OS wars

Carl Lumma wrote:

>> Aaron Johnson wrote:
>>OTOH, Windows and Mac OS-X offer nothing but headaches with things
>>like viruses and security issues.

>I had a virus once, which was innocuous, for about 30 minutes in
>1999, in almost 20 years of wintel computing.

You were using Windoze in 1986? Interesting......

I know many people who have had entire system meltdowns using Windoze,
as well as more than 1 person who experience the infamous 'blue screen
of death'

The idea of corporate control over standards bothers me--OS platforms
should be open. I've come to believe strongly in that idea and aesthetic.

Gates is too wealthy to take any of my cash, if I ever wanted to
switch to doze--which I wouldn't.

I'd say the best experience I've ever had using a computer was
BeOS--which is a shame--the OpenBeOS project is only growing at a
snails' pace. I switch back to Linux for that reason.

> I also have a purse
>here for anyone who successfully recovers private data from my
>hard drive. Meanwhile, there are linux viruses.

I suppose there are--I've never experienced one, and have used Linux
for 9 years now.

>>Not to mention the API of both, should one want to develop an
>>app (we know you don't Jon, but that doesn't mean you speak for
>>all) is extremely ugly and counter-intuitive.

>Mac OS X has 3 major native APIs and hundreds of cross-platform
>ones that run on it. Windows is known for win32, which isn't
>roses, but Aaron, you probably don't know about WinFX, which is
>far superior to anything available on any other platform.

How so?

>>and from what I've seen, evil Apple
>>has destroyed the typical *nix file structure, and doesn't have a >>/dev
>>directory---apparantly they in their infinite wisdom have decided >>that
>>it was of no use to anyone

>As of 10.1, this wasn't the case.

I still wouldn't use Apple---too 'braindead' an OS--but I understand
it's appeal, and it has a UI that is noted as 'sexy'

>>I'd take Linux anyday over any other OS---and Carl, you are >>absolutely
>>wrong about it's stability---Linux was years ahead of windoze in >>this
>>area---my wife had to reboot her machine every day just about,

>One has to compare apples to apples.

Exactly; my point being that Linux was far more stable earlier on than
Windows in its modern incarnations. Yes, Windows has always had more
software, though.

-Aaron.

>>I had a virus once, which was innocuous, for about 30 minutes
>>in 1999, in almost 20 years of wintel computing.
>
> You were using Windoze in 1986? Interesting......

DOS. Which also could get viruses. Meanwhile, the virus I had
in '99 was totally my fault, for using and trusting an
anti-virus program. I know better now.

> I know many people who have had entire system meltdowns using
> Windoze, as well as more than 1 person who experience the
> infamous 'blue screen of death'

I've never lost data, and I'll put my system's stability against
any other OS. I have had BSODs, but not in the past couple of
years at least. I've also crashed the Linux kernel more than
once.

> The idea of corporate control over standards bothers me--OS
> platforms should be open. I've come to believe strongly in
> that idea and aesthetic.

I agree. This is aside from a technical comparison of the
OSs, though.

> I'd say the best experience I've ever had using a computer was
> BeOS--which is a shame--the OpenBeOS project is only growing at
> a snails' pace. I switch back to Linux for that reason.

Be was great. I was a stockholder until the bitter end.

>> Meanwhile, there are linux viruses.
>
> I suppose there are--I've never experienced one, and have used
> Linux for 9 years now.

Since both Linux and Windows are essentially unixes written
in C-legacy languages, they both have the same fundamental
kinds of vulnerabilities. It's a matter of debate which
system has more holes at this point, and a matter of debate
whether the open model or MS's 'official patch' model is
more effective at repairing them. On this latter question,
I tend to side with the open system.

Any system behind a firewall and run by a non-idiot should
be quite virus-resistant.

I heard about the recent Linux worms on slashdot.

> >>Not to mention the API of both, should one want to develop an
> >>app (we know you don't Jon, but that doesn't mean you speak for
> >>all) is extremely ugly and counter-intuitive.
>
> >Mac OS X has 3 major native APIs and hundreds of cross-platform
> >ones that run on it. Windows is known for win32, which isn't
> >roses, but Aaron, you probably don't know about WinFX, which is
> >far superior to anything available on any other platform.
>
> How so?

It's a fully-featured, object-oriented API that one can code
against in any .Net CLR language. And it contains WPF, the only
fully-3D, markup-based (and XAML is an open standard), network-
transparent toolkit currently available, with unique typography
features and amazing dev tools like Sparkle (see my blog). And,
it provides full access to win32.

> I still wouldn't use Apple---too 'braindead' an OS--but I
> understand it's appeal, and it has a UI that is noted as 'sexy'

I kinda like OS X. It has bash, most unix apps can be compiled
and run, and the GUI isn't only sexy, it's has some very cool
features.

> Exactly; my point being that Linux was far more stable earlier
> on than Windows in its modern incarnations.

That's true. But it was also way behind on multimedia and
desktop GUI features in those days.

As for ease of setting them up correctly, I haven't tried Linux
lately, but in '02 there were still lots of tweaky things you
had to choose -- lilo or that other one, and only one of them
did what I needed. And ext3 was still standard -- to get
reiser (the only NTFS-comptetive fs I know of for Linux) I had
to jump through some hoops. Switching to Dvorak required
something on the order of 4 arcane steps I gleened from the
usenet and put into a bash script. Subpixel rendering was
broken....

That said, a standard OEM install of XP is a damn distaster.
You'd think they'd have that fixed by now, but no, I just
bought a Dell for my Dad for Christmas and it came with 928392
pieces of trialware (lots of it potentially security-compromising)
and it was at least 6 months behind on Windows patches.

Installing XP from scratch is pretty straightforward, though,
and usually gives a good result.

-Carl

Hiya!

Carl Lumma wrote:

>>The idea of corporate control over standards bothers me--OS
>>platforms should be open. I've come to believe strongly in
>>that idea and aesthetic.
> > I agree. This is aside from a technical comparison of the
> OSs, though.

It's still something I consider when I buy a new computer or look at new software. Open standards are likely to be portable and future proof and I find that saves a lot of trouble in the long run. If I weren't already using free software for most of the things I actually need I wouldn't have been able to move off Windows. Now I've done so I can consider OSs by their technical merits.

>>>Meanwhile, there are linux viruses.
>>
>>I suppose there are--I've never experienced one, and have used
>>Linux for 9 years now.
> > Since both Linux and Windows are essentially unixes written
> in C-legacy languages, they both have the same fundamental
> kinds of vulnerabilities. It's a matter of debate which
> system has more holes at this point, and a matter of debate
> whether the open model or MS's 'official patch' model is
> more effective at repairing them. On this latter question,
> I tend to side with the open system.

MS made a big step to squash stack overflows with XP SP2. The Linux folks are also making incremental progress on this. But the difference is that good Linux distributions give you a default configuration that isn't vulnerable to security bugs. Microsoft have made three elementary security mistakes over the years:

1) automatically running programs from email attachments

2) running network services by default

3) auto-running external media

I don't know an other company lax enough to fall for (1). Linux distributions did used to do (2) but I think they saw the light before MS. It used to be stupidly difficult to disable (3) in XP, but I hope it's been fixed in SP2.

> Any system behind a firewall and run by a non-idiot should
> be quite virus-resistant.

You shouldn't need a firewall for a desktop machine. Microsoft have chosen to open redundant ports and then firewall them. Perhaps this will work well enough but after the pre-SP2 disaster I really don't trust them.

> I heard about the recent Linux worms on slashdot.

Do any of them affect a normal desktop machine?

>>I still wouldn't use Apple---too 'braindead' an OS--but I
>>understand it's appeal, and it has a UI that is noted as 'sexy'
> > I kinda like OS X. It has bash, most unix apps can be compiled
> and run, and the GUI isn't only sexy, it's has some very cool
> features.

I really don't like the OS X GUI. A lot of this is because I have a "mere" 256MB or RAM and it's not up to the job. With time, this will become less important, and Windows is heading in the same direction.

The main thing that stops Unix applications working is that Apple decided to change the options to ld. That means you have to reconfigure every application and I haven't seen any instructions for how to do it.

>>Exactly; my point being that Linux was far more stable earlier
>>on than Windows in its modern incarnations.
> > That's true. But it was also way behind on multimedia and
> desktop GUI features in those days.
> > As for ease of setting them up correctly, I haven't tried Linux
> lately, but in '02 there were still lots of tweaky things you
> had to choose -- lilo or that other one, and only one of them
> did what I needed. And ext3 was still standard -- to get
> reiser (the only NTFS-comptetive fs I know of for Linux) I had
> to jump through some hoops. Switching to Dvorak required
> something on the order of 4 arcane steps I gleened from the
> usenet and put into a bash script. Subpixel rendering was
> broken....

If you needed some specific feature from a bootloader, isn't it good that you were given the choice?

What's wrong with ext3? There were no hoops required for choosing Reiserfs in Mandrake at that time.

Switching to Dvorak is the kind of geeky thing you're likely to have to hack around a bit to get working. As it's a simple re-map, putting a .Xmodmap in your home directory will fix X-Windows. That still leaves text mode, the login screens and such. Hence the different, arcane steps.

I think Ubuntu has Dvorak as a standard option. Something I looked at recently did, anyway. Here on OS X I don't have Chinese input in X11. I tried to install it but I couldn't get any package to compile. It's the same system as Linux, and definitely hairy. Windows has some really cool plug-ins. The OS X Pin Yin works well enough once you work out how to use it. It would be nice if they supplied English documentation. I can understand the logic behind not doing so.

Yes, subpixel rendering is difficult.

> Installing XP from scratch is pretty straightforward, though,
> and usually gives a good result.

Yes, my brother got it this year, and it worked well enough. But remember it's a minimal system. You have to install software to do anything useful (I don't think it even comes with a CD burner -- I couldn't find one) and drivers for every other piece of hardware.

Graham

> > Installing XP from scratch is pretty straightforward, though,
> > and usually gives a good result.
>
> Yes, my brother got it this year, and it worked well enough. But
> remember it's a minimal system. You have to install software to do
> anything useful (I don't think it even comes with a CD burner -- I
> couldn't find one)

Since I have preferred apps for all that stuff, I'm quite happy
not to have the OS choosing them for me.

>and drivers for every other piece of hardware.

Huh? Windows probably comes with more drivers than all other
OSs combined.

-Carl