Author: David Rasmussen
Date: 23:26:52 12/19/00
Go up one level in this thread
On December 20, 2000 at 00:24:54, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>I find Windows 2000 to be a tad MORE reliable than NT 4, actually. >>>The stability of the Linux kernel is good, but as much as I like Linux, I really >>>have to say that I think it is useless for anything else than server OS and >>>development OS. It has louse harwaresupport and lacks standards in various areas >>>that are extremely important, if you're not only using development tools and >>>server software. I'm looking forward to the day when the rest of Linux is as >>>good as the kernel. > > >I would disagree with the "lousy hardware support". I haven't found anything >it doesn't support in years. The most common problems are the various video >accelerator cards, but most of those are well-supported today. Sound? works >fine. SCSI? the same. RAID cards? Ditto. USB? there. > Winprinters? REAL printers? Native 3D support with proprietary chipsets? Soundcards ? etc. ? I'm not saying that all these are great products (winprinters certainly isn't), but still, you have a greater chance of getting things to work without problems on windows as opposed to linux. That's just a fact. >As far as following standards goes, I can't imagine a POSIX-compliant system >being called "non-standard". TCP/IP works perfectly, for example. The >X-windows system has been around for years and is certainly a stickler for >standards support. > Yeah, so the basic network system and window system works. So it does in windows. X windows is overkill in many cases, IMO, and also, it lacks or chooses not to implement several important features that COULD be standardized by a windowing system, such as drag and drop, clipboard etc. I know that this can be done in the window manager, but that only leads to standard rot. There is nothing wrong with X windows supporting these modern and not so modern notions that make the GUI of even Windows much better in practice. As I've said, I know that linux is good for development and server applications, but if I was stuck somewhere with a computer and a net connection, and had to solve 1000 different tasks (not only development and server stuff), I'd sure hope it was a windows machine. I have numerous times been in a situation where I said "Damn, I have to do this or that, and I only have a linux machine at my disposal. Now I have to download and install and configure all sorts of really basic stuff, to get this problem solved. But first, I have to find it. And make sure that the individual software parts work together". Of course, I have had the same problem with windows, but then it's much less of a problem to find and download the stuff I need. What I'm saying is, that in practice, windows is more complete for the very different things that I use my computer for. I have a linux system installed, and I work with linux all the time at my work and at university, and I too get the feeling, "wow, this system is cool and the multitasking is great, and it doesn't require very much memory, and the GUI is all different and fancy", but then when I've sat there for a while and actually have to solve some real problems, then I get in trouble. Sure, I solve the problem usually, but it takes thinking and downloading and configuring etc. etc. to do what is usually just a minor detail to do in windows. >I have zero problems taking programs from linux to Solaris, for example... Sure you don't. That's not what I was talking about. That's a developer feature.
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