Why I went back to Windows After Having Got to Know Linux

alienationware

alienationware

New Member
I played around with Ubuntu for a few days... Learnt a few nifty things... The Synaptic Manager thingy impressed me the most. But I got rid of Linux for good, and now, I'm back to WindowsXP again.

For the home/office user, Windows is alot more productive and fun. I recall spending hours just figuring how to get certain things to work under Linux, whereas in Windows, it's a simple little Google search and the problem is fixed within minutes.

My biggest complain about Linux: After hearing some of my favorite songs on high quality speakers on both (1) Linux and (2) Windows XP with SRS Audio Sandbox, there's no way in hell I'll work under Linux while hearing the crap noise that is pretending to be music being output in the background. And sure, Totem media player's visualizations are a lot prettier than WMP11, but com'on, there's no taskbar toolbar for it? And besides WMP11 is a lot more intuitive to use, especially when you have multiple playlists and want to switch rapidly between them without having to manually locate your other playlists like in Linux.

Sure, WinXP may look as ugly as hell, even with the Zune or Royale/Media Center theme, but it's functionality is not duplicated in Linux. And sure, Windows may be the damn capitalistic OS that it is, but without generating revenue, cool things like SRS Audio Sandbox, etc. will never come existence, much less the some-what cool New Aurora desktop background from Vista, which I suspect they hired some Ph.D. of psychology or mathematician to come up with because the image sure plays tricks on the eyes and looks like it's damn hell moving when it's not.

Also, the same programs that I've come to enjoy simply work differently (and often dumberly) under linux. Example, if you play a song in the background, you can't listen to sounds coming from your VMWare VM, because only one program can output sound on Linux at anyone time. Whereas in Windows, this is not the case. Another program with the WTF factor is Snes9x. Sure, the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version, but that's it. It's usability in Linux is pure crap, especially when you want to save multiple states and resume them quickly.

Maybe I'll consider giving Linux another try again a few years down the road if I can do the same things in Linux as on Windows (example, no way in hell you can compare OpenOffice with Office 2007 in terms of functionality and productivity).

And for people who dual boot Linux and Windows XP, I don't understand you. Why switch back and forth between them to do certain tasks if you can do everything on 1 OS, and then some? That's enough of my ranting for now... :D
 
Why dual-boot? Well some of us like to use different operating systems because they may do X task better that OS Y. Also it's partly the geek value.
 
Why dual-boot? Well some of us like to use different operating systems because they may do X task better that OS Y. Also it's partly the geek value.
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Then you guys are no different from the anime otakus that women so despise and devalue in Japan... :rolleyes:
 
Jesus...hey it's all about the reason. Why would you need Linux? To hack and do programs. Why would you use Windows? To have fun and experiment.
So the conclusion is...Linux is only for experts :P
 
I use Linux because I like to have a mess around and try new things. It also makes installing things easier once you've used bash as you know your way around.
 
With all due respect, "I played around with Ubuntu for a few days" *hardly* warrants 'knowing' Linux.:rolleyes:

For the sound, it seems like you don't have correct packages installed. My music actually sounds better coming from it than it does XP. For everything else, re-read my first sentence...

Don't blame the OS if *you* don't want to dedicate the time it takes to learn it. It's a shame really, you could have had so much fun with so many things if you'd simply given yourself a few weeks to understand *how* Linux works rather than gripe about *why* you need to learn how to use it.

<sniff> I smell smoke...is there a Flame coming...?
 
alienationware said:
I played around with Ubuntu for a few days... Learnt a few nifty things... The Synaptic Manager thingy impressed me the most. But I got rid of Linux for good, and now, I'm back to WindowsXP again.

For the home/office user, Windows is alot more productive and fun. I recall spending hours just figuring how to get certain things to work under Linux, whereas in Windows, it's a simple little Google search and the problem is fixed within minutes.

My biggest complain about Linux: After hearing some of my favorite songs on high quality speakers on both (1) Linux and (2) Windows XP with SRS Audio Sandbox, there's no way in hell I'll work under Linux while hearing the crap noise that is pretending to be music being output in the background. And sure, Totem media player's visualizations are a lot prettier than WMP11, but com'on, there's no taskbar toolbar for it? And besides WMP11 is a lot more intuitive to use, especially when you have multiple playlists and want to switch rapidly between them without having to manually locate your other playlists like in Linux.
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Yes and the apt command line package manager is also very impressive when installing software. I suspect your audio files are probably poor in quality and downloaded from some crappy P2P application like Limewire. I use Linux for ripping audio/video a lot more than I do in windows. With FLAC and OGG, I get highly compressed lossless audio. I have a logictec 5 piece surround sound system, which is not the greatest, but it is very good for the price. I don't necessarily consider myself an audiophile, but I do collect a lot of music and I still think vinyl sounds better than digital.

Also, WMP, is bloated, resource hungry and a huge security risk. Just google search all the viruses and malware you get from installing bad codecs.


Sure, WinXP may look as ugly as hell, even with the Zune or Royale/Media Center theme, but it's functionality is not duplicated in Linux. And sure, Windows may be the damn capitalistic OS that it is, but without generating revenue, cool things like SRS Audio Sandbox, etc. will never come existence, much less the some-what cool New Aurora desktop background from Vista, which I suspect they hired some Ph.D. of psychology or mathematician to come up with because the image sure plays tricks on the eyes and looks like it's damn hell moving when it's not.
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Did you know that open source software is a 500 million dollar per a year business? Its not like these open source developers aren't making money, their business model is different than that of Microsoft's or Apple's, or SUN, or any other giant technology company.

Also, the same programs that I've come to enjoy simply work differently (and often dumberly) under linux. Example, if you play a song in the background, you can't listen to sounds coming from your VMWare VM, because only one program can output sound on Linux at anyone time. Whereas in Windows, this is not the case. Another program with the WTF factor is Snes9x. Sure, the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version, but that's it. It's usability in Linux is pure crap, especially when you want to save multiple states and resume them quickly.
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The problem here is not Linux. It is the manufacturer of your sound card. They do not produce specs or source code for their product. So, Linux has to use a generic driver which lacks features of your sound card. This is very common in Linux, and its not the OS's fault. It is the manufacturer's fault for not supporting it. Now, this may make or break the deal with you, but other users it may not.

Maybe I'll consider giving Linux another try again a few years down the road if I can do the same things in Linux as on Windows (example, no way in hell you can compare OpenOffice with Office 2007 in terms of functionality and productivity).

And for people who dual boot Linux and Windows XP, I don't understand you. Why switch back and forth between them to do certain tasks if you can do everything on 1 OS, and then some? That's enough of my ranting for now... :D
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This is far from fact, and is your personal opinion. Sure, you are totally entitled to it, but using Linux for a few days to a week does not constitute a valid review of Linux. First of all, there are 100s of distributions out there, ubuntu was not for you. So, try suse, mandrake, fedora, PCLinux, puppy, knoppix, debian, redhat, or try some form of Unix like free BSD.

I agree with you that Open Office is not a fair comparison to MS office, because MS office does actually perform better, but what openoffice does, for what you pay (free) is a damn good program.

I think windows is not very productive. I find myself most productive on a Mac, they are designed for simplicity and efficiency. I can get 5 hours of work done on a Mac in about 2 hours. I do it every day. Friday, I recon'd a whole lab of computers into inventory, finished up building a file server (ubuntu actually, RAID 5, dual xeons, 2.5gig of RAM) for the graphic design department, created 4 deployable software images for network installment, Created a deployable CS 3 Design Premium installer for the graphic design department. Created several new network policies for the client machines to help with internet traffic and filtering. Pushed out an update on assessment testing to several computers. I also reimaged a few machines. This was all possible because of the simple and efficient way of how Macs are designed. This is my opinion, not everyone would have the same results as me.

I suggest if you really want to learn Linux, take at least a month of tinkering with it. You can't expect it to just do everything out of the box with out learning how to use it. However, do not expect it to be like or compare it to windows while you use it. It is nothing like windows at all. If you still want to use windows after a full month, then you will know Linux is not for you. It is not for everyone.
 
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With FLAC and OGG, I get highly compressed lossless audio. I have a logictec 5 piece surround sound system, which is not the greatest, but it is very good for the price. I don't necessarily consider myself an audiophile, but I do collect a lot of music and I still think vinyl sounds better than digital.
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I'm too lazy to read the rest of your long post... But haha! Lol, Logitec... :eek:

I'm talking about playing audio thru the Creative/Gigaworks T20 2.0 speaker system, which by the way beats most entry level 5.1 Altec Lansing speakers hands down, let alone Logitec speakers. This baby is so awesome that there is no audible distortion when no sound is playing (See CNET reviews for details)...

And obviously, you haven't played around with SRS Audio Sandbox, which artificially adds back the missing elements in the music so that, say, the sound of a piano key degraded thru compression will sound just like the original when passed thru SRS Audio Sandbox. And yes, even on my high quality speakers, there is a ginormous difference between the audio quality played on Linux without SRS and on Windows with it... And yeah, even with lossless audio files, they can benefit from SRS with Circle Surround and bass boost, etc.
 
Nope, I run my audio into a receiver and use these awesome retro cerwin vega speakers I got from my parents. Computer audio will never lay a hand on actual audio equipment, but it may sometime down the road. When everything is integrated into a computer. But I hear ya, sounds like a nice audio rig.

But again, it is not Linux's fault. It is creative for not writing decent Linux software/drivers for supporting their product. So, of course it won't work that well on Linux. Do you think Creative wants to release specs or their source code? I think that more companies should, then you would see their product being bought for all the Linux users. In fact, ATI just did this, they are releasing source now to the open source community. So maybe now other companies will follow. They are just scared that their product will get hacked and they will lose revenue.
 
Using Ubuntu for a few days is hardly enough to give is a proper review and say that you know it. I've been using Ubuntu for 6-7 months and I'm still FAR FAR away from saying that I know all of it's features (I really want to learn more about the terminal).

As far as productivity goes, of course you're going to be more comfortable with Windows. Every person has grown up with Windows in some way, shape, or form. Really, it's sick, actually. If you were to grow up with Linux from the start you would feel that rifling through the internet for software would be the most ridiculous thing you'd ever heard. I can understand what you mean about spending hours trying to get a simple task going that could have been done in Windows in minutes; that's half the fun. Once you learn though, you understand what the purpose was though, and you'll never have that problem ever again.

Someone above me already told you that it was the hardware part of your sound card and not Linux itself. My sound is great and has never had such a crisp sound before under Linux. I really prefer Rhythmbox to iTunes or WMP. It can handle iPod transfers and much more. Plus, the system resources are EXTREMELY minimal whereas iTunes causes your system to hack up a lung just to be used. Another thing I really enjoy about music on Linux are the keyboard shortcuts. I can be in a completely different window and the keyboard shortcuts take precedence over any program I am in which is GREAT. I hate having to open iTunes, or go down to the taskbar just to click 'Next' to skip a song when I could just press '6' on my keypad to skip it. It's great.

Appearance? Linux can be skinned just as much, if not more (and better) than Windows. If you like the look of Windows, skin Linux to look like it. Or, if you want to be original, go find some other random one off the internet. Simple. I've got mine in a black/orange theme I really enjoy.

I must admit that having the sound coming from only one program was annoying for me as well. After a simple Google search, however, I found a simple fix. Just download a simple program/plugin called 'jackd'. It will allow sound channels to flow from all open programs and not just the current one you're viewing.

For me, it was hard to switch from Windows to Linux. At first, I had a computer that couldn't run anything else and so I was sort of 'forced' to run Ubuntu. I'm totally grateful for it now. And then, for the little tiny things I can't do in Linux 'yet' I run a VMware Window of XP. For example, I haven't gotten CS3 to run in WINE yet, but I'm not giving up yet.

Anyway, I guess the point of this entire post is just to stick with it. One day isn't long enough at all to judge anything. Stick with it for months, google your problems, or go to Ubuntuforum.org and they'll help you with tons of your problems!

Good luck.
 
alienationware said:
I'm too lazy to read the rest of your long post... But haha! Lol, Logitec... :eek:
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Enough said there by the looks. If you are too lazy to read posts about the subject, or too lazy to read up on a new OS, then why bother.

If you want to just rant, then how about a blog?

You own post was also quite long, BTW.
 
oh them good ol linux threads, oh well.
in my opinion linux is good for home users but not office users.
i once had the idea of installing ubuntu/Pclinux on some machines here (to avoid virus issue) but the work we do and the software we use is not available for linux and we need productivity.
As for home you can spend countless hours searching for an alternativ software to your favourite dvd player or ripper but at work we don't have that kind of time.
But oh well, it really depends on the person in my opinion.

@ the OP - wow nice rant....haha
 
I did a similar thing in the 90s with IBM OS/2. However, instead of taking a few days I used it for about 6 years. I bought version 2.0 through 3, I bought the DeScribe word processor and the Lotus SmartSuite. I bought "ColorWorks" a great multithreaded picture editing package. This was before open source, but the shareware/freeware/private label software community was actually fairly robust for OS/2. I had some games and a great tax prep program for about 3-4 years. Netscape released a browser, there were cool MP3 players and the Windows 3.x support was just about perfect. - Just about. I could never get my MIDI sequencing stuff to work -quite right- under Win-OS2. SOmetimes it was OK, but more reliable under Win. I had triple boot - Win3.1/95, NT 4, and OS/2. I had originally used Windows NT 3.51 so I found a way to hack the 3.51 HPFS (OS/2 native file system) drivers into NT 4.

I had lots of fun tinkering and learned a LOT about that OS. The UI was fantastic, without peer.

The day I upgraded my Winodws 98SE computer to Windows Me I gave up on it. By then, it was obvious that OS/2 was a tiny niche and the only thing I was really doing with it was having fun with a hobby. I decided that instead of tinkering with my computer as a hobby I would like to just use the damn thing. I ditched OS/2 and NT 4 and went to Windows Me and was a happier computer user.

So yeah. I understand. It's fun to fiddle, but if you just want to sit and use mainstream software to actually do stuff, Windows is King.
 
It's not the sound hardware that has no support, or sux in Linux, it's the lack of universal sound enhancement software (universal as in all system sounds [games, music, movies, etc.] must pass thru this software before being delivered to the speakers). Go download the trial version of SRS Audio Sandbox for Windows, and tell me that the same song on really expensive speaker systems won't sound so much better on Windows (with SRS) than Linux (without an audio enhancer).
 
You're completely entitled to your opinion, however Windows as an OS is the most assailable, volatile, seismic system that I know of. We'll start by example, firstly by taking a look at the security and stability of Windows. Do you think AVG or some other literal trash could even concieve the consistency and growth of malware? Or your "Windows Firewall" would be adventagous to somebody who was a competent hacker? The answer is no. Running a duel OS system (Vista 32 and Ubuntu) I can say this honestly because I've run, dealt with, and have studied both rather avidly as opposed to just getting introduced to Linux. We'll start with my security system, which is white listing. I promise most anti-virus and anti-malware software runs off of black listing, which is, of course the exact opposite. Your anti-virus, (including the ones originally put on your OS) work in a way that when you encounter anything malicious, it recognizes it, and stops THAT thing from entering your system. White listing allows SOLEY systems and devices that you recognize and allow to enter in while closing every other connection out, thus solving the problem of a person repeatively changing their IP and bypasses your black list. Linux? Before I used white listing on my Vista 32 OS, I had Trojans. I loaded Ubuntu, brought up my kernel, and shut down each individualized piece of my computer that was malicious, effectively stopping it, began using white listing, and thus far have no malware or viruses whatsoever after the initial trojans were deleted and rejected forever more from my system. I will say you ARE right, that Windows is the most user friendly in my opinion, but for actual value? Linux takes it for me.
 
alienationware said:
because only one program can output sound on Linux at anyone time.
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Is that a ubuntu thing? Because Linux mint, Crunchbang, and Backtrack all don't do that, and I never installed extra software or configured extra work arounds.


As far as you not liking linux. Fine. That's your opinion, but you've barely scratched the surface on what I would consider a nub linux OS.
It's made with the beginner in mind, and so if you can't operate and know that, you really have no room to talk in terms of being productive on a linux OS.
 
tlarkin said:
The problem here is not Linux. It is the manufacturer of your sound card. They do not produce specs or source code for their product. So, Linux has to use a generic driver which lacks features of your sound card. This is very common in Linux, and its not the OS's fault. It is the manufacturer's fault for not supporting it. Now, this may make or break the deal with you, but other users it may not.
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Agree'd, however I do believe manufacturers of computer components are now taking this on board and being more proactive about it. But there is still a lot of unsupported hardware out there. Unless you are going to do some hacking about to make things work such as driver creation I think the user is pretty stuck.

tlarkin said:
This is far from fact, and is your personal opinion. Sure, you are totally entitled to it, but using Linux for a few days to a week does not constitute a valid review of Linux. First of all, there are 100s of distributions out there, ubuntu was not for you. So, try suse, mandrake, fedora, PCLinux, puppy, knoppix, debian, redhat, or try some form of Unix like free BSD.
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Agree'd again, I have dabbled in the past with linux and BSD systems but never dug deep enough to understand to true potential of the operating systems.

It's only through work I have now appreciated this after learning a small amount of linux kernal stuff that controls and runs our video systems. If you have the knowledge the things you can do and achieve are brilliant.

Being the company IT Admin I stepped up my game by looking and researching BSD systems to see how they could benefit myself and the company's network.
I then decided to turn one of our older HP DL380's into a fully fledged firewall running PF Sense (which is a BSD OS). That gave me so much more functionality than any off the shelf firewall I could buy and didn't cost me a penny. The system is a real asset to the company now and I am really glad I went out my way to get it in place.

But I think at the end of it all its really down to what you want to use the systems for, if you are already happy with your system (whether its a Windows driven system, OSX, or whatever) then there is really no need to move across platforms.

However if you want to broaden your horizons then yes roll up your sleeves and get stuck in otherwise you will never know and just left with having a very ignorant opinion about the whole thing...
 
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Linux is half cooked.

For example:

Ring ring ISP " hello this is your ISP"
You "hi my internet is not working"
ISP "ok no problem we can fix that"
You "ok great ;)"
ISP "what operating system do you have"
You "linux dev"
ISP "good bye"

Pretty much all the ammunition Linux users had prior to Win 7 is now gone.
 
strollin said:
Do you guys realize you're responding to a thread that is almost 4 years old?
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Indeed, however even today the points still remain valid and its an interesting topic to talk about and review.

Either way its better than posting crap like some of the religion stuff thats floating about on here...
 
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