Ubuntu 11.10 > Windows 7

[Zeven]

That is, according to Tom's Hardware. Interesting stuff! I am especially surprised that AMD are apparently finally upping their game on Linux to boot. What do you guys say?

[shaithis]

And it can't run Battlefield 3, Photoshop, or stream through Netflix, just to name a few examples. The fact remains that Linux loses because fewer people use it, and fewer people use it because everyone else already uses Windows. It's a vicious, if not ironic, circle.

Even if less people used Windows, Linux would still be at the same point it is now. The vast majority of users would dump it within days (probably hours or minutes) and buy a copy of Windows because they know they have a better chance of installing, configuring and using it.

[aidanjt]

Even if less people used Windows, Linux would still be at the same point it is now. The vast majority of users would dump it within days (probably hours or minutes) and buy a copy of Windows because they think they have a better chance of installing, configuring and using it.

...and then they go calling me to fix inevitable screwups because since they paid for it they fell compelled to use it.

[peterb]

Even if less people used Windows, Linux would still be at the same point it is now. The vast majority of users would dump it within days (probably hours or minutes) and buy a copy of Windows because they know they have a better chance of installing, configuring and using it.

They latest (mainstream) distros of Linux aren't that difficult to install. Fedora gets a little complicated with disk partitioning, but once up and running in a Gui like Gnome or KDE, configuration tools hide most of the configuration nitty gritty from the user. The Gnome 3 minimnalist approach takes a bit of getting used to, and that might put some people as it seems rather featureless and barren after the windows desktop. I'm still coming to terms with it!

[spoon_]

Ubuntu came a log way to help the "dummies" so no one should really moan that's difficult to do things anymore.. Installation is like 3 next buttons and finish? And the OS is completely FREE to use, unlike Windows 7 that cost a bomb is you aren't student or not interested in OEMs (Ultimate version not some Home or whatever flavour you can't even join to the domain lol)

Ideally I would like to see Linux being used more and more, RHEL is already growing strong to provide directory services so soon people will not need AD, yay!

[b0redom]

Not sure where all this is Linux > Windows stuff is coming from.

I've had 2 people ask me recently if they should install Linux as it's 'faster'. I'm pretty platform agnostic so I don't care, but almost invariably the people in question play games, do Photoshop stuff etc etc.

I still don't think Linux on the desktop is there. For servers, great, no problem. For your average Mum and Dad install, no chance.

[jim]

Not sure where all this is Linux > Windows stuff is coming from.

I've had 2 people ask me recently if they should install Linux as it's 'faster'. I'm pretty platform agnostic so I don't care, but almost invariably the people in question play games, do Photoshop stuff etc etc.

I still don't think Linux on the desktop is there. For servers, great, no problem. For your average Mum and Dad install, no chance.

Have you tried the most recent versions of Ubuntu? The last one I tried seemed far more simple than Windows 7. So much so that I didn't find it very interesting.

Okay, so I wouldn't be able to fix it so easily if anything went wrong, but considering Mum and Dad probably do everything online these days you can just nuke it and start again as long as you've got some kind of backup running for their documents.

[Splash]

For my Mum and Dad install it's great - they only use it for t'internet really and I spend less time rebuilding nowadays. They don't really find it any harder to use than Windows, but then they're not really set in the Windows mindset. It's not for everyone, but if your parents aren't overly au fait with computers it's just as easy to set them up with Ubuntu or something similar and just let them get on with it.

[Steve]

Ubuntu has been my main (95%+) OS since version 8.04. I don't even dual boot - I have a VM with windows in it.

Is it better than Windows 7? For me, it is, and that's all I care about.

[peterb]

<---snip
I wouldn't be able to fix it so easily if anything went wrong, but considering Mum and Dad probably do everything online these days you can just nuke it and start again as long as you've got some kind of backup running for their documents.

You probably could as all the configuration files for the OS are plain text files, andd the ones for the GUI and GUI apps are either plain text or XML. You need a bit of CLI experience, but armed with that, the basic information is available with the man command and info command commands.

[TheAnimus]

I think its hard to say one is better than the other, if you play games a lot, the choice is simply better in windows 7.

If you use a lot of command line shell for different things you'll probably be better of with the cli of many linux distros.

If your using bespoke stuff powershell integrates with many platform things quite effortlessly.

If your using cross platform stuff a lot of them will run better under linux, as its got one less level of abstraction, it will run faster, conversly if you've got something thats optomised for windows its going to probably run faster.

Horses for courses. But I think as Apple have shown with the iPad plenty of users don't really need anything... What was that study on the average number of apps on an iPad?

[Hicks12]

When more people use Linux and then companies adopt open source tech like openGL then i would certainly go back to a linux based distro. I just cant go to it at the minute when my course heavily revolves around Visual studio usage (i dont have to but its much easier to follow... and better than most alternatives!) and gaming is the other main issue, then Office is the icing on the cake because i hate open office .

[TheAnimus]

Visual Studio and ReSharper is still the best dev platform I've found.

Oh, and I HATE IT. Slow, memory hogging, hangs in COM deadlock for a while......

[Hicks12]

whoa, ReSharper looks mighty useful... going to install that now, thanks for mentioning it!.
Havent had issues with VS yet, only on university computers but i use my laptop 90% of the time and it flies on the SSD .

[Zeven]

I just hope that this release makes it easier to connect my laptop to my monitor. My laptop has an Nvidia card and plugging it into my monitor is a trial and error kind of deal with the result mostly being error. On Windows 7, though? Easy as pie.

[GeorgeStorm]

I put fedora on both the family pc and laptop, and my family had no problems with it in principle, only issues being some of the software they wanted to use didn't work (like the stuff for their cameras) so I put windows back on, brother still uses fedora on the main pc unless he's playing games.

I use crunchbang on my laptop atm, just because I wanted to try something different. Linux is easy to use on a basic level, you don't need to know any commands to get by with it for day to day stuff really.