

In Defense Of Windows - ddelony
http://lifehacker.com/5858462/in-defense-of-windows?tag=rants

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jiggy2011
One of the main advantages for windows is that backwards compatibility is
excellent (I can generally run programs for Win95 without getting into some
weird dependancy hell) and I have never had a big update (like a service pack)
totally break everything like I have had with pretty much every linux distro I
have ever tried.

One thing I never really understand is why people complain about windows RAM
usage, especially on recent versions. RAM is cheap and you have about 8GB of
it , why are you complaining about it showing usage of 2GB after boot? You
didn't buy all that memory for it not to be used, surely most of this usage is
due to windows preloading commonly used DLLS into memory at bootup so parts of
the system can load faster?

I heard at one point that data to be preloaded is deliberately organized into
contiguous blocks on disk so it can be read quickly in one pass, giving an
overall performance win vs seeking all over the disk later trying to load in
bits of DLLS to run a program?

I'm sure somebody can correct me on the details of that.

I'm not sure the security argument is even particularly valid anymore, is
there really any concrete reason that a Unix OS has an inherent advantage over
an NT based system?

I think allot of the issues stem from the culture (or pherhaps lack of it).
Linux users are generally happy with their open source software from aptitute
, whilst Mac users only tend to use a small number of good quality commercial
apps. On the other hand a huge number of windows apps seem to be 'freeware'
type apps that make their money by bundling crapware, also there is more
pirated software used which I suppose would be more likely to have viruses
bundled. I generally stick to either open source or fully paid up commercial
software on my Windows 7 box and I've not had any real problems.

~~~
ahi
2G of OS is 2G of data I have to hit spinning disk for. My workstation is much
more than a Word/Browser box, and I never have enough RAM.

I find it a pain in the ass to work in Windows. Sure it's backwards
compatible, but it seems like none of the packages I need are ever packaged
for Windows. In Ubuntu, a 'sudo apt-get install' can get me pretty much
anything I could ever want.

