On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Mirabella, Mathew J wrote: > This may not be a very structured and organised piece of prose on this > issue, but it includes all of what i essentially think on the topic. > Please correct me if i am wrong on any particular technical issue. This is a very interesting message. > Windows and redhat might cost similar regarding the enterprise edition > of redhat vs windows xp pro, but the average person would probably just > get the normal redhat cds or download the os and install it for pretty > much next to nothing. So from this perspective, windows XP is more > expensive for a base system than is red hat. The real comparison is RH Personal/Pro and WinXP. RH's Enterprise options should be compared to MS's Enterprise options (i.e. their Datacenter and other high-end options). You'll see a serious price difference there, too. > Also, with a Windows system you do have to purchase MS Office to get a > suite of products like openoffice which is free with red hat and new > linux distros, or at least free to download. Right. > Also with windows, you do have to purchase photoshop and a number of > other tools for audio editing, programming, etc. You can get freeware > stuff for Windows, but this is usually not as good quality and has less > features and less support. So you mostly have to pay if you want good > quality tools for windows. Again, true. > It can probably be argued that the applications that are free either > with red hat or which can be downloaded free are as good and in some > cases better than good Windows apps albeit sometimes with a few less > features in the guis. On average the normal office apps are equivalent. Some of the specialized apps are still better on WinXX or Mac. > So all things considered, red hat (and linux in general) is a lot > cheaper and more application rich at least from the standpoint of a base > system. And this is to be expected when you consider the GNU stuff and > the open source notions surrounding linux/unix apps. > > In addition, it is widely suggested that linux is a far more stable OS > than windows, and certainly the filesystem (ext2 and ext3) is a lot > faster and more efficient than fat and ntfs). Linux is also known as a > far better system for networking, web serving, and other such > applications that are still dominated by unix style systems. You do not > have to reboot linux as often as windows, you can do more things without > needing to reboot for those things to take effect, and you dont get as > many system crashes with linux. Right. > However, there is another side to the story. Windows does come with > full mp3 support, media players that support a wide range of media > types, While RH 8 and up don't support mp3 out-of-the-box, it's not difficult to get the versions of the apps that do support it. > a web browser that does really support css and xslt/xml stuff properly > (netscape and mozilla have a long way to go with css support, and in > some cases, even tables and frames). Actually IE is not as standards compliant as Mozilla. The things that look good in IE but don't in Mozilla are things that MS has used to break standards compliance in order to make them look good. > with the addition of ms office, you have a range of office tools that > are very feature rich (still more so than openoffice), and an email > client that is very easy to configure (although, i have serious issues > with microsoft exchange, but that is another story). Open Office is as feature compatible as MS-Office for normal office use. And Evolution is as easier and less troublesome than Outlook. > while red hat 8.0 for their own perhaps reasonable reasons, have not > provided mp3 support out of the box. True. See above. > In short, from the cds of windows and office, the install process is > very easy, it has worked well every time i have tried to do it, and once > everything is installed, you can basically do everything right away > without worrying about any special files to edit, things to compile in > just the right way with the right files in the right dirs or they don't > work, etc. etc. This is the same result I have had with RH from 7.x on up. If I'm setting up a normal desktop system for a normal user it's been as easy as any Win2K install. The only issue with RH 8 is the mp3 situation as you mentioned. > The user interface of windows is still way ahead of gnome or kde, and > way less buggy (in my experience). The user interface is and has been > more intuitive and incorporates far more accessibility features than > gnome or kde (although, these x systems are moving in the right > direction, they have a long way to go). e.g. problems people have with > graphics card support and fonts stuffing up and system hangs... and new > issues arising after updates. GNOME and KDE aren't perfect but the idea that the Windows GUI is intuitive is propaganda. It's only easier to use for people who have never used anything else. If you were to take someone who hasn't used a computer before and showed them GNOME/KDE and Win2K you would find that they are damn near identical. In fact, the Mac OS X gui in infintely more intuitive and, for Linux, Xfce <http://www.xfce.org> blows everything else out of the water for features, speed and eas-of-use. > in windows, graphics and sound are supported right away. just install > the drivers if you need to and often you don't have to even do that... > and it all works. I have heard of very few problems with windows in the > same way as those with red hat on this issue. Same as in Linux. I've never had a problem with sound and graphics under RH that wasn't as easily solved as inder WinXX. Worse case is d/l and install a driver. > my experience with red hat (and other linux distros) is that the > installation process is slightly more complicated than windows, but once > you get it done, there are still many more things you have to fix to get > it working properly. there are excentricities with what red hat does > have and does not have, excentricities with what yor given linux distro > sets up as default as opposed to others, and even what is the default > across versions of the same distro. I find the maintenance of such an > os much more messy than windows. especially when you have to even play > around with the kernel to get certain things to work properly that > windows just does out of the box. The trick is to use some pre-planning before doing any kind of install. Here's the basic things I do to keep from having difficulties: 1) Check the HW compatibility and get supported HW before even trying to install. 2) Understand what the install is going to do (desktop vs server vs development vs specilized) and plan the layout of apps and configurations before trying to install. 3) Make sure that you aren't trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist (IOW, if you don't need to change the desktop systems from WinXX then don't... Only change if there's a reason to) 4) There are other Linux distros that fit various situations better than RH. Sometimes they might be a better choice. I've been able to use RH for all my needs but I'm not unwilling to use something else if it gets the job done better. > for example, red hat sets utf 8 support as the default, but in many > common apps this is not supported, so you get strange characters in > emacs, etc. taking the utf.8 off from the i118n file leaves you with a > font that does not support some highlighting, so you have to change this > as well. I know that gnu apps are seperate from any particular distro > and i understand how these things interact, but at least windows is a > single os with a single direction where all things that are intended to > work together usually do so. In /etc/sysconfig/i18n it's trivial to change the default to LANG="en_US" (or whatever you need). This isn't an issue. > updates from red hat (or whatever distro) are often difficult to manage. > e.g. the glibc problems people are having, the issue of kernel updates > being different from other ones, etc. With windows, just installing the > update and rebooting results in at the very least nothing broken that > was not before. I have seen many posts to the litsts recently where > people say "i installed the latest red hat update and now application x > does not work, but it did before... what has happened". this has never > occured for windows in my experience. With RH, up2date has not given me any compatability issues. Most of the other distros have a similar facility. It's just as easy and much less problem prone as the Windows Update. I've had time when running Windows Update has totally hosed the system and I need to fall back and wait a few weeks for MS to fix the update. With Linux, you wait only days at most. > There may be some windows 95 apps that dont work in windows xp, but you > can usually get newer versions for the nt style of windows anyway. > What i really mean here is that any updates to a particular version of > windows (e.g. updates of windows xp) do not break any currently running > apps. The last time that has been a problem on Linux was the change from a.out to elf. I didn't have problems going from libc5 to glibc. > I know that more immediate support with hardware is likely to be better > for windows because most hardware like sound cards etc are comercial in > nature, and thus usually come with windows drivers as a default. e.g. That's because MS will not let them build any drivers at all unless they build for MS platform first. > creative labs sound cards. This is understandable, and it is not a > criticism of red hat or any linux distro. However, if linux wantts to > really hit the mass market, they have to learn three things from > windows. > > 1. for the gui, it has to have a very intuitive and device independent > accessible user interface, or at least accessible as far as being a > template for making applications that are accessible to a veriety of > access apps like screen readers etc. By device independent, i mean > mouse + keyboard + whatever oelse access, to ALL THINGS in the > interface, not just one or the other, with keyboard access being limited > in some ways. Gnome and kde are on the way, but have a long way to go > on this. I know that windows screen readers and access apps are > expensive, and emacspeak and speakup for linux are free, but the windows > GUI offers rich features that are graphical PLUS accessible to a screen > reader. whereas at the moment in linux, screen readers only work in the > text environment. If you want a graphical web browser that is > accessible, IE is currently the only one (but you have to get a screen > reader of course). This is a very specilized situation that is being worked on. It does need more work, this is true, but doesn't impact the majority of users. > 2. Maintain compatibility with older ways of doing things. Linux could > be ahead with this. i.e. providing good text based applications with > rich user interfaces as well as the gui apps. But i find it > disappointing that new versions of distros of linux cut out old apps > like linuxconf in favour of only having gui based apps, leaving text > users to have to edit conf files etc. This cuts off continuity leaving > people wondering what app they have to use now to configure their system > as opposed to what was available in 7.3 where it is now different in > 8.0. Windows may use different styles and ways to do things from win 98 > to win nt to win xp, but the apps are fundementally the same in the way > they are accessed from the desktop. There are many reasons for this difference across the distros and even from within releases of the same distro. The best option for this has been Webmin, so far. > 3. it has to work really well out of the box for the average user with > the kind of hardware that people are buying now as well as older stuff, > not only the kind of hardware that people had available a year ago. > e.g. creative labs audigy 2 requires significant kernel patching to > work, and even then people have issues in linux. All apps have to work > well together without conflicts, and the package management system has > to automatically install and configure dependencies etc. the dselect > and apt-get stuff for debian is slightly ahead of rpm on this latter > score. dselect is much more difficult than rpm. And don't forget that apt is also available for RH. Just apt-get anything you want. ANd if you need "official" support, use up2date and the RHN. > It has to be powerful and app rich, and linux is just that, but it also > has to offer the basic user a wide range of ready to go applications > that people want to use every day with minimum of fuss to get them going > and no sudden rude issues of something not working right after an > in-version update or patch that fixes an old bug. That's where Linux is not. It's the equal of any MS distro for home users and non-specific desktop users. It's still got a way to go for some specific cases and for others it's much superior. > In short, out of the box, windows is intuitive and ready to go right > away with minimum config and maintenance issues, and a wealth of support > for new hardware. While many modern linux distro versions claim this, > it is usually not quite the case, or at least not yet. I've had as much difficulties with WinXX and with Linux. One system I had with some slightly funky HW was usable right away out-of-the-box with various Linux distros but wouldn't install Win98 or Win2K. And I had another system where I couldn't get any distro installed but Win98 and Win2K worked with no problems. It happens. > If i just wanted to start doing work, edit documents, write email, chat > on the net, browse the net, play audio stuff, and do all of this right > away with a minimum of fuss... I would use Windows with no hesitation, > and i would live with the issues of instability. Try Xandros or Lycoris Desktop/LX. You'll be very shocked and suprised at what you find. -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
