Second-richest man giving billions to the first-richest man.

[Forboding Angel]

ok well I need to b able to run phtoshop cs, cubase sx, spring, guild wars, other misc games on it, as well as the other little programs that are only distributed as windows binaries.

THat's the problem. Linux may be more usable, but I don't care to compile every new program I get, and I can do roughly 20% of what I need on linux due to the filesystem being different.

And don't even mention gimp. Gimp is pathetic in comparison to PS CS. And audacity is nowhere even close to being in CuBase's league.

Umm, did microsoft make Photoshop? Cubase? Spring? No. Microsoft made Windows and office and crap like that. And if they weren't around, PS and cubase and suchlike would've been made for a different, possibly superiour operating system.

I'm not saying that windows isn't the way to go. I'm saying it sucks. If the only car in the world was a Ford Pinto or home-made cars built by auto mechanics, we'd all drive a pinto for the convenience - but it'd still be a Pinto, and it would still suck.

Agreed, but it's what we're stuck with. I was hoping for some time that google would release a linux based operating system, but that's pretty much a bust now. If google released an operating system then it would be pretty much gauranteed to gain immediate traction.

BTW do me a favor and stop speaking to me as though I don't thouroughly understand all of this. I was simply stating that the poor open source OS world is pretty damn sucky.

WHy are there 50 billion offshoots of linux systems? If those developers had put all their heads together then the rest of us would be much better off. Meh. Still we have linux systems that are damn hard to use and practically impossible for the average user to get a grasp on. PLUS... Would it be THAT difficult to incorporate readability of NTFS into linux? If so, why? If not, then why the fuck wasn't thios done in the first place?!

[Pxtl]

Agreed, but it's what we're stuck with. I was hoping for some time that google would release a linux based operating system, but that's pretty much a bust now. If google released an operating system then it would be pretty much gauranteed to gain immediate traction.

BTW do me a favor and stop speaking to me as though I don't thouroughly understand all of this. I was simply stating that the poor open source OS world is pretty damn sucky.

Fair enough - it's just that we were arguing whether or not Windows/MS sucks, not whether or not we use it for good reasons.

WHy are there 50 billion offshoots of linux systems? If those developers had put all their heads together then the rest of us would be much better off. Meh. Still we have linux systems that are damn hard to use and practically impossible for the average user to get a grasp on. PLUS... Would it be THAT difficult to incorporate readability of NTFS into linux? If so, why? If not, then why the fuck wasn't thios done in the first place?!

Well, the fact is that each linux distro is created to fill a need - It's hard to get somebody else to change their project to fill your need (unless they're Caydr), so most people will create a specialized distro. So, everybody makes their own project. It's not that bad - the fact is that if you look around, you'll find that there is at most one or two major, well-supported distros that actually fill your needs, so shopping around through lists of hundreds of distros really isn't necessary. For example, for good XFCE support (which is to have an easy-to-use Gui on older processors) the popular distros are Xubuntu and Mandriva.

For the generic "desktop operating system" Linux, yes it is a lot of Coke/Pepsi competition between similar products... but for special purposes there is damn good reason to have that much variety.

And I don't know why NTFS is hard to support, but if it was easy it would've been done already. If hobbyists can hack multiplayer support into GTA, they can do anything.

[Forboding Angel]

And I don't know why NTFS is hard to support, but if it was easy it would've been done already. If hobbyists can hack multiplayer support into GTA, they can do anything.

Good point here.

Ya know, windows wouldn't suck so bad if it simply wasn't so bloated. Bloat causes a lot of problems as we all know.

*buntu is pretty cool, but really, *nix needs to incorporate NTFS readability cause that would make everyone happy ;p

[smoth]

Bah,

nix', bsd etc for servers

Doze for pc and developers of software people use

OSX for artist.

[PauloMorfeo]

-1 respect for pixl.

Smoth doesn't respect people that hate M$.
...

Smoth, i am pretty sure that you know, at least, some of the past of Microsoft. I have posted in these forums some of it's actions. All that stuff like buying a concurring company that sued Microsoft and firing everyone in it, making the MSN site specially crafted to not look good in the Opera browser, etc, etc, etc, the list goes on forever.

If you think that that behaviour, doing whatever possible to crush all competition , stealling whatever possible to grow and forcing users to whatever they want, is worthy of such loyalty from you, i would deeply question my fundamental set of values if i were you.

As up to me, a goal (which ain't even one that benefits me or that i think is noble) does not justify that kind of actions.

And no, Microsoft didn't gave you all that software for free, it has been payed by your university. It is to your university that you should be thankfull, not Microsoft.

[PauloMorfeo]

...
And I don't know why NTFS is hard to support, but if it was easy it would've been done already. If hobbyists can hack multiplayer support into GTA, they can do anything.

NTFS suport is available ever since Linux 2.4, i think (or is it 2.6?). The problem is that it isn't all that good, you can only read, not write to NTFS partitions.

I have my Windows XP installed into a FAT32 partition instead to make sure i can read/write into it. Outside of campany enviroments, NTFS offers virtually no benefits to the end user and certainly no extra security since we always use a user with admin rights (i actually tried using a guest account for my friends and family several times. Nothing works as suposed...).

Keep in mind one thing. NTFS suport is hard because the standards by which NTFS functions are complicated (beeing not obvious) and are not open, are closed and only Microsoft is suposed to know them. If they hack into the NTFS, or reverse engineer it, they won't be doing a legal thing. The result of it will not be legal and, therefore, cannot be included with Linux.

Maybe now you understand some of the importance of having open standards as well as open source (even though some people exagerate over it). It has hapened, in the past, many companies finding themselves stuck because they had operating systems, databases, documents and whatever, in formats that were closed source and the only company that knew them and suported them went out of business.

[PauloMorfeo]

Hey I actually...well...like windows. But then again I have almost never had a problem with bugs. I once played a game that EVERYONE said was buggy and I never ran into a single bug. And this has happened consistently. So either I'm lucky or my computer is MAGIC!

To me, it was never about some bugs. If it was, i would not use Linux since, although it's kernel (Linux - the core os the operating system) is extremely solid, many (GNU) aplications in it are not. Ex: sometimes the Konqueror file browser crashes.

I have 3 major gripes with it.
- Forcings
- General Instability
- Microsoft

Forcings
I hate to be forced into stuff. Using Windows had always been a pain and that was my first gripe ever with it:
What? It is uploading information about my actions through the Internet to Microsoft? Fuck no i don't want to, although there is no way to stop it. Open messenger? Stop asking me, i don't want to! Create a Hotmail account? NO!!! Automatic updates are not active? I fucking know and that is the way i want them, i am a networks and systems administrator! I try right-clicking on it's icon to stop warning me - opens automatic updates - Fuck no, i said no!!! I uninstall outlook - It still opens outlook windows to write e-mails - good dam, why won't you just do what i want??? I disable the service that sends crash reports - it still keeps asking me everytime an application crashes - godam fuck just leave me alone!!!!!

General instability
Windows relies heavily on RPC (Remote Procedure Calls). That is impossible to maintain any kind of security in the long run. You get viruses just for beeing connected to the Internet. Spyware-Malware just keeps crawling into your system.
Windows does not have good modularity. Everything runs with administrator rights. As soon as Winzip/Outlook/whatever has a bug, a virus taking advantage of it gains access to the whole system compromissing it entirely.
Space used just grows. You end up finding GBs of space wasted on temp folders that are never deleted unless you specifically do it yourself. You delete an entire partition and find out that 1 GB is still ocupied with system volume information.
Registry just grows. Applications store most of its setting in the registry which is global. Soon, it has grow so much that everytime you access any application, it takes forever.

Microsoft
Only much later of Windows hating have i got to know the past of Microsoft, it's dirty actions. I won't talk again about it, but it deserves no consideration from me.

[Tim Blokdijk]

Ah, PauloMorfeo let it rest, Linux is great (I use it) but I started this topic for another reason.

[vitality15]

I know its old, but I just wanted to point out how through the years, people have started to notice the potential of Mac and Linux.

For the Cubase SX and Photoshop CS[2] programs, both are cross-platform.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--STECUBASESX
Cubase SX <<Check System Requirements

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/
Photoshop CS[2] <<Try now (mac)

The world is noticing the power of each, so hopefully they will understand that Windows isn't the ONLY operating system out there that programs should be created for.

I've tried all three families: Windows XP, Mac OS X, Linux (Kernel 2.x) and my current favourite is still Mac OS X due to graphics and Unix potential. Linux has amazing potential as well in graphics due to full access to OpenGL in its implementation.
============================================

On the ACTUAL topic, it's great to see Bill dedicating some of his time from fighting to keep his corporate domination. Hopefully in the near future, he'll give Microsoft to someone else to run, and work on bettering the world through his charity.

It would be nice to see not only Bill Gates helping fight disease to near extinction, and as a plus see someone remove the cut-throat tactics that cause us such pain. (Bloatware[have you seen Microsoft Office's size recently?], Backward incompatibility, Vaporware[remember MS DOS 7.0?] , Bundling of inferior products[Two letters.. IE])

Anyways, Bill is heading in the right direction. Hope to hear more stories about people donating billions (if possible).

[dogthinker]

[quote="PauloMorfeo"][/quote]

Sorry to continue this off-topic thread, but I've got a couple of quick tips for Paulo...

- Disable the "Security Center" service to get rid of those pop up warnings you were complaining about.
- Open internet options and change your default email program.