Windows vs Linux, Pros and Cons

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-02-03 01:34am

Lord MJ wrote:Well for an OpenGL front end. Some commercial company can take the from what I hear, near perfect, FreeBSD 5 kernel, and develop an OpenGL front end to it, and release it commercially. WIth the kernel remaining open source, but with the front end being a commercial product (with adequate documentation of the api for developers) they could even engineer it so that X apps could be emulated in the new graphics scheme.

Such an operating system would kill Windows in the desktop market if not for the fact that windows is already deeply entrenched, and lots of marketing capital would be needed, plus OEM agreements.

What you're describing sounds suspiciously like Mac OS X. It's based on FreeBSD and the Mach microkernel, and it has a GUI that is drawn through OpenGL on supported hardware (Quartz Extreme). Also, the guts of the OS are open-source (Darwin), but the GUI (Aqua) is closed. And, Apple just released their own version of X11 which hardware accelerates it through Quartz, and does some of the window drawing with the Quartz engine. And a couple of months back, someone released GTK+ libraries for Quartz which enable Linux applications to be ported over to the Quartz window manager easily.

So, basically, someone's already done it

And it's not exactly killing Windows on the desktop, although if someone was going to do it, it would be Apple.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-02-03 01:36am

Windows' hold on the desktop is based on many factors, many of which are due to the interrelated nature of software and some of which even delve into sociology. It will not be easily broken by any competing system, regardless of intrinsic merit.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-02-03 01:59am

I read an article, which, among many other things, stated that Windows tries to monopolize on its Windows Media format by purposely degrading the performance and quality of other formats such as mp3s.

This article was written by the chief technical officer of Red Hat. Obvious bias aside, what are your opinion?

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 02:16am

Darth Wong wrote: Pros of Linux:

Vastly superior remote-computing capabilities when compared to Windows; you can do anything over an SSH login that you can while sitting at the box, as opposed to being restricted to certain "approved" remote operations.

I wanted to make a note on this, on XP there is the Remote Desktop function wich allows you to connect to your computer remotely, and since Windows is more GUI based you can do more with that than with a CLI.

That might change though with the new Windows version wich is supposed to have a much improved CLI.

And there's always Cygwin(run OpenSSH on windows).

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 02:17am

Shinova wrote:I read an article, which, among many other things, stated that Windows tries to monopolize on its Windows Media format by purposely degrading the performance and quality of other formats such as mp3s.

This article was written by the chief technical officer of Red Hat. Obvious bias aside, what are your opinion?

Obvious bias on his part, I've seen nor heard any differences in MP3's played on WMP or WinAmp.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-02-03 02:21am

His Divine Shadow wrote: That might change though with the new Windows version wich is supposed to have a much improved CLI.

There's ANOTHER one coming out???

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-02-03 12:25pm

Apparently, Longhorn is being delayed. I haven't heard anything about an improved CLI, but the CLI they have now is so unbelievably horrible and crippled that almost anything would be an improvement. The only purposes it seems to serve are for pings and traceroutes.

The ability to SSH into my machine remotely and kill a process has saved me more than once, and it's much faster than fucking around with a remote GUI.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-02-03 01:09pm

Durandal wrote:Apparently, Longhorn is being delayed. I haven't heard anything about an improved CLI, but the CLI they have now is so unbelievably horrible and crippled that almost anything would be an improvement. The only purposes it seems to serve are for pings and traceroutes.

The CLI isn't *that* bad. Certainly not as powerful as the ones available on *nix, but not horrid either.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-02-03 01:10pm

Shinova wrote:
His Divine Shadow wrote: That might change though with the new Windows version wich is supposed to have a much improved CLI.
There's ANOTHER one coming out???

Well, yes, Windows is continually updated. Did you think WXP/Server 2003 would be the last version of Windows ?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 02:52pm

Well I run Cygwin under Windows. Slow as shit though. Then again my computer goes along at 266MHz.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 03:18pm

Durandal wrote:Apparently, Longhorn is being delayed. I haven't heard anything about an improved CLI

Well now you have
*pats Durandal really hard on the back whilst shaking his hand*
Anyway, linkage:
http://www.jobsahead.com/search/jobdesc.html?id=89305

but the CLI they have now is so unbelievably horrible and crippled that almost anything would be an improvement. The only purposes it seems to serve are for pings and traceroutes

I defer to ping-phong's judgement on this.

But, still, here's some stuff you might find interesting:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/te ... efault.asp

The ability to SSH into my machine remotely and kill a process has saved me more than once, and it's much faster than fucking around with a remote GUI.

Then you'd be well advised to get an SSH server for a windows box, if you have one that is.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-02-03 03:25pm

While I did note that the NT Command Interpreter isn't that bad, it does not come with the same suite of tools that UNIX users would come to expect. You can install Cygwin and get many of the benefits, but not all.

AFAIK, there is no way to kill a process that is not a service remotely, which is annoying.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-02-03 03:26pm

Pu-239 wrote:Well I run Cygwin under Windows. Slow as shit though. Then again my computer goes along at 266MHz.

Still, it shouldn't be that slow. I've run Cygwin on P55C/166 machines and the performance was more than acceptable.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 04:14pm

It takes a full 9 seconds for 'ls' to run on my downloads directory (yes I timed it), while only 1 second for the dos 'dir' . However it's faster the next time around probably due to caching. Then again I have 469 directory entries in that folder, and the ls command probably does some checking on each file. Letters typed in often don't appear onscreen immediately. I multitask heavily though. However under native linux CLI is fast. Anyways lots of factors could affect it.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-02-03 04:17pm

Pu-239 wrote:It takes a full 9 seconds for 'ls' to run on my downloads directory (yes I timed it), while only 1 second for the dos 'dir' . However it's faster the next time around probably due to caching. Then again I have 469 directory entries in that folder, and the ls command probably does some checking on each file. Letters typed in often don't appear onscreen immediately. I multitask heavily though. However under native linux CLI is fast. Anyways lots of factors could affect it.

Cygwin has never given me those kinds of speed issues! Something is messed up...

Wait...is Cygwin being executed through command.com or cmd.exe?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-02-03 04:32pm

phongn wrote:
Durandal wrote:Apparently, Longhorn is being delayed. I haven't heard anything about an improved CLI, but the CLI they have now is so unbelievably horrible and crippled that almost anything would be an improvement. The only purposes it seems to serve are for pings and traceroutes.
The CLI isn't *that* bad. Certainly not as powerful as the ones available on *nix, but not horrid either.

Yeah it is. Who uses backslashes for paths? Sheesh ...

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 04:42pm

I'm running Windows 98, though I use rxvt [edit] instead of loading it from the batch file [/edit]

Here's the options passed in the shortcut:
C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -fn fixedsys -bg black -fg gray -ls -sr -e bash -l

Starts RXVT for windows, changes the font to dos style, makes the background black and foreground gray, sets it as login shell, moves scrollbar to the right instead of the default left, then loads bash as a login shell- the first login option probably redundant (just tried it without; it is)

I hate 80x25, too small. I've been spoiled by my linux computer downstairs, which I set up to have 125x?? (forgot the number, probably 50 or 60-something). It's pretty fast on a P-120, but then again it's text mode. I rarely use X downstairs (haven't downloaded all necessary components yet, and don't want to waste time compiling blackbox just to have to do it again later). It's pretty cool, put vga=ask in lilo.conf, run lilo, reboot, type the number for the mode you want, or scan for maybe a few more modes, write down the number, then replace 'ask' in lilo.conf with it. Or you could use the framebuffer device (I don't, since hardware doesn't support it and framebuffer is slower).

And how the hell do you get rid of the annoying ring when you press tab for commandline completion?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 04:45pm

it's still slow if I use the batch file to load Cygwin with command.com anyways.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 04:48pm

Durandal wrote:
phongn wrote:
Durandal wrote:Apparently, Longhorn is being delayed. I haven't heard anything about an improved CLI, but the CLI they have now is so unbelievably horrible and crippled that almost anything would be an improvement. The only purposes it seems to serve are for pings and traceroutes.
The CLI isn't *that* bad. Certainly not as powerful as the ones available on *nix, but not horrid either.
Yeah it is. Who uses backslashes for paths? Sheesh ...

Yeah and it's his fault, not BG:
http://www.patersontech.com/

He sold DOS to M$ for 50K and lost a fortune and his site suggests using IE? Geez.

Anyways if MS was smarter, they would have changed the whole thing when they implemented NTFS, so it IS their fault too. Also the drive letters concept is stupid, since what if you run out of letters? For example a machine with lots of CD burners or hard drives.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 05:13pm

Pu-239 wrote:He sold DOS to M$ for 50K and lost a fortune and his site suggests using IE? Geez.

Aah, so he's supposed to be bitter and angry at MS instead to the point where he will reccomend Lynx before IE?

Anyways if MS was smarter, they would have changed the whole thing when they implemented NTFS, so it IS their fault too. Also the drive letters concept is stupid, since what if you run out of letters? For example a machine with lots of CD burners or hard drives.

Unlikely situation that, even so, I guess there are solutions for it

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-02-03 05:14pm

Pu-239 wrote:Yeah and it's his fault, not BG:
http://www.patersontech.com/

He sold DOS to M$ for 50K and lost a fortune and his site suggests using IE? Geez.

Anyways if MS was smarter, they would have changed the whole thing when they implemented NTFS, so it IS their fault too. Also the drive letters concept is stupid, since what if you run out of letters? For example a machine with lots of CD burners or hard drives.

Don't get me started on the stupidity of drive letters. They basically make relative paths impossible. If OS X ran on that idiotic drive lettering scheme, I'd be screwed, as I've moved my home folder from drive to drive more than once, and I've even renamed it. Of course, I've done this all seemlessly because of the beauty of mount points.

Doesn't XP do mount points, though?

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 05:17pm

Apparently it started with 2k:
http://www.wtblock.com/resume/mount_points.htm

One advantage that Windows 2000 brings to end users is the removal of the 26 drive letter limitation. Under Windows NT, you could access resources under a fully qualified path name (i.e., \\resource\sharename) without having to map a drive letter to that resource if it was storage.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2003-02-03 05:50pm

Still, backslashes are harder to type.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-02-03 05:54pm

Pu-239 wrote:Still, backslashes are harder to type.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Nah, it's all about what you're used to

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-02-03 06:11pm

In this case, Windows' use of backslashes fucks everything up. People think I mean backslash when I give them a URL with forward slashes in it.

Oh, and is it possible to mount local drives at a mount point in 2000/XP? Like if I wanted to mount a drive at /, and then another one at /volumes/drivename?