Why I use Windows and not Linux | Hacker News Reader

Why I use Windows and not Linux

bzupnick.com

17 pointsJerusaEnt24 comments

Maybe we should give an "enable up/downvote" cookie when the user clicks through the link and actually sees the article.

I cannot imagine 5 people (currently with 6 points) upvoted this after actually reading it...

I read it, and I upvoted. I did that because I believe he has interesting points in it.

People commenting here are just focusing on certain points of the article and not the whole sentiment.

What the author is saying is that even though he likes linux a lot, he is more productive in windows. I can see that happening. Fixing things in Linux is difficult, specially coming from a Windows world.

I re-read it and it still looks like a rant from an uninformed person. He spent a month with Linux and didn't notice NetBeans or Eclipse? Is there ANY programmer on Earth that doesn't know those? He claims Windows enjoys better "hardware, software, IT guys" because it's more popular. Linux is only unpopular in PCs. In every other segment it trounces its competition.

And maybe you have a point about fixing things. On Windows, people just reinstall or download a freeware tool that cleans up some specific mess and may (or may not) make things better. But the truth is it's much harder to break stuff on Linux than it is on Windows. And on Linux, you may be tempted to actually find out what the problem was (because you are able to) and fix it, which is much harder than just reinstalling the thing.

Except for the fact that, after you do a clean install, you'll have to download missing drivers, service packs, run Windows Update a couple times and reboot the machine each and every time something major gets updated, which happens a good couple times in this process). Last time I tried, reinstalling a Windows machine from scratch took me a day.

Reinstalling my Ubuntu box takes, usually, less than an hour.

Does not matter how popular Linux is in other segments. That is not going to help things on my desktop. Unpopularity is a valid argument in this context.

He claims to be a developer (something hard to believe for all he knows seems to be Visual Studio). He's not a law student.

If you think Windows is popular, go to any respectable compsi department and look around. Go to any conference not sponsored by Microsoft. Go to any place where someone is pushing the envelope. You'll find plenty Linux, plenty OSX and a couple Windows machines.

> He spent a month with Linux and didn't notice NetBeans or Eclipse?

I grew up on Linux. It was my primary desktop OS for many years. A few years ago, though, I found myself needing to move for personal reasons, and the best job offer I could get in short order was a Windows development one. I very quickly switched platforms for all my hobby projects. Visual Studio really is that good.

I can see the opposite opinion, too, of course. At least to the extent that other people prefer NetBeans or Eclipse, and that I'm not some sort of blind VS fanboy who thinks the only reason someone could have a different preference from me is because they're uninformed or unintelligent. It's not an opinion that I hold, but it's an opinion held by others I know and they're smart people so I trust it's for reasons that are every bit as valid to them as my reasons are to me. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they also like different ice cream flavors from me, too. They might even have tasted my favorite flavor, only to find it wasn't to their liking.

I have no idea why I should be interested in whether or not someone uses a particular OS. Especially when that person appears to be an uninformed youth.

I would be much more interested in "Why this government department decided that Linux is a good fit for some situations and what they're doing to migrate" style article. I'd hope that HN would avoid the traditional flame-bait; but perhaps that's optimistic.

Old flamewar, same argument, move along folks.

It's just so hard to resist the flame bait. Although I really believe that the author tried to be honest here and simply missed a few things that the platform has to offer and tried to make an argument out of his own failure.

But the naivety to believe that *NIX platforms would exist for a few centuries and that none of the smart people that used them got the idea to write a debugger, is just a little bit too much to take.

Here's a summary.

The author uses Windows instead of Linux because:

1. Linux isn't as popular as Windows

2. He can't use Visual Studio on Linux

Compelling argument!

For him those may well be compelling reasons. Conversely, I'm not sure if it makes sense to get people to switch OS platforms when they are actually happy with what they are using now. It certainly doesn't hurt to stay informed about the capabilities of software you're not using currently (in some areas it should probably be mandatory), but switching in the absence of good personally-applicable advantages is simply not a reasonable cause of action for most people.

tl;dr: The author failed to fully explore the tools available for Linux and uses Windows on account of his ignorance

Interesting argument. Personally, for all the stuff I do, Linux is far superior. Give me Emacs, R and LaTeX working out of the box and available in easy downloads with no spaces in my paths, and I'm happy. I can understand that others may have different perspectives.

That being said, has he tried Emacs? As far as I know with GDB and gcc and flymake, pretty much everything he wants to do is available.

Lol... trying to make this a Vim vs Emacs rant now? It started as a Windows vs Linux rant... :D

He says he programs, but he no doubt means that he clicks and drags stuff around in visual studio. Anyone who has never heard of eclipse, netbeans, or intellij is not a programmer. I'm sorry but he's just not. I'm having trouble believing this is for real.

Makes you realise how it's a clever strategy to make excellent dev tools for a platform. Visual Studio is really one of the best, and developers will go where the tools make it easy for them.

Yes, because all the best C programmers use Windows.

Then again, most programmers today aren't C programmers. And developing in Java/C# really makes a good IDE mandatory.

The point is valid, even if you have a point in what you write too.

I have to disagree with the original opinion, that Visual Studio is the best IDE ever. It is, if you are developing on Windows and for Windows on Microsoft-endorsed languages. If this is not the case, it's far from optimal.

Come on, you have to give me something to argue with. I can't just sit here agreeing with people. :) Yes, Visual Studio outside the MS sphere is not the greatest. C++, C#, VB.Net, F# - fine. Does anyone use it for anything else?

> I can't just sit here agreeing with people.

Agree when you agree. Disagree when you don't.

The only important thing is to do it politely ;-)

I'm porting some of my software to Windows. I haven't used Windows in years. Doing things like opening a DOS console and typing "cd C:\" was like going back in time about 25 years. And then I had to create a Batch script using old BASIC style commands, using REM at the start of comments... It's like Windows is stuck in time, and Microsoft's primary way of making money is by keeping this crusty operating system running, and milking enterprise IT budgets as long as possible.

If you're using XP or later then you shouldn't be using DOS batch files you should be using Powershell, which is what MS write all of their own CLI interfaces to work with.

You can run Cygwin on Windows. It'll be the same Windows we know <sarcasm>and love</sarcasm> but you'll have a familiar Unix-like environment you can use to do things like move files and automate tasks.

As AndrewDucker pointed out, you can also use PowerShell (I find it weird, but it's a major improvement over cmd.exe)

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