Life In 19x19

RobertJasiek wrote:

amnal wrote:It is difficult [...] to replace the window manager with something more powerful.

I am not sure what you mean by window manager. The shell can be replaced by, for example, the PowerShell (if you like a DOS-like GUI). The task manager can be the Sysinternals ProcessExplorer.

The window manager is the program that manages window placement and appearance. For instance, as a trivial example, the mac window manager places the 'close window' button at the top left of the window whereas the Windows wm places it at the top right. Much more significant differences can be seen if you compare tiling window managers with floating window managers, or even the flashy effects of modern wms compared to windows 3.1

I like using xmonad, which is a tiling window manager. Windows does not offer this functionality out of the box, though it is possible to get similar results with third party add-ons. I don't think it's possible to simply replace the wm with xmonad, though, which is (for me) a point against windows. This probably also imposes a minor performance penalty, but whether this matters is a matter of opinion and circumstance.

I'm not saying that windows doesn't have tools available to do stuff any way you want to, including in power user terms, but I think linux lets me do it better and more easily. In part, because it's generally more designed to do so. Of course, this backfires for new users when it comes to the common 'why isn't there just one good distro?' question, but that's just not the point .

cdybeijing wrote:Ubuntu 10.04. I will upgrade when 12.04 comes out.

Even though I use Linux, I don't delight in changing my OS every six months.

You might be interested in a distro like Linux Mint, particularly the new(ish) debian based version that's rolling release. In principle, that means you never need to actively upgrade, as everything is incrementally upgraded when the update is available. Mint also is very well thought of as a competitor to Ubuntu's user-friendliness.

Depending on how you have ubuntu installed, you wouldn't lose any data, and could possibly even keep your current program settings etc. in the same way that ubuntu does when you upgrade. Though depending on how you have ubuntu installed, this also may not be possible.

Going to school for computer science taught me (among other things), that I really, really don't want to spend my free time customizing computer systems and such. As such, I use windows because it came on my laptop, and I try to mess with things as rarely as possible.

Laman wrote:Win 7 / Kubuntu 11.04

i have used mainly Linux for 3 years or so, but since last upgrade it has started overheating my notebook (fan is screaming most of the time) ...any tips? ...

Have you checked your battery pack? If the batteries are getting old, the internal resistance may rise enough to overwork your batter charger, then the fan has to work harder to keep it cool.

Chew Terr wrote:Going to school for computer science taught me (among other things), that I really, really don't want to spend my free time customizing computer systems and such. As such, I use windows because it came on my laptop, and I try to mess with things as rarely as possible.

I will echo these sentiments.

Now, as an ambitious programmer-wannabe (and as a sysadmin), I dream of being in complete control (can I has ATCA chassis w/ blade servers all running multiple VMs of various flavours, plz? I haz netwurk sk1llz, mebbe?). The reality is, though, I don't have the time to learn what I need to learn to make Linux (any flavour) my go-to OS (or OSX, for that matter). My company works on Windows, and my netbook came with Windows. That's what I use.

As a side note, my home PC is on for less than an hour a day (on average), so I'm not exactly the typical user. I have no cell phone (we have one flip-phone for the family), so I don't have a mobile OS either.

Yay for outlier data points?

Joaz Banbeck wrote:Have you checked your battery pack? If the batteries are getting old, the internal resistance may rise enough to overwork your batter charger, then the fan has to work harder to keep it cool.

i have not. the notebook and its batteries are 1 year old, but my main point was that the wins are still quiet and keep CPU at average 5°C colder than linux (if both thermometers are reliable). another thing is that i started caring about the temperatures more around the time of the kubuntu upgrade and now i don't remember how was it with with the previous version (10.04), if it behaved better or same as the current one

anyway, thank you for your interest, but i suppose this is getting away from the original topic of the thread

I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 on all my systems. I don't have a windows computer in the house at all. I'm planning on switching to Ubuntu 11.10, but not until after I finish switching KGS over to the new ISP and finish up a project on my day job also. I've learned to never do a major upgrade unless you are in between projects.

Marcus wrote:

Chew Terr wrote:Going to school for computer science taught me (among other things), that I really, really don't want to spend my free time customizing computer systems and such. As such, I use windows because it came on my laptop, and I try to mess with things as rarely as possible.

I will echo these sentiments.

... My company works on Windows, and my netbook came with Windows. That's what I use.

I'm mostly the same as these two guys -- except Mac for me.

Working in the computer industry and with programmers, I don't have time to be constantly installing, rebooting, configuring any machine. Its just a tool, and I've got work to do.

My company hands me a Windows laptop -- I use that (except that I will install Cygwin on it and then spend most of my time in the shell) -- but I switched to Mac as soon as they allowed me to switch. Most of our backend servers are linux (usually RedHat), so I'm on the commandline 90% of the time anyway.

At home, my whole family (5) is now off Windows and all on Mac. Yay!

You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows? I mean, having done Windows support for years, I do understand some of the challenges ... but issues with Windows stability and vulnerability always seem to be blown WAY out of proportion to the reality (as are issues with Linux usability, in my opinion ... but I digress).

I understand that many of you have a preference for an OS other than Windows. I find that acceptable. I just don't believe Windows is the inferior choice overall. Different tools for different jobs, right?

Marcus wrote:You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows? I mean, having done Windows support for years, I do understand some of the challenges ... but issues with Windows stability and vulnerability always seem to be blown WAY out of proportion to the reality (as are issues with Linux usability, in my opinion ... but I digress).

I understand that many of you have a preference for an OS other than Windows. I find that acceptable. I just don't believe Windows is the inferior choice overall. Different tools for different jobs, right?

I've always owned PCs because of the price, and the need to use software for work that wasn't available for Macs. I remember with Windows 98 that problems would accumulate and I'd have to reinstall the OS every few months. But since then I've found each new version of windows to be more stable than the previous one. There is still the issue of hardware conflicts with PCs that you theoretically don't have with macs. My sister bought a Dell with Vista that has some kind of weird configuration issue so it would crash after automatic updates. I had to wipe the windows partition and reinstall Vista from scratch 3 times, plus turn off automatic updating. Now they have a dual boot with Ubuntu to keep them online until I can get out there and fix their problems.

Marcus wrote:You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows?

Two reasons for me are that I think the open model is more economically effective, and transparency is important. There is a huge potential for hiding malicious code in proprietary software that can never be legally confirmed or denied. Free software makes this far less likely to occur, and impossible to fully hide. This is not a huge problem yet, but in the future I think it will be.

nagano wrote:

Marcus wrote:You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows?

Two reasons for me are that I think the open model is more economically effective, and transparency is important. There is a huge potential for hiding malicious code in proprietary software that can never be legally confirmed or denied. Free software makes this far less likely to occur, and impossible to fully hide. This is not a huge problem yet, but in the future I think it will be.

This is a valid opinion, and I respect that.

However, with the right tools nothing is truly "closed source" ... I consider this a consumer/social issue (to be fair, it can be a big issue) ... not a technology issue.

Marcus wrote:You know, I can't help but wonder ... why are so many so anxious to be off Windows? I mean, having done Windows support for years, I do understand some of the challenges ... but issues with Windows stability and vulnerability always seem to be blown WAY out of proportion to the reality (as are issues with Linux usability, in my opinion ... but I digress).

I understand that many of you have a preference for an OS other than Windows. I find that acceptable. I just don't believe Windows is the inferior choice overall. Different tools for different jobs, right?

I actually don't think that as a *desktop* system Linux is much more secure than a carefully set up Windows system. That of course only holds if the user in front of the system is behaving reasonably. On Windows it's still way too easy to fool the user into starting some trojan and giving it permission to do damage. But for me personally, that doesn't really apply, because I would never dream of opening an attachment of a spam mail that's called "hot_babes.jpg.exe"


For me, it's mainly a usability argument:

1) I like tiling window managers.
2) For pretty much everything exept web browsing, I prefer the console to GUI.

These two points boil down to me preferring the keyboard over the mouse. I absolutely hate having to move my right hand between mouse and keyboard. A tiling window manager that's keyboard controllable, plus a reasonable console, gets me very far without ever having to touch the mouse. The former is not available for Windows at all, and the latter isn't really able to compete, either.

3) I like package managers.

These things are a huge time-saver. On Windows, I often have to search the internet for some software. If I'm lucky I find an installer that I can just execute. If I'm not so lucky, I have to install some prerequisites first, then I have to search for them, too. For example on Arch Linux, I just do "pacman -S <package-name>". Or "pacman -Ss <keyword>" if I'm not sure how the package is called.

Ok, once I have everything I need installed, that's not really an issue anymore. But especially when installing a new system, the time saved here is huge. On Windows, I often need two or three days of my attention until the system is in a state where I can actually do some work. On Linux, that usually needs about an hour at most, and most of that unattended.

An added bonus is that the package manager keeps all of my software automatically up to date, not just the system and the few programs where the developer provides an auto-update. And that is IMHO the biggest security advantage of Linux compared to Windows, because outdated software is generally the biggest security risk nowadays.


To sum up: Yes, I actually prefer Linux over Windows on a pure usability basis. That goes as far as me having a VirtualBox running Linux on my Windows work PC, where I do certain tasks where the usability difference is really noticable, opposed to just some minor annoyance.


And to answer the original poll:
At home, I use mainly Linux. Windows is only used for SC2 (at the moment, probably for D3 when it comes out ).
At work, I use Windows for .NET-Development, Linux in a VirtualBox for pretty much everything else.

It is really strange that Linux has completely solved the package-management problem for 10 or 15 years, and Windows still has not even attacked it. I sit around with a bunch of old versions of stuff on my Windows machines just because every program has an inconsistent updating mechanism or no updating mechanism. How hard can this be? Even if Microsoft doesn't want to maintain an apt-style repository of Windows software, can't they expose some API that programs can register with to check for updates, and some central management screen I can look at to see the updates?

On the Windows side, I like to use Secunia PSI to keep track of what software needs updating. It's not perfect (Linux package manager are definitely better), but it is pretty good.