Which operating system do you use most?

[myk]

Bucket said:
And what development environment are they using to write all that Windows software that's dominating the market?

Commercially, that's the hegemonic operating system. That doesn't speak as much of the any comforts or conveniences that it may grant skilled computer users or programmers, as of the fact that it sells more along with programs made for it.

[fraggle]

Bucket said:

I'd say the one with 3 megs of RAM performs much worse.

Uh huh. And what development environment are they using to write all that Windows software that's dominating the market?

Firstly, you're making a fundamental mistake in assuming that all software development involves writing software to be sold commercially. It actually counts for less than 10% of all software written.

Secondly, the web has made Windows software development less relevant. It's even been said that there is a stigma attached to web developers who are "still using Windows":

3. Apple will continue to trounce everyone else for the preferred geek platform. The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.

- David Heinemeier Hansson

Not that all my friends are web developers, you understand, and I don't know what all of them use in their day jobs, I'm just pointing out that for a pretty large segment, MacOS appears to be their preferred platform when they're at home. The old cliche of "Macs being for idiots who don't know how to use a computer" seems to be something that is long gone.

[Graf Zahl]

fraggle said:

Secondly, the web has made Windows software development less relevant. It's even been said that there is a stigma attached to web developers who are "still using Windows":

So, there's one person 'predicting' this. Great! Is it true or is this just some jerk trying to push his agenda? I can't tell becasue I don't know how to place him.

As I said before, Seeing that Apple gains ground is something I find actually scarier than Microsoft. Should Apple ever become the dominant player I am sure that many, many people will wish that Microsoft regains that position.

[chungy]

Graf Zahl said:
I'll say up front that I have never worked with Linux for longer. That said, I have seen user interfaces that made me puke and ones that looked really nice. But generally saying that Linux UIs (implying all of them) were superior is definitely wrong.

I was mostly referring to the defaults that came in distributions. Of course there's tons of crap ones, but that wasn't the point. Specifically, around that time I was using the default FVWM config that came with Red Hat 5.2.

It was designed for stronger computers. Read my argument above. In the 3 years between Win95 and Win98 a lot has changed about computer hardware. I have used it for 4 years and never had any serious problems with it aside from the deficiencies of the entire series's design (meaning Win95-WinME.) I can't say that it was particularly unstable (ME is a different story...)

Stronger computers doesn't mean that you should -- or that it's a good idea -- add pointless features and consume far more RAM than previously. We didn't enter the gigabyte range of RAM just to continue running only Word.

Maybe that was because Win95 had the typical problems of the first product in a series that were gone in Win98?

What problems? From what I saw, Win95 was vastly superior to Win98, didn't have nearly the amount of problems. Granted you could hack around this by adding the Win95 explorer back onto Win98, and it worked OK like this.

I have no idea what was going on with ME but it was an utter piece of shit. When one of my computer was trashed I re-installed with ME. Worst mistake I ever made. In any case, saying that ME had any enhancements over 98 is just wrong. It was just a slightly overhauled Win98 with a lot of bugs introduced. And it was obvious that M$ did not give this product the QA it needed because they were focussing on XP already.

Win98 enhancements over Win95: Uglier and slower explorer.exe.
WinMe enhancements over Win98: System restore that worked half of the time, more media codecs for the popular stuff of the day, slightly more usable explorer.exe (though still the webified crap).

Fine, it might be unstable as hell, but to say it had nothing over 98 is ridiculous.

You may call XP uninnovative if you look at Win2000 as its predecessor - and in that context it is true. However, you should not forget that for 90% of all users Win98 was the true predecessor - and from that point of view it was a massive improvement - provided you had a system that was good enough of course.

So they finally dumped the piece of shit known as Windows 9x, big deal. That doesn't change my statement.

With Vista the situation is different. Unless you are in dire need of DX10 it doesn't offer much that may motivate upgrading - especially if you have to pay for it.

For exciting DirectX 10 games like Grand Theft Auto IV! ... oh wait

And Microsoft made the fatal mistake of having the security center enabled at a level that basically ensured that it'd piss off users that were transitioning from XP. A smarter approach would have been to do this transition gradually so that people get used to it. I still download new software on occasion that wouldn't work with it enabled.

What people were used to was dumb. That is, always running as administrator and developers making programs require administrator privileges for no reason. Mostly a relic of the old MS-DOS days, though this carried into Windows NT early in development just for familiarity, and of course very little had changed through Windows XP. Windows Vista attempts to rectify it with a sudo clone (UAC) but pretty much fails to convince people it's worth it; on top of the fact that it's intentionally more annoying than it has to be [fact]

So what? Any modern computer has that much space. The system has been optimized for systems which are sold today, not 3 years ago! But that's something people like you tend to conveniently forget.

Maybe you like having your hard disk wasted on useless programs, but most people don't. Oh and being optimized for computers of today is also no excuse for running poorly in 1GB of RAM. I have 1GB of RAM and rarely swap; when I'm just browsing the web it's a mere 300MB and no swap being used, and even that is a sign of excessiveness IMO. If I have a few VMs running and I'm doing something big, maybe I'll start using up some swap.

Biggest - Pile - Of - Nonsense - Ever!
I bought my last 2 computers in the summer of 2004 and last september. THe old one was a 3.2 GHz P4 with XP and 512 MB RAM. The newer one was a CoreQuad 2.4 GHZ with Vista and 3MB RAM. The price was the same so I'd say they are comparable in this regard. And now take a guess which one performs better.

I'd guess the XP machine, unless you're taking the low road of comparing heavily-tweaked Vista (which nobody whose time is important to them will bother) versus untweaked XP. And yes, I'm looking past your 3MB typo and assuming you meant 3GB.

Sure, Vista's multimedia programs are a waste of space but as long as they only consume HD space, who cares?
The percentage of HD space Vista needs on a modern system is still smaller than the percentage XP needed on my 4 year old system. On that one I was constantly fighting with available HD space. On my current one I'm not despite Vista's 'bloat'.

Who cares? My brother, for one, he begged me to shoe-horn Windows XP on his laptop after getting tired of numerous Vista annoyances, including eating up tons of disk space.

That coming from a Linux user is a good one! I'd still say that Vista is more compatible with XP as some Linux distributions among each other.

Is your information from the 90s or something? Or do you mean trying to get a precompiled binary running on Gentoo (only losers that buy into the belief that compiling all their software will make them run fast run Gentoo)? Yeah, that's a real common occurrence </sarcasm>

PROTIP: There's things called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard and Linux Standards Base that pretty much make sure all sane distributions are compatible with each other. Strictly speaking, you can probably find some distro put together by some teenager because it makes him "cool" that won't comply, but the likelihood of running into that situation in the real world is practically zero.

Some people simply don't have a clue how to configure a system. I had problems with only one component in Vista: The security center and its cursed UAC. After that was disabled everything ran fine. Even some older games that had constant problems on my XP system suddenly worked again!

Some people simply don't care about tweaking their system. If your operating system needs to be tweaked just to run well, that's a serious flaw. This is another reason I run Linux over Windows.

These programs were poorly written. Would you compromise your system with holes as big as a meteorite crater just to run some hackish old software? Sometimes you have to draw a line if you are planning for the future.

The programs might be poorly written, I can't argue against that, but backwards compatibility is important to quite some number of people. On my Linux box, I don't need to compromise my system to run them either; hell, I can even remove Wine's default Z: drive so the programs can't possibly access my entire filesystem (usually I just have C: mapped to $HOME/.wine/drive_c, D: to /media/cdrom, and E: to /media/cdemu (fake CD drive); viruses and such can't touch my important documents).

They did not 'intentionally remove' XP driver support. They developed a completely new driver model to make it more secure and the old drivers did not work with this.

At least that's what Microsoft would have you believe, but the truth is quite the contrary. Like I said, it was fully compatible with Windows XP drivers right until the very last build before final release -- this compatibility was necessary for people to test the system, but it would have also been a good thing post-release. Maybe one point against Vista wouldn't exist if they didn't make such a maneuver.

I won't comment on the problems. That was to be expected that such a transition would be painful for some people relying on old hardware. But hasn't this always been the case that things became obsolete even though you'd love to use it again?

Old hard ware isn't always replaceable.

I wonder in which way that is better, especially if it concerns some obscure hardware only few people care about. Chances are you won't get drivers at all for lots of things.

You'd be very wrong on that point. In fact, this posting has turned out to be extremely successful in retrieving device information so that Linux can have drivers for many devices even though they may have only a few dozen users. Note that all it asks is for technical documentation, it's not telling the companies to spend time developing drivers, which they may or may not be willing to do in the first place.

Now to be as blunt as possible:

1. Linux will only become superior if this nonsense with 1000 different distributions, all in some way incompatible with each other, stops. The current Linux landscape makes it a very, very unattractive system for general use. People don't want to be bothered with such shit.

More stuff from the 90s? Have you looked at the current landscape. Potential users basically see three very-well-supported choices today: Ubuntu, Fedora, and SuSE. The days of a thousand distributions have been over for a few years now.

Honestly, I'd love to see Linux emerge as the winner but the general attitude of the Linux community will effectively prevent that from happening any time soon.
The Linux community has to acknowledge that not all is well and find ways to change that. But instead too often people just get shouted down. It's not a place I like to hang out and if that is the case, imagine how the general public might see it.

Link to evidence of this happening?

2. Calling MacOS superior is a joke, right? I am working in software development and in all the years I have not met one single person who likes it! That's correct: Not One Single Person! Some grudgingly use it because they have no choice but those are the ones who complain loudest.
Besides, as long as Apple restricts it to its own hardware it will never become an alternative.

I can't tell if you're joking or you're still relying on information from the 90s -- probably both. Mac OS X is an excellent platform, even for the one part of only running on their own computers (although peripherals generally work no matter who made them).

No, Windows is not perfect but as long as 'savvy computer users' equates to 'nerds with too much time on their hands' it doesn't really matter. These people may be a vocal minority on the internet but in real life they don't really matter and what's worse often have an attitude that only serves to alienate others.
No matter what software related forum I visit, the most annoying bunch aside from the trolls are always the Linux zealots.

Equate it to whatever you want, but you should get up and look out a window sometime. There's even news now of Windows' total market share for desktop systems dropping below 90% (for the first time since 1995); if you don't think this means anything, why don't you go revisit the days Firefox was taking over Internet Explorer's dominance (which is now at 60%, still a majority but not by much)? The news pretty much matches up.

Let's say it this way: If there is one company I trust less than Microsoft, it's Apple. Should they ever gain dominance I fear the very worst for the computer market.

I can't imagine it being any worse than Microsoft. Hey, at least the core operating system is open, which is more than Microsoft can say about Windows.

Microsoft is mainly a software developer so they have never had a chance to dictate the hardware market and this is where Apple is noticably different. Their tendency of locking their own hardware to their software could be a major problem. For example, the company I work for had to buy an overpriced Mac just to be able to do iPhone development. Talk about tying your customers to your own products...

I seriously doubt that you needed to buy a Mac just for that -- could probably have downloaded Darwin and worked from there, at the very least. Anyhow, this is hardly surprising. Microsoft has a similar lockdown on the custom Xbox 360 development called XNA, I'd need a Windows machine to develop on it; kind of saddens me too because I do own an Xbox 360, just no Windows machines.

Neither does my Vista system. The longest I had it running without interruption was 5 days so far. I'm not sure how long it could do because obviously I switch it off for the night. ;)

XP - that's a different animal though. No, I can't run my XP system for longer than a day without rebooting.

Five days is hardly anything, but I have no idea what your usage habits are so I can't tell whether it was put down out of necessity or just habit. Anyway, I'd guess that most people keep their machines up for a max of 3 days (weekends) before shutting down, if a system can stay up for that long at least with no apparent side effects, most people won't notice.

You may be convinced that Linux is secure but I think the criminal energy of virus developers is strong enough that they will find ways to infect Linux as well if it'd be worth the effort. Let's talk about this again in the (improbable) case that Linux gains a significant market share.

I never said it was impossible, but there's a few factors making it highly improbable for a Linux virus to become widespread even if it had 99% (desktop) market share. Good operating system design practices, full disclosure, and fast patch distribution (the virus writers don't typically find the exploits, they just ride on other's findings). All the major distributions make and send out security and bug fixes fast enough to put Microsoft to shame. The virus has practically nowhere to go if all the potential systems are fixed within the same day.

Still, concerning the internet the best strategy is to trust no one. You can never be too well protected. I never had a virus malware infection since I did the first system update on my first XP installation.

You're obviously more knowledgeable than most users, so your own experiences mean little. On the other hand, go try seeing a clueless user's machine (which is the vast majority of Windows users) even with virus/malware/whatever protection on their system. Chances are they have quite a few strains of bad shit.

How true! I still can run many original executables of >10 year old games on Vista. I doubt that the same would be true with Linux, considering that there's even problems with executables compiled for distro A running on B.

Unreal Tournament runs fine on Linux today. Hey, even the original Quake 2 Linux engine runs (the original Quake 1 I can't get to run, on the other hand, but I'd be somewhat surprised if it runs on Vista too). Oh I'm not cheating by using Wine either, I'm talking the actual linux binaries from 9+ years ago. Cross-distribution compatibility is a non-issue almost as much as running old binaries is.

And we really don't need to talk about MacOS, do we? Didn't they change processor architecture twice in this time?

And your point? They retained binary compatibility with the old system via emulation.

[Maes]

Graf Zahl said:

As I said before, Seeing that Apple gains ground is something I find actually scarier than Microsoft. Should Apple ever become the dominant player I am sure that many, many people will wish that Microsoft regains that position.

Apple and their products may be attracting more people than ever before, but it will all come down to cold accounting sooner or later, at least regarding the computer department.

Regardless of historical uses and shortcomings, what is the current Mac target group?

• Brand loyalists? Most definitively yes, in fact Apple should be renamed to "brand loyalty taken to the extreme" ("gone wrong" would be too far fetched, even for me). These people have gotten used to the associated price premiums, custom software, vendor lock-in etc. for years, perhaps even decades. They are the Mac die-hards. No fucking around with them, bitch.
  
• The "glamorous" types, aka those who bought into the whole "Get a Mac" thing because, ultimately, it's the most "cool", "hip" and "groovy" thing to do, especially if they were never anything more than casual users that just wanted a "computer" to "chat" and "share their photos", but also a computer that is "posh" enough. They will fit right in. And have the extra cash to spend for the added glamour and bling and "poshness".
  
• Those fed up with DOS, Windows and IBM PCs, perhaps after decades of use, hoping to find something better after all these years, especially now that the OS is better than even before (yes, that's a fact) and the hardware is not that custom and much more expensive anymore. Well, I really hope they do find peace of mind with their new Macs....
  
• Those willing to experiment. However, since you can't really assemble a Mac from 3rd party components, you need a hefty bounty to get started. Experimenting doesn't preclude also using a PC or the XP dual boot capability. I wouldn't mind a Mac as a second b0x...but I would never spend that much cash on a new computer.
  

MikeRS said:

And your point? They retained binary compatibility with the old system via emulation.

Way to waste CPU power champ, Windows direct binary compatibility pretty much filled Mac's ass with concrete time and again.

ehm... Jokes apart, very few companies except Microsoft and Sun ever took backwards compatibility very seriously. Mac apps on the other hand were mostly incompatible even on successive releases of Mac OS even without hardware architectural changes, but that's something Mac users got used to over the years (and also expected software houses to catch up and provide updated binaries or something).

Feasible if your OS only has a handful of available software titles to begin with, and all from big software houses, not really the case with the bazillion of freeware utilities and dozens, if not hundreds of commercial games appearing every six months on other platforms (like the Wintel).

[Bucket]

fraggle said:

Firstly, you're making a fundamental mistake in assuming that all software development involves writing software to be sold commercially. It actually counts for less than 10% of all software written.

So, "weekend coders", then? Forgive me for not putting much weight in their opinions.

Secondly, the web has made Windows software development less relevant. It's even been said that there is a stigma attached to web developers who are "still using Windows":

Everyone knows that Web developers are the lowest form of developer. Hell, I do, and I am one.

Not that all my friends are web developers, you understand, and I don't know what all of them use in their day jobs, I'm just pointing out that for a pretty large segment, MacOS appears to be their preferred platform when they're at home. The old cliche of "Macs being for idiots who don't know how to use a computer" seems to be something that is long gone.

I never thought that. I have always thought, though, that Macs won't *let you* use them. Kind of like they're always doing their own thing and if they invite you along, you should be grateful. That's my take, anyway.

[Graf Zahl]

MikeRS said:
Stronger computers doesn't mean that you should -- or that it's a good idea -- add pointless features and consume far more RAM than previously. We didn't enter the gigabyte range of RAM just to continue running only Word.

Deliberate misinterpretation by the anti-M$ crowd, nothing more!
In any case, most of the allocated memory on my system is used by installed programs, not the OS. And I don't think it's a secret that most of today's programmers don't care about reducing memory use at all costs. If you can assume that a system has at least 1 or even 2GB you tend to optimize for performance, not for reducing memory use.

What problems? From what I saw, Win95 was vastly superior to Win98, didn't have nearly the amount of problems. Granted you could hack around this by adding the Win95 explorer back onto Win98, and it worked OK like this.

I used both - and if there's one thing Win95 was not it's vastly superior. Plus, are there really people who were insane enough to actually use Windows Explorer? Most useless program ever - in each and every incarnation so this was hardly relevant to me.

Win98 enhancements over Win95: Uglier and slower explorer.exe.
WinMe enhancements over Win98: System restore that worked half of the time, more media codecs for the popular stuff of the day, slightly more usable explorer.exe (though still the webified crap).

Fine, it might be unstable as hell, but to say it had nothing over 98 is ridiculous.

I had the pleasure to work with ME - and that system was so utterly bad I couldn't believe it. All the new features paled in comparison to its problems. I have never had a system that was that unstable before and after.

So they finally dumped the piece of shit known as Windows 9x, big deal. That doesn't change my statement.

No, but it invalidates the point you were making. Win2000 was never marketed to the home user so for those XP was the first true 32bit system.

For exciting DirectX 10 games like Grand Theft Auto IV! ... oh wait

Any game developer who thinks that a DX10-only game is going to be a success needs to be his head examined. Has there even been one such game where M$ was not involved in the production?

What people were used to was dumb. That is, always running as administrator and developers making programs require administrator privileges for no reason. Mostly a relic of the old MS-DOS days, though this carried into Windows NT early in development just for familiarity, and of course very little had changed through Windows XP. Windows Vista attempts to rectify it with a sudo clone (UAC) but pretty much fails to convince people it's worth it; on top of the fact that it's intentionally more annoying than it has to be [fact]

I think we are in agreement about this. Instead of thinking up something that actually guides the user to proper use they annoyed the hell out of them with these ridiculous warnings that only served to render the feature useless. This could have and should have been done differently.

Maybe you like having your hard disk wasted on useless programs, but most people don't. Oh and being optimized for computers of today is also no excuse for running poorly in 1GB of RAM. I have 1GB of RAM and rarely swap; when I'm just browsing the web it's a mere 300MB and no swap being used, and even that is a sign of excessiveness IMO. If I have a few VMs running and I'm doing something big, maybe I'll start using up some swap.

Lucky you! I've got so much software installed that I need that my system rarely runs below 1.2MB used RAM. But most of that is not Windows itself but third party software. Then again, why should this bother me? The remaining 1.8MB are still more than enough for my regular needs.

I'd guess the XP machine, unless you're taking the low road of comparing heavily-tweaked Vista (which nobody whose time is important to them will bother) versus untweaked XP. And yes, I'm looking past your 3MB typo and assuming you meant 3GB.

You guess wrong and now I can finally say that your skewed view of this whole matter renders large parts of your opinion useless.

Who cares? My brother, for one, he begged me to shoe-horn Windows XP on his laptop after getting tired of numerous Vista annoyances, including eating up tons of disk space.

I don't know the specs of his system but it's a fact that too many people get worked up about non-issues. I'd care about HD space if Windows would actually require more than 10% of my available HD space. But it's not even close to that.

Is your information from the 90s or something? Or do you mean trying to get a precompiled binary running on Gentoo (only losers that buy into the belief that compiling all their software will make them run fast run Gentoo)? Yeah, that's a real common occurrence </sarcasm>

PROTIP: There's things called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard and Linux Standards Base that pretty much make sure all sane distributions are compatible with each other. Strictly speaking, you can probably find some distro put together by some teenager because it makes him "cool" that won't comply, but the likelihood of running into that situation in the real world is practically zero.

Please tell me then, why I constantly see software that exists in 10 Linux but only one Windows flavor. If all Linux distros were that compatible with each other and Windows compatibility was as bad as you make out, wouldn't the situation be reversed?

Some people simply don't care about tweaking their system. If your operating system needs to be tweaked just to run well, that's a serious flaw. This is another reason I run Linux over Windows.

Another deliberate misinterpretation. I don't tweak my system. I don't need to tweak my system. I also don't need to fight with software that won't run for this or another reason.
However, I have been in a situation where something I was desperately waiting for because the person who had to deliver it thought he was cool, killed Windows off his system, installed Linux and then had problems getting the software to run that he needed to finish the task.

At least that's what Microsoft would have you believe, but the truth is quite the contrary. Like I said, it was fully compatible with Windows XP drivers right until the very last build before final release -- this compatibility was necessary for people to test the system, but it would have also been a good thing post-release. Maybe one point against Vista wouldn't exist if they didn't make such a maneuver.

Granted, it may not have been the smartest thing but if they hadn't, the situation today would be worse: Nobody would have transitioned to Vista's new driver model and the problems of the old one still would persist because nobody would feel the need to do a 2-track development.

Old hard ware isn't always replaceable.

Old hardware isn't always salvageable, too, especially if its manufacturer goes bankrupt.

You'd be very wrong on that point. In fact, this posting has turned out to be extremely successful in retrieving device information so that Linux can have drivers for many devices even though they may have only a few dozen users. Note that all it asks is for technical documentation, it's not telling the companies to spend time developing drivers, which they may or may not be willing to do in the first place.

Let's be honest: That might work now but should Linux ever gain sufficient popularity I have serious doubts that there's enough manpower to maintain such a system, as noble as it is.

More stuff from the 90s? Have you looked at the current landscape. Potential users basically see three very-well-supported choices today: Ubuntu, Fedora, and SuSE. The days of a thousand distributions have been over for a few years now.

These may be the best but just mentioning these is still ignoring the fact that there's many, many more distributions.

Link to evidence of this happening?

No need to. You have proven my point already in typical Linux user manner.

I can't tell if you're joking or you're still relying on information from the 90s -- probably both. Mac OS X is an excellent platform, even for the one part of only running on their own computers (although peripherals generally work no matter who made them).

I'm dead serious. I don't know a single person who likes Macs. And one of my colleagues who has to work with it is constantly cursing about it. Just mention the words 'Mac' or 'Apple' in his presence and watch him go off...

Equate it to whatever you want, but you should get up and look out a window sometime. There's even news now of Windows' total market share for desktop systems dropping below 90% (for the first time since 1995); if you don't think this means anything, why don't you go revisit the days Firefox was taking over Internet Explorer's dominance (which is now at 60%, still a majority but not by much)? The news pretty much matches up.

I'd love to dump Windows but to be blunt, for what I do Linux is not an alternative. However, Windows dropping below 90% is mostly Apple's gain - and you know my opinion about them...

I can't imagine it being any worse than Microsoft. Hey, at least the core operating system is open, which is more than Microsoft can say about Windows.

Hm, let's see. OS manufacturer: Apple, Hardware manufacturer: Apple. Who is saying that, should they gain control of the market they are not swallowing it whole? Because that's exactly what I'd expect them to do. Look at the iPhone market. Apple still got total control over it and they sure won't relinquish that. Considering that that is their business model I fully expect them to use the same methods for PCs as well.

I seriously doubt that you needed to buy a Mac just for that -- could probably have downloaded Darwin and worked from there, at the very least. Anyhow, this is hardly surprising. Microsoft has a similar lockdown on the custom Xbox 360 development called XNA, I'd need a Windows machine to develop on it; kind of saddens me too because I do own an Xbox 360, just no Windows machines.

... with the major difference being that this wouldn't be much of an expense to games developers because in most cases they need Windows to create a PC version, too, whereas nobody needs a Mac to do Mac development when doing mobile content.

Five days is hardly anything, but I have no idea what your usage habits are so I can't tell whether it was put down out of necessity or just habit. Anyway, I'd guess that most people keep their machines up for a max of 3 days (weekends) before shutting down, if a system can stay up for that long at least with no apparent side effects, most people won't notice.

I don't run a server so obviously I switch my computer off when I go to bed - unless I need to do lengthy processes over night.

I never said it was impossible, but there's a few factors making it highly improbable for a Linux virus to become widespread even if it had 99% (desktop) market share. Good operating system design practices, full disclosure, and fast patch distribution (the virus writers don't typically find the exploits, they just ride on other's findings). All the major distributions make and send out security and bug fixes fast enough to put Microsoft to shame. The virus has practically nowhere to go if all the potential systems are fixed within the same day.

You are forgetting the human factor. As long as Linux stays restricted to technically knowledgeable people you are correct, this will be enough to ensure that there is no place to attack.

But once you have to factor in the 'normal' crowd that don't have this knowledge things look completely different.

Just a reminder: The most damaging computer attacks I can remember were done against security holes that were already fixed at the time of the attack and the only reason they succeeded was carelessness by the operators of the attacked computers - because they did *not* do what you assume to be the guard against virus infections: frequent updates!

You're obviously more knowledgeable than most users, so your own experiences mean little. On the other hand, go try seeing a clueless user's machine (which is the vast majority of Windows users) even with virus/malware/whatever protection on their system. Chances are they have quite a few strains of bad shit.

Sure - and if these people used Linux things would not look much different. And you can tell me as much as you want about system security - they will still get their system infected!

Unreal Tournament runs fine on Linux today. Hey, even the original Quake 2 Linux engine runs (the original Quake 1 I can't get to run, on the other hand, but I'd be somewhat surprised if it runs on Vista too).

Probably not, considering that Q1 was a DOS game... ;)
Q2 still runs fine for me though. Unreal, too.

Oh I'm not cheating by using Wine either, I'm talking the actual linux binaries from 9+ years ago. Cross-distribution compatibility is a non-issue almost as much as running old binaries is.

To take your response literally, saying that something is 'almost' no problem, still means that there is a problem. But why, then, do I often find so many different binaries for the same Linux program (if binaries are distributed at all)?

[chungy]

Deliberate misinterpretation by the anti-M$ crowd, nothing more!

Oh, calling me anti-Microsoft because I disagree with an apologist. Bonus points for misspelling it as M$!

In any case, most of the allocated memory on my system is used by installed programs, not the OS. And I don't think it's a secret that most of today's programmers don't care about reducing memory use at all costs. If you can assume that a system has at least 1 or even 2GB you tend to optimize for performance, not for reducing memory use.

Doesn't make it a good idea to use however much RAM people are expected to have just because. You should allocate more memory because you need it, not because you can. The end result is that despite more powerful computers, people are still limited to the same number of programs they were 20 years ago, for the same tasks even.

I used both - and if there's one thing Win95 was not it's vastly superior. Plus, are there really people who were insane enough to actually use Windows Explorer? Most useless program ever - in each and every incarnation so this was hardly relevant to me.

You're kidding right? How often do you see someone not use Explorer? Besides the "cool/1337" crowd, almost no one.

I had the pleasure to work with ME - and that system was so utterly bad I couldn't believe it. All the new features paled in comparison to its problems. I have never had a system that was that unstable before and after.

Hmm, I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I guess I'll just stop on this one :-)

No, but it invalidates the point you were making. Win2000 was never marketed to the home user so for those XP was the first true 32bit system.

Inexperience with previous systems doesn't exactly make the descendant a "first", but I'm not sure exactly what point you're trying to make anyway.

Any game developer who thinks that a DX10-only game is going to be a success needs to be his head examined. Has there even been one such game where M$ was not involved in the production?

I almost want to dismiss this immediately by usage of "M$", but the other thing to dismiss it is the fact I already mentioned GTA IV.

Lucky you! I've got so much software installed that I need that my system rarely runs below 1.2MB [sic] used RAM. But most of that is not Windows itself but third party software. Then again, why should this bother me? The remaining 1.8MB [sic] are still more than enough for my regular needs.

I've got tons of software installed too! I'd probably fill up my whole swap if I try to run everything at once! You don't exactly need to run everything at once.

I don't know the specs of his system but it's a fact that too many people get worked up about non-issues. I'd care about HD space if Windows would actually require more than 10% of my available HD space. But it's not even close to that.

120GB hard disk, about a ~30GB C:\WINDOWS directory. That's more than 10%, and it's a fairly common hard disk size -- hell, there's new Vista systems with smaller disks still being shipped. His Windows XP C:\WINDOWS directory is about 3GB at current, mostly filled up with hotfix backups.

Please tell me then, why I constantly see software that exists in 10 Linux but only one Windows flavor. If all Linux distros were that compatible with each other and Windows compatibility was as bad as you make out, wouldn't the situation be reversed?

No idea what software you're looking at, but most often from what I've seen there's just a Deb package (Debian-based distros, like Ubuntu or Debian itself) and an RPM package (Red Hat-based distros, like Fedora or SUSE), if the software isn't in the operating system repositories themselves, at that. The different packages aren't provided for different binary compatibility, but rather just installing the software into your distro's prefered package management database. You can even use the `alien` program to convert from RPM to Deb, or vice versa, if you need to. Plus your question is nullified by the fact that there's only one vendor allowed to make an operating system called "Windows", there's only one distribution of it.

Another deliberate misinterpretation. I don't tweak my system. I don't need to tweak my system. I also don't need to fight with software that won't run for this or another reason.

Didn't you say that you need to remove a bunch of crap from Vista to make it usable? In fact, I'll make the point without having you to answer:

Graf Zahl said:
So I suspect that you did not configure your system properly. If you want Vista to work you HAVE to disable UAC, despite all the warnings Windows tries to annoy you with and the nonsense that's being said about it being useful. It's not and any Vista machine with it enabled will exhibit the problems many people complain about.

If this isn't tweaking, I don't know what is. @_@

However, I have been in a situation where something I was desperately waiting for because the person who had to deliver it thought he was cool, killed Windows off his system, installed Linux and then had problems getting the software to run that he needed to finish the task.

Call him an idiot and ignore. Horray for anedotal evidence (of which I myself am guilty too)!

Granted, it may not have been the smartest thing but if they hadn't, the situation today would be worse: Nobody would have transitioned to Vista's new driver model and the problems of the old one still would persist because nobody would feel the need to do a 2-track development.

Worse because their hardware would work right out of the box? I have no idea if Vista's new model is actually superior, but it would seem rather silly either way to remove XP compatibility deliberately.

Old hardware isn't always salvageable, too, especially if its manufacturer goes bankrupt.

Did I say it was? In my example about the Zip drive, I needed to find some information on some disks. These things are like 10-14 years old, I'll never use them again, and I didn't want to spend money on a new USB Zip drive. The parallel port one might've been slow, but it got the job done and it was still fully supported thanks to the wonderful kernel maintainers. I would be extremely surprised if it could be used in Vista (or if Vista supports the parallel port at all).

Let's be honest: That might work now but should Linux ever gain sufficient popularity I have serious doubts that there's enough manpower to maintain such a system, as noble as it is.

That's rather pesimistic considering Linux already supports almost all hardware that's out there. New/different hardware isn't usually so different -- same-model chips are used in a wide variety of devices. What do some Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, and Broadcom wireless adapters have in common? They all use Ralink! Same driver for all of the different brands! Compare to Windows where each vendor deliberately makes their drivers incompatible with the others despite using the exact same hardware.

These may be the best but just mentioning these is still ignoring the fact that there's many, many more distributions.

There always will be, such is the nature of things, but the point was that it does not matter anymore. Look at http://distrowatch.com/ and tell me how many distributions from the top-10 page ranking you're familiar with? I personally am unfamiliar with PCLinuxOS and Dreamlinux -- and that's out of the top-10. Out of these ten, five are Debian-based and the other five are Red Hat-based (I'm not kidding, check the facts on Wikipedia). You have only two real targets -- that is the packaging you use.

No need to. You have proven my point already in typical Linux user manner.

Oh yes, one person disagreeing with you is proof enough. lol. On the other hand, you've pretty much repeated all the things I expect from a Microsoft shill.

I'd love to dump Windows but to be blunt, for what I do Linux is not an alternative. However, Windows dropping below 90% is mostly Apple's gain - and you know my opinion about them...

Actually it's really Linux's gain, especially with a 30% share in the netbook market. Disruption from the low-end, yes, but the same thing happened with PCs taking over the minicomputer market ("That would never happen!").

Hm, let's see. OS manufacturer: Apple, Hardware manufacturer: Apple. Who is saying that, should they gain control of the market they are not swallowing it whole?

Well, the DOJ would have a hayday with a new antitrust trial, that's for sure ;)

Because that's exactly what I'd expect them to do. Look at the iPhone market. Apple still got total control over it and they sure won't relinquish that. Considering that that is their business model I fully expect them to use the same methods for PCs as well.

Apple has control of an Apple product, big deal.

... with the major difference being that this wouldn't be much of an expense to games developers because in most cases they need Windows to create a PC version, too, whereas nobody needs a Mac to do Mac development when doing mobile content.

XNA is not targetted at commercial game developers, you missed the point. Oh, and I'll bet that you'll need a Linux machine to do Android development, so everyone's guilty of the same non-existent issue. (Hint: Xbox uses Win32/DirectX albeit a custom OS, iPhone uses OS X, Android uses Linux.)

You are forgetting the human factor. As long as Linux stays restricted to technically knowledgeable people you are correct, this will be enough to ensure that there is no place to attack.

But once you have to factor in the 'normal' crowd that don't have this knowledge things look completely different.

Just a reminder: The most damaging computer attacks I can remember were done against security holes that were already fixed at the time of the attack and the only reason they succeeded was carelessness by the operators of the attacked computers - because they did *not* do what you assume to be the guard against virus infections: frequent updates!

From what I've seen, Windows users tend to ignore or completely turn off updates just because of how annoying the cycle is (sometimes it takes more than two reboots to get it all done, plus you can hardly use the computer while it is being updated). A habit that needs to be broken for sure, but it's not any harder than getting rid of a silly Drive == Letter attachment. Case in point: my mother. Configure her system to install updates in the background every day, she doesn't even notice; well about once a month or so a kernel update comes that needs her to reoot, but it's usually only seen in the morning when she doesn't have anything important open yet. So far no complaints.

Sure - and if these people used Linux things would not look much different. And you can tell me as much as you want about system security - they will still get their system infected!

How? If you're technically inclined and have a relation with the person, you might as well setup ssh on the machine (no harder than installing the ssh package, btw) so you can do administration remotely. Or just train users that they don't need root for everything, in fact they'd need root for very little; this is a task that is not that hard. Programs are just designed more sensibly.

Probably not, considering that Q1 was a DOS game... ;)
Q2 still runs fine for me though. Unreal, too.

WinQuake, you don't need to use the excuse that it was a DOS game :)

To take your response literally, saying that something is 'almost' no problem, still means that there is a problem. But why, then, do I often find so many different binaries for the same Linux program (if binaries are distributed at all)?

'Almost' was used in the sense of running decade-plus old binaries, which is very uncommon in the real world of Linux, not in the sense of cross-distribution compatibility. Would you mind elaborating on the later if you've had any experiences with such issues?

[EarthQuake]

God dammit, guys. Leave some forum for the rest of us.

[Craigs]

Jesus Christ, it's amazing how quickly a simple poll can turn into a massive epic debate.

[lupinx-Kassman]

I'll settle with a simple answer. My old computer used windows 3.1. It was later upgraded to Windows 98. After that I got a new computer using a bootlegged version of Windows XP for a long time (because of this I could not update it). Finally, I got Vista which I am using right now. Of the three, I am guessing I probably used Windows XP the most.

[Jodwin]

I have a laptop set to dual boot to Vista Biz and Xubuntu (The "light" version of Ubuntu, hey, did you know that even just Ubuntu comes in rainbow color...distributions? Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu...). The laptop has some AMD Turion dual core CPU, 2GB ram and stuff and yes, I'm having more GUI lag in Xubuntu than I do in that "horrible and bloated" Vista. And yes, I'm serious, the "light" Ubuntu is being slower in everyday use than Vista is. Beat that.

Btw, the laptop originally had 1GB of ram. Back then Vista ran pretty much the same as XP on 512MB, which you could argue is somehow "bad" of Vista. But then again, these days ram costs, what, one tenth of what it did back in 2001? Who the hell cares about some 512MB when it costs almost nothing. Jesus Christ.

Oh and one day last week I had the pleasure to visit my university's Linux class for the first time to compile and test my Linux programming class coursework (the only reason I got Xubuntu in the first place). The computers there were running Debian and, well, they even more ridiculously slow than Xubuntu was. I'll admit the boxes they were using weren't really top notch, but weren't you (Mike-RS) just saying that Linux doesn't suffer of needless bloat? If that would be true, then why was that Debian worse than running 98 on my old computer from years ago with I don't even know what shit it had?

[chungy]

Craigs said:

Jesus Christ, it's amazing how quickly a simple poll can turn into a massive epic debate.

It's inevitable. (Plus I find it amusing)

[Chilly Willy]

Graf Zahl said:

Please tell me then, why I constantly see software that exists in 10 Linux but only one Windows flavor. If all Linux distros were that compatible with each other and Windows compatibility was as bad as you make out, wouldn't the situation be reversed?

<snip>

To take your response literally, saying that something is 'almost' no problem, still means that there is a problem. But why, then, do I often find so many different binaries for the same Linux program (if binaries are distributed at all)?

This is an easy one to answer - because the people running the particular distro KNOW that the average user is an idiot and will bug them about whether a particular program is compatible if it's not specifically for their particular distro. At least, that's the primary reason. People see the program in the SUSE 10 repo and are satisfied that it will work properly on SUSE 10. The same exact binary will probably be in the SUSE 8/9/11/etc repo with only a name change.

There are other reasons as well. For example, there are two primary desktop environments on linux: Gnome and KDE. There are others (XFCE is gaining strength rapidly), but 95% or more will be one of those two. So you may need two different packages to account for the difference in how the programs are entered into the desktop menus. There are two primary package formats: RPM and DEB. Again, there are others, but those two make the vast majority. Then you generally have two main platforms: x86 and AMD64. If you support all those options in your pre-built binary packages, you have eight different packages.

But none of that matters as the vast majority of programs are kept in a well maintained repository. The distro comes with a nice GUI driven package manager that allows you to install/update/remove the programs with the click of a button. Linux makes Windows look like shit on program management. The sure sign of a Windows fanboy/MS shill is the claim that linux makes it hard to install programs - especially if they claim that linux makes you compile your programs. That hasn't been the case in many years with the odd exception that proves the rule.

On an unrelated note, I run my linux systems 24/7 and have not had to reboot for anything other than a kernel update (or a REALLY low-level kernel system like dbus) in going on four years. I can get XP to run perhaps three days at most - usually far less - before it bombs the entire machine. Maybe Vista is better, but I don't care to check as linux fills my needs nicely.

[Graf Zahl]

I'll stop here. I have no desire to reply to another excessively long post. MikeRS already confirmed all my suspicions.

Just to make it short: The problem with the Linux crowd is to deny that there is a problem that prevents it from going mainstream.

Unless it is realized that the current way of doing things will forever lock Linux in the 'expert' corner these discussions will endlessly continue.

As long as some software developers feel the need to provide different binaries for different Linux distributions all talk about compatibility remains empty talk.

As long as people have to compile software from the source the system is not end-user friendly.

I am not talking about people like him and me but about the average Joe.

Hell, even I don't want to bother with this stuff, even though I know what's going on.

Complain all you want about Windows - but these problems don't exist there - and that's why it will remain as dominant as it is.

[chungy]

Nobody denied anything, simply debunked all of your claims. There are problems, no one denies that, but none that would actually affect acceptance on the mainstream desktop. Arguably Windows is guilty of the same issues that should have prevented its acceptance (hard to install, configure, etc) if it weren't for bullying OEMs.

Well anyway, thanks for playing. :-)

[RTC_Marine]

Good to see windows winning the race in the polls ;)

[Jodwin]

Also on a somewhat related note, what's up with all you Linux folks feeling the need to keep your computers running 24/7? What benefit does it bring to you to be able to run it at night? Doesn't it show in your electricity bills, too, and I'd think it's not very environmental friendly either.

(note: I'm not saying that Windows is any greener, I'm just wondering why the hell can't you shut down your freaking systems when you're sleeping?)

[Csonicgo]

MikeRS said:

Nobody denied anything, simply debunked all of your claims. There are problems, no one denies that, but none that would actually affect acceptance on the mainstream desktop. Arguably Windows is guilty of the same issues that should have prevented its acceptance (hard to install, configure, etc) if it weren't for bullying OEMs.

Well anyway, thanks for playing. :-)

I've seen better debunking from a 9/11 truther. What you did do though, is make me realise how Linux will never make it on the desktop.

Windows hard to install-- that's a good one. Holy shit, I remember sweating bullets pushing enter all those times.

No, Windows is mainstream king because Windows did easily what people wanted when the PC world was filled with shite DOS Shells. It wasn't even a DOS Shell in a sense, but it's own OPERATING SYSTEM (:o), with its own programs (besides a clock). I didn't see Deskmate do any of that shit. (Go on what you want about Digital Research, when that really had nothing to do with windows then, and now.)

It's funny how, when your product is good, most people will buy it and use it, it's really that simple. oh, you could say it was forcing OEMs but I remember quite well machines being sold with Mandrake well into the mid 90s, even on Wal-Mart brand computers.

Jodwin said:

Also on a somewhat related note, what's up with all you Linux folks feeling the need to keep your computers running 24/7? What benefit does it bring to you to be able to run it at night? Doesn't it show in your electricity bills, too, and I'd think it's not very environmental friendly either.

(note: I'm not saying that Windows is any greener, I'm just wondering why the hell can't you shut down your freaking systems when you're sleeping?)

E-Penis.

[chungy]

I have an old Compaq Pentium 3 (running OpenBSD, actually) always on for an IRC client and web server.

But anyhow, I always suspend my laptop at night. My uptime is usually double of what my system has actually been up for, if I haven't rebooted for whatever reason.

[Graf Zahl]

Csonicgo said:

I've seen better debunking from a 9/11 truther. What you did do though, is make me realise how Linux will never make it on the desktop.

I think that perfectly sums up the essence of the whole discussion - and which is the main point I was trying to make. It's too bad that it will never reach the people it has to reach. If they continue as they do Windows will never be dethroned.

[HackNeyed]

Jodwin said:

Also on a somewhat related note, what's up with all you Linux folks feeling the need to keep your computers running 24/7? What benefit does it bring to you to be able to run it at night?

People have their reasons. I have a couple reasons myself. On cable my downloads go faster at night. I can encode a shit load of videos for my portable player or Media Center... My Vista HTPC is my VCR though I do have this weird sound bug that makes me reboot often. I think it has to do with the HDMI detection but anyway, grr.

I run XP for days and weeks often without issue. I download, game, watch videos, install software (sometimes the install makes me reboot), chat and cam, encode, plug and unplug devices... all in a week without reboot, well, when I have that kind of time. I think its my download manager that hangs and forces me to reboot most often.

I wonder what it is these people are doing that cause a reboot so often.

-EDIT: Oh yeah and my Mom hibernates her XP laptop and doesn't bookmark ANYTHING or close ANYTHING so she leaves her Firefox tabs and her programs up and wont reboot the thing for months on end... By then I finally come around and reboot the thing to speed it up and I think it's really only sluggish cause all the programs are taxing the hardware and not because windows is unstable. Now Win98 was a different matter.

[Maes]

Graf Zahl said:

Just to make it short: The problem with the Linux crowd is to deny that there is a problem that prevents it from going mainstream.

Bingo. This has been spotted long ago and even has a name: Linux Fault Threshold. Heh.

[Fredrik]

Bucket said:

So, "weekend coders", then? Forgive me for not putting much weight in their opinions.

I'm pretty sure fraggle is referring to in-house software (business logic, intranets, maintenance scripts, ...), embedded systems, etc.

[Catoptromancy]

Maes said:

Bingo. This has been spotted long ago and even has a name: Linux Fault Threshold. Heh.

And nothing has changed at all in the last 7 years to make linux more user friendly.

[Maes]

Catoptromancy said:

And nothing has changed at all in the last 7 years to make linux more user friendly.

Well...actually my abit Airpace didn't work with it, even though a "binary blob" closed-source driver was included...and yeah, I know, it's the manufacturer's fault for not opening up the specification etc. There, LFT, and from someone who couldn't care less.

[Remilia Scarlet]

I'm impressed, this has turned into a more heated debate than Christians vs Atheists or Emacs vs the Venom Incarnate. Though I think what's surprised me more (though perhaps I shouldn't be, since I'd expect more Windows and Linux users to be present in the Doom community) is that the OS X people have been pretty silent.

[fraggle]

Bucket said:

So, "weekend coders", then? Forgive me for not putting much weight in their opinions.

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about the most knowledgeable, most skilled programmers that I know; some of them might use Windows at work, I don't know. The point I'm making is that their preferred platform for their spare time is a Mac. Graf Zahl's original point was that he has never met anyone in software development who likes Macs; I'm pointing out that a lot of the smartest programmers that I know "like it" enough for it to be their preferred choice of platform.

Everyone knows that Web developers are the lowest form of developer. Hell, I do, and I am one.

Well, I thought I was clear when I said "Not that all my friends are web developers, you understand". I'm not saying that the people I'm referring to that use Macs are all web developers.

Plus, tarring all web developers as "the lowest form of developer" is frankly absurd. Yes, if all you're doing is "designing web pages", that's pretty boring, but with all of the "web apps" appearing in the past few years, it has become more like a UI for more complicated things.

Graf Zahl said:

So, there's one person 'predicting' this. Great! Is it true or is this just some jerk trying to push his agenda? I can't tell becasue I don't know how to place him.

David Heinemeier Hansson is the author of Ruby on Rails. So hopefully his opinion counts for something. I'm not a web developer myself, so I'm assuming he's probably better qualified to gauge the general feeling among web developers than I am.

Graf Zahl said:

Just to make it short: The problem with the Linux crowd is to deny that there is a problem that prevents it from going mainstream

Hey, I agreed with you! :-)

[Maes]

I've never seen so much Windows pimping and pwnage packed in a single forum before. Pure win. No wonder that advocates of certain other OSes are silent, while others struggle in vain...

...for what it's worth, at least. I wonder when they will make an edition of "Ciao Darwin" with Windows vs Linux users... (for those not familiar with the format, it's an Italian variety game show which pits teams of opposing "factions" to compete in various "tests". Examples include Employers vs Employees, Blondes vs Brunettes, 20 yo girls vs 40 yo women etc.

Wow...that was quite OT.

[Graf Zahl]

Maes said:

Bingo. This has been spotted long ago and even has a name: Linux Fault Threshold. Heh.

Great article! It was the best laugh I had today. And even though it is old and hopelessly exaggerated it quite effectively nails down the problem I have with Linux. Interesting how some things change and others stay the same - even after so many years... :D

DJ_Haruko said:

I'm impressed, this has turned into a more heated debate than Christians vs Atheists or Emacs vs the Venom Incarnate.

Didn't you know? Linux is not an OS, it's a religion. Its users are not just simple users, they are believers. :D:D:D

(and before anyone accuses me of believing in Microsoft, let me make clear that I don't. But the fact is, they still offer the best overall solution for my problems - as sad as it is.)

Venom Incarnate.

Heh! :P