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Re: Is Windows becoming irrelevant?

__/ [ Michael B. Trausch ] on Monday 01 May 2006 17:31 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote in <2026846.ZARVOqsoq1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on Mon May 1
> 2006 11:51:
>> 
>> I once attempted an amateur's benchmark. I ran pscp on Windows
>> (Linux->Windows, then Windows->Linux). I used that box to channel large
>> heaps of media, so I saw this as a good assessment/sanity check
>> opportunity. Windows was roughly 3 times slower than its equivalent on
>> Linux->Linux with scp. I'll never forget it. The Windows XP box was very
>> modern and it was running nothing else (apart from AV and other crucial
>> appendages).
>> 
> 
> Network transfers and the like, yeah, those stink in Windows, too.  On my
> desktop, the most I could download from Georgia Technical Institute ("GA
> Tech" -- 20 minutes from my apartment) was 400KiB/sec -- if I was lucky.
> 
> Running *any* browser or network transfer under Linux, I can download at
> just a hair over 1 MiB/sec -- good enough for me!  :)


Over here, it was at most 33 MBit/Sec for Windows and 100 MBit/sec (maximal
speed) under Linux. The system was idle enough to permit other programs to
run and remain fairly responsive (especially the JRE 'stuff', for whatever
reason). Call it "stress testing" if you like, but it comes to show how slow
and cumbersome Windows has become. It is _not_ suitable for brute-force,
24/7 work (with or without the presence of the user/admin).

If it takes 10 minutes to restore a desktop session with all the needed
connections and precesses (I have well over 100 of them), I cannot afford
fragility. Fragility, as I have experienced in my cousin's house (Windows
XP) costs too much time, effort, and ultimately patience.

I never wish to spend any time on maintenance either. I don't enjoy it.
Nobody does, but others treat it as a necessity and take it for granted. I
want things to be completed as soon as possible and require the least user
intervention. GNU/Linux gives me the ability to come in day after day, punch
in password to unlock, and always resume without taking time aside to
update, to defrag, and to worry about viruses or malware, let alone the
integrity of my data.

Data (information) is the bread and butter of all who go beyond basic Web
surfing and Webmail. GNU/Linux and its origins have concentrated on this
aspect for decades, in the enterprise and primarily its datacentres. Thus,
they all handle it so well, whereas Windows has been progress-driven (read:
more bells-and-whistles), concentrating on UI and ease of use (by an
outsider as well, if you know what I mean).


>> PS - Another experience I will not forget: Sending files to a colleague
>> with Windows 2000 box via FTP. On GNU/Linux-SuSE 8.1-KDE-Konqueror
>> (multithreaded by default), this took about 5 minutes. On Windows-Windows
>> Explorer this took roughly 3 hours. When my colleague cancelled the
>> download (due to impracticality of this) and erased what had already been
>> transferred, she hit the wall and discovered the infamous deletion bug --
>> that which had persisted in Windows since its 95 release. It was never
>> fixed, until a few years ago. Her computer froze for 10 minutes. If I
>> hadn't told her it was a known bug, she would have rebooted.
>> 
> 
> Oy.  There are some things -- like this -- where there are *no* excuse for
> their persistence.  What do you think the odds would've been that the bug
> would've been squashed, if Windows were open?
> 
> For that matter, what do you think the chances are that the overall quality
> of the Win32/64 systems would improve if opened?  People would probably rip
> the defunct code out, adding support for newer filesystems, add an actual
> POSIX layer... Windows would've probably had better default permissions and
> applications would've been better living in a restricted world, too, I
> think.


Dvorak's crazy article (nothing out of the ordinary) on Open Source Vista
should be folded, squashed, and thrown out the window. 60% of the code in
Vista is awaiting a re-write, according to Microsoft. It is too early to
expose it. It is not ready for prime time, according to the EU (Microsoft
offered to sell the code to selected developers).

You see, Michael, when they write in a closed-source context, the quality of
code developed is affected accordingly. It is not visible. It needn't
necessarily be tractable (think of legibility of todo notes that you use and
bin a few hours later). I believe I know this rather well because I made all
my code public. I also see code of others whose work I'm a part of -- either
as a contributer or a user (I often need to hack/tailor projects at source
level).

All in all, forget about Open Source Windows for the time being. Internet
Explorer has got its own Bugzilla copycat recently, but noone can submit
patches. The code remains closed source.


>> I am never doing that again. She can burn her time working like Sisyphus <
>> http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/sisyphus.html >, but when others are
>> in the loop, she ought to use a proper research (or lack thereof)
>> platform. Once of my motives for ditching Windows entirely is was its
>> incapability of dealing with a deep file structure/hierarchy. When the
>> filesystem is deficient, there is not much hope for the O/S that sits atop
>> it.
>>
> 
> This is very true.  I remember when UMSDOS was considered a popular choice
> for running Linux (remember ZipSlack?).  I never understood why you would
> want to try to use a compatibility layer on top of a brain-dead filesystem
> such as FAT to try to get at the permissions and names of files.  Now, with
> the LFN standard that MS came up with for FAT, it's conceivable that the
> permissions could be stored directly in the filesystem with the filename,
> but it's still FAT, and FAT is still brain-dead.  *shrugs*.  Never got it.


I am probably too young to be familiar with ZipSlack. I had to look it up...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZipSlack

Earlier on I forgot to mention people whom I heard migrated to Linux owing to
major data losses in Windows. I am very serious about this and I know how
devastated I would be if I ever lost data. I sometimes do a filecount. I
still mirror my hard-drive in 3-4 places due to fear of physical errors (bad
sectors).

Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      | Disclaimer: no SCO code used to generate this post
http://Schestowitz.com  |    SuSE Linux     ¦     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
  5:30pm  up 4 days  0:27,  13 users,  load average: 1.48, 0.98, 0.80
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