How cute. Did I said that there were no graphical network managers? That I was forced by the evil Linus Torvalds to use the console? No. There are quite a few, tried 2 or 3 that I found on Synaptic and didn't found one that I liked so I did all the work on my own.

As I said, you could grab a Gnome (or KDE, or Unity, or whatever Mint uses) desktop environment and have all the graphical utilities you'd want, I simply choose not to and travel the rough path to see if I could learn something.

But bash the OS for my personal choices! I sometimes use the console on Windows too, must be a pretty archaic OS too right? Ooooh, spooky cmd!

You misunderstand. I'm not bashing Linux, I'm bashing your personal choices.

Out of interest when was the last time you installed Windows?

I have to agree that installing Windows is not something for beginners though. Recently I installed Windows 7 three times on two different machines. So that is twice on one PC on the same day, as after installing some weird error came up that even the helpdesk didn't know how to fix, so the advice was to just wipe the harddrive and install again. On the second machine installing went fine, until installing some additional software (ironically with Microsofts own installer) failed because it had no access to write to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu. Right, Windows installer not having permission to add icons to the start menu, after a fresh install. Luckily there was a solution, involving either changing advanced user account control properties of a hidden folder (good luck for beginners) or entering a number of obscure command line commands (good luck for beginners). Installing Windows 8 luckily goes a lot faster, and except for the blue screen of death that showed every time you booted it up it worked perfectly. So in the end, out of four clean Windows installations, just one went correctly. And still some people claim Windows is easy....

I've installed Windows Vista, 7 and 8 multiple times over the past year on computers and VMs. Not one problem aside from getting the correct ethernet driver from a vendor's site.

I think you can use any other Server OS as well and it will not crash anyways. I run a root server for years now with linux installed. We never had a crash, only scheduled maintenance. So Linux is not either a crashing OS.

Oh no, sorry I wasn't saying Linux does crash. I was just referring to a previous post where somebody claimed Windows as a Server sucks because it does crash regulary.
I know Linux can run years 24/7, as many other server OS, that's what they are made for.

1) Starts and runs slower than Mint.

Same Hardware? Else the comparison is pretty pointless.

4) Insists on being rebooted after every damn update (a problem that gets a bit worse since i sometimes only boot Windows at work once or twice per week and thus usually have a bunch of important updates waiting for me)

What makes people do that. I know many that only put their device in suspended mode, claiming that it takes too long to boot.
My suggestions:

• Don't install a bunch off crap that you aren't even using. Especially things that start with Windows, add tray icons, uneccessary services, desktop widgets or toolbars...
  
• Get yourself a SSD!

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="JinixVomitorium" data-cid="5017534" data-time="1357339098"><p>
Linux is just about the best OS out there. It will run many MS programs through WINE, and if it wont run, there are several substitute softwares. The best Linux distros ive used sofar are... ubunt(before version 10.10) , Linux MINT, Crunchbang. Every since i switched to linux back in 205ish... i've found it very difficult to chang back to windows. and well... Mac OS is for losers.</p></blockquote>

I just believe this post screams fanboy. While a topic like this will have to do about opinion so a little fanboy will come out. Though yours IMO just screams it.

1: your main argument for making it better is that it can run windows programs through wine? Don't see how it makes it a better OS.

2: your ending of Mac OSX is for losers screams it even more and makes your points null.

Their are pros and cons for every OS. Their are something's I feel OSX does better than both Linux and Windows. At the same time Linux has some things that I tend to like more than the other OS's. Windows also does stuff well (obvious with how popular it is). Saying an OS is for losers screams fanboy and IMO makes any point you have null.

My suggestions:

• Don't install a bunch off crap that you aren't even using. Especially things that start with Windows, add tray icons, uneccessary services, desktop widgets or toolbars...
• Get yourself a SSD!

For not installing a bunch off crap like you name it you need more insight into the system and what is needed and what not. The tray thingi is another point that needs more knowledge than many W-users do not have.
I am on your side to say that W is easy to install as long as everything works fine, specially that all devices drivers are working, the disk and network drivers at the first.
If you need a network driver first and you have no second machine to download and prepare the installation you are lost. Had that with a WinXP installation and a 3com 1GB Fibre interface that is not supported out of the box, and I do not expected it.

Why should I use a SSD? To startup faster? And to shutdown the machine completely?

I think it is a good thing anyways to shutdown a workstation and poweroff. My household gets cut off at the end of the day except the fridge. It saves me a lot of money along the year.

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="shadowomf" data-cid="5018116"><p><br /></p><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Tribad" data-cid="5017715"><p>I think you can use any other Server OS as well and it will not crash anyways. I run a root server for years now with linux installed. We never had a crash, only scheduled maintenance. So Linux is not either a crashing OS.</p></blockquote>Oh no, sorry I wasn't saying Linux does crash. I was just referring to a previous post where somebody claimed Windows as a Server sucks because it does crash regulary.<br />I know Linux can run years 24/7, as many other server OS, that's what they are made for.<br /><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="SimonForsman" data-cid="5017722"><p>1) Starts and runs slower than Mint.</p></blockquote>Same Hardware? Else the comparison is pretty pointless.<br /><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="SimonForsman" data-cid="5017722"><p>4) Insists on being rebooted after every damn update (a problem that gets a bit worse since i sometimes only boot Windows at work once or twice per week and thus usually have a bunch of important updates waiting for me)</p></blockquote>What makes people do that. I know many that only put their device in suspended mode, claiming that it takes too long to boot.<br />My suggestions:<ul class="bbc"><li>Don't install a bunch off crap that you aren't even using. Especially things that start with Windows, add tray icons, uneccessary services, desktop widgets or toolbars...</li><li>Get yourself a SSD!</li></ul> <br /><p><br /></p></blockquote><br />
Its my work machine, same hardware, no crap installed, just the essentials i need to actually do my work (The Linux system has far more software and services installed),
an SSD is pretty much out of the question since both operating systems run more than fast enough and i need the extra space (its a laptop, if i swap to a SSD i'll have to put most of my data on a external USB or network drive instead which would be a royal pain in the ass),
also: i just said that Windows was slower than Mint, not that it was too slow to be used.

The reason i only boot Windows once or twice per week is because Mint is the more productive enviroment for me(I could probably learn how to use powershell, install a working desktop enviroment, the default one in Win7 is lacking too many basic usability features like window grouping, multiple desktops, etc (if it does have them i have no idea how to enable them), etc, for Windows aswell but i just don't see the point when Mint has what i want either out of the box or a few commands away and i've been using Linux for so long that i feel more comfortable using it, heck i don't even know where to start looking to get the functionality i want in Windows).

Why should I use a SSD? To startup faster?

Not really. A SSD makes the entire system faster (and cooler, and more quiet), not just when booting. It's one of the best things to invest your money in, making a much bigger overall difference than e.g. having the most expensive CPU and the biggest bad-ass graphics card.

Anything that needs to touch the disk in a not strictly linear fashion will run a hundred times faster with a SSD due to almost non-existing access time. Which includes every compiler, everything program with a lot of DLLs, and all programs with a lot of plugins (so, every browser, office program, image manipulation program, etc.).

The buffer cache helps, certainly. But only to some extent, and only after the first run. SSD helps always, consistenly.

It's almost all I use. At home I have a headerless linux server, a linux laptop to work on. I rent space on a linux server in a hosting centre for backing everything up to. At work my desktop is a linux system and the network is all Linux - my stuff runs on some tens of thousands of the servers in various places. I'd hate to be looking after that many machines running anything else.

I have a Mac Air for carrying around, but generally that's just used to SSH to a proper computer.

good luck, installing Windows from scratch is a pain and not for beginners

I'm sorry but your credability went out the window (no pun intended) with this one. I've seen you here for ages so you're definatly not a troll, but your statement that Windows is difficult to install is as stupid as claiming Linux is unstable. Wow..

It's a choice, like driving a Toyota vs. a Ford vs. an Opel. Some people prefer one, some prefer the other.

Except there's not a huuuuge difference between those (or most) cars. Fanboy much? :)
The difference between Linux and Windows isn't exactly small.

Not really. A SSD makes the entire system faster (and cooler, and more quiet), not just when booting. It's one of the best things to invest your money in, making a much bigger overall difference than e.g. having the most expensive CPU and the biggest bad-ass graphics card.

Also makes the swap page unusable (try to use it on a SSD and watch how quickly it dies due to wear off), so you better add more RAM to make up for it if you were using swap beforehand (wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't because of several programs trying to use up as much memory as possible - yes, including many of the most popular programs). Of course if swap was disabled don't bother with it since it was already running OK without it.

Also may want to disable disk cache in browsers for a similar reason, although the situation there isn't anywhere even remotely as bad, so you can live with it really. As a general rule, you want to avoid writes to the SSD as much as possible, both due to wear off and because they're horribly slow (even slower than on a hard disk - SSDs are faster at reading).

Anything that needs to touch the disk in a not strictly linear fashion will run a hundred times faster with a SSD due to almost non-existing access time. Which includes every compiler, everything program with a lot of DLLs, and all programs with a lot of plugins (so, every browser, office program, image manipulation program, etc.).

Every program ever, really, thanks to filesystem fragmentation. Opening a file seems to be the biggest offender in such operations anyway.