Re: Microsoft tries to polish a turd

JosephKK wrote:
On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:08:50 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
<dirk.bruere@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Joel Koltner wrote:
"Dirk Bruere at NeoPax" <dirk.bruere@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:6g164pFdreq2U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My main dislike was that if anything went wrong and KDE or GNOME failed to come up all I got was a text prompt on screen.
I've had the same complaint -- I remember very early on with, e.g., Windows NT 3.51 if something went wrong with the video driver the machine might just crash, but for many years now if Windows can't load the "proper" video driver, it just uses "generic VGA" mode and at least still gives you a desktop.

Happily, the most recent versions of some distributions (like Ubuntu :-) ) now take the same approach. Why it took them nearly a decade to implement this is beyond me, although of course when it's 99+% volunteers writing the software, prioritization of work perhaps has a larger disconnect with "what the public wants" than with payware such as Windows.

I was just not willing to plough through 500 pages of manual learning Unix command line i/f from scratch.
You can get reasonably familiar with *NIX command lines in probably no more than 25 pages. However, the trick is then knowing which configuration files to mess around with (a common Windows problem as well) -- and their formats: Unlike Windows, where 95+% of configuration information is either in the registry, .inf, or .xml files, in *NIX there are many, many dozens of different configuration file formats, and while you can often just "figure out" the format by looking at them, it's still more work than just firing up, e.g., regedit. Additionally, not all programs use standard parsers (as Windows provides for the registry and .inf files), having just hacked some little parser together on their own, so programs are still somewhat fragile if their configuration files aren't exactly what's expected. X11's configuration file, Xorg.conf, will still crash the X server (GUI) and dump you back to text mode if you do something as seemingly benign as forgetting double quotes around an argument. :-(

Realistically, if you're buying a machine that already has all the hardware setup from the likes of Apple, Dell, *NIX and Windows both work just fine. If you're setting up a machine yourself, from scratch, the average *NIX machine still takes a lot more effort than the average Windoze machine.

But try out, e.g., Ubuntu Hardy Heron, released back in April... it's pretty good.
I'll probably go for a dual boot system when I get a new machine later this year. Ubuntu and XP64

Notice: There is still a driver paucity in XP64. And there is an
even greater paucity of 64 bit software.

But I can actually use 4G of DRAM.
Still, I'll look into it a bit more when the day comes.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Great SWT Program
    ... which is where the configuration files ... are shared by all machines. ... it's not like Windows software is perfect. ... On Unix GUI ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Microsoft tries to polish a turd
    ... if something went wrong with the video driver the machine might just crash, but for many years now if Windows can't load the "proper" video driver, it just uses "generic VGA" mode and at least still gives you a desktop. ... Why it took them nearly a decade to implement this is beyond me, although of course when it's 99+% volunteers writing the software, prioritization of work perhaps has a larger disconnect with "what the public wants" than with payware such as Windows. ... Additionally, not all programs use standard parsers, having just hacked some little parser together on their own, so programs are still somewhat fragile if their configuration files aren't exactly what's expected. ... Realistically, if you're buying a machine that already has all the hardware setup from the likes of Apple, Dell, *NIX and Windows both work just fine. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: [SLE] Network Name Resolution Problem Retry
    ... However, having made those changes, I still cannot ping sserver from either Windows device; although the laptop as SUSE can ping sserver. ... of course sserver does not show up in either Windows device's Network Window. ... nameserver 192.159.12.32 ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Microsoft tries to polish a turd
    ... I've had the same complaint -- I remember very early on with, e.g., Windows NT ... You can get reasonably familiar with *NIX command lines in probably no more ... the trick is then knowing which configuration files ... to mess around with -- and their formats: ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Microsoft tries to polish a turd
    ... I've had the same complaint -- I remember very early on with, e.g., Windows NT ... You can get reasonably familiar with *NIX command lines in probably no more ... the trick is then knowing which configuration files ... to mess around with -- and their formats: ...
    (sci.electronics.design)