Yes, currently I can play all my media on Linux. Windows is just a gaming platform for me.

HP didn't go far enough in marketing those. When they actually decide to push Linux computers not as a secondary alternative, but as a real line of products that they want people to buy - Hell, when they make it perfectly clear to consumers that they save money by buying a computer with Linux on it, we'll talk. They barely marketed it, so of course it stayed in its niche. I just use games as an example because they're the example closer to home; Apple is far from being viable, with more expensive hardware, less supported games, and slower release cycle. Games are a chicken and egg problem; Linux needs more market share to warrant big games being relased for it, but Linux needs game support to help it gain market share. In truth, the MS monopoly is being eroded; games and interoperability are the only reasons I have not to switch fully to Linux.

The new OS X will run on PCs? Where do you get that from?

Quoting Microsoft's website:

2 support request(s) submitted online or by a phone call are included at no charge. Unlimited installation support is available by phone at no charge.

All additional support requests are $35.00 US per request or use an existing Software Assurance Agreement or contract. Some support issues may not be covered under the listed charge.


However, checking the information on that on the Brazilian version of Microsoft's website provides four 'free' support requests and no paid option for support from Microsoft itself. Those agreements probably vary between markets but I don't think Microsoft offers unlimited free support in many places for home users. Also, 'free' support is a bit misleading, since you paid for it when you bought the OS.


Too much of a performance hit thanks to poorly supported ATI video cards. Not a real alternative right now, although if it could approximate the performance of Windows, I would pay for it.


That's applications. Think about games.

Yes, and closed file formats are a form of lockdown. 90% of businesses use your word processor, and only your software can read that format, then you have a monopoly on word processors and you are deliberately and willfully working to keep this monopoly by keeping the format proprietary.

You didn't get my point. My point is, the fact that you can use a non-Microsoft browser on a Microsoft OS does not mean they don't have a monopoly. Likewise, the fact that you can use non-DeBeers (I should've clarified that I meant jewelry branded and marketed by DeBeers, not just any LVMH jewelery) jewelery with DeBeers diamonds doesn't make their monopoly any less of a monopoly.

You can find any good classic game for linux. You can't get the latest game available, but you can get the good classic games.

There is linux Civ, Linux Mario, Linux doom, Linux warcraft (heck there is a flash version of warcraft out there) Linux diablo. Lots of games.

If I didn't have an Xbox I couldn't have played Fable, until a few months ago, when they released Fable for the PC. If I wait longer I'll be able to play Fable on a non windows computer.

Also, 90% market share is not a monopoly.

from the email I got at work informing us we would be test running mac os X leopard on our machines (normal intel boxes)

That's bizarre. Goes against everything Apple does. Sounds like a hoax. I demand a press release.

Again: Microsoft's monopoly might be frayed at the edges, but it's still a monopoly that can keep sustaining itself for a while.

You never heard of the Intel chip codenamed "Core"?

Heh, DeBeers isn't even a monoply either. It only has 60% market share, and it used to have only 80% market share.

Just for the record, you can easily have a monopoly and not have 100% control of the market. I can easily find scores of people running Linux, but a LAN party hosted by the CompSci department isn't a representative sample. Neither is saying, "Hey, this guy next to me is using a Mac."

No one has yet answered an important question: Discounting software/hardware compatability, tech support, and previous experience with either, which is more value, Linux or Windows?

As an OS, I vastly prefer Linux. Everyone who knows enough to have an opinion in the matter, and has used both, prefers Linux. That's anecdotal evidence, of course, but I haven't seen a real objective analysis yet that compares only the OS and puts Windows on top. I'd love links if someone knows of one.

As for stealing, I've yet to see anyone convinced of the truth of the opposing argument; you either believe stealing is always wrong, or you don't. If you don't, then we can maybe have a discussion. Either way, that question is a philosophical debate that really should be divorced from the economic one. It happens, for better or worse. Even the people here defending some forms of piracy have legal copies of Windows, so anti-piracy proselytizing does little here.



Only 80%? . You can try to pass that off as a small number, but that gives you a LOT of leverage in the market. Even 50% does, unless your major competitor has the entire other half. Regardless, the diamond market is so incredibly different than the software market that bringing up DeBeers is meaningless.

I have studied under PHDs in computer science and on my previous posting (communication bunker - server maintenance) I worked under a PHD who wrote his thesis on linux, so I'm asuming they 'know enough' to have an opinion on the matter, and they do not prefer linux in general, yes they prefer linux as a server, they prefer linux as a coding environment, yet they totally burn linux into the ground when it comes to being a normal work desktop.

Lets remove everything thats important about an OS, and compare to see which one is "better"

What Mac is best at in their OS is integration. Then comes Windows, then comes Linux. However, Window's attempts at better integration lead to lawsuits and illegal activity. Linux sucks with integration, and I found that aspect highly annoying.

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

edit: I know that I tried Linux and found that if I wanted to spend time with my OS I should use Linux, if I wanted to spend my time doing other stuff, I should not use linux. I don't think theres a price under $500 that would make me think that the time required to use linux would be better than the price of Windows. And I know many people who feel the same way about windows, and so they use a Mac.

Windows seems to be an obvious winner on that one.


I don't understand. What stops you from doing any stuff that you do on Windows (except visual gaming) on Linux?

If you really think that those are the only important things about an OS are the things I discounted, I'm not sure what to think, really. Sit down with a freshly formatted hard drive, install both, and look at how they differ. Maybe you don't make use of your computer in a way that those differences are obvious. I know that the feel of the two, when I'm using them, is vastly different.

Anisu, as I said, I only have anecdotal evidence from my friends. You win. Still, any links to some comparisons I can read? What were the main objections to Linux on the desktop? I'll admit to not being the standard end user, but for the uses most people have a computer for, Linux is not significantly different. If you can use Windows, I can have you using Linux almost as well in ten minutes, most of the time.



Why? It may be obvious to you, but Linux is the obvious answer to me. What's the reason for that difference in opinion, do you think? What is it about Windows that you like, what features make you want to use it?

About the free alternatives, what's the difference between pirating a pay-for version for free and getting an alternative for free? If they are really that similar, either way, no party profits.

This is, of course, separate from morality and ethics.

Seperate from morality and ethics, the only difference is in the product you get. The entire point of this thread is trying to find out why one is worth paying for, how much it is worth paying for, and why you should pay for it. If you don't pay for it, and see nothing wrong with that, then it's really a moot question.

When was that?


My answer stems from the way you stated the question.

Software:
There's just tons of applications for Windows. You can get 50 different products for one task - from freeware to expensive ones. Linux doesn't provide that much of an alternative. Quality of it is also questionable. Most often, even comparing freeware Windows applications (only fair considering basically all Linux software is), Windows programs are just richer in options and utility.

Hardware:
Windows supports pretty much everything. I have yet to see a device Windows doesn't recognize or drivers are not provided, while Linux has no problem with it. Even if you can give me examples, it would still be exceptions. It is, of course, vendors fault for not providing Linux drivers, but that doesn't matter for a typical user.

Tech support:
I am reluctant about the quality of MS tech support, but I have never used and never even thought about using it. Or any tech support, actually (I am talking about me as a home user here, it's obviously completely different at work, but that doesn't count). But Linux hardly has one, so I guess that one's for MS.

Previous experience:
This one's tricky, but I have been using Windows for like 9 years now, more than three times longer than Linux. I'm just used to it. Lately, I found I have little problem with adjustment to Linux desktop, be it KDE or Gnome, however Windows still seems the more 'right' one. It's completely personal, but the power of habit is not to be trifled with. How do you think, which OS has more people used to it's interface?

Please, object and argue. I find this topic interesting, which is kind of a rarity lately for me.


Even if you find Linux a better system for your day to day work and fun, you still have to use Windows for visual PC (should be called MS PC) games.

erm no the first point of this thing was that pirating is wrong. we just got sidetracked with linux at some point. There is really no difference between pirating windows and stealing say a dvd player from a store. Some stores will totally not notice, some will notice a small decrease in profit due to the theft but it's too expensive to persue, smaller shops might actually lose quite a bit of income. But despite the difference of punishment it's still the same crime

And to answer the question what is the difference between pirating software and getting free software

in pirated software they have people that make that software as their jobs, in the free software a company might pay these people for you or like linux is made by volunteers who get their income in a different way.

as example take the making of cookies

A baker makes cookies and sells them, taking a cookie without paying him will be theft
A mother makes cookies and says to her children you can take cookies if you like, this is clearly allowed.

I can't argue with anyone who doesn't see the difference between stealing something there is an infinite quanity of, and stealing something that there is a finite quantity of. It will break my brain. That's why I'm avoiding the issue as best I can.

Also, Kashim, I said WITHOUT all that. Just the OS itself.

march 2006(I'll be going back after tour of duty and officer academy)


and the main complaints where that linux's security is so good that it forms a problem towards userfriendlyness and instinctive behaviour, you can not use linux to it's full extent without learning the basics of it's text command interface (exceptions are some commercial userinterfaces but they essentially make linux even more vulnerable then windows).

(this is only one theory, I have read another theory stating that Linux is infact as insecure as windows but just doesn't suffer the same amount of attacks due to less popularity, but that should it become more popular it would be even less secure due to the code being so freely available and easy to abuse and thus it's adviced to use a version of unix or bsd)


I also however learned that many of such theories are not objective at all and we should just all go to a decent science library and read research reports

Linux simply took too much of my time. Find something nice to download? Time to reboot and log in as my admin so I can install the thing.

Then there was the 2 dvds worth of software that all did the same thing but had slightly different interfaces, all given to me at once without any idea about what the differences between them are. So I got to spend more time figuring out which one was better to use.

then there was the constant flipping of Console to GUI. Reminded me of Windows 3.1.. more wasted time.

I still have it installed on my computer, its still defaults to Linux when I boot up and have to manually select windows, but I select windows every time.

Oh, and then there were the hardware changes that didn't get reocognized by linux right a way, that was a pain.

And the difference between the games is the difference between reading the latest Tom Clancy novel, and reading the orginal Sherlock holmes books. Time makes all the difference.

Sylphas, its called intellectual property. Its not infinite, its just highly reproducible. Complete different things.

Disregarding the fact you ignored Sylphas' original question:

Outside games, networked software running on proprietary, closed protocols, and specialist software, what is that? Every time I try to find Windows software, I run madly around CNET and am faced with either A) The industry leader, which costs more than I'm going to spend or is some annoying shareware job that deliberately eats up my precious time or Utterly crappy freeware. There are rare freeware exceptions, and then there's FOSS that runs on Windows. The only applications that I can't replace on Linux that I can think of are Photoshop (If you need CMYK), Flash (If you need the latest flash) and AutoCAD, maybe. CD burners for Windows are exceptionally bad; my experience with burning CDs in Linux is either overwhelmingly seamless (Gnome), extremely simple and powerful (Console CD burning tools) or very friendly (K3B). Linux runs the only alternative to MS office, on any OS - Star/OpenOffice. It runs the best browsers around (Firefox and Opera). It runs more mail clients than any other OS - Thunderbird, Evolution and Sylpheed for people who want a GUI, and elm, mutt and pine coupled with fetchmail and a MTA for 'power users' who don't. It has a feed aggregator I enjoy using, an IM client that does everything I want it to do (And most importantly, doesn't do anything I don't want it to do) and a videoconferencing client that is the height of simplicity (Sadly, it does not interoperate with what most people are using.) It has Skype, albeit only for voice and text; it has three popular IRC clients, five different music players, two different CD rippers, two separate vector graphics software, 3D graphics packages including triangle mesh graphics, industrial and electronic CAD, and raytracing; and most importantly, the ability to pick which GUI shell you want to use. This has a lot of value to me; it enables Linux to be sensible and natural for everyone, because there are so many different GUI shells that one probably must adapt to you. Modern Linux distributions, in fact, make an effort to curtail all those choices and just present users with sensible defaults.

Any hardware based on decent standards is supported. With mainstream, decent Linux distributions I only ever had problems with winmodems and video cards. The winmodem issue was unsolveable, but that was years ago and modems are dying the slow death of obsolete technology. Video and wireless cards are perfectly compatible if you bother to shop carefully for hardware.

Hardly? There's a whole industry providing Linux tech support. Canonical lists so many 'partners' in the Ubuntu marketplace I can't even check them all out. Tech support for Linux is cheaper, more scalable, and more pervasive than it is for Microsoft. People who think Linux has no tech support never bothered to look.

That's the tricky bit. But most intelligent people would agree that spending some time learning to use a new OS is worth it if it means not just saving money, but also becoming more productive. Linux is more stable and faster for the bog standard home user. It's also more rewarding; it behaves like a complex, fine tool. The more you learn to use it, the more it increases your ability to do more in less time. After a week or so of adapting, it's generally as good as MS Windows. For users who want to go deeper, it lets them automate repetitive tasks with shell commands and scripts, and customize their working environment to their liking. Linux empowers users; Windows seeks to cripple them for their own protection.

Piracy is a market response to what consumers view as overvalued merchandise. IP only exarcebates the issue.

Current IP laws are applying industrial-age ideas to information-age situations.

Thank you, good night.