Be Honest, Windows Beats Linux Hands Down

I've been experimenting with most of the various wanna-be linux distributions, trying to get them to function on a 4-y.o. laptop, and I must say that, with all due respect to the oversensitive, adenoidal, teenage male egos utterly invested in linux, --

--it ain't ready for prime time, not by a long shot.

For all its warts, WinXP installs on almost any x86 system you can find - linux does not.

Most of the versions I gamely tried to install cannot even deal with a Compaq Presario 17XL570 notebook on account of a buggy ACPI implementation (yeah, I came across the rather tart, hauty little quip from one of the "developers" of the kernel that manufacturers need to cater to linux, not the other way 'round, and that therefore they weren't going to do anything to implement support in linux for laptops that, like this Compaq, have a buggy DSDT. That's a nice little boo-hoo rationalization from an intelligent idiot - we can't deal with it, but rather than admit reality, we're going to blame everyone else, instead).

Second, obscurantism in art is annoying and childish; obscurantism in a shell is just simple b**l-s**t. So, all I can say is, bash stinks worse than the biggest industrial hog-farm I've ever seen (and, since I spent a while in western VA/NC, I've come across some of the worst). Bash is quite clearly someone's private hotkey version of what would have been an otherwise very useful shell; unfortunately, there's no underlying shell that's been hotkeyed - all there is are someone's obscure private hotkey commands.

That, in a nutshell, exemplifies much of what handicaps linux, it is, and seems condemned to remain, essentially a private as opposed to a public operating system. Unless and until linux can grow up and get over the unstated assumption that every user is just another computer geek, it will never be able to compete with Windows - not even when M$ barfs up abominations like Vista.

 

I guess you get to be right. I have had experience with Linux and find it useful on the mobility, hardware-specific, or special situations categories pretty much dominating, but as a main os, it is not the easiest thing to migrate to from windows, and also has the usual major bugs, just as all code does.

 

Vista... I really like Vista... oh, well I guess we all have our opinions.

 

It's difficult not to picture you differently from the description above that you label people with.

Clearly, your conclusion is correct, contrary to the significant increase in Linux market share, implementation of Ubuntu on tens of thousands Dell laptops, and the expansion of the OS onto every electronic device imaginable.

Why don't you just admit that your thread is nothing more than an opinion? Because, the real world doesn't reflect your comments.

 

This is more flamebait than anything else. Let's not all be moths and flutter to the fire.

 

How much experience do you have with alternative operating systems, shyster? Are you a "techie" that enjoys experimenting with hardware, drivers, and how to make things work? Are you active in the open source community? Are you familiar with the drawbacks that open source developers must deal with daily, in that hardware developers cater to Microsoft and Apple, and that hardware details are sometimes painfully slow to be released to open source developers?

I have no idea where you fall in the computer-user spectrum, so I obviously can't pigeonhole you as a certain type of user. That's why I asked the above questions. As a fairly active open source guy, I'm accustomed to slow driver releases, kernel problems, etc, when it comes to Linux. I agree that the kernel developers can, at times, be a royal pain in the backside. However, since I don't have the technical expertise to help develop code, I can't be critical of the process.

Remember that laptop technology is a different animal than desktop technology (at least in a developers eyes). You'll have much better luck getting Linux working on an old desktop than on an old(er) laptop. However, I do agree with the kernel developer with regards to the buggy implementation; there are much larger issues to work in kernel development, so I wouldn't spend any time trying to code a workaround for a very small user base.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Hey. It's free.

And beats Windows hands-down for h4x0rs.....

 

Well, I would expect Widows to be better after paying for it. You can't beat a free Linux distribution though.

 

Yes, I'm sure if Linux's hands were tied down, Windows might have a chance of beating it up.

 

Did you guys here what he said? Do you want to leave the thread alone and be the better man, or start a flame war and lead to it's locking?

 

Windows does beat the pants off of Linux where compatibility is concerned, especially in notebooks. However, as kegobeer stated, much of the blame must go to the manufacturers themselves, but things are beginning to improve in this area as of late.

Drivers are the biggest issue I've found in Linux, but as with most areas of Linux, this is being improved upon at an accelerated rate. I think in the next few years we will see Linux really coming into it's own, but for now, I agree that it still has too many incompatibilities and driver issues for the casual user.

 

It must be delightfull to know it all and even better than those 'computer geeks' at Dell who offer Ubuntu.
Or those nitwits at Lenovo who are to offer SuSe Enterprise.
Damn those fools, if only they would know of your experience.

 

Just to be fair here, this is just anecdotal evidence. You found one system where one feature of Linux didn't work. Does that necessarily mean that *overall*, Linux is less compatible with hardware than XP? Perhaps, but you haven't really presented any overwhelming evidence.

Just curious here, but how is this attitude different from yours? Aren't you saying the exact same thing about Linux developers as they're saying about Dell?
In any case, does Microsoft supply you with drivers for all hardware? Or does the hardware manufacturer do it? (Yes, that's a trick question)
So why do you expect the Linux developers, rather than hardware manufacturers, to deliver Linux drivers?

No clue what you mean with this. Are you complaining that you are not familiar with bash? That's hardly Linux's fault, is it? Or is it bash specifically you don't like? Then use another of the several dozens of different shells available.

Or just don't *use* it. Several "modern" distributions give you a pretty Windows-like GUI where you don't really need to use a shell at all.

Now, Linux has plenty of flaws and shortcomings, no doubt about that. And in some areas, Windows does beat it hands down.

But as far as your complaints go, they sound more like ignorance than anything. I mean, you're complaining that Linux *allows* you to do something that Windows doesn't (use a decent shell). How is that a bad thing? If you don't like it, don't use it, but it's there for those who do use it.

When you bash Linux like this, you're having the opposite effect of what you intended. Just like when Linux-fanatics who haven't used Windows in a decade bash Windows, all they achieve is making Linux look bad.

 

I don't believe that true for a second. When I got my HP dv9700t, the first thing I did was attempt a clean XP install, because Vista sucks (obviously). However, the XP installer could not find the notebook's HDD, because I needed to integrate a SATA driver into the install CD (this was an XP SP2 CD with all updates to June 2007). So I installed Vista, in which it was extremely frustrating to get the drivers to work. I didn't know whether I should install from Windows Update, or by using executables from the hardware manufacturers' sites. Eventually, I managed to get Vista working.

Then I tried installing Kubuntu: everything, EVERYTHING worked automatically, except the sound, for which I simply had to update some software that was already installed. In the next version of Kubuntu, even that will work out of the box. Using the restricted drivers manager, I checked a few boxes, and I had full support for my graphics card, as well as support for a number of common proprietary formats.

After a few weeks, I decided to integrate the XP driver into my XP CD using nLite and install it. The XP install was pure torture. Upon completion of the installation, literally NONE of my hardware worked. Not the sound, not the graphics card, not the wireless, not the ethernet, not even the USB ports!!!! I had to download drivers from this site (because there are no drivers for XP for my laptop) and burn them to a CD, so I could install them on my laptop.

Now tell me, which OS is more hardware compatible?

 

You're reaching a general conclusion with a specific case; a mistake that plenty of Windows/Linux advocates make. One case does not represent the majority.

Compatibility depends on manufacturer support; Linux has poor compatiblity relative to Windows because it lacks manufacturer support. Windows, meanwhile, has good compatiblity because it has unanimous manufacturer support.

 

On the other hand, Linux has far better support for more obscure hardware. If the manufacturer isn't interested in making a driver for your version of Windows, you're screwed.
On Linux, there's still a decent chance that some developer somewhere has written a driver you can use.

So it's not that simple. Linux supports a lot of crazy hardware that doesn't generally work on Windows (ancient hardware that only has win9x-compatible drivers, for example, or fancy new hardware that only has drivers for Vista/XP but not older)

But for mainstream hardware, Windows probably has better compatibility.

 

Clearly, if I "knew it all" I wouldn't have any problems with linux - I'd have already tweaked it to perfection, and would be offering it up as, say, Godnix. Duh.

Second, Dell may be offering Ubuntu ("distro", etc..., lordy, can we get over the too-cute names?), but they're doing so at a premium over the same system that comes with Vista installed, which tells me that Dell is having to undertake a significant amount of monkeying with ubuntu in order to get it to work on their systems with at least the same degree of reliability as does Vista (which ain't saying much, since Vista's still beta as far as I'm concerned, and unlikely to ever be more than the ME version of WinXP).

So, perhaps the Dell engineers have discovered the same thing I have, namely, that linux is still not ready for prime time (i.e., widespread retail distribution). The only difference being, Dell has the money available to pay for its engineers to sit around for days/weeks/months poring over the ubuntu code, weeding out all of the problems, and fixing up what needs fixing in order to make ubuntu work reliably on a current system, whereas all I have is the spare time I can squeeze out of work/family obligations, plus my own less-than-stellar native intelligence.

I wouldn't put too much weight on the fact that a brand-name is beginning to put a linux version on its retail machines unless I know for a certainty that no significant tinkering had to be done for that linux version to work reliably.

 

I agree, that's why I wanted to try rescusitating this old Compaq with a linux installation instead of diddling around with the old WinME that was originally installed. However, the difficulty is that finding those resources is a major chore, and may not bear fruit if no-one has yet addressed the particular crazy hardware that I am trying to deal with.

However, until a linux version is issued that can reliably do that search for me and find/install the needed resources, or else provide me with a robust framework that would permit me to develop the resource myself without having to go back to school and get a degree in writing device drivers from scratch, linux cannot claim to be anything other than an experimental boutique system that cannot be relied upon (unless you're already experienced with monkeying around in the crank-case of your OS).

That, primarily, is what I'm getting frustrated by, a frustration that is not helped by the overbearing evangelism of the we-hate-Windoze side of the linux choir.

 

Clearly, anecdotal evidence does not a theorem prove; it does, however, disprove a theorem (e.g., take the proposition "all X are Y;" to prove that, I must, either directly or indirectly, be able to canvass every instance of X, on the other hand, to disprove that proposition, all I need to do is discover one instance of an X that is not a Y, and can use any ad-hoc means available for making that discovery).

The theorem disproved here is that linux is really and truly ready for prime time and is a more-than-adequate competitor to Windows - it ain't, and all I need is one instance that disproves the proposition.

Second, clearly, almost every device manufacturer has done significant work in order to make their devices as compatible as possible with Windows; however, that relationship is a two-way street, with MS also making certain compromises and adjustments in order to increase the compatibility of Windows with as many devices as possible.

This is plainly borne out precisely in the case of the bungled ACPI implementations - the constant complaint from many linux evangelists is that linux has problems because it's pure and has maintained fidelity with the underlying ACPI standards, meaning that it barfs on bungled ACPI implementations, and that MS, being the dirty dastardly corpo-fascist that it is, has cheated by sullying the purity of the ACPI standard in order to ensure that Windows can deal with many bungled implementations without barfing, and that linux will never stoop to MS's level by making the same sorts of compromises needed to get linux to stop barfing on many bungled implementations, and that it is the holy obligation of the device manufacturers to come forward and fix their own bungled implementations.

That's a very nice, pure, holy position to take, it's also b**l-s**t. First off, going forward, most device manufacturers would most likely fix up their ACPI implementations on their current and upcoming devices so that they get even better compliance with Windows, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (about which they probably know nothing, so they cannot assume that Win7 will still have the necessary leeway to deal with their past ACPI mistakes, and therefore can only count on full compatibility if they fix up their ACPI implementation), so getting holier-than-thou lectures from smart-mouthed linux evangelists is unlikely to achieve a solution that would not come about in the absence of said lectures.

Second, only a real dim-wit, or a truly cloistered academic, could really believe that said lecturing is going to be instrumental in getting device manufacturers to go back and fix up the ACPI implementations they bungled in devices that were sold years ago and are no longer on the market. It's more likely that such brow-beating will generate a defensive reaction in many device makers and cause them to more studiously ignore the problems with linux caused by their bungled ACPIs rather than ameliorate those problems.

Thus, it is both childish as well as unhelpful for the gods of linux to put on their mantles of purity and insist that the mountain come to them, rather than they going to the mountain - i.e., refusing to provide fix-ups in linux that will overcome bungled ACPI implementations and instead demanding that device makers fix years-old implementations so that linux will stop barfing when it's installed on old hardware.

 

Your frustration is with your specific hardware. Do you also complain that Windows won't run out of the box on an Apple machine? You still have to tweak, do lots of configuration and hacking to make it even boot.

Linux will not work 100% on ever piece of hardware. Nor will any OS. Overall, Linux tends to work on more hardware. I have the opposite problem of you: Windows won't boot or install on my Xeon and SCSI based desktop without lots of hard work, Linux is perfectly happy right outta the box. Does that mean that Windows obviously sucks and is not ready for prime-time? It does according to your logic. But what it really means is that just that specific hardware is not compatible with Windows. And that's it. Unfortunately, the laptop you have was designed by people who didn't adhere to standards (and actively contravenes them many times), and as such, doesn't work with Linux. Have you considered putting Vista or XP on that laptop? Something that you claim would actually work?

Another point... Ubuntu isn't a "cute" name. It was started by Mark Shuttleworth, a native of South Africa, and as such he used a name that was central to his heritage for the distribution he founded and funds.

Linux is much, much more than an experimental boutique system, and is quite reliable. The machine that handles all my email and web serving runs for months at a time, and only reboots for kernel updates. An old Compaq laptop, as it happens to be. The machines we use at work here that get the best performance with our applications are Linux based. Same hardware, Windows is slower. I'm sorry you've had a bad experience, but you're drawing some pretty broad and incorrect conclusions from very little evidence.

 

Yes the troll gets feed and fud..

 

Undoubtedly I'll catch even more heat, but I feel like a little gratuitous sniping, and you're the flavor of the minute - sorry.

1) "Ubuntu" is a too-cute name, and larding on PC overtones does nothing to lighten the flavor. Anything with a "K" artificially stapled on as a prefix is too-cute, as is the older (but no less obnoxious) "G" prefix. That being said, "Windows" is just plain dorky. Just as his-highness Gates is entitled to display his dorkiness in whatever fashion he chooses, Mr. Shuttleworth is entitled to play whatever rhetorical name games he desires; that doesn't make it any the less cutesy.

By-the-by, and admitting that my knowledge concerning Mr. Shuttleworth's "heritage" is rather limited, as even Mr. Shuttleworth's own website is rather vague concerning all the gory details of his biography. However, if centrality to "heritage" is such a sine qua non, why not something like "Mensdom"? Just as too-cute, but also seems to be just as "central" to his "heritage." For those so inclined, you're at liberty to flame away, I'm quite used to it by now.

2) Neither Apple, MS, or any of their respective evangelists is singing the praises of running Windows native on Mac hardware, are they? If they were, perhaps your criticism would be more to the point; as it is, it's pointless.

3) No, by my criteria, Windows is not "not ready for prime time" simply because it barfs on your Xeon/SCSI based desktop, essentially because such systems are not retail prime-time systems. If Windows barfed on, say, AMD Turion 64 systems, then, by my criteria, Windows would not be ready for prime time given the widespread availability of retain AMD Turion 64 systems.

4) Of course I've considered putting XP on the laptop in question (and I still may, since I can no longer adequately recover the old WinME installation). Vista - surely you joke; even I'm not so stupid as to believe that Vista would work at all on a 4 y.o. laptop that was of middling capabilities even when new.

5) Of course, as I've stated too many times already, one of the underlying complaints is that Compaq bunged up the ACPI implementation on this laptop (which is just too f**king funny when you think about it, because Compaq was one of the main driving forces behind development of the ACPI standard in the first place). What I most object to here, and what separates Windows from linux, is that, in the interest of reliable functionality, Windows got down and dirty and made sure that it accomodated most buggy ACPI implementations such as the one on this laptop, whereas the linux developers are more interested in vainglorious self-importance, and are too dainty to provide decent work-arounds for buggy ACPIs, and instead wrap themselves in the cloak of fidelity to the standard and demand that the manufacturers instead fix the bugs in their ACPI implementations.

Guess what, going forward, a posture like that is nothing more than self-serving because most manufacturers are going to fix their ACPI implementation in their newer products any way, as evidenced by the fact that there are significantly fewer ACPI problems in linux on newer laptops. Going backward, a posture like that is actively counter-productive - few manufacturers have any incentive to repair 4 y.o. bugs in the first place, and being brow-beaten by a bunch of holier-than-thou upstarts is not going to make them any more inclined to spend the time, effort and money to provide fixes for 4 y.o. equipment that is no longer being sold. In this case, the old adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar most assuredly applies. So, if I do eventually get linux working on this laptop, it will more than likely be despite the linux evangelists, not because of them.

6) What version/distribtion of linux are you running on your personal server and on the machines at work? Totally for-free, or quasi-proprietary (i.e., who'd you get them from)? And, if totally for-free, and not from one of the for-profit linux vendors, how much time and effort went into setting them up, and what skill level was required of the person(s) who did the setup?

 

Nice. Get a job.

 

The reason I use Windows is because it's right here, pre-installed on my computer. It works.

 

Jalf and Pitabred tag team, go!

 

This is an idiotic thread. The linux users use linux because it works for them. And the PC users use windows because it works for THEM

End of Discussion.

 

The discussion continues; I use both!

 

There's probably more truth in that statement than I would have wanted to admit last night when I wrote the original post. As it is, most posters have been admirably restrained in their flaming, so a tip of the hat to all (other than the poor lost soul who thinks Vista is the cat's pajamas - a moment of silence, perhaps :wink: ).

 

Actually I'm simply stating that you cannot make a generalization that Linux _never_ works. In my personal experience, I've had almost no issues with hardware compatibility with Linux, however I do know some others who have. I'm just stating that the likelihood of encountering such issues is far less than some claim it to be.

 

MS is quite good at getting in its own way, so I don't expect them to really deal with the potential for competition linux may in the future provide; however, I do believe that, if MS really wants to prevent linux from becoming a real competitive threat, the best thing it could do is make sure that most of the retail development continues to come from the open-source freebie crowd and not from the proprietary for-profit developers.

As most know, most servers run on unix or linux variants, not Windows, and there are many reasons for that; however, one aspect that is not sufficiently appreciated is that most of those variants are not free, they're paid for, either because they embody significant proprietary code that is licensed, or because they entail a significant degree of customization and after-installation support that is only available for pay.

The biggest threat to MS will never come from the open-source crowd, but from a for-profit that builds a reliable, affordable linux-based offering in which they have sufficient enforceable intellectual property rights to give them the right market incentives to maintain and develop that offering.

Essentially, open-source is as much bane as it is boon, and without the incentives that come from having marketable, protectible property rights, will never be able to offer a product that can compete out-of-the-box with Windows, even though Windows is in many respects a lesser operating system.

The very fact of Windows' lesser status is, however, part of the reason why Windows does better than linux. Linux is, as much as possible, a purebred; Windows is a mutt. Being a mutt, however, means that even though Windows cannot perform as efficiently or gracefully as linux in many situations, it can perform more flexibly and accomodate a greater number of real-world bung-ups.

 

Experience with alternative OSes - depends. In terms of current alternatives to Windows, very little; in overall terms, some, although that was many, many moons ago - I used to do a lot of digging around in my old Atari 800, and spent some time playing around on Arpanet with a friend who had a low-level login, back before Arpanet became internet.

"Techie" experience viz-a-viz hardware (as opposed to software) - minimal, although that is one of the areas I am currently expanding (or at least attempting to expand). Most of my experience, such as it is, is software-related, and much of it is extremely outdated - I used to do basic assembly on the aforementioned Atari 800, and I cut my Pascal and Fortran teeth on old NEC desktops that ran MS-DOS.

Awareness of so-called open-source issues with h/w developers - more intellectual than visceral; i.e., I've head about the issues you mention, but haven't banged my head against them for that long.

I am (regrettably) very familiar with the kludged-up nature of laptops, having spent way too much time trying to deal with my sony vaio (not related to linux, mainly to upgrades and BIOS issues), and just recently with the compaq.

In terms of whether or not the developers should address issues like work-arounds for bunged up ACPI implementations on old laptops, I would have no beef (well, ok, less of a beef - everyone ought to be honest, at least with themselves, about when their self-interest comes into play) with the developers if they had simply stated that, due to much greater pressing necessities, and very limited resources, they had concluded that there would be no official attention paid to implementing work-arounds in the kernel that would only benefit a few idiots trying to install linux on crappy outdated laptops - resources and problems always have to be triaged - but that's not the position that was taken.

The position taken was that, notwithstanding that it was a serious problem, they'd lived up to their end of the bargain by properly implementing the OS side of ACPI, and that they weren't going to address the need for work-arounds for buggy ACPI implementations on the hardware side because that was the job of the hardware developers and any willingness on the part of the linux people to develop work-arounds would only cause the h/w developers to shirk their responsibility to go back and correct their old buggy ACPI implementations. That sort of statement smacks of arrogance, and of a machiavellian willingness to needlessly sacrifice the few for the sake of maintaining some sort of mystic purity and coercing the h/w vendors into setting right what should have been right in the first place, and is quite different from the we-don't-have-the-resources statement you've suggested was intended. My-way-or-the-highway is what I would expect from MS, not from supposedly progressive, virtuous open-source folk.

 

Pfff, incredible, if you would spend have the time you used on writing elaborate replies on linux, you could have mastered 4 different distro's and set up linux on the first Turing machine.

 

lmao!

 

By request of the original poster, this thread is now closed .