I'm not in the least sure about the content of that, but it's no less true than what's in the original statement.

A ridiculous and failed attempt at trolling ...

I do not want to see Windows gone. Neither do I want to see Linux or Mac OS gone or completely dominant. As in almost all fields competition is very healthy and if there is a lot of competition the customers get better products. I'd be very happy with a Mac OS market share of 20%, Windows 50% and Linux 30%. That way, companies are forced to build interoperable products. It's not only about games ... take document formats for example. Complete dominance of one player in the market is always bad for the customers. Especially you as Windows fanboy should be happy if there is some serious competition. Because that means Microsoft will have to make a better Windows. Right now they can basically produce any crap they want and because of their monopoly you just have to use it.

The good thing is that we are comping closer to some real competition in the OS market. With apples recent rise and the continuing success of Ubuntu the OS market will be very, very interesting in the not-so-far future.

On a sidenote: It would of cause be totally awesome if the Windows source code was publically available. Wine could simply run everything then. It would also instantly break the MS dominance - even better then just opening D3D. But it would be a little too much I'd say

I'm not a windows fanboy. I'm not a linux fanboy. I'm not an OS X fanboy... I use whatever runs the things I want to run. I don't care much about the "flavor of the day" style.

I run all the games and applications I need on windows, and I rarely have any issues. To quote an old Unix saying; "If it works, don't fix it"... You can argue all you want about how Vista is crap and doesn't work, fact remains that I haven't seen a single unprovoked bluescreen the last 2 years.

I wouldn't switch to Linux today even if I could run all my stuff on it, because it wouldn't really bring me any added value. All I'd get would be a longer boot time...

I GNU/Linux achieves this market share then it will simply steamroll over Windows and Macs. The only thing holding it back atm is lack of program compatibility. Such a market share would mean that most companies would create their programs as mutliplatform in order to capitulate in all the markets. And once there is no app that cannot run on 'Nix, then its freedom (both in ethical and practical terms) would make it a superior choice.

Bloat is not the problem. The problem is that Windows is so completely lacking in the stuff a professional user needs, that even if it were open source, there would be years of work fixing it to make it a sane alternative. It took years of work for Linux to read Windows partitions flawlessly, read popular file formats properly, talk Windows network protocols, and so on. Now that Linux is big, any OS that cannot read ext3 partitions, doesn't talk NFS, etc, etc. is no alternative.

So, an open source Windows would need years of work to fix just this, without doing anything to the user experience, because the current Luna or Aero user interfaces are good for people expecting a toy, but inadequate for professionals.

Open-sourcing Windows wouldn't solve anything by itself. Open-source can attract more developers, but WIndows is not suffering from a lack of development. The main use of it would be that it would become easier to integrate existing open-source code bases with the Windows code, but that's it.

Hahaha! You're kidding, right? Windows is used professionally by millions of people every day... I'm assuming most do it successfully too, or we'd have seen alternatives on the desktop a LONG time ago.

What a professional user need is professional applications, the OS is not a mean of productivity, regardless of what the OS developers of the world say.

You know mickeko, for not being a fanboy you're awfully eager to put down anything positive said about GNU/Linux and defend MS Windows...

Only things that doesn't make sense. I do the same thing for Linux in Linux-bashing threads.

The thing is, neither "side" can argue constructively in these debates... (I'm not any better either really, so I just point out where people are mistaken, guessing, or plain wrong :P)

I'm not kidding at all. In the 70's people were happily using long play records, because they didn't know better. As soon as people started to learn about the compact disc, they suddenly did consider the long play record awkward to use and old crap.

It's exactly the same story with Windows: Those millions using it do so, because they don't know better. If you'd like I can bring you in contact with people who are not known for their computer knowledge at all, were migrated from Windows to Linux because of company policy, and would never ever like to switch back to Windows (they call it Wintendo) again. Actually I got my view that Windows is a toy from them.

So, how do I rename all png files on disk from naming convention xxxx_yyyy_zzzz.png to zzzz_yyyy_xxxx.png? Tell me how productive the Windows operating system is for such a task.

You can always tell a fanboy from a fan; a fan will happily tell you about all the good stuff his favourite thing has to try to get you to join him.  A fanboy will extol the virtues of every single thing about his favourite, even the flaws.  By all means advocate linux on account of it's security, stability, cost and community.  It's UI, though, is terrible; consistency is incredibly important in user interface design, and linux is lacking it in its environment (Gnome, KDE, how many more?) and at the application level. Whining because someone points that out isn't going to convince anyone of anything.

Actually, don't advocate it, since it's completely off topic in here.  Go make another thread called "I <3 Linux" and continue your pointless argument in there.

p.s. the only reason I have Windows installed and not linux is because I play games.

For whom is consistency incredibly important to pray? The vague "normal users" that somehow all windows defenders fall back onto? The times where "normal users" switched to GNU/Linux and didn't look back are too many to number. As dmantione said, what is holding it back is awareness, (and I would add) backed by FUD.

There is quite a lot of consistency and integration between the apps of KDE. Gnome is known for being more modular. I don't see why the fact that one has options in his choice of Desktop Environments is bad.

PS: Calling someone a whiner becuase they disagree with you is basically an admission of defeat.

Windows does not have a consistent UI. It did have it years ago, but today, even if you try to look at consistency, you will find very little. Please open Word 2008, Media Player, Internet Explorer and Wordpad, and see how consistent their UI's are. Also open a few third party applications, like Acrobat Reader, of perhaps even Impulse and look again. Don't just look at the Window appearance, also look at the great diversity in common dialogs, like File->Open.

Obviously the point that Linux does not have a consistent UI has a lot of merit. Firefox has a different UI than OpenOffice, it is as simple as that. On the other hand, if you open some equivalent applications we did open on Windows, for example OpenOffice, Kaffeine, Konqueror, Kwrite and Kpdf you will find that only OpenOffice is a bit different, the rest have the same consistent UI. The many years of UI polishing work that has been done has paid off.

IMO Linux looses in UI consistency from MacOS, but not from Windows.

Simple, I use a file renaming tool.. I'd do *exactly* the same thing on a linux box, even though it CAN be done with a single (too complex for the average user) commandline in *both* OSes... (Windows Powershell is not the old CMD crap...)

A couple of things I picked up on. How do you know if the Windows source code is bloated when it isn't open source? Consider that Linux is also a monolithic system, not a micro-kernal + modules setup. I would agree with a more limited version though: Windows certainly is held back by having to support/provide consistency with choices made in previous versions in anumber of cases. Also, having a separate UI layer apart from the kernel is a good thing.

The second thing: "So, how do I rename all png files on disk from naming convention xxxx_yyyy_zzzz.png to zzzz_yyyy_xxxx.png? Tell me how productive the Windows operating system is for such a task."

Are you trying to imply you would just write a Bash script to rename all the png files on a disk? Think how easy it would be to spectacularly mess that up.

On WIndows, one option is Bulk Rename Utility, which is freely downloadable, pretty easy to use and can work with regular expressions.  The other is to load up Eclipse or Visual Studio, and write something in a good scripting language (i.e not Bash) of your choice, and not accidentally rename arbitrary files because you got a $2 and a $3 mixed up somewhere.

Wat?

Lol, I think he meant the regular windows command prompt.

 Potatoes, potatos... Tomatoes tomatos...... Mwahahaha...

You are missing the point: The problem with external tools is, that since renaming files is an OS task, if you need external tools, the OS is missing functionality. Even MS-DOS could be "fixed" this way (and its shortcomings were "fixed" by countless third party tools). This also rules out Powershell, because for some reason, it is only part of Windows Server operating systems, however, Microsoft would do a good job to make Powershell the Windows default shell, it would make the OS a lot more usable. It would also need more tools, i.e. tools to extract information from files, like the dimensions of a png file, or the author of an mp3 file.

The point is that these kind of operations, wether it's generating a list of files satisfying various criteria, renaming then, converting them are very comon in any document collection, and document collections very often occur in professional environments. While I agree with you that not every user is able to write the command lines necessary for the operations, my experience is that one must not question the intelligence of the poor "average user"; it has happened me more than once that a "computer illiterate user" did successfully edit scripts I wrote for him.

Anyway, if you need an external tool on Linux to do renames, Linux is broken too for you. So there might be some personal preference. What I do want to point out, that many people, including me, do not consider Windows an OS to use for serious work. The Windows command line unfortunately is not the only component that is lacking. Instead of the features one needs, one gets talking dogs and paperclips.

That is just complete nonsense.  What you're saying is that some things that call themselves linux aren't linux.  You understand that not every version ships with every package?  Linux is a kernel at heart, nothing more.  Aside from which, every version of windows has wsh, which will let you write scripts in vbs or javascript.  And of course, if you were very perverse you, could do that rename using a cmd batch file.

Pretty much ALL commands that make bash a useful commandline tool are external tools. Just look in your /bin directory...

My experience that I don't resort to scripts that fast, I think I would write it on a single command line, but a script is certainly a possibility. It is very easy to mess things up, to prevent that, you "echo" the new name of the file first to the screen, look closely at the result, and only then replace the echo with a mv.

Careful, you're close to be judged a fanboy.

lol, yeah I'll have to watch that.  Didn't mean to make vb sound like a good thing.  Merely Turing complete

That is a different interpretation of an external tool. The tools needed by a Bash script are on the system as part of the operating system just like Bash is, so the operating system is not lacking.

What you are pointing at is indeed a weakness of Bash, it makes Bash scripts not very efficient regarding computing power. If one wants to avoid executing external tools from a script, one could for example use the Tclsh, this is much more efficient. It however, has nothing to do with the OS lacking functionality, in fact, a normal Linux system has Bash, TCL, Perl, installed ready to use.

Look at it from another point of view: How many Windows systems in the wild have Powershell ready to use? I think very few of them, you could just as well install Bash or Tclsh on Windows. It will not kill the "market share" of cmd. Cmd isn't used because it is good, but because it is there.

Not every Linux ships every package, but so is not every Linux installation an operating system usable for professional computer usage. One could call a floppy disk with a kernal and an Ash shell a Linux system, it may have it's purpose, but it doesn't satisfy my computing needs.

When it was first released with Windows 98, I was optimistic that WIndows would perhaps become a better OS after all. Alas, wsh, hasn't been what was hoped and does not fix Windows' shortcomings in this area.

I can rename files, yes, even in CMD. So there's no lack in functionality. It does have a lack in flexibility/usability, which is ENTIRELY different. If we ignore the fact about how much effort it takes, *everything* that can be done on linux can be done on windows (and the other way around ofcourse). And even resorting to checking a website is an external tool. If I can google for info, I can as well google for a tiny app to sort my problem.

I'd love to see how you'd solve the renaming issue with someone not familiar with a bash prompt... You'd send them a script, or perhaps mail them the commandline (which would be really stupid, since it requires an extra step of copy/past which could cause problems for a user), and it would be done... Where's the difference in doing that or sending them a small app that does the same thing? I'll tell you... NONE. An app is nothing but a precompiled list of actions, the difference is that it's in binary form rather than a text file.

A "regular joe"-user can change a cmd-script I've given them too btw, I've seen it often enough... It doesn't prove anything.