King_Corduroy wrote:
Ah, that explains it - the zeal of a college student. You of all people should understand opportunity cost - Linux is a huge timewaster. I never understood Mac people when I was younger, but after years of dealing with Linux I can now completely understand just wanting to get your work done as quickly and easily as possible. I used to be like you, but Linux really does everything it can to piss you off over 18 years. It's nice when you don't have to rely on it, and have tons of time to tinker with few other intensive hobbies. Just wait and see.
Just off the top of my head, without thinking too hard:
1) "They" are constantly changing around the syntax of things like mounting an SMB share.
2) Linux totally messed up the automatic fan controller on my Lenovo Thinkpad L512 several years ago. TWICE. Reflashing the BIOS did not solve it; I had to send it in to Lenovo for a depot warranty repair both times! If you think I'm making this up, here's my post: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/R-and-L-Series-Th … ing/td-p/644023 I soon discovered that installing LINUX caused the problem. Wonderful, more time wasted.
3) LibreOffice in college, you say? Hah! My professors hated everything I turned in with it! And have you ever had a physics class yet? I once again wasted hours of my time that could have been spent studying on trying to figure out WHY LibreOffice/openOffice did not have POLYNOMIAL REGRESSION required for the labs due. Once again, Microsoft came through with Excel - it just works out of the box.
4) PulseAudio randomly screeching at full volume on two different soundcards (Audigy 2 ZS and builtin)
5) The open source nVidia video drivers are terrible and slow on all systems
For developers, yes, Linux is incredible. For CIS people like myself, it's ok - but I still contend that FreeBSD is better: it can run ELF (Linux) binaries out of the box, has ZFS support (the best filesystem on the planet in many admins' opinions), and is much more stable & cohesive. Things don't change so often that you have waste time re-learning stuff just because some kid in Finland decided he didn't like the way things were done.
For normal users, Linux is a joke. I give credit where credit is due, but like I said previously, they have been spinning their wheels for many years.
If Linux was so great, I wouldn't need to dual- or triple- boot to Windows 7/XP. Setting up Linux takes a long time; you have to get MP3s working, install video codecs, get rid of the ridiculous open-source Nvidia drivers that are SLOW, leave artificats, and CRASH often, etc. etc.
King_Corduroy wrote:On windows I would have had to pay for all these programs AND pay to use the OS.
Not necessarily. 😉 Some people have not paid for a MS OS since Windows 95. I'm not saying that I'm one of them. But there are also student discounts.
King_Corduroy wrote:I am constantly viewing and resizing pictures using GIMP
And I'm sure you know that many open source programs are also available on Windows - I use GIMP on Windows 7 regularly without issue (except slow filesystem dialogs when there are a lot of directories to traverse).
Of course if I have to batch-resize, I will just SSH on over to my FreeBSD server and use mogrify.
You'll see as you get older (I'm only 30!) that sometimes it's ok to have the best of all worlds!
Oh and I have to bring up the single most important thing that Microsoft has ever contributed to the world: Active Directory. No one else even comes close to this magnificent feat of computer science. If you don't know what it is, Google it and see just how incredible it is. For starters, I can move from computer to computer on my network (via LAN or WAN) and be able to log in and have instant access to all my settings, preferences, folders, etc.
Of course, I'm using a FreeBSD server with Samba4, but still, Active Directory is a Microsoft innovation.
No other operating system has such tight integration between client and server. The granularity of Active Directory is something to behold, especially when paired with Microsoft permissions. Linux just cannot compete with certain things on the desktop and especially in the SMB environment where real work is done.
- x86: Tandy 1000RL (HD+768K), Tandy 3000HD, 486DX33 VLB, 486DX50 VLB, Packard Bell Force 1998CDT (Pentium 133)
- 68K: Mac Plus 1MB (early), Quadra 700 (2), Quadra 950, Quadra 650
Clock multiplication is too new for me, as you can see!