Making The Switch
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I'm a Windows guy, but I use Windows because it runs SQL Server, the platform I've grown to know and make a career out of working with. I thought this article was interesting on why people don't switch to Linux. It makes a comparison with SUVs and high gas prices, which is somewhat valid. It's why location is so important in so many businesses: people do what's convenient.
It's a little different with computers. Many people are still intimidated. I know this from many of the interactions I've had with people outside of work. The average other parent I meet out in the world, or the average person that I might run into and talk about computers, they're still a little intimidated by then. They use them, are capable of working with them to browse the web, send email, write papers, etc. But move them out of their area and they're not happy.
Even when I have people see our Mac, they're not thrilled. They're a little unsure of how to use it and the familiarity is gone. Macs are easy and you can quickly figure the basics out, but there are plenty of things that I've struggled with and haven't bothered to dig through the help files.
Because Windows works.
For the most part, I'm past the "cool" phase and I'm not sure that I want to upgrade to Vista anytime soon. I'm comfortable with XP and it works well for me, and more importantly, it's a tool that just works. There are plenty of security issues, but I don't and most people don't encounter them. There are failures, but I see failures on Macs and the Linux boards are full of people having minor issues with their systems.
But all of that is unimportant. What it really comes down to is that were familiar with Widows and unless something comes along that makes life easier, most people just won't switch. Just like most people are wary of hybrid technology and many don't even want to deal with diesel fuel, most people will stick with Windows because it's what works.
If you want to get people to switch, make a computer that does one or two things very well. Give people hints and move them along a path. Require two hard drives and keep them in synch. Prompt them to just insert a DVD every week and run a backup. Microsoft has gotten a lot better, but there's still a lot that could be improved.
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Like you Steve, I'm a windows guy, very comfortable with my XP Pro desktop and Windows Server 2003 when the need arises.
However, call it boredom or the real need to find something better, but I've been learning Linux lately. First just the Linux desktop Ubuntu 6.10 and now I've setup an old laptop for my wife with Ubuntu 7.04. She has had very little computer experience, but now I catch her reading and sending her own email. And when she wants to look something up, she just Google's like the rest of the world:-)
Last night I caught her playing Solitaire, in a version I'm not familiar with, and she had figured out the rules using the, can I say this here, Help file!
Why me, and Linux??? Well, my 64 bit processor is looking for a better operating system than 32 bit windows. Better to me is booting quicker, running VMWare Workstation virtual computers faster, and letting me Google and check my email as well. I don't think I'm going to learn the new Solitaire... the rules are just to complicated!!! 🙂
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When Linux is available in a version the average Joe schmuck on the street (that's me) can actually figure out without having to spend 1000 hours tweaking knobs and settings, I'll make the switch.
I played with it and found it to be really buggy, technical and irrelevant for family use. Oh, did I mention the install was REALLY time consuming and difficult?
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If its good and free, then why isn't every one using it?
It's either not good or not free.
Not good might mean it's to cumbersome to use compared to other software. Maybe it's not what we use at work so it must not be good at home.
Not good because I didn't pay for it, hence it's not good. Like someone giving you a car. The price is good but the problems it brings you in using it (registration, insurance, new tires, transmission, was in a flood...) are not worth it. Maybe that mentality is prevalent here too. This is America, home of the free except for taxes and software.
If I spend a lot of money on something, then it must be good. After all, Consumer Reports does not exist to cover free products.
Maybe because its just not ready for primetime viewing.
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I was pulled kicking and screaming from DOS and into the Windows world. You're not getting me back into a command line environment. In my limited experience with Linux, all the GUI apps are just crappy shells for the command line tools. That and the fact that MS Visual Studio is a truly incredible software development environment keeps me in Windows.
BTW, I have made the switch to Vista in the past couple weeks and it is much better than XP. I have only found one significant annoyance and that is that you can't easily move the user profiles to a separate drive. I tried following some instructions for moving the profiles by editing the registry and managed to hose up the system so that no one could log in. I went to rebuild the OS and thought I would try out the repair options. Would you believe that I was able to recover in about five minutes by going back to my last system restore point?! It appears as if Vista is creating a restore point every time a new application is installed.
Overall, Vista is a lot better organized and easier to get around in that XP. Aero glass is cool but I haven't really found it useful yet. Gadgets are another cool feature but I haven't felt compelled to find any new ones. The usability enhancements, however, are worth the upgrade for me.
Do make sure your hardware is compatible with Vista before making the switch. I didn't know my video capture card was not supported until after the upgrade but I don't use it any more anyway.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
You do understand that the Mac run OS-X under the covers. I had a co-worker who's a Linux guru. He was helping his neighbor with a Mac. He jumped out of the gui and dove in with command line.
Steve you said, "Because Windows works." Um.
Kind of. On a good day. Most days. Then there are lots of folks who will tell you that their AS-400 works. I know places that swear by their AIX servers. Lots of 390's and 370's out there still. (any one still running a 360 with HASP?)Operating system choice is nearly a religion. We are likely to get zealots from both camps in here. Where is my helmet and flak jacket?
My new home computer (still in the box for over a year) will be running Windows. My old '95 machine (that has not been powered on for over a year) will get converted to Linux so that I can learn. Have not yet chosen a distro yet.
In case you are wondering: I just don't have the time to play at home. Too busy at the office. If I have to work from home, late nights or weekends, I just use my wife's computer and remote into the office. I have to mess with her screen resolution sometimes but she doesn't mind. She's blind.
So here is another thing for the Linux crowd. Accessability. What screen readers are out there for Linux? What prices? I know the Windows stuff, that's good anyway, is damn expensive. You think it tough configuring a system when you can see? Try it with your eyes closed.
Austin Meyer (http://www.x-plane.com) says that he has a "secret" for coding. I know what it is. He writes on his Mac and ports to Windows. Stable software? "X-PLANE gets FAA approval for training towards airline transport certificate". "This is the first time ANY consumer-priced software has EVER gotten this certification." This is no game here.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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I have one project on Oracle and Linux where I am supposed to be a technical lead. This is a third-party application with vendor's support , so my actual knowledge does not count that much. I agreed to be a technical lead as my challenge. My impression:
1. Why pwd does not mean password and means a directory path?
2. It is challenging to work as non-sysadmin because both OS support person and Oracle support person would not give me admin rights and I am not asking for admin rights because I actually don't know Oracle and Linux well.
3. It is challenging not to be an expert when I am used to consider myself a Professional in other areas
4. Considering #1, #2 and #3 I really rely on Oracle and Linux administrators to help me and call it a delegation.
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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I installed Red Hat on an old laptop a couple years ago. I didn't really have any issue with the install, the Browser and email clients worked fine.
But they weren't any better than the ones in Windows. I had to force myself to use the laptop, so eventually I decided I just didn't need the other laptop or OS.
Windows works great for me. I haven't had a blue screen in probably over a year. My laptop in 2 years hasn't failed at all. Then again I don't stress the computers. SQL queries, email, web, Word, Excel. Probably the extent of what most non-technies due (minus the SQL queries).
I know companies with AS400s and they work great. Nothing wrong with them. If things work, they work. Except for the hard core people pushing computers to do new things, it just needs to work for the rest of us.
BTW, I love the command line. I'm more likely to run my backups to Red Gate servers with command line FTP rather than mess with ws_ftp
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WOW!!! I thought this was sort of an insignificant thread:-) However you have all made me think a little more on the subject so I wanted to add a couple of more cents worth before stopping.
Someone brought up, if it's free (Linux) and easy why isn't everyone using it. That's a good point, and I have to say that for me, Linux isn't easy. The new desktop distribution's are easy installs, so if you have an old computer, pick a distro and give it a try. Most can be purchased on the internet, if you don't want to download the iso and burn a CD. The going price for a CD with shipping in the US is less than 10 bucks.
The CD will run the Linux OS and you can play with it without installing it on you computer. To me that's really cool, to be able to test drive without installing on my hard drive. I think MS needs to do that with Windows, but being MSDN and having the ability to make a virtual computer with any MS OS keeps it from being a biggie for me, but I bet there are a lot of folks that would like to see Vista without doing an install, but maybe not...
There are three things in my world that have me interested in Linux.
1) My software development computer is a 64 bit machine and I would like to have all the horse power that it can supply. Using a 32 bit operating system isn't optimum, so I'm looking... Granted, MS is doing wonderful things with .Net, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and I could go on for a much longer list, but they have left a tiny percentage of us without a lean, mean OS to run virtual computers for software development. This could be fixed before the ink drys on this post, but I'm not sure they are even considering the problem.
2) We have several Linux servers at the office and a fine Linux guru to take care of any problems, but he has no backup. I won't be at his level for years, if ever, but he could use some help on the day to day STUFF that comes up in the server room when he's not in the office.
3) Finally, I love the open source concept. Notice, I said concept, it doesn't always have application in the real world. Also, open source does not necessarily mean free and in many cases does not. Red Hat is a good example of open source, but not free. If you want free Red Hat, you have to run CentOS, a direct copy with all references to Red Hat removed from the source code. If you geeky enough, you get FREE Red Hat (CentOS), but if you pay for Red Hat, you get support:-)
Finally, being a developer, I'm not really for FREE software unless I can find the time to write something useful as a hobby to give back for all the many developers that have added to my tools and utilities. As long as I'm having to work for a living, I need software to produce revenue:-)
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Good points, William. Then go look at MySQL. They give away most of their products and only charge for support. It's good stuff and comes close to SQL server.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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SQL Server and MS is my bread and butter, but when I replaced my Thinkpad a month ago it was with a new Core2 Duo Macbook. I'll continue using Windows et al, but for my personal use, I'm going Mac. Basic reason? It just works. I don't have the deluge of updates, I don't have the corporation constantly checking to see if my software is legit, it just works. I've got a nice GUI and I've got BSD underneath if I want to get hard-core CLI. And when I get enough disk space cleaned out, I'll have Parallels, Windows, SQL Server, and Access running.
I've used MS since Dos 1.1 on the original four-screw PCs, and frankly I'm tired of having to work on my computer. I don't have to do that with my Mac. Case in point -- last night I plugged in my printer for the first time ever. I'm anticipating some configuration rituals, so I open up the printer utility, and there's the printer, sitting there, ready to go. Zero set-up: no work from me, no noisy screens on my system (I didn't need to open the printer config but I didn't know that). I thought that was pretty cool!
I have almost no interest in linux, though with BSD under the hood, I'll be developing my *nix CLI/shell skills which should apply to most flavors of linux. I've installed various flavors of *nix on various flavors of hardware, and I've never had one flavor make everything work. And frankly, like I said, I don't want to have to work on the box. I want it to mostly work from the get-go. I don't want any of this "oh, you just need to edit this module and recompile the kernal" crap, that's an unreasonable expectation, and I've been working with this garbage for 25+ years.
I will probably be buying a Toshiba laptop with Vista in the Fall for continuing education, but I'll still be sticking with my Mac for most use.
My only complaint is that I have yet to find a book for the Mac for Windows users, or for that matter, any Mac book, that was worth the price. Their documentation doesn't suck, but it's not addressed to an experienced user, it's just a little bit lightweight for my needs.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
Wayne,
I was tempted to go with a Mac as well. We got one for the kids, but one thing I've noticed with them each having non-admin accounts, is that some things aren't that easy. As soon as something gets misconfigured, like my daughter losing her toolbar, it has very confusing getting it back. And on printing? We have an IP based printer that we send stuff to from the PCs. The MAC doesn't seem to work well with it for some reason. That has been a pain.
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Folks, taking this more from a sysadmin perspective as opposed to a DBA, I started off with DOS/Netware going to Windows and now am expected to support Linux (RedHat/SuSE for now) and VMWare ESX/VI3 (they have a linux core). I have been working on/off with Linux for a couple of years now and to be honest it has been a bumpy ride. I need/want to learn because I am trying to develop *nix skills since it is pretty difficult to get any Unix like experience at home. Linux is great for this and as technical folks you need to embrace it since it is not going away any time soon and make more inroads in corporations
On the client side, I concur with the other posts. Users at home would rather use what they use at work (since they know it) and odds are that is Windows/Office/Outlook. Until the time comes when Linux makes more inroads on corporate desktops, this will not likely change.
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Terry,
Much the same philosophy came from William Piper, who founded Piper aircraft. He thought that if flight students trained in Piper plance that they were more likely to buy Piper planes. Apple thought the same thing and even cited Piper. Apple thought that putting Apple computers in schools would encourage people to buy Apple.
How well does this work? History is still judging.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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I have a Black Book on using a Mac in a Windows environment. I'll see if it has any suggestions on IP printing. I'll also see if I can do some experimenting when I'm home this weekend. (I live/work 100 miles from my wife and most of my equipment is up there).
I haven't had any problems using a non-privileged account yet. I added an admin account (and un-admin'd my initial user account) and have no problem authenticating it on the rare occasion that I need to. Don't know what to tell you about the tool bar, but I'm hoping I might have an IP printing suggestion for you soon.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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