Linux is useless

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Exact Audio Copy - The main differences between EAC and most other audio grabbers are : It is free

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows

Miranda IM is a minimalist, open source multiprotocol instant messaging application - Miranda is free software

Adobe Photoshop - commercial product

DVD Decrypter - License: freeware

IMGburn freeware - heir to DVD Decrypter/same author

Since July 2002 eMule has been free software, released under the GNU General Public License

Media Player Classic License : GNU General Public License (GPL)

Utorrent Publisher Ludvig Strigeus License Freeware


So let me get this straight. 7 out of 8 of your favourite/best windows apps are really free. What happened to the 5000 dollar computer? And it seems that 3 out of 8(at least) are open source. In other words, most of what you use here are developed by the same sort of people that develop for linux, but somehow, because its for windows, the quality of their work is greater.



Hahaha. You finally offer up what you consider "better software" but 87.5% of it is developed in the same spirit as the software you dismiss!

All of those either are available for Linux or Mac, or else equal or better alternatives are. I've looked, and so far the only program I've found that doesn't seem to have a fully equal (or better) Linux version is Sibelius or Finale (equivalent programs). There are plenty of Linux programs that will fulfill the same function (editing sheet music) but they might lack a few of the extra frills. That's the worst I've found. And I would gladly trade one or two extraneous features in an application that don't have much to do with its primary function in order to be able to have FREE (as in beer and also as in freedom) software rather than forking over hundreds of dollars for proprietary software. And since I'm dual-booting with OSX, I can get either of those programs if I really need to anyways.

So... round two of the software name-off. What other great software is Windows-only?

To start, I use both Windows and Linux. I actually preffer Linux, unfortunately, there are some things I simply can't get to run properly under wine. Specifically QuickBooks, and the software to program Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood radios. (I know, probably about time to try QB again, and I have read others who have had limited success). Unfortunately, some other things I have found to be much more dificult in Linux than Windows. I'm learning Japanese, so on my main machine, Japanese IMEs are required. It is much easier to get full international support on Windows than it is on Linux (at least on the distros I use). By full support, I mean all the way from keyboard, to applications (web browsers and word processors, primarily) to print, and all to work togeather cleanly. (I primarily use Slackware based distros, although I have dabbled in RH and Debian, even Caldera back in the day.)

Now, there are many things I find work better on Linux. There are much more advanced and fine-grained security settings available, locking things down so there isn't nearly the likelyhood of a compromised machine as there is with windows. For E-mail, I've found the KMail interface vastly superior to what's available on Windows (I know, KDE is coming to Windows this December) All the other programs I use, actually seem to run faster on Linux, most likely because there isn't nearly the bloat in the system.

WTF does the fact that those programs being free and open source (some of them) have to do with anything? The comment you left is [edited by lau].

Those programs are all freeware, but they still beat [edited by lau] any of the BS apps you find for Linux.



BS. This is the ONLY audio ripper the scene uses. It's the most accurate audio ripper. You've never used Windows before so how [edited by lau] would you know that that's the main difference?

Tell people in the scene that it's the main difference and they'll laugh at you. People who will laugh at you more though are experienced lossless rippers (like me). I only rip for myself though.

Well, any of those that are open source (and obviously anything under GPL) are available for Linux.


But I have the same apps for Linux in some cases, and in other cases functionally identical programs under a different name.


You're going off on Fuzzy here? He used Windows for quite a while before switching to Linux, I believe. And IIRC, he still has Windows in another partition.

Really now?

[setenv flame=on]

I'd say that an easy way to distinguish oneself as NOT a "pro" is by use of the following arguments:

1. I'm right because everyone else does it my way.
2. I'm right because I say so.
3. I'm right because I stick my tongue out.
4. I'm right because I swear a lot.

[setenv flame=off]

Let me save you some laughter. That quote comes from the Exact Audio Copy home page. Here.

I've Never used windows before?

Where do you dig up your facts? I've used windows since 3.1, when my dad bought a 286+. That was shortly after it was released in april 1992. He delayed his purchase because windows was going to be the next big thing. Prior and concurrent to that I used a early mac and various incarnations of dos, starting at dos 2.xx in school. Prior to that we used apple IIe, Commodore 64 and I had(and still have) a little TRS-80.

The latest incarnation of windows that I have installed is Vista Ultimate For my brother. I chose to build my latest machine with xp pro(vista had JUST come out), and have only touched linux for the first time about a year ago.

I hope that clears that up for you.

Games would count

OK, so Windows has games. Why not buy a Wii? Or, if you want something Microsoft, an Xbox? Aside from games, what's so special about Windows?

FL Studio, good sequencer despite the bad rep.

Honestly, just an OS like any other. If you feel comfortable using it, why change?

The discovery last night that someone managed to compile some KDE 4.1 packages for Kubuntu inspired me to give Linux another go again. Normally, I run Windows Vista on both my Laptop and Desktop and use Offline Files to sync them. All data is stored in one shared folder and accessible to programs on both machines via symbolic links (which are in Windows Vista). This makes sharing data between the two machines trivial. I could never do this on XP, and I was curious if I could manage it with a dual boot.

The first thing I tried is installing Linux on my laptop, then creating some symbolic links to the offline files cache of the shared directory. I had to do it this way because Linux lacks an offline files feature, but the cache is visible via ntfs-3g. While this seemed to be working fine in Linux, on booting back to Windows I discovered all accessed parts of the cache had been severely corrupted. I had been smart enough to back up the cache beforehand, but it became clear I could not use offline files and do this. So I installed Microsoft Synctoy instead, and use it to sync my own little "cache" in a local folder. Unfortunately, at this point, I got greedy and decided to try creating a sync system in Linux via mounted samba shares. This was working briefly, but I was told by Konqueror a bug was preventing me from reading a certain folder on the share, so I tried renaming the share. This caused the installation on my desktop to be eternally incapable of ever sharing via samba again, even when I changed back what I did. I struggled to repair the damage, but no matter how hard I tried, that was that. Instead of reinstalling and starting over, I gave up again. Luckily, I use WUBI now, so my partition scheme didn't have to be redone to get rid of the Linux instead. This was all just as well, because most of the programs I wanted to sync were games that didn't run through wine at all or ran unusably slow.

I think there must be something to this thing, because nearly everyone I know with a reasonable amount of technical knowledge agrees that Windows is terrible and I should dump it for Linux. I myself can't let go of Linux and I find myself continually trying to get it working, not understanding why. I think the reason why I have such rotten luck with the thing while others don't is that others are content to have a simpler setup. Still, if I try to get Windows to do all these things I want, it grumbles but complies. I don't have this sort of mess with it.

I guess the issue for me isn't why I should stick with Windows, but why shouldn't I. If there was some really awful, compelling problem with Windows I couldn't stand, I'd switch to get away from it, but if everything works, including all the open-source software I like to use, and if I haven't gotten anything worse than a tracking cookie in years, why should I switch to Linux? Linux has done a great job taking care of its problems, but it needs to focus more on providing advantages over Windows rather than just eliminating disadvantages.

@ Kamex: I've heard that KDE is coming to Windows soon, so anything you're interested in there would soon be available.

I agree with your reasoning here: if you find Vista to work well for you, and Linux is too much of a hassle, then stick with Vista. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" though I'm a total hypocrite for saying that because I moved from a perfectly functional OSX box to Ubuntu. But, if it had really been unusable for what I wanted to do, I would have switched back. There's no sense in beating your head against a brick wall if what you already have is working fine.

warcraft
warcraft 2 tides of darkness
warcraft 2 beyond the dark portal
warcraft three reign of chaos
warcraft3 the frozen throne
world of warcraft
world of warcraft the burning crusade.

It's more natural to mee then Mac Os
A lot of Mac benefits is hyped up.
macs are too integreated, macs dont allow me to have what compents I want, list goes on. Its not just gaes..its specific games. You may as well tell someone to go to a barbeque resturant when he wants all you can eat crab.

thats a pretty good summary Kamex. The world needs more people with a informed view point like that. You've articulated both sides of the equation and in doing so, anyone that reads your words will have a better idea of where to look for their particular needs.

And this is where you lose me. You seem to be trying out some sort of proprietary, Vista only, probably flaky, file sync system, and for some reason expect it to work perfectly under Linux?

*nix has been syncing files, reliably, securely, across the internet, forever. rsync/ssh for instance.

Personally, it doesn't appeal very much to me.

However, you also seem to be talking about dual boot file "sharing". I find that simplest done by having a FAT partition and using that to hold any files I want to have available on all OSes on that machine.

It is, of course, perfectly possible that you have found a new "quirk" in NTFS. As it is not an open standard, Microsoft can change it whenever they like. E.g. a single bit that has always been zero before can suddenly be interpreted as "when set, use a completely different data layout, especially designed to make Linux wreck this filesystem... because they won't yet know about this change of 'standard'... because nobody has ever seen it before... because we've never used it before... because we just invented it... over coffee... today".