Dispersing the Linux Lies

[gnomez]

One of the biggest wails heard by the most vocal and fanatical zealots in the Linux community is that Windows and most of the programs that run on it are bloated and slow, while screaming about how fast and "un-bloated" Linux is.  Where this myth started I do not know, but it is obvious that it is a deliberate effort by Linux fanatics to tarnish the good name of Microsoft and Windows and to lure Linux newbies and those curious about the OS into making the fatal mistake of installing it on their computer.  The fact that this alleged truth seems to go unquestioned shows how reluctant most Linux advocates are to admit that their once lightweight OS has degenerated into nothing more than piles and piles of spaghetti code and a huge mess of cheesy, mostly unused apps that is characteristic of most Linux distributions these days.

Now to dispel the myths:

Myth 1.) Linux is good for old computers.

This Linux Lie is often perpetrated when a newbie wants to try out Linux, but is reluctant to install it on his or her main computer (with good reason) Others replying to his question will say that it is fine to erase the hard drive of his old Pentium 166 with Windows 98 SE to prepare it for the Linux revolution, but the fact is that Linux performs horribly on slow computers in comparison to Windows.  Sure, Linux may turn an older computer into a feeble server or a router, but try running things that you could run fairly quickly under Windows such as anything GUI, particularly an office app or a web browser, and Linux crawls, stutters, grinds the hard drive for 10 minutes, and generally eats up all the RAM in your poor machine's system like an obese glutton.


Myth 2.) Linux is lightweight

Once, yes, but now it couldn't be further from the truth.  Linux has quickly snowballed into a gargantuan assortment of apps and bloated libraries that have been stitched together by the slaves of Tux.  No amount of RAM will satisfy Linux, it will eat it all until there is nothing left to do but start swapping.  Many Linux purists will say that is not true, but since they choose to only use the command line or maybe blackbox or windowmaker they have no say.  The very fact that they would be torturing themselves with such rubbish just goes to show that they find straining their eyes and wrists on the geeky command prompt or configuring their blackbox using text files less torturous than suffering through the unbelievably slow load times and bloated programs found in KDE and GNOME.  

Myth 3.) Windows is bloated

This absurd statement is the most fictitious, and is spouted over and over again by the Linux faithful in the hopes that they will brainwash themselves into believing this most grievous of the Linux Lies.  My computer, an Athlon 1600+ w/ 256 mb RAM running Windows XP, takes merely seconds to start, the whole system taking about as much time to load as KDE by itself takes to start up in Linux.  Even on my old 166 Mhz IBM Aptiva Windows 98 SE runs very well, is quite snappy, and is just as featureful as KDE, even considering that Windows 98 is a four-year-old OS.  None of this speed or functionality was even remotely matched by any Linux GUI I ran on it.  The lie spouted by many Linux users that Windows 9x is an unusable crap OS is something that perplexes me, as I had far more stability/mysterious problems on RedHat 7.2 and KDE than I

[voidmain]

Good name?          And how can installing something that costs you nothing be a fatal mistake?  It's not like you can't put Windows back on if you don't like it, which most people won't at first (hell, I didn't like it at first, until I gave it a serious effort).  And I don't know about bloated.  I do know about choice.  I know that for what I do most MS apps have very few features that I really need and very many that I don't need.  And you don't have to install all 6 CDs that you might get with your Linux distro.

I would agree with you that for desktop work you need at least the system requirements of a Windows box but for many server tasks (not all) you can happily do on a 486 with very little RAM. Certainly don't need to waste any resources running a GUI on a server that you never need to touch the console on.

And for some young kid who wants to learn how to program and doesn't have rich parents there's nothing better than Linux.  What does Visual Studio and MS SQL server cost now days?  Especially if you want to use your SQL server on a public IIS server and license it legally?

And the time thing is complete bull shit.  I can't tell you how much time I waste dicking with Microsoft servers because the MCSEs don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, and never have to touch the *NIX boxes.

And automation is still just as much of a pain in the ass in XP as it was in DOS.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[gnomez]

I completely agree that Linux is very cost effective for servers and programming, and your comments are intelligent and well taken.  (Why the hell do servers even need a GUI anyway?) I really should have emphasized that I was talking particuarally about Linux for desktop/home/office use, as that is what most people use computers for.  Linux has its place, but I can't see it being in the desktop just yet.

[voidmain]

And I would actually agree with you on that point.  Although I see it getting closer to being viable.  And it certainly can't hurt to encourage young people to learn how to program and make a contribution.  As Linux get's closer to the desktop I think you will see more and more people contributing and more and more vendors porting.  Then maybe you will not be dependent on a single company for your operating pleasure.  Unless you work for Microsoft you can't help but at least be comforted that Linux and Macs are out there and if something ever happened to Microsoft you have something that is at least , if nothing else, usable.

I happen to find it very usable and am tickled that nearly 100% (if not 100%) of the people who came to this board looking for an alternative and tried it say they are very pleased.  It is encouraging and makes me want to help them where I can.

[Heywood]

While you post an intelligent argument, (a lot better than "Linux sucks..you fags!!!"), I would have to say the opposite is true, with me, personally. While everyone is different, I have found Linux to be 99.999% stable for me. Its been over a year since I had linux lock up on me, and the last time was when I had some bad memory sticks, and it would lock up regardless. Windows, however, has been a nightmare since 95.

I am one of those "old timers" (although only 24) who thinks DOS was Microsoft's last good OS. It was stable, powerful, just didnt multitask worth a crap. So I guess when they killed it, It started a grudge against Windows from Day 1. But I have had nothing but problems, and I pushed, and pushed, learned the OS inside and out, and still found, no matter what, "freak" things would happen, blue-screens, memory leaks, etc, data corruption, and in my Anger and hatred of 95, I turned to Linux. In 1996, someone gave me a copy, and it was rough at first (VI? THIS SUCKS) but I struggled with it, read the manpages, documentation, etc, and its been cake since then.

I have seen an improvement in Linux, without a doubt, in the last few years. It was clunky, it was shaky, and meant for a server. But I think its readiness for the desktop is approaching. While I think Gnome is mostly a pile of Crap (Sorry Gnomers, but KDE is for me) it's still better than any Windows system, for me.

While I have had to spend more time learning, now, years later, I spend more time productively, enjoying my computer, rather than fumbling with it, trying to make it work. Its really nice. I spend my time "tweaking" or "playing with things" at my own leisure, rather than "fixing" things. XP has been a heap of sh*t (Can you cuss on this board) that makes my tbird run like a duron, sorry. With a tbird 1400, with 512MB DDR, and Raid, yeah, it takes longer to boot up than XP, but once I get in and start the X server, its a Rocket from there. No waiting for anything.
And all I have to do, when I set it up is, install the OS, (with complete control of what happens with it)
setup my window manager, install a few programs, pimp out the kernel, slide it in, and its a joyride from there. Worry free computing. Thats what I love.

I have reinstalled XP three times since I installed RH 7.2 For a while, I just ran Redhat, without XP, and waited until I needed it, to put it on. (They need AutoCAD for linux dammit).

While it doesnt run on old hardware well, what OS does? But I must say, when I had  setup a print and proxy server at home, I wouldnt have considered Windows for a second. It was a Pentium 100 with 16mb of Ram, and I'd like to see someone put Win2k on it, and have it do the job, like FreeBSD did, effortlessly.

While Linux may have been a bad experience for you, and I agree, its not 100% ready for the desktop, and not ready for my mom to use it, its great for me.

Just my opinion.

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: Heywood ]

[mr6re9]

A brief testimony.

Once Upon A Time......
Like many, my first PC was windows. And second. The difference was my first was a hand-me-down win 95, the second was win 98se that I paid to have custom built (by some OEM). Keeping a potentially long story short...I was cracked very thoroughly. Neither myself or the OEM could reinstall win on the disk without it reverting to the post crack condition in a few days. I had very limited, virtually non-existent computer skills. I heard about linux from a friend and saw a RedHat 7.0 boxed set and gave it a whirl. Thankfully, 30-day phone and 180-day web support was included with the purchase. It was a challenge to be sure, but I stuck with it for a year and a half. 7.0 to 7.1 to 7.2.

Now to the crux of this bizkit.

I have three machines for the family. All are duell boot linux/win98. Our internet connection is a DSL pppoe. We would normally connect each machine independently as needed. Two machines are booted into linux 99% of the time and they connected to our ISP 99% of the time we want them to. One box is almost always used by the kids for playing games and using MSN, Morpheus, etc. Twice in the last 3 months, a condition arose where the win box would fail to negotiate a connection. The linux machines were unaffected, including the linux install on the other half of the win box. My ISP gave me the same old song and dance about removing and reinstalling the software, rebooting, rebooting, rebooting. I did this the first time it happened and the problem was at their end. I would not do it again. WHATEVER THEIR problem was, it did NOT affect our linux machines at all.

Where am I going with this anyway? Oh.....

The solution took a little configuring, but all the necessary tools and kernel modules came stock in my FREE ISO download of RedHat Linux. I set up one linux machine as a gateway masq router firewall. No more failed connections for win. The win box is even more secure with packets going through a linux kernel first. Initially I was amazed at the amount of unsolicited packets to and from the win box. Aren't iptables, netfilter and stateful inspections GREAT?

Anyhow, in conclusion:

1. I spent $200 bucks on win98se two years ago and still have win98se.
2. I spent $60 bucks on RedHat 7.0 a year and a half ago and now have RedHat 7.2.
3. I spent $50 bucks on a firewall for win98se and it was still cracked.
4. I spent a few hours setting up the linux kernels built-in packet filters and have not been cracked.
5. I did NOT spend $500 bucks on Photoshop, I HAVE the GIMP.
6. I did NOT spend $500 bucks on Office2000 I HAVE Koffice and StarOffice.
7. I did NOT have to buy CD burning software, I HAVE XCDRoast.
8. I did NOT have to go online and activate my personal copy of a M$ product in order to use it and get a personal Passport.
9. I DID register my OS with RedHat and I DO get regular Eratta sent by email notifying me of software updates and bug fixes.
10. I get more frags Quakeing in linux than I do in win.
/etc/yadda/yadda/yadda../we/all/know/the/rest

And we all live hippily over ether.

farmer6re9

[lost]

Learn something about c or assembly and we will have a discussion.  Until then i will treat you like ignorant person you are.  Fucking gotards everywhere, i swear.  Theres a reason why people leave garden gnomes outside with the dogs.

[gnomez]

Originally posted by lost:
Help me, Help me! I'm a mere spreader of lies!

Sorry , I can't help you or hear you.

Nice comments everybody.  I actually wrote the whole thing out of devilishness and frustration because KDE was giving me the shits, and all the other GUI's are not nearly as powerful, good looking, etc.  Taking so long to start everything on my uber-box made me want to bite Linus's head off like Ozzie Osborne.  Then I made the foolish mistake of upgrading KDE in hopes that the newer version would be faster, which caused all sorts of problems, so I had to spend forever getting back to the original RedHat installation.  I have been using Linux for over 2 years now and it frustrated me that while the quality of the software greatly improved, the speed seemed to get much worse.  I tried asking around on message boards why it was so slow, and most of the replies I got were from retards telling me I had screwed up my computer or that there was something wrong with me, not Linux, blah blah blah.  Even though it had been slow since I first installed it. (Red hat 7.2) I tried Mandrake 8.1 and a couple of others but they were actually slower.  I really wanted it to work since I don't like Microsoft as a company very much and was ticked that I had to download an illegal hack just to install the copy of Windows XP that I bought with my own money on my other computer.  Sheesh, I've given you over a thousand dollars Bill, what more could you possibly want?!?! Besides world domination...  
I don't claim to be a computer know-it-all although I am pretty knowledgeable about computers in general and am planning to major in computer science when I go to college, and yes, I do know some programming, just not enough.  I really admire the work people are doing on Linux to try to make it better, and I hope it will become a viable alternative to Microsoft and Mac sometime soon.  Don't make Linux be just for servers! Most people don't even know what a server is and they deserve an alternative too, regardless of how geeky they are.

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[Ron]

Sorry to swear but I liked win 3.1 . I ran a 486dx with it & 8mg ram & now run an Athlon 800 with win98 & 256 mg . The only difference in speed I notice ( with stuff like word, excel etc.)is that I can scroll more quickly down windows. I've tried to think of other advantages of win 98 over 3.1 but having several hundred meg of what seems like unnecessary clutter doesn't seem to count. IEEradicator made a visible difference in speed to pop-up menus on 98. My system now has over 17,000 files/folders and I reckon that I'm responsible for about 1500 of those. So BillG & his system authored 15,500 (including files for non-M$ apps to let them 'interface' with win). That seems slightly bloated to me. And with Linux, as far as I can tell, you install what you want/need, not what BG decides you should have. At least I saved space by deleting IE & findfast (which, again as far as I can tell, sucks the will to live from your pc (and helps fill your hd - so you have to upgrade to keep up - BG memo Jan 1997 - get Joe Muglic to upgrade, take advantage of all that extra processing power, bulk up win to slow pc down, must upgrade, take advantage of all that extra processing power.....).As I find alternatives to M$ I replace them on system ( Linux by Xmas 2035 at this rate).
And for Yahoo chat, www.yahelite.tk - no spam, instant , no ads, reams of inbuilt functionality (lots of whistles & bells), & someone'll tell me you get a free sub7 trojan on your system with it.....
Hope Bill never builds mobile phones - you'll need a lorry to transport the latest version, it'll be out of date last week and Estonia's national electricity production to run it.
One good thing about Bill's updated versions of wIMP$UCK - each version crashes more impressively than the last.

[voidmain]

I tell you what. You're speed problem could be something as simple as using the "hdparm" command to tweak the throughput on your hard drive.  I ran across a note on "hdparm" one day and noticed I was only getting around 4MB/s read/write speeds on my 350Mhz Dell Optiplex w/256MB RAM and 10GB hard drive (now a few years old).  Everything was slow as you are experiencing.  Web browser took forever to pop up. Well, within a minute or so of checking different parameters in hdparm I was getting 20MB/s throughput and the browser was loading MUCH faster, I was pleased.  After adding the appropriate "hdparm" command to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local life was much brighter after that.

I've found with RedHat 7.2 I've never had to run that command on any machine. It seems to do a good job of setting disks up optimally at install time.

[LunchboX]

I have Lnux and Windows XP. They both work fine, though XP has some problems, like the fact that I have to reinstall it almost every day for one reason or another. To tell you the truth, I would get rid of XP from that computer, but I can't. Some of my software doesn't run on Linux (like my version of Mathematica and Autocad, I have the same problem as you Heywood). When it works though, XP it workable, but it's like comparing a BMW (Linux) to a Ford (Windows). They are both cars, but one is better then another (I know, it's on some site that I found on this forum, but I can't remember the name).

[gnomez]

Um, just what are you doing to your poor computer to make it where you have to re-install Windows XP every day?  I swear for such smart Linux users some people pretend to be it seems strange that they would have so much trouble with an OS that is nearly idiot-proof.  (That doesn't mean XP is designed for idiots; I can make a guest account in Linux to idiot-proof the system so my dumb cousin won't stumble across "rm -Rf /" I haven't had any problems with XP yet.  It has been very stable and easy to configure so far.  Maybe you need to upgrade your brain?

My beef with XP isn't its quality, it's Microsoft's horrid business moves lately.

PS Hurray for ClearType! My eyes have never felt better

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[gnomez]

quote:My system now has over 17,000 files/folders and I reckon that I'm responsible for about 1500 of those. So BillG & his system authored 15,500 (including files for non-M$ apps to let them 'interface' with win). That seems slightly bloated to me.

You call that bad?  Do you even know how many trillions of files are in the /usr directory alone under Linux?  Someone ought to do an exact count of the number of files in windows and the number in an average linux distribution, but I know from experience that Linux has more files.  I'm not saying more files = bad but Linux definitely has a lot of files.

[kinky]

i have a box i dual boot... Win2K and SuSE 7.3 ... its an Athlon Tbird 800 with 512mb of PC100 ram a Geforce2 GTS, and a 20 gig ATA66 5400 rpm hard drive...

well i use linux almost always, the win2k is only so i can boot up and run my 2 accounts of EQ at the same time :-P

my linux runs noticably faster than Win2K...

i will agree that windows is ready for people that dont know what to do.. it very simple to set up and does almost everything itself, where in linux you have to do alot of tweaking. linux IS ready for the desktop, it just isnt ready for ignorant users of that desktop.

[jtpenrod]

It's *always* the same-old, same-old.  

So here we go again:
     

quote: Myth 1.) Linux is good for old computers.

No myths here. I ran a Dell OptiPlex GSa (Pentium II, 232MHz, 32MB RAM, 2.0GB HD) a six year old rig. Last November, I did a full install of Mandrake 8.1 on this machine. This, *despite* the recommendation that Mandrake required a minimum of 64MB, *twice* what I had. I can tell you that the old Dell never ran so well, or looked so fine. The machine performed *better* than when it was running Win 95, with which it came as an OEM install. The one and only problem that I had was with Konqueror. That ran slow due to the lack of memory. So I didn't use it. No problem. Sorry: Mandrake was *very* good for that ol' box.

     

quote: Linux has quickly snowballed into a gargantuan assortment of apps and bloated libraries that have been stitched together by the slaves of Tux.

Oh really? I've since acquired a new system that I have set up for multi-boot: Win 95, Mandrake, Red Hat, and QNX. So I did some checking with the df program to see how much disk space everything was taking. Here are the results:

Win 95 - 1.8GB

Mandrake - 2.086GB

Red Hat - 1.233GB

Mandrake takes up the most space as it's my main OS. Mandrake runs the GRUB bootloader, E-mail clients, Browsers, and Star Office. I have none of this on the Red Hat parts, nor do I store the bulk of my files there. I'm using Red as a development platform for GNOME, so naturally there's not as much there. The Mandrake parts are just somewhat larger than Win 95. However, I don't have *any* of the MS Office apps, I've also used IEradicator, so Internut Exploiter is gone, since I don't connect to the 'Net from a wide-open Win 95 - there is no anti-virus apps, no Web browsers of any sort, no E-mail clients. At the absolute *worst* Linux is no more bloated than Win 95.

     

quote: Myth 3.) Windows is bloated

Look at what I've already said. That old Dell would be considered a mainframe by the standards of twenty years ago. And yet, I couldn't've used it to send an E-mail across town with Win XP on it. Why? Because the ol' Dell isn't powerful enough! Win XP hogs vast amounts of real estate on the HD, uses RAM like a hog, contains more bells and whistles and other crap than any ten people could ever use. Windows is horribly bloated since Win 95 was the last good idea they ever had. How do Win 98, Win 98SE, or Win ME *really* differ all that much from Win 95? Every few years Macro$uck comes along, makes a few minor changes, throws in more crap, and tries to convince us that the same old thing is really something grand and glorious. Bloat is the unavoidable, inevitable outcome.

     

quote: To end, if you want to get some work done, don't use Linux, you'll spend all your time tweaking it and waiting for slow assed programs to load, I know Windows costs money but its not that expensive and besides Linux is only free if your time is worthless
 

Tell me, just where can I get these "slow assed" programs? I sure didn't find any on the Mandrake or Red Hat CDs      :eek:       OK: perhaps Linux doesn't boot up as fast as Winders. Here, it's kind of hard to compare as I can set Linux to boot up in either graphical mode or text mode, I can set it up to go into Run Level 3 or Run Level 5. Whatever you choose, you'll either speed it up or slow it down. And, of course, fast booting is a definite advantage in an OS that crashes often as you'll be booting it a lot.

     

quote: I would get one but I don't want to re-buy all my commercial apps I have for windoze
 

I get *tons* of apps, all for free. There's precious little freeware for Winders.

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]