Originally posted by: Nothinman
how can you say linux is easier to use then windows? thats like saying size doesnt matter to a girl!
I never said Linux is easier, I said windows isn't easy.
haha.
The major strength that Windows has going for it for "user friendliness" is that the basic user interface hasn't changed for almost 10 years. Almost all the elements that you find in Win2k3 existed in almost the exact same form in Windows 95.
And people respond to this, how many people in threads like this condemn Windows XP because of it's cartoony interface? How many of the "power users" here switch back the UI to something that is more Win2k/Win9x-like? Think about it, it's familarity that breeds ease-of-use, not quality of design or layout.
If you go to any community school and check out classrooms full of people struggling to learn howto use MS Office or come to terms with the broken and fractured desgin concepts.
(example: Explain to me the idea of a "network drive" and why it's a good idea to have a "network drive" or a "C" or a "A" drive versus just directories that represent filing systems? A C drive doesn't even rely be a harddrive! It can be a partition, and you can have a D and a E and a F drive on the same harddrive! And a network share as another G drive? How does that make sense. Stuff like that f*cks with new user's heads, because it's required to know the differences in what these devices are in order to properly operate a computer when using Windows.).
And check out how easy it is to install WinXP. (Bleh). You hook it up to the internet to download your updates, and within 10 minutes your hacked. Hope you have fast download speeds.
(But you can slipstream cdroms!! Ahah!. You need a firewall!)
Well, certainly you can, but I wouldn't call that easy!
What you need to know to install WinXP successfully:
setup a network with a seperate firewall, or
get a slipstream update cdrom from MS or build one before you format the old OS.
buy and install a virus scanner and keep it up to date. Buy and install a seperate software firewall sometimes, Download adaware, download spybot, update the drivers for many things to fix various random bugs. blah blah blah.
Not exactly what I would call easy for the average person to learn howto use in a short time. It's not like it's a tremendous amount of difficulty, either, but it's a big time waster and the trick is that you first have to know to do these things. Then it works out fine.
But it's a unfair comparision to take 7 years of Windows experiance and try out Linux 2 weeks and declare it crap. It's not that Linux has it's downsides and I can understand people disliking it.
One of the crappy parts of Linux is various hardare support. You can't just buy whatever from the store and it expect it to be easy to setup. However you can selectively buy hardware and it can work very well and easily, often better then it does in Windows. (one major personal example was getting my ATI Wonder VE working with Nvidia vid card was nearly impossible in WinXP when I first bought it. People all over the place couldn't get it working, but in Linux it worked fine immediately.) The trick is to find stuff that has good driver support and manufacturers that support Linux.
Another thing is gaming. Games that are native to Linux usually work great, and are fairly easy to install. Ut2004 is a good example, Doom3 is another. But the numbers of native games are very small compared to Windows. But with a subscription to
Transgaming/Cedega will get most Windows games working.
For example is that many people are running Steam and Halflife2 in Linux thru Cedega windows compatability software. It's not as fast as it is in Windows, but you can spend the money you save by not buying Windows on faster hardware and that is good compinsation IMO. (not that I'd touch Steam personally, though).
