ZDnet moves from Vista to Ubuntu and I’ve removed Ubuntu
Vista has been called slow, unreliable and even more unkind things have been said. Vista isn’t that bad, yes, it has problems but it is not that bad when in the proper hands.
A ZDnet author became fed up with Vista after purchasing a $2600 laptop and claiming that several things in Vista kept him from using it properly.
His first complaint revolves around Vista taking longer to launch a program and on a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, SATA hard drive, Geforce 8600GT graphics and only 1GB of memory. Well, yes, with only 1GB of memory Vista is going to be slow, no matter what other hardware you toss behind it. Vista Home Premium thrives on having 2GB to 3GB of memory. Vista 64-bit likes having 4GB or more.
It’s as simple as that. As soon as someone says their computer has 1GB of memory and Vista is slow, in my opinion, they just lost all rights to complain about it.
The second part of the complaint is related to the first about how menus and other such things are slow to appear, just see above, 1GB of memory does not cut it with Vista.
Part of the article really does bother me, “Operating systems should be light,” maybe but I’ve seen so-called “light” operating systems, they are terribly ugly and feel somewhat incomplete with limited or non-existent WiFi support not to mention other amenities. I can’t agree with this one.
Somewhere in there, UAC is mentioned and how it blanks the screen out with all its security warnings, no kidding, turn it off, problem solved.
The second part talks about why he decided to move on to Ubuntu and though he does allude to the fact he should have purchased 2GB of memory for the laptop but refuses to do so just for the sake of an operating system… 2GB of laptop memory (assuming two 1GB sticks) can be had for $50 or less, online and if you can afford a $2600 laptop, you can certainly afford $50 for 2GB of memory.
Now then, Ubuntu well it’s Linux and I’m no fan of Linux though Vista has sent me ripping out my own hair from time to time, Ubuntu (7.04, I forget the pointless name for it) did not do several things I would rely on Vista to do.
Things such as processor throttling, it was lost on Ubuntu that my Turion processor could be throttled down to save power, reduce fan usage and keep the heat down. It also refused to acknowledge the display hotkeys on my laptop to adjust contrast and brightness. Also, the display driver didn’t work with my Nvidia 7600 “out of the box” and required the installation of nvidia-glx which, if required to work, should be installed by default, restricted or no, opensource or no, it should “just work.”
That being said and considering the fact that all of the applications I use are on the Windows side made me realize that Ubuntu was simply wasting 45GB of hard drive space so I downloaded TweakVI and used the integrated EasyBCD to reset the Vista MBR (Master Boot Record) and then formatted the partitions Ubuntu was occupying, goodbye Grub, goodbye Ubuntu, rest assured you will not be missed.
So, Vista makes me rip my hair out on occasion but so did Ubuntu. The only operating system on the planet I really can’t complain about is Mac OSX, if only Apple didn’t have so many hardware problems.
There’s one last thing that bothers me, a comment in the article suggests that it takes him 26 minutes to boot Vista on a new laptop. I find that hard to believe so I’m just going to call “lie.” In the five Vista installs I’ve done, Vista took no longer than 1.5 minutes to boot from a cold state and the faster the system, the better, the fastest boots in just slightly over 30 seconds. “26 minutes,” yeah, right.
The same comment goes on to say that Ubuntu installed in 47 minutes (I installed Vista in 25 minutes) and “74 seconds from boot to switched off” – though I’m not sure that that means. On the fastest computer I have, with all the fancy effects enabled in Vista, it shuts down to a cold state in 13 seconds flat.
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October 22nd, 2007
Why do you insist on commenting on this subject? Here is Jonathan’s tale of woe with Ubuntu:
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/05/06/ubuntu-is-not-ready-for-most-even-from-dell/
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/05/13/how-ubuntu-nuked-my-laptop/
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/05/24/dell-begins-ubuntu-campaign/
“As soon as someone says their computer has 1GB of memory and Vista is slow, in my opinion, they just lost all rights to complain about it.”
As soon as someone says they won’t use minimal steps to fix a problem, they’ve lost the right to complain about it.
“Vista isn’t that bad, yes, it has problems but it is not that bad when in the proper hands.”
Here’s an article about proper hands:
http://vista.blorge.com/2007/10/01/windows-vista-is-already-past-its-expiration-date/
Amazing that display and wireless issues in an old Ubuntu version make you blow it off your laptop and pronounce it a piece of crap, yet you will disassemble your laptop, do a restore and still have no idea what caused the problem.
Repeat after me; Linux is not Windows. Ubuntu is not Linux, it’s one Distro. You could try Pclinuxos, Mint or pay $50 for a commercial Linux Distro like Mandriva that has licensed proprietary software so it can legally be included on the installation disk.Complaining about an issue and refusing to fix it because you won’t use the command line is like bitching about a Porsche not running at top speed because you refuse to use a manual transmission and leave it in 1st. How about trying a couple of different flavors of Linux and spending enough time to give it a fair evaluation, or shutting up about it? By the way, did you know you can copy text from a web site and paste it into the terminal session? Other than that, never regedit or use the run feature in Windows to solve a problem, just to be consistent.
October 22nd, 2007
Ubuntu 7.04 was the latest version when I tried it, it was sitting there, wasting space.
A modern operating system should not require you to drop to a command line to perform simple extractions and installs… if you think otherwise, maybe you like using DOS or staring at a black and green screen all day.
I wasn’t complaining about Linux as a whole, I was complaining about Ubuntu, in this instance…
I don’t go out and use regedit on my own, I search online for solutions but at least I don’t have to type cryptic commands that don’t make sense a great deal of the time.
I do refuse to use a manual transmission because well… I don’t know how to drive one, I could learn… if I had the time and wasn’t worried about breaking the transmission.
October 22nd, 2007
Vista is a terrible operating system period. A failure at best. Microsoft missed the boat on this one and they’re at the airport.
There was nothing wrong with Windows XP. In fact, there isn’t much (if anything) you can do in Vista that you can’t already do in XP. But that will change when the new DirectX10 games come out. That’s why Microsoft refuses to release a DX10 for XP, otherwise, not many would make the migration to Vista.
They are just trying to force upgrade everyone to make more money on the poor users who are locked into using their poorly designed, bloated software that is more resource-demanding than ever. For the most part, they just keep recycling the same windows kernel over and over again.
This type of crap may have worked when Microsoft had the global monopoly on operating systems and consumers had no choice, but now, thanks to open source alternatives, this is not the case. Microsoft may as well forget about the operating system market and invest in other areas, because it’s pretty much over now for them.
October 22nd, 2007
“Vista isn’t that bad, yes, it has problems but it is not that bad when in the proper hands.”
Oh really?
“Somewhere in there, UAC is mentioned and how it blanks the screen out with all its security warnings, no kidding, turn it off, problem solved.”
Your don’t seem like the proper hands at all. UAC is there for a reason, and If windows users turn them off, it just becomes useless, and Vista goes back to being as virus-prone as XP. UAC is long overdue from Microsoft, something which has been in Linux, Unix, Mac OS and BSD (By another name) for years now.
October 22nd, 2007
Upon perusal of your other posts, it seems that for vista you are willing to take your notebook apart physically, and trawl around on vista forums looking for answers, yet say that ubuntu doesn’t “just work”. I believe this ‘just works” crap is Mac or Windows marketing crap.. Don’t your previous posts say the same of vista?
October 22nd, 2007
Worst article ever, no pros, only contras, whats the essence ? I always used windows and always will, it supports colors and ram is cheap. wtf, who cares ?
October 22nd, 2007
Mark, yes, but that only happened twice…
As for Ubuntu, if processor throttling worked, if the graphics driver wasn’t so picky and maybe, if by some miracle, desktop effects worked (correctly) then I might have stuck with it.
I don’t think there is anything more annoying than having your battery life eaten up because the operating system refuses to throttle down the processor and fan.
It’s easy(ier) to find solutions to Windows problems on Google than it is to search Linux forums for a solution, which ends up being a convoluted mish-mosh of terminal commands.
Taking apart a laptop… is easier than typing in cryptic commands. Perhaps, maybe that is just my opinion.
“only contras” – well – if I was pro Ubuntu… I know, I know, you’re looking for a fair and balanced view, let me state the obvious, this wasn’t meant to be that.
October 22nd, 2007
I don’t care if you like Ubuntu or not. You don’t have any interest in putting aside your preconceived notions of how an operating should work. I read Windows forums and can’t believe the amount of crap involved with keeping their systems running, blessed by WGA to get updates, Malware and viruses ravaging data etc…I think an operating system should run well on 512 megs of Ram. I don’t spend alot of time on the command line, because everything I’m running is from the repositories. 90% of folks running it are the same. Were you searching for solutions on the same machine with Ubuntu installed? If so, did you know you could have highlighted the text and pasted it on the command line?That’s right no typing. You can do the same thing with any text you see, even in the command line box. If you would spend a relatively small amount of time (how many years do you have invested in Windows?) to learn a bit about how things work in the OS, it would stop being a cryptic mish-mosh of monkey see monkey do then throw feces when the blindly entered commands don’t work. I’ll end this like I do after all of your Ubuntu posts. For the love of God stop writing about it. You’re a Windows-lowest-common-denominator-if-the-only tool-is-a-hammer-every-problem-is-a-nail kind of guy. From now on, treat Linux like a manual transmission.
October 23rd, 2007
Jonathan, I read your article with interest, and these are the points that i have to offer.
a) Vista is a good operating system, and having legally purchased it, you probably should stick with it till your license expires. If you have purchased your laptop recently, I am assuming that your license is good for another year (unless MS has changed/affected changes to its licensing)
b) Linux on the Desktop, is a different animal from Windows and MAC-OS. Power management IS a big problem with Linux, but so was a large number of things till a couple of years back.
* – You were able to actually INSTALL linux in 45 minutes, a few years back, it would have taken you many hours, not to mention multiple tries. So for a OS put together by a bunch of folks who don’t want your money, it has matured
* – Wireless drivers was another crib, most Linux distros are able to do that now .
Now I know you have a valid point about spending 200-500 Dollars on Vista, another 200 plus dollars on Office, plus more money on a good Antivirus, plus more money on renewing license all to save your time. And frankly if I wanted to work without having to bug someone to get some small thing working – I’d recommend Vista too.
But the whole money thing apart – i think it is a question of whether we can actually consider an alternative. Pose yourself this question, if you were given a Mac for the same cost as a Windows Box, which would you select – if you still feel that Vista would have been your choice, then you are a focussed person. My suggestion is Stay with what keeps you happy, in your case Vista – its a good product from a reputed company.
October 23rd, 2007
Wimp – shows how little you even know about Vista!!!
EasyBCD is not an “integrated part” of TweakVI, it’s a separate standalone program produced by the awesome NeoSmart Technologies.
Both Totalidea’s TweakVI and NeoSmart Technologies’ EasyBCD will prompt you to download and install the other program. They complement one another, not integrate!
EasyBCD: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
Does that look like TweakVI to you?!
October 23rd, 2007
Nowadays, the one who owns 1Go ram cannot afford to complain about Vista.
Jonathan analysises are most of the time just right and rigorous.
And for the one complaining that an os, any os, should run on 512Ko ram, it sounds to me like an old nostalgic out of real speech. Just not worthy
to discuss the past, jut tiring to convince lessons givers.
Keep on blorging, Jonathan, you are just so right.
Sincerely.
October 23rd, 2007
I used 2000 then XP until around 2006. I then started to make the move to Ubuntu. It’s simply good and free and I like the open source philosophy. Plus open source applications have proliferated and are really good (of course you can run them in Windows too since most are cross platform). I can install ubuntu on multiple systems for free. Plus Ubuntu keeps getting better. My first experience was Dapper Drake, and now with Gutsy compositing shines.
I still use Windows at work and I must say that at home I never had trouble with malware, viruses or the like. I had my machine behind a gateway/router so I had passive firewalling with DHCP/NAT. It seemed as long as I was moderately careful with what I downloaded and what I was doing, I never had any issues. However, there are many users I help with computer issues who were frequently hampered by malware, so I know linux could have really helped them there. Anyway, Ubuntu seemed just as good to me and keeps getting better (such that it has exceeded Windows in my judgment). Plus Ubuntu needs much less hardware. 2 GB minimum for Vista seems relatively absurd to me as well, and that’s just the minimum. I’m not a gamer, but that is the only purpose I can really see a need for Windows anymore. If Ubuntu or another flavor of linux really takes off, I suspect commercial games could begin to appear and actually challenge Windows given that its only remaining advantage is gaming in my opinion.
October 23rd, 2007
Alright, bad choice of words, EasyBCD integrates with TweakVI, I didn’t use it as a stand alone program, at any rate, you can access it within TweakVI and it’s an option and that’s how I used it, therefore… it’s part of TweakVI…
Actually every part of TweakVI is a plugin so technically no part of TweakVI is really TweakVI though most are made by the same people and sometimes they’re not…
Vista is not my preference, I’ve said this before, the only operating system I can’t complain about is Mac OSX and if Apple GAVE me a Mac, sure, I’d take it but I wouldn’t pay for a Mac.
Apple had far too many hardware problems for me to be happy with a MacBook a while back, which I ended up returning, not because of OSX (which I fell in love with) but because the display issues were insurmountable.
October 24th, 2007
Seems like one persons straightforward assessment of the computer world as it currently stands. I am in complete agreement. I’ve tried several distros several times. Not even the Linux community can keep from arguing which is better. Outside that, it’s Microsoft or Apple, and they both have releases and accompanying updates (with a built in mechanism for updating) that works out of the box. Apple has the luxury of supplying all of the major hardware that their OS will ever see. Microsoft does a great job of providing drivers for an entire planet full of devices, not all, but most, even if some are generic drivers to get the system up and running until you can get the mfgrs drivers. Linux? Oh man, I’m sure there are drivers for most hardware, but where? And when I search for them, how am I sure I’ve got the right one for the right distro? How can any company with computer systems running Linux be sure that the driver is from reputable devs? They’re forced to believe others on blogs instead of having a company backing it with their reputation at stake? I’m not against Linux as a concept, just as it’s current manifestation.
October 24th, 2007
Buying an operating system is getting to be almost as quaint as buying CDs. I guess it’s a good thing that there are still some people who are willing to apologize profusely for the companies that took their money in exchange for lowered expectations…where’s this guy’s blog about how great his local cable company is?
October 24th, 2007
>>”Linux? Oh man, I’m sure there are drivers for most hardware, but where? And when I search for them, how am I sure I’ve got the right one for the right distro? How can any company with computer systems running Linux be sure that the driver is from reputable devs?”
January 6th, 2009
> Also, the display driver didn’t work with my Nvidia 7600 “out of the box” and required the installation of nvidia-glx which, if required to work, should be installed by default, restricted or no, opensource or no, it should “just work.”
Yeah I completely agree, it’s soooo stupid! I hate that it doesn’t just use it’s sixth sense to predict which of the infinite combinations of hardware my particular machine is running and add the driver to my installer. Either that or they could at least package ever existant driver for ever piece of hardware in the world. I mean sure it’s only a 700MB CD but that’s what compression is for!
I never had these problems with Vista, it came with everything I need preinstalled. I have this USB powered vibrator, yeah you know the one Jonathan; I sat down on it, plugged it in and it just worked!!! Why can’t Linux just fuck me in the ass like Vista does?
October 23rd, 2009
Microsoft doesn’t care for pirates copies of Windows XP as so users don’t migrate to any Linux distributions. They are scared about Open source and they are scared about Chrome OS. They are trying to hold people at the “Windows”. I used Windows my whole life (since 1995) and 2 months ago I met Ubuntu 9.04. I learned everything that I needed in the help of the OS and tutorials. I can say that ANYTHING that you do in a Windows you can do in Ubuntu. And more, you can do that with a better perfomance and you don’t have to pay for it. Basically, people doesn’t know about that. And they are good with the Windows XP / Vista / Seven with their Microsoft Office 2007. If people actually known about Ubuntu and OpenOffice they would certainly migrate just as I did 2 months ago. I was motivated by reading at the newspapers “Rio de Janeiro Government saves R$ 700.000,00 by installing BrOffice” (Brazil’s Open Office). It’s a question of time that people will use Open Source OS and Open Source Software.
October 23rd, 2009
Plus, I can code a software that will make you never see your Windows XP / Vista logo again. Actually, any computer science graduated can do that. The point isn’t about “I always take care”. The point is that it won’t happen on Ubuntu and many other Linux based. Everyday, people study various Linux distribution’s source code and that’s what makes open source strong.