life after Windows....

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
William Black writes:


"Lou Ravi" wrote in message
...

I don't have a server nor do the vast majority of computer users.

So what do you back up to?

It's very easy to back up to a removable external disk, such as a USB
disk.
That's probably the best option for desktop users these days.

Ah, I forget you live alone...

Only one computer as well it seems...

I need a system that will back up a reasonable array of computer equipment
from an Asus eeepc to a Linux box, with a couple of others thrown in.

Wandering around the house once a week with a USB passport for ma couple of
hours (plus the odd conversation on the lines of "Have you finished with
that computer? I need to do backups") isn't really practical, I have a
life to lead...

A Samba box using RAID 1 works, costs next to nothing and is easy to
administer.

--
William Black

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.

aracari writes:

I don't agree. It has taken MS since the halcyon days in mid
1980s to arrive at XP. Too bad they lost the plot after that...

Microsoft had NT more than a decade ago.

John Stubbings writes:

Horse's for courses, there is only one OS that competes with Windows on the
Desktop. MAC. It's subsystem is based on............... BSD

Because Apple couldn't afford to develop a completely new operating system,
and its existing operating system was woefully inadequate (being roughly
equivalent to the old Windows 3.1 architecturally).

Chris H writes:

I have to agree there. OSX is a proper Unix and is very reliable.

OSX has far too much bolted onto it by Apple to be a proper UNIX. And it will
become increasingly proprietary in the future.

White Spirit writes:

No, they are different distributions of the same operating system
(GNU/Linux).

No. Linux by itself isn't much of an OS at all; that's why tons of software
have to be added on in "distributions" in order to provide even basic
functionality.

Other true operating systems are complete out of the box--no add-ons required.

The difference in standards is negligible and hidden from the general
user.

If there are differences, there is no standard.

You can still run MS-DOS applications on Windows.

White Spirit writes:

It is precisely the right question because the answer was only a quick
search away.

Windows doesn't require any search at all. It just works. And Mac is
friendlier still. Both leave Linux in the dust.

An MP3 application is an extra and is not part of the operating system.

Tell that to the average Windows or Mac user.

Since when did MP3 software comprise part of an operating system? It is
a userspace tool.

See above. Normal users don't care about userspaces, tools, quick searches,
or anything of the kind. They just want something that works. Unfortunately,
Linux won't give that to them, because geeks refuse to admit that it doesn't
work, and blame all problems on the user.

White Spirit writes:

Windows actually does not support software and hardware very well;
speaking as a software developer, I would say that it actually does it
quite poorly.

It supports everything I've given to it.

The difference, which you have missed, is that developers
and manufacturers happen to support Windows very well. Think about it.

The difference, such as it is, doesn't matter to the average end user. All
the end user sees is that something works on Windows and not on Linux.

Mxsmanic wrote:

White Spirit writes:

What a load of rubbish. I do far more with Linux than I ever did (or
could) with MICROS~1. I'll also give Mac OSX a miss, thank you very much.

So what exactly do you do with your computer? I have roughly 100 applications
on mine that I use (under Windows).

When not developing software, I play music and video content, rip music
and video content, use various Internet applications, print documents,
word processing, construct graphics (as much as my ability allows, at
least), transfer files from camera and portable media devices, play
games etc.

White Spirit writes:

Good. I hate that feature and it is often more trouble that it is worth
in my experience.

Most users like it. Put the CD in and it runs.

Libraries and utils could be put into standardised
locations across all distros, but the user is protected from all this
when using 'official' packages.

Why is "packages" plural? It's singular with Windows.

The only time there might be a problem
is when the user is building a package from source, in which case one
would think that the user would know how to resolve a library dependency.

No normal user ever builds anything from source. No normal user knows how to
resolve library dependencies. No normal user even knows what they are.

Good. The registry is a truly horrible concept. In Linux, /etc has the
system-wide configuration and the users' home directories can contain
local configuration files to provide local settings. It's a much
cleaner way of doing things.

It would be if everything always put all information in the same place, in the
same way. But that isn't the case.

Good. Not everyone likes a taskbar GUI, or wants to use the disk space
to run Gnome and KDE.

Normal users don't care. They just want something that works. They do not
want to have to choose things.

There isn't in Windows either, but with Linux the situation is much
better because you have many standardised APIs.

No, if you have many APIs, then obviously there is no standard.

Windows does have a single, published, standard API that is fully supported.

I find developing for Linux to be a much nicer experience.

Normal users do not develop anything.

From the
point of view as a user as well, I'd much rather run a command like
'pacman -S $_name_of_package' than have to click several useless
dialogue screens.

Normal users insert the CD and go.

Your post makes it abundantly clear why Linux is unlikely to ever be a player
on the desktop.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
William Black writes:

Almost all users do almost nothing with their computers.

Not true. There are two basic types of users: Those who have a computer
for
the sake of having a computer (the geeks), and those who have a computer
in
order to do productive things that interest them that just happen to
require a
computer. The latter group represents the vast majority of computer
users.
The former group represents the vast majority of Linux users.

You don't get out much do you...

You're at least a decade out of date.

Most people don't do anyything more productive with their computers than
write emails, surf the net and buy the odd book from Amazon.

The major problems only turn up when people write their web pages in such
a
way as to only work on Microsoft products, as is currently the case with
the British government's 'Government Gateway' system.

I thought the British government was supposed to be using Linux?

It is changing over.

The problem isn't them, it's their contractors.

As for the musician who couldn't get software, very few professionals in
the music business use Windows products. They're almost all using Apple
products, including software. Indeed, when Apple bought 'Logic' and
insisted on stopping manufacturing the PC version it caused something of
a
stir in the industry.
.
Now, this being the case, there's little reason why people shouldn't
use,
for example, Ubuntu on their computers.

There are other users besides musicians.

Changing the subject won't get you off this particular hook Mixi. You're
still a plonker.

It's free, reasonably easy to install, something which most Windows
users
find hard work anyway, runs a friendly GUI and finds just about
everyone's
hardware with remarkably few problems.

Apart from not being free, all of this is even more true of Windows.

The 'free' bit is horribly important.

Especially as people are now replacing old Windows XP computers with new
ones and finding they have to pay 'Windows tax' even though they already own
the product...


--
William Black

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.