Operating Systems (Split)

[Panix]

Seen this image? I have. Although this would look like just a funny picture on the interwebs, I've found from my experience while working (mostly in a school system) that the assumptions made by windows users isn't just limited to fanboys. This is how the general public, the average Joes that Baker referenced, looks at the other products as well. Unless someone like Novell or whoever backs Ubuntu decided to go kamikaze and try and outspend Microsoft, I don't see someone unseating the Richmond king.

But who knows. With that one laptop to rule them all compaign in Africa, maybe Linux will get uber market share and take the world by storm!

Personally, I think each OS has their place. I'm just trying to be realistic.

[lxndr]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymbB8RT6Aas]YouTube - Race Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 2 vs Windows 7 RC[/ame]

[Panix]

YouTube - Race Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 2 vs Windows 7 RC

That's great and all but to prove my point further, my grandmother, before she got DSL 3-4 weeks ago and was still using AOL dialup, has waited hours to get online, JUST to check email. She was using a Windows 98 box (like a p3 550 with 384mb ram) she got when she retired several years ago. The ONLY reason I installed Win2K on here machine was because the NIC that I bought her was acting flakey on 98.

This may seem like a rare case but I heard the comment 'I don't want to have to learn something new' more times than I could count when I was installing iMacs in class rooms that had WinXP.

[Baker]

This may seem like a rare case but I heard the comment 'I don't want to have to learn something new' more times than I could count when I was installing iMacs in class rooms that had WinXP.

I don't understand why OS X can't use the same cursor behavior as Windows and Linux. That's my only complaint ... well, plus the navigation keys behavior is different.

In OS X, instead of pressing the home key to go to the beginning of a line, you press the up arrow.

If they at least had the option to use the same navigations keys and cursor behavior as other operating systems use, there would be almost no learning curve at all.

Ironically, OpenOffice.org on OS X *does* use the Windows/Linux cursor navigation and keys. And there is a FireFox hack for such behavior as well. As well as some web page out there on how to override OS X default behavior for the cursor navigation plus keys.

Other than that, I have to say I like OS X a lot better than Windows.

Plus on OS X, you don't have the billion crapware apps that HP/Dell/others install.

I like Windows XP quite a bit and I prefer XP just slightly more than OS X, but I'd rather use OS X than Vista and presumably Windows 7 which I haven't used.

In recent years, Microsoft has gone way the wrong way --- think of the Vista control panel and the UAC system and the stupidity of write-access being denied everywhere -- and the thing I love about OS X is that it is designed very well and everything is easy to find.

With OS X, you don't have anything dumb happen like sleep mode kicking in when you are watching a movie. And updates are minimal ... Vista updates itself constantly.

Plus the OS X file system is setup so well (just like Linux).

Ok ... long story short, I really like OS X and I think they've ruined Windows starting with Vista. XP was awesome.

[lxndr]

That's great and all but to prove my point further, my grandmother, before she got DSL 3-4 weeks ago and was still using AOL dialup, has waited hours to get online, JUST to check email. She was using a Windows 98 box (like a p3 550 with 384mb ram) she got when she retired several years ago. The ONLY reason I installed Win2K on here machine was because the NIC that I bought her was acting flakey on 98.

This may seem like a rare case but I heard the comment 'I don't want to have to learn something new' more times than I could count when I was installing iMacs in class rooms that had WinXP.

I fully agree with you. People use what they are used to use, and sometimes, rarely, they change their mind, eg ie -> firefox. They tend to be very conservative, and will try something new only if someone else has tried it before and have positive feedbacks. That's fine, they don't want to spend time on things that doesn't matter. But what is quite frustrating, is when one of them states his way of doing things is the only valid way, only because he feels safe being part of the crowd. On a different scale, it leads to ostracism, hatred, war and death.

[MH]

Windows 7 is actually quite awesome too. Never mind the sexy desktop, it's features like Libraries, the new Taskbar, Jump Lists, and no doubt a hell of a lot I haven't discovered yet, that amount to a genuine increase in productivity. I've only really been using it full-time at home for a week, and right now I'm finding it difficult to go back to an XP box in work.

Best thing is that these features are instantly discoverable, and the dialogs and options you need to work with them are right there in front of you when you need them.

Backwards compatibility is back, performance is massively improved over Vista (no doubt as a result of the new stripped down modular kernel), and UAC in it's default setting kindly stays out of your face. Only time I've ever seen it is when launching regedit, which seems appropriate and correct.

Regarding applications, the deal-breaker for me is a Wave editor, which I utterly 100% need. I know Audacity is there, but the UI is like a bag of cold vomit, and it doesn't support some bitrates/filters/sampling rates/formats/etc that I need to use.

Now, I know I could mod the Audacity source, but (1) I've never gotten it to compile, even following the included instructions to the letter, and (2) I don't want to mod it's source, I just want to edit Wave files.

I guess a Wave editor is also a classic example of the type of app that isn't gonna be usable on the internet for quite some time. Not everyone needs one or uses one, but for those of us who do, having to upload a 2GB file, do your stuff, download it again (or alternatively find a provider who lets you have unlimited usage and potentially up to 12 megs guaranteed minimum bandwidth for streaming) and repear ad-nauseum is not a fun idea.

[MH]

I fully agree with you. People use what they are used to use, and sometimes, rarely, they change their mind, eg ie -> firefox. They tend to be very conservative, and will try something new only if someone else has tried it before and have positive feedbacks. That's fine, they don't want to spend time on things that doesn't matter. But what is quite frustrating, is when one of them states his way of doing things is the only valid way, only because he feels safe being part of the crowd. On a different scale, it leads to ostracism, hatred, war and death.

Inertia in the corporate desktop world is actually another important -and related - factor here. I know that in our case we have minimum 10 deal-breaking business-critical apps that would need to be migrated, tested, bugfixed, etc. We have 1500 users who would need to be retrained. We have teams of sysadmins, developers and helldesk staff (our DBAs don't count, they're off on their own magical mystery tour) who would need to be retrained, and brought up to speed with stuff at least to the same level they are at now before any potential change. All this makes it far easier - and far more cost-effective - to stay where we are.

[Baker]

Windows 7 is actually quite awesome too. Never mind the sexy desktop, it's features like Libraries, the new Taskbar, Jump Lists, and no doubt a hell of a lot I haven't discovered yet, that amount to a genuine increase in productivity. I've only really been using it full-time at home for a week, and right now I'm finding it difficult to go back to an XP box in work.

Interesting.

My experience with Vista was "grrrr ... 20% of my favorite applications won't work or install".

Then I sort of starting not minding Vista as a "well, at least my laptop is good for Netflix" machine [but so is OS X].

And then I discovered several additional annoying things about Vista that permanently made me dislike it. I have a ton of memory and somehow it manages to use it all at times and I have a bare minimum of processes/services and the user-interface is slow to respond at times.

Well, hopefully Windows 7 as you say is a lot better than Vista.

[MH]

Interesting.

My experience with Vista was "grrrr ... 20% of my favorite applications won't work or install".

Then I sort of starting not minding Vista as a "well, at least my laptop is good for Netflix" machine [but so is OS X].

And then I discovered several additional annoying things about Vista that permanently made me dislike it. I have a ton of memory and somehow it manages to use it all at times and I have a bare minimum of processes/services and the user-interface is slow to respond at times.

Well, hopefully Windows 7 as you say is a lot better than Vista.

On the 4 year old laptop I'm writing this on, we're talking about 450 MB memory usage with 3 IE tabs open, Windows Media Player, content indexing running in the background, Anti-Virus, Explorer, and some other bits and pieces. CPU is steady at a few percent, it does peak up to 60-90 when I do stuff, but I'm thinking that those times are when I want my CPU to be working. I ran the RC on an even older machine with only 512 MB RAM and it was very good.

[metchsteekle]

...Atari

[spooker]

About these bits of open source software that have floated into the conversation... Baker, I was excited about Gimp at first, as a free alternative to the massively bloated, $700+ Photoshop, but also didn't really take to Gimp. I've found something better though--Paint.net, give it a whirl.

OpenOffice is really nice too, and I wish the world would go that way, but Microsoft Office is still critical for some things. When I'm sending resumes to people I need to know exactly how it will appear on their screen. They will almost certainly be viewing it in Microsoft Word, which means I need Microsoft Word too. MS Office has a stranglehold on the business world, and I don't see that changing any time soon, especially since so much data for the past decade or more is locked in MS Office formats.

[foq]

Windows 7 is awesome. I have Home Premuim on my laptop with a Celeron-m 530 and 2GiB DDR2 533 and it's pretty quick. If I turn my desktop (3075MHz AMD Dual core, 2x2GiB DDR2 1000, Xp x64) and my laptop on at the same time, they both start up in about the same amount of time. Niether of them have any notible applications that start up that would increace boot time (firewall, antivirus etc).

I don't know why we're talking about windows 95/98 in this thread. Win 98 is 11 years old! Let's compare current operating systems.

[lxndr]

Inertia in the corporate desktop world is actually another important -and related - factor here. I know that in our case we have minimum 10 deal-breaking business-critical apps that would need to be migrated, tested, bugfixed, etc. We have 1500 users who would need to be retrained. We have teams of sysadmins, developers and helldesk staff (our DBAs don't count, they're off on their own magical mystery tour) who would need to be retrained, and brought up to speed with stuff at least to the same level they are at now before any potential change. All this makes it far easier - and far more cost-effective - to stay where we are.

True until the point you reach a limit, obsolete hardware, external support expired, existing systems full of crapware, etc.. then you need to change the whole thing and it's time thinking about the next 5 years. In the small company where I work, most boxes are running Linux. If one needs a Windows app, he can run it remotely through terminal server (not sure about the name, I never use it). No one seems to complain about that and I think the admin is a happy man

[Baker]

About these bits of open source software that have floated into the conversation... Baker, I was excited about Gimp at first, as a free alternative to the massively bloated, $700+ Photoshop, but also didn't really take to Gimp. I've found something better though--Paint.net, give it a whirl.

Gimp is "ok" and fairly good for certain purposes, but isn't a panacea.

I'll look at Paint.Net but I have a feeling just by the name is rather Windows specific now and forever and I'm not convinced the future is necessarily a Windows world. I'm not even so sure the future is a desktop world. And Microsoft has bet the farm on the desktop with no plan B.

OpenOffice is really nice too, and I wish the world would go that way, but Microsoft Office is still critical for some things. When I'm sending resumes to people I need to know exactly how it will appear on their screen. They will almost certainly be viewing it in Microsoft Word, which means I need Microsoft Word too.

Understood

MS Office has a stranglehold on the business world, and I don't see that changing any time soon, especially since so much data for the past decade or more is locked in MS Office formats.

Spooker ... memorize this and you will go far in this world:

And this expression is an expression I've used for a while now and I tell others this frequently:

"Change never occurs as fast as you want, but always runs deeper than you could have ever imagined."

Watch the world. I think you'll be surprised. I sure was surprised to discover OpenOffice.org installed on every machine at a Fortune 500 company that I didn't think "got it".

Things are always the same until they're not. 5 years ago, virtually every site on the internet was Internet Explorer specific for example.

[MH]

True until the point you reach a limit, obsolete hardware, external support expired, existing systems full of crapware, etc.. then you need to change the whole thing and it's time thinking about the next 5 years. In the small company where I work, most boxes are running Linux. If one needs a Windows app, he can run it remotely through terminal server (not sure about the name, I never use it). No one seems to complain about that and I think the admin is a happy man

True, but there's still the issue of your servers which are still susceptible to migration headaches. If you're using Active Directory, Group Policy and Exchange (or even the Linux equivalents) we're talking about quite a huge migration task with really only one chance to get it right, cos when it goes live you won't get another.

Also, things tend not to happen in neat 5 year chunks and all PCs tend not to be replaced in one fell swoop. PCs will normally be replaced on a rolling basis as current machines fail (or fail to meet the requirements of the people using them) so over any given one year period you will tend to see 10%-30% of your PCs being replaced. It's difficult for a new OS to break into this kind of environment.

Admins tend to be pragmatic above all other considerations when it comes to OS choices. If they're at a point where they need to change they will carefully consider what's available and select that which will give them the least headaches, enable the cleanest transition period, which is easiest to integrate with what they've already got all the way through from backend to frontend and including desktop and server apps, and which will stand the best chance of users on the new OS being able to log on in the morning and get their stuff the same way as users on the old OS do.

An office suite is easier to change, especially one that will coexist with MS Office and broadly share the same doc formats. I've no doubt that OpenOffice is great, but the Java requirement is a killer. Corporate deployment and management of the JRE is a nightmare, but I suppose if you're Fortune 500 you're not living in the same world as the rest of us, and you have the resources and money to draw on to help smooth the path.

I guess I've now moved on to talking about transitioning from Linux to Windows as well as transitioning from Windows to Linux.