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Comment by stinos | Hacker News Reader

Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable

I wouldn't call it much less usable, depends on what you're used to I guess.. Actively using both, each for their own task, I find them on par with each other. But I don't expect Windows too give me a super easy to setup server with a mighty commandline, and I don't expect Linux to give me a super smooth Desktop UI that can be used as a digital audio/video workstation, for instance. Cause they both suck at those tasks equally as it's far from their target experience. And I also don't have the WTF feeling you have as I never had the problems you talk about: three minutes? Really? More issues than Pulseaudio? Almost sounds like you try to run Windows 7 on an old pentium with crap drivers :P

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I'm running Windows 7 on a current top of the line box.

Speaking of that, when I swapped out my old motherboard for a new one, Windows refused to boot, giving me a bluescreen every time. I googled around and found that this was, in fact, a very common issue and the only solution is a full reinstall. Woah.

More issues than Pulseaudio, yes. In fact, I have zero issues with Pulseaudio and plenty of issues with Windows. Not like stuttering, but devices not being recognized and a terribly confusing UI when it comes to, for example, switching sound playback devices (getting sound to work on my TV has been an awful experience).

Every time I have to boot into it it's an awful, awful experience. Here is just ONE reason why: https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-...

If you sysprep generalize the machine before you swap the board it'll work afterwards. It's like moaning that your brain transplant resulted in you not being able to move your arms or something similar.

The analogy is unsound, you can do this with any Linux/BSD/Solaris system just fine. It's Windows who requires a more complex procedure here.

So yes, it's user's fault, but the point is that in this particular instance Linux is more user friendly compared to Windows. The user needs more knowledge and expertise to do the same operation with a Windows machine compared to a Linux machine.

I disagree.

If you take the disks out of a Dell and stuff them in an HP machine with the same chipset, Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup.

It's just different and you see the differences as misfeatures.

> Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup

Systemd does.

a) Debian stable, Ubuntu, rhel6 don't have systemd. So no our servers don't.

b) it can't assume heuristics like that if the vendor changes so no it can't. This was based on a complete data transplant.

When I complain about Windows, I'm expected to complain about things that are still present in the latest version of windows (8.1 currently), not things that are no longer an issue since XP. In return, I expect you to do the same when complaining about Linux.

This is a solved problem and systemd is coming to debian as well.

In that case that would be complaining about windows 9. There are no mmainstream distributions shipping systemd yet.

Windows 8.1 is not mainstream either, compared to 7.

I'm sitting in an office with 120x 8.1 systems at the moment so...

And I'm sitting in an office with over 200 Fedora and Arch Linux machines. What's your point?

I swapped my motherboard and CPU too a month ago (from an SB i3 on an H61 mobo to an Ivy Bridge Pentium on a B75 mobo) and everything worked fine on the same installation. I only had to install the chipset INF drivers, Ethernet and USB3 drivers.

Most likely you didn't set up the SATA controller on the same mode (AHCI vs RAID vs IDE legacy).

To change sound playback device, you simply right-click on the speaker in the system tray > Playback Devices > choose what you want and click on Set Default.

Sounds like most of your issues mostly relate to just not knowing how to do certain things in Windows. Which that's basically the same reason people have issues with Linux.

It's fine to be comfortable in Linux, that's actually a great thing, but Windows is incredibly capable and usually easier to use for more advanced things. The basic UIs are similar enough to not be a big deal.

I always thought that Windows gave me a super easy to setup server too because of the fact that I don't have to use the command line.

With Linux server setup, if I haven't done something in a while - I must go and hunt down the information on what files I need to configure and commands that I need to run. Sometimes it takes hours of reading. With Windows I can usually take a look at the standard management interface provided with the server software and just figure it out or be guided through it.

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