Migrating to Linux

[urger]

@Jofers
I'm not duel booting XP, yet. The distro I had on my Laptop never worked right, from the day I got it from Dell, so I removed it completly. However, once I do install it on my desktop I'll let you know.

@Everyone else
Hmmm, my experience with XP is completly different from yours.
My desktop I upgraded to XP because of software that I need for college, they require XP. The system never has worked right since.

My Laptop came with Win XP installed on right out of the box from Dell. It crashed the first week I had it. Despite a trip back to Dell for repairs it continued to be unreliable. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with the polls choices. I was (still am) very unhappy with the reliability of the Win XP computers in my possestion. I am happy with the reliability of a Win 98 SE computer in my posestion (3 years running with only one failure, and that was due to hardware failure).
Maybe my XPerience is a unordinary. Oh well. It is the only experience I have with it (unless I have another personality I don't know about ) and so far it has been bad. I gave it a shot, I am not impressed. I did think about reverting to 98 as I still have a copy of it somewhere, but I had been wanting to use Linux, so I switched. After a few days of using it everyday at school, I have to say that I prefer it. I am a command line officinado (sp?), I guess you could say that was another strike against XP.
So, when I first posted this topic I was not a member of the Religion of Linux, just a very disgruntled XP user. I'm still not a member of the cult of 'nix, but I am now getting there.
Anyway, you do your thing, I'll do mine.
Slan.

[adosorken]

urger: I'd normally have plenty of foul words to throw at you like an iron mudpie striking with extreme prejudice, but I'll keep it to myself this time to spare the eyes of all who see this thread. Despite the overall immaturity of the poll, I'd have to say that the only thing keeping me from adopting linux as a full-time OS is the fact that there is no proper BASIC for it. In particular, I'd be partial to FreeBSD, as usual. Without proper programming support, *nix is simply uninteresting for me. Sure, I could code in C all day long, but how boring does that get? Very. And quickly too. Bottom line: if FB was ported then sure, I'd triple-boot two Windows versions and a *nix. But until then, I'll stay a person with a room-temperature IQ and use a so-called "broken" OS.

(99.5% of all Windows errors are between the chair and the keyboard, otherwise known as the eye-dee-ten-tee error.)

[urger]

Ugh.
Adosorken, there is no need for foul words, I do not want a flame war. What my above post is an attempt to say (in my own odd about the edges way) is, effectivly, "Sorry".
I am not sorry about my unhappyness with XP, but that is my own personal opinion. However, I do realize that the poll questions were most disapropriate (normaly I would not have wrote said such a thing), I was exceptional angry at the time of the original posts writing.
Once again, and with deepest apologies,
Slan

[adosorken]

Everyone gets angry. It's part of human nature. And don't worry...I wasn't throwing ya any harsh words, but I did forget the smileys again. My apologies.

[VonGodric]

Linux is great. I use it all the time. It's gfx in UI is ahead of M$ windows. It's all cool. BUT -for just updating a video driver I had to recompile Linux kernel? And for what? to get errormessages for like 3hours, until got it all to work. Linux is (in my idea) not for desktop computing. In windows all you need to reinstall video driver, is just run installer, and in worse case to do a restart. in Simplicity Windows is FAR ahead of Linux.

So I say, naither is better or worse. Both have theit strong and week sides. And it's smth people (especially linux geeks) like to forget.

[Jofers]

Well, windows does support different drawing routines for its UI graphics. However, they decided to be prickly and only support some signed something or another so they could release that silly "themes" thing.

GDI is supposed to be completely overhauled in longhorn, and replaced with some "avalon" gizmo that is supposed to be very, very neat That's all I can tell you about it, I'm a lowly man with other concerns.

[relsoft]

I find it funny that all of you guys are trying to bash, either windows or linux and here I am stuck with win 98. :*) Oh wait!! My neighbor borrowed my comp so I don't even have an OS. :*)

[na_th_an]

I'm not bashing any OS. As I wrote, I use both. I only was telling that Linux is not "the perfect thing" and that it can give you the same or more problems than Windows. There is some kind of belief that "M$ is crap, so if I don't use Windows anymore I won't have a problem anymore". False.

The first year I owned a windows machine (Win95 OSR2 on my P233MMX) I crashed the computer 10 times a day and had to reinstall once every two months. Same happened with linux. The very first time I went to install Debian I only got it after four takes and 1 month lost, 'cause my computer was not "the latest Dell" but something different. Then I had problems with my NICs and with my videocard, which only was detected as a VGA. When I had everything working, I kept killing the wrong process... and crashing the computer 10 times a day.

What I mean is that if you don't know how to handle an OS, it will crash, no mater how überleet it is.

[LooseCaboose]

99.5% of all Windows errors are between the chair and the keyboard

I dislike this line of argument also. If an operating system is well designed and you are using it as an normal user (ie not root) then it should be very difficult, if not impossible to crash it by doing something wrong.

If you are using an operating system as root then you deserve any misfortune you bring upon yourself. Unfortunately in the windows world many people either dont know better or are stuck having to use the computer as root because of legacy issues and applications (even games, etc) that for some reason require superuser rights to run.

[na_th_an]

99% of stuff that needs superuser rights only need them when installing unless they are administration tools, which should be used by superusers.

Most Windows manuals boldly tell that it's safer to create a non superuser account for daily usage, and only log in as a superuser when you have to administrate your PC (i.e. installing new stuff or doing some repairs). Exactly the same thing is advised by Linux manuals or any other OS manuals. But the average MS Windows user don't give a shit about that simple stuff and screws up everything with his superuser rights.

What's happenning? Most of the time, the user who installs and uses Linux is a somewhat advanced user, so (s)he knows what (s)he is doing most of the time so things don't go funny. The Windows user is mainly that person who bought a computer to make assignments and turned it on the first day and found the nice tetracoloured logo. That's one of the main reasons why Linux looks more stable and less screwable, if you allow the invented word .

Let one of those Windows users to fiddle a bit with Linux and you'll get the nastiest crash you could have ever thought of. Or what's worse: before a crash the user will get bored 'cause he doesn't know how to do anything.

Then there are people who blame the OS for their own faults. I've seen people disconnecting the printer in the middle of a printing just 'cause they found that they made a mistake... Of course, Windows goes funny. But they blame Windows, not their silly action. I've also seen people deleting programs from Windows Explorer and when they reboot and find the tons of missing files and lost references, they blame "stupid Windows" as well (something that can't be done if you don't have superuser rights)... And I could go and go and go.

On the other hand, the Linux user enjoys Linux, plus is far more advanced. He knows that when a process go funny he just has to open another console instance and kill it. The average Windows user doesn't even know what a process is.

That's the main difference between Linux and Windows.