End of a (personal) era...

[faulkner132]

It finally happened this morning. For the first time in almost 2 years, I loaded Windows XP on my home machine, removing Ubuntu Linux. Partially for the reasons first brought out in this thread: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=173380 - however the need for me to do *some* work at home has made running Linux too much of an inconvenience.

I'm still a huge Linux advocate (the meat eating vegetarian variety now I guess), as I am still running another Ubuntu Linux machine which still acts as my personal web server, streaming music server and I use it to rip our DVD movies so I can watch them via a wireless connection. After all, you can't beat the price and the results it produces.

The moral of this story is there is *no way* Linux can compete with MS in the office desktop world. Case and point, here are a few major (i.e. industry standard) applications which do not work on Linux:
- Citrix clients
- Wide variety of VPN's
- Sharepoint
- RDP (yes it works, but it is extremely slow compared to the MS client)
All of these I heavily depend on at work because both our company and our clients use it. Now instead of having to RDP to my work server and then RDP'ing to our client's machine, I can jump straight to the client machine. It's faster to connect and runs significantly faster. Even still, this list doesn't even touch industry specific applications such as AutoCAD and every product my company sells.

George puts it best here:

Originally Posted by glc This is why Linux is still primarily a hobbyist's operating system.

I couldn't agree more. For a home user who only does Internet, email, word processing, and listens to music on their computer/iPod (which is probably the majority of home users), Linux is a fantastic choice because it is stable, cheap (free), and easy to use... once you realize it is not Windows.

Despite this move, I'm still going to run Linux in my home as I have many "projects" which Linux is suited perfectly for and it's great for loading on 400 MHz laptops I come across and then giving them to people who want it. I'm still going to maintain my installation guides and update them with the newest release of Ubuntu as well as upgrade my home installations.

Both Windows and Linux are great OS's and have their place. I don't know why people would bash either one. MS is not money hungry, it takes money to develop good software as, believe it or not, you actually do have to *pay* for good developers and testers. On the flip side, booting to a live CD and typing "hello world" in OpenOffice is not trying out Linux. If you want to criticize something, understand it first.

Anyhow, there is now a happy medium in my house of my work (Windows XP) and play (Ubuntu Linux) machines. Over time there will end up being more Linux machines as I come across "junkers" all the time I can make use of... much to my wife's "dismay".

[David M]

It seems all the operating systems have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. I have always been one who believes the more choices we have then the better off we are. I have always admired Linux for its plusses of essentially being free and stable. I have wondered as well how it will ever develop much further if all the software is done on a volunteer basis. From what I have seen of human nature, you cannot tell volunteers what to do. You can only ask them. As for people you pay?...yes, you can tell them what to do. I believe that is Linux's Achilles heel.

[glc]

Linux makes a great fileserver/webserver/whatever server if you care to learn how to set it up and administer it. I'm still somewhat of a Novell Netware fan - and Netware is just a proprietary spinoff of Unix with a steep learning curve. Look at what Apple based OS X off of - BSD, right? That's Unix.

[edfair]

Understand where you're coming from. But like in the carbon breaking business, you don't use sledge hammers on diamonds, and you don'n use a hammer used to break diamonds to break up coal.
Although I have customers moving from Unix based database apps to Windows based database apps it isn't because of the underlying OS. It is the availability of additional capabilities based on hardware supported better by Windows.