Why Linux is Cheap 14

[eman6]

This is for all those who defend Linux.
First: Remember, if there was no MS Windows and MS Office in the market, and if it wasn't so popular, Linux would either never have existed, or it would probably be of higher price than MS products.

Second: What is Linux? Correct me if I am mistaken please. Linux is an attempt to force a Unix-Like product into the very popular Personal Computer, so that we (the volks) can use it at home (or small office) and not only on big systems at big companies.

Now my big question is: Regardless of the price. Do we need Linux? Aren't we re-inventing the wheel?
The brilliant ideas behind MS Windows was to create a user-friendly, easy to understand and use inteface and to be able to run more than one program simultaneously.
Thanks to Microsoft, only few people are still afraid of computers and feel only specialized professionals can use them. Mainly people older than 40 or 50, mostly.

So what we really need, is not a re-invention of what exists already but to have what exists in more appropriate form. In other words to have MS products:
1) Fine tuned for a minimum of bugs rather than a multitude of unnecessary (paid anyway) features.
2) Fine tune the prices so less people have to use illegal copies mostly because they just cannot afford to buy them even if they would love to have them.


Eman_2005
Technical Communicator

http://www.smartistek.com

 

[Provogeek]

This sure is turning into a pretty interesting thread. Wonder how much longer it will last, sure hope it doesn't turn into a monkey rage as other Linux v Microsoft thread have done ... thus getting them deleted, including a very good one I started my self some time ago.

Yes, M$ has market share with the desktop, yes, their desktop is superior in design and usability to all others and is capable of running on cheep hardware. The catch is, it runs like poopie on that cheep hardware. Go for the good stuff to make Win run good and your paying more than you would for a Mac.

M$ only got desktop market share because of big blue, the trusted leader back in the day. Software was written for it and businesses bought it. WordPerfect was the WP leader for a majority of the time, and M$ could not compete "fairly" with them in the DOS market. M$ only won the Office application market because when they released Windows, they refused to release many of the API's that were needed to write a decent WP program. Thus WordPerfect ended up making a very poor product that made many move to MS Word. The only sector that stuck to their guns was the legal community because MS Word did a very poor job with many of the function law firms required. It took a paid holiday of many people from many firms to Hawaii for M$ to find out what they were doing wrong and they got it some what right when they released 97. But the one that hit the nail in the coffin was many of my clients moved to Word because their own clients were using word and M$ made it more and more difficult to share documents between the two word processors.

My focus being networking (as some may see by my handle, if you get it), it pains me to no end to see M$ win a deal on the sole fact that they GAVE AWAY the server license to the company they were bidding for. Not sold, GAVE IT AWAY. Do it enough time and you get into the old, well everyone else is doing it. Yea, sure they are, but you have to pay for it, and in the end, so will they. Would be nice to see M$ win sale based on a technically superior product not just straight marketing buzz and dirty sales tactics, but I plan on retiring by the time I foresee that day coming.

 

[WombatSound]

We talk about different environments ... My environment is strictly Internet ... I'm only all the time ... I do web hosting and development ... Some of the issues do migrate towards the desktop and that also is a source of grief ...

"Standards" is a word that Mr. Bill likes to throw around ... It is my belief that the way he uses that word is synonymous with "my way" ... You cannot use MSIE to browse an RFC compliant Internet ... They've extended MSIE to be even more invasive of your desktop ... This has been the cause of many problems ...

This will all be coming together since Mr. Bill is going up against Google to have the web integrated onto your desktop organizing the world's information ... The APIs they've released for this are all written in Microsoft proprietary code ... The Java/PHP'ers have already made their voices heard who've done much API work with Google, etc ...

Mr. Bill is looking to buy AOL ... I think there was a smaller company he was looking at as well, or, he just purchased them, I forget, but I think it was related to the Google thing ...

So, history is repeating itself once again ... Microsoft doesn't innovate, they just buy the companies that are successful doing the things they would like to be successful in ... In order to have no competition, you simply buy them to make them go away ... and I speak here of business practice ...

Going back to "user friendly" ... yes, a monkey could run a Microsoft operating system ... but I find that it is very hard to have it do the right thing when it guesses ... For example; using a Windows machine in a cable based environment behind a DHCP'd router, Microsoft tries to find the gateway and assign itself an IP address ... If it can't find it, you get a very interesting IP address ... If you play with it some more, eventually you might get a connection ... Now the person that went through this knows how to improperly get Microsoft working on a cable connection and they will share this information with their less fortunate friend ... In my opinion, if the error messages were more informative people would learn how to use their computer and may get a better realization of what's going on ... What the heck is {31B2F340-016D-11D2-645F-00C04FB984F9} supposed to be? What happened to naming things with Englishlike names ...

I myself had a problem with a Windows Server where it would crash almost once a month ... There is no way Grandma could have figured this one out ... It required running C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows>kd -y srv*c:\symbols*

http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

-i c:\winnt\I386 -z c:\winnt\memory.dmp ... This showed the offending problem and it made me react with moving services to a FreeBSD machine ... The Windows machine still hosts sites and serves ASP quite happily with no more crashing ...

Once again going back to history is the reason we see MSIE included in the Windows operating system today ... Many people were running Win 3.1 and firing up Netscape ... Mr. Bill decided he wanted that market and there was the beginning of the DOJ problems ...

IBM shipped 8088s with AMD processors ... I guess Intel made a deal with IBM, and that's why Intel is where it is today ... It's more about marketing and mass use than anyone's opinion ... But since you have an opinion, you're able to choose ... It depends whether you choose on your political thoughts or your personal ones ... I myself am a bastard, I use them all and have my own opinions of the politics ... So, I run all of the operating systems, I reap the benefits that each one of them provide ... I use which ones work in the best areas and exploit them ... In truth, everything at one time was 100% Windows ... After researching and learning what my best solution was, everything is FreeBSD here except for the machines that need the proprietary Microsoft technologies ... If I didn't have to run Windows servers, I probably wouldn't ... I do use a Windows desktop though ... I have tried Open Source, and it isn't bad ... I am just used to Windows having used it since the early 1990s ...

That was when you booted at were presented with a C:\> prompt ... From there I'd fire up my text editor which was called Q ... or hop around my harddrive using ElfTree or QDos ... If I wanted the GUI, I typed "win" and up it came ... Solitaire for everyone! In 1997 I hadda get used to Win95 and lost my command line ... Was so refreshing to get it back with FreeBSD ... Now I boot to [user@myhost /etc]$ and from there I have the choice again ... mc for my harddrive shell or startx for my GUI ...

Sorry for the long post, I am venting .. sharing my history as well as my opinions on the software that I use ... It may explain in part how I have arrived at my opinions ... My main opinion is that there are already standards in place developed by a whole bunch of technical people ... Those standards are freely available for anyone to use and follow ... Why Mr. Bill decides not to do this is beyond me ... I don't understand ... It is of my opinion if MSIE itself followed these standards that it would remain as the #1 browser, but people who are into standards and worry about their security exposure have found Firefox and Thunderbird ...

... and back to the WP MSWORD thing, like I said, I never used them ... I have always used a 3rd party text editor ... Right now EditPadPro is my editor of choice, but I just know that Corel is continuing to release Word Perfect ... NotePad+ is a really good free text editor ... I know a programmer that works at Microsoft ... He uses emacs ...

 

[eman6]

This time I am the one giving you a star for this post.
Surprising as it may look, I liked it.
You see, from my view, I lived since 1990 onwards as a technical documentation specialist, ranging from a technical writer to documentation manager passing by Vb and VBA on the way to tailor office applications to specific needs depending on the company I had contract with. Yes, I worked as a contractor since 1995 practically earning most of my life with word processing and desktop publishing and this stuff.
I am sure you can understand why Microsoft is bothering me less than it is bothering you.
Yet, when you say: "What the heck is {31B2F340-016D-11D2-645F-00C04FB984F9} supposed to be? What happened to naming things with Englishlike names". I couldn't agree with you more than I do. Absolutely! And you forgot to mention that clicking on the help button or pressing F1 is completely useless or even unavailable when you need it most.
More and more you must contact MicroSoft support for serious problems and follow the annoying phone queue and enjoy the waiting music, but then they are sure you did buy their products and not had a copy from a friend.
That's fine for me because I earn enough to buy what I need of them, but I passed by a number of young enthusiasts who wanted so much to learn the new stuff and spend the money they spared on hardware so not much left in their little pockets for the whole Microsoft Office package and multimedia, and graphics and and and.
One problem here is, if today I decide to forget about Microsoft and buy Lunix, I really don't know if you would have a job for me. Let alone the distance between wherever you are and where I am (Switzerland).
It is indeed a pity if Linux was a good product but could not have the place it deserves in the market. Not only if it was better than Windows, but even if it was just good, and I trust it is.
I have worked for big establishments like banks, food industry, Pharmaceutical industry and so on.
They all have huge servers running with Unix and they all have Windows Desktops for thousands of their employees all over the world.
Yes, definitely microsoft products are bothering me every now and then with bugs and even with some of their features. Yet, I learned absolutely everything I know today on my own. I could do that because of the intuitive and user fiendly interface design. I thank Microsoft for that alone so much, but I also said many times, I wish they stopped adding so many new features most of which nobody ever uses, and rather put more effort into eliminating persisting bugs version after version.


______________________________________
Eman2005
Technical User

 

[Stevehewitt]

LOL - I'm enjoying this thread!

I have got to defend MS on some the points raised above. (How flammed am I going to get!?!)

The MSIE thing. Personally I haven't got a problem with it. Doesn't stand out as being particularly great, but I get by. Used Firefox - not out of userability but security. I've given up now. Anything advanced on the web breaks, and current trends show that Firefox has had more security patches released, with more being critical than IE. (Source is

http://www.theregister.co.uk

- posted it in this forum I think).
I know what you mean by standards - but MSIE DOES support current RFC standards on the web. The problem is that MS have created their own extensions too. So when you go to a website in Firefox / Opera / Safari and it doesn't work - blame the webmaster for not writting it properly by strictly meeting RFC's and just trying to base it on MSIE standards only.
(MS website works fine in Firefox or Opera last time I used them)

If your refering to the GUID - I'm really confused, I've never seen a GUID in a Windows error message through normal day to day use. Terminology in Windows (IMHO) is vastly superior to most *nix platforms I've tinkered with. (Generalisation I know, but I don't know what GRUB is - but I do know what 'Setup' is...!)

The only times I've had a problem with a cable or DSL modem on windows is when the modem is a piece of crap. It tried to tell windows it's a NIC - but it's actually a USB device. AOL cack all over it. If the virtual 'NIC' is setup to use DHCP but it should be manually set, or vice-versa then I suggest looking at the configuration. DHCP is one of the few 100% standard compliant part of Windows. (In fact the TCP/IP stack is from BSD I believe)

Also, I've called MS support various times (free calls in my OSL pack) - got through in under 2 mins.

Cheers,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[skiflyer]

DHCP in Windows is not 100% standards compliant, upon failure during bootup (and sometimes during regular usage, though not always) when it cannot contact the DHCP server it will assign itself an IP address other than 127.0.0.1... I forget exactly what the IP is, but it's well known, all 4 tuples are set, and the first time it happens to you you look at the number and say WTF is this? This isn't part of my network, but it connected, but nothing's working, and so on.... it's really a dumb design, I've actually wondered in the past if it was testing code that accidently shipped.

MSIE vs. Firefox... security wise, it's looking like quite the toss up... your source says what it says, then other people look at the same data, and look at # of days unpatched or number of exploits exploited and Firefox looks better then they add in different perspectives and they swing back and forth and back and forth. Usability wise, sounds like you prefer IE and I wouldn't give up my tabbed browsing and mouse gestures for a free weeks worth of donuts... this is a perfect example, IMO, of each person choosing the tool they like best and using it, thank goodness each tool adheres to enough standards that we can both use them. (Neither browser is 100% standards compliant, though claiming MSIE is compliant with current standards is a bit of a mis-leading statement since they've declared CSS2 to not be a "current standard")

To me the whole Windows vs. *nix debate is a non-issue, I use Windows when it's the better tool for me and I use *nix when it's the better tool for me.

Right now I'm developing an application for resale, the server components sit on *nix and are therefore cheaper for me to deliver to the customer since I ship them a complete box, are easier to maintain remotely over dialup connections when my customers are rural, have proven to outperform their Windows equivalent for their particular tasks.

But the clients components are all .NET code and run on Windows boxes, this allows me to sell to greatly reduce my training time to end users, have an easier time interfacing with 3rd party hardware (i.e. bar code scanners, fingerprint readers, medical equipment), and quickly design my software with a user friendly GUI (I know it's possible in *nix, but it takes alot longer). It also allows me to hire less expensive employees to develop.

My personal desktop? Was linux, until I had to run certain unsupported applications to maintain my small business (namely quickbooks and visual studio)... so now it's Windows, right tool for the right job.

 

[Stevehewitt]

All valid points, I've always said in the stupid debates that occasionally popup regarding *nix Vs WinNT that there is no "better" OS - only one that is better suited to your needs for that task at that time.

Just in regards to DHCP - adding new features to something as well as keeping to RFC standards is still compliance with RFC. In fact, there is even a RFC on how to disable the autoconfiguration which is also avaliable on some novell system (so I've read a while ago - don't ask me for a source!)

http://rfc.net/rfc2563.html

To my knowledge there is no RFC which actually states what a client should do if it's setup to use a DHCP server but cannot contact one. (Although again - if someone can point me to it I would be grateful) Looks like MS just decided to have client pick a IP from an inbuilt range. (Not sure how useful it is - i've certianly never used it.)

Ta,



Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[pmonett]

Steve:

From my experience, the built-in IP selector is incredibly useful if you don't want the slightest chance of ever connecting to anything.
Really, given that business users can choose any IP range internally (they have a domain server to handle that), it makes no sense setting an IP of, for example, 26.184.5.106 - it will amost surely not work. Then you have the home users, which are practically always constrained to the 192.168.0.x range. So, why not generate an IP within that range, instead of all over the theoretical range ?
Oh, and the subnet thing could be set to 255.255.255.0, instead of 255.255.0.0 - but that may just be my own nitpicking.

Pascal.

 

[gpastorelli]

With regard to DHCP problems with Windows, when a computer that is setup to use DHCP cannot find a DHCP server AND there is no alternate address specified, it assigns itself an address from APIPA ( i believe that is how it's spelled ). The theory, at least that I've read and experienced, is the case that NO DHCP servers are accessible on the network, all workstations/servers will be assigned APIPA, therefore having the same address range and still be able to maintain limited connectivity until the DHCP server has been brought back up.

In my experience, it does not work this way. Reason being, most of the time, your servers, printers, etc. are statically defined and therefore isolated when all the workstations obtain APIPA addresses. Microsoft could've done a lot more to improve the usage and practicality of APIPA. Perhaps included something in the server OS to detect a DHCP server being down and assigning itself an alternate APIPA address even tho it's statically defined, therefore network communication could at least continue between clients and servers.

As far as Linux goes, I'm mostly a windows guy, it's what I work with and what I'm good at. I've used Linux and personally enjoy it. But one thing I really have to say, before Linux becomes widely accepted it needs to be a much easier interface. Just installing AOL Instant messenger, I can see the headaches for end users, as opposed to windows you just double click the .exe and be done with it.

- Greg