Windows vs Linux

Well, this isn't a Readers Digest web site. I thought it was supposed to be for Professionals, and people who wanted to be as skilled as the pros...

I didn't expect the whining end users to expect their opinions to be counted as being as valid as what the 25 year veteran IT has experienced with multiple platforms and who is adept to expert in all of them... My DOS/VSE skills are getting rusty... Anybody need a systems programmer (shudder) ...

1) Windows users have just as much grey matter as Linux users ;
Ans. Yes, but will they actually use it?

2) GUI's and Help Files are good for end users, not confusing...Linux uses them too
Ans. But you can do everything from the CLI much faster if you know the OS. If you are a newbie use the GUI...

3) There are free .pdf converters for Windows as well
Ans. Yes, but "Harry it still sucks" (Gapin' Chapin honorarium)

4) I can use Canon printers
Yes, but so can I with the fiery engine installed, or with cups, lpr on the cannon. Again it is knowledge that is king...

5) Firefox, Opera, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc all work under Windows as well
Yeah, and like EXPLORER they are not as cool in windows.

6) Why is spending money for the most widely available, most used, most compatible OS a waste of money?
Maybe not in the onesy market. I see it as a waste of 4.5 million dollars that should go in raises and bonuses (to me of course).

Several people on here have said, and I'll say again, the "best OS" is the OS that works for you. Many factors go into this decision...don't demean those that make a decision in disagreement with yours. You don't know all the factors that go into their decision.

Mostly, For gaming/home decisions can I support MS because of their base. For business I think it is incredibly stupid not to go Linux.

Some won't run in XP and they were written for 98se

That includes MS games.

Worst of all My Tex Murphy games don't work (sob).

LDAP and HPUX and or Sun.

No more locked up fileservers...
Use SFU and Windows becomes useable. Dang, then it is almost a UNIX...

When you won't have users direcly logged into the servers, (using it via NFS/CIFS) It provides even greater reliability and even C2 security...

However that being said

Polack's home machine 2.4 GZ- 1 GB ram
deflowered to 512 MB RAM.

The performance of a Malloc of 240 MB in ram.

is 2% faster in Linux when I had 1 GB in it.

I have to reload windows in between the tests. When I malloc-ed the Ram XP $&#$ing blue screened I hate Microsoft C++...

So several days later, I am ready to try again...

The funny thing is I am playing with a client's servers to do my performance testing There was just a disk swap to reboot. This is taking time.

Do I count reload time in the malloc for MS XP
PRO ?

Even with 1 GB and 1 GB it took much time..
DB server XP isn't...

Apparently Internet traffic slows memory management...

"A Linux installation is generally complete, with all the programs that you will ever need and then some."

Maybe. I haven't found anything comparable to Visio, Quicken or Quickbooks yet. And I mean "comparable", not simply "a diagramming tool" or "a checkbook program".

Applications are what drive the need for an OS. First decide what you need to run, *then* pick an OS. Finally, pick the hardware. Selecting the hardware and OS first and trying to shoehorn your needs into it is working backward.

I never really had any problems with the older selections from RH .As in from 7.1 to 9,however when Fedora 1 came out I had to try it. I had to read some info about it...the issues I had on hardware were not related to the mainboard, video,sound or memory. They had to do with two things. A 3C905b Cyclone NIC and a 56k PCI hardware modem.RH 7.1 through 9 did not have issues with those items.For some reason kudzu would throw the installed configuration out on those items and I never could figure out why. Later on I found out the NIC was an issue with FC ,but nothing about the modem.
I've had lots of install experience with various flavors of Linux, those are the only two issues that really bugged me about Fedora.Finding the multi-media plugins were a piece a cake,getting NVidia drivers were easy,everything else was easy.

Win 98 runs quite well on a PII 400 with the same amount of RAM and has all the features I need. I have one in my garage for when I take smoke breaks.

With AVG Free and a free other utilities, sitting behind my firewall, I have no security fears and the performance is great.

So what was you're point?

Ah, there is a comparable Windows scenario...

1) Windows users use their grey matter just as much as you...don't be so egotistical.

2) GUI's are favorable...cuts down on training time which offsets your "speed" advantages

3) The free pdf converters work just fine, I use them all the time

4) Knowledge is king unless you discount the amount of time it takes to obtain it vs what I accomplish while you're down and learning

5) What the hell does "cool" mean? Boy, that's professional

6) Any millions not spent on Windows at my company wouldn't be spent on bonuses, they'd be spent on hiring more staff to replace the loss of productivity caused by a Linux conversion

Linux users do it all the time, similar to Wine and Cedega.

Use a virtual PC to run all your outdated, crappy games. The VM machine is now free.

I did not make any of those statements.

OK one at a time.

Actually I read it as a problem the person who wrote the quote experiences when they install RH products regardless of what else is available.

I'm picturing windows literally eating(with teeth) drivers. :P that's pretty funny picture. The problem was with Linux.

About that. it's not what I remember reading last night(UDT). But I did say "even you gave a good argument", which you have clearly prove to me you haven't. Maybe I was tired. You got me on that one.

This one is tricky, and seems to all depend on the definition of heavy. and a definition of Linux full desktop and windows full desktop.

The humanity.

;)

Sounds like you could used some of what I'm smoking. B-) :p

The typical Win XP install is about 4GB, maybe smaller by itself.

I think you're showing your lack of Windows knowledge when you say "Windows XP started complaining that the hard drive was too full".

Has anyone else on here ever seen that error message?

A 10GB Win XP install must have a crap load of software.

Yes, Linux installs are smaller, but by a 25% margin maybe not the apotheon reported 2-3 times larger.

My current install is just over 2.5GB...cutting out the crap and just what I need. Very efficient, very reliable, very stable.

It's not about whether the end users' opinions count. Of course they count. It's about whether the end users know how to make what they need happen -- and they don't. That's why the professionals exist.

Thus, the professional takes the end users' opinions into account, and uses technical know-how to serve the end users' needs.

Windows started as a no-security cheapo toy and built layers of cruft around it to keep up with the bells-and-whistles necessities of consumer demand, thus ensuring a severely broken security model. Actually, to be strictly accurate, it really doesn't have much of a security model at all. It has relied on third-party solutions for security until now, and now the security is still being provided by separate solutions even when they're being produced by the same people producing Windows.

Linux started out being built as a multi-user system, thus ensuring that security and stability are integral to the architecture of the system. Bells and whistles are added as modular services and clients, ensuring flexibility and continued system security. While for a long time end user concerns were largely ignored because the geeks using Linux were happy to have functionality instead of merely "features", the recent increasing attention Linux is getting for desktop and thin client applications is ensuring that end user features are getting more development, however, and Linux is converging very quickly on Windows clicky dumbed-down interfaces for the clueless end user without compromising the solid, flexible functionality of the system under it, because all that end-user stuff is modular servers and clients installed on top of the secure and stable OS underneath. As a result, Windows users like you get defensive and talk about how "hard" Linux is. This debate wouldn't even be happening if Linux wasn't a credible threat to Windows dominance, and the fact that it's the benficiary of open source development means that it will advance faster than Windows possibly can as closed source proprietary software.

What a ridiculous comparison.

1. Microsoft isn't selling Windows 98 any longer, so if you don't already have it, you're SOL.

2. Windows 98 suffers some severe security shortcomings that no amount of firewalling and AV protection can cover. It's even more a single-user system than Windows XP, without even the application-level attempts to make the system appear multi-user that XP uses. It cannot run fully updated, more secure versions of a lot of security-critical software, like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Office. Do you really want an application that is Internet-aware and integrated into the entire OS (I'm talking about IE) to be any less secure than the most-secure version available? Firewalls make no difference with an application that actuall goes out and [b]requests[/b] foreign systems to send data to them.

A [b]bare minimum install[/b] of XP with no useful software and no security is only 4GB. Are you unaware of the size of applications and application suites on Windows? Are you unaware of the storage resource usage of security tools required for sane use of Windows? Are you unaware of how bloated Windows logfiles and restore points are?

You claim Windows isn't anywhere near two to three times as bloated as Linux for an equivalent install, but you're wrong. Let's compare to the three Linux installs I have right here at home with a bare minimum install of Windows XP with zero additional applications, zero additional security, and no logfiles. As you say, it's about 4GB.

This laptop:
~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 1.8G 1.3G 466M 74% /
/dev/hda6 4.1G 1.9G 2.2G 48% /home
tmpfs 62M 0 62M 0% /dev/shm

That's 62 MB of swap and 1.9GB of data (I store most data on a server). The system partition (/dev/hda1, 1.8GB partition) has 1.3GB of used space. I have a full GUI system installed here with the GNUstep framework. I have OpenOffice.org and two other word processors installed. I have about two dozen software development tools installed, including two GUI toolkits, a couple of IDEs, debuggers, code editors, and so on. I actually have antivirus installed just to make sure I don't forward some Windows virus to a mailing list. I have the GIMP (open source competitor to Photoshop) installed, along with digital camera software. I have two different multiprotocol IM clients, Firefox, a mail user agent (email client), two IRC clients, three other browsers (for testing), three FTP clients, PDF viewers and creators, secure shell server and client, integral stateful packet filter firewall, rootkit checkers and system integrity auditing software, and a bunch of other miscellanea installed. All in 1.3GB.

My application and file server:
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 6.5G 2.6G 3.6G 42% /
/dev/hda5 67G 24G 40G 38% /home
tmpfs 253M 4.0K 253M 1% /dev/shm

This one has 253MB of swap, 24GB of data, and 2.6GB on the 6.5GB system partition. It has everything on it that is on this laptop, with rare exceptions, and a whole lot more (including music server software, version control servers, video server software, and a metric assload of other stuff).

Finally, a non-GUI server:
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 3.0G 334M 2.5G 12% /
tmpfs 79M 0 79M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda6 7.3G 129M 6.8G 2% /home

334MB system partition usage. That's it. Let's see what happens if I install [b]both of the most bloated GUI environments available[/b]:

[i]0 upgraded, 447 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 255MB of archives.
After unpacking 691MB of additional disk space will be used.[/i]

[i]0 upgraded, 310 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 176MB of archives.
After unpacking 578MB of additional disk space will be used.[/i]

So, if I installed both of those, complete with all the desktop software they carry with them, even counting the libraries they have in common so that my calculation ends up being more bloated than the reality would be, that's a grand total of 1.6GB for the system partition usage, including what was already there.

Thus, a bare-minimum Windows XP install with no logfiles, no software, and no security is almost twice as fat as a huge, towering application server system, complete with a gawdawful lot of software installed and several years' worth of logfiles. It's almost three times as much as a system with a month's worth of logfiles if I were to add two full GUI environments complete with full complements of productivity software, each including duplicate functionality for a lot of things. It's more than three times as much a laptop with a full GUI environment, a couple years' worth of logfiles, and a helluva lot of applications -- a system I use for both work and play, as a development platform, an office productivity platform, and a toy. It's also [b]12 times as fat as a CLI server system complete with the full complement of server management and scripting tools[/b].

. . . and that Windows system has [b]nothing installed on it and no logfiles or restore points yet[/b]. Yeah, you must really know what you're talking about: Windows isn't that much more bloated an install at all. Right. Sure. You betcha.

Thats my current install of xp on a laptop, also very stable and very efficient. With firefox, gimp etc...

At work it's just under 4gigs but that's with all the extras installed that I don't use. But I don't really care about because it is a work PC and it performs just fine with all the additional stuff.

I have seen a message in an event log saying disk space on drive whatever: is low, but thats cause I got heaps of stuff.

I use my laptop for games\work\movies\ and ipod etc.., And if I switched to Linux I would probably lose the ability to do all those things (until I learnt, download and complied to the kernel thousand s of bytes of code that would of taken ages to find on the net). but at least it would run at a small size on HDD and I could surf the net securely as long as I could get my modem configured (how ever long that would take).

And no OS can make a celeron better.

that no-one in the linux - linux thread completely refuted anyone elses comments.

yup, I have always had bad installs with red hat.
yet debian, mandriva, xandros, vector, linspire and from scratch all install perfectly on the hardware.
says it has to be red hat related.

no-one in that thread argued that the sudo security model is a good way to go.
[ though Ubuntu dev team do think so..to the point of stating that unix sys admins are implementing it across their systems ]

full install of absolutely everything available for a 3 cd distro... takes up around 6 gigs of drive space. [ not including swap partition ]

Do you know how many virus and spyware and adware I have had attack my win98 laptop build that I am currently writing this thread on. absolute zero. Why? one of the big reasons is M$ don't support win98 anymore, they can't and don't find and publish exploits on the web anymore. Virus makers and nasty adware makers upgrade with the times. Every win2k exploit or winnt exploit or winxp exploit or vista exploit is not a win98 exploit, I.E 7 M$ next big security risk won't even run on win 2k because they can't. M$ can't be bothered fixing it for win2k. Win98 is not compatible with a lot of new Trojans out there. Remote connecting to a win98 PC for the pleasure of doing malicious things to the users PC just isn't worth all the work that has to go into hacking.

win98 supports more games then any Linux distro (that does not have wyne(or what ever the win emulator is)). The same anti-virus I would run for Linux distro runs for win98. And spy-bot S&d also run on win98.

M$ have not built a Linux emulator but Linux has built a Windows emulator. Who would need a Linux emulator?

;)

http://www.tui.co.nz/yeahrightintro.asp , also please note that when I refer to "you" it is "you" and not *rickk. :D "you" as in every-one.

Are you familiar with what a monopoly is? Did you know M$ got busted for being a monopoly? Do you know what that meant for M$? They are not allowed to provide an OS that does every thing.

Are you familiar with business term "partners"? MS have many partners which provide third party solutions for the windows OS. It is against the law (for m$) and serious bad company practice to piss all over your business partners.

If M$ provided every thing with their OS (which is what they wanted to do before the monopoly law suite) then nobody would need third part apps and M$ could just strangle out any competition (lucky for Linux they can't). Nobody could compete thats what a monopoly is.

Linux isn't a credible threat to Windows, the law is and other corporate organisations are.

Sony use Linux and make lots of money of it(300k a licence for a red hat distro) and are competing using Linux against M$ (why the xbox was born).

Animators\Special effects creators use MACS and Unix and pen and paper (not supplied by M$).

VMware is not cheap and not open source either, it runs on Linux, cisco waif servers are not cheap but run on Linux also not open source.

M$ can't get into everything it's against the law for them too.

Linux is being raped and pillaged by big organisations\corporations that want a share of the money and profits that M$ have. And they give nothing back to the open source community.

The US gov is a different story. With access to virtually unlimited funds (from US tax payers) they can use any and all software. Much coveted is a US gov contract (because if you get one it's shit loads of money for the guy at the top of the pyramid)

Linux isn't hard just time consuming. hard and long often get confused, it isn't hard to put a million piece puzzle together it just takes a lot of time, and if you good at it you do it faster. Windows comes premade, no assembly required. you can break the puzzle and have to make it again but you don't have to start from scratch.

Windows has a lot of bells and whistle because people who pay lots of money to M$ ask for it from them. M$ are obliged to make the money givers happy (something to do with supply and demand).

Linux doesn't have any bells and whistle, not because it is built more efficiently or better security but because there is no demand for them and when there is demand you buy a third party product or make your own.

Windows vs Linux. Yeah Right!

I should of posted it as one of my blogs, but then noone would read it. ;)

Dam! Coke Zero is good! :)

*(but you can read it that way if you want rickk, there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop you reading it that way, in fact you don't even need my permission :p )

"Who would need a Linux emulator?"

ROFL

Wine is a recursive acronym (or at least a recursive backronym) that means Wine Is Not an Emulator. The reason for that is, of course, that it's NOT an emulator: it's a software library that provides compatibility with Windows software semi-natively in Linux. This means the Windows software runs a lot faster than it would in an emulator (and, in fact, some Windows games actually give better frame rates with Wine than on Windows).

If you haven't been hit with any malware at all on that Win98 box, you've been very lucky, very careful, or some combination thereof. There are a lot of older exploits out there running around as worms and viruses that still affect Win98 because it hasn't been patched to resist them, among other dangers. There will always be open source antivirus programs available, and you'll probably be able to get one that'll work on Win98 at least until you stop using it, but antispyware programs are another matter entirely -- eventually, they'll just stop supporting Win98, then you're screwed. After all, most of the good open source software that runs on Windows starts out as software for Linux that gets ported to the Windows platform, and there's no need for antispyware programs on Linux.

As for Linux emulators on Windows . . .
Obviously you haven't heard of projects like Cygwin, which provide Linux functionality on Windows because a lot of computer-savvy people who want to be able to [b]get stuff done[/b] are forced to use Windows for some reason. Unlike Wine, Cygwin is an actual emulator: Windows won't let you run bash on system libraries very easily, especially since the Windows API changes with each new minor version so the libraries would have to be rewritten all the damned time.

Actually if you mix Open Source Software (OSS) with proprietary software product where no such OSS equivalent to the proprietary software exist, it would be very complex in many areas; support, coding, integrations, preventive measures, standard procedures, etc.

Don't mix. Or you will get older sooner than you think.

I worked in a corporate sector administering Linux server for not less than 24,000 active users (students). I also recently studied thesis on GPL in Open Source and the war between GPL and M$ for my course-work.

You are not talking from the corporate perspective. There are already thesis and research that shows TCO and ROI is what commercial organization looking for.

And your fact is all wrong. I have read a few research on Open Source Software Development model.

1. Bugs & Vulnerabilities
You see, that applied to MS Windows only. I admin not less than 14 production Linux servers, from Slackware to Redhat to RHEL. 4 of which are database server. From the installation day until now, I never update any of the Linux servers. :-). Crazy do you think ?

2. Linux tweaking & reliability
About 14 months ago, I documented a Standard Linux Installation Procedure (SLIP) for my IT department. It usually took 3 hours to install Redhat following SLIP excluding application installation. Until today, 5 Linux servers are running with zero (0) unplanned Operating System downtime. What this mean is that the Linux server Operating system has never failed. The only thing that have unplanned downtime were the application running inside the Linux servers which are mostly proprietary software.

In fact, we managed to have less planned downtime. And since the last 12 months, I don't know what else I can do during my working hours. Why ? Because my main job description is to maintain and admin Linux servers and there is nothing to maintain except backup and installation.

So, don't talk as if you know about Linux.

I have more time surfing IT forums, reading other peoples thesis or research, doing my assignment for my study, all in office hours. Can anyone here have so much time doing that during their office hours ?

Probably I did not clear out my statement.

I'm not talking about mixing open source Software (OSS) with Windows. I'm talking about mixing Linux with some other proprietary software.

A real-life example, running a proprietary Link-Balancer/DNS Server (LBDS) under Linux. The link-balancer DNS service does not support wildcard virtual hostname (*.domain.com). Another application required that the wildcard virtual hostname must be supported. I asked the LBDS vendor to support wildcard. They said it is a major patch.

Another real-life example, proprietary PHP webpage running under Linux. A few problem happened but still it happened again and again. No preventive measure taken by the vendor who developed the webpage.

Probably Richard Stallman already saw that this kind of problem will occured when he wrote GPL.

That is why don't mix Linux with proprietary software. If you want to use proprietary software, run it under Windows!

There's a difference (a big one) in mixing and matching applications vs mixing and matching OS'es.

Most ERP type software is written for Windows, period.

And if though "a lot" of companies are using Firefox (10% market share), what about Thunderbird (single digit percentage), and OpenOffice (single digit again probably).

Yes, MySQL and Apache are quite successful but again, that is most attributable to the Linux world's success in the server market and failure in the desktop market.

Firefox is starting to attract the hackers, OpenOffice just isn't compatible enough with MS Office yet, and Thunderbird is a mess.

If I use Thunderbird, what about SharePoint Services, what about mobile messenging, what about intregretion advantages with Exchange.

You're asking me to give up too much.

As some may know I have all 4 operating systems on this machine here.
I would have just linux on it if it wasn't for the fact I gotta learn more about XP.
I know what works and what doesnt on this machine as well as all the rest. Been a Linux user for about 5 years ,no programming no hefty networking etc etc, just a general home user. Been using Windows since about 3.11, same thing no heavy stuff.

I have heard some talk about the kudzu issue, I already worked around that, that was just a continuing issue on hardware that was on the edge of the support level of the linux I was installing.
I'm not gonna get into the which is better . in part cause I already know.
If it comes down to home usage . my windows screensaver says it all.
"If I didn't have to learn Windows XP you would be looking at a 100 % linux machine."

Nice how you take things out of context. I think you'll find that any time I bring up Apache/MySQL market share, the only purpose of it is to refute some asinine commentary about Microsoft market share "proving" some point, such as the ubiquitous shrill cries in defense of MS technical quality that claim MS is just picked on because it's bigger. Aside from making a mockery of market share arguments, I don't tend to use market share statistics.

Linux on the desktop is only a failure if you measure success by market share, and as I said your judgment is premature: Linux on the desktop is growing steadily. Why don't you go tell the city of Munich that its municipality-wide migration to Linux is a failure?

Your complaints about Firefox are funny, considering A) few, if any, other people suffer such indignities at the hands of Firefox, and B) IE is a worse disaster than you're describing for Firefox.

MS Office doesn't open and close quickly in its entirety: only the interface opens and closes quickly. When you start your computer, the core process(es) of MS Office get(s) started automatically, so that almost the whole damned thing is in RAM, reducing the perceived start time of the application when you double-click an icon.

Calendaring is being developed as an application called Sunbird by the Mozilla Foundation. Furthermore, there's an integrated mail client and calendaring application being created by the Mozilla Foundation that combines Thunderbird and Sunbird to form Voltron (or whatever they're calling it -- the name escapes me at the moment).

The links prove a point: you said that basically all ERP software is Windows-only. I pointed out that there's a huge heap of quality ERP software out there that runs on Linux. Your point has been shot to hell. Have a nice day.

The problem is that most MS USERS think they know everything about computers and applications. They think that anyone suggesting anything except MS solutions hasn't looked at _____. (You fill in the blank.) MS LDAP still can't work for ^%$# with other CIFS servers controlling an Enterprise.

Do you need a lot of scheduling? Cron works much more reliably than a PCs task scheduler. If the RAM used by the application makes the machine swap You can just forget the scheduler on a PC. Leave too many windows open, same thing. SFU on 2K,2k3 makes Windows perform almost like a UNIX box. but the same issues plague these servers, still.

Explaining the differences in OSes to people who are windows centric is nearly impossible. Most of them won't learn anything new. "Put it in windows terms..."

Unless you understand how Tivoli and Openview work with Enterprises, and how the interfaces work with backup software, and other non-mentioned interactions for the sake of brevity, these end users opinions aren't worth used toilet paper. Maybe you can let them tell you what they want it to look like. Woo Woo... (see my fingere circling in the big Whoop.)

Let the Pro's do the work and make it happen, let the kids make it pretty... The management will love the kid's work, but when the back end (that which does all the work) breaks let the users and the GUI kinders try to fix it.

Users are just what they are called...

I was just reporting what maya 4.01 says about it's features.

Page 2 of the PDF Linux User Notes from it has the following paragraph to end the page.

Unsupported Maya Features

Some of the features in our IRIX and NT versions are not currently supported. These include AliasToMaya, MayaToAlias, DXF, the IGES converters, and output to AVI or SGI movie formats.

for more information about operational Differences in Maya for Linux see "Known Limitations."

I'm pretty sure Alias knows what they didn't implement in the Linux version of their software.

.We're using Sage Line 500 based on SQL 2000 DB / Windowmaker Enterprise on SQL 2000. We have just integrated the Sales Order Entry-process between the two applications.
While Sage does come with the option to run on a Linux platform, the GUI-client is still Windows-based (although great inroads are being made to provide a web-client [even though this only runs on IIS]).
The Windowmaker application only runs on a Windows-platform.
Thus in our environment it is not possible to derive maximum financial benefit in moving to a pure opensource infrastructure.
On that note I would also like to add that we are in the middle of implementing SugarCRM using the Windows-stack and integrating it with our Sage system.
I think the bottom line is that your business type dicates what systems you put in place.

Our ERP system is called FAST.

http://www.tfmg.com

It is Windows only.

Given the points above, can anyone name an open source program that offers everything that FAST does for the construction industry?

It handles everything from estimating to purchasing to HR to accounting to scheduling to marketing to sales to etc etc etc. Even a dashboard.

And don't go naming some generic ERP piece of software. I mean one specifically built for the residential construction industry.

Our entire business for the most part is built around it. We're been using it over 10 years.

We even have all sales functions now on-line as well as handhelds out in the field for supervisors.

It isn't realistic to think our management team would easily switch to anything else.

In addition, they charge us not a flat licensing fee but rather on a per house built fee. Nice!

It is in areas like this and situations like this that Linux just isn't a real possibility.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but . . .

Sage doesn't provide open source software, so if you ran it on Linux you wouldn't be running a "pure opensource infrastructure" (your words). Since there are open source alternatives to the software Sage sells, I don't see how your objection makes any sense.

I don't know how I missed this earlier. 4.01? That's ancient!

Alias is selling version 7 now. Things have changed a bit.

no rewriting required, or Linux functionality, just good writing from the start.

http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

see Small Is Beautiful (SIB)

and

http://www.masm32.com/

I actually think I prefer Win 98 to XP.

Sure, there are times I have to use XP. Win 98 isn't a multi-user OS per se. But at home, do I care?

Win 98 is smaller, faster, and like the previous poster said, the newest and latest greatest malware isn't being written for it for the most part.

Just like some Linux supporters prefer the lighter, older versions of Linux, at times, I prefer the lighter, older versions of Windows.

On my laptop, a PII 400 with 192MB of RAM, Win 98 flat out hauls. And, it will still play one of my old favorite games...Shadow President (DOS based).

Any OS, behind a good firewall, running decent AV, anti-spy/mal/adware, and such is fairly immune to such malware without the user doing something stupid or being a bonehead.

I don't surf porn, I don't open strange attachments from unknown people, I don't visit crazy websites.

I'm behind a firewall (SPI included), have AV (AVG), Spybot, Adaware, Spyware Blaster, and am NAT'ed. I patch regularly, scan daily, and take additional measures.

This Win 98 laptop has had zero, as in big fat goose egg, vulernability issues in 3 1/2 years.

I think that not only do the security vendors of the world over exaggerate security issues, I think some Linux supporters do as well.

I properly maintained and supported Windows install actually has very few instances over time.

Because out of the 18,000 or whatever the number is pieces of software that is in your repository using that apt get command thing, I don't have a need to use any of it.

I do occasionally surf sites like freshmeat.net or sourceforge but that is merely to be informed or cherry pick.

Almost all of my software for my Windows system is as free as yours with the exception of Office and Windows itself (and an occasional game...no good games are free).

I take that back, America's Army rocks and is free.

Open source does not mean Linux. Free isn't owned by Linux. Choice isn't only about Linux.

Browse CNet or ZDNet to see for yourself. There are thousands of free titles to choose from on just those two websites.

I use free AV, free malware detectors, free games, free .pdf converters, free firewall, a lot is free.

And if I so chose, I could also use free Firefox, Sunbird, OpenOffice, etc. But I think they suck in comparison so I stick with the tried and true.

But from someone on here other than Apotheon.

I know some wouldn't believe it, but I'm still sticking it out. I will not fail to learn more.

But this Linux debate is more and more like politics. The vast majority of us are probably quite open minded and willing to learn and use both.

In politics, the vast majority of Americans sit somewhere in the middle politically. Polticians only pander to the far left or far right because that wins elections. Igniting your base.

But some on here make me want to learn less about Linux...Apotheon. Just like Hillary Clinton makes me hate the Democratic party...who for the most part does have good ideas from time to time.

BTW, I'm pure 100% independent with Republican leanings but face it, there are some decent Democrats but Hillary makes the party like bad.

Apotheon, I'm starting to wonder if he gives Linux a bad name in my opinion. Like Hillary, he polarizes instead of seeks for inclusion.

I've only taken a hard line pro Windows stance so as to try and attempt to give a equal footing for both OS'es in here.

Isn't this all about using the right tool for the job? Life is complex...using Windows or Linux is about more than which is better.

There are $ issues, personality issues, preferences, management issues, suitability issues, etc.

Is there an answer...NO...except for it is a personal decision based upon the situation at hand.

Debating which is better, Windows or Linux, is like debating which language is better, English or Spanish.

And for me, like in politics, which party is better? I think they both suck.

Maybe Windows and Linux both suck.

The funny thing is, 10 years from now the world will be so different that this debate will probably have been meaningless.

Since when do people prefer an older version of Linux for purposes of "lightness"? One of the benefits of Linux over an OS like Windows is that you can make a new Linux distro release as light as you like, so you don't have to hunt down an eight year old CD to be able to run something on a 486. If you think you need a "lighter, older version" of Linux, you really are talking out of your arse. Obviously, you don't know anything significant about Linux.

"[i]Any OS, behind a good firewall, running decent AV, anti-spy/mal/adware, and such is fairly immune to such malware without the user doing something stupid or being a bonehead.[/i]"
Do you mean "something stupid" like using an ActiveX-enabled OS to browse the web? Perhaps you're not aware of recent studies on the ubiquity of malware on the web. Self-installing Windows malware sneaks into the darnedest places sometimes.

From the sound of it, you're reasonably careful. I'm the same way when I have to use Windows -- and the results, with that level of care, are much the same for any Windows version (as long as one doesn't use any network-aware Microsoft applications). I tend to prefer putting less than half the effort into more than twice the security, though. Thus, I avoid Windows.

"[i]I think that not only do the security vendors of the world over exaggerate security issues, I think some Linux supporters do as well.[/i]"
Vendors certainly do. I haven't run into many Linux users that do so.

"[i]I properly maintained and supported Windows install actually has very few instances over time.[/i]"
A properly maintained and supported unix/Linux install can has none. In fact, a neglected and ignored unix/Linux install often has none.

"[i]Almost all of my software for my Windows system is as free as yours with the exception of Office and Windows itself[/i]"
Gee, only $800 retail for functionality you could have for free. I guess it's a good think you don't use other industry standard professional software like high-end image editors, layout software, and so on.

"[i]Open source does not mean Linux. Free isn't owned by Linux. Choice isn't only about Linux.[/i]"
Right. You could also use *BSD or OpenSolaris. You could even use Darwin. There's at least one each open source spin-off of BeOS and DOS. There's even an open source Windows work-alike in development.

. . . and, frankly, Linux doesn't need Windows emulation, either. The only reason Wine exists is, for the most part, for games and easing the transition from one platform to the other. The reason for Cygwin on Windows is to provide unixlike functionality, though.

My apologies for YOUR inability to understand. My apologies for YOUR need & desire to prove that YOU know it all.
Thankfully there are a lot of professionals on these forums who can see the wood from the trees unlike you.

1.You probable want a gui. Look at kde or gnome.

2.You want ONLY IP and no netbios support (you don't want MS in your Linux box.)

3. If you have the option, pick a fixed IP... DHCP works, but I despise it...

4. If you have a router in the loop, configure the firewall there if there is one.

5. Get familiar with Smalltalk rather than Java as a programming language. Nicer Gui set and Cincom has great documentation.

6. Learn bash,sed,and awk as well as Perl.

7. for cross platform support use perl or python for scripting. Use smalltalk on Gui for programming.

8. Learn Linux firewall security.

As for Books, I recommend Steven Prata's UNIX book from Sam's photofacts. understand this: Everything is a file... Say it as a mantra...

I will simplify things for you and this is a gross oversimplification.Think: /etc = administration tools ;/tmp = where ephemeral stuff goes; /var = stuff made by VARs ; /usr = stuff users might need. (binaries) /bin = system binaries. /home = where users (not system owner or root) start. I know this has nothing to do with filesystem layout, or other stuff, but start out with a / , /var, /usr, /tmp and /opt as separate file systems on separate mount points... Never put /tmp, /var, or /opt under / if you have any options...

If you put multiple NICs in the Linux box it can make a very secure firewall/gateway configuration...

1. Yeah, I do know what to do with contradictory observations and premises. Of course, I also know what to do with assumptions: question them. I do not assume that rickk's intentions are necessarily that ill-conceived. As such, I still entertain the notion that he's operating out of willful ignorance at least as much as actual malevolence. He certainly seems intent on proving he's a waste of my time, though.

2. Mandriva (aka Mandrake) is simply not designed for lean installs. As with any Linux system, you can still pare it down to only what you need, but Mandriva makes it distinctly difficult to get there without basically breaking everything that makes it Mandriva. If you want to customize the system extensively, you may want to look into other distributions.

Debian is my favorite for such purposes. Fedora also provides an environment within which it is easier to reach those ends (though not as easy as Debian). Most other distributions are either not designed to make it easy to slim it down or not designed to make it easy to manage it on a day-to-day basis for general desktop use.

For the time being, though, you can easily get along with Mandriva and learn what you're doing there. It lacks in some of what would help to really understand Linux beyond the pretty clicky stuff -- for instance, it has a very incomplete man system -- but you can probably get by just fine with it, without even noticing a problem, until you're ready to move on and try a different distro if you like.

The best book I've ever seen for familiarizing oneself with Linux beyond the distro-specific stuff is called [u]A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming[/u], written by Mark G. Sobell. As much as I recommend this thing (and yes, that's a really long title), he should be paying me a cut of his royalties. You can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131478230/sr=8-1/qid=1141236727/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7330093-0903862?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Aside from that book, my recommendations don't involve books, for general Linux references. Oh, sure, there are some subject-specific books that I recommend (such as O'Reilly's [u]Linux Security Cookbook[/u], [u]Linux Network Administrator's Guide[/u], [u]Linux in a Windows World[/u], and [u]Linux Server Security[/u]), but not really books about general-purpose Linux subjects.

Instead, I would recommend getting yourself a mentor and joining a LUG (Linux User Group) mailing list or two. I'm currently a member of no less than three LUG lists, and attend meetings for the one of those three that is local to me. You can find LUGs in your area by way of this URL:
http://www.linux.org/groups/

You could also contact me by way of the "Send private message" link in my Member Profile here at TR, and thus get in touch with me via means other than forum discussions like this if you want my personal help. I'd be happy to help out where I can through email and/or IMs.

While we are all arguing about which OS is more security or better or whatever, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the entire industry isn't doing enough:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=165&tag=nl.e550

I for one don't think security is a Windows problem, a Linux problem or a Mac problem. It is everwhere, admit it or not.

Sure, some OS'es have it worse than others, but all OS'es have issues.

Linux isn't Windows -- or, really, anything much like it. It's reasonable that it'll take some adjustment, especially for someone that knows Windows pretty well and thus has assumptions about the architecture that don't apply.

The partitions themselves are actually called things like "hda1" and "hdb3". The hard drives are designated "hd", or "sd", typically -- h for an IDE drive and s for a SCSI drive. The next letter, a, b, et cetera, indicates which drive it is. For instance, if you have two drives on the master IDE controller, they're hda and hdb. The trailing number indicates which partition it is on the drive.

You can access the drive device by a "filename" (everything in a POSIX filesystem is a "file") within the /dev directory, which holds filenames for direct hardware access to devices. Thus, if you have hda1, you'll find /dev/hda1 within your filesystem. This isn't what you use to actually access files on the partitions, though. For that you mount them within the virtual filesystem (the filesystem as it appears to the user). For instance, if /var is a separate partition, that means that some partition (perhaps /dev/hda3, for instance) is mounted at /var so that it looks like part of the same virtual filesystem.

That may be more information than you needed, but there it is. Maybe I should just write an article about this.

To learn more about mounting partitions within the virtual filesystem -- within the filesystem hierarchy -- you can open a terminal emulator (such as xterm or kterm) and enter "man mount" there. You can exit the manpage for the mount command by pressing the Q key, and use the arrow and PgUp/PgDn keys to move around within the document.

I can't begin to understand why you feel that way. I have been using Suse 9.3 for under a year - following a switch from Windows XP Pro. I haven't had anything even resembling an intractable problem with it. The GUI can be used almost entirely with a mouse - as much as Windows can. I save a huge amount of time which was wasted on security issues with XP, I no longer have to defrag my machines, Suse doesn't crash a tenth of the times that XP does. Installation with Yast is easier than installing new programs with Windows. Most things that you are likely to need are installed by default anyway. It saves a lot of cash. As for training, if you can read a book . . . All I can see are advantages.
The only possible disadvantages are perhaps with some of the Multimedia programs, because they lack some of the refinements in comparable Windows programs. However, most of them are perfectly capable and many of the Windows programs (e.g. Photoshop 7) can be installed under Wine.
As for the vast majority of compatability problems, these can
easily be solved with a minimum of thought.
Hardware all configured itself during installation - no probs.
Your comments (which I have seen so many times before from Windows propagandists) seem to suggest that you need to be a lucky genius to use Linux. I have certainly proven that to be a load of non-sense.

So you want all people to eat the same bland Soylent Green just because you like to eat it?

You don't like choice? Fine, but don't force your lack of choice on me.

As for the distros being "hard" to install, you are full of it. While some distros might be "harder" than others...for the most part it is click next a few times and wait.

Configuration is usually automatic and if the proper driver can't be found, a generic is used in its place. Thus, even if you don't have the proper video driver, you won't have a problem.

Not only is what you are saying wrong, but also you are trying to force a lack of choice on the consumer!

The consumer at this point in time is not interested in that many choices.

The consumer whats simplicity. The consumer, unfortunately, isn't as intimately involved with their PC as you are.

A PC anymore is an entertainment device and or a convenience or education device.

The average consumer is a PC moron. Linux confuses them not only because of the too many choices of distros, but numerous other things (some Linux's fault and others not).

Lastly, a generic driver is never as good as the real thing...if you have a good device that is. I would never go out and buy a $150 video card just to use a generic driver.

No one is forcing a lack of choice on anyone. However, let the consumer decide...right now, the consumer isn't interested in that many choices.

For christ sakes, people are already bitching that there will be 6-8 different versions of Vista coming soon.

Does anyone in Europe even buy the Windows XP -N?

Dork.

Take all the free versions you want, throw away after one bite, or one byte, as the case may be, eventually buy one if you like it enough, and PLEASE, quitcher bicthin'.

You seem to misunderstand.

If a specific driver isn't available, Linux installs a generic driver, yes. If a specific driver isn't available on Windows, you're lucky if you get a generic driver. In either case, you then have to install a device-specific driver yourself.

Get it?

The thimble cannot hold the whole ocean, but it can hold a thimblefull of ocean water...

/var was originally supposed to be for different flavors to concentrate their diversions from the base document (this is from pre 1975) the discussion went into the night. We'd also want to see vendors products there. The idea was that it would be the last and largest partition on the drive. Nearly everybody does logging different. For example /var/adm/messages is Sun, /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log for HP, etc. but it all fit under the Vars who were building the OS from the documents. Hence the name /var.

If you can recall there once were so many variants of System 5 UNIX that nearly everybody had a release for the 486 marketplace. Everex had one, Dell had one. (a pretty good one.) There were many UNIX variants at the time. SCO had several.

Beaten to death by both sides. I now see Windows people can't open up to the fact that Windows is not a stable OS, and that it is brain damaged. If you want more than 24 mounted drives (This happens all the time in real systems.) You are SOL.

Linux people have an eye in the land of the blind. Explaining blue to the blind is fruitless. The problem with the comparisons and the explanations is that when they don't have the vocabulary to understand, you peeve them off. Then it gets more personal...

Let's forget about Rickk and other flaming idiots. Let's get back to work helping our companies and ourselves...

Its probably good this forum doesn't have the option to negative rep people like yourself.
Your atttitude sucks and is representative of why nix is having such a hard time making inroads. YOU may love making things as hard as you can, but 99% of computer users do not wish to do so. TRY lightening up. Super geek isn't cool.