What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

[Jokervx4]

What do you think is better, here are the categories:

Gaming:
General Editing:
Development:
Features:

And whatever else you happen to think of.

[Troberg]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Gaming: Sorry, but in this category, Windows wins hands down. There is some cool stuff coming, but it's still mostly through Wine or similar technologies, and that's simply not the same. I know there are some native Linux games, but they are not a match for commecial games for Windows. I think our best hope is related to the consoles, because they force game developers to write nice, portable code, which will make it easier for them to also port to Linux.

Editing: Linux. The only thing Windows have which Linux lacks is MS Office, and, frankly, that's a bloated, buggy mess. I'm perfectly happy with OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Lyx, Scribus and Kate (although Kate could have better macro capabilities).

Development: This is a tough one. Linux has a better community and of course it makes a huge difference that it's all open source and under an open license, but Windows still has its "killer app" in development, in the form of Visual Basic and it's successors (such as VB.Net and MS Java, oops, I meant C#). I know a lot of people likes to slag VB, but in the hands of a good developer, it makes as good code as any other language, but it makes it faster, a lot faster. Face it, most programs written professionally are fairly simple database frontends with some minor logic behind them, and writing those in, say, C is just stupid. Linux has very good development tools, but it still lacks that killer app for rapid application development. There are several projects underway that might remedy this, but I simply don't feel them having any big momentum at the moment.

Features: No contest, Linux wins this. Really, Windows really goes out if its way to discourage any deviation from a "standard installation", limiting your choices to some fluff like colours and system sounds, while Linux really puts you in power and lets you set up your system exactly the way you want. I believe this is a result of the open source mentality. Sure, not everyone makes the features they want but can't find, but enough do to make sure there is a rich choice of nice options.

I have written an article on the subject, which goes into more detail and goes into other issues as well. It can be found here (Swedish):

http://rpglab.net/troberg/pmwiki.php...tAtTheOSCorral

or in English by Google Translate (which made a surprisingly good job):

http://translate.google.com/translat...al&sl=sv&tl=en

[phillipchandler]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Gaming: Sorry, but in this category, Windows wins hands down. There is some cool stuff coming, but it's still mostly through Wine or similar technologies, and that's simply not the same. I know there are some native Linux games, but they are not a match for commecial games for Windows. I think our best hope is related to the consoles, because they force game developers to write nice, portable code, which will make it easier for them to also port to Linux.

Editing: Linux. The only thing Windows have which Linux lacks is MS Office, and, frankly, that's a bloated, buggy mess. I'm perfectly happy with OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Lyx, Scribus and Kate (although Kate could have better macro capabilities).

Alas I have to dissagree with your thoughts on Openoffice being better than MS Office.

First I think OO is fantastic as a FOSS alternative to MS Office. Its got great features to rival MS, plus the button for exporting directly to PDF.
But Ive found that OO is actually the one thats bloated compared to MS Office.

Ive uninstall OO and it equates to about 317MB Min. This is just the writer, spreadsheet, publisher and database (I think).

I use Win XP Office on my laptop under both Win XP and Ubuntu. I have a full copy of Crossover from Codeweavers.

When I installed Office, I installed word, excel, access, Frontpage and Outlook, which only amounted to 292MB, so thats already 25MB less than OO. But this included Outlook for email. If I install Evolution email then that adds approx 120MB to my Ubuntu system.

So that amounts to 145MB approx extra I have to install to have an office suite equal to MS.

Your all probably saying, "145MB, so what ? Does that amount really matter ?". No it doesnt, not with the size of todays HDD's. But heres another thing Ive found out. I can open a word doc in MS Word under Crossover, 4 seconds faster than using Openoffice Writer natively. And when you have a laptop spec like mine, that 4 seconds counts.

So Im one of the lucky few that found OO is actually more bloated and slower than MS Office, whether I run MS Office under windows or linux.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and I dont want to gripe about Linux, as there are great people (Devs) trying to do good work, actually damn good work, but lets be fair about whats what.

Apart from that I love Linux, and I use Windows less and less. I only use windows when Im working, otherwise its all done under Linux. And I can assure you, if linux was naff, I would have dumped it years ago and stuck with Windows. So it must be good.

[Troberg]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

I was not talking about bloat as disk usage, I was talking about a flood of unneeded (and often annoying) features, such as the irritating automatic conversion of URLs to links.

To be honest, I've only used the word processor in OOo, and I had nothing against it. I do prefer Abiword or Lyx, however, but that's just a matter of taste. I like to just hammer the text in, then do the layout and formatting elsewhere.

Also, one more caveat: I've not yet used the 3.x OOo. Things may be different there.

[phillipchandler]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

I was not talking about bloat as disk usage, I was talking about a flood of unneeded (and often annoying) features, such as the irritating automatic conversion of URLs to links.

If a software package is bloated, as in features, then its going to use a lot of disc space, and a bloated software package will always (nearly) take longer to load, because of the extra functions it needs to load into memory, etc. So in this case, bloated means both software modules / features & disc space.

But my original point still stands. MS Office has a lot of features that most home users, will probably never use. But it still wins hands down over OO, for loading quickly. I only have a Dell Inspiron 1200 (1.2mhz) running with 512 megs ram, and its about 4 yrs old. So I need to compromise. I need a fast, slick, safe O/S (Linux) on one side, and on the other side I need software that isnt resource hungry and slow to run. So I have the "Best of both worlds."

But apart from that, Im one happy bunny for running Linux. Lets hope that Linux can continue doing good things for the FOSS movement.

[Kubuntu Computer Geek]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

I was not talking about bloat as disk usage, I was talking about a flood of unneeded (and often annoying) features, such as the irritating automatic conversion of URLs to links.

If a software package is bloated, as in features, then its going to use a lot of disc space, and a bloated software package will always (nearly) take longer to load, because of the extra functions it needs to load into memory, etc. So in this case, bloated means both software modules / features & disc space.

But my original point still stands. MS Office has a lot of features that most home users, will probably never use. But it still wins hands down over OO, for loading quickly. I only have a Dell Inspiron 1200 (1.2mhz) running with 512 megs ram, and its about 4 yrs old. So I need to compromise. I need a fast, slick, safe O/S (Linux) on one side, and on the other side I need software that isnt resource hungry and slow to run. So I have the "Best of both worlds."

But apart from that, Im one happy bunny for running Linux. Lets hope that Linux can continue doing good things for the FOSS movement.

OO opens just as quickly on a Windows Machine as MS Office does.

[phillipchandler]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp



OO opens just as quickly on a Windows Machine as MS Office does.
[/quote]

All I know is that with my spec, running a dual boot machine, Win & Linux, using crossover in Linux, I can get MS Office to run faster in Linux than OO.
Ive never tried OO in Windows, But then if it runs slow in linux and is bloated, then I see no reason why it would run faster than MS Office, under windows.

In fact if I was to download and install OO in Windows, Im prepared to bet it would be evidently slower. It may be fast for someone who has a faster machine, more mem, dual core, quad core etc, etc. But on my humble machine OO is slower. Simple as. My fair opinion, tried, tested and proved on my machine, blah, blah, blah.

[Troberg]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

To be quite honest, I find the discussion of startup times for an office package quite irrelevant. Neither of them are painfully slow to start, I don't find it a problem and definately not a showstopper. Adobe Acrobat, on the other hand...

There are many issues more relevant.

[phillipchandler]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

To be quite honest, I find the discussion of startup times for an office package quite irrelevant. Neither of them are painfully slow to start, I don't find it a problem and definately not a showstopper. Adobe Acrobat, on the other hand...

There are many issues more relevant.

At last, someone I can agree with, you have diddled me out of an arguement.

But another point is that it is relevant. If you have a medium type machine, IE less than 1.8 ghz, 512mb ram and only a small HDD, then it is relevant what you can run fast, or what makes the machine slow right down.
But the real funny thing here is that Adobe runs pretty fast on my machine, dont know why when OO is slow to load everything.

This thread is about whats better for different areas of usage, gaming, office etc. I was mearly pointing out that MS Office may be bloated for you, but for me its slick and fast even under Crossover. We need to be honest here and have a fair amount of comments "For and Against". We need to get "The real picture." not just one poster saying OO is fast, when for others its slow and bloated. The is alternatives, Abiword for example, or even using a plain simple text editor.

One final point on a good note. Im pleased to see that the Kubuntu users are rather more educated than a lot of the other forums.
Ive seen too many posters using such comments as "Microshaft", "M$" etc. If people dont like MS, then fine have that belief, but why use such naff terms anywhere else ? Ive even seen the term "M$" used on a UK Linux User Group, a group which I believed was made up of IT Key Workers, who should be rather intelligent, shame they have to lower themselfs to use such terms. Linux is a damn fine OS, yes it needs some work in some areas. But for the most part I think a nice handfull of Distros are going places. Kubuntu has the potential of being one of those fine O/S's.

Im also glad that this thread didnt turn into a slanging match and that you were of sufficient IQ to have a good conversation over the title, and make your claims sensibily. I shall be back again, as long as I keep trying to say what I mean correctly, so everyone gets the point.

[The Liquidator]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

My 2 pence worth

I agree that informed and polite debate and discussion is one thing, a slanging match is another. Like you I grow heartily sick and tired of reading arguments between M$ and Linsucks zealots (obviously terms that each call the other) and just wish everyone would grow up. On the point of MSO v OOo, at work I have OOo3 and MS Office 2003 on the same machine. There's only 20Mb disk space difference between the 2 MSO taking up slightly more. Not important. MS Word launches far much faster than OOwriter I believe this is down to a couple of points:

On windows launch all the necessary dlls etc required to give a quick launch to an Office component are already loaded. That is fully understandable in my book - it's simply the result of integration. The OOo quickstarter in Windows is in my view totally ineffective - it might as well not be running, for all the difference it makes.

Because of the way that OOo is structured on first load, you load much of the suite.

As a result, On first load MSO knocks spots off OOo. Thereafter, my experience is that its a much closer race. Also the fact that I can, with 3 actions from within the same gui copy from text, open spreadsheet and paste into it to me puts OOo in front (as I am one of those who use 10% of the power). So I find OOo better to use although I accept familiarity is also a factor as I now find MSO rather awkward.

My Linux box (Dell 630 Laptop 1.8gh centrino) - I must be one of the lucky ones because OOo flies. I use the MS Wordviewer under Wine if I need to check a document.

[blackbelt_jones]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Everything but gaming, Linux.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Everything but gaming, Linux.

+1

Using Kate, Qt4 and PostgreSQL 8 on Linux, I wrote in-house applications at work (before I retired last June). I found it faster and easier to use than MS Visual C++ 6.0. When I got things working the way I wanted on Linux I copied the source to my XP side, recompiled it and put it into production.

I have been following the development of Qt-Creator, by Nokia, and watched it become a tool that exceeds MSVC6 in power and ease of use for Qt based applications.


I must say that my sub-teen grandsons prefer the games on the Linux, although they are now switching to on-line Java based kid games (Disney, etc.) As fast as they switch "favorite" games having games on Linux or the web is a blessing to Grandpa's pocket book!

[dibl]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

I'm going to beg the question ...

Gaming -- don't care
Editing -- they're all the same (limited by my typing speed only)
Development -- not smart enough
Features -- mostly equivalent (only Windows has Adobe PhotoShop, Linux has a better CLI, etc.)

However, which one wins on price?

How about license restrictions? (how many hard drives does YOUR Windows license permit?)

What's your virus vulnerability? And if you say "Windows, with strong anti-virus" the follow-up question is, "How much did you have to pay for THAT?"

[Telengard]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Gaming: Windows wins, sadly

Editing: Kubuntu, Linux has the widest array of highly advanced editors for any purpose, though I still use Emacs or Kate more than anything.

Development: Kubuntu, Linux has the widest array of highly advanced development tools, though I still use GCC more than anything.

Features (gotta break it down a bit):

- Software and hardware compatibility: Windows, but Linux is getting better all the time.

- Customizable desktop and environment: Kubuntu, KDE and Linux are truly flexible and powerful.

Also +1 to dibl's insightful list.

. . . which one wins on price?

How about license restrictions? (how many hard drives does YOUR Windows license permit?)

What's your virus vulnerability? And if you say "Windows, with strong anti-virus" the follow-up question is, "How much did you have to pay for THAT?"

[Qqmike]

Re: What's better? Kubuntu vs. Windows xp

Ahh ...
Kubuntu.
My 2 cents.