Linux, and I moved this to the proper section of the forums.

xboxrulz

Good to hear that you're enjoying your OS. Bear in mind other's have their reasons to enjoy theirs, so in case you want a fair poll you'd better try not to show your choice too much as well as denigrating those that choose other than you.

My only problem with avid linux fans is their cries of superiority and frowning down on the heretics using some corporate software. Free and open-source stuff is good, enjoy it - but try not to parade.

linux is free but not very userfriendly while windows is very very userfriendly but with a very high price tag and thats the only big difference, linux hosted servers form 90 % of current internet due to its stability and security features and thats where windows cannot ever reach because most of hackers target windows to hack because of its wide usage ,linux has also very less software compatibility while windoes has a wide range of sofwares for different purpose compatible to windows

However, you must first define what user-friendly is. Proponents of command line interface users find Linux very user-friendly.

xboxrulz

Great for users.... but what if you are a developer ?
Windows is horribly developer un-friendly.

I have wasted countless hours because of windows broken / badly designed API's.

A few Examples...

BROKEN:
1) WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance) (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633559.aspx)
Stupid me... i assumed that hPrevInstance was a handle to the previous instance of the application...
Nope.. regardless of how many instances are running, this variable is ALWAYS null... it even states that its broken in MSDN.


IN-CONSISTENT STANDARDS...
2) LoadLibrary() http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684175.aspx
Most win32 api's take standard path notation ( "/Documents/Folder/File.txt" )
They also accept non standard, crazy double backslash notation... ( "\\Documents\\Filder\\file.txt")

Portablilty being important, i was using good old standard forward slashes,
But for no real reason, the LoadLibrary function is special, in that it cannot handle slashes, and MUST take double back slashes..

This took ages to resolve.

3) DLL's !!!!

lets say shared.cpp is a c++ source file...
in most operating systems, to compile it as a dll, you just add "-shared -PIC" to the compiler options. and -soname myDllname to
the linker options.

you dont need to change the .cpp file at all.

in windows, chaning shared.cpp into a dll from a normal .exe means painstaking going through all the code, adding __cdcecell(dllimport)
and dllexport to all the relevant parts. and if that program installs any global headers, you have to do lots of pre-processor juggleing
to make sure dllexport flip over to dllimports depending on if they are being #included from the dll project, or a project that intends to load
the dll.

4) Let me access the underlying hardware !!!!

I wrote a small 2d game engine for an embedded machine that can run windows or linux.
it has a good cpu, but no graphics acceleration, and memory is precious...

for graphics, in linux, i map the framebuffer memory into the application address space, and write pixels to it directly.
the rendering code is only a kew kilobytes.

for graphics in windows.... ohhh no, no framebuffer access for you... i have to use DirectDraw ( now intergrated into Direct3D )
And how many megs of dist space does Direct3d take ??? i dont have the fugures with me... but its a lot of wastefull redundant
code just to blit a few sprites to the screen.

I disagree, and it is not so much that I like Linux, which I do, but please take a look at Xandros Linux. You can download it from here:
http://www.xandros.com/about/downloads.htm...edium=text_link

It looks and acts so much like windows except for different but similar names. Instead of a Start button you have a Launch button and instead of a Recycle Bin you have a Trash icon and so on and so forth.

Linux is way very userfriendly, windows sucks for hanging without any valid reasons.
Install KDE on linux or use Ubuntu, things will be much easier, dont judge linux as the pure command shell.

The only problem you will have with linux is adding new drives or partition /drive letters since they require some extra work. On windows they all instantly appear then disappear without giving you any clue why.

***********
Windows have successfully reinstalled the blue screen of death on Vista after successfully removing it from win2003. Win2003 have black or gray screen of death.




There are far more tools and exploits targeted to linux that are written daily but cannot exist for glory to stay more than 3 months that it cannot win a fair share of popularity, linux can patch the holes way faster than you can recite mississippi 10 times backwards .

Windows, the holes always work and will work by changing something in the exploit code after windows fix the problem. M$ wants you to buy the next version in order to fix all and get a new set of bugs.



80% or more in the future of windows program can now work on linux using emulators and translators. I am using outlook express on my fedora.

P.S.
Post #1 is bias..

This post has been edited by vhortex: Apr 27 2007, 03:16 PM

AMEN to that! You didn't even address the exorbitant costs of the development environments for windows though...and I don't want to hear about "express versions" form anyone...you *can not* develop software that you intend to market with those crippleware versions; they're intended for learning only. If you want to sell windows software, prepare to pirate or pony up some kickbacks, er, i mean... license fees to micro$oft.




Actually this works fine on my Gentoo box. The drives pop up almost Mac-like on my desktop thanks to the automounter and hald. I do however refuse to drag partitions to the trash though to unmount them...whoever thought THAT up needs to be shot in the kneecaps.

Why not just use Thunderbird? It's way better than OE...

edit: I thought the board would automatically merge this post with my last one...sorry.

This post has been edited by ethergeek: Apr 27 2007, 05:16 PM