[Topgun]

and programs are binary compatible across distros, they aren't package compatible, but they are binary compatible.

now, ive never had any filesystem corrupt on me, ever, linux or otherwise, but I can tell you that my ext3 and ext4 partitions have never fragmented sufficiently to justify a defrag. NTFS, not so much. hardware used to be a problem, now it  doesn't matter so much, except the occasional wifi card and web cam. I can't say it takes time to configure, as I can just pop in a live cd and it just works. If you want to do something exotic for the first time, then yeah, it will be a while before everything is set up right, but thats not something limited to unix/linux.

[S-99]

I dont compile anything. Call me a stinge but i'm similar to nuke in this respect. Hell no to compiling source. This is why i use distributions that offer more than enough binaries like debian and ubuntu. I haven't ever needed to compile anything.

The security model for linux is that you're in a user account, and when you want to do something administrative, you enter the admin password (installing software, removing software, system wide changes and os tweaks). This is something all windows users can get going with too if they have vista or windows 7. Basically almost all infections in windows occur because somebody was running as administrator 24/7 and their firewall and or virus protection went down or was out of date. This security model is easy to get used to, and it keeps the operating system from treating the user like a dumbass.

As far as linux filesystems go. I don't know what the default filesystem is in gentoo, but it sure doesn't sound like something solid like ext3 or even better ext4. Those are filesystems that are way better than ntfs. Ext4 is to linux as ntfs is to windows, except that ext4 works waaaaaaay better.

It's your choice to run windows of course. But, i don't believe you when you say it's impossible to learn how linux works. I just believe that you checked out the wrong distribution that's more geared to somebody who is rather advanced in starting from a terminal and having a gui with all hardware working at the end of the day; you were trying to use something that was not in your interest or experience.  Check out linuxmint for example and see how windows like it really is.

Lastly for linux hardware support. If this were 2004 i'd believe you about linux hardware support. For linux support there's only two things today you need to double check before you install it. Is your wifi card compatible with linux? If not then use ndiswrapper and load the windows driver in linux to make it work. Another biggie is will your scanner/printer work. Printer support has gotten really good. Big names like brother and hp provide linux drivers (hp printers are usually plug and play for me), and other brands also provide linux drivers for printers.

As far as anything else goes, i haven't had a single computer where linux didn't support the video, audio, ethernet, etc right after installation. More and more companies are supporting linux in the hardware realm, and it's been great. Using linux and the latest hardware isn't such a big deal in my mind, i have one of the newest netbooks out there still and everything works on it great, even the bluetooth.

Linux actually has much better hardware support than windows does any day of the year. No planned obsolescence in linux means that all of your old stuff isn't going to have dropped support, nor is your new stuff that works. Unlike when vista came out, people upgraded to it, and had to buy new printers because manufacturers didn't want to make printer drivers for older models of printers. Linux in the area of new hardware when it comes out, it doesn't take linux too long to have compatibility for it.

As far as anything else goes, i loved windows 2000 back in the day. It was the best os microsoft ever made, and the last. It had no bull****, unlike everything that came after.

Ideally, for people who upgrade to windows 7 because of how much nicer it is. I tend to disagree there, i find it pretty much identical to vista (not to mention the fact that it's vista retweaked and slightly redone). There was a slight taskbar change and removed features that i really saw noticeable. Whoopdi-doo, those who have the hardware to run vista should keep running vista. For those who bought vista and then windows 7 afterwards and say how much nicer it is, i'm sorry, you fell for marketing strategy and microsoft duped you for paying for nearly the same os twice.

I could go on, but back to the point. Was when the windows 2000 source code got released. The only thing to complain about was how many hacks that were in it for the sake of backward compatibility for what was otherwise elegant clean code.

[Bobboau]

never had linux file system die on me, have had NTFS kill some files though a bunch of times.
I just set up a new machine tonight, it took half an hour.
the security model's biggest downfall is in the GUI where there is not yet integrated prompting for elevation, it's ironic that Linux's security model is 'remarkably' similar to vista/7's but the latter has handled the GUI aspect much better for the most part.
I rarely run into hardware problems, when I do it's usually in some sort of very nitch or very new hardware (video cards, tuner cards).
I normally don't have to do much configuring, though some times I want to do something very specific that does need it.
I have had to compile from source probably a total of three times, and that's just because I'm impatient.
you can just download software and run it, but normally installation is more along the lines of typing "apt get install awesome-software" you don't even have to hunt down and download an installer, all you need to know is what the package name is, it'll also automatically tell you when an update for it is available and offer to upgrade it in place, this is actually the thing that impressed me the most when I switched from windows, cause I totally wasn't expecting it.

can't argue with you knowing windows though, that is a major reason not to use Linux, honestly if it wasn't for Compiz I probably wouldn't have switched.
there are still some things that piss me off though, there are a lot of things that seem to be different just for the sake of being different, and some major components /*cough*/Gnome/*cough*/ have assholeish attitudes.

[Bobboau]

Ext4 is to linux as ntfs is to windows, except that ext4 works waaaaaaay better.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, for instance, try making an image backup of a hard drive without unmounting the file system, you can do that in NTFS on windows, you've been able to do that for ten years. yes I know about btrfs, am awaiting it eagerly.

have yet to experience any printer problems though, it's normaly smoother than windows.

[Nuke]

funny how all the linux users troll the windows thread i wanted to learn linux a long time ago and i actually got the system to how i liked it. but then again i have certain windows only programs that i have grown accustomed to, and i really dont want to run linux just to run everything i use through wine. im not happy with the direction windows seems to be heading, but linux isnt for me. reactos on the other hand i could deal with.

i think my favorite distros so far have been ubuntu and fedora. ive been know use slax or any other live distro for hardware testing. but i dont want to waste time fumbleing around with something im not used to. im not arguing that it would be impossible for me to run linux, just that the time i would need to invest would be astronomical.

[S-99]

the security model's biggest downfall is in the GUI where there is not yet integrated prompting for elevation, it's ironic that Linux's security model is 'remarkably' similar to vista/7's but the latter has handled the GUI aspect much better for the most part.

I don't know what you mean by this exactly or if there's something i just don't know. Aside from that, vista and windows 7's UAC totally gained inspiration from kdesu and gksu (my whole point with uac is that i can finally run vista/7 the same way as linux via user account and grabbing temporary permissions from an admin account). Kdesu is what i'd call integrated into kde, and gksu integrated into gnome for prompting of permissions elevation.

I consider ext4 to be way better than ntfs because i've had a couple of problems with the damn file system that have ended up being show stoppers for a while. Ntfs is a good file system, but microsoft could make it less "dumbassey" as a way of saying it. Twice on a big storage partition, ntfs failed and i lost 40 gigs of my backups and games. Ntfs also complains if you didn't shut down the computer properly, and because of that can keep you from mounting an ntfs partition. Ntfs complaining about the computer not being shutdown properly should only be a filesystem flag that windows should check off after installation on said ntfs filesystem (this would make it handy). And ironically, i've found that formatting a partition via the linux utility gparted, that it does a better job at formatting something to ntfs than windows does (at least what i would call a better job).

When you format a drive to be ntfs in windows 7 and you safely remove it and plug it into another computer and it does nothing but complain of an improper shutdown that never occurred multiple times, the only thing i could think of was to format to ntfs with a different program. Wierd idea, i didn't think it make his hard drive stop complaining but it did. Really wanted my friend to stick with ntfs for his external 320gig drive for compatibility reasons and fat32 sucks. For the most part ntfs does an ok job at detecting if a computer was shutdown wrong, but i've witnessed it make multiple mistakes in that regard too.

Other than these two showstoppers happening every now and again, ntfs is a good filesystem, it does get better via each release of windows now with ntfs 7.0. It has a powerful permissions system, journaling, it's pretty fast, each new version handles fragmentation better than the last, and doesn't have any file size limitations that anybody will encounter any time soon.

[Bobboau]

what I mean is UAC works better than gksu/kdesu, you should never EVER get an "ERROR permission denied" you should get a prompt to enter an administrative password, UAC does a better job of this and the windows interface has a 'run as administrator' option almost everywhere, Linux does not.
just because something was inspired by something else doesn't mean it was not a better implementation.

why isn't there a big push to make FOSS ext4 support in windows, I'm sure there is a way of writing new file system handlers.

[Iss Mneur]

I consider ext4 to be way better than ntfs because i've had a couple of problems with the damn file system that have ended up being show stoppers for a while. Ntfs is a good file system, but microsoft could make it less "dumbassey" as a way of saying it. Twice on a big storage partition, ntfs failed and i lost 40 gigs of my backups and games. Ntfs also complains if you didn't shut down the computer properly, and because of that can keep you from mounting an ntfs partition. Ntfs complaining about the computer not being shutdown properly should only be a filesystem flag that windows should check off after installation on said ntfs filesystem (this would make it handy). And ironically, i've found that formatting a partition via the linux utility gparted, that it does a better job at formatting something to ntfs than windows does (at least what i would call a better job).

When you format a drive to be ntfs in windows 7 and you safely remove it and plug it into another computer and it does nothing but complain of an improper shutdown that never occurred multiple times, the only thing i could think of was to format to ntfs with a different program. Wierd idea, i didn't think it make his hard drive stop complaining but it did. Really wanted my friend to stick with ntfs for his external 320gig drive for compatibility reasons and fat32 sucks. For the most part ntfs does an ok job at detecting if a computer was shutdown wrong, but i've witnessed it make multiple mistakes in that regard too.

A file system will never complain that a computer was shutdown incorrectly. What a file system will complain about it if it was not unmounted correctly (ie. the computer didn't shutdown correctly, or the removable harddrive was not cleanly dismounted).  This is something that every file system that caches writes (which can include FAT and ext2) will complain about; NTFS is not unique in this regard.

You are probably right, it was likely caused by a bad formatting job on the hard drive, but that is hardly NTFS's fault.  More likely, the problem was actually caused by the hard drive itself and the sector that the dirty bit was written on was iffy.  It could have been the firmware of the drive as well.  I have had many large capacity hard drives formatted with NTFS (for storing branded PC recovery images) and have never had the problems you describe.

I did once have someone come in with a hard drive that had that problem or one similar, we copied the data off, ran the harddrive manufactures diagnostic tool (it said that it permanently failed a couple of sectors), reformatted the hard drive (with NTFS), and copied the customers data back onto the drive, it stopped the complaining on the stores computers (I never heard anything back from the customer). 

why isn't there a big push to make FOSS ext4 support in windows, I'm sure there is a way of writing new file system handlers.

I actually looked into this (for ext3 actually) quite a while ago.  It is actually fairly easy, Microsoft provides all of the documentation you need.  The problem is actually Microsoft.  A file system driver must be authicode signed by Verisign (you need the driver signing authicode certificate which when I last checked is still only available through Verisign). Also, the windows driver development kit (again, the last time I checked) has a very weird licence such that it means you can't publicly distribute the source code for a driver.  There are a couple of kind individuals that have jumped through the hoops to make an ext3 driver available for windows for free (IIRC, 32bit windows only though).

[S-99]

what I mean is UAC works better than gksu/kdesu, you should never EVER get an "ERROR permission denied" you should get a prompt to enter an administrative password, UAC does a better job of this and the windows interface has a 'run as administrator' option almost everywhere, Linux does not.
just because something was inspired by something else doesn't mean it was not a better implementation.

You're right, you should never ever get an error permission denied as long as you entered the password properly, unless you have a linux install with wierd permission settings. You can easily get something like this the moment someone starts messing with gksu settings or the user account settings.

I digress, kdesu, and gksu work about the same as UAC. First off in the gnome de, i right click anything in the interface and there is in fact an "open as administrator" option. Secondly, if you have more than one account that can do admin privileges on a linux install gksu will let you make a choice as to which account you want to authenticate with just like UAC does. Thirdly i'm not seeing a difference at all here. I just meant heavily inspired term just toward UAC, UAC is microsofts rip off of kdesu and gksu, but the integration and automation UAC has in vista/7 is much better than xp's runas dialogue (if there was one thing microsoft could rip and be good, it was this and it really helped them...ripoff of gksu and whatever).

A file system will never complain that a computer was shutdown incorrectly. What a file system will complain about it if it was not unmounted correctly (ie. the computer didn't shutdown correctly, or the removable harddrive was not cleanly dismounted).  This is something that every file system that caches writes (which can include FAT and ext2) will complain about; NTFS is not unique in this regard.

You are probably right, it was likely caused by a bad formatting job on the hard drive, but that is hardly NTFS's fault.  More likely, the problem was actually caused by the hard drive itself and the sector that the dirty bit was written on was iffy.  It could have been the firmware of the drive as well.  I have had many large capacity hard drives formatted with NTFS (for storing branded PC recovery images) and have never had the problems you describe.

I did once have someone come in with a hard drive that had that problem or one similar, we copied the data off, ran the harddrive manufactures diagnostic tool (it said that it permanently failed a couple of sectors), reformatted the hard drive (with NTFS), and copied the customers data back onto the drive, it stopped the complaining on the stores computers (I never heard anything back from the customer). 

why isn't there a big push to make FOSS ext4 support in windows, I'm sure there is a way of writing new file system handlers.

I actually looked into this (for ext3 actually) quite a while ago.  It is actually fairly easy, Microsoft provides all of the documentation you need.  The problem is actually Microsoft.  A file system driver must be authicode signed by Verisign (you need the driver signing authicode certificate which when I last checked is still only available through Verisign). Also, the windows driver development kit (again, the last time I checked) has a very weird licence such that it means you can't publicly distribute the source code for a driver.  There are a couple of kind individuals that have jumped through the hoops to make an ext3 driver available for windows for free (IIRC, 32bit windows only though).

I formatted the drive on two different vista computers. Normally i don't experience any problems with trying to mount said newly formatted drive formatted by windows under linux. But the catch was vista and xp kept screwing up with formatting this drive which would always make it complain as being shutdown incorrectly, when the whole procedure for safely removing the drive before unplugging it happened. The whole thing got fixed when i formatted the drive as ntfs with gparted. I was mystified a little bit, but that kept drive from complaining every single time i plugged it into a linux box since there was indeed no impoper shutdowns. It probably was indeed the hard drive, but i only formatted it 3 times, i guess formatting with gparted would have been no different than formatting with windows since i'm taking it as the fact that perhaps 3rd time was the charm. The last time i formatted, i did have a chance to put in the time for a chkdsk, and it didn't complain or need to do anything, 3rd time was probably the charm.

For the most part i have a smooth sailing experience with ntfs, i only lost data two times on an ntfs partition twice which was years ago. Then the nag that i keep experiencing is ntfs complaining about how it wasn't shutdown properly when i mount it under linux. Then i have to reset the bad shutdown flag on that format before i can continue. Most of the time it's from negligence when i did shutdown a computer improperly. It's the way in which ntfs complain about a bad shutdown that i don't like that's a show stopper on other platforms.

During the last few years i did run ext3 as a filesystem for only my big storage partition since this is what i did after i lost data to ntfs two times on that partition. I said ok, linux filesystem in windows since i know the partition works fine. There was a nice little thing called ext2fs which worked fantastic. It was an ext2/3 filesystem driver. It stopped being maintained a while ago so i couldn't use it when ext3 had one of it's few last upgrades. But, i no longer use windows so i don't really care about this.

If anyone doesn't know, microsoft only supports their own filesystems and no one elses. Linux and macos support more filesystems including microsofts. Microsoft will never integrate compatibility with the likes of ext4, btrfs, reiserfs?, ever, just sort of like how they're never going to integrate compatibility (or at least integrate it properly) with the openoffice document format in microsoft office.

[Titan]

[Bobboau]

can't an unsigned driver be made? this seems like a silly thing to be getting stuck over.

[S-99]

I think ext2fs was an unsigned driver. In the windows world i use drivers regardless of whether or not they were certified by microsoft for stability and breaking the system.

I don't see why it would matter if a driver was signed or not. If it's known to many people that it works fine, and it comes from a good source, then screw trying to get whatever driver it is whql signed. The only thing you're likely to get come up when install happens is "this driver is not signed....continue or cancel?".

[Bobboau]

yeah, I don't see how this is an issue.

[Nuke]

can't an unsigned driver be made? this seems like a silly thing to be getting stuck over.

pretty much all 64 bit windows oses require driver signing. the 64 bit version of ppjoy has been having the same kind of issues with driver signing. driver signing costs about $500 per year! so the developer is trying to drum up donations, and is thinking about doing a premium version. same sort of thing could be done with the filesystem driver i assume. of course i keep my computer in a test mode which lets you use unsigned drivers.

[S-99]

Signed drivers is now mandatory?

[Bobboau]

that's the impression I got.

[Iss Mneur]

Signed drivers is now mandatory?

On 64-bit windows. Yep.

Whats worse is that it can't be the $180 per year (which if you look really hard can be found for about $80 per year) normal Authenticode signature, it has to be the $500 per year Kernel Mode Code Certificate.  A good summary can be found here: http://www.tech-pro.net/code-signing-certificate.html

Now, I should add, it seems Microsoft has either lifted the draconian distribution restrictions when using the Driver Development Kit or there are not people that just don't care, as I have found a few opensource driver projects like libusb-win32. So at this point it seems that it is only the code signing issues that keep people from bothering.

[S-99]

Ghey
The backlash of the whole windows 7 is more stable than vista or any other windows through one of the ways of stable drivers. But, pay the bills on the authenticode so it's signed, and it could be **** on a stick.

[Nuke]

windows (or any microsoft product for that matter) seldom changes much, even over several releases. there were only maybe 2 things in vista i actally wanted. there was nothing in 7 that i wanted at all. id still be using xp if it was supported as much as vista and 7 are right now. so im not too concerned about upgrading past what im already using (which is vista 64).

[castor]

I thought besides the features, 7 had big parts of it rewritten, supposed to make it superior to XP in any case?