Microsoft: Validation for Windows 7 is coming soon!

DarkNovaGundam said:

Yes for the average user its a big mess, when they get it like Windows or OS X (easy to install things, easy to configure, easy to do pretty much anything) Then I'll consider switching.

Well, tons of things are pretty darn easy in the Linux world. Installing applications is one such area. First, right out of the box, a typical distro like Ubuntu will have zip utilities, pdf viewers, graphics apps, office apps, cd burning apps, and the like all pre-installed.

So, lets say that you are curious about installing a database. You simply open up the package manager (like Add/Remove programs), search for SQL and you find mysql. You simply check the box, and it downloads and installs from the web. Done. Pretty freaking easy. You can also do it if you are a command line guy like myself with yum install mysql-server or apt-get install mysql-server.

A lot of average users won't use Linux because it simply isn't the thing that's preinstalled on their computers when they buy them. For many users, they just use whatever their computer comes with and they get something different when they buy a new computer.

DarkNovaGundam said:

Why does piracy debates always turn over to linux?

Simple, Linux is free and doesn't need to be pirated. It's the alternative to piracy.

DarkNovaGundam said:

Opensource isn't always better and especially when its linux. :)

It's not always better, but it often can be. The real beauty is that you aren't stuck with how it works until a company decides to change it. You have the code and can modify it to fit your needs at will. That's a pretty powerful value add.

It's fine if you aren't a fan of Linux. I'm a firm believer that Linux isn't for everyone. However, I'm extremely thankful that I took the time to learn it and am pretty much equally as proficient in one as I am in the other. This gives me the ability to really see what else is out there and determine what really is better for my needs. Many people don't have this luxury and are stuck with what they got.

It also benefits me that I am a systems admin who does a ton of Linux for a living. You know, quite a bit of the Internet infrastructure runs on Linux (apache, tomcat, mysql, bind, sendmail, squid). We use Linux extensively at work for publishing web applications and the money saved on our licensing costs is pretty significant. And honestly, the setup of the systems at a command line is awesome for documentation and scripting installs. To me, it beats the pants of point and click and right click.

Colonel Travis said:

This makes no sense.

1.) Piracy affects every piece of software available. Some of the cheapest crap is pirated the most.

2.) There wouldn't be a Windows 7 if it cost the consumer no more than "£30 at most" for an upgrade. It would be Ubuntu or Zeta or worse, and have fun switching your office secretary or mother-in-law or school system or any given worthless bureaucrat in any given worthless government over to that. You, the individual, do not set the price. But you, as part of the free market, do, with, of course, the assistance of Microsoft, who has to pay a lot of people to think about how you can touch a screen and move a map around without it looking like an Atari 2600. Can you - from scratch - make a box on the screen move around with your fingers? I sure can't. Besides, your "reasonable" price will not be reasonable to someone else. You're price is insane for this guy in China, who's selling 7 for $5.85.

Let's say you did sell a Windows 7 upgrade for £30 for everyone on earth using a Windows PC. As of 2008, there were about 1 billion PCs in use. Windows XP, Vista and 2000 account for roughly 89.6% of all OSes in use, so that's about 896 million PCs we need to upgrade, which would give Microsoft £26,880,000,000 ($43,709,528,100.68), which would be about $16.7 billion dollars less than the company's revenue in 2008, which means they would be screwed. Revenue does not = profit. But at least it would be Christmas every day for a long, long time for the publisher of Ubuntu For Dummies, at least until Ubuntu starts charging for its OS because the skyrocketing demand will force it to, or else it will go under and then we'll have to use crappy Zeta and the world will come to a screeching halt and then everyone will start throwing rocks and each other like it was 100,000 years ago and boy won't that be fun.

Yes, I'm exaggerating but not that much.

fair point, but can I just point out to you that XP and 2000 were never mentioned in my original post.. i was talking solely about upgrading from vista.. an operating system that is just over 2 years old (being released to retail in 2007) and despite 2 service packs is still widely regarded as inferior to the 8 year old XP.. here's what i actually said "Vista sums this up perfectly..(personally i think that any computer sold with that excuse of an OS should be upgraded for £30 at most!!)"

My wife has a laptop computer with Vista and my work laptop have Vista on it and honestly after Service Pack 1 things have been pretty decent on both machines. I have no intentions of upgrading Vista on my wife's laptop to Windows 7. The OEM copy that HP shipped with it is fine and the system restore from HP will put me right back to where it was the day I got it in the event that anything goes wrong. Since it ain't broke, I'm not going to attempt to fix it.

I'll likely upgrade my work laptop at some point...but still have a few work things which aren't working well or at all on 7 yet...so going to be a little time there to iron everything out. But again, no rush as Vista is honestly working just fine for me.

My newest home build computer is running Win7 RC1 and will be put on Win7 as soon as my legit copy comes to me.

pparks1 said:

My wife has a laptop computer with Vista and my work laptop have Vista on it and honestly after Service Pack 1 things have been pretty decent on both machines. I have no intentions of upgrading Vista on my wife's laptop to Windows 7. The OEM copy that HP shipped with it is fine and the system restore from HP will put me right back to where it was the day I got it in the event that anything goes wrong. Since it ain't broke, I'm not going to attempt to fix it.

I'll likely upgrade my work laptop at some point...but still have a few work things which aren't working well or at all on 7 yet...so going to be a little time there to iron everything out. But again, no rush as Vista is honestly working just fine for me.

My newest home build computer is running Win7 RC1 and will be put on Win7 as soon as my legit copy comes to me.

lol, at my house i rushed it, and put it on every comp.

Yipee! I cant wait to see if I paid for my copy of Windows 7!

7Dreams said:

lol, at my house i rushed it, and put it on every comp.

Well, I guess I don't want to pay for that much licensing and I like to switch it up run a few different operating systems for learning experiences. If everything were the same, it'd be a bit boring.

pcgeek said:

It needs to have something like an exe file as windows has for convenience and not having to open a shell every time.

Well, distributions like RedHat have rpm files (which are installed when double clicked) and Ubuntu/Debian have deb files (which are installed when double clicked). Other distros have similar functionality. Here is a 2 minute YouTube clip showing just how easy it is to install skype on a Ubuntu box after downloading the .deb package: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxaD-aDprX0"]YouTube - Installing Software on Ubuntu 9[/ame]

And once you get used to the shell, not only is it "not bad", it becomes "preferred" for many us us. The reason that you see so many tutorials on installing software using the shell, is simply because you can cut and paste in the command and you get it right 100% of the time.

For example, let's say that you want to use Ubuntu to play back MP3 files and commercial DVD's. Now, I could write a guide saying, Go Here, click this, click that, choose this tab at the top, scroll down, find the box which says X, click on that, hit apply. Click on Ok 2 times. Then, right click My Computer, go to Properties, etc. Or, I could say, open a terminal and type the following 2 commands;

Code:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

That's it, it's done. Everything is installed and movies and MP3's will playback. So, now you just store those two commands in a text file for future reference and you are set. If you ever set another box up again, or get a new box, you simply cut and paste this lines and "viola"....you are all set. SIMPLE.

pcgeek said:

No one else in my family would have any idea how to install anything on the pc and if they did, they would be like-what a pain just to install a simple program-Give me my windows back!

For this reason, there are package managers installed on RedHat/Ubuntu/Debian...where it's extremely easy to load software. It's like going to Add/Remove programs in Windows and seeing thousands of applications that you can install. You simply search for what you want (say, OpenOffice), then you click on the box and choose Install. Here is a short You Tube clip showing how absolutely simple it is to install Apache, mySQL and PHP on a Ubuntu box using the Synaptic Package Manager. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjIXZT9Hxwg"]YouTube - Install Apache 2.2, MySQL 5, PHP 5, phpMyAdmin for Linux Ubuntu 8.10[/ame]
Seriously, you don't even need to go to the web and download the files first. You just tell this tool what you want and it gets it and installs it for you...as well as all the dependencies. This really is simple stuff.

People always make Linux out to be this horrid system with cryptic and arcane command lines that require a 4 year degree in computer science to use. However, with a little bit of time, you find out that it's really not all that hard to do the majority of stuff that you would actually want to do. Sure, there is a learning curve...but there is a learning curve with everything. None of us were 100% proficient with Microsoft software when we first started using it. It took time. After having used Linux for a number of years, I actually find it just as easy to use, if not simpler to use in some areas.

Any my intended purpose is not to persuade others to come to the dark side and start using Linux, but rather to show the masses that things aren't as difficult as some people make them out to be. Like you said, you dabbled a bit and did a dual boot for awhile. Take it from somebody doing it for years and getting paid for it, sometimes it's not too hard at all.