A Retired Microsoft OS Engineer's Comparison of Linux with Windows (youtu.be) 231
David Plummer is a retired Microsoft operating systems engineer, "going back to the MS-DOS and Windows 95 days." (He adds that in the early '90s he'd fixed a few handle leaks in the early source code of Linux, "and sent my changes off to Linus at Rutgers.")
This weekend on YouTube he shared his thoughts on "the classic confrontation: Windows versus Linux," promising an "epic operating systems face-off." Some highlights: On Usability: "Linux's itself lacks a proper user interface beyond the command line. That command line can be incredibly powerful, particularly if you're adept with Bash or Zsh or similar, but you can't really describe it as particularly usable. Of course most distributions do come with a desktop user interface of some kind if you prefer, but as a bit of a shell designer myself, if I might be so bold, they're generally pretty terrible. At least the Mint distribution looks pretty nice.
"Windows, on the other hand, includes by default a desktop shell interface that, if you set aside the entirely subjective design aesthetics, is professionally designed, usability tested and takes into consideration the varying levels of accessibility required by people with different limitations. In terms of usability, particularly if you do include accessibility in that metric, Windows comes out ahead..."
On Updates: "Windows users are well served by a dedicated Windows Update team at Microsoft, but the process has occasionally had its hiccups and growing pains. It's very easy to update a Linux system, and while there's no professional team sitting by the big red phone ready to respond to Day Zero exploits, the updates do come out with reasonable alacrity, and in some cases you can even update the kernel without rebooting.
"Keep in mind, however, that Linux is a monolithic kernel, which means that it's all one big happy kernel. Almost everything is in there. If they hadn't started to add that ability a few years back, you'd be rebooting for every driver install. The reality is that some parts of the Linux kernel are just going to require a reboot, just as some parts of the Windows system are going to as well. I think we can likely all agree, however, that Windows software is hardly selective about rebooting the system, and you're asked to do it far too often.
"While we're on the topic of upgrades, we can't overlook the fact that upgrades are generally free in the Open Source world, unless you're using a pre-built distribution from a vendor. To it's credit, though, I don't remember the last time Microsoft actually charged for an operating system upgrade if you were just a normal end user or enthusiast. Still, this point goes to Linux."
Plummer also says he agrees with the argument that open source software is more open to security exploits, "simply because, all else equal, it's easy to figure out where the bugs are to exploit in the first place," while proprietary software has professional test organizations hunting for bugs. "I think it's a bit of a fallacy to rely on the 'many eyeballs' approach..."
Yet he still ultimately concludes Linux is more secure simply because the vast universe of Windows makes it a much more attractive target. Especially since most Windows users retain full administrator privileges...
This weekend on YouTube he shared his thoughts on "the classic confrontation: Windows versus Linux," promising an "epic operating systems face-off." Some highlights: On Usability: "Linux's itself lacks a proper user interface beyond the command line. That command line can be incredibly powerful, particularly if you're adept with Bash or Zsh or similar, but you can't really describe it as particularly usable. Of course most distributions do come with a desktop user interface of some kind if you prefer, but as a bit of a shell designer myself, if I might be so bold, they're generally pretty terrible. At least the Mint distribution looks pretty nice.
"Windows, on the other hand, includes by default a desktop shell interface that, if you set aside the entirely subjective design aesthetics, is professionally designed, usability tested and takes into consideration the varying levels of accessibility required by people with different limitations. In terms of usability, particularly if you do include accessibility in that metric, Windows comes out ahead..."
On Updates: "Windows users are well served by a dedicated Windows Update team at Microsoft, but the process has occasionally had its hiccups and growing pains. It's very easy to update a Linux system, and while there's no professional team sitting by the big red phone ready to respond to Day Zero exploits, the updates do come out with reasonable alacrity, and in some cases you can even update the kernel without rebooting.
"Keep in mind, however, that Linux is a monolithic kernel, which means that it's all one big happy kernel. Almost everything is in there. If they hadn't started to add that ability a few years back, you'd be rebooting for every driver install. The reality is that some parts of the Linux kernel are just going to require a reboot, just as some parts of the Windows system are going to as well. I think we can likely all agree, however, that Windows software is hardly selective about rebooting the system, and you're asked to do it far too often.
"While we're on the topic of upgrades, we can't overlook the fact that upgrades are generally free in the Open Source world, unless you're using a pre-built distribution from a vendor. To it's credit, though, I don't remember the last time Microsoft actually charged for an operating system upgrade if you were just a normal end user or enthusiast. Still, this point goes to Linux."
Plummer also says he agrees with the argument that open source software is more open to security exploits, "simply because, all else equal, it's easy to figure out where the bugs are to exploit in the first place," while proprietary software has professional test organizations hunting for bugs. "I think it's a bit of a fallacy to rely on the 'many eyeballs' approach..."
Yet he still ultimately concludes Linux is more secure simply because the vast universe of Windows makes it a much more attractive target. Especially since most Windows users retain full administrator privileges...
Missing category: (Score:5, Insightful)
"On telemetry, spying on you and selling your data"
Didn't WTFV of course
Re: Missing category: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Missing category: (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice fallacy you knowingly used there. And I was the one giving you the idea. Sadly you tripped up, when you said "distribution".
You deliberatey mixed two different definitions of "Linux".
Linux is a kernel. But it has become normal to call the operating system GNU by the name "Linux" too, if it uses that kernel. And by "Linux distribution", people mean a GNU/Linux distribution. That is OK.
Android is AOSP + Google Apps.
AOSP is an operating system that also uses the Linux kernel. But it has a completely different, Java-based user space. There are some Unixoid remains underneath, that could be confused for Linux by a layman. But it is very incompatibe in many ways, comparable to how far BSD is from Linux.
And most of all, it clearly is not a GNU/Linux *distribution*.
It uses the Linux kernel. That is all.
(And Google had to be fought, tooth and nail, to stop forking Linux [and Java] to make it not have Linux inside anymore.)
Re: Missing category: (Score:5, Interesting)
The most popular end-user distribution of Linux is in Android, which is more data hungry than Telemetry. Just saying.
This guy is talking about desktop OSs. Android may have the largest Linux install base but it's not a desktop OS. A better comparison would be Android vs. Windows Phone and iOS. Oranges to Oranges.
Additionally Android is not the only Linux distribution available. People have the choice of not using it if they want to. If you need an OS with specific features like a tiny memory footprint, small installation size, support for your older hardware you can find, or hire someone to create, a Linux distro that foots the bill. With Windows your stuck with whatever MS wants to give you.
Case in point, my Linux desktop uses Devuan and only uses 14GB of the hard disk, includes all my apps (LibreOffice, browser/email, media playback/editors, Blender, etc.). My Windows 10 laptop partition uses 30+GB of the HD just for the base OS alone. Sure, it includes a browser and basic media playback in that but 30GBs and forced updates plus telemetry?
And anyone who says Linux is hard to use has not used a recent distro.
Purely anecdotal but a couple days ago I installed LUbuntu on my other system, took me a few clicks and typing in a some passwords and it did the rest. All the hardware drivers enabled, updates installed, and the system ready for use in under 2 hours. Back when I did computer repair I had to do Windows XP/7/8 re-installs all the time, usually after a malware infection or hard disk failure. It would sometimes take most of an afternoon just getting the installer running since the Windows Install media didn't support the SATA chip or such and I'd have to track down the right drivers and integrate them into the Windows Installer image. By the end I had one Hells of a a set of "Universal" Windows installers with all the extra drivers I'd had to add to them :)
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That's hardly unique to Linux - ever tried to change the desktop environment in Windows? Or even just the task bar? How about getting a 90's plotter to work?
It can be done - but if you're doing anything beyond the basic install-and-launch apps on Windows, or the most basic configuration, the difficulty ramps up dramatically. And that's before you consider how much stuff Microsoft changes randomly with each update - I've done Windows repair work on the side since version 3.1, and with Windows 10 it's gotte
Re: Missing category: (Score:2)
Your windows installs were hard because despite previous experience you started every install assuming everything was supported in the install media you had.
You could have 'baked in' the needed drivers.
You could have supplied the needed drivers during the install.
You could have gotten proper install media from the Mfg.
But instead you just assumed everything was fine, then were surprised when problems surfaced... Again.
Installing Win 10, Win 8.1, and Win 7 is no harder than any recent linux distribution, tho
Re: Missing category: (Score:2)
Windows Phone was a house of cards that didn't hold together very well. "The light was on but nobody home" in many system API calls. And that 'feature' wasn't very well documented.
Re: Missing category: (Score:4, Funny)
Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Insightful)
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For me finding how to do something in Windows is a hell... because for me graphical instruction is never as precise as text one + it looks different on different windows versions
As opposed to say, how you set a static IP address, specify DNS resolution, or the mechanism to stop and start services? This never changes in the linux command line world...
Re:Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Informative)
The point is, instructions for Linux may change, but it's always "type this in" which is very straightforward. On Windows, it's "look for the icon that looks like a duck, double click it, look for the foobar field..."
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in windows, pretty much everything you can do in the ui is automatable on the command-line.
Re: Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:2)
*ba-dum TISS*
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Except in the Linux world you have to read obscure "manuals" that were put together by engineers, not people who understand how to communicate with normal people. These have exactly zero examples of how to make use of the software but do let you know about the umpteen dozen command switches to use compression formats you never heard of before.
So you rely on blogs and hope someone wrote down how to do what you're looking for.
Except you could only find an article that applies to a version of a distribution y
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Balderdash. I've used Linux off and on since the 90s and only very rarely use the man files - they're almost as useless as the Windows help files.
In any OS when you want to learn how to do something you search Google, and 9 times out of 10 will rapidly find clear concise, well-explained instructions from someone helpful. The tenth time you were probably screwed before you started - in any OS. Though at least with Linux you can probably track down a solution if you're stubborn and competent enough.
Re:Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the whole story though. I've been a unix geek for over 30 years now, and I work for a fortune 500 company, where for the past 12 years, my primary workstation / laptop has been a linux desktop (corporate build of Redhat Linux). I've always had to deal with problems when I've upgraded the OS or when I've upgraded the machine. All kinds of things ranging from the touchpad is uncontrollable (and had to be turned off), to hibernate failing, to time not being kept correctly on KVMs that run on the system and so on. In each case, I've had to research and eventually found a fix for all of these problem, but it was unbelievably painful finding the fix. And this process often took months.
Over the past Christmas holidays, I migrated to a new machine - along with an accompanying move from RHEL 7.6 to v8. What a pain! My 4K external monitor stopped working on Thunderbolt. Eventually figured out that I had to buy a new cable, tweak the BIOS and apply the nvidia drivers, along with a magic incantation of stuff in a config file. But until I figured all that out, my external display went from not working, to working but crashing the browser when screensharing was attempted, to finally full function, over 2 months. Even now, if I reboot, the internal and external display relative resolutions don't persist as I've set up.
My next hardware upgrade will be to a Mac. I've had it. The mac has enough of a command line for me to live with. I don't like Apple's "I know what you need better than you do" attitude, but it just _works_. I'll take that any day over the hell that Linux has become.
Re:Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:4, Interesting)
Its obvious I guess, but each has its benefits and issues. These days, I enjoy the variety. I still run flavors of Linux on servers and machines for compute- none are laptops. MacOS for daily work. MS Windows on personal box for gaming. Good times. I wish you all the best luck!
Re: Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Interesting)
I "bumped my head" a few times trying to learn how to use Linux. But having learned the basics, I find it far more user-friendly than Windows. "Usability" is of course a subjective thing, but the "you're the boss" attitude that saturates the Linux layers is a VERY noticeable and nice contrast to the "you are our product" attitude that the Windows design takes.
The current "privacy controls" in Windows, for example, are abysmal. There are like 20 different switches you have to turn off, and they are hidden multiple-levels deep across various menus, and given VERY marketable names (they call it "Inking and Typing" because if they called it by the honest name of "keylogger" people would throw a fit). The end result is that it is very, very difficult to actually turn off everything that basically everyone wants turned-off from the get-go, and yet the Windows team can honestly insist that they have powerful controls that put privacy under your control (except, of course, for the bits that you can't disable).
The Linux distributions I have used, however, just had privacy baked-in by default and never once advertised at me or tried to bully me into configuring my system the way THEY wanted me to.
So, despite the paid professional design and usability testing, I have found Linux to be all-around more usable. The key difference, I think, is the intent (Linux wants to serve, Windows wants to bully and profit off-of, its users).
Re:Never used accessability he mentioned... (Score:5, Insightful)
For me finding how to do something in Windows is a hell... because for me graphical instruction is never as precise as text one + it looks different on different windows versions.
Win+R -> cmd
Hasn't changed in well over 20 years.
Additionally, finding out how to do something in Windows is no more difficult than finding out how to do it in Linux, unless you choose for it to be so.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with you preferring one OS over another, but your bias, and that of those who moderated your post, is what you've actually demonstrated, rather than an objective assessment of their relative merits.
Praises for MS-DOS shell? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Praises for MS-DOS shell? (Score:5, Informative)
blame IBM for that one. MS wanted to change it to '/' but IBM wanted to keep '/' for command switches.
in most places '/' works as a path separator nowadays on windows anyway.
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Blame Digital Research!
CP/M 2.2 used forward slash for command-line options, and MS-DOS 1.0 was highly focused on compatibility with CP/M 2.2's API. It was actually EASIER to port a CP/M 2.2 program to MS-DOS than it was to DR's CP/M-86. Most of those ported programs did their command-line parsing themselves and wouldn't tolerate '/' being part of a filename.
When MS-DOS 2.0 came along and gave us sub-directories, Microsoft needed something for a directory separator, and '/' just wasn't available.
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'/' was only used on a very few commands at the time, and MS was willing to break backwards compatibility and use '/' for the path separator in DOS2, but IBM said no.
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in most places '/' works as a path separator nowadays on windows anyway.
I hadn't realized they'd finally caved to the people who can't tell their virgules from their backvirgules.
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What difference does the backslash instead of forward slash make?
In Japan due to the different character set the directory separator is a Yen symbol. I've never had an issue with that either.
Case insensitivity is good, because it's too easy to confuse files with the same name separated only by case.
What sucks about MS-DOS is the default lack of command history and line editing (you need DOSKEY) and the crappy batch file syntax. Oh and 8.3 of course.
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What difference does the backslash instead of forward slash make?
I've asked myself that same question a hundred times. Or, more specifically, "why does the backslash in Windows piss me off so much?" or "why does using a forward slash for command line parameters equally set me off?".
And I have no answer other than "it just does". And I'll be damned if I can make myself get over it.
I know it's a gross oversimplification and completely misses historical context, but given the fact that so many other mainstream syntaxes have evolved to using forward slashes as path or elem
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What about using colon : as separator, as classic Mac OS did?
Re: Praises for MS-DOS shell? (Score:2)
As a longtime Mac user, I don't like it because it's commonly something you'd want to use in file names. (Especially descriptive, 31-character ones)
They should've just invented something and stashed it into the 8th bit of the character set which had plenty of room, or perhaps they could've used ASCII 0x1C which seems like it would be appropriate especially on a totally GUI computer where no one else is apt to use it.
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I used to hate it because Amiga OS used forward slashes. Now I don't care any more.
CLI software can't decide if a slash or a dash or nothing should be used for parameters. It's a shame no standard caught on. Maybe if the GNU getopts stuff was better it might have.
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I know it's a gross oversimplification and completely misses historical context, but given the fact that so many other mainstream syntaxes have evolved to using forward slashes as path or element separators (URLs, for example...literally "universal resource locators"), I just cannot make myself use a command line interface that instead forces me to separate paths with a backslash.
It's just, unnatural I say. What makes it unnatural? I can't say. It. Just. Is.
URLs are a relatively recent (90's) construct.
If, instead of being influenced by Unix, Tim Berens Lee was influenced by VMS, you would have dots separating not only the domain but also the paths.
And if instead he was influenced by Clasic MacOS, you woud have colons separating the paths...
So yes, oversimplification of historical context.
Re: Praises for MS-DOS shell? (Score:3)
Yeah, we all know that the traditional separator character for the Internet is the bang !
Plus it makes things exciting!
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The MS-DOS shell is an abomination. The use of the backslash character as directory separator should, alone, condemn it to the pits of Hades. Then there's the case (in)sensitivity. Finally the % delimiters on variable interpolation.
#1 The MS-DOS shell (CMD) has been deprecated for a few years now. Get on with the times.
#2 If, instead of coming from "grown-up" Unix world, you came from "grown-up" VMS world, you would feel right at home witht the backslashes, your case insensivity and your % variable interpolators.
Drops mic!
Hahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternate title: "Guy who worked for Microsoft regurgitates some old talking points about Linux".
Seriously, does he think companies like IBM's Red Hat don't have people ready to jump to work on zero day exploits on short notice? And does he really think the "bad guys" spend most of their time perusing code, looking for exploits, rather than relying on automated tools?
Re:Hahaha (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternate title: "Guy who worked for Microsoft regurgitates some old talking points about Linux".
This exactly. "Windows is insecure because it's popular not because we're crap" / "Open Source is the danger" blah blah blah. Same old Microsoft; the one everyone tells us "doesn't exist any more". I checked the article - it's actually a video. In Slashdot tradition, I'm offering my opinions without having watched it, which is justified by the simple fact that it's a Video. What is with these people?
Someone who worked on Windows as his primary job is quite likely to come to the situation where they know Windows much better than Linux and have problems transferring. Dunning-Kruger guarantees that, at some point early on he'll go through a belief he has lots of important stuff to tell Linux people. The real question is why Slashdot is reporting it if the opinions are as inane as the ones given in the summary. This is true 1990s level of Microsoft FUD as if the whole of computing hadn't changed since then.
We've had tens of Microsoft shill articles recently. Could we please start to drop the idiocy? If the only problem with Windows security was popularity then Apple would have problems at a proportionate level. Instead the problem is that Microsoft has interests at cross purpose with it's users and things like Telemetry, embedded languages in Office and the ability to run binaries from emails are set up for the convenience of the company in imposing their will at the cost of their customers.
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and the ability to run binaries from emails
I'm sorry, what?
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and the ability to run binaries from emails
I'm sorry, what?
His email attachments self-identify as either 0 or 1 ... :-)
Regurgitates some old talking points? (Score:2)
At least he didn't spew them?
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Or squirt them.
Which cavity? (Score:2)
I am not following you.
There is only one opening to a cavity rather than a pass through, and dude's don't have one?
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Automated tools aren't that useful for finding exploits because everybody has them. You can be sure every API has been heavily fuzzed by now, for example.
Then again source code isn't that helpful either. All the easy stuff has be found by static analysis already. These days most of the new exploits rely on looking at the machine code that the compiler produces.
Re:Hahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
And he doesn't say shit about windows update being absolutely hostile garbage.
I've never had a linux distro slow to a crawl because it was updating itself without me requesting it to. I've never had a linux distro force a reboot. I've never had a linux distro reboot without user interaction and losing work because it detected the machine was idle. I've never had a linux distro sit at an upgrade screen that's blocking it from booting up for a half hour.
And this rant reminded me that I needed to fire off some updates, so I'm doing that now while continuing to work, because linux doesn't actively block productive work while it's updating.
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Or it could be titled "Old Man Argues Entire Life Not Wasted". If I'd spent my life working on Windows, I'd want to think there'd been a point to it all. He's hardly likely to say he spent 30 years taking advantage of idiots who paid him when they should've installed Linux.
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It’s also not some inertia in the market because Google managed to go and create a Linux-based consumer OS in Android
Andoid is "popular" simply because it is pre-installed on phones and tablets. Linux would likewise be "popular" if it came pre-installed on laptops and workstations, rather than Windows. Outside of Slashdot, the vast majority of people are entirely oblivious of what OS they are running, in fact they think the think the way their device works is hard-wired into it somehow.
1995 called and they want their post back (Score:5, Funny)
This article is like something from a 1995 slashdot post. Regurgitating old stuff that's been hashed over 1000 times.
1995 called and they want their imperial back (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet people still have metric vs imperial wars no matter how discussed.
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And usually those defending Imperial have no clue what imperial is while defending it.
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Give an inch, and they'll take a kilometer.
"Usability tested"? Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Every version from win2k forward has been a regression in overall usability, to where we find ourselves today; which control panel would you like to use? Well, to uninstall some things you need to use the new app manager, but other things are still uninstalled via the old interface. Network configuration? Let's not even talk about the new interface ( I dread the day some moron removes that with an update ).
All in all, the interface is minimally acceptable. Let's not even talk about the mess they're making of the server side of things.
Usability tested my ass.
Re:"Usability tested"? Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Windows 2000 was what killed desktop linux. Microsoft finally got it mostly right. XP was a regression that they corrected for by the time Windows 7 came along.
If Microsoft hadn't released W2K many of us would have stayed on linux and it might be the dominant desktop now.
Re: "Usability tested"? Bullshit (Score:3)
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Re:"Usability tested"? Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
He left before Windows 10 and the great Test Department Purge. Microsoft basically fired most of their testers and moved to slowly rolling out patches to see if they crash people's machines. I imagine most of the usability testers went with them.
That explains why he thinks Windows Update is reliable too.
The one thing Windows 10 has going for it is that it scales the UI pretty well for monitors with high DPI, and even when you have multiple monitors with different DPIs. Well, okay, font rendering is second to none as well. And WSL2 is pretty nice.
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I can only comment on the "challenges" with DPI issues between a high dpi workstation ( like a Surface ), and remote app. You used to have to turn on external manifest files then override the DPI settings on mstsc...but that broke at some point, so now I have no idea how to make that work.
I only know that it's obvious no one is paying attention to the usability of windows, and hasn't been on a long while. There is no way anything of windows 10 passes a "usability test", but the nonsense started well befor
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Meh. Windows Update was plenty capable of disappearing into its own posterior black hole back in the Windows 7 days, so what's happening now isn't particularly new.
I recall letting a win7 update run for several days once, just to see if it would ever get anywhere. (No, it didn't.)
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I just suggested a friend buy a 4k monitor when she went to upgrade her 10-year-old monitor. It is amazing how difficult it was to make it work without the text being unreadably tiny. It involved a couple of web sites found on Google then searching through the control panel to get to the settings.
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course most distributions do come with a desktop user interface of some kind if you prefer, but as a bit of a shell designer myself, if I might be so bold, they're generally pretty terrible. At least the Mint distribution looks pretty nice.
Even the ones that can be configured to look/act like Windows? If I may be so bold, it's really a matter of personal preference. I use MATE on Ubuntu and it's fine (Don't know if he was referring to MATE or Cinnamon on Mint...) but there are others I'd use too. I will agree that some GUIs force you into a modes of operation that some may not want/like (*cough* GNOME3, Unity *cough*), but least people have the *option* of selecting, and usually extensively configuring, their preferred/desired GUI on most Linux distributions ...
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Following up... This article [opensource.com] lists and describes 24 Linux desktops... I sure there are more somewhere.
Re: Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
The idea is that YOU get to choose what you like. Instead of eating whatever they serve you.
You mix and match as you please. Infinite permutations.
The window manager? Just a program.
The task switcher? Just a program.
The window decorations? Just a program.
The background? Just a program.
The widgets? Just a module.
The task bar? Just a program.
The task bar widgets? Just programs.
The launcher? Just a program.
The session manager. Just a program.
The sound engine? Just a program.
Run two, run three, at the same time
A shell vs tightly integrated stack (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing about Windows that I've always had a hard time with is the tight integration between the GUI and the OS itself. The whole concept of event handling in Windows in Win32 is tied to, well, windows. An app has to have a window handle to receive events, even those that don't originate from a mouse or keyboard. Win32 programs require a window, even if it's hidden. This makes things like non-GUI applications and background services rather awkward to develop compared to Linux where all types of apps have the same essential structure and API. Windows has a console subsystem which is different from Win32 and cannot do certain things. Then there's the service API for background services. I find it more difficult to work with, although MS has done a really good job documenting things and making the APIs flexible and powerful. I'd still far rather write a systemd ini file that runs a simple script or binary to implement a background service than deal with the Windows service API even though it's rather flexible.
I feel like Windows' architecture (tying it so closely to the integrated WIMP interface) has pidgeon-holed Windows and made it much much harder to effectively adapt Windows to other genres including IOT, smart phones, etc. Whereas Linux successfully underlies successful products in all of those categories.
Further as a counter to his argument, macOS is also implemented much more like Linux than Windows, with a shell over the non-GUI low-level Darwin/FreeBSD kernel, and offers even more consistency and ease of use than Windows ever did. Perhaps he hasn't used or developed on Windows recently on Windows 10 with the inconsistency of win32 vs WPF. So maybe Windows is moving more towards the shell paradigm and more like Linux in the long run.
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console apps and services don't require a window. not sure where you're getting that.
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You apparently didn't read what I wrote. I addressed that. Windows does have subsystems for these different kinds of programs but why is that even necessary? There are some things you just can't do with Console apps, like make some win32 calls or do win32-type things that require some event processing, even if there's no need for a GUI. There are no such boundaries in the Unix world and things work very well. That's my point.
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can you expand on what you mean by "make some win32 calls or do win32-type things that require some event processing", because i have a feeling you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.
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can you expand on what you mean by "make some win32 calls or do win32-type things that require some event processing", because i have a feeling you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.
I'm thinking that caseih has never heard of Server Core, which seems to be the default install now-a-days.
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That was the case in the dark times of Win 3.1x
Begining with win95, MS started a long and (admitedly) slow journey to a pure command line OS. Google "Windows Server Core" and you will see
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Windows have "everything must be a window" and *NIX has "everything must be a file". You have select and epoll on Linux, but both of them can only wait on file descriptors. Everything else waits on a single object (mutex, condition variable, whatever). You have nothing like WaitForMultipleObjects that can wait on multiple types of kernel object for the first to be notified. Windows has massive overhead on I/O system calls though. It's really obvious for anything that does a lot of filesystem stuff, lik
Conversation is incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
"If they hadn't started to add that ability a few years back" What is "that" he refers to? Linux has always been a monolithic kernel. Is he talking about the ability to add/remove kernel modules dynamically perhaps?
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"If they hadn't started to add that ability a few years back" What is "that" he refers to? Linux has always been a monolithic kernel. Is he talking about the ability to add/remove kernel modules dynamically perhaps?
Yeah, the abiility to load driver modules is the only thing that makes sense in that context. Except, you know, that Linux has had that ability basically forever, not in the last few years.
Unsurprisingly, a lifelong Microsoft engineer doesn't understand Linux.
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"If they hadn't started to add that ability a few years back" What is "that" he refers to? Linux has always been a monolithic kernel. Is he talking about the ability to add/remove kernel modules dynamically perhaps?
Yes, he is talking about about adding/removing Kernel modules dynamicaly, but he is also talking about things like Oracle Ksplice and KGraft, Kpatch and KernelCare...
The ability to patch a running Kernel without a restart.
Believe it or not, WinNT started life as a microkernel, and while it has become fat over the years, some of the architectural decitions of a microkernel are still there to Windows benefit. As the author said, much of the reason of so many windows reboots is actually abuse by application de
"completing the conversation" from transcript (Score:2)
Was going to say some of the same things, you beat me to the punch, I'll add a bit more.
The crucial missing phrase is "in some cases, you can even update the kernel without rebooting."
The issue is that there's no stable kernel API/ABI so modules have to be built for your specific kernel version. If you need a driver that's newer than your kernel, you have to update the kernel, unless somebody backported for you. He seems to think ksplice etc help get around this. They probably won't.
The flip side of the sam
Updates (Score:5, Insightful)
'On Updates: "Windows users are well served by a dedicated Windows Update team at Microsoft, '
This is utter BS. There is no mechanism built in to Windows for non-MS tools to get updates, resulting in a mishmash of update systems, unlike yum, apt or other systems on Linux, which allow the addition of 3rd party repositories.
The author doesn't understand Linux. He also doesn't understand that people don't want to use Windows: they want to use applications on Windows.
Re:Updates (Score:5, Funny)
What do you expect when the guy starts his security analysis by preaching about the greatness of security-through-obscurity
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You linked to an article, but you didn't understand it.
The uploaded packages are not "Linux" packages. They are packages for languages and not part of any Linux distribution. They most certainly don't affect any "out of the box" Linux distribution.
In fact, the same package sources would be used by people running those languages under Windows, so this is completely irrelevant to any Linux vs Windows discussion. Perhaps the fact that the article mentions Microsoft as a company that could also be compromised u
Installing drivers on Linux (Score:4)
Linux driver experience is DKMS, modprobe, and no reboot. Imagine that. Most distros wrap it up in some scripts that does it automatically with a few clicks of the mouse.
Last week I plugged an old USB wavetable synth/MIDI interface that has fallen out of support on Windows, worked immediately on Linux. The driver just loaded up and was still in the kernel. Even the digital audio recording interfaces came up at the full sampling rate.
There are tons of graphical user interface choices on Linux. That's both an advantage and disadvantage. The vast majority of them are mostly usable with some quirks. GUI has always been sort of a second class citizen on the platform. Once you have things set up the way you personally want on Linux then it goes along smoothly. But sitting down in front of some random new Ubuntu box is generally not a great experience. macOS and some versions of Windows do this better than Linux.
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Meanwhile, Windows is the one where you step away for a few minutes and come back to find that it's rebooted without permission to update who knows what. It's been quite a while since I needed to reboot to install/update a driver in Linux.
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you're lucky. i just had to buy 3 PCIe sata port cards to find one whose chipset is supported in a non-bleeding-edge kernel. they all work out-of-the-box in windows.
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I had a hell of a time installing Windows 7 on an NVMe. It's not supported on the install disc, even the latest one from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine of course.
Professionally designed, usability tested? LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Windows "includes [...] a desktop shell interface that [...] is professionally designed, usability tested" then that's just what it's been for that last twenty+ years, an evidence of incapacity for the professionals who did that testing, along with those who did the design. And that's not a matter of taste, it's one of objective design and usability principles.
If that bloke might have had the Windows in mind we used around 1996, he might have had a point, as its UI was nice, intuitive, coherent. Four years later the path away from coherence started, with Windows 8 and 10 being the most incoherent UIs on a computer I have ever had the bad luck to be forced to use.
Yes, most if not all Linux desktops are lacking in accessibility, and that needs to improve. But there are several desktop environments which are better than current Windows in about every other aspect.
Other than desktop and number of apps, (Score:2)
With that said, KDE used to be decent and now it is a fucked-up mess. Have to say that Windows on the desktop remains superior to Linux.
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WHen I go to the man pages, they do not work, unless I pick Mozilla as my browser (it is because of how they generate their HTML).
Kontact, in fact, most of KDE, no longer works with Google stuff (calendar, addressbook, etc).
All in all, KDE used to be great when I was developing for it (I did various parts including on SNMP, etc). At this time, KDE is a disaster, HOPEFULLY, heading in the right direction.
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I used to develop on KDE until I developed vertigo. I have watched KDE go downhill and it is hard to say where it is heading.
And CLI is great for the server, working in kernel, development, BUT, GUI is needed for my 85 y.o. father (engineer, pilot)/mother
Mod TFA (-1, Troll) (Score:2)
This isn't even clickbait anymore. This is just ... trolling.
Clearly, the guy lived in his MS bubble, and doesn't even really understand what computers are for.
The point of computers is, to automate your work away.
The point of a CLI is that you can script it, and automate your work away.
The point of a desktop is to look good in ads and sell it to the PHBs and luddites, in complete disregard of its inhrently cumbersome and limiting nature.
Hence PowerShell having become a thing.
Also, coming from KDE and Compi
All about memorization (Score:2)
GUI is basically muscle memory. On the other hand, once you configure your linux server and let it run for a year in the corner, good luck remembering all the tools and switches and config files once the sh*t hits the fan. Windows just needs a good norton commander program like far manager, that's what I personally use, but I'm sure there are alternatives.
I was left wondering.... (Score:2)
That stuff about the command line? Are people still really saying this?
"You would think" (Score:2)
A lot of this is composed of what I call "You would think arguments." You would think Windows would be more secure, more convenient to use, require less rebooting. And I can't argue with any of that. If you cherry pick factors you can argue that "you would think" anything, which makes that kind of argument pretty useless. What matters is what *is*.
Windows is *not* more convenient to use, once you learn you way around a modern Linux distribution. Linux *doesn't* require as much rebooting as Windows.
I really can't take him seriously (Score:2)
Agreed and this is why: (Score:2)
Linux updating is now nearly painless (many Debian users retain their OS install over several computers) while Windows is a crap shoot then your OS support (mostly, hobbyists maintaining custom Windows versions like XP Black Editions do a praiseworthy job) ends because it's not FOSS.
BTW I quit dual-booting on the same hard disk many years ago switching to VMs for convenience. On notebooks with but one hdd I run Windows in VMs (all my Winboxes get Linux VMs and Linux boxes Windows and other VMs since once bu
This guy is trolling like it's 1998. (Score:2)
This guy is trolling like it's 1998.
TBH, I kind of miss that period too, when we were bashing windows users for having viruses and rebooting all the time. Oh wait, that hasn't changed! Let's party then! [youtube.com]
Updates without new (buggy) features (Score:2)
With Linux, it is possible to get a fix for a bug in package X without having to add features you don't want.
Microsoft USED to offer that, but they caught the Apple Syndrome, that no bug fix can be released without new, unrelated "functionality" bundled in, which usually includes a new set of critical bugs.
Linux updates systems are way easyer to add 3rd (Score:2)
Linux updates systems are way easier to add 3rd party software to them.
Windows Update just does MS software and now days it's just 1-2 big updates with very info on what parts are being updated.
WSUS is bloated and needs 3rd party tools to just keep it running good. You can add 3rd party stuff to it but it's an very manual process
What a Fucktard (Score:2)
I'm not going to say he's a retard, especially because he's got about 5 more years of programming experience over me, but he sure is a fucktard. Linux is all about choice.
Linux's itself lacks a proper user interface beyond the command line.
Yeah, but only if you decide to install it without a GUI. There is a reason why we install Linux without a GUI on servers (more resources, lowering the odds of security issues, or simply don't need it), but if you don't know the command line, feel free to install any of the GUIs you feel comfortable with. Linux was designed to be operat
Missing very basic category of "Longevity". (Score:4)
It's a primary criterion for purchase of infrastructure: how long will it last? Do you want a toaster that will die in 5 years, or 25?
My 7-year-old Windows 7 laptop is now deprecated, won't run needed software that came out with no Win 7 version, and I'm afraid to attempt to upgrade it to Win 10, which would also cost me money.
My 7-year-old Linux workstation keeps upgrading itself silently, is running perfectly, runs all the latest software.
This guy is obviously biased (Score:2)
I don't really have a dog in the fight but for me Linux is superior. I'm running Manjaro and compared to Windows on the same hardware it is faster and more reliable. Updates are a breeze and, unlike Windows, I can install them whenever I like. Linux is more secure. I'm not saying that exploits don't exist for Linux - they do - but it's a much smaller target area.
From a configuration standpoint it's Linux no contest. I can fiddle around with it and get it exactly the way I want it or just download a theme an
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If Linux does everything you want, well for you, power to you :)
Guess Freedom to choose Windows over Linux for some things is "stoopid" too?
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Except nobody said that. How about we lay off the *tard language? You're just looking for conflict. You are coming across as a passive-aggressive Wintard. Call people Freetards, then act like the injured party when there's any pushback.
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Ha....I use both - as stated before *facepalm*
I just don't try to shoehorn everything into Linux like some idiots do. Square peg, round hole.
But it's OK to slag off Windows, because "Linux4Life" and "M$ iz teh EV1L".
Gimme a break.