How is that bad?

Posted Apr 24, 2004 2:28 UTC (Sat) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: How is that bad? by paulpach
Parent article: Windows vs Linux - Which is easier to install?

The problem is not ease of use (which Windows certainly has got). It's the ease of breakage, intended or otherwise. Linux is no panacea in this regard; it just happens that it's easier to see what's been done and to fix it when it happens due to user error.

Windows is dangerous, not because it is easy to use, but because that ease of use is combined with easy ways to break things subtly. Maybe you install a piece of software that includes spyware which tries to disable your anti-virus software. Maybe you delete a file you don't recognise, and then discover that it's critical to your system (although that's being made harder to do by accident in modern versions of Windows). Maybe you connect to the internet for your weekly update process, and get hit by the latest worm.

Note that none of these problems are Windows-dependent. Instead, they are a combination of users who don't understand, don't have to learn because for what they normally do they don't need to, and a system that makes it possible to cause problems without malice. We have decided with cars that the best way to handle this issue is to force people to learn; that way, you know what can cause problems and what doesn't. With computers, we may want to try and make them such that for if user doesn't need to learn about them to do their job, they don't need to learn about them to avoid problems.

This means that if what you want to do is read e-mail and browse the web, you aren't at risk of getting the latest worm or trojan installed. If you want to hack about with the system, you're expected to learn enough to know what causes damage and what doesn't. I'm not expert enough to know how to do this, but it's the only route I can see that allows for large numbers of owner-administrators without insisting that they all learn the details of administration.

How is that bad?

Posted Apr 24, 2004 3:53 UTC (Sat) by raytd (guest, #4823) [Link]

The problem is not ease of use (which Windows certainly has got)

The hell you say! The experience I've had both installing and using Linux in the last 2 years has been orders of magnitude better than that of using or installing Microsoft products. The last time I was forced to re-install Windows 98 (sorry, I have stupid games with lame ass publishers), I had to reboot no less than 4 times before I could install any interesting third party software. That's utterly absurd!

Ease of use is mostly habitual. The more you use a brain-dead interface the more you'll accept it as being correct.

Dangerous? Hooooh, yes! (-:

Posted Apr 25, 2004 2:15 UTC (Sun) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link]

Windows is dangerous, not because it is easy to use, but because that ease of use is combined with easy ways to break things subtly.

Amen, brother, amen... except that I'd say "obscurely, bizarrely and seldom unpredictably."

How is that bad?

Posted Apr 25, 2004 11:00 UTC (Sun) by thomask (guest, #17985) [Link]

bear in mind that it's not just newbies who can do bad stuff and break their computers in windows. i have been using computers for the last seven years, and am able to program in maybe 10 different languages on windoze, mac os and linux.

a few months ago, i was playing around with the windows 2000 services control panel (i might add that this is available to the administrative user of the computer without warnings, passwords etc). i disabled some services i thought i didn't need because i reckoned i could speed up my computer (it ran at 155 mhz, after all).

i managed to break networking, completely. i never managed to fix it without re-installing the whole os.

thanks, microsoft. thanks a lot.