dunno much about linux

[MyndFyre]

While I don't disagree with your ma-and-pa 150 million argument, to say that Windows is inadequate for the power user (like myself) is patently absurd, and like it or not, that's what you're doing (you're implying that Windows is sufficient for the average user, but for people in the "elite", which includes yourself, it's not good enough).

I also disagree with your statement that marketshare isn't a good yardstick.  That'd be like saying, "What's the best textbook on human anatomy?  Let's pick the one that has the least market penetration."  "Who's the best scholar in the international affairs field?  Let's pick the person who only has a few articles published and who has seen no criticism from others."

I'm not indirectly implying that Windows is better *because* it has marketshare.  I'm saying, flat-out, that Windows has marketshare *because* it's better.  You're reversing my cause and effect statements.

I'm also not the least bit surprised that Windows is, in fact, "better" for Ma and Pa 150 million. It's not better for me though. Quite frankly, I think it sucks.

I want to know, in your words, what it is that you do with your computer that justifies your use of Linux?  I can see using Linux as a hobby OS, something fun to tinker with, to really get to know how the low-level nitty gritty stuff works on your computer.  But quite frankly, I don't see much that you can do on Linux that you can't do on Windows, short of some network administration tools, and even that has the caveat that most network administration tools in use these days (like - what's that neat port scanner/vulnerability detector program called?  I don't remember) are available for use in Windows too.

In software development, we're always looking for the best "toolkit" - if we can avoid repeating work, then it's awesome (this is the idea behind object-oriented programming).  We don't want to have to reinvent the wheel of, say, configuration files, every time we start a new project.  To me, the hassle of getting Linux to work in any fashion like Windows (by which I mean to say, hardware compatibility) is just not worth it.  I can, what, program in Java?  Woot.    Look, I can't play games.  I can't listen to music (despite what Alsa's docs say, I can never get my Creative Labs sound cards to work in Linux, and Creative is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, sound card manufacturers available).  3D doesn't work, even with NVidia drivers compiled into the kernel.  If I'm lucky I *did* manage to get NDISWrapper up and running and I have wifi.  Oh, and the desktop shell doesn't understand that I need to run .exes in WINE.  Let me start the terminal...

What's most disheartening about Linux is that everyone who uses it raves about it.  I'm an exceptionally competent power user, but it typically takes me roughly four tries to even get a distro installed and booting.  Then I spend hours on end trying to find support for getting the basic things working, googling with about 13 windows open on a separate computer.  Try as I might, I can't convince myself to keep Linux installed just so I can play KMahjongg and KSnake.  KAsteroids, maybe.  And the reason I first wanted to try Linux was because I was so impressed with KDE at school.

People criticize Microsoft because the old guard at MS has the "embrace, extend, and extinguish" mentality.  Well, the Linux advocates of the world have the "we must keep our software pure" mentality.  Examples of this include X (which is great in theory, but in practice has seen great pitfalls), the entirety of GNU (you can never use this "free" software unless you're going to do "free" stuff too, otherwise fuck off), and every programmer who is convinced that he can do full project refactoring faster in vim than in a competent IDE.  Oh, and let's not forget to mention that Linux has thousands of distributions which may or may not provide binary compatibility for their software.

This is commonly responded-to by Linux enthusiasts: "I can compile my software.  make is super-easy to use!" 

Great, but why should *anyone* have to download software *just* to compile it?  85% of the world (or more) doesn't even know what compiling means.  It sounds very intimidating.  And - I hate to tell you - it's just as easy to stick a virus in source code as it is to stick it in a binary.  Take a look at this.  The provided code creates an image with Tolkien's Elvish lettering in a PGM file based on the command-line argument provided.  Honestly, you think you could find malicious code in that file?  What about in a program that is several hundred source files long?

I've ranted for too long, probably because it's late and I'm tired as hell.  But out of all this, I just have the one question I'd like answered, and I'll repeat it here:

I'm also not the least bit surprised that Windows is, in fact, "better" for Ma and Pa 150 million. It's not better for me though. Quite frankly, I think it sucks.

I want to know, in your words, what it is that you do with your computer that justifies your use of Linux?

[nslay]

While I don't disagree with your ma-and-pa 150 million argument, to say that Windows is inadequate for the power user (like myself) is patently absurd, and like it or not, that's what you're doing (you're implying that Windows is sufficient for the average user, but for people in the "elite", which includes yourself, it's not good enough).

Well, considering I've been using Microsoft products since MS-DOS and Win 3.1,  including all major betas and just about every Microsoft software under the sun since then (My father has a MSDN subscription), I must say that moving to BSD two years ago, I've bloomed from a Windows power user into an actual programmer of sorts.  I've written everything from bots, to device drivers all the way to VLANs ... I've even ported several Linux and one OpenBSD Window Maker dockapps to FreeBSD.  There is much more possibility on a Unix system, much more I can learn from, much more I can explore than I could on Windows.  I never saw these possibilities in Windows.  And I must say, in my opinion and experience, documentation in Windows is of less quality...I've often felt this way about the MSDN library.  Although, not to mention, but I've found Linux documentation equally awful ... especially the ALSA documentation (I wrote a MIDI Engine device driver for Linux), thats beside the point.

Windows lacks these:
a) Openness
b) Customizability (yes, I have bad feelings about too much mechanism but it has advantages)
c) Verbosity and diagnostics
d) Flexibility

Allow me to explain:
a) Openness
I cannot stress this enough, but it is an extremely valuable to have the source for an OS and its userland.  When porting wmwlmon I had to examine ifconfig's inner workings to find an undocumented ioctl.  When writing a device driver for Linux, I would have to examine code in the kernel many times since the documentation lacked.  Mark Russinovich didn't earn the title of "Technical Fellow" for nothing ... he is an expert on Windows internals, even those undocumented features ...certainly not a feat the average or competent user could accomplish. 

http://ddj.com/dept/cpp/190500794?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_Cpp

b) Customizability
I shouldn't have to explain this, but you can use Unix for anything under the sun.  It could be a desktop, a server, an OS for an embedded device, its highly portable and has a diversity of applications for all types of things.  You don't have to have a GUI, you could use csh instead of bash, aterm instead of xterm, KDE instead of Window Maker, pf instead of ipf, it can run on your D-Link or Linksys router...or your calculator, telephone or PDA.  It can be your tivo.  You can even make your very own kernels suited to your system.

c) Verbosity and diagnostics
The entire boot process is a diagnostic!  You have a variety of system logs sitting in /var/log, one for general messages, one for security, one for firewall, one for X, one for mail, one for printing and etc...  The Event logger in Windows is dirty joke if I ever heard one.  It's usually easy to know whats wrong when something goes wrong.

d) Flexibility
I cannot stress this enough, but there is so much power at your disposal in Unix.  You can do everything from mounting files as though they were disks or CDs/DVDs to having your computer run at slower or faster speeds (MHz).  You have a lot of command over hardware, a lot more than you do in Windows, and quite a bit of power over the OS.

So, I would agree that Windows is inadequate for power users ... you have no room to expand, less possibility, less power, less functionality.  Use a Unix system for a few months (no dual booting Windows) and I am almost positive it will open up your mind. 

[MyndFyre]

Allow me to explain:
a) Openness
I cannot stress this enough, but it is an extremely valuable to have the source for an OS and its userland.  When porting wmwlmon I had to examine ifconfig's inner workings to find an undocumented ioctl.  When writing a device driver for Linux, I would have to examine code in the kernel many times since the documentation lacked.  Mark Russinovich didn't earn the title of "Technical Fellow" for nothing ... he is an expert on Windows internals, even those undocumented features ...certainly not a feat the average or competent user could accomplish. 

http://ddj.com/dept/cpp/190500794?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_Cpp

I'm familiar with Mark Russinovich - in fact, I was very impressed with his books.  That's why it does not surprise me that Sysinternals was absorbed into Microsoft.  And I don't disagree that it's handy to have source code occasionally (I've found myself cracking open the .NET decompiler more than once to try to understand the inner workings of the class library).  So I don't disagree on this point, although your later point that MSDN and the DDK are inadequate - I would disagree.  Very rarely has MSDN been opaque to me, and I've almost always found that it's not MSDN's fault, but because I'm not understanding some kind of concept.

b) Customizability
I shouldn't have to explain this, but you can use Unix for anything under the sun.  It could be a desktop, a server, an OS for an embedded device, its highly portable and has a diversity of applications for all types of things.  You don't have to have a GUI, you could use csh instead of bash, aterm instead of xterm, KDE instead of Window Maker, pf instead of ipf, it can run on your D-Link or Linksys router...or your calculator, telephone or PDA.  It can be your tivo.  You can even make your very own kernels suited to your system.

I could say all of these are true for Windows.  I've used Windows workstation editions, server editions, I have a PocketPC with Windows Mobile 2003, and I've got a friend who has a Windows SmartPhone.  I also use Windows Media Center Edition, since you mentioned Tivo.  I can use the Monad shell instead of the command prompt - hell, I can even write my own command interpreter if I wanted to, since the console subsystem is very accessible - or I can use bbLean instead of Windows Explorer.  I know Microsoft makes routers that run Windows.  The only thing I can't do is make my very own kernel - and Microsoft does have programs for partners who need it, although I can't think of a single situation where *I* personally would need it.  And even then, people have figured out how to hack the Windows Preinstallation Environment to be able to boot Windows live from a CD.

Then let me ask you about tablet PC functionality.  For my next notebook, I'm planning on getting a tablet.  Does Linux have a unified API that works across Linux distributions for software input?  Is the Linux API for getting drawing notes on a PDA the same as a tablet PC?  (I really don't know the answer to these questions; I've never heard of a Linux API for tablets, nor have I ever heard of a PDA running Linux, but it wouldn't surprise me if they existed.  The kicker is, I know that the Windows environments work the same, and I've never programmed for, for instance, ink technology).

The drawback to this is - yes, you have to be licensed to do this stuff, whereas Linux is free.  That's why education is important.  You want to be able to plan ahead for the right software.  Of course, most Windows administrators know that if you are going to need Terminal Services, then you don't get Windows Server Web Edition.

c) Verbosity and diagnostics
The entire boot process is a diagnostic!  You have a variety of system logs sitting in /var/log, one for general messages, one for security, one for firewall, one for X, one for mail, one for printing and etc...  The Event logger in Windows is dirty joke if I ever heard one.  It's usually easy to know whats wrong when something goes wrong.

Well, if you're only using the event logger, then I'm going to go ahead and question your claimed knowledge of Windows.  Between the event logger, boot logging, and the kernel debugger, I've only ever had one problem figuring out how to repair a Windows machine, and that was when a renegade software application (Dell MediaDirect) overwrote something in his partition table and it was causing Plug-and-Play errors in the HAL. 

d) Flexibility
I cannot stress this enough, but there is so much power at your disposal in Unix.  You can do everything from mounting files as though they were disks or CDs/DVDs to having your computer run at slower or faster speeds (MHz).  You have a lot of command over hardware, a lot more than you do in Windows, and quite a bit of power over the OS.

I've been mounting files as though they were disks for about 10 months now (and don't even get me started on ISOs, which have been going for much longer).  Windows Vista is going to give me more granular control over the clock speed of my computer, although I've always been able to set that through my BIOS - and Windows is smart enough to know to throttle my mobile PCs when they're running on batteries.

So, I would agree that Windows is inadequate for power users ... you have no room to expand, less possibility, less power, less functionality.  Use a Unix system for a few months (no dual booting Windows) and I am almost positive it will open up your mind. 

That would be a great experiment, but what you'd be asking me to do would be to give up doing anything useful, fun, or otherwise interesting to me for several months.

I consider things like writing device drivers, while very educational and a skill I'd like to have, to be at least one level removed from the real reason about why I'm using my computer.  If I'm using the computer to write the device driver - because I'm a hardware or software vendor who needs kernel access - then fine.  But if I need to write a report, or do my taxes, or hell, even get onto World of Warcraft to go to a guild meeting, I don't want to have to spend the time making OpenOffice, or recompiling that kernel driver that just caused a panic, or hacking through my (or, I should say, someone else's) source code to add the feature that Microsoft Word has had for ten years.  All of these things are one level removed - or more - from me doing what I actually *want* to do with my computer.

What is your definition of a "power user," nslay?  Is it someone who makes device drivers?  Why not just call yourself a device driver engineer?  I've got better things to do with my time than try to make my hardware work.

[mynameistmp]

I'm not indirectly implying that Windows is better *because* it has marketshare.  I'm saying, flat-out, that Windows has marketshare *because* it's better.  You're reversing my cause and effect statements.

I'm not reversing your cause and effect, you're confusing correlation and causality.
I'll finish your sentence for you:

I'm not indirectly implying that Windows is better *because* it has marketshare.  I'm saying, flat-out, that Windows has marketshare *because* it's better for Ma and Pa, who make up the majority of the market. 

Which is true. Not a very interesting point to the non-average user though.

As far as your question goes, I've answered it too many times. Here's the last one I posted on this forum (and the ensuing melee):
http://www.x86labs.org:81/forum/index.php/topic,4467.msg49300.html#msg49300

[nslay]

Allow me to explain:
a) Openness
I cannot stress this enough, but it is an extremely valuable to have the source for an OS and its userland.  When porting wmwlmon I had to examine ifconfig's inner workings to find an undocumented ioctl.  When writing a device driver for Linux, I would have to examine code in the kernel many times since the documentation lacked.  Mark Russinovich didn't earn the title of "Technical Fellow" for nothing ... he is an expert on Windows internals, even those undocumented features ...certainly not a feat the average or competent user could accomplish. 

http://ddj.com/dept/cpp/190500794?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_Cpp

I'm familiar with Mark Russinovich - in fact, I was very impressed with his books.  That's why it does not surprise me that Sysinternals was absorbed into Microsoft.  And I don't disagree that it's handy to have source code occasionally (I've found myself cracking open the .NET decompiler more than once to try to understand the inner workings of the class library).  So I don't disagree on this point, although your later point that MSDN and the DDK are inadequate - I would disagree.  Very rarely has MSDN been opaque to me, and I've almost always found that it's not MSDN's fault, but because I'm not understanding some kind of concept.

Here is an example of why MSDN library is inadequate

but because I'm not understanding some kind of concept.

That's no excuse.  If you don't know what a socket is in Unix or how they work, you can easily 'man net' or 'man netintro' that explains the network routines.  Documentation is meant to be thorogh.  If you didn't understand something MSDN was saying and it offered no explanation for a concept, then it wasn't thorogh enough.

Speaking of sockets, but I've heard Yoni comment that MSDN does not explain very well how to do proper socket programming and that Skywing had taught him.

man net

b) Customizability
I shouldn't have to explain this, but you can use Unix for anything under the sun.  It could be a desktop, a server, an OS for an embedded device, its highly portable and has a diversity of applications for all types of things.  You don't have to have a GUI, you could use csh instead of bash, aterm instead of xterm, KDE instead of Window Maker, pf instead of ipf, it can run on your D-Link or Linksys router...or your calculator, telephone or PDA.  It can be your tivo.  You can even make your very own kernels suited to your system.

I could say all of these are true for Windows.  I've used Windows workstation editions, server editions, I have a PocketPC with Windows Mobile 2003, and I've got a friend who has a Windows SmartPhone.  I also use Windows Media Center Edition, since you mentioned Tivo.  I can use the Monad shell instead of the command prompt - hell, I can even write my own command interpreter if I wanted to, since the console subsystem is very accessible - or I can use bbLean instead of Windows Explorer.  I know Microsoft makes routers that run Windows.  The only thing I can't do is make my very own kernel - and Microsoft does have programs for partners who need it, although I can't think of a single situation where *I* personally would need it.  And even then, people have figured out how to hack the Windows Preinstallation Environment to be able to boot Windows live from a CD.

It looks like Microsoft is starting to get it ... however, you're still bound to buying different versions of Windows for diferent functionality.  I don't thik Windows is very portable and its obvious that it demands a lot from hardware to run.  Unix is very portable, NetBSD alone exists for dozens upon dozens of platforms, and it provides all the functionality that you need Windows * version to do. 
A command interpretor is known as a shell.  I'm glad they adopted the terminal/shell concept.
You wouldn't need a specific windows kernel because it is a true microkernel.  Most Unixes use a monolithic kernel (minus say Mach...thats Microkernel).  Although, I believe you gain a subtle performance gain by compiling certain drivers into the kernel.  Ability to compile a kernel also gives you control over kernel specific features such as SMP, preemption, IPv6 support and a variety of other features.

Then let me ask you about tablet PC functionality.  For my next notebook, I'm planning on getting a tablet.  Does Linux have a unified API that works across Linux distributions for software input?  Is the Linux API for getting drawing notes on a PDA the same as a tablet PC?  (I really don't know the answer to these questions; I've never heard of a Linux API for tablets, nor have I ever heard of a PDA running Linux, but it wouldn't surprise me if they existed.  The kicker is, I know that the Windows environments work the same, and I've never programmed for, for instance, ink technology).

Because of the all-mechanism-no-policy nature of Unix, Unix doesn't force the use of a GUI environment nor does it even have a GUI.  Your question about tablet machines really depends on what Xorg or XFree86 can do.  That said, I would be really surprised if some X API didn't exist for touch screens.  Furthermore, I would be surprised if some applications that use this API didn't exist.
What I can tell you for sure is that there is no Window Manager or Desktop Environment that I know of that allows control with a stylus that I know of ... maybe Gnome or KDE. 
One solution would be to write a daemon that interfaces with X and acts like, say, moused.

The drawback to this is - yes, you have to be licensed to do this stuff, whereas Linux is free.  That's why education is important.  You want to be able to plan ahead for the right software.  Of course, most Windows administrators know that if you are going to need Terminal Services, then you don't get Windows Server Web Edition.

Even though Linux is free, companies still have to hire admins ... the cost is probably the same.

c) Verbosity and diagnostics
The entire boot process is a diagnostic!  You have a variety of system logs sitting in /var/log, one for general messages, one for security, one for firewall, one for X, one for mail, one for printing and etc...  The Event logger in Windows is dirty joke if I ever heard one.  It's usually easy to know whats wrong when something goes wrong.

Well, if you're only using the event logger, then I'm going to go ahead and question your claimed knowledge of Windows.  Between the event logger, boot logging, and the kernel debugger, I've only ever had one problem figuring out how to repair a Windows machine, and that was when a renegade software application (Dell MediaDirect) overwrote something in his partition table and it was causing Plug-and-Play errors in the HAL. 

You shouldn't need a kernel debugger to diagnose problems.  One thing I wish Windows had was a console where the kernel could print errors ... Windows has no such thing.  The event logger is not verbose or detailed enough.  The boot log is okay.

d) Flexibility
I cannot stress this enough, but there is so much power at your disposal in Unix.  You can do everything from mounting files as though they were disks or CDs/DVDs to having your computer run at slower or faster speeds (MHz).  You have a lot of command over hardware, a lot more than you do in Windows, and quite a bit of power over the OS.

I've been mounting files as though they were disks for about 10 months now (and don't even get me started on ISOs, which have been going for much longer).  Windows Vista is going to give me more granular control over the clock speed of my computer, although I've always been able to set that through my BIOS - and Windows is smart enough to know to throttle my mobile PCs when they're running on batteries.

Thats only a fraction of what you can do with md.  Regardless, you can't do things like update or view hardware parameters.

To demonstrate just one among things I can do with ACPI:

dev.acpi_ibm.0.%desc: IBM ThinkPad ACPI Extras
dev.acpi_ibm.0.%driver: acpi_ibm
dev.acpi_ibm.0.%location: handle=\_SB_.PCI0.LPC_.EC__.HKEY
dev.acpi_ibm.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=IBM0068 _UID=0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.initialmask: 2060
dev.acpi_ibm.0.availmask: 16777215
dev.acpi_ibm.0.events: 0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.eventmask: 2060
dev.acpi_ibm.0.hotkey: 3487
dev.acpi_ibm.0.lcd_brightness: 7
dev.acpi_ibm.0.volume: 14
dev.acpi_ibm.0.mute: 0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.thinklight: 0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.bluetooth: 0
dev.acpi_ibm.0.wlan: 1
dev.acpi_ibm.0.fan_speed: 4025
dev.acpi_ibm.0.fan: 1
dev.acpi_ibm.0.thermal: 46 43 34 48 33 -1 23 -1

Many of these, like 'thinklight', 'volume' and so forth can be modified.
You do not get this kind of flexability in Windows at all.  This is a trivial demonstration, you can do other things like define the max UDP packet size, adjust caching, tune file systems and much much much more.

NOTE: The mask mibs are for devd...devd is a daemon that reacts to hardware events ... it is scriptable, very flexible indeed.

So, I would agree that Windows is inadequate for power users ... you have no room to expand, less possibility, less power, less functionality.  Use a Unix system for a few months (no dual booting Windows) and I am almost positive it will open up your mind. 

That would be a great experiment, but what you'd be asking me to do would be to give up doing anything useful, fun, or otherwise interesting to me for several months.

I consider things like writing device drivers, while very educational and a skill I'd like to have, to be at least one level removed from the real reason about why I'm using my computer.  If I'm using the computer to write the device driver - because I'm a hardware or software vendor who needs kernel access - then fine.  But if I need to write a report, or do my taxes, or hell, even get onto World of Warcraft to go to a guild meeting, I don't want to have to spend the time making OpenOffice, or recompiling that kernel driver that just caused a panic, or hacking through my (or, I should say, someone else's) source code to add the feature that Microsoft Word has had for ten years.  All of these things are one level removed - or more - from me doing what I actually *want* to do with my computer.

What is your definition of a "power user," nslay?  Is it someone who makes device drivers?  Why not just call yourself a device driver engineer?  I've got better things to do with my time than try to make my hardware work.

In the Linux world, most things come precompiled, although, in BSD you do have to often compile your applications.  You can do everything on Unix that you can do on Windows minus gaming, that includes taxes, writing reports and so forth.  Very rarily do you have to hack the OS source or drivers and friends.
A power user is any user who can use, and usually requires, special and sophisticated features ... usually they are users who are curious about how things work underneath.  They are making a transition between using software to writing software.

The device driver I wrote was for a course ... of course I don't normally write drivers, its extremely difficult.  But I would like to bring to your attention that for our last project we had to write a device driver for real hardware, many had trouble finding hardware, new and old, for this project because there are already so many device drivers available.  As much as I dislike Linux...Linux supports thousands if not hundreds of devices.

See also:
http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/
http://www.freshports.org/
http://www.freshmeat.net/

EDIT: Sorry, its freshmeat.net

[rabbit]

Just an update: Java will be open-sourced in October.

[Ender]

Oh god, that makes my day! Java's going to be a real player now. Not that it wasn't already =P

EDIT: Oh and Myndfyre, this is why Java > .NET. Just wanted to grind your gears .

[Newby]

omgz, open sourcing a crappy language! look out world, here comes java!!!@

[Ender]

* forces steaming coffee down Newby's throat, eyes, and ears *

[rabbit]

On a related note, intel also open-sourced their graphics drivers.

[Sidoh]

On a related note, intel also open-sourced their graphics drivers.

I think someone posted that a few days ago.  ATi is too, if I read correctly?

[rabbit]

Well, technically.  AMD swalled ATi, and basically said "you're us now, OPEN SOURCE!"

[Sidoh]

Well, technically.  AMD swalled ATi, and basically said "you're us now, OPEN SOURCE!"

Yeah, I know AMD acquired ATi and I was fully aware that this was probably their influence, but that's not very related to the point.

[rabbit]

Well I'm fairly sure that ATi would not have open sourced their drivers if AMD hadn't eaten them.

[Sidoh]

Well I'm fairly sure that ATi would not have open sourced their drivers if AMD hadn't eaten them.

So am I.

Yeah, I know AMD acquired ATi and I was fully aware that this was probably their influence, but that's not very related to the point.