also, excel on windows is extraordinary useful if you're a power user. there's nothing like it on other platforms, and don't say excel for mac or even worse numbers for mac.
Excel...the Windows killer-app. You Sir^H^H^H"Power-User", made my day.
Sorry that it hurts so much, but so, so true in the business world.
I love Linux. I use it for servers, I've rolled my own kernels, even my own embedded distros (and I mean back before Knoppix remastering made that trivially easy). But for day to day desktop use?
Quite simply, Linux sucks ass as a desktop OS. Some of that doesn't count as its own fault, but rather, that of a Windows-centric world. Others (like getting something as basic as sound to work reliably), I consider a major shortcoming. Either way, sorry, but I just can't call myself a desktop Linux user. And I say that as someone who would switch in a frickin' heartbeat if it really counted as a serious option.
For home use, I could probably get away with it. But at the office, no way in hell.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Saturday June 08, 2013 @09:34PM (#43949281)
Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
While at Microsoft for a meeting, Misty Silver saw and overheard some employees on Reddit. She looked at one of the employee’s screens:
“I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One,” Silver reported.
“Reputation management” is the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
I did read somewhere that the XBox One will have a mandated phone-home function for the software run on it......which kinda sucks for those without a landline....or cable/DSL....or MiFi.
I don't think it was anything to do with the uproar, it was to do with Sony's announcement at E3 that the PS4 specifically *would not have a phone home feature* which immediately upstaged Microsoft at the event.
Slashdot, don't just up-vote a comment just because it's anti-Microsoft. Even the reddit mods have come to the conclusion that it was all one big troll:
Social advertising has become a staple of the media mix as marketers look to leverage their campaigns to drive valuable word of mouth and influence. Microsoft Advertising has helped some of the world’s biggest brands tell their stories
If it stinks of paid shill, check the posting history of the user. In this case, GP (pla) seems to be a quite normal user. He posts about a lot of different things, only some of them related to Microsoft.
My verdict: pla is not a representative of Microsoft
Thank you. This anti-XBox-One [slashdot.org] rant from just last week might have put the nail in that particular coffin, if most people had bothered to look.;)
All companies do this. They're smart about it, too. They know that the first vote a post gets determines its fate 90% of the time. Say something negative about McDonald's in one of those "random" Reddit threads titled "This wouldn't have happened if he'd just gotten a McRib", and watch how quickly you get that first downvote.
The sad thing is, 90% of people on social media will think you're some kind of conspiracist if you imply that corporations are somehow guiding the otherwise advertising-free and cost-fr
"Reputation management" is the term social media marketers use to âoepose as happy customersâ on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
Another term for this is fraudulent advertising. "Posing" as a customer is a form of lying. It's no different from claiming that one can sell somebody the Brooklyn Bridge.
I'd say that a fundamental right arising under the 9th Amendment is the right to have not businesses engaging in false advertising, making this conduct illegal. This right supersedes the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Any legal professional working for a company that engages in such practices has a responsibility under his or
Ah! I didn't really think about that. He's an Excel user, that explains it. My wife is an Excel wizard and she hardly knows how to use a computer at all. It's just something to boot into Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
What is the point of an operating system if not to run programs? For some, computers can be a hobby, but when you need to do work, you don't do that with an operating system but a program inside one.
From a CS point of view, an user should never even touch or see the operating system. Everything is either application or shell. iOS and Android are so well received because they perfectioned this. You either are in an application, or you see the shell with the icons to choose the next app.
Just because the shell I use the most isn't as colourful, and the icons are what are called "characters" for the most part, doesn't make it any less powerful than a GUI shell.
No-one directly uses the OS, even if they write some kind of scary low-level shell that directly calls kernel functions by typing their names, they are still in an application.
Not universally. PulseAudio has a spaz and dies for me, often, if you break the audio stream up enough. Alas, this includes doing things like seeking around in videos. You have to kill it manually, and then you usually have to restart any applications that were connected to it so they can re-establish their sessions. It does seem tied to the audio hardware - it only occurs on one machine for me.
It's annoying, and probably doesn't occur on most hardware.
It doesn't wreck Linux as a desktop platform for me - I
Agreed. USB audio is especially tedious to get to work reliably and, more importantly, easily. I use a Linux PC with Ubuntu Studio to record speeches and occasionally play some background music. Our mixing board has a built-in USB audio interface that should "just work" (at least it does in Windows). With the Linux PC, we have to jump through many hoops to get it to work. Basically, it never shows up in Pulseaudio, so we need to use JACK and link it up to PulseAudio. Which means that we have to start up the
My response to the question is simple too: WORKSFORME
Sometimes it seems to me the Desktop Linux developers are actually trying to sabotage Desktop Linux and not make it better. Whenever Microsoft screws up, they try to make Desktop Linux even worse!
So I've given up on Desktop Linux. Server Linux on the other hand is generally better than Windows. Windows is terrible for servers. For example, going through the event logs to find out stuff is such a pain and an often fruitless endeavour. Stuff on unix/Linux s
Ubuntu is not "the be all and end all" of Linux, it is simply a distribution designed to be usable by the average Windows user if they want to give it a try.
Yes, by all means state that it can take a lot of time and effort to get a desktop Linux distro working exactly the way that you want it but others will state that is simply a trade-off for having the flexibility to combine countless desktop environments and window managers in pretty much any way you want. Ubuntu's Unity is merely one facet of that flexibility, I personally couldn't think of a more horrific desktop environment to use but if others like it, so be it, it doesn't affect me doing stuff the way that I want to.
Although I've used both Windows and Linux extensively over the years, XP with the Classic desktop was, for me, the closest Microsoft got to a perfect desktop environment, that's why I'm still using Gnome 2 at the moment because it works very similarly to Windows Classic.
I tried Windows 7, I even bought a shop copy and played with it for 2 weeks but I found the Aero interface ugly and cumbersome to use, even the Classic interface in 7 was just a poor approximation of the one in XP.
"Sabotage" is the wrong word to have used in this instance. If you're saying that the Gnome and Ubuntu devs made some bad design decisions with Gnome 3 and Unity respectively then I couldn't agree more, and I've never liked KDE full stop. But there's plenty of other alternatives out there and whilst it may need some time and effort to slot everything together, it's perfectly possible to have a nice slick Linux desktop system to work in.
1. I'm a control freak when it comes to the computers I use. I want to know exactly what is running on them, when it's running and why it's running. I want the ability to customise it completely to my requirements, I want to be able to remove anything I don't need and add anything that I want to add. If, with that level of control, I mess things up then I accept full responsibility for doing it, I don't need to place that responsibility into the hands of some corpo
More often than not, the "power users" you're referring to are the people copying and pasting from one CRM system to a spreadsheet, shipping the spreadsheet to someone as an attachment, and that person putting it into another. They're all automatically generated sheets.
I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.
And at no time did you realize that it's the completely wrong tool to use for that and that there's better and easier ways to manipulate that kind of data (if you even need it, most of those intermediate data points will never be used)? Wow, that's grade A level incompetence there.
pop quiz hot shot, which tools do you think would have been better? then I'll tell you why you're wrong. and yes, I'm "using" all those intermediate data points.
I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.
Model building like that is probably better done in R anyway
<quote> <quote><p>I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.</p></quote>
<p>Model building like that is probably better done in R anyway</p></quote>
I'd call that a miracle more than a power user. When I tried to to this kind of thing more than a decade ago in Excel, it kept crashing and that was two orders of magnitude lower than your 10^6. It was one of the reasons I learned Matlab. And then soon after I thought, hey as far as I have to learn a new scripting language, why not do it open-source. Booted Linux and never looked back. And who wants to try and remember the meaning of column AJR anyway ?
that's because before excel 2007 you were limited to 32k rows. excel 2007 upped the ante to at least a million rows and many more powerful formulas, enabling more sophisticated analysis. if you rejected excel a decade go because it was underpowered, then it's worth trying again.
If your definition of a desktop OS is running "windows centric apps" then I can see why Linux sucks for you. As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing. The programs on my Mac are much better than the Linux video applications but things there are improving. Having used Linux as my primary desktop for 14 years I've never been tempted to use windows for my home system but then I don't really play games. If I was a video game player I'd have to dual boot 'cause Linux gaming is really pretty far behind. I don't get the sound problem. Haven't seen that in like 8 or 9 years. Wifi was the last real hurdle I had for a Linux install and that's been about 3 years since I've had to open a terminal to fix that.
I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
Nearly identical experience except for me it's video editing and Lightroom 4. I use AfterShot Pro on Ubuntu but like the color tools better in Lightroom. That and Netflix, but that's available on Android now.
It's not going to be Linux that kills Windows, Android is the real killer. And as soon as video and photo editing are available, there won't be anyone using Windows at home
As I am sure you know, Android is built on top of Linux. I have one Android phone, but haven't used it as a desktop OS at all. Do you know if it is relatively simple to add free or open source software to the few Android desktop devices now available? It seems to me that so long an Android is not locked down for desktop users that we would gain much that we look for in Linux.
Also, I keep seeing more and more business applications migrating to a web-centric OS neutral model using servers that are Linux
On most Android devices, you can enable the "Unknown sources" option in the settings menu and install packages directly from.apk files, bypassing the Play Store completely. It does require the developer to make an.apk file available directly, of course. For instance, the Humble Bundle app is installed this way: https://www.humblebundle.com/app [humblebundle.com]
I've recently replaced my aging netbook with an Android tablet and I love it. I'm still in the process of finding the best apps for my needs, it's a completely diffe
As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
For me it's: - Drivers: Any device I buy has Windows drivers and can be up and running in minutes. - Games: Started as a PC Gamer, switched to Xbox for Gears of War, PS3 cause my brother-in-law had one, back to the PC cause Skyrim DLCs weren't available for the PS3. Kicking myself for ever switching. Compared to PC gaming, consoles are just toys!! - Video Editing: Many more programs etc. for the PC - Financial Apps: I keep track of my finances on my PC with apps that aren't available on LINUX or the MAC.
If your definition of a desktop OS is running "windows centric apps" then I can see why Linux sucks for you. As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
But since damn near everything of interest in OSX and LINUX is ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app, if you are comfortable in the Windows environment there is no compelling reason to leave it.
Because some company tools are only available on Windows, especially some management software for the systems we build, I am forced to use Windows. There is even one tool to keep track of the tickets that runs only on Windows XP, thus I have to have a VMware on my company system just to fire up XP. But one of the first things to install on any fresh Windows for me is Cygwin - just to actually use Windows. rsync -av is still a backup tool that suits my needs perfectly.
I much prefer either Linux or OS X, or any unix-based system over Windows. I have used Linux as a desktop OS and as a server OS. I have also used Windows IIS for web server, and would rather deal with Apache and perl. I would much rather write a bash script or an Applescript than a batch file. YMMV.
The definition of "power user" frequently means "I'm too set in my ways and too bloody lazy to possibly save myself some money by spending a little of my incredibly valuable time to install and play with some of the free alternatives to Windows-only applications."
I think Canonical is trying to do this with Ubuntu which may be why I don't like Ubuntu anymore. I've installed Ubuntu for several of my friends who didn't need any windows applications and all of them have been really happy with it. Every single one of them was amazed at how fast it ran compared to their former windows installs and after a few questions here and there they generally had no problem using it for the things they needed. Of course how difficult is it to use a browser for Facebook, an e-mail
Every time this type of question comes up someone pipes up with this kind of statement.
It always makes me wonder if I'm the only one that has zero problems with sound? Or pretty much anything? Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
For other desktop uses I again must just be some kind of freak outlier. The only time I've had problems using Linux in the office was when I worked at places that were outright Linux (really "non-Windows") hostile and would actively prevent you from using anything else or at best just didn't help a lick. If it wasn't that kind of place I had no problems doing everything everyone else was doing. Maybe it was just that my job didn't require me to be some fancy Excel jockey or something.
It always makes me wonder if I'm the only one that has zero problems with sound?
No, you're not. My guess is that the OP is a Windows fanboi regurgitating anti-Linux talking points from over fifteen years ago. I'm surprised that he's not also complaining about how hard it is to configure X and getting it running properly or to find a printer that works with it.
Or you are a Linux fanboi. I installed linux on my media server just last year and it did not work with the optical audio, After a couple of hours I gave up.
Both my sister and I have been using Linux as our sole OS for over five years now. Neither of us has had the slightest problem getting sound to work over several different computers, using various releases of Fedora for me and Ubuntu for her. I follow several different support forums for Fedora, and questions about getting sound to work have gotten
Pulseaudio always struck me as a solution in search of a problem. The only time I ever had trouble getting sound to work with Linux was when pulseaudio was new; now, It Just Works, for the most part.
You've missed the point. I'll quote it by itself so it doesn't happen again:
Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
This person checks the hardware support list for his distro of choice and makes purchasing decisions based upon it. 99.9% of the home computer users in the world don't do that. They log on to Amazon or drive to WalMart or whatever big-name IT retailer is local and buy whatever they damn well want and it will always work on Windows. When Linux has that kind of hardware support, you'll see Linux start to get desktop adoption.
I was a Linux user starting in 1995. I have yet to have a Linux work well with whatever my current hardware is.
Right now for example I'm having horrrible trouble with EFI boot sequences. If I could those to work I know I'd have a whole nothing round of problems with high DPI screen. I might have wireless or bluetooth problems since those are common.
Linux does a tremendous job running on a huge range of hardware given its limited budget for QA on hardware configs and mechanisms for complex problem resolu
I switched to Linux as my desktop OS in 2002 and haven't looked back. Back it the day it was pretty hairy but it was still such a breath a fresh air that I was willing to put up with it. These days, it's pretty much plain sailing!:-) Running Debian Sid with Awesome window manager, so I can be quietly amused when I hear people bitching about the latest versions of Gnome and Ubuntu.:-)
I do have to run a few windows-only apps in the office - Outlook and Lync being the main ones, but for that I
so I can be quietly amused when I hear people bitching about the latest versions of Gnome and Ubuntu.:-)
I don't like Unity either, but xUbuntu with xfce works fine for me.
Even so, I'm still mostly on Windows due to gaming. For my everyday non-gaming usage, the systems are pretty much equal. Web browsing works fine on both systems, and LibreOffice is cross-platform too.
Last week I bought myself a new Lenovo laptop for use with Linux with a nice JBL speaker-based hi quality sound system built in.
Don't get me wrong, once I wiped Windows 8 and started the Linux install (using source-based Gentoo Linux) I knew I'd have some fiddling to do with EFI booting, power management and few other bits and pieces, some of which I am still tweaking now - but I'd planned for that.
Sound was never an issue on it, however. I installed Gnome and PulseAudio as usual, tried a few FLAC files fro
It always makes me wonder if I'm the only one that has zero problems with sound? Or pretty much anything? Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
Well, last time I had to reinstall my work PC it took at least half a day, what with hunting down the driver CDs (without which even the ethernet port didn't work, so no downloading them), and figuring out which license keys to use, and where to download every individual software package.
Oh wait, got it a bit mixed up. Nops, Linux also works fine for me, last reinstall took at most half an hour to get the system running, which happily included office, and about another half hour to remember which other pack
Yeah. Even though there are usually some kind of hardware problems upon Linux installation, I was pleasantly surprised Putting Ubuntu 13.04 last week on a HP SpectreXT ultrabook: not a single problem. Zilch. Nada. Once UEFI was removed and the installed finished, the thing worked out of the box with Linux. I dropped the/home of my wife on it and she kept using it like it was the old one. 15 minutes top between turning it on the first time and her taking over. Beat that Windows, hah!
HEY EVERYONE!!! pla HAS CRACKED IT!!! HE HAS THE ANSWER!!! LINUX IS SHIT ON THE DESKTOP!!!
Here was me, running Linux Gnome desktops and laptops for at least the past 10 years, thinking it ran perfectly fine.... and then you make this comment and all of I sudden I see how right you are!
That's it, I'm finished with this conversation as I scrabble for my car keys and dive to the nearest computer store that is open on a Sunday for a Windows installation DVD.
I like how you only provide vague claims. Surely mr 'roll my own kernel' can give us more detail on how the sound ( or anything else) is busted. I'd like to know given Ubuntu has worked just fine for me for the past 7 years aside from a few wifi issues which haven't been a problem in at least 4 years.
I don't think that you can call the linux desktop a "toy and novelty", for example the KDE plasma desktop kills windows 7 in it's look, feel and power.
Yes it doesn't have the areo features that windows 7 does, but still I think the main problem for people who don't use linux is that certan hardware doesn't work with it,
most does but wireless is diffucult
"I love Linux. I use it for servers, I've rolled my own kernels, even my own embedded distros (and I mean back before Knoppix remastering made that trivially easy). But for day to day desktop use?"
I've been totally Linux only at home for over three years, and haven't noticed the loss and I've never had to compile a kernel. I don't 'love' Linux, I find it just works.
Business world, huh? I finally switched my business laptop full-time (after being on & off for about 6 years) a little over a year ago, and I'm finding a significantly different experience to you, but considering that my use of Excel may be comparatively basic (as I'm not writing macros or anything like that), Libreoffice seems to handle the relatively complex formulas and dynamic linking between documents that I need. It handles my document templates perfectly well, and my presentations are just as exc
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Informative)
For actual work and play I use windows. Everything works best on it.
Every now and then I boot into the latest linux distro currently in favor and give it a spin. And I've always ended up disappointed.
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You Sir^H^H^H"Power-User", made my day.
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry that it hurts so much, but so, so true in the business world.
I love Linux. I use it for servers, I've rolled my own kernels, even my own embedded distros (and I mean back before Knoppix remastering made that trivially easy). But for day to day desktop use?
Quite simply, Linux sucks ass as a desktop OS. Some of that doesn't count as its own fault, but rather, that of a Windows-centric world. Others (like getting something as basic as sound to work reliably), I consider a major shortcoming. Either way, sorry, but I just can't call myself a desktop Linux user. And I say that as someone who would switch in a frickin' heartbeat if it really counted as a serious option.
For home use, I could probably get away with it. But at the office, no way in hell.
Microsoft Hired People To Make Positive Comments (Score:4, Informative)
Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
While at Microsoft for a meeting, Misty Silver saw and overheard some employees on Reddit. She looked at one of the employee’s screens:
“I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One,” Silver reported.
“Reputation management” is the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
http://au.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-comments-2013-6 [businessinsider.com] [businessinsider.com] [businessinsider.com]
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It's her stripper name [thejuicyj.com].
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was that a question or a statement?
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I did read somewhere that the XBox One will have a mandated phone-home function for the software run on it... ...which kinda sucks for those without a landline. ...or cable/DSL. ...or MiFi.
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I don't think it was anything to do with the uproar, it was to do with Sony's announcement at E3 that the PS4 specifically *would not have a phone home feature* which immediately upstaged Microsoft at the event.
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Ah yes, the old "I dont like what hes saying so Ill just call him a shill" technique.
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Slashdot, don't just up-vote a comment just because it's anti-Microsoft. Even the reddit mods have come to the conclusion that it was all one big troll:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fyjgr/regarding_xbox_one_and_allegations_of_voterigging/ [reddit.com]
Fucking hell /.'s, you're supposed to be smarter and more critical of things than the general public.
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82 results fo Social Media Marketing at Microsoft jobs
https://www.linkedin.com/job/q-social-media-marketing-c-microsoft-jobs [linkedin.com]
Social advertising has become a staple of the media mix as marketers look to leverage their campaigns to drive valuable word of mouth and influence. Microsoft Advertising has helped some of the world’s biggest brands tell their stories
http://advertising.microsoft.com/en-us/social-media [microsoft.com]
Case Study: How Does Microsoft Do Social Media Marketing?
http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php? [socialmediatoday.com]
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If it stinks of paid shill, check the posting history of the user. In this case, GP (pla) seems to be a quite normal user. He posts about a lot of different things, only some of them related to Microsoft.
My verdict: pla is not a representative of Microsoft
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All companies do this. They're smart about it, too. They know that the first vote a post gets determines its fate 90% of the time. Say something negative about McDonald's in one of those "random" Reddit threads titled "This wouldn't have happened if he'd just gotten a McRib", and watch how quickly you get that first downvote.
The sad thing is, 90% of people on social media will think you're some kind of conspiracist if you imply that corporations are somehow guiding the otherwise advertising-free and cost-fr
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"Reputation management" is the term social media marketers use to âoepose as happy customersâ on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
Another term for this is fraudulent advertising. "Posing" as a customer is a form of lying. It's no different from claiming that one can sell somebody the Brooklyn Bridge.
I'd say that a fundamental right arising under the 9th Amendment is the right to have not businesses engaging in false advertising, making this conduct illegal. This right supersedes the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Any legal professional working for a company that engages in such practices has a responsibility under his or
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Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah! I didn't really think about that. He's an Excel user, that explains it. My wife is an Excel wizard and she hardly knows how to use a computer at all. It's just something to boot into Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
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There are shells and shells.
Just because the shell I use the most isn't as colourful, and the icons are what are called "characters" for the most part, doesn't make it any less powerful than a GUI shell.
No-one directly uses the OS, even if they write some kind of scary low-level shell that directly calls kernel functions by typing their names, they are still in an application.
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It's almost as if normal people use computers to get stuff done, not just for the sake of using a computer.
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Not universally. PulseAudio has a spaz and dies for me, often, if you break the audio stream up enough. Alas, this includes doing things like seeking around in videos. You have to kill it manually, and then you usually have to restart any applications that were connected to it so they can re-establish their sessions. It does seem tied to the audio hardware - it only occurs on one machine for me.
It's annoying, and probably doesn't occur on most hardware.
It doesn't wreck Linux as a desktop platform for me - I
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Agreed. USB audio is especially tedious to get to work reliably and, more importantly, easily. I use a Linux PC with Ubuntu Studio to record speeches and occasionally play some background music. Our mixing board has a built-in USB audio interface that should "just work" (at least it does in Windows). With the Linux PC, we have to jump through many hoops to get it to work. Basically, it never shows up in Pulseaudio, so we need to use JACK and link it up to PulseAudio. Which means that we have to start up the
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Quite simply, Linux sucks ass as a desktop OS.
Yeah, but it still has a way better Solitaire game.
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LOL To be fair, my response to this question is pretty simple:
I like Windows, I prefer it, I've tried alternatives, and I'm happy with it. I use it because it suits my needs.
Sometimes I even use Mandriva and any web-facing servers that I touch I prefer to run CentOS.
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My response to the question is simple too: WORKSFORME
Sometimes it seems to me the Desktop Linux developers are actually trying to sabotage Desktop Linux and not make it better. Whenever Microsoft screws up, they try to make Desktop Linux even worse!
So I've given up on Desktop Linux. Server Linux on the other hand is generally better than Windows. Windows is terrible for servers. For example, going through the event logs to find out stuff is such a pain and an often fruitless endeavour. Stuff on unix/Linux s
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubuntu is not "the be all and end all" of Linux, it is simply a distribution designed to be usable by the average Windows user if they want to give it a try.
Yes, by all means state that it can take a lot of time and effort to get a desktop Linux distro working exactly the way that you want it but others will state that is simply a trade-off for having the flexibility to combine countless desktop environments and window managers in pretty much any way you want. Ubuntu's Unity is merely one facet of that flexibility, I personally couldn't think of a more horrific desktop environment to use but if others like it, so be it, it doesn't affect me doing stuff the way that I want to.
Although I've used both Windows and Linux extensively over the years, XP with the Classic desktop was, for me, the closest Microsoft got to a perfect desktop environment, that's why I'm still using Gnome 2 at the moment because it works very similarly to Windows Classic.
I tried Windows 7, I even bought a shop copy and played with it for 2 weeks but I found the Aero interface ugly and cumbersome to use, even the Classic interface in 7 was just a poor approximation of the one in XP.
"Sabotage" is the wrong word to have used in this instance. If you're saying that the Gnome and Ubuntu devs made some bad design decisions with Gnome 3 and Unity respectively then I couldn't agree more, and I've never liked KDE full stop. But there's plenty of other alternatives out there and whilst it may need some time and effort to slot everything together, it's perfectly possible to have a nice slick Linux desktop system to work in.
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Okay, here's why, for me, Windows won't do:
1. I'm a control freak when it comes to the computers I use. I want to know exactly what is running on them, when it's running and why it's running. I want the ability to customise it completely to my requirements, I want to be able to remove anything I don't need and add anything that I want to add. If, with that level of control, I mess things up then I accept full responsibility for doing it, I don't need to place that responsibility into the hands of some corpo
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More often than not, the "power users" you're referring to are the people copying and pasting from one CRM system to a spreadsheet, shipping the spreadsheet to someone as an attachment, and that person putting it into another. They're all automatically generated sheets.
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Funny)
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And at no time did you realize that it's the completely wrong tool to use for that and that there's better and easier ways to manipulate that kind of data (if you even need it, most of those intermediate data points will never be used)? Wow, that's grade A level incompetence there.
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Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Insightful)
You really put over a million records into a single excel spreadsheet and this was a good thing?
Just cause you have a hammer doesn't actually mean all the world is nails.
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"Excel power user" == Someone who can't write code or use SQL.
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Someone takes their hobby a bit serious. Come up from the basement and get some sunshine, you can plant miniature trees later.
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:4, Informative)
I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.
Model building like that is probably better done in R anyway
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<quote><p>I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.</p></quote>
<p>Model building like that is probably better done in R anyway</p></quote>
Indeed, especially as Excel doesn'
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Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Informative)
If your definition of a desktop OS is running "windows centric apps" then I can see why Linux sucks for you. As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing. The programs on my Mac are much better than the Linux video applications but things there are improving. Having used Linux as my primary desktop for 14 years I've never been tempted to use windows for my home system but then I don't really play games. If I was a video game player I'd have to dual boot 'cause Linux gaming is really pretty far behind. I don't get the sound problem. Haven't seen that in like 8 or 9 years. Wifi was the last real hurdle I had for a Linux install and that's been about 3 years since I've had to open a terminal to fix that.
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I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
Nearly identical experience except for me it's video editing and Lightroom 4. I use AfterShot Pro on Ubuntu but like the color tools better in Lightroom. That and Netflix, but that's available on Android now.
It's not going to be Linux that kills Windows, Android is the real killer. And as soon as video and photo editing are available, there won't be anyone using Windows at home
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On most Android devices, you can enable the "Unknown sources" option in the settings menu and install packages directly from .apk files, bypassing the Play Store completely. It does require the developer to make an .apk file available directly, of course. For instance, the Humble Bundle app is installed this way: https://www.humblebundle.com/app [humblebundle.com]
I've recently replaced my aging netbook with an Android tablet and I love it. I'm still in the process of finding the best apps for my needs, it's a completely diffe
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As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
For me it's:
- Drivers: Any device I buy has Windows drivers and can be up and running in minutes.
- Games: Started as a PC Gamer, switched to Xbox for Gears of War, PS3 cause my brother-in-law had one, back to the PC cause Skyrim DLCs weren't available for the PS3. Kicking myself for ever switching. Compared to PC gaming, consoles are just toys!!
- Video Editing: Many more programs etc. for the PC
- Financial Apps: I keep track of my finances on my PC with apps that aren't available on LINUX or the MAC.
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If your definition of a desktop OS is running "windows centric apps" then I can see why Linux sucks for you. As a desktop for me it's fabulous. I can do anything I need to do on a Linux desktop and the only place I find the need to use another OS is in video editing.
But since damn near everything of interest in OSX and LINUX is ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app, if you are comfortable in the Windows environment there is no compelling reason to leave it.
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(I wonder if ComWin runs on WINE, didn
Re: because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:2)
I much prefer either Linux or OS X, or any unix-based system over Windows. I have used Linux as a desktop OS and as a server OS. I have also used Windows IIS for web server, and would rather deal with Apache and perl. I would much rather write a bash script or an Applescript than a batch file. YMMV.
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The definition of "power user" frequently means "I'm too set in my ways and too bloody lazy to possibly save myself some money by spending a little of my incredibly valuable time to install and play with some of the free alternatives to Windows-only applications."
Just thought I'd mention it... :-)
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I think Canonical is trying to do this with Ubuntu which may be why I don't like Ubuntu anymore. I've installed Ubuntu for several of my friends who didn't need any windows applications and all of them have been really happy with it. Every single one of them was amazed at how fast it ran compared to their former windows installs and after a few questions here and there they generally had no problem using it for the things they needed. Of course how difficult is it to use a browser for Facebook, an e-mail
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Sounds like where Android is headed.
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I love how everyone thinks "current crappy company I work for"="buisness world".
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time this type of question comes up someone pipes up with this kind of statement.
It always makes me wonder if I'm the only one that has zero problems with sound? Or pretty much anything? Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
For other desktop uses I again must just be some kind of freak outlier. The only time I've had problems using Linux in the office was when I worked at places that were outright Linux (really "non-Windows") hostile and would actively prevent you from using anything else or at best just didn't help a lick. If it wasn't that kind of place I had no problems doing everything everyone else was doing. Maybe it was just that my job didn't require me to be some fancy Excel jockey or something.
Am I really alone in that?
Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're not. My guess is that the OP is a Windows fanboi regurgitating anti-Linux talking points from over fifteen years ago. I'm surprised that he's not also complaining about how hard it is to configure X and getting it running properly or to find a printer that works with it.
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Both my sister and I have been using Linux as our sole OS for over five years now. Neither of us has had the slightest problem getting sound to work over several different computers, using various releases of Fedora for me and Ubuntu for her. I follow several different support forums for Fedora, and questions about getting sound to work have gotten
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Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware ?
This person checks the hardware support list for his distro of choice and makes purchasing decisions based upon it. 99.9% of the home computer users in the world don't do that. They log on to Amazon or drive to WalMart or whatever big-name IT retailer is local and buy whatever they damn well want and it will always work on Windows. When Linux has that kind of hardware support, you'll see Linux start to get desktop adoption.
The othe
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I was a Linux user starting in 1995. I have yet to have a Linux work well with whatever my current hardware is.
Right now for example I'm having horrrible trouble with EFI boot sequences. If I could those to work I know I'd have a whole nothing round of problems with high DPI screen. I might have wireless or bluetooth problems since those are common.
Linux does a tremendous job running on a huge range of hardware given its limited budget for QA on hardware configs and mechanisms for complex problem resolu
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No, you're not.
I switched to Linux as my desktop OS in 2002 and haven't looked back. Back it the day it was pretty hairy but it was still such a breath a fresh air that I was willing to put up with it. These days, it's pretty much plain sailing! :-) Running Debian Sid with Awesome window manager, so I can be quietly amused when I hear people bitching about the latest versions of Gnome and Ubuntu. :-)
I do have to run a few windows-only apps in the office - Outlook and Lync being the main ones, but for that I
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so I can be quietly amused when I hear people bitching about the latest versions of Gnome and Ubuntu. :-)
I don't like Unity either, but xUbuntu with xfce works fine for me.
Even so, I'm still mostly on Windows due to gaming. For my everyday non-gaming usage, the systems are pretty much equal. Web browsing works fine on both systems, and LibreOffice is cross-platform too.
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Last week I bought myself a new Lenovo laptop for use with Linux with a nice JBL speaker-based hi quality sound system built in.
Don't get me wrong, once I wiped Windows 8 and started the Linux install (using source-based Gentoo Linux) I knew I'd have some fiddling to do with EFI booting, power management and few other bits and pieces, some of which I am still tweaking now - but I'd planned for that.
Sound was never an issue on it, however. I installed Gnome and PulseAudio as usual, tried a few FLAC files fro
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It always makes me wonder if I'm the only one that has zero problems with sound? Or pretty much anything? Am I just that lucky and skillful and freaking awesome in selecting hardware?
Well, last time I had to reinstall my work PC it took at least half a day, what with hunting down the driver CDs (without which even the ethernet port didn't work, so no downloading them), and figuring out which license keys to use, and where to download every individual software package.
Oh wait, got it a bit mixed up. Nops, Linux also works fine for me, last reinstall took at most half an hour to get the system running, which happily included office, and about another half hour to remember which other pack
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MS Windows was always known as a toy and novelty, from the beginning. Maybe they don't like someone else using the term? 8-)
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Damn! You are SO smart!
HEY EVERYONE!!! pla HAS CRACKED IT!!! HE HAS THE ANSWER!!! LINUX IS SHIT ON THE DESKTOP!!!
Here was me, running Linux Gnome desktops and laptops for at least the past 10 years, thinking it ran perfectly fine.... and then you make this comment and all of I sudden I see how right you are!
That's it, I'm finished with this conversation as I scrabble for my car keys and dive to the nearest computer store that is open on a Sunday for a Windows installation DVD.
(Warning: The level of sarcasm
Re: because desktop linux is a toy and novelty (Score:2)
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Others (like getting something as basic as sound to work reliably), I consider a major shortcoming.
How many centuries ago did you last try Linux? If there's something that works these days, it really is sound.
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Linux for day to day desktop use .. (Score:2)
I've been totally Linux only at home for over three years, and haven't noticed the loss and I've never had to compile a kernel. I don't 'love' Linux, I find it just works.
"Quite simply, Linux sucks ass as a desktop OS"
To which desktop are you referring to:
Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? [youtube.com]
Linux Media Centre [youtube.com]
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Offices so handicapped by windows dependencies may find themselves more and more outpaced by more productive ones.
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Business world, huh? I finally switched my business laptop full-time (after being on & off for about 6 years) a little over a year ago, and I'm finding a significantly different experience to you, but considering that my use of Excel may be comparatively basic (as I'm not writing macros or anything like that), Libreoffice seems to handle the relatively complex formulas and dynamic linking between documents that I need. It handles my document templates perfectly well, and my presentations are just as exc