21-01-2005 23:56									#1
	Will there ever be a decent alternative to Windows? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Sorry Linux fans, I think your OS sucks.

I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with. I want to be able to play all my games on this system.

Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?

I'm asking this because I'm currently installing a new version of Windows. I tried to upgrade my copy of Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2... big mistake. It completely screwed up my copy of Windows. Now I'm stuck installing it over again because of this. I'm going to have to reinstall all of my programs and games.

I want an alternative to Windows. Is there anything out there or on the horizon that looks promising? If not, will there ever be?

Will Linux ever be worth running? My disdain for Windows isn't strong enough to put up with the headaches that is LInux. Plus, I'm a gamer, so I would need an OS that is compatible with all my games. And LInux is NOT a reasonable alternative.

I want a choice dammit. Or at least I want Windows to be better.

	21-01-2005 23:57									#2
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	22-01-2005 00:05									#3
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No. OSs suck by definition. The real expansion of the very abbreviation is "obscene suckiness".

	22-01-2005 00:09									#4
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Newer version of Linux aren't headaches. They were surprisingly easy to install and use. Hell, with KDE or GNOME, you forget you're using X Windows and Linux.

	22-01-2005 00:11									#5
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I hope that refers to a newer version of Gnome, because the one on some of the computers at my uni is bad enough you find yourself wishing you were using MSDOS 4.3 or something.

	22-01-2005 00:13									#6
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I prefer KDE myself.

	22-01-2005 00:25									#7
	Re: Will there ever be a decent alternative to Windows? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Sava Sorry Linux fans, I think your OS sucks.

Bite me.

quote: I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with.

Having read The Old New Thing for some time, no. For example, The Importance of Error Code Backwards Compatibility will blow your mind.

Windows is compatible with some utter crap. For example, most things released for Windows won't work with an XP Restricted User. Many won't work with an XP Power User. In other words, they are either crap or doubly crap.

It's like HTML. Because Microsoft intentionally accomodates idiots who can't code worth ****, they can't fix bugs that those idiots code around. Therefore, Windows is irrevocably buggy and unfixable.

quote: I want to be able to play all my games on this system. Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?

Fortunately, if Microsoft has its way, everyone will be playing games on crippled hardware like PS2 and XBox and this will cease to be a concern.

quote: I'm asking this because I'm currently installing a new version of Windows. I tried to upgrade my copy of Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2... big mistake. It completely screwed up my copy of Windows. Now I'm stuck installing it over again because of this. I'm going to have to reinstall all of my programs and games.

SP2 is generally a waste of time. I had my own problems with it because a DLL that Nero loaded on startup crashed SP2. I had to do some DOS boot fixery.

quote: I want an alternative to Windows. Is there anything out there or on the horizon that looks promising? If not, will there ever be?

Computer games are developed for whichever platform has the largest market share.

quote: I want a choice dammit. Or at least I want Windows to be better.

Lobby for abolition of copyright and fork Windows into something good and incompatible with its current incarnation.

	22-01-2005 00:26									#8
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Having tried Gnome for a bit, I went back to KDE. Gnome feels like an ugly straitjacket.

	22-01-2005 00:41									#9
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(hmm, Leons already linked to The Old New Thing, it appears... well, that's what I get for taking so long to type these posts)

Well, you certainly made your opinions clear ...

quote: I want an OS that will be completely compatible with everything Windows is compatible with. I want to be able to play all my games on this system. Will such an alternative to Windows ever exist? Or are we doomed to be subordinate to Microsoft?

Have you ever read Raymond Chen's blog? The stuff that Microsoft has had to do to keep compatible with older versions of their own OSes is quite incredible. There are projects that attempt to reimplement Windows, natively and on top of other OSes, but they're hopelessly overwhelmed by the amount of quirks of the platform and will stay overwhelmed for the foreseeable future. Also, besides the fact that the amount of work required to reimplement Windows is so huge, there's the fact that any such project is rather controversial among geeks who would really rather get as far away from Win32 as possible...

quote: I hope that refers to a newer version of Gnome, because the one on some of the computers at my uni is bad enough you find yourself wishing you were using MSDOS 4.3 or something.

Define "bad" . Also, which version is it? The way I understand GNOME's history, every geek loved the featureful 1.4, then absolutely everyone hated 2.0 and 2.2, and after that half of everyone has gradually started to learn to like the simpleness and the rest have hated the dumbing down of later versions...

	22-01-2005 00:45									#10
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Currently you can't run any games which require DirectX on Linux, right? Why is this? Couldn't this be countered somehow?

	22-01-2005 00:54									#11
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That's not quite right, actually. Wine itself has limited support for DirectX, Cedega (based on Wine) has more. It's just that these DirectX implementations aren't any more reliable than implementations of any other part of Windows, and even in the case that they do work, whether their performance is several magnitudes worse than on the MS implementations or only slightly worse is a matter of luck.

	22-01-2005 00:58									#12
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Dual booting would be the obvious solution.

Keep Windows for games and Linux for serious work. Given that computers boot up in next to no time these days, and the fact that you usually aren't running other programs when gaming, I don't see it as a problem.

	22-01-2005 01:03									#13
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Newer version of Linux aren't headaches.

The hell they aren't.

Do you know how difficult it is to install, say, Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux? Even if you have a Nvidia video card, etc...

I also totally broke my Debian install some time ago, trying to install gaim (a simple instant messenger). It needed a newer version of gtk-runtime, so I installed that. But wait! Gnome doesn't work with that gtk-runtime!

	22-01-2005 01:06									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Dual booting would be the obvious solution. Keep Windows for games and Linux for serious work. Given that computers boot up in next to no time these days, and the fact that you usually aren't running other programs when gaming, I don't see it as a problem.

Aside from the fact that you've got two independent file systems now, and the annoyance of using two different OSes.

The obvious solution is to not be a moron -- I see no possible reason for Sava to have to reinstall all of his programs from what he's described. Reformatting and reinstalling is just something a lot of idiots jump to doing, though it's almost always not necessary.

	22-01-2005 01:06									#15
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Does anyone even play UT2k4?

	22-01-2005 01:07									#16
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quote: Do you know how difficult it is to install, say, Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux? Even if you have a Nvidia video card, etc...

emerge -va nvidia-kernel
>> yes.
emerge -va ut2004
>> yes.

( to be fair, that's on Gentoo Linux using Portage package management, but any Linux system with Portage installed would work the same way. )

	22-01-2005 01:09									#17
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quote: Aside from the fact that you've got two independent file systems now, and the annoyance of using two different OSes.

I've done the two OSes thing before. If you are only using Windows for games (which is all it is good for) there's no problem.

	22-01-2005 01:09									#18
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quote: I also totally broke my Debian install some time ago, trying to install gaim (a simple instant messenger). It needed a newer version of gtk-runtime, so I installed that. But wait! Gnome doesn't work with that gtk-runtime!

Like I said, you have terrible luck with Linux.

I'm running a server that's rock-solid on Gentoo Unstable (keyword ~x86) using mysql 4, php 5, apache 2, with gaim 1.1.2, fluxbox, kde, gnome, subversion, and so on... on kernel 2.6.10

Hasn't borked since install.

	22-01-2005 01:09									#19
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quote: Are you a user of Windows? How are you doing on your backups? Have you had the machine hold in the middle of backups, by any chance? Have you lost any data? Have things disappeared into strange part of your disk, or have you had to reinstall the operating system and lose track of all your settings? Or are you a user of the Macintosh? One that is so simple and unreliable. No, rock-solid and uncomprehensible! So the beginning user puts something on the desktop, goes "OK, filed on sight... oops" and gets the full UNIX directory. How about Linux? Oh, that's great. We have this wonderful command-line interface, or we have the GNOME thing with really nice, incomprehensible widgets that were designed as a dumb-down of the command-line interface (as distinguished from clarity). Everything is designed either for people who need to know too much or for an imaginary stupid person.

-- (partly misquoted - if something doesn't make sense, it's my fault) [url=http://xanadu.com.au/ted/]Ted Nelson on the usability of different operating systems, in a lecture about ZigZag that I wasn't able to find online...

	22-01-2005 01:10									#20
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quote: I see no possible reason for Sava to have to reinstall all of his programs from what he's described. Reformatting and reinstalling is just something a lot of idiots jump to doing, though it's almost always not necessary.

Yes -- because we all know how stable and good XP sp2 is. If it doesn't work for your PC or start's ****ing around, it's because you're an idiot.

I just realised that I'm slowly starting to sound a bit like Comrade Tassadar...

	22-01-2005 01:12									#21
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If you do a whole wipe and integrated install of Win XP SP2, there are no problems.

The only thing is, do you really want to do a whole wipe and reinstall?

	22-01-2005 01:13									#22
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quote: Having tried Gnome for a bit, I went back to KDE. Gnome feels like an ugly straitjacket.

Fluxbox, my desktop/wm of choice.
KDE and Gnome are only on the server because it's got the best processor for compiling.

	22-01-2005 01:26									#23
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quote: Originally posted by VJ Yes -- because we all know how stable and good XP sp2 is. If it doesn't work for your PC or start's ****ing around, it's because you're an idiot.

If the PC starts ****ing around, call tech support or open a thread here and I can almost guarantee you there's a simple solution.

Even re-installing the operating system itself shouldn't force you to re-install other applications or lose any data.

I've only ever had to reformat a PC once, and that was actually a result of having a dual-boot Linux, and it totally demolishing my partition table...

	22-01-2005 01:36									#24
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I didn't have to reinstall my games and ****... just a few progs. Nothing major.

But my Gigabit PCI card doesn't want to work now. I'm looking at getting a new mobo anyways, so this isn't that big a deal.

	22-01-2005 01:40									#25
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quote: I've only ever had to reformat a PC once, and that was actually a result of having a dual-boot Linux, and it totally demolishing my partition table...

Which, no offense, sounds more like user error than anything...

Linux kernel itself doesn't ever write to the partition tables at all, iirc, and the programs fdisk, cfdisk and so on, have lots of safeguards...

	22-01-2005 01:40									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala Define "bad" . Also, which version is it? The way I understand GNOME's history, every geek loved the featureful 1.4, then absolutely everyone hated 2.0 and 2.2, and after that half of everyone has gradually started to learn to like the simpleness and the rest have hated the dumbing down of later versions...

I do not know what version it is. I would suppose one of the alter ones, since "featureful" isn't the word that pops into my mind when I think of it.

If making me long for MSDOS isn't the definition of bad, was is? I find the layout of menus etc counterintuitive. I really hate how much harder it is to hop around between various windows - there's no equivalent of Alt-Tab that I've found, and finding and remaximizing minimized windows is a pain. Icon listings in directories sometimes screw up on the screen.

That the tech staff has neutered everything neuterable doesn't help. There is, for instance, a fairly recent Mozilla browser installed, but the security settings are so insanely high - and they can apparently not be changed by mere users - that you're better off using the ancient Netscape version that's also provided (and which can be launched by a single click on the quicklaunch bar, while modern browser is burried in said counterintuitive menus).

	22-01-2005 01:41									#27
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Incidentally, is there a way to cap the percentage of CPU capacity a certain process under WinXP is allowed to use?

	22-01-2005 01:52									#28
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed Linux kernel itself doesn't ever write to the partition tables at all, iirc, and the programs fdisk, cfdisk and so on, have lots of safeguards...

It's not user error when the Red Hat partition wizard hard-locks while processing, my friend.

	22-01-2005 01:52									#29
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OS/2...failed.

BeOS...failed.

Linux...is still trying, but currently fails.

We should never say never, but it doesn't look good.

Asher: If you've never had to re-format due to Windows you're either immensely lucky or too young to have been a power user through the worst years ('95-'99). I'm supposing the latter.

	22-01-2005 01:55									#30
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quote: Originally posted by dejon Asher: If you've never had to re-format due to Windows you're either immensely lucky or too young to have been a power user through the worst years ('95-'99). I'm supposing the latter.

Are you kidding? I've been a heavy computer user since ~1990 and was the guy people came to for computer help all through the 90s. I can't recall how many times I've configured the DOS extended memory settings for my friends.

There's almost always an alternative to reformatting, it's just a nearly guaranteed way to fix a problem.

Too many people try to reboot, retry, reformat. All formatting does is give you a clean slate, it's a cheap way out of resolving a problem. I always try to dig down to the core of a problem.

I almost resorted to reformatting once, when Partition Magic totally screw Windows up to the point that it couldn't even boot in safe mode. I'm pretty sure more than 99% of people would've just reformatted in such a case, but I found a DOS bootdisk with NTFS capabilities and removed all trace of Partition Magic from Windows myself.