Thread: Windows Vista--Thumbs up or thumbs down?

My biggest gripe about Windows, apart from the general suckiness of how it does things in the background and that you have to REBOOT ever time you install system upgrades and certain software and that it has more holes than a swiss cheese and that it's bloated beyond belief, is the way applications can make things go tits up. I mean, sure, I've had applications crash under X-Windows on Linux, but then the application disappears and you get a core dump file you have to delete, but nothing else happens. On Windows, an application crashing can kill other applications, and can even bring up the Blue Screen Of Death, or in some instances even reboot the computer without telling you there was a problem. Not very user friendly, IMHO.

Having said that, Windows wins hands down if you look at hardware support. Plug a new piece of consumer hardware into it, and it usually works. It may be annoying to wait while Windows installs the hardware drivers (with rebooting occurring now and then) to get it to work, but at least it works. With Linux you have to tweak the system by hand much of the time, install half-assed home cooked drivers, and pray to Linus Torvalds that it will work, and even then you might have to besiege some haughty Linux gurus online and nag them into revealing the arcane secret switches you didn't know existed and didn't know you had to supply to the driver in order to get things to work properly.

OTOH, when some hardware doesn't work on Windows, it's usually close to impossible to coax the system into making it work, for a layman...

I still run Windows 98SE on one of my computers, and Windows XP Home on my laptop, mainly because I have more programs for Windows, and because most computer games I own are for Windows.

I only have experience with pre OS X Macs, so I can't say anything about the new Macs. I never liked the pre OS X Mac operating systems, though. Whenever I sat down with a Mac, I would usually get the "bomb" popping up and have to reboot the computer, losing work...

Just my 2 cents.

/Nicholas

Edit: Oh, and regarding the original post: Windows Vista... I've heard that some software that works under Windows XP won't work on Windows Vista, so unless you are going to buy all software new and "Vista proof", you probably should stick with XP.

I'm not going to highjack Josh's thread....I'm not going to highjack Josh's thread.....
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Bugger it! Grow some grunions, men, and use Linux!!



(So that's for Vista from me, BTW)

James.

Ok before I start, I will say that I am a systems programmer with 10 years of experience on both Windows and Linux

Originally Posted by minstrel

My biggest gripe about Windows, apart from the general suckiness of how it does things in the background and that you have to REBOOT ever time you install system upgrades and certain software and that it has more holes than a swiss cheese and that it's bloated beyond belief, is the way applications can make things go tits up.

While you do (often) have to restart for system updates, it can usually be deferred by clicking 'later'. I shutdown my pc every night. Big deal.

More holes than swiss cheese? If the firewall is enabled, nothing gets in.
The major cause of virus infection and worms are still naive / uncaring users who click everything they get via mail or downloads.

Originally Posted by minstrel

I mean, sure, I've had applications crash under X-Windows on Linux, but then the application disappears and you get a core dump file you have to delete, but nothing else happens. On Windows, an application crashing can kill other applications, and can even bring up the Blue Screen Of Death, or in some instances even reboot the computer without telling you there was a problem. Not very user friendly, IMHO.

Applications cannot ever bring on the blue screen of death. only kernel components can. an app crash does not cause a reboot either.
Applications can crash, but they won't take others with them. each app runs in its own memory space.
What you said was true for windows 98 and windows Me. all other versions of winows that grew out of the NT family has not had this problems.
The only blue screens I experienced in the last 5 years were caused by crappy device drivers, and a couple of times failing hardware.
dead hardware will cause any consumer system to crash. Analysis has shown that 3d party drivers and bad hardware in total cause > 80 % of all system failures.

Originally Posted by minstrel

Having said that, Windows wins hands down if you look at hardware support. Plug a new piece of consumer hardware into it, and it usually works. It may be annoying to wait while Windows installs the hardware drivers (with rebooting occurring now and then) to get it to work, but at least it works. With Linux you have to tweak the system by hand much of the time, install half-assed home cooked drivers, and pray to Linus Torvalds that it will work, and even then you might have to besiege some haughty Linux gurus online and nag them into revealing the arcane secret switches you didn't know existed and didn't know you had to supply to the driver in order to get things to work properly.

Linux has it's good points, though it is decidely not user friendly. there are basically 2 ways to get someone to answer your questions:
1) grovel, and complain how you really would like to use this perfect system called linux, if only you could get X to work.
2) post an angry message, saying that linux is stupid because it can't do X. then you will quickly get 3 ways to do X.

what annoys me about linux is that there are no stable releases, there is no system level design documentation that is written down somewhere, documentation is usually out of date and hardly any component has a design phase BEFORE it gets coded. This leads to such things as the whole USB subsystem being ripped out and recoded 3 times with totally incompatible new susbsytems.

Originally Posted by minstrel

OTOH, when some hardware doesn't work on Windows, it's usually close to impossible to coax the system into making it work, for a layman...

The same goes for linux. if your hardware is not supported right out of the box, or with a simple recompile, it is close to impossible to get it to work unless you are a C or C++ programmer.

Originally Posted by minstrel

Edit: Oh, and regarding the original post: Windows Vista... I've heard that some software that works under Windows XP won't work on Windows Vista, so unless you are going to buy all software new and "Vista proof", you probably should stick with XP.

Let me tell you this as a programmer: The design principles that were guidelines under XP are now enforced rules under Vista.
With XP, programs are free to leave files pretty much anywhere, and even default users have read/write access in the program files directory
Microsoft gets flack for delivering an OS that is not compatible with its predecessor, yet at the same time they would get flack if it would not be more secure.
Linux is incompatible even between point releases and minor updates.
But that is all water under the bridge. Check up-front if your software runs on Vista. If it doesn't, stick with XP.

I hope this post did not come off as hostile, but a lot of people seem to think that linux is so much better than windows. It isn't.
Well, it is, for a given value of better. Better usually being philosophical or political reasons.

Quality wise, the BSDs like FreeBSD or OpenBSD are much more polished and generally much more stable than Linux. They are designed up front and come with accurate documentation and how-tos.
But of course, they don't use the GPL license so they are shunned by the fanboys and the 'cool' crowd.