[ILUG] Have you had your daily dose of reality?

[Martin Mellody]

One thing though - for a desktop machine, an X crash might as well be a
total system crash. It saves some time (and possibly a fsck/chkdsk) if you
can log in and sort things out, but you've still lost your editor and the
file that was in it, along with the rest of your X apps.

I know most people on the list guard their uptimes religiously, but the user
doesn't care.  For a normal user (which is the MS market that we want to get
linux into), a staroffice crash is just as devestating as a total OS crash.
That's part of the reason why MSword (and vim?!?) have document recovery
methods in case of a crash.


As far as Win2K goes, I'm doing development for win98/nt4/2k and I boot from
one to the other several times a day, and I have to say that Win2K (and I'm
not even using the retail build) *feels* faster than 98/nt4 (and again, the
average user doesn't care about the benchmarks) and is at least more stable
than 98. A lot of the internal architecture has been made a lot cleaner, and
it feels more like a completely integrated solution. Idiot proof Plug & Play
and device support means a lot too - it's nice to plug in a new USB
peripheral or PCMCIA card and have everything work properly (for a change -
MS didn't always get this right).

They've also started signing drivers in an attempt to make the OS more
stable. In Win2k, if you install a driver that hasn't been tested by MS
labs, you get a box basically saying "if the system crashes or becomes
unstable, tough luck, you're on your own". Not nice if you're writing
drivers, but it can only improve OS stability. Also, the DLL nightmare is
gone, 'cos Win2K does versioning on DLLs.

I'm not saying Win2K is a better server, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but
I'm saying that linux has along way to go before you can displace Win2K for
joe soap desktop users.


(sorry about the long mail - I just think there's two arguments here, server
& desktop, and for the moment, MS wins the desktop one)

Martin.


-----Original Message-----
From: ilug-admin at linux.ie [mailto:ilug-admin at linux.ie]On Behalf Of Aaron
McDaid
Sent: 18 February 2000 15:24
To: Ilug (E-mail)
Subject: RE: [ILUG] Have you had your daily dose of reality?


> My linux machine has been rebooted about 5 times
> due to problems with X and various apps

I assume you're referring to a situation where you couldn't log out or stop
X in a normal way

why? you shouldn't have to reboot because of that! if your window manager is
hanging or whatever try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. That'll kill X for you.
It's also possible to restore some sanity by going back to the console
Ctrl-Alt-F1 and messing about there (it's the same as Alt-F1 or Alt-F2 to
swap virtual consoles if you aren't in X) . Such as SIGKILL the wm and
restart it (this keeps your X-apps your running). But that's getting a bit
complicated.

If neither of these is working only then should you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del or god
forbid hit the reset button.

-----Original Message-----
From: Shane Dempsey [mailto:sdempsey at tssg.wit.ie]
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2000 2:41 PM
To: ilug at linux.ie
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Have you had your daily dose of reality?


Thank you Lars.
After 6 months of Win2k beta testing
I am extremely happy with it and here are the reasons
why.

Networking Speed:
It has outperformed linux on all the CORBA benchmarks that
I've done.  When you're doing CORBA based development that's
kinda important .

My downloads are faster but maybe the OS is lying.
When I timed it a linux v Windows download I discovered
that the difference in download speeds wasn't as great as registered.

Reliability : My linux machine has been rebooted
about 5 times due to problems with X and various apps.
I'm running WindowMaker ( not enlightenment and gnome like some )
and I have never been impressed with the stability of linux GUIs.
My windows machines have been rebooted once each.
The workstation got rebooted when winamp bombed
out. Something to do with an outdated sound driver
I'm told. ( this kinda thing IS going to irritate a lot of people )


Development tools:
We have the full suite of MS dev tools plus support here
and they're extremely useful. I suspect that some absolutely
hate developer studio but I really like it. The MSDN help system
is genuinely helpful and as compilers go, VC++ is very good.


Plug and Play:
You install Win2k and it works. I felt like saying that in the last mail
but I didn' think that anyone would believe me.


Applications:
Advanced Server costs a tonne of cash but
it's easy to install, intuitive to configure , stable while running,
seems pretty efficient and comes with everything that
one could ever need. Well not quite but the networking
applications ( security , remote access , routing , dns et al ) are
cool. Administration is a piece of piss.

Look and feel:
The GUI looks lovely  ( in an MS kinda way ).
It looks solid and clean and feels responsive.


Put simply it feels like they've spent billions
on it and they have. A lot of people won't use
it cos its expensive and others cos its Mc$oft.
Personally I don't care. I use it cos it's productive
in a way that WinNT never was.

I'd just like to point out that I don't work for Microsoft,
have never worked for Microsoft, still use
linux, like gnome for its innovative design, like linux
for its stability and great efficiency on almost anything
that I install it on but don't feel that LINUX is always better
than Mc$oft.

I would like to say that I'm in the windows development
business ( much to the embarrassment of my nix loving
friends ) and as such I read the official mc$oft mags

It seems like many different aspects of the OS have
been totally rewritten ( yes totally ).
This includes many aspects of the device driver architecture
as this was reponsible for many problems in the past.
The word from some friends in MS is that they threw out
whatever caused problems in the past and threw as much
money as possible at it to fix it.

I could look up the relevant articles and quote them
but what's the point. After 6 months the honeymoon
isn't over.

BTW I was joking about the MsHardware and the pinging.
It's just my strange sense of humour.

    ...shane


----- Original Message -----
From: Lars Hecking <lhecking at nmrc.ucc.ie>
To: <ilug at linux.ie>
Sent: 18 February 2000 13:35
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Have you had your daily dose of reality?


>
> > Agreed. WIn2k is bulky and needs lots of RAM, fast processors
> > and new equipment.
>
>  Maybe so. But, contrary to all the published benchmarks, people
>  who are actually running it on their machines claim it's a lot
>  faster.
>
> > WIndows NT / 2000 are quite reliable at the end of the day.
> > They don't just configure themselves though. It takes a lot of
> > work to make a Windows NT based system work properly.
>
>  But W2k does not.
>
> > I'm running several win2k advanced server boxes here
> > and they've been up and running for weeks now without
> > a reboot or a major problem. This is definitely progress
> > from Redmond's finest >:-))
>
>  I was just talking to someone who attended the W2k launch in
>  Dublin yesterday. Someone with no particular symapthies for M$,
>  and not prone to being excited about computers either.
>
>  His comments: Scary. Fast. Absolutly seamless. If they ever get
>  it to run on any non-Intel hw, the other vendors are screwed.
>  No more reboots. Real plug and play, support for gobs of devices.
>  Excellent network and server control tools. And so on ...
>
>
>


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--
Irish Linux Users' Group: ilug at linux.ie
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug for (un)subscription information.
List maintainer: listmaster at linux.ie