I finally had enough of Microsoft!

Tonight I finally did it. I dumped microsoft completly off my machine and installed Linux on the entire 3 hard drives! I feel like I just busted my cherry.

I can't think of any reason why I still need that machine running any Windows products. It was the 3rd time I had to re-install XP and 2000 (used both off and on) all each time having to re-install my Linux partitions since Windows wipes out the boot sector and I didn't use a boot manager other than lilo.

I may miss some games, but hey I would rather spend my time trying to get WINE to work.

Thanks for all the support

Why do so many people complain about Microsoft. It is an annoyance sometimes especially as they (MS) release new things every 6 mos-year. But the product has its uses and is very user friendly for people trying to get familiar with hardware and OS.

LINUX is however a great operating system with much power in the right hands.

I am a firm believer in using whatever is needed to get the job done...

people complain because m$ makes it very difficult to transact with anyone not using a m$ product. if a person using star office sends a document to someone using office, the office user gets the message "support for this file type has not been installed. Would you like to install it now? They freak and call the sysadmin, who usually complains like hell for being pulled away from more important duties (irc) and usually doesn't know what star office is anyway and why should something he/she didn't authorize need to be used at all.

Whatever it takes is right, I'm using windows on one of my machine to run some TV tuner hardware, something linux can't currently do with that card. As for games, I'm a gamer but its sad that everyone develops with directX and such. I think games could benefit the most from linux's stability. Sure its not the most user-friendly OS in the world, but it really works. What a concept that is.

no kidding, microsoft gets really annoying when all you get is the "blue screen of death" and nothing ever seems to fit it, and defragmenting the hard drive, thats always a bitch.

It really is up to personal choice really. I think possibly one of the reasons you hear a lot of complaints about MS is that their software is on a large portion of the computers out there, so there are more potential problems, as opposed to linux, which is a lot less mainstream, so the linux problems get less of the attention, if that makes sense to anyone.

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Originally posted here by mcsegraves
Why do so many people complain about Microsoft. It is an annoyance sometimes especially as they (MS) release new things every 6 mos-year. But the product has its uses and is very user friendly for people trying to get familiar with hardware and OS.

LINUX is however a great operating system with much power in the right hands.

I am a firm believer in using whatever is needed to get the job done...

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... i agree with you on them releasing new stuff, because it is true, the only thing good with windows is that it is easy to use (when it works). Ive been using linux and windows on and off for about 5 weeks now. And have never realized how many problems i have with windows. Rebooting all the time is not a favorite of mine. One thing i do enjoy about windows is the installation wizards ;). Anyway, you bring up good points, and i also believe in what gets the job done.

I think Tedob1 has got it right. It is the fact most other people use MS stuff that you feel that you have to do. The conversion of documents from one platform to another must be really annoying for people. When I got my PC it came with a Lotus Office package and when we upgraded to Microsoft Office (Did i say upgraded!?!) It was bad. The reason we did this was they used MS office at my school and I couldnt be fussed with converting the documents/etc. all the time. IMO, Lotus Office was better.

Just my opinion =) Prankster

I agree with using whatever makes it easiest with the least amount of hassle. I love Linux as a networking OS, but right now I'm more involved in sound production and gaming, neither of which Linux is good for. I'm using Windows 2000 Advanced Server right now, and it works amazingly well. Very rarely does it crash on me. Everyone complains about it's compatibility problems, but if you get certain patches for it, those go away. I know alot of you are going to complain about having to get those patches in the first place, when it should have been fixed before it was released, but look at all the patching you have to do with Linux...

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Originally posted here by lucktsm
I feel like I just busted my cherry.

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That phrase means a *whole* different thing over here in Ireland, he he he.

That's the way buisness goes. I'm pretty sure all of you know that Microsoft has molded themselves in a monopoly. However, MS is such a big part of the technology industries that the economy can't afford to have it shut down. And that's buisness. They're smart (yet evil) in only making microsoft products compatible with other MS product:

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people complain because m$ makes it very difficult to transact with anyone not using a m$ product. if a person using star office sends a document to someone using office, the office user gets the message "support for this file type has not been installed. Would you like to install it now? They freak and call the sysadmin, who usually complains like hell for being pulled away from more important duties (irc) and usually doesn't know what star office is anyway and why should something he/she didn't authorize need to be used at all.

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I had that problem. My computer at home had another word processer other that office and when I went to school to print it out or to edit parts of it, Office could not read it so I was stuck. The solution I had to fixing this, was getting office xp from the school for a $10.00 fee. (Universities have a "reproduction" licence). Ever notice how 99.99% percent of the computers issued out with Windows installed come with Microsoft Works and not Microsoft Office? Works uses the WKS extension and microsoft uses DOC. Two totally different files coming from the same company. One can't read the other? Get both. If kind of brings up the golden rule for buisness. ::Supply and Demand::
A good majority of the schools, universities, colleges, work places, etc. use microsoft products and only microsoft products because the PC computer is seen as a better buisness computer than the Mac. And what do the PCs come with? A fully functional Microsoft OS complete with games, other MS products preinstalled, 2 bedroom; 1 bath, kitchen, home entertainment center. IT DICES IT SLICES.... you get the picture.

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Originally posted here by lucktsm

I may miss some games, but hey I would rather spend my time trying to get WINE to work.

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You don't really have to give up yer games any more. There is Direct X 8 support for *nix systems. Check it out here.

Myself, I really like FreeBSD, though I don't much care if I can play a game or not. I like the stability and the ability to just all out manipulate the OS. M$ has done a great job and forming an OS that is really kind of user friendly. You don't have to go through great pains to get the thing installed, and if you don't really goof with it or tweak it too much, it will run fairly stable. On the same token, it needs patching right from the time you install, which can be a pain in the rear on a dial up. I know, *nix machines need patching too, but when M$ released the OS and within the first days of public release had an 18MB patch that needed installing, that was just uncalled for. What a pain.

The compatability is a whole can of worms that is just too broad a scope to be covered in one post and I'm leaving it at that.

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As for games, I'm a gamer but its sad that everyone develops with directX and such

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Do you understand how useful directx is? It is a pretty good improvement to any OS, and it isn't for stability so the whole stability usefulness things doesn't make that much sense. Directx also works on the web, and so is fairly useful to improve graphics, I don't think that graphics improvement and stability are in the same category. Jus' 'cause linux is less mainstream and so is hacked and cracked less doesn't make it a great OS.

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I know, *nix machines need patching too, but when M$ released the OS and within the first days of public release had an 18MB patch that needed installing, that was just uncalled for. What a pain.

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You need to know how incredibly hard it is to create an OS. One good thing about *nix systems is that they don't have to do all that, for example, x-windows, freebsd didn't create it, they just had to find a way to implement it. An OS is a lot of hard work, and some things you don't realize until somebody gets bored and tries really hard to think of a way to hack something.

I still go for the Windows, although it has so many bug report. There is always a downloadable patch for the bug.

Um, not really true. That is the reason there are so many cracks and hacks and exploits for windows. Sure, the vital ones are patched, but there are plenty of exploits that can crash a system that are never fixed except in the next OS.

Welcome, to the world of kernel hackers :)

I do know that it is not easy to build an entire OS

NOTE/ Disclaimer: The following is merely the opinions and thought of myself and myself alone. There is not necessarily and evidence to back this up, I present this as fodder for the fire as it may be nothing more than the ill advised rantings of a bumbling egotard.


On the same token, M$ hasn't really build an all new OS in some time. They keep adding buggy code to the ones that exist and remove bits of them. It is my understanding that M$ has development teams that should be capable of catching bugs, developing seperate layers and implementing those seperate layers of the OS into the preceeding layers. If this indeed accurate, then they are not really all that different from the FreeBSD developers working to find a way to implement X. It would seem that logistically they are doing the same thing, just w/ less public knowledge.
They also have Quality assurance groups that are assembled to catch bug. They caught a number of bugs prior to the OS's release, hence the patch that was so readily available right after release of XP. They knew they were releasing a buggy OS, they had the patch in development. What prevented them from pushing back the release date? It certainly wasn't a respect for their perspective consumers, because if they polled their perspective consumers they would have known that on average people would rather wait and get an OS that is functional and doesn't require major patchwork straight out of the vendors box.

Windows is ok for a home or workstation environment. It's got a nice GUI, and simple to use. But if you need something free -- and more secure -- for servers, *nix is great.

Chefer,

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They keep adding buggy code to the ones that exist and remove bits of them

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Give me an example, other than ME. 2000 is a great OS, 98 had some really nice extra features, and XP (which my friend has and I use often enough as he hosts my server) is very fast when loading, very stable and fairly secure. I don't think you know that you're talking about. Sorry ta say. And so I suppose you think that every time something like freebsd or red hat comes out with a new version they build an entirely new OS an use nothing of what they have spent tons of money and many man hours on before to make the previous version? I think you need to think again. Once you build an OS you don't go building an entirely new one, you improve on what you have, and fix your mistakes and make things better, building an entirely new OS just makes no damn sense.
And sure those quality groups may have found the bug, but I don't think yo realize how hard it is to ship millions of copies of software all over the world for international release. You also don't know the circumstances surrounding the bug and you don't know when they found it. Perhaps they found it after and the engineers had to rush to put out a patch before the press could give MS bad press. The fact that they put out a patch so quickly after the release of Xp proves that they work fairly hard to keep their patches current and to provide security for their new OS.

M$ has some great stuff depending on what ya wanna do, and not every OS is for everybody. I myself use M$ for legacy apps and games (gotta love Max Payne I suppose), but for programming, networking, servers and stability, I prefer *NIX. Not everybody will agree with this, but this has been a source of debate since the inception of the OS itself.

Moreover folks, if you are tired of something and want something different cuz it does not meet your needs, by all means move on. I happen to use both :)

For programming, gcc is da way ta go, real powerful compiler, I love it. I even heard there is a GUI for it though I have yet to find it. But these people here aren't talking about power, they are talking about stability, which is easily contestable. Perhaps MS should add some programming utils to their next OS. They are also arguing about bugs, which is easily arguable by saying 2 things. 1. There are many *nix system exploits that I have seen online, they aren't as popular as more works needs to be done to compile them and then to find a vulnerable system. 2. MS is the most user friendly and used OS making it more interesting and worthwhile to hack and create cracks for, it is more popular and so is more often attacked.

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Originally posted here by alittlebitnumb
M$ has some great stuff depending on what ya wanna do, and not every OS is for everybody. I myself use M$ for legacy apps and games (gotta love Max Payne I suppose), but for programming, networking, servers and stability, I prefer *NIX. Not everybody will agree with this, but this has been a source of debate since the inception of the OS itself.

Moreover folks, if you are tired of something and want something different cuz it does not meet your needs, by all means move on. I happen to use both :)

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In many ways that is why MS has done so well. As a product for your normal end user, it works very well in an office or a home environment. Which I'm afraid is not something you can say about *nix. It will probably get there, but hasn't done so yet.
However when it comes to running servers, *nix has the edge, although Win2k is pretty good.
But most flavours of *nix/Windows have very weak internal security compared to that used by mainframe OS - but these OS are about 30 years old, and have closed all the obvious loopholes.
For example, working as a systems programmer (sysadmin) on an IBM mainframe, with what is effectively root access, I do not have access to users data that has been protected. Not that I want to, and I've never met anyone who would be tempted to do this. Like anything, there are ways to get around this, but the chances of deleting/fudging the audit trail are almost nonexistant.

Hi,
Here are my reasons for not liking Microsoft:
1) Their business practices.
2) The fact that I think that their software is overpriced. Windows XP Home Edition costs around $200.00. A
Mandrake Linux 8.2 PowerPack edition costs about $69.00. (But you can download many Linux versions for free). With the Mandrake you get three (Count 'em) office suites. What do you get with Microsoft? Word Pad, and maybe Microsoft works I guess. Plus, if you want any other software (gui ftp client, irc client, graphics (other than MS Paint) you will have to look for it yourself at freeware sites or buy it. You can get hundreds of programs with most
Linux distros.
3) Linux is much more customizable.

I do not believe you understand why linux is so cheap, or you would not be using that as proof. Linux is cheap because usually you are not paying for the OS, you are paying for extras and tech support, partly because linux is open source and if linux was highly priced then people would find a way to use the source code to create their won OS installers and then the linux companies would have nothing. MS on the other hand is different, they control windows, nobody else has the right to check out the source code unless MS says ok which is part of why they can price their products higher. Also they include a lot of things with their OSs and there OSs are also more supported than linux. :) And one more thing, have you even seen the MS campus in Redmond? Man, they probably have to price XP that much jus' to afford the property taxes on that place.

Hi,
I'm well aware of the facts you mentioned. That's exactly why Linux is so much cheaper (and free). Microsoft
does not control it. By what you're saying you're proving my point. And for $200.00 a pop, you ought to
get a lot of support. And as for the extravangance of the MS campus in Redmond, I'm sure that's one of the
major reasons Microsoft products are so expensive. But Microsoft being able to afford nice buildings doesn't
make their software worth anymore than it is. Linux is cheaper not because it's inferior, it's cheaper because it's
not controlled by Microsoft. For $199.00, you should get more than you do.