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I would love to try OSX but I don't want to own a Mac. I would love to ban Windows but some of my favorite apps/games won't run anywhere else. I love Linux for respecting my Freedom(tm).
On August 24 2009 10:37 MK wrote: And guess what, Flash sux on Mac OS and Linux. Flash sucks in general. It just happens to suck even more when not run on Windows.
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i used to use windows only but i started to like linux
but i use cygwin nowadays haha
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On August 24 2009 06:40 Cambium wrote: I use XP, Vista, and Ubuntu on a regular basis. I've spent considerable amount of time on a Mac as well.
Ubuntu is convenient if you don't rely on a lot of application. This is true when I do development work, and all I need is the terminal (putty is crap). While it has made a lot of advancements on UI and drivers in recent months, it's still lacking on the application front, which probably north of 90% of computer users still heavily rely on these days (please don't compare open office with MS office...)
Mac OSX is very nice, and I would actually use it if it wasn't so ridiculously overpriced. They should also tone down their intuitiveness push as well ("Enter" to change the file name does not make any sense).
Windows simply works. It's been around for so long, it actually defines what's intuitive and what's not. On the contrary, I don't understand why so many linux users (and Mac users too) bash (haha!) windows. Yea, putty is crap, random keys don't work, copy and paste are dumb; yea, some programs crash on windows (a lot of programs are extremely quirky on Linux too); but guess what, to 90% of computer users, these things are irrelevant or insignificant. Windows works.
yeah this guy speaks the truth. for an average user, windows is just better, period. ubuntu (nevermind the non-newbie distros) is just not good enough yet (and yeah i've used ubuntu for months myself). misc related link: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:uWWjQZbluBoJ:contentconsumer.com/2008/04/27
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Rereading that article, the problem with it is that the complaints are all essentially: "Ubuntu doesn't do X like windows does, fix pl0x" or "GIMP uses a windowed system instead of tiles, make it more like photoshop pl0x" or "Make linux see windows partitions and name them appropriately pl0x". Does he even realize that windows will see linux partitions as FREE SPACE (maybe this has changed since I was shown this, but my friend's linux partition literally showed up as free space in the partition list in windows)? At least linux lets you see it and even access it.
Of course Ubuntu is in the wrong here too by trying to shove linux down people's throats. The average user clearly isn't going to find linux better than windows because they've been raised with commercial software and when the free software isn't EXACTLY like the commercial software (see above) they're going to complain that it's unintuitive and bad.
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i own both windows and mac and i definate prefer mac os better than windows, though you cant play al the games and stuff, but boot camp does its job.
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United States47024 Posts
On August 24 2009 06:14 vAltyR wrote: Whenever someone says "XP/Vista/OSX/Linux is the best OS" I always have to ask: "Have you ever used any other operating system, and if so, how long?" "Best OS" is overly broad, seeing as there are a lot of ways an OS can be "good", many of them irrelevant to the everyday user.
The best OS is Bell Labs Plan 9.
On August 24 2009 06:40 Cambium wrote: I use XP, Vista, and Ubuntu on a regular basis. I've spent considerable amount of time on a Mac as well.
Ubuntu is convenient if you don't rely on a lot of application. This is true when I do development work, and all I need is the terminal (putty is crap). While it has made a lot of advancements on UI and drivers in recent months, it's still lacking on the application front, which probably north of 90% of computer users still heavily rely on these days (please don't compare open office with MS office...)
Mac OSX is very nice, and I would actually use it if it wasn't so ridiculously overpriced. They should also tone down their intuitiveness push as well ("Enter" to change the file name does not make any sense).
Windows simply works. It's been around for so long, it actually defines what's intuitive and what's not. On the contrary, I don't understand why so many linux users (and Mac users too) bash (haha!) windows. Yea, putty is crap, random keys don't work, copy and paste are dumb; yea, some programs crash on windows (a lot of programs are extremely quirky on Linux too); but guess what, to 90% of computer users, these things are irrelevant or insignificant. Windows works. I agree with this 100% (and seem to share Cambium's experiences).
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I use many linux distros and XP everyday.
I think linux is the right way to use a computer, i use xp to play games. Any linux distro is many times more intuitive than XP. When you have any problem you can always find where it is with few command lines and filters. The pipetube is the better thing that any OS can have built in, and with cat, awk, grep and sort you can find any file at just 1 line, even if you dont remember anything about it.
For develope use any unix based OS (FreeBSD, any Linux, even Mac or gnu hurb) If you want gaming go with xp.
EDIT: right now i am using debian and gentoo-
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On August 24 2009 10:37 MK wrote: I'm using mac OS X and it's definitely crap. BWchart doesn't work on it. Nothing works on it and I still can't figure out how to alt-tab switch to the desktop while playing SC. You can run BWChart using Darwine and X11. It's a real pain, but you can do it. Until the developers decide to release a mac version, yeah, we're SOL there.
As for alt-tabbing out of starcraft, command-m switches to windowed mode, and from that you can minimize it or do whatever you want. Also, the equivalent of alt-tab on OS X is command-tab. That's not so much a feature it lacks as a difference from Windows.
On August 24 2009 12:45 Hamster1800 wrote: Rereading that article, the problem with it is that the complaints are all essentially: "Ubuntu doesn't do X like windows does, fix pl0x" or "GIMP uses a windowed system instead of tiles, make it more like photoshop pl0x" or "Make linux see windows partitions and name them appropriately pl0x". Does he even realize that windows will see linux partitions as FREE SPACE (maybe this has changed since I was shown this, but my friend's linux partition literally showed up as free space in the partition list in windows)? At least linux lets you see it and even access it.
Of course Ubuntu is in the wrong here too by trying to shove linux down people's throats. The average user clearly isn't going to find linux better than windows because they've been raised with commercial software and when the free software isn't EXACTLY like the commercial software (see above) they're going to complain that it's unintuitive and bad. You make a great point here, and goes along the same lines that MK brought up. This is why I don't like it when people say "I've used [insert OS here] for about 15 minutes, and I hate it because everything is different." Well, yeah. Switching an OS can bring about some major differences, and it does take time to get used to them, but there's a difference between a flaw and a difference. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to see it that way.
Another thing I've noticed from reading this thread is the number of people who've said "I'd use something else, but I need Windows for this application." If you ask me, that pretty much sums up why Windows is popular, the sheer volume of *third-party* software available.
A clean installation of Windows XP can't even open PDF files. There's no AIM application, just Windows Messenger. Part of the massive pain of reinstalling windows is having to redownload and reinstall all of the other software needed to get it useful again. I don't know if the situation has improved with Vista or Windows 7. Mac OS X, there's a competent application for most basic stuff from the start. It may not be the most sophisticated or the best, but it'll get the job done. Same deal with Linux. Unfortunately, you can't really make a comparison without the third party software because it makes a huge difference to practically everyone.
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I've used Linux and I have no real problem with it, I'm simply better acquainted with the Microsoft OSs. What I do have a problem with is the Linux fanboys who won't even speak to you simply because you use Vista or whatever -_-
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vAltyR you make a really good point. For using a computer frm a clean installation windows is clearly the worst choice. Even for listening some music you have to do some shitty configuration and someupdate to the horrible WMP.
The two things that i hate most in windows are: 1. there is NO WAY on having a clean computer, from the registry to the HD it eventually became full of crap to the point where is usually faster to format and reinstall than clean it. In my 6 years using LINUX i have formated 0 times the 80% of my file system. Only the binaries and the kernel when i switch from distro to distro. Not even my boot, always the same home, my gnome configuration is the same for about 4 years now. Windows XP cant avoid the crap mainly because the uninstalation information and the prefetch, a feature that is suposed to speed up your frequently applications, and works fine if you use not many of them, but lets face it is not our case. i use like 50 app at the same time on any moment (linux and Mac users just open a bash console and type `ps -A` to see the complete list of running apps) and that makes the hd go like crazy... and after a while any ntfs disk with xp is really fragmentated.
2. Fixing a problem in windows is like a blind next to a everruning train. You have no clue, you have no idea and you cant ask anyone. Then someone says in some anonymous forum "i did this and this in the registry, i did this and that" and you try it and it doesnt work at all and you read "I have the same problem, anyone knows how to fix it?" and you start to progress on it, to understand it, and when you know where is the problem, wich one is the fucken file, or the fucken registry key, someone gives you a solution like a fucking code for a game, like a fucken password, a cryptic shit that doesnt makes any sense. And you tell me that fuck is intuitive? my balls are more intuitive than that. Once you understand unix structure there is NOTHING out of place. And you can understand 100% of what is written on the config files for anythihng.
My 2 first linux troubles took me like 2 months to solve. Now i solve any problem in less than 1 hour,
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Modern Linux distros are much much better than XP but not necessarily better than Vista (Don't knock it, Vista is a decent OS). I'm a Linux guy running Debian or Ubuntu on all my computers.
But Let's be realistic here. Linux is definitely not the perfect solution for everyone. If you are a gamer and don't know too much about CLI commands and wasn't trained in software / coding then maybe Linux isn't the way to go for you.
Let me just list a few areas where Linux currently suck.
Package manager is restrictive. APT is probably the best in terms of package manager for Linux but as soon as you start installing packages outside of their repositories you are running the risk of breaking dependencies. I guess package manage exist to manage the chaos that come with the freedom.
Sound and Graphics suck balls. NVidia drivers are buggy as well and require distros to implement their own mods to make it stable. ATI is just hopeless. Sound as in ALSA/OSS has been a mess ever since I can remember and only recently it starts to get better but really the problem is that there are only a handful of developers who have knowledge to write kernel level implementations on devices and most of them either can't be bothered or too overworked to give a damn.
There is also the fundamental problem with developers jumping ship on projects when more interesting thing grab their attention.
So you see? The biggest problem and the reason why Linux on desktop still suck after all these years is due to the distributed nature of their software development. Open source is disorganized and always will be.
Blu-ray, Itune? nope they are proprietary technologies and thus they will never settle on Linux. Thinking about playing games? nope most of them lags or require tweaks to make it playable.
With that being said. Linux excel in other areas.
1. Stability. I'm not talking about application software here. I'm talking about their kernel and file system stack. My current uptime is approaching 230 days and it could have being longer if I didn't trip over the powerboard.
2. Security. AppArmour, SELinux, free firewall apps that actually work.
3. Free manuals and tutorials everywhere. Some of them do suck (lazy developers) but it won't get in the way of learning. Build in system commands are awesome to manage your computer.
4. UI is customizable (Even if X system is a mess). 5. fast and efficient file system such as EXT3/EXT4. I wouldn't say that they are actually better than NTFS since I don't know too much about NTFS internals but hey it's free and it's fast.
So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that Linux require you to learn, it require you to gain a deep understanding of the system to make it wonderful. A stock Ubuntu is ugly but after heavy customization it can be beautiful. If that sounds like too much work for you then please by all means stay in window land or Mac (I think of OS X as a polished version of Linux, Yes I know it was based on bsd, which is based on UNIX blah blah).
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On August 24 2009 21:37 jello_biafra wrote: I've used Linux and I have no real problem with it, I'm simply better acquainted with the Microsoft OSs. What I do have a problem with is the Linux fanboys who won't even speak to you simply because you use Vista or whatever -_- Trust me, I have a problem with those people too. I don't care which operating system someone prefers, but when they bash everything else without even backing their argument or treating it as some immutable fact that I get annoyed.
haduken, I'm not exactly a developer, but from what I've heard about sound and graphics, you're right. The situation has improved, but it's still a mess for developers and for end-users, performance isn't exactly up to par with commercial OSs. Example, in Fedora, when I get a system alert, the alert sound comes a few seconds after the alert window pops up. Clicking the play/pause button on audio players has about a one-second delay as well. That just shouldn't happen. I think it will eventually fix itself, though, as will the graphics stuff. Nvidia drivers are crap because Nvidia wants to keep their drivers proprietary, and their open-source drivers are obfuscated to hell. I know freedesktop.org is working on better drivers for nvidia, though, and whenever those are finally mature, hopefully things will get better. Since I don't have any ATI graphics cards, I don't know much about the situation there.
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Nvidia is actually better driver-wise than ATI with linux support. As far as I know, both have proprietary linux drivers, but the ATI drivers for linux suck massively (I switched from ATI to Nvidia for that reason).
Also, I'm using gentoo linux and to be honest I can't see most of the microcomplaints that people have about "linux". As an example, there was an xkcd recently that "complained" about lack of full screen flash video support. I had no idea what it was talking about and went to the forums, where people said that they couldn't play youtube videos in full screen. A few days ago I went to youtube, played a video in full screen, and it worked fine. Maybe that's just because I'm using gentoo (so my system is very different from other distros that come with "base packages" since I compiled my own kernel and basically installed packages myself).
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i like unix. i use unix. windows is perfectly fine for an average user. i would like to think that their time is important enough to not have to learn a new os for no gain. never understood why people try to get others to try unix. who cares? :3
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On August 24 2009 12:45 Hamster1800 wrote: Rereading that article, the problem with it is that the complaints are all essentially: "Ubuntu doesn't do X like windows does, fix pl0x" or "GIMP uses a windowed system instead of tiles, make it more like photoshop pl0x" or "Make linux see windows partitions and name them appropriately pl0x". Does he even realize that windows will see linux partitions as FREE SPACE (maybe this has changed since I was shown this, but my friend's linux partition literally showed up as free space in the partition list in windows)? At least linux lets you see it and even access it.
Of course Ubuntu is in the wrong here too by trying to shove linux down people's throats. The average user clearly isn't going to find linux better than windows because they've been raised with commercial software and when the free software isn't EXACTLY like the commercial software (see above) they're going to complain that it's unintuitive and bad.
actually no, they're not we can go down the list if you like 1-she figured out 2-this is a pretty bad one. completely unintuitive, completely not user friendly. 3-no limewire or whatever, that's pointless i agree, it's not installed on windows either. the naming of transmission though is a perfectly valid complaint 4-this one is pretty bad as well, vector editors definitely shouldn't be the default =x 5-ok this is the first (and only) one i am willing to pin as a user fault. 6-8 she figured out 9-pretty funny (albeit still bad) problem 10-the gimp complaint can easily swing both ways but i'm sure you can see how making the initial arrangement similar to photoshop can only help users. 11-well no real problems there, she figured it out 12-ditto
stuff like #2 is my main problem. the ubuntu team needs every now and then to have a nix newbie sit down and point out all the problems they encounter when trying to use the system exclusively over, say.. a month. sure some you cannot really fix like #5 above.. but stuff like #2, #3, #4, #9, can and should be fixed (and for all i know, they could be, i haven't used anything later than 8.04)
in fact maybe i'll do something like that when 9.10 comes out although i don't really classify as a nix newbie
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2 - The author of the article pointed out that this in fact was more of an issue with youtube than with linux/firefox since if youtube had just displayed the video without checking whether or not you have flash support firefox would be able to automatically install it. 3 - Sure the naming of transmission may be a bit opaque, but she figured it out eventually anyway. 4 - I'm not really sure what happened here...she found GIMP in task 10 and so I don't see why she didn't find it here. It's hard to say that oo drawing is the "default." Personally I would say GIMP is. 9 - I think if you close the window and then go back to the screen resolution dialog box it will open to fit on the screen (at least that's my guess - I use xrandr directly from the command line when I need to change resolution so I have no idea). Also double clicking on the title bar maximizes in gnome (I think), which would make it fit on the screen. Really what do you expect when you make your screen resolution smaller than a window that's on the screen? Of course it's not going to fit... 10 - I see that making GIMP look like photoshop would make the photoshop->GIMP transition easier, but so would making photoshop look like GIMP. There's no reason to blame one or the other. Also the fact that he's directing his complaints at "linux" shows that he has no idea about what's going on. GNU is not "linux". They just happen to produce the best image editor for linux. Besides, GIMP has a windows version too, so to direct the complaints at "linux" is completely ludicrous.
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On August 25 2009 06:52 uberMatt wrote: i like unix. i use unix. windows is perfectly fine for an average user. i would like to think that their time is important enough to not have to learn a new os for no gain. never understood why people try to get others to try unix. who cares? :3 Compassion. We don't like other people to suffer through the unimaginable terror that is Windows.
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On August 24 2009 06:14 vAltyR wrote: For those of you who haven't tried either OS X or Linux, I definitely encourage you to do so. What do you have to lose?
Music software.
I'd be running Linux no question if only my DAWs, VSTs and other music software would run properly. Unfortunately, "finicky" doesn't even begin to describe some of these tools. In extreme cases, they start humping the failstick if they just go off windows XP SP2/3, much less to another operating system entirely.
Linux is still great, though. I would second vAltyR's statement and recommend people try it out. Without a doubt the overall best operating system.
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On August 25 2009 11:03 ven wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2009 06:52 uberMatt wrote: i like unix. i use unix. windows is perfectly fine for an average user. i would like to think that their time is important enough to not have to learn a new os for no gain. never understood why people try to get others to try unix. who cares? :3 Compassion. We don't like other people to suffer through the unimaginable terror that is Windows.
ive never had a problem on windows
seems like a fine, gentlemenly os to me either im extremely lucky or everyone else complains way too much dont get it
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On August 25 2009 15:41 uberMatt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2009 11:03 ven wrote:On August 25 2009 06:52 uberMatt wrote: i like unix. i use unix. windows is perfectly fine for an average user. i would like to think that their time is important enough to not have to learn a new os for no gain. never understood why people try to get others to try unix. who cares? :3 Compassion. We don't like other people to suffer through the unimaginable terror that is Windows. ive never had a problem on windows seems like a fine, gentlemenly os to me either im extremely lucky or everyone else complains way too much dont get it
fact is 99% (or 90% ? Forgot) of the global computer users have Windows and the majority never tested any other OS so when they have a crash, because they read on the Internet that Windows sucks, they automatically say : omg, it crashes, blame Microsoft F-Windows of my A !
Well... I have some terrible crashes under Mac OS X too
and yeah, agreed, GIMP rox.
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