Miscellaneous > The Lounge
windows vs linux
robert:
I just want to clear out some misconceptions about the windows vs linux crap.
It's not a damned war between microsoft and linux distributions. The whole idea of this (and as this site's menu on the left shows), is to show you, the dumb end user, that you have the FREEDOM of CHOICE. You don't have to settle of for a crap os, just because the majority of the world uses it. If everybody is stupid and and jumps off the roof, you'll join them just because they're the majority ? nope.
Ok, so what alternatives do I have? "LINUX!!!" scream all the "computer wizards" all over the media. Well, sorry to spoil your euphoria, but linux is just a step in realizing that the whole damned computer market is monopolized by fat ass greedy idiots who don't give a shit about technology. Linux is a good os for starters in the unix world, but it's distribution as a whole os is controlled by companies that resembles microsoft's ways ( commercialization is more important than the os itself ).
So, why the hell the windows/linux issue keeps popping up ? Well, that's cause the majority of "computer experts" have such a thin knowledge of technology.
I live in Israel, and besides suicide bombings and crap we have also a growing internet community. Well, surprise, the majority of the servers run microsoft crap, cause with the size of their local advertising budget you could feed a whole damned 3rd world country. So ppl here think that a computer MUST have windows, otherwise how would they work ?
I work as a freelancer system builder/administrator, and I designed and built some medium sized networks around linux boxes.
The companies I work for them consider me half God. Recently, I moved towards FreeBSD, and my latest project was built around it ( it's a more professional and powerful os in networked situations ), and now everyone think I am God himself
So the key word in this issue is EDUCATION. When people are not enough educated enough in their field, they begin barfing buzz words, most of them extracted from the media's hype, and most of them erronous. As the proverb says, "a smart one who THINKS he's smart, is an idiot, and an idiot who KNOWS he's an idiot is half smart".
So, all kudos goes to sites like this one, that try to educate people and show the world the real truth. As they say, open your mind, and your os will follow.
[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: RastaMan ]
voidmain:
quote:Originally posted by RastaMan:
Ok, so what alternatives do I have? "LINUX!!!" scream all the "computer wizards" all over the media. Well, sorry to spoil your euphoria, but linux is just a step in realizing that the whole damned computer market is monopolized by fat ass greedy idiots who don't give a shit about technology.
[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: RastaMan ]
--- End quote ---
Nice post. I can relate to just about everything except for the above quote. I don't believe that's *all* Linux is although there may be partial truth to what you say.
For one, Microsoft does not make their distributions (and it's source code) available for free like Linux vendors *must* do (even if they do have proprietary code in the specialized versions that they do not have to make available for free). Yes, nothing beats the IP stack of BSD, in fact Microsoft even took it for some of their own OSs and managed to screw it up like everything else they touch.
I don't believe commercial *NIX is better than Linux, sure some things are better IP Stack in BSD for instance, and maybe the availability of 3rd party software in the others gives an advantage. However, I prefer Linux in most cases because I think it is better in *most* ways over all other commercial *NIX because of the tools and utilities that are included with it by default, and it runs in a cheap platform (PC). Most other *NIX is proprietary although there is a version of Solaris (x86) that will run on Intel, BSD runs on Intel, SCO (sucks) runs on Intel but I don't know of too many more other than Linux that run on Intel. Intel/AMD platforms are by far the most inexpensive for the person needing the power of UNIX on a budget.
The first thing I find myself doing on the commercial OS installs is to download all the GNU stuff (file utils, compiler, etc), Perl, Apache, PHP, etc etc... Linux has all this stuff included. Too bad they don't incorporate the BSD TCP/IP stack, you've got me on that one. I personally prefer the SysV init over BSD by far.
Keep shining the light brother!
---
scp -r [email protected]:/var/www [email protected]:/InetPUB/wwwroot
MeNaCe:
HE7Y RASTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 I am #89 and you're 90...coool huh?
triploop:
Hi,
I am glad this board actually has some somewhat intelligent users. I have noticed that many people posting are here simply to bash Microsoft as much as they can. That is not what fuckmicrosoft.com is about! FM staff please correct me if I'm wrong. ;)
Great post, anyhow. What non-commercialized Unix/Linux operating systems would you recommend? I am still mainly a Win2K Pro user, and I've been playing with Mandrake 8. I've of course checked out BeOS for fun, but I would like to see the other serious solutions out there. Could you recommend three of your favorite?
voidmain:
quote:Originally posted by triploop:
Hi,
What non-commercialized Unix/Linux operating systems would you recommend? I am still mainly a Win2K Pro user, and I've been playing with Mandrake 8.
--- End quote ---
Having dedicated the last 15 years of my life to Win* and *NIX I can only speak for them. In the Win* area you are obviously limited to one vendor and they are commercial but Win* is not my area of preference anyhoo.
I'll list my 3 choices in no particular order:
1) Linux - I personally like RedHat over Mandrake (I've used both but RedHat mostly). RedHat has a somewhat goofy default configuration but nothing as bad as Mandrake (I'm talking the amount of time to make it secure and usable as an internet server). They are both basically the same distro other than that.
If you've already tried RedHat/Mandrake I would suggest Debian. This is what most of the *power* Linux users like. It's a little harder to install but with it's base setup is probably the best Linux setup for an internet server. And it uses "apt-get" rather than "rpm" for package management. "apt-get" packages are more granular then RPM packages.
2) FreeBSD - Rock Solid, Best TCP/IP stack on the universe, probably the best choice for an internet server. My experience with FreeBSD is very limited as I have only built 3 of these, one DNS server, one Lyris list server, and one Apache web server. I don't have enough experience to give a good review, especially on the desktop side.
3) Sun Solaris 8 - Yes this is a commercial OS but you can download it and run it for free now. 3 CDs. Although I've worked heavily with Solaris over the last five years I prefer Linux as an all around *NIX machine. Solaris is better for large SMP applications such as heavy duty database servers. At least they are ditching Openwindows (although it is still packaged with 8). They are going to CDE for their standard desktop. They also have GNU downloads with compiler and most of the other goodies including KDE if you for some reason don't like CDE (I don't, but then I don't run X on any of the Solaris machines, they're all servers and the consoles never get touched).
[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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