In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
Cydrome Leader wrote:

In rec.crafts.metalworking Gunner wrote:
Ok..for all you Linux junkies...this has been driving me nuts for
months and months and ... well you get the idea.
Originally..I thought this issue was hardware....but now...

What are you trying to do that justifies all the time wasted on trying to
run anything but windows?

Huh? Compared to MacOS, Windows is a notorious timewaster, so clearly
you will be switching to MacOS immediately?

Joe Gwinn

Only for the clueless.

I made my living as an embedded realtime programmer for 20 or 30 years.

I use MacOS at home (where I'm the IT Department), and Windows plus UNIX
at work. MacOS is simply less trouble, by a lot.


MacOS was total crap up until Apple finally
realized they lacked the expertise to write an OS and put their UI over
someone else's Unix core. Now instead of being a crappy UI on top of a
crappy OS, it's a crappy UI on top of a so-so OS.

Don't mistake me for a Windoze bigot either, ...

Could have fooled me. Listen to yourself, listen to the music.


...I use Windoze for a lot of
things for two reasons:

1. When you have a clue, Windoze is perfectly stable. Over five
different systems, two of which run 24x7, I average one Windoze crash /
problem every couple years. I have also never had a virus on any of
these systems despite the fact they are on a cable modem connection full
time. People who have problems with Windoze primarily bring it on
themselves and will do the same regardless of the OS.

You are very fortunate. One wonders how long your luck will last. The
rest of the world must be pretty clueless, because they have all these
problems, in spades. and the computer mags are full of sad tales.

As for security problems, there are tens of thousands of viruses et al
for Windows, maybe ten for MacOS (none that still work), and essentially
zero for most flavors of UNIX.

Because MacOS is only for the clueless, it cannot be that the lack of
trouble on Macs is due to clued-in users. So there must be some other,
simpler explanation.


2. Many pieces of software I use are only for, or run best on Windoze
and they run without any problems whatsoever on my systems. In the Linux
world there are open source substitutes for some of these programs,
however they are inconsistent, are often missing important features and
have essentially no support.

I do have to run Windows to use some applications, but they are odd
ones, like FEMM. Not to mention many CAD-CAM apps, and the like.

Mainstream stuff is available on both MacOS and Windows, but less so on
Linux.

I agree that lots of Linux applications require some fiddling to use,
but this is due more to their being open-source versus commercial. With
the growth of Linux in the market, more commercial apps will support
Linux, so this advantage is likely to erode over time.


If you want a rock solid, secure and reliable OS you will not find it in
Windoze, MacOS or Linux, you also will not find it for free.

Well, I agree that it won't be free. It will cost time and/or money,
one way or the other.

MacOS is rock solid; this I know from direct personal experience.

The real reason for a metalworker to use Windows is that many of the
standard apps for metalworking and manufacturing are currently
Windows-only, but these are slowly picking up Linux support. I'm
planning to get a Dell PC at home for just this reason, but this PC will
be well-isolated from the Internet.

The App developers and their customers would dearly love to have an
alternative to Windows, to regain control of their lives, to escape the
Treadmill.

Joe Gwinn