OS X Is No Longer On My Main System, But I Already Have Regrets

[liam]

It's not just about having easier rollbacks; higher-level support is important.

Back in my schooling days (during the Vista period) I was working as a temp in my campus's IT support dept to earn a little extra pocket money and the department had a problem with a Windows update that, for some reason, affected only staff and students using notebooks from a certain OEM (which shall remain anonymous) that had the school's software installed; other notebook makes and brands were not affected.

The dept wrote to OEM for help since it only affected their machines, but the OEM claimed that it was a Windows issue and they were unable to assist. So we had no choice but to ask Microsoft. In 4 days Microsoft sent down a specially written patch that solved the problem.

There was also another incident where an OEM loaded a bad Windows image into its notebooks for sale at the campus which results in the school's software failing to install correctly, and in the rare instances where it did successfully install, crashes frequently; this was not observed on other OEMs' notebooks. As usual, this OEM claimed that it was not its fault, so the school had to ask Microsoft for help. Within a week Microsoft sent the IT dept a specially written patch to fix the faulty image so that the school's software can be loaded into the OEM's notebooks.

You don't get this kind of special treatment with Linux; everything goes to the bugzilla where you have to wait for the developers to successfully recreate the issue so that it can be pushed with a general update package for all users. Which is not acceptable for an enterprise environment.

I find it hard to believe anything you say since it's WELL known that windows updates ALWAYS WORK
To your point, that's why enterprises pay for support... but it is really expensive. Hence why rh is doing so well.
So, it's not something inherent to Linux but simply an issue of adoption. If more people used the desktop it would be more solid. That would mean less bugs reported and it would be cheaper to provide support to everyone. I've no idea at what level of adoption this would occur, though, but, IMHO, the Linux desktops (that is, the complete environments not just people running wms) are pretty far from the stability of windows/Mac.

[liam]

This is the single reason of why btrfs can't become the default filesystem soon enough. I use it with OpenSUSE, and it's awesome to know that if I fuck up something, the old working system is just a "snapper -v" ahead.

They're not taking about btrfs, though since josef chimed in saying btrfs shouldn't be considered for default yet. There's a few options we have to allow rollback that don't require a fs level solution. For example, there's the new thinp through lvm which brings copy on write support. Colin has his ostree (I think it's called rpmtree now), but I think he's only just started looking at adapting it for system rollbacks.
Here's the thread if you're interested:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2014-March/196405.html

[curaga]

He said he worked at a school. Microsoft works extra hard to help schools and keep their products cheap for schools because their marketers are smart - make someone comfortable with Microsoft products from age 14-22, and they're much more likely to use those products from age 23-97.

In any non-educational endeavor, I think you're point would be valid.

If I may offer a contradictory anecdote: my uni is one of them getting free MS services, using office365 cloud for mail etc. So when MS broke the webmail last fall (in two ways), and I reported it to the local support, the response was that they're getting it for free, their tickets take days to get answers, and depend on MS people's goodwill on if they actually get fixed.

One of the breakages got fixed in three weeks, the other is still there.

[chrisb]

You don't get this kind of special treatment with Linux; everything goes to the bugzilla where you have to wait for the developers to successfully recreate the issue so that it can be pushed with a general update package for all users. Which is not acceptable for an enterprise environment.

As others have already pointed out, you do get this kind of treatment if you buy a support contract. But I'll tell you a different story about what Microsoft support is like for ordinary developers..

Years ago I was part of a group that had a project which involved some embedded Windows work on MIPS platform (some of my coworkers did this part). They found a bug: when debugging was disabled, one of the Windows libs was about 1000 times slower. It was unusable. But with debugging on it was ok. Microsoft said they wouldn't even look at the issue unless the equivalent of about $10k was paid upfront. The money was paid and the bug escalated to Microsoft's developers. They responded that it was an already known issue that they would not fix, even though this was still a commercially available and supported platform. The only workaround was to ship with debugging enabled, which had a performance hit, but was at least usable.

Complain as you may about the open source bug trackers, at least you don't have to pay money upfront before a developer even looks at your bug. And if you do want to do that, then the option is there.

[Michael_S]

If I may offer a contradictory anecdote: my uni is one of them getting free MS services, using office365 cloud for mail etc. So when MS broke the webmail last fall (in two ways), and I reported it to the local support, the response was that they're getting it for free, their tickets take days to get answers, and depend on MS people's goodwill on if they actually get fixed.

One of the breakages got fixed in three weeks, the other is still there.

Huh. Funny that Microsoft would be so inconsistent. Maybe the other school was paying them a big support contract and yours was not.

As others have already pointed out, you do get this kind of treatment if you buy a support contract. But I'll tell you a different story about what Microsoft support is like for ordinary developers..

Years ago I was part of a group that had a project which involved some embedded Windows work on MIPS platform (some of my coworkers did this part). They found a bug: when debugging was disabled, one of the Windows libs was about 1000 times slower. It was unusable. But with debugging on it was ok. Microsoft said they wouldn't even look at the issue unless the equivalent of about $10k was paid upfront. The money was paid and the bug escalated to Microsoft's developers. They responded that it was an already known issue that they would not fix, even though this was still a commercially available and supported platform. The only workaround was to ship with debugging enabled, which had a performance hit, but was at least usable.

Complain as you may about the open source bug trackers, at least you don't have to pay money upfront before a developer even looks at your bug. And if you do want to do that, then the option is there.

I developed software for Windows CE from 2001 to 2005 for an OEM partner of Microsoft, though I think they were using low end Via x86 processors and not MIPS.

Plus with open source, if the problem is big enough you can always fork the project and fix the problem yourself or hire someone to fix it for you.

[Mike Frett]

It's your fault

XFCE is a lightweight UI, you should have known that; what you need is Unity or Gnome. As far as usability and Apps, I used Windows for 15 years and amassed quite a need for specific Software. I found replacements for EVERY thing in Linux and I'm proud to say I don't use Windows or Mac anymore; It's just me and trusty Xubuntu 12.04. It's a choice Michael, Microsoft's Slave Chains or the Freedom of Linux; obviously I choose my Freedom.

You are complaining because you got locked in to Software. Your continued use of Mac will lock you even more into it's Software. You just have to bite the bullet and make a switch to dig yourself out of the hole that YOU put yourself into. It's not the fault of Linux that you did this to yourself.

[molecule-eye]

XFCE is a lightweight UI, you should have known that; what you need is Unity or Gnome. As far as usability and Apps, I used Windows for 15 years and amassed quite a need for specific Software. I found replacements for EVERY thing in Linux and I'm proud to say I don't use Windows or Mac anymore; It's just me and trusty Xubuntu 12.04. It's a choice Michael, Microsoft's Slave Chains or the Freedom of Linux; obviously I choose my Freedom.

You are complaining because you got locked in to Software. Your continued use of Mac will lock you even more into it's Software. You just have to bite the bullet and make a switch to dig yourself out of the hole that YOU put yourself into. It's not the fault of Linux that you did this to yourself.

Easy tiger. Great lesson though. When will you be lecturing next?

[ChrisXY]

You don't get this kind of special treatment with Linux; everything goes to the bugzilla where you

... often get a response within minutes and if you're lucky a patch to test within an hour. Yes, this happens. Try reporting some bugs.

Sometimes not, of course, then it sits there until someone who knows the hardware comes along, that happens too.

But you don't compare the same things: Regularly giving money to microsoft vs. not paying anything.

If you do want "special treatment" there are several companies that offer support contracts for linux like, you know, red hat etc.

If you want the same thing, then try mailing microsoft: "Hey, I don't pay for windows, but I have a problem with hardware X." See, how long it takes them to fix the issue.

[erendorn]

As others have already pointed out, you do get this kind of treatment if you buy a support contract. But I'll tell you a different story about what Microsoft support is like for ordinary developers..

Years ago I was part of a group that had a project which involved some embedded Windows work on MIPS platform (some of my coworkers did this part). They found a bug: when debugging was disabled, one of the Windows libs was about 1000 times slower. It was unusable. But with debugging on it was ok. Microsoft said they wouldn't even look at the issue unless the equivalent of about $10k was paid upfront. The money was paid and the bug escalated to Microsoft's developers. They responded that it was an already known issue that they would not fix, even though this was still a commercially available and supported platform. The only workaround was to ship with debugging enabled, which had a performance hit, but was at least usable.

Complain as you may about the open source bug trackers, at least you don't have to pay money upfront before a developer even looks at your bug. And if you do want to do that, then the option is there.

Just now, in Visual Studio 2010, in debug you have the choice between:
- builds will fail unless you build twice, or
- edit and continue does not work.
You might think both of these are useful for debugging, but the answer to the (acknowledged) bug is:
"Fixed in VS 2012"
Yay,

Microsoft usually provides very polished tools, but it's not always perfect..

[Sonadow]

Just now, in Visual Studio 2010, in debug you have the choice between:
- builds will fail unless you build twice, or
- edit and continue does not work.
You might think both of these are useful for debugging, but the answer to the (acknowledged) bug is:
"Fixed in VS 2012"
Yay,

Microsoft usually provides very polished tools, but it's not always perfect..

I don't think anyone here has ever claimed that Microsoft and its tools are perfect.