Microsoft will always beat Open Source

DaRuSsIaMaN said:
The only thing that matters is that harrack52 seems to want to keep using an ATI card. And Windows lets him do that. End of story.
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Um, our point was that if you want to use 3D in Linux, ATI is not a good option. Additionally, people who are serious about using Linux should not use hardware which is not well supported in Linux. In fact, people should not buy hardware that is not well-supported on their platform period, no matter which platform they choose. I don't see what's so confusing about that.

If Harrack52 is more interested in using ATI cards specifically than having cards which work well in Linux, that's his prerogative. He said:
harrack52 said:
I already have an ATI card. I shouldn't need to switch to nvidia in order to do what I want. And whether it's ATI's fault is irrelevant for the reason mentioned above.
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While I agree that ideally this would be the case, it's ATI's responsibility to get drivers which work for the Linux platform, or for any platform. The specs are closed on their product, and the source code for their drivers is not available to Linux developers. For this reason they's no way anybody but ATI can make Linux drivers (or for BSD, or Solaris, or anything else). Otherwise, ATI hardware would work beautifully "out-of-the-box" on Linux, no user-interaction necessary.

What you are asking for is unreasonable. It's akin to me asking you to draw a highly accurate sketch of how my office looks under the following conditions:

  1. You cannot visit my office personally.
  2. Nobody who has been in my office can describe it to you or sketch it for you.
  3. You cannot have somebody who has been in my office build a mockup for you to study.

What do you think your chances would be of drawing an accurate sketch of my office? I'd venture a guess of "not very good at all".

What needs to happen is that either a) ATI needs to put more serious effort into developing their closed-source drivers (this is what NVidia has been doing, that's why I own an NVidia card) or b) ATI needs to open-source their drivers so that Linux developers can work on it themselves (Intel has already done this, and AMD may do the same with ATI's drivers now that they've aquired the company). But unless they do either a or b, ATI's Linux drivers will continue to be horrendous.

I used to own ATI cards, but I sold them when I made the decision to switch to Linux. I don't regret the decision. It took me 15 minutes to pick out a replacement card at newegg.com and about 15 minutes to list my old card on the B/S/T forum here. I wonder how much time I wasted doing malware scans, system recoveries, reformatting, defragmenting, and restoring backups on Windows? A lot more than 30 minutes, friend, I assure you.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
I, for instance, use AIM just because all my friends use it. I don't like it too much, I bet there are better "messengers" out there, but I'm not gonna dump the ability to talk to my friends online just cuz I don't like the program!
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As a subnote, I dont like AIM either so I either use trillian, gaim, kopete or... See how that works? They provide me with trashy software, so I dont go to them anymore. It's the only way we can stand up to companys that dont give decent products because they "dont feel like it" or maybe they dont feel like it because everybody will use their products whether they bite nuts or not. I completely understand what you're getting at about Harrack and I agree. If he'd rather keep his video card and use Windows than switch companies because of the inconvenience provided by ATI that is totally up to him and I'm not going to go rioting...
 
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who really wants to use a closed source AND inferior software can do so. If they choose to ignore my advice or think its just not for them then I don't really care.

I'm not exactly a Richard Stallman type, I think that FOSS is great and whenever given the choice between good free software and proprietary software then free software should be used. On the other hand, I think that proprietary and good software can co exist with FOSS. I don't agree with crappy, closed source software when it has a monopoly on the market, which is the case with Microsoft.

It makes sense for a manufacturer to provide driver support for other OSes. Windows is not free, as in beer and speech. GNU/Linux and BSD is. Why offer support for an OS which takes away user freedom and feeds a monopoly, yet at the same time not provide support for an open source OS?

To me, it seems counter-intuitive. Yes its true that 90% of their users are going to be Windows users but for large companies like ATI and others who don't support Linux, surely it can't be that hard on the books to get the engineering team to write some drivers for Linux.
 
Fred said:
I completely understand what you're getting at about Harrack and I agree. If he'd rather keep his video card and use Windows than switch companies because of the inconvenience provided by ATI that is totally up to him and I'm not going to go rioting...
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Haha yeah, I just think that there are probably quite a few people out there who feel the same way as Harrack.

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But ultimately, I think what Swansen said up there holds the key to this: games really are the clincher. Since no one designs games for linux, and they all require emulators (which as I understand it won't work with all the new super-demanding games), then for a lot of people there's no way they're abandoning windows completely. Don't even all u windows-haters have some kind of dual boot setup for games' sake? So yes, I think Micro$haft will beat open source for a long time to come.
 
The lack of commercial games doesn't really bother me because I rarely play anyway. That being said, there are numerous free, open source games widely available for Linux.

Anyway, Linux IS a better gaming platform and there are a few companies producing commercial games. As Linux gains market share, gaming houses will take notice and produce a wider variety of games. When that happens, you will lose your only reason to stick with Windows :)
 
And there in lies the problem. Linux is a better gaming platform but, curretnly most people buy pcs so games are developed for them. That said Direct X is a windows exclusive, which runs games better, for the most part, as open GL works WAY better for commercial uses and imaging. Yes there are some games that run on Linux and some of them are really good, but there a a HUGE amount of games that have no support and i hope that i loose my only reason to stick with windows sooner than later.
 
Linux is a great gaming platform from a technical perspective, no question about that. It's faster than Windows, handles multitasking and multithreading worlds better, has a wide range of open APIs for development, and has extremely low latency both in networking and in operation. There is also no question that there are many, many more games written for Windows than Linux. This is because of the sheer market share of the Windows OS; it would be counter-intuitive for most companies to write games for Linux only (or Mac, or whatever) because a majority of their potential customers run Windows.

That all said, by discussing hardcore gamers we are talking about a tiny minority of computer users. Casual gamers, even moderate gamers will likely find the selection of games for Linux acceptible for their needs. As for the "coffee-break gamers" out there who's gaming experience is typically limited to MS Solitaire, which is the vast majority of desktop computer users in the world, I've got 50+ games of that sort installed on my system which came with my OS. We're not even talking about "real" games like Battle for Wesnoth, Enemy Territory, Savage, or commercial games like Quake4 or UT2k4, which I've also got installed. Let's just say I've never missed out on a LAN party due to my OS of choice.

In reality, the vast majority of computers are used for only a few main tasks:

  • Internet access
  • Email
  • Basic office functionality (world processing, spreadsheets)
  • Maybe basic multimedia (photo editing, music, etc)

Paying hundreds of dollars for Windows and all of the mandatory software tools to keep it afloat is just plain wasteful for 99% of the population. Linux can do all those things better, and right out of the box, too. And that's legally, without paying for any 3rd party tools or being at the mercy of any vendors.

It's not really even worth discussing how much better any UNIX-like OS is for a server than Windows. After all, Windows was designed as a single-user, non-networking OS and security and long-term stability weren't even tertiary goals until very recently. Plus Window's I/O, network stack and filesystems all suck, which are critical to a server's performance. Worse, you cannot seperate the GUI from the OS, it is not trivial to administrate remotely, nor can it be automated to a very high degree. And who wants to reboot servers every time there's a security patch? [Attn users: The server will be down today due to server maintenance, so save all your work now and twiddle your thumbs for a while. Sorry for the inconvenience.] Yes, enterprise server product indeed.
 
Well i agree with all of that except about the casual gamer, because a gamer is a gamer regardless, and will want, most likely, mainstream games and now not a year or whatever later when there is a port made. Yes the fraction of pc users who are gamers compared to the rest of the market is comparatively small, their a pretty big voice, ie. of all the hardware developed for gaming purposes. Its just a crappy ordeal.
 
I can say from running ut2k4 on both Windows and Mandriva Linux that it runs in Linux much better. No bias at all here, using OpenGL with higher graphical quality settings than on Windows, I still had good performance. This is not even mentioning networking, which was unsurprisingly also better at.

Cedega will work for a wide variety of games, some of them won't work. That is inevitable, but I'm not a heavy gamer so it doesn't matter to me.

One more thing, performance can be increased further without sacrificing quality by recompiling the kernel, with less features to increase speed. Unlike Windows, it is a open system. This makes tweaking much easier.
 
Addis said:
One more thing, performance can be increased further without sacrificing quality by recompiling the kernel, with less features to increase speed. Unlike Windows, it is a open system. This makes tweaking much easier.
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Well, I'm sure a large share of the market is definitely excited about that :P :D
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Well, I'm sure a large share of the market is definitely excited about that :P :D
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The majority of "the market" don't know the first thing about computers or technology. This likely won't excite them, but it should excite people who know what they're doing.
 
As an everyday kind of bloke the reason i use MS mostly and not another OS is:
a) It mostly works fine and is well supported
b) Im lazy and can't really be arsed with all the faffing around to change to another OS
c)Change is daunting in anything, not least to an OS where you really don't have the knowledge to go playing around
d) Finding support from 3rd party companies is an absolute nightmare on Linux (i think this has been pointed out already).
e) im a hardcore gamer and most of the games i play are unsupported by any OS other than windows.

Thats how i see it and i think as an average joe i probably speak for the majority in the points i have raised.

Thanks
 
Here's an interesting anecdote. My corporate IT-supported Windows XP Pro (SP2 + latest patches) workstation crashed unexpectedly today. It's a brand new image, and the hardware is fine. I wasn't even doing anything unusual on the box; it just went down. When it came back up, the video drivers had been corrupted and it would not boot except in safe mode. System restore didn't help at all due to the FS corruption, and I could only boot in safe mode. Since Windows wouldn't let me unload the existing drivers or install new ones correctly in safe mode, I actually had to install a new video card myself to get the system up and running in order to get back to work.**

It's interesting to me that I have payed exactly $0 for my productivity software on my home network, including my firewall and servers. At work, they've probably spent around $5,000 on licenses for the software I use everyday, and that's just one workstation out of hundreds. Despite the glaring discrepancy, my home network is rock-solid; I've never experienced a crash, security issue, performance issue, data loss or otherwise. Also, my multi-desktop KDE installation is more attractive and more productive than its Windows counterpart at work. My question is simply this: why can't my workstation / network at my place of employment (a corperate IT/security-related enterprise) come anywhere close to the quality of service on my home network?

Windows is popular because of ignorance. For example, I currently hold 3 MS certifications, and I would not consider that a point of any personal pride. In fact, of the admins I work with on a daily basis, the least knowledgable and effective are invariably decked-out in certifications beginning with the words: "Microsoft Certified". I'm not saying people who hold MS certs are dumb, but I am saying you don't have to know much to be MS certified. So basically, even 90% of the "industry professionals" in the world are something very close to worthless when it comes to technology in general. What do you think the average is for those who know even less about IT?

OK, my little rant's over, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make here. Sometimes it's not about how good something is, but people's perception about the alternatives. Some people don't even know Linux exists; others rationalize why Windows is best even though they are largely ignorant of anything else. Either way, they're only cheating themselves.

**I'm a network engineer, not internal IT. It's not my job to have to fix workstations.
 
To most of the general public they turn there computer on, it works, why do they need a different OS.

Scenario: You shop at ASDA you have done for the last 10 yrs, someone tells you that you can save money by going to Tesco. Do you go?

Some may try it out to see if there's a difference but the vast majority know where everything is in ASDA, its convienient, and yes maybe ignorance is a factor but at the end of the day only a small minority will switch.

So the bottom line is there may be problems with MS. Linux, Sun, etc may be cheaper and may have more going for it, but it is hard to get people to change.

Once in a blue moon will people embrace an idea or concept

The last one i remember off-hand is James Dyson and his vacuum cleaner.
 
yorkkev28 said:
As an everyday kind of bloke the reason i use MS mostly and not another OS is:
a) It mostly works fine and is well supported
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Well supported by manufacturers, yes. Only because of market share though. Moslty works fine? What is fine? Is fine having to defragment your hard drive every week, the system going into a massive slowdown as soon as RAM usage goes over a certain amount or having to pay £200 for an OS that dies spontaneously? I think not, but if that is fine for the average joe, then I see that Microsoft has lowered everybody's standards of software.
b) Im lazy and can't really be arsed with all the faffing around to change to another OS
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If that is the case, then GNU/Linux is probably not for you.
c)Change is daunting in anything, not least to an OS where you really don't have the knowledge to go playing around
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You're right. Change can be daunting, but that is why there are distributions like Ubuntu to help ease a user into a new OS, rather than drop you in the deep end.
d) Finding support from 3rd party companies is an absolute nightmare on Linux (i think this has been pointed out already).
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Well, I agree and also disagree with you here. Some 3rd party manufacturers are a complete pain in the ass, some have inferior quality drivers, and some don't know about Linux at all. But on the other hand, there are a few which do give good support. You'd be surprised at the number of devices which are supported without having to install any other drivers. E.g. my new Creative Audigy 2 ZS was detected, and the appropriate driver installed with no intervention from me. Almost all wired network cards I've used have been supported out of the box with Linux.
e) im a hardcore gamer and most of the games i play are unsupported by any OS other than windows.
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If you are a hardcore gamer (like some of my friends) then Linux probably isn't for you. Cedega will run DX games surprisingly well, and Linux itself handles games far better than Windows, but it's back to the developer support again.

Scenario: You shop at ASDA you have done for the last 10 yrs, someone tells you that you can save money by going to Tesco.
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Well, actually that is what happened with my family. We used to shop at Safeway, then ASDA, then Morrisons. First change was for the prices, second was for the quality (plus Morrisons pies are great).

Linux may not be for you, and that is understandable. It's not always the fault of the user, but the fault of manufacturers, developers, and of course Microsoft. Some people play games on their computers, some work. I mainly work, developing is just as easy on Linux for free software as it is on Windows (easier in fact). But developing applications for Windows? Well that can only be done in Windows, and so for that I must use it. However, for all my daily computing needs I use Linux, it just works for me. :)
 
Yeah thats true but i think the point here is why not change. Its a whole industry thing, microsoft has a finacial and market monopoly and no ones going to change anything to who ever else because they will probably get huge hassel from MS and then if it does work out they might not be able to keep the company afloat unless a large number of other companies made a switch with them. Yes Linux would be great for the every day user, spreadsheet maker, e-mail writer but a lot would have to happen in order for unknowing people to use linux.
 
Meh, that's just defeatism. I've personally deployed Linux on many people's home systems, and guess how many people went back to Windows? One out of about two dozen. Once you've used a properly configured Linux system, there's very little incentive to spend more money in order to get inferior quality. Once you've crossed that bridge, "because everyone else is doing it" becomes a very weak argument.
 
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