I’m with you dude! I would be 100% Linux if it could run Autocad

Well I tried Vista about 4 times. The install and force yourself to use it for a week 4 times. Twice I went back to XP. Then I tried Ubuntu and tried XP and Vista but still went back to Ubuntu.

So now it has been exclusively Ubuntu for me since 8.04. I’d probably still be using XP if it had some of the basic features Ubuntu has out the box. It just takes too much cruft and too many downloads to get a modern and usable XP machine.

Vista made me switch. That said I’ve got nothing that says I won’t switch to Windows 7. It’s just not likely. I’ve come to appreciate the other side.

I met a techie at the bar last night. Once he identified me as a tech minded person he asked if I had tried the new beta’s for windows 7. Apparently even though he is a Ubuntu user, he was claiming that windows 7 appears to be sleek.

I thought that was an interesting comment from someone in our own community. I’m still sticking to my Ubuntu though.

If I could get a Adobe Photoshop Album working on Wine or equivalent opensource product that has the same tagging features, my desktop would lose Windows faster than you can blink.

I have tried the beta on my laptop and in a vm. I must say that it is faster than vista as far as I can tell at this stage from my limited vista experience. I also prefer the interface and the changes they have made to the control panel, task bar etc. They have also made UAC pretty much like the linux way of doing things, where it asks for a password for administrative tasks; these are much more infrequent than the many accept, deny pop-up boxes in vista.

Anyway…despite the improvement over Vista imo, it’s still windows. It still gets viruses, it still hogs system resources and it still limits my use of my computer to how Microsoft envision me using it.

So I will be staying firmly with some Linux distro or another, probably still arch. However I will recommend it to those poor Vista users who refuse to try Ubuntu.

@Ian Clifton: Don’t forget drivers. I think I blogged about it before but I had the following happen to me more than once:

I install Ubuntu on a laptop and everything works out of the box (including Wifi)

I install WinXP and it doesn’t recognize audio card, video card, ethernet card, wifi card and my resolution is 640×480 with 8 bit color.

This is why most people with no clue buy computer with preinstaled windows, and then just trash it and buy a new one when it stops working.

@mcai8sh4: I believe you can disable it somewhere, but it is all or nothing option. Ideally you would want to leave some of these prompts in there for added security.

@Matt`: Of course – if they don’t revamp the UI then no one knows anything changed. Supposedly the calc.exe in Vista was completely rewritten to be much more accurate, and more powerful but they left the UI intact.

Then every single blogger in existence was like “Yea, Vista is nice and all but I can’t believe they didn’t even touch calc.exe – that app really needed to be updated.”

Sad but true.

When Vista was revealed to be the OS equivalent of a sack of dead kittens I was thinking “if they don’t do something special with Windows 7 then XP will probably be the last version of Windows I use”.

Right now I’m thinking that Windows 7 has about as many compelling reasons to switch as Vista did – it’s the same basic engine underneath and Microsoft’s idea of a pretty interface is my idea of stupid-looking. MS Paint with a ribbon? I don’t like the ribbon even in more featureful programs where it might have a use in organising stuff into tabs… MS Paint does NOT need a ribbon. If they were to make Paint more useful… maybe support transparency or layers or an undo queue longer than 3 items then that would be a legit improvement – I like Paint for it’s ease of use on little things, but really it’s painfully limited (at which point I switch to Paint.Net)

But no… they forge ahead with the extra shiny-ness, and I hear little to nothing about things that will actually make it better for me, over XP. Fuck’em, XP FTW.

@Ian Clifton: I think you’ve summed it up well there. And yes… “Do you want me to run the program you asked me to run” is REALLY annoying. There needs to be an option “Yes I know what I’m doing, stop treating me like a child and I’ll suffer any consequences for my actions” button.

95 was interesting but broken. 98 was pretty fast but leaky. 2000 was slow and stable. XP was a decent mix between 98 and 2000 after it had been out a few years. I’ve barely touched Vista, but I watch my brother get pissed off within minutes of using it. “Did you mean to click that?” “Are you sure?” “Do you want to install the thing you just installed?” It’s simultaneously humorous and sad.

I was off Windows for so long that it’s been an interesting experience getting back to it (XP, that is). I have to add office software. I have to add software for making PDFs. I have to add software for viewing PDFs. I have to add software to properly support most archives (e.g., rar). I have to add virus protection. I have to add an instant messenger. I have to add a good graphics program. I have to add Putty and other related software. I have to add a torrent client. Now I have to wonder why my Start > All Programs menu is 1000 pixels tall….

@mcai8sh4: Yup, the right tool for the right job is my mantra too. Whether we want it or not, Windows is the dominant system in Business World and if your deliverables are mostly Office files then you should by all means use MS Windows and MS Office on work machines.

That said, my cousin works at a local medical center and her team was able to almost completely phase out MS Office from their machines. They are also planning on slowly phasing out Windows. It works for them because it allows them to cut costs (no need to buy licenses) and time spent doing SAM related crap.

I can’t imagine doing the same thing at my work, since we actually need to share and exchange files with our clients and we already are having MAJOR issues with the Office 2003 vs Office 2007 conversion quirks (as small as they may seem). Add OpenOffice to the mix, and you have a recipe for mayhem.

I guess I ramped up the hate for teh funnies here. ;P

I tried the beta, I didn’t go to the hassle of dlding it like others, but I have a friend who’s geeky enough to care, but not geeky enough to try Linux instead.

Personally, I thought it was Vista, but ran better and took less resources. I didn’t spend much time with it, but it seemed like what you would have thought Vista would have been.

I firmly believe in the right tool for the job, hence I don’t dislike M$… or love them. I use Windows every day (but ‘My’ time is spent in Linux). Since I control what software is used at work, I use M$ because it suits my needs perfectly. But I do prefer Linux for my ‘real’ computing.

I currently have a duel boot Vista/Ubuntu machine. And Honestly have not installed ANYTHING in Vista… there simply doesn’t seem a need.

I understand (to a degree) your subconscious hate for M$, but I disagree. I like(d) XP, didn’t like paying for it but then again I don’t like paying for anything. I also like the look of Vista… if W7 is just ‘Vista done properly’ then I’d be happy with that. But I wouldn’t switch back.

For me, the perfect OS at present is Linux with XP running in Virtualbox.

Let’s just hope that the ‘dumbing down’ approach to computing (that we are currently seeing) doesn’t continue. Making things easier, doesn’t mean Making them better (unless your stupid!).