Heh first time I installed ubuntu. Ran through all the updates which broke it next time I logged on, just wouldn't do anything(would just freeze at the startup screen loading or whatever). Eventually narrowed it down to graphic drivers.

Bah,

What do you want for nothing? Rubber Biscuit?

Wanting it to just work, mac: $1500.
Getting it work in a usable environment only to get spyware from a porn site, windows: $300
Pulling your head out of your ass and learning to install home-brew drivers, Linux: Priceless.

Money can buy you ease, but freedom is worth more than pennies.


Yes I will agree linux has driver issues but...
A) it's free
it's free
C) it's open, for you to fix it.
D) it's free


You learn to either work around your problems, fix it your-self, deal with it, or fork out $300 for latest windows.
That being said Ubuntu sucks, get a real man's linux like Arch or Slackware

[dont mind the snarcasm; im trying to stay true to the format of a flamewar here]

Most of code compiles on Windows under MinGW.[/quote]Im distrustful of 'most'.

]Both Unix and Linux variants take from POSIX. Linux and unix are not related, Linux was created as anti-Unix, at least in the beginning.[/quote]Whatever. They cross compile without modification; I dont care what thats called.

Windows is not POSIX compliant, but POSIX interface can be used on Windows, some of it natively (pthreads), some via minor modifications (winsock) and some completely from emulated environment (MinGW).[/quote]Kudos for packing so much bad news in a single sentence.

This doesn't make sense. Python is platform agnostic.[/quote]Evidently, youve never tried. Even the core elements show a decided indifference towards windows (installers are often not available for the bittage / python version you are looking for), but most packages just come as a llinux distribution. Im sure there is some way to make it work under windows, but ive been told I can follow the linux instructions under both linux and macosx, and then it 'just works'. That seems more appealing than trying to turn windows into linux; but I could be wrong.

Yes, Macs "just work". If your "work" is hanging around StarBucks, sipping coffee while arranging photos and buying next selection from iTunes.[/quote] Dont get me started on the mac-bashing, but my coworker is running his CUDA code on his mac. Which compiles without modification for a linux server. Thats what im aiming for; I dont much care what it is called, or wether its hip with hipsers or geeks.

As later mentioned (CUDA), you are not looking for typical work.[/quote]Meaning which? Linux is only for hanging around the computer hackers club and geeking out over open sourceness?

Ah, CUDA. That will be a pain, regardless on which OS you use. Get used to all kinds of kernel-level debugging and even worse, blindly guessing at what went wrong since much of it is black box with no diagnostics.[/quote]I know; if its up to me id do all this in visual studio, being the microsoft fanboy which I am, which, you know, does come with all these tools.

And before getting a Mac, make sure it actually comes with nVidia card. Apple prefers Radeons these days.[/quote]I may not know anything about linux, but im not stupid.

A typical PC user is in the same boat, and the claim he debates is that Linux is ready for those kind of people.[/quote]
I would not treat a CUDA developer as "typical PC user".

No, for someone who needs this type of work the complaints stated here, let alone being completely oblivious to *nix is not really excusable.[/quote]
So if you are a programmer, you have to know linux? Well, here is your living counterexample. Ive been programming since I can remember, im am confortable with all flavors of programming language, and I guess I owe that in large part to never wasting much time in the desert of creativity and grindingly boring morass of convention that is system administration and operating systems.

Yes I will agree linux has driver issues but...
A) it's free
it's free
C) it's open, for you to fix it.
D) it's free

You learn to either work around your problems, fix it your-self, deal with it, or fork out $300 for latest windows.

OP is asking for work machine.

$300 is total cost. Employee salary is 1/3 to 1/4 of added value. So employee salary is $100. Taxes and everything else take about 50% of that, so $50 income to employee.

Divide $50 by your hourly rate and you get the time needed for Windows license to be a better deal than "free".

Then note that Windows for companies comes with corporate license which is cheaper per seat and counts as life-time cost, and suddenly the effective cost per employee is one-time expense of 1 work hour.

OP also mentioned not wanting to do sysadmin work, which makes sense. Learning *nix will take them weeks, during which they will also lose productivity. Such transition can easily cost $100k per employee.


So many people simply don't understand how expensive free is.

guess I owe that in large part to never wasting much time in the desert of creativity and grindingly boring morass of convention that is system administration and operating systems.[/quote]
What did you work in? LOGO?

It's impossible to even build something without dealing with system administration and it's impossible to write Hello World on Windows without using WinAPI, which is OS.


We all know Linux is not ready for prime time desktop, but a CUDA programmer going on such a rant doesn't evoke any sympathy from me.

What do you want for nothing? Rubber Biscuit?

I dont want anything for nothing; infact, id pay a high price for something that 'just works', because, you know, unlike linux geeks living in their parents basement, my time is worth money.

[so hows that, valderman? yeah im talking to you there ]

[edit: what the previous poster said]

Lies, I tell you. Installation is smooth; just a few clicks, no problems there. But the first problem turns up soon enough: my linksys wireless network isnt working. Why? Cause they dont make any linux drivers. Well then thats linksys fault you say? Well great, but I couldnt care less whos fault it is: its not working. Some googling informs me that one can make the windows XP driver work on linux. You just need half a day of hacking around the innards of linux; that is, if you are an experienced linux user, which im not. But the most damning thing is of course: if this driver magic is technically possible, then why isnt there some tool included with linux to facilitate the process? Bottom line: it doesnt work, and its not going to work given the amount of time im willing to spend on it.

An hour or so later, after I try to reboot into linux after some windows work, it has already completely died. If any of my hardware broke, windows didnt notice. I didnt change a single setting, didnt download a single driver, exited linux properly. Yet it fails to boot, without any visible excuse. Well, it dumps a ton of jargon on my head, which, if I knew what it meant, might suggest a single-second solution. But I dont, and more importantly, I dont care to find out. Ive got actual work to do. But hey, at least this screen of death isnt blue; I guess that counts for something. For the record: i havnt had windows pull such crap on me since windows 98, and if it did, it was always clearly my own fault, messing around with system drivers or something.

So, to recap: Linux is a lie. In particular the notion that it can even lick windows' boots when it comes to 'just working'. Yeah, im looking at you, GDnet lounge linux fanbois. You had me fooled. I guess im going to shell out for snow leopard and do my unix stuff on that.

Flame on!

Ok so no linksys driver for linux, what about when there is a new version of windows and you shell out money for it and you find out that the manufacturer isnt going to make a driver for it, what do you do? you ring customer support of that hardware to see what the best advice they give you is OR YOU BUY ANOTHER ONE, this is self explanatory, sooner or later that hardware will not have a driver for the latest version of windows, its the whole hardware lifecycle

So the best advice is to like the people above suggested try it in virtualbox or if you want to keep the ubuntu installation then do some research on wifi adapters that do "just work" and if it works now then it will likely work for its whole lifetime no matter what version of ubuntu you are on

You rebooted ubuntu and now it doesnt work, well what was you doing, the same can be said for windows, if you was messing with it and then you rebooted and now it doesnt work then its obviously something you done or it was just some random event, I have been running ubuntu for years now and I have only needed to reinstall when I HAVE MESSED IT UP

linux is not really a lie, if you got compatible hardware then it will just work, I got a server downstairs and it was running 8.04 LTS (Long term support) and its up time is amazing, way longer than any windows server installation, the only time it needed a reinstall was when 10.04 (the next LTS) came out and I have gotten so used to clean installing because I see it as a clean start where I can experiment again and try out newer software

the specs of this server is a

800mhz pentium 3 CPU
512mb RAM (originally 256mb)
500gb Hard drive (had to get a SATA PCI card because there was no sata ports on the motherboard)
matrox millennium g200 or something like that

Everything works except for compiz which is 3d effects which the graphics card isnt capable of so is not linux's fault

That being said Ubuntu sucks, get a real man's linux like Arch or Slackware

Both you and I know that arch or slackware is not the best linux distro to start off with

The best distros for newbies is ubuntu (or its derivatives) or opensuse

<br />[quote name='JSoftware' timestamp='1299345249' post='4782113']<br />[quote name='Eelco' timestamp='1299341071' post='4782085']<br />As an introduction, ive always been an exclusively windows user. Not for any particular reason; im just not into system administration. The less time I spend on it the better, so that pretty much makes one use a single operating system. Which due to historical reasons, happened to be windows.<br /><br />Now, that has worked just fine for me up until now, but at my new job I find that many people are using unix stuff, so im going to have to bite the bullet and learn a new paradigm that I dont care about sooner or later, I figured. I was actually kinda looking forward to it. Even though I dont care for knowing all the innards of my operating system, id been told this was optional nowadays with linux... -<br />

<br />I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Thanks; thats precisely the kind of knowledge I was hoping to avoid.<br />[/quote]<br /><br /><br />

Wait, you seriously are attempting to Avoid knowledge? Why would you even start this thread? Go stick your head in the sand, and then go look for some cheap labour job that doesn't require any real critical thinking or learning new skills.

There is never an excuse to avoid knowledge. If I employed someone with your attitude, they would be out the door the first chance I could legally fire them.

Bah,

What do you want for nothing? Rubber Biscuit?

Wanting it to just work, mac: $1500.
Getting it work in a usable environment only to get spyware from a porn site, windows: $300
Pulling your head out of your ass and learning to install home-brew drivers, Linux: Priceless.

Money can buy you ease, but freedom is worth more than pennies.


Yes I will agree linux has driver issues but...
A) it's free
it's free
C) it's open, for you to fix it.
D) it's free


You learn to either work around your problems, fix it your-self, deal with it, or fork out $300 for latest windows.
That being said Ubuntu sucks, get a real man's linux like Arch or Slackware

I paid $140 for the OEM version of Win7 Pro when I built this computer. And magically it just worked. I don't spend all day looking at porn or downloading torrents so malware hasn't been an issue. I payed $700 for a Mac mini and it worked even easier then Win7. I can see if you live at home, have a crappy part time job, and lots of free time that endless screwing around with Linux might seem 'fun'. I have a fulltime job and a social life, paying money for something that works makes a lot more sense. And as was stated, "free" in the corporate world generally ends up costing a lot more then just buying something that works.

[quote name='BronzeBeard' timestamp='1299347111' post='4782129']
Bah,

What do you want for nothing? Rubber Biscuit?

Wanting it to just work, mac: $1500.
Getting it work in a usable environment only to get spyware from a porn site, windows: $300
Pulling your head out of your ass and learning to install home-brew drivers, Linux: Priceless.

Money can buy you ease, but freedom is worth more than pennies.


Yes I will agree linux has driver issues but...
A) it's free
it's free
C) it's open, for you to fix it.
D) it's free


You learn to either work around your problems, fix it your-self, deal with it, or fork out $300 for latest windows.
That being said Ubuntu sucks, get a real man's linux like Arch or Slackware

I paid $140 for the OEM version of Win7 Pro when I built this computer. And magically it just worked. I don't spend all day looking at porn or downloading torrents so malware hasn't been an issue. I payed $700 for a Mac mini and it worked even easier then Win7. I can see if you live at home, have a crappy part time job, and lots of free time that endless screwing around with Linux might seem 'fun'. I have a fulltime job and a social life, paying money for something that works makes a lot more sense. And as was stated, "free" in the corporate world generally ends up costing a lot more then just buying something that works.
[/quote]I'd like to point out that the "endless screwing around" that a lot of people connect to Linux simply isn't there if you know what you're doing and make sure to get supported hardware (which is quite frankly trivial nowadays.) I've been using Debian extensively for eight years or so, and the only time I ever do any "screwing around" is when I get a new machine (or my boot drive dies and needs to get replaced, which happened last week.) The rest of the time, "it just works." If something needs to be installed, upgraded or configured, it's literally a matter of seconds.
Meanwhile, on my Windows 7 machine, it takes quite a lot of "screwing around" just to upgrade Visual Studio or install Erlang, and with all of W7's moronic quirks, I'd say it's nowhere near "ready for the desktop." Not because that's undisputable fact, but because I'm used to and enjoy the way Debian works.

Boldly proclaiming that GNU/Linux (let's avoid further interjections!) is teh bestest because it's free of cost is stupid because, as someone previously said, that just isn't true unless your time is worthless. Claiming superiority for Windows and whining about how hard it is to get something working on GNU/Linux is similarly retarded because getting Linux to do what you want is trivial if you have the right knowledge.

From a developer perspective both have their pros and cons and, excepting situations where your tools are only available or significantly better on one platform or another, which one is "better" is just a matter of experience and personal taste.

tl;dr OS arguments are stupid.

you had it easy the last time I installed winXP, what didnt work out of the box was

ethernet/internet // biggy (lucky I had mac to go on internet + download stuff)
nvidia GPU drivers
usb2.0 // still only on usb1.0 but I can live with it
webcam // still doesnt work

everything worked out of the box with ubuntu

Of course this like your example are just anectdotal

2/10, trolled enough to get slightly annoyed. Well chosen subject, but execution needs more work. [/quote]
+1