Author Topic: Why Windows Sucks  (Read 7622 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Joe

  • B&
  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10319
  • In Soviet Russia, text read you!
    • View Profile
    • Github
Why Windows Sucks
« on: March 07, 2006, 07:42:41 pm »
I'm sitting here, playing WoW, right? Well, all of a sudden, LAGSPIKE! Oh wait, it's not a lagspike, my internet just went out.

Alright, I asume my brother disconnected his network card, because he's a bodag and always does stuff like that. Well, I go upstairs, and he's not even home. So I come back downstairs and ping google.com. Takes forever to resolve, and fails. I look at my systray, and my network card icon has SEND lit, RECV dim. Uh oh. I right click it to Disable it (to restart it), and the menu freezes. Damnit. I open up Network Connections to disable it, and explorer freezes. Control+alt+delete, kill explorer, relaunch. I get Network Connections open, and go to disable it. The menu doesn't freeze, but it doesn't disable either. So I restart my box (which I should never have to do.. (and takes 5 minutes)), and then go to Network Connections to enable the card. Explorer crashes again. Restart explorer, and I'm FINALLY on the internet.

Windows gets the following awards:
Instable
Accident-prone in normal situations
Confusing
Stupid


Linux wins the following awards:
Just works.

True story!
I'd personally do as Joe suggests

You might be right about that, Joe.


Offline Sidoh

  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17634
  • MHNATY ~~~~~
    • View Profile
    • sidoh
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2006, 07:53:54 pm »
I'd wager you'd have more stability problems in Linux if you tried to play WoW.

I've never had this sort of problem, so we're clear.  Sure, it's annoying, but I've had equally annoying experiences in Linux.  I usually argue for Linux in arguments like these, but there have been few recent situations that I've disagreed with.

It's unstable, by the way.  Instable isn't a word.  Just thought you might want to know that if you want to insult Windows in a more formal environment.  Windows isn't confusing or stupid.  It has bugs.  That's not confusing or stupid.  It's expected.  It's a really strange/stupid bug to complain about, if you ask me.  There's obviously something awry with your software installation (drivers, OS, connection hardware or otherwise).  Since it's worked in the same conditions before, it's preposterous to claim that Windows as a whole sucks because this one little thing stopped working.  It happens.  Fix it and get on with life.

Offline Joe

  • B&
  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10319
  • In Soviet Russia, text read you!
    • View Profile
    • Github
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2006, 09:05:59 pm »
I added a step to that last sentence. Fix it, complain, and get on with life. $_$
I'd personally do as Joe suggests

You might be right about that, Joe.


Offline Super_X

  • I suck.
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1340
  • I suck!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2006, 09:11:54 pm »
Could you really expect a good ping to google on 56k?

Offline MyndFyre

  • Boticulator Extraordinaire
  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4540
  • The wait is over.
    • View Profile
    • JinxBot :: the evolution in boticulation
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #4 on: March 07, 2006, 09:20:11 pm »
It's unstable, by the way.  Instable isn't a word.  Just thought you might want to know that if you want to insult Windows in a more formal environment.  Windows isn't confusing or stupid.  It has bugs.  That's not confusing or stupid.  It's expected.  It's a really strange/stupid bug to complain about, if you ask me.  There's obviously something awry with your software installation (drivers, OS, connection hardware or otherwise).  Since it's worked in the same conditions before, it's preposterous to claim that Windows as a whole sucks because this one little thing stopped working.  It happens.  Fix it and get on with life.

I'd actually bet that this isn't a Windows bug, but either a driver bug or a WoW bug.

WoW sometimes had glitches with my NVidia drivers that caused the master boot record of one of my harddrives to be overwritten.  Don't ask me how this works; I would just guess that a handle got crossed somewhere in my video driver (I know it's the video driver because it would bugcheck out with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL specifying nv4disp.dll). 
I have a programming folder, and I have nothing of value there

Running with Code has a new home!

Our species really annoys me.

Offline Sidoh

  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17634
  • MHNATY ~~~~~
    • View Profile
    • sidoh
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #5 on: March 07, 2006, 09:23:15 pm »
I added a step to that last sentence. Fix it, complain, and get on with life. $_$

You're complaining about the wrong thing.  That's what I'm arguing.

I'd actually bet that this isn't a Windows bug, but either a driver bug or a WoW bug.

WoW sometimes had glitches with my NVidia drivers that caused the master boot record of one of my harddrives to be overwritten.  Don't ask me how this works; I would just guess that a handle got crossed somewhere in my video driver (I know it's the video driver because it would bugcheck out with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL specifying nv4disp.dll). 

Strange!  I also experienced a glitch in WoW with my Nvidia NForce3 network card.  I'd randomly get disconnected after turning in quests, I would lag horribly and half the people I saw were "Unknown Entity."  I checked the forums a while ago and found a tech support post recommending a person having similar problems to disable Checksum Overload.  I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I have a general idea.  Anyway, that worked. :)

Offline Blaze

  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7136
  • Canadian
    • View Profile
    • Maide
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #6 on: March 07, 2006, 10:25:26 pm »
I've had windows disconnect from my router and not be able to reconnect without a full restart, a re-format fixed it.

WoW sometimes had glitches with my NVidia drivers that caused the master boot record of one of my harddrives to be overwritten.  Don't ask me how this works; I would just guess that a handle got crossed somewhere in my video driver (I know it's the video driver because it would bugcheck out with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL specifying nv4disp.dll). 

Strange!  I also experienced a glitch in WoW with my Nvidia NForce3 network card.  I'd randomly get disconnected after turning in quests, I would lag horribly and half the people I saw were "Unknown Entity."  I checked the forums a while ago and found a tech support post recommending a person having similar problems to disable Checksum Overload.  I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I have a general idea.  Anyway, that worked. :)

I have the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL often, it's got to be either my network drivers or my sound drivers, which are up to date... :-\

I have the ATI driver crash in the place above Burning Steppes so many times I refuse to go adventuring in it.
And like a fool I believed myself, and thought I was somebody else...

Offline Glove

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Hey! Look over there!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2006, 11:07:14 pm »
Lists of reasons Windows sucks:
1) Not very flexible - you can only use one GUI and you're forced to use it and the tools built in.  The tools are not very flexible (for example, try making RRAS do NAT on one nic something a Unix firewall can handle).  Repair tools are poorly designed, a clever trojan could name itself with characters that recovery console will refuse to delete (I have personally seen this).  Most people cannot properly comment because either they are still partially dependent on Windows or have never used anything else.  Please, if you fit either criteria, don't comment.
2) Requires higher end hardware to run - It's no secret, even old machines are useful ... but for example XP will tear apart an older 400-500MHz machine.  Windows grows fatter and requires more, this is no secret.  Most Unix flavors can run off of a diskette.  Try running a Unix for a whole year without exposure to Windows, then try Windows ... you'll see, then you'll wonder why and how anybody could accept this as the computing standard.  I couldn't believe that a coworker's brand new 3 day old laptop was extremely sluggish running XP (someone who might use XP all the time will not notice due to Microsoft's conditioning).
3) Lack of control and verbosity - No boot diagnostics, error messages are useless or limited.  I'll be very brief ... try manually setting your CPU's speed.  Exactly, you can't.  You also have no control over what drivers and modules load.
4) Bad documentation - Wait!  There is no useful documentation!  Please, don't start on MSDN ...
5) Easy to run, easy to break - Even windows can break on the most experienced users...but what I find most ironic is that Windows is designed for the faint of heart, but it also breaks most frequently for these types of people.  Ever try fixing Windows?  Right...usually you just format and reinstall.  Even if you know how to manually remove malware, you can never be sure its gone (and don't kid yourself, virus scanners and spyware removers don't always work).
6) Mercy of Microsoft - Microsoft does NOT have to fix their software ... and in fact there are problems they do not fix, for example, the DSO exploit in IE.  As a Windows user, you rely on Microsoft to find problems and patch them.  Patches are not always released immediately either.

Please, don't post the typical responses  ... like I said, if you've never used anything else then you shouldn't even be replying in this topic. The typical windows user has computing tunnel vision ... its a sad thing.



Offline MyndFyre

  • Boticulator Extraordinaire
  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4540
  • The wait is over.
    • View Profile
    • JinxBot :: the evolution in boticulation
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #8 on: March 07, 2006, 11:19:38 pm »
I'm going to take apart your argument item by item, even though we both know that, no matter what I say in contradiction, I'm going to be labelled a "windoze n00b" and unworthy of posting.

Lists of reasons Windows sucks:
1) Not very flexible - you can only use one GUI and you're forced to use it and the tools built in.  The tools are not very flexible (for example, try making RRAS do NAT on one nic something a Unix firewall can handle).  Repair tools are poorly designed, a clever trojan could name itself with characters that recovery console will refuse to delete (I have personally seen this).  Most people cannot properly comment because either they are still partially dependent on Windows or have never used anything else.  Please, if you fit either criteria, don't comment.
Inflexibility in using a windowing system is not a reason that Windows sucks.  It's the reason people buy it.  Windows is consistent, and it's interesting how both Gnome and KDE use Windows mneumonics.

You may be right about the trojan issue, but it's not something I've ever seen.  I'm also not familiar with RRAS performing NAT -- nor am I familiar with its applications.  I would wager with a proper driver it's possible.

2) Requires higher end hardware to run - It's no secret, even old machines are useful ... but for example XP will tear apart an older 400-500MHz machine.  Windows grows fatter and requires more, this is no secret.  Most Unix flavors can run off of a diskette.  Try running a Unix for a whole year without exposure to Windows, then try Windows ... you'll see, then you'll wonder why and how anybody could accept this as the computing standard.  I couldn't believe that a coworker's brand new 3 day old laptop was extremely sluggish running XP (someone who might use XP all the time will not notice due to Microsoft's conditioning).
I'm not quite sure how well it does, but I know that a friend of mine runs XP on a 433MHz Pentium III.  With proper maintenance, Windows does not grow "fatter" -- but the catch is exactly that -- with proper maintenance.  I have bought two laptops in the last four years -- as soon as I get them, I wipe them clean and do a completely fresh install.  Dangerous, you say?  Hardly!  I know how to set up my system securely.

3) Lack of control and verbosity - No boot diagnostics, error messages are useless or limited.  I'll be very brief ... try manually setting your CPU's speed.  Exactly, you can't.  You also have no control over what drivers and modules load.
You certainly have control over what drivers and modules load through hardware configuration.  It seems you don't know what you're talking about in that vein.  Proper administrators will set up hardware configurations prior to that being an issue.

You are correct though, in asserting you cannot set your CPU speed.

4) Bad documentation - Wait!  There is no useful documentation!  Please, don't start on MSDN ...
That's... dumb.  Yeah -- MAN pages are *great*.  Okay.  I have never not been able to find what I was looking for on MSDN.  As it turns out, once you get an idea for how the Win32 API functions and how it's generally ordered, it's quite easy to find things.

5) Easy to run, easy to break - Even windows can break on the most experienced users...but what I find most ironic is that Windows is designed for the faint of heart, but it also breaks most frequently for these types of people.  Ever try fixing Windows?  Right...usually you just format and reinstall.  Even if you know how to manually remove malware, you can never be sure its gone (and don't kid yourself, virus scanners and spyware removers don't always work).
Actually, yesterday I discovered a nice little piece of malware (adware) had tunneled into my winlogon and explorer processes.  First, I forbade it from loading through COM, which stopped it from loading into Explorer, but it was still there in winlogon.  I loaded up Process Explorer, killed winlogon, and deleted the file before I BSOD'd.  Guess what -- all gone!  Fixed!

6) Mercy of Microsoft - Microsoft does NOT have to fix their software ... and in fact there are problems they do not fix, for example, the DSO exploit in IE.  As a Windows user, you rely on Microsoft to find problems and patch them.  Patches are not always released immediately either.
Well yeah, this *is* the problem, isn't it?  I was looking today at the WMF vulnerability -- do you know I have *never* seen a WMF used anywhere except clipart?  I'm not really sure what the relevance for these things is.
I have a programming folder, and I have nothing of value there

Running with Code has a new home!

Our species really annoys me.

Offline Warrior

  • supreme mac daddy of trolls
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7503
  • One for a Dime two for a Quarter!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #9 on: March 07, 2006, 11:37:55 pm »
I'm sitting here, playing WoW, right? Well, all of a sudden, LAGSPIKE! Oh wait, it's not a lagspike, my internet just went out.

Alright, I asume my brother disconnected his network card, because he's a bodag and always does stuff like that. Well, I go upstairs, and he's not even home. So I come back downstairs and ping google.com. Takes forever to resolve, and fails. I look at my systray, and my network card icon has SEND lit, RECV dim. Uh oh. I right click it to Disable it (to restart it), and the menu freezes. Damnit. I open up Network Connections to disable it, and explorer freezes. Control+alt+delete, kill explorer, relaunch. I get Network Connections open, and go to disable it. The menu doesn't freeze, but it doesn't disable either. So I restart my box (which I should never have to do.. (and takes 5 minutes)), and then go to Network Connections to enable the card. Explorer crashes again. Restart explorer, and I'm FINALLY on the internet.

Windows gets the following awards:
Instable
Accident-prone in normal situations
Confusing
Stupid


Linux wins the following awards:
Just works.

True story!

Well there are some problems with this, Windows has to stop all the net related services and some of them may not "cooperate" such as any open applications you may have sometimes this causes instability. It's generally no big however you went about it entirely the wrong way. Perhaps you should have..oh I don't know..plugged it back in? Windows should autodetect that it's been reconnected via a polling mechanism it has built in then just try to restablish your network connection.
One must ask oneself: "do I will trolling to become a universal law?" And then when one realizes "yes, I do will it to be such," one feels completely justified.
-- from Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Trolling

Offline iago

  • Leader
  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17914
  • Fnord.
    • View Profile
    • SkullSecurity
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #10 on: March 08, 2006, 12:10:01 am »
I'm going to take apart your argument item by item, even though we both know that, no matter what I say in contradiction, I'm going to be labelled a "windoze n00b" and unworthy of posting.
No, the reason that your post is unworthy is exactly that line.  It instantly casts doubt on everything you said. 

Offline Glove

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Hey! Look over there!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #11 on: March 08, 2006, 12:21:41 am »
I'm going to take apart your argument item by item, even though we both know that, no matter what I say in contradiction, I'm going to be labelled a "windoze n00b" and unworthy of posting.
I used to talk like this until I tried and used something else.
Quote
Lists of reasons Windows sucks:
1) Not very flexible - you can only use one GUI and you're forced to use it and the tools built in.  The tools are not very flexible (for example, try making RRAS do NAT on one nic something a Unix firewall can handle).  Repair tools are poorly designed, a clever trojan could name itself with characters that recovery console will refuse to delete (I have personally seen this).  Most people cannot properly comment because either they are still partially dependent on Windows or have never used anything else.  Please, if you fit either criteria, don't comment.
Inflexibility in using a windowing system is not a reason that Windows sucks.  It's the reason people buy it.  Windows is consistent, and it's interesting how both Gnome and KDE use Windows mneumonics.

You may be right about the trojan issue, but it's not something I've ever seen.  I'm also not familiar with RRAS performing NAT -- nor am I familiar with its applications.  I would wager with a proper driver it's possible.
Windows is consistent, agreed.  KDE and Gnome are not the only window managers available.  I personally love Window Maker.
RRAS likes handles rules on a per nic basis ... I haven't found a way to do NAT on one nic in Windows 2000 ADV Server.

Quote
2) Requires higher end hardware to run - It's no secret, even old machines are useful ... but for example XP will tear apart an older 400-500MHz machine.  Windows grows fatter and requires more, this is no secret.  Most Unix flavors can run off of a diskette.  Try running a Unix for a whole year without exposure to Windows, then try Windows ... you'll see, then you'll wonder why and how anybody could accept this as the computing standard.  I couldn't believe that a coworker's brand new 3 day old laptop was extremely sluggish running XP (someone who might use XP all the time will not notice due to Microsoft's conditioning).
I'm not quite sure how well it does, but I know that a friend of mine runs XP on a 433MHz Pentium III.  With proper maintenance, Windows does not grow "fatter" -- but the catch is exactly that -- with proper maintenance.  I have bought two laptops in the last four years -- as soon as I get them, I wipe them clean and do a completely fresh install.  Dangerous, you say?  Hardly!  I know how to set up my system securely.
Yes, you have to strip XP of its eye candy features for it to run nicely on those systems.  But its still noticeably sluggish until you get used to it.
Please see: http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html
Quote
5)      Image size. The team was unable to reduce the size of the image below 900MB; Windows contains many complex relationships between pieces, and the team was not able to determine with safety how much could be left out of the image. Although disk space on each server was not an issue, the time taken to image thousands of servers across the internal network was significant. By comparison, the equivalent FreeBSD image size is a few tens of MB.

It is very fat and it continues to grow.

Cuddos to you for wiping your laptops clean.  That's exactly what I do.

Quote
3) Lack of control and verbosity - No boot diagnostics, error messages are useless or limited.  I'll be very brief ... try manually setting your CPU's speed.  Exactly, you can't.  You also have no control over what drivers and modules load.
You certainly have control over what drivers and modules load through hardware configuration.  It seems you don't know what you're talking about in that vein.  Proper administrators will set up hardware configurations prior to that being an issue.

You are correct though, in asserting you cannot set your CPU speed.

Please see: kldload, kldunload, kldstat and my favorite, securelevel

I can forcefully load, unload, and even view loaded kernel modules with builtin system tools.  With securelevels, I can prevent modules, firewall rules, and certain device nodes from being loaded, modified, and written to during system run time.  No other OS I know of has such a feature ... very handy.  Unfortunately X likes to write to /dev/io and so I cannot even run the system at securelevel 1. These securelevels cannot be lowered during multi user run time.  I do not know of any ways to do this in Windows...Sysinternals has some tools like Process Explorer but thats the best I can think of.

For example:
Code: [Select]
%kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   14 0xc0400000 4033b4   kernel
 3    2 0xc080a000 20448    sound.ko
 4    1 0xc082b000 3f44     acpi_ibm.ko
 5   17 0xc082f000 6057c    acpi.ko
 6    1 0xc0890000 41c4     wlan_tkip.ko
 7    1 0xc0895000 6fe4     wlan_ccmp.ko
 8    1 0xc1ef5000 18000    linux.ko
 9    1 0xc4079000 5000     snd_ich.ko
Quote
4) Bad documentation - Wait!  There is no useful documentation!  Please, don't start on MSDN ...
That's... dumb.  Yeah -- MAN pages are *great*.  Okay.  I have never not been able to find what I was looking for on MSDN.  As it turns out, once you get an idea for how the Win32 API functions and how it's generally ordered, it's quite easy to find things.

Man pages are great and they usually list indepth examples.  I learned a lot about network programming in Unix just from the man pages.  They also have "intro" man pages for topics.  See, for example, netintro

Quote
5) Easy to run, easy to break - Even windows can break on the most experienced users...but what I find most ironic is that Windows is designed for the faint of heart, but it also breaks most frequently for these types of people.  Ever try fixing Windows?  Right...usually you just format and reinstall.  Even if you know how to manually remove malware, you can never be sure its gone (and don't kid yourself, virus scanners and spyware removers don't always work).
Actually, yesterday I discovered a nice little piece of malware (adware) had tunneled into my winlogon and explorer processes.  First, I forbade it from loading through COM, which stopped it from loading into Explorer, but it was still there in winlogon.  I loaded up Process Explorer, killed winlogon, and deleted the file before I BSOD'd.  Guess what -- all gone!  Fixed!

Are you sure its all gone?  Might popup again one day :)


Quote
6) Mercy of Microsoft - Microsoft does NOT have to fix their software ... and in fact there are problems they do not fix, for example, the DSO exploit in IE.  As a Windows user, you rely on Microsoft to find problems and patch them.  Patches are not always released immediately either.
Well yeah, this *is* the problem, isn't it?  I was looking today at the WMF vulnerability -- do you know I have *never* seen a WMF used anywhere except clipart?  I'm not really sure what the relevance for these things is.

Doesn't make it alright for Microsoft to ignore vulnerabilities. 
What amazes me is a project like OpenBSD, totally volunteer driven, has a team of code auditers that look for bugs and security vulnerabilities.  That's not even the beginning to security in OpenBSD.  I invite you to read their security policy: http://www.openbsd.org/security.html
Does Microsoft have a team of code auditers?  I'd wager not...they seem to only respond to problems.

Offline MyndFyre

  • Boticulator Extraordinaire
  • x86
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4540
  • The wait is over.
    • View Profile
    • JinxBot :: the evolution in boticulation
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #12 on: March 08, 2006, 12:38:43 am »
No, the reason that your post is unworthy is exactly that line.  It instantly casts doubt on everything you said. 
Ron, c'mon now, take a look at this:
Most people cannot properly comment because either they are still partially dependent on Windows or have never used anything else.  Please, if you fit either criteria, don't comment.

(someone who might use XP all the time will not notice due to Microsoft's conditioning).

4) Bad documentation - Wait!  There is no useful documentation!  Please, don't start on MSDN ...

Please, don't post the typical responses  ... like I said, if you've never used anything else then you shouldn't even be replying in this topic. The typical windows user has computing tunnel vision ... its a sad thing.
Now, I know you're vehemently anti-Windows, but c'mon, this is loaded language.  Now, I'll step back and admit, Glove's responses to what I said definitely are making me re-evaluate how I thought he was approaching the topic (I thought he was going to be a Warrior for Unix, and by Warrior, I mean the member).  We'll see as time moves forward, but I think you're just being silly.

I used to talk like this until I tried and used something else.
Huh?

Windows is consistent, agreed.  KDE and Gnome are not the only window managers available.  I personally love Window Maker.
RRAS likes handles rules on a per nic basis ... I haven't found a way to do NAT on one nic in Windows 2000 ADV Server.
I don't do network programming at that level, but because of the multilayered nature of drivers in Windows starting with WDF (Windows Driver Foundation) model in Windows 2000, I'm sure you can do something like that.  Unfortunately the DDK (Driver Development Kit) is not publically available - I believe you need to be an MSDN subscriber to get access to it.

Please see: kldload, kldunload, kldstat and my favorite, securelevel

I can forcefully load, unload, and even view loaded kernel modules with builtin system tools.  With securelevels, I can prevent modules, firewall rules, and certain device nodes from being loaded, modified, and written to during system run time.  No other OS I know of has such a feature ... very handy.  Unfortunately X likes to write to /dev/io and so I cannot even run the system at securelevel 1. These securelevels cannot be lowered during multi user run time.  I do not know of any ways to do this in Windows...Sysinternals has some tools like Process Explorer but thats the best I can think of.

For example:
Code: [Select]
%kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   14 0xc0400000 4033b4   kernel
 3    2 0xc080a000 20448    sound.ko
 4    1 0xc082b000 3f44     acpi_ibm.ko
 5   17 0xc082f000 6057c    acpi.ko
 6    1 0xc0890000 41c4     wlan_tkip.ko
 7    1 0xc0895000 6fe4     wlan_ccmp.ko
 8    1 0xc1ef5000 18000    linux.ko
 9    1 0xc4079000 5000     snd_ich.ko
I'm not sure what the availability of these kinds of things will be, but I am sure that with the movement of drivers into userspace, that many more drivers/modules will be able to be forcibly loaded/unloaded at runtime.  Now, you cannot unload the kernel; nor can you unload the graphical environment (obviously).  I can't think of an instance where I would need to, though; I've only two or three times ever had to resort to a tool such as the Recovery Console, and that's on my desktop computer, not my laptop, although that number may be moderated by the fact that I usually maintain two separate installations of Windows as well as a Linux distro on that particular computer.

Man pages are great and they usually list indepth examples.  I learned a lot about network programming in Unix just from the man pages.  They also have "intro" man pages for topics.  See, for example, netintro
Unfortunately I cannot come up with man pages that I have found woefully inadequate, but particularly when I was *brand new* to Linux, some of the operating system features themselves were not well-documented (although I suppose that could have been due to the distro itself).  The experience pretty much tainted man pages for me.

MSDN is very frequently a fantastic resource that you dismissed out of hand.

Are you sure its all gone?  Might popup again one day :)
Yes, I'm sure.  I monitor these kinds of things.  How do you think I discovered it anyway?  It had bypassed MS anti-spyware and it broke ad-aware.  :P

Doesn't make it alright for Microsoft to ignore vulnerabilities. 
What amazes me is a project like OpenBSD, totally volunteer driven, has a team of code auditers that look for bugs and security vulnerabilities.  That's not even the beginning to security in OpenBSD.  I invite you to read their security policy: http://www.openbsd.org/security.html
Does Microsoft have a team of code auditers?  I'd wager not...they seem to only respond to problems.
Well, there is a slight difference in culture between Windows and OpenBSD users, I'm sure -- that OpenBSD users use it because of its security.  ;)

But yes, MS does have a team of code auditors, I have read about them in their published works.  With as much code as they have, though, it's questionable whether code review is as effective with them.
I have a programming folder, and I have nothing of value there

Running with Code has a new home!

Our species really annoys me.

Offline Glove

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Hey! Look over there!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #13 on: March 08, 2006, 12:55:15 am »
Quote
Most people cannot properly comment because either they are still partially dependent on Windows or have never used anything else.  Please, if you fit either criteria, don't comment.

(someone who might use XP all the time will not notice due to Microsoft's conditioning).

4) Bad documentation - Wait!  There is no useful documentation!  Please, don't start on MSDN ...

Please, don't post the typical responses  ... like I said, if you've never used anything else then you shouldn't even be replying in this topic. The typical windows user has computing tunnel vision ... its a sad thing.
Now, I know you're vehemently anti-Windows, but c'mon, this is loaded language.  Now, I'll step back and admit, Glove's responses to what I said definitely are making me re-evaluate how I thought he was approaching the topic (I thought he was going to be a Warrior for Unix, and by Warrior, I mean the member).  We'll see as time moves forward, but I think you're just being silly.

No, I truthfully think the BSD man pages are much more readable than MSDN.  I also experienced the sluggishness of Windows XP after not touching anything Windows related for a year ... I thought to myself, "This is the most popular OS?"  I was shocked beyond belief.  Because windows users are so accustomed to the Microsoft way of doing things and the speed of these tasks, it is a wonder that people don't complain...they have been conditioned to this sort of computing.

Quote
Man pages are great and they usually list indepth examples.  I learned a lot about network programming in Unix just from the man pages.  They also have "intro" man pages for topics.  See, for example, netintro
Unfortunately I cannot come up with man pages that I have found woefully inadequate, but particularly when I was *brand new* to Linux, some of the operating system features themselves were not well-documented (although I suppose that could have been due to the distro itself).  The experience pretty much tainted man pages for me.

MSDN is very frequently a fantastic resource that you dismissed out of hand.

I'm not sure about Linux documentation, but BSD documentation is usually excellent.

Offline iago

  • Leader
  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17914
  • Fnord.
    • View Profile
    • SkullSecurity
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #14 on: March 08, 2006, 10:16:32 am »
Windows is consistent, agreed.  KDE and Gnome are not the only window managers available.  I personally love Window Maker.
If I had to say one thing about Glove, the man knows style.  Window Maker for life :)

Offline Glove

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Hey! Look over there!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #15 on: March 08, 2006, 07:26:17 pm »
Windows is consistent, agreed.  KDE and Gnome are not the only window managers available.  I personally love Window Maker.
If I had to say one thing about Glove, the man knows style.  Window Maker for life :)

Calls for showing off :D


XMMS and the dockapps on the clip are running off of a remote machine (my jukebox/misc machine).

Offline iago

  • Leader
  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17914
  • Fnord.
    • View Profile
    • SkullSecurity
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #16 on: March 08, 2006, 07:34:14 pm »
Cool.  I've tried almost every dockapp there at some point, but I never really used them much.  I'm currently using a fairly new installation, so I haven't got as many as I'd like, but I have enough to make me happy. 

I personally like the simple look.  Here it is.  I used to use different backgrounds and stuff, but I just didn't like it.  So I stick with the default settings, or very nearly default. :)

Offline Glove

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Hey! Look over there!
    • View Profile
Re: Why Windows Sucks
« Reply #17 on: March 08, 2006, 07:38:38 pm »
Cool.  I've tried almost every dockapp there at some point, but I never really used them much.  I'm currently using a fairly new installation, so I haven't got as many as I'd like, but I have enough to make me happy. 

I personally like the simple look.  Here it is.  I used to use different backgrounds and stuff, but I just didn't like it.  So I stick with the default settings, or very nearly default. :)

Whatever works.  I particularly like the XKB status button on Window Maker...very handy.