June Desktops!

[Floyd]

Has to be the olop, bit messy thou!

 

[Stonehelm]

 

[Dataforce]

even though it's almost July...
i tried Kubuntu was impressed, but sadly it didn't want to work well with WoW with my graphics chipset so i'm back on Windows

Alas

Windows is safe. The level of safety is however largely determined by the intelligence of the user. Although it is argued that Unix based systems have an architectural safety advantage, it remains to be seen just how reliable this assertion is if such systems were under the pressures of a dominant market share in the consumer arena.

I'd say servers are under attack more-so than desktops a majority of the time. Furthermore even if linux was the dominant OS, i do believe the root/non-root architecture is enough to stop alot of the things that window-based problems rely on.

Well I'd be concerned if you were sure of the exactness of the statement, as you don't make clear what you are talking about. IBM is a services company, Novell and RH distributors, and Sun an OS developer but primarily a services2software company. I'm pretty sure that their GDP would cumulatively not come close to MSFT's.

This is what I was refering to, but as i said I wasn't sure. They are pretty big companys who all support linux in one way or another, be it RH/Novell developing and distributing, or SUN using their patents etc in an effort to thwarte patent-realted issues with m$.

I however suspect that you may be using it to qualify support. In this case, you undermine the sheer number of companies that support Windows.

A different kind of support.

You have to remember that even a small droplet in the Linux see (say, Corel) looks like a giant compared with the other companies operating in the field. However when purely supporting Windows, they are just one of many with little or no emphasis placed upon them. Linux remains a marginalised OS.

I never refuted that.

Nothing else? Saying Windows dominance is due to marketing is absolutely rubbish.

Its really not.

While Microsoft are great at creating a stir for their products,

Marketing.

it comes nothing close to the religious fervour of die hard MacOS and Linux users.

Which are at a low number due to the marketing of microsoft.

No, Microsoft's dominance is due to its agreements with OEM's and monopolist tactics in order to get Windows on as many machines as possible

This smells like marketing to me. Offer the OEMs a deal to sue windows and advertise it for them. Marketing.

- thus breeding familiarity and user lock-in through the back door.

I'm still going with marketing here, sorry.

The majority of familiarity etc is a result of early-day marketing.

The Aero and WPF systems make overall, a very small part of the changes in Windows Vista. Vista incorporates many new technologies which remain under the hood. There is a very good Arstechnica article on the changes.

Linkage?

Yes the requirements for all features are a bit over the top. However the Basic version still remains to run on most machines, just like XP. No Linux user has a leg to stand on when it comes to number of variations.

Ah true, but linux users/companies don't sell the product for hundreds of pounds, then cripple it and sell it for less.

More freedom and choice over what exactly?

.. everything.

To the average joe, what freedoms does Linux offer which they would be interested in?

With the abundance of DRM and "Trusted Computing" I'd say that linux offers freedom of just general ability to use what you have.

The lack of full Windows Application compatibility is quite a 'freedom restricter' in my point of view.

This isn't the fault of linux, and windows software isn't always the best for the job. Take internet explorer for example.

There are not Linux versions of everything people use,

Examples? I've found replacements for everything I used.

particularly those of us for whichever reason use old or bespoke software.

The older stuff is likely to run fine on linux, having been around long enough for people to have added compatibility to things like wine, or coded a satisfactory replacement.

Well, I'd say it has a lot more going for it. Whether it is through ignorance or otherwise, the Windows share of >85% of the consumer market says most people just are not seeing your point of view.

That *is* the problem.

Linux fails spectacularly with its user friendliness and performance.

I don't believe I claimed it was overly user-friendly, but what performance issues make it fail?

Very few distributions have succeeded in matching WinXP's boot times (cold boot),

Personally I don't find this a problem, Even if I were to shutdown at night, The fact i don't have to reboot to install or update anything (kernel excluded), or every few hours randomly cos of general sucky-ness makes up for it.

with Ubuntu being particularly slow. You need to do all sorts of technical things to get the boot time down yourself. Its user interface requires you to drop down to bash to perform the simplest of tasks, such as installing the correct driver.

I never claimed it was perfect, as i said - there is a learning curve. but quite frankly, "./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run" pressing enter when asked to, and then rebooting (or "sudo invoke-rc.d [k|g|x]dm restart") isn't exactly hard.

If something goes wrong, you risk being forced out of your X session - particularly with graphics drivers, which means you are stuck there unless you are proficient enough to fix the xorg.conf from the command line (great idea for n00bs).

X works out of the box on install in most cases, applications like installers that make modifications keep a backup - there is no need for knowledge of xorg.conf to fix problems, just "sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf" - a simple linux command that most people would know before deciding to make the switch.

Raw performance is also MUCH slower than Windows. Benchmarks with applications such as SuperPI have proven this.

SuperPi on windows and linux are not the same. They are different code bases etc.

for a fair test an application needs to be written using a language that uses the same code on both systems, and a compiler doing the same optimizations etc. Also, this program would have to be console-based (with Explorer/X Server running still) to be fair, as the GUIs provide different levels of performace and issues.

However I concede that many applications, even those under WINE, have a performance benefit (particulary games). Although user perception surveys show people 'feel' its slower - mainly due to for whatever reason slow application loading / window painting.

I have no experience with games on linux (apart form UT99 which feels the same to me, and as I only play it every now and then, I don't notice any subtle changes in performance etc), and avoid using wine when I can. However others have confirmed the games theory about performing better, but due to various issues in wine/cedega/cxoffice - not as good as on windows.


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Splitting to 2 posts cos the forum sucks.

 

[Dataforce]

And this is the problem. New users do not know how to use Google.

Thats the users fault. (Yes, I know this is not the mentality that is needed, but its the truth)

Linux does not JustWork(tm) like MacOS and Windows, and still requires a great deal of system maintenance in order to get to an acceptable level.

It does just work out of the box, but requires customization to work as wanted. However I dare say I spent less time configuring my linux install than my windows installs after a fresh install.

I dualboot Ubuntu 7, WinXP pro and Vista.

Nice one.

I have stuck to my WinXP system due to what I perceive as raw performance and ease of use. I don't do anything particularly resource intensive, but I do notice when things such as Firefox take an extra few seconds to load compared to my WinOS.

I personally blame this on firefox's shoddy (XUL is a poor-mans UI) coding in some aspects, as konqueror loads near instantly for me.

In Ubuntu, and have to consistently drop to the command line to perform tasks

Most things have a GUI, however in linux everything is done via console, the GUIs just hide it, and in a lot of cases just shell-out to the console.

Console is the quickest and most powerful way todo things (and imo easiest in most cases), however the availability of GUI tools (and the familiarity of these tools by the experienced users, not jsut the creators) needs to be improved.

For example recently I was helping kud with his linux install, and whilst I know there is GUI ways of doing things, my first (and only) instinct was always the console methods.

- particularly when trying (and usually failing) to configure the xorg.conf file correctly.

In most cases i doubt you need to edit it.

I infact, never managed it when I had dualview CRT's.

It took me a good, 2 minutes to get mine working. (post nvidia driver install)
edit xorg.conf, adding

Option         "TwinView" "True"
Option         "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"

to the screen section.
and changing the "MetaModes" section to list each resolution twice, eg:

Option         "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768"

and I'm sure there is a GUI out there that does this for you aswell. However the downside of X is needing to restart it for a simple change like enabling a second monitor. (However it doesn't freak out when that monitor is no longer attatched like windows - trying to open a window at a lan party and having it appear offscreen where my old monitor used to be, was irritating as hell)

The lack of GUI configuration options is simply inexcusable, especially considering its inclusion with new Dell systems.

There is GUIs for most things, but this is not the prefered way of doing things, and is often overlooked.

Anyone buying a dell machine with ubuntu probably knows they want linux and thus expect it.

Lastly, Windows offers a consistent experience. I can quite happily drag a file from explorer into BSplayer and watch it play effortlessly. In ubuntu it depends on the playback application, drag source... and god knows what else.

This is a problem related to KDE/Gnome, QT/GTK, DCOP/DBUS.

This is one of linuxs problems. "Too much" freedom. Take wine/cedega/cxoffice - they all do the same thing, but with different bugs.

Not mentioning that Ubuntu's out of the box Samba performance is dreadful,

You expect anything else form a closed reverse-engineered proprietary protocol that Microsoft tries to protect as much as possible? It does a damn good job considering the situation.

making it impossible to achieve throughput acceptable enough to drag and play files from a Windows share.

Bull****. I have quite happily played files from Linux<->Linux and Linux<->Windows using samba. Infact for the best part of 3 years my entire music/Movies/TV collection was hosted on a samba share on my server.

And Windows is pretty (I use the Vista transformation pack). Compiz-fusion has nothing on WindowBlinds.

I fail to see anything windowsblinds can do that can not be obtained on linux. The choice available for windowsblinds is about the only thing.

I do however use Xubuntu as the primary OS for two of my other workstations. Bare bones systems which do nothing but provide internet access for other users. Their environment does not need to adapt to new software and the users are somewhat inexperienced. Therefore I rely on Ubuntu's lack of malware compatibility to keep maintenance of the systems down - its ideal in this situation.

That is one of the goals of linux OSs.

I do own a Fedora server, but I'm happy with my Windows one and much looking forward to Longhorn server and its new Terminal Services features . It doesn't have problems with uptime either.

I have always praised Win2k3 Server.
What new TS features does longhorn server have then, I havn't been reading much about it.

/Leo

In my opinion linux *is* ready to use as a viable windows replacement for near enough everyone. However the problems with companies producing windows-only (or mac-only which annoys me slightly more, an intel-OSX bianry needs much less work to make linux compatible, with OSX being BSD based and all) products, and the general lack of newbie-friendliness is inhibiting it.

- DF

 

[Jambo]

Prepare yourself for the most unorganized edesk top in the wrold!!!

Well its organised abit lol games at bottom right, CRAP!! at left and usefull stuff at top right lol

[/URL][/IMG]

 

[kud125]

you have bearshare shortcut, twice.

 

[Jambo]

lmao, thats how un organsied i am :P

Just formated about 10 mins ago lol so heres my new desktop

[/URL][/IMG]http://www.lomcn.co.uk/forum/[URL=h...ack.us/img522/8980/dekstopcu1.png[/IMG][/URL]

 

[JealY]

Nice resolution you have there.