Vista who ? Try an alternative

Peteee

monosharp wrote:

I said it was exciting, not that it was an innovation I think beryls development rate is .. well astonishing to be honest. 6 months work and look where its at now. Incredible in my opinion.

Definetly the rate of development is phenomenel.

Actually i'll give you that one. But you may find it hard to believe but when Vista was first announced and later on i was actually looking forward to some of the features including Aero. I was especially looking forward to Monad (powershell) and WinFS. What has annoyed me since is the reviews etc making Monad out to be this super great sliced bread beating shell. I actually a read a review which sarted with saying that Monad is better then Bash (Linux shell) because instead of writing "ls -l" (Linux) u can just write "ls" (Monad) and away it goes. The author obviously unfamiliar with Bash or .. some other reason seems to ignore the fact u can alias any command and the command "ll" does the same thing.

Honestly i don't even know what the above (from the article) is supposed to mean, monad is better then bash because by default it uses a long listing format whereas by default bash uses a short one yet both can do either and all of what the other does ....

I'm actually looking into Monad, the one thing that DOES sound interesting is passing stuff as objects and not as text. I don't see the benefit yet but i'm researching it.

We'll definetly have to see about Powershell, but a rip off of bash it isn't

They didn't copy it well enough :P (p.s > tcp/ip sucks anyways but thats besides the point, not any OS/Companies fault)

I'm fairly certain its the exact same code. I'll try and find a reference.

As for TCP/IP, would you prefer the OSI model? IPX?

Thats a load of crap. Honestly, 90% of users want to write text, select font/size/style, insert headers, bullets, numbering, pictures/graphs etc, maybe textboxs and print it.

My mates a secretary, works with formal/legal documents all the time and thats all she does/needs. Your saying a home user wants more ?

Maybe not, but 2007 still makes it easier to do all of the things you listed above.

No of course he doesn't, but average Joe also doesn't give a flying **** what OS hes using or what application hes using as long as it works and does what he wants it to do. For the majority of average Joes, Linux is more then enough for his/her needs, including hardware. The exceptions are webcams and some mp3 players and more non-standard hardware. Although i know a lot of people with a lot of different mp3 players and the only one i've had a problem with was an iPOD. But then again its more or less the same problem people have with the iPOD on any OS. (The erase my collection if its not on the current system thingy).

If he dosent care what he's using, why should he care about switching to Linux?

On windows if media bloated player (Yes can't stand it, not for MS/Windows reasons but because it sucks) can't play something u need to go find the codecs yourself. Ubuntu will ask u do u want to download them and then download and install them seemlessly.

I quite like WMP11, but thats an aside point.

Sometimes it downloads codecs automatically, more times it dosent (And it points you to where you can install it). Most of the time its the DivX codec you need anyways.

Definete room for improvement there.

I've heard it all, i've seen the videos, i've seen it in action.

Obviously a LOT of work was done, whether or not its a good thing is another question altogeather.

Interfaces suck, all interfaces. Gnome sucks, KDE sucks, Windows shell sucks, OSX gui sucks.

Whats good for you or me might be atrocious for someone else.

What exactly sucks about them?? You have a better idea

Its all personal preference. Office 2003 and before users are not going to thank MS for this new interface until they get used to it and then it'll be the best thing ever because its what they know, until they find out 1000+ things wrong with it and make a new one where the process will continue.

It is personal preferences.

As for the home user (Who only changes fonts etc etc) Most things are in pretty much the same place. And the rest is logically laid out. If you cant figure it out after 5 minutes of being shown how, you shouldn't be let near a computer!

Somehow i doubt it will be a problem.

I think it will be quite the problem. Though if the encryption is cracked so easily, them maybe not!

MS shouldn't have caved in so easily imo.

Agreed.

We were talking about innovations, not ease of use.

We were.

But I think as a whole, we are 'debating' whether windows or linux is more usable

Which isn't a problem. Its just as usable for Windows for average Joe.

Which I dont think so.

Given the choice for a general desktop OS, I'll pick windows every time.

As for common sense, well as you say it's not all that common!

ntlbell

monosharp wrote:

I just might and don't get me wrong, i'm not disagreeing with people about Opera, but your talking to someone who is happy most of the time browsing with Lynx

Ok, so you're happy with your browser, you're happy with your choice of OS and this all works well for you, great.

I've tried not to get involved in this thread because they happen every now and again some moron see's the light and try's to convert the world to their way of thinking. I'm all for the advocay of using OSS but shoiving something down people's throats,slamming their opinion's or pointing them to go study comp-sci on wikpedia is not the way to go about it and it's this idiotic attitude that prevents a lot of users trying out OSS.

If you wish to be helpfull then offer your support on the UNIX forum.
Sign up to mailing list's and help people that are actually looking to make the change and help make it easier for them.
Write documentation, I'm sure you're well capable of creating a "Vista Who Try an alternative with my quick and easy how to guide" instead of having silly pointless arguments with users who seem to be happy with thier current choice of OS.

Ghost Train

monosharp wrote:

...............

I suggest reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(computer_science)

Again let me say. Manufacturers do not support Linux. Distros etc is a non-issue for drivers.

Yeah I agree, most manufacturers do not support linux, thats a problem for a lot of users.
From my own experience, i've have had a distro that after setup supports a wifi card and one that doesn't support the wifi card. i suppose it's just some distros build the driver support in while others leave the user to work it out. with windows you download your driver from the manufacturer, run the exe file and all going well the hardware works. I thought some manufacturers release linux drivers, ibm/lenovo had some linux systems, anyway if manufacturers provided user support for linux the same way they did for windows it would be much better for customers. if i go into the shop for some piece of hardware it will have a sticker on it saying if it's compatible with windows xp or mac os, very rarely will you see linux mentioned

monosharp wrote:

You can't play it with Linux ?

Funny that. I play games, the list may be small but i can certainly play games. I'm currently playing Quake 4 actually.

DX is the majority choice for games developers for a number of reasons but there are a lot of games out there availible for Linux as well.

Yeah I agree the list is small, Linux is severely limited when it comes to available games

monosharp wrote:

What is an advanced task with hardware ?

Mostly involves video recording, editing and playback. Some electronics programming and stuff, i've two or three pci cards that i'm sure i'd have a difficult time getting fully fuctional under linux, it can be difficult enough getting somethings working properly with windows sometimes

monosharp wrote:

I don't agree. Most people i know wouldn't use a pc for much more then writing docs, browsing the web, listening to music and watching movies.

yeah in most cases thats what the pc is used for, but windows may be needed for specific software to run, when somebody get a music player, a pda, some windows software. windows being the most common os, lends itself to being compatibly with all sorts of software somebody might need to use outside the basic pc tasks

monosharp wrote:

I suggest googling for DRM, its much more then that and it sucks for several reasons. Regardless of what its purpose is.

i agree 100%
i don't need to read what drm is. i don't buy drm music, i try to avoid it, i agree that it sucks, but you can't blaim windows for it. drm exists, if your os can't playback your drm'd music then it sucks.
blame the content providers, the music companies who insist on using it, don't blame windows and osx for being able to play back the content.
i hope drm goes away, but given that movies/music use drm, linux users are locked out of using most drm'd content, a negitive for linux

Ghost Train

Zapho wrote:

DRM is there mainly to PREVENT people from viewing content they don't have copyright for (in otherwords, not legally purchased). So if you decide to download an wma file with drm included, then you can't just email it to your friend so he can have a listen too, so its more of a pain in the ass rather than a reason to stick to windows. Its basically Microsofts answer to the Mac aac format (even Steve Jobs admitted that restricting aac files is a bad approach and is now thinking about returning to the mp3 format). DRM is not going to last long, especially since windows systems can still and always will be able to play mp3 files or ogg or the like. About DVD playback. Have you tried to play a DVD in linux? Its as easy as typing "apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd" once. As for HD disks and drives, whats stopping linux from accessing them just like they can access DVDs and CDs? And as for multimedia hardware, yes, they are supported by linux too. Might just take more time to sort them. Building a multimedia machine (HTPC) with linux (using mythTV) is a cost effective solution in my mind, with the added bonus of allowing the user to completely customise the software.

i have no love for drm, but the fact is most online music you buy uses drm. therefore having linux means youre limited to not buying drm music, for me that wouldn't be a problem, but i can imagine for a lot of people i might be. Some versions of windows come with dvd playback included so no command line vlc install needed. There are lots of legitimate dvd codecs available for windows, a few hd codecs available too now, linux doesn't seem to have the same support, and for legel reasons can't distribute certain codecs in the distros, in some ways it's the same for windows, but there's more software out there as far as i can see. From my understanding hd disks are pretty much locked down with layers of drm, sure people will get around it, and linux users may be able to playback disks at sometime, but windows vista should make the process a whole lot easier for the average user.

i have media software, i tried myth tv a while back and it didn't work for some reason, probably a hardware thing. there are a few good freeware apps out there that do the same as mythtv for windows, gbpvr being the one i like, plus there are commercial one too if i want to use them

DonkeyStyle \o/

monosharp wrote:

What about beryl ? You don't think thats anything to get excited about ?

I was excited about it until I actually got it installed and realized how pointless and nauseating it is
it also brokereererd xgamma on me

wayne040576

Been using linux for about 4 years now. It has got a lot better but I still think it's nowhere near ready for the average windows user. As an example: if any ubuntu user performed an update in the last 24 hours, there's a good chance their x windows system is now broken due to sloppy handling of the update. Just look at their message boards.

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=140&page=2&order=desc

There are new messages popping up about it every few minutes with people asking "why am I booting up to a black screen?" I'm kinda in the same boat today but at least I've experienced enough of these type of screw ups to know how to fix it manually. But new users will not have a clue how to fix it.
Totally unacceptable for am OS supposedly aimed at converting the average windows user.

Capt'n Midnight

Broken link
Yeah in fairness microsoft updates are a hell of a lot more stable than in the bad old days.

wayne040576

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Broken link
Yeah in fairness microsoft updates are a hell of a lot more stable than in the bad old days.

Fixed.
The official word on the problem and the solution is very helpful to the inexperienced user:

ATTENTION:

Due to an unavoidable ABI change the Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu
6.10 kernel updates have been given a new version number, which
requires you to recompile and reinstall all third party kernel modules
you might have installed. If you use linux-restricted-modules, you
have to update that package as well to get modules which work with the
new kernel version. Unless you manually uninstalled the standard
kernel metapackages (linux-386, linux-powerpc, linux-amd64-generic), a
standard system upgrade will automatically perform this as well.

The system upgrade doesn't fix the issue. This is why I usually don't install the graphics drivers from the distro's repository. Sooner or later they will do a kernel update and break the system. I hadn't bothered doing it manually myself and ended up booting to a black login screen this morning. Downloading and installing the drivers from the nvidia site was faster and easier than following the instructions above.

pickarooney

Ah crap, did an upgrade yesterday without even checking what packages I was updating. Probably will not be able to reboot ever again!

But in other news, for anyone still having trouble installing (K|X|Ed)Ubuntu,
try this.
All it needs is a working Windows installation, but sure everyone has one of those

monosharp

Peteee wrote:

We'll definetly have to see about Powershell, but a rip off of bash it isn't

Depends what you mean by rip-off. As far as i can see it IS bash, just with added functionality. (I'm not saying they nicked it from linux or X, its perfectly fine to take something like bash and improve it. I'm just saying its NOT an MS innovation)

As for TCP/IP, would you prefer the OSI model? IPX?

This would be OT as its not any OS vendors problem.

If he dosent care what he's using, why should he care about switching to Linux?

Point taken. He shouldn't because average joe won't know or care what hes using. Which is sort of my point. More users for Linux/Apple/BSD = good for everyone as it promotes competition in the market.

I quite like WMP11, but thats an aside point.

I'm not talking from a linux zealot etc position, purely from a "this application sucks" POV and imo WMP badly sucks. Then again so does most media players for Linux and Apple.

What exactly sucks about them?? You have a better idea

Every interface sucks, its just the level of "suckiness".

I think it will be quite the problem. Though if the encryption is cracked so easily, them maybe not!

I can't see it remain uncracked for very long.

But I think as a whole, we are 'debating' whether windows or linux is more usable

So really we are talking about gnome/kde vs windows interface ? In which case they are all useless/as good as eachother.

monosharp

ntlbell wrote:

I've tried not to get involved in this thread because they happen every now and again some moron see's the light and try's to convert the world to their way of thinking. I'm all for the advocay of using OSS but shoiving something down people's throats,slamming their opinion's or pointing them to go study comp-sci on wikpedia is not the way to go about it and it's this idiotic attitude that prevents a lot of users trying out OSS.

I'm not trying to shove it down peoples throats, i'm just trying to show people an alternative exists and that competiveness is good for the market and that some misconceptions about Linux in general are incorrect.

monosharp

wayne040576 wrote:

Been using linux for about 4 years now. It has got a lot better but I still think it's nowhere near ready for the average windows user. As an example: if any ubuntu user performed an update in the last 24 hours, there's a good chance their x windows system is now broken due to sloppy handling of the update. Just look at their message boards.

Yes that shouldn't have happened. But in fairness from what i read it shouldn't be a problem for the majority of users who don't uninstall the meta packages. (ubuntu-desktop).

Peteee

monosharp wrote:

Yes that shouldn't have happened. But in fairness from what i read it shouldn't be a problem for the majority of users who don't uninstall the meta packages. (ubuntu-desktop).

So, hypothetically speaking, if it happened to a windows box (where MS provided an update that completely broke the desktop environment) it would be okay because "in fairness...it shouldn't be a problem for the majority of users"

:rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

Peteee wrote:

So, hypothetically speaking, if it happened to a windows box

or non-hyporthetically if you are talking about exchange.

monosharp

Peteee wrote:

So, hypothetically speaking, if it happened to a windows box (where MS provided an update that completely broke the desktop environment) it would be okay because "in fairness...it shouldn't be a problem for the majority of users"

:rolleyes:

99.99999% of users who would uninstall the meta packages i'm talking about know exactly what they're doing when they do it so YES it is not really a problem.

Anyone who couldn't find their way around without X wouldn't uninstall the meta packages in the first place.

Linux/BSD gives you the freedom that Microsoft denies you. If Ubuntu was ran like Windows you would be forced to keep the meta packages installed and all their dependencies.

Ginger

Well ViperLair did a comparison of XP/Vista/Unbuntu

Might be worth a read

http://www.viperlair.com/articles/editorials/vista/versus/index.shtml