First of all, piratepenquin, my apologies for the 'herd' comment, and the assumtion that you don't know anything about Linux. Those were low blows.
I'll be quoting a few different people here, so bear with me....
The question, though, is the design better? Now I can show you lots of highly complex circuits for audio amplifiers which are quite complex. Indeed, it looks like the end result of a competition for the "fanciest" design. However, not a single one has the performance of a simple design that originated in 1964 (which, in turn, was adapted from a far older design from the "glass FET" days) when it is implemented correctly. Complexity for the sake of complexity is a marketing ploy, nothing more.
The superior design of german weaponry during during WWII is a prime example which actually makes your point. Germany designed weaponry that was too expensive and time consuming to build, and their weapons suffered from reliability issue which American and Russian weapory didn't. That said, I won't (and didn't) say the Window's more complicated design makes it better. My experience is that WIdnows more complicated design can definitely lead to issues, but they are not at all insurmountable.
No! This is not a "personal problem" for piratePenguin or anyone else.
I'd have to respectfully disagree here. I think is was a personal problem, and mr piratepenquin solved it by switching to Linux. Good for him.
The documentation for Win-Doesn't is horrible. Just this morning, I saw yet another advert from someone calling himself the "Video Professor". He was advertising his latest version of Windows training CDs. This guy has been in business for at least five years now, doing the very same thing. Furthermore, these adverts do not appear on your run-of-the-mill "prime time" TV stations, but rather on specialized stations whose audience is presumeably above average in intelligence, and professional folks. Once again, the Windows user has no choice but to turn to yet another third party provider to compensate for the manifest inadequacies of this "operating" system. It is unacceptable that there is nothing comparable to the Linux Documenation Project.
Ha! I laugh at your assumtion that the Linux Documetation Project would help out your average computer user who doesn't even know what an "Operating System" is.
It is doubly unacceptable that the documentation for Winderz remains so piss-poor that the Video Professor could still be in business.
The problem is not about the quality of the documetation at all. I've found the built in help facilities of XP/2000/2003 to be quite helpful over the years. The problem is that the average use simply refuses to "RTFM". People want to be told and shown how to do things with minimal effort on their part. This is why the Video Professor series is a viable product. I will concede that when you get into the more advanced documetation Microsoft provides a lot of it can be inadequate. Sometimes their higer level docs can read like PHD thesis papers - they assume you already know a ton of things. Also, at times, their documentation is incomplete and little things are left out. These little things they don't bother to mention can cause big headaches. I had this experience most recently with Microsoft's documentation of RIS. Microoft's SQL server documentation is also really tough. It basically assumes that you are alredy a guru a transact SQL, and you fully understand every advanced concept related to SQL database systems. On the other side of things, I've not seen documentation for Linux or BSD that is any more user friendly than the documentation available for Windows. Many times, fully understanding what man _x says requires you to also read man page _y, and man page _z, and man page _r, and so on. The biggest issue I've even had with Microsoft documetation was FINDING the relevant articles. Microsoft's internal web site search is pure CRAP. Thank god you can use Google to search their site.
Well actually, seeing as my system doesn't suffer hard lock-ups at all, and it did back on Windows, and GNU/Linux is running perfectly here, I'd say GNU/Linux would do far better than Windows. Prove me wrong.
That's a rather unreasonable request o make, unless you want to send me your system via airmail with return postage.
"cheap hardware", I doubt it. Anyhow, I guess that means GNU/Linux is better here?
Yep. I agree that, in general, overall driver stability in Linux and BSD is superior to Windows. That said, a quality hardware setup in Windows can be just as stable as any Linux box.
However, given that making Windows completely stable (I have yet to breach a 30-day uptime with it) is quite the feat, you would be certainly in the upper .000001%
It's not quite the feat if your hardware is adequate. Have alook at my
uptime stats. You'll notice two Windows machines on there which have very high loads, and uptimes that are much longer than 30 days. These Windows machines have NEVER crashed. The IIS5 box has been deployed for three years now. I also urge you to take a look at the uptimes for other people's Windows machines. I guess that upper .0000001% must ALL use this site? Note - the uptime site seems to be broke at this moment.
But that BSoD can't happen, and you can't have any malfunctioning drivers that can't be recoded. Ah, now the FUN sets in, doesn't it?
Fun? Is that fun in an S&M way? I'm well aware of the issues that can arise out of close source drivers. It took Creative around three years to write a stable driver for their SB Live! series. THey finally did manage to pump out a stable driver a couple of years ago and the issues that came with it finally stopped for good. I did have my FreeBSD box lock up a few times while playing AAO using that damn SB Live card, so I sometimes wonder if the hardware is just poorly designed and the stable Windows driver that creative finally came out with had a very large number of hacks written into it to compensate for the hardware's problems. I ended up canning that card and using the integraded audio on my MB.
