Re: [tlug] Linux and Windows {2k|Xp|Vista} Comparison

[<stephen@example.com>]

Scott Robbins writes:

 > This is what FreeBSD calls a bikeshed discussion.  (See www.FreeBSD.org,
 > go to the FAQ and the miscellaneous section)  It means that people can
 > take part in the discussion without too much technical knowledge and
 > much of it is simply opinion.  The discussions can be lots of fun
 > though.  :)

The original bikeshed (from _Parkinson's Law_) also had another
important property: the consequences of the decision were relatively
unimportant.

 > I think some of it, at least, comes down to the axiom that security
 > and convenience are mutually exclusive.

I disagree here.  To paraphrase Miles Bader's .sig,[1] "Cheap, secure,
convenient.  Choose any two."  What's such a shame about MS Windows
historically (and even more so, Apple's Xserve) is that you only got
*one*.  In fact, with Windows you sometimes only got *none*, because
you just couldn't get the job done without using something like
RegEdit.  (Of course there's an essential conflict between security
and convenience at some level, but I don't think we're there yet, and
certainly not in the consumer/workstation desktop market.)

 > As a FreeBSD user and one who likes to be an advocate for it, in
 > fairness, I have to say that Linux is still much better as a desktop.
 > At present, I still have to have at least two browsers to be able to
 > view multi-media, linux-opera for flash and pdfs,  and native, that is
 > FreeBSD's own version, of firefox for things like quicktime, mp3's and
 > the like.  

Ah, in all fairness I should note that (1) I'm only a user of FreeBSD
userland, and that not all the time (ie, I use a Mac).  Specifically,
I use the Aqua version of Firefox, not the X11 version.  (2) My
impression of FreeBSD's variety of apps comes from (a) DarwinPorts,
which is 90% based on FreeBSD's ports, and (b) browsing FreeBSD's
trees when it's not yet in DarwinPorts.  I haven't missed yet.  (3)
Probably most important, I don't think I've ever intentionally watched
Flash.  Ie, when I say apps, I don't mean high quality consumer
multimedia, I mean research tools---eg, R and Maxima on the free side,
S+ and Mathematica on the proprietary side, and authoring/teaching/web
development/presentation tools appropriate to academia, and desktop
and system organization tools.

Footnotes: 
[1]  "Cheap, fast, good.  Choose any two."