Microsoft aims to beat Linux through community spirit

[Ribbit]

Gurm,

Actually, I wasn't so much debating your post as trying to parody it.

It sounds to me like your distro is very seriously screwed. I have never had an install take 4 hours, even in the days of a 25MHz 386, an ESDI hard drive (130MB, wow!), and a 3x CD-ROM which actually only gave single-speed performance. (Actually, there was this 386SX-16, but my memory is very hazy on that one.)

You've highlighted what to me is the biggest problem with Linux, software packaging and dependencies. Packages often have optional features which depend on other packages, but to have the ability to use those features, they have to be compiled in along with their dependencies. And then you need that other package present whether you'll be using those features or not. And that other package no doubt has similar dependencies. There are so many possible combinations that it just isn't possible to to make a distro that's right for everyone, and it's just going to get worse until it's standard practice to have these things determined at run-time. It seems that either your distro is screwed (again), or you're a pathological worst case. Pretty much anything that's non-Unix is far superior in this respect. (And of course, the stupid directory layout doesn't help - /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share/man, etc.)

RPM is horrible. I haven't tried apt or anything else - RPM is that bad that these days for my own personal box I pretty much roll my own distro. And I like it.

Linux isn't for Granny, or Joe Average Home User, or the clueless CEO, or people who are afraid of what might happen if they don't do things EXACTLY right (those people should just be kept away from technology until they're cured if you ask me) or apparently even for you , but it CAN be made to work out of the box. My sister doesn't know a processor from a preprocessor, yet I remember her installing and setting up SuSE 6.4 almost all by herself. Then again, she's almost a support person's wet dream - she keeps her system details in a little notebook (things like what hardware she has, partition layout, monitor refresh ranges), and makes sure she knows what she's trying to achieve, and when she does have to ask me a question it's normally a worthwhile one. OTOH, the only thing she uses Linux for these days is the Sokoban game...

Oh, and even she recognises that Linux is the technically superior OS, and perhaps even why. We were trying to play some Divx files under Windows on her machine, and it was obvious that it was only just coping - dropped frames, slightly stuttering audio. I said that it might be better using MPlayer under Linux, since it would likely be faster. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was something like "Of course it will be faster - it was written by geeks."

[dZeus]

the problem with most of the drivers defects in linux is that they always only seem to show up on your box, and not on the one of the driver developers. Sure, you'll find a few other people through google with the same problem, but without a solution for it, and you'll only find out about those problems if you search for specific symptoms. Trying to figure out which hardware works for linux is waaay to time-consuming this way. I guess the best option is to ask people from the linux community what to buy :/

[Gurm]

Originally posted by Ribbit
Actually, I wasn't so much debating your post as trying to parody it.

I know. However, I think that we need to clear up some misconceptions...

It sounds to me like your distro is very seriously screwed.

Think again. My distro is fine. I verified it with checksums and signatures. It is the Red Hat 7.3 distro for x86 machines... 3 cd's.

I have never had an install take 4 hours, even in the days of a 25MHz 386, an ESDI hard drive (130MB, wow!), and a 3x CD-ROM which actually only gave single-speed performance.

Then you're lucky. I've talked with LOTS of people who have had a Linux install take this long. I recall slackware taking this long when I did a bit of MIS management of a Linux dweeb at my last job. However, I _do_ recall Red Hat 6 being MUCH faster. Of course it was also only one disk... and didn't come with all this prepackaged stuff.

You've highlighted what to me is the biggest problem with Linux, software packaging and dependencies. Packages often have optional features which depend on other packages, but to have the ability to use those features, they have to be compiled in along with their dependencies. And then you need that other package present whether you'll be using those features or not. And that other package no doubt has similar dependencies. There are so many possible combinations that it just isn't possible to to make a distro that's right for everyone, and it's just going to get worse until it's standard practice to have these things determined at run-time. It seems that either your distro is screwed (again), or you're a pathological worst case. Pretty much anything that's non-Unix is far superior in this respect. (And of course, the stupid directory layout doesn't help - /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share/man, etc.)

But you'd think that when I run the Red Hat graphical installer, and select "standard server package", that it would have the configurations all tweaked up and ready for that, right? I used the default hard drive layout, and told it I wanted a default server. It told me what the default server contained and I said "sure that sounds great". Oops.

RPM is horrible. I haven't tried apt or anything else - RPM is that bad that these days for my own personal box I pretty much roll my own distro. And I like it.

Well, RPM may suck, but so many people use Red Hat that it's a defacto Linux standard.

Linux isn't for Granny, or Joe Average Home User, or the clueless CEO, or people who are afraid of what might happen if they don't do things EXACTLY right (those people should just be kept away from technology until they're cured if you ask me) or apparently even for you , but it CAN be made to work out of the box.

No. This is my point. If I run the installer, and click "setup", and hit "default" to everything and it DOESN'T WORK, then it hasn't worked "out of the box". If you have to fiddle, recompile, redownload, reinstall, uninstall, reinstall again, and generally **** with it a lot, it isn't working "out of the box".

My sister doesn't know a processor from a preprocessor, yet I remember her installing and setting up SuSE 6.4 almost all by herself. Then again, she's almost a support person's wet dream - she keeps her system details in a little notebook (things like what hardware she has, partition layout, monitor refresh ranges), and makes sure she knows what she's trying to achieve, and when she does have to ask me a question it's normally a worthwhile one. OTOH, the only thing she uses Linux for these days is the Sokoban game...

Again, I recall Red Hat 6 working better. I'm sure there are distros that just run. And this one got me up and booting KDE immediately after the 4-hour install. BUT... none of the server apps worked.

Oh, and even she recognises that Linux is the technically superior OS, and perhaps even why.

It's not technically superior. You can debate Minix versus CMS all you want, but the truth is that Linux is just Minix + patches, whereas the NT kernel has been totally rebuilt since the VMS days. The fact that Linux can be stripped down more than NT can is immaterial. The kernels perform roughly the same, and on NT the graphics aren't an afterthought. That makes NT win in my book... although some think graphics are stupid. If MS took the graphics out NT would win hands-down.

We were trying to play some Divx files under Windows on her machine, and it was obvious that it was only just coping - dropped frames, slightly stuttering audio.

Then you had something misconfigured, or your "distro" was broken. DIVX files play fine on any P2-class machine.

I said that it might be better using MPlayer under Linux, since it would likely be faster.

Or not.

I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was something like "Of course it will be faster - it was written by geeks."

For geeks, with zero quality control. Yeah, faster sometimes. Better never.

- Gurm

[The PIT]

I think Gurm there has summed up what I think about Linux. I tried the last few distros of Mandrake and Redhat from five to six and things have improved but when ever anything is broken it's down to the command line editing some files here and there if they in the right place etc etc.
People who are used to Linux have got to stop telling newbies that it's simple. They also got too start writing trouble shooting questions for newbies not just making huge jumps across problems becuase they presume the user knows what they're doing.
Linux is getting better but it's still years away from general public use.

[Ribbit]

Sorry about the length, I really don't mean to rant.

Think again. My distro is fine. I verified it with checksums and signatures. It is the Red Hat 7.3 distro for x86 machines... 3 cd's.

I meant as in "it looks like Red Hat have put out a very substandard (to put it lightly) distribution in this case", not some kind of corruption on your end.

But you'd think that when I run the Red Hat graphical installer, and select "standard server package", that it would have the configurations all tweaked up and ready for that, right? I used the default hard drive layout, and told it I wanted a default server. It told me what the default server contained and I said "sure that sounds great". Oops.

Again, part of what I meant by "screwed distro". It should not have given you that kind of trouble, and the fact that it did shows incompetence on Red Hat's part.

Well, RPM may suck, but so many people use Red Hat that it's a defacto Linux standard.

True. And that needs to change.

No. This is my point. If I run the installer, and click "setup", and hit "default" to everything and it DOESN'T WORK, then it hasn't worked "out of the box". If you have to fiddle, recompile, redownload, reinstall, uninstall, reinstall again, and generally **** with it a lot, it isn't working "out of the box".

Again, back to "screwed distro". The work to get it running out of the box should be borne as much as possible by the distro maker, not the end user. Looks like Red Hat haven't been doing their job, IMHO.

It's not technically superior. You can debate Minix versus CMS all you want, but the truth is that Linux is just Minix + patches, whereas the NT kernel has been totally rebuilt since the VMS days. The fact that Linux can be stripped down more than NT can is immaterial. The kernels perform roughly the same, and on NT the graphics aren't an afterthought. That makes NT win in my book... although some think graphics are stupid. If MS took the graphics out NT would win hands-down.

To say that Linux is just "Minix + patches" demonstrates a great deal of ignorance. It would be more accurate to say that Win98 is just "DOS + patches". Linux was written from scratch, just as NT was - it's early association with Minix is due to the fact that you needed Minix to build and install it from scratch, and it's first filesystem was Minix-compatible. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl<something> - and seriously since 1.2.x - and it has always been fast and stable, even on slow hardware. I don't remember ever having a hang or crash which I couldn't nail down to a hardware problem. (OK, my 486 hangs once or twice a month, but that machine has the living daylights overclocked out of it and the wrong BIOS for its motherboard (longish story).)
NT's performance has only recently raised itself above "abysmal" with the release of Win2K. NT4 was/is slow even on hardware far beyond what was available at its launch. Win2K is reasonable on modern hardware. Haven't tried XP. Also, I know your experience has been better than mine, but NT4 used to have strange unexplainable crashes a lot. (e.g. start machine, log in, run DOS prompt, instant blue-screen. Huh, why did that happen? Reboot, repeat exercise, all seems well. Can't track problem down, forever after have worries about running DOS prompt.)
Putting the graphics in the kernel is a performance win, but a big stability loss (how many blue-screens are down to the video drivers?), which isn't helped by the cheapness in design of much PC graphics hardware until recently. Doing it all in user-space, as in XFree86, isn't ideal either, but if the graphics system crashes it doesn't have to take the whole OS with it. The ideal way would be to have a minimum of code in kernel space just to regulate access to the graphics hardware, and have the rest in user-space - like the DRI, but for all graphics, not just 3D. Unfortunately, with fbdev and DirectFB, it looks like Linux is heading into an all-kernel-space method.
Having to have the graphics in the kernel is just stupid on an OS which is intended to do any kind of server work. It's a waste (and as I just said, a needless stability liability). Sure, it's nice to have graphical configuration thingies, but if you're going to, say, make the server headless and put it in a rack, it's pointless unless you can use it remotely (like some other system I can think of).

Then you had something misconfigured, or your "distro" was broken. DIVX files play fine on any P2-class machine.

K6-III, 400MHz. I'll look into it. It did look like it wasn't using overlay.

[wrt Mplayer being faster] Or not.

I'll let you know.

For geeks, with zero quality control. Yeah, faster sometimes. Better never.

Wrong. Your typical geek actually cares about the quality of the code (s)he writes for the sake of technical quality. Yes, things like user friendliness get less attention (and that is a problem), but what you normally get (after some development time) is a core <thingy> which is fast, stable, efficient, and well-featured, and which is relatively easy to add a good user interface to. Case in point: if you follow these things, look at the recent threading improvements in the Linux kernel. Linux already had a threading implementation that was "good enough" - it wasn't POSIX-compliant, but it performed well, it was efficient, it was adequate for most needs, and it was uncomplicated. And yet recently a new implementation has gone in which is one or two orders of magnitude better, and fully POSIX-compliant. I don't think anyone needs the kind of performance this new implementation provides (start and stop 100,000 threads within 2 seconds on I think a P2-400), but it's there. Would you see behaviour like this from Microsoft, who only care that their product is good enough to be marketable? Hint: Look at how much good their recent security initiative has done. Hint2: Windows only has enough POSIX.4 features so that it makes a government-approved software list. Hint3: Reread my first post here. That is not the behaviour of a company that cares about the quality of its product.

[Technoid]

Gurm,
When you counted minutes on that Linux install, Where you using Microsoft minutes™?

[Gurm]

Technoid,

No, I was using "two 2-hour movie" minutes.

- Gurm

[Belwarrior]

I am not so sure about redhat installations but so far all the SuSE versions (5.x, 6.4, 7.1) i tried had no problems whatsoever but you have to know what u want also. I normally take just one desktop manager - gnome. apart from that i chose everything else and while that install takes around 2 hours it is not only for the OS but also for every office, graphics & proggramming tools, etc and hardware install and setup, all in one go. Practically on a windows system it also takes 2 hrs or more to install all your hardware and software like office, graphics etc. So a windows install is not faster than a linux as a basic linux installation takes only 10 to 15 mins (though you end up installing whatever software other than the OS later on).
So it is a tie in that sense.
my 2cts worth