52 replies to this topic

[SpaceRat]

I'd prefer something that works well and is designed well

That's why more than 90% of all users prefer Windows ...

So, the bottom line is, there is no first line helpdesk. There is a search function, there is Google (or substitute your favourite search engine) and there is the always helpful community which we are always thankful for.

The problem with Linux is the misbelief that this was the actual difference.

My last contact with Microsoft was about the conditions for the upgrade of Windows 3.0 to Windows 3.1 ...

The art of making a good OS is not only to make it work but also to make it usable to a degree where you do not need "first level support" (or Google) three times for one simple task.

You will of course deny the reality, but it is:
Linux is based on an OS from the 60s and the development policy is to never put an end to any antiquated custom because someone might have considered a limitation a feature.

The case-sensitiveness of Linux for example is not a feature, but just a limitation. Back in the 60s and 70s you wouldn't have dared to waste any precious CPU power on "upcase" every parameter before comparing it or to try all variants of cases on a filename.
But some freaks meant to make it a feature to have program A behave differently on -r and -R params, preferebly vice versa as program B:

cp copies recursively on -r or -R
chmod changes rights recursively on -R, although it doesn't even have an -r option, so it could as well also handle both equally.
tar does completely different shit (where is the r in append?) on -r and -R and uses --no-recursion and --recursion for recursion instead (Where the long param in most other programs isn't "recursion" but "recursive".

Now some really weird shit:
mkdir creates a directory
and
cd changes to a directory
but neither
chdir
nor
md
do what every clear mind would expect now ...


From the design point of view, there isn't any bigger shit than Linux, but Linux nerds will never understand the real problem.

You can easily see that by looking at Gnome and KDE ...
The Linux devs try very hard to make it more color- and playful than Windows would ever be, even if Mickey Mouse and Goofy took over the design ... but they will never get the problem that KDE and Gnome are just dead beef.
Yes, you can move a mouse pointer around and if there is some icon, you can even click it, but the real point isn't if you have 32 bit or 16 bit color or can rotate across virtual desktops on a cube but if you can actually just DRAG AND DROP an app to the desktop or the different variants of Quick Launch Bars.
As soon as you want to add some own program to for example Ubuntu's launcher or whatever that thing is called you have to edit config files again.
That's not a GUI (The I in GUI means Interface and Interface means more than just being able to LOOK at something, but to INTERFERE using it).

As long as devs do not understand the most basic usability needs of users, Linux will stay at 1% market share forever.

In the meantime, the Windows GUI even becomes cleaner, leaner, less colorful and using less extreme colors again with every version.

[SpaceRat]

You will of course deny ...

For sake of keeping the topic clean I will refrain from reacting on your points about Linux and Unix which are obviously only supported by your own misinformation, which is often the case with Microsoft adepts.

q.e.d.

[WanWizard]

That is cheap and easy.

 

You'd say exactly the same if I would argue that the sky is green and the grass is blue.

 

So you have proven exactly nothing, other than the correctness of your prediction. Which is besides the topic.

 

There is only one reason most people use Windows today, and that is because it's spoon-fed to you my Microsoft, who forces hardware vendors to bundle it with every PC or Laptop. And people use what they are given. Organisations use it for the same reason, and because their employees use it, so there are less training costs involved. Technology or quality is not a factor in the decision.

[SpaceRat]

That is cheap and easy.

No, it's not.
 

You'd say exactly the same if I would argue that the sky is green and the grass is blue.

The sky is actually colorless, what you deem blue are reflections.
Grass however is plain green, thus it can only appear colorless - if you remove all green from the light - but never blue.
Special cases like red–green color blindness left aside ...
 

There is only one reason most people use Windows today, and that is because it's spoon-fed to you my Microsoft, who forces hardware vendors to bundle it with every PC or Laptop.

That's one of the excuses Linux devs use when asked why nobody likes their crap.
It's never the devs fault ...
'6 billion brain-dead idiots and 5000 "knowing" people.' make a good psychosis but not a good beginning for a Linux success story.

As a matter of fact, a large enough market share of PCs is bought at stores that sell the systems OS-less. Also plenty of Windows 8.x systems got down- (or up-, depending on your point of view) graded to Windows 7.
All those systems could as well get Linux installed, it's about the same effort. But it's not done, because Linux is not ready for the desktop (of a normal user) and never will be, because of the lack of understanding for the user's needs by the devs.

BTW:
Over the times, lots of sellers have tried to bundle anything but Microsoft Windows with their systems. Dell sold Linux PCs, Vobis in Germany sold PCs that had DR DOS or later OS/2 rather than MS-DOS on it back in the WinDOS times, ... none of them had any permanent success doing that.

Looking at the download counters next to "activation hacks" and things like that, everybody sees that "preload" is only a lame excuse. A fraction of Windows installations is legit.

 

Technology or quality is not a factor in the decision.

Nothing will ever change about Linux' market-share, unless Linux devs start to understand that "usability" is a quality factor.

Edited by SpaceRat, 3 November 2014 - 09:12.

[hemertje]

Time to go back ontopic, transcoding!

[Erik Slagter]

Technology or quality is not a factor in the decision.

That's exactly how it is, history has proven this time after time. And that is the last thing I will say about it, because it's all irrelevant.

[SpaceRat]

Technology or quality is not a factor in the decision.

That's exactly how it is, history has proven this time after time. And that is the last thing I will say about it, because it's all irrelevant.

How about splitting this discussion into a new topic inside The Lounge instead?

I really wonder if you can make at least a single point or if it's all limited to Linux fanboys agreeing to each eather without any argument given.

Hint: Don't come up with the not-even-compatible-with-itself-1h-max-length-and-support-dropped-by-its-makers-VCR-Video2000-crap.

Dreamy nostalgia left aside, the better has always won. There are just some people that banned the word "balance" from their treasury of words and thus can't understand that overall it's the balance of attributes which makes A better or worse then B and not single aspects.
While OS/2 definitely had the best GUI concept of its time and maybe even all times, the lack of software, driver support, single message queue, its too high demand on ressources and lots of other aspects effectively made it the worse system in total.

[WanWizard]

How about splitting this discussion into a new topic inside The Lounge instead?

 

The first sensible thing I've heard from you in a long time...

 

Dreamy nostalgia left aside, the better has always won.

 

And that is where you are wrong.

 

It has nothing to do with best (as in product), in most cases the one with the best marketing wins.

[MiLo]

Grass however is plain green, thus it can only appear colorless - if you remove all green from the light - but never blue.

Feed it lots of fertilizer (in particular, nitrogen compounds) and grass will in fact turn slightly blue.

We sell blue tulips here in Holland. They don't really exist, apparently you cannot even genetically get them to become that color, they're just white tulips which are being dyed blue in some weird way, so I think it's safe to assume that you can order actual living blue grass from that same company.

[Sjaaky]

Just put blue "paint" in the water and the flower goes blue.

About Linux vs Windows. My personal view: Linux rules the command line, Windows got somewhat better with powershell, but it still feels awkward to me.
Windows is better in the gui, although they make it harder and harder to use each release. I don't like the grouping of windows on the task bar, but if you disable it, Windows 7 will reshuffle the windows every once in a while...
I never felt comfortable with a Linux gui. Ubuntu unity doesn't do even do a proper alt-tab. And copy paste between programs, notably the terminal and the rest is not intuitive.

[Happysat]

I know sum guys who can even make a blue bah bah 

Edited by Happysat, 4 November 2014 - 04:28.

[SpaceRat]

We sell blue tulips here in Holland. They don't really exist, apparently you cannot even genetically get them to become that color, they're just white tulips which are being dyed blue in some weird way, so I think it's safe to assume that you can order actual living blue grass from that same company.

Well, to be honest, it's not exactly technology that I respect the Dutch for ... especially not after using OpenPLi for quite some time

However when it comes to alchemy, no greater and more successful nation comes to my mind ...

Normally we distinguish between "inventing" and "discovering" as in America was discovered while the wheel was invented ... the Dutch were the only ones to break that barrier and invent a fourth state of substances, in this case the fourth state of water: Adding "tomatoe" to the three natural ones "solid", "liquid" and "gaseous".

[SpaceRat]

About Linux vs Windows. My personal view: Linux rules the command line,

It's overrated.
I was quite disappointed at some time for example that bash can not handle nested loops (properly).

And basically it's "power" results from tools which you can as well use on Windows (I have some folder containing all those mini-tools which I put on ANY Windows installation FIRST. I can neither understand how one can zip/unzip, rar, 7zip on a GUI without being forced to...), one of them piped to the other.

And it takes us to Saint Backward-Compatible-with-Versions-from-the-60s:
I can't count how often I missed proper (= Perl style) regular expressions in sed.
It will never get them I guess, because nobody will ever dare to extend sed beyond what the first version of it could do nineteen-seventy-somewhat in Berkely.
Nobody even adds non-greedy-matching to it ...

Nowadays most of those tools have more limitations than power, some pipe chains could be half as long by just adding a slight bit of additional functionality to the first or the last element of it.
In many cases blah | grep | awk | sed could be reduced to blah | sed if only sed would handle more powerful regexps.


Also it lacks the consistence which seems to be a value in the Windows world only:

TCC  15.01.58 x64   Windows 7 [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright 2013 JP Software Inc.  Alle Rechte vorbehalten

[C:\]cd /?
Anzeige oder Wechsel des aktuellen Verzeichnisses.
...
[C:\]chdir /?
Anzeige oder Wechsel des aktuellen Verzeichnisses.
...
[C:\]md /?
Erzeugung eines Unterverzeichnisses.
...
[C:\]mkdir /?
Erzeugung eines Unterverzeichnisses.

And you might laugh, but one of the biggest annoyances is the lack of an escape KEY and instead the existance of an "escape char hotkey" in *ixoid OSes.
Have a look at the web and you will find thousands of questions (and solutions) about adding semi-proper key handling to the Linux shell, e.g. moving word-wise left and right ...
You will however also find zillions of questions about that stupid Ecape key, which does just nonsense and which can not be fixed.

You can of course add
Escape: unix-line-discard # Escape -> Clear line
to your .inputrc and it will even work to some degree but everybody more experienced knows the consequences.

And no:
Ctrl-U is not intuitive or the logical hotkey for just starting over a line after your cat tried to compute ... though a linux command line is about the only place where you probably won't even notice your cat added chars, it looks all a bit like Perl golf.

Rest assured that I know where that silly use of the Escape key originates from and why it can't be fixed easily without breaking terminals ... but knowing the reasons doesn't make the consequences feel better.

When you got used to a proper Escape key which takes you back from about every "What The Fuck?" and "How The Fuck?" over three decades ("AMSDOS", CP/M, DR DOS, OS/2, Windows) you can get really pissed off by a borked Escape key which even gets you into WTF situations instead ....
I just simply tried:
I pressed Escape three times in a terminal session and got
"Display all 616 possibilities? (y or n)"
huh?

Next point is that it behaves vice versa as any other shell in various points ...
You have to explicitely separate GUI and even daemon programs started from the shell by appending & ...

6tunnel 1234 remotehost 2345 &

(And they will still pollute the invoking shell with status/error messages)
... but you also have to explicitely force other shell scripts to execute within the same shell (although there is no visible new one)
 

. ./source.sh

Nobody except the one who wrote that considers that logical, don't take my word for it, just see how often this gets asked.

If I invoke shell scripts from a shell, I expect them to be executed on the very same shell unless I explicitely start them inside a new one ...

That's just natural. If you light a cigarette in your car, you would also expect your car to smell and not the one of your neighbour, unless you explicitely blow the smoke through his window ...

Windows handles this right:
Every console task you execute on ONE shell gets executed on ONE shell (In 32 Bit versions even DOS and Win32 apps), unless you explicitely detach.
GUI tasks however are rarely expected to freeze the invoking shell so they get executed in their OWN task (What else? They aren't console tasks anyway.) unless you explicitely tell the console to wait ...


For Linux nerds that don't get my points, let's try something simple:

df means "disk free" and just as you would expect if you know *ix ...
 

root@duo2:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
ubi0:rootfs 882968 212296 670672 24% /
devtmpfs 703912 8 703904 0% /dev
tmpfs 64 0 64 0% /media
/dev/sda1 1952909412 1422612616 432621068 77% /media/hdd
tmpfs 704032 1492 702540 0% /var/volatile

... of course does not show the FREE space but the USED space of a disk most prominent/user readable ...

You might call me picky but it's the sum of bugs like that making Linux a PITA to use unless you grew up with it and dropped all criticism in the process.




 

Windows is better in the gui, although they make it harder and harder to use each release. I don't like the grouping of windows on the task bar, but if you disable it, Windows 7 will reshuffle the windows every once in a while...

Windows has its disadvantages too (Which is why I had to laugh about the topic of this newly created thread) and Microsoft appears to forget about the (semi-)professional users a bit more with every release, that much is true.

And I hate that grouping and all those mini-previews too. You might want to have a look at "7 Taskbar Tweaker" if you are looking for a small tool to configure that all.

Edited by SpaceRat, 4 November 2014 - 09:04.

[SpaceRat]

Did I mention already that I hate board software which invents plenty of broken BBCode just because you forgot one / at some place?

And why can't this crap be switched into a mode where I can not only see and type raw BBCode but also add it through the menu bar?
Is there anything this software can do better than phpBB or why use it?

[SpaceRat]

Some less technical points:

I guess everybody noted the success story of Windows 8.x ...
If we still need to argue about quality vs. marketing, something is wrong ... not even Microsoft can sell crap just through marketing. That's silly bullshit claimed by OS/2 fans, Linux penguins and CrApple fanboys.

The story of Microsoft's success is simply that of a company that listens to what the customers really want.
It was not always - or better: It rarely ever was - the story of fair competition (Beginning with Microsoft selling the OEM-CP/M-86 QDOS to IBM as their own MS-DOS) but it would be ignorant to believe Microsoft won the millions and billions (actually: milliards, the Americans will never get that right) to be able to afford all those buy-outs of competitors in the lottery.
They must have done something right in the first place to make them powerful enough for some cheats later ...

The point is that Microsoft doesn't sit inside a cathedral, where all those wrong design decisions are lined up as holy people.
They had no problem in dumping any wrong or no longer relevant decision/technology when the time was right.

There was no (official) support for HPFS in Windows 2000 anymore, the OS/2 16-Bit compatibility got dropped, Windows 64 Bit dropped DOS compatibility, ... Word doesn't have a jumping paper-clip anymore, nobody remembers "Bob" anymore ...
... the main advantage of Windows is that it doesn't carry around a backpack worth of legacy technology anymore.

On the other hand, where it matters it is compatible. There is less than a handful of driver models across the whole history of Windows. A 32 Bit Windows 8.x can still use Windows 2000 drivers.
Linux can't even use x.y.z drivers on x.y.z+1 anymore ...
"Source compatibility" is first of all limited (Linux CAN change APIs any time, rendering older drivers useless, although in most cases even the most useless drivers get adopted) and second doesn't help here.
Even lots of embedded devices won't get any updates anymore as the drivers are closed source and simply can't be adopted to the jumpy Linux APIs.

Real users prefer to be able to operate their CURRENT printer rather than being happy that Linux can still operate a 1980 dot matrix printer (For which you won't even be able to buy a ribbon tape).
Yes, Linux can still use the analog or even Atari joystick with the worn out microswitches ... Windows users simply attach its USB remake (or buy the supported adapter ...).


The only advantage of Linux is its non-progress.
*ix was never meant to be used by normal people on a normal PC (and thus shouldn't), thus it misses about all and any comfort.
While it makes it a pain in the ass to use, it can work better on limited ressources, which explains its success on embedded systems.
There the user normally doesn't get in contact with the actual Linux inside and Linux does a better job on some 266 MHz pile of technology waste than Windows would (Even if you tried to rip out the GUI part of it).

Oh, and the bad decision by Microsoft not to care about any platform but x86 greatly assists Linux there
I think the maximum of supported platforms was 3 (DEC Alpha, x86, ....?).
Nowhere as close to the "unlimited" platform support of Linux.

[WanWizard]

Did I mention already that I hate board software which invents plenty of broken BBCode just because you forgot one / at some place?

And why can't this crap be switched into a mode where I can not only see and type raw BBCode but also add it through the menu bar?
Is there anything this software can do better than phpBB or why use it?

 

As said before, nobody forces you to be here. If you want to be here, behave, and live with the consequences of your choice.

[gorski]

Agreements or disagreements aside, it is not a simple thing to disagree on a forum of lovers of your object of critique! It takes balls and confidence, lots of hard won/"earned" arguments...

 

I - as one of those "ordinary, everyday, non-IT, lay users" - happen to think Winblowz is the least cr@ppy OS, sadly... But there it is... I would LOVE to see Ubuntu or Mint become better than, properly supported (drivers and all), alas... There is much more to it than just programming, which frequently is not the most user-friendly in Linux, for zillions of reasons, some of which we have seen eloquently presented above... The idea behind the Open Source is phenomenal and really worthy but... The cr@ppy thing about iGolaware or Mint seems to be the usual derogatory comments how they are for "noobes" (read "lamers", such as myself) and the "real Linux" is Deb or some such nonsense... It gives the game away in some ways, for sure!

 

And this is with all the "backdoor" or even "frontdoor" Winblowz sh@te included - we protect ourselves additionally, we inform ourselves of the dangers, so we keep attention and it seems kinda OK... When it comes to PCs!

 

However, when it comes to our recs - if kernel and drivers are well written and optimised for the box and it all works, then GUI can be sorted out, so I don't care about the "ideological" or "technical" rows...

 

And we know that some boxes are better sorted than others, kernel and drivers and then the GUI, that is - ergo it is possible to have a phenomenal and usable Linux box!

 

Good luck to the coders, who can take the lamers like me into account!!!

[pop_eye]

You can use whatever suits you for the task needed.

 

By saying this entire thread is just irrelevant.

 

 

And by the looks the world is moving forward you will not be looking at windows vs linux or iOS but

at ecosystems which you need to adopt / adapt and use for whatever is put in front of you.

 

So there, you got it.

 

Signed,

 

A linux fan boy.

Edited by pop_eye, 4 November 2014 - 18:26.

[gorski]

Nothing is irrelevant if we can learn from it...

[pop_eye]

There is nothing to learn from this...

 

1. linux is mostly used with mainframe / server installations

2. windows is loosing its user base for iOS or other *nix derivatives such as Android or Chrome as simple as that.

 

There were /are many articles on the net how to improve linux kandy aspect but at the end of the day its usage is totally different.

I dont think linux needs the newbies users anyway..Newbies already have Android for that purpose.

 

Thats just me after many years of troubleshooting...

 

A newbie can only learn from others and personal experience only. not from what main media wants to push.

There is no such thing as linux for desktop...just saying..

Edited by pop_eye, 4 November 2014 - 20:37.