Macs or PCs

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Wait, let me straighten this out. Mac vs. PC is a hardware issue. Linux is not a computer; it is not hardware; it is an operating system. You can have Linux on a Mac, and you can have Linux on a PC. There is no such thing as a "Linux computer". Macs and PCs are computers. Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux are OSs.

Linux all the way for me (specifically Ubuntu, I have not used any other distro)

I have just come back from the UK where I spent many, many hours sorting out friends and families windows machines, several times using a live cd to access and rescue the data trapped in the broken MS OS. The issues with windows are so insidious that people get used to how the computer is operating and think that freezing, slow booting, slow web surfing, failure to open programs etc is normal!! !! !!

Admittedly some of the above situations were caused by viruses and malware, many were simply windows corrupting itself. And any how, if a system is so porous to malware fix the way the security works. For pities sake windows cannot even keep its files in any semblance of order and requires you to 'defrag' to sort the mess out on a regular basis.

If for any reason I break my distro, I can reinstall it without the need to reinstall all my data. If you don't 'play ' with a decent Linux distro it will not break, they don't freeze up, and as for BSOD

AS far as programs go the only commercial package that I use is my accounting software, the freely available ones for Linux would adequately do the job, but I see no need to use them as the one I paid for to use in windows works well under Wine.

Regarding the installation of packages, even something as basic as a printer driver requires windows to reboot, as well as a plethora of clicking 'next' agreeing to eula's, telling windows its 'ok' to use 'non signed software' blah blah blah, Ubuntu on the other hand could not be any easier, you want software, go into the package manager, type the style of software you want into search and voilà, up comes several options, pick one, click install, type in your password, and you are done. All without a single reboot or additional question. And as for installing the OS in the first place how ridiculously difficult does MS need to make it, things may have improved somewhat with win7 but for crying out loud it is now 2010, it is about time windows started to catch up.

And then there is the eye candy, if you like a specky desktop compiz gives you far more than aero could dream of at a fraction of the computing power.

I could go on and on, but I will sum up using the words of my 78 year old mother, who upon seeing Ubuntu for the first time via a live cd ( Windows live cd ?????) said and I quote, "Oh my goodness that all makes so much more sense can you put that onto my computer" She now has a dual boot system with Ubuntu as the default.

In further summation and Borrowing somewhat from Prince Charles -

WINDOWS IS A CARBUNCLE UPON THE BACKSIDE OF HUMANITY

I like Linux, but you're overselling it a bit, Dent.

ext3, and even the shiny new ext4, get fragmented as well. Perhaps they don't fragment as badly as NTFS does (and certainly not nearly as badly as FAT did) but at least NTFS has support for defragging. In HFS+ on the Mac, and ext3 or ext4 on Linux, currently the only solution for a badly fragmented disk is to reformat your hard drive and reinstall everything. In Linux's defense, they are working on getting defrag support in ext4, but it's a ways off yet. Fortunately most desktop users don't really need to defrag in the life of their OS- especially one as short-lived as Ubuntu.


Or if you try to install the bi-annual Ubuntu upgrade to find that they shipped completely broken Intel graphics in an allegedly "stable" release, you can always try to go back to last year's version that receives no updated versions of any programs, so you're still using an outdated Firefox and OpenOffice 2.4. Or you can just install unsupported and unstable "fixed" graphics drivers from some shady source on the net.

Ubuntu does occasionally break for no apparent reason, even if you aren't playing around with it. How many times has Flash suddenly decided it doesn't want to work for either of us? My webcam never works for more than about a day at a time, and I have yet to get Ubuntu to run with all of my hardware fully functional. My webcam used to work in the Hardy Heron days, but kernel 2.6.24 had little to no support for my speakers. Even with the much improved support in recent kernels, audio quality on my machine is significantly better in Windows or OS X.

Heck, I was running Debian for a while last summer, and after I had gotten it set up I didn't do anything fancy with it, I was only using it for normal web browsing and other simple tasks. One morning it refused to boot, and I never did manage to get it back. I hadn't even installed any updates that could have broken something, it just inexplicably offed itself.


You often have to do this in Ubuntu as well if you ever have need to go outside the official repos. Try installing Seamonkey, for instance. Unless you're content using a Gecko engine that is several years out of date and fails on half the Internet, you have to find an obscure PPA somewhere or else install it yourself from the Mozilla site, in which case none of your plugins will ever work and you have to manually configure the launcher to show up in your applications menu.


The software that is available is very nicely sorted in a central location, but there is more out there for Windows. It's hard to argue against that. (Though I should note that one of my classes this semester requires a program that doesn't run under Windows- prof sent out an e-mail today giving installation instructions for Xubuntu)

^ well all I can go on is my experiences, I had a wireless card issue with Ubuntu on my laptop, which was resolved, and I have, as you pointed out, had some difficulties with firefox and embedded video, but that is it, all the comps I have installed it on have worked pretty much flawlessly, my own computer has worked beautifully, (the issues I had with the cpu usage were down to a screwed MB). The install and updates could not be easier, yes there have been bugs with new releases but I defy any OS developer to bring out a new release that does not have glitches, Windows has far far more notoriety in regards to unstable releases. So yes in a perfect world Ubuntu could be better, but the fact remains that compared to Windows it is by far and away more stable and safer to use, and in my opinion far easier and more intuitive

"Karmic" Koala indeed. I badmath Linux just a little bit and my system comes crashing down, starting with Compiz. I suppose the Linux gods are taking their vengeance.

By the way, Epiphany web browser locked up as I was typing this post.

$ uptime
12:53:33 up 27 days, 22:45, 10 users, load average: 0.86, 0.40, 0.45
$ uname -a
Linux medion 2.6.24-27-generic #1 SMP Wed Jan 27 23:54:28 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

This is Hardy Heron.

I don't much mind that the Firefox is at 3.0.16 (my various Karmic Koalas get 3.5.8) - as I use (a rather broken profile in) SeaMonkey (1.1.17), from the repository, in any case.

I have another year of support, for Hardy Heron, and there are a number of reasons why I keep this system down at that level (only one of which is its ancient NVIDIA card - the rest mainly being my laziness).

Also, I have PCs - lots of them - and to my mind, that means "Personal Computers". A Mac is a PC, but I don't happen to have one of those.

Whatever. You know what the original poster meant. Agreed 'PC' is about 20 years out of date. Semantic issue not hw issue.

I've run OSX on an AMD-based Frankenstein.

I don't have:

- Freezing
- Slow booting
- Slow web surfing
- Failures to open programs

Agreed Linux is more flexible in recovering once it craps. In general. But I do *have* a Windows 7 Live CD.

The Mac users I know typically get as much as six months or a year of uptime without thinking twice about it. But then, they probably don't install updates, which I presume is why you rebooted last month.

In the past, I would have sided with the mac or another Unix OS like Linux. But the truth is, Windows is no longer the horrible operating system it once was, as of Win2000. Even Vista is a great OS, its only black eye being people running it on 10 year old PCs and wondering why its slow.

Windows simply doesn't crash unless you get a virus, and of course windows is more prone - its more used. I don't buy the whole Unix/BSD being more secure because its open source, so anyone can find flaws in it, making it less secure than Windows. Furthermore, you're not going to get a virus unless you're stupid and run without AntiVirus and run weird executables that install "IM emoticons" and the like. My parents use a windows system and its had an uptime of about a year and a half without issues. I'd have a high uptime as well if I weren't a laptop user.

Macintosh computers are overpriced(Yes, I know the cost covers their expensive case designs, so it is going somewhere), but I will admit they have a good OS. Their UI, however, is the very definition of form over function, and I cant stand using it because it takes forever for me to do anything in it. Not worth it IMO

Unix/Linux, I keep wanting to try but I always get turned off by its poor performance in both KDE and Gnome(I use a 550mhz p3 as a test machine, and windows runs circles around KDE/Gnome OS's on it, which makes me hesitant to put it on my primary machine).

You don't have to have a 10 year old PC for Vista to run slow. For me it was pretty slow on a dual core Athlon 5200+ with 4GB system memory. Unacceptable. Also, 3 confirmation boxes for the same action is unacceptable. I downgraded to XP.

I believe all operating systems should run every process in a virtual machine. This would allow "native" code to be run from the web without worrying about the security risk or requiring the user to confirm. It would open up new possibilities (see Google's Native Client, based on VX32).

There is no reason why a program like Microsoft Word needs to be able to do anything other than draw in its own window and save files in its own sandbox. All the other API functions should be unavailable. I have a plan for how this could work, but I do not have 100 employees to make it happen.

Vista is slow on anything.


Run Xfce, or better yet LXDE. LXDE runs on about the same resources on Win98, with the difference being that it is still modern and functional.

And yeah, there is no way Vista is faster than GNOME on any machine. Maybe XP is marginally faster than Ubuntu+GNOME, but that's because XP is ancient.

Possibly because you are an experienced computer user, however my experience helping out those who are not is totally different. An OS that requires such constant surveillance, is, in my opinion, unfit for the task for which it is sold.

I don't fully agree (assuming Windows 7; XP was a lot more susceptible to spyware and virii). And I don't believe Ubuntu or any Linux is appropriate for an inexperienced computer user. Of the many UIs available, none are as intuitive as Windows 7 for an inexperienced user. Further, those types of users tend to use their computers to do office work and games, both of which are lacking in the applications dept on Linux.

Apple is another alternative for an inexperienced user, but I don't think they're far ahead of Microsoft this year.

I'm a PC user and have always been. I'm running Windows 7 on my desktop along with Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu isn't very hard at all. It's surprisingly easy for those who still think Linux doesn't have anything more than a command line. I absolutely hate Apple with a passion. Why? Their iPods are horrible MP3 players. My Cowon D2 that I have Rockbox on beats the iPod any day. Ubuntu serves the same purpose of Mac OS X to me. I.E. a stable UNIX like OS good for productivity.

PC's. If you pay for a Mac, you pay for the brand. I guarantee you a PC of the same price will be a better computer.

As for "Windows vs. OSX", as this debate usually is (even though you can run Windows on a Mac and OSX on a PC), OSX.