(fwd) Re: Is Microsoft really that bad?

[gsutter@pobox.com (Gregory Sutter)]

Note the sender.

GReg

==========================

On 31 Oct 1996 20:02:41 GMT, in alt.destroy.microsoft "Rich Elberger"
<a-riche@microsoft.com> wrote:


> Take the plunge!  Go on!  You know you want to!  Seriously, with
> harddrives being /so/ cheap these days, I would whole-heartedly
> recommend Linux to anyone who has enough of a brain to cope with
> anything other than point and drool interfaces.  (That's not to
> say that you can't point and drool in Linux if you want to.)

You expect that teachers in any US High School <or businessmen, or NASA
for
that matter> who are busy with their PROFESSIONS to recompile a kernel
every other month? Be realistic in thinking that corporations have time
and
bandwidth to perform these tasks at a consistent level.  Linux is
practical
for developers and researchers.  I MIGHT go as far as to say it is OK
for
networking <if you have a love affair with SendMail>, but the
maintenance
level is too high right now.

> 
> Actually I would disagree quite strongly with this.  I would
> concur that there a lot of good /ideas/ in Windows 95 which
> attempt to fill many of the gaps in 3.1, but the actual
> implementation is so horrificly bloated and buggy that I will
> now not touch it unless I really have to, whereas ... well,
> actually, I won't touch 3.1 unless I really have to either, but
> given the choice I'd rather use 3.1.  I've found that NT is
> significantly better than both, although IM not so HO Linux
> beats the hell out of all three.
 
Win95 is a good end-user OS.  This means students writing papers,
secretaries, and Joe Schmo playing Doom.  It is NOT intended as a
development platform.  And you HAVE TO UNDERSTAND: It is bloated so it
will
be compatible with legacy hardware as well as dos programs.  Let's see
you
run a DOS strategy game from 87 on os2 or even the win31 emulator on
Linux.
 Good luck.

> I `like' Word too, but in a very weak sense of the, um, word.
> For basic stuff it is very convenient.  Once you start needing
> complex macros, it gets pretty disgusting very quickly though ...

Only for people who are so spiteful that they refuse to learn the
application.  Complex macros work fine.  Learn how to write them first.

> Maybe, but (again IMO, obviously) gcc is far better.  And it's
> free, and comes with Linux.

Not recommended for Win32 API programming.  gcc is good for porting unix
tools to the dosbox, but once you leave the command line, VC++ is much
better.  Try writing resource files in GCC.  Doesn't work.  There goes
your
whole globalization strategy.

> - Linux is cheaper than any M$ OS (it's free).
> - Linux is more available than any M$ OS (you can download it
>   from countless ftp sites (I think it's a fair assumption that
>   you have net access!))
> - Linux significantly outperforms any M$ OS.
 
Linux is cheap because overall support and usability is not there.  It
outperforms MS OS because there is no background operation overhead.
You
get 8 child processes running with sendmail, ftp, and www service with
Xwindows you will have a performance drop.  NT4 has these demon
processes
running all the time.  Plus you have OLE and Win32 API which not only
makes
functionality a hell of a lot better than Linux but usability.  Linux
has
yet to come full circle.    

> How can you say that?!  Intel/Linux is cheaper than Intel/MS!
 
In money but time?  Don't be so sure.  Money is not the only value here.


> I've wondered a fair bit about the answer to this question, and
> (you won't be surprised to hear this, but ...) I honestly think
> that the best answer is to support Linux as much as possible.
> Spread the word!  Help with software development!  Support new
> users!  Any of these will help the cause.

Microsoft isn't going to topple anytime soon, and Linux will not be the
OS
to do it.  If anything will, that I have seen in the last 5 years, is
the
BeBox.  That is considerable. Parallel processing isn't anything new,
been
around since the 70s.  But the BeBox promises some things that I would
like
to see happen.  Play with Linux, have fun, but it will NOT be the OS of
the
future.

mailto:therion@accessone.com 

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