Daniel Keep wrote:
Warning: semi-rant ahead. Feel free to ignore. :)
[...]
Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life. But the fact is that
it's STILL better than Linux.
Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
That's fine; I'm a programmer! But I'm also a user. I shouldn't have
to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
in Windows.
What you don't realize is that you spend all day to work out how to do
something in Windows that's trivial in Unix. And that "something" is
writing computer programs. I agree that winamp, games, ..., are much
more polished in Windows. I mean, it's a foregone conclusion. It's the
core market of Windows!
Now here's the thing: mono-culturalism is worse than either Windows or
Unix bigotry. If you know the OS, go ahead, rant all you want about it.
But I have little consideration for rants against some OS from people
who don't know it.
And the situation isn't symmetric, which is liable to raise an eyebrow.
I only know two persons who know Unix and prefer Windows. One worked for
Microsoft, the other loves every big American company and is in fact a
Microsoft fan (nothing wrong with that). All others I know disliking
Unix actually don't know it. On the other hand, I know plenty of
programmers who know both Unix and Windows programming and can't bring
themselves to think seriously about getting work done in Windows. I also
know Unix zealots who have no idea about Windows, and their rants are
pretty damaging (Richard Stallman only tried to use Word once and was
unable to do anything with it - too many confusing menus and buttons...
a sad case of monoculture.) Finally, programmers who only know Windows
kind of just don't know better so they take it as a given without
becoming fans and that's that.
I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...
As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment). Best move I
ever made.
I don't really see this. From the last several years of using Cygwin,
I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.
I WANT to get off Windows. But whatever I switch to would have to be
better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
stuff. And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.
I guess it sort of depends what "it" is. I agree that getting Unix to
install with drivers and all can be a bitch, even with Ubuntu. Even
beyond installation, all OSs have annoying quirks that take getting used
to. And for someone with the attitude "I'll give you this long to
impress me" the initial hurdles can be a deal breaker.
Andrei
