Re: XP is garbage

Colin Dawson wrote: 
LOL, my Sony Viao is running perfectly on Windows XP Pro.

Never crashes, never "beeps and boops". I do have a Win2K box at work, which has is also very good, but I prefer XP as the mouse wheel does work better. Of all the Operating systems that I've used Windows XP is the best OS that I've seen to date. Win95,98 and ME needed to be re-built every six months, Windows NT 4 once a year, Windows 2K works well, but there are issues which are down to it's age more than anything else.

I'm still keeping an eye on Linux, but I don't think that it's quite got the ease of use bit sorted out properly. I can't see it being a serious contender for Windows for a while yet, but it is improving.

Linux might very well be getting worse. The different distros all have their own way of doing things, so no apps work the same across all of them. They customize the vanilla apps such as OpenOffice and Mozilla to integrate with their desktop and config tools, so you can't upgrade the apps with drop in packages direct from the originating projects.

I am having so many problems with the highly regarded Suse 9.1 (after about a month of tinkering just to get it to the point of being able to do most of my work) that I'm really getting fed up. Each version gets worse, in direct proportion to how much more "smart" it tries to be. I am considering going back to Slackware with which I started 9 years ago, but I can't afford another 1-2 months of tinkering to get it all set up. And no matter what I do, more and more of the web sites that I simply must use to run my life, have show stopping quirks or issues unless IE is used. Or even more depressingly, they work with an alternative browser such as Firefox on Windows, but not on Linux.

The PC OS and office software industry is a horrible mess, and there's no relief in sight. Linux was a reaction to this brokenness. But it isn't providing ordinary users with an escape path, only a narrow group of highly technically skilled developers/users. I am becoming convinced that Linux will never become the solution to the Microsoft problem, for reasons the Linux community will never ever be able to admit.

If we had the kind of competition in the software industry as we have say, between AMD and Intel, then we might really have something worthwhile. Two or more 99.9% compatible PC OSes trying to one-up each other all the time on straightforwardness and stability.

Oh what a dream.

At this point I would pay serious personal money, say $500-$600 for a PC OS that was very solid, with the flexibility and features that I like about Linux, and with the vast pool of applications and hardware available for Windows. But it doesn't exist. And the Mac hardware is way too expensive, though it's a possible contender for the first criterion, except for the applications.


Good day!



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