Mike McCarty wrote:
Well said. Just another "I hate MicroSoft and am envious of their success." story. Somehow, in these days, being successful has become eeeevil. I think it may have to do with the idea that there is a limited amount of wealth in the world, and when someone amasses wealth, then someone else is losing wealth. I know that I have encountered that sort of belief in strong union supporters who believe that there are a limited number of jobs around, and we have to spread them out over the people who exist.
That's a bunch of crap. I tried Windows when it was v2.0 and crashed so often DOS apps were more attractive. I LOVED 3.1 and 3.11 and even liked WIN95. I started using Excel and Word well before they became office suite giants (and loved them). I do not begrudge Gates, et al. one cent... in fact, I applaud their initiative, drive, and success(es). That success is the epitome of the American Dream.
I became disillusioned with Microsoft when they started bullying companies, created the registry fiasco, rushed incomplete (and inferior) products to market, and has produced an operating system so insecure it spawned an industry of virus / adware / spyware software companies. I have worked (as a profession) on every Windows OS since 3.11 through XP. I am underwhelmed.
I too cut my teeth on RH v6.0. I must have installed it two dozen times before I got the hang of it... which coincides with my experiences with WIN 2.0 - with the notable exception that Linux did not crash unless I "experimented" and crashed it. It did not fail on its own, it failed because I did not know how to use it. And I had similar experiences with Windows... tweaking DOS, etc...
After the Code Red debacle, I made a conscious choice to leave Windows behind... I was M$ free until late last year when I had to use Windows for school. Much to my chagrin, I had to install XP Pro to complete course work.
The XP Pro install took over three hours from start to finish where (on the same machine) a typical Fedora installation took me just about an hour. The third party apps I had to install to complete my course work did not work as advertised (which was the norm), were slow to start, and would lock up or crash randomly. On the other hand, on the same machine (pre-M$), I had a Fedora 2 system up for 130+ days without rebooting (I did not update the kernel) and used it for web development (Jedit, Apache / MySQL / PHP), school (OpenOffice), email (Evolution), and web browsing (Firefox). The window appearance was comparable with the XP Pro install.
Lastly, I recently purchased an HP Pavillion notebook with the AMD Turion 64 chip which came with XP Media (32 bit). It came with two 100 G hard drives so I used one drive for XP and installed Fedora 4 (64 bit). The two issues that I had to resolve with Fedora was getting the wireless to work (which was made more difficult by the manufacturer telling me the wrong chipset for the computer) and the ATI video driver. Since resolving those two issues, I boot Fedora with no problems and no crashes / lockups / other mishaps.
It is important to note that the ONLY reason I kept XP was that I recently became addicted to a game called "Call of Duty" and since Windows is the only OS it will run on, I decided to keep it.
When I boot into XP, a good 20% (one out of five) of the time, I watch a black screen for about two minutes until the HP splash screen appears. During these times, XP takes about twice as long as Fedora to boot up (measured to the log in screen). Chances are about even that I will get a pop-up message that the HP wireless helper will not work (even though it seems it is working). Also, if I push any of the keys which control the sound output (mute, volume control) on the keyboard, XP takes significantly longer to boot and then will not work as advertised. With my XP, I was lucky enough to have a plethora of marketing / adware installed (which I never asked for) to suck money out of my wallet which instead uses system resources that I prefer to use elsewhere. When I delete the shortcut, I am told that I have to uninstall the program... yet, when I go to uninstall these programs, they (mysteriously) are not there. Plus, because Windows is so vulnerable, I have to have anti-virus / anti-spyware/adware software installed which also uses system resources I prefer to use for other things.
Bottom line is: I do not use Windows (except for gaming) because it is an inferior Operating System. It is buggy, prone to unexplained crashes, vulnerable, and Microsoft has become a monolith which is poorly suited to react to the multitude of deficiencies and vulnerabilitities of its products.
I use Linux because it is a vastly superior operating system, not because I am anti-Bill Gates. I use OpenOffice because it does what M$ office does without the price tag. I prefer the *nix method of putting together small tools which can be used together for a big job as opposed to a "one-size-fits-all" application designed by someone whose primary goal is to profit from selling me something, not solving my problems.
So... stop the boo-hoo'ing about people being anti-success... we are not anti-success, we are anti-shoddy products... which is what M$ Windows is.
Regards, Ken Nordquist
