Screw this, I'm going back to Windows!

Actually, it's a new kernel and there are many improvements. A simple google search will tell you that much.

@ShadowDefender,

Actually, that's accurate. Windows vista and 7 share an identical kernel with a few changes to drivers and UI. That isn't even close to being the case with 8.

But this is really not on topic.

 

Why are you spewing this complete and utter nonsense, again? Claiming the Vista and 7 kernel is the same is as silly as claiming the 7 and 8 kernel is the same.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2010/WCL404
http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/windows_7_kernel_architecture_changes.html

 

Saying the kernels were identical was wrong. I mean that they're very similar. Most of the changes to the kernel were incremental and built off of what was being done in the SP1 of Vista.

 

Yes the NT kernel is definitely being improved incrementally, but really the only thing "very similar" is the version number (6.1). Something that wasn't fully incremented with the sole reason of preserving backwards compatibility against programs that do kernel version checks before running (as explained in the video), same reason for Windows 8 (6.2). But Windows 8 also has a lot of major kernel changes, I hope Mark will do a video on it also in future.

Shall we return to the topic now?

 

Great article, as always
I think that no O.S is perfect, anyway i surely prefer Linux drawbacks to Windows drawbacks.

 

Setting up linux I really had a laugh. I chose Mint first as it's a really user-oriented linux OS. I figured that if any OS would be easy to set up it would be Mint.

God no.

I start up and I try installing Chrome. Chrome won't install. I try installing dependencies just in case - still doesn't install. An hour later after installing Chromium, installing Chrome, and then uninstalling Chromium again it works (though I ended up ultimately switching to chromium lol.)

Not horrible, a little hiccup maybe?

But then I install my ATI driver. This alone took quite a while, I had to restart a few times - honestly I blame ATI for this one, but it's still entirely part of the "linux experience."

I finally get ATI drivers installed. The UI breaks.

So I go back to the classic UI with no effects. Ugh. It feels like I've jumped back to XP - some decade old interface.

Oh, and scrolling on my mousepad didn't work. That was a simple fix but I still had to look around for it.

So yeah, I'm not an idiot, I can fix these problems, but no average user would have spent more than 30 seconds trying to get it to work.

I'm on Ubuntu now and love it. I just really find it funny that "Year of the linux" keeps coming up like with Vista and 8. There is no way Linux will catch on in its current state. I think its biggest issue is fragmentation.

 

Nice Mrk: the river keeps flowing.

Without getting ...too...far OT, we can have an interesting discussion here.
I'm with Blue on this.
I suspect anyone who has experience over the last few years is somewhat agnostic re OS's.

I need Windows, mainly for Office; there is still nothing better for my needs.
I dont have to use Windows for everything.
Use Linux: at home most of the time: PCLOS for 'easy' interface and CentOS for exploring: the sheer breadth and depth of the open community is a great resource, and, free.

I was given an iPhone 4S and it would have been churlish not to accept: it's a good tool. The woman in charge here also has iPhone.
HUGE leap forward from the MS OS on phones.
ITunes on Windows is an amazing total pita.
Not enough for us to change our home network to Apple.

My kids ( one of them) have Apple laptops from school: ergo have to get used to it. They make movies and do 'stuff' without any real training: just ease of use.

The kids have access to an older Winbox for themselves and as per all children have taken to iOS on the phones with ease.

I prolly would have gotten an ICS phone for myself.

There are 2 ipods and a shuffle here.

We have 2 Kindles in the house: not perfect but pretty good for what it does.

If I get a Tablet, I might get iPad2 as prices will drop now.
By choice I would ( and likely will ) get Samsung Note 10 inches: for the pen.
Mostly the tablet set-ups piss me off because of connectivity/port issues: hard to find the one that is just right: the Lenovo ThinkPad comes closest atm but is a bit clunky and has really crappy speakers.

So in this house we have or will have 4 OS working: not what I imagined.

I am concerned that MS is making a huge leap here with W8: I dont want a phone/touch screen interface on my desktop.
I see many of the threads elsewher are about getting back to the "start" desktop: might have been better to fix that, not give us a metrosexual GUI ??

Woody leonhard has written an interseting op-ed piece:
http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/a-windows-veteran-looks-at-win8-consumer-preview/
Interesting take ( well reflects what I thought anyway ).

IMO, the iPad has in fact proven to be a game changer around the world.
MS has no answer.
What might be an enormous risk for MS is putting a proper version of Office on the iPad ?
The idea of the iPad as a content viewer is done.
As a platform for productivity it has been shown to be a remarkable tool.

Even Amazon is now cutting back on sales of Kindles because of the e-reader apps available for other devices.

LOL, even with all that stuff, I regard myself as a slow adopter: still on XP.
My life is not fully wired.
The comment that W7 is the new XP may have some merit.
"we" are sort of cutting edge for many aspects of the tech revolution but the rest of the world may lag behind.

Not withstanding the China effect on everything.

Even here wireless access is not a given any where and Australia is spending BIG for a national cable network as you know. In oz we have hugely expensive data and phone contracts with LIMITS !! and absurdly slow uploads that really limit any interface with 'the cloud' as such.

Despite the billions who use MS world wide, Redmond is facing a crisis they have not seen b4. The momentum shift is apparent.
I suspect the vast majority are in no mad hurry to get off MS but cracks may be appearing.

I want to own my stuff, not be owned by it.

Regards.

 

Just installed ATI 12.2 after removing 12.1 on my netbook yesterday and not a single hiccup, just followed the instructions on the cchtml wiki and it went smooth on Oneiric.

 

In the other hand, fragmentation may benefit creativity, the arising of new ideas, and even enforce some "natural selection". Anyone with the proper knowledge may create is own distro and bring something new into the field...

 

Here's my take on it:

There are three kinds of people, The person who only does music and web, The gamer/windows power user, and the "Guru's"

The first one and last one can use linux perfectly fine. ( I will get to that). The gamer/windows power user though can't (won't).

I say this because this is my experience:

People who only use web, youtube, music etc. don't need to know how the OS works, just how to find and do those things. I have successfully switched several of these people over to linux mint/Ubuntu with no issues after a simple guide of where there browser is. I didn't tell them it was linux or windows or anything. They asked how they could go about not worrying about malware and I said I could show them an alternative to windows and I did. It took about 30 min each time and they got the grasp of it. No complaints at all from any of them, they all enjoy it.

The second group (gamers/windows power users) tend to be the hardest to switch over. Why? Because they tend to want the latest and greatest hardware and don't want to fiddle with it to get it to work. Sadly ATI/Nvidia/etc. tend to keep these things closed-sourced making them harder to port over to linux rapidly and not every distro has support either. Power user in this sense is someone who knows more than the average person and knows the ins and outs of windows but not much else (no offence).


The last group is the "Gurus". I fit in here. I don't care if it takes 33 commands in terminal to get something done, I like using the terminal more than the mouse. 80% of my actions are keyboard based. This is the group that can handle any OS because they aren't afraid of things breaking or needing manual control. They use any OS that fits the job regardless of if it's the "best one" or if they like it.

Obviously it doesn't take ALOT of effort to use linux if you are a geek at all but there is more of a learning curb than windows/mac. Using and understanding how it works are two different things. I have taught people how to install software via apt-get but they don't know what it is actually doing. For that matter most modern distro's don't even require you to use terminal (Ubuntu I'm looking at you).

Linux will always be that geeky OS until someone does what google did with android but to the desktop. Than just maybe it will take off among the masses. Personally I don't care that much as I won't use a distro like that. As much as I want to see Linux "succeed" I don't care as long as I can use it for what I want.

/Rant

 

That basically sums up exactly how I feel.

 

Great article. Interesting that Idiocracy came up. Every time we talk about the direction of new OS's at work that movie always comes up. I don't want a PC that someone's grandmother could use. I want one I can utilize. They need to stop removing features.

 

I would rather have freedom to choose from the various distros and derivatives than be stuck with Windows or MacOSX. Sure things are rough around the edges in because we don't have a unified Linux OS, but you can't create your own Windows distro based on a crazy amount of choices like we have available to us.

The way I look at it, I'd rather eat from a buffet at the greasy spoon than have oatmeal every day for breakfast.

Canonical took a big risk with Unity, and it may really shine in the long run. The Linux Mint devs have my respect and admiration, they are trying to give us a real alternative to unity and vanilla gnome 3.

 

..yes food is an important part of a balanced diet.

 

As they say, variety is the SPICE of life and so is CHOICE.

 

But oatmeal is much much healthier!

 

Haha...

 

I agree with the point about the fragmentation on linux. most distros are largely the same. opensuse and fedora are test beds for the enterprise counter parts.

People may complain about windows but overall its a good platform. I do wish that microsoft would have less versions of windows. home and business for windows 8 would be enough versions.

I dont like gnome3 or unity. If you setup windows 8 right it works just the same as the older versions of windows.

IMHO it doesnt matter what OS you are running. what matters is the applications you use.

 

I also have to agree with your first point about fragmentation. Some say variety is the spice of life, but in the case of linux, I think too much of it is bad. I'd like to see just a handful of distros with some major efforts put into them to make them run out of the box on all configurations and be bug-free. That would be fantastic. I think a few well done distros would capture a lot more people than what's going on now.

I do like both Gnome 3 and Unity, mostly because I like change and new things, but also because I think they're easy to work with. I was getting tired of the same old Gnome 2 and KDE 3 UI a while back. Nice to see something new.

Windows is windows, and that's what I use mostly. I do think they're now putting out new versions much too quickly. There's no reason, for example, why Windows 7 can't be another XP with a good long life if MS didn't try to force it's obsolescence if 2 or 3 years... 7 looks nice, and gets the job done. I'd rather see them improve it's performance and security under the hood etc, and forget about the UI changes (Metro).

 

And that's great... but really... how big are the differences between Mint and Ubuntu? Or the other hundred Ubuntu "spin-off" projects?

If all of those devs were just working on Ubuntu you could have a similar experience to any of them but all of the support would be built in or at least developed for one OS.

And you'd still be able to hop off to Arch, which has its own spinoffs.

 

@ Mrkvonic

Screw Windows I'm sticking with LinuxMint.

You are too much of a purist or perfectionist; and perfection does not exist in the computer world. As you may know a computer system is always a work in progress.

Thanks.

 

On my less exciting days, I like to think of the mountains of bandwidth which could be saved if all but a small & diverse handfull of Ubuntu based distros were simply themes or gui packages.

 

Mrkvonic lets a bit loose in this one... deviating from his normally euphemistic, polite, superficial manner of writing, in this article he pulls his lips back a bit to reveal his canines

 

The subtle differences makes it palatable for discerning tastes. The fact that Ubuntu spin offs exist and survive shows how much variety we can live with.