How many of you out there after having problem with Microsoft just wanted to switch to Linux or some other OS?
Friday, February 26th, 2010 at
00:24
Can you tell your problems… because of these answer I might be able to get sponsorship for starting a Microsoft Battered Shelter. Just Kidding, just say your story!
Tagged with: Microsoft • sponsorship
Filed under: Microsoft
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I have used Windows 98, ME & XP, I have also used Linux, Redhat, Mandrake, Knoppix and every release of Suse since 8.1.
Initially I didn’t like linux at all and removed it to go with XP. Up until I started dabbling with Linux I wasn’t particularly computer savvy.
Some of the reasons I strayed from Microsoft were:
Security issues, constantly having to update security and pay because microsoft writes bad code or is slow to update it’s security, (some time ago a security hole was found in the linux kernel and a similar hole in Windows, the linux hole was plugged in about an hour it took microsoft 6 months).
Pricing, if you want the full versions of all the microsoft programmes, OS, office suites etc it costs a hell of a lot of money. Linux is free or very cheap with a full range of software which is easy to install if it comes with the distro or distro specific, a bit more dificult if not but nothing insurmountable.
Licencing is terrible with microsoft, they want to control everything you do or use even down to not accepting drivers that may make your hardware work, read their EULA.
There are a whole lot of other problems with windows which I won’t bore you with, if something doesn’t work you have vertually no chance of sorting it out, constant rebooting when you install software, if a programme crashes it stops the whole system, etc. etc.
Most of the reason I didn’t like linux at first was that it is different to windows and some of the hardware didn’t work like I thought it should, but once I decided to persevere with it I ran a dual boot system with XP & Suse 8.2 and when suse 9.2 came out I installed it on my laptop & deleted microsoft, being dual boot on my desktop but I now never boot into windows at all. Linux does everything I want to do and now I’m used to it I prefer the way it works to windows.
If you want to try Linux I would suggest suse 10, it will find all the onboard hardware you have, the only thing you may find is dificult is the winmodem, I bought a serial (not usb) modem (they’re cheap) which works perfectly without using processor power, some makes of periferals don’t work but all of the major manufacturers are supported it takes a minute to check which are but I have managed fine with all my stuff. One thing to remember is that linux works differently in some respects to windows but once you get used to it I have found it better, it is not difficult to use in fact in some respects it’s easier than windows and definitely more controllable & secure (I don’t use any anti virus software, only the default firewall). There are a lot of very helpfull people and web sites if you get into trouble they can get you out of pretty much any sort of linux problem.
I have no intention to go back to using windows at all, mail me if you want to know more.
Be careful with what you wish for. Linux and Tiger also crash. Every OS in the world crashes at some point. If you go with Linux, be prepared for a VERY STEEP learning curve and a dearth of software.
But there are rewards. Price, mainly.
I’ve never had anything bad happen to any one of my five computers that are running XP and none of them are older than two years. Sure, I had computers before then that were running XP and I never had a problem with them either but I never know where I’m going to be when I want to play a game so most of the computers are built for gaming, hence I’ll always have young computers around.
BUT, one of my friends reinstalled XP on his computer and in its infinite wisdom decided to label the boot drive F: this did not appear to be a problem for a while. But one day during boot it decided oh that shouldn’t be F: that should be C: so it changed it, produced an oh so helpful BSOD, crashed and would not boot into Windows. The only option was to reformat and reinstall, making sure the boot drive was C:
He nor I will make that mistake again. But, I’ve never had it crash, ever, I’ve never had program errors, never had hard drive problems (though I have plenty of backups and disk images), never had memory, networking or graphics problems either. Basically stuff the average user fights on a day to day basis I never had a problem with because I’m not your average user. And if I had any say in it, you’d be required to know the ins and outs of Windows before graduating from high school and maybe all you other people out there would actually know what you’re doing (that’s kind of a joke, kind of not).
Of course, Windows ME and Windows 98 are another story entirely…
If you’re using WinXP, there shouldn’t be any problems at all. I am currently using WinXP, Win2000, Win98SE, Suse 10.0, and Fedora 5. I can tell you WinXP is the best as of now because it is very user friendly and less problematic. In contrast, Linux has issues with hardware drivers, software dependencies, and some many different versions and distributions to choose from. The good thing about Linux is practically free!