What can Windows do that Linux can't?

[josvanr]

I've never printed a page in linux that gets printed at the actually right size. I thought I'd give it a try again, but after 3 hours and a stack of photo paper I'm back to windows virtual machine again. Just forget about linux and print photos

[peyre]

I've never printed a page in linux that gets printed at the actually right size. I thought I'd give it a try again, but after 3 hours and a stack of photo paper I'm back to windows virtual machine again. Just forget about linux and print photos

Funny, I haven't had that problem. I have had trouble with installed networked printers suddenly not working until I deleted and reinstalled, but that seems to have been largely a Lubuntu thing back when I was trying to use that on my laptop.

[RadicaX]

Get viruses, malware, spyware with little effort. Lol.

Seriously though, the advantages Windows has, is only because they tend to be locked in. Basically any OS can what every other OS can do if you program it to do that. Windows could do many things to be more secure. But they opt not to do those things. You can use the latest version of flash with most browsers on Windows, only Google Chrome has updated flash on Linux. But such things like that is not really the OS fault. So that kind of question would be pretty hard to answer.

[jtarin]

I've never printed a page in linux that gets printed at the actually right size. I thought I'd give it a try again, but after 3 hours and a stack of photo paper I'm back to windows virtual machine again. Just forget about linux and print photos

If you could specify the particular problem your having and the printer make and model perhaps someone could help. Printing in Linux can be very flexible, but at times also challenging until you get the hang of it.

[Grinage]

Wow, this isn't what I was searching for, but I saw it and had to attempt to read through the nearly 37 pages worth of comments, I kind of wonder if the OP had any idea what kind of can of worms that question would open. For my part Security was the biggest reason for switching from windows. Yes some games don't work, and there are some occasional irritating bugs, glitches, PEBKAC errors, etc., but, when I install any distro of linux vs any MSWIN product, the differences are immediately obvious. A clean install of a Microsoft OS will have a minimum of five restarts, before you can actually get around to installing the programs you need and functioning as security patches and bug fixes are applied. Linux is mostly secure out of the box unless I make it not so, and if there are security patches and updates they can download and install while I do other things, install other aplications, and go about the business that I need to get done without a single necessary restart or a message that pops up every five minutes that says you need to restart your PC to finish updates.

That's a long way of saying, that for the average user, end user or business user who doesn't rely on specialized software tied to Microsoft Products and Liscenses the biggest advantage of linux over windows is sustained stability. If you surf the web, watch videos, stream videos such as netflix, check email, and do some occasional word processing, linux is a cost effective and speedy alternative to any MSWindows available, without any of the issues a Windows OS causes. When you start diving heavily into photo editing, wine, games, and studio aplications, and custom gaming rigs, that's a whole other can of worms.

[montag dp]

This doesn't directly answer the question, but I thought I would make this remark. Recently I've had to use Windows for some things. I found Windows can be made much more pleasant to use by installing:

* Dexpot for multiple workspace support, plus the needed "Scale" and "Exposé" views (though they're not called that). It also has a setting that allows the taskbar to work more like a dock, where clicking an icon for an app on a different workspace brings you to that workspace and shows the window you selected.

* Cygwin for a bash shell emulator.

* MinGW for GNU compilers.

* KDE for Windows so I can use Dolphin, Okular, Kate, and others which are simply better (IMO) than their Windows counterparts.

Once you install these things, Windows can get a little closer to being as nice to use as Linux (but still with a long way to go).

[montag dp]

But even so, it is so refreshing to get back to Linux...

[Dragonbite]

Windows can make me have to upgrade my Windows 7 Home to Windows 7 Pro if I want to back up over the network, while Linux lets me do whatever I want so long as I don't mind putting some things together like and Ikea cabinet.

[paul_c2]

For me, I find Windows is WAY easier to deal with when you have some issue, ie: just fixed my sound problem over HDMI, man that was some pain in the ... took me 2 days to find what was wrong, all the solutions out there were useless but one, and finding that one solution was real hard work and it was something VERY simple that still needed me to jump through hoops! For Windows, I usually find the right solution within minutes and I don't have to run to the terminal everytime!

Also there are a few softwares that I uses in Windows that are not working in Ubuntu : PPStream (works but it's quite buggy) & Baidu Player, it works with Wine but in Windows it also works within browsers but of course that particular feature is what I use and of course it doesn't work with Wine, so the Chinese TV website my wife uses is now useless and with PPStream being unstable I have quite a lot of insentives (read : presure from my wife) to switch back to Windows!

There are other minor things but for me those are the main "annoyances" that would make me switch back to Windows 7.

[paul_c2]

oh well, I guess Ubuntu's God heard me ... Windows just kicked me where it hurts!

One of my laptops wifi "stopped" working, can't connect to any protected wifi (WPA or WEP) but can on an open network ... there was no updates or new software installed recently so it's either a virus (couldn't find one), a driver issue (that I couldn't fix) or one of those infamous Windows Gremlin!

Either way I'm only left with one option (after hours of Google search, driver install, reinstall and reboots), the "easily-fix-everything-solution-for-any-Windows" : a fresh Win 7 install!