41–50 of 219 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's Eric Raymond on Cups for a Unix perspective. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
I got to this bit: > LaserJet 6MP attached to it via parallel port. That got me looking for the date this was written.
I have to endure some amount of XP and 7 on a regular basis, so I have some understanding on how to work with them (well, mostly how to set up or correct things).
Those that say that Windows 7 is so much better.. well, in some sense. I admittedly has better optics. And it crashes less.
Administrative tasks got more tiresome though, compared to XP you have to wade through more windows to get to a specific configuration point. That gets very irksome if you want to perform some configuration for a dozen PC's. (Enough to make it very repetitive, too little that automation would make much sense, especially considering the abysmal automation tools Windows comes with coughshellcough). Other critical points are software management systems (lack of) and general disability in the usability sector.
Granted, learning to cope with a Linux system is somewhat more challenging, but once you are into it, it's really much less bother to do things, no matter the scale.
Microsoft still has a long way to go just to reach the current status. Maybe they will manage, as they seem to be very apt at keeping the stranglehold on the market.
And I will keep avoiding them as much as I can.
Seriously though, is all of this fixed in Windows 7, or are people just hyping that up because it sucks alot less than any previous Windows iterations? I don't think I've _ever_ seen a process that convoluted, and I've been using Linux OSes since _before_ the advent of dependency-resolvers like yum and apt (i.e, the bad old days of "RPM hell").
I'm a Windows person, but I've got Ubuntu on a netbook. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to get the repository for XBMC set up so that it would let me install the program. Now I'd like to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.4, but I don't have quite enough space in the SSD to do it. I'd like to cut out some software that I don't really use on the netbook. But I can't figure out how to make it actually get rid of thing…
Dependencies are automatically installed for all applications and are automatically removed when there are no packages left that need them, so don't worry about those!
If you're more a command line guy, you can do the same using aptitude (aptitude remove package-name). Packages under aptitude will be listed as (a)utomatically installed if they were installed as a requirement for another package, so you shouldn't have to remove those by hand.
Seriously though, is all of this fixed in Windows 7, or are people just hyping that up because it sucks alot less than any previous Windows iterations? I don't think I've _ever_ seen a process that convoluted, and I've been using Linux OSes since _before_ the advent of dependency-resolvers like yum and apt (i.e, the bad old days of "RPM hell").
I'm a Windows person, but I've got Ubuntu on a netbook. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to get the repository for XBMC set up so that it would let me install the program. Now I'd like to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.4, but I don't have quite enough space in the SSD to do it. I'd like to cut out some software that I don't really use on the netbook. But I can't figure out how to make it actually get rid of thing…
"They've done it different, and people who know the system can use it very effectively, but those of us who don't know the incantations are still out in the cold."
Agreed, but seriously, I've never had to go through such steps to do anything in Linux unless it was, for example, a brand new piece of hardware that didn't have kernel module. This was Microsoft Windows user trying to install Microsoft Moviemaker software by Microsoft. And, it took all that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
Mostly you're right, but I object to the claim about Excel being better. While Word was better than anything else I had found to use at the time (Word Perfect was a buggy mess). However, I claim that there were better spreadsheet products available. Certainly the one I used, Enable, was quite robust, and was more capable than Excel.
When people make choices they also look at convenience and price ... having these products packaged and nicely integrated with each-other was genius.
I tried to download it - their new simple solution is to include it as part of Windows Live. So I want a simple movie editor to clip 5secs off the beginning of a home movie - BUT to do this I have to sign up for an MS specific hotmail account, create a windows passport (I thought they had abandoned that?) get Windows messenger, windows photo viewer and be included in a whole bunch of MS specific social websites. So I…
You know, no one took away the check boxes that let you choose which Windows Live programs you want to install when you're trying to run the installer. The installer doesn't even download any of those apps if you leave them unchecked. If you don't want Messenger, Photo Gallery, or even to sign up for a Windows Live ID, you don't have to get/do those things. Most people find that this is actually helpful, though, beca…
Windows too often decides to do an update that will give me X extra stuff that I don't trust signing up for something like windows live just to get an included free movie player
It comes across as the sort of email you would write while criticizing/mocking a competitors product that you were powerless to change.
There's no demand for improvement, or accountability for making that happen. No wondering if this small experience is indicative of other problems. He's just "disappointed".
If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
To be fair, Windows and the Windows ecosystem is so huge that it would be almost impossible for one guy to sit down and say, OK, this is how Movie Maker is going to get installed, and this is how it should function, and this is how Windows Update Q52324 will get installed, and blah blah. My point is that it's easy to think Steve Jobs is in compete and total control of every pixel on an OSX screen and has intimate kno…
If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
You're right and the anonymous commenter on their site said it well: "The Steve Jobs version: "If the MovieMaker download site isn't working by tomorrow at 6 am I will come down there at 6:01 am an choke the living ___ out of all of you.""