All Things Microsoft > Microsoft Software
Muzzy, why does Windows rule?
Aloone_Jonez:
I haven't run Mandrake or Mandriva myself I was just going on a friend's opinion, sorry you're right on this one I was wrong to mention Mandrake as I haven't tested it myself.
Nothing to do with Mandrake, oh sorry Mandriva I know but this archived thread on linuxquestions.org makes very good reading.
piratePenguin:
--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez ---Nothing to do with Mandrake, oh sorry Mandriva I know but this archived thread on linuxquestions.org makes very good reading.
--- End quote ---
LMFAO! Some day I'm gonna buy an old power supply and plug a decent CD-ROM drive into my old computer. And tell someone in the house to install Windows XP on it (I wouldn't wanna give up my freedom now, would I? ;)). Should be fun.
I could also turn it into a usable infinitum Slackware system.
Aloone_Jonez:
I plan to resurrect my old computer by trash picking a mother board and installing Vector Linux, or I'll see if I can install knoppix on the hard disk, which I might do anyway as I do have a spare 2.1GB hard drive lying around.
ShawnD1:
I'm surprised a thread asking this question is this long. The reason is basically summed up with 1 statement: MS tries to woo developers.
MS vs Apple
In the 80's, MS and IBM were very focused on getting outside developers to support them whereas Apple was concerned about inside projects; Apple lost sight about what people cared about. Forget how the computer looks or feels, what can it do? Can it do spreadsheets? Can it do word processing? Can it do database? DOS/IBM computers could do that; Apple computers could not. Apple shrank so much that it's now mostly a niche market. In the 90's, MS has been involved in almost all projects imaginable. As a result, MS supports a lot of things well before Apple does. Examples: PCI, PCIe, AGP, IDE/ATA/UDMA, USB, PC100/PC133 RAM, DDR RAM, and now SLI. That's just the hardware end of things. On the software end, MS keeps very close ties with developers, and each version of Windows is very backwards compatible. Apple does the opposite - they change standards over and over, and all it does is annoy the hell out of software developers. Here's spl's take on Mac programming.
MS vs Linux
First off, Linux has a lot of problems. Linux has a lot of stupidly named things that make it imcompatible with Unix; things like different named var and bin folders as well as differently named binaries. Bash on Unix is "bash", on Linux it's "sh". Gmake on Unix is "gmake", on Linux it's "make". What the hell?
More of a problem is having a billion different types of Linux that aren't 100% compatible with each other. Sometimes you'll find an RPM that is for RedHat, but it doesn't work on your Mandrake install. Why not? Not all versions are the same.
An even worse problem with Linux is that it doesn't really have anybody guiding it to gain support from developers. How can Linux get support from developers? What is Linux? It's not 1 group or 1 company, it's many groups with many companies and each group is going a different way. It's hard to get support when Linux isn't exactly a unified group.
The absolute worst problem with Linux is the mentality of Linux users. Windows users use Windows because they want to get desktop work done, BSD users use BSD because they want to get server work done, Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows and they refuse to use BSD because "omg BSD is too closed source" (open to read, not as open to contribute to).
Although Linux is very popular, the qustion remains: What kind of company would actually want to support Linux when it's an ununified and somewhat incompatible clone of Unix with a user base that hates closed sourced (read:proprietary) software? It's just not worth it.
MS vs BSD
BSD is amazing for servers. It really has no place in the desktop market.
MS vs BeOS, YellowTab, etc
BeOS and YellowTab are great operating systems. The problem is that they lack an enthusiast market, and that leads to a lack of software. Linux and Mac OS may not have close ties with software developers, and the majority of the users are fanatical nutcases (not all users), but they still get support simply because they're popular (actually Linux is the popular one, it's just a strange twist that you can compile Linux stuff on a Mac). If YellowTab had support from software developers, there's no doubt in my mind that its popularity would just explode.
piratePenguin:
--- Quote ---Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows
--- End quote ---
I use GNU/Linux 'cause I think it's better than Windows.
I suppose I'd regreat if I asked you about GNU/Hurd?
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