- Blog entry posted in 'Uncategorised', December 29, 2010.
I'll start by saying, I've been using PC's and their direct desktop ancestors since about 1980 or so, and have used CP/M, DOS, OS/2, just about every version of Window$ (including Windows 3.0, and the Win95 "desktop" known as "Bob"), Unix, and Linux.I've helped people do some configuration and network setup on Vista and Win7, although i do not own (and do not want to own) copies of Vista and Win7. I have been doing this for a while... I used to run a BBS 24/7 before there was such a thing as the internet. How i actually got any work done "back in the day" with 64k of memory and a pair of 180k floppy drives and a 1Mhz 8 bit processor is beyond me, but i did manage to get a few things done i guess.... So we'll skip most of the history lesson, and fast forward to a couple of years ago. At that time almost all of the computers in the house were running WinXP, and because i was tired of kicking my children off of my computer so i could so some web browsing or amp design or play Delta Force, i decided to just build another box. My kids had just brought home a freebie they found sitting next to a dumpster, P3-800, 512M of RAM, and a 10G hard drive. i have a few other HDDs in a box, so i put a 30G drive in it, loaded Win2k on one of the drives and Linux on the other and set it up as a dual boot machine. i copied all of my CAD software and other files to the "new" machine and started using it. i began leaning heavier on Linux. up to this point i had been using Linux primarily as a hardware diagnostic tool and had set up a few Linux routers. I began using Linux for web browsing, and a few other things. Using Wine, i could also run quite a few "must have" Windows apps too. i was still somewhat limited by the hardware i had, though, and eventually had the opportunity to upgrade the hardware. When i got the new box home, i moved all of the hard drives into it. It booted fine into Linux, but would not boot into Win2k. By this time i now had 4 hard drives containing 5 linux partitions and 3 windows partitions. one of the drives contained the Windows system and a second Windows partition with about 10G of files, and a third was a Linux partition with a bunch of music files on it. I put the disk in the machine as the primary master drive (which is what Windows wants to see when it's being installed) and began reinstalling Windows. Windows refused to install unless it owned ALL of the drive (Windows, you see, doesn't like to share disk space with another OS). After Trying for a few hours to install Windows, i finally arrived at the 6th or 7th time of seeing....
"Windows cannot continue installing on this disk. Press R to retry, Press F3 to exit."
So I exit to check and see what just happened here..... booting from a Linux live CD, i find that there is indeed a Windows (C: ) partition and my Linux partition is safe and sound.... but my 10G of data (which had been a Windows partition) was now "unallocated".... So what happened? When i fixed the MBR, Windows' heavy-handed disk tools wiped the FAT of both windows drives, and somehow wrote an invalid partition type to the D: drive (it was FAT32, not NTFS, which for some reason the installer didn't like that). Once MS disk tools do something like this, there IS NO way to fix it. Linux fdisk can delete a partition and restore it without losing data, but Windows disk tools just blow everything away.... OK, enough of this.... this machine has just become Linux ONLY...... today the machine has Slackware Linux 13.0 on it, and for the very few instances where I really need Windows, I have a copy of Win2k installed on a virtual machine.
So fastforwarding to December 2010, I have a PC at work running WinXP because I have to. My machine at home has been running 24/7 for at least 3 or 4 months without a reboot (yes, Linux is THAT stable), and i have been running my machine at work for about 2 weeks since it's last reboot. My machine at home has been running a few apps constantly, such as a large torrent download, email, a VOIP server, etc.... My machine at work rens a few apps during the day, but most of it (except MS Outlook) gets closed at the end of the day. So what's the difference? The Linux box comes back from the screen saver instantly, apps run smooth, even though the machine hasn't been rebooted for a few months. The machine at work begins getting sluggish, churning the hard drive for 5 minutes or more after entering the password to return from the screen saver. taking forever to switch between apps, crashing apps (like Adobe Acrobat, which for some reason locks up Internet Explorer when it crashes). Looking at the process tree in Task Manager reveals nothing except system processes are churning up a lot of disk writes and reads while apparently just slowing the machine down. the system's cache file has grown to 2 GIGS of who-knows-what. What fixes this odd behavior? rebooting.... then the machine is back to normal. I'm not sure why Windows gets so top heavy after it's been running for more than a few days, but it does. Possibly the cache file also keeps a growing cache history (which is what the strange behavior would indicate). It's not just on my machine, but company wide, and I've seen other Windows machines do this as well, and it's not a new phenomenon. Windows also takes FOREVER to restack it's RAM allocation when you close an app, Linux rearranges it's RAM usage immediately. When Windows crashes, it often requires a reboot to get everything working right again. With Linux, -- will force a restart of X (linux's graphic interface) without a reboot in the off chance that the GUI gets hung up. Also, processes in linux can be killed, "re-niced" (where you can alter the CPU and disk priority a process gets) , or restarted (or in some cases given a swift kick in the butt to get it moving again), but when a process hangs up in Windows, all Task Manager allows is to kill it.
Currently there is only one WinXP machine still operating in the house. The children use a Linux box for web browsing and watching movies. Now when they play online arcade games, no more viruses... My oldest son is away at college, my next oldest uses a Macbook. Linux's KDE Desktop is a really nice GUI with a lot of useful features and even some "eye candy" that should be making Bill Gates green with envy. It simply is better and slicker than Windows.
Speaking of viruses (and their siblings... malware, spyware, adware, exploits, etc....), there are at least a few hundred thousand virii for windows, and between 800 and 1000 for linux. Most of the Linux virii assume you are 1) running using the root (administrator) account and 2) have an idiotically simple password (like "root" or "admin", "joes-computer", etc...), and uses a "standard" list of known common passwords to try to gain access. Operating a limited user account with a random or unknown (to the "list") password stops the majority of Linux virii before they can do anything. The remainder can do some limited damage to files in the user account currently running, but can't harm the system (which runs as the root account). Windows virii have the ability to gain for themselves "super admin" status, and avoid deletion or even the halting of their processes by the real admin of the system. Antivirus software for Windows runs under the ownership of the admin user, which the virus can bypass with "super admin" and not even the antivirus software can stop or delete it. Not to mention the numerous security holes that Microsoft is constantly plugging because somebody found a way to exploit it.
Last but not least, i'm tired of paying a couple hundred dollars every time a new flavor of Windows comes out, then a few hundred more for the office suite (Microsoft Office) that goes with it. Slackware Linux is FREE, and so is Open Office and Thunderbird (email client). when you get Win7 "standard" edition, you get ALL of the same software that comes with Win7 "ultimate edition", but only has the functionality of "standard" unless you pay a few hundred dollars more to "unlock" it. If you want to set up a server farm, you have to pay lots of $$$ for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, as well as a license fee for each machine it's installed on. With Linux, EVERYTHING neccesary for a server is included "out of the box" with no fees. The license is GPL (General Public License), which means "if you can install it and set it up, go right ahead", and if you make any changes to the software to make it better, provide the source code so everybody can use it.
Tech support for Linux is also free, and you can go to many places and forums on the web and ask questions ( LinuxQuestions.org ) , and get real help. If you have older hardware languishing in a corner, Linux generally will run just fine on that as well (only recently has some of the i386 and i486 code begun to disappear from the Linux kernel, but Linux should still run quite well on those older architectures) an old 386 or 486 with 16M of memory is more than enough to run a router or internet gateway. add a wireless card, and it becomes a wireless router. Try that with Windows...
Slackware Linux:
The Slackware Linux Project
Installer packages for "aftermarket" Linux software:
SlackBuilds.org
Need help?:
LinuxQuestions.org
Need to run Windows programs in Linux?:
WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X (a windows API for Linux)
VirtualBox (a virtual machine, where you can actually install and run ANY operating system, including Windows)
Arkansas, January 16, 2011
As you, I go back to the days of the 150 BAUD modem. There are a lot of things in your rant that I appreciate, because we've both been to that set of parties. I still have two machines that run DOS. One governs my hot water heater and furnace, and the other one runs a very primitive CNC device out in the shop. Linux is my preferred system of operation for anything I own myself. If the boss wants to subsidize Brother Bill and the rest of the dimbulb dumbifiers of Microsoft (I still maintain that we did ourselves hurt as a people when we abandoned language to go back to drawing stick pictures in the mud, which is what a GUI is, essentially...) I'll use it until I can teach him better. God bless, and Go Linux....
unclejed613, January 17, 2011
tnx for the comment... in fact i use the KDE GUI in linux, because it's convenient. i still however keep a terminal or two open most of the time, because there's stuff that works better from a CLI than from a GUI. when i'm trying a newly installed program, even if it is a GUI app, running it from a terminal gives me any error info i need to get it running correctly. it used to be that even windows software could be run from a command line window, but M$ seems to have even gone away from that remaining "holdover" from DOS. try it with most software anymore and you get an error. if one of your DOS hard drives ever takes a dirtnap, there's an open source replacement for DOS at [url=http://www.freedos.org/]FreeDOS | The FreeDOS Project[/url] i still have a couple of copies of my DOS 6.22 install set floating around, but don't know if they're still any good, since i haven't had a floppy drive in a machine for a year or two. btw, DOS 6.21/6.22 was the only exception i can remember to the M$ "even numbered version curse". if i remember correctly, M$ used a piece of copyrighted (and buggy) compression code and got sued for it in ver 6.21. DOS 6.22 corrected the "oversight", but 1) couldn't fix trashed compressed drives created with 6.21, and 2) didn't have it's own compression.... i remember losing 100MB of data with a DOS 6.21 compressed volume crash and having to restore everything from floppy.....
frazelle09, February 18, 2011
Am always happy to see and read others impression of and path to Linux. i finally found it about 3 years ago and finally settled on a flavor called PCLinuxOS. Since i don't do much with it, except use it, i have found it to be really great - easy to install and easy to use. i've been able to install it on our foundation's computer, my wife's, my mother-in-law's and several friends. It just works - plus - like you mentioned, the help forums are really great. Great post and have a wonderful evening! :)
tytower, April 07, 2011
Anyone who wants to try linux -buy a magazine and get a "Live" disk with it .Or download an iso from a distro Run your Browser and webmail email on it and leave everything else on windows . When ready install Linux from the "Live" as a dual boot if you want and delve further As the majority use windows everything starts off as Windowsonly and gradually Linux versions come out so its always a little behind . Not as many people working to write or fix programs. New hardware can be a pain for a while.
throbscottle, April 23, 2012
Been running Linux for 12 years now - started with a magazine cover disk - Red Hat 6.2. I had to use the nascent fips to create a partition on my (first PC) win98 box. Very scary. Now running Arch Linux after I fell out with Ubuntu a few months ago. Feels like Linux again... Everything just works, and if it doesn't, I can fix it. When I use Windows now I get frustrated very quickly (usually because I'm only using it because I've been asked to fix it). Best version of Windows IMHO was win2k. I almost never use a file manager - do all that stuff on the console. Much quicker and easier.
()blivion, July 05, 2012
Hi. Since I'm a certified PC technician, I though I would give a few (lot of) thoughts and opinions of my own on your blog entry and some of the comments under it. I'm most likely going to get flamed for this, you can file this in the trash if you want. Just know that I'm RESPECTFULLY disagreeing with you. This is only what I have seen with my own two eyes. I actually like Linux and would love to use GNU-Linux as my main machine, but I have tried many times and just can't do it. This is most likely because I have different usage needs from my PC than most of you. Anyway, I'll start with the Linux pro's first... [B][U]LINUX PRO's[/U][/B] It's free, especially useful if you want to do something that is common to do and expensive otherwise. Such as a [L]AMP stack. It's *FAR* more secure... FROM SCRIPT KIDDIES. (Real hackers have your number [0day] for any OS). It's open source. Making a person with code skills able to do anything with the OS they can dream up. IT CAN BE more fast and more stable, since it is more flexible. But the positive comment train stops here... [U][B]LINUX CONS[/B][/U] Dinosaurs need to get with the times, GUI OS is in... CLI OS is out. It's 2012, the GUI [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto"]has existed for nearly 40 years[/URL]. I shouldn't have to use a command-line for normal use if I don't want to. But with Linux it's becomes a requirement. Now I'm no stranger to the command-line, but I disagree with this command-line comes first mind set. The command-line should certainly be there when you need it, but not in your face all the time. And in the end, you can do anything in a GUI environment that you can with the CLI, it's called Batch/Bash scripting. So how is a pure CLI OS some how superior when GUI OS's include a CLI? Edit: I am not suggesting that Linux doesn't have a GUI of course. I actually like the newer Linux desktops look better than most of Window$. What I'm saying is that favoring Linux over Window$ because it has "better command-line" is IMO completely backwards thinking. I have found Linux "free help" to be unhelpful AND unfriendly with a side order of slow on top. On the other hand, I have never needed tech support for Window$ because any problems I have had are almost always already well documented thanks to the OS's popularity. Just Google the problem and it's fixed in a few moments, in a few steps. I have seen Linux crash it's a$$ off, it *DOES* happen. In fact, more often than not, it crashes MORE than windows when out of the box. An out of the box Window$ machine on the other hand is mostly crash free (full of security holes, but crash free.) Truth be told "crashing" is almost never the fault of the OS. It's actually the programs and drivers and bad users that end up causing crashes 99.9999% of the time. THIS ISN'T WINDOW$ FAULT. However, because less programers put as much effort into the Linux versions of software and drivers as they do for Window$, Linux does get screwed over. THIS ISN'T LINUXS' FAULT. But it does mean "Linux crashes more often" by default. Neither OS will have problems for an educated user on a machine with popular and stable hardware. Malware is a problem with Window$ because of the OS's popularity, not because of inherent design. But this is only a problem for people dumb enough to not protect themselves properly. Back up your important files, don't run anything that's shady, don't download warez, use strong passwords, have a "safe" machine for banking and shopping [VM/clean windows/Linux/live CD] and above all else... use your brain. It has been said time and time again that it is NOT the computers fault, but the person using the computer who's usually too blame. A bad user on Linux is at greater risk that a good user on Window$, regardless of Window$ inherent flaws. To many flavors of Linux make standardization impossible. Porting and compiling source every time I change flavors is a PITA. FAR less hardware support in Linux. Most every PC component has a windows driver for it though. (not the fault of Linux) Win se7en does suck, as does Vista, as does XP. But they are easier to use for the less PC savvy than Linux is. Wine rarely works 100%, or even 85% honestly. It's really only good for the "must haves". I believe in the mathematics of "software evolution" over time, more so than the expertise and effort of programers that work for nothing. Bill gates has donated more money to charitable foundations than you or I will ever see in our entire life times. Do give respect. Try playing the latest GPU destroying games on Linux... You can't... plain and simple. [U][B]Conclusion[/B][/U] I think [URL="http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/the_problems_of_open_source.htm"]this link[/URL] sums up Linux/Open source nice and accurately.
unclejed613, July 05, 2012
Well i won't send your comment to the trash bin, but i think some of your comments should have been researched a bit better. For instance [QUOTE]"Dinosaurs need to get with the times, GUI OS is in... CLI OS is out. It's 2012, the GUI has existed for nearly 40 years. I shouldn't have to use a command-line for normal use if I don't want to. But with Linux it's becomes a requirement. Now I'm no stranger to the command-line, but I disagree with this command-line comes first mind set. The command-line should certainly be there when you need it, but not in your face all the time. And in the end, you can do anything in a GUI environment that you can with the CLI, it's called Batch/Bash scripting. So how is a pure CLI OS some how superior when GUI OS's include a CLI?"[/QUOTE] Linux has quite a few different GUI interfaces available, as well as several different desktop managers. While the CLI is available if needed as a terminal window (as is a DOS window in Windows, it's no longer the primary interface. That actually changed in Linux about 20 years ago. [QUOTE]I have found Linux "free help" to be unhelpful AND unfriendly with a side order of slow on top. On the other hand, I have never needed tech support for Window$ because any problems I have had are almost always already well documented thanks to the OS's popularity. Just Google the problem and it's fixed in a few moments, in a few steps. [/QUOTE] go to [url]www.linuxquestions.org[/url] and browse around a bit, and you'll see that the strident "RTFM" attitude of people using Linux has mostly become a thing of the past. [QUOTE]I have seen Linux crash it's a$$ off, it *DOES* happen. In fact, more often than not, it crashes MORE than windows when out of the box. An out of the box Window$ machine on the other hand is mostly crash free (full of security holes, but crash free.) Truth be told "crashing" is almost never the fault of the OS. It's actually the programs and drivers and bad users that end up causing crashes 99.9999% of the time. THIS ISN'T WINDOW$ FAULT. However, because less programers put as much effort into the Linux versions of software and drivers as they do for Window$, Linux does get screwed over. THIS ISN'T LINUXS' FAULT. But it does mean "Linux crashes more often" by default. Neither OS will have problems for an educated user on a machine with popular stable hardware.[/QUOTE] There are stable versions of software in both camps, as well as unstable development versions. I have been using a distribution of Linux (Slackware) that only includes stable versions of software in their distribution, I have seen Windows come out of the box with various unstable components, often requiring patches or service packs to correct. There's a very old joke about "never buy an even numbered version or a .0 revision of Microsoft software. Wait until they fix it, then buy it." This joke (with a few exceptions) has been quite true, from DOS2.0 onward. [QUOTE]Conclusion I think this link sums up Linux/Open source nice and accurately. [/QUOTE] actually that link is more of a rant than mine was..... one OS that has become quite popular, had it's origins in Linux and Open Source, and that's Android.... The idea that Open Source software is clunky and poorly written sometimes has some truth to it, but I've also seen my share of poorly written Windows software, and even Microsoft has laid their share of rotten eggs (look up "Microsoft Bob").
throbscottle, July 06, 2012
Wow - I like Microsoft Bob! Shame they stopped doing it.
Real-PCB, January 05, 2013
spam deleted with extreme prejudice
