Why one OS VS another isn't over played here

It seems when I decide I want to make a post or get a decent discussion going about OSs, it takes maybe one day before someone says "This is been talked to death and it's old" or I get called a Microsoft basher.

I don't think this has been done to death and I sure as hell don't think we should stop talknig about it.

Why?

Simple, this is the OS forum, it was made to talk about OSs. That has yet to of happened very often though. The only thing we see here is questions.

So, in the near future I'll be starting another thread about Windows and other OSs. However, this is a pre warning:

Don't think for one minute someone is going to ruin it with "This is my OS is better than yours bull"....Not happening.

Maybe people would have realised this had there been more discussions on OSs here, but because people seem to think that once a thread about Unix and Windows was done it didn't need to be done again, I have to explain it:

MS-DOS is different from.... Well Windows.

Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 are not the same thing.

Windows NT was a complete re-design from Windows 95. And at that time Linux was very different than it is now.

Windows 2000 came out and so did another version of the Linux Kernel. Why did we not talk about it?

Windows XP came out as did the new Linux Kernel.... Again, another chance for discussion on new changes and features in both OSs.


Well, Windows Vista is coming. The 2.6 Kernel for Linux isn't the same thing it was, as Linus wants to slow down on adding features and start fixing up issues. Free BSD also has a new release.

We could have a GREAT discussion on the differences from past releases... And we could talk about who is using them... How do they like it?

And we are. For the Closet zelots (Windows users who pretend they only want fairness when really they are Windows zelots in the same way we have Linux zealots who ruin every discussion I try to get going here) if you think for one minute of ruining this new discussion coming up, here is a warning, I WILL delete your posts. I WILL re-open the thread if need be. We CAN talk about things without "My OS is better" and if you don't like it, select the option that says front page display, and un-tick OSs.

Windows Vista

Free BSD 6

SUSE Enterprise 10

Slackware 11

Lots of topics.

Hmmm now there's one i cannot believe i have not tried free BSD, i've been tinkering around with detoxx lately, i haven't gotten far, but hey it's kind of fun to get a little bit done, then wait to see if everything glues together, then when it fruits up you have to start again and try to get a little further.

It's soooo irritating, yet addicting. :)

will get onto that free BSD as i've now got a new box that i've been meaning to put together and use.

cheers
f2B

Good idea gore. I was just reading an article by Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols about the Vista/SUSE 10.1-Enterprise 10 match up. He thinks the advantage at present goes to SUSE. But this is something we will read more about.

The Linspire people also have a new offering coming out called freespire. Which is a free version of Linspire (free in price and free as in GPL freedom) which they will give you as a free download. I think you can use apt-get to update the free software. If you want to use Click and Run (CNR) they have a 30 free trial, and then you have to pay $20.00 a year. This may give people another Vista alternative.


About your idea for a new discussion. I think one way to keep it a useful discussion is to focus on facts. That is, back up statements with facts. If you say, "My OS is better," be prepared to give details to back up opinions (when I say "you" I mean anyone making a statement).

Vista is still supposed to come out early next year (January I think). The first part of 2007 looks to be an interesting time.

I've been prepairing for this for quite some time. I just wanted a fair warning to anyone who's tinking of ruining it.

Thanks Precher.

Her OS is better than his... :p

*snikker*

[Edit]

Actually... I don't think I ever had a post deleted... A new first... :cool:

[/Edit]

Don't say a new first. That implies that you've had it happen now. which you haven't.

However, if you're planning on replying to the thread, you WILL add something useful, you WILL NOT reply with your usual crap of how it's dumb, or over done, or whatever else you kay have planned to kill it with, or I'm going to get out the harpoon and go phishing for sharks. :)

Actually Tiger you should be damn happy about this, because you run almost completly a Windows network. Meaning you should probably have quite a bit to add in. There are only 2 boxes here running Windows. Even though I have been thinkign about setting up Server 2003 again. Was fun.

Looks like someone has an ideal ike mine:



http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5613250391.html

The only reason OS threads turn into wars for the most part is because "usually" one party on either side makes comments that are entirely untrue and biased. So when those statements are made it fuels the discussion in my opinion. If one seems biased and unprepared they should be called to the floor. Not silenced. For example most of the time people speak of windows in the context of 1995. People are biased against windows for one particular reason, proprietary source code. Often the actual merits of either OS go undiscussed. And it ALWAYS depends on exactly "what" you are trying to accomplish. Zealots go both ways, not just with defending Windows. Even among the Linux user base in various forms of distros you have your zealots pointing out deficiencies in other distros, even ones under dev.

People are more critical of windows. Even as Vista readys the media seems to focus on what is wrong with windows or what features are left out versus the linux distros where each release is portrayed as the second coming of Jesus. And rightly so, I suppose. Considering we are paying out the ass for windows, we want more. And it's up to MS to convince us to spend money on another round of upgrades. Some of us will be forced to because with each release of a new OS comes the impending end of their lowest platform support.

And to continue a discussion on a path of collaboration with windows and Linux: open office 2 has been out for some time now and it reads MS formatted document files like never before.

before this thread goes 'Live'
I would delete posts 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 [and THIS one natch]
as you seem to be posting for a self fulfilling prophesy
and those posts are just superfluous to the thread

trim it down now
and let her rip ..........

you don't NEED to go at it like a bull with a sore head
mod it from the background

Dont use big words foxy you will confuse him!

Hell I'm lucky I can type right now,. It's almost 3 PM and I'm still awake. I have an appointment in a few minutes and a Ghost Hunters Marathon is on which is why I haven't replied to any of this so far.

But for some of the comments, I'm not going to have the actual thread in here, this was more like the rough draft, the thread is going to hopefully be started sometimes after I sleep heh. I've invited a few people in so hopefully they jump in, and Tiger had his invite in a reply here as he is one of the few Windows only netywork people, and I know, that if he knows this is going to be seriouse, than he can add to it on that side, and maybe Pooh will hop in though he has been busy.

For modding, the only thing I'm going to do on that end is delete threads that contribute nothing to it. I don't plan on dleeting or editing threads other than for that. I mean I'm not going to sit here deleting every Pro Windows Vista post, that would kill the discussion.

Anyway, I'll be back in a bit. I'm finding out how my lungs are doing and my blood tests.

If you get the Sci Fi Channel, pop it on!

I'll solve this immediately. There are those who know know.... the best OS ever conceived goes with the best toys ever handled by primates. The open source implementation of the Lego Operating System - LegOS However LegOS seemed to have been too much like Legos (the toy) so it is now brickOS

It's too bad the BarbieOS gore posted on a while back was a hoax. They could have had KenOS also, which could have been KDE based instead of Gnome :)

Quote:

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Originally posted here by RoadClosed
I'll solve this immediately. There are those who know know.... the best OS ever conceived goes with the best toys ever handled by primates. The open source implementation of the Lego Operating System - LegOS However LegOS seemed to have been too much like Legos (the toy) so it is now brickOS

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Ahh Man :
now I'm too thick to play with LEGO :eek:

I have copies of all the MS OS's
and have a couple of the open source too

from MY perspective
the MS path was a LOT easier as there was / is a HEAP of help out there
plus everyone and their dog has MS at home too

Open source has me flummoxed
I can load it, and it sorts itself out to find the network settings to let me surf [well, Ubuntu / Fedora core3 did] but to get help with these requires you to utilise the web to get to a forum

Still can't get any of em to 'do' what I can do with windows
and the forums are full of KDE this and Gnome that

it's full of code
I.T. is Acronym hell
but open source has em ENCRYPTED :eek:

I still keep hacking [no pun intended] away at em
but for my day to day services I'm 'stuck ' with MS .......

Something I want brought up is File Systems. Not just NTFS, or Fat32, and sure as crap not just Ext2 and Ext3 either.

I can hold my own in BeFS, FAT, UFS, FFS, ReiserFS.... I won't list them all, but I would like to discuss these as well.

Again tis is going to be more like Windows, Linux, Unix, MscOS if someone has a Mac around.... Also Fragmentation.

This is one of my complaints in Windows... How can they say a modern secure File system if it needs defragged at all?

I'm hoping... Well I WAS hoping, with vista WinFS would kill defragging. BSD and Linux don't need any defragging... So why should Windows?

I just finished Defragging my laptop on the Windows Partition.... It has %5 Fragmentation still.... Why?

Fox:

When you say you have copies of ALL Microsoft OSs, do you have a copy of Xenix by chance? I've been looking for one.

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forums are full of KDE this and Gnome that

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That's because with KDE or Gnome you can do most of what windows GUI does. You just have to take your hat off and start over with where things are located. There is no c:/, each distro has a configuration utility that replaces "control panel". In SuSE its YaST. Change IP.. YaST, change video settings.. YaST etc. Learning curve? HUGE.

Quote:

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I just finished Defragging my laptop on the Windows Partition.... It has %5 Fragmentation still.... Why?

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Because it's impossible to have ZERO fragmentation. Even under Linux. If you ran some kind of "fragmentation" program under Linux right now. I bet you would see around 15 - 20 percent fragmentation. What Linux does do better is a couple of things to keep it down. One is the newer file systems that sort of "defrag" on the fly and keep fragmentation minimal. You will never have all space consumed within each sector and cylinder. NEVER. Until a sector is 1 byte in length. But that would make file tracking very costly in over head.

For simplicity lets say both windows and Linux have 500kb sectors and you save a 300kb script on each os. Guess what? Fragmentation. Linux doesn't really need a "defrag" program per say because they have moved forward a little better and maintain files systems that keep fragmentation minimal. That is NOT to say it is absent.

Why didn't windows do as well? Compatibility in the upgrade process over time from FAT (8 bit) to FAT 16 to FAT32 to NTFS which with each succession did a better job and fragmentation.

Another thing Linux does better to hold off fragmentation is starting with several partitions right on install. More partitions = less overall storage space but better fragmentation management. But even on Linux if the free space becomes small fragmentation will increase.

So Linux really doesn't require defragmentation because it does a better job at keeping it in check. Windows isn't as good but is improving and the most likely reason is backward compatibility over time. Where as in the Linux world they don't mind trashing and rebuilding their systems because there isn't the issue with a registry tracking software parameters and the inability to build (compile) source code on modified file systems.

If you don't mind when I do post the new thread I'm going to copy and post that one in it.

Sipping my coffee I had another thought. People have always said linux didn't need defragging. But in ext2 you had a tool called e2defrag. funny, there is a defrag tool there. And in ext3 you could downgrade to ext2 run defrag and then upgrade again.

With NTFS MS said you wouldn't need to defrag. They were wrong. Not quite there yet. If you are going to copy that, I should spell check it. :p

You can spell check it, I can copy over and edit it for you if needed. ;)

Hmmm,

I think that RoadClosed has a good point with the "backwards compatibility" angle?

I have software that defragments and compacts the Windows registry hives. It doesn't do that with Windows 2000 (NT5) or XP because they have been enhanced to handle this.

It certainly was an issue with 9x/ME :eek:

MS seem to have dumped this "backwards compatibility icon" when they went to XP? I expect them to improve rapidly, as it is a fairly easy and obvious area, and the old hardware won't really support the new operating systems.

My suggestion is that MS were trying to corner the OS market in the commercial sector (the only people who could really afford computers back then) so this "backwards compatibility" became some sort of sacred cow?

Just a thought :)

Quote:

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became some sort of sacred cow?

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It was a sacred cow and perhaps the reason linux has succeeded. Anyone who was around when the transition for FAT16 to FAT32 KNOWS the issues. And that was backward compatible. For the very first kernal linux FS was superior. But did it EVER gain major performance advantage ouside extreme applications? I would say no.

But now as hard drives are getting bigger and bigger. The advantage becomes apparent and yes MS knows this.

LinuxFS? Errrr, MinixFS?

Quote:

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Originally posted here by gore
It seems when I decide I want to make a post or get a decent discussion going about OSs, it takes maybe one day before someone says "This is been talked to death and it's old" or I get called a Microsoft basher.

I don't think this has been done to death and I sure as hell don't think we should stop talknig about it.

Why?

Simple, this is the OS forum, it was made to talk about OSs. That has yet to of happened very often though. The only thing we see here is questions.

So, in the near future I'll be starting another thread about Windows and other OSs. However, this is a pre warning:

Don't think for one minute someone is going to ruin it with "This is my OS is better than yours bull"....Not happening.

Maybe people would have realised this had there been more discussions on OSs here, but because people seem to think that once a thread about Unix and Windows was done it didn't need to be done again, I have to explain it:

MS-DOS is different from.... Well Windows.

Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 are not the same thing.

Windows NT was a complete re-design from Windows 95. And at that time Linux was very different than it is now.

Windows 2000 came out and so did another version of the Linux Kernel. Why did we not talk about it?

Windows XP came out as did the new Linux Kernel.... Again, another chance for discussion on new changes and features in both OSs.


Well, Windows Vista is coming. The 2.6 Kernel for Linux isn't the same thing it was, as Linus wants to slow down on adding features and start fixing up issues. Free BSD also has a new release.

We could have a GREAT discussion on the differences from past releases... And we could talk about who is using them... How do they like it?

And we are. For the Closet zelots (Windows users who pretend they only want fairness when really they are Windows zelots in the same way we have Linux zealots who ruin every discussion I try to get going here) if you think for one minute of ruining this new discussion coming up, here is a warning, I WILL delete your posts. I WILL re-open the thread if need be. We CAN talk about things without "My OS is better" and if you don't like it, select the option that says front page display, and un-tick OSs.

Windows Vista

Free BSD 6

SUSE Enterprise 10

Slackware 11

Lots of topics.

---

Gore, darling ;). I'm starting on tech support in Sun this July and will have more time to dig in to different OSs, while getting payed for doing that, so I'll be definately up for discussing their pros and cons :)

Cool. Darling?? =o

I was off working on a phone system cut over and was thinking about Linux and MS and this defrag debate. I had to smile because there is one more thing...

Just because a defrag tool does not exist for a file system doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't need defraggin'ation. It means there isn't one that exists. That's all. I mean no one has written one. Either because it is difficult or impossible because of the implementation of the file system. Or no one thinks it is necessary. Having said that. ReiserFS 4 has what in development? A defragger.

They "used" to say Linux didn't need anti-virus too. :D Tail packing is a tool in Reiser the eliminates excessive fragmentation (note I didn't say stop it). And it's only possible (to my knowledge) using meta data to store file tags. But even the Reiser folks recommend disabling it in resource critical applications. The performance hit on tracking file location isn't worth the benefit of decreased fragmentation. So it makes sense in some applications to reserve defragging to offline functions. Such as maintenance windows and patch time. I can't remember where I read about ReiserFS v4 and their defrag. Stay tuned. Linking follows.

//EDIT Instead of the article I went right for the source. The Reiser dudes

Quote:

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Repacker
Another way of escaping from the balancing time vs. space efficiency tradeoff is to use a repacker. 80% of files on the disk remain unchanged for long periods of time. It is efficient to pack them perfectly, by using a repacker that runs much less often than every write to disk. This repacker goes through the entire tree ordering, from left to right and then from right to left, alternating each time it runs. When it goes from left to right in the tree ordering, it shoves everything as far to the left as it will go, and when it goes from right to left it shoves everything as far to the right as it will go. (Left means small in key or in block number:-) ). In the absence of FS activity the effect of this over time is to sort by tree order (defragment), and to pack with perfect efficiency.

Reiser4.1 will modify the repacker to insert controlled "air holes", as it is well known that insertion efficiency is harmed by overly tight packing.

I hypothesize that it is more efficient to periodically run a repacker that systematically repacks using large IOs than to perform lots of 1 block reads of neighboring nodes of the modification points so as to preserve a balancing invariant in the face of poorly localized modifications to the tree.

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Hmmm seems the move is on from on the fly defragging to periodic defragging during system inactivity. Could the be the reason windows has stayed their course with scheduled defragging? :p I only said that to jab some Linux freakzoids. In fun. But as you see that is the methodology Reiser is going to. Because it does leave more resources to be used in real time possibly increasing efficiency quite a bit. Gore, could you imagine running Doom3 in full on resolution with a high overhead FS taking the slow way to write data, journaling it and defragging it on the fly? Then comparing disk performance with Fat32.

But their is no question that linux based file systems are more advanced. And windows as a usable OS is more advanced than linux.

http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html#repacker

The way I've sen defragging for Linux and UNIX explained was that if you don't have more than 90% of the HD used up, you won't see more than a percent or so.

A lot of linux books I have and BSD books I have say this.

Oh by the way, no I can't imagine playing Doom 3 on that... Well I can, what I can't imagine is it on Fat32, because Doom 3 only runs on Windows 2000 and XP, and I don't know anyone using Fat anything for a file system. ;) teehee.


I also fully support ReiserFS. I use it on everything. Except floppy disks.

Something I should probably put in Cosmos. I really liked this and I hope everyone does read the somewhat long... But very good story here:

[ From http://www.performancecomputing.com/.../9809of1.shtml ]

The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

If there's nothing different about UNIX people, how come
so many were liberal-arts majors? It's the love of words
that makes UNIX stand out.

Thomas Scoville

In the late 1980s, I worked in the advanced R&D arm of the Silicon
Valley's regional telephone company. My lab was populated mostly by
Ph.D.s and gifted hackers. It was, as you might expect, an all-UNIX
shop.

The manager of the group was an exception: no advanced degree, no
technical credentials. He seemed pointedly self-conscious about it. We
suspected he felt (wrongly, we agreed) underconfident of his education
and intellect.

One day, a story circulated through the group that
confirmed our suspicions: the manager had confided he was indeed
intimidated by the intelligence of the group, and was taking steps to
remedy the situation.

His prescription, though, was unanticipated: "I
need to become more of an intellectual," he said. "I'm going to learn
UNIX."

Needless to say, we made more than a little fun out of this. I mean,
come on: as if UNIX could transform him into a mastermind, like the
supplicating scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz." I uncharitably imagined
a variation on the old Charles Atlas ads: "Those senior engineers will
never kick sand in my face again."

But part of me was sympathetic: "The boss isn't entirely wrong, is he?
There is something different about UNIX people, isn't there?" In the
years since, I've come to recognize what my old manager was getting
at.

I still think he was misguided, but in retrospect I think his
belief was more accurate than I recognized at the time.

To be sure, the UNIX community has its own measure of technical
parochialism and nerdy tunnel vision, but in my experience there
seemed to be a suspicious overrepresentation of polyglots and
liberal-arts folks in UNIX shops.

I'll admit my evidence is sketchy and anecdotal. For instance, while banging out a line of shell, with
a fellow engineer peering over my shoulder, I might make an
intentionally obscure literary reference:

if test -z `ps -fe | grep whom`
then
echo ^G
fi
# Let's see for whom the bell tolls.

UNIX colleagues were much more likely to recognize and play in a way
I'd never expect in the VMS shops, IBM's big-iron data centers, or DOS
ghettos on my consulting beat.

Being a liberal-arts type myself (though I cleverly concealed this in
my resume), I wondered why this should be true.

My original
explanation--UNIX's historical association with university computing
environments, like UC Berkeley's--didn't hold up over the years; many
of the UNIX-philiacs I met came from schools with small or absent
computer science departments.

There had to be a connection, but I had no plausible hypothesis.

It wasn't until I started regularly asking UNIX refuseniks what they
didn't like about UNIX that better explanations emerged.

Some of the prevailing dislike had a distinctly populist
flavor--people caught a whiff of snobbery about UNIX and regarded it
with the same proletarian resentment usually reserved for highbrow
institutions like opera or ballet.

They had a point: until recently, UNIX was the lingua franca of computing's upper crust. The more
harried, practical, and underprivileged of the computing world seemed
to object to this aura of privilege.

UNIX adepts historically have been a coddled bunch, and tend to be proud of their hard-won
knowledge. But these class differences are fading fast in modern
computing environments.

Now UNIX engineers are more common, and low-
or no-cost UNIX variations run on inexpensive hardware. Certainly UNIX
folks aren't as coddled in the age of NT.

There was a standard litany of more specific criticisms: UNIX is
difficult and time-consuming to learn. There are too many things to
remember. It's arcane and needlessly complex.

But the most recurrent complaint was that it was too
text-oriented. People really hated the command line, with all the
utilities, obscure flags, and arguments they had to memorize. They
hated all the typing.

One mislaid character and you had to start
over. Interestingly, this complaint came most often from users of the
GUI-laden Macintosh or Windows platforms.
People who had slaved away
on DOS batch scripts or spent their days on character-based terminals
of multiuser non-UNIX machines were less likely to express the same
grievance.

Though I understood how people might be put off by having to remember
such willfully obscure utility names like cat and grep, I continued to
be puzzled at why they resented typing.

Then I realized I could connect the complaint with the scores of "intellectual elite" (as my
manager described them) in UNIX shops. The common thread was
wordsmithing; a suspiciously high proportion of my UNIX colleagues had
already developed, in some prior career, a comfort and fluency with
text and printed words.

They were adept readers and writers, and UNIX played handily to those strengths. UNIX was, in some sense,
literature to them. Suddenly the overrepresentation of polyglots,
liberal-arts types, and voracious readers in the UNIX community didn't
seem so mysterious, and pointed the way to a deeper issue: in a world
increasingly dominated by image culture (TV, movies, .jpg files), UNIX
remains rooted in the culture of the word.

UNIX programmers express themselves in a rich vocabulary of system
utilities and command-line arguments, along with a flexible, varied
grammar and syntax.

For UNIX enthusiasts, the language becomes second
nature.

Once, I overheard a conversation in a Palo Alto restaurant:

"there used to be a shrimp-and-pasta plate here under ten bucks. Let
me see...cat menu | grep shrimp | test -lt $10..." though not
syntactically correct (and less-than-scintillating conversation), a
diner from an NT shop probably couldn't have expressed himself as
casually.

With UNIX, text--on the command line, STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR--is the
primary interface mechanism: UNIX system utilities are a sort of Lego
construction set for word-smiths.

Pipes and filters connect one utility to the next, text flows invisibly between. Working with a
shell, awk/lex derivatives, or the utility set is literally a word
dance.

Working on the command line, hands poised over the keys uninterrupted
by frequent reaches for the mouse, is a posture familiar to wordsmiths
(especially the really old guys who once worked on teletypes or
electric typewriters).

It makes some of the same demands as writing an essay. Both require composition skills. Both demand a thorough knowledge of grammar and syntax. Both reward mastery with powerful,
compact expression.

At the risk of alienating both techies and writers alike, I also
suggest that UNIX offers something else prized in literature: a
coherence, a consistent style, something writers call a voice.

It doesn't take much exposure to UNIX before you realize that the UNIX
core was the creation of a very few well-synchronized minds.

I've never met Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, or Ken Thompson, but after
a decade and a half on UNIX I imagine I might greet them as friends,
knowing something of the shape of their thoughts.

You might argue that UNIX is as visually oriented as other OSs. Modern
UNIX offerings certainly have their fair share of GUI-based OS
interfaces.

In practice though, the UNIX core subverts them; they end
up serving UNIX's tradition of word culture, not replacing it.

Take a look at the console of most UNIX workstations: half the windows you
see are terminal emulators with command-line prompts or vi jobs
running within.

Nowhere is this word/image culture tension better represented than in
the contrast between UNIX and NT. When the much-vaunted UNIX-killer
arrived a few years ago, backed by the full faith and credit of the
Redmond juggernaut, I approached it with an open mind.

But NT left me cold. There was something deeply unsatisfying about it. I had that
ineffable feeling (apologies to Gertrude Stein) there was no there
there.

Granted, I already knew the major themes of system and network
administration from my UNIX days, and I will admit that registry
hacking did vex me for a few days, but after my short scramble up the
learning curve I looked back at UNIX with the feeling I'd been demoted
from a backhoe to a leaf-blower.

NT just didn't offer room to move. The one-size-fits-all, point-and-click,
we've-already-anticipated-all-your-needs world of NT had me yearning
for those obscure command-line flags and man -k.

I wanted to craft my own solutions from my own toolbox, not have my ideas slammed into the
visually homogenous, prepackaged, Soviet world of Microsoft Foundation
Classes.

NT was definitely much too close to image culture for my comfort:
endless point-and-click graphical dialog boxes, hunting around the
screen with the mouse, pop-up after pop-up demanding my attention.

The experience was almost exclusively reactive. Every task demanded a
GUI-based utility front-end loaded with insidious assumptions about
how to visualize (and thus conceptualize) the operation.

I couldn't think "outside the box" because everything literally was a box. There
was no opportunity for ad hoc consideration of how a task might
alternately be performed.

I will admit NT made my life easier in some respects. I found myself
doing less remembering (names of utilities, command arguments, syntax)
and more recognizing (solution components associated with check boxes,
radio buttons, and pull-downs).

I spent much less time typing. Certainly my right hand spent much more time herding the mouse
around the desktop.

But after a few months I started to get a tired, desolate feeling, akin to the fatigue I feel after too much channel
surfing or videogaming: too much time spent reacting, not enough spent
in active analysis and expression. In short, image-culture burnout.

The one ray of light that illuminated my tenure in NT environments was
the burgeoning popularity of Perl. Perl seemed to find its way into NT
shops as a CGI solution for Web development, but people quickly
recognized its power and adopted it for uses far outside the scope of
Web development: system administration, revision control, remote file
distribution, network administration.

The irony is that Perl itself is a subset of UNIX features condensed into a quick-and-dirty scripting
language. In a literary light, if UNIX is the Great Novel, Perl is the
Cliffs Notes.

Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The
price of freedom is always dear, but there's no
substitute.

Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live in a
bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. I'm hoping that as IT folks
become more seasoned and less impressed by superficial convenience at
the expense of real freedom, they will yearn for the kind of freedom
and responsibility UNIX allows. When they do, UNIX will be there to
fill the need.

Thomas Scoville has been wrestling with UNIX since 1983. He currently
works at Expert Support Inc. in Mountain View, CA.

Heh, I'm really thinking about whacking that into Cosmos. It deal much more with Philosophy than tyechnology. I remember reading that thinking "Wow, this is kind of cool, and I relate with it".

Also note, he's not in any way Bashing Windows. He's pointing out the WHY of what he loves. He doesn't bash anything. He even poits out that Windows NT did make his life easier in some respects. But the part of him in the inside, he still wanted what he had always loved.

I think it's a damn good peice. No bashing, no flames, just pure honesty.

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Well I can, what I can't imagine is it on Fat32, because Doom 3 only runs on Windows 2000 and XP, and I don't know anyone using Fat anything for a file system.

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That's true. I have never seen a box formatted with FAT32 except the one's I built. And the only reason I used FAT was because of costly maintenance tools that weren't supported in NTFS at the time.

As for linux only having 1 percent fragmentation? I know alot of books say that. I say however most are full of it because they were claiming it before any decent file systems came out. Just think about how the core of a file system works. Only recently has linux evolved but there is a cost. Performance. That's the catch. If your files become too fragmented like Windows will do in a month or two; there is a performance hit. But a files system designed to handle fragmentation also takes a performance hit. So depending on whats going on under the hood who cares? What is WORSE about windows is the registry. But without it, keeping track of software configs would be difficult. It's like a "package" manager in that sense. And is almost in itself a mini file system.