Pleng said:
On my Windows box, I have about 50 apps installed. Updating them means: Visiting every single website, downloading and running setup. Takes about a day to upgrade all those apps. A big Windows flaw, if you ask me.
Pretty much all Windows apps have an auto-update feature. And most can do updates without having to visit websites or download executables
Well, that Auto-Update is mostly that they check the website theirselves, download and run setup. And they only do that when you start them.
I've never seen anything else (except for the normal Windows Setup and maybe some Adobe apps).
When I update a system, I simply want it to automatically update all installed things. And there's no way yet to do that in Windows.
I don't want to start each application manually so that it looks for updates, etc.
Maybe I'm using the wrong apps, but I use OpenOffice, Gimp, Canopus EDIUS, Filezilla, 7zip, etc.
No autoupdate here, only when program run and on user interaction.
There are also a lot of simple things that do annoy me on Windows:
As said, I have a lot of programs and therefore also have a lot of quickstart icons. They need about half the size of the taskbar. Of course, on the right, there's the tray - so in the middle there's very little space for the currently running tasks.
On Linux, this is easy: I simply put that to the top and keep my menu, quickstart items and trays on the bottom. On Windows? Not possible.
This is fixed on Windows 7. You can set icons to show themselves on the quickstart bat or not. There's a little button next to the quickstart which will display the hidden icons.
I don't want to hide the items. All I want is the Quickstart icons + Startmenu + Tray on the bottom and the tasklit on the top of the screen.
I'm using Windows 7 at work, as I need at least 10GB RAM
If this really works, then tell me how, I haven't found it out yet.
On old computers, Linux is also way better. The latest Linux still runs on old PIII machines. I have an optimized Arch Linux running. It only starts what I really need. I use a minimal GUI. The system runs snappier than another old P4 Windows machine.
Because you can't really optimize Windows. You can't really remove what you need. Yes, you can switch off services and things like that, but the plain GUI still needs a lot more CPU and RAM than an optimized Linux needs.
I tried using Ubuntu on my 5 year old Laptop (for uni work) and the display simply did not function correctly. The graphics driver didn't feature my screen's native resolution. Selecting a smaller resolution would make the display skewed, covered in red lines, doubled up and unusable, and selecting a mode bigger than the screen could handle meant I couldn't access the taskbar. The display didn't scroll when the mouse went off screen as I had come to expect from Linux distros.
Old hardware generally is well supported. But as said below: For quick, easy and commercial driver support, Windows is better.
You might have one weird laptop with a rare graphics adaptor. However, I didn't say it should run out of the box.
(Ubuntu is about as bloated and slow as Windows anyways, since it includes a lot of stuff you probably don't need).
On ALL old machines I tried to optimize Linux and Windows, Linux won. All the time.
Yes, you need to know what you're doing and how to help yourself.
To be fair, plain WinXP also had a lot of problems with Laptop graphic cards. Often they were OEM crippled cards where you need the driver from the manufacturer to make it work correctly. Yes, when you buy it, they are included. For Linux, someone needs to do that. The mainstream hardware is supported well, but not a special laptop-crippled graphics adapter.
When you want to use Linux, you should check what hardware is supported first.
No big deal, same for Windows: I have some hardware that didn't have XP drivers (too old) and never got some. An old serial HP 3D Spacemouse, for example. Could never get it to work on Windows. Do I blame Windows? Nope, it's a rare and old device and if the company doesn't support it anymore, you can't get it to run.
I had other issues trying to use KUbuntu on my mums PII 600 laptop. I couldn't find any way to downgrade the desktop environment, which was far to resource heavy for the laptop. Windows 2000 worked out of the box.
Maybe they're isolated incidents, who knows. But on the two recent occasions that I've tried to use Linux, I've had to resort back to Windows.
Nope, it's not an isolated incident. It's like trying to run Windows 7 on a P4: It doesn't work.
If you read yourself into Linux, you could find out that Ubuntu is meant for recent computers. It's probably the most bloated Linux distribution out there. Installing Kubuntu on a PII 600 is like installing Windows 7 on that system.
For minimal system, you need to get a minimal distribution. There are a lot out there, I do prefer Arch Linux. A bit more advanced to setup, but once you're used to Linux, you'll love it.
So, from an objective view:
Both Windows and Linux have flaws and both have their uses.
If you like flexibility and are not afraid of learning new things, Linux by far surpasses Windows.
If you like a standard system which everyone knows and that gets commercial support with drivers for the latest hardware, Windows surpasses Linux.
It's up to you
Now this is an opinion I can get along with. It's not often you hear Linux guys admit that Windows can be useful. And in fact, it's not often you hear Windows guys admit that Linux can be useful.
Oh, you will probably find quite a few of those when you talk to them
Each OS has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Linux is still some hacking around. Once someone who knows what he's doing set it up, everyone can easily use it.
But you first need to take some time (well, A LOT of time) to find out how it works and how to optimize it. Then you have probably one of the best systems there is. It's flexible, you can suit it to your likes.
Windows is definately better for normal users when you run it out of the box. However, you don't have the power to make it as flexible and optimized as a Linux system.
