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Will there ever be a decent alternative to Windows?

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  • #1

    Will there ever be a decent alternative to Windows?

    Sorry Linux fans, I think your OS sucks.

    I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with. I want to be able to play all my games on this system.

    Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?

    I'm asking this because I'm currently installing a new version of Windows. I tried to upgrade my copy of Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2... big mistake. It completely screwed up my copy of Windows. Now I'm stuck installing it over again because of this. I'm going to have to reinstall all of my programs and games.

    I want an alternative to Windows. Is there anything out there or on the horizon that looks promising? If not, will there ever be?

    Will Linux ever be worth running? My disdain for Windows isn't strong enough to put up with the headaches that is LInux. Plus, I'm a gamer, so I would need an OS that is compatible with all my games. And LInux is NOT a reasonable alternative.

    I want a choice dammit. Or at least I want Windows to be better.
    To us, it is the BEAST.
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  • #2
    Doors
    Blah

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    • #3
      No. OSs suck by definition. The real expansion of the very abbreviation is "obscene suckiness".
      Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?

      It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
      The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok

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      • #4
        Newer version of Linux aren't headaches. They were surprisingly easy to install and use. Hell, with KDE or GNOME, you forget you're using X Windows and Linux.
        Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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        • #5
          I hope that refers to a newer version of Gnome, because the one on some of the computers at my uni is bad enough you find yourself wishing you were using MSDOS 4.3 or something.
          Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?

          It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
          The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok

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          • #6
            I prefer KDE myself.
            Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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            • #7
              Re: Will there ever be a decent alternative to Windows?

              Originally posted by Sava
              Sorry Linux fans, I think your OS sucks.


              Bite me.

              I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with.


              Having read The Old New Thing for some time, no. For example, The Importance of Error Code Backwards Compatibility will blow your mind.

              Windows is compatible with some utter crap. For example, most things released for Windows won't work with an XP Restricted User. Many won't work with an XP Power User. In other words, they are either crap or doubly crap.

              It's like HTML. Because Microsoft intentionally accomodates idiots who can't code worth ****, they can't fix bugs that those idiots code around. Therefore, Windows is irrevocably buggy and unfixable.

              I want to be able to play all my games on this system. Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?


              Fortunately, if Microsoft has its way, everyone will be playing games on crippled hardware like PS2 and XBox and this will cease to be a concern.

              I'm asking this because I'm currently installing a new version of Windows. I tried to upgrade my copy of Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2... big mistake. It completely screwed up my copy of Windows. Now I'm stuck installing it over again because of this. I'm going to have to reinstall all of my programs and games.


              SP2 is generally a waste of time. I had my own problems with it because a DLL that Nero loaded on startup crashed SP2. I had to do some DOS boot fixery.

              I want an alternative to Windows. Is there anything out there or on the horizon that looks promising? If not, will there ever be?


              Computer games are developed for whichever platform has the largest market share.

              I want a choice dammit. Or at least I want Windows to be better.


              Lobby for abolition of copyright and fork Windows into something good and incompatible with its current incarnation.
              Blog | Civ2 Scenario League | leo.petr at gmail.com

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              • #8
                Having tried Gnome for a bit, I went back to KDE. Gnome feels like an ugly straitjacket.
                Blog | Civ2 Scenario League | leo.petr at gmail.com

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                • #9
                  (hmm, Leons already linked to The Old New Thing, it appears... well, that's what I get for taking so long to type these posts)

                  Well, you certainly made your opinions clear ...

                  I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with. I want to be able to play all my games on this system.

                  Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?
                  Have you ever read Raymond Chen's blog? The stuff that Microsoft has had to do to keep compatible with older versions of their own OSes is quite incredible. There are projects that attempt to reimplement Windows, natively and on top of other OSes, but they're hopelessly overwhelmed by the amount of quirks of the platform and will stay overwhelmed for the foreseeable future. Also, besides the fact that the amount of work required to reimplement Windows is so huge, there's the fact that any such project is rather controversial among geeks who would really rather get as far away from Win32 as possible...

                  I hope that refers to a newer version of Gnome, because the one on some of the computers at my uni is bad enough you find yourself wishing you were using MSDOS 4.3 or something.
                  Define "bad" . Also, which version is it? The way I understand GNOME's history, every geek loved the featureful 1.4, then absolutely everyone hated 2.0 and 2.2, and after that half of everyone has gradually started to learn to like the simpleness and the rest have hated the dumbing down of later versions...
                  This is Shireroth, and Giant Squid will brutally murder me if I ever remove this link from my signature | In the end it won't be love that saves us, it will be mathematics | So many people have this concept of God the Avenger. I see God as the ultimate sense of humor -- SlowwHand

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                  • #10
                    Currently you can't run any games which require DirectX on Linux, right? Why is this? Couldn't this be countered somehow?

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                    • #11
                      That's not quite right, actually. Wine itself has limited support for DirectX, Cedega (based on Wine) has more. It's just that these DirectX implementations aren't any more reliable than implementations of any other part of Windows, and even in the case that they do work, whether their performance is several magnitudes worse than on the MS implementations or only slightly worse is a matter of luck.
                      This is Shireroth, and Giant Squid will brutally murder me if I ever remove this link from my signature | In the end it won't be love that saves us, it will be mathematics | So many people have this concept of God the Avenger. I see God as the ultimate sense of humor -- SlowwHand

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                      • #12
                        Dual booting would be the obvious solution.

                        Keep Windows for games and Linux for serious work. Given that computers boot up in next to no time these days, and the fact that you usually aren't running other programs when gaming, I don't see it as a problem.
                        Only feebs vote.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by chegitz guevara
                          Newer version of Linux aren't headaches.
                          The hell they aren't.

                          Do you know how difficult it is to install, say, Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux? Even if you have a Nvidia video card, etc...

                          I also totally broke my Debian install some time ago, trying to install gaim (a simple instant messenger). It needed a newer version of gtk-runtime, so I installed that. But wait! Gnome doesn't work with that gtk-runtime!

                          "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
                          Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Agathon
                            Dual booting would be the obvious solution.

                            Keep Windows for games and Linux for serious work. Given that computers boot up in next to no time these days, and the fact that you usually aren't running other programs when gaming, I don't see it as a problem.
                            Aside from the fact that you've got two independent file systems now, and the annoyance of using two different OSes.

                            The obvious solution is to not be a moron -- I see no possible reason for Sava to have to reinstall all of his programs from what he's described. Reformatting and reinstalling is just something a lot of idiots jump to doing, though it's almost always not necessary.
                            "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
                            Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

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                            • #15
                              Does anyone even play UT2k4?

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