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Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet)
LinuxPlanet
compares Linux to Windows in the educational arena.
""Using Windows ME, we've had lots of problems with popups and spyware. There's been none of that with Linux," says Subroto Mukerjea, a site director for the Computer Learning Center in Fairfax County, VA. Mukerjea oversees one of 14 sites within an after school program for children and teens aged six to 16.
"Windows 95 was always going down," maintains Paul Mundell, national director of canine programs at Canine Companions for Independence, Santa Rosa, CA. "The problem with Windows 2000 isn't 'crashing.' It's just that, after a while, applications start running more slowly and features don't work as well unless you say to yourself, 'Maybe it's time to rebuild your hard drive.'""
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Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 17:54 UTC (Thu) by scmason (guest, #19869) [Link] It is good to hear about positive applications of the linux desktop. It may not be apples to apples to compare a modern linux with operating systems from 2000 and 95. The point is not diminished, however. For MOST users (non gamers) the linux desktop can perform all the needed functions in a more stable and more reliable manner. No virus/worm/backdoor worries.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 18:18 UTC (Thu) by dang (subscriber, #310) [Link] Am I the only person who cringes when people make a lot of the lack of viruses/worms/backdoors in linux? Damn. Trust me, when Linux does achieve domination on the desktop, then the viruses, worms, and backdoors will come. The bottom line is that for most people a computer is an appliance. It isn't maintained, it isn't monitored, it is just used until it breaks in some way and then it is replaced. Many of the popular exploits out there are succeeding despite the fact that fixes have been available for a long time ( on the desktop AND in the enterprise ). Nothing about this will change when people move from windows to linux. And the people who run windows as the admin user will be the same people firing up X as root.Which isn't to be doom and gloom. And it is certainly not a knock against Linux. I just think that it is bogus to parade Linux as proof against viruses and such. It is also risky. The FUD will really fly if that is trumpeted as a virtue of the platform and then proves to be untrue as soon as the desktop userbase grows to where it becomes easy and fun target misconfigured and poorly maintained systems.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 18:54 UTC (Thu) by chill633 (guest, #16013) [Link] Yes, viruses, worms and backdoors will be more prevalent when Linux gains more mainstream popularity, but they won't be anywhere near as bad as on Windows.Due to conscious choices on the parts of OSS software vendors, Linux mail clients don't automatically run scripts when you preview/open e-mail. Nor are attachments executable by just clicking them in the e-mail. Extensions don't mean a damn, so renaming something to .pif.exe isn't going to hide anything. All this will serve to minimize the threat from automatic infection. Linux has had a firewall built-in from (almost) day 1. Most vendors now have it default to "on". In most environments, users will log in as unpriviledged users and not root or admin users. It *is* possible to install software as an unpriv user on Linux, though you need to be root to do it systemwide for a multi-user setup. Unlike Windows, which doesn't provide (or didn't for the longest time) an "su" command, software can be installed systemwide by a regular user just by popping up a password box for admin rights. People don't have to log in as an Administrator just to play with their system or install software. That protects from malware that wants to do systemwide nastiness. Backing up a Linux box, as far as a user is concerned, is as simple as making a backup of /home/<user>. Data is the critical part as the system can be rebuilt in a short time. Unlike Windows, there is no nasty registry to eat all your configs you spent months tweaking for each package. Finally, Linux enforces the concept of priv ports so a worm is going to have a hard time opening port 25 to act as a mail server. No, Linux is not immune but it will be significantly better than Windows on Microsoft's best day.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:00 UTC (Thu) by scmason (guest, #19869) [Link] No, I cringe also. Except for two things: linux IS fundamentally more secure and the distro's are doing an excellent job of discouraging running as root with 'default' logins etc. Linux has proven its inherent security advantages in the server market for years. The interface is just a front end to a solid foundation. Your email client doesn't have hooks into the kernel and the web browsers don't have write access to the kernel space. Security is inherently increased.Lets face it: The linux desktop has grown up. Microsoft has a lot to worry about.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:28 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] Not really, but it does worry me. I worry not because I think Linux isas susceptible to these things as Windows but because I don't think many of the people who say that understand why Linux is better. And if they don't understand why, it's a problem because some of these
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:51 UTC (Thu) by dang (subscriber, #310) [Link] Ultimately the OS and applications can't insure that. There is no such thing as inherent security. Security is a process and for all that one might facilitate that process, you can't automate it away. And if IT managers or ma and pa users think that Linux is proof against malware, then they are going to be even less attuned to that process than they are as M$ users.And there are already a ton of vulnerable linux servers out there ( running old kernels, old apache, old bind, you name it ). And even if there weren't, someone is going to hit a homerun with a trojaned tarball someday. Marketing Linux as inherently secure is wrong, scary, and inviting FUD.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:56 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " The bottom line is that for most people a computer is an appliance. It isn't maintained, it isn't monitored, it is just used until it breaks in some way and then it is replaced." Bull's eye!... Its only proverbial justice that the malware is sickning the OSes of the propagaters of that "appliance style" BS mantra. So it's no wonder that a large porpotion of the hardware industry is not angry with a Microsoft that seems to continuing to piss all over on their users, and on their IT partners...the "status quo" has its conveniences!!... Perhaps all this is a cause for the poorer involvement of the "gross" of the hardware industry in the Open Source world (Its not closed proprietary Nvidea or ATI drivers that change that).I guess that might be a "feeling" that the domination by Open Source systems will reduce sells of hardware,... ...perhaps is my wrong opinion, perhaps is just a feeling... but one thing is certain; without the commitment of the "gross" of the hardware industry, the Linux Desktop will never really dominate, and neither will the Linux Server, because server "always" has been hostage of the desktop ( Microsoft has showned that). So in the above picture, the only way out for a real Linux domination is to partner with that hardware industry... perhaps with the convenience of a broader "Open Source" driver model from the BSDs/Darwin to the Linux... Because IBM & Cia cant do much more than reduce the gap to Microsoft.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:02 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] Of course, with Gnome, I've had the experience of needing to (effectively) rebuild the hard drive. It's not that things work slower, but things stop working-- Gnome specific things, not other things.Because Gnome's configuration is all GUI based and huge and mysterious and saddled with stuff like GConf, the only way I found out of it was to move all of the dotfiles in my home directory into an "oldhome" dirctory, carefully move back the ones I really needed (like .bashrc and .cvspass), definitely leaving things like the .gnome directoy behind, and starting over configuring. I don't have as much experence with KDE, but recently moving from Woody to Sarge on my machines at work, I found I had to scorched-earth a number of other user accounts similarly. (I think they *had* been using Gnome, and trying to move to KDE was just a mess.) Personally, after getting frusturated with needing a GUI to configure Gnome, and too many undocumented configuration files that interact in ways that I couldn't figure out, I moved back to FVWM, which I find far more geek friendly. I don't recommend it to other people (I recommned KDE), since configuing it requires you to be comfortable with reading the man page to figure out the configuration file directives. But I know where to look when something is odd about configuration, and it never seems to drift in time as did Gnome configuration. My point of all this is that KDE and Gnome are great user interfaces nowadays, but they *do* have the problem that your configuration can get munged up, and it can be hard to figure out how to extricate yourself from it if you don't know the standard old Unix geekly tricks. (And if you are standard old Unix geekly, you probably will be happier with something lighter weight like FVWM.) -Rob
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:49 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Because Gnome's configuration is all GUI based and huge and mysterious and saddled with stuff like GConf, the only way I found out of it was to move all of the dotfiles in my home directory into an "oldhome" dirctory, carefully move back the ones I really needed (like .bashrc and .cvspass), definitely leaving things like the .gnome directoy behind, and starting over configuring.I haven't used Gnome for any length of time, but have been using KDE since the 1.x days, and have used it continuously on my laptop since 2.0. Indeed, when I got a new laptop I tarred my entire old home directory and untarred it on the new one; I've even moved it between FreeBSD and Linux and now DragonFly. With one caveat, KDE has never broken: I'm sure there's lots of junk inside my .kde directory but it just works. I'm now on KDE 3.2, I don't expect the 3.3 beta will damage anything. The caveat is that the move from FreeBSD to Linux (and later back) involved going from /usr/local to /usr for the KDE paths, which broke some stuff inside my .kde directory (and I fixed that fairly easily); this shouldn't be an issue in most situations.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 20:03 UTC (Thu) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] "rebuild your hard drive"? LOL, on what planet? - more like: stop X, rm -rf the gnome related subdirs of your home dir, and start X again with virgin settings.Having said that, I've had to do that with my gnome environment, more than once. Nowdays I'm using KDE, it's suse 9.1 that pushed me over the edge, with it's wonderful KDE environment. I recently had a chance to use a couple of expee boxes when I visted relatives in another state - while upgrading them from ie+outlook to mozilla, I was struck by all the poor multitasking of expee, and the longish pauses where it would become unrepsonsive to mouse clicks - I'm here to tell you, it was good to get back home to my linux desktop.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 16:19 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] "rebuild your hard drive"? LOL, on what planet? - more like: stop X, rm -rf the gnome related subdirs of your home dir, and start X again with virgin settings. Granted, that's not as bad as rebuilding your hard drive -- but how many non-Unix geeks would be comfortable with that step, or would even have any clue that that step needs to be takes? And, on the other hand, how many Unix geeks would not gnash their teeth at the ridiculousness of having to take that step with a large directory full of diverse configuaration files, all of which must be rebuilt by hand in order to fix what was probably a problem in one of them? This is why I don't think that (at least) Gnome is in a state where it is a perfectly clean plug-in replacement on the desktop. Just as Windows develops cruft and brokneness over time, so does Gnome. -Rob
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 19, 2004 10:28 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] "rebuild your hard drive"? LOL, on what planet? - more like: stop X, rm -rf the gnome related subdirs of your home dir, and start X again with virgin settings. On this planet. For my sister, mother or father (who are not geeks like me) there are exactly zero difference between these two operations: in both cases you have documents left (you do keep "My Documents" folder when reinstalling Windows, right?) while most of configuration will be lost.
The same goes with "no root by default". For typical desktop user it's OS installation is valued as something like $20-$30 (he/she spent hour or two to install it and that's all value it's there) while it's ducuments are valued as something like $1000-$2000 (yes, there are backups but he/she spend weeks to tune it's desktop "just right" and some files are always not on backup, or not easy to pull out of backup - like bookmark list). Now you come and say: "hey, Linux is so great - it'll be never brough down since there are this root/user separation". But this means this small $20-$30 of system will be secure while it's precisious desktop settings and wallpapers are in danger just as much! Do you see now why most geeks are not impressed? On single-user system 99% of things worth keeping are not protected by root/user separation, so forget about this argument when talking about desktop. P.S. And do not start on "but programs will still be there and configuration will be intact!". It's totally wrong - either you'll run random installers of random stuff under root or you run them under normal users and in all cases separation does not work. For most users "test account" is too cumbersome to be really useful. So no, the sad truth is that on desktop there are surprisingly small difference between Windows's and Linux's security
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 15, 2004 20:15 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link] Well, I´m biased, but I find that these days, the Linux desktop is so much better than Windows it´s not even funny.I´m typing this on my wife´s centrino laptop, which until yesterday had only Windows XP on it. It now has Fedora Core 2 on the drive too, and now that I´ve tweaked KDE a bit, it makes an absolutely stunning and easy-to-use desktop. As a long-time Linux user myself, who doesn´t mind doing a bit of hacking, I was impressed with the way everything ¨just works¨ in FC2. No hacking required, beyond setting up some yum repositories and typing a few ¨install xyz¨ commands. KDE provides things I find staggeringly useful, that I find awkwardly missing in Windows: the FSViewPart graphical filespace viewer in Konq, the multiple virtual desktops, the powerful window manager among them. Throw in the pointless but cool eyecandy things, like transparent menus and mesmerising OpenGL screensavers, and you have an environment that anyone could use, and which is dramatically prettier and more powerful than Windows. Put it this way, my non-techie wife is very happy with it....
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:05 UTC (Fri) by penguinwarrior (guest, #20672) [Link] Well, I´m biased, but I find that these days, the Linux desktop is so much better than Windows it´s not even funny.
As soon as i get a spare PC, i'm going to take into work and let everyone see that what we do at work (except for accounting: would be a real slog to port over) could be done more efficiently and quicker with linux. (even if we had to keep one machine for accounting/windows, thats not bad for the near term... (blushing) i still use windows sometimes as my personal XBOX. everything else is all GNU/Linux, thank god (damn all that money i spent on windows games).
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 18:39 UTC (Fri) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] Why not take them a Knoppix disc. Then you don't need a spare pc, and it's (almost) entirely set up. It's a great demo, and also really useful for fixing "troubled" windows systems (i.e. when your presentation is stuck on an unbootable system, and you need it right now!). See www.knoppix.netRichard
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 6:36 UTC (Fri) by penguinroar (guest, #14460) [Link] First, what is good on the desktop? There are other factors besides ease of use that is important like flexibility, security and stability. What suits the average person is a PITA for someone like me to use. I cringe and moan everytime i have to work on XP or W2k because i lack so many things use in linux. I happen to like linux because of how it works and not some political reasoning. Granted it could be slimmer but that would remove what i love most, the enormous flexibility. I can make linux do whatever i want without having to buy endless third party applications. Its all there to DIY if you can. For me linux is better than MS Windows.Is the sole purpose of linux really to take MS place? I dont think thats a healthy concept, why not focus on what we want? If we are to mimic MS Windows we are bound to repeat their mistakes. Open Source needs to start ignoring Microsoft and start going for the users needs and wants directly. About patching and security. Default auto updating, default firewall and not a single inbound listening service turned on by default. Couple that with an easy way to manage these things and you have a winner security wise. There is an enourmous difference between someone just getting 0wned and someone getting 0wned because they themselves srewed up something.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 13:13 UTC (Fri) by wweber (guest, #11678) [Link] As a desktop platform Linux has been a disappointment. Recently I installed klogic on an older machine running SuSE 6.4, and it worked. I had gotten the program from the distribution CD's. But when I downloaded the latest klogic from the home site to use on my Mandrake 10 system, well, it configured, it made, it make-installed, but it would still never come up. Using the command line brought a dozen complaints from it, none of which could be found in the klogic install documentation.This is fine for those who are so well-versed they know exactly what the trouble is. But the downloads I've put on my MS operating systems have always worked, or at least told me clearly what was omitted. The installation that succeeds is always going to look better to me. Great as the gEDA programs, for example, might be, they are altogether useless if I can't find the right way to set up my LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Despite the three Linux boxes kicking around here, I don't think Linux is ready to take over on the general public's desktops, except maybe in the form of one of those hated "sellouts" like Linspire.
Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet) Posted Jul 16, 2004 18:45 UTC (Fri) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] There's a golden rule under Mandrake: if at all possible, use a package that has *already* been built and tested for your version. That means setting up an urpmi source (see www.urpmi.org) and running "urpmi klogic". Almost all the packages you could want are already built and in "contrib". This way, things usually work perfectly. If you want the absolute latest version, compiled from source, then use "checkinstall" rather than "make install" - that way, your install doesn't bypass your RPM database, and you can uninstall it easily.Regards Richard
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