On 2009-02-04, Ignoramus28897 wrote:
[ ... ]
There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.
[ ... ]
The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.
And one of the reasons for the difficulty in automation
(scripting and the like) is what the users normally consider one of tis
strengths -- the ability to easily embed spaces in file names (from a
GUI level -- though not so from a command-line level). This tends to
break scripting and command-line operation on Windows, just as it does
on unix systems. (This is ignoring for the moment the difference in
scripting capability in the absence of the embedded-spaces filenames.)
So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.
Agreed.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.
While the open source software, if you want (and are willing to
invest the time learning to program in C and/or C++) you can add features
to existing programs. I did this to add the ability to calculate times
in hours, minutes and seconds to a spreadsheet calculator called "sc".
I needed this capability when juggling performance cut lengths to
arrange them to fit equally on the two sides of a 60-minute cassette
tape. All I did was to add a modulo operator so I could deal with the
60 minutes/hour and 60 seconds/minute calculations.
Or -- if you are a bit more patient, you can suggest the feature
(with reasons why you think that it will benefit other users) to the
maintainers of the package, and if there is enough interest, *they* may
add the feature between times of dealing quickly with reported bugs or
security holes.
To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.
Agreed. Don't dive in depending on it all to work and you to
understand it immediately. Give yourself something which you can use to
continue things which you *need* to work, and as you learn to do things
easily on the linux side, move that task over to the linux machine.
When you find that you are doing everything on linux you can retire the
windows machine and install linux on it to benefit from the faster
machine.
Be warned, however, that so far the vendors of things like
income tax software only support Windows and Mac (OS-X these days), so if
you depend on such programs, at least keep dual-boot capability.
Also -- some later acquisition may force you to a need for
either Windows or Mac's OS-X. An example is the TomTom GPS navigators.
While it should be perfectly possible to download the updated software
and install it from unix, they *insist* that it be downloaded and
installed by their own programs, which are only available for Windows and
Macs. (I don't know whether other GPS vendors are similar, since I only
need one GPS. :-)
I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.
Great!
Enjoy,
DoN.
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