Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Sat, Dec 25, 2004 at 07:14:14PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:Are you? Curt's got the right idea from the fragment he quoted. I've yet come across something that Windows doesn't screw up better.Self-fumigation will effectively prevent open source from adopting those things which proprietary software currently does better. There are some things e.g. XP or OS X do extremely well, and not only for impatient, naive users.
I'm not sure what they are. But I am pretty certain that those things which might be considered better are probably done so at the expense of flexibility of the installation in terms of configuration and selection of software.
As a Linux example: I sepent a year trying out Suse and RedHat on my desktop. SuSE does a fantastic job at installation and basic configuration. And they continue to do a great job just so long as you do nothing to deviated from their expectations of how you use their software. And some of those variations have shown themselves to be very common. If you don't love KDE then SuSE isn't for you.
If all you want is a basic workstation then SuSE is a great option.But don't plan on really doing all that much with the software that's installed in terms of "tweaking" it to your likings.
Please don't compare Windows XP to Linux anymore. They really aren't even in the same class anymore. And as for which one is better? Decide for yourself and let your neighbors do the same. I'm really not sure why we have these silly debates every few months on the mailing list.
Just use whatever you want for whatever purposes you want and be done with it. I gave up answering any of those "family admin" questions at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings years ago. Now I just offer to install linux for them. It's so much nicer during the holidays.