[brlug-poly] thanks

[Andrew Baudouin]

On 10/23/05, Will Hill <williamhill2 at cox.net> wrote:
>
> Just for you, Shannon, I'll tell you why XP is unusable for me. To
> continue
> your analogy, this is a small fish that I'd usually throw back where it
> could
> die or grow larger and be more fun.
>
> It's funny to post here as what follows is mostly a technical discussion.
>
> XP's closed source nature make it buggy and useless. The list of problems
> starts with power management and extends to a lack of applications, stupid
> data formats, poor GUI and printer management. It would be easier to say
> that everything Microsoft is second rate and leave it at that, but I'll go
> into details for someone who loves file permissions on systems with 12
> minut
> half lives.
>
> Power management, the most important feature in a laptop to me, is wasted
> in
> an OS that works best when booted daily. The whole point of mobile
> computing
> is to take your work with you. Even the best session management, which XP
> has none of that I'm aware of, fails to bring up your work exactly as you
> left it. So, without power management, you lose your place and have to
> waste
> your time booting your computer and looking up all the things you need to
> get
> the job done. Compare that to having everything you need already opened
> when
> you open the lid.


Have you even used XP??????

This is a giant laugher.

ACPI and laptop hardware has been supported better on Windows since before
Linux distributions even thought about supporting it.

This wins the made-up statistics award for 2005. You remind me of the
LSU/Les Miles bashers who invent things like "LSU was #1 in recruiting under
Nick Saban....The defense never gave up this many yards under Nick Saban"


XP's sorry single screen GUI makes place keeping difficult anyway. If I've
> got more than two or three documents to look at in several programs, the
> single screen gets crowded fast. Not being able to slide documents to the
> side so I can look at them easily is frustrating, but not nearly as
> frustrating as their pathetic task bar which reduces everything down to a
> few
> icons that continuously change positions.


The application icons never change position. As you open more programs they
stack to the right.

Finding your work is like playing
> "hit the gopher". I don't remember how to make the screen split, to it's
> very difficult to compare things side by side. As I recall, it was
> different
> in every application and changed from version to version. It was much
> easier
> for me to discover these features in Enlightenment and KDE applications
> where
> they are very useful.


In MDI applications, Window-Tile.

Did you just admit that you haven't even used windows since '95? I believe I
detect that.

All of the above assumes I have programs to work with, which is not true. In
> the non free world of XP, I have to pony up money or search the world wide
> web for applications that are probably trojaned.


This is simply fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Name an open-source
application, and there is probably a windows build for it. GiMP, gaIM,
OpenOffice, X-Chat....all have windows builds. Infact, the X=Chat developers
insidiously charge money for the windows builds. Would you go as far as to
say that those applications have trojans?

You better stop now while you're ahead.

Out of the box, XP does not
> even include a spell checker. I need the red letters kmail and most other
> free text editors give me. I also want tools like a spreadsheet, iso
> writer,
> compiler and so on. I was amazed to learn that XP Home does not include
> programs, like flash, Real, Xine, xmms, noatum and so on, for watching
> movies
> or listening to music the way that Mepis does. The average person who
> really
> uses their computer for work and play will have to dig up dozens of extra
> applications. It would cost me hundreds of dollars to duplicate what
> Debian
> provides at no cost.


This is an outright lie.

Debian provides nothing. MEPIS is a customized build that third-party people
put toghether with Debian as a base. They spent a lot of time setting up
repositories to automate installation of the aforementioned programs.

First of all, Winamp is free and that takes care of all of the
aforementioned needs. It is actually easier to download the Winamp
installation build from their website than use Debian's apt-get utility. It
is trivial to use Firefox/IE's automated install capability for Real and
Flash.

Why do you feel the need to make up things to support your argument?


Once I've managed to find and purchase what I need, I'd then spend all sorts
> of time actually putting the software on my machine. The install process
> is
> typically an insulting affair of "I submit", reboots and other nonsense.
> If
> only that were the end of my troubles instead of the beginning.


My stomach hurts.

Between crashes caused by malice and incompetence, install is never over.
> Because the companies that own this process think they need to earn money
> by
> selling you the very same program next year, the cycle goes on and on.


You are free not to buy them if you don't want to. You are also free to
continue running Windows 95 if you choose to do so as well.

Because non free companies don't co-operate, there's a good chance your next
> upgrade will screw up one of the applications you need. Things get really
> messy when the owner goes out of business and you have to get your work
> back
> out of their roach motel. Roach Motel? That's another way of saying
> non-free data formats suck life. Your work goes in and never comes out and
> this was done intentionally to make migrating to "competing" applications
> difficult.


Let's say you sold widgets and competed with a lot of other companies who
also sell widgets. WOuld you not do everything legally and ethically
possible to make sure everyone buys your and ONLY YOUR widgets?

People who rant about this show their absolute lack of understanding of all
things business-related.

I could rant for hours about what a disgusting mess things like
> the Outlook format are. Microsoft's ballooning install requirements prove
> that the complexity of these formats is more for planned obsolescence than
> for performance reasons. When you add worms, Microsoft got more fragility
> than they wanted from the registry. The only way to keep XP free of worms,
> spyware, adware and all that is to wipe and reload, a task that's only
> made
> less tedious by yet another program you have to find and master. Bill
> Gates
> especially hates programs that allow end users to duplicate his software,
> so
> programs that make backup easier are a particularly difficult thing to
> keep
> working.


Sigh. Are you actually going to give well-thought out examples or just
continue to spew FUD?

By the way, what do you make of all of the bugs and insecurities that have
showed up in Firefox now that it has reache dcritical mass?

So, let's say I'm in one of those 12 minute miracles of non free software.
> I'm not reloading, virus scanning, Windoze updating, or anything like
> that.
> I've gotten all the programs I think I need. I'm plowing through the
> painfully disorganized GUI and getting work done with the greatest of
> determination. I have actually produced something that is worth sharing or
> demanded by others. Now what?
>
In my case, I'm stuck trying to share that work even with myself. XP does
> not
> have ssh and I would not trust it if it did.


No "Linux" "has" ssh. All require you to download from an internet
repository. How, again is that more complicated than googling PuTTY and
downloading the executable to your computer?

There are free samba clients
> out there, so I can use that to get my work of that one computer but it
> would
> be much easier if I could use a file manager like Konqueror to securely
> move
> things around my network like I do now. Without those programs, I'm stuck
> choosing between a completely insecure home network and sneaker net.
>
You not knowing how to secure a Windows network is not the same as all
Windows networks being "insecure".

Getting my work to others is an even bigger pain. In the XP world, I'm stuck
> emailing Microsoft formated junk. I'd like to print out a pdf, but I have
> to
> get more software to do that. Awful things happen when I start mailing
> Word
> docs, for example. If I've bothered to use any text formating, it gets
> screwed up if I change printers or computers due to inconsistent font
> sets.
> As things are, I simply sftp pdfs or html to any of several web servers
> that
> I can then direct my friends.


You don't have to "get more software" to do that. There is a free office
system that runs just fine under XP (and this argument is about the
usabillity of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, not all of its
third party software) called Open Office which allows you to do that
seamlessly.

Are you really arguing that Microsoft has a worse printing system than
Linux? I'm dumbfounded.

Free softare is all about sharing, non free is all about sucking money. The
> net result is that non free software is expensive and difficult to use
> where
> free software is cheap and easy.


You are a liar.

That's why XP is useless to me.


Congratulations.
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