Why Windows is better than Linux

[kernelpanic]

First of all, this is not mine, I found it here, I just translated Spanish-English.

1- On Monday mornings, your coworkers chat about the latest virus/security threat. You feel isolated.
2- The absence of anger, rage and acts of violence against your machine has made you a soft, bland, placid and soggy ball of fat, while your peers are always active and alert, and are able to explode in a tornado of unfounded hate at will. You envy their readiness.
3- By not having to remember serial numbers, keywords, keys, registry codes and evaluation periods, your memory is deteriorating worryingly. Others, on the other hand, are capable of reciting 25 character strings when they feel like it. You cannot participate in their joy.
4- The uncanny lack of spontaneous blue screens is atrophying your retina's blue receptors, so your oculist recommends that you stare at IBM's logo for hours on end. Your associates have hyper-developed such receptors and are capable of seeing in the dark.
5- In the common event of an invasion of ultraviolent extraterrestrials, you are not able to install Outlook in their mainframe, act that would destroy their civilisation.
6- Being a Linux user, you have no excuse whatsoever for rebooting dozens of times a day, and watch with envy as your peers talk merrily in-between boots. You are unjustly forced to be highly productive.
7- The monetary assets that others purposefully employ in licences, supports, renovation periods, and user rights, you spoil in tickets to sporting events and movies, meals and alcohol, which is deteriorating your health.
8- Not being a Windows user, friends don't call you a weekend afternoon asking for help in reinstalling their OS, so you are immensely bored while your friends engage in fulfilling social relationships
9- You are forced to read all e-mails sent by your boss, being cruelly deprived of the universal right to the phrase "Outlook won't let me open it", that others enjoy so much.
10- Your computer's Reset button is accumulating alarming levels of dust.

If you were expecting to see actual reasons for why Windows is better than Linux, grab a fistful of dog shit and cramp it into your eyes. It's basically the same, but with better smell.

[Sharlos]

What a wonderful and thought provoking topic. Please, let me subscribe to your newsletter Mr. Fanboi.

[Agent_Irons]

What a wonderful and thought provoking topic. Please, let me subscribe to your newsletter Mr. Fanboi.

Two trolls don't make a right.

In any case, I was wondering if anyone knew why Windows even has a registry? From where I'm standing it looks like

Code: Select all

Pros: none
Cons: horrible driver infighting, conflicts, clutter, and general mess.

Also what's up with cmd? I just started using it, and weaning myself off bash is so difficult. cmd is awfully horribly crippled. I hated bash, with it's syntactical whitespace, for so long. I had no idea what I was missing.

EDIT: Please disregard, I found a better thread to natter in. Thank you all for listening!

[MHD]

Pros of using windowns over linux:

None, linux can run just about any winapp.

Cons of using windowns over linux:

That windows at it's core is DOS and never will be anything else. It gradually grains up and you need to reinstall about one a year.
At least linux is somewhat designed to be a UI system.

[hotaru]

That windows at it's core is DOS and never will be anything else.

that hasn't been true for almost 10 years.

It gradually grains up and you need to reinstall about one a year.

most linux distributions have similar problems, it just takes longer. you probably don't notice because you don't keep using the same machine for more than about three years.

At least linux is somewhat designed to be a UI system.

no, it's not. at all.

the NT kernel really isn't that bad... it's just the rest of the operating system that sucks.

[phillipsjk]

In any case, I was wondering if anyone knew why Windows even has a registry?

I think it is one of those things that look good on paper, but doesn't work well in practice.

All the setting are stored in a database, which is supposed to give you something like O(log(n)) time for random access (but horrid sequential searching time).

The problem of course, is that all the information is stored in a large binary file prone to corruption.

My question is: Why did they come up with the concept of 5 "hives" to represent the data? In reality, it is backed by two files (one local, one optionally remote), and a "virtual" file (current user and machine state)? Were they deliberately trying to make it complicated, or did some manager decide it is easier to understand that way? Or, more likely, write the specification that way?

EDIT: Please disregard, I found a better thread to natter in. Thank you all for listening!

Link? There is more than one thread discussing Microsoft products you know!

Edit: It's GNU/Linux, not just "Linux."

[You, sir, name?]

I like how Windows BSODs whenever a driver doesn't play nice, but Linux just prints a message on the console. Linux is a damn hippie that way.

Something is wonky with my computer's USB circuits, so sometimes I have to plug/unplug devices for them to work ... in Linux. In windows, I get a BSOD slapped in my face and that's the end of the fun. It usually only happens around boot time, so I typically need to boot Windows 7-8 times until it starts. Then it's usually fine. For a few hours, anyways.

[phillipsjk]

The problem with that is sometimes the error message is pretty cryptic.

I couldn't install "Peanut GNU/Linux" one year. It installed ok, but failed to boot with the following message:

40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 . . .

I have it written down somewhere, but don't remember the exact context.

Years, and data-loss later, I saw a similar message on another computer I was trouble-shooting with the following command (may have be trying to make a back-up):

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dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null

That command reads the first partition; if your swap the arguments, it will erase the first partition. be careful!

Long story short, that error message means your disk has errors. Using the manufacturer's utility to do a low-level format may or may not help.

That said, Windows never complained, just sort of froze/didn't work well.

Edit: It's GNU/Linux, not just "Linux."

[Berengal]

I used to have a faulty harddrive that would lose connection to the machine about once a day. When this happened, windows simply turned the machine off instantly, no warning given. On linux, the problem wasn't even noticed unless I tried to access the drive after it had disconnected. At first, this was my main drive, where both the linux and windows partitions lay, but linux would still keep on going, even starting new programs as long as they were cached (which they usually were). When linux eventually did fail, it still allowed me to save my work to other drives and eventually do a clean shutdown.

[You, sir, name?]

This is really an uphill battle for Windows. Windows must be backwards compatible, since they can't very well expect manufacturers to issue new drivers twice a month, and thus is stuck with whatever made sense some time in development of the operating system (and for Windows XP, that is a very long time ago). But the Linux kernel doesn't suffer from that, and can update it's internal interfaces whenever it's necessary. Most Linux kernel revisions invalidate some drivers, and that's okay with Linux' model.

Years, and data-loss later, I saw a similar message on another computer I was trouble-shooting with the following command (may have be trying to make a back-up):

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null

That command reads the first partition; if your swap the arguments, it will erase the first partition. be careful!

This is borderline off-topic, but actually it won't do anything if you swap the arguments. /dev/null doesn't contain anything. If you read from it, you get end of file. If you dd from /dev/zero, on the other hand, you're in more of a pickle.

[lulzfish]

Windows has self-restraint and won't let you run it from a CD or USB drive, because you might get functionality without paying for it. Oh, the horror.

[phillipsjk]

Code: Select all

james@test:~$ dd if=/dev/null of=test.file bs=1024k count=256
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 2.9667e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s
james@test:~$ _


I stand corrected.

Edit: It's GNU/Linux, not just "Linux."

[cathrl]

Because in some cases, it just is.

My three year old could install most Windows apps (and did install several). Linux? Cross your fingers and pray. If it doesn't work, your best bet is to delete and start again.

Because, provided you stick to the standard look-and-feel, people will be able to use your programs instantly.

Because it's most unlikely to have some wacky configuration which just happens to break the program your customer is trying to install. I can generally debug Windows issues over the phone. Linux? Not a hope.

Sometimes, simple to use and standard is more significant. Actually, for the work I do, simple to use and standard is almost always more significant.

And yes, I know there are all sorts of super-geek arguments why Linux is "better". Most users aren't super-geeks, and even most super-geeks have to work with or support people who aren't.

[phillipsjk]

Because in some cases, it just is.

My three year old could install most Windows apps (and did install several). Linux? Cross your fingers and pray. If it doesn't work, your best bet is to delete and start again.

This is a Windows habit that is hard to break. When you run the installer, you expect everything to work out of the box, using sensible defaults. As I was planing to write that, I realized that would sound really bad for non-technical users.

Specifically:

• Running the installer again will not typically fix installation problems.
• Restarting the machine for a "clean slate" won't help.
• It is improving, but GNU/Linux (Debian specifically) is often easier to install than actually configure.
• Because, when it comes down to it, things are configured via text files, each with their own syntax.

Now, an average person may reasonably ask: What do you gain from such a tangled, user-unfriendly configuration system?

• The installer can't read your mind. Sometimes there are no sensible defaults. (BSD installs with services disabled by default.)
• The system (neglecting plug 'n play) does not reconfigure itself on boot. This means if its broken, it stays broken. If it works, it keeps working.
• I must admit that GNU/Linux distros can often use better documentation. It is one of those things that does not get updated as fast as the code. (BSD requires all patches to be documented, I believe.)
• For anything remotely complicated, editing a text file (or series of text files) is just easier than navigating a special-purpose GUI.

Edit: It's GNU/Linux, not just "Linux."
Edit: grammar.

[Area Man]

My three year old could install most Windows apps (and did install several). Linux? Cross your fingers and pray. If it doesn't work, your best bet is to delete and start again.

Are you living in 1993? Your 3-yo could accept a license agreement then click "next" 51 times, then enter a 7336746958-digit product code and reboot 5 times BUT could not check a box and click "install"? 500p3r-g33ky!

[OOPMan]

Because in some cases, it just is...SNIP

Have you even used linux recently? Odds are your three year old could install Ubuntu or Mandriva without a problem.

Also, I don't quite see how three year olds installing anything is a good idea...

[Amnesiasoft]

I can certainly say it was far more pleasant to install Handbrake on Windows than on Linux.

[OOPMan]

I dunno, I found that Handbrake is rather easy to install. Major distros have it in the repos and it's easy to compile when it's not.

[Ekeda]

I, for one, laughed my ass off at this.

[henryx]

To Agent_Irons:

Every Operating System has to have a configuration repository. It might be distributed or it might be centralized. The registry is a centralized configuration repository. Before the registry Windows have .ini files, which corrupted even more frequently, provided even less guidance, didn't have access controls and were easier to misconfigure. So the registry is a great solution.
The problem with the registry is that crappy developers fill it with stuff without care of where it should go. But the same thing would happen with any possible configuration repository, so I would not blame that on the registry itself.

As for the original post, while funny, it is outdated by well over a decade. I have not seen a blue screen in years, have not seen a registry corruption in a decade, have not had to remember any kind of key in a loong time, etc. All that might have been true in the nineties (probably before Linux even existed) but it is now quite old.

[phillipsjk]

To add to henryx's comments:

Yes, it is true the (DOS based) Windows .ini files didn't provide access control, but every modern OS (Including Windows) provides access control through the file-system.

And (the) Linux (kernel) has been in development since late 1991

[Berengal]

And GNU since 1984...

[Gaydar2000SE]

Pros of using windowns over linux:

None, linux can run just about any winapp.

Nope, that's nonsense. It's also, various Linux distro stables only work so-so with wine depending on the hardware configuration. A long list of games, perticularly games that are either really popular, or really obscure remain to have no proper wine support, and most importantly, bloody photoshop and related things like Flash, Audition, Cubase, all sorts of 3D things, essentially what you need as a creative professional, and no, GIMP is by far not a valid equivalent, which is to be understood, as the people working at it aren't graphics professional and have less intensive needs.

Cons of using windowns over linux:

That windows at it's core is DOS and never will be anything else. It gradually grains up and you need to reinstall about one a year.
At least linux is somewhat designed to be a UI system.

Yes and no. No in the literal sense, yes in the effect, backwards compatibility needs ultimately clog it up.

[You, sir, name?]

And GNU since 1984...

And UNIX since early '70s (while it isn't directly "blood-"related, it does largely conform to POSIX).

[Emu*]

Ubuntu:
Menu>Applications>Add/Remove, apps in list are known to work (mostly)

Windows:
Find your own installer, hope it works, run it.

Your 3 year old has been brainwashed, or is being assisted.

[JohnWittle]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

[phlip]

Hmm? Aside from the one person who mentioned dd, noone's talked about GNU tools at all. Almost all the points in the OP in particular (perhaps not #2) would be equally valid (or, equivalently, equally invalid, as appropriate) with just a Linux kernel with, say, busybox or BSD's sh or something running over it. Sure, you wouldn't be able to do much of use in such a system, but it still wouldn't BSoD particularly often, etc.

Because questions like "how often does the kernel panic" and "how susceptible is the system to viruses" and such are mostly either kernel-level or distro-level... rarely tool-level, which is where GNU sits.

[Emu*]

Yeah, shut up beardy. I've never really liked RMS.

[lulzfish]

Actually, I'm using Kubuntu, which is more like KDE 4 / GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / several other projects.
People like to say "Linux" because the "X" makes it sound cool.

[Josephine]

Actually, I'm using Kubuntu, which is more like KDE 4 / GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / several other projects.
People like to say "Linux" because the "X" makes it sound cool.

Apple figured this out 8 years ago.

[kernelpanic]

Actually, I'm using Kubuntu, which is more like KDE 4 / GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / several other projects.
People like to say "Linux" because the "X" makes it sound cool.

Apple figured this out 8 years ago.

But when they have to update to System 11, OSXI sounds stupid. Maybe they'll say OS X 11.0...

[stephentyrone]

Apple figured this out 8 years ago.

But when they have to update to System 11, OSXI sounds stupid. Maybe they'll say OS X 11.0...

OS\xi, however, sounds awesome.

[Emu*]

Or they'll go for OSX 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 which would probably work...

[kernelpanic]

Apple figured this out 8 years ago.

But when they have to update to System 11, OSXI sounds stupid. Maybe they'll say OS X 11.0...

OS\xi, however, sounds awesome.

wouldn't it be OSΞ? And it would sound like "Oh, sexy!", which is good. I vote for that. Let's start a formal petition!

[phlip]

OS\xi, however, sounds awesome.

wouldn't it be OSΞ? And it would sound like "Oh, sexy!", which is good. I vote for that. Let's start a formal petition!

I approve of this suggestion and intend to sign your petition.

[kernelpanic]

OS\xi, however, sounds awesome.

wouldn't it be OSΞ? And it would sound like "Oh, sexy!", which is good. I vote for that. Let's start a formal petition!

I approve of this suggestion and intend to sign your petition.

Well, then please do!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/osxi/

[markfiend]

Actually, I'm using Kubuntu, which is more like KDE 4 / GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / several other projects.
People like to say "Linux" because the "X" makes it sound cool.

Apple figured this out 8 years ago.

Apple claims that OS X is pronounced "O-S ten". Having said that, I've never heard anyone call it anything other than the three letters.

[zug]

I like Windows because it's the universal platform for every game I want to play. I've also owned my homemade winderbox for over 4 years now and never had a single OS crash or BSOD. The only time it turns off without my permission is during a power outage.

/shrug

I'd like to get a Linux partition running, but I've been told it doesn't run out of the box like Windows does, and it's been a pretty long time since my collegiate tech-days.

[OOPMan]

I like Windows because it's the universal platform for every game I want to play. I've also owned my homemade winderbox for over 4 years now and never had a single OS crash or BSOD. The only time it turns off without my permission is during a power outage.

Blatant lies are not good form, my good man!

/shrug

I'd like to get a Linux partition running, but I've been told it doesn't run out of the box like Windows does, and it's been a pretty long time since my collegiate tech-days.

It's easier than you think and these days it has a strong tendency to run out of box better than Windows does (Ie. You don't need a damn driver CD which you lost a year ago to get your networking up and running)

[phlip]

(Ie. You don't need a damn driver CD which you lost a year ago to get your networking up and running)

Unless you need wifi, in which case, yes, you may well need to do some messing around to get your networking up and running.

WiFi drivers and 3D acceleration are basically the two things that don't always work out of the box on common Linux distributions. 3D isn't that bad - you'll still have video straight up, and not at the 640x480 that Windows dumps you at before a driver is loaded... and getting acceleration is just a case of downloading and installing a single driver package, which is even included in the package manager for some distributions. WiFi is a bit more of a mess... you might get lucky and find it works out of the box, or you might have to figure out how ndiswrapper works, which is a bit of a mess. Of course, the number of cards that work out of the box is steadily increasing over time, though.

As opposed to Windows, where almost nothing works without finding and running the driver CD, or heading to Windows Update (which won't help if you need a driver for your network card).