The Good, The Bad, The Postal Cow

I agree with Postal Cow for the most part. I do like how in every catagory there is Bill. I do, however, disagree with floppies. As you know, when home computers first came out all that was needed were floppies. Also casette tapes where popular and that was based on magnetic tape (so were the old computers that were 6 ft tall). And only recently have CDs come close to the drag and drop ease of a floppy. By the way what is that organic compund?

i agree. casette tapes were much worse than floppes

Oh Man, I forgot about cassette tapes. That should have been there for sure. I remember it would take 45 minutes to load a program in my Commodore 64 then it would die.

Gee, now floppies don't look so bad

They do. I'm not lucky enough to have my hands on cassette tapes. But I have very bad experiences using floppy disks. I never trust them. Its the worst media type that I have ever used.

So cute to see Bill in all three categories

You have missed some in my point of view..

The Best
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Open Source
Birth of Linus Torvalds

The Worst
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Viruses

trust me. tapes were worse. can you imagine something 100 times slower and 100 times less reliable than floppy?

didn't think so...


btw, no need to glorify Linus so much...

I figured it out...but I'm not telling! ;)

Not glorifying.. But deserves when Bill is everywhere..

I agree with nazly!
Linus deserves to be on "The Best" more then bill, at least Linus actually coded the linux kernel, bill is more a business man then a innovative coder in the computers hystory!

http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/microsoft.html

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(1) none of the key software innovations have been produced by Microsoft
(2) Microsoft's key products are essentially copies of previous products.
(3) Microsoft's key technologies aren't innovative either. Microsoft has always ``chased the tail lights'' of real innovators.

Perhaps Microsoft has been creative in small ways, but there's absolutely no evidence that they're more or even as creative as any other group of developers, OSS/FS or proprietary.

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Also, Red Hat's Apostles should be on second place below Linus.
:-p

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UPDATE: changed 'linux OS' -> 'linux kernel'

Been there, wrote that...
http://codewalkers.com/pasture20030727.php

I wish the Unix fans would shut up for once. It's all a bit much.

If you all stop to look at Linux/Unix, you'll see that it certainly does lack some things that are part and parcel with Windows.

Windows is easy to learn. This is a vital reason for so many people to use Windows. Unixes are certainly not easy to learn, and very often help is very hard to find. The man pages are quite detailed, but, at least where my learning is concerned, it is still a big learning curve.

That's fine, though. Nobody expects a good OS to be easy to use at first. Help in Windows is notoriously cryptic, and, more often than not, completely useless.

Very often it's trial and error till you find the problem. However, for the most part, Windows doesn't give you much control, and along with this comes ease of use.

The fact is, many computer uses want to do just that, use a PC. They don't care about kernels, compiling, file permissions, users, groups, blah, blah. They just want to use it.

Number 2, Windows comes pre-installed with most PC's. Of course this is a result of Microsoft's monopoly, but it has the result that there is a large user base that can pretty reliably diagnose most common problems.

Unfortunately, at least in my country, Linux has a very small user base, and other Unixes even less. This means generally there is no-one to help you. Installing a Unix version is more of a risk, because if you have trouble, you might be stuck.

Point 3: Windows programs work with windows. You install a program and it works. With different Unix flavours you need to get a specific binary, or compile the source. This is too complex for most people. Most programs for Linux don't seem to be complete, all have an illusion of being in development. People don't care about stable branches, etc. They just want the program.

Documentation seems to be less with Unix systems, or kept more sparsely. Many programs have help, but it is more like a reference than a users guide. Most people can't understand it. The MAN page for sh is a good example. Unix isn't really tailored for the end-user.

Point 4: There are too many Unix versions. Just looking at the free versions, we have many distro's of Linux, and also FreeBSD. With all these programmers hard at work, can't they work together to create some free überUnix version that incorporates the different stuff? Why are there so many different versions.

With Windows there is much less choice, and certainly all windows have much in common. For most users, the underlying differences don't matter.

Point 5: Unix advocates are too fanatic. Unix fans love to use sarcasm and make witty remarks when comparing Windows to Unix. It's time to stop comparing, and look at Unix on its own. It can be improved. Many people say Linux is getting closer to the desktop. How do they see that? Nothing much is changing. X certainly doesn't seem to be as functional as Windows, at least according to my experience. Also there are too many different Window Managers. Can't people decide on one or two, or make one that is customisable. Surely they can make it better than Windows' Explorer.exe. People don't want so much choice. Stop using choice and diversity as an advert for Unix. People don't care about that. They want quick results.

As far as I'm concerned, Unix doesn't need to take over the desktop, it can stay as an OS primarily for standalone systems. XFree86 can of course be improved upon, and that would always be a good idea. It needs a central place to configure the system, like device manager in Windows. Setting things seperately all the time is a pain for the general user.

So here is my final point. Stop comparing Windows and Unix, or using Windows to make Unix look better. Windows is crap, that's a known fact, so get over it and make Unix into the world class OS it can be.

vertigo: I partially agree and partially disagree with you.

Yes, I totally agree with your opinion on documentation and users' fanaticsm.

But what did you say about stability? That people don't care about it? Stability is THE thing that has made me think of Linux as an option for my future desktop computer or laptop. After a few years I will most likely start studying in a university. A laptop would be handy tool for making notes, but with Windows on it, that's a risk. Windows crashes too often. In the middle of a lecture I wouldn't be too happy about that.

Another thing I have to disagree with is learning difficulty. Sure, Linuxes are far more complicated than Windows, but let's take Knoppix for example. It is a working Linux, but it needs no installing. There is no need to remove Windows. You can freely experiment all the nice stuff Linux has.

And finally, the smaller number of Linux users can also be a good thing. I mean that there are less threats to Linux systems. Most viruses for instance are written especially for Windows.

Vertigo, did you posted that because of the last thing I posted or because any other thing?
about the other things, my posts where defending the desicion Red Hat took, so I don't see when I spoke on linux as a desktop OS better then windows, but yes as a betetr system for mission critical needs. Yes I spoke of fedora, but not because fedora is better on the desktop then windows(at least more user friendly, because its more stable and very coder friendly, so linux works better on my needs then windows), but your writing about normal users, who don't know much about pc's (example: my grandpa (I give this example not to offend no one! I just did to give an obvious example of how user friendly windows is.)).

about my last post, I didn't wrote about windows better then linux on the desktop, I just post the facts! Microsoft is not innovative, sure they have good looking software, but check the link I posted and the link postalcow posted, on computers history the only credit microsoft deserves is of a great business company, they see one software wich they can explote and they acquire it, but the software already existed the only thing they do is make it more pretty and easy to use, once the sofware is pretty and functional the development process start to slow down on the sofware they acquire. But linux is another story, Linus wrote the first linux, the gnu software is very stable, not so user friendly but it makes the job and makes it good and it is progressing fast. If this is not true, why microsoft is scare of a OS used less then 1% on the world for normal use?
(http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/sep03_pie.gif)
maybe because the linux kernel 2.6.* is almost stable and worst for them is that its GPL and not a BSD clone?
(http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/)

linux doc projecthere you can start learning, search for howtos not man or info, man and info are reference as you correctly noticed. If you need help ask me I'll be happy to help)
http://www.tldp.org/

As far as I know, I said nothing about stability. When did I say people don't care about stability? Of course they do. But in most cases that isn't enough to get them tu use Linux/Unix. The reasons are those that I mentioned.

The learning curve may not be as bad as it seems, but the fact is it seems bad, and that is enough to get people to not use it. I was highlighting, in my view, the shortcomings of Linux/Unix.

This stems from the propaganda spewed by most Unix fanatics, which I disagree with. Knowing Unix is not something to brag about, and us to sound smart. It is an OS which in any area other than an end-user desktop machine is the best to run. I don't want to generalise, because by far the majority of Unix users act perfectly normally. Its the rest that annoy me.

In its present form, Unix will never take over the desktop role from Windows.

rolosworld, it was not aimed specifically at you. I was against the attitude that the Linux/Unix users I have met have portrayed, that of people trying to show off their knowledge and using every opportunity to point out how Unix is better than Windows.

That gets tired after a while. It wasn't in anyway aimed at you, only perhaps indirectly, if you fit that profile.

And, by the way, you don't need to convince me of Windows lack of quality assurance, Bill Gates' morality, or any other such overplayed concept. I know. I dislike Microsoft, and Windows, greatly. I don't use every opportunity to point it out though. I don't think you do either. That's why it wasn't aimed at you.

linus didn't code linux OS. he coded linux kernel, and not all of it, he just started it.

and btw, there is no "linux OS". there is only "linux kernel". everything else on a "linux OS" is from GNU. glibc, gnu bash shell, gnu compilers colection, coreutils (ex findutils and sh-utils, like find, ls, cat, locate, less etc..), and many other gnu tools. when you think about it, kernel (linux) is only hardware drivers, and memory/filesystem access. everything else is from GNU.