the video drivers - something Cas takes for granted from Windows, but is practically non-existent (yes, I know how to get it to work, but it’s not standard/default yet) on linux.

I agree heartily that there are some great GUI’s on linux. Even the basic window managers have incredibly cool features that make windows XP feel clunky, like when you alt-tab on my desktop, and as you cycle through windows, they are highlighted on screen, so you don’t need to look at the icons / read the window titles, you can actually SEE the app you’re about to jump to.

Personally, I fall into the “Gnome people should wake up and smell the roses, and get behind KDE” ;D camp, FWVLIW. KDE is good, but the killer-feature here is doing the standardization and integration (e.g. right click on desktop to configure your graphics driver etc).

Linux is not any more inherently secure than windows. They are both similar kernel architectures. IIRC neither (yet) is a full micro-kernel architecture (which definitely would be something to crow about…). Certainly neither of them (yet) use the secure OS architectures that have been in existence for 20 years…

Some linux people seem ignorant that you can replace your windows kernel - if you’re a windows sys admin, you may well do it quite often, but on different PC’s each time. There are actually a few MS kernels to choose from (the windows install program - much like many distros - tends to build a custom one for you, IIRC, based on one of a range of common cores).

If linux were something else entirely, e.g. Nemesis, or possibly HURD/HERD (although the last I recall that project had lost most of its sparkle :frowning: ), then things would be different. As it is, linux was a quick hack to get a working unix-clone system, that is only in recent years starting to be evolved into something decent in it’s own right (e.g. kernel moving towards being entirely modular…).

#3

Weird. I’ve had the exact opposite experience. I used to work on WinNT while at an investment bank in London. Standard hardware (Compaq or HP or something like that), standard corporate administration where you have bugger all access to the admin of the OS. And I had crashes at least once a day, sometimes more. Everyone on the team had crashes at least once a week. While I had less problems with Win2K, I still had crashes.
Contrast with the team I’m managing now – all running various distros (well actually I standardised on Mandrake, and then changed to Gentoo myself, when my sys. eng. introduced me to it) none with crashing problems. The main issue I’ve got at the moment is I can’t figure out how to get Chinese working properly for one of my developers. A pain in the arse compared to Windows.

I have -never- had a problem killing a process. Ever. I’ve been running Linux solidly (at home and at work) for almost 2 years and I’ve never seen that. I’ve seen mozilla processes hang and had to either killall or kill one by one, but never been unable to kill a process.

[quote] Linux is not any more inherently secure than windows.
[/quote]
That flies in the face of everything I’ve heard and read about Linux. Just look at user permissions for one basic example --of course maybe XP added that sort of stuff. I refuse to touch it, so I don’t know.

#4

Just to prevent another flame war (which was my first reaction to seeing the title of this thread) could you change it?

No one said Linux sucks generically, maybe “The Linux Desktop/Gaming Argument” or something. Normally I wouldn’t worry, but there seem to be pationate ‘believes’ on this argument which were getting out of hand before.

Kev

#5

Regardless of what the strengths and weaknesses of Linux are in the eyes of those who are tech savvy, the utlimate concern for most of us (as in people who hope to make some cash as an indie game dev) is that the conversion rate in the Linux market is negligible. The only way it will become viable is when its share of the desktop market reaches a point where Joe Gamer is comfortable running it.

All of these complaints about installation & maintenance problems and GUI issues are very relevant when you consider that Joe Gamer is using Windows now, and has been for quite some time. If Linux cannot be installed, booted, updated, and maintained with the same ease as Windows, then the market share will not grow. That in turn means the viability of the Linux games market will not grow much as well.

I so want to use Linux at home, but it has given me more headaches than I have patience for. I don’t want to spend hours reading man pages, learning the difference between the dozens of config files, or rebuilding the kernel just because I don’t have the proper version for my graphics card driver. And I’m not Joe Gamer. By contrast, I have never in 10 years had an installation issue with any versio of Windows. Blue Screen of Death, yes. Freezes, yes. But nothing a hard reboot doesn’t fix. Installing drivers is a point-and-click deal these days.

One of these days, I’ll try to get another version of Linux installed and make another attempt to get used to it (last time I tried Lilo corrupted my MBR). But until Linux becomes point-and-click simple, it will be very difficult to convince Joe Gamer and his parents to use it. That’s the perspective Cas’ original argument was coming from, as I see it.

#6

[quote]But until Linux becomes point-and-click simple, it will be very difficult to convince Joe Gamer and his parents to use it. That’s the perspective Cas’ original argument was coming from, as I see it.
[/quote]
Exactly. Which is why I put this in off-topic.

#7

A little note on the windowsismucheasiertousethanlinux-issue. My experience is that most people don’t know how to even install programs on windows. I’ve lost count on all times I’ve had to help relatives and friends with trivial things, so please give up the myth of the easy to use windows. My point is that if you would install a window system on linux that looked and behaved the same as windows the average user would be able to use it as much as he/she would be able to use windows. (start a webbrowser, use a mailprogram, play a small preinstalld game and do some occational writing in a wordprocessor)

#8

[quote]A little note on the windowsismucheasiertousethanlinux-issue. My experience is that most people don’t know how to even install programs on windows. I’ve lost count on all times I’ve had to help relatives and friends with trivial things, so please give up the myth of the easy to use windows.
[/quote]
Most people I know using Windows2000 run with Admin rights all day because otherwise they can’t install drivers and games and many applications (and they don’t know there’s a security difference between different users). Lovely for viri and other not-well-programed programs which trash the system…

It’s not that easy, though: I too (on Win2000) can’t always use that “run within a different user” option for programs to install or run - somehow the registry is not the same then and I have to logout and login as Admin just to install or run that single program…

WindowsXP users I don’t know too many (does the WinXP home edition differentiate between admin user and normal user?).

#9

I personally abhor the concept of having to log in as an administrator in order to install things. I am the administrator. It’s my personal computer I’m sat at. What joker decided I had to log out and log in again as someone else when it’s still me? Whatever your take on the security issue it’s a usability nightmare on both Windows and Linux. I have a feeling MacOS might be similar.

The problem has been very neatly circumvented in Java Webstart where you actually grant permissions to programs and code as they ask for them. In other words all programs installed have to ask you, the user, for permission to do things. This is how it should be.

The key issues as I see it with Linux are with basic usability. One of the cornerstones of basic usability is standardisation. If all cars had different controls, nobody would be able to drive them well, and we’d see a lot of accidents. The often-used car/computer analogy is often-used precisely because it is so eerily accurate.

If we started to really think about how computers should be to work in a true mass market the very first thing we’d do is decide how they all have to behave, more or less, in their basic interface. Before you stutter in apoplexy: this has already occurred several times in the past and you didn’t complain then. Let me point you at a few examples:

  1. The Mouse Pointer. We now have a device that is universally used across operating systems to point at things. The left button universally selects whatever is under the pointer on the screen. Unfortunately standardisation ends there; MacOS persists in thinking I’ve got a hoof and not fingers, and Linux persists in thinking that I want to use the middle button differently everywhere I point it. But gradually most OSs are coming down to the concept that left selects and right brings up a context menu. This is a Good Thing. That’s why we universally know the right pedal makes the car go faster, and there is a pedal to the left that makes it slower, but there may not be a clutch in the car.

  2. The backspace key moves the cursor to the left and deletes the previous character, and the Delete key sucks characters from the right. The backspace key used to do some strange things. Sometimes it just moved the cursor but didn’t delete. On Unix it until very recently almost universally printed the totally unexpected ^H out in a terminal (duh!). But we are seeing some progress on keyboards and how they are used. Even in Windows nowadays you no longer have to use DOSKEY to get a command history in your cmdline prompt to work.

  3. Windows. That applications run in their own bit of screen space is taken for granted now, and that the user can move the windows around and resize them is also established. There is a little awkwardness in that the controls to manipulate windows are frequently in funny places and rarely visually standardized. Why a red blob on OSX and a cross on Win32 and Linux? What would the world be like if STOP signs at junctions said STOP in some countries and had a picture of a smiley face in other countries? What would it be like if green traffic lights meant stop in Asia and red meant go? Can you see a normal society thinking that would be a good idea?

  4. In some countries they drive on the left; in some countries they drive on the right. This is the Way It Is and there’s no correct side of the road to drive on and you just have to get used to the local custom. It’s too bad that there are several ways of describing filesystems. The only thing it does is confuse end users. Fortunately we have a common standard now born of the Internet, the URI. It uses forward slashes and colons and ?'s and squiggles. Whoever decided a web URL should begin with “http://” was clearly inhuman. Why not… "web "?

  5. The user interface on Windows is excellent. Not perfect in many ways but it’s been reliable and consistent for about 9 years now. Consistency and ubiquity are the key. The problem with Linux afficionados is their insistence on doing things deliberately differently despite their tiny minority status. When 95% of all computers work like Windows does, how can you expect that 95% to think your strange ways of doing things are more usable!? To an ordinary user, trying to use Linux for the first (and even many subsequent) times is like getting a car driver out of his car and putting him on a sportsbike. “The controls still do basically the same thing, they’re just in different places and behave a bit more sensitively. No, you can’t change into any gear you like you have to do it one at a time. Don’t touch that! etc.” The car driver is typically terrified after 2 minutes riding a bike and gets back into the comforting, familiar world of 4 wheels again. The same thing happens when someone attempts the transition to Windows.

If the Linux desktop does not make very significant movement to behaving not only consistently with itself but also consistently with the de facto standard that the Windows GUI has become then it will never catch on. When the Linux desktop has got everything working as familiarly as Windows, then it can start to try and make things better but not by altering the basic use-cases that users find familiar. Highlighting windows as you alt-tab is a great example of what can be done to improve the user interface without breaking any usability paradigms learned from Windows. Allowing users to skin their desktop so that the close button is in the bottom right of a window is not a good idea. (It might seem cool but it’s as stupid as allowing a motorcyclist to swap the brakes levers around on his bike).

Let me now draw you again to the car/bike analogy. Years ago when I didn’t drive and only had a bike, I’d tell everyone that bikes were the best etc. etc. and everyone should have one. Now I can drive. Driving is tedious and banal and I rarely actually drive except out of necessity to carry cargo. But nowadays there is a fundamental shift in my attitude to bikes now that I understand the car perspective. Bikes are great but I now know they are weird, scary, dangerous, irritating, and no cheaper than driving cars.

What’s interesting is that the motorcycle industry has noticed too, finally. How are you going to sell more bikes if you keep trying to sell bikes that are weird, scary, dangerous and irritating compared to cars? Here’s a few of the things that have happened in recent years:

Big Scooters have arrived. If you actually sit in a Big Scooter (and I mean in!) you will be first astonished that the dash layout and proportions look uncannily like a car’s. You will then notice the huge, plush seat, rather like a car. And then you will notice the huge luggage space and enormous pillion seat. And somewhere to put your crashhelmet so you don’t have to lug the bugger around with you when you go shopping.

BMW produce bikes with a kevlar belt drive or shaft drive (they make 1 bike, I think, with a chain). For years, bikers have extolled the virtues of chains because they make a bike slightly lighter and more responsive and can take a lot of power and have no adverse side effects. No adverse side effects, that is, until you ride off one day and it snaps because you haven’t oiled it in 15,000 miles. Why would a car driver stop to think about oiling a chain every week? They don’t, they’re used to just getting in and driving, every day, without thinking about this. BMW know this. Kevlar belts and shafts don’t need adjusting or oiling.

What has happened here is that the industry has realised that there is already a defacto standard for personal transport that anyone considering alternatives to will be used as the benchmark.

It’s about time Desktop Linuxen woke up and had a long think about the existing benchmark of usability and where Linux compares - objectively, not subjectively.

Cas :slight_smile:

#10

It’s hard to sort the arguments mentioned here. I think much of them are a matter of personal experience. I have used Windows and Linux for some time now (Windows even longer than Linux). I think, regardless if Linux is easier to install and use, it opens you a whole new world of possibilites, makes you more productive and saves you a lot of money.

One of the main problems is probably that most people here seem to think that Linux is ready for the desktop, if it becomes almost indistinguishable similar to Windows. This should not be the primary goal, because it’s much better to mix the strengths of both (and other) systems. One of the philosophies of Linux is to have programs, which fulfill exactly one task (almost) perfectly. A second one is to have the freedom to choose what software fits your needs best. These are reasons why you can’t simply say: “Put all desktops in one and make all GUIs look the same.” One of the main reasons, that some distros try to be Windows-like is that there are millions of users with several years of experience, who can be attracted by a Windows-like desktop. While this is often good for experienced Windows users without Linux experience, it often has its drawbacks (for instance trying to hide as much as possible from the user) and doesn’t emphasize the stengths of Linux. A very valid point mentioned above is that is that Linux and Windows is about similar difficult for people with no experience in both worlds (study).

The Linux market is currently dominated by companies. This has disadvantages. Every company tries to put the latest and greatest packages together and tend to focus on the most popular packages. However the difficult thing when creating a distribution is not to have the latest packages in it or a pre-release-kernel with several hundred patches. It’s making a consistent distribution, which behaves exactly as a user expects it to do. That’s why I personally prefer distributions, which are driven by the community instead of a company. For those who don’t know: Debian has voluntary maintainers for each package. Each maintainer typically uses his own package and cares a lot about painless user installations and fixing bugs in it. You’ll typically notice that Debian (and Gentoo for instance) are much better maintained, when it comes to less popular packages. They usually care more about standards and social contracts. The average Debian and Gentoo user is often quite happy about his operating system, because he knows how it works. The learning curve for these distribtuions is much steeper than for Suse/Redhat. If you have a problem, you can really fix it (without trial and error like it’s often done in Windows). And if you ask for help politely, you’ll probably get it. As a sidenote the learning curve for Linux is usually steeper than the one for Windows. I have used Windows for years and I can’t say that it makes a significant difference, if you use it for one, two, three or more years.

Some obvious adavantages of Linux haven’t been named. For instance you are not tight to a company, which makes your data (and knowledge) much more future proof. You can be sure that the underlying software doesn’t violate your privacy. You can keep your software uptodate without regular needing to pay for it, which pays off in the long term. If you have problems with some piece of software you have the chance fix it yourself or (more likely) pay someone to do it. Opensource avoids the need to write everything from scratch, if it’s already been done.

#11

[quote]It’s about time Desktop Linuxen woke up and had a long think about the existing benchmark of usability and where Linux compares - objectively, not subjectively.
[/quote]
When you write this, it sounds like GNU/Linux developers didn’t even start think about usability. In fact they are not sleeping and usability plays a large role in many Opensource projects. KDE has its own usability subproject for instance.

There are already number of existing objective studies comparing Linux and Windows in terms of usability. Most of them show that Linux was behind Windows in terms of usability for the desktop user and is about equal now. KDE and Gnome are more powerful than the Windows desktop nowadays.

#12

[quote]I think much of them are a matter of personal experience
[/quote]
And that’s one of the things I have an issue with. When 95% of the world’s personal experiences are The Windows Experience you’d better be sure not to make any new experience too jarring or they don’t like it. The mass market can only cope with tiny adjustments, a few at a time, and they have to percolate for a good while.

That study fails to mention that after the initial terror of using the OS, Windows is very very rapidly learned. To become competent at using Windows one has to learn very little, and nearly always, one has to learn only one thing: double click to run. New programs always install the same way, despite the installers all being different. New drivers are (almost always) installed in the same way these days (it’s still not perfect but it’s getting there). Whereas on the Linux I had, I had to learn how to:
Open a terminal
Learn how to change directory
Navigate to a directory
Figure out how tar and gzip work
Figure out that I needed to do su to install something
Figure out how to chmod the installer
Figure out how to run the installer (hint: prepend the totally obvious ./ to the filename. Er…?)
And then figure out where the hell it actually installed to because it didn’t ask me
And at the end of it it didn’t create any icons and I had no idea how to create them

After having learned this painful rigmarole once it would have been nice if that was all I had to do to install the next thing. Except it came in a completely different form, and was fraught with its own bizarre troubles. And so on.

After 3 days, the Windows user is productive and happy and competent. After 3 days, I, a very old hand at computers of all sorts, was still so uncomfortable at just how fiddly it was to make anything work that I gave up. What hope for the mass market?

[quote]Some obvious adavantages of Linux haven’t been named. For instance you are not tight to a company, which makes your data (and knowledge) much more future proof.
[/quote]
This is such a massive misconception it must be stamped out, completely, now! The news is: Microsoft do not own the desktop nor all the applications that run on your computer. All the software that is written for Linux could equally well be written for Win32 and still be under the GPL.

Linux has no advantage to the end user in respect of free software, either beerwise or lunchwise. The end user wants a tool to do a job. Who made the tool and the “philosophy” behind the tool is not important to the end user. Why the hell would I, as a user, care about a philosophy of one small tool to do one small job? Especially as in the rest of the computing world, we have nice big tools that do lots of things in a wonderfully integrateed fashion. Consider that 99% of us in here use the most celebrated and brilliant uber-tool idea of all time: the integrated development environment. Why is this concept so popular? Because it’s easier and better and faster than using a loosley coupled collection of bits and bobs.

The only things important to the end user are fitness for purpose, quality, and price. Fitness for purpose is by far the most important - and that’s irrelevant as far as the Linux / Windows / MacOS debate concern goes. A few crazy nerds might insist on using only GPL software and never paying for anything ever, or hate Windows just because it’s owned by an evil self-serving monopolistic empire, but a few crazy nerds is not a very large number of people compared to the billion-strong Windows users club.

All of the rhetoric about being able to fix stuff and asking for help gets it etc. is just that, rhetoric. You know as well as I do that because there are 99 times as many Windows users in the world you’re rather more likely to a) have your problem fixed for you in the first place, sooner and b) find help from someone when you need it. But the fact is it’s so accelerated over the last couple of years now that almost nothing ever actually goes wrong with Windows, and when it does, you have probably noticed Microsoft automatically fix it for you without you even needing to ask.

Cas :slight_smile:

#13

[quote]And that’s one of the things I have an issue with. When 95% of the world’s personal experiences are The Windows Experience you’d better be sure not to make any new experience too jarring or they don’t like it.
[/quote]
Not everything what the majority does is really good. (Say if 95% of the world is using C++ to write desktop applications, this doesn’t mean all programming languages for desktop applications have to be like C++.) The second point is, that there are a lot of people, who use Linux without having used Windows before and a lot of people who used Windows long ago, but don’t care for it anymore. Those people only want the best solution possible, not the most Windows-like solution possible. And after all it’s even better, if you have the choice, what you want to do.

What I wanted to say with the sentence above is, that it depends on what concrete experiences one person had with Windows or Linux. If someone never managed to install Linux, but tried several times, he won’t like it. If someone always has problems with Windows, he won’t like it either.

I already told in the other thread, that you don’t have to compile your software most of the time. On Windows you just use the installer all the time, why not on Linux? (We already had this topic in the other thread.)

[quote]This is such a massive misconception it must be stamped out, completely, now! The news is: Microsoft do not own the desktop nor all the applications that run on your computer.
[/quote]
That’s very true for my computer. :smiley:

What I wanted to say is, that as long as you have Windows-specific software, you rely on Microsoft to exist. Typically Windows users have software, which relies on Windows.

[quote]Linux has no advantage to the end user in respect of free software, either beerwise or lunchwise. The end user wants a tool to do a job. Who made the tool and the “philosophy” behind the tool is not important to the end user.
[/quote]
For some users it is important. It’s very important to know, if the product’s philosophy is to get more expensive and force you to upgrade each release cycle or if the software will stay free forever, if it uses open standards or is proprietary etc. This can be critical for users. Even if the user doesn’t care, does this make Linux worse?

[quote]All of the rhetoric about being able to fix stuff and asking for help gets it etc. is just that, rhetoric.
[/quote]
No, it isn’t. It’s reality. I’ve done it several times.

[quote]You know as well as I do that because there are 99 times as many Windows users in the world you’re rather more likely to a) have your problem fixed for you in the first place, sooner and b) find help from someone when you need it. But the fact is it’s so accelerated over the last couple of years now that almost nothing ever actually goes wrong with Windows, and when it does, you have probably noticed Microsoft automatically fix it for you without you even needing to ask.
[/quote]
Surprisingly this is often not true. How many Windows users are really using forums, mailinglists and newsgroups to help other users? How many of them can actually help? How many Windows users actually report problems? How interested is Microsoft in having problems discussed openly? Is the Windows community really stronger than the Linux community?

I don’t think that you can’t say that actually nothing ever goes wrong on Windows (maybe this is true for you, but not for all users). A lot of people have problems with viruses, bluescreens, unexpected behaviours, stupid error messages etc. Often you simply can’t do anything about it. Sometimes Microsoft needs a long time to fix security issues etc. Windows isn’t as close to perfection as you describe it here especially in the fields of security and stability. (Only look at the really serious issues of Internet Explorer.)

#14

I just want to add my thoughts on this. Cas, you keep mentioning how everything must be standardized, otherwise things will begin blowing up, or something. Why? You know, I rarely ever sit at a random computer and start using it. The computers I use are, in fact, mine or the company I work for who is loaning it to me. Why is it a bad thing to make my computer work like I want it to? In fact, every linux install I have seen in the last two years by default creates a desktop VERY similar to windows. The user is then free to modify it to their hearts content.

You make the analogy that we shouldn’t be allowed to move pedals in our car. I agree, but I think your analogy is flawed. I think we should (and CAN) adjust the seats in our car to allow us to reach those pedals. Hell I can even adjust the MIRRORS! :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

That’s exactly analogous to the alt-tab feature mentioned, or to being allowed to have your resprayed in any colour you like. Swapping the pedals is crazy.

Now, you’re a very lucky person, by the sounds of it. I’ve used more computers than I can count in the last 2 years, in about 8 different organisations. I thank my lucky stars they were all running Windows because they all behaved the same way and I could just get on and do what I needed to do without having to find lots of different ways to do it.

Jens keeps talking about “many users” and such but for each one of his “many” there are “99 x many” Windows users who are more usefully catered for. Why not accept this? There are more of them! Make them feel at home in Linux, don’t be different just for the 1%.

Cas :slight_smile:

#16
First: As my hd suddenly died a couple of weeks ago (don't ask why *sigh* stupid stupid me...) I'm writing this on a "the network is the computer" ;) kind of set up (knoppix booted from cd running on ramdisk) - kinda hard to do with windows :)

Second:

A couple of centuries ago 95% thought that slavery was a good idea => stuff change - get used to it (well “slavery” is probably quite a good description of the current microsoft influenced “it” sector as well :wink:

Third:
My mom and dad have been using redhat for about 2 years now and are currently using fedora, my dad had been, and is still, using windows 95,98 and nt in his work. My mom was (is :wink: a complete computer newbie.

Thing is, after dad started paying his bills and surfing the 'net with redhat (and now fedora), after first being somewhat (understatement) pessimistic (“that doesn’t look like windows attitude”) he is now, in pseudo his own words, totally convinced that linux is a lot easier to use and definitely more stable than any windows os he has used.

My mom had to be shown once by me how to connect to the internet (they have an old 56k connection…) with kppd and since then she is happily surfing the net for recipes and similar stuff, writing documents in openoffice and playing music with xmms (or mu.dev.java.net depending on her mode :slight_smile:

(true, as their computer had a windows only modem: configuration of that was a b****… - but had it only been a regular non-software modem I’m positive my father could have configured the net access totally by himself as it’s quite similar to windows connection settings).

Redhat/Fedora version:
1, Download rpm file (i.e. save to desktop)
2, Double click rpm file
3, enter root password *
4, Click ok
5, Program installed and links provided in redhat’s equivalent of windows “start-menu” in appropriate category (i.e. internet apps in that folder, generic apps in applications etc etc very easy for my parents to understand where to look!). Or a quick alt+f2 and entering the app-name in the prompt (with auto completion!) and pressing enter which works in 99% of the cases - quite easy if you ask me!

  • My mom was very happy when I told her that she couldn’t “mess anything up” when using the computer as she was using a “safe user”, well she probably didn’t understand what safe user was but anyway - she was less afraid of the computer after that. Thus she had no problem later that day accepthing the need to input root-password when connecting to the internet (I guess she understood somehow that the 'net ain’t safe :wink:

Fourth:

[quote]But the fact is it’s so accelerated over the last couple of years now that almost nothing ever actually goes wrong with Windows, and when it does, you have probably noticed Microsoft automatically fix it for you without you even needing to ask.
[/quote]
********!!
Just yesterday I had a coffee with a neighbour and his father - his father had a question about why suddenly the “export-files to disk” feature suddenly had stopped working (read: crashing the application) in windows media player - later we found out that the drivers for his mouse had somehow managed to replace a vital (well…) dll with their own version - funny thing is, as he is using XP and it’s “super smart keeping dll files safe in memory and very protected from the user thingy” it’s almost impossible (well… relatively speaking) to remove that corrupted dll file and replace it with the original one (Earlier, before asking me - the father had asked a local support hotline how to fix the problem - can anyone guess their response? LOL)

So much for XP and usability if you ask me!

Btw, I stopped using windows in 2000/01 when I uppgraded to linux as I had a neighbour who had this “cool”, yay ;), linux os in which you could customize almost everything, and it had all these nifty small programs that you either can’t find for windows, or they are ad/spyware etc etc.

Earlier I’ve been using the windows “versions”
3.1 (limited)
3.11 (some)
95 (a lot)
98 (a little)
me (before I deleted it from my parents computer…)
nt ( 4/5? I think- a little)
2000 (a lot)

Even though I’ve only used linux based distros (maybe 5 or so) three years or so; I almost everytime become frustrated when using windows again as it feels so limited, slow and “expert user” unfriendly!
(I.e. no quick terminal access, no nifty way to create smart shortcuts, launch files, scripting language - I don’t consider JScript a language…, strange cron jobs etc etc)

Well it is off topic :wink:

#17

[quote]One of the cornerstones of basic usability is standardisation.
[/quote]
With the invention of changeable skins for windows and buttons and blabla since Windows2000 I find several applications on Windows NT5 and higher to have a totally different L&F, which is horrible…
Worst is Microsoft; their applications do brake “official GUI guidelines” on a regular basis.

#18

Yeah, they don’t always get it right :slight_smile:

I do wish people would stop giving me individual examples of so-and-so-who-uses-linux-without-problems and such-and-such-an-application-that-breaks-Windows. I am trying, over and over again, to argue that individual instances of success or failure are not what the argument is about. It’s about what happens when you throw 100 million people at the issue.

Overwhelmingly, without fail, the vast majority of people are used to Windows. There’s no reason to suggest just because your dad uses Linux that it makes it easy. Throw 100 million dads at Linux and you are certain to end up with 99 million angry or confused dads.

Cas :slight_smile:

#19

[quote]Throw 100 million dads at Linux and you are certain to end up with 99 million angry or confused dads.
[/quote]
Throw 100 million dads at Windows and you are certain to end up with 99 million angry or confused dads.

Throw 100 million dads at Mac OS X and you are certain to end up with 99 million angry or confused dads.

Throw 100 million dads at BSD and you are certain to end up with 99 million angry or confused dads.

#20

Damn good point actually. Due to the complexity of computers, the only machine you could point 100 million dads at, and not have 99% of them angry or confused is probably a console.

[quote] I do wish people would stop giving me individual examples of so-and-so-who-uses-linux-without-problems and such-and-such-an-application-that-breaks-Windows. I am trying, over and over again, to argue that individual instances of success or failure are not what the argument is about. It’s about what happens when you throw 100 million people at the issue.
[/quote]
Cas, We are offering counter arguments to your own examples of a ‘happy’ windows user: yourself. You talk about the problems you’ve had as an experienced computer user – and you’ve been given counter examples of the non-experienced succeeding…

…you’re not bitter about it, are you…? ;D