Post by: never_retreat on December 24, 2007, 04:36:43 PM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/PowerSearch.aspx?N=2010340343&SubCategory=343&GASearch=3
Holly crap is not the word for it. Let alone looking at motherboards.
Someone help me out here.
I've always been kind of partial to asus mother boards and Intel chips.
What I need is a board, chip, memory.
I want to use everything else I have. video, disks, case, power supply etc.
Trying to do this as cheap as possible of course. I guess around 500 if i can.
Post by: JimMarch on December 24, 2007, 08:47:10 PM
BIG question is, what's the intended use? Which can really be boiled down to "are you a gamer"? Into the hardcore 3D stuff or not?
Also relevant: are you going to run Linux?
What kind of graphics card do you have right now? What kind of slot does it fit in? AGP or the newer type of specialty video slot that frackin' escapes my memory right this sec...or maybe 64bit PCI?
Your video card may not be usable. OK? Everything else should be OK, assuming you have the "P4 class" power supply connectors.
---
If you're going to go Linux, or even thinking about it, you should have a preference for NVidia video versus ATI - although now that ATI has just released a ton of specs they'll catch up in six months to a year or so.
In CPUs, you REALLY want one of the new Intel dual-core jobbies...anything with the "VT" series virtual machine hardware support. Reason being, you can boot Linux while running XP or even Vista as a task underneath, running all Windows apps except 3D games with rockin' performance. (Linux plus XP can run Windows applications such as Microsoft's own Office stuff faster than Vista can run them natively.) Linux ends up acting as a "super firewall from hell" around Windows - damn near the only safe way to run Windows
. You can do this without the VT dual-core chips but it's slower - still works OK for me, but I wish I had the hardware virtualization support.You'll have to buy memory in paired modules no matter what, so your only real choices will be "2gig or 4gig" - you only need the latter for Vista and even then MS has set up yet ANOTHER memory limit of around 3.3gig. (Their "solution" in the upcoming service pack one for Vista is to report that 4gig is installed if the user asks, neglecting to mention that only 3.3 or so is usable.)
Post by: DustinD on December 24, 2007, 09:12:08 PM
If you are building one now (give or take a year) you will want to go with Intel as they are in the lead by a large margin. Picking a chipset could be more tricky depending on how much upgrade headroom and how many features you are looking for. Depending on how old your power supply is you may need a new one as the wiring has changed a bit. If you need a new one I would not buy a low end one, read the reviews on the various hardware sights and pick on of at least some value. For memory you have the choice of DDR2 or DDR3, DDR2 is cheaper and fine for now, but won't transfer over to your next upgrade.
Post by: BryanP on December 25, 2007, 03:54:52 AM
What kind of graphics card do you have right now? What kind of slot does it fit in? AGP or the newer type of specialty video slot that frackin' escapes my memory right this sec...or maybe 64bit PCI?
You're thining of PCI-E? AGP support is going to be hard to find now. You'd be better off buying a PCI-E motherboard and a cheap PCI-E video card until you can afford a better one later.
You'll have to buy memory in paired modules no matter what, so your only real choices will be "2gig or 4gig" - you only need the latter for Vista and even then MS has set up yet ANOTHER memory limit of around 3.3gig. (Their "solution" in the upcoming service pack one for Vista is to report that 4gig is installed if the user asks, neglecting to mention that only 3.3 or so is usable.)
If the memory "limit" you speak of is the one I'm thinking of it's not really a microsoft issue, but a 32-bit OS issue. It's pretty well explained here:
http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 25, 2007, 10:07:11 AM
Quote
Linux ends up acting as a "super firewall from hell" around Windows - damn near the only safe way to run Windows.
Jim does a disservice to those of us who have run Windows just fine sans problems for many, many years.
I ain't a Microsoft shill, but he often uses rather broad brush strokes in promoting the Linux OS, while forgetting that the latter isn't Everyman's OS, nor is everybody on Gawd's Green Earth totally inept at running the former safely and securely - much to the chagrine of more than a few real IT professionals here at APS who have considerably more than just my MCSE certificate on their resumes, and can vouch for their own non-issues with NT/2000/XP.
Post by: Phyphor on December 25, 2007, 10:20:39 AM
BryanP, thanks for clarifying that.
Jim does a disservice to those of us who have run Windows just fine sans problems for many, many years.
Quote
Linux ends up acting as a "super firewall from hell" around Windows - damn near the only safe way to run Windows.
Jim does a disservice to those of us who have run Windows just fine sans problems for many, many years.
I understand his advocacy of Linux. Windows does tend to be a much more tempting target than *nix based OSes, primarily because of the market share. Although Linux does tend to be more secure, it's still not invulnerable, especially to ID10T errors, or PEBKAC issues.
Windows tends to be a mite friendlier about fixing those. (Linux is catching up though, witness Ubuntu...)
Quote
I ain't a Microsoft shill, but he often uses rather broad brush strokes in promoting the Linux OS, while forgetting that the latter isn't Everyman's OS, nor is everybody on Gawd's Green Earth totally inept at running the former safely and securely - much to the chagrine of more than a few real IT professionals here at APS who have considerably more than just my MCSE certificate on their resumes, and can vouch for their own non-issues with NT/2000/XP.
Well, NT/2000/XP haven't been perfect, but I've been running Win2k for years on all of my machines with nary a hitch.
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 25, 2007, 10:48:57 AM
Lest we forget, Lindows was an earlier attempt to make Linux an Everyman's OS through that marvel of consumerism, WalMart. While it's since garnered a larger market among the inquisitive geeks, tweakers, and Redmond-haters, they still aren't quite there, knowwhatImean?
Post by: never_retreat on December 25, 2007, 11:02:19 AM
My current video card is of the agp type. If I have to get a new one i will, this one is not the hottest anyway. My power supply has connectors for another style of motherboard. It is only a year old, 600 or 650 watts. The existing machine had 4 hard disks, two cds, scsi tape, hence the big power supply. I kept torching 350's. So I stepped it up a bit.
Since I redoing this computer it my be time to switch to linux, I've been kicking it around for a while now and this is the perfect opportunity. So yes linux compatible hardware would be a good thing.
Must be able to handle ide and sata disks, pref with an on board raid controller for my mirrored disks.
(raid 1 ?)
I'm not so worried about upgrade ability for the chipset itself. AS long as I can stick in 4 gigs of ram and some big disks i'll be good. (waiting for the prices to drop on the terabyte drives)
Oh and some sort of decent sound card. I output to my stereo system, For max volume usage. so it has to be rather clean sound. Have had ones in the past that had noise and hiss that you could hear when amplified.
Post by: Vodka7 on December 25, 2007, 11:19:09 AM
Easiest way to pick what motherboard you want is to decide what processor you want. There are really only two options here (sorry AMD, better luck next gen): Intel duo, or Intel quad. Prices for the first gen quad are pretty low right now, so I'd probably recommend a Q6600. For the motherboard, you use Newegg's search features to narrow down the options. You want Intel, so that takes away half your choices, you want quad, so that takes away more, if you decide to keep your video card you'll want AGP, and that will take away a TON more. You also want IDE, but to be honest, I doubt there are more than one or two boards out that have BOTH AGP and two IDE channels on the same board. More likely is one or no IDE channels, but don't worry, PCI controller cards are cheap as dirt.
As for RAM, ignore the guy who said DDR2 won't transfer to your next upgrade. No offense, but buying anything more than DDR2 800 right now is absolutely insane. You'll be paying twice as much for no noticeable speed upgrade. The only people buying the higher clocked DDR3 RAM right now are overclockers beause they need the timing.
As for PSU's, nothing's really changed. If it's 20+4, it'll work. Of course, if you have SATA drives, you'll need SATA power connectors, but Newegg sells molex->sata adapters. You can pick up a few for about a tenth the price of a good PSU. Speaking of SATA, feel free to grab as many SATA HD's as you want, but conventional wisdom says stick to your IDE optical drives. You won't get any speed increase from a SATA DVD-ROM and you're setting yourself up for possible trouble if you ever try to install an OS that doesn't have driver support for your drive built into the installer.
As for OS choice, that's up to you.
Post by: never_retreat on December 25, 2007, 03:35:49 PM
I going to stick to intel chipset. I never liked the amd.
Post by: JimMarch on December 25, 2007, 07:43:45 PM
Over a year ago I was running a laptop with XP and my Internet connection was same as now: a PCMCIA Verizon cellmodem.
Which means I didn't have a hardware firewall up. I *did* have every possible MS update plus a paid-up, fully current copy of ZoneAlarm Pro for a software firewall and anti-virus package. I was protected about as well as anybody could be.
Something slipped in and nuked me good. I spent three days chasing that damnthing before giving up and downloading Ubuntu. Haven't looked back since, except that with VirtualBox I can run a real copy of XP as well. All the data I care about is in Linux so worst case, I can rebuild what's in the XP area from scratch if it gets turdified.
With a good hardware firewall, XP gets a bit safer. If you're running XP plugged straight into a cable modem or DSL box with no external hardware NAT router, I personally think you're going to get crapped on eventually.
---
My point remains valid: IF he's thinking about Linux now or down the line, he should pick his hardware with that in mind. That means NVidia is the best idea in video cards right now. Anything else, like a given motherboard, he should run the part number through ubuntuforums.
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 08:54:59 AM
After you select your CPU, buy a mother board that fits the CPU. The mother board should also have the correct number of the correct slots to house the other components that you decide that you want. You have to start with the CPU, then work your way out from there.
In regards to this Windows/Linux/security debate, the bottom line is that you just have to know what you are doing. It does help to be a computer enthusiast, because a lot of this stuff isn't apparent to someone who doesn't know much about computers. I run Windows XP because I'm a gamer. I also am a .NET programmer at work, so I need to have Windows installed in order to develop on my machine at home. I know how to tweak Windows just fine so that not only does it run faster, but it is also very secure. I've never had a virus or trojan on my PC.
First, don't ever open spam or visit a random website and download the programs that they will ask you to download. They are viruses. Some computer users are their own worst enemy beause they get suckered into installing the viruses themselves. Turn off HTML-images in your email programs.
Second, don't use Internet Explorer.
Third, use your router (you do have a router with a good firewall, yes?) to filter all those open ports that Windows networking services keep open. I can't remember exactly what they are, but they are around 130-135, 440, etc.
Fourth, get a comprehensive suite of security software that will overlap your protection and cover all your bases. I use McAfee, Spywareblaster, Spybot, and Firefox with the NoScript addon. Windows firewall is of course turned on, as well as Windows automatic updates. If you really want to lock down your computer, install ProcessGuard, which will not allow a process to access memory addresses outside the allocated range. I've never found this necessary because the previous measures that I listed work fine.
Post by: CNYCacher on December 26, 2007, 09:18:03 AM
Seems like a lot of steps to get security on your computer. . . I have a one-step solution to ensure computer security:
1. Install Linux
This method also has the side-effect of making your computer faster.
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 26, 2007, 09:25:50 AM
Quote
This method also has the side-effect of making your computer incompatible with most popular software.
There, fixed it for you.
Post by: CNYCacher on December 26, 2007, 10:57:13 AM
There are very few "popular software" that don't run on GNU/Linux with WINE installed.
Among those few, fewer still have no free alternative that is GNU/Linux native.
-CNY-msfreesince1998-Cacher
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on December 26, 2007, 11:24:07 AM
I used to be one... I guess I still am, sort of. I'm also one of those recalcitrant throwbacks that favors AMD and ATI. I run a 3800x2 64-bit core with an ATI x2650 Radeon PCI-E video board, a pair of 300GB SATA drives and a 24" widescreen monitor running Windows XP 64-bit edition and 6 gigs of 800mhz DDR2 RAM. From time to time, I run virtual machines (as many as four at once to simulate a false domain) for work testing.
System's starting to get a bit long in the tooth and I'll probably be upgrading the CPU to something around 4500-5000 rating from AMD, an ATI x3900 series video board and 8 gigs of RAM... maybe an external disk system too, something fast and blingy on e-SATA.
The only things that stop me from running a Linux OS are:
1. I love my games. I'll go weeks without playing at all, and then I will HAVE to play some World of Warcraft, BioShock, Call of Duty or whatever.
2. I've got to be able to run SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005 as well as Visual Studio 2005. Anyone have that working properly in Wine? I've never gotten service-oriented windows apps to run properly in a Linux environment.
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 11:24:43 AM
Past a certain point, you have to leave your subjective feelings behind and objectively decide which technology is best for the job that you are doing. Computers and software are the tools of my trade, so I personally have much less flexibility to play favorites. I have a responsibility to my employers/customers to choose technology which is most efficient and effective for the job at hand. I need to be able to show that I chose the best solution possible. I would be out of a job if I let Linux fanboyism dictate my decisions at work, like running a mission critical ASP.NET 2.0/IIS 6 web server or SQL Server 2005 database in a Linux sandbox.
I used to work on IBM AIX servers when I got started in IT. I love Linux and especally Unix. If you have some hardcore computing to do where the machine has a ton of jobs and must be a total workhorse, I would choose a Unix OS every single time. Unix is just awesome. You have to choose the right tool for the job, just like any othing else. Sometimes a Windows 2003 server is better, or it may Linux. It just depends.
For home computing, if you are mainly surfing the internet, checking email and doing some light gaming, I see no reason why Ubuntu or Macintosh would not be a great choice. Macs, and to a sometimes lesser extent PCs, are great if multi-media is your primary pursuit. If you are a hardcore gamer, Windows PCs are hands-down the way to go, even over consoles. I am a gamer but also a developer. 90% of my time at work right now is spent developing ASP.NET and SQL Server applications. So I need a Windows XP machine for when I work at home. If I wasn't such a hardcore gamer and didn't need the Microsoft development tools, I would probably own a Mac.
And the number of steps that one needs to take to secure their Windows XP machine isn't inordniate. When I first installed Linux on another one of my home machines, it took me two weeks to write a script for IPTables to create a secure firewall. Ubutntu may install as a completely configured OS now, but Fedora that I installed three years ago on a home PC came completely wide open. I was shocked actually because I had heard about how secure they were, blah blah. But it had NO firewall, effectively. Lol. So other systems still have vulnerabilities that need attention. You just need to pick the right tool for the job at hand.
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 26, 2007, 01:17:33 PM
I knew somebody would bring up the WINE emulator. Been there, done that.
Nothing like an extra layer of code between the app and the hardware to keep things zipping along, really.
I get paid on the side as an IT consultant for Robert Half Technologies. As much as I'd like to see the day happen when the world eventually swings away from Microsoft, frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy Linux installs won't get my customers through their daily routines without a lot of retraining and extra layers of emulator code to run their already-purchased Adobe/MS Office/whatever apps, neither of which they're willing to pay for. Nor could I come home and unwind with a game of Brothers In Arms afterwards.
When Linux becomes Everyman's OS, then we can talk. Of course, when Linux becomes Everyman's OS, then the virus/trojan/malware authors will also take notice of the new standard in computing, nicht wahr?
Post by: Paddy on December 26, 2007, 02:18:19 PM
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 26, 2007, 03:35:45 PM
They're reviled because Bill Gates is the Son of Satan, and his minions at Redmond propogate that particular brand of evil with every copy of Windows they sell. As you can see, the angst is strongest amongst those who are either unwilling to or incapable of running a virus-free system - that's when the fanboys pop out of the woodwork and say "You must install Linux - there's no malware for it". True, but the world isn't running Linux, either, save for the dedicated geeks who derive gratification from being non-conformist (kinda like punk rockers - noncomformist, but terribly conformist in their own rights) with respect to their computer operating systems. Were that particular bit of open-source code to displace Microsoft, I'd bet cash money it would be on the virus writers' radar screen. Right now, it's not worth their effort.
Meanwhile, the world steams along with Microsoft, having watched OS/2, GEOS, CP/M, Amiga, BASIC, and gawd knows how many other operating systems drop by the wayside through the years since 1985.
That says a lot for that evil Bill Gates, and it really chaps some fanboy hides, as one can witness in the exchanges in this thread.
I enjoy playing with Linux, and even use my Knoppix distribution to rescue crashed Windows machines. At the end of the day, however, one returns to Microsoft to get things done. It'll stay that way for a long time before any parity is achieved via the upstart.
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 03:52:36 PM
eh, not to hijack the thread or change the subject, but can anybody explain why Microsoft is so reviled?
For making as much money as they do, Microsoft puts out some unbelievably half-assed products. Their half-assed products cause a lot of people a lot of frustration, which they do not forgive lightly. Their operating systems were laughably insecure for many years. They still had many serious issues with XP for years after its release. XP has worked pretty darn well for a couple of years now, since Service Pack 2, however. Remember, at one point XP (and all previous Windows versions) didn't even include a firewall. The early XP and Windows 98 years were when Linux really started to stand out favorably against Windows, because Windows had so many security problems.
Also, their latest operating system, Vista, is a total dud. Two of the very most important goals for an operating system are: 1) run relatively quickly/efficiently on the given hardware and 2) actually work well with few bugs. It fails miserably on both those points. I hate it because it is a real pig of a program. I write my software so that it is fast and bug free (tested well). I mean really fast, with great code optimization and good database design. Vista is the biggest, bloated pig, piece of software ever released, probably.
I do really like some things that Microsoft did, however. I love ASP.NET and the Visual Studio 2005 development environment. SQL Server (2000 and 2005) is a great database also. From a developer's standpoint, ASP.NET is so much better than any other web based programming technology, in my opinion. I think AJAX.NET is about the coolest thing on earth.
Post by: Phyphor on December 26, 2007, 04:01:05 PM
eh, not to hijack the thread or change the subject, but can anybody explain why Microsoft is so reviled?
Ok, I'm gonna fire up the WAAAAAY-the-frell-back machine and take us back to the late 80s/early 90s.
MS-DOS is the OS of choice, Windows is the operating environment (not a true OS yet)
(Keep in mind, my memory may not be perfect.)
Wordperfect is still in it's DOS form and is considered one of the best. Well, MS comes out with both Word and Microsoft Works, in an attempt to wrestle away market share.
Then along comes OS/2. OS/2 was one of the first pre-emptive 32-bit multitasking OSes for the PC. MS helped IBM with some of the development of said OS, including WIN-OS/2 development (running Win 3.1 under OS/2, so you can use your Windows apps in an OS/2 Presentation Manager window.)
Well, MS screwed IBM on marketing OS/2, and then went on to use a lot of design ideas from OS/2 in Windows 95. OS/2 became pretty much a niche OS, and Windows 95 rode the marketing rocket to history.
That, and the way they treated smaller software companies (totally buying them out, or just crushing them) earned them a bad rep.
Then too, on the Demo scene side of things, the sudden forcible shift to Windows 95 and DirectX based gaming/multimedia coding went over like a lead balloon. Many demo coders (and game companies) had already figured out the myriad tricks to squeezing out the most performance from existing MS-DOS machines using direct hardware access. With the advent of DirectX, that went pretty much out the window. Instead of accessing the hardware directly, one had to negotiate with the DirectX API to get things done. The first couple versions of DirectX weren't anything to scream about, either. Not to mention that converting existing MS-DOS games and such to DX was a complete pain in the ass.
Post by: Phyphor on December 26, 2007, 04:04:17 PM
Let's see if I can capture the essence of Jim March and CNYCacher...
They're reviled because Bill Gates is the Son of Satan, and his minions at Redmond propogate that particular brand of evil with every copy of Windows they sell. As you can see, the angst is strongest amongst those who are either unwilling to or incapable of running a virus-free system - that's when the fanboys pop out of the woodwork and say "You must install Linux - there's no malware for it". True, but the world isn't running Linux, either, save for the dedicated geeks who derive gratification from being non-conformist (kinda like punk rockers - noncomformist, but terribly conformist in their own rights) with respect to their computer operating systems. Were that particular bit of open-source code to displace Microsoft, I'd bet cash money it would be on the virus writers' radar screen. Right now, it's not worth their effort.
Meanwhile, the world steams along with Microsoft, having watched OS/2, GEOS, CP/M, Amiga, BASIC,
Point of interest? BASIC is a interpreted programming language, and Amiga was a model of computer marketed by Commodore (IIRC). Didn't have a thing to do with the PC.They're reviled because Bill Gates is the Son of Satan, and his minions at Redmond propogate that particular brand of evil with every copy of Windows they sell. As you can see, the angst is strongest amongst those who are either unwilling to or incapable of running a virus-free system - that's when the fanboys pop out of the woodwork and say "You must install Linux - there's no malware for it". True, but the world isn't running Linux, either, save for the dedicated geeks who derive gratification from being non-conformist (kinda like punk rockers - noncomformist, but terribly conformist in their own rights) with respect to their computer operating systems. Were that particular bit of open-source code to displace Microsoft, I'd bet cash money it would be on the virus writers' radar screen. Right now, it's not worth their effort.
Meanwhile, the world steams along with Microsoft, having watched OS/2, GEOS, CP/M, Amiga, BASIC,
Quote
and gawd knows how many other operating systems drop by the wayside through the years since 1985.
That says a lot for that evil Bill Gates, and it really chaps some fanboy hides, as one can witness in the exchanges in this thread.
I enjoy playing with Linux, and even use my Knoppix distribution to rescue crashed Windows machines. At the end of the day, however, one returns to Microsoft to get things done. It'll stay that way for a long time before any parity is achieved via the upstart.
That says a lot for that evil Bill Gates, and it really chaps some fanboy hides, as one can witness in the exchanges in this thread.
I enjoy playing with Linux, and even use my Knoppix distribution to rescue crashed Windows machines. At the end of the day, however, one returns to Microsoft to get things done. It'll stay that way for a long time before any parity is achieved via the upstart.
Pretty much. I like Linux (especially for web browsing,) but at the moment, Joe Blow ain't gonna care what's running on the box as long as it does what he wants it to do. For the moment, Windows tends to be easier to set up (for basic things.)
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 04:05:22 PM
eh, not to hijack the thread or change the subject, but can anybody explain why Microsoft is so reviled?
Also this:
BSOD!!1!11one!
Post by: JimMarch on December 26, 2007, 04:59:57 PM
Gamers are just going to have to dual-boot or avoid Linux altogether, for the moment. Wine *might* get good enough later. (It can run World of Whorecraft right now
.)---
As to Microsoft. The two most evil things they've done are the old DR-DOS ripoff and the license violation against Sun's Java. Billy Gates and company paid about $200mil for *each* of those mis-adventures.
DR-DOS: in the early 1990s we were running MS-DOS 5/6 family as the core OS and then loading Windows 3.x on top of that. By the time we hit DOS6 and Win3.1 it was actually pretty respectable...but it was still very much a single-application-at-a-time thing...no multi-tasking like we're used to now.
MS-DOS was a ripoff of something called "CP/M", which in turn was descended from DEC minicomputers. CP/M was the product of Digital Research. DR came out with something called "MP/M where the first "M" meant multi-user - and anything multi-user (like Unix) was inherently multi-tasking. This was all the way back around 1980, to give you an idea how far ahead of Microsoft they were. DR then came out with a series of "sorta MS-DOS compatible" operating systems, some of which included the multi-tasking and even multi-user aspects of the old MP/M.
And then in the early '90s DR came out with DR-DOS. It flat-out kicked butt. Close to 100% MS-DOS compatible, single-user but multi-tasking. See, the old 386 chip had this weird mode where it could immitate 8 ordinary 8086-class CPUs side-by-side. For all I know the guts to do this are still in the Pentiums/Celerons/whatever but we don't use it. But at the time, it was a cheap and fast path to real multi-tasking. MS-DOS couldn't activate it, DR-DOS could.
Remember, Microsoft was making "double profits": they'd sell you MS-DOS as one deal and then Windows as another. The two didn't merge until Win95 (and then barely).
Well when you ran DR-DOS on the bottom and Win3.x on top, whoa, it started to kick butt. It could do some things that Win95 choked on some years later. Gates&Co were pissed.
So they sabotaged Win3.x. Literally. They added code that detected the presence of DR-DOS and self-destructed when it was found.
Now. Did MS ever *promise* DR-DOS compatibility? Of course not. BUT, the people that bought Windows could legitimately expect to buy code that was NOT booby-trapped in order to maintain Billy's lavish lifestyle.
Digital Research bellied up and died - and sold the rights to DR-DOS to another company, which didn't have the legal/financial muscle to go up against MS, so they sold it to Novell who did and knew exactly what they were buying: the right to sue the crap out of Gates. And they did, winning $200mil.
But by that time, the dominance of MS-Windows was supreme - Win98 for example was already out. MS gained much more from this black hack than they lost in court.
---
The Sun Java saga was similar. Java is a programming language designed by Sun. Anybody can make a Java-compliant interpreter for free, so long as you follow Sun's license - which states flat-out that you can't add your own features out past what Java is designed to do. That way the exact same Java code will run on any system with a Java interpreter.
As one example: this "interoperability" is why youtube works just fine on my Linux box, or a Mac, PC, BSD, whatever system, delivering exactly the same content. As long as I can get Adobe's Flash player and Sun's Java to work on a given device, including the iPhone for example, I can use youtube.
For another example, there's a money management package out there called "Moneydance". It's pretty good, esp. for the low price. You download it for Mac, PC or Linux - and it's not different versions for each, it's the SAME DOWNLOAD running under Java. It's one of the most advanced Java apps going.
So what did MS do, faced with this "threat" of people being able to write apps that would work on anything and screwing up their Windows monopoly?
They licensed Java from Sun, and then wrote a set of really REALLY good development tools to write Java apps under Windows. So far so good - software development tools is where MS started in 1976 and it's still what they're best at. Problem was, their Java toolkit would create Java code that only ran on MS-Java in Windows - not, for example, my Linux box or a Mac or anything else.
This is why we sometimes call Microsoft "The Borg". They tend to assimilate new tech, make it their own, make it so it only works in their world, locking you into Windows.
This was all very deliberate in the case of Sun, and mentioned in numerous internal memos. Which came to light when Sun sued and won the other $200mil judgment - because all this deliberately violated Sun's license.
And yet again, it was $200mil well spent - slowing down Java by years furthered the MS monopoly.
---
Beyond all that, and yeah there's MANY more examples of fraud by Gates&Co...
Microsoft has never had the guts to change their platform enough so that old apps wouldn't work on the new OS. You can take 1982-era DOS programs and they'll probably work under Vista.
And that's a bad thing. Microsoft started with an operating system that was really a bad joke from a security and usability point of view, a single-user, single-tasking toy, and scaled it up to where it's now a looming monstrosity - but with "feet of clay" because it started out as a bad joke and the code needed to support that old gag is still in there if you dig deep enough.
When you compare this with Linux, it's descended from large-scale, multi-user, multi-tasking systems dating all the way back to 1968(!). Literally decades of deep thought regarding security are in it's genes. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been spliced in but if the GUI breaks, Linux reverts back to the old command-line mode and you can still back up your data, load new software, make repairs, get it back up properly. Many of us go a step further: we have at least two complete graphical user interfaces loaded (one of the two major ones like Gnome and KDE plus at least one minor one like Enlightenment, XFCE or the like) and on startup, when we log in we can hit the "sessions" button and switch from one GUI to another, either temporarily or permanently. I had a test copy of Gnome puke on me once, brought my lappie up under XFCE, started Firefox to google a solution, applied a fix, rebooted back into Gnome and all was well in about 10 minutes flat.
So not only is hardcore security built in as a core concept left over from university data centers of the 1980s, things are "modular" and there are competing subsections of everything available. For example, I didn't like how the Network Manager component worked so I pulled it and spliced in something called "Wicd" which handles WiFi connections much better. *Everything* is modular like that, right down to the kernel.
It's like a Zombie movie. Windows would make a damn poor Zombie - nail any part of it's integrated whole and it blows the hell up. Linux would make a terrifying Zombie - you can shotgun whole chunks out, guts flying everywhere and what's left will shrug it off and keep stumbling forward.
Let's go back to my original point about MS not having the guts to start over. Apple did. The original MacOS was pretty good - for 1986. But by around 1995 it was way long in the tooth and starting to fall apart over the increased memory demands of modern apps and multi-tasking needs of users. By about version 8.5 it was an utter joke - it was becoming harder to support Macs in a corporate environment than Windows. Version 9 was a last-ditch attempt at cleanup that failed.
So they did something remarkable. Steve Jobs had gone off to do Next and the Next-step OS which was based on pure Unix. Apple bought Next after apologizing to Jobs, and let him bring the NextOS back into Apple - calling it "OSX". In some ways it's closer to it's Unix roots than Linux, and the two are definitely cousins. OSX isn't as modular as Linux but it's good, solid, slick code that is unable to run most older OS9-and-below code. (OS10.5 is now certified as "really honest to God Unix".) Apple stopped trying to patch up a broken house and did a demolish-and-start-over approach. Microsoft has never had the guts to take that step!
Linux had good genes to start with and never needed to, but then again it's a much more "evolutionary" process with different modules competing with each other in a "survival of the fittest" mode
.
Post by: CNYCacher on December 26, 2007, 05:23:58 PM
Ahh, the fanboy.
I knew somebody would bring up the WINE emulator. Been there, done that.
Nothing like an extra layer of code between the app and the hardware to keep things zipping along, really.
I knew somebody would bring up the WINE emulator. Been there, done that.
Nothing like an extra layer of code between the app and the hardware to keep things zipping along, really.
Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator
The fact that you think WINE is an emulator makes your entire opinion suspect.
Wine is an API, not an emulator. It allows programs compiled for windows to use windows function calls on linux natively. As a result, many apps made for windows run faster on linux with wine.
That is all.
Me being a "fanboy" doesn't negate the validity of my opinions or my expertise in this matter, Mr. ad hominem
Post by: Phyphor on December 26, 2007, 05:29:31 PM
Regarding Wine: I agree that it mostly sucks. VirtualBox running a real copy of WinXP does NOT suck - software compatibility with Windows apps is naturally very high - except that 3D graphics support isn't working yet, so this is a "business software solution" versus gaming. (Note that as the virtual machine managers like Virtualbox and others get better at using the hardware virtualization extensions in the Core 2 Duo, we can expect gaming/3D/graphics performance to improve.)
Gamers are just going to have to dual-boot or avoid Linux altogether, for the moment. Wine *might* get good enough later. (It can run World of Whorecraft right now.)
---
As to Microsoft. The two most evil things they've done are the old DR-DOS ripoff and the license violation against Sun's Java. Billy Gates and company paid about $200mil for *each* of those mis-adventures.
DR-DOS: in the early 1990s we were running MS-DOS 5/6 family as the core OS and then loading Windows 3.x on top of that. By the time we hit DOS6 and Win3.1 it was actually pretty respectable...but it was still very much a single-application-at-a-time thing...no multi-tasking like we're used to now.
MS-DOS was a ripoff of something called "CP/M", which in turn was descended from DEC minicomputers. CP/M was the product of Digital Research. DR came out with something called "MP/M where the first "M" meant multi-user - and anything multi-user (like Unix) was inherently multi-tasking. This was all the way back around 1980, to give you an idea how far ahead of Microsoft they were. DR then came out with a series of "sorta MS-DOS compatible" operating systems, some of which included the multi-tasking and even multi-user aspects of the old MP/M.
And then in the early '90s DR came out with DR-DOS. It flat-out kicked butt. Close to 100% MS-DOS compatible, single-user but multi-tasking. See, the old 386 chip had this weird mode where it could immitate 8 ordinary 8086-class CPUs side-by-side. For all I know the guts to do this are still in the Pentiums/Celerons/whatever but we don't use it. But at the time, it was a cheap and fast path to real multi-tasking. MS-DOS couldn't activate it, DR-DOS could.
Remember, Microsoft was making "double profits": they'd sell you MS-DOS as one deal and then Windows as another. The two didn't merge until Win95 (and then barely).
Gamers are just going to have to dual-boot or avoid Linux altogether, for the moment. Wine *might* get good enough later. (It can run World of Whorecraft right now
.)---
As to Microsoft. The two most evil things they've done are the old DR-DOS ripoff and the license violation against Sun's Java. Billy Gates and company paid about $200mil for *each* of those mis-adventures.
DR-DOS: in the early 1990s we were running MS-DOS 5/6 family as the core OS and then loading Windows 3.x on top of that. By the time we hit DOS6 and Win3.1 it was actually pretty respectable...but it was still very much a single-application-at-a-time thing...no multi-tasking like we're used to now.
MS-DOS was a ripoff of something called "CP/M", which in turn was descended from DEC minicomputers. CP/M was the product of Digital Research. DR came out with something called "MP/M where the first "M" meant multi-user - and anything multi-user (like Unix) was inherently multi-tasking. This was all the way back around 1980, to give you an idea how far ahead of Microsoft they were. DR then came out with a series of "sorta MS-DOS compatible" operating systems, some of which included the multi-tasking and even multi-user aspects of the old MP/M.
And then in the early '90s DR came out with DR-DOS. It flat-out kicked butt. Close to 100% MS-DOS compatible, single-user but multi-tasking. See, the old 386 chip had this weird mode where it could immitate 8 ordinary 8086-class CPUs side-by-side. For all I know the guts to do this are still in the Pentiums/Celerons/whatever but we don't use it. But at the time, it was a cheap and fast path to real multi-tasking. MS-DOS couldn't activate it, DR-DOS could.
Remember, Microsoft was making "double profits": they'd sell you MS-DOS as one deal and then Windows as another. The two didn't merge until Win95 (and then barely).
Yea, I always thought that was hilarious how the OS ID'ed itself as Windows 4.0, and yet it was still pretty much a 32-bit wrapper (w/some 16 bit code for backwards compatibility) over a 16 bit command line OS.
Quote
Well when you ran DR-DOS on the bottom and Win3.x on top, whoa, it started to kick butt. It could do some things that Win95 choked on some years later. Gates&Co were pissed.
So they sabotaged Win3.x. Literally. They added code that detected the presence of DR-DOS and self-destructed when it was found.
So they sabotaged Win3.x. Literally. They added code that detected the presence of DR-DOS and self-destructed when it was found.
Yea, many little things like this have been found throughout Microsoft's products.
Quote
Now. Did MS ever *promise* DR-DOS compatibility? Of course not. BUT, the people that bought Windows could legitimately expect to buy code that was NOT booby-trapped in order to maintain Billy's lavish lifestyle.
Digital Research bellied up and died - and sold the rights to DR-DOS to another company, which didn't have the legal/financial muscle to go up against MS, so they sold it to Novell who did and knew exactly what they were buying: the right to sue the crap out of Gates. And they did, winning $200mil.
But by that time, the dominance of MS-Windows was supreme - Win98 for example was already out. MS gained much more from this black hack than they lost in court.
---
The Sun Java saga was similar. Java is a programming language designed by Sun. Anybody can make a Java-compliant interpreter for free, so long as you follow Sun's license - which states flat-out that you can't add your own features out past what Java is designed to do. That way the exact same Java code will run on any system with a Java interpreter.
As one example: this "interoperability" is why youtube works just fine on my Linux box, or a Mac, PC, BSD, whatever system, delivering exactly the same content. As long as I can get Adobe's Flash player and Sun's Java to work on a given device, including the iPhone for example, I can use youtube.
For another example, there's a money management package out there called "Moneydance". It's pretty good, esp. for the low price. You download it for Mac, PC or Linux - and it's not different versions for each, it's the SAME DOWNLOAD running under Java. It's one of the most advanced Java apps going.
So what did MS do, faced with this "threat" of people being able to write apps that would work on anything and screwing up their Windows monopoly?
They licensed Java from Sun, and then wrote a set of really REALLY good development tools to write Java apps under Windows. So far so good - software development tools is where MS started in 1976 and it's still what they're best at. Problem was, their Java toolkit would create Java code that only ran on MS-Java in Windows - not, for example, my Linux box or a Mac or anything else.
This is why we sometimes call Microsoft "The Borg". They tend to assimilate new tech, make it their own, make it so it only works in their world, locking you into Windows.
This was all very deliberate in the case of Sun, and mentioned in numerous internal memos. Which came to light when Sun sued and won the other $200mil judgment - because all this deliberately violated Sun's license.
And yet again, it was $200mil well spent - slowing down Java by years furthered the MS monopoly.
---
Beyond all that, and yeah there's MANY more examples of fraud by Gates&Co...
Microsoft has never had the guts to change their platform enough so that old apps wouldn't work on the new OS. You can take 1982-era DOS programs and they'll probably work under Vista.
Digital Research bellied up and died - and sold the rights to DR-DOS to another company, which didn't have the legal/financial muscle to go up against MS, so they sold it to Novell who did and knew exactly what they were buying: the right to sue the crap out of Gates. And they did, winning $200mil.
But by that time, the dominance of MS-Windows was supreme - Win98 for example was already out. MS gained much more from this black hack than they lost in court.
---
The Sun Java saga was similar. Java is a programming language designed by Sun. Anybody can make a Java-compliant interpreter for free, so long as you follow Sun's license - which states flat-out that you can't add your own features out past what Java is designed to do. That way the exact same Java code will run on any system with a Java interpreter.
As one example: this "interoperability" is why youtube works just fine on my Linux box, or a Mac, PC, BSD, whatever system, delivering exactly the same content. As long as I can get Adobe's Flash player and Sun's Java to work on a given device, including the iPhone for example, I can use youtube.
For another example, there's a money management package out there called "Moneydance". It's pretty good, esp. for the low price. You download it for Mac, PC or Linux - and it's not different versions for each, it's the SAME DOWNLOAD running under Java. It's one of the most advanced Java apps going.
So what did MS do, faced with this "threat" of people being able to write apps that would work on anything and screwing up their Windows monopoly?
They licensed Java from Sun, and then wrote a set of really REALLY good development tools to write Java apps under Windows. So far so good - software development tools is where MS started in 1976 and it's still what they're best at. Problem was, their Java toolkit would create Java code that only ran on MS-Java in Windows - not, for example, my Linux box or a Mac or anything else.
This is why we sometimes call Microsoft "The Borg". They tend to assimilate new tech, make it their own, make it so it only works in their world, locking you into Windows.
This was all very deliberate in the case of Sun, and mentioned in numerous internal memos. Which came to light when Sun sued and won the other $200mil judgment - because all this deliberately violated Sun's license.
And yet again, it was $200mil well spent - slowing down Java by years furthered the MS monopoly.
---
Beyond all that, and yeah there's MANY more examples of fraud by Gates&Co...
Microsoft has never had the guts to change their platform enough so that old apps wouldn't work on the new OS. You can take 1982-era DOS programs and they'll probably work under Vista.
Not so much anymore, actually. A LOT of apps just won't work on Vista... many of them developed for Win2k/XP.
Hell, Wordperfect for DOS won't even work under XP.
Quote
And that's a bad thing. Microsoft started with an operating system that was really a bad joke from a security and usability point of view, a single-user, single-tasking toy, and scaled it up to where it's now a looming monstrosity - but with "feet of clay" because it started out as a bad joke and the code needed to support that old gag is still in there if you dig deep enough.
When you compare this with Linux, it's descended from large-scale, multi-user, multi-tasking systems dating all the way back to 1968(!). Literally decades of deep thought regarding security are in it's genes. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been spliced in but if the GUI breaks, Linux reverts back to the old command-line mode and you can still back up your data, load new software, make repairs, get it back up properly. Many of us go a step further: we have at least two complete graphical user interfaces loaded (one of the two major ones like Gnome and KDE plus at least one minor one like Enlightenment, XFCE or the like) and on startup, when we log in we can hit the "sessions" button and switch from one GUI to another, either temporarily or permanently. I had a test copy of Gnome puke on me once, brought my lappie up under XFCE, started Firefox to google a solution, applied a fix, rebooted back into Gnome and all was well in about 10 minutes flat.
When you compare this with Linux, it's descended from large-scale, multi-user, multi-tasking systems dating all the way back to 1968(!). Literally decades of deep thought regarding security are in it's genes. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been spliced in but if the GUI breaks, Linux reverts back to the old command-line mode and you can still back up your data, load new software, make repairs, get it back up properly. Many of us go a step further: we have at least two complete graphical user interfaces loaded (one of the two major ones like Gnome and KDE plus at least one minor one like Enlightenment, XFCE or the like) and on startup, when we log in we can hit the "sessions" button and switch from one GUI to another, either temporarily or permanently. I had a test copy of Gnome puke on me once, brought my lappie up under XFCE, started Firefox to google a solution, applied a fix, rebooted back into Gnome and all was well in about 10 minutes flat.
Yea, but to be realistic, most folks aren't going to want to deal with that sort of thing. If windows craps out and the 'Repair' option doesn't work, then yea, they're screwed. But the repair option there is a turnkey type of thing. Under most *nix distros...not so much.
Quote
So not only is hardcore security built in as a core concept left over from university data centers of the 1980s, things are "modular" and there are competing subsections of everything available. For example, I didn't like how the Network Manager component worked so I pulled it and spliced in something called "Wicd" which handles WiFi connections much better. *Everything* is modular like that, right down to the kernel.
It's like a Zombie movie. Windows would make a damn poor Zombie - nail any part of it's integrated whole and it blows the hell up. Linux would make a terrifying Zombie - you can shotgun whole chunks out, guts flying everywhere and what's left will shrug it off and keep stumbling forward.
It's like a Zombie movie. Windows would make a damn poor Zombie - nail any part of it's integrated whole and it blows the hell up. Linux would make a terrifying Zombie - you can shotgun whole chunks out, guts flying everywhere and what's left will shrug it off and keep stumbling forward.
Under the NT kernal, that's not quite true anymore. However, the kernal *IS* rather vulnerable, before Vista. A bad video driver could absolutely kill a WinXP box deader'n *expletive deleted*it.
Quote
Let's go back to my original point about MS not having the guts to start over. Apple did. The original MacOS was pretty good - for 1986. But by around 1995 it was way long in the tooth and starting to fall apart over the increased memory demands of modern apps and multi-tasking needs of users. By about version 8.5 it was an utter joke - it was becoming harder to support Macs in a corporate environment than Windows. Version 9 was a last-ditch attempt at cleanup that failed.
So they did something remarkable. Steve Jobs had gone off to do Next and the Next-step OS which was based on pure Unix. Apple bought Next after apologizing to Jobs, and let him bring the NextOS back into Apple - calling it "OSX". In some ways it's closer to it's Unix roots than Linux, and the two are definitely cousins. OSX isn't as modular as Linux but it's good, solid, slick code that is unable to run most older OS9-and-below code. (OS10.5 is now certified as "really honest to God Unix".) Apple stopped trying to patch up a broken house and did a demolish-and-start-over approach. Microsoft has never had the guts to take that step!
Linux had good genes to start with and never needed to, but then again it's a much more "evolutionary" process with different modules competing with each other in a "survival of the fittest" mode.
So they did something remarkable. Steve Jobs had gone off to do Next and the Next-step OS which was based on pure Unix. Apple bought Next after apologizing to Jobs, and let him bring the NextOS back into Apple - calling it "OSX". In some ways it's closer to it's Unix roots than Linux, and the two are definitely cousins. OSX isn't as modular as Linux but it's good, solid, slick code that is unable to run most older OS9-and-below code. (OS10.5 is now certified as "really honest to God Unix".) Apple stopped trying to patch up a broken house and did a demolish-and-start-over approach. Microsoft has never had the guts to take that step!
Linux had good genes to start with and never needed to, but then again it's a much more "evolutionary" process with different modules competing with each other in a "survival of the fittest" mode
.Yea, but the issues here aren't so much 'Linux is more secure' it's 'Under Windows, I insert CD, the installer launches, I hit 'next' until it's done, and then run my app.' Under Linux it's not always that easy, and if something breaks, it can be counterintuitive for the average user to figure out.
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 05:50:45 PM
Post by: JimMarch on December 26, 2007, 05:59:11 PM
Quote
A LOT of apps just won't work on Vista... many of them developed for Win2k/XP.
Hell, Wordperfect for DOS won't even work under XP.
Hell, Wordperfect for DOS won't even work under XP.
Yeah, but it's *accidental*.
True story: I had a client who just had to have Vista, I helped him set up his box, and then it turned out he had an old CD collection specialty database written for, I kid you not, Windows 2.x family.
Yeah, you read that right.
And it freakin' *worked* in Vista. Looked like a turd and windows management was beyond funky, but it worked. I was both amazed and appalled.
Quote
Yea, but the issues here aren't so much 'Linux is more secure' it's 'Under Windows, I insert CD, the installer launches, I hit 'next' until it's done, and then run my app.' Under Linux it's not always that easy, and if something breaks, it can be counterintuitive for the average user to figure out.
In any Debian-family Linux variant (including Ubuntu), double-clicking on a .DEB file to install something is 100% just as easy as in Windows. Actually cleaner sometimes: one of the things the .DEB installer specifies is "what other software is needed for this to run?" - and then it'll go fetch them and install them too once it lists them for you and lets you hit "OK". This step is eliminated if all prerequisites are met. It's called "automatic dependency management". The Red Hat family "RPM" system is similar and 95% as good as the .DEB system.
Where the better Linux distros blow Windows away is in searching for freeware (open source stuff). You can always look in the Windows section of Sourceforge, or take your chances on Tucows, C/NET or the like. But in the better Linux variants like Ubuntu, we have our own databases of "known freeware" built into the operating system, pointing to online repositories maintained by the distributions. I can go to the "add/remove programs" feature in Ubuntu and not just see what's installed, but also what's available - all 20,000+ pre-packaged pieces of freeware, all known to be malware free, with user ratings, descriptions, etc. I check which ones I want, sorted by category, hit "apply" and watch 'em stream in.
Usually no reboot needed afterwards, either
.You're saying Windows beats THAT!?
Post by: JimMarch on December 26, 2007, 06:05:15 PM
http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu
That's for Ubuntu, probably the single biggest distro right now. Being based on Debian I think it's more flexible than Fedora (based on Red Hat Corporate Edition).
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 06:05:39 PM
You're saying Windows beats THAT!?
The only reason you need Windows for home use is if you are a gamer or Microsoft technologies developer.
Edit: You may have issues if you are not tech-savvy and run into some hardware driver issues. Other than that, my above statement stands.
Post by: GeoJAP on December 26, 2007, 06:07:19 PM
Post by: Phyphor on December 26, 2007, 07:07:30 PM
Quote
A LOT of apps just won't work on Vista... many of them developed for Win2k/XP.
Hell, Wordperfect for DOS won't even work under XP.
Hell, Wordperfect for DOS won't even work under XP.
Yeah, but it's *accidental*.
True story: I had a client who just had to have Vista, I helped him set up his box, and then it turned out he had an old CD collection specialty database written for, I kid you not, Windows 2.x family.
Yeah, you read that right.
And it freakin' *worked* in Vista. Looked like a turd and windows management was beyond funky, but it worked. I was both amazed and appalled.
Heh, I still use MSVC++ 2 under Win2k.... the 16 bit one (for hammering out quick and dirty programs that really don't need the bloat of a windowing system. I just let the VM manager run 'em in a window and display the output,)
(I use .NET for real 'doze apps, but sometimes a quick and dirty DOS program just makes sense, )
The 16 bit core isn't quite as...... *centralized* in more modern OSes, it's pretty much virtualized. Not so much in Win95-ME.... IF you ran a process viewer on those OSes, you'd see a 16 bit kernal running alongside the 32 bit one (which explained the sheer instability of those OSes,)
Quote
Quote
Yea, but the issues here aren't so much 'Linux is more secure' it's 'Under Windows, I insert CD, the installer launches, I hit 'next' until it's done, and then run my app.' Under Linux it's not always that easy, and if something breaks, it can be counterintuitive for the average user to figure out.
In any Debian-family Linux variant (including Ubuntu), double-clicking on a .DEB file to install something is 100% just as easy as in Windows. Actually cleaner sometimes: one of the things the .DEB installer specifies is "what other software is needed for this to run?" - and then it'll go fetch them and install them too once it lists them for you and lets you hit "OK". This step is eliminated if all prerequisites are met. It's called "automatic dependency management". The Red Hat family "RPM" system is similar and 95% as good as the .DEB system.
Oh, I know... but there's the first hitch. Joe blow's gonna go "RPM? Debian? Huh?"
Quote
Where the better Linux distros blow Windows away is in searching for freeware (open source stuff). You can always look in the Windows section of Sourceforge, or take your chances on Tucows, C/NET or the like. But in the better Linux variants like Ubuntu, we have our own databases of "known freeware" built into the operating system, pointing to online repositories maintained by the distributions. I can go to the "add/remove programs" feature in Ubuntu and not just see what's installed, but also what's available - all 20,000+ pre-packaged pieces of freeware, all known to be malware free, with user ratings, descriptions, etc. I check which ones I want, sorted by category, hit "apply" and watch 'em stream in.
Well, yea. The linux community tends to support itself so much better than the 'Doze one does.
Quote
Usually no reboot needed afterwards, either .
You're saying Windows beats THAT!?
.You're saying Windows beats THAT!?
Joe blow goes to Walmart. Joe blow buys a game or an app he wants/needs. Joe blow tosses it in CD ROM drive, it installs, and runs.
See, I agree that Linux is superior in many ways, but overall, people *know* Windows. Windows *USED* to be pretty much "buy it and just go" - despite the warts. That did change with what, 6 versions of Vista? (something like that, ) I think that was a mistake myself, but what the hell, I ain't running MS.
Until you can either get games and other popular software titles to install *seamlessly* with Linux, it's not gonna really be feasible for the average user.
And, as I said, if an app craps out under Windows, there's usually a "repair" option under the add/remove programs section. There isn't always (yet) such a thing under Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I'd seriously *LOVE* to see serious Linux support, especially with more games (hell, it'd be fairly easy, if done properly,) but I just don't see it happening right now. Maybe in a couple of years. Ubuntu is a *GREAT* leap forward....but they're not done yet.
Post by: Gewehr98 on December 26, 2007, 08:34:51 PM
Somebody used the "Ad Hominem" bit again! Can I introduce them to Mike Irwin's Ad Hominem Club thread? Please?
(Never mind the fact I didn't introduce the fanboy term to this thread, hint, hint...)
Unless things have improved in leaps and bounds, even the WINE FAQ spells out that there are performance drawbacks to the extra layer of API code, and that performance is not a WINE priority.
Now, if you want to question my credibility - for the record, when I started playing with WINE back in 1998, it was called WINdows Emulator on the distribution. Go look it up, I'll wait here. I discovered the code from the COMP.EMULATORS.MS-WINDOWS.WINE newsgroup, and proceeded from there to get my own distribution of WINdows Emulator back then, running it under Mandrake Linux on a dual P-II workstation. Go figure, you suppose that somebody did a bit of revisionist historian wordplay with the acronym to make it more appealing? WINdows Emulator, WINdows Emulator, WINdows Emulator, out there in black and white for all to see, as early as 1994. Jeebus. I suppose we brought Pearl Harbor on ourselves, too.
http://www.linux-kongress.org/2002/papers/lk2002-meissner.ps
Post by: BryanP on December 27, 2007, 01:37:23 AM
Guys, guys, guys. Speaking as someone who runs and supports Linux (on my desk at work, with XP in a VM for all the stuff I need to do that does indeed work better - or only - under Windows), various flavors of Windows from one legacy NT4 box up to Server 2003 all over the place, and Novell (still the best file print services and directory services network OS ever developed, but I'm not biased
) it's not worth arguing over. All OS's suck in some way or another. Windows can be a security nightmare. Linux, no matter how pretty a shell you put on it (barring the Mac and it's Mach kernel BSD bastard stepchild kernel) is still a geek's OS and just isn't suitable for anyone except the most sophisticated users OR the more unsophisticated users who can be trusted just to use the icons you set up for them.
I run Linux at work. I run XP at home because yes, I am a gamer and I can keep it stable and secure since I'm the only user. If you like Linux, great. If you can't stand it and you want to run Windows and like it, good for you. I'll reiterate - each is great at some things, each sucks at others. I cuss Linux at work regularly. Almost as much as I cuss Windows.
Now, go argue something more productive like the merits of 9mm vs .45 or AR's vs AK's.
Post by: Sergeant Bob on December 27, 2007, 03:40:28 AM
If Ron Paul were president we could all use Linux, or Windoze wouldn't suck!
Post by: Paddy on December 27, 2007, 06:45:16 AM
I've worked in large corporate environments using Microsoft stuff that always worked flawlessly. Problems and confusion reigned, however, when we added outside 'vertical market' software, such as Meditech or Lawson, to name a couple. Then, high priced 'experts' had to be flown in, housed and fed for weeks on end in attempts to get the new thing up and running (mostly a process of hit or miss, IMO)
Post by: Phyphor on December 27, 2007, 07:09:43 AM
I still don't understand why Microsoft is so reviled, but then all I know about kernals is regular or extra crispy. And I can't tell a Linux from a Rhino Liner. It seems to me that Microsoft stuff is the standard; it's what everybody uses in order to be compatible with everybody else. Most non Microsoft apps are designed to be run on Microsoft based machines, correct? And Office is the worldwide standard for its purpose, right?
[/quotes]
It's standard mainly because of the marketing. Remember when Windows 95 came out and people were buying it who didn't even own computers?
[/quotes]
It's standard mainly because of the marketing. Remember when Windows 95 came out and people were buying it who didn't even own computers?
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on December 27, 2007, 07:16:07 AM
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I still don't understand why Microsoft is so reviled, but then all I know about kernals is regular or extra crispy. And I can't tell a Linux from a Rhino Liner. It seems to me that Microsoft stuff is the standard; it's what everybody uses in order to be compatible with everybody else. Most non Microsoft apps are designed to be run on Microsoft based machines, correct? And Office is the worldwide standard for its purpose, right?
I've worked in large corporate environments using Microsoft stuff that always worked flawlessly. Problems and confusion reigned, however, when we added outside 'vertical market' software, such as Meditech or Lawson, to name a couple. Then, high priced 'experts' had to be flown in, housed and fed for weeks on end in attempts to get the new thing up and running (mostly a process of hit or miss, IMO)
I've worked in large corporate environments using Microsoft stuff that always worked flawlessly. Problems and confusion reigned, however, when we added outside 'vertical market' software, such as Meditech or Lawson, to name a couple. Then, high priced 'experts' had to be flown in, housed and fed for weeks on end in attempts to get the new thing up and running (mostly a process of hit or miss, IMO)
I'll admit right off the bat that I am about 3 years removed from this fight today, but MS used to suck. Not so much anymore, although I can't stand Vista. When MS bought Hotmail back in the late nineties, they attempted to remove the service from the Unix-based servers it initially ran on and put it on NT 4.0 boxes. It crashed immediately; MS put it back on the Unix backbone until they had Win2K running sufficiently well to manage the traffic for Hotmail.
The entire backbone of the internet used to run almost exclusively on Unix based systems. Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever.
Not so much today. Win2K/2003/Longhorn-08 are pretty tolerable for most tasks. The one thing that MS still hasn't done well is VPN/Routing services... but Cisco is the king of that, not Linux/Unix. Oh, I greatly dislike Microsoft-based DNS servers that use Active Directory integrated naming services. I like honest BIND based DNS servers. But I'm ornery.
Most net-admins dislike MS today due to licensing concerns. When you're in a pinch and you have to rescue a PC that your retarded end user trashed, you end up reloading the machine and wrestling with various concerns over how Microsoft verifies its licensing. It's a big PITA.
In regards to your big environments and specialists; specialists exist to fit special needs. Your company probably was inefficient working with an older or less complicated software product. They did a cost/benefit analysis and found that changing software would save them x man-hours a year. Or they reached a technological threshold that made it impossible to scale the old system to growing demands. After a certain point, small office networking becomes insanely costly. Guys who make $120K or more are a bargain when you really need them.
Post by: Phyphor on December 27, 2007, 10:53:19 AM
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I still don't understand why Microsoft is so reviled, but then all I know about kernals is regular or extra crispy. And I can't tell a Linux from a Rhino Liner. It seems to me that Microsoft stuff is the standard; it's what everybody uses in order to be compatible with everybody else. Most non Microsoft apps are designed to be run on Microsoft based machines, correct? And Office is the worldwide standard for its purpose, right?
I've worked in large corporate environments using Microsoft stuff that always worked flawlessly. Problems and confusion reigned, however, when we added outside 'vertical market' software, such as Meditech or Lawson, to name a couple. Then, high priced 'experts' had to be flown in, housed and fed for weeks on end in attempts to get the new thing up and running (mostly a process of hit or miss, IMO)
I've worked in large corporate environments using Microsoft stuff that always worked flawlessly. Problems and confusion reigned, however, when we added outside 'vertical market' software, such as Meditech or Lawson, to name a couple. Then, high priced 'experts' had to be flown in, housed and fed for weeks on end in attempts to get the new thing up and running (mostly a process of hit or miss, IMO)
I'll admit right off the bat that I am about 3 years removed from this fight today, but MS used to suck. Not so much anymore, although I can't stand Vista. When MS bought Hotmail back in the late nineties, they attempted to remove the service from the Unix-based servers it initially ran on and put it on NT 4.0 boxes. It crashed immediately; MS put it back on the Unix backbone until they had Win2K running sufficiently well to manage the traffic for Hotmail.
I remember that well. I was a daily user of Hotmail back then, and rather liked how fast it was even on a dial-up. Then MS got it. It became..... unstable, to say the least. Then MS made it completely UNUSABLE.
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The entire backbone of the internet used to run almost exclusively on Unix based systems. Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever.
Not so much today. Win2K/2003/Longhorn-08 are pretty tolerable for most tasks. The one thing that MS still hasn't done well is VPN/Routing services... but Cisco is the king of that, not Linux/Unix. Oh, I greatly dislike Microsoft-based DNS servers that use Active Directory integrated naming services. I like honest BIND based DNS servers. But I'm ornery.
Not so much today. Win2K/2003/Longhorn-08 are pretty tolerable for most tasks. The one thing that MS still hasn't done well is VPN/Routing services... but Cisco is the king of that, not Linux/Unix. Oh, I greatly dislike Microsoft-based DNS servers that use Active Directory integrated naming services. I like honest BIND based DNS servers. But I'm ornery.
MS never really has understood the KISS principle, have they?
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Most net-admins dislike MS today due to licensing concerns. When you're in a pinch and you have to rescue a PC that your retarded end user trashed, you end up reloading the machine and wrestling with various concerns over how Microsoft verifies its licensing. It's a big PITA.
Yea, a cousin of mine had a XP pro machine. He'd bought the XP-pro CD from Staples, and had been using XP for about a year, when it suddenly stopped working. Kept bitching about 'invalid licensing.' Turned out, it was phoning home and so it decided that his CD key was fake/stolen/whatever.
Took forever to get that one resolved through MS's 'support' phone line....and they were acting like he stole it.
So yea, not a fan of their licensing scheme myself.
Post by: Brad Johnson on December 27, 2007, 11:48:17 AM
Quote from: RileyMc
but then all I know about kernals is regular or extra crispy. And I can't tell a Linux from a Rhino Liner.
Now that's funny!
Brad
Post by: K Frame on December 27, 2007, 04:12:03 PM
DEC COMPLETELY screwed the pooch by tying CP/M to the Rainbow, and Kildall screwed his personal pooch in negotiations with IBM over use of CP/M-86. One story goes that Kildall blew off IBM's negotiating team to go flying. He apparently stated that at one point, but there's at least several different versions of what actually happened.
The ONLY marginally redeeming aspect of the Crapbow was its keyboard. It was a WONDEROUS keyboard. At my peak I could type nearly 130 words a minute on one of them.
There's a lot of disagreement over whether Gates & Co. actually copied CP/M's structure, or whether they both were using structural processes that were descended from the first systems that broke out of the mainframe environment.
Post by: JimMarch on December 28, 2007, 06:27:37 PM
MS could address more than 64k of course but nobody HAD more than 64k at first.
The big thing was that MS-DOS 1.x didn't have a directory structure. (That was a 2.0 feature with the IBM PC-XT and it's 10meg hard drive). Neither did CP/M but the latter at least had "user areas" - in other words, a slew of different "cubbyholes" you could switch to. Each was in parallel with the rest - there was no "hierarchy". The whole directory idea was grafted in from Unix, yet they kept the drive letter concept for devices from CP/M.
Drive letters were just one similarity. LPT: ports, COM: ports, all the same from CP/M. I remember making the jump from CP/M to MS-DOS 1.x and it was basically "no learning curve". The copy command worked better in MS-DOS (and now using Linux I can see the Unix origins), and batch files were a good thing (yet another Unix ripoff).