Örn Hansen wrote 13 June 2004 13:01
söndag 13 juni 2004 07:57 skrev John Andersen:
(Of course, I won't mention the fact that even with Windows 98-XP installed you STILL are not thru buying stuff just to
finish your next
great novel or balance your checkbook. - No, you have another couple hundered bucks of software to buy). Ooops, I guess I did mention it.
Windows XP is actually quite a nice system Fact of the matter is, if Microsoft had made Windows NT the way XP is, Linux probably would never have gotten a chance. As of now, they're a bit late with it as everyone, including me, is a bit sceptic about it's stability. Sceptisism that has come from having seen to many blue screens.
This is what many of the fanatics on this list fail to understand. XP does do a lot well, and many people are very happy running it. Much of the problem with windows lies in the reputation, richly deserved, that it built for itself with previous versions. XP is not windows 95 or NT, or even 2000. In the pro version I have been using it reliably for many months. I have rarely seen a BSoD and have managed to spend my time doing the things that I want to do with my computer, not fixing problems which is what I have found on the Linux box. I have seen the equivalent of the BSoD on Linux, infact worse because crashes have given me nothing except a locked keyboard mouse and screen and nothing useful in the logs about the cause. Like with XP these are likely to be due to bad hardware, poor drivers, bad software, or simply bad setup on my part. Most of which I have now resolved with SuSE 9.0 pro, but it puts me off even contemplating embarking on an upgrade to 9.1 and I have disabled the auto-update feature because I have read of problems that occur when downloads have not worked as planned.
About safety, there is a personal firewall (a sort of, anyway) inside Windows XP ... it may have flaws and stuff, but it's still there and provides some security. And on the issue of "professionalism", as an arguement, then Linux is still going a very similar way and making a separate Enterprise version that does cost a lot of money. But Linux has, a lot more options and usable software out of the box, than Windows does. That part is undeniable. Not to mention, the open source, makes it very hard to include undesired code in the product. However, it does not exclude it, as with time people will start trusting the software and thus stop scrutinising it ...
Agreed, you get a lot for your money with Linux, and much of it is useful. Much is also not useful or specialist and I have yet to be tempted to change as I have already invested much in my XP setup. To me the greatest investment is in time and effort configuring and running the software as you like it, that takes a great deal more than simply installing it. Linux, to me is harder to configure and more quirky about its setup than XP. Damon