[ale] Kind words for Windows? - was The latest from Gigabyte

[Greg Freemyer]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-02-08 at 01:25 -0500, Ron Frazier wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> The line I'm quoting from Chris Fowler (below) inspired this note. If
>> you're offended, blame me, not him. But, I hope no one will be
>> offended, just spurred to thought. But, lots of it is just some random
>> things I've been thinking about, and maybe ranting for frustration
>> about some problems I've been trying to solve. I'm not trying to start
>> a flame war, but, I've been using Windows ever since it was invented.
>
> While I haven't used Windows 1.0 or 2.0 outside of checking it out years
> and years after the fact, I go all the way back to MS-DOS 2.11.  My
> first encounter with Windows was Windows 3.0, followed by 3.1, 3.11, WFW
> 3.11, Windows NT 3.1, Windows NT 3.5, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0.  I
> have, since that point, run every version of Windows for short periods
> of time for no other reason than to study the way the system works (and
> the changes from the last version) in order to stay up on how it works.
> While I may not use Windows for my everyday computing (in fact, I could
> not imagine doing so at all; when I have to, I find so much base
> functionality missing from the system that I'm unable to effectively
> work.  Adding that missing functionality via Cygwin is pretty much
> unbearable, given the high cost of process spawning in Windows and the
> Unix philosophy that everything lives in multiple processes.).

I run a OpenSUSE KDE desktop, but I keep a terminal services client
open to a Windows 2008 Server box the vast majority of the time.  If
I'm at home, I just reconnect to Windows Server 2008 and continue my
login session.  Same if I'm on the road.  I basically never log-out.

For command line, there is no doubt Linux wins.  Even compared to
Cygwin, I totally prefer Linux.

But for GUI work, Windows 2008 is simply more stable.  Especially for
running firefox / gmail.  And doubly true for KDE 4.x.  Hopefully KDE
4.6 will be better.

I tend to only logout of either environment when I have problems.  (Or
when a patch requires a update.)  And I logout of KDE every 3 or 4
weeks due to some glitch or another.  I don't recall the last time I
logged out of Windows 2008 Server for that reason.  Could easily be
well over a year.  (Admittedly, that machine gets rebooted for other
reasons every 2 or 3 months, so I'm not saying I've had a continuous
login on it for a year plus.)

Greg