majorsilence

My personal account of switching to Windows as my home computers main operating system.

This is undergoing changes and updates as I spend more time on windows and have time to write. My opinions and conclusions may change from what is currently written.

First Posting: 28 April 2008
Second Posting: 29 April 2008: Added stuff about pdf viewing.

So the basically I have been using Linux as my main desktop computer for seven years (January 2001). Now I have of course used Windows at work and school, but at home I used Linux and that is what I like and have become accustomed to.

I should also note that I obviously used Windows to build the DeVeDe for Windows installers. I used virtual machines to do this. At no time have I used Windows as my main desktop, installed on my home computers, in the last seven years.

I am not happy with my switch to Windows. But with my recent upgrade from ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 it broke suspend and hibernate support. Try as I may, I could not fix it. I spent four days trying to fix it. I had a free weekend with plenty of time to get this working. All to no avail.

So I decided I would give Windows a try. Luckily I still had my Windows restore cds that I created when I bought my computer. So I thought it would be a rather quick painless operation. Sadly I was disappointed. First I had to partition my hard drive to the correct size, because there was no option to with the restore cd. It would choose a small partition at the beginning of my hard drive. So I used
gparted live cd to make a sane partition.

Update: So I have been using Windows for a few days now and have discovered that suspend does not work reliably with windows either. It does as long as I have no applications open. If I do it will wake up a few minutes later. So really what is the point of using suspend if I have to close all my work before using it.

So I started the restore cds again and it took two hours (wtf !!!) to install Windows from them. I really do not know why it takes two hours, I really do not want to know (actually I would). I do know that it takes 30 minutes for ubuntu on the same computer. Of course now that the two hour restore has been completed and the computer reboots I find the grub boot loader, and obviously that is not going to work since my Linux install as been wiped. So the restore cd takes two hours and does not even bother to reinstall the mbr. So some time later I have that fixed and am finally booted into windows.

I spend the next 1.5 hours installing updates. To be honest this is not that bad. If you install ubuntu a year or so after release, or any other distribution for that matter, there are usually several hundred megabytes of updates to download. The real annoyance is downloading the programs I want to use. I have to go to all their websites.
OpenOffice.org,
thunderbird,
firefox,
eclipse,
apache,
virtual desktops (more on this later), multimedia codecs (more on this later),
bittorrent client (Azureus classic interface),
cd burner (more on this later),
a decent text editor (what is with notepad?),
file archiver (really, only support for zip).

Now that I have it all up and running I am not sure what is going on. For some reason Windows (or some program) is molesting my CPU. It keeps shooting up to 80% - 100%. Now this is when I have apache and mysql turned off. Not that I am hosting a site with them. I am just using them sometimes to test some web development locally. I noticed that when I turn off my virtual desktops provided in Microsoft powertoys I do not have this problem. So I am not really liking this solution. On closer inspection I am still having this problem with virtual desktops off. Bah!

Now since I am on the topic of virtual desktops, why is it that Microsoft does not include this in the default install? They do not need to turn it on my default, but it would be very useful to at least have it in the toolbar options.

One thing that was very nice about using Linux was the pdf application installed by default with ubuntu. It was a very pleasant application to use. When I had finished reading a pdf document and closed the program, the next time I opened the same document it would be opened to where I had last been. Now with Windows there is no pdf viewing application installed by default (but my system did have adobe reader). So I upgraded to the lastest and greatest of adobe reader. It does not come with the simple feature of auto saving the current location of the pdf documents. So every time I open the document I have to find my place.

I know there is probably a way for the adobe reader to save the location in the books I am reading, but why should I have to look for that when in Linux it is done automatically.

Multimedia:

I much prefer rhythmbox over Windows Media Player. Now it would be nice if rhythmbox could also play videos, but I am more than willing to let a separate application take that responsibility (Banshee has added video support). Rhythmbox is just so simple to use. Its interface is the same as all other gnome applications. On the other hand we have Windows Media Player. It takes me forever to figure out how to do anything. For example I am currently in Windows Media Player trying to que a song to play next. I do not think it is possible, and if it is possible I seem to be missing it.

I do not understand anymore why people complain about lack of multimedia support on Linux. On modern desktop, especially ubuntu it is so simple, try to play a audio or video file and it asks you for permission to install a codec. You are done. On Windows, if it is not a mp3, wma, mpg, or wmv, you are out of luck, searching the Internet for the right codec or audio/video player. Or if you are like most people you will not be watching or listening to that file because you will not figure out how to get it to play.

I do understand that if you are doing professional photo, video, or audio editing you may very well be out of luck with Linux. Windows or Mac may be or only options. I do neither professional video editing or photo editing. I do know that if you want to do some audio work jokosher is coming along well. I am also hoping that pitivi will get into a usable state as it will make video editing simple on Linux.

Of course for image editing we have the GIMP and Krita and they more then meet my needs. I do not need photoshop. Also if I ever want to create any graphics I can use Inkscape.

I will include cd/dvd burning under multimedia because that is the category I am use to it being under in Linux. The cd burning software that comes with XP (at least home edition) is wholly inadequate. It cannot even burn an iso file. Now I suppose most people do not burn iso files everyday, neither do I, but sometimes it is needed and it would be appreciated if it were included.

Security:

Using the security tab to set permissions on XP home is not possible. It is if you boot into safe mode, but who wants to do that. So according to some
searching there is an unofficial patch that can be
downloaded. Basically all it does is set a reg key DWORD named OptionValue to 1 at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Option.

What I Like
All my hardware works. My built in web cam and mic. Also my plugin mic on the front of my laptop also works. I can play my video games. I can easily record audio since my mics are now using.

I do not record often but it is useful. I am currently using this to record some presentations with audacity and will also be using audacity to edit them. This just seems impossible on my computer with Linux. Probably is not, but I am not willing to spend the time and effort. My next computer purchase will have ubuntu preinstalled. Probably a dell. So that will take care of my hardware compatibility problems.

Another thing I like is that it is easy to install 3rd party software. But to be honest I much prefer the Linux repository way. Especially with ubuntu huge repository of applications. But if there is an application missing it can be a pain to install. With windows you just download the installer and you are good to go.

Conclusion

Overall I am relatively satisfied with my experience. It was not horrible, but it certainly was not good. As with most operating systems there were some good parts and some bad. At least I got to play some of my games without wine(Windows is still better for Windows games) problems. But it is just not as easy or intuitive as ubuntu Linux.

When using ubuntu things were a lot more simple, and in logical locations when using applications or searching though the application menu. I suppose the real credit for this should go to the gnome desktop people. Very good software. Very sane defaults. All the applications have the same look and feel. So easy to use. I think I will be switching back to Linux.

Update: Six days later I did switch back to ubuntu 7.10.