From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sun Oct 20 2002 - 09:59:34 MDT
On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Charles Hixson wrote:
> > No. They are not that bad. I have computers on both Windows NT and
> > Mandrake, and NT is better in just about EVERy respect.
Above assumes a single 'best' metric. Which is plain wrong, unless you add
the extra qualifier 'for you'. However, I agree. There are things which NT
does better than Linux, and Windows 2000 does better still (haven't used
XP in depth yet, but the Microsoft tablet PC is very slick, albeit still a
bit rough about the edges in the latency department). Then there are
things which Redmond systems do very badly, or not at all.
Depending on your valuation of those factors you're running one or several
systems (there's a Win2k warez (I of course wouldn't pay the full price
for it) system on my network which I access via VNC, largely as a bridge
to access hardware I don't have Linux drivers for).
> Mandrake does tend to push the bleeding edge. They've got too few people
> trying to do too much. And they need work on quality control.
I don't think he meant the system instability issue. I have to kill and
restart Mozilla every week, or two as well, or else run out of swap.
> But every problem that they ship with, you can fix. Whether it's worth it to
> you or not may be a different matter, but its problems are fixable. If
> problems bother you, then stay away from the *.0 editions. (I've also heard
> reports that SuSE is having a few QA problems. Nothing heard yet about Red
> Hat, and I wouldn't hear about the others.)
All the distros and alternatives (largely, *BSD) have their strengths, and
their weaknesses. I've used all of those you mentioned. While I run RH 7.3
on two of my boxes I'd rather use Debian and/or Gentoo, but I'm too lazy
to tinker with these on my own time and budget.
> That said, MS produces the technically worst programs I've seen being sold
> recently. They're pretty, but really no prettier than Linux themes. If you
Once again, 'worse' is a metric specific to individual users. There's
things in Office 2k which are much better solved than in current
OpenOffice.
> want something that's pretty problem free, give a look at Red Hat 7.3 (note
> the .3 at the end?). This will give you an almost uptodate system that has
> very few problems. Of course, the 8.x series breaks binary compatibility
It's a tolerable tradeoff between bleeding edge and stability. It's far
from being perfect, but it's a local minimum in terms of workload as far
as I'm concerned. YMWV.
> with the 7.x series. So you can't install rpms from one onto the other.
>
> The reason that I'm so down on MS software has to do with some experiences I
> had two weeks ago at work. First one of my programs that had been working
I've never used MS Sofware much. As long as I don't have to pay for it
(the price tag is not worth it) and don't have to warp my being around it
(speed does feel good, and the first ones are always free, but
nevertheless I don't use amphetamines) I use it now and then.
> for over a month quit cold. The only solution was to recompile. No program
> changes were needed, the original was fine. It just needed to be recompiled.
> (I think it compiles the code in-line with the program text or something, and
> doesn't necessarily notice if the editor corrupts it.) Then I heard about
> another of my programs had started giving wrong answers. No warning. Just
> wrong answers. Again, recompiling fixed the problem. But it also started me
> wondering, I'd known for years that sometimes programs spontaneously broke,
> but everytime I'd noticed it, it had been because they started failing. How
> many silent errors were being propagated. And I realized that I had no way
> to even estimate... And this behavior has persisted over three versions (of
> MS Access, but probably applies to all of their code that uses VB scripting).
You shouldn't have looked into that palantir in the first place. I
personally believe that fire burns (according to the accounts of victims
in the heavy burns unit), and I've got a blister or one on the occasion,
so I don't quite long for the whole body barbecue experience.
Again, this is not an incitement to start a flambe fete. Your mileage WILL
vary.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:40 MST