Why Linux sucks

[laurentius]

Elijah, I dont think your post was laughable, in fact it was great. Ted's the one whos laughable

[Whaleboy]

Thankyou! In all fairness to Ted, he didnt say it was laughable, that honour I must bestow to Asher.

[Whaleboy]

By the way laurentius, I love your location (Helsinki) and envy your choice of women!

[Asher]

The very idea that Windows is not as "powerful" as Linux is extraordinarily laughable.

I also find it hard to believe you only managed a 4 day uptime with XP, seeing as only the beta has crashed on me and I run it on 3 computers that are on 24/7, and I use the hell out of my computer...

[laurentius]

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Asher
The very idea that Windows is not as "powerful" as Linux is extraordinarily laughable.

I also find it hard to believe you only managed a 4 day uptime with XP, seeing as only the beta has crashed on me and I run it on 3 computers that are on 24/7, and I use the hell out of my computer...

i concur. my main box can pull an uptime of 4+ days easily, and my servers hardly ever shut off.

my webserver box currently has an uptime of 11 days 13 hours 27 minutes and 41 seconds, and thats only because i had to turn it off while moving back from uni

[Whaleboy]

Then your hardware must be more windows friendly than mine.

However, on all three of my computers, XP ran for no more than 4 days without crashing on me (I take crash to mean a forced reboot... application crashes were far more common... while I could expect no more than perhaps one a week from Linux/BSD).

Over here, I remember reading a MS advert advertising a 16 day uptime for windows XP, just before it was released

In all fairness, a friend of mine gets about a weeks uptime with Windows 2000 server, before it slows down and dies. Unfortunately, he doesnt want to switch to Linux, because he doesnt understand that running it does not hand control of ones PC over to a band of hackers. Compiled code that has been independently audited for security holes on many occasions by many different programmers, is not handing over control. That would be spyware in certain proprietery systems that will go unnamed.

I find linux to be extraordinarily more powerful! In KDE, with the exception of some games (the games that I play run perfectly well in Wine, (UT, Max Paine etc) and some natively to linux (UT2K3), I find I get much more power than in Windows, I can simply do more stuff.

Sure the sheer number of apps doesnt make it as aesthetic or easy to use (although a little theming sorts that out), but I find that having more system, package and application tools at my disposal means that I can do stuff faster and more efficiently. OSS contains little or no bloat, so my system can concentrate on performing tasks, rather than executing pointless lines of bloat code. IIRC, windows 2000 had upwards of 30 million lines of code, and god knows about XP!

My optimised Linux system has a tiny fraction of that, a little more in FreeBSD than linux.

The commandline is another aspect that makes linux more powerful...
Burning a CD
Windows: click, click click, reboot, click, click, keyboard, click, click.... 2 minutes

*nix CLI: cdrecord -v -dev=0,0,0 -speed=40 -eject image.iso ... 6 seconds.

Of course, I can further reduce that by spending about a minute writing a script, meaning all I have to type is:

burncd image.iso

To make a CD image, a similar procedure and similar length of time. Of course, I can string the two together to master and write a CD with a few keystrokes.

Catch my drift?

[Whaleboy]

Of course all that needs to be learned, but 4 months ago, I had never used BSD or Linux!

Meantime, my mum is still struggling with WinXP on her laptop, after a year after using Mac OS! Learning new ideas takes time, but the reward is well worth it!

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by elijah
Of course all that needs to be learned, but 4 months ago, I had never used BSD or Linux!

Meantime, my mum is still struggling with WinXP on her laptop, after a year after using Mac OS! Learning new ideas takes time, but the reward is well worth it!

right. theres my problem.

it takes time to learn, and it's often frustrating.

if i was a casual PC user, i might be able to convert after some trial and error, but i'm not, i'm hardcore .

when i need to do something, i need it done, now. i dont have time to fiddle with it until uit lets me do exactly what i want.

i TRIED converting to linux this fall, i honestly did. i started compiling my compsci projects with g++ or whatever the hell it was, then i had to tar it blah blah blah, and most of it was CLI stuff.

long story short, it took longer than it should have, and i still didnt completely understand it all. also, i dont know why, but it was a ***** about the networked printers on campus. my school uses some weird authencation system, and theres probably a linux way to do it but i didnt have time to find it.

and gaming. god. windows wins hands down.

i know. there are emulators. there are games for linux. i know.

but i have easily over $1000 in games, made for WINDOWS, that don't work in LINUX without hours of tweaking.

oh, not to mention, the first time i tried linux (back in RedHat 5 days) i was told to "write my own ethernet drivers". that sure set me fack a few years.

[Asher]

elijah: It sounds to me like one of the following is happening:
1) You are simply making up your WinXP and 2000 uptime figures
2) You have extraordinarily bad hardware and/or bad drivers
3) You misconfigured something

Because Windows 2000 and XP have both been extraordinarily stable on every computer and server I've used them on. In fact, XWindows + KDE/Gnome crash more than Windows does.

I also simply don't understand why your friend's Win2K's server would slow down after a week, because I used Windows 2000 and rebooted it about once a month for updates, and I used programs like Visual Studio, 3DSMax, Photoshop, tons of games, etc. rather heavily, and I didn't have any problems with slowdowns or crashing.

And I think my experience is the norm, rather than the exception.

I know how to use Linux, I've got a dual-boot with WinXP and Linux, but I avoid Linux whenever possible. Quite simply, it's uglier, KDE3 is less responsive than WinXP and more buggy, the software selection blows, you need to jump through 100 hoops, sideways while on fire, to do simple things like enable font anti-aliasing (which still sucks in quality) or change the desktop resolution.

Linux is simply not a good desktop OS. BeOS, MacOS, NeXTSTEP, OS/2, etc. are all way better. The only people who insist Linux is the better desktop OSes are those who are obviously incapable of seeing things as they are, but rather how they want them to be...

[Whaleboy]

That is of course a fair point. If you want a system that "just works", that gives you a reasonable system with no effort (and you are prepared to accept the consequences) then by all means, windows is the best choice.

I get better performace with a bit of tweaking, and a more customised system. Half an hour to a couple of hours spent changing settings, moulding the system to your hardware will pay dividends.

If you dont want that but dont want the bad stuff with windows, then use Knoppix... it does most of the donkey work of configuration for you (more than winXP install), runs from cd requires no installation. It is a good tool for getting up to speed with linux, one I found very useful. It is probably also the best recovery tool available (the fact that it is linux is incidental), every home with a dvd and cd-rw drive should have a knoppix disk!

I concede that for the moment, windows is superior when it comes to games, of that there can be no doubt. $1000 (thats about £600/700)??? Thats incredible!! I probably have maybe £100 worth. Buy porn instead!

Linux is making strides when it comes to games. Its superior multi-tasking capabilities, as well as better hardware abstraction makes it technologically superior for games, although obviously the industry plays to MS monopoly. Within 2/3 years, expect Linux to be a better gaming platform than Windows.

If you would like to try again with Linux, either download a knoppix cd (http://www.knoppix.net) or buy one from an online retailer (I know its free software, and its still free, you're just paying for the cd, their time and risk in selling it etc). If you need help with that, dont hesitate to PM me, I can point you in the right direction. Linux/BSD is often a different skill to windows, unless you are a mouse pusher who will just use KDE/Gnome, but it is useful to know imo.

While windows "just works", *nix works better

[Asher]

IIRC, windows 2000 had upwards of 30 million lines of code, and god knows about XP!

My optimised Linux system has a tiny fraction of that, a little more in FreeBSD than linux.

Please tell me you're joking.

The 30M line figure includes:
IE, Explorer.exe, the kernel, shippnig device drivers, IIS, ASP, Windows Calculator (solitaire, etc), tools like System Restore, etcetc.

If you counted the lines of code for all of the equivalent Linux Distro code, it'd be that size or higher.

Hell, Linux distros come on 3-4 CDs now while Windows uses less than one.

BTW, the Xbox uses Windows 2000, and the OS takes up less than 500KB of RAM total...

[Asher]

Originally posted by elijah
Linux is making strides when it comes to games.

Like how? IIRC, Loki Games went bankrupt, and it was by far the best movement forward for Linux gaming...

Its superior multi-tasking capabilities

How do you figure? Last time I checked, only the latest "beta" 2.5 kernels had decent multitasking performance compared to Windows. Even then, the latencies are higher on Linux 2.5 than Windows XP.

as well as better hardware abstraction

Better hardware abstraction?? You have to be kidding me! I had to recompile my kernel so I could get half-functioning audio! Linux's "hardware abstraction" is non-existant for the most part, except for things like SDL, which still are pathetic in comparison to DirectX 9. Not to mention the GDI+ in Windows is faster and better than XWin...

Within 2/3 years, expect Linux to be a better gaming platform than Windows.

You're totally out to lunch, man...

While windows "just works", *nix works better

The difference for me, is Windows works and *nix doesn't. ARTS is the only sound server that works for me in Linux right now, it doesn't use my USB devices properly (digicam, mp3 player, joystick), the fonts are still hideous, I patch more security glitches weekly on my distro than in Windows, and the lack of apps make it fairly useless.

[Whaleboy]

Ash: Try to keep this non-personal and rational. On your dual-boot system, switch to a newer distro. You said KDE3. That implies one installed sometime a few months back. Get either Mandrake 9.1, Red Hat 9, or Slackware 9.0 if you are able. Try Knoppix 3.2 if you dont want to install anything. KDE 3.1 will blow you away!

I dont think I have extraordinarily bad hardware, I think it may be slightly faulty (we all know Linux to be more fault-tolerant than windows), or maybe windows doesnt like it. I installed all the specific drivers I could, but I guess there may be some generic thing in Windows that refuses to budge. I know I didnt reconfigure anything. Either way, I get near-perfect performance from Linux/BSD.

As for the win2k server, I tried everything I knew, and everything he knew, little or no joy. The system was a 2Ghz Pentium 4, with 2048 Megs DDRRAM it shouldnt have been performing so lamely.

As for my system, it is a 2.8GHz P4 with 512 megs DDRRAM, it was sluggish and unstable in XP, as I have said, perfectly fine in Linux and BSD.

XFree86 and KDE do still occasionally crash, but those are application crashes, not forced reboots. If X crashes, i type "startx". If windows GUI crashes (because everything is all compiled together and isnt modular), the whole thing goes down.

The package selection can be changed easily. The pkg management tools are superior to windows, even microserfs admit that, so you can easily mod it. However, like I said, if you want something that works out of the box, choose either knoppix or windows. If you want something that works out of the box, and operable with other stuff, with a simple interface that doesnt require synapse use, choose XP.

"And I think my experience is the norm, rather than the exception."

I think my LUG will have something to say about that. I guess with windows and perhaps to a lesser extend *nix, hardware is a lottery. I know *nix to be more fault tolerant, so its safer with *nix.

[Asher]

Originally posted by elijah
Ash: Try to keep this non-personal and rational. On your dual-boot system, switch to a newer distro. You said KDE3. That implies one installed sometime a few months back. Get either Mandrake 9.1, Red Hat 9, or Slackware 9.0 if you are able. Try Knoppix 3.2 if you dont want to install anything. KDE 3.1 will blow you away!

I actually run KDE 3.1, thank you, and I use Libranet (basically it's now Debian Unstable) which is way better than Mandrake 9.1, RedHat 9, and Slackware. I've actually tried those all at various points in their lifetime.

As for my system, it is a 2.8GHz P4 with 512 megs DDRRAM, it was sluggish and unstable in XP, as I have said, perfectly fine in Linux and BSD.

I'm sorry man, but you have to try to make this more believable. You really must've f*cked it up if a 2.8GHz P4 with 512MB of DDR was sluggish, let alone unstable.

XFree86 and KDE do still occasionally crash, but those are application crashes, not forced reboots. If X crashes, i type "startx". If windows GUI crashes (because everything is all compiled together and isnt modular), the whole thing goes down.

This is patently bull****, and shows you don't know what you're talking about. If the Windows GUI goes down (Explorer.EXE), it either relaunches automatically or you can do CTRL-ALT-DEL, and launch a new Explorer.EXE. Not only does it launch again without a reboot, but all of your applications you had open are still there.

The pkg management tools are superior to windows, even microserfs admit that, so you can easily mod it.

Linux having better package management tools??

Have you ever used RPMs, darling?