Linuxwatch.com is running a great story called “Five Reasons NOT To Use Linux.” It includes a nice list of reasons why one might want to steer clear of Linux, along with a nice comparison to how easily these reasons are addressed in Microsoft Windows.
Five Reasons NOT To Use Linux
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]
I don’t know how many of you consistently read his articles, but I wouldn’t trust him with an IPod, let alone making my technology decisions.
This was one of his better (more comical) articles, so perhaps theres still hope for him.
Alot of comments about linux are simply without any facts whats so ever. Yep Linux has made it because people throw FUD at it, and it’s amazing how many Windows users really lack real knowledge of basic computing skills.
In the end no one force the Windows user to install Linux, it’s your choice, be thankful you even have one. You’ll also find (like people I know) that they moan so much about Windows but claim Linux it not ready, Amazing how Microsoft have brainwashed people on how to use a computer.
🙂
I just don’t understand those who constantly scream about how horrible Windows XP is …
I’ve been using XP Pro for three-and-a-half years. I’ve spent *ZERO* money on firewalls (kerio), antivirus (AVG), and spyware removal (Spybot) programs. I’ve always updated my OS according to Microsoft’s recommendations … almost immediately, and not waiting weeks *after* the fix has been issued.
Because of this, I’ve *NEVER* had a virus/worm/trojan infect my PC. I’ve never sent one to anybody else. This, with at least seven email accounts.
My XP box has crashed maybe six times in nearly 48 months … usually due to me overclocking some hardware.
All to say … pick quality hardware components and *LEARN* how to tighten up a Windows XP install, and you’re golden.
On the other hand, I tried (for the third time) to get FC4 to recognize my Belkin wireless card in my box. Followed *all* the HOWTO’s to the last letter. Took about an hour or so, editing files, recompiling the kernal modules. I rebooted the machine … Kernel panic.
Nice, Linux. How long did it take XP to get my wireless card up and running? About two minutes.
Linux is fantastic — on the server. But in my experience, it largely fails as a desktop OS.
As I expected, you know how hard it is writing wireless drivers when manufactures dont release there specs? Get a different one, belkin are known to use broadcom chipsets which are thinly supported. If Windows works for you good, but dont claim just because you have one problem other windows user dont because they do, big time.
Wireless support in Linux is vastly improved and loads run it without any issues what so ever, maybe you should “LEARN” hey!
I do not use linux just for the same reson I do not drink diet coke. I just don’t like it. Here is a crazy though, maybe – just maybe, millions of people just do not like it, never heard of it, and simply do not care.
“Linux ready for a prime time”, “Linux gaining momentum”, “now is the time for Linux”… Has not happened, I can’t see it happening, well, maybe it just will not happen…
“Linux ready for a prime time”, “Linux gaining momentum”, “now is the time for Linux”… Has not happened, I can’t see it happening, well, maybe it just will not happen…
But it is gaining momentum and it is the time for Linux for some. Every month I read that another corporation or government is implementing Linux desktops. It may not be for you, or for many others. That does not mean it is not gaining more adopters and therefore momentum and therefore it is the time, for some. To suggest otherwise is plainly false, misleading, misinformation and possibly even lies.
I seems there are more unsytified Linux users than
win users.
No, it just means that there are more Windows fanboys in this thread than Linux enthusiasms. If you take the number of pro/anti posts on a thread on a website and use this as some sort of scientific yardstick, then I’m sorry to say that you’re an idiot.
yea, well I dont even want it for free but if anyone wanted this piece of crap here is a new freebie coupon for linspire
For a limited time, they are making available a coupon code called “FREESPIRE” that will give you a free digital copy
enjoy!
When it comes to the CLI, there is something to consider. The CLI is fine IF you know about it. If you use it every day.
But consider this. The CLI to a newcomer, to a new user, a ‘desktop user’ is totally un-intuitive.
Try this if you like. Remove the MAN pages from a linux box. Remove the network settings. Remove the info pages. Now, go away for 3 months and do not touch a computer.
Come back and sit down at this box, and – no use of GUI, start working on it. By removing the MAN and INFO pages THAT you KNOW about, but a desktop user has no idea of (new user to Linux), you would gain an idea.
Better still, sit down with someone who has never been near a UNIX/BSD/Linux/ machine and get them to try the system. You would not have access to man or info pages, so you’d have to get them to look around for commands.
Its not an exact/perfect senario, but it would highlight how a CLI comes across to a new user using LINUX for the first time.
For Linux to succed ON THE DESKTOP, you really would have to look seriously at getting Linux to have the GUI functionality of OSX or windows as a priority. And by that I mean a serious priority. Not some shoehorned, half assed bunch of loose tools bolted on at the end as an after thought, or a mixed bag of utils and tools that are good, but would only be part of a good desktop.
Frankly, when you look at Linux, its never been better, but its also never been as diverse, messier, disorganised, choice = disintergration.
I’d say however, that in every area, Linmux communities have everything they would need to commit a clean slate approach to all areas, and by throwing away some legacy ideas, could come up with clean fresh approaches.
That won’t happen, far as I can see if everyone harps on about the command line. Its a complete misfocus.
AdmV
For Linux to succed ON THE DESKTOP, you really would have to look seriously at getting Linux to have the GUI functionality of OSX or windows as a priority.
But it does, that’s the whole point. With a modern distro like Mandrake, you can do pretty much everything from a GUI, including system configuration.
The only exception has to do with closed-source programs, such as the NVIDIA drivers, Java and Flash. The problem is that you can’t put the responsibility for these on Linux/distro developers – it’s up to NVIDIA, Sun and Macromedia to provide graphical installers (Autopackage or the Loki installer are good choices, but they can also provide their own).
I use the CLI in Linux because I choose to, not because I have to. Everything on my system can be done through a GUI, from Samba configuration to software installation/update to screen resolution choice to user management.
@admV:
I agree with you that the cli in Linux is hard and unintuitive to use, and I agree with the rest of your points as well. But consider this: the cli in windows isn’t really anymore intuitive than the one in Linux. Sure, you don’t need to use it as much in windows, but the point remains.
Just sit a new user in front of the command box in windows xp and tell them to figure out how to delete/move/copy/rename/whatever a file without using explorer. They’ll probably be just as confused as on a Linux system.
ps: I use the cli often, so I’m not confused, but I’ve been a windows/dos user for many years.
“I am a linux geek”
Linux clearly have more software to run!
There is a lot of freeware and opensource software for Linux according to my feeling. Although, some of them can also run on Windows, but still Linux have more.
You can even run Windows application with WINE. There are DOS emulator like DosBox. Linux run Xen better and VMWare to allow you to run Windows system and all software that was Windows-specific.
Although there is a project called Cygwin for Windows, but you need to download and install yourself. Plus, it did not run ALL linux software.
Even though VMWare allow you to run Linux and software written for Linux, but it is too slow.
Some people may argue there is no Photoshop for Linux…. But you can always use GIMP for free, why paid Adobe?! And don’t forget, GIMP will keep improving in the *future*. If you cannot find a plugin/effect on GIMP, you can develop it yourself. Linux have Java and GCC compiler on the CD!
If you need Dreamweaver, AutoCAD and Games? just use VMware and install an Windows as guest system.
What? It is slow? But it still run, right?
Let’s ask all your friends to switch to Linux now. The software you cannot find on Linux nowadays will be there in the future!
” Even though VMWare allow you to run Linux and software written for Linux, but it is too slow. ”
“If you need Dreamweaver, AutoCAD and Games? just use VMware and install an Windows as guest system.
What? It is slow? But it still run, right? ”
Wut ? Is linux slow on VMware ? But it still runs as well right ?
I’d rather run Windows and get Linux to be slow than the other way around. At least you can tweak the Linux and use lightweight window manager.
Besides, most of the best apps for Linux are ported to windows. AbiWord, Gaim, OpenOffice, Ethereal, Emacs, VIm, MySQL, Apache, Firefox + Mozilla, GIMP, most of Apache projects, heck even Mono has windows version, Dev-C++ uses GCC.
We don’t need the rest :-).
Hmmm.. Stupid topic, but still…
If you’re just a secretary or a web addict you can run both Linux or Win. The diference is that Linux comes with most things you need for these acivities, whereas for Windows you have to install them (which might or might not be hard. That depends on your basic understanding of a computing system)
If you’re a gaming freak, you’ll probably want Windows so you can easyly run most of the ‘hot’ games quick and easy. For Linux, they invented a small handy tool called Wine. Sure it needs some configuring (hard or easy again according to your knowledge) and you might have problems but in the end it can run any Windows aplication I’ve tried.
If you’re into music, Windows is the system to use: Lots of tools, support for external devices etc. Linux can’t really top that as emulating that software isn’t worth it.
Programing: Linux. If you’re some kind of a programmer, you’re used to consoles and commands (you can use a keyboard for more than posting stupid topics on a board) and the processing power of a Linux-based machine is bigger. Also emulating programming software isn’t that much of a problem.
Windows user switching to Linux: not likely to happen unless you are determined to do it. It is kind of hard as you’re used to all your apps to run with the click of a button (of course that doesn’t always happen), and don’t like to make choices between preinstalled Linux programs. Also using a web browser for something other then searching for porn or looking at friends webpages seams to be a waste of time. And not to mention the EVIL TERMINAL! which you don’t even have to run if you only use your system for ofice stuff and souch, or mostly any other aplication as Mandrake and RedHat use RPM’s which automatically install the prog for you.
Linux user switching to Windows: Don’t think that exists. Unless he hasn’t used Linux for more than a month.
Never used a computer before and nobody to tell you ‘Use Windows’ or ‘Use Linux’: Don’t worry about what you’re using. You probably don’t know what it is anyway and it doesn’t make any difference.
About myself: I have been using Windows for a loooong time (since ’94 to be exact) and if my first computer had Linux on it would have been the same thing to me. First time I installed Linux was abt 2 years ago: It sucked. It didn’t support my winmodem, it didn’t have a media player and so on. Second time was this spring: Worked like a charm. I had a lot of stuff allready installed, searched the net for a Win emulator and found Wine, learned how to install it from source (altough I could have used a RPM), made Quake2 run better than it did on Win and so on. (Btw I was using Mandrake 9.2) But still, it wasn’t windows… So I went back to using the default OS. A month ago I had just formated and had installed all the important features for Win: An AV, anti-spyware, Ymessenger, codecs, programs etc. I left the compuetr for 30 mins and my sister appeared. When I came back she was just shutting down the comp. I turned it on and got a fake blue screen: Explorer didn’t work and neither did the other aps. So I formated again, and after a while it happend again (I used to format my comp at least once a month anyway). Then I thought to myself: I should install Solaris 10 and so I did but it didn’t even support my Realtek NIC (even if it was the x86 distro). So I went back to Mandrake and have been using it ever since without any problems. I still have a copy of XP installed but I haven’t used it in some time.
My advice is: If you want to get rid of Windows do it graduatly. And stop bashing MS or Linux or any other os out there in favour of the other: They’re all crap, it depends which kind tou like
kovu_tlk