Why Linux is inferior to Windows and Macintosh

Sabot
My name is Dave Oliver. I'm a Technical Architect.

Wikipedia wrote:
A saw is a tool for cutting stuff, consisting of a serrated blade (a blade with the cutting edge dentated or toothed) and worked either by hand or by steam, water, electric or other power.

The teeth of the saw are each bent to specific angle and this angle is called "set". The set of a tooth is dependent on the kind of cut the saw will be making. For example a "rip saw" has a tooth set that is similar to the angle used on a chisel. The idea is to have the teeth rip or tear the material apart.

Some saws, such as the abrasive saw, use an abrasive disc or band for cutting, rather than a serrated blade.
The saw can also be used, more uncommonly, for playing music.

A saw is a tool, an OS is a tool, so therefore Linux is a tool, Windows is a tool, OSX is a tool, zOS is a tool

Just like a saw, a single type of OS can't perform all jobs. Jobs may seem similar and yes it can 'cut it' but perhaps not as well as the right type.

Any Enterprise these days cannot afford to back just the one horse and expect to just get the best from it. Create capabilities and make an Arsenal I say!

Successful business comes from creating good options not following paths!

odujosh
Need Microsoft SUX now!

I am very sure an OS is not a tool. Its a platform for tools. In many ways we should be talking about shells, programability, consumer approachability, and stuff like that.

To use your analogy Wood is a material not a tool. You can make a lot of stuff out of wood. Talking about the qualities of wood as a general concept is only superficially useful.

I think Windows and Linux both have great tools written for them which are very comparable. Grep has a windows version for example. (http://www.wingrep.com/)

Both Windows and Linux have good shells. (Not familair with Mac as a platform so cannot comment) If you have a preference thats one thing. I think the comparing game doesn't pay off. I think picking a side like a religion is silly.

Really it comes down to making a living off technology for us. If Linux makes you money and your passionate about it great. If some Mac development gets you excited awesome. And so on. Let stop the us vs them mentality right here.

I tend to more buy into if you have enough code you can do anything on any platform. To me Linux is a blank canvas that you can paint anything on. Most people rather have a paint by numbers kit as the time to paint is not an excercise in practicality. This is Mac and Windows draw. Linux you get whatever you get. The experience is not marketed. Often you have to take a wait and see attitude with a distro and you have to try several to find one you can be productive on. To many this is a disadvantage.

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

Completely illuminating insights. I hadn't anticipated anything so clearly thought out as a response.

I guess that developers like anything in life are at various stages of maturity. When see Videos here on '9 by the likes of Peter Sestoft or Erik Meijer, you really start to get a feel of the orders of magnitude of software. Why do corona_coder or creditcard champion Linux Vs everything else. I won't venture into putting words into their mouths, but supposition would lead one to beleive that they are youthful consequently fail to see the orders of magnitude sufficiently clearly.

Conjecture;

17 year old, gets or builds PC for first time
Hysteria from his mates about Linux, dictates that they download it and install it
Get to grips with the myriad of settings available, feel enpowered, as they have total control over the operating system environment
Fail to grasp the odious organized structure of MS and Windows
Only blind people (no offence) don't like a Mac. They are beautiful things. The 17 year old isn't a complete fool, recogises their aesthetic value, also recognises that it's anti-windows so looks to Macs with tumescent fervour
Ploughs on for a number of years gaining maturity in software

This is by no means accurate, it is a conjecture, but in the real world the major concern is always about, resolution of a problem or business need. As you have rightly pointed out Linux is disadvantaged because it is higgledy-piggledy to configure.

It's only when you've matured I guess that you can view things laterally and say, do or use whatever it takes to get the job done.

cyber_rigger

vesuvius wrote:
Head honcho of the Developer Division has a blog about Incubation projects.

We can almost always expect to be surprised (anticipate derision here) by each new Windows OS, what is it that Linux has? Why is it so great?

I like the synaptic package manager.

It is an installer, uninstaller, updater, security updater, and version updater all in one.

Synaptic can use mixed repositories ftp, http, nfs, CD, DVD, floppy, etc.

It can handle multiple packages. I have processed as many 800 packages at a time.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

odujosh wrote:
I am very sure an OS is not a tool. Its a platform for tools. In many ways we should be talking about shells, programability, consumer approachability, and stuff like that.

To use your analogy Wood is a material not a tool. You can make a lot of stuff out of wood. Talking about the qualities of wood as a general concept is only superficially useful.

I kind of like this analogy. It puts the zealotry into perspective when someone says OS x is better than OS y, you could think of it like saying "Plastic" is better than "Steel".

But, if you were getting a breast augmentation, would you rather have "Plastic" or "Steel" implants Smiley

odujosh wrote:

I think Windows and Linux both have great tools written for them which are very comparable. Grep has a windows version for example. (http://www.wingrep.com/)

I've used wingrep, and a bunch of other windows based grep tools, but none of them seem to work as simply and cleanly as how I remember using grep from the shell prompt.

It may simply be because of when I learned about the tool, but I've got the same issue with head and tail.

drhowarddrfine

odujosh wrote:
To me Linux is a blank canvas that you can paint anything on. Most people rather have a paint by numbers kit as the time to paint is not an excercise in practicality.

That's a very good way to put it. I sometimes say Windows is the family van (for users) while Linux/Unix are the big construction trucks.

This is Mac and Windows draw. Linux you get whatever you get. The experience is not marketed. Often you have to take a wait and see attitude with a distro and you have to try several to find one you can be productive on. To many this is a disadvantage.

That's why I haven't looked much into Linux and went with FreeBSD. One central committee/repository for everything. You don't have to worry about several slightly different versions of the same thing.

(And before someone mentions NetBSD and OpenBSD; those have clearly defined different methodology which makes them different enough for most to know which to select)

drhowarddrfine

Double post. Sometimes this site doesn't work very well.

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

The wise words of a Mac zealot?

I don't find Linux real difficult to manage or configure.

Yes, you need to learn some BASH commands and syntax and edit config files to configure advanced things, such as SSH and VPN. However, most basic and intermediate configuration tasks can be performed from GUIs.

Learning about the command-line in Linux is much like learning about variable pointers in C/C++... they are both very powerful features and make sense to embrace.

I also don't feel particularly "disadvantaged" when I sit here and play with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio Web Developer, etc. just like anyone else here, who's using Windows or OS X full-time.

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

Heh... this thread caught the interest of a ZDNet journalist:

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10007155o-2000331761b,00.htm

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

drhowarddrfine wrote:
Double post. Sometimes this site doesn't work very well.

if you put 'user="person"' inside your quote block header, it will work much better...

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

" Feel free to discuss ideas below..."

Err why zdnet? Why no discuss it here? Where it was started? It's not like you did anything but leech.

Perplexed

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

creditcard wrote:
Linux as a kernel was the first OS to support x64, and it the first OS to use a shortest-average-wait-time-first scheduler, ie a completely fair scheduler. It's probably the only OS that supports tickless operation, and as an OS even beats NetBSD in how many platforms it supports. From a technical perspective Linux is the most advanced and flexible kernel ever created.

As far as OSS/Linux distros are concerned.. the biggest innovation I think is the package manager. Originally envisioned by FreeBSD and greatly improved on by the Debian project, the concept of a package manager is unlike anything else found in MacOSX and Windows. If there is anything keeping me using Linux the most is apt-get and the amazing frontends for it.

I don't want to reduce this to a 'this OS introduced this feature first' type thing. Lambda Calculus was first developed in the 1930's and is central to Linq. How did a mobile phone come together? It was the availability of a long lasting low power battery and the rest of the associated technology, not about the guy that invented the battery. Right now you have things like Parallel FX being innovated. This is cutting-edge stuff, and my key argument that Linux is not cutting edge. Like Linq you can immediately see the benefits of a concurrently run program.

Mature platforms like Linux are good though, look at a non-exhastive list here. I am involved in writing an application that is Winforms based, merely because WPF is immature. Microsoft have taken a leaf out of Linux's book and made available (very welcome) the source code to the .NET Framework.

Linux is great, but it certainly is not innovative!

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

vesuvius wrote:

I don't want to reduce this to a 'this OS introduced this feature first' type thing. Lambda Calculus was first developed in the 1930's and is central to Linq. How did a mobile phone come together? It was the availability of a long lasting low power battery and the rest of the associated technology, not about the guy that invented the battery. Right now you have things like Parallel FX being innovated. This is cutting-edge stuff, and my key argument that Linux is not cutting edge. Like Linq you can immediately see the benefits of a concurrently run program.

Mature platforms like Linux are good though, look at a non-exhastive list here. I am involved in writing an application that is Winforms based, merely because WPF is immature. Microsoft have taken a leaf out of Linux's book and made available (very welcome) the source code to the .NET Framework.

Linux is great, but it certainly is not innovative!

While I'll grant you WPF as a Windows innovation - Linq is a library for .NET that doesn't actually add anything that you couldn't do before (everything you can do in Linq you can do with delegates, and that's exactly what it compiles to). Linq is definitely a Microsoft innovation, and one that is important, but it is not a Windows innovation anymore than the GCC's __forceinline declaration is a Linux one.

k2t0f12d
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society

An operating system may seem like a tool to a systems administrators whose duties revolve around setting up and maintaining multiple machines providing divers services. At that level of abstraction, the distinguishing feature is the ability of an operating system to perfom some collection of tasks, which, depending on the tasks, are best performed with a particular operating system. In that capacity, the operating system is only a tool, and to such a person, operating systems need not ever be considered any other way; however, to say that is in fact the only way to view operating systems is ridiculous.

The nature of the beast is in the name. An operating system is a system, like politics and government are systems. They can be added to or taken away from [provisionally]. They provide [and sometimes deny] services to the user. But the most remarkable thing about them is that they provide a platform for other applications and services, the ability of which is only limited in scope by the imagination and ingenuity of the developer and the limitations of available hardware.

ten_thousand_monkeys

Wow, is Microsoft entering the stand-up-comedian business? Because this is a great start.

And if your version of "innovation" is the DRM in your Vista device drivers, then you can have it.

Linux easily can get uptime of +600 days on most machines. Match that, windows. It might not be innovative but it works.

I'll take reliability over "innovation" every day of the week and twice on sunday, pendejo.

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

ten_thousand_monkeys wrote:
Wow, is Microsoft entering the stand-up-comedian business? Because this is a great start. And if your version of "innovation" is the DRM in your Vista device drivers, then you can have it. Linux easily can get uptime of +600 days on most machines. Match that, windows. It might not be innovative but it works. I'll take reliability over "innovation" every day of the week and twice on sunday, pendejo.

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows. Both Windows and Linux will offer upto 99% uptime. It even more of a stand-off now that Windows supports hot-patching too.

Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.

RoyalSchrubber
One. How many time travellers does it take to change a lightbulb?

drhowarddrfine wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows.
By far, the longest running servers are Unix based. There is an "uptime" site, I can't find right now, that shows this. Unix uptimes are listed, in some cases, at 10 years. Others have less time but are known to only have gone down in power outages lasting longer than the backups or hardware, not software, failures.

Personally, my first FreeBSD server has a 1 1/2 year uptime. The other two I play with too much.

Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.
I put X up against anything you've got.

You mean this(http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html) site? And if Windows comes second it doesn't mean it's that bad. Wink

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

drhowarddrfine wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows.
By far, the longest running servers are Unix based. There is an "uptime" site, I can't find right now, that shows this. Unix uptimes are listed, in some cases, at 10 years. Others have less time but are known to only have gone down in power outages lasting longer than the backups or hardware, not software, failures.

Personally, my first FreeBSD server has a 1 1/2 year uptime. The other two I play with too much.
said:

Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.
I put X up against anything you've got.

My refrigerator has been running for at least a decade.

Edit: And seriously, learn how the quoting system works. I'm not even going to try and figure out how you farked this post up.

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

drhowarddrfine wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows.
By far, the longest running servers are Unix based. There is an "uptime" site, I can't find right now, that shows this. Unix uptimes are listed, in some cases, at 10 years. Others have less time but are known to only have gone down in power outages lasting longer than the backups or hardware, not software, failures.

Personally, my first FreeBSD server has a 1 1/2 year uptime. The other two I play with too much.
[quote]
Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.

Showing my age a bit but, I suspect that VMS and/or OpenVMS might actually be a contender for title of "uptime king"... especially if you allow for clustered systems that provide maintenance without any "system" downtime.

As an ex-VMS developer, I've often wondered where the renowned VMS stability went to, if the WinNT kernel is essentially a port of the VMS kernel ? Is it really all to do with device drivers ??

figuerres
???

elmer wrote:

drhowarddrfine wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows.
By far, the longest running servers are Unix based. There is an "uptime" site, I can't find right now, that shows this. Unix uptimes are listed, in some cases, at 10 years. Others have less time but are known to only have gone down in power outages lasting longer than the backups or hardware, not software, failures.

Personally, my first FreeBSD server has a 1 1/2 year uptime. The other two I play with too much.
[quote]
Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.

Showing my age a bit but, I suspect that VMS and/or OpenVMS might actually be a contender for title of "uptime king"... especially if you allow for clustered systems that provide maintenance without any "system" downtime.

As an ex-VMS developer, I've often wondered where the renowned VMS stability went to, if the WinNT kernel is essentially a port of the VMS kernel ? Is it really all to do with device drivers ??

what about the different in who runs the systems??

classic UNIX / VMS and other systems were generaly kept up by a group who were very skilled and very carefull.

while most NT boxes were much less well tended to.

also hardware and driver quality....

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

figuerres wrote:

elmer wrote:

drhowarddrfine wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

There really isn't an uptime difference between *nix and Windows.
By far, the longest running servers are Unix based. There is an "uptime" site, I can't find right now, that shows this. Unix uptimes are listed, in some cases, at 10 years. Others have less time but are known to only have gone down in power outages lasting longer than the backups or hardware, not software, failures.

Personally, my first FreeBSD server has a 1 1/2 year uptime. The other two I play with too much.
[quote]
Anyway, I seriously doubt any version of Unix can achieve really long uptimes with the X Windowing system running. Until recently, my experience with X stability was horrible.

Showing my age a bit but, I suspect that VMS and/or OpenVMS might actually be a contender for title of "uptime king"... especially if you allow for clustered systems that provide maintenance without any "system" downtime.

As an ex-VMS developer, I've often wondered where the renowned VMS stability went to, if the WinNT kernel is essentially a port of the VMS kernel ? Is it really all to do with device drivers ??

what about the different in who runs the systems??

classic UNIX / VMS and other systems were generaly kept up by a group who were very skilled and very carefull.

while most NT boxes were much less well tended to.

also hardware and driver quality....

No argument there... you can't compare datacentre servers to home servers or even corporate servers. Different scenarios and priorities. Uptime is an interesting number to see what is possible, but an academic one for the most part.

k2t0f12d
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society

vesuvius wrote:
I don't want to reduce this to a 'this OS introduced this feature first' type thing.

Yes, just remember folks, anything done elsewhere first is just something Microsoft hasn't innovated yet.

AndyC

elmer wrote:

As an ex-VMS developer, I've often wondered where the renowned VMS stability went to, if the WinNT kernel is essentially a port of the VMS kernel ? Is it really all to do with device drivers ??

Run Server 2003 on approved hardware with decent quality drivers. lt absolutely will not fall over, not unless your hardware dies. It really is that good.

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

ten_thousand_monkeys wrote:
Wow, is Microsoft entering the stand-up-comedian business? Because this is a great start. And if your version of "innovation" is the DRM in your Vista device drivers, then you can have it. Linux easily can get uptime of +600 days on most machines. Match that, windows. It might not be innovative but it works. I'll take reliability over "innovation" every day of the week and twice on sunday, pendejo.

Well you might not like DRM, but frankly I would be pissed if I couldn't watch my bluray DVDs on my laptop, and thats a reason for not using Linux.

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

evildictaitor wrote:
Well you might not like DRM, but frankly I would be pissed if I couldn't watch my bluray DVDs on my laptop, and thats a reason for not using Linux.

You can but not without first breaking the DRM and ensuring that support for UDF 2.5 is compiled into the kernel.

There is software that will either rip the stripped movies to the hard drive or stream directly from the disc to mplayer.

But I'm not sure if the FOSS community has cracked BD+ yet. Those movies might first need to be ripped with AnyDVD HD on Windows.

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