PcLinux

rrr for some reason I'm losing messages here.

Allow me to just say that any time that your chief complaint against software is what its named, your argument is in serious trouble. Linux is cheaper, more powerful, and more flexible than windows. Unix (including OS X) has many of those same advantages. Windows is, therefore, the least capable of the major desktop systems- leading to my comment that "anything is better than windows". GCC

I've clearly indicated my issues with it go well beyond the asinine naming of many utilities.

And that is where your argument falls flat. All your claims of more capable OS only have relevance to server type applications. For a desktop OS Windows is as good as any of them and indeed better than OS X with it's hideous UI.

Pete C.

Like lack of documentation? A clearly false claim?

Right, 'cause microcontrollers are servers, as are supercomputers, as is my desktop. I'm going to ask you a few basic questions here:

Can't comment on Python because I've never used it. I suspect it all depends on your intended use. I do a lot of relational database stuff with data streaming in real-time from instruments to terminal servers, then tcp connections from Java programs and tcp and/or udp out to consumer processes, with logging in rdbms's. The nice thing with Java is every major rdbms vendor provided a Type 4 driver so you can load & swap them on the fly. Even Microsoft eventually had to come to the party.

Postgresql running on linux works nicely. There are many faster dbms engines, but it works well and I like it.

Returning to comments WRT the aesthetics of OS X vs Windows - it's a pretty poor argument whan all you can say about a competing product is that you, personally, don't like how it looks. Hell, there's nothing stopping a person running X Windows as well, as I'm sure you know and Pete C doesn't.

Shrug. I don't bother trying to convert Windows bigots. It's a waste of time, just like when I used to tell Mac bigots that their OS (prior to OS X) was a POS. I got my first Mac when OS X came along because I wanted a unix based laptop without hassles. 4 years later and I have no reason to change my mind - and I have a *shitload* of computer gear, with the work budget to buy anything I want.

PDW

Yeah, for that kind of thing even I'd use java, the integration is just so good. Python is nice for scripting and internet applications, and plays nicely with .net. It's also nice to have essentially self-commenting code, since Python is very easy to read. I'm beginning to see your point- he's never going to understand what it is we're talking about since he hasn't ever seriously used Linux. Wish more people realized that computers are more than web browsers and word processors. GCC

There is indeed more to computers than web browsers and word processors, however that is largely out of the desktop realm. As I said, for a desktop OS, Windows is perfectly fine and perfectly reliable. As a server OS Windows does ok for personal use, it sure as hell doesn't scale to enterprise class.

As for Linux, I'm well aware of what you're talking about and I'm quite familiar with "real" enterprise class operating systems. The fact remains that for normal desktop use (and you shouldn't be running web or mail or whatever servers on your desktop machine), Linux, Windows and even OS X are all adequate though I can't stand the OS X UI.

I did retrieve a spare system from the pile and will be fiddling with some of the more recent Linux stuff you mentioned.

Pete C.

Claiming I said that is a false claim. I clearly indicated it was an issue with inconsistent documentation that bothered me about Linux. Inconsistent is not synonymous with a lack of documentation.

WTF are you babbling about? Are you one of those programmer types who can't stay in context?

To clarify:

Microcontrollers are the only thing I write code on (in ASM).

Servers are what I manage every day (real ones, not PC crap).

Desktop is what I work from, not where I run server type applications from.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes for anything reasonably related to desktop use.

So now you conspicuously leave the "desktop" part out of your question eh?

And how do you justify that claim?

With claims of Windows instability? I personally witnessed a friends OS X Macbook crash numerous times while my home Windows systems haven't crashed in litterally years.

With claims of Windows insecurity? My W2K web and mail server has been running 24 x 365 x two years on cable modem and under attack daily and has not been compromised.

Care to give an example of something that Linux or OS X can do that Windows can't? And this isn't a free open source vs. have to pay for an application.

I never said Windows was more capable, I pointed out that it is just as capable for pretty much anything you could reasonably expect to do on a desktop and many server tasks as well. I'm not bashing Linux functionally (just it's inconsistent documentation and stupid names), you're bashing Windows and your claims against Windows have been nebulous or simply untrue.

OS X has a UI that wins awards from it's 10% user base and is considered a high water mark of UI design by that same 10% user base. The rest of the world thinks it's cheesy and dumbed down to a pre school level. And just for reference I hate Windows apps that try to be Mac like with cheesy stylized "organic" windows and I also hate cheesy animated junk.

Pete C.

What, exactly, are you calling "stupid names"? Things like "awk" (a pattern matching language)? The name is derived from the initials of the three authors "Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan". And it is *not* unique to linux. It has been with unix since at least v7 unix.

And the reason for the short command names (mv, cp, ls, rm, etc) on unix is because early versions of unix were often stuck with ASR-33 Teletypes as terminals. They were blindingly fast (10 CPS), and the keyboard was sufficiently insensitive that you could balance a broom handle down on a key without pressing it hard enough to send a character. As a result, there was a bias towards short commands (less strain on the user's typing fingers. This set of command names persists today because it is awkward to change command names under the existing userbase.

Granted -- linux implementations of programs (and other free source ones as well) often wind up with weird command names -- in part because all the logical ones have already been taken by earlier programs which perform similar functions. An example is the "more" program which is used to display one screenful at a time from a file, and "less" (which came along later) is a superset of "more". What would be a logical name to indicate that it is a superset? And that choice was made before linux even came into existence.

Also -- remember that a lot of extension to the unix command set was made by the BSD project -- a bunch of college kids getting to play with the source for unix and to extend it as they saw fit. The programs which are still around from that are the ones which people discovered made life easier for the user/programmer.

Enjoy, DoN.

Naming a utility after it's authors name instead of something that actually describes it's function is stupid and unprofessional and I didn't say it was unique to Linux.

There is nothing wrong with commands abbreviated to two or three characters and indeed VMS does this exceedingly well without resorting to cryptic acronyms.

That's an example of one of the problems with the whole open source / unstructured world, and something that isn't a problem with OSes that are consistently developed by one company where the successor would also be "more" just a later version.

Again going back to my gripe about the amateurish nature of Linux.

I'll also note that the Linux bigots in this thread have touted how wonderful Linux is and how powerful it is while simultaneously trashing Windows, however they have not produced a single concrete example of how Linux is superior. Indeed most of their claims of greatness have revolved around "open source" and "free" which while not bad things do not in any way indicate a superior product.

When they produce a solid example of something you can do with Linux that you can not do with Windows then they may have something legitimate. Until then it is simple mindless Windows / Microsoft bashing.

Pete C.

Ummm, an o/s is a collection of programs, maybe sitting on top of some firmware. That's all it is.

As I said - Windows bigots, arguments..... you just keep you Windows systems. I don't care. Let's just see how the tide of history goes. Pretty soon one thing you'll be able to do with Linux is run it on hardware that isn't connected to the net and doesn't want to tattle home to M$. I'm really looking forward to the next M$ operating system. Should be a maaaaajor incentive for people to shift to something else. And before you raise piracy as an issue, I don't. However I have heaps of computers on ships with no internet connection, or in remote places with very slow and intermittent connections.

Turning your argument around - how about you come up with one thing that you can do with Windows that can't be done with Linux or OS X? If you can't, why pay money for an o/s that you have to take blindly?

Well.....?

PDW

Well ... there was nothing like it at the time, and they could not figure a short name which truly described it.

And this was created when unix was in the hands of AT&T/Bell System *only* -- not when it was out where BSD was expanding it. So -- do you blame a big monolithic company (Bell System) for being "unprofessional"?

The only one of those which could be considered cryptic was "mv" being used for "rename" -- and that was because both functions were exactly the same in terms of the underlying system calls.:

Since it was a superset, some of the options were different, and this came from outside the distribution, so the intent was to leave the old "more" there for when it was used in scripts which depended on the old syntax, and keep the new name for the improved capabilities. As it turned out, most users (or sysadmins) set up aliases so you could type "more" and still get "less" -- leading to some confusion as to which capabilities were actually present in "more" at a given time. (It has now picked up most of the features of "less".

But in unix -- you can add any new programs to the system (including in your private bin directory, if you want to use it without subjecting others to your new program, without having to have a sysadmin change configuration tables (as is required in VMS, IIRC).

Then you want to expand that to most versions of unix, not just linux. BSD was quite widespread -- and Sun has added a lot of BSD programs to the SysV flavored Solaris because the older SunOs was BSD flavored, and people expected such tools.

Hmm ... How do you add a new feature to the kernel of the OS in Windows? How do you get the documentation to even learn *how* to do it? How do you discover what is buried in Windows which Microsoft did not bother to document in the help files?

And in particular -- how do you check the source code for security holes which you may wish to patch? (Other than downloading the stolen source code which appeared for one of the Windows flavors a while back.)

AFIK -- the *only* way to check Windows for potential security holes (if you are not Microsoft) is the same way the crackers (who call themselves "hackers") do -- by bashing away at it with various strings to experiment with overflowing the stack in various parts of the OS or the programs.

Enjoy, DoN.

According to Peter :

Pardon! *I* did not say what was quoted there. (Nor *would* I!) Could you not have edited out that attribution string?

Yes -- I know that the quoting level shows that I did not say it, *if* the programs all added quoting according to usenet conventions, but not all do.

Enjoy, DoN.

Please define "inconsistent".

I am a programmer, yes, but this is very much in context. See windows is JUST a desktop OS. Linux and even Mac OS X can be more than that, and what windows is. In the business, we call these "features", and people who buy things usually look for more and better ones. Your argument attempts to bypass the fact that windows has fewer of them by saying that you don't need the ones Linux and Unix do, which would be fine if there were some other features or a lower cost to balance it out- but there isn't, and you don't even claim that there is. You claim that the programs on Windows are better, not that windows itself is better, but ignore the fact that Linux can run windows programs. So, given that Linux has more features (is more powerful) and runs in more variable scenarios (is more flexible), carries all of your claimed benefits of Windows (the programs), and is cheaper (free), you have no substantial case.

Then you must know that Linux runs on much smaller systems than does Windows- one more point in its favor.

What kind of servers do you manage, I'm curious.

Do you do development from it? Do you administrate from it? If not, you're missing out- you can get more from your computer.

Meaning "yes, for word processing and web browsing", but the basic question remains. I agree that windows does what it does- not that it does it well (internet explorer? activeX?), but that it does what it does. Linux does all of that- and more. And is therefore the clear winner, end of story.

Desktops do it too, and we are basic our cross section of the OS market around the market that Windows claims, which is the desktops. We are not comparing Windows to Symbian or XOK, we're comparing it to other desktops- but the other desktops just do more, bringing more power to the user, making them better operating systems.

See above.

Windows is historically less stable than Linux or Unix. Windows XP is more stable than previous releases by a good bit, however, and generally as long as you don't freak it out too much will not crash regularly. It is less tolerant of faulty hardware or drivers, but you can't really blame that on the OS too much. This is not a claim I make, although I feel that I could support it if need be.

Again, your anecdotal evidence just doesn't bear any weight in this instance. If I told you that my parents managed to crash their system daily, that would leave us in a bind, with neither of us able to falsify the other's claim, and our argument effectively going nowhere.

Wait, I'm thinking- how about run on an iPod? Manage memory efficiently enough for the world's most powerful computers? Deal with extreme hardware environments? Moving a little closer to home, run entirely from a CD? Show me a modern supercomputer running windows, please. As far as software goes, obviously if we restrict the definition of "desktop" applications to mean "anything that windows can do", then no, Linux has no software that does anything different from what windows does- although it offers a greater diversity and opportunity to customize its software than does Windows. If, on the other hand, we restrict it to what the desktop distros of Linux are capable of, you have the entire span of software on Linux and OS X and Windows to choose from! That means server software and development software, yes, but it also means scientific software like Prints or Rebase, graphics software like Blender, and, of course, powerful multilingual support, including automatic french-english-spanish-german support for many distributions and some distros carrying hundreds of language packs including translated documentation. It includes a vast variety of productivity software, including OpenOffice and KOffice, but also including WikiNotes, Vim, and Emacs. Do I really need to go on?

Good- it isn't.

Nebulous? Untrue? Like saying, as you do, that windows is a less capable OS for more money? That is my essential claim; disprove it.

No, you dislike it- which is not the same thing as saying 90% of the world dislikes it. And just so you know, OS X has more power under the hood than Windows has period.

GCC

Yeah - sorry about that, missed a line with my cut.

I don't really understand the Windows bigots. Half the time I think they really don't understand that an o/s is a series of layers and the presentation layer is just the top, for most people. So Pete C likes WinXP and doesn't like Apple Aqua. BFD. If M$ had written their o/s in a modular manner, using POSIX compliance, they could have ported it to run on X easily, and then it could be run on Linux, OS X, Solaris, whatever. They never have because it's better financially to keep tight integration, and it allows for sloppy coding and all sorts of unseen hacks.

Ditto for Office. I run it under OS X - bought a Mac version - so it isn't impossible for them. Where's the Linux version? I strongly suspect there's an internal fight going on in M$ between the application sales people who want sales on all platforms and the o/s sales guys who want to avoid competing on a level playing field by keeping Office etc exclusive to their o/s. Shades of IBM in the 80's trying to avoid cannibalising their revenue streams from mainframes & minis. Ditto Ken Olsen at DEC. Look where they are now. IBM is essentially a services organisation and DEC is dead. Best thing M$ could do is get out of the o/s business and concentrate on applications, where their products are pretty good. They're going to lose the o/s war anyway.

I think M$ Office is a less buggy product than Open Office but that's because I get a lot of Office docs and the compatibility isn't all that wonderful. I'm quite happy running Office on my Mac. If I had to run Windows then I'd probably seriously look for alternatives.

PDW

I don't know what the hell I was trying to type, but this wasn't it. What I was trying (and apparently failing) to say is that even as we discuss the capabilities of desktop systems, we are basing our definition of what is and is not a desktop system around the windows model, where a user is a user is a user and performs limited, mostly office and communication directed activities. Linux and Unix reject this, bringing much more than that limited subset of computer capabilities to the desktop market, and therefore being the superior system, and the fact that you can't or won't effectively capitalize on that is not an excuse. GCC

That's an extremely silly opinion. "AWK" is short, and pronouncable.

I dare you to come up with a three letter name for this tool that is better, and usable as a verb.

AWK was a a major breakthough in programming languages. It changed scripting forever. I can think of no other language that is as simple, useful, and compact as AWK.

As far as I am concerned, Alfred V. Aho Brian W. Kernighan Peter J. Weinberger deserve to go into the hall of fame for their contribution to programming.

BTW - I agree with you about Linux documentation. Compared to Solaris, the man pages leave a lot to be desired.

Wait a minute. All 2-letter commands are cryptic acronyms or abbreviations. Arguing over the superiority of "CO" vs "cp" is silly.

Not if it breaks compatibility.

Personally - making the browser part of the kernel was the stupidest thing Microsoft ever did.

It caused kernel instability, and security vuilnerabilities, and provided NO BENEFIT to the end user.

The Microsoft kernel is filled with bloat. 1 million lines of code. How can any single person be assured the OS is secure? WHo can humanly review all of that crap? Someone in high places told me there is even a FORTH interpretor deep into the kernel.

As far as I am concerned, this makes the OS unsuitable for secure systems - too many potential holes.

I'd like to see the equivalent of section 2 of the Unix manual - a complete listing of every API that provides an interface into the OS and its escalation of priviledges.

This was also because of the design of the file system. Moving a file did not move the data contained in a file. Instead, the inode information was changed. This was quite sophisticated at the time.

Let me add two more things that drive me crazy about Windows

• Using "letters" to indicate different disks and networked file systems. That's just brain dead. On Unix systems, I can change any directory to be on a different disk or on a remote server, and the user doesn't have to change anything in their software.
• Software management.

I'd like to be able to

• Update or reinstall the OS without changing any of my files and configurations. * Replace/upgrade my hard drive and retaining the installed software. * Move my software to a different system

I don't want to be forced to re-install all of my software from CDROMS. With the dozens of programs I use, It takes a while to customize everything the way I like it. If my IT people have to re-image my disk, I have to re-install everything from scratch. It takes me weeks to get everything back the way I had it.

These things are trivial on Unix systems. I can back up my drive to a remote system, and re-install my software on a new machine and get back to work very quickly. It might take a day instead of weeks.

And that relates to my statement how?

I'm not a Windows bigot by the wildest stretch of the imagination. I do however point out to the Linux bigots that despite your bashing, Windows is still a perfectly capable and reliable OS. And I'm still waiting for an example of something you can do with Linux that you can't also do with Windows, and cost, open source and licensing aren't valid arguments.

There isn't anything, and that's my point, both are perfectly capable OSes. Linux is not oh so superior to Windows, it's just different.

As for the money argument, I point to Linux in the enterprise space. There was all kinds of hype in the various magazines that Linux was going to take over the enterprise space and certainly all the bean counters liked the price. This takeover never materialized for a number of reasons, while the purchase cost of Linux may be low, the TCO is rather high at least in part due to the fact that a support structure comparable to existing enterprise OSes has yet to "jell".

Sure there are commercial Linux suppliers that offer support contracts and there has been some level of support from the big players, but the Linux suppliers don't have support resources / infrastructure comparable to the big boys and the big boys haven't taken to supporting Linux to the level of their competing enterprise OSes.

I'm sure Linux will continue to evolve and improve, but it's competitors aren't static either.

Pete C.