ranking lists - Why windows

[CRoberson]

Why do you only run your tests with windows? It is far easier for me to develop on Linux. Linux is cheaper and higher performance, so why insist on windows? It used to be that a developer (wanting to reach a wide audience) needed to release on windows. That is rapidly becoming false. With the increasing popularity of smart phones and tablets running some version of UNIX or LINUX, windows is becoming less than necessary.

Do any of the testers/ranking lists use UNIX or LINUX?

[Volker Pittlik]

...

Do any of the testers/ranking lists use UNIX or LINUX?

I did that some years ago. No one gave a s... about it, so I kept it private and stopped it completly after a while.

In general I agree with you about Lunux. However it seems to me the developement concetrates too much on the desktop and other secondary ascpects. Meanwhile I noticed that the stability of some Linus distributions is not a good as it has been some time ago.

Using an Android smartphone does not change anyone to a Linux enthusiast.

regards

Volker

[Evert]

Why do you only run your tests with windows?

Partly historical reasons, is one of the reasons I was given: most commercial software used to only be available on Windows, so that's what was tested.
Plus more people use Windows.

It is far easier for me to develop on Linux. Linux is cheaper and higher performance, so why insist on windows? It used to be that a developer (wanting to reach a wide audience) needed to release on windows. That is rapidly becoming false. With the increasing popularity of smart phones and tablets running some version of UNIX or LINUX, windows is becoming less than necessary.

I use Linux (or OS X) and I don't have Windows, so I agree to a point: it'd be much easier for me if I didn't have to bother with Windows support.
Note that phones and tablets are not desktop PC replacements, so the fact that there's more testing on those is not very relevant to development on a PC.

[Evert]

Linux is for developers, not users.

Utter nonsense.
It depends greatly on what you're used to. I'm not even talking about the commandline here, people use Linux without ever seeing a command line (I don't, but that's a preference; I make heavy use of the terminal on my Mac too). I also don't "have to compile everything" (well, I do, because I use gentoo, but that's beside the point since the package manager deals with it al behind the scenes).
What is true though is that Linux is not Windows (this is a good thing) and it will not be to everyone's liking (conversely, neither will Windows).

Having said that, congratulations on trying it out for six months. I'm not sure I would last six months on Windows.

[sje]

Once I tried Linux for about half a year. I found it uncomfortable and had many problems. I hated to have to compile everything. That despite being quite familiar with working from the command line. I can't give specifics but I simply did not have the patience. Linux is for developers, not users.

Try the latest Ubuntu Linux from http://www.ubuntu.com/download for free. It can be run from a CD-ROM or a USB thumb drive without having to do an installation.

Running Ubuntu is very much like running a version of Mac OS/X that's a few years old. The Ubuntu developers are stealing as much as possible from Apple without risking lawsuits; for nearly every Mac OS/X feature, there is or soon will be a corresponding Ubuntu feature. Both have an application store, both have a music/video store, both have a selection of media players, both have device synchronization, both have some kind of cloud facility, both have about the same desktop feature set, both have a software update system, and both use a flavor of Unix as the underlying operating system. On both, many users never need to use a command line.

OS/X benefits: OS/X is a bit more polished and there are no driver problems as long as Apple hardware is used.

Ubuntu benefits: it's free and it runs on all sorts of hardware old and new.

[jdart]

I do most of my testing on Linux now. Most development is still done on Windows, but I keep the Linux version in sync. I like Linux a little better because it's easy to set up grep, perl, emacs and other tools I use; it doesn't run any mysterious background processes; and I can get the Intel software tools free on Linux for non-commercial use. But I have a lot of software on my Windows box that isn't available on Linux (ChessBase for example). So Linux for me is mostly for programming and automated tests, not other tasks.

[CRoberson]

Linux is for developers, not users.

Utter nonsense.


Having said that, congratulations on trying it out for six months. I'm not sure I would last six months on Windows.

That is exactly my point pertaining to tablets and smart phones. The leading ones are UNIX or LINUX based. People use them and enjoy them and have no clue that they are using LINUX or UNIX. This is going to rid us of the UNIX is for developers stigma.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Why do you only run your tests with windows? It is far easier for me to develop on Linux. Linux is cheaper and higher performance, so why insist on windows? It used to be that a developer (wanting to reach a wide audience) needed to release on windows. That is rapidly becoming false. With the increasing popularity of smart phones and tablets running some version of UNIX or LINUX, windows is becoming less than necessary.

Do any of the testers/ranking lists use UNIX or LINUX?

Why not

[pocopito]

]

Once I tried Linux for about half a year. I found it uncomfortable and had many problems. I hated to have to compile everything. That despite being quite familiar with working from the command line. I can't give specifics but I simply did not have the patience. Linux is for developers, not users.

Around two years ago some relatives of mine to whom I give technical support for their computer somehow toke my advice about switching to linux (ubuntu).

They use the PC for web browsing, email, and stuff like that. Since then, all of us are happier: I visit them a lot less times due to problems related to their computer (formerly they used XP). Of course there are times they need my advice, but no more often than they did when they had XP installed. (I'm not that sure that the "linux is much more difficult than windows" stuff is true:a lot of not advanced users of microsoft OSs get free support from friends or relatives: in spanish it's called "la guía del pringao", http://www.sromero.org/wiki/linux/sistema/pringao_howto, sorry I don't dare to translate this expresion into english).

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

]

Once I tried Linux for about half a year. I found it uncomfortable and had many problems. I hated to have to compile everything. That despite being quite familiar with working from the command line. I can't give specifics but I simply did not have the patience. Linux is for developers, not users.

Around two years ago some relatives of mine to whom I give technical support for their computer somehow toke my advice about switching to linux (ubuntu).

They use the PC for web browsing, email, and stuff like that. Since then, all of us are happier: I visit them a lot less times due to problems related to their computer (formerly they used XP). Of course there are times they need my advice, but no more often than they did when they had XP installed. (I'm not that sure that the "linux is much more difficult than windows" stuff is true:a lot of not advanced users of microsoft OSs get free support from friends or relatives: in spanish it's called "la guía del pringao", http://www.sromero.org/wiki/linux/sistema/pringao_howto, sorry I don't dare to translate this expresion into english).

Windows Xp 64bit is one of the most stable operation systems Microsoft had ever released to the public....actually I have 2 computers running overclocked i7 quad processors running 24/7 without any major problems that worth to mention....
Dr.D