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Remote desktop vs. remote displayRemote desktop vs. remote displayPosted Feb 16, 2013 6:00 UTC (Sat) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205)In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by Cyberax Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland
>Again, Linux might be OK for you on desktop, but it certainly is not significantly better than Windows.
This is very silly. But if we are going to argue with anecdotes, let me tell you about my experience with the last six Windows computers I tried to use.
Windows takes forever to boot up (and requires frequent reboots!), displays a desktop long before it has actually booted (to prevent you ever knowing if the computer is in a usable state), routinely freezes up as it pegs the hard drive for long periods of time for no apparent reason, changes keyboard layouts out from under you once or twice every hour (and often only for specific applications), and generally looks and feels unprofessional. The installer cannot handle repartitioning or multiboot, but you must run it every year or so because the OS naturally degrades to the point that it must be reinstalled.
If you buy Windows off the shelf, you will find it is missing crucial drivers, so you get the fun of searching a motherboard website for Ethernet drivers and then transferring them via USB key to the new system. Or, you can install an OEM copy which will have most drivers, and spend a month finding and deleting crapware and advertisements. It is your choice.
It has awful filesystem support, awful network support, awful driver support, no tiling window managers, no scripting languages. It ships without any sort of development environment or compiler. It requires a slew of arcane third-party programs to constantly monitor the system and spackle over security holes. These all need constant updates.
Office can't handle nearly as many formats as LO can, nor can it handle LaTeX. Windows Media Player can't play half the formats out there, including Vorbis or Theora or FLAC. Outlook can't deal with PGP unless you pay extra to yet another third party. (So I guess it's OK that Windows doesn't support any filesystems, since it can't deal with any files..)
Almost of its software is closed-source, so you have no chance of dealing with the barrage of bugs you will encounter. Of the dozens of vendors you will need to deal with, you will find that most of them are either AWOL or openly hostile to bug reports. There is no software repository or standard way to manage updates, so everything just pops up and interrupts you.
Windows is great if you are looking for garbage and despair. But for anything involving files or networks, you'd be much, much better off with Linux.
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Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 6:35 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Sure, whatever. Windows sucks and must die. We know that, yes.
However, everybody else just doesn't care about it much. Most computers can be ordered with pre-installed Windows that works sufficiently well enough for 99% of users. Who don't care at all about LaTeX or scripting.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 25, 2013 14:59 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
So... we should ditch Linux on the desktop because Windows works fine for the majority of users who don't want to *do* much with their computers?
That's logical.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 25, 2013 16:49 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
That just about sums it up. For the 'classic' desktop Linux only, of course. It's clear that it won't be able to capture a significant marketshare from Windows without some pretty drastic changes in development process throughout the whole stack. And these changes are not going to happen.
On the other hand, moving from the areas where Linux is a strong contender into 'desktopy' segments seems to be a better strategy.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 25, 2013 18:26 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I think there's always room for another Mac OSX, in no way dominant but carving out a significant and sustainable market share. I think a similar strategy would work as well, selling a small number of boutique devices as a profit to fund development on a constrained set of hardware. Canonical could maybe pull it off if they could focus on one thing but I think Google has a better chance with their Chrome books which seem to be doing OK.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 25, 2013 20:57 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I think there's always room for another Mac OSX, in no way dominant but carving out a significant and sustainable market share. I'm not so sure. Mac OSX is only sustainable because Apple sells hundreds of millions iPods and iPhones. It's not a sustainable as a purely desktop OS. And I'm not sure even large companies (like RedHat) have enough money to pour in the development of Mac OSX alternative. Canonical could maybe pull it off if they could focus on one thing but I think Google has a better chance with their Chrome books which seem to be doing OK. These are no yet sustainable by itself: they are somewhat popular but you can't develop software for ChromeOS on ChromeOS. Give it few years and situation may change, though.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Mar 11, 2013 9:34 UTC (Mon) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
> but you can't develop software for ChromeOS on ChromeOS.
In theory, you develop it for the web and run it on a server an it "just works" on chromeos... and anywhere else there's a reasonably current browser. Yes, as always with the web there's some issues with portability on the advanced stuff, but it's still far more portable than stuff written to a local system api.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 11:32 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] I ran the same installation of Windows XP Home for something like five or six years without needing to reinstall, and I've never had a Windows XP Pro installation at work's lifespan be shorter than the corporate desktop-PC replacement cycle. Fact is, a Linux box whose user treats it as cavalierly as most people treat their Windows boxes will break.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 15:45 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Fact is, a Linux box whose user treats it as cavalierly as most people treat their Windows boxes will break. Could you provide a citation, please?
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 22, 2013 17:23 UTC (Fri) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link] I ran the same installation of Windows XP Home for something like five or six years without needing to reinstall, and I've never had a Windows XP Pro installation at work's lifespan be shorter than the corporate desktop-PC replacement cycle. Fact is, a Linux box whose user treats it as cavalierly as most people treat their Windows boxes will break.I recommend you to stop telling us some fairy tells. I reinstall windows boxes quite often, so you won't trick me. Fact is Linux doesn't break unless you break it intentionally. Windows breaks, because it's broken by design.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 22, 2013 17:44 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] It appears to me that it is your intent to state that I have knowingly made a false statement (I admit that there was a slight error - the Windows XP Home installation I recently abandoned due to purchasing a new desktop PC was only three years old - but it was accidental and certainly not in the land of "fairy tales"). Would you like to disabuse me of this impression, or is it correct?
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 22, 2013 18:49 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
"Fact is Linux doesn't break unless you break it intentionally."
I have *no* idea how I managed to get paid for most of the past 5 years, then.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Mar 5, 2013 21:18 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Why this didn't make QOTW I have no idea.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 13:38 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Fact is Linux doesn't break unless you break it intentionally.
Aha, haha, haaahaaahaHAHAAAAaa
That's probably the most hilarious thing I've heard in the last three years.
Hehe.
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