R U fedup with Windows XP etc....

[DougP]

Each OS has its quirks. it all comes down to what you are willing to put up with versus what you need the box to do.

i am an MCSE with several years of IT experience. i never gave Macs a thought until some of the users in my office bought them and i soon realized that i never had to work on them. Whereas i was constantly fighting with software incompatibilities and driver issues on the windows boxes. i started to take a closer look at the macs and i borrowed one while at work to learn.

i gave up the windows world because i spend more time fighting with the software and hardware issues than actually recording music.

i was running Mandrake on a laptop as my sole computer until i could afford the Mac.

i'm not well versed in linux but once i got it running right it was great.

personally, i feel that Windows is great...until you start putting software on it or plug it into the internet.

btw, has anyone ever gotten XP and win2000 to network properly outside of a domain environment? i have yet to figure it out.

 

[Bassic83]

I don't know about the networking outside a domain, I only use it networking at work, in our domain. Where it really gets weird is when you have Win9.x, NT, 2K, XP, and have NT, 2K, and 2K3 servers all trying to get along...

 

[DougP]

ooofff...anytime 98 and NT is still on the network i'd be worried.

 

[Komakino]

ooofff...anytime 98 and NT is still on the network i'd be worried.

All of our tills at work, and the server, run NT. It's a bloody nightmare! They crash SO often and slow down the more you use them.

Every time I call support I 'remind' them that linux would have been a better choice. Or QNX, but that's cos QNX is great!

 

[winston]

I have a multi-boot setup that includes Window$ XP SP2, and various versions of Linux: Slackware, Vector, Mepis, and Planet CCRMA (Fedora-Core based music distro). My fiancee pretty much insists on using XP 'cause she's used to it. XP is definitely a step up from ME which has to be one of the worst OS's ever conceived; even a fresh install will freeze for no reason every 2nd or 3rd boot.

I try to use XP as little as possible; I think Windoze in general is poorly conceived/executed/illogical. I have no interest in making Bill Gates any richer. Filesystem structure makes no sense to me: why is Desktop higer in the directory tree than My Computer, multiple document/temp directories, completely F###ed up permissions structure, need for frequent defrags, lousy networking? I do run audio software (Tracktion 2, Live, Reason) 'cause it works well and isn't ported to Linux.

I use Linux as much as possible for word processing, image work, and a good amount of recording, as well as some basic stabs (or is that fstabs?) at programming/web design/server setup. There are some great media programs (JACK, Pure Data, Rosegarden 4, LADSPA effects, GIMP, Hydrogen) for Linux BUT a great variance in how they are implemented out of the box.

Like with Fedora you have to manually install Java runtime, Flash, and MP3 support whereas Mepis has all these running from the get-go. Also keeping your system up to date requires a bit of planning and vigilance, and you have to decide between bleeding-edge new packages and more stable, older ones.

Also the interface and documentation of many Linux programs sucks. Ardour is a good multitrack recorder but it has a horribly obtuse interface compared to Tracktion. Often the supplied docs apply to older versions before newer features have been added.

I put Mepis on my Mom's computer; it works much more quickly and reliably than Win 98 did on the same computer...but she does send me a few "tech support" questions each month because of lack of documentation. My next computer will probably be a Mac laptop.