
Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu - nreece
http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2770
======
sant0sk1
I've been running Windows 7 via VirtualBox for a few months now. It's okay.
Better than XP? Marginally. Worth money to upgrade? Not really.

Windows 7 will probably get its "foothold" on the consumer market the same way
Vista did: when people buy new computers they get Windows 7. I speculate that
the vast majority of Windows users are simply running the same O/S that their
computer shipped with, whether that is XP, Vista, or even ME (I've been
shocked by how many people I know are still running ME (in a vague sense of
the word "running")).

Of course that doesn't apply to techies like us, but when you hold mass market
share you have mass market demographics.

As far as businesses upgrading their workstations to Windows 7... no way.
Windows XP is pretty stable (they've been improving it for like 8 years, it
oughta be) and there are few compelling reason for a business to invest in
Windows 7. The only way MS will get Windows 7 into the business market will be
to force it (via OEMs or by stopping support for XP/Vista).

I think Microsoft's outlook (pun not intended) is pretty gray in the O/S
market.

EDIT: changed "no" reasons to "few" as trezor pointed out at least one reason
I was unaware of.

~~~
trezor
Windows 7 has lots of new features which appeals to the corporate market
compared to Windows XP. You have more options for locking down workstations
with GPOs, you have UAC which improves security. Searching for stuff is miles
ahead of Widows XP, which means increased productivty.

Granted, most of those features were added in Vista, but Windows 7 actually
runs quite decent on older hardware, something Vista wasn't exactly acclaimed
for doing.

Windows 7 also includes lots of features which are handy for portable machines
like laptops. Bitlocker anyone? You also have transparent, automatic VPN back
into your company's domain, either trough native IPv6 or tunneled connections.
In either case IPSec is used to secure communication. In effect, the windows
domain model just got network transparent. That's a pretty neat thing in
itself.

Again, some things came with Vista, but Windows 7 delivers it all in a much
more appealing package.

I'll shut up before I sound like a Microsoft market-droid, but to say Windows
7 adds no features which would make an upgrade worthwhile in the corporate
environment is either disingenuous or misinformed.

~~~
zyb09
exactly, I'm sick of the "but XP gets the job done"-attitude. Yes, there's no
killer feature, that would absolutely demand an upgrade, but all the minor
changes and usability improvements add up. I'm kinda annoyed that I have to
use a XP machine at work, since I've been spoiled by W7 beta at home for a
while now.

~~~
mikeyur
The problem is that most people just see it as another ~$100 they'll have to
spend to upgrade, and that isn't worth it to most.

I think it's worth the upgrade, but 90% of my family doesn't and I'll need to
upgrade them with a pirated version once it's released + cracked.

------
ianbishop
See, even living inside a web browser, there are terribly large difference
between Ubuntu and Windows 7.

For example, not too long ago I had a bug which caused firefox to crash due to
a flash problem. The fix involved having to download the source, editing the
launch file and build it.

While this very thing is what draws many of us to Linux, it is the same thing
that would push the majority of consumers away.

~~~
Tichy
While I never had to resort to such a bugfix for Firefox, I'd like to point
out that with windows/IE you would not even have the option for such a bugfix.

~~~
briansmith
Windows/IE runs Flash well (much better than Linux/Firefox), so you'd never
need that option.

~~~
Tichy
Incidentally that is one of the reasons for disliking closed source software.
It is impossible to fix Flash on Linux because it is not open. Once you open
that Pandora's Box (using closed source software), all sorts of nasty side
effects ensue.

(That said, I think the closed source Flash player has improved on Linux, too,
and some people even get by with open source clones).

------
Tichy
Maybe the XBox will kill Windows - after all, games have been the only reason
for it's existence for a while now.

Edit: I meant to say "justification", not "reason".

~~~
pohl
It sounds like what you meant to say was this:

"Maybe the XBox will relegate Windows to the workplace - after all, games have
been the most common justification for its existence in homes for a while
now."

It's funny, the first time I read your post, this was the meaning I pulled
from your phrasing - despite the exaggerations "kill" and "only". I must have
known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the
linked article.

I actually think you're on to something. It seems that Windows is losing its
grip on the home. Sure, I've heard tales of a few die-hard Media Center PC
enthusiasts, but the vast majority probably only need a web browser, a TCP/IP
stack, and some implementation of klondike solitaire.

I wonder what the market share of the Mac would look like if you just looked
at the segment of the market where a person buys a computer for themselves
and/or their family. They seem to have grown there.

We could be in for a historical irony, depending on how things shake out: the
rise of the PC in the days of the mainframe happened because non-IT
departments (and, in some cases, individuals) could afford to bring a PC into
the workplace, ultimately wresting control of computation from the hands of IT
departments, who were failing to provide adequate services. In the cubical
farm where I work, there are a half dozen people who have decided to just
bring their Mac laptop into work every day. And, yes, for work functions.

~~~
Tichy
"I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just
read the linked article."

Yeah it made more sense in that context and it was also what I was thinking
about. I admit I didn't think about workplace use. Not sure if most companies
choose Windows because that is what most employees are familiar with.

~~~
rbanffy
I think most companies chose Windows:

1) because it's what their IT staff is comfortable with and it's what they
advise companies to buy.

2) Unix sysadmins are somewhat more expensive than their Windows counterparts

3) Because there are a lot of applications that run only on Windows. The fact
several of them are malware is completely ignored ;-)

4) There is a whole lot of documents that are in Word and Excel and that
cannot be reliably converted to, say, OpenOffice. Companies must live with
their past.

(burn, karma, burn)

------
cturner
I worry the trend is going in the other direction. I've been trying to set up
a particular wireless networking device in ubuntu and the only instructions I
found that I could get working involved gnome desktop apps.

To reiterate - I need to have a user logged into the desktop environment in
order to get wireless networking going. At that moment I lost all enthusiasm
for the prospect of desktop linux becoming mainstream.

    
    
        Of course there isn’t. He lives in a web browser.
        The underlying OS is irrelevant. 
    

What about games? Nethack runs better under unix.

~~~
mattyb
I have no idea what 'particular wireless networking device' you're trying to
configure, but if you're just trying to get your Wifi card hooked up to a
secured router using just a shell, the following thread is gold (substitute
vim/nano/whatever for gedit in Step 2):

<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834>

~~~
cturner
Thanks a stack for that link. Having the right doc is everything. I followed
it through and everything Just Worked for me. I was at the stage of hunting
ebay for good deals on ciscos before this thread, you've saved me money and
time.

~~~
mattyb
Anytime.

------
raintrees
In all honesty, I have been able to use Ubuntu for most everything, but had to
keep a Windows XP system going for remote control to access Microsoft-only
stuff.

I installed Exchange 2007 with Small Business Server 2008, so accessing Public
Folders pretty much requires Outlook or IE. (Evolution only seems to work with
Exchange 2003...)

Which brings me to ActiveX. So much of what I do requires ActiveX that I also
must have a copy of Windows around to be fully functional, as I haven't gotten
WINE or IEs4Linux to support MS's RDP correctly.

Otherwise, I would be running Ubuntu only, as I don't really game much beyond
all the games that have been written/ported to Linux.

~~~
dandrews
'scuse (I'm not very MS-Windows literate). Why doesn't rdesktop fit your RDP
needs?

~~~
raintrees
gRDC seems to work best, as it supports an RDP clipboard.

But when VPN does not work, I then require ActiveX controls (I do not allow
RDP directly through my clients' firewalls).

Likewise, ActiveX is the only other way that I know of that allows me to
access Public Folders against an Exchange 2007 server with drag and drop
support for filing to that system from my personal folders. I am a bit if an
organizational nut, so I find this high on me digital "needs" list.

------
ColemanF
It's like the boy who cried wolf. I've seen so many of these articles, it
hardly means anything to me anymore.

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tybris
If it can be upgraded without reinstall it's a signficant improvement over
Ubuntu.

~~~
mattyb
Who says you can't upgrade without reinstalling on Ubuntu?

    
    
      sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
      sudo do-release-upgrade

~~~
tybris
It's not impossible, just a horrible experience. Most likely your network
drivers will break, their new version of X doesn't support your graphics
card/drivers, etc. I have never been able to upgrade Ubuntu without using
Ctrl+Alt+F1 a lot. I'm not going to give that to my family.

------
Elepsis
Then he will grow up and start having to do real work. Unless he's a
programmer, that (still) pretty much means Windows or Mac OS.

~~~
rbanffy
Really? Why?

------
jacoblyles
His son is not a gamer.

