XP runs as fast as Xubuntu!!? [Archive]

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DirtDawg

October 18th, 2006, 06:39 PM

I have a friend with a lousy computer. 700-some Mhz Processor, 128Meg RAM, 8-bit video card. Crap.

After he pulled it out of storage and blew the dust off, he was dismayed to find the copy of Windoze XP he was running was soooooo slow and often crashed. No suprise there. So I said, "I have a great idea. Use Xubuntu. It will rock on that piecer".

He used Xubuntu for about two months, and it was fine, other than some minor issues(well, one major issue. Xubuntu didn't recognize either CD drive correctly). But he recently got a usb wireless card, which didn't work on Xubuntu and he was in no position to try to get it to work (as he had no internet). His solution was to reinstall XP and use the wireless long enough to figure out what he would need to get the wireless running on Xubuntu.

Lo and behold, I see him last night and he says, "Hey, Windows XP runs just as fast as Xubuntu, and it recognizes both my CD drives. Screw Xubuntu." I was skeptical.

But then I saw it with my own eyes. XP was running neary as fast as Xubuntu! I mean, the difference was really neglegable. So he feels no need to try to learn an entirely new way of doing things. Though I think he's making a mistake, I certainly see where he's coming from and can't even say I blame him.

Anyways, long post. But what gives? There's doesn't seem to be any preformance advantage to Xubuntu, but that can't be right. Can it?

EDIT: Just notcied the title. "XP as fast than Xubuntu?" Brilliant.

taurus

October 18th, 2006, 06:43 PM

Old Pink

October 18th, 2006, 06:46 PM

Give it a week. XP will be so cluttered with temp files and malware it'll take at least 5 minutes to boot.

Even if XP ran faster than Ubuntu, I'd use Ubuntu. :)

IYY

October 18th, 2006, 06:49 PM

XP is indeed very fast when you first install it, but it doesn't stay fast.

meng

October 18th, 2006, 06:49 PM

There is no one solution for everyone. Also, for some other users, speed is not so important. Ubuntu is great for me, Windows XP is great for others.

picpak

October 18th, 2006, 06:59 PM

Sure, it's fast now, but wait until it's slower than running Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac all at once.

skymt

October 18th, 2006, 07:02 PM

Sure, it's fast now, but wait until it's slower than running Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac all at once.

How can running Windows by itself be slower than running it along with (I assume you mean virtualization) two other operating systems? That doesn't seem physically possible!

DirtDawg

October 18th, 2006, 07:11 PM

Right, I wondered about the speed bogging down after some time. But suppose he constantly maintains it? Dumping adware and temp files every time he shuts down, for example. Will he manage to maintain his speed for an extended period of time?

Taurus~ I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen it.

Meng~ I absolutely agree that XP is a better solution for some people(I'm no hater). But 128 Megs of RAM!!?? :confused:

meng

October 18th, 2006, 07:14 PM

Funny thing about my experience with XP - kept it on my notebook long after installing Ubuntu on my desktop - it was fast, stable and secure for about 2 years, then ground slowly to (almost) a halt. Nothing that I could identify malware-wise. Perfect excuse to change the notebook to 100% Linux.

If the guy's happy with the speed of XP on 128 MB RAM, who am I to quibble?

DoctorMO

October 18th, 2006, 07:25 PM

bdb

October 18th, 2006, 07:25 PM

XP is indeed very fast when you first install it, but it doesn't stay fast.

My windows xp system used to boot up within 30 seconds after I installed my WD Raptor Harddrive. However, once I installed directx it slowed down. After installing other programs it slowed down more. Boot up time increased to nearly a minute. Don't get me wrong, it was still fast and it still boots* up faster than Ubuntu on the same hardware.

*However, I only reboot ubuntu when installing new hardware.

kuja

October 18th, 2006, 07:29 PM

I guess I need to see it to believe it because we have those P3s in our labs and those things take forever just to boot Windows 2000. And when after it comes up, you can't click anything for another 10 or 15 minutes... ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)
Windows 2000 is slower than WinXP. I'd say the reason Windows XP runs faster is likely because it in general needs less memory to run, of course, when you hit the 128MB in use mark, both systems will likely seem slow. If you want to see performance out of that old computer, just put in some more memory, really, simple, that's all it would take to put Xubuntu back on the level.

picpak

October 18th, 2006, 09:10 PM

How can running Windows by itself be slower than running it along with (I assume you mean virtualization) two other operating systems? That doesn't seem physically possible!

I was exaggerating.

dannyboy79

October 18th, 2006, 09:29 PM

i'll have to say when i tried intalling xp on my 266mhz pentium mmx with 128mb ram and i actually was able to go to the bathroom after I clicked on ie before it even came to the first webpage. so i didn't want to go back to win98se and my friend had just gave me a brand new cd of Breezy around the time that dapper was coming out so I figured, if I am gonna learn linux, might as well be on the bleeding edge of what ubuntu has to offer, that's when i started my adventure of linux with Xubuntu. Now my laptop is ALIVE. Even better than when I had win98se on it! I use Opera, Spylheed CLaws for email, gaim for im, and all the other xfce goodies! gone with windows, i love linux. just need to figure out my external usb/parallel cd-rewriter but nobody has responded in my thread despite there being a firmware download on the microsolutions website. sorry for taking this off topic slightly.

Indras

October 18th, 2006, 09:39 PM

My father has a pentium 3 500Mhz, with 256Mb of RAM. I just recently upgraded it from Windows 98SE to Windows XP, since 98 just dropped out of support from Microsoft. After getting it installed and all the drivers set up, I was absolutely stunned at how fast it ran. Everything seemed quick to run. Explorer windows popped up instantly and navigating folders was snappy and quick. After seeing it run, I realized that now was not a good time to try to get him to run Ubuntu (I already know how it'll run on that hardware).

Then, I installed Office. Then AOL, then Yahoo Messenger (his social life). I tried to set him up on Firefox, but he insists on using AOL's built-in browser. Then he installed Mcafee virus scanner, free from AOL.

Long story short: four hours after base install, XP is running at the speed of snails.

The nice thing about Ubuntu is that it seems no matter how much stuff I install, it always has about the same speed. If things get too different, I do a profile boot, and shave 10 seconds off my boot time and I'm happy again.

I'm 100% Microsoft free, and I intend to stay that way.

aysiu

October 18th, 2006, 11:50 PM

paulmerchant

October 19th, 2006, 12:05 AM

What I've seen doesn't make me believe in huge speed differences between XP and Linux distros, however...

- Once Linux has booted, it's basically ready to roll.

- After XP has apparently booted, it's actually still loading startups, playing with swap files, scanning registries, etc., etc., for what seems like an eternity.

- Linux stays smooth and predictable.

- XP is only smooth until it decides to bog down and chug along whenever it feels like it.

- My favorite apps, OpenOffice, Gimp, Blender, etc., basically load twice as fast on Linux than they load on XP.

That guy can have his XP, but I think he would have been smarter to fix that drive or buy a new one.

RAV TUX

October 19th, 2006, 12:25 AM

EDIT: Just notcied the title. "XP as fast than Xubuntu?" Brilliant.

As a kind courtesy I corrected the title for you.

I will move this thread to the Windows discussion forum now.

rs3

October 19th, 2006, 12:39 AM

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

The last time I tried to run an XP box with 128MB of RAM, I remember having to do a great deal of swapping once I had a core set of programs installed. If he's running XP SP 2, I'm sure he'll feel the crunch pretty quickly.

K.Mandla

October 19th, 2006, 01:13 AM

There are an awful lot of tweaks available to Xubuntu (and both OSes, really) that would make it faster. ... :D

DirtDawg

October 19th, 2006, 03:01 AM

There are an awful lot of tweaks available to Xubuntu (and both OSes, really) that would make it faster. ... :D

I know that, and you know that, but try telling that to someone who has little experience with Linux and isn't interested in spending what little free time he has tweaking an OS he has passing knowledge of;) Me, I could tweak all day and not get bored(on Linux anyways. I honestly don't understand Windoze under the hood too well).

Again, lots of experiences involving fast XP at first, then eventually bogged down with crud of one form or another. I think he intends to keep his XP pretty pared down with only 'essential' software and he's pretty good about keeping things clean, so maybe he'll manage to keep it running smooth for some time.

Of course Aysiu and others have another good point about some computers like some OS's while others don't. Could there be some technical reason for this behavior, or should I chalk it up to the mysteries of nature?

P.S. Thanks to Yozef!

K.Mandla

October 19th, 2006, 01:05 PM

I know that, and you know that, but try telling that to someone who has little experience with Linux and isn't interested in spending what little free time he has tweaking an OS he has passing knowledge of;)
You're right. Cheers, mate. :)

d3v1ant_0n3

October 19th, 2006, 01:23 PM

I 'manage' 2 computers...one is this laptop- Kubuntu 6.10 and Beryl, running on a P4 3.06Ghz (not the nice hyper threaded P4 either :( ), 768Mb PC2700 RAM. The other is an AMD64 3200 (about 10% Overclocked), 1Gb PC3200 Dual channel RAM, running Windows XP Pro. When the windows box was first installed , it ran fast and nice. Upon startup it has a fairly minimal load- just the AV (NOD32), firewall (Tiny), Object Dock and Windowblinds, plus the regular processes. The windows install has been there about 9 months, with fairly good management ( I run crapcleaner, Adaware, Spybot and NOD twice a week, plus a full registry scan and defrag once a month, plus regular windows updates). The machine is theoritically MUCH more powerful than this laptop. but this laptop boots faster (into a ready to use state), shuts down faster, and feels much snappier to use. I'm sure if I reinstalled the windows box it would be faster. But I shouldn't have to.

3rdalbum

October 19th, 2006, 10:47 PM

My computer had XP preinstalled, and was a demo model (so it was being run every business day from September 2005 to May 06). On 256 megs of RAM, Ubuntu pwned XP speed-wise. XP wasn't running any security software, nor any malware, and I didn't specially optimise Ubuntu.

turkenator

November 2nd, 2006, 12:40 PM

i have a family friend who has a pc with exact specs they had xp crawling so i thought id install ubuntu its pretty sluggish to use and they arent happy with it if i install 98se in ut would it be 2 vulnarable (which windows isnt i know stupid question) orr is there some good speed tweaks i could do that would make the over all systen faster? id really hate to resort to ms98se

aysiu

November 2nd, 2006, 12:46 PM

turkenator

November 2nd, 2006, 12:57 PM

yeah i installed ubuntu then installed xfce (xubutu-desktop) and i also tried
icewm they didnt like either because u couldnt create desktop icons
btw i installed hoary bcoz dapper wont install due to the low ram and dont have the alternate cd
does the new version of xubuntu support desktop icons?

EDIT:
also i remember reading that a certain flavour of BSD was really fast which 1 was that openbsd?
how would that go any ideas?

and aysiu thanks for the quick reply

Lord Illidan

November 2nd, 2006, 01:03 PM

XP out of the box runs faster than Ubuntu, true..but XP after a few months....different story.

kuja

November 2nd, 2006, 01:08 PM

Here's a better idea than all of the rest of them. Why not just add more RAM? Probably wouldn't cost much.

Drezliok

November 2nd, 2006, 01:08 PM

I noticed with older systmes XP does run faster.

I havn't figured it out yet, but my freind's pc was 600mhz while mine 2ghz. his was faster.

Doesn't matter now, Ubuntu's here.

josys36

November 2nd, 2006, 01:09 PM

turkenator

November 2nd, 2006, 01:10 PM

thats what i would have done but hard to explain or get them to do it with people that arent technical enought to understand the importance of ram theyre just saying 98 will run fast just install that
looks like there isnt any other options for me to choose from since im not going to buy them ram just bcoz im nice lol

Lord Illidan

November 2nd, 2006, 01:12 PM

I noticed with older systmes XP does run faster.

I havn't figured it out yet, but my freind's pc was 600mhz while mine 2ghz. his was faster.

Doesn't matter now, Ubuntu's here.

tell that to my sister's pc at 333 Mhz, trying to run XP. My Dual Core 2.8 ghz Pentium D positively flies! :mrgreen:

Seriously, Ubuntu is not meant for ultra performance. DSL, Zenwalk, Arch, etc more than take care of that.

kuja

November 2nd, 2006, 01:56 PM

theyre just saying 98 will run fast just install that Sure, until they get a virus, or whatnot, then they're screwed.

Explain to them that you can keep them virus free, or whatnot, and still run acceptably fast, for a cheap upgrade (< $50USD)? When they ask what RAM does, just tell them that adding more will make things run faster.

happysmileman

November 5th, 2006, 07:10 PM

I installed Win XP and Ubuntu within a day because my hard-drive re-formatted itself and within a few weeks Win XP was going slow.

argie

November 7th, 2006, 01:45 AM

Interestingly, Xubuntu was very sluggish for me. It even felt sluggish.
Then I started using Fluxbox, and things started to go well, but Firefox still got all slow with too many tabs.

That computer was on Windows 98SE, and I'd "remembered" that it was faster on Windows, so I booted up Win98 (dual boot), and when I tried using it, I saw that it seemed to be nearly as sluggish as Xubuntu, except that it didn't look it. Timing firefox starts came down to the same time, and OpenOffice took the same time, it's just that it didn't have that little lag before the icons and stuff. That made it "look" faster, but it wasn't.

That's just my personal experience.

Oh by the way, P3 Celeron 1Ghz, 128MB RAM.

DirtDawg

November 7th, 2006, 01:53 AM

chaosgeisterchen

November 7th, 2006, 03:55 AM

I am well aware of the fact that operating systems become slower with time. This is not a bit different with my Kubuntu I run at home...

ashmew2

November 7th, 2006, 04:10 AM

When i opened this page it said this :
"Windows Discussions Discuss the Windows operating system here. Please do not use this as a bashing area."
SO , where can i find a Window Bashing Area ?:P

steven8

November 7th, 2006, 04:22 AM

Then he installed Mcafee virus scanner, free from AOL.

Long story short: four hours after base install, XP is running at the speed of snails.

That danged AOL Security Center is the cause!! I finally uninstalled the darn thing and put Avast back in and our boot time has improved 300%!!

I just installed XP on a P3 366mhz 128 mbs RAM and it runs pretty good. A little slow processing images, but not bad overall.

turkenator

November 7th, 2006, 02:37 PM

eeried

November 8th, 2006, 06:09 AM

swiftfox it runs much better nearly twice as fast
Not on my old box and better use iceweasel which is freer!

Bender the Robot

November 8th, 2006, 07:44 AM

One of my PCs is an 800Mhz with 128Mbs of PC133. Until a couple of months ago it was running 'Win98' but, out of interest, I decided to try it with 'XP' and it runs faster than it did with '98' and just as fast as 'ubuntu' does, on this PC (1.8Ghz and 768Gbs of PC 2700). In several years of computing with different MS operating systems, I've never had a 'virus' or a 'malware' invasion of any description and the only times I've had a 'crash' were when I pushed the software to do the impossible (or when taking 'nLite' too far) - but I've also caused 'ubuntu' to crash spectacularly (irretrievably, in fact).

PS - I can't even get 'ubuntu' to load onto the PC in question.

argie

November 8th, 2006, 07:50 AM

Ah yes, I should try Swiftfox, it's just that I thought that only gives a 5-6% increase in speed. Or something like that. But I'll give it a shot, that and maybe a freshly compiled firefox.

ago

November 8th, 2006, 08:00 AM

My experience on several systems is that XP is fast for the first few hours, but only if you run a few apps at the same time and only if you stick to the useless apps that come out of the box. As soon as you install other needed software (Office, FF, Thunderbird, AV...) and the a huge amount of windows updates, XP does not look snappy anymore... And that is not only due to the AV consuming cycles... From there it goes downhill... Moreover, Windows can cope far worse than Linux with limited resources. XP cannot really tolerate several apps running simultaneously on low end systems. If the memory is over for instance, windows will just freeze. XP is not as stable when there is little headroom as it is on larger systems... Excluding corporate maintained systems, I know very, very few people that have a snappy XP after 1 year, but I know plenty of people with dead slow XP machines (even powerful ones)...

On the other hand, my Ubuntu, after 1 year is as snappy as it was on the very first minute, even after HEAVY use (including installation/disinstallation of several dozens of applications and full dist-upgrade to new version). If anything, with each dist-upgrade it becomes faster. And I have to do nothing to maintain that speed. Any Ubuntu version, save possibly kubuntu, has smoked XP on any machine (I mean a working version of XP, patched and with same software base as Ubuntu). Comparing a verging XP system is nonsense, because XP loses its virginity fairly quickly...

RJARRRPCGP

November 26th, 2006, 03:55 AM

Windows 2000 is slower than WinXP. I'd say the reason Windows XP runs faster is likely because it in general needs less memory to run

I disagree. While Windows 2000 can seem to take forever to boot, it uses less RAM than Windows XP and probably is faster with gaming, at least with the socket A Athlon platform.

mysticrider92

November 26th, 2006, 03:53 PM

We have two PC's with about the same specs (AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512mb of ram on the Ubuntu one and 1gig on the XP Home one) and I think that my Ubuntu Edgy one is faster than the Xp one by far. I also like that in Ubuntu when the desktop loads, I can immediately open and run thinks, but on XP the desktop loads but you won't be able to load anything for a bit.

My dad also recently put Ubuntu Dapper on his laptop (some P4 with 256mb of ram and a 32mb ATI video card) that came with XP, and Ubuntu seems to have sped up the computer a good bit, you just have to watch what programs you try to run at the same time. Now I need to convince my friend to put Ubuntu on his P2 laptop that he managed to put XP Pro on (how he did it, I don't know).

Lster

November 27th, 2006, 07:04 AM

Ubuntu for me is alot faster - being a programmer I even benchmarked 2 C programs... Using G++ and Visual C++.

The results of my 3 test (finding primes, simple looping, memory allocation) was Windows took from 1.5 to 4 times slower than Ubuntu.

However graphics wise, Windows beats Ubuntu because I have no graphics drivers. Ubuntu does a better job than Windows without drivers though.

Some up, I think Ubuntu is generally faster...

holylucifer

November 30th, 2006, 08:39 AM

Give it a week. XP will be so cluttered with temp files and malware it'll take at least 5 minutes to boot.

Even if XP ran faster than Ubuntu, I'd use Ubuntu. :)

yes windows will slow down, where as this, it will run like new,anyways if the developers who can see what happens more in the operateing system, all they have to do is program the os to suck in spyware etc, and the more they can see its blatant.

thinklife

November 30th, 2006, 09:40 AM

XP can be very fast if u do lots of registry hacks,deleting the temp folder every hour and using msconfig to control the startup items.Then it will be as fast as xubuntu.....

PS:My XP is on my com for 3 years,but speed still quite fast..hehe

holylucifer

November 30th, 2006, 10:04 AM

This is written by a programmer,

http://100777.com/node/1120

(yeah if the developers can turn linux as near as possible like windows is, and is possible then how blatant can it get,can you hack electric- no!,unless you break the circuit)

Introduction

Context, context, context. I was sick hearing that phrase from Egyptologists in regards to my research on the Great Pyramid. They never could grasp that context is irrelevant to the scientific process or methodology, science examines facts, not interpretation. In saying that, they taught me a lot, it is funny how the entire aspect of a thing or situation can change, just by applying a different context to it.

In this article, I intend to do just that, with Microsoft's Windows Operating System.

If you have ever wondered, if;

1. Microsoft, was secretly spying on end-user machines?
2. Big Brother deployment scenarios were real?
3. M$ Windows was a type of bugging device?

Then this, is for you my friend, the 'Top-47 Windows bugging functions', and then some. There is also an appendix on forensic methodology and Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM).

All sing...'There may be trouble ahead...' :)

If You Could See, What I Can See, Reinstalling Windows...

In general, to people in the western hemisphere; bugging devices, parabolic microphones, signal tracing, satellite tracking and secret government agencies, performing highly illegal activities, on a covert basis, are the source of inspiration for novels, movies and theater, rather than any real event.

These devices and activities have been part-and-parcel of my life (and almost anyone else in Northern Ireland), from the moment of birth and conspiracy theories are simply facts of daily life that, could put, any of my friends, or myself, into an early grave. Therefore, it is only natural for me to see things in a military context and this provides a very interesting picture of odd behavior, at Redmond and various other big names, throughout the US.

Microsoft is of the 'opinion' that its software is an operating system with a wide range of 'features'. As I am about to demonstrate, that is simply a matter of 'how you see things' and the context in which they are highlighted in. This is a very subjective experience and different people tend to see different things, simply because their own personal context is automatically applied, a 'bias', if you will.

The point to hold, in the front of your mind, throughout reading this article, is the fact that the 'features' and their descriptions, presented here, are accurate representations of Window functions, in their own right, however, any suggestion as to motivation would be speculation.

More clearly, Microsoft has presented it own 'opinion' on the various features within Windows, other 'opinions' do exist and this article presents one of them, in a hypothetical scenario. For this analysis to hold, the hypothetical scenario must be demonstrated to be consistent throughout the design of the OS, not just its usage.

The style and tone throughout, is based upon the working hypothesis, that Microsoft has altered the Windows OS, to reflect US military requirements and that its primary role is that of a modern variation of a 'bugging device'. It is simply taken as a given fact throughout.

This clarification allows for a more direct style of writing and legal protection for publishers. In addition to this, the views expressed in this report are the authors and have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else.

There are no accusations being made, this is presented only as a 'working hypothesis', at all times, to allow for the fullest exploration of this particular train of thought. If the hypothesis holds, then we will expand it a little, to place it in proper context and draw the conclusion from the entire investigation.

Report On Analysis of Microsoft Windows XP

1. Start -> Search :)

Each and every time a search is conducted using the search option under the start button on Windows XP, the system automatically checks if your online and transmits information directly to Microsoft.

This is done, without informing the end-user in any fashion, nor providing a clear method to disable. It has been hidden by design. In technical terms, a form of Trojan.

A good application level, stateful firewall, will catch this communication attempt.

Done by design.

2. Help System, F1

When accessing Microsoft Help systems, through the F1 key. A communication attempt to Microsoft's ActiveX site is made.

Done by design.

3. Microsoft Backup

Designed to bypass all security, even ownership rights of a drive. Try it.

Done by design.

4. Process Viewer (Task Manager)

No mapping to executable file, nor will it show all running processes. Designed to hide important information required for determining system infections and sources of network data transmission.

Done by design.

5. Dr Watson

This used to loadup with information on dlls that had been hooked. Hooked DLLs are used to intercept keystroke, etc. Microsoft removed end-users capability to see this. It now generates a simple messagebox.

Done by design.

6. The Windows Registry

Now, on the face of it, this may seem like a good idea, however, as any developer will tell you, they only use it because the commands are quick, simple and, when it comes down to it, security is mainly the end-users responsibility.

It would be much faster, simpler and provide greater system security to use an ini file. Linux uses this approach with config files. An entire database must be examined each time request is made. This is why Windows slows down after you begin installing applications. The registry grows and more cycles must be dedicated to completing each query.

When you multiply this, by the wide range of systems accessing the registry, it is clear to see, that as a design architecture, it is completely moronic.

That is, until it is examined from another perspective, try the following perspectives as examples:

a. HKEY_CURRENT_USER - psychological profile of logged on user, real-time usage focus.

click on link to read from there, full article is to long to be posted here.

drFUNK

November 30th, 2006, 09:56 PM

Just read that whole thing - wow. I didn't even know there were THAT many intentional ways to track one in XP. Just imagine now many are undocumented.

holylucifer

December 1st, 2006, 12:28 PM

Yeah and read this,

http://100777.com/node/1107

Linux Opinion: An Open Letter to a Digital World
"The Windows platform is not just insecure - it's patently, blatantly, and unashamedly insecure by design"

December 18, 2004, http://www.linuxworld.com/story/47536.htm

Summary
As a Linux desktop user himself, system administrator Chris Spencer did not relish having to clean up his wife's infected Windows PC after it had become compromised. By the time he'd solved the immediate problem, Spencer had become so fed up with spyware, trojans, viruses, and spam, that he decided it was time to write a letter to the world. It's a simple message: it's time to switch from Windows to Linux. "The letter serves as a guide," Spencer explains, "taking you through some of the history of Microsoft right up to this present day."

By Chris Spencer

To Anyone Who Will Listen,

Recently I was reading an article from Wired magazine talking about the Windows spyware problem [1]. It was unbelievable to me that people would choose to use programs that they know make all their personal information available to companies. It turns out that 80% of Windows users suffer from spyware [2]. I read many articles like these but always thought that these people have problems just because they aren't careful. Maybe they don't run anti-virus, they don't use a firewall, or they browse seedy sites and download applications for seedy activities. It turns out though that is not the case.

My wife discovered that her computer had been infected by spyware and trojans despite the anti-virus, regular Windows updates, having the good sense not to open attachments, using a firewall, and avoiding any type of seedy activities online. As best we can tell someone exploited IE transparently while she searched for medical information to help our nephew.

The clean up from these types of infections is great fun. I spent not less than 5 hours running about every spyware prevention program known to man. Each one searching for those pesky files and registry settings. The worst thing of all was that, once I cleared them off the disk, simply starting Internet Explorer would reinfect the whole system. Seriously, it was great fun and I did, eventually, have the satisfaction of beating the problem. That's right - a system administrator for 10 years with a degree in computer science and a RHCE CAN clean up a single spyware infection in 5 hours.

I hope you see what I am really saying here. How on this earth are people that aren't trained in Information Technology going to do it? As a Linux desktop user, I had never been exposed to this type of problem. Having now battled with spyware, I am finally motivated to speak up and say something to the world. I want to get a single message across:

It's time for anyone running a Windows PC to switch to Linux.

You see, the Windows platform is not just insecure - it's patently, blatantly, and unashamedly insecure by design and for all the lip service to security it's really not going to get better, ever. To make matters worse, it's more expensive and gives you fewer necessary applications right out of the box than Linux. Everyone, even Microsoft, knows this - they are just too afraid to say it. The tide is coming in. Nothing on this planet can stop it.

Whew. I said it. I am so happy to get that off my chest, however, for me to stop here would be unfair. I haven't really proved it to you. So if you will entertain me a bit longer here is the rest of the story.

Microsoft started conducting a "Get the Facts" [3] marketing campaign against Linux. This signaled that they have correctly assessed that their competition is Linux and that they need to fight it with all they have. It even made it into their 10K filing. [4] It's really an interesting read to note that Microsoft sees Linux as a major threat It's a big enough threat to their monopoly that they say:

"The Linux open source operating system, which is also derived from Unix and is available without payment under a General Public License, has gained increasing acceptance as its feature set increasingly resembles the distinct and innovative features of Windows and as competitive pressures on personal computer OEMs to reduce costs continue to increase."

If Microsoft thinks this then that alone is more than enough reason to give a fair look at Linux. Of course it's just as likely that they are preparing the lawsuits to attack Linux because it is a real competitor. I am not sure which distinct and innovative features they are referencing. Perhaps it was the whole GUI concept that Apple sued them for stealing from them. Perhaps it was the Microsoft Office-like functionality that Open Office has that Microsoft took from Word Perfect. It's hard to tell and it gets me off topic to delve into it.

Alright, let's talk about the "Get the Facts" marketing campaign. What happened is that Microsoft and vendors that make money on Microsoft products have all come together to tell us that we us why we should use their products. As a consumer and something of a student of history, I always question people that are highly motivated to protect their jobs and money. Did big tobacco say their products were safe long after they knew it wasn't true? Might Microsoft be inclined to say that their products provide better total cost of ownership (TCO) and security than another product despite knowing it wasn't true?

It turns out they have done something strikingly similar before. [5] When IBM OS/2 had just taken off and become "the best selling retail software product in America" then "sources close to Microsoft" leaked word to a columnist for the UK edition of PC Magazine, who dutifully reported both the rumor and source." - Computerworld, March 20, 1995, page 118. From there it was all downhill for IBM. Despite everything indicating that OS/2 was doing great the press just kept printing the Microsoft party line. In the almost 10 years since that happened, have things changed? Are they kindler, gentler, and friendlier to work with or do they still spin, bully, and use talking heads?

Carrying on in their history we see that, empowered by their victory over IBM, just 4 years ago Microsoft was ordered to be split in two by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson because they were convicted of abusing their monopoly market position. Then 3 years ago Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reversed the decision to split them and a much lighter penalty was imposed. Unhappy with the results the EU took up the case and just this year Microsoft was convicted in the EU. Since then Microsoft has paid billions of dollars to the companies that were aligned against them. One by one settling the differences. Most of the companies had little choice but to accept the money they were offered. Because they have been so badly beat. Now they stand with billions of dollars in the bank and a patent portfolio that is rapidly expanding.

I don't know about you but when a convicted monopolist that has been shown to use those monopoly powers against their competitors says that Linux is a competitor but that it's not as secure or cost-effective, well then I take note. Because I know there is a good chance that a half truth was spoken.

Maybe Linux is shoddy code just hacked together by a college student. However, according to the four-year analysis by five Stanford researchers [6] Linux contains only "0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code" and most all of those bugs have been fixed. Given that an earlier study from Reasoning, Inc [7] had already shown that the Linux TCP/IP stack had a 0.013 per 1000 lines of code defect rate back in 2001, it is hardly astonishing that the entire Kernel is also relatively low in defects compared to your average commercial software application To put that in perspective the average code seems to have anywhere from 2 to 30 bugs per 1000 lines of code. That makes the Linux kernel between 11 times and 176 times better than your average product. So it's certainly not shoddy software by any stretch of the imagination.

Considering that many Linux distributions are free, it is hard to believe that it would be more expensive than Microsoft where a simple upgrade costs $100 and their Office application costs hundreds more. Call me crazy but I am having a hard time finding any truth in the "facts" as reported by Microsoft. However, Microsoft studies the TCO to show that other factors make Linux more expensive. Yet, the studies that I have read seem to make crazy assumptions like saying it takes more money to train users to push a button on Linux than it does to push a button on Windows. They also tend to ignore the costs associated with viruses, spyware, and trojans that prompted me to write this. Perhaps most unfortunately for Microsoft they also ignore that wildly varying labor costs directly affect TCO. [8] That means it wouldn't just be a poor decision it would be a completely moronic decision for a government to use the Windows platform in the third world if it wasn't absolutely necessary. To be honest, for a long time I have wanted to see a case study that took these types of issues into account. I was, for this reason greatly disappointed, when I heard about a study from Cybersource [9] that ignored these things but still found Linux, even Red Hat Enterprise Linux, to be 19% or more expensive. So much for being less expensive, they can't even win when the whole thing is tipped in their favor.

Maybe I missed something? Maybe Microsoft just happens to be truly better at security than Linux? For this I had to get dirty and dig. On the surface it did seem like Windows had fewer security issues. Looking at Seconia, a security research company, I discovered Windows 2000 Server has had only 76 Advisories in all of 2003 and 2004. [10] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 on the other hand has 101 Advisories [11] and it wasn't launched until November and looking at Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 I found a whopping 145 vulnerabilities. [12] That looks pretty bad, right?

I am sure that is what Microsoft would like us to think. If we would just ignore the elephants in the closet then we would come to their happy conclusion. I'm not going to do that though.

Microsoft Windows is but one component in a much larger Windows platform. What good is the operating system without remembering productivity software, anti-virus software, instant messengers, media players, software to burn CD and DVDs, and the list goes on and on? These are all things that Red Hat and every other Linux distribution includes as part of the package. Usually they go so far as to include multiple applications for each function. It would be, therefore, completely unfair if we didn't compare a comparably equipped Windows platform to a comparable Linux platform. How do you add it up though? Whose products do you pick and whose products do you ignore? It's a horrible can of worms. I tried to do it. To build the comprehensive list so that we could compare a Microsoft Windows that's fully equipped like a Linux distribution and I was able to exceed the number of advisories. I just felt dirty doing it and in the process of doing it. Besides, I came to the realization that the bug count isn't what really mattered.

What really matters is that the bugs are getting fixed so you aren't online without protection and that the updates were easy to track and install. Both of which Microsoft is in serious trouble with.

With Linux all of the updates for all of the different types of applications come through a single path and in an automated way. It is a process very much like the Windows Update service. The key here is that one update service covers all of the products. On the Windows platform you can get the Windows updates this way but what about all of the third party applications we needed to have the same functionality as Linux? Each of those need to be searched for or are hidden inside the application themselves.

In my research I found one particularly nasty Microsoft bug that really emphasizes this point. I am talking about the GDI+ buffer overflow with JPEG processing [13]. They put out a security bulletin and they released a patch for each of their affected products but they never identified who put the SDK library in their products and each of those products linked to it individually. Not only did this mean users had to be experts that researched the update on their own, but they also had to manually install it in each location. You have to admit, that sure isn't as nice as the centralized updating that Linux has. It seems more like a tidal wave to me.

Then there are the issues related to actually fixing the bugs that are known. Again, Secunia makes it really easy to see. Of the 76 advisories Microsoft 2000 Sever still had a whopping 20% outstanding and one of them was rated "Highly Critical". Red Hat Enterprise Linux had fewer than 1% outstanding and it was rated only "Moderately Critical". So much for fewer security updates meaning you are more secure and let's not even talk about the Internet Explorer Web browser. Because it is so insecure that the United States government, through the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, had to issue a warning to use any browser besides IE. [14] Yet, to use Windows Update you have to use IE. It's just not fair.

Then there is the issue of design. Linux was designed to be in a hostile Internet centric world. As people were programming it they knew this and it no doubt played a role in the designs of their products. With Linux you will find that firewalls are enabled by default, users rarely login as administrators, server applications run as users that have limited rights, etc. In Windows these obvious things were an afterthought. Finally put into Windows XP with the creation of SP2, well mostly. I think it's because of the mindset that Windows is for end users on either private networks or no network at all that Microsoft has been hit so hard by security issues. It's of course equally possible that the issue is entirely different. Maybe they don't fix the security holes because it's considered a feature. I know they said as much about the Windows Messenger Service [15] even though it was being actively used to send banner advertisements to desktops around the world.

Perhaps Microsoft is finding that the standard software wisdom about bugs [16] being less expensive to fix before a product ships is true because after several years of having security as the number one focus they are as plagued or more plagued by security issues than ever before. Maybe pouring money on the problem won't fix it? I mean come on Even before Windows XP [17] - we knew these things but it still shipped with the stupid default settings and we STILL have 20% of their advisories unfixed. How can anyone feel safe running on a Microsoft platform?

Linux provides a better paradigm. It costs less, it is more secure, and perhaps most importantly of all it isn't controlled by a single vendor. While Red Hat is the largest distributer of Linux and does provide a comprehensive support system and legal protections for their customers, they aren't alone. Major companies like IBM, HP, and Novell are all deeply involved with Linux but none of them are in control of it.

Because of Linux, the future of computing is commodity. By the year 2000, Linux already represented billions of dollars worth of development effort [18] and it's owned collectively by each one of us. The savings will follow and you can count on getting what you pay for or there will be someone else that is there for you on the terms that you want. The tide has turned and Microsoft is going to get wet. From my perspective they already are all washed up.

It's all an issue of attitude. Linux follows the share and share alike [19] mindset where as Microsoft seems to have the greedy mindset of it's all mine and I want to get paid for it now [20]. Well Bill, Steve, and talking parrots, that's not very nice. As I have shown there are good reasons for using Linux as the better alternative to Windows. Give my friends at Red Hat a call. I am sure they could comp. you a copy. Anyway.....

Like I said: It's time for anyone running a Windows PC to switch to Linux.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read my letter and I hope that it gets you motivated to make the switch or, if you already have, that it just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

holylucifer

December 1st, 2006, 12:33 PM

Well theres some food for you to digest,i think you can tell for your selfs, that windows is a pile of poo to compared to open source linux, however i am on windows because i just want to use it for games,you can decide for your selfs, which is more blatant, a company with billions makeing a buggy insecure operateing system, and where Linux is free and more secure,you can make your own mind up.

holylucifer

December 2nd, 2006, 05:51 PM

Bump,

laosboyme

December 3rd, 2006, 05:04 AM

I have ubuntu running in my pc and windows xp is pretty slow!! it often crash!!!!

Tazix

December 8th, 2006, 08:59 PM

hoagie

December 9th, 2006, 08:23 AM

This thread has to become sticky.
There are many interesting posts, about linux, windows, boot up speeds etc.
Not to mention the great points that holylucifer made ...

holylucifer

December 11th, 2006, 04:09 AM

I did Hardly Hardly heard any max loud hard drive sounds in linux where in windows its GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,where the hard drive running in linux is quite.

Fatec

December 11th, 2006, 10:36 AM

Xubuntu Edgy boots to using about 90MB of RAM at desktop idle on my machine. (Mainly because of Xorg and nVidia drivers)

Windows XP (untweaked) Takes up about 120MB.

That said... if you change the Xserver from XORG to something like TinyX (See what Damn Small Linux Uses)and run VESA drivers, you can get Xubuntu to run around 50MB at desktop idle.

With XP, if you turn off enough services, you can get it down to running a little under 100MB at desktop idle. If you run the generic VGA driver... you can even get XP down to around 70MB.

Either one, untweaked, doesn't have much room for applications to launch with only 128MB, and will start using virtual memory (hard disk) which is dog slow.

You will find that Xubuntu with a smaller Xserver and a Vesa driver is much more pleasant than XP and the generic VGA driver. AND you will have more memory left over of that 128MB, for apps than XP.

-Taz

Well, thats kinda wrong, i can get xp down to 32mb idle if i disable useless features...and my custom xp runs fine on the spare p3 700 128mb sdr 20gig hard drive....linux on it?..gah...couldnt even load the cd...took nearly 9 minutes...windows won that one.

i generally find linux to be alot slower than windows even on my current rig.

AMD64 3200+
Asus A8N-E Deluxe mobo
2GB PC3700
GeForce 7600GT (pci-express)
sata ii 120gig (main hd)

startup times kill me, if im in a rush i simply boot into windows because its alot quicker and i can get things done quicker as well.

dont get me wrong..i love linux..but every rig i try it on its quite slow...even with gfx card drivers on...beryl runs great...but i cant even play HD vidoes on ubuntu very well (jerks, stutters, frame drops) yet they play perfectly fine in XP.
i really miss nvidia purevideo as well, wish nvidia would get their fingers out of their butthole and port that over to linux.

holylucifer

December 13th, 2006, 01:10 AM

While you are bragging about ram, what about your blatantly noisey hardrive in windows, and in linux.

TheTank

December 13th, 2006, 09:26 AM

Some years ago I had given my old system to my now mother-in-law. After the system (500 celeron, 512mb) had some kind of problems a couple of months ago and half of the components needed exchange, I could no longer install winxp. Always had problems while installing. After a week I'd thought I'd give ubuntu a try (my main is still xp and used to dual boot to suse). Two hours later everything was installed (first time doing it) and the missing nvidia drivers took me about 30 mins extra.

The sys also had an old 56k external modem, which installed without a problem, though turning the sound off does not work. Then again getting the thing installed on winxp was a pain.

I'd say the system now runs as fast as it used to.

All in all I now reccomend ubuntu to anyone who aks me what OS they should install. And the fact the software does not cost a cent.
Next time I have to set up my system, it will only be a 'nix.

Fatec

December 13th, 2006, 11:48 AM

While you are bragging about ram, what about your blatantly noisey hardrive in windows, and in linux.

Excuse me?

My hard drive is quiet thank you, brand new sata ii drive...

no need to hate on my drive because i said videos dont play fine for me in linux is there...or perhaps because i said vista is slow....some people hate the truth, about the videos in linux...i cant work out why they wont play properly...cpu is fast enough to handle HD smooth even without the gpu doing the work...so yea...and all my hardware is fine ty.

holylucifer

December 15th, 2006, 06:36 AM

Well hopefully ,

i get a,

e6300,
2gb of ram,
sapphire x1950xt 256mb

etcetc,

however the hard drive on this computer is IDE basicly slower than a sata,

but the hard drive noise ,for me,

in windows the hard drive is way way way more noisey, in linux it is mostly quite when i am useing the computer.

saadakhtar

December 15th, 2006, 12:04 PM

Fatec

December 15th, 2006, 03:12 PM

no offense to all this microsoft lovers. but every OS that MS ever made sucks. i've used each everyone of them. The only thing with ubuntu is that you have to do some research to get things to work. i had all my hardware configured just by reading through posts on this forum. never had any crashes or hang ups.
if one is lazy enough to sit there and just browse to a site and download a driver and have it installed and does not wanna do any research to get things to work then i guess they are just lazy.
thats what i have to say.
BE FREE WITH LINUX.

Well, i use both windows and linux so i dont bash either but...your post makes me laugh, in all the years ive used windows (since the 3.1 days) i've never had one virus, spyware or adware.....and had 2(yes, 2) crashes in total.

Makes me wonder what sort of sites these people visit to get spyware, i mean..to me its pretty obvious the only way u really get that stuff is on pr0n and warez sites!

2000 Pro did not suck, infact imo and many other peoples it was the best OS m$ released, XP is now great and stable with sp2, sure it has problems, but so does linux and i have crash X quite a few times by accident.

Alright to like linux but the way some of you guys on here bash m$ your just as bad as the m$ fanboys bashing linux.

holylucifer

December 22nd, 2006, 08:26 AM

Bump,look at my posts at 6 make your own mind up, don't want to have to post them,in other threads -_-.

holylucifer

January 10th, 2007, 07:17 PM

Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista

The Inquirer | January 10, 2007
Nick Farrell

THE USA GOVERNMENT'S cryptologic organisation, the National Security
Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes
to Microsoft's operating system Vista.

According to the Washington Post , the agency which was once so
secret that it was jokingly referred to as 'No such Agency' has
admitted making 'unspecified contributions' to Vista.

Tony Sager, the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis and operations
group, told the Post that it was the agency's intention to help
everyone these days.

The NSA used a red and a blue team to pull apart the software. The
red team posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary"
to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. The Blue team helped
Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.

Vole said that it has sought help from the NSA over the last four
years. Apparently its skills can be seen in the Windows XP consumer
version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.

The assistance is at the US taxpayers' expense, although the NSA says
it all makes perfect sense. Not only is the NSA protecting United
States business, its own Defense Department uses VoleWare so it is in
the government's interest to make sure it is as secure as possible.

Microsoft is not the only one to tap the spooks. Apple, with its Mac
OSX operating system, and Novell with its SUSE Linux also asked the
NSA what it thought of their products. The NSA is quite good at
finding weapons of mass destruction that are not there.

http://jahtruth.net/plan.htm

----

This below - is not part of the copy message, go back to read 6 if your concerned about privacy and big brother.

holylucifer

January 18th, 2007, 04:23 PM

Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.

by Duncan Campbell

A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.

Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:Windowssystem directory of your computer.

ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.

Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery

A second key

Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".

Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.

A third key?!

But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.

Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.

Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".

"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked

Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?

Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.

Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's website.

According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."

holylucifer

January 18th, 2007, 04:24 PM

Also go back to 6 and read my comments.

Monsuco

January 20th, 2007, 05:55 PM

Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista

And the NSA also created SELinux included in CentOS, Fedora, RHEL and a few other distros and installable on almost all. Makes since as the NSA and the US government use both Linux and Windows in large amounts, so they probably do want them to be secure. I think OpenBSD had help from the US Gov for a while, but its funding was pulled.

He's sold his freedom because a) he wants to get his cd-rom drive to work and b) because he didn't do his research and just blindly bought hardware and expected it to work (which is just daft)

Shame because freedom is important.I wouldn't use linux if my CD drives didn't work. It's software not a revolution, and I for one use what works best. I like linux not because it is free, but because it works best for me (though the fact that it is free has helped it develop into something that works best for me). Heck even Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux said that propriatary software isn't some evil monster and part of the reason he GPLed linux (when linux 0.1 was released, Linus used his own license which said linux could not be sold, but he changed it to the GPL soon after) was because he wanted to see Linux become as useful as possible, not because he wanted it to be a symbol of freedom. That is unusuall though as most CD drives are fine with Linux. Really the only picky hardware I have ever seen are PocketPCs (duh), Playforsure MP3 Players (sometimes problematic, and duh), a few WiFi cards, a few TV cards, and a few softmodems (though many Wifi and softmodems can work, and hardmodems almost always do), and you have to manually set up a few graphics cards. This is fairly small.

I have three major systems.

My modern one is a P4 3 GHZ, 512 MB of ram, and a speedy HDD. Windows XP SP2 (with IE7 and WMP11, fully updated, malware free) and Kubuntu Linux 6.10 (fully updated) are both on there and both have 1GB of swap. Windows XP boots to the desktop faster, but then it takes another 30 seconds to do something, while in Linux the desktop takes about 15 seconds longer to load but once your in, your done. Linux seems to run software faster. I have a low end Intel 915 Express GL card, which doesn't have much in the way of a GPU or graphics ram. It runs crappy either way, but it seems much faster on Linux, with the i915 driver than on windows with the intel driver, but the linux one seems to have bugs (such as funny looking shading sometimes). Nothing serious though. I have used msconfig to trim down windows and even then it takes 15-20 seconds longer to be in the usable desktop stage. Software seems faster on Linux.

My middleaged PC is a PIII 995 MHZ 6 year old PC. I upgraded it from 256 MB of RAM to 384 MB. It origionally ran Windows ME (ugh). Windows ME was fully updated (or at least until MS killed support. This PC was also plugged in when our house suffered a direct hit from lightning. We thought that had killed it but it somehow it was fine other than the fact that it's USB ethernet adapter was fried (which I replaced with a PCI eth) and its hard disk required formatting (but worked, though I put a spare bigger HDD in it from a damaged DVR). I reinstalled ME and it worked fast. I put software on it. It slowed down a bit but a defrag and MSconfig brought it back up to near origional speed. I got bored and put Kubuntu on it. Kubuntu booted fairly slowly (about 1-2 minutes). It wasn't as fast as ME, but was useable. It was faster than XP on 256, but not as fast as 2000 on 256 to give you an idea. I then put Xubuntu on there. It booted slower than ME by a bit (took about 30 seconds to a minute) but it ran faster than ME.

I also have an old system a 9 year old (I think, it was made around 1998 to lazy to check). It ran Windows 98 1st Edition (not updated due to lack of any form of ethernet adapter or modem). 98 ran fairly slow it seemed, and 98 ran slower than I liked. This system had like 400 MHZ PII with 32 MB of ram, and only 2GB of HDD so not much room for swap. Xubuntu probably wont work on that, but DSL will. DSL ran faster than 98 when installed to the HDD, but firefox was all but unusable (Dillo seemed fast though). I got bored with this thing due to lack of networking so I put FreeDOS on it, which ran increadably fast (FreeDOS is happy with a 486 and 4 MB of ram I think.)

Linux does pretty well on old hardware, though often times modern software wont fit as well unless it is designed for that perpouse. Look at the installation of Linux on low end pieces of hardware that linux can run well on:

Have you seen the OLPC Children's Machine? It runs linux on an AMD Geode 500 MHZ with 128 MB of RAM (no swap as they have a 512 MB flash chip instead of an HDD, and execive writes damage flash memory).

Xebian Linux also works well on the XBox which has only 64 MB of RAM an Intel Celeron (well like a cross between a PIII and a Celeron) at about 700 MHZ and I think 256 MB of Swap (though you can up it to 128 if you use the mod chip and you solder the heck out of it.)

There is PS2 Linux which works well despite the PS2's relativly slow CPU (I think it was in the 400 MHZ area, but it is hard to compare as the PS2s CPU was not an X86 so MHZ may not be an acurate representation of speed). The PS2 also only had 32 MB of ram. To use PS2 linux you installed a HDD into the PS2 so you could have swap as well.

There was a hack for the game cube to allow for you to run linux despite its slow CPU and only 24 MB of ram (it worked sorta like a thin client, you could stream data to the cube using the broadband adapter, the PSO broadband hack, a router, and another system with SMB. Also the GC could only read a few DVDs and could only read the first 1.2 GB or something of that DVD).

I know the iPod could run linux fairly well despite the fact that an iPod only had 32-64 MB of ram or so and a CPU that was very slow.

The DS and PSP also can run linux despite their humble hardware.

Several PDAs and Phones can run linux too.

Linux is better than modern windows on old hardware, and can even sometimes beat software designed for that system.

Falcorian

January 20th, 2007, 06:15 PM

I've so far been VERY impressed with Xubuntu. It runs like a champ on my 1Ghz Athlon with 128mb RAM.

98 didn't run so well on it...

erlyrisa

January 23rd, 2007, 10:43 PM

I guess I need to see it to believe it because we have those P3s in our labs and those things take forever just to boot Windows 2000. And when after it comes up, you can't click anything for another 10 or 15 minutes... ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

My mum is using a P2 - 128mb ram - loads about the same as a p3-1ghz

-it's running open office - which does take a while to start up, coreldraw8 which runs faster than sodipodi ever will and ie5.5 with flash- and the average ad still renders normally.

-of course it's not running malware which is makeing your p3s' take 15mins to load! ,Mums P2 is up and running with IE on it's home page in about 3mins (and I have it running on a 19inch monitor with high res, oversized icons, 120dpi fonts)

-oh and my ubuntu computer - about 5mins (cose I haven't gone through /etc to not load all the crud) before I even see a gui. -and that's on a p3-1ghz

---so for the average Joe that ain't going to unload all the servers that a fresh install of an average linux distro usally does XP is still the way togo. -oh and it's a damn lot easier to just run services.msc to get your XP install running faster than stuffing around in your /etc .

PS - I like both OSes, but thought it prudent to piont out that sometimes Windows ain't as bad as it is made out tobe.

umattu

January 31st, 2007, 01:10 PM

I installed Xp on my laptop which has a P3 833 Mhz with 512 MB of ram with 16MD being allocated to video. The XP install ran smoothly, then I knew i had NO CHOICE but to install an antivirus software. I installed Norton, and the OS grinded to a snails pace. XP will run nicely on older hardware if it is IME the xp install itself, once you have to start adding those resource hungry "defense" applications that are a MUST for any windows machine, you lose resources to protect the once snappy OS. I couldn't imagine running XP on a box with 128MB of RAM, heck I wouldn't even attempt to put it on a box with that amount.

Thankfully I found ubuntu and am now completely Windows FREE for 6 months now!! (well I have an XP VM running in VMware- but that doesnt count :)

sooner or later he will have to buy a new machine to keep running windows or he will see the light and take a little bit of time to learn the superior OS named ubuntu to keep his existing hardware.

mips

January 31st, 2007, 02:16 PM

I have always found (X)(K)Ubuntu to be slower than windows XP. I don't like windows, but have not had any problems with windows in the past either. It's not that hard to have a fast & stable windows install.

Many people exaggerate stuff and the windows bashing is really tirung.

Ubuntu is a slow distro, period. There are distros out there that are way faster than ubuntu & it's derivatives. Part of the problem is peoples believe that Ubuntu is the BEST. The fanboyism for ubuntu is astonishing.

Somehow people fail to be objective but hey if you believe ubuntu is the best then grate for you !

A server install of ubuntu + X11 + something like fluxbox I find fast though.

People must realise there are other options out there besides ubuntu, ubuntu is not the be all and end all of linux. it's agood intro to linux though for people new to linux.

Trebuchet

February 1st, 2007, 09:23 PM

He's sold his freedom because a) he wants to get his cd-rom drive to work and b) because he didn't do his research and just blindly bought hardware and expected it to work (which is just daft)

Shame because freedom is important.Freedom also means the right to make choices, even bad ones, and abide by the consequences of those decisions. If he's happy with XP and Ubuntu wasn't working right for him, then I can't even claim he made the wrong choice.

I use XP Pro myself (My Ubuntu install attempts failed, so I'm gonna try again with an empty hard drive), but my problems even with 98SE (a vastly poorer OS) were minimal compared to many because I maintained the system carefully and cleaned out the crap regularly. The problem is that the majority of Windows users, being functionally illiterate so far as computers go, are unaware that you ever have to do anything but turn it on. The idea of defragging, disk cleanups, removing old software and remnants, and even malware scans is simply not on their radar.

Redsandro

February 23rd, 2007, 07:40 PM

I've had XP on my P2 266/218MB TNT2/32MB for a long time, but since I didn't use the P2 anymore I decided to install Xubuntu linux. I'm only used to working with textmode but now I want the full gui experience. I THOUGHT it would be fast.

I don't understand. XP was much faster. Opera 9 boots in 30 seconds, on XP that was 10. Some older DivX's played fluently on XP, and the same files play about 1/3rd of original speed on Xubuntu. And let's not talk about startup times.

I'm a multimediadesigner and I need Windows packages, but I like linux to play around with so it stays or I wouldn't use this P2, but it would be nice if the computer actually seemed faster with linux in stead of slower.

I don't know if my perception changed over time, but I remember using Red Hat 5 on this same computer back when it was new, with a fully bloated Gnome desktop. And I almost got the feeling that was faster.

I wish there was a secret option like export set_fake_delay = false.

Trebuchet

February 23rd, 2007, 08:28 PM

Give it a week. XP will be so cluttered with temp files and malware it'll take at least 5 minutes to boot.Most halfway-intelligent XP users clean that stuff out on a regular basis. (Don't try to pretend Ubuntu doesn't take any routine maintenance - any OS does). My XP Pro system went from cold start to ready to roll in 2 minutes and 5 seconds, and that included loading the five Startup programs I use. If I cut those out it would have been about a minute and 45 seconds.

jesus5511

February 24th, 2007, 11:24 PM

He's sold his freedom because a) he wants to get his cd-rom drive to work and b) because he didn't do his research and just blindly bought hardware and expected it to work (which is just daft)

Shame because freedom is important.

LOL, wow. Isn't part of freedom being able to use whatever you want, therefore he is exercising his freedom, not giving it up.

But hey, if your idea of freedom is taking away peoples options to use other operating systems (and my god what a pathetic view point it is,) then I guess you need to look up what freedom means.

Rhapsody

February 25th, 2007, 02:38 AM

I noted this topic in a conversation recently, saying that the latest version of Windows manages to run faster than Linux, a situation Microsoft has rectified with Windows Vista.

mips

February 25th, 2007, 05:39 AM

I don't know if my perception changed over time, but I remember using Red Hat 5 on this same computer back when it was new, with a fully bloated Gnome desktop. And I almost got the feeling that was faster.

I wish there was a secret option like export set_fake_delay = false.

Try another distro.

inversekinetix

October 25th, 2007, 02:22 AM

I'll believe anything.

I read people saying Gnome is much faster than KDE. Then I read people saying KDE is much faster than Gnome. I've experienced both Gnome and KDE to be about the same speed.

I've seen some computers where XP is faster than Ubuntu and others where it's slower.

It all depends.

it does indeed, if xp is configured correctly from install and has GOOD apps, not AOL, McAffee and other bloated junkware like that it can run flawlessly. Most things only work as well as the person using them, ever seen a bad driver trying to drive a ferari? a good driver gets better performance from a bus.

miggols99

October 25th, 2007, 04:28 AM

If it's faster than my Arch Linux, I'll be amazed. I have a dual boot with XP and Arch Linux. Things generally feel slower in XP (Maybe because XP is 32bit and my Arch is 64?) and even if I clean things out, defragment etc. it doesn't make too much of a difference. I don't think I'll ever look back. The only thing I need XP for is printing, which I can't do in Linux due to lack of 64bit drivers :( When this Lexmark dies, I'll probably get a HP, as they are very well supported.

xp_boy

October 26th, 2007, 02:07 AM

I gave Linux a shot for a few weeks, and I'm back to XP.

Here's why:

I use a computer to do online banking, play poker, download music, videos, books, make calls, email, and surf.

It's simply a tool. As much as I appreciate the philosophy behind open source projects, at the end of the day ... it's just an operating system. XP allows me to do everything without having to spend all night dicking around with flash media, soundcards, configuring my wireless, or wondering:

1) Where that program I just downloaded went.
2) Whether it installed or not.
3) Whether it's working or not, assuming it was installed.

That said, DSL was kinda cool, but I appreciate having the freedom to step away from my computer ... and not have it's little Linux issues chain me to the terminal.

I see that some people are asking if they can interface with iTunes. iTunes is a pile of rubbish. Fubar2000 rocks, you guys might be able to enjoy it in a few years. K-Ninja (a stripped down Firefox) is brilliant. For video I use VLC which bypasses all need for codecs, and plays anything on earth. Hell, it's so good, the French government will fine anyone found using it, lol.

Insofar as Windows and their 62,000 viruses and whatnot ... well, here's a little story for ya:

I've had my Acer Travelmate 2200 (2.8 GHZ, 192 M RAM) for a few years now. Use NO virus protection, and I freely download from all sorts of P2P networks (Limewire, eMule, Ares). Well, just for fun I did a virus scan the other day:

Zero. I do a virus scan once a year, then delete the anti-virus program, and run Bootvis to speed up the boot.

My boot time is under 40 seconds, idle I sit at 92.3 M of RAM, my browser pops up in 1-2 seconds, and I can connect and run virtually anything offered on the web. Fubar and VLC are instant. Admittedly, MeanPuppy 2.02 was a little quicker launching the internet, but I never did get Flash working.

Linux might be cool. But I prefer the freedom to live life and party, not spend it learning operating systems.

However, I do thank you guys for turning me onto all the open source alternatives to Microsoft and Apple products. My XP has never been faster or more efficient.

(and I really must get more ram sometime. Been saying that for years ...)

Cheers!
xp_boy

padams10001

October 26th, 2007, 10:01 AM

I have recently begun to begrudge having to use my computer at work (XP) after spending the rest of my time on feisty. I want to change my work computer, but a i us autoCAD and Land Desktop 99% of the time, i don't think i can really do it.

Depressed Man

October 26th, 2007, 02:52 PM

I have a modified version of XP running in my virtaul session on my laptop. It's faster then any OS I've used in thisage lol. Though it's largely stripped down to only what is needed to run the OS and programs. Windows classic theme, etc..No windows defender, firewall, etc..

vishzilla

October 27th, 2007, 11:46 PM

xp slows down with the increase of the no. of programs installed esp. with the AV and spyware scanners and also with the increase in the number of files.

-grubby

October 27th, 2007, 11:47 PM

It's all so complicated...hardware, software,etc

inversekinetix

October 29th, 2007, 01:56 AM

xp slows down with the increase of the no. of programs installed esp. with the AV and spyware scanners and also with the increase in the number of files.

I have all the programs I need installed (over 50), av scanner running and over 1,000,000 files spread over 3 HDs, i have zero fragmentation, a clean registry and a computer that runs and boots as fast as the day installed windows and its drivers. I can't understand what your claim is. btw, why do people blame AV scanners as a source of system slowdown, have you seen how many resources are used by fecesware like ituneshelper and the like?

I have ubuntu 7.1 set up with unrestricted drivers and it works great, a little slower in places than my XP, but the area where ubuntu is nowhere near as fast as XP (for me) is, if i want to install something that isn't in a repository, or where the repository has outdated versions. Now bare in mind Ive had linux for 5 days, but i know windows/pcs pretty well. I want to install some application, there is no package, fair enough (its a new release) first i have to get the source code for the executable, no prob, but wait, i have to install some apt-file components first to make sure i have the dependences for the executable i want to compile, thats ok I find the command, run it put the CD in as requested but ubuntu cant find the files on the CD, np, get the files from a download, now i check that i have required dependencies, i do!! sweet. Next step I try and makefile, oops error, i dont have the correct compiler for the source I have, eek, go find that install it compile, sweet it works (only took 2 hours of researching a load of new things to get to here) but hold on, i have 30,000+ files to manage with this new apps, what its cli only? aaaagggh, off to find a a gui frontend for it, sweet, got one, its in python, np get that up and running, now where did the script go, got it, pop it on my desktop. run the gui, it works, cool, i can choose the installed executable to run with it, excellent, put the paths to my files in and, what? it doesnt read them, arrrghggh, what is wrong, i dont know, i have a headache from over 2 hours of getting the app installed.

I have XPpro running just the services i need, i want the latest release of an app, I find it, run setup.exe it installs everything i need and pops a link where I tell it to. It works in less than 1 min.

while my XP and ubuntu run about the same, XP runs way faster in terms of use. I know, I know, I've only been using linux for less than a week and to be honest I really like it, I can't wait till I get everything I want running on it. But wow, if theres something you want and theres no package for it it can be a real slow process, I learnt a lot, but i only wanted to play some old arcade games. I was lucky enough to have a fairly troublefree install/setup (ubunty randomly assigns drive letters each time you put the CD in and grub is a dog with multiple HDs). I wish installation was easier it a real pain, if its difficult to set up and configure things it will seem slower to users who are accustomed to setup.exe systems.

technicalevolution

October 30th, 2007, 04:43 PM

inversekinetix

October 30th, 2007, 08:08 PM

yeh i agree with all the other people.

xp disentigrades after the installation, anti virus software or not.

over priced + un-needed software + magnet for viruses + good promises of microsoft = WINDOWS XP, VISTA, etc.

please explain how is disintegrates? mine is as fast today as it was when I installed it.

what uneeded software is installed by windows installer? notepad? calculator? telnet?

it's only a magnet when it's not secure. why is the root account in ubuntu hidden by default?

I was promised that ubuntu 'just works' it didn't it borked my MBR, it is no faster than my XP.

maybe you should think for yourself instead of following all the other people.

baaaahhhh.

NoSmokingBandit

October 30th, 2007, 09:28 PM

I have XP Lite installed on my windows partition and its just as fast as ubuntu. The thing is, ubuntu just rocks harder than xp, so i had to leave it.

kulturloseramerikaner

October 30th, 2007, 09:37 PM

mine is as fast today as it was when I installed it. Interesting. Allow me to wager a guess as to how you achieved that, because it IS an achievement. Once or twice a month you do a full registry scan and cleanup, followed by a registry defrag, and probably a rootkit check too. You probably find between 50-100 errors in the registry every time, even though you do this regularly and even when you HAVEN"T recently installed any new software. Follow that up with a full defrag and run chkdsk. You also do spyware and virus scans at least once a week and are always checking to be sure you have the latest definitions installed. Before you shut down, you manually go into the temp folder to clean it out, clear your browser chache, and delete all cookies. You likely spend considerable time
online figuring out how to kill things like wgatray.exe and how to hack
your registry and svchost.exe to free up a few clock cycles.
BAH! If only half of what I said is included in your maintenance ritual, you can have it. Any time I spend "maintaining" my system is more like "tweaking." I can try out different themes, or hack my X11 to force sound out of all 5 speakers of my 5.1 system even from a 2-channel MP3; I don't have to defrag or clear out bad links in a "registry" that in addition to slowing my PC down ISN'T NECESSARY, I'm doing it play around and experiment, not waste time running scans.

what uneeded software is installed by windows installer? notepad? calculator? telnet? Well let's see WGA is a biggie, but I think what they were really referring to is the Picasa trial and the Adobe Albumstarter and the Aol and he 30-day trail from McAffee and the other crap that comes on a preinstalled system. How about the software that IS necessary on a new Win install such as the registry tuner and the security suite? Trade ya.

it's only a magnet when it's not secure. why is the root account in ubuntu hidden by default?
I could spend the entire night showing that by it's very design Win is not secure but we'll start here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/05/microsoft_announces_7_patches_for_october/

Sweet! My WORD PROCESSOR can allow a script kiddie to pwn my system!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/20/vista_security_oversold/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/19/new_vulnerability_reports/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/microsoft_uri_reversal/
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=190301156
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34978-2003Aug23

Pay special attention to the last one, and don't be afraid to follow the links either; remember that 'bolt-on" security is never an adequate replacement for an inherently secure system.

maybe you should think for yourself instead of following all the other people.I believe I just did. ;)

baaaahhhh. I concur.

Depressed Man

October 30th, 2007, 11:12 PM

Well let's see WGA is a biggie, but I think what they were really referring to is the Picasa trial and the Adobe Albumstarter and the Aol and he 30-day trail from McAffee and the other crap that comes on a preinstalled system. How about the software that IS necessary on a new Win install such as the registry tuner and the security suite? Trade ya.

Picasa has a trial? I thought it was free, but all the other stuff isn't Microsoft's doing. It's the company that sells the computer.

inversekinetix

October 31st, 2007, 02:35 AM

Interesting. Allow me to wager a guess as to how you achieved that, because it IS an achievement. Once or twice a month you do a full registry scan and cleanup, followed by a registry defrag, and probably a rootkit check too. You probably find between 50-100 errors in the registry every time, even though you do this regularly and even when you HAVEN"T recently installed any new software. Follow that up with a full defrag and run chkdsk. You also do spyware and virus scans at least once a week and are always checking to be sure you have the latest definitions installed. Before you shut down, you manually go into the temp folder to clean it out, clear your browser chache, and delete all cookies. You likely spend considerable time
online figuring out how to kill things like wgatray.exe and how to hack
your registry and svchost.exe to free up a few clock cycles.
BAH! If only half of what I said is included in your maintenance ritual, you can have it. Any time I spend "maintaining" my system is more like "tweaking." I can try out different themes, or hack my X11 to force sound out of all 5 speakers of my 5.1 system even from a 2-channel MP3; I don't have to defrag or clear out bad links in a "registry" that in addition to slowing my PC down ISN'T NECESSARY, I'm doing it play around and experiment, not waste time running scans.

Well let's see WGA is a biggie, but I think what they were really referring to is the Picasa trial and the Adobe Albumstarter and the Aol and he 30-day trail from McAffee and the other crap that comes on a preinstalled system. How about the software that IS necessary on a new Win install such as the registry tuner and the security suite? Trade ya.

I could spend the entire night showing that by it's very design Win is not secure but we'll start here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/05/microsoft_announces_7_patches_for_october/

Sweet! My WORD PROCESSOR can allow a script kiddie to pwn my system!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/20/vista_security_oversold/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/19/new_vulnerability_reports/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/microsoft_uri_reversal/
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=190301156
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34978-2003Aug23

Pay special attention to the last one, and don't be afraid to follow the links either; remember that 'bolt-on" security is never an adequate replacement for an inherently secure system.

I believe I just did. ;)

I concur.

you sound like a hater son,
i spend no time doing any such things to keep my system optimized. my registry is scanned at boot and automatically fixed (takes about 3 seconds), my AV updates itself everytime I boot (another 4 seconds for the download and update, automatic of course), my temp folder is automatically emptied on boot. wga was completely removed after I installed just like all unnecessary services were disabled. I dont have a browser cache, i have gigabit fibre, my pages load fast anyway. I don't even have a page file, I use ram only (unless a program requires a pagefile to run) Defrag takes about 1 min on a drive with 1% fragmentation.

As for disabling wgatray.exe to 'get a few more cycles' well it doesnt run because it was removed, if i do want to tweak things and play around for fun, I'll crank up my silent square and load my o/c profile 2 and have all 4 of my cores running at 4.0GHz each. Then I might start o/c ing my gpu and its ddr3 memory to see what that will do. Then again I have my system optimized for killer performance so theres really no need to o/c.

Cool you managed to force stereo through a 5.1 decoder, I did that in about 6 mins by downloading kx project drivers and manually routing the signal through my soundcard.

Free software trials, hmm, it's weird, i build my own machines and install the OS myself, I cannot for the life of me find the software you are talking about, point me to the cab its in?

So, I spend how much time scanning and checking for updates and the like? next to none as you can see. I think you were speaking down to me thinking I know nothing at all, is that because I use windows aswel as linux? or is it because you're arrogant? either way I am happy knowing my system is optimized to death and i doubt if there is much more performance to be had from it. Also,

I paid special attention to your last point, please go here,

http://www.abisource.com/

and let them know their software allows script kiddies to 'pwn' my system.

and on your way back close the gate so no more sheep can get out.

:lolflag:

kulturloseramerikaner

November 1st, 2007, 10:52 PM

you sound like a hater son,

I don't hate Windows users; I like nearly all of us was a full-time Windows user once and still it need for many things. I do hate the attitude a lot of them have that just because my experience with it is such-and-such yours should be too, and I admit freely - I hate Windows. I hate the way you often risk massive system damage just getting it look the way you want to because you have to muck around with the Registry, something that Windows can't do without but something that is not necessary and causes system slowing. I hate the woodenness of the interface, the way leaves you with few choices and the way it forces you into certain way of doing things. I hate the constant maintenance required, the things like disk defragging that even if they do only take a minute really aren't necessary in a properly-designed system. I hate the way MS does business, how they create proprietary formats and go around threatening to sue other OS makers for "copyright infringement" on things they by and large didn't create themselves. I hate the massive security flaws in it and the way my mother received a spam email from her own email address two weeks ago, and having to tell her that despite the fact she has the latest fixes from MS and updates her security suite and scans regularly, her system now has a bot on it and she now has the immense joy of going through 5 1/2 years files to find the ones she can't live without. I hated her expression when I told her that the only way to be sure you've eliminated a rootkit like this is to completely wipe the drive and do a full reinstall of the OS. I could go on.

You do have a very nice system; I'd love something similar on my desktop. From the specs, it also could not even be a year old. When my system was still new, it ran like it was new too.

Forcing stereo through 5.1 was only an example of things you can do to tweak your system on 'nix and only meant to be an example, as was my mention of the theme options. But since you mentioned it, it took a minute to add the lines to the appropriate sound config file, I didn't have to rely on anything third-party as the capability is built in, no manual tweaking was required, and it defaults back to 5.1 by itself when playing from a 5.1 source.

You built the system yourself and installed Win free of trialware; custom building a system yourself is always going to be the best bet, but it's really not an option for the majority of users for whom preloaded crap is legitimate gripe. They lack the knowledge to build their own system, or might be intimidated by the idea of it, or need something with a warranty and tech support for their business. I think it's arrogant to cast aside those concerns just because you yourself don't have them.

As for the last point, Abiword is great and one less thing you'll have to worry about. But can you think of any circumstance under which it's acceptable for something as simple and basic as a word processor to grant unauthorized access of your system? Those articles are just a small sampling of the ways in which MS has knowingly put out a product that is inherently insecure.

The sheep are fine, thanks for asking.

inversekinetix

November 2nd, 2007, 12:14 AM

I don't hate Windows users; I like nearly all of us was a full-time Windows user once and still it need for many things. I do hate the attitude a lot of them have that just because my experience with it is such-and-such yours should be too, and I admit freely - I hate Windows. I hate the way you often risk massive system damage just getting it look the way you want to because you have to muck around with the Registry, something that Windows can't do without but something that is not necessary and causes system slowing. I hate the woodenness of the interface, the way leaves you with few choices and the way it forces you into certain way of doing things. I hate the constant maintenance required, the things like disk defragging that even if they do only take a minute really aren't necessary in a properly-designed system. I hate the way MS does business, how they create proprietary formats and go around threatening to sue other OS makers for "copyright infringement" on things they by and large didn't create themselves. I hate the massive security flaws in it and the way my mother received a spam email from her own email address two weeks ago, and having to tell her that despite the fact she has the latest fixes from MS and updates her security suite and scans regularly, her system now has a bot on it and she now has the immense joy of going through 5 1/2 years files to find the ones she can't live without. I hated her expression when I told her that the only way to be sure you've eliminated a rootkit like this is to completely wipe the drive and do a full reinstall of the OS. I could go on.

You do have a very nice system; I'd love something similar on my desktop. From the specs, it also could not even be a year old. When my system was still new, it ran like it was new too.

Forcing stereo through 5.1 was only an example of things you can do to tweak your system on 'nix and only meant to be an example, as was my mention of the theme options. But since you mentioned it, it took a minute to add the lines to the appropriate sound config file, I didn't have to rely on anything third-party as the capability is built in, no manual tweaking was required, and it defaults back to 5.1 by itself when playing from a 5.1 source.

You built the system yourself and installed Win free of trialware; custom building a system yourself is always going to be the best bet, but it's really not an option for the majority of users for whom preloaded crap is legitimate gripe. They lack the knowledge to build their own system, or might be intimidated by the idea of it, or need something with a warranty and tech support for their business. I think it's arrogant to cast aside those concerns just because you yourself don't have them.

As for the last point, Abiword is great and one less thing you'll have to worry about. But can you think of any circumstance under which it's acceptable for something as simple and basic as a word processor to grant unauthorized access of your system? Those articles are just a small sampling of the ways in which MS has knowingly put out a product that is inherently insecure.

The sheep are fine, thanks for asking.

Nice. I just have to add one thing about security.

I have a metal shed with 3inch thick walls, a 3inch thick door with 5 locks on it. In the shed there is a bag of cash.

I also have a wooden shed, with windows, a bike lock holding the door closed and an a security guard with a bat. It also has a bag of cash in it.

Neither bag of cash has even been stolen, not even looked upon by unauthorized eyes.

Which is more secure?

karellen

November 2nd, 2007, 03:09 AM

in conclusion no matter the os, if the user is tech savvy and eager to learn and tweak, good results can be obtained. perfect, everybody's happy ;)

xp_boy

November 3rd, 2007, 01:33 AM

in conclusion no matter the os, if the user is tech savvy and eager to learn and tweak, good results can be obtained. perfect, everybody's happy ;)

Hah! Nice try Karellen, but it would be a mistake to believe that trying to get Linux operational and compatible with your system, much less use it, is easier and/or less time consuming than keeping your xp clean and tight.

No matter, here's a bit from the heart:

Neither OS is going to make you healthier, wealthier, or improve your odds with the girls. Actually, during my "Linux Week Of Hell" (DSL, soundcard) I would occaisionally mention I was a Linux user. All I ever got was blank stares.

Never once was I asked to see my desktop.

Kinda bummed me out.

So to console myself, I'd pirate all the products available in the known universe. Windows does this with a point and click.

Linux would just sit there, confused.

I would sit there, confused.

Together, we would sit confused. And the hours spent together in confusion, trying to rid the confusion, only added to the confusion. And as the hours turned to days, sadness and despair crept in mingling with the confusion to create a ******* bitch child from Hell named Linu ...

*ahem*

I implore you, good people of the world, make not the mistake I did. Point, click, and be happy. Seek out the Linux command line if you must, but if you have the talent to figure out that abomination ... you should really reconsider how you are spending your time. Find a cure for cancer instead, or something.

Besides, no one cares about your desktop, anyway.

Best,
xp_boy

akiratheoni

November 3rd, 2007, 04:21 PM

I implore you, good people of the world, make not the mistake I did. Point, click, and be happy. Seek out the Linux command line if you must, but if you have the talent to figure out that abomination ...

Yes, because it took me all of five minutes and a tutorial to learn to use it.

The only reason why you think it's hard is because you don't take the time to learn it.

Seriously, if you want to survive Ubuntu, all you need to really know are:

sudo apt-get install packagename
gksu gedit /path/to/file
cp /path/to/file /other/location
mv /path/to/file /other/location
cd directoryname

What, too hard for you?

xp_boy

November 4th, 2007, 03:57 AM

Seriously, if you want to survive Ubuntu, all you need to really know are:

sudo apt-get install packagename
gksu gedit /path/to/file
cp /path/to/file /other/location
mv /path/to/file /other/location
cd directoryname

What, too hard for you?

Funny, that's what I kept telling my computer.

Each night I would sudo apt-get install packagname gksu gedit/path/to/file cp/path/to/file /other/location mv/pat/to/file/other/location cd directoryname ... and yet it seemed we just weren't communicating effectively.

This struck me as odd, for the commands were so intuitive.

I mean, I was sure I was the only person in the Linux universe unable to get his wireless working. Everyone else had such an easy time of it. And at least 20% of all Linux users don't even need to pull out their soundcards and install new ones.

But really, these are trivial issues. Linux is a philosophy, not an operating system. Some might say a religion, others a cult. It matters not, what is important is to understand what it offers you:

Freedom.

The soothing silence of freedom, my friends.

:)

Best,
xp_boy

inversekinetix

November 5th, 2007, 12:15 AM

Yes, because it took me all of five minutes and a tutorial to learn to use it.

The only reason why you think it's hard is because you don't take the time to learn it.

Seriously, if you want to survive Ubuntu, all you need to really know are:

sudo apt-get install packagename
gksu gedit /path/to/file
cp /path/to/file /other/location
mv /path/to/file /other/location
cd directoryname

What, too hard for you?

which of those commands lets me recompile my kernel with only the modules for the specific hardware I'm using on this machine. which one uninstalls my installed packages? which one removes arrogance from people?

xp_boy

November 8th, 2007, 10:45 PM

which of those commands lets me recompile my kernel with only the modules for the specific hardware I'm using on this machine. which one uninstalls my installed packages? which one removes arrogance from people?

Ouch.

But it does bring up a good point.

My bro-in-law is a successful engineer.
My sister pursuing her Phd in medical research.

Both of them have troubles keeping their music separated on itunes. It's really quite funny to watch, actually, as they accidentally erase each other playlists on a near-daily basis and start screaming at each other.

I've given up trying to help.

Skype was also a problem. They were dazzled by it (yes, slowly but surely I'm ushering them into the 1990s), however ... they became frustrated when they couldn't connect with each other. I asked if they clicked the little box that booted Skype when they turned on their computers.

I got blank stares.

Admittedly, they are pushing forty, so perhaps this is simply a generation (culture?) gap, but I can't help but think if these two over-educated professionals can't point and click to get itunes and Skype working on a PC ...

What hope is there for apt-sudo to do their bidding?

Best,
xp_boy

(ps Besides, xp is faster than xubuntu anyway.)

(pps Wannabe XP hackers might want to google "bold_fortune")

Tavorisch

November 9th, 2007, 01:57 PM

the whole thing with the cd drives, probably has something to do with the distro being so light weight, i can run team fortress 2 on my 9600 mobile on a fresh install of xp. after a week or two of use it just got worse and worse to the point of not working.. BTW,, i have a dell inspiron 8600, with a 9600 mobile i know for a fact! and when i go to amd-ati's site i select drivers for Windows XP, RADEON, then Mobility series, than 9600 series and the drivers say wrong device or something.
..... im never buying ATI again..

technicalevolution

December 12th, 2007, 01:15 PM

please explain how is disintegrates? mine is as fast today as it was when I installed it.

what uneeded software is installed by windows installer? notepad? calculator? telnet?

it's only a magnet when it's not secure. why is the root account in ubuntu hidden by default?

I was promised that ubuntu 'just works' it didn't it borked my MBR, it is no faster than my XP.

maybe you should think for yourself instead of following all the other people.

baaaahhhh.

secure?

how have you secured your xp machine then?
because no-one else in the world has lets face it, have ever used all of the software that comes with your machine...i dont think so

yes of course it edits your master boot record...thats how it dual boots fool...what were you expecting?

mips

December 12th, 2007, 01:33 PM

secure?

Maybe we should look at how the DoD considers secure. Last time I saw there was no such thing as a secure windows server unless it was disconnected from a network.

Has this changed at all?

Harpalus

December 12th, 2007, 01:53 PM

Maybe we should look at how the DoD considers secure. Last time I saw there was no such thing as a secure windows server unless it was disconnected from a network.

Has this changed at all?

Depends on how you define secure. By my own KGB/paranoid standards I don't think it is possible to truly lock down a Windows environment. I only use it for gaming.

However, Windows can be brought to a reasonable level of security. If you really whip it, bend it to your will, delve into the registry and install the right software, it can be locked down to a reasonable level of security. The US military says so. Almost every major business says so. There are plenty of large businesses who've had nary a serious security breach, and yet run only Windows. It's nonsense to claim that these companies are all "lying about their security breaches", or are "just being lucky". It may not be possible to lock it down to my personal standards, but it can be locked down and protected within business acceptable margins.

I would also agree with the speed of Windows. Windows is many things, but I do think there's a lot of FUD being spread around by Linux users. Modern Windows has improved a lot since the old days, and my own heavily modified distribution is quite fast.

karellen

December 12th, 2007, 05:03 PM

Funny, that's what I kept telling my computer.

Each night I would sudo apt-get install packagname gksu gedit/path/to/file cp/path/to/file /other/location mv/pat/to/file/other/location cd directoryname ... and yet it seemed we just weren't communicating effectively.

This struck me as odd, for the commands were so intuitive.

I mean, I was sure I was the only person in the Linux universe unable to get his wireless working. Everyone else had such an easy time of it. And at least 20% of all Linux users don't even need to pull out their soundcards and install new ones.

But really, these are trivial issues. Linux is a philosophy, not an operating system. Some might say a religion, others a cult. It matters not, what is important is to understand what it offers you:

Freedom.

The soothing silence of freedom, my friends.

:)

Best,
xp_boy

:lolflag: nice touch, man...:)

InsertNameHere

December 12th, 2007, 05:51 PM

I have XP for a year now, it still runs faster then ubuntu gutsy (mainly because of gnome login and the bootup is quite long as well (grub to gdm))

I still use ubuntu because it looks nicer....

perixx

December 12th, 2007, 06:39 PM

InsterNameHere...
why don't you use auto-logon?
Menu > Settings > Login Screen > Security > Automatic Logon (USER)
go... ^^

Oh, and if Xubuntu is too slow for you - you could also try out Puppy-Linux, if you didn't already; it's lightning-fast!

perixx

InsertNameHere

December 12th, 2007, 06:45 PM

I do use that, I'm not talking about the time which it takes to enter my password etc...

After I log on the screen stays brown for a minute and then displays anything. (not sure why, only on first log on, so if I started the system, logs on, log off, log on again, the second log on would be faster)

And I do wish that Halo (1 and 2) works for linux.

perixx

December 12th, 2007, 10:13 PM

Perhaps you should consult your LOGS...erm log-files (just kidding ^^) under /var/log and /var/log/gdm...

Perhaps it's also a problem related to this link:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=581075&highlight=long+booting+time

perixx

inversekinetix

December 13th, 2007, 01:25 AM

secure?

how have you secured your xp machine then?
because no-one else in the world has lets face it, have ever used all of the software that comes with your machine...i dont think so

yes of course it edits your master boot record...thats how it dual boots fool...what were you expecting?

I was kind of expecting that when I chose ubuntu from the grub menu it would actually start ubuntu rather than give me file error. As a new user I had no idea I had to edit the boot menu to get it started only for it to do the same next time I booted. A little poking around taught me that I had to edit several parts of my menu.lst file in order to keep the settings. Unfortunately trying to save my changes left me with another error message telling m I didnt have sufficient rights to modify that file. So I had to find out how to do that. I guess I expected too much, at least I learnt something out of it. I'm glad I did learn it because whenever grub gets interrupted during boot I have to go through the same process again.

and please don't call me fool.

afljafa

December 13th, 2007, 05:32 AM

perixx

December 13th, 2007, 11:15 AM

I was kind of expecting that when I chose ubuntu from the grub menu it would actually start ubuntu rather than give me file error. As a new user I had no idea I had to edit the boot menu to get it started only for it to do the same next time I booted. A little poking around taught me that I had to edit several parts of my menu.lst file in order to keep the settings. Unfortunately trying to save my changes left me with another error message telling m I didnt have sufficient rights to modify that file. So I had to find out how to do that. I guess I expected too much, at least I learnt something out of it. I'm glad I did learn it because whenever grub gets interrupted during boot I have to go through the same process again.

and please don't call me fool.

Well, you see -
those problem above arised from the fact that Ubuntu had to share your HDD with XP in the first place, thus it had to overcome XP's restricted booting abilities (needs to have nt-bootloader in the first primary partition and doesn't multi-boot other OS's without a little hacking).

Multi-booting is a bit hairy for the newbie and needs a little investigation for special setups.
And while things SHOULD run smoothly during the Grub-installation, they always can mess up due to whatever reason (including wrong partitioning / settings).
Windows won't let you boot Linux or other OS's at all or at least not easily - Linux makes things fairly easy, if you take your time to consider what needs to be done (of course you need to know some basics about multi-booting).

If you had a clean system with a full HDD for Ubuntu - like you usually have on a Windows-PC - you wouldn't have had any of those hassles.

Your second problem is not a problem, but a feature of Linux: you don't have writing-permissions on any other than your /home folder by default - that is system security :!:
While Windows runs in administration-mode natively and lets you (and any kind of malware) mess with the system at will
- with all known consequences - Linux can easily grant you those rights ON DEMAND via 'sudo / gksudo'-commands in the terminal/bash, or even in graphical mode (ALT-F2 > gksudo ....).

Of course you need to investigate a little for that info, like you had to, back when you learned how to e.g. remove 'netmeeting' and its folder .... :mrgreen:
While the first is possible after some half an hour of googling and downloading the 'pcwkillemall'-script, running it, booting into protected mode, running a cmd-terminal, running a second script, restarting again (:P)... the second one is virtually IMPOSSIBLE (maybe if you disable WFP, but that's another story). :)
Mind you, everything in ADMINISTRATION-MODE!

In Linux, to achieve sth. similar, you'd just open your terminal, enter
'sudo apt-get remove <program-package> --purge', then, to remove the folder:
sudo rm -r /.../folder -- done!
You see, Linux is not necessarily more difficult than Windows - often it is a lot easier!

Btw.: and please don't call me fool
I fully agree to that! ;-)

perixx

inversekinetix

December 13th, 2007, 11:13 PM

Well, you see -
those problem above arised from the fact that Ubuntu had to share your HDD with XP in the first place, thus it had to overcome XP's restricted booting abilities (needs to have nt-bootloader in the first primary partition and doesn't multi-boot other OS's without a little hacking).

Multi-booting is a bit hairy for the newbie and needs a little investigation for special setups.
And while things SHOULD run smoothly during the Grub-installation, they always can mess up due to whatever reason (including wrong partitioning / settings).
Windows won't let you boot Linux or other OS's at all or at least not easily - Linux makes things fairly easy, if you take your time to consider what needs to be done (of course you need to know some basics about multi-booting).

If you had a clean system with a full HDD for Ubuntu - like you usually have on a Windows-PC - you wouldn't have had any of those hassles.

Your second problem is not a problem, but a feature of Linux: you don't have writing-permissions on any other than your /home folder by default - that is system security :!:
While Windows runs in administration-mode natively and lets you (and any kind of malware) mess with the system at will
- with all known consequences - Linux can easily grant you those rights ON DEMAND via 'sudo / gksudo'-commands in the terminal/bash, or even in graphical mode (ALT-F2 > gksudo ....).

Of course you need to investigate a little for that info, like you had to, back when you learned how to e.g. remove 'netmeeting' and its folder .... :mrgreen:
While the first is possible after some half an hour of googling and downloading the 'pcwkillemall'-script, running it, booting into protected mode, running a cmd-terminal, running a second script, restarting again (:P)... the second one is virtually IMPOSSIBLE (maybe if you disable WFP, but that's another story). :)
Mind you, everything in ADMINISTRATION-MODE!

In Linux, to achieve sth. similar, you'd just open your terminal, enter
'sudo apt-get remove <program-package> --purge', then, to remove the folder:
sudo rm -r /.../folder -- done!
You see, Linux is not necessarily more difficult than Windows - often it is a lot easier!

Btw.:
I fully agree to that! ;-)

perixx

look at my sig, one of those 500GB HDs was dedicated to linux, ubuntu was installed onto a partition on one of them. Windows is on the 10,000 rpm one for games. The problem arose I think because the MB bios and the linux/grub installer name the drives in a different order. I figured out how to fix all my problems myself, I just didn't think I would have to. I expected it to work. After GRUB messed up for about the 5th time I decided to just install wingrub and edit the windows boot.ini. It didn't bork onceb after that. It's not a problem anymore as I have removed linux for the time being.

perixx

December 14th, 2007, 12:14 PM

I understand what you mean, basically. I was pretty upset about Grub and installation troubles myself in the beginning ;)

But I realized pretty soon, that it's actually Windows' fault in the first place when things tend to get complicated. Since it simply doesn't bother with other OS's on your computer. It simply occupies your PC by default, basta. And your new OS has to deal with that. :-k

Doing a basic Ubuntu-installation (being the primary OS) on a totally empty drive will most definitely be as simple and save as putting a pizza in your oven!

perixx

screaminj3sus

December 14th, 2007, 06:51 PM

I've NEVER seen a cd drive that doesn't work in linux...

Joeb454

December 15th, 2007, 09:00 AM

I have

perixx

January 20th, 2008, 11:20 PM

XP runs as fast as Xubuntu!!?
XP can actually run even faster, especially when it comes to heavy 3D-graphics (also booting), if the system is configured well and stipped from superfluous services etc....

perixx

cmat

January 22nd, 2008, 10:28 AM

I noticed this too. On my dual boot, my clean XP install with no bloat is FAR faster than Ubuntu let alone Xubuntu. As soon as you add the necessary scanners and stuff to run XP safely it's slower than Ubuntu at booting.

perixx

January 22nd, 2008, 11:26 AM

I was also referring to all-day work; e.g. accessing certain folders takes so ludicrously long with Thunar at times, that I can't help but wishing back my Windows-Explorer (or the cool 'freecommander') - let alone the terrible instability issues of Thunar.

And more than ever I get homesick, when trying to run and play fast-paced games under Ubuntu - which can be partially addressed to ATI. A big 'thanks' to ATI for providing it's customers with such crappy drivers ):P
I'm gonna try a 8800GT from a friend under Linux in a few days...

perixx

perixx

January 23rd, 2008, 08:02 PM

As soon as you add the necessary scanners and stuff to run XP safely it's slower than Ubuntu at booting

I don't think it's a sane thing to run a s background virus-scanner - not to speak of something as stupid as Norton Security Suit.

I'd recommend to scan only downloaded things by hand, or emails on demand (which will start the scanner newly each time). Disabling IE for everything else but MS-Updates and using Firefox with a few plugins (prefbar, noscript, adblock...) will round up internet security.

If all unnecessary and unsafe services are disabled, if you're running a basic firewall and if some nasty loopholes are closed via registry hacks (standard / admin shares and such), everything should be rather much sunshine!

That's, if you add brain.com to all of this, of course ;]

perixx

cmat

January 24th, 2008, 10:38 AM

In the ideal world no virus scanner constantly running would be fantastic. But people are forgetful at times and don't scan their files. I'm a nut when it comes to security but I fell victim to my own devices by not scanning and carelessly opening files at times. Good thing none of them were infected.

leafhound

January 24th, 2008, 11:22 AM

:lolflag: give it a week

LaRoza

January 24th, 2008, 01:53 PM

Also keep in mind that XP is 6 years old, and Ubuntu is not such an old OS.

Compare Vista with Xubuntu for a fair comparison.

perixx

January 24th, 2008, 04:31 PM

Also keep in mind that XP is 6 years old Sure. But it's been completely reworked with SP2 and updated ever since then.
Also Ubuntu has stable releases that stay for about 4 years or so; why not compare XP with Ubuntu as well?

And don't forget - in terms of gaming, Ubuntu is still on the very loosing end compared even to XP.

perixx

perixx

January 24th, 2008, 04:34 PM

That's true cmat :)

I try to circumvent this by downloading everything into a single folder and then scan it's content before sorting out or running sth. in it.

perixx

LaRoza

January 24th, 2008, 05:47 PM

Sure. But it's been completely reworked with SP2 and updated ever since then.
Also Ubuntu has stable releases that stay for about 4 years or so; why not compare XP with Ubuntu as well?

And don't forget - in terms of gaming, Ubuntu is still on the very loosing end compared even to XP.

perixx

Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows Vista are on the same timeline. If you want to compare an OS build and designed for 6 year old computers, find a Linux that is that old. The first version of Ubuntu is pretty close, try it. Is it faster than/as fast as XP?

Windows 98 flys compared to Windows Vista, does that mean Windows 98 is better than Windows Vista? They are designed for different computers.

Gaming wasn't the topic of this thread, and Ubuntu (and Linux) isn't behind. OpenGL is very good, as good as DirectX. Don't blame the platform for lack of gaming development.

Ubuntu has a release every 6 months, Windows has one...randomly, late, and lacking features that were the selling points.

perixx

January 26th, 2008, 07:22 AM

I get you point, LaRoza.

On the other hand it's possible to run Ubuntu on a six-year-old PC without trouble, while you'd have a hard time doing so with Vista ;^}

perixx

andrewjoy

January 26th, 2008, 07:27 AM

It may be fine now give it a week and it will be dead :P.

:lolflag:

If he realy wants to use windows i would say put 2k on that old rig should work just fine.

If he wants it to run realy fast throw a coppy of vector linux soho on there. Wireless is a pain in the *** with it tho but should be ok when you get it sorted.

perixx

January 27th, 2008, 04:43 PM

It may be fine now give it a week and it will be dead :P. How come that you think so ? :]

perixx

inversekinetix

January 27th, 2008, 08:07 PM

I find it truly amazing that linux users see nothing wrong with someone new to linux spending untold hours getting everything working on their linux install. These forums are filled with stories of new users trying to figure out this and that, to get everything working. However when it comes to a windows user spending some time setting up a bunch of free unbloated applications, tweaking a few settings and learning how to manage accounts all hell breaks loose.

I spent a bit of time learning to tweak and secure my windows installs, they run very well, most maintainance is automated so i dont notice it. I tried using ubuntu, it was nice but way slower than my windows installs, I didn't like the file browser, it was slow, clumsy and usually died when opening folders containing 1000s of zip files. The applications panel in gnome was an absolute horror, it wouldn't work correctly and the edit function did anything but what I told it to do. Gaming was a joke, yes wine is an amazing bit of work, but to get games working it is a pain. Overall I was impressed with what linux developers have come up with but found myself reverting to windows for it's simplicity of use, reliability and consistency.

perixx

January 28th, 2008, 02:56 AM

I didn't like the file browser, it was slow, clumsy and usually died when opening folders containing 1000s of zip files. The applications panel in gnome was an absolute horror, it wouldn't work correctly and the edit function did anything but what I told it to do.
You've got some points here... especially when looking at the Xubuntu desktop -- you can do A LOT but Thunar is everything from satisfying and Xfce doesn't reveal it's secrets easily, quite some remain yet to be discovered(!)

Seing that you use Vista - I must complain (stability, usability, reliability...). It's about the same as learning a new OS, so best switch over to Linux. Very expensive new programs ('Vista certified'!!) will anything but work. Hardware is refused/ignored and in some real bad cases destroyed (mp3-players), thanks to DRM. I've seen that OS in progress and it's really proven itself to be 'WinME reloaded'. But this is no 'anti-Vista'-thread, so I'll quit here ...

perixx

inversekinetix

January 28th, 2008, 08:11 PM

You've got some points here... especially when looking at the Xubuntu desktop -- you can do A LOT but Thunar is everything from satisfying and Xfce doesn't reveal it's secrets easily, quite some remain yet to be discovered(!)

Seing that you use Vista - I must complain (stability, usability, reliability...). It's about the same as learning a new OS, so best switch over to Linux. Very expensive new programs ('Vista certified'!!) will anything but work. Hardware is refused/ignored and in some real bad cases destroyed (mp3-players), thanks to DRM. I've seen that OS in progress and it's really proven itself to be 'WinME reloaded'. But this is no 'anti-Vista'-thread, so I'll quit here ...

perixx

all my hardware works fine, the only time vista has crashed on me was when i accidentally unplugged a live IDE drive, windows didn't like that at all.

LaRoza

January 28th, 2008, 08:22 PM

all my hardware works fine, the only time vista has crashed on me was when i accidentally unplugged a live IDE drive, windows didn't like that at all.

Neither do drives. Hopefully, everything still works.

finferflu

January 28th, 2008, 08:37 PM

Well, if for him the only advantage of using Linux is only speed, let him use Windows :P
Also, you have to be aware that Ubuntu is not centered around speed, you would need some other distro for that job. The ability of ubuntu to provide a flexible system for all possible machine setups influences the level of "bloat". Not that Ubuntu is not a good distro, but it's full of stuff that you will eventually never need, and on slower machines you can feel the difference.
To be honest I don't know any newbie friendly distro focused towards speed, perhaps for the very reason Ubuntu is not exactly that fast. To be user friendly it needs to be prepackaged, and to be prepacakged means losing speed.

But as I said, one should not focus on Linux for speed. The beauty of this OS is in how it's built. I love the modularity, the way things interact between each other, the whole privileges system.

perixx

January 28th, 2008, 09:08 PM

Well, if for him the only advantage of using Linux is only speed, let him use Windows :P Right said Fred :]

Though I must admit that, when it comes to gaming, I'll prefer the extra speed of XP. For now. Hope this gets better in 1-2 years!!

As for a rather userfriendly & insanely quick Linux-candidate I'd recommend Puppy-Linux (for 256MB RAM and below)... of course it's got drawbacks as well - but which distro doesn't?

perixx

LaRoza

January 28th, 2008, 10:10 PM

of course it's got drawbacks as well - but which distro doesn't?

Arch?

finferflu

January 29th, 2008, 07:08 AM

Arch?

Ahahah! As you can see I'm an Arch user, but I didn't suggest it as a distro because people complain about it not being newbie-friendly. I think the complexity is just in the different approach it proposes, but still, newbies tend to want everything up and running as soon as the installation is complete.
The guy switched back to Windows because he couldn't get the cd drives to be recognised out of the box...

perixx

January 29th, 2008, 07:46 AM

The guy switched back to Windows because he couldn't get the cd drives to be recognised out of the box... Which actually really should be nothing the user has to care about...

I've got two drives in my system (CD + DVD) and both were named (CDROM1+2) - CD drive wouldn't work at all until I MANUALLY hacked 'fstab' and re-mounted the DVD drive to /media/DVD and CD drive to /media/CDROM. Still, many programs have trouble recognizing either one or the other drive...

I'll admit - that's belonging into the category users shouldn't have to agonize about - but they'll have to very often!

perixx