Jeff, you are just trolling.
People forget why Windows won. It was not good marketing. It certainly wasn’t the best technology. It was device drivers, and standards.
With Windows, you had a standardized GDI, and you could submit your device driver to Microsoft, who essentially QC’d it for you, and get it distributed by them, for free. There were enough copies around for the market to be worth something, so people started making their peripherals work with Windows, which turned out to be more cost-effective than doing it in DOS.
Linux, for all its advantages, still has not gotten together a standardized set of installers, graphics interfaces, audio interfaces, or other peripheral interfaces.
Until that happens, and installs and plug-and-play work everywhere on all flavors of Linux, it will be forever an also-ran.
P.S. The green text is sweetly nostalgic, but I’ve got work to do.
Hi Jeff, nice new theme… I can’t stop giggling reading this post and comments…
No, I’m not some caliber software engineer like Jamie… but I like coding and I also don’t have much time to fix some unnecessary bugs on my OS as it keeps automagically updating. Anyway, I’ve used RedHat, Mandrake, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. Now, I stick with Ubuntu on my dual boot Laptop. Yes, I do have Microsoft Windows XP on my other partition but since I have no more VBA nor VB task anymore, it seems that I haven’t booted to winxp for about 5 months now.
You won’t believe this. Linux is getting better. And please, there is no Ubuntu 10.7 yet… kekekeke… this Jamie guy really make me laugh… Maybe, Fedora 5 sucks but there is Fedora 8 now and they are also getting way far better than before… come on Jeff, try the upcoming Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) scheduled to be officially launched on 24th April 2008. You can download it for free at http://www.ubuntu.com
For me, I won’t bias on which OS is better… all OS are made to fulfill our computing task. I use Mac for my graphic design work, I use Windows for some VB programming and I use Ubuntu Linux for my daily computing (surfing, email, chat, writing, scripting, coding and so on)… please, try linux yourself and see…
“I will say though, Linux audio is horrible. And that’s coming from someone who uses it as his platform of choice. It does seem to be getting better.”
I recently switched to Linux, and my sound quality has actually improved: sound card seems to have much better signal to noise ratio now 
Same deal with open source firmware for my MP3 player
I kindly disagree, sir!
Wherever did you get the idea that Linux is his “platform of choice”? I’ve never heard him say anything nice about it.
Irix seemed to be his platform of choice, before SGI self-destructed, and then he played with Linux for a little while (enumerating the countless ways it sucks compared to Irix), and then gave up and bought a Mac.
And I find it weird how you conclude that “Linux is so complex that even a world class software engineer can’t always get it to work”, but nothing else was ever actually tried. Did he have more luck with Windows, or Mac OS, or Irix? Why are you calling attention to a constant? Isn’t the more accurate conclusion that “Computers are so complex even a world class software engineer can’t get it to work”? Unless you have an alternative operating system that would have worked well on his PC for his uses, you can’t exactly say Linux is bad – it’s the best we’ve got, sad as that may be.
P.S., I’m going to have a party next month to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the latest major release of Irix, the Unix OS that was so awesome even Linux could kill it.
Wow one small april fools joke and you unleashed the style police here!
Linux is free if your time is worthless
Windows is only the price you paid for it if your time is worthless.
There’s one Windows computer here that will randomly bluescreen if a certain Windows update is allowed on it. It has taken me days to figure this out. It takes hours to do a full reinstall of a Windows system. Every time I installed Linux it’s been much quicker. Even my laptop is fully up and running - including wireless access, graphics acceleration and synaptics trackpad options - in less than an hour on Ubuntu but Windows requires downloading drivers (which aren’t always easy to find or even correct on the manufacturer’s website) and many reboots.
It does take time to do anything whether you are using Linux, Windows, Mac, or whatever.
Nice post Jeff,
I have also given up trying linux on my home PC as well as on my development server. Configuring Java development server with services like SVN, Artifactory, Tomcat, etc. proved out to be a real pain. We have been trying to set it up with my collegue for a week, but then just put XP on that box and everything works fine now (and much faster).
I don’t know if the post or only the theme is the april’s fool, but what disturbs me is that this kind of “anecdotical evidence” aka trolling is that common, even with the “better” it crowd that consider themselves engineers or scientists.
Programmers, that, if it comes to OSes don’ seem to know that theres a difference between the OS and the software running on it.
Administrators, who usualy complain about the ignorance of the users, saying things which boil down to “i installed YOUR os, didnt work, must be the OSs fault, even if i never dealt with it i’m pretty sure”.
Bloggers, who take their own, special case experiences and generalize it to “apperently $OS sucks”.
And I hate to turn into such a troll myself, when i feel urged to reply.
Please fix this theme. I love reading this blog but will stop reading it in these awfull colors.
Let That Be a Lesson To You, Son: Never Upgrade !
With all the complaining about “it’s too hard to read”, there’s an article about gamma curves just waiting to be written. I can read this just fine on this monitor, but I’m sure my other computer would make it painful.
For the FF2 users out there who value their eyes: View - Page Style - No Style.
Linux is a component, not an operating system, which why generalizations like this never lead to much good.
As has already been pointed out, the Fedora system is specifically intended to keep pushing the cutting edge of Open Source server and desktop software; it isn’t intended to provide you with a stable or easy to upgrade platform for free, nor to host old software. Some other distributions are specifically engineered for ease of maintenance, and do support online upgrades very effectively. The trade-offs are that they sometimes bundle older software, and the distribution developers have to do more work to ensure smooth transitions.
"The black background uses less electricity,"
Umm - sorry, try again:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/
All distros are not equal.
I hate Red Hat too.
Try out Ubuntu.
I feel like avoiding your blog, because the colors are so…i can’t find right word!
I think the word you are looking for is… “bad”! Don’t worry, it was a one-day only April Fool’s joke.
a link to his “lounge” with a picture of one guy appearing to bugger another
LOL. DNA Lounge is a great club, but it depends what event/band is scheduled. I’m extremely partial to the Bootie (mashup) shows myself:
http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2005/
http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2006/
http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2007/
Really outstanding stuff. If you’re ever in the SF Bay area, I recommend checking it out. It’s a true geek club, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Addendum. Linux has never been jwz’s “platform of choice”. This is a guy who was quoted at length in the Unix-Haters Handbook.
http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html
"But I’d rather run Unix than Windows or MacOS any day, because Unix sucks less. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck."
Surely OS X or Windows could have worked on the kiosk machines? I have always had success installing Windows on controlled hardware – unless there’s faulty hardware. Still, I find it hard to believe that all the kiosks would have faulty hardware.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000907.html
"Here’s one thing I’ve learned from experience: if your system can’t finish a clean install of Windows, it’s not stable. Period. It’s tempting to blame Microsoft, but the only possible culprit if you have problems at this stage is the hardware (or possibly a scratched DVD). Trust me on this one. "
realize that computers can take time to get set up perfectly.
Wow Trab, you just missed it by a mile.
While I’m no fan of Windows or Linux, the reason say, my technically challenged sister won’t use Linux is because it takes effort.
She gets a Windows computer, preconfigured. She spends about zero time on setup and never will. She uses it. She doesn’t care about it or its inner workings at all. When it breaks, she goes to Best Buy or the guys down the street who can fix windows and they fix it.
Linux isn’t a consumer product. It’s great. I love Ubuntu. But it’s a geek toy. It has to be as effortless as Windows, with as many resources as Windows has, to ever beat it.
Jeff, before i contribute to the war so far, i’d advise you do something about the captcha on your blog. or i might just be tempted to write a script to spam it 
your blog is well-known, as is the captcha on it. maybe your should randomize the word? that’s done, on to the war!
the OS/database/app/browser/* wars are bull, because humans are rarely impersonal about anything. “Mac OS ‘just works’”? i have a friend that has had issues with his Mac. serious issues. the same can be said for Linux, Windows or anything in this world. while i don’t always agree with my boss, i feel that his approach - which is wait until the guy can’t open the door, then give him a key that works - is the best thing anyone can do. Linux works for you? great! advocate it, but quit being insufferable and saying everyone else is an idiot. you’re using Mac OS? great! tell people what you got good in it, and maybe they’ll fall in too. Windows works for you? nice! tell people it works, and show them what you did with it. people can argue with your methods, but your results are the one thing people can’t argue with - especially if they’re consistent.
it’s a sad thing that a large number of FOSS users are really elitist and act like they’re the only right people on earth (as the saying goes, those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who actually do). right now, i have Wings 3D and Softimage XSI Mod Tool installed on my machine and i keep wondering why XSI seems so ‘non-intuitive’. nobody’s telling me to do my modeling in Wings - but i’m doing it. yet not all my experience with FOSS has been that good. Ubuntu 5 didn’t work on my laptop (AMD Turion 64 processor), yet so many people praise it.
gentlemen, the war isn’t worth it. let’s devote our time to making the world a better place where we can. and it doesn’t really matter what software we use doing it - once we get it done.
Re: Linux is so complex that even a world class software engineer can’t always get it to work.
Heh. Linus Torvalds on Fedora: “youtube no workee - fedora 9 not usable for wife”
And again the anecdotal evidence fallacy:
ThatGuyInTheBack wrote on April 2
[my sister] gets a Windows computer, preconfigured.
She spends about zero time on setup and never will.
She uses it.
I could say, that this is exactly why windows never worked for my family. They get a nice, preconfigured computer, and in a weeks time it’s broken.
Myriards of IE-toolbars, spyware, etc, they even the nicely preconfigured Programs dont work anymore.
They are now using Macs mostly, which i like because a) it seems to work for them, and b) i can now truthfully deny any knowledge of how to fix their problems.
But i would never, ever say that this prooves anything, like i don’t accept the “user stories” of Homeopathy or the followers of other pseudo sciences.
She doesn’t care about it or its inner workings at all. When
it breaks, she goes to Best Buy or the guys down the street who
can fix windows and they fix it.
which would work for really any OS, i bet even BeOS or Dos.