Freedom of speech

Norman_Graham

Hi all

I was shocked ("He was shocked!") and completely appalled ("He was really, totally appalled!") to see the prominent anti-Linux ad on the PHP Builder homepage when I logged on a few minutes ago. Paid for, of course, by our old friends in Redmond.

But hey - I believe in freedom of speech, even when it gets nasty. So I took the bother to read the stuff. Interesting to see how stupid MS thinks its potential customers actually are. How many business customers appreciate being talked to like a 14-year-old? They seem to have borrowed their approach from the Nancy Reagan (my deepest sympathies, Nancy) 'Just say no' campaign.

After reading this tripe, even if some it may well be true, you just want to delete your Win partition and tell YaST to take over the rest of the hard drive, right down to the last cylinder.

Appropriately, considering what's going on in Portugal, I'd call this an own goal.

Norm

drawmack

I once heard someone talking to an immigrant who was thinking about becoming naturalized and he said: "Just remember that being American means you will hear someone say something that makes you puke, and defending to the death their right to say it."

You know I have to agree.

Mordecai

I like Windows. However, I agree wholeheartedly. I don't even think most of their stats are true, and those that are are obviously blown way out of proportion.

A windows server costs 10 times less than a linux server? Hmm... on what planet? If you read into it, you'll notice they use Red Hat for all of their stats, too. Hmm.. no one in their right mind uses Red Hat if they can help it.

LordShryku

Ok, I wasn't going to chime in on this because I know people are sick of hearing my opinion on this subject, but I just "got the facts", and COME ON! The one that I just loved was "Is Linux More Secure Than Windows?"

* Responsiveness: On average, Microsoft had a fix available 25 days after a security issue was publicly disclosed.

"Publicly disclosed"...meaning Microsoft could and probably has known about the vulnerability for a long time, but since it hasn't been exploited to the point if shutting down large corporations, it's not an issue. There's many "high severity" exploits that someone has found and submitted to our Redmond buddies, but they don't acknowledge. Once there's a virus or worm tearing down entire networks, then they admit they know about it, and I guess at that point, it's "publicly disclosed".

* Relative Severity: Windows has the fewest vulnerabilities and the fewest "high severity" vulnerabilities of any platform measured.

I forget what's the difference between written and spoken. Which one's slander and which one's libel?

Paragon

I'm not talking from a developers perspective or a company, but rather a normal home user. When is linux going to start being easy to use?

It's like they try to make it complicated. The point of using a OS is to make your life easier.

Probably some what off topic, but just thought I would throw that out there.

tekky

Originally posted by Paragon
I'm not talking from a developers perspective or a company, but rather a normal home user. When is linux going to start being easy to use?

It's like they try to make it complicated. The point of using a OS is to make your life easier.

Probably some what off topic, but just thought I would throw that out there.

Mandrake makes it easy.... shrug It isntalled on my Cyrix 233 with out a problem, even managed to run the KDE GUI quite well... just took it a good 5 mins to load the GUI

Shryku, slander is spoken, libel is written

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Paragon
It's like they try to make it complicated. The point of using a OS is to make your life easier.

I thought the point of an OS was to coordinate and allocate system resources to programs which is not simple.

Now, if you're talking about the user interface ... which one are you talking about? Of course, a machine that is just going to sit around being a server doesn't need to waste gigabytes of disk space and hours of clock cycles doing pretty graphics on a screen that might not even be plugged in; and if troubleshooting work is required, there's always the command line. And as for GUIs (which should not be confused with operating systems) and user environments; there are a lot of them out there for Linux to choose from, aimed at users ranging from "systems adminstrators, who actually know how their systems work" through to "clueful home/office user" through to "mouthbreather who keeps breaking their cupholder, and has just failed their driving test for the fourth time running". Although, to be honest, there aren't that many in the last category, because such people are more apt to pick Microsoft, who in turn regards them as its favourite market segment.

And to return back to the OS for a moment, much of the apparent extra complication of Linux is a result of the developers offering the user more control over how the OS goes about its tasks, as opposed to Microsoft's black box. And that control of course extends up to and including the ultimate: "Here's the source code, here are the compilers (and their source code): knock yourself out".

Mordecai

Originally posted by Paragon
It's like they try to make it complicated.

Get FreeBSD and install KDE. If you're a Windows user, you'll feel right at home.

Paragon

Originally posted by Weedpacket
I thought the point of an OS was to coordinate and allocate system resources to programs which is not simple.

I am sure you are a smart guy and all, but its not fun talking to somebody that trys to prove it when its not needed.

annoying reply -- The space time continuum is a direct contrast of the left hemispheric triangulum so to properly hypostasize I will be congruent in my next statements. ---

Now I have used Red Hat 9 and Fedora Core 1 and everything was fine and dandy, but everything is a hassle. I mean there wasn't any simple process just to install a program.

I don't think its fun to install a program and I don't think its being leet or uber to make installing things difficult.

Eventually I just got tired of reading on how to do this and that. When I got on Windows back in the day on Win 95 it was a cake walk. I didn't need to have some super big head just to install a program.

Untill these things are changed in some version or form of Linux I know it will never take over the market.

Now I love having good security and I like to play games and do a little programming. So far Win lets me do all three at the same time the fastest and easiest.

Who knows maybe I will give Linux another shot later on, but I just don't have months to try and figure it out. Wish I did because all my geeky internet buddies say its great.

LordShryku

Well, with the two systems you tried, using their standard rpm packaging system to install...
rpm -Uvh packagename.rpm
What it sounds like your really saying is that it's not that Linux is hard. It's that you don't have time to put any thought into working it.

bubblenut

and if you've got one of the nice GUIs you can just double click on the rpm and go from there, just like Windows 🙂

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Paragon
I am sure you are a smart guy and all, but its not fun talking to somebody that trys to prove it when its not needed.

annoying reply -- The space time continuum is a direct contrast of the left hemispheric triangulum so to properly hypostasize I will be congruent in my next statements. ---

Seeing as you're the only person to be "annoyed" or otherwise offended by my writing (and speech) style, I'd have to say that this is your problem to deal with in your own time.

In other words (and I guess this is what you'd prefer):

Diddums.

Merve

Ahh, but there are Linux distros for the clueless, or the kinds of people who just like it simple: SuSE, Mandrake, Linspire (Lindows), Lycoris...and there's more. Red Hat is a waste of time.

I'm currently backing up my data. Next week, SuSE will have place on my hard drive right next to Win2k.

Nothing wrong with a dual boot...

drawmack

I have four computers in my home.

File Server - Running Red Hat 9 (why red hat, cause when I have a kernel panic it rebuilds from the journal all on it's own - yeah me)

DB Server - Solaris (Kind of like unix but less user friendly)

Web Server - Running Red Hat 9 (same reason as above)

My Desktop Machine - Running Win xp, why it came with the system it was simple to set up and Neverwinter Nights Doesn't run on Linux.

jstarkey

Originally posted by LordShryku

"Publicly disclosed"...meaning Microsoft could and probably has known about the vulnerability for a long time, but since it hasn't been exploited to the point if shutting down large corporations, it's not an issue.

I can't remember the exact number, but I think it was something like 600 exploits in queue(?). Some being several years old.

jstarkey

Originally posted by Paragon
When is linux going to start being easy to use?

From the other side of the fence, I'd like to know when Windows will be easy to use. I love the installs, they are great, but the GUI is a pain in the butt.

jstarkey

no one in their right mind uses Red Hat if they can help it.

:glare:

jstarkey

Originally posted by Merve

I'm currently backing up my data. Next week, SuSE will have place on my hard drive right next to Win2k.

Byron (one of our sys admins here) recommended SuSE. He's Mr Finicky when it comes to Linux, so I'm sure it's nice.

Mordecai

Originally posted by jstarkey

What? It's true! 😛

Weedpacket

Originally posted by jstarkey
From the other side of the fence, I'd like to know when Windows will be easy to use. I love the installs, they are great, but the GUI is a pain in the butt.

I'm not that keen on the installs. It's one click and they put this file here and that one there and these ones over here and these ones somewhere else and make a directory tree here and write this in here and register that there and alter this setting here and change that file association and reconfigure that and WTF has it just done to my system?!

I'd rather not be treated like an idiot.