The Holy war. Mac vs Windows :p

Rhys · Jul 7, 2008

monkeykoder said:
Ubuntu is a fairly decent desktop as far as I'm concerned Debian does have its faults though.

It falls flat on its backside as regards practicality though... I cannot use my Canon software on it. I cannot just go and buy software from Staples for it. I recall trying to make it work as a dial-up once and it was an awfully fiddly experience that had to be repeated every time.

monkeykoder · Jul 7, 2008

Yeah that is where scripting comes in for Linux which I'm guessing the average person isn't going to go. I've never needed camera specific software but I'm pretty sure it would run just fine through Wine. I've also never had to BUY software for a Linux computer I can always find something free that happens to do EXACTLY what I wanted.

clarinetJWD · Jul 7, 2008

monkeykoder said:
Yeah that is where scripting comes in for Linux which I'm guessing the average person isn't going to go. I've never needed camera specific software but I'm pretty sure it would run just fine through Wine. I've also never had to BUY software for a Linux computer I can always find something free that happens to do EXACTLY what I wanted.

I actually do a ****-ton of scripting using AutoHotKey for windows, though I haven't yet delved into it on Linux (nor have I needed to yet)

monkeykoder · Jul 7, 2008

Scripting is where Linux shines Linux is the operating system for geeks that want to do scripting/programming. The command line is where Linux really exceeds all other operating systems. If you're not a fan of command line and want to buy commercial software by all means never use Linux but if you're looking for something 100% customizable with excellent command line interface and a few different guis that are on par with Windows and of course free Linux is probably the way to go.

Rhys · Jul 7, 2008

I'm not sure where Linux came in but...

Linux - great for experimenters. Not bad as a file-server for the average Joe. Imitates a desktop environment quite well but once you want to do more than web browsing or word processing, it gets a bit hard for the average Joe to handle.

Windows - works pretty well but has some horrendous flaws and exploitations galore. Quite nifty for the average Joe. Plenty software available although much is of dubious quality.

Mac - works very well. Less flaws than Windows (haven't found any yet aside from incompatibility issues with hard drives formatted for NTFS - can read but not write). Hard to convert to and expensive for Windows users.

I have experience of all 3 systems. Vista has fallen down where Linux falls down - too many slightly different versions. All I can say about Vista is that my sister-in-law has it on one of her two work laptops. She never uses that laptop because Vista just doesn't work - even with the updates and work won't retro-fit it with XP for her so it sits in a drawer most of the time.

At the moment I am a happy Apple advocate.

monkeykoder · Jul 7, 2008

What is it that is difficult beyond dial-up? + Linux =#1 web-server.

Corry · Jul 7, 2008

I'm still surprised at how many people say that Vista just doesn't work. I've been using it for over a year, and I haven't had a single problem yet.

Senor Hound · Jul 7, 2008

Corry said:
I'm still surprised at how many people say that Vista just doesn't work. I've been using it for over a year, and I haven't had a single problem yet.

I think much of it is expectations. I have XP, and it doesn't hardly freeze up at all other than once in a while. Mostly its just slow.

I had a Mac with OS 9. Granted its not the new X platform, but it still had issues. If you try to open up 20 things at the same time like I do, you're gonna run into memory problems in Vista, OS X, and Linux. Most of these issues people have could probably be more easily solved with hardware upgrades than anything else. But yet, people go and get a whole new computer. Oh well...

Truthfully, I feel the whole debate is totally overplayed. It REALLY doesn't matter which one you get, as long as you can do what you want with it. People throw around a lot of "facts" to help determine which one is better, but in the end there's some good parts and bad parts to all three. And despite what some may say, if you're familiar with one system, you're probably going to like it more. For example, I think Macs are cool looking, and my artistic side likes them, but I can't stand how when you "X" out of a program, it doesn't close. I also can't stand how when you maximize a window, it doesn't automatically take up the whole screen. In XP, I hate how everything runs as slow as molasses, and I have a few virus/spyware threat on my computer every time I run a scan. With Linux, it was hard to find good information on it. There are so many versions that making books for the GUIs is more difficult.

clarinetJWD · Jul 8, 2008

Senor Hound said:
I think much of it is expectations. I have XP, and it doesn't hardly freeze up at all other than once in a while. Mostly its just slow.

I'll agree and disagree...Microsoft dug its own grave, releasing too much information too early, and letting a lot of features slip to future releases. They promised an OS that would descend from the heavens, giving milk and honey to all, but gave us an incremental upgrade. It is, however, just that. You implied that stability is a problem in Vista, but my work computer (XP, c2d e6850, geforce 8800gt, 4gb ram, yes, you get killer computers when you work for a game company) blue screens way more than I'd like, and does a lot of freezing as well.

Vista on the other hand is stable for days, if not weeks at a time, and most of my restarts are before playing a very demanding game, if only to clear out the memory. As for the speed of XP and Vista, I don't notice much difference between the two, maybe 5% slower for vista, but with gadgets and the fast start menu search, I work a lot faster in Vista too. It had a rocky start with driver releases, and I've been using it since its pre-release candidate betas, but has matured into a very good OS.