Linux

Charles said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

Agreed. Comparing Windows and Linux is in some sense pointless. Each OS has its strengths and weaknesses. Windows is great for plug and play experience (think about the number of devices and hardware configurations Windows supports out of the box...). Linux is still more of an "academic" OS, but less so than, say, EROS or especially Singularity... The Linux kernel has some rather excellent features and the fact that it is light weight (compared to Windows kernel) means that the Linux  kernel can run on a variety of low memory devices. With Windows 7 we are seeing Windows move into the smaller footprint world and this bodes well for future iterations of Windows.

Personally, I think the Linux developer community is composed of very talented, bright and passionate people. From an OS point of view, I've been impressed by the innovations arising from of one of the worlds largest open source projects.

I'd really love to see less of the Us versus Them mantra and focus on reality: general purpose operating system architecture and design are complex engineering endeavours and the complexity increases with the increase in number of installed instances running in many, many different hardware configurations.
 
It's unfair to proclaim that Windows sucks and Linux is great or that Windows is great and Linux sucks. Fact is, neither of these operating systems are poorly designed and implemented (that's just ignorant thinking). Further, they don't target the same demographic, not really, so why compare apples to oranges? Sure, from a system design perspective there are core similarities (monolithic kernel, etc), but there are also many differences and these are based on requirements and usage scenarios demanded and expected by their users. I think it's more than fair to say that Windows has a broader set of users than any of the Linux derivatives. More users doesn't just mean more users. It means more requirements to meet, more expectations to satisfy, more configurations to run on, more devices to support, etc. It really is rocket science.

Windows is a very solid general purpose operating system that must support tens of thousands of devices and hardware configurations by default, by design. Further, Windows must maintain a high level of compatibility across generations and this alone is an incredibly complex problem and is the number one reason Windows can't evolve faster (it's a big part of why Windows versions fail or succeed). Linux has it's own problems to solve that impact its evolutionary speed, but rediculously large numbers of devices to support out-of-box and enabing many thousands of applications to run across OS versions are not major factors, not in comparison to Windows.

Linux is a great general purpose kernel. Windows is great general purpose kernel. It follows that neither suck. These are two general purpose operating systems with their own goals, requirements, usage scenarios, etc.

All of this is, of course, equally true in the OS X vs Windows game...
C

Bass said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

I'm basically the same way, although I have been using desktop Linux for only a few years. I'm interested in Microsoft technology, especially .NET, but that interest does not really include Windows itself. If it weren't for Linux I doubt I would be in this industry, or have any interest for computer.

RoyalSchrubber said:

Ubuntu said:

*snip*

1st) How long did it take MS to deal with the shatter attack issue, can this problem ever be resolved for every scenario?
Shatter attack was issue in XP, but it has been completely fixed in Vista where background services run in different session. Design of old versions of Windows is completely irrelevant to our discussion - it's like me accussig linux of its horrible security record of sendmail daemon. Or how I pluged two mice some 8 years ago and linux kernel-panicked. We all know Win95 was horrible, so was XP, the only relevant version is Vista, even if XP still has considerable marketshare.

2nd) IE can save web pages to your file system therefore it's not sandboxed in the strict meaning of the word - however there may be rendering components such as mshtml.dll which perhaps are sandboxed which is a good idea given the number of security issues associated with it in the past.
IE itself (some plug-ins not) is restricted to temp and few other folders, for access to other parts of filesystem broker process is required.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250462.aspx

How can it be gone when the majority of users still sits on Windows XP and parallel to that you have got Vista and now Windows 7 – don' you think that making your software run across 3 systems is quite a challenge – now add the x86 and x64 issue and you end up with 6 versions of your binaries to make it run on “Windows”.
I think on linux one is still required to use chroot to run 32 bit software on 64 bit linux kernel (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24575) - Windows can do this in more straightforward way so any 32 bit executable is likely to work on 64 bit windows without any modification, so you really have to target /only one/ platform (Win32), unless your software is very memory-hungry. Format of executables stayed the same between XP, Vista and 7.
However I think you do not know what dll hell really is - it's polution of global dll namespace  with incompatible libraries - not platform diversity or API/ABI changes. And as I said, if you don't run shareware from untrusted sources then this problem is gone on modern Windows installations. However it looks like, as me(automatix) and matthews suggested, dependency hell is still present in some form on linux if you don't install software excusively from official repositories.

it's closed source, perhaps it has been tampered with by somebody, and of course I can check the signature but then most of the software you install is not digitally signed
Unless you're able to check ~50 million lines of code yourself then you cannot trust your linux distribution. People like to mention Linus's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law) - because linux code is open people can see flaws. It looks great on paper, but in reality it looks like only few are really looking at code and even they are very sloppy at spotting flaws. Else we wouldn't have this - (http://www.metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/debian-openssl/). After this fiasco, I think we can safely put open-source argument of linux's supposed security to rest in any future discussion - because if somebody had actually been looking at the code then every debian server would not have been vulnerable to remote attack for more than a year.

The reason that it's not digitally signed is that MS takes advantage of the signing process to make the developers commit to making the app run in Windows the way that suits MS and not the user for instance would you get a digital signature when your product name was “Windows Commander” - not until you change the name to Total Commander right?
Microsoft has the right to protect their registered trademards just like any other company has.

Can you sign your apps when your company's name is TomTom – most certainly not.
That is true if you believe in conspiracy theories. I'm sure if MS denied TomTom signing services without good explanation a lawsuit would follow. On the other hand at Open Source Initiative approval of few licenses did not go so smooth just because they were from Microsoft (http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jul-31.html) - irony?

Or when you insert somebody's flash disk and under default configuration it runs the Autorun.inf malware that was installed on it on some other machine – you are to blame for not holding the Shift key.
Not problem anymore since XP and Vista - as default behavior is displaying dialog giving user option to or not to execute software on inserted medium. 

matthews said:

Ubuntu said:

*snip*

Compared to how many different incompatible distros and kernel versions? Suprising as it may be to you, Win32 is really the only platform you need to target on Windows unless your app needs more than 4GB of address space. If you do, than you probably have the resources to handle the cost of compiling a 64-bit version (better yet just target .NET).

matthew said:

Compared to how many different incompatible distros and kernel versions?

I only use Ubuntu on my newly built computer, and I dont have any problems, been using Ubuntu for 4 yrs.I have the codecs installed. I can watch any type of video and listen to any audio,watch movies from dvd.And btw this is the only OS on the hard drive.I used windows for along time and i cant say anything bad about it, use what you want.I wouldn't mind doing a dual-boot with windows 7.I would have the best of both worlds.Linux and MS windows.I dont think i'am a typical linux user saying thats this and that sucks, and linux is the best, nothing is better.Windows 7 does look real good, and i read up on it alot. well just my 2 cents worth.

I'm only replying to this thread to reset whatever screwed up variable keeps me from browsing passed page 1 of this thread.

Edit: yay it worked.

fknight said:

I'm only replying to this thread to reset whatever screwed up variable keeps me from browsing passed page 1 of this thread.

 

Edit: yay it worked.

Well, I finally did it, I had also wanted to try Windows 7>You know what,last night i switced from ubuntu 9.10 to Windows 7 and i have only windows on this computer.I love everything about this OS, uses just the right amount of ram, i have 2 gb.I knew one day i would go back to windows and also this great community of MS people.

thiebaude said:

fknight said:

*snip*

Well, I finally did it, I had also wanted to try Windows 7>You know what,last night i switced from ubuntu 9.10 to Windows 7 and i have only windows on this computer.I love everything about this OS, uses just the right amount of ram, i have 2 gb.I knew one day i would go back to windows and also this great community of MS people.

 

welcome to the dark side then 

RoyalSchrubber said:

thiebaude said:

*snip*

welcome to the dark side then 

thanks, it is nice to be back and have an OS that is reliable.