Very Computer

by **R!ch** » Fri, 02 May 1997 04:00:00

> "vastly more productive environment" is a very bold statement. I'd be
> very interested to see you back that one up. Some people may start to
> waffle on about stability and stuff, well, while I'll admit that my
> Linux box is far more stable than my Win95 box, my Win95 box is pretty
> stable (once crash per week, perhaps less). What I'd like to see is
> some real proof that the above would, at a general level, be a "vastly
> more productive environment" than Win95 and the usual attendant
> applications.

Let's assume that with individual applications, an experianced user
is equally productive, no matter what the platform. Ie, let's
ignore the "my wordprocessor is better than yours" type argument.

You say that you have to reboot your machine "once per week, perhaps less";
machine crashes are not very good for productivity, IMHO.

You're at your favourite wordprocessor, and you've been typing away
for a couple of hours. Bang! Your machine crashes, taking with it
your work: not very productive, is it? Meanwhile, the UNIX users,
with their stable OS merrily keep working...

PC (well, windoze anyway) users seem to think that frequent reboots
are a necessary fact of life: they're not. There is no excuse
for an unstable OS. Reminds me of the time when Win3.1 came out:
No more UAEs, Microsoft proudly proclaimed. What they didn't say
was that they'd simply renamed the error to GPF...

--
R!ch

by **JEDI** » Fri, 02 May 1997 04:00:00

>> "vastly more productive environment" is a very bold statement. I'd be
>> very interested to see you back that one up. Some people may start to
>> waffle on about stability and stuff, well, while I'll admit that my
>> Linux box is far more stable than my Win95 box, my Win95 box is pretty
>> stable (once crash per week, perhaps less). What I'd like to see is
>> some real proof that the above would, at a general level, be a "vastly
>> more productive environment" than Win95 and the usual attendant
>> applications.

I don't know about the 'usual' applications. However, the interactions
between what I run on a dialy basis and Win95 DO cause me to loose
data and restart the system (once per day MINIMUM). Occasionally, I'll
even run out of USER/GDI resources.

The true test of any device is not what happens when you coddle it
but what happens when you stress it.

...and on the home front. Win95 still likes to die in the middle
of the word processor. These infrequent crashes are worse actually.
You get a false sense of security from a slightly improved OS and
then, as you've been lulled: WHAM! Then you start looking for that
autosave feature again.

In Linux, you need to be doing some seriously funky sh*t as root
to bring the system (or even X) down.

BTW- are there any good user mode X killers that I'm not aware of?

Quote:
>Let's assume that with individual applications, an experianced user
>is equally productive, no matter what the platform. Ie, let's
>ignore the "my wordprocessor is better than yours" type argument.

>You say that you have to reboot your machine "once per week, perhaps less";
>machine crashes are not very good for productivity, IMHO.

>You're at your favourite wordprocessor, and you've been typing away
>for a couple of hours. Bang! Your machine crashes, taking with it
>your work: not very productive, is it? Meanwhile, the UNIX users,
>with their stable OS merrily keep working...

>PC (well, windoze anyway) users seem to think that frequent reboots
>are a necessary fact of life: they're not. There is no excuse
>for an unstable OS. Reminds me of the time when Win3.1 came out:
>No more UAEs, Microsoft proudly proclaimed. What they didn't say
>was that they'd simply renamed the error to GPF...

by **Geoffrey T Cheshir** » Sat, 03 May 1997 04:00:00

: Absolute rubbish! Just about every free package and utility I use
: under Linux is also used under Win95 and WinNT. You want a C/C++
: compiler? Use GCC. Want a good text editor? Use Emacs/Vi/Jed/Etc..,
: want a Postscript utility? Use GhostScript. Want lots of handy command
: line utilities? Use the GNU shell/file/text utils. Want a better CLI?
: Use bash.

What ports exactly are you referring to? The Cygwin32 stuff? Try to
compile most packages and see what the result is. The package is good for
what it is, but it feels like a kludge. Bash from the command like is odd
because it was meant to run in a unix envronment, not NT. Therefore
things like directory structures over multiple devices are a bit mangled.
What NT needs are its OWN equivilant utilities tailored to the NT system.
Saying that you can hack some gnu utilities into running on NT isn't the
same thing.

: Come on people, lets be serious about this, Linux is good at some
: things, not so good at others, it all depends on what you need to be
: doing. Mindless advocacy with few facts to back it up help no-one and
: it certainly doesn't help Linux itself.

I agree, but let's not forget the downside of the NT platform. One small
example is the arbitrary line between NT server and NT workstation. I'd
venture to say that most implementations use Workstion as a peer or 2nd
tier server in come cases, and Server for some workstation tasks.
However, workstation is crippled and server is HUGE. At least you have
the flexibility to tailor Linux to it's specific niche in your topology.

--

Pgp Key <http://www.U.arizona.EDU/~gtc/home.html>

by **Timothy Wats** » Sun, 04 May 1997 04:00:00

> Saying that you can hack some gnu utilities into running on NT isn't the
> same thing.

Yep, therefore the market for OpenNT - a replacement for the POSIX
subsytem. Sold for lots of $$$..

-TW

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