I never said that. In fact I can think of a number of s/ware apps that only run on Windows. Mainly from hardware vendors who supply control s/ware with their toys. I have a couple of these systems aboard ship. More trouble to reverse-engineer than it's worth.
Again I had no stability issues with NT, 95
Now I *know* you're either:
- a trivial app computer user
- suffering from memory loss
- lying through your teeth
or multiples of the above. NOBODY would claim that Win95, 98 or any version of NT prior to NT 4 SP 3 was stable, in any normally accepted use of the term.
Feel free to have the last word, because you just lost any vestige of credibility. Hell, Win95 was *notorious* for memory leaks. It was no better than Mac OS 8 and my God, that's damning with faint praise!
Well, if they *are* doing it, they're remarkably unsuccessful at finding the bugs, you'd have to agree. Or are those security patches just a figment of my imagination?
I'm somewhat reluctant to add more to war which has consumed a major part of the newsgroup (which is not even a computer newsgroup), but I do have to give you at least one example.
Remember -- these are features which Microsoft did not choose to add to their OS, so if the user wants it, the user has to add it.
Consider the "immutable" bit which can be set on files in OpenBSD (and some other unix variants). This prohibits *anyone*, even the administrator (root or whatever you call him on a given system) from changing a file once it is in multi-user mode. (Examples could be the password and shadow file, the hosts file, the configuration files for sshd, and anything else which could otherwise be altered to lower the security of the system.)
To add this feature and have it meaningful -- you *must* put it in the kernel of the OS. Anything which could be done by a user-level program could be undone by another one.
The kernel enforces that this can be unset (to allow the file to be changed) only in single-user mode -- when there is no chance of an attack from out on the net doing anything.
There are actually two such bits -- one system-level and one user-level.
There are also other similar bits which apply on a file-by-file basis, such as "append only", which would be set on a logfile, so it could not be altered by an attacker, thus denying him the ability to cover his tracks.
I don't see any way that anyone could add this to Windows without access to the Microsoft source code for the Windows version in question.
What linux docs have you seen? Perhaps a man page? No, the main documentation for Linux and Unix programs is the source code- a total document detailing every aspect of the program and thus giving you a total ability to understand it. This is not the case with windows.
Gladly- buffer overflow attacks have been successful against NT for years, and easy access to less well known ports, Bonks, lack of syscall table cloaking, etc. do not help.
Well, see, when you provide a more expensive product, people assume it does things better- or else it is called a "worse" product. Since windows does less (runs on fewer architectures, does not provide the same level of reliability, power, and scalability that Linux does.
An ignorant point- it builds it for the architecture, that is all. The system calls are still the same. The capabilities remain the same in Linux, as its kernel is smaller, and no, you do not compile a "limited" version of linux, you compile the full kernel. That is not the case with Windows.
That is painfully obvious.
Not true- windows caps out at about a 32m limit, while Linux has been run down 4m, although normally 8m suffices.
Not the case, and I don't even know where you're getting that from.
... Embedded Linux is not a "variant", its the same thing... and BTW, a cell phone is a good example of a medium-sized embedded environment, much smaller than a PC and much larger than a PIC. Though it is not the absolute smallest of environments- those require only a superloop- their featureset demands an OS for anything approximating a normal development cycle. Linux is frequently used for this as it is easier to modify, utilizes memory more efficiently, and can fit into a smaller operating environment, thus reducing hardware costs.
I was told a few years back that it was customary in the banking industry to write in house database applications to avoid having known security vulnerabilities, and was wondering if that's the case?
Just mentioning that they were not the same thing, and if you didn't have stability problems with 95 then you have had a very atypical Windows experience; even most hardcore Windows nuts usually admit that
95 and 98 were pretty unstable. That having been said, history is not at issue- what is is the Linux and Windows of now.
You're fighting ghosts here- I haven't claimed that, and again- personal experiences would simply lead me to say things like "well, my Windows user experience sucked, so Windows sucks", which is basically what you're saying about Linux, and isn't terribly productive.
Man, 'cause everybody wants one of those iPaqs lol.
Right- the key word being "variants", costing thousands of dollars more, and still not being able to handle the hardware fault issues that Linux is, due to its hardware polling structures.
Efficiency is obscure?
I am assured (I am also not an expert on physics or physics software) by Clemson's physics department chair that Unix and Linux systems provide them with free access to software which has no counterpart in the Windows world- I assume that such software could eventually be written for windows, but...
This is just an ass-backwards way of saying "if everybody uses it, it must be the best", which is, as you stated earlier, untrue.
Look, I'm not going to spend too much more time here since this is basically the "you can lead a horse to water" part of this argument, but here's the basic case: even if we look only at x86 or x86_64 desktop systems, Linux and Unix systems do at least what Windows does, and they do it for free, with source code available. Even you say that they can do everything Windows does. Providing additional benefits sweetens their case, and makes the Linux and Unix alternatives better solutions than Windows. If we broaden the outlook, Linux and Unix systems are more powerful and versatile than Windows, running on platforms it cannot or where its inefficiency and code bloat make it deeply undesirable. This makes these systems better than Windows, and your argument that you can use windows for everything you want does not change that fact. Now have the dignity to let this die in peace- I do not dispute your perfect right to use windows if you have limited needs for an OS, and you are not disputing that Linux and Unix have broader uses in less typical markets. Let's just all move on before this becomes a flamewar in the middle of the holidays.
... yeah, actually, they do- OS X runs the X server, which is what all Linux GUIs run on top of, allowing people to choose whatever they want. Aqua just didn't run off of PPC, which it now does. Can't get it for free, of course, but you can run it just fine. And I think calling them "lemmings" could probably be construed as "bashing"...
I never indicated I didn't bash Apple, their claims of inventing just about everything (like the GUI, the PDA, the portable music player and many others) which are all false, and the lemmings who blindly follow them.
When I was working for a college system way back when, our standard desktop was Win 95, the usual MS Office suite and Digital's eXcursion X windows server. We left our machines up 24 hrs a day and while some other folks around me had stability issues, my machine never crashed.
The folks with the crashing machines were always amazed, but it was indeed true. Others tried rebooting weekly or even daily without effect while my machine ran for months on end. I was also pretty heavy user of the system and had many xwindows open at a time and changing frequently.
Of course I have had calls for help from people with various misbehaving equipment which mysteriously started working properly as soon as I walked in the room...
I doubt they've found them all, the point is they have released far more patches than are accounted for by the flaws publicized by others so they certainly aren't just waiting for reports to come in. The other producers of non open source OSes don't seem to have any issues of having to rely on the bad guys to find the flaws either.
They you have no clue. The entire concept and power of awk is amazing. You can use it as a mini-C language, a report generator, pattern scaner and parser, or a spreadsheet calculator.
The concept of associative arrays alone revolutionized programming languages.
Except that the VMS model fails when you add new commands.
If someone added the command "COMMENT" for example, then "CO" would no longer be unique. That would cause script to break.
You were talking about "more" versus "less".
Less is not compatible with more, which is why a new name was chosen.
They were unable to prove any benefit to the user in a court of law. If Microsoft could not proove any benefit in a court of law, then I don't expect you do be able to do this.
But it adds insecurity and unreliability. That much is certain.
Yes man pages and also some hard copy documentation from the Red Hat folks. No non-programmer user (the bulk of the worlds user base) could reasonably be expected to read through source code to figure out how the hell to do normal user and administrator tasks.
Not on any systems I've been associated with.
So a Chevy is better than a Cadilac since it's cheaper and performs the same functions, the only differences being cosmetic?
Semantics, you are still creating a reduced Linux installation, very different from a normal desktop installation.
And the production cost difference for a 32M device vs. a 4M device is what, $0.25?
Specialized small Linux version vs. Specialized small Windows version, not much different. As for reinventing the wheel, there isn't much of that either as there are commercial small embedded OSes and module libraries that would typically be used these days.
Looking at my latest cell phone (LG VX8300), it ain't much smaller than a PC sitting there with it's dual monitors, well over 1GB of memory, audio devices, multiple RF data transceivers, GPS receiver, digital camera and who knows what else crammed into it's few ounces.
Not that I've seen. Lots of Oracle, RDB and whatnot. A few applications have their own proprietary DB, but they are vendor apps, not in house.
I'm probably not typical. I've had cases where a misbehaving machine started working properly as soon as I walked into the room.
I've not said Linux sucks. I've said that Windows doesn't suck. Linux has done what I've asked it to do the various times I've used it, however I've found that it didn't provide any particular benefit over Windows for what I needed and it did have enough quirks to annoy me, therefore I simply stuck with Windows. The example I believe I provided earlier of testing Linux / EMC directly along side Windows / Mach2 is a prime example, both performed exactly as they were supposed to, but the Windows / Mach2 side won out for neatness and ease of use.
People who want a PDA typically do. People who are addicted to pirated music don't. On that note, ever look around you on a subway or commuter train at the various people? Notice how wherever you see an iPod you almost universally see someone in a vegetative state? Notice the folks around them who don't have iPods who instead are reading a newspaper, magazine or book? Find that a bit scary?
Well, I don't see anyone rushing to run their ATM (banking, not datacom) networks on either Windows or Linux (though the ATMs themselves could use either).
"Supercomputers" are obscure.
Couldn't tell you on physics, that's not my area either.
Most everyone has had some exposure to both Macs and Windows PCs and still most of them choose to buy Windows PCs. Clearly the "Mac experience" isn't converting them and / or they are deciding that the "Mac experience" doesn't justify it's price tag.
Perhaps when Apple starts selling an unbundled OS and people can go buy that cheap and powerful Dell (or HP or whatever) box and then choose between the $99 OEM windows or $99 OEM Mac OS or $0 OEM Linux OS we'll get more meaningful data.
Alrighty, Linux is better for the 10% of the population who want / need to do stuff well beyond the desktop / small server space.
There are certainly better third party options, but I've never had a problem using plain old crappy Windows backup believe it or not.
Don't know, since I've never used them. The PC support folks seem happy with them though. I think they are some in house built utility that grabs all the Outlook files, browser bookmark files, "my documents" area, etc. copies them up to a network drive and then just repopulates them back down to the new PC or reimaged PC.
Not really much different from what I do more manually. Although I'll sometimes pull drives and put them on another machine to do the migration. A desktop PC and a couple of the SCA80 drive adapters let you migrate laptop stuff very nicely.
The adapter also saved my laptop nicely when the HDD went south with what was apparently a thermal problem. I quickly pulled the laptop drive and hooked it to a nearby desktop PC. I pointed a fan at the laptop drive and was able to keep it running long enough to put a full backup image on the desktop PCs drive. I did the same in reverse (without the fan) when the replacement drive arrived.
Probably not, I'm not a programmer. Either way I'm quite certain that a more descriptive name could be found.
Programmers who use abbreviated commands in anything but one shot scripts are sloppy. Hell, if you don't want to type it fully all the time, at least write a script to clean it up for you after the fact.
I've worked with these pseudo-programmers with their ABC blocks and hot glue guns so I'm quite certain they exist. Indeed there was one real programmer who joined their group who commented to me how amazingly bad their code was and provided some examples. That programmer rapidly moved on to bigger and better things where he presumably worked with other "real" programmers.
These are the same pseudo-programmers who were all upset when I told them I was replacing their 2 250MHz CPU development system that has narrow SCSI storage with a 1 CPU 600MHz system with Fibre channel storage. The CPUs were also like four generations newer which I tried to explain to them with the i386 to P4 comparison which they couldn't comprehend.
This upgrade was at no cost to them as well, I was replacing it with a spare system I had on hand because their old system couldn't support an adapter I needed to add due to other needs. I just put the new system in place, migrating their entire old configuration seamlessly. When they finally tried the new system, their first comment was "Wholly shit this thing is fast". Between the CPU generations, clock speed and storage speed the new system was like 10x faster.
I can give you two things easily that can be done with Windows that cannot be done with Linux or OS X.
One is ease of installation and use by your typical computer user. With Windows you pop the CD into the machine, answer a few questions and let it run. If you have a phone line connected it will connect up and check itself for updates and install them.
None of that is true for Linux. Why? Because of the fact that there are hundreds of different versions of the OS available, and items that run under one will not run under others. Some can be installed easily while others require you to adjust half of the system and still fail to find all the equipment. That is a HUGE problem with open source. Since they have such a small segment of the market they do not supply all of the additional driver support. With OS X you at least get a single source for the OS, However it isn't able to run the applications of a Windows machine in the same way that someone who has used only Windows OS is familiar with. No real incentive to change if you have to retrain the workforce.
Technical support. Show me a phone number I can call to get technical support for 99% of the Linux distributions out there. Even the local shops can usually give you help with Windows problems and provide guidance. Not so with OS X or Linux. Low market share and different varieties are the reason for this, The local shop may have a Linux guru who runs Debian, or knows Red Hat inside out. He may have never used Ubuntu or Knoppix.
Security wise I would have to say that they are about equal. They ALL have security holes and they all have bugs. The reason that Linux and OS X users talk about how secure they are is also simply related to market share. If your doing something that you want folks to really take notice of you don't go after the 2% segment of the market that Linux has or the
7% that OS X has. You go after the big prize and hit the OS with the highest user base. The hope is that you hit the ones that don't bother to run a good AV program or bother to update the OS when a flaw has been found. That is usually a large target.
As for taking ANY OS blindly, that applies to them ALL. I also doubt that Vista will make anyone change to a different OS. It is nothing more than XP with a different face.
Been able to do this with windows since 95. Updating and doing repair installs without upsetting any files.
Benn doing that since windows 3.0. Much easier now with applications like Ghost. Make an image of the drive when you get it the way you want it.
Have used the same copies of 95, ME, and XP on many different machines. No problem at all.
Then your IT people need to learn how to do an image. Properly done you can have a machine back up from dead in about an hour. Even less if the applications are remotely stored.
All of those are easily done under Windows as well.
Ubuntu, Mephis, Kororaa, lord, Knoppix you just pop in the disk and it runs, no configuration, no installation, nothing- and if you want to get more software or an updated kernel you just use the synaptic updater.
I suddenly doubt that you have any specific knowledge of linux- things that run under any given linux system will run under all of the others, unless its truly hardware specific (ie, specifies memory locations- won't port between a cell phone and a supercomputer), you may be referring to the differences between package managers, but you can get multiple package managers on one machine, or use conversion utilities. Source, of course, compiles and runs on any Linux box.
So- its not the same, so its worse?
Most Linux questions can still be answered by somebody who has a general knowledge of linux. An experienced Debian user will certainly be able to troubleshoot almost anything wrong with Ubuntu, and an experienced Red Hat user will almost certainly be able to do the same for Knoppix.
I'm sorry, but Linux and Unix run on the largest servers in the world, which have a strongly disproportionate number of attacks. To claim, for instance, that the CIA (the federal government is an extensive user of Unix and Linux) is subject to fewer or less sophisticated attacks than John Smith's PC down the street is nearly comical.
I have to disagree with the general sentiment there- while I have a distaste for windows that seems to have started a flame war, Vista is significantly different from XP under the hood. I don't know what those differences will mean to market share, but it will be interesting to see whether microsoft will have to use new computer purchases to move Vista, or if people will upgrade. GCC
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