All I can say is that if even burning an ISO CD from windows frustrates you, you are probably not going to like Linux.
Having said that, it's a bit ironic that burning an ISO image is easy in Linux but that you have to scour the web to find a way to do it in Windows. It's no surprise that the only way you were able to find to do it cost money (although you worked around it by using a demo version.) This is extremely typical of the difference between these two OS's. You can even mount a CD image, and make it look like part of your file system. For any given random task that you might need to perform you are far more likely to already have the right tool or combination of tools in almost any Linux distribution. And even if you don't you are far more likely to be able to build it quickly in Unix. Linux comes bundled with I don't know how many program languages. Most distributions have a C and C++ compiler ready to go, along with a ton of other languages, such as perl, python, ruby and others that are usually just installed by default. Most of the best free tools for Windows have migrated from Unix and usually are not quite as polished since they were obviously designed for Unix. Cygwin is one outstanding example. I have to say this too: if you compare a lot of little things, none of which may seem very important, you get this sense that Windows made a lot of decisions that were not really quite right. Those decisions were made in the good old days and may have been good decisions back then. However, for whatever reason, Unix also made a lot of decisions a very long time ago that are still appropriate. For example file systems. Each device in windows must have a drive letter encoded, such as c: or d: and then the path. With unix, you don't think in terms of physical drives, that is abstracted away. I can mount a windows drive and "put it" anywhere I want and it just looks like a directory somewhere. Unix has a single directory tree and you don't need to know or care about physical devices, how many there are, etc. I think this was a huge error with Windows. Another example is the extra character in text files to distinguish lines. Not a big deal, but a minor nuisance, a minor inefficiency. Probably the very biggest show-stopper for me has always been the short-sighted windows conceptual model that a physical computer is "owned" by only 1 person. This of course made the OS very simple in the old days and was easy, but again this is a legacy thing that causes windows to suffer forever. And over time, windows has gradually tried to fix this, but even Vista hasn't addressed this. Unix was ahead of Vista decades ago in this area. The perfect example of this is that when I asked for a computer to host CGOS on, Dave Dyer was generous enough to let me use his. All he had to do was give me an account and password. I cannot even imagine asking to borrow someones "Windows" computer on the other side of the world to do some experiments or run some tests. I know it's possible with special software, but it's a hack, not integrated into the Operating Systems way of doing things. To even think of doing it you have to do a lot of communicating with the guy on the other end, agree on what software to use, how it should be set up, etc. Therefore, every unix computer is easily turned into a mail server, web server, ftp server, etc. It's an awkward add-on for a windows computer to allow someone to get files from you (although I do think windows got it right with SMB.) But in general networking with other computers (or users) is a nightmare with windows and was tacked onto the operating system, not integrated as part of it like Unix is. - Don [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > ?I got excited about the free software sometime ago and bought a copy of > Susie Linux. But the?installation always hang up at some point and can never > complete. I had to kiss my $20 goodbye and so much for the Linux. Recently > my?job involves embedded Linux. For whatever reason we used the Fedora > version 4. It looks like the Windows 3.1. The?newest version?may be more > modernized, which I don't have tme to fnd out.?The?Linux operatng system is > about 600 Mbyte compressed. Since we have a fast internet, it took only 40 > min. to download. After downloading we needed to find a software that can > write ISO format on CDs. I failed to find?such a software on the internet and > ended up use the trial version of Nero. Then the Nero?I installed highjacked > my CD drive and I had to unnstall?it later.??I also tried the 64-bit version > of Linux and the installation never worked. > > I begin to consder install Linux on my PC at home. With my?internet > connection speed, downloading 600 MB is just unrealistic. The other option is > to order CD's. They cost $45 and up and I'm sure this cost will?go up with > time. So much for the free software.?I keeps asking myself what will happen > if the installation fails. I only have one computer and one internet > connection.?????? > > Not that I don't trust?other people's opinion, but?people pitched other > things before which we never hear again. > > > DL > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
