Tech

I suspect you’re wrong about lots of people do. A few years back a root exploit almost snuck into the kernel where a comparison was supposed to be made with the invoking process’s effective uid, instead if was assigned, as in “if (uid = 0) { … }” instead of “if (uid == 0) { … }” type of thing. There are many more examples like these, and one cannot be sure how many are malicious, and how many are accident.

Personally I only ever look at the source code if something is b0rked. And b0rked enough to annoy the crap out of me, enough to make me want to fix it before I munch off my wrists.

Regarding free vs proprietary, yes, there are major difference ito philosophy, but I suspect you’re right in that “most users just don’t care” and many still have the attitude of “well, I pay for that one, so it has to be better”, but not all users, some are entirely of the opposite attitude, “Ah, i can get it for free (as in free beer) so who cares if it’s useless, it’s better than having to pay”. The point being that the majority of people care more about free beer than freedom of speech (expression). These same people definitely don’t care about computer security and would probably give you their internet banking password for a slab of chocolate.

Technically, is Linux/Hurd/BSD/BeOS/RiskOS actually better than Windows/MacOSX? Perfectlly valid question to which I don’t think we’ll find an answer soon. What I can tell you is that the Linux network stack kicks ass :). I think in the almost 10 years now that I’ve been using it I found exactly 3 issues with it:

1. kernel panic in the ULOG iptables module (not really part of the stack, but tightly enough intergrated that I’ll count it). This was around 2.4.18.
2. MSS adjustment bug when packets comes off a lower MTU interface onto a higher MTU one. Strictly speaking this is more of a feature enhancement and again not actually part of the stack as this was once more netfilter adjusted code (picked up and fixed around 2.6.23).
3. Finally, there is currently a little rp_filter+routing annoyance that’s irritating the crap out of me but I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how it should be working without getting a severe headache and don’t see how this can be fixed (yet).

Compare this with numerous networking problems I ran into in the last three years on the Windows stack on networks where I simply had to co-exist with these machines. Things that I simply have no way of fixing, not even the ability to complain to some company to get it fixed.

Returning to “everybody can, and a lot of people do”. No, I don’t think everybody can. A great many number of people doesn’t know the difference between = and == above - which results in an immediate can’t watch, even if they wanted to. Also, many people (including myself to an extent) has the ability to write severely obfuscated code, code that’ll do stuff which not even the semi-serious readers will notice or realize. Code that’ll look harmless but stab you in the back. I love pointer arithmetic :). And those of us who can decode such code often have better things to do - like de-obfuscate our own code which we wrote what feels like millenia ago and now needs updating.

You s/hould have tried the Subsystem for Unix Applications in Ultimate / Enterprise… (MS SFU with Debian-Interix works quite nicely on XP, haven’t had Vista / Win 7 installed long enough to try SUA)

[...] Closed Source Day 5 Going Closed Source Day 7 » Oct 06 [...]

When Linux works on a Tablet PC (and allows me to use it as a tablet PC)

When Linux lets my computers sleep correctly without crashing

When Linux has an office suite with features AT LEAST comparable to Word 2000 (i.e. one only 10 years out of date instead of 15)

Maybe I’ll consider a permanent switch.

I have no idea how you screwed up a Windows 7 install so badly. I really don’t. My guess is that you started by installing it over some weird Linux bootloader that it’s not compatible with, but who knows?

But please, this 7 day “experiment” is a joke. It’s obvious you had the conclusion determined long before it even started, and you never gave Windows 7 a fair shot, not even close.

The fact that you never bothered to look for software, just blithely assuming Photoshop is the only program EVAR to edit images, and that VS Express (which has been around, what, 8 years now?) didn’t exist. You came out of this learning nothing.

Did you even talk to a single Windows user asking for advice? Frankly, after the crashes on the third day, you should have backed-off and said, “whoa, hold up… this hardware is bet, let’s fix that first.” I’m guessing that secretly you were jumping for joy “yay! Bad hardware! Now I can REALLY unfairly push Linux!)

Bah.

Hi James.

I cannot comment on the Tablet PC issues, since I have never used Linux on a tablet PC.

As for your other comments regarding Linux - they are all there already.

Again, I reiterate - no bad hardware here. None. Lappy works fine. If you took the time to carefully re-read my comments you will note that I was PLEASANTLY SURPRISED that I had no urge to immediately swop back to Linux once given the chance.

You, sir, seem to be pushing the agenda here.

Thanks for your comments though - I will keep your concerns in mind.

Regards

Q

In the same way that no single piece of software is perfect, and that no single OS is perfect for everyone, no single method of software distribution is perfect either. There are things for which there is a perfectly good FLOSS replacement.

Open Office is perfectly serviceable for 95+% of all users. I use it, I like it. Not being compatible with Access databases not withstanding. IE8 is leaps and bounds ahead of IE6 and 7, but you are right, it is not perfect, but it is great for downloading Chrome so what if its free, that means that you can use it on closed source OSes as well, not that you have to use it only on Linux. The same goes for GIMP, thought I would recommend Paint.Net in its stead. However, having spent many years in the graphics industry, I have used just about everything, and I can honestly say that Photoshop is worth every single penny of the cost. Don’t complain about doing .net development on windows. You don’t need VS, use the express edition. Microsoft gives it to you for free (as in beer). There are also several free multi desktop switchers out there that work well under windows 7. If you are used to the LAMP stack for development, and don’t want to stray too far, I use a WAMP stack with eclipse and the PHP extensions on windows quite often.

Try your 7 day experiment again, but try this.
1.) install the OS and updates and then install Avast antivirus (works under 7, does not cause your random crashes)
2.) install chrome
3.) install visual studio express, IIS and MS SQL Server developer edition (all free) or alternatively, hit google up for “WAMP” and grab the latest single click install.
4.) Putty and winscp are still wonderful even under 7
5.) go with photoshop if that is what you know
6.) go with open office, since you are used to it
7.) download windows mail on the first day, or go ahead and install outlook. Outlook is a pain, but it does its job mostly (I seem to have some personal issues with it on some machiens, its hit or miss)
8.) actually look at the dialogs when they are presented, most of them give you the option to accept what you are clicking on now as the default and not to bother you again.

If you don’t mind spending a few dollars, install deskspace, which is the mutli desktop cube like compiz and you will be good to go. Now try to make it through a week. I think you will find that the experience if much different