Re: If it's too hard for the experts...
"i.e. an amateur in all but name"
Better (by far) a very talented amateur than an anonymous loser
(Not, of course, that he is an amateur BTW)
2677 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Mar 2010
"Also you're just as AC as other commenters who post under a nom de plume, and your comments don't have that much weight."
Absolute nonsense - he/she has a posting history - ACs can be anyone or more suspiciously just one.
Incidently Munich ALWAYS intended to take a LONG time to move to Linux - it's the sensible way, it's certainly the German way.
"you'd probably be better off stopping calling the users of Windows ignorant."
If you are SO smart you would have realised that he/she didn't. He/she called SOME people buying PC's (almost always) supplied with Windows ignorant. That is the CORRECT usage :
ignorant
Use Ignorant in a sentence
ig·no·rant
[ig-ner-uhnt]
adjective
1.lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned: an ignorant man.
2.lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact: ignorant of quantum physics.
3.uninformed; unaware.
4.due to or showing lack of knowledge or training: an ignorant statement.
Plenty of SAs here would describe their users as ignorant whatever OS they used !
"I can't think of one replacement to Microsoft RDP that allows users to......"
My wife used krdc for YEARS to access her school's Windows server for remote access - no problems and indeed faster than using Windows and not prone to crashing.
BTW thanks for joining The Register TODAY to post this ! It all helps to validate your impartiality !
"Dear clueless idiot,"
Cheeky sod !
Please learn to separate critical kernel vulnerabilities from trivial program problems. I'm ending this now as arguing with a faceless AC, yes just the one, is rather pointless, esp. with the constant repetition of worn, unproven, unprovable garbage.
What is it with you ? So insecure ? Afraid WIndows isn't as perfect as you like to suggest ?
I'm happy to use Linux, and indeed only Linux. You use what you want
"If I started listing monthly patches for any enterprise flavour of Linux, it would usually be a far longer list than the above."
That will be true after all I have dozens of programs and libraries that get upgraded fairly regularly . ALMOST always because of improvements to the code HARDLY ever due to vulnerabilities esp.not the kernel.
"nb - Office is not part of the OS. You would need an additional exploit to gain any additional rights over standard user..."
Just like a proper OS then these days.
Nota bene - the coming Windows security update include 4 critical remote execution and 10 important remote execution, elevation of privilege and DOS patches.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-sep
Includes :
Bulletin 1 Critical Remote Code Execution May require restart Microsoft Office,
Microsoft Server Software
Bulletin 2 Critical Remote Code Execution May require restart Microsoft Office
Bulletin 3 Critical Remote Code Execution Requires restart Microsoft Windows,
Internet Explorer
Bulletin 4 Critical Remote Code Execution May require restart Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 8 Important Remote Code Execution May require restart Microsoft Office
Bulletin 9 Important Elevation of Privilege May require restart Microsoft Office
"but is it really necessary to make all the UK passport holders wait through that process"
We came back via Calais a couple of weeks ago, the queue was far longer than normal, each car was taking 90-180 seconds and only 3 points were manned. Because the checks take place in France and before the ferry check-in any delay can cause a missed ferry even when arriving, in this case, with an hour to spare.
(This was, as usual, the ONLY passport check on the trip UK->France->Switzerland->Italy->Switzerland->France->UK)
By the way :-
Microsoft refuses to release study challenging Munich Linux success
"I would struggle to see how a Windows deployment would be cheaper than a Linux installment," said Roy Illsley, principal analyst at Ovum, who added that he couldn't imagine why Microsoft wouldn't release a study that actually proved that Microsoft is cheaper than Linux. "I would suspect that they read it and they suspected that there are some errors in there," he said.
"No, linux updates all applications which come from a repo."
It is however possible, indeed normal, to have a number of repositories, I have all the OpenSUSE for my version +packman. A little care is needed when installing certain applications ( for example kdenlive needs the programs/libraries melt, mlt, ffmpeg and vlc to be from the same repo.) to get all the necessary helper programs from the same repo but otherwise as stated all software will be updated automatically, semi-automatically or not at all depending on the user's wishes.
Good luck with your decision John, try a few live CDs first
"So...what DO you do with your PC...just so we know? CAN you do anything worth the effort?"
Edit 1080p/50 video
Edit RAW photos
Generate panoramic photos
Scan/print in colour & B&W
Program in a considerable number of languages
Layout & design PCBs
Program PIC microcontrollers
Access my other (remote) machines by ssh/fish/rdp
Run a file/odds&sods server and a Samba server for the wife's Nexus 7 & phone
Run considerable amounts of scientific software including hardware 3D modeling
+ all the usual wp/spreadsheets/browsing/video watching/GoogleEarth/Skype/e-mail
More to the point there isn't anything that I want to do that I can't.
"erm, you realise that most Linux distributions have far MORE vulnerabilities than Windows XP?"
So you KEEP telling us. Makes no difference to me I wouldn't use MS OSs if you offered me a free trip to Vogsphere. Guess I'll just have to be careful
(You might actually learn something if you analysed the levels of severity of these 'vulnerabilities' )
"Erm, GIMP is not a direct functional replacement for Photoshop. "
I know several professional photographers who use Linux, but they don't just use Gimp. There are a number of RAW photo conversion/editing/tweeking programs that are available.
Personally I do as little to a RAW photo as possible maybe resize/tweek exposure/tweek the curves/ unsharp/save in appropriate format usually.
""it's not MS / it is free" pseudo-religious aspect"
Nothing of the sort - I've been using MS software since the days of single-board computers with 6502 8-bit BASIC ( and even that had an infuriating bug ), DOS, Windows from the start upto W2000 and it's always been mediocre , and the company has always been trying to tie it's customers into its ecosystem. Fair enough if that's what you want to do or don't know any better.
I started using Linux about 1994-5 and even though there were plenty of limitations early on the system was clearly far superior for what I wanted.
As a scientist I've mainly used PDP-11s, VAX , alphas, SGIs and then big Linux workstations and compute farms - WIndows had no place in that except for the usual corporate guff of Exchange/Word. ( Excel was never powerful enough or indeed capable of handling the dataset sizes needed for our research work )
"(1) Since I buy "complete kit" from Dell/Lenovo/HP etc. since more than a decade instead of self-assemble the Windows is "no extra cost" for all practical purposes"
The 'cost' is that you buy into and reinforce a monopoly and one that has shown itself to have only one interest - itself. People here are always going on about not wanting even a duopoly in mobile and yet de facto is a desktop monopoly (an arrogant and increasingly irrelevant one)
"no higher cost "industrial solutions""
All my stuff is consumer grade, cheap Samsung laser, cheap Brother laser, old Epson laser cheapest Epson scanner/printer, the only 'special' I bought was a new Nvidia card so I could use hardware video acceleration for playing back 1080/50p H264 video without using all the processor and that was only £50.
"Software for i.e my DSLR is Win only"
Guess what - I have 2 DSLRs Canon 300D and 550D and I don't use Windows. There are plenty of RAW processing programs for Linux. Occasionally if you buy a very new camera as I did with the 550D it takes a little whole for the programs to catch-up - 2 weeks in the case of the 550D.
The situation you raise with unsupported hardware is not one I have experienced.
I've had 3 laser printers, 1 inkjet, 1 scanner/printer, accelerated graphics card, 3G dongle, serial/USB converter, PIC programmer, 4 cameras, 2 video cameras, 6 webcams/notebook cams, USB telephony headset. Even the HDTV will work as a dual-monitor setup with the laptops/netbook
This with OpenSUSE 12.3 or earlier
"You can install software on Linux without the admin password"
Well of course you can, you can also compile your own and run it from within your own account - but you can't readily allow global execution. Neither of these is a subtle introduction of malicious code to a machine
"I do not know any Linux desktop users who have any money to steal."
Well I'm sitting here in my Swiss apartment reading this on my Linux desktop, with a Linux netbook nearby and connected by fish: to my Linux server in UK. When we go home I'll process my holiday videos/photos on one of the Linux workstations and then go on holiday again in our motorhome . Rich ? not by Gates' standard but pretty well off after a lifetimes work and saving and investment.
Linux by choice - it does all that I want
How are holidays on Vogsphere ?
"The initial phase of the project simulated the cortex of a cat brain on an IBM BlueGene massively parallel supercomputer with 147,456 cores and 144TB of memory developing the basic synaptic circuits for the brain chip. ®"
After immense amounts of 'thinking' about going out or eating the compu-cat decided to wash its bum instead
"Indeed - a lot of the time my workstation is like that, then again a lot of the time it spends with a load way over 7"
Agreed, I'm rendering 1080p/50 video in H.264 and both cores are running melt @ ~70% cpu whilst letting me browse this forum smoothly. If I had more cores available I'd be transcoding already rendered video to 720p/25 for playback on a laptop and if I had more I'd be setting up another editing session by generating proxy clips.