ranking lists - Why windows

[Richard Allbert]

Feel I have to chime in here

I have an iMac, and two desktops running windows 7.

I've grown to really dislike the Mac, it's slow, the interface isn't intuative ( for me) and I hate it trying to do things for me.

Although I do most work via W7 for .NET in C#,
I really wanted to get into Linux, and installed it on a desktop. After a week of tearing my hair out trying to get everything to work (I never found a USB WLAN stick that didn't drop out after a couple of minutes) I gave up. Whereas W7 was intalled and running in 60 mins.

The problem is, when time is of the essence, side by side, an average person when given two pc's, one for Linux, one for Windows's, and a CD for each, will have the windows pc running as required much faster then the Linux. And for most the pc is there as a means to get something else done.

[marcelk]

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?

Because many testers are not programmers and are stuck doing click-a-dee-click in a GUI that is not available on Linux, or don't know how to pair programs running on different computers. And to be honest, the only unix I would recommend to friends is the one in a mac.

[michiguel]

]

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).

ha, ha, fantastic.

Linux gave me back the joy of dealing with a computer and programming.

Miguel

[pocopito]

Maybe you can try it on a virtual machine (virtualbox or vmware work really fine).
In this case you can test how good (or bad) all the stuff you need work (email, windows app under wine, etc) and wouldn't have the cons related to a real installation.

PS: in any case, during the linux installation, there's no need for deleting any data that are already in the hard disk. Actually, you can install a dual boot system, choosing linux or windows when restarting your computer. And from the linux install you can access the files in the windows system.

[Evert]

How am I going to get my Fritz 13 running? Will I have to run a lot of things through Wine?

Obviously, if you want and need to run Windows software, you may be better off using Windows rather than Linux.
That said, Wine is actually guite good these days, so you may be perfectly fine. No way to know without trying.

Will Arena run flawlessly and stable?

No idea (never used it, and don't really feel like using it either but that's a separate issue). Supposedly there's a Linux version, which should then work the same as the Windows version.
Again though, there's no point in running Linux if all the software you want to run is Windows software.

How will I test engines that do not have a Linux 'executable'?

Through wine, if you insist?
In my case, I just don't unless I have the source and can compile it for Linux as well as OS X (some engines are open source, but still Windows-only). Otherwise it's just too much hassle.

Moreover, I am afraid of some side effects if I use Windows and Linux as alternatives. E.g. when my e-mail arrives into the mailbox I use under Windows it will not be accessible from under Linux.

You don't have that problem if you use IMAP.
There is an alternative I used in the past with Thunderbird: keep the mailbox on the Windows partition, then symlink it from Linux. That way you use the same mailbox in both operating systems. Only works if you have write permission on the Windows partition and if you're using compatible mail programs on both systems.

I remember having this problem at the time I used Ubuntu.
I also remember that I had difficulties removing Linux from my computer. It sticks.

How so?
Delete the partition it's on, and it's gone. Granted, the bootloader is still there (but that's not part of Linux), but that doesn't really hurt. You can get rid of it by reinstalling the Windows bootloader.

Also, I have about 40 GB of data on the HDD I plan to use running Linux. Will that be erased during the installation process? If not, will that data be accessible and editable?

No, but you will need to resize the partition (the installer can do that automatically). This should be safe and completely fine, but you're always recommended to make a backup just in case (but you should always make backups anyway).

[zamar]

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

But for people who are not nerds, there is a big problem: always something doesn't work. It might be digital camera, web camera, wireless network card, Java, satellite navigator or something else. Sometimes you can fix these issues with Google + typing magics in terminal window, sometimes not.

When buying a device from the shop and plugging it in the computer, people just expect it to work. I don't blame Ubuntu developers for this, but it is very difficult to recommend the OS for ordinary people.

But as a development environment and for server-use, I think Linux is very close to ideal

[Volker Pittlik]

[quote="zamar...But for people who are not nerds, there is a big problem: always something doesn't work. It might be digital camera, web camera, wireless network card, Java, satellite navigator or something else. ...[/quote]

Only for them? I have four computers at home. All of them configured as dual-boot machines running W7 and different distributions of Linux.

The buil-in cameras don't work with windows. Linux uses it from installation on. At one computrer I use a TV as second monitor. Windows uses it without problems, to try that *freezes* Linux.

I have given up to try to solve that problems. I use what works. Next week I'm going to buy a Mac.

Volker

[Milos]

Only for them? I have four computers at home. All of them configured as dual-boot machines running W7 and different distributions of Linux.

I will never be able to understand in the era of multicore systems why ppl still use dual boot???
Dual boot is such a prehistoric thing. Who has nerves to wait for one system to shutdown and for the other to boot?

Ppl use virtual machines, it's free, it's painless, it's extremely fast and extremely safe and multiple cores on your machine anyway do nothing at all.
Performance loss when not using all the possible cores is close to non-existing.

[Michel]

The Linux I used once was Ubuntu. However, at your suggestion I may try the latest version and see if I like it.

Unfortunately it appears people are now running away from Ubuntu in droves. It seems their "Unity" GUI is a complete disaster....

[Don]

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?

We run all our internal testing on Linux for the reasons you have stated.

However windows is what the majority of people use so it makes sense that most people test on windows.

For a developer, there are numerous reasons why Linux is better but I'm not going to go into that here.

I have made my own (personal) commitment that I would try to support any major platform and try to do as much as possible in a platform neutral way. I believe that Linux (or something else) will eventually dominate unless MS succeeds in stopping it, and they are clearly working at doing this.