Re: An official slightly off topic anouncement

[<jaffar@art-palette.net>]

Hi.  I totally agree.  I came to linux from a windows environment through a 
software engineering course that i had just completed.  Throughout the 
course, I had the opportunity to compare both environments, and the huge 
difference for me is that while MS Windows is all there, in a manner of 
speaking, Linux allows one to explore, learn and above all else, to be 
adventurous.  Now those attrebutes one definitely cannot associate with 
windows.  Summary? with MS windows, what you get is what you get.  With 
Linux, what you do is what you get, and i know which i prefer.  Cheers!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: An official slightly off topic anouncement


> From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
>> on this list, are
>> anti-microsoft. After all, having been a user of windblows, and
>> gnu/linux for a few years now, I can't honestly say that I think
>> people are switching from windblows to gnu/linux, because gnu/linux is
>> easier to use than windows is.
>
> I made this same point on the blinux list a while ago and sparked quite a
> controversy. I believe anyone getting into linux should prepare themselves
> for a steep learning curve. But it pays off in the end. In fact, I've 
> been
> advising my blind computer nerd friends to get into linux as a form of job
> security.
>
>> For anybody else who has used both
>> operating systems for a good while, and is tempted to disagree with
>> that, think back on your first time compiling a customized linux
>> kernel, or on the steps one has to go through to build a piece of
>> software from source , or better yet, on how involved building a
>> gentoo, or a linux-from-scratch system is.
>
> Yeah, but you can't compile a custom kernel at all for Windows. Mostly, 
> you
> can't compile software either. You get what you get.
>
> So this is really the #1 difference between linux and Windows.  In linux,
> you can do just about anything you can do with a computer but you're
> expected to learn how. With Windows, the ideal situation is for you to 
> never
> have to read the documentation. Windows users want to just install and go.
> With linux, we give up intuitiveness for being able to make the thing do
> exactly what we want.
>
> Actually, I think the combination of both works really well. I use Windows
> as my desktop environment. But i do all my actual work on linux. For
> example, I have this elaborate system for recording the sound track of TV
> shows. I have a script that checks the schedule of my local PBS affiliate
> searching for my favorite shows, Nova, American Experience, etc. If it 
> finds
> them, it writes the show and time it will be on to a file. Then there is a
> cron job that runs sox to record each show . I then listen to them on my
> Windows machine by double clicking on them on my network drive.
>
> Here at the Math Department of the U of Wisconsin, we have dhcp, dns,
> ldaphttp mysql,  , and imap servers all running on linux.  I manage all
> these things via my Windows desktop.
>
>
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