Yet another Windows rant, A.K.A.: How can anyone use that crap?

[NickStone]

There is a very good SimCity clone in the repos called Lincity. Put Kubuntu on your mothers older pc stick lincity on it and ask her opinion on that game.

[james147]

All that being said, there is one thing that windows seems to consistently do better at: graphics driver support. I watch a lot of video, and play a few games, and the linux drivers always seem to under-perform. I know this is mostly the fault of the companies who make the drivers, like nVidia, ati, and Intel. Still, the fact remains, nearly every PC I've seen both windows and Linux run on, windows has better graphics performance, hands down.

Valve are starting to change this, they are now working with nvidia to bring better support for nvidia drivers to Linux. Also, from their tests on porting left 4 dead 2 to Linux they found that it actually preforms much faster under Linux then it does under windows, and this only after a few months of porting vs years of optimising for windows.

The only thing windows does better then Linux is gather better support from companies. however even this is starting to change... slowly...

[dave2001]

I would only say that it would be more correct to state that manufacturers support windows with drivers than windows being better at it. Microsoft pays/cajoles this support. Most hardware actually performs better under Linux if it has good driver support.

And yes, my Mom (not Grandma - I'm 51!) is not too far behind the times. She has been playing games like SimCity since the 1980's and loves it. She has an Esty store that she set up herself and buys collector pieces at garage sales for pennies and sells them for big bucks! In contrast, my mother-in-law doesn't have an ATM card and takes her checks to the bank and stands in line.

Oops! How embarrassing, I totally misread your original post. Well, regardless of relationship, she's doing well with tech for 75. I was thinking you were younger than me since I only have one grandparent left alive (and she's in her 90's). Imagine my chagrin.

About graphics driver support, you're very correct. That's what I was trying to getting at, but I said it in a pretty sloppy fashion.

[Detonate]

As soon as tax season is over I have to replace XP Pro with Win 7 on the 16 computers we use in the tax preparation assistance program the non-profit I volunteer for owns. I'm really looking forward to that.

The good news is that I will be using a disk image from a bootable USB drive to do this. Before I start, I have to run a program in XP that reports the machines identity to a central database, and once Win 7 is installed, on first boot the machine will connect to this database and automatically enter the license key if the machine is in the database. If the machine is not in the database it won't proceed. This is done to insure that Win 7 is not installed on a machine which the license does not cover. I will never actually have the license key.

There are two versions of the tax preparation software used in the program. One is a desktop version that will only run on Windows. The other is an online version, that they say must be accessed only with Internet Explorer. I have done some experimentation with the online version and was able to sign in and access the program with Firefox in Kubuntu. However, I did not go all the way and prepare a complete tax return, so I can't really say it would work, but I intend to examine this a little further next year.

There would be two major obstacles I would have to deal with. First, the company that publishes the online program only provides tech support for Windows and IE. Secondly, each computer used in the program must pass a security check by signing in to a web site that examines the computer to see if it has adequate anti-virus software installed and that the computer has all of the latest security upgrades installed. This site would not even be able to examine a Linux machine so it could not be certified.

I am at the bottom of a very long organization chart when it comes to implementing any changes. This is a national program with several thousand sites like mine all over the country. I am too old and tired to take on the task of trying convince them that there is a better way to do this.

[oshunluvr]

At least your company top-heap likely doesn't even know Linux exists so they have an excuse. MY company, on the other hand, uses Linux in the field but the entire office runs MS. Twice a year we all get emails telling us to remove any unneeded software from our laptops because the MS License Police are coming for a visit.

It's maddening. I swear we are the least-techie tech company there is.

[bigseb]

My company kind of relies on Windows, mainly 'cos there isn't a Linux alternative software-wise. Most company I know here in South Africa are still running XP, while others have only now switched to Windows 7. Many of them don't need anything Microsoft-specific either, it's just that their IT guys don't know Linux from Shinola so it is never considered...

[Detonate]

The reason we are being forced to upgrade to W7 is that MS will no longer support XP after April of this year, and that includes security updates. As you can imagine, as the program I support is a tax preparation program, security is a huge consideration. Which would be another reason to switch to Linux, but alas, it is not to be.

[ronw]

The reason we are being forced to upgrade to W7 is that MS will no longer support XP after April of this year

I wish that were true, so my employer could stop supporting IE8, but it is 2014.

http://countingdownto.com/countdown/62361

[Detonate]

I could be wrong about the date, but nevertheless, support ends before the end of the next tax season, so we must upgrade this year.

[Detonate]

I just checked, it ends April 8, 2014.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...ofsupport.aspx

[DoYouKubuntu]

To the OP: your 75 y/o Grandma is doing pretty good! My parents can barely turn a computer on, much less my grandparents!

My mom is 89 (I'm 50-something), and had used nothing but Micro$oft products for ~20 years. A few years ago I wiped her drive and put Kubuntu on it, and she didn't even require instruction--she just plunged in and started using it, that's how intuitive it is. And--trust me on this--she's as computer illiterate as you can imagine! Since then we've gotten her a new desktop, and the first thing I did when it arrived was wipe window$ off its drive and install Kubuntu. She used it all day every day until becoming bedridden last September.

[SteveRiley]

Who's every heard of NTFS file permissions?

Uh, every Windows sysadmin on the planet?

NTFS actually has a pretty robust permissions system. Every object has a security descriptor that contains the owner's security identifier, the owner's primary group, the file's discretionary access control list, and the file's system access control list. Permissions can be explicit or inherited, and they follow a defined precedence order. Properly setting NTFS permissions is a crucial element in protecting a Windows computer. Fortunately, the defaults are much better now than in the NT4 / Windows 2000 days.

Much like in Linux, a user name is just a handy alias. The actual security identifier is generated by the operating system. Identically-named users on different systems (or in different Windows domains) will have different SIDs.

[oshunluvr]

Ok, Steve you got me (again ). Seriously though, in the Windows user-space environment, I've never seen that pop up before. It made me laugh when I saw it...

[SteveRiley]

Yes, J. Random HomeUser will likely never see NTFS permissions. You encountered one of the rare edge cases where they make themselves known.

[Teunis]

(I'm 50-something)

Aw!
Not even 60 and can no longer remember his age