VISTA: will this improve Linux foothold?

XP products (Msoft ones at any rate) seem incompatible with VISTA. I have not been stupid enuf to venture into VISTA ( read Very Insane Serioulsy Tapped & Arseholed) yet, and it is not going to happen.

Do not get me wrong MSoft have provided a lot of stable products that I support, VB6 (not so sure about VB.net - had deploy issues with this but I work for a living), the XP Home OS (apart from crippling the networking side of the XP Home OS to 'encourage' you to upgrade).

The next computer I buy (granted it will be in 3 to 4 years time) will have a LINUX OS as its primary OS. If it cannot encapsulate MSAFT I'll deal with it then.

What do you think ?

In 4 years i use a simple pc for office, and consoles with HD_OLED TVs for the rest. x)

I hope it increases the Linux foothold. Unfortunatly major corporations are incorporating Vista. Still seems way too soon to me.

VB6 is awesome I used it for years and years, but I finally decided to make the jump to .Net, I use ASP.NET (C#) where I work and so far I like it a lot. C# that is, I prefer PHP over ASP.NET for most everything though but thats a different discussion.

yeah, I delved into VB.net at college to its fair to say a great degree but it's depltoyability seemed like a ball ache that I could not be bothered getting my head around, hence my preference for VB6.

Seems like theres a gap in the market now to convince major companies to exploit the benefits of Linux.. big step, possible now though?

I'm holding onto XP as long as I possibly can, and for the first time in many years am SERIOUSLY considering another OS. I don't like Vista in any way shape or form, and unfortunately, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. MS will continue to push and unfortunately we will HAVE to upgrade.

Simply put,...I use certain software packages. They are only available on Windows, and there are no good alternatives on another OS. That means I'm stuck with it, no matter what they do. I can only hope to see some gains in the competition, and hold out with XP as long as I can.

I think you're listening to too much old gossip. Vista is much more solid now than it was a year ago - I have it on both my dev PCs now (No more XP), although I do still have XP on one of my test PCs and Win98 on the other.

Vista will be better still when Service Pack 1 is released (which is not far away now).

I moved to Vista today. So far it's been pretty nice. The problems that plagued it originally are mostly gone now. Plus the new Solitaire is great.

Vista is here to stay for a while.

I remeber the war betwen dos and windows XP.

Dos = Win3X, Win95, Win98,WinME
NT = WinNT3x, WinNT4,Win2000,WinXP
Vista = Vista ?

or are vista accaly NT ?

I like Vista. It has generally been pretty solid and reliable, and pleasant to use - not things that I can say about any flavour of Linux I've ever tested.

I have Vista on my computer and on my laptop.
I have no problems, works fine for me.

I've decided to abandon Microsoft AND Apple.

I purchased a 16Gb iPod Touch today - beautiful unit, but crippled by Apple's conventions. Even copying / syncing music is unnecessarily complicated.

And my experience with Microsoft over the past few years has left me similarly jaded. They bend over backwards to facilitate their 'content-providers' needs (read DRM) at the expense of the consumer's-'needs'. AND expensive, multiple versions for the same OS? Come on! There's no need for this!

Now, I don't mind paying for stuff, but enough is enough. From now on it's Open Source / Linux for me. Fortunately I can afford to pursue philosophical agendas so to hell with everything else.

Well, if so many 'consumers' didn't use knocked off software/content, there wouldn't be any need for DRM. Piracy has had companies by the balls for years now. Its pirates that have backed them into a corner and forced them to bite.
You don't have to buy every version. You choose the one that best suits your requirements, and buy that.

No need for companies to protect their IP? Or no need to charge for operating systems? Either way I disagree. We're talking about companies, not charities.

WinXP long as its possible, then MAC OSX where Im already now over my PowerBook pro..

Evidence for this claim?



Why have different versions? Why not sell a single version that's suitable for every consumer's 'needs'?



No need for multiple versions. Read my whole paragraph. Or do you not understand the concept of 'paragraphs'?

I like Vista!!! Pretty

You need evidence that piracy is a massive problem? o.O
So if Microsoft had only released Vista Ultimate and you had to pay top dollar for it, you wouldn't find anything to complain about?
I obviously have a better understanding of 'paragraphs' than you do of 'sarcasm'.

For me, one of the things that make me stay with MicroSoft is that they have great free dev tools. I've tried a lot of them, and for me, nothing beats Visual Studio 2008. Also, vista is a very young OS, still being fixed. It is much more mature now than one year ago, but surelly it will be best in 2009. Do you remember how crap was XP SP2 when it was released? or even MacOsX in version 10.1, Both were terrible...
Linux requieres even more maintenance than Windows or MacOsx, I've had RedHat, Fedora and Ubuntu, and none of them worked for me 'out of the box'. Lots of hardware problems, incompatibilities between SO libraries, and the like... I don't want to spend most of my time fixing my OS, I prefer spend my time using it. Obviously that applies to Microsoft OS and Mac Os, but linux has always been much more time demanding on maintenance in my experience

Vista, in the categories, is actually the prototype build for MS next OS (as all features that made it a new OS were dropped like managed kernel, WinFS etc).

If apple wouldn't play the closed platform game, MS surely would have problems ... but if apple did, then apple would have the problems as they aren't really capable to write drivers and doing it for more than 8 different hardware configs (ie millions like MS) would definitely bring the company to a quite fast end.

I've actually a Mandriva One 2008 on a second partition as the idea behind that can be seen as an OS idiology (Ubuntu etc don't have it. Enforced opensource drivers just raises the level of problems, not the level of stability. Of 2 systems *core duo reference notebook from intel and a core 2 duo with high end components* none of both actually worked anymore on the network end since Ubuntu / kubuntu 6.10 ... the 7.XX distris are totally borked and that holds for most others as well. Mandriva including Compiz Fusion worked out of the box)

I believe Linux will only really become widespread if more large organisations use it in the workplace - people would get used to using it at work and then may consider it as an option for home use. ATM I wouldn't recommend Linux to anyone who didn't have a decent level of computer knowledge.

I buy an OS for the programs it runs. Everything I want runs under MS, end of story.

I run Redhat Fedore Core within VMWare on my XPHome machine. Works very well for what I need it for, despite being a 'virtual' machine.

Yes MSoft provides a good product line up, but there is a cost involved. Linux, whatever your flavour is free.... unless you opt for the Enterprise version of some releases.

Free v's not free.

Vista won't have any effect on the foothold of Linux, because it was never preventing Linux getting a foothold. Linux is the only thing preventing Linux getting a better foothold. Linux will get a better foothold when it gets better - particular in area of user friendliness and the ability to just work out of the box for the average computer illiterate consumer - not when or if everything else gets worse.

I think if you want to see Linux get a foothold, go to the cell phone, handheld, etc. market. Seems it's getting popular there thanks to people having made it run on close to everything now. I wouldn't count on Linux making any major advances as a desktop OS soon, it's still an OS made by and for programmers with little thought put into making it easy for users- Ubuntu was a nice try, but somewhere along the way they went nuts and drove the bus off a cliff.

Programmers should NOT make any decisions where the public is involved. End of message.

Linux's foothold on the desktop can come as a result of the urge to integrate desktop and handheld applications. Something really cool about Linux-based handhelds like the Nokia N810 is that a lot of the software on them is exactly the same software I am using right now on my laptop, maybe with a different front-end. That is a level of portability here we do not see with other software, and one which is made quite easy partly thanks to the fantastic GUI toolkits that have become standard on the Linux desktops.

There are many nice things that can be gained from the similarities of all these Linux-based software platforms, including really smooth synchronization of everything via d-bus.

Unlikely -- there are two current trends:

1) People holding on to XP as long as they can
2) Most of Apple's gain in userbase is coming from the Linux camp, rather than Windows.

So... Vista is slow on the uptake, people aren't giving up XP, and the most likely 'switchers' were already running a non-windows OS in the first place.

People may be hesitant to switch to Vista, they're *also* hesitant in giving windows up altogether... The huge market share of windows solutions combined with a ton of 'necessary' software they use that simply isn't available on Linux is still a deal breaker.

By comparison, the Mac is a less radical alternative. Still a minority OS, but at least major software suites like Photoshop and Microsoft Office are available for it, which makes for a much easier transition for a lot of people than it would be to switch to Linux.

Very true.


There may be advantages to Linux's wide portability, overall it's a really big disadvantage to a user who just wants a nice and simple desktop OS that works without too much trouble.

Yeah, it's nice to be able to synchronize your palmtop with your PC perfectly (if you even have a palmtop), but if that means my desktop is 5x harder to use, is that really such a great advantage?

IMHO Linux's biggest problem for desktop use is that it's so portable that you can't be sure what processor it's running on, and therefore it's almost impossible to simply run an EXE like you can on windows. To install new software, you have to compile it from source. Yourself. That's something most (>97%) computer users don't want to have to deal with. Yes, the package managers included in distros like ubuntu are nice, but if you want to install software that's not included in the list, you're out of luck.

In addition to user-friendly-ness, the developer-friendly-ness of an OS makes a huge difference in it's desirability. Needless to say, when a developer chooses an OS to target, more applications become available for that OS, and therefore more users start using the OS. Not many people will argue (except those who haven't tried it) the fact that Microsoft's (free) Visual Studio is simply the best application development tool suite available.

In order for Linux to even begin to compete with Windows or OSX, it's really going to have to work out a lot of issues (like the lack of a universal EXE) first.

Enter Mono, Autopackage and Python :)

I think that building things with the tools in a good Linux distro is pretty easy, in part thanks to Debian and in part thanks to the use of "make" for practically everything. It would do well to have a desktop-neutral system that built and ran a special source package. A tad slower than usual on the first run, but it would at least be faster to download than a universal binary.

Suse has a really cool system set up for one-click installs that also adds a third-party repository. Ubuntu has [a apt://epiphany-browser]apt links[/a], but the ability for those to add a repository has been disabled due to "security concerns". Hopefully someone will remedy this...
I predict that one system will win out and become standard across distros within a couple of years.

That is the beauty of D-Bus, though: It makes everything easier for everyone. For developers it is good because this is just one dependency for integration of all applications on the desktop. The alternative is having a library that everyone crosses their fingers will become the standard for every facet of the desktop that needs consistent integration, be it RSS feed readers, opening files or desktop search.

In Epiphany (not Firefox), I can click on the little RSS button, select a feed and have my feed reader subscribe to it (no matter which feed reader it is, just so long as it follows the convention).
There is some good momentum for having consistent desktop search standards, such that a program can integrate a search engine like Tracker or Beagle without necessarily adding either as a dependency, instead using whatever happens to be available. That leads to consistency, efficiency and ease of use.
Drag and drop is getting pretty good, too. Programs are making great use of including MIME type information with dragged and dropped data, which shall serve us well. Again, there is an example of how IPC can lead to a consistent and predictable desktop!

I do agree with you that Windows has some beautiful IDEs. Especially BLIde :)

Basically Vista is here to stay, yes you can get windows games to run on linux with cedega or wine but how many starting users will know how to do that? Vista at least runs some of the software out of the box albeit not all of it some needs major tweaking.

Forced them to bite? Wow. That's certainly an interesting fantasy you have there.

For starters, if it hadn't been for piracy, Microsoft would have been bankrupt YEARS ago. You think they would have gotten a foothold over IBM if everyone had been forced to BUY Windows? Of course not - don't be silly.

Secondly, companies have been dreaming up increasingly elaborate (and draconian) copy protection schemes since the invention of the printing press, and not a single one of them has put so much as a dent in piracy - all it does is inconvenience legitimate consumers.

Well not if you're religious about it. But basically the scientific method involves, providing among other things, corroborative evidence to support a given hypothesis. Unfortunately every scientific peer-reviewed publication on the subject (which granted, don't amount to much) point in the other direction.

No it doesn't. The PS2 being a perfect example of an absolutely horrible platform with almost embarrassing amounts of software for it. QED. Sure if you're doing it for shits and giggles, it's a factor, but everyone who works for a living will tell you that Marketing people, not developers are the ones who get to chose platforms.


I will, but you probably figured as much. Microsofts (free) Visual Studio is absolutely horrible. In order to make it even marginally as useful as many other IDEs you need to install at least half a dozen plug-ins (which you can't legally do with the free version). Sure it's great for writing those little tools like grep and tail (the kind of programs proper operating systems come with), but for any real application it's a complete joke, and the free one more so (it even refuses to compile Windows Services, so you need to have at least 2 IDEs installed, Visual Studio Expres and SharpDevelop - brilliant).

It's refactoring "suite" is a joke (get ReSharper instead). It took until version 2008 for Microsoft to rip off NUnit. Its "intellisense" feature is laughably poor compared to other IDEs auto-completeion features (again get ReSharper). It doesn't do proper (any?) code analysis (again, ReSharper) . It doesn't provide CASE tools (anyone got a good suggestion here?). It forces you to write convenience functions yourself (get JustCode). It's error "detection" will occasionally report errors that aren't errors, and fail to catch ones that are. For any non-trivial GUI, using the designer is a surefire way to ruin your day. The whole IDE is designed specifically for single user environments and doesn't integrate well (or not at all) with collaboration software like like version control software and issue tracking software.

So now you're saying that Virtual Machines are better than code compiled directly for the target hardware? By the way there has been a universal "exe" format (ELF) for the last 10 years.

That's a pretty strong claim. Do you know of any statistics to back that up?


I agree.


Did I say consoles? I'm referring to PCs.


Yeah, I already knew you dislike Visual Studio, so I'm not going to try to change your opinion. The fact is, most developers prefer Visual Studio over anything else, and that's more important than any single opinion (they say you can't please everyone - it's true). I'm sure it has it's faults, but I have yet to find anything better (more productive) overall.

The lack of certain features in the express version is to be expected, obviously. I used the Express edition for about a year before I upgraded to Standard (free from Microsoft, btw), even though I never noticed any considerable new features in Standard.


No (sorry I probably used a poor choice of words). What I meant was that Linux needs to choose a standard instruction set in order to compete with OS'es like Windows and Mac, which don't need to recompile from source just to run a program. But I'm sure this isn't going to happen since it's apparently against the "philosophy" of Linux.

@Picklesworth, some interesting points, what's the D-bus ?

In four years, we will have cell phones with beamers and laser keyboards and only enterprises will still use PCs because they have not yet been fully written off tax-wise. Face it: Home PCs are a dying breed.

-- If -- Linux will ever take off anywhere else than in the server rooms, it will only be in mobile devices. Nobody who is not a geek and/or programmer uses Linux on a desktop, and that won't change. People use applications, not operating systems. And Linux still sucks in that regard.

D-Bus is a desktop and platform neutral messaging daemon, acting as sort of a middle ground between everything else. Quite cool because it allows communication between applications and the kernel as well as other userland applications, tidily, all under the same technology.
Other platforms offer very little middle ground between applications, leaving that task entirely up to you to implement, usually with a horrifying number of frighteningly over-imaginative solutions to choose from. (Window messages often being the source of them).

D-Bus is, in other words, destined to eventually give Linux a standard instruction set far more extensible than other such systems, while still leaving many options open thanks to its desktop-neutral design :)

As for quality of applications, I am really starting to disagree with that claim. Tomboy, F-Spot and Banshee are three applications that I cannot live without. MonoDevelop is a really nice IDE even early in its life, and Scorched3D is a sure example of games under Linux doing quite well (although I must admit, I installed the Windows version for now since I can't be bothered to compile from source to get the latest one, as the game's creator does not create Debian packages. It's under Wine and required no tinkering, so I think it still counts).

As for accessibility, I still cackle maniacally whenever I change the application font size on my GNOME desktop.

I doubt Vista will effect Desktop Linux much, it's all about applications. The Desktop Linux crowd are one day going to have to accept that if you can't give your product away and people are prepared to pay £300+ for the competitor products then you have some serious problems to resolve in your offering.

Darkheart

Windows all the way here, I just want my software to run, particularly my commercial software I use on a daily basis. 3dsmax, Photoshop, painter, and MS office, with commercial games coming a close second.

I havent jumped on vista because it seems the biggest advantage it has is with modern hardware and currently not even the best games like crysis have really tapped into DX10 exptensively.

My system is made of hardware 2-5 years old and hasn't had any problems since I last installed it in Oct 2006, not a single app or utility has caused me problems, and the only minor glitches I had were with using beta video drivers in a couple of games.

Linux doesn't interest me in the slightes since I couldn't care less about the OS so long as it runs my software its just a means to an end.

@Picklesworth, thanks for the feedback on D-Bus.

F-Spot and Banshee look like quite useful linux flavoured products. Scorched Earth 3D also looks quite impressive.

So, Linux may remain niche-esque, but if IT budgets get squeezed who knows how well Linux may do ?

> but if IT budgets get squeezed who knows how well Linux may do ?

Terrible. A business does not buy an OS for the OS, they buy it for the applications it runs.

Linux is doing well in the backend of the business though (web servers, database servers, etc...) and from there it will spread slowly out to other areas.

I have Vista on a desktop and the laptop I'm currently typing this on - they came with Vista presinstalled on them. I have seen a few apps that have security issues with Vista, but once the apps were upgraded those problems disappeared. I primarily do development in Visual Studio (2008 now) and Sql Server for a living, and have had no problems at all and seen more stability on Vista than I ever saw on XP. There were some initial problems with VS2005, but they were quickly resolved also.
There are a few games that don't work correctly on my laptop, but I chalk that up to video drivers rather than the OS. I can go a long time between reboots with no problems with Vista while working on pretty sophisticated projects in Visual Studio; that is something I could never do with XP.

Thanks,
Mark.

As a user of windows 1.0 through vista I can honestly say that in the 20 odd years of using windows and the 3 years of learning and "crafting" my linux setup I know where i am happiest.

Linux is great, its faster, smoother, more secure, cheaper, blah blah blah, but isnt for everyone. Linux is great as long as you have yourself or someone nearby that knows what they are doing to do any system stuff or installations.

From a basic user point of view (a user with no permission to do anything) linux IS superior because it just works 100% and nothing can change it or break it, they are given the software needed to do their job by admin and the user just uses it, it just works, full stop.

For home users however, (if not technically minded, have bad general PC skills or no patience to learn something new), linux may be a bad choice as its not as free and easy as windows (well its free but you know what i mean :) It is still more difficult to configure for the average joe and prehaps isnt for him, unless of course all joe wants is what say.. ubuntu provides "out of the box"

(Unfortunate really as (s)he has to live with all the bollox that comes with windows, however "friendly" and "easy")


-edit-
@evak: Windows software like Photoshop, PSP (jasc), MSO (why when u got oo.o but still, each to their own.. :) can run fine under linux, as well as a lot of major games.

Some interesting points of view, I'm inclined to agree with D4NM4N sentiment, as I mentioned earlier I do not have Linux OS as the primary OS at home , merely within VMWare - it works great within that for my ends.

Bye.

Its quite a good way to try it out, but do you get the full direct glx 3D acceleration with VMware?


More thread rambling:

I think what puts a lot of people off linux is that they load it up expecting it to work like windows, it doesnt, its totally different except from the fact it has a standard GUI. I reckon a lot of users who consider themselves experts or "advanced users" feel intimidated (or just angry) that their knowlage is suddenly useless, so go running back to the "safety" of windows.
(Not a critisism and doesnt apply to everyone, but thats how i used to feel, but i stuck at it and never regretted it) I can only compare it to living in an 'nice city' but over the mountains is a utopian city with bright lights, faster transport, clean streets and safe neibourhoods (but speak a totally different language).
Problem is, to cross the mountains all you have is a few sandwiches, an ice pick, a phrasebook, and an old mule named bob who knows the way.

My problem with Linux is that I find no real benefits from running Linux over Windows and lots of negatives. There is a tiny number of useful applications that are Linux only.

BTW you can run VMWare with 3D Acceleration but is only "experimental" in VMWare 5.5 and I don't know if it works under Linux.

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_vidsound_d3d_enabling_vm.html

Darkheart

Well, one advantage I can pull off my recent explorations is how it handles disks. Linux keeps track of spaces on hard drives where files are placed, can be placed, etc. whereas Windows essentially dumps them wherever it can find room, with little thought put in to the matter. The latter necessitates continuous defragmenting, while the former keeps things very organized and potentially improves the speed of disk access over time.

You have to look beyond applications, and at the platform as a whole. There is some really cool stuff on the Linux end!
Granted, there are some really ugly hacks implemented by certain distros in their early days that never seem to get removed, but at least we know they're there!

That is a dream ... There is no way to know months in front how large the files will be that come in, so you must physically rearrange them. Even HFS+, Apples "high end" Filesystem does defragment. It just does it very well hidden (its mentioned in the docs).
Its the how and when that makes the difference on Linux.

And I think if Mandriva One gets more support, then there is at least one Linux Plattform I would be willing to target with project as its RPM installers, its working "out of the box" experience and the fact that it treated like ONE OS instead of a box of put together instable pieces of crap (-> build your OS distros) or put together by too many cooks with some kind of "strange view of how the world looks like" actually make sense to target it with closed source software.

If other distros can run it, then thats fine for them, but I wouldn't spend the time to actually make it work there. Tuxies have to understand the fact that intelligent humans prefer a system where you spend the time on beeing productive instead of spending your time on having the system running and that over and over and over again.


Which means: No chance Linux in general will gain ground. But I believe that a few major distros will raise at the price of a few trash distros hopefully dying again.
And that linux users buy apples does not mean that they leave Linux. I've a few comrades in study that bought a macbook just to kick OSX and install Linux on it as it is an affordable damn fine piece of hardware (the only Apple in the current generations not beeing a joke in some way ... MBP is out of question, how well the Air is has to be seen and iMac is a too large notebook thats not portable hardware wise ... and the tower versions just are too expensive for most common users)

Most people i know who regulary uses both (and know both well) say quite the opposite, once configured the way you want it, it stays like it. Theres no post login crunching, no viruses or spyware so to speak, better security, i have never had an unrecoverable kernel crash in 3 years, its faster and smoother, easy to backup etc.
Also, linux has a massive app-base, plus the added advantage of being able to run many major windows and unix progs, so theres usually a perfectly good alternative (or the real thing, i use PSP, PS and a few other windows apps under it).

Each to their own i guess. And yes, i too would boot out osx if i had a mac, or at least make it my non primary.

You shouldn't have to touch the OS once you install it. It's just there to run your apps. If your interested in it for anything else and actually care about how it works then your more or less a Geek, Nerd or whatever.

I have no interest in the OS whatsoever, just that it runs my software that I use to make $. I guess I'm just not really interested in computers much anymore and don't want to have to tinker and play with an OS's insides and find utilities for it to do little background tasks etc.

I agree with Evak. I just want an operating system that gets the job done. Linux, as nice and stable as its kernel may be, just doesn't do the job for me. As I said earlier, I believe this is due to Linux's lack of unification and its scattered goals, which whether you like it or not has made Linux difficult to develop for (compared to Windows, at least). As a programmer, I'd rather spend my time programming, not hassling with how to make my program accessible to hundreds of distros and platforms.


Windows XP is plenty stable for me. I can't remember it ever crashing on me.

On the other hand, the last time I installed Ubuntu I noticed it would totally freeze (absolutely unrecoverable) if I tried dragging a window around the screen for more than about 3 seconds unless I disabled all visual effects. I've also noticed many other neglected areas, like how when the partition manager freezes (it always does when I try to close it I think), a little popup comes up saying "Partition manager has crashed, etc", and I have to close it twice because the first time it pops up again.

It also took me about 3 days to find how to get my wireless card working through various utilities, etc., and even then it wouldn't connect nearly as well as Windows. It took me another day to fix a problem where it took >5 seconds before it would start loading a new webpage I just clicked on (which made web-browsing extremely slow).

On the bright side, I've noticed that Linux does recover fairly well when individual programs crash, although it seems to me I've experienced this event a little too often.

You can 99.99999% of the time drop to a separate non-gui text only terminal using a ctrl+alt+f1 and kill -9 the offending process then ctrl-alt-f7 back into gnome. When windows goes on a *proper* bender (rare, but does happen more often than i would like) you cant even ctrl-alt-delete to list the processes to kill them (or have to wait ages for it to appear).

I 100% agree, which is why I use ubuntu, i just want to install, restore and go! For example, this is approx my last install from scratch from my old desktop 2 new one:

30 min -Ubuntu live 2 hdd = 25-35 mins (this includes all office & bundled stuff + almost all drivers) And it even lets you browse the net/email while its installing!
10 min -NVIDIA Video driver install and tweak
5 min -Lan fileserver Samba & Nfs config from backed up etc/
5 min -Printers (download the correct ppd file and simply install it)
X min -All other apps (3d apps, 2d apps, video editors, sound editors, video codecs, etc.. etc.. etc.) how long is a peice of string, I simply check/tick the apps i want and go out for a beer, its all downloaded and installed in my absence (no next next nexts). Lets say 40 mins over 100Mbit?? (we are talking a LOT of apps here)
15 min -restoring all prog settings and user data to /home/me 10-20 mins from usb hdd/dvd .
5 min -entire "wine" drive C: windows structure inc. apps from usb hdd/dvd 5 mins (try doing that with the windows C drive)
12 min -restoring my 'aesthetics' to gui 10-15 mins from backed up profiles
20 min tweaking any app settings that need it from backed up etc/ files

And thats it one complete system and for me that means a complete print/file server and desktop PC with full ssh/vnc remote and "mock" apache web server, the way i want it with all hardware working, all drivers, software, codecs, data (about 80GB in total) in the time it takes to babysit a few drivers, apps into windows. And for the majority of this i didnt even need to be there (software installing) Compare that to a full windows rebuild of the same number of apps, hardware driver disks and reboots etc and it would be closer to a whole day, disk by disk, next by next. (However compare that to my "first round" with ubuntu... and it would take days because I had no clue what i was doing but the hours spent learning have saved me hours since :D)

The reason for the first post was that a recent university informed students of the dangers of installing '0lder' MSoft products on VISTA that led to problems with not saving docs. Yeah. okay after the first time you wouldn't do it again but not everyone is computer literate, and if you'd done a significant amount of work just to discover it may nor save, could be frustrating. Yep, may ? happen similarly on linux in open office, but i doubt it.

I like Ubuntu generally, but the latest version doesn't like my hardware much. IMO it's the worst version of Ubuntu so far, it's becoming too experimental. I think they need to backtrack and focus on stability and hardware support for a while.

Outside of work and some games, I use the Mac for everything. I'd say for stealing desktop market share from MS, OSX has a much better shot in the next couple years than Linux.

Realistically Linux is still years off becoming a regular desktop OS for most people, and that's coming from someone who supports it.

Linux is still way too much of a pain in the backside, which is a shame, because there's a lot to like about it. If all those bedroom coders could just get behind one distro, it might have a chance, but I doubt it will happen any time soon.

One of the biggest problems with Linux is the lack of support from hardware vendors. Last time I tried, getting a wireless dongle to work was nigh on impossible... and Linux geeks need to acknowledge that most people don't get a thrill out of having to compile system components from source.

I don't think OSX is in with much of a shout really. It could be if they'd produce a version for standard PC compatibles, but ain't gonna happen.

Ive been using it for 3 years, never had to compile anything except blitzMAX stuff & my own bits and peices..
TBH If a £20 bit of hardware isnt working after an hour or twos hacking about, i simply look at the compatability chart and go and buy something that works, which is most well known stuff. After all, the price of the OS certainly allows for that i reckon. Oddly enough, i have not had any probs with laptops from dell, hp / compaq, fujitsu siemens or packard bell. Ubuntu has detected all of it no-probs as far as wireless etc goes. These days i tend to buy hardware for the OS, not the OS for the hardware because for me the OS is more important.

But i agree with normen, it does need some solidified standards for locations and names, but for the most part it doesnt cause me so many probs as i now stick to the biggest? and probably best supported 'home/general distro' which IMO is ubuntu.

Fair point with regards to the cost of £20 compared to the cost of an OS. I chose to go with 64 bit Ubuntu, which is where the lack of a compiled nvidia driver arose.

Thing is, if me and a friend couldn't get everything working in 3 days, then I know a lot of other people will be put off. Ubuntu with its commercial support is definitely a step in the right direction, though.

compared to debian?

It is still several worlds behind Mandriva and Red Hat / Fedora

"Ubuntu so far, it's becoming too experimental. I think they need to backtrack and focus on stability"

Thats why they offer long term support for 6.06 LTS ( < LONG TERM SUPPORT).

This in theory should be solid as a house made of cast iron.

But I like experimental it teaches you how to find "work arounds" and become more familiar with how the OS is put to gether so you can become better at solving any problem that arises with the OS or it's applications.

I found Vista very easy to use (even with UAC and file permissions). I think a lot of problems with this OS (apart form NO PROPPER MANUAL) is more to do with the Computer manufactures (Parkard Bell etc) installing it on hardware that was ment only for XP (driver compatibility issues).

The new Sony Laptop VAIO AR51SU runs a treat with Vista as does the custom built Quad Core Duo 2 I have. The only thing about Vista I have, is a little problem with is the speed of file/folder transactions (this I suspect has some thing to do with the file roll back feature as well as indexing) and the time it takes to initialize LAN networking.

Linux is a terrible, terrible os for mainstream. Worst of its kind. Its a business os for specific tasks.

XP will be used as long as possible until ppl have no choice.

The problem with XP is a horrifying lack of modern hardware support. Try using an old XP install disk with a SATA hard drive, for instance :P

Anyhow, stop saying "Linux"! Gah...
Linux is not an OS, it is a kernel. Granted, Linux is a great blanket statement, but it must be understood as a blanket statement: "Linux" implies any desktop Linux distro out there, of which there are many good ones.
If you want a good OS for mainstream, try Suse. I understand Fedora 8 is pretty neat and tidy, too.
Mandriva has also been making huge strides, and has some innovative stuff going on. It's a bit bleeding edge, but has much a much more malleable release schedule than Ubuntu, ensuring that everything in the final release is indeed final. (Whereas Ubuntu, on the other hand, is not unknown to have release candidates and late beta versions of user-space software).

Ubuntu definitely needs a nicer identity. Right now it is a half-polished bleeding edge distro most of the time, a beautifully polished stable distro every 4th release. Hardy is going to be quite good, though. Polish and LTS means implementing some fancy new stuff that will serve it well for stability, like PulseAudio and PolicyKit. Hopefully NetworkManager 0.7, too, which is conveniently aligned with this release. Heck, we may even see Compiz being stable for once.

What Ubuntu needs is a better way of keeping user-space software up to date. Really one the major reason people want bleeding edge is because they want the new version of The GIMP, or new Wacom drivers. That stuff is not really system-critical, and should be provided as updates within the support cycle of each release instead of requiring a whole new upgrade to get them from the official repositories. Otherwise, users just grab the stuff from GetDeb or compile from source, which defeats the purpose of those official repositories altogether.
I think a good example of how badly Ubuntu needs to have its release / update cycle rethought is the fact that Gutsy comes with a release candidate for The GIMP, and has never seen the stable version officially. That is seriously stupid, since the stable version is out and we can safely assume it is a safer, more stable thing to go with than the release candidate! Putting out a release candidate in the final "stable" version there is completely backwards.

Perhaps one nice approach would be if things were a bit more consistently standardized with regards to where programs go and what they change, such that the developers of major programs could maintain their own stable repositories used by Ubuntu by default.

One good thing coming of the fragmentation, though: People are developing some really inventive solutions, and they are way more scalable than the application packages of MacOS or the installer programs in Windows. Only a matter of time before one of them works nicely...

Thats why I only consider doing Linux versions for mature Linux distributions. Not "up visualized build your distro" Distributions.
To me, currently all have to get their features, stability, updates *with in cycle kernel patches and new KDE betas as optional possibility* and standardization compared against Mandriva One 2008 ... and so far the only one that stood a chance was XandrOS which sadly is worse than apple when it comes to the time frame you have to buy a new OS to get current versions updates any further.

When Ubuntu can install with selectable support for pretty common multiple button scroll mice, I'd say it has a shot at being desktop ready. That's only one of the complaints I'd level at its desktop friendliness.

While it has improved a lot for things like installing codecs and drivers, there are some things wrong with it that are so facepalm obvious and could be fixed with minimal effort.

LTS means nothing for stability. It just means they have longer to make it stable. It's for corporate types who are scared of a dist-upgrade. I'm not afraid of new packages, I'd just appreciate if they were better tested before the release happened. The Ubuntu release cycle is great for avoiding Debian-style stagnation, but not so great for getting a stable and consistent desktop experience.

I'm tempted to give fedora 8 a whirl within VMWare and see how it compared to my Fedora 4 within VMware.

Thanks Picklesworth (;-)