Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu

http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2770

by nreece • 17 years ago

29 53 17 years ago

education.zdnet.com

Tichy6• 17 years ago

Maybe the XBox will kill Windows - after all, games have been the only reason for it's existence for a while now.

Edit: I meant to say "justification", not "reason".

trezor3• 17 years ago

If you honestly believe that, you have either a) never worked in any company with more than 10 employees or b) have serious issues with reality.

In either case, not the kind of person I would take advice from.

Tichy6• 17 years ago

Why, because companies force Windows on their users, or because of the nifty group management features of Windows products? While I have worked at companies where some boss could edit my Outlook schedule, I can't say I have really missed that feature in later jobs. Possibly some megacorps have essential stuff to do with Windows. But what about private use (which is what I was thinking about)?

Anyway, not sure what your problem is. I wasn't even giving advice in my comment.

Edit: maybe you can enlighten me about the wonderful world of the Windows Exchange Server (which I presume you are referring to). Perhaps it could actually improve my life - any pointers?

Edit2: reading my original comment again, I realise that I phrased it badly. What I meant was "justification", not "reason". Of course there are all sorts of business tricks that also made it persist.

pohl• 17 years ago

It sounds like what you meant to say was this:

"Maybe the XBox will relegate Windows to the workplace - after all, games have been the most common justification for its existence in homes for a while now."

It's funny, the first time I read your post, this was the meaning I pulled from your phrasing - despite the exaggerations "kill" and "only". I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the linked article.

I actually think you're on to something. It seems that Windows is losing its grip on the home. Sure, I've heard tales of a few die-hard Media Center PC enthusiasts, but the vast majority probably only need a web browser, a TCP/IP stack, and some implementation of klondike solitaire.

I wonder what the market share of the Mac would look like if you just looked at the segment of the market where a person buys a computer for themselves and/or their family. They seem to have grown there.

We could be in for a historical irony, depending on how things shake out: the rise of the PC in the days of the mainframe happened because non-IT departments (and, in some cases, individuals) could afford to bring a PC into the workplace, ultimately wresting control of computation from the hands of IT departments, who were failing to provide adequate services. In the cubical farm where I work, there are a half dozen people who have decided to just bring their Mac laptop into work every day. And, yes, for work functions.

Tichy6• 17 years ago

"I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the linked article."

Yeah it made more sense in that context and it was also what I was thinking about. I admit I didn't think about workplace use. Not sure if most companies choose Windows because that is what most employees are familiar with.

msc2• 17 years ago

Highly doubt this, unless the XBox comes with a keyboard and a mouse. Some genres simply can't be played with controllers.

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

It can connect to a wireless keyboard or, at least, a USB one, right?

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

I do a lot of audio/video editing. Linux, sadly, does not cut the mustard in this area. Not that there aren't many cool tools, but cool =/= industrial strength. Now the tools I use are (mainly) equally available on the Mac, but that requires a hell of lot more cash than building my own PC and putting Windows on it.

I also prefer Windows for a variety of other reasons, but cost is a significant factor.

ianbishop• 17 years ago

See, even living inside a web browser, there are terribly large difference between Ubuntu and Windows 7.

For example, not too long ago I had a bug which caused firefox to crash due to a flash problem. The fix involved having to download the source, editing the launch file and build it.

While this very thing is what draws many of us to Linux, it is the same thing that would push the majority of consumers away.

Tichy6• 17 years ago

While I never had to resort to such a bugfix for Firefox, I'd like to point out that with windows/IE you would not even have the option for such a bugfix.

briansmith• 17 years ago

Windows/IE runs Flash well (much better than Linux/Firefox), so you'd never need that option.

raintrees3• 17 years ago

In all honesty, I have been able to use Ubuntu for most everything, but had to keep a Windows XP system going for remote control to access Microsoft-only stuff.

I installed Exchange 2007 with Small Business Server 2008, so accessing Public Folders pretty much requires Outlook or IE. (Evolution only seems to work with Exchange 2003...)

Which brings me to ActiveX. So much of what I do requires ActiveX that I also must have a copy of Windows around to be fully functional, as I haven't gotten WINE or IEs4Linux to support MS's RDP correctly.

Otherwise, I would be running Ubuntu only, as I don't really game much beyond all the games that have been written/ported to Linux.

windsurfer• 17 years ago

ActiveX? What needs ActiveX nowadays, may I ask?

raintrees3• 17 years ago

I have previously sold Small Business Server to several dozen of my clients. In order to remotely manage their systems, I am forced to use either IE's RDP plug-in or Remote Web Workplace (a Microsoft-created web site on these servers that uses RDP) if I cannot get in via VPN.

And, as I mentioned, my whole email storage system currently lives in Exchange 2007 as a quite intricate set of private and public folders, not addressable by IMAP.

dandrews• 17 years ago

'scuse (I'm not very MS-Windows literate). Why doesn't rdesktop fit your RDP needs?

raintrees3• 17 years ago

gRDC seems to work best, as it supports an RDP clipboard.

But when VPN does not work, I then require ActiveX controls (I do not allow RDP directly through my clients' firewalls).

Likewise, ActiveX is the only other way that I know of that allows me to access Public Folders against an Exchange 2007 server with drag and drop support for filing to that system from my personal folders. I am a bit if an organizational nut, so I find this high on me digital "needs" list.

sant0sk12• 17 years ago

I've been running Windows 7 via VirtualBox for a few months now. It's okay. Better than XP? Marginally. Worth money to upgrade? Not really.

Windows 7 will probably get its "foothold" on the consumer market the same way Vista did: when people buy new computers they get Windows 7. I speculate that the vast majority of Windows users are simply running the same O/S that their computer shipped with, whether that is XP, Vista, or even ME (I've been shocked by how many people I know are still running ME (in a vague sense of the word "running")).

Of course that doesn't apply to techies like us, but when you hold mass market share you have mass market demographics.

As far as businesses upgrading their workstations to Windows 7... no way. Windows XP is pretty stable (they've been improving it for like 8 years, it oughta be) and there are few compelling reason for a business to invest in Windows 7. The only way MS will get Windows 7 into the business market will be to force it (via OEMs or by stopping support for XP/Vista).

I think Microsoft's outlook (pun not intended) is pretty gray in the O/S market.

EDIT: changed "no" reasons to "few" as trezor pointed out at least one reason I was unaware of.

trezor3• 17 years ago

Windows 7 has lots of new features which appeals to the corporate market compared to Windows XP. You have more options for locking down workstations with GPOs, you have UAC which improves security. Searching for stuff is miles ahead of Widows XP, which means increased productivty.

Granted, most of those features were added in Vista, but Windows 7 actually runs quite decent on older hardware, something Vista wasn't exactly acclaimed for doing.

Windows 7 also includes lots of features which are handy for portable machines like laptops. Bitlocker anyone? You also have transparent, automatic VPN back into your company's domain, either trough native IPv6 or tunneled connections. In either case IPSec is used to secure communication. In effect, the windows domain model just got network transparent. That's a pretty neat thing in itself.

Again, some things came with Vista, but Windows 7 delivers it all in a much more appealing package.

I'll shut up before I sound like a Microsoft market-droid, but to say Windows 7 adds no features which would make an upgrade worthwhile in the corporate environment is either disingenuous or misinformed.

sant0sk12• 17 years ago

> In effect, the windows domain model just got network transparent. That's a pretty neat thing in itself.

Ok, that is a compelling reason. I stand corrected.

zyb09• 17 years ago

exactly, I'm sick of the "but XP gets the job done"-attitude. Yes, there's no killer feature, that would absolutely demand an upgrade, but all the minor changes and usability improvements add up. I'm kinda annoyed that I have to use a XP machine at work, since I've been spoiled by W7 beta at home for a while now.

GeneralMaximus• 17 years ago

Usually, I'd be the last one to defend Microsoft, but sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due. I installed and played with Win7 on my home PC, and it is leaps and bounds better than WinXP and WinVista. Win7 was more responsive than XP on my oldish PC, though it did use more RAM to accomplish this feat. It's much more usable than Vista, and some of the new desktop features are quite nice.

This does not mean I'll give up my MacBook anytime soon for a Windows machine, and neither will Win7 replace Ubuntu as my OS of choice on the PC, but you have to acknowledge the fact that Microsoft is finally getting the hang of this OS business.

newacc• 17 years ago

MS won't make a mistake of forcing people to adopt WIN7 otherwise the result would be same as IE - there are many, especially in the 3rd world countries where they are just looking for a reason to dump windows but they keep it because it came pre-installed - just 2 countries (china & india) can make windows dead in matter of years (if not months) if they try to force it ...

also who knows??, there are new guys (read Android, WebOS, OS-X) who MIGHT be waiting for the opportunity to jump in ... i dont know why but i feel that eventually google will enter the game by getting android from phones to netbook to notebook....!! if the brand like HTC starts making netbook/notebook then i won't be surprise if it comes pre-installed with android !!

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

The real question is not whether Windows 7 is worth its cost, but if the downgrade-to-XP option is still worth to pay for.

IMHO, Win7 sucks less than Vista - it's snappy, partly because we have much faster computers (at least I do) than when Vista was launched, and is much less of a disruption, even for a XP user. It was inevitable: software designed for XP may have problems with Vista, but programs designed for Vista run well under 7.

Will I drop Ubuntu for it? No way.

cturner4• 17 years ago

I worry the trend is going in the other direction. I've been trying to set up a particular wireless networking device in ubuntu and the only instructions I found that I could get working involved gnome desktop apps.

To reiterate - I need to have a user logged into the desktop environment in order to get wireless networking going. At that moment I lost all enthusiasm for the prospect of desktop linux becoming mainstream.

    Of course there isn’t. He lives in a web browser.
    The underlying OS is irrelevant.

What about games? Nethack runs better under unix.

eru• 17 years ago

Yes. But NetHack runs pretty well under DOS, too.

ajross• 17 years ago

Details on the wireless thing? I assure you, do you not "need" an X client running on the box to make any piece of hardware work. The fact that someone wrote a GUI helper for the task (what task, btw?) hardly sounds like a disadvantage to me.

People here can help you, if you let them. Posting incomplete problem reports like this as evidence for a platform troll is kinda bad form.

cturner4• 17 years ago

You're absolutely right, and thanks to help from this thread I got it working.

whughes• 17 years ago

Games run perfectly on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

bep• 17 years ago

And some run perfectly in Windows. I prefer my PC Games.

mattyb3• 17 years ago

I have no idea what 'particular wireless networking device' you're trying to configure, but if you're just trying to get your Wifi card hooked up to a secured router using just a shell, the following thread is gold (substitute vim/nano/whatever for gedit in Step 2):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834

cturner4• 17 years ago

Thanks for this (anmd everyone else's suggestions) - gives me encouragement ot have another crack at it. This guide in particular looks like a solid runthrough of the stages along the way.

cturner4• 17 years ago

Thanks a stack for that link. Having the right doc is everything. I followed it through and everything Just Worked for me. I was at the stage of hunting ebay for good deals on ciscos before this thread, you've saved me money and time.

grinich• 17 years ago

Nethack runs pretty well in the browser too.

http://www.big-ape.net/nethax/

Elepsis• 17 years ago

Then he will grow up and start having to do real work. Unless he's a programmer, that (still) pretty much means Windows or Mac OS.

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

Really? Why?

tybris2• 17 years ago

If it can be upgraded without reinstall it's a signficant improvement over Ubuntu.

mattyb3• 17 years ago

Who says you can't upgrade without reinstalling on Ubuntu?

  sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
  sudo do-release-upgrade

tybris2• 17 years ago

It's not impossible, just a horrible experience. Most likely your network drivers will break, their new version of X doesn't support your graphics card/drivers, etc. I have never been able to upgrade Ubuntu without using Ctrl+Alt+F1 a lot. I'm not going to give that to my family.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

His son is not a gamer.

ColemanF• 17 years ago

It's like the boy who cried wolf. I've seen so many of these articles, it hardly means anything to me anymore.

Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu

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