5 Reasons To Run Windows 8 Instead Of Linux

[Red Falcon]

It's not too hard to get the best of both Windows and Linux in one OS.

http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2001/10/47888

That distro, Linspire, was last updated, and active, back in 2007.
Wine does all of this already.

 

[heatlesssun]

Home consumer front it completely different. Home consumers plunk down money at purchase and generally stop. So The OS price is baked into a laptop. If two laptops are functionally the same for a user and one is $350 and another is $450 which will they pick aside from their friends scaring them off the $350 laptop?

Then what people become familiar with at home they often like to take back to the workplace such as Androids/iPhones displacing blackberries.

The problem with this argument is that these laptops aren't functionally the same if one is running Linux and the other Windows. If Linux were functionally the same, meaning in part that all hardware and software for Windows were 100% compatible with Linux, at cost Windows would have died a long time ago.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

That distro, Linspire, was last updated, and active, back in 2007.
Wine does all of this already.

Seriously? I think the first *nix I used was on a really cheapo and old at the time laptop that had like a 1 GHz VIA C3 in it with Lindows. It was a Balance G320 or ECS G320 or something like that but the fan was horrible screamy loud and annoying for no reason since the VIA CPU didn't get that hot. Poor Lindows.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Seriously? I think the first *nix I used was on a really cheapo and old at the time laptop that had like a 1 GHz VIA C3 in it with Lindows. It was a Balance G320 or ECS G320 or something like that but the fan was horrible screamy loud and annoying for no reason since the VIA CPU didn't get that hot. Poor Lindows.

heh. First one I ever used was an ancient Slackware disk that came on the front of a PC Magazine back in the early to mid 90's. I installed it on my 486 as a test, played around with it, and then determined it wasn't for me.

I didn't try Linux again until 2002 with RedHat 7.3 Valhalla. I started to see it's usefulness, particularly for servers. I proceeded to put RedHat on all my gaming servers (I ran Yodas Barn Counter-Strike servers at Umass at the time). I still - however - wasn't interested in it on my main desktop.

I was dual booting at the time though. I was frustrated with Windows98SE's level of stability, and preferred Windows 2000 for work purposes, but gaming and mouse feel was just off in Win2k no matter what I did, so I dual booted those for a while, until I decided to replace Win2k with Gentoo Linux in Late 2002. Loved the tinkering aspect of Gentoo, and finally learned how to manage things from the command line (as it kind of forced you too, at least back then).

Gentoo was my primary desktop system for the next 5 years or so, dual booting first to 98SE and later to XP for games.

In about 2007 I finally got tired of how high maintenance Gentoo was, and decided to switch to Ubuntu. I enjoyed Ubuntu, dual booting to XP for games until 2011 when Ubuntu made Unity the default window manager. I hated it. Switched to Mint for a while, but at the same time I upgraded to Windows 7 (skipped Vista all together) and found - to my surprise - that it was stable enough for every day use for me. I suddenly had no real reason to continue dual booting (which can be frustrating) and have been Windows 7 only on my main rig ever since.

I still long to go back to desktop linux, but I just can't make myself do it until such time where I no longer feel the need to keep dual booting all the time. I'm hoping SteamOS will bring more driver and software attention to back to Llinux, so that I can make this move for good!

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

heh. First one I ever used was an ancient Slackware disk that came on the front of a PC Magazine back in the early to mid 90's. I installed it on my 486 as a test, played around with it, and then determined it wasn't for me.

I didn't try Linux again until 2002 with RedHat 7.3 Valhalla. I started to see it's usefulness, particularly for servers. I proceeded to put RedHat on all my gaming servers (I ran Yodas Barn Counter-Strike servers at Umass at the time). I still - however - wasn't interested in it on my main desktop.

I was dual booting at the time though. I was frustrated with Windows98SE's level of stability, and preferred Windows 2000 for work purposes, but gaming and mouse feel was just off in Win2k no matter what I did, so I dual booted those for a while, until I decided to replace Win2k with Gentoo Linux in Late 2002. Loved the tinkering aspect of Gentoo, and finally learned how to manage things from the command line (as it kind of forced you too, at least back then).

Gentoo was my primary desktop system for the next 5 years or so, dual booting first to 98SE and later to XP for games.

In about 2007 I finally got tired of how high maintenance Gentoo was, and decided to switch to Ubuntu. I enjoyed Ubuntu, dual booting to XP for games until 2011 when Ubuntu made Unity the default window manager. I hated it. Switched to Mint for a while, but at the same time I upgraded to Windows 7 (skipped Vista all together) and found - to my surprise - that it was stable enough for every day use for me. I suddenly had no real reason to continue dual booting (which can be frustrating) and have been Windows 7 only on my main rig ever since.

I still long to go back to desktop linux, but I just can't make myself do it until such time where I no longer feel the need to keep dual booting all the time. I'm hoping SteamOS will bring more driver and software attention to back to Llinux, so that I can make this move for good!

Wow, you have a hugely long history with Linux (insert old jokes )! I think I understand how you feel about it in light of Windows 7 too. Having it setup in dual boot, I very frequently just booted up Windows because I didn't feel like having to deal with Linux. I also am pretty excited about the idea of SteamOS encouraging more Linux development for games and (more importantly to me) eventually other applications that are end user oriented.

Despite the fact that I really, really like Mint 14, 15, and 16, I can't make up a good reason to switch completely over to it. Right now, the computer I use the most is a Latitude 2100 netbook and it runs Windows. I have another Dell laptop around (a D620) that runs Backtrack 5 and I only have it installed because I wanted to play with some of the packaged tools it includes to learn some stuff about the things I do for work. In fact *grumbles* I've been annoyed about and dragging my feet over switching it to Kali because Backtrack is no longer supported. I might just reinstall Vista or something because I don't really want to spend a couple days getting the OS configured with the stuff I want. Right now, if I were to install Mint again, it would be because I feel bad about not having an off the shelf Linux PC around.

Also...I <3 Slackware but I haven't used it in ages. I think the last version I played with was 13. Gentoo was way too much agony with the whole compiling everything to appeal even to the mega nerdness of me.

 

[Paul Ed]

Except they are not forcing you to do anything of the sort...

See My Respponse to another Commenter, on Page 4.

Now, you can "Not Use" those features, by "Decling Them", but given time, I foresee Microsoft making "Cloud", and "Skydrive" things you will have to "Opt Out" of, and as more time goes by, they will become a part of the Windows software, that you will have to use, and "Pay Rent For" to boot.

 

[Semantics]

See My Respponse to another Commenter, on Page 4.

Now, you can "Not Use" those features, by "Decling Them", but given time, I foresee Microsoft making "Cloud", and "Skydrive" things you will have to "Opt Out" of, and as more time goes by, they will become a part of the Windows software, that you will have to use, and "Pay Rent For" to boot.

Good thing they are getting rid of skydrive, just renaming it "onedrive" XD

microsoft isn't going to force you to use the "cloud" and pay monthly for it. What they will make you pay for are things like Office and OS etc i doubt they'll move an OS to a monthly payment maybe professional software like visual studio but not the OS, the OS is the crux of their closed system, microsoft may even want to move the OS to a free model if they can move more of their software to a monthly revenue which would help their stocks out more in the quarterly, Office 365 was already a move to a subscription based office but you get a paid for skydrive account to boot something i don't think you get out of office 2013.

No good reason Microsoft to move skydrive to a pay to use system, unless google does as well, drop box etc. All of them use a free version with limited featured and limited space you pay for extra features and space.

So where do you see microsoft forcing you to use the cloud and making you pay a monthly to use it?

 

[eon]

I work alot with linux at work but when it comes to doing regular stuff at home I much prefer windows

 

[daglesj]

Except they are not forcing you to do anything of the sort...

It's called making up problems that aren't actually there.

I've told all my customers if they are on 7 to stay there as its still pretty much the defacto OS at the moment.

However, if they are on XP or Vista then depending on the existing hardware I'm encouraging them to upgrade/switch to Windows 8/8.1 if they ask.

The exceptions are the few business folks that still need certain versions of Citrix etc. that haven't been adjusted for 8.

Had no issues so far.

 

[reb00tin]

It doesn't have to be one or the other, you can run both OSes simultaneously, that way you can run any app you want. I run Linux Mint and several versions of Windows as virtual machines. The integration is seamless, it's just like switching to another app. Oracle's VirtualBox is amazing and free!

I find the Linux kernel much more stable, and I'm suspicious of Microsoft's ties with the NSA. I can go months without rebooting, all updates are open source, from a secure server and do not require constant reb00ting. Linux will cheerfully install on a USB flash drive, making it portable, it can can boot off any machine, try that with Windows.

 

[daglesj]

Linux will cheerfully install on a USB flash drive, making it portable, it can can boot off any machine, try that with Windows.

You know I and probably 99.99% of the worlds computer users have never needed to do that.

That's really handy! ahem

 

[ManofGod]

It doesn't have to be one or the other, you can run both OSes simultaneously, that way you can run any app you want. I run Linux Mint and several versions of Windows as virtual machines. The integration is seamless, it's just like switching to another app. Oracle's VirtualBox is amazing and free!

I find the Linux kernel much more stable, and I'm suspicious of Microsoft's ties with the NSA. I can go months without rebooting, all updates are open source, from a secure server and do not require constant reb00ting. Linux will cheerfully install on a USB flash drive, making it portable, it can can boot off any machine, try that with Windows.

Windows Anywhere?