Some opinions wanted (at a crossroads between Windows and Linux)

[Sonadow]

*crap*

I made myself damned clear from the start that this is not a topic for flaming Microsoft.

All posts have been reported.

[brosis]

Right now, I am exploring the "wonderfull world" of ACPI DSDT on my laptop, because apparently it likes to heat up to 60?, and only then spin up the fans.

So, enjoy:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1036051&

Quote Originally Posted by CylnZ View Post
Code:

   Scope (\_SB)
    {
        Method (_INI, 0, NotSerialized)
        {
            If (DTSE)
            {
                TRAP (0x47)
            }

            Store (0x07D0, OSYS)
            If (CondRefOf (_OSI, Local0))
            {
                If (_OSI ("Linux"))
                {
                    Store (0x01, LINX)
                }

                If (_OSI ("Windows 2001"))
                {
                    Store (0x07D1, OSYS)
                }

                If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP1"))
                {
                    Store (0x07D1, OSYS)
                }

                If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP2"))
                {
                    Store (0x07D2, OSYS)
                }

                If (_OSI ("Windows 2006"))
                {
                    Store (0x07D6, OSYS)
                }
            }

Those dirty SoBs.

I'm going to try an experiment; changing :

If (_OSI ("Linux"))
                {
                    Store (0x01, LINX)

to:

If (_OSI ("Linux"))
                {
                    Store (0x07D2, OSYS)

which would be telling the bios we are running xp sp2 wouldnt it?

I'll post the results in a bit. Its gonna be real interesting to see if the things cool off.

Gateway 6860fx
Bios v. 94.29

CylnZ@CylnZ-laptop1:~$ iasl -tc /home/CylnZ/dsdt.dsl

Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL Optimizing Compiler version 20081204 [Jan 10 2009]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2008 Intel Corporation
Supports ACPI Specification Revision 3.0a

ASL Input:  /home/CylnZ/dsdt.dsl - 7427 lines, 258581 bytes, 2928 keywords
AML Output: /home/CylnZ/dsdt.aml - 27724 bytes, 715 named objects, 2213 executable opcodes

Compilation complete. 0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Remarks, 872 Optimizations
CylnZ@CylnZ-laptop1:~$

Yippee-Skippee!!!!

-----------

Unfortunately that is not true. While the Microsoft AML compiler may be just as buggy as all the rest of their products, the end result is that many of us have dual boot machines where a Microsoft OS is able to work around the DSDT bugs to yield a running system and Linux is not.

Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux that is well positioned to be an upgrade from Windows. But as long as so many have had experiences like mine where I set a friend's laptop up for dual boot Vista/Ubuntu and only the Vista system works, Microsoft will continue to win. The vast majority who try Ubuntu with a buggy DSDT will do no research whatsoever, decide Ubuntu is sort of pretty but not ready for real work, delete it and go on never to look back.

People want to experience this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4

But end up with a lot of this:
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/...pg?w=362&h=500

Unfortunately that is not true. While the Microsoft AML compiler may be just as buggy as all the rest of their products, the end result is that many of us have dual boot machines where a Microsoft OS is able to work around the DSDT bugs to yield a running system and Linux is not.

You unfortunately don't understand what you are talking about. Do you know what a DSDT is and how operating systems interact with them? The Microsoft ACPI tables in the 71 DSDT's I've fixed so far have had zero errors. All the errors have been in the Linux tables. MS and Linux don't use the same sectiuons of a DSDT. The MS sections have no errors to work around when the MS compiler is used. The Microsoft AML compiler is intentionally breaking Linux/Mac compatibility. If you send me your DSDT, I can break a few things in the Microsoft ACPI tables, the MS AML compiler won't catch the errors, and MS won't run correctly. Would it then be MS's job to fix it? When the open industry standard Intel AML compiler is used, "ALL" operating systems work as they should.

They can fix anything they want, they will still stay scumbags. And only scumbags join scumbags. Or how do you call sabotagers?

[brosis]

I have been using Microsoft software since I was old enough to touch a computer. That was during the Windows 3.1 days where Windows was just a GUI layer for DOS.

Yes, we did have an issue with opening Office 97 docs because garbage started appearing in the files. To those people, we just made a simple phone call and said "Your file contains garbage, are you using Word 97? Please Save As Word 6.0/95 so I can read it, thank you very much."

They were always happy to oblige, and Word 95 remained on our computers until dad made the major upgrade to Win 98SE sometime in 2000, before the launch of ME, where we eventually moved up to Office 97.

It was only in 2006-ish that I decided to give Linux a go. That translates to approx. 7 years of Linux to 15 years of Windows. Now I know what some of you might think; 7 : 15 ratio is hardly a fair comparison since 15 years of being used to Windows gives Windows an unfair disadvantage. But you got to also remember that from 1990 to 2005 Microsoft's operating system and software products was almost universally mocked for being extremely unstable and buggy.

Of course, i was not spared from the instabilities and issues brought up by others during those times, such as frequent freezes, BSoDs and the infamous 'program performed an illegal operation' error that plagued Windows 95 and 98. But none of those were drastically catastrophic; major pain-in-the-neck annoyances yes, bit that's it. That made me leave Windows on a fairly positive note (albeit quite a fair bit poorer too) when I tried out Linux in 2006, save for two major incidents where a broken Win 98 installation had Windows always failing to detect the mouse, and in 2004 where my computer (then upgraded to XP) somehow managed to get itself bugged up with that infamous worm that caused Windows to shutdown after 60 seconds.

What attracted me to Linux then was the fact that it was something totally different and that people were claiming that it automatically works with their hardware. Unfortunately, that was not the case in my experience; first my WiFi cards weren't supported, and then Xorg was not able to generate a proper list of resolutions for my then CRT monitor. In the end I had to dig out the monitor technical specifications and manually make changes to xorg.conf to get the resolutions I wanted. Not a very good first impression. To top it off, I also ran into ext3 filesystem corruption on a recent distro during normal usage; for all the 15 years of Windows instability a filesystem error was never one of the issues that affected me, but hey, it showed up on Linux.

To give Linux credit, it has improved vastly over these 7 years and many devices now feature built-in drivers in the kernel to make plug-and-play possible and its stability is now top notch. But even that pales with the third-party vendor support Windows enjoys, and I do play with hardware too. Having launch day drivers is a major priority that Linux is not capable of producing (example: I cannot use any of Linksys's latest WiFi adapters on Linux because one of them employs a 80211ac stack, another one uses a relink chipset that has not been merged into mainline and the third one uses some super weird Broadcom chipset that is not even covered by b43 and Broadcom's own official open drivers, and my Southern Islands card is...well, was really being under utilized until AMD updated Catalyst to work with newer kernel versions). In short, the time, effort and cost incurred in scouting around for Linux-compatible hardware eventually starts to outweigh the upfront cost I pay for Windows (eg: choosing between a $200 HP printer that is guaranteed to work on Linux vs a $100 Panasonic printer that has Windows-only drivers). And now that I can get all manner of software licences at no cost from Microsoft in exchange for an annual $300 subscription to MS TechNet, the cost-savings portion of Linux is not very relevant to me anymore. I have Linux to thank though, for getting me interested in computing as a career move.

As for the software, let's just say that I love the polish on Microsoft software. What others call bloat, I see as 'features that are there in case they need to be used'.

I can give more examples, but the gist of it is that of all the issues I experience in both Windows and Linux, the worst of Windows I had to deal with was much better than what I experienced with in Linux.

Feel free to disagree but keep it civil.

I started with MSDOS 4.0 on 286 and draw the last line on vista.
I remember various filesystem corruptions in FAT days. I remember filesystem corruption in win95 osr. I remember ANSI encoding issues in filenames. I remember hanging pseudo OS win3.1. I remember still hanging pseudo OS windows 95. I remember self-polluting windows 98. I remember broken-by design windows ME. I remember hardware hog windows 2k. I remember wga of windows Xp, whose activation phone line were constantly busy and which wanted be to reactivate on hardware change. I remember swastika key on keyboards. I remember disk utilies dropping heads on the plates. I remember several NTFS corruptions due to power cut off. I remember viruses. I remember being infected via official updates. I remember patches that froze my machine. All past antiviruses. I remember browser hi-jacks. I remember IE-only sites. I remember doc incompabilities. I remember printers having no drivers. I remember unknown device drivers which you can't delete. I remember driver installations that do not remove everything on uninstall, that I am unable to reinstall similar product because it breaks with error. I remember using software to clean driver parts that borked the system in the end. I remember breaking system by change to ACPI. I remember inability to handle DLL files properly. I remember registry chaos. I remember access rights that are no way usable. I remember access rights that value SYSTEM OVER ADMIN. I remember same stupid startbutton desktop. I remember windows ME with 95% of software being in MSDOS and straight resistance to launch usual msdos session. I remember implementing of anti-user palladium system. I remember tons of instable software, because companies ripped off money and abadoned it in broken state. I remember copy protections that refused me to make backup copy of CD. I remember scratching that CD by my asus CDROM. I remember a system that autoexecutes graphics attachments. I remember RPC hole that made every system insecure for several weeks. I remember microsoft killing Gary Kildall. I remember microsoft sabotaging OpenGL. I remember microsoft try to sabotage Java. I remember development paradigm of "everyone reinvents same wheels and packages covered with DRM", that turn an OS into complaining fenced gardens instead of a usable machine. I remember much more.

But then I was introduced to Solaris with KDE2 and finally discovered that there were OSes that were MUCH BETTER, MUCH SECURE out there that have miserable marketshare ONLY DUE to microsoft illegal arrangements with OEM.
Then I discovered Linux, an OS that was trying to survive, despite all these arrangement, all these ms-only standarts, all these proprietary agreements, that put heavy emphasis on paying for work instead of paying for DRMed copies. An operating system from the future that gives choice, but still lacks polish and ONLY DUE to microsoft monster.

I understand who is responsible for what I had crap IT experience in the last years and who is still stretching its tentacles over IT no matter at what price even today. I am using Linux ONLY because its an OS that respect its users, is bold enough to challenge the world has no boders, had awesome toolkit integration, has huge emphasis on openness.

Switching from windows to linux was like a travelling from smoked city into high montains with fresh wind. And if some manufacturers decided to pollute further in the corrupted microsoft city, I chose those who were ticking according to time. I learned to choose my partners, and not allow somebody to manipulate me.

[Sonadow]

To sum up, I know it's hard to see where I'm coming from (even I have to admit that some of my reasons sound very fan-ish in general) but the truth of the matter is that having used both Windows and Linux for a fair amount of time, the conclusion I've made is that I still very much favour the Microsoft camp. Polished software tools coupled with a decent operating system are a major deciding factor, and I can definitely claim with a clear conscience that I enjoy using Microsoft's software tools and operating systems a lot more than any other FOSS equivalent.

Hope you guys understand, and much appreciation to those who gave advice on the different non-Microsoft technologies I can learn at the same time to keep myself relevant.

[Sonadow]

Have you been using Microsoft software for long, if their practices have never bitten you?


Just for one example, documents you created in your perfectly working and paid-for Office 95 won't show up properly with other people's Office 97. This is essentially forcing you to upgrade.

Due to their lock-in, you can't even switch to a competitor, since WordPerfect won't open your existing documents perfectly either. The formats are secret and nobody has completely reverse-engineered them.

Do you not see this as bad?

I have been using Microsoft software since I was old enough to touch a computer. That was during the Windows 3.1 days where Windows was just a GUI layer for DOS.

Yes, we did have an issue with opening Office 97 docs because garbage started appearing in the files. To those people, we just made a simple phone call and said "Your file contains garbage, are you using Word 97? Please Save As Word 6.0/95 so I can read it, thank you very much."

They were always happy to oblige, and Word 95 remained on our computers until dad made the major upgrade to Win 98SE sometime in 2000, before the launch of ME, where we eventually moved up to Office 97.

It was only in 2006-ish that I decided to give Linux a go. That translates to approx. 7 years of Linux to 15 years of Windows. Now I know what some of you might think; 7 : 15 ratio is hardly a fair comparison since 15 years of being used to Windows gives Windows an unfair disadvantage. But you got to also remember that from 1990 to 2005 Microsoft's operating system and software products was almost universally mocked for being extremely unstable and buggy.

Of course, i was not spared from the instabilities and issues brought up by others during those times, such as frequent freezes, BSoDs and the infamous 'program performed an illegal operation' error that plagued Windows 95 and 98. But none of those were drastically catastrophic; major pain-in-the-neck annoyances yes, bit that's it. That made me leave Windows on a fairly positive note (albeit quite a fair bit poorer too) when I tried out Linux in 2006, save for two major incidents where a broken Win 98 installation had Windows always failing to detect the mouse, and in 2004 where my computer (then upgraded to XP) somehow managed to get itself bugged up with that infamous worm that caused Windows to shutdown after 60 seconds.

What attracted me to Linux then was the fact that it was something totally different and that people were claiming that it automatically works with their hardware. Unfortunately, that was not the case in my experience; first my WiFi cards weren't supported, and then Xorg was not able to generate a proper list of resolutions for my then CRT monitor. In the end I had to dig out the monitor technical specifications and manually make changes to xorg.conf to get the resolutions I wanted. Not a very good first impression. To top it off, I also ran into ext3 filesystem corruption on a recent distro during normal usage; for all the 15 years of Windows instability a filesystem error was never one of the issues that affected me, but hey, it showed up on Linux.

To give Linux credit, it has improved vastly over these 7 years and many devices now feature built-in drivers in the kernel to make plug-and-play possible and its stability is now top notch. But even that pales with the third-party vendor support Windows enjoys, and I do play with hardware too. Having launch day drivers is a major priority that Linux is not capable of producing (example: I cannot use any of Linksys's latest WiFi adapters on Linux because one of them employs a 80211ac stack, another one uses a relink chipset that has not been merged into mainline and the third one uses some super weird Broadcom chipset that is not even covered by b43 and Broadcom's own official open drivers, and my Southern Islands card is...well, was really being under utilized until AMD updated Catalyst to work with newer kernel versions). In short, the time, effort and cost incurred in scouting around for Linux-compatible hardware eventually starts to outweigh the upfront cost I pay for Windows (eg: choosing between a $200 HP printer that is guaranteed to work on Linux vs a $100 Panasonic printer that has Windows-only drivers). And now that I can get all manner of software licences at no cost from Microsoft in exchange for an annual $300 subscription to MS TechNet, the cost-savings portion of Linux is not very relevant to me anymore. I have Linux to thank though, for getting me interested in computing as a career move.

As for the software, let's just say that I love the polish on Microsoft software. What others call bloat, I see as 'features that are there in case they need to be used'.

I can give more examples, but the gist of it is that of all the issues I experience in both Windows and Linux, the worst of Windows I had to deal with was much better than what I experienced with in Linux.

Feel free to disagree but keep it civil.

[brosis]

I must admit that I come from a place where the culture is that if a product delivers the goods and promotes standardization by ensuring that everybody uses it, lock-in is something that should not be seen in a negative light.

Your logic is extremely flawed. Standartization does NOT mean "everyone uses it".
"Everyone uses it" means MONOPOLY. Standartization means "commonly shaped medium".
A standard NEVER SEEKS SINGULARITY.

Once a lock-in/singularity happens, there is no choice, no movement, no difference and hence no comparison of "better". Singularity means ethernal immobile prison.

Your "place" is bugged.

[curaga]

Have you been using Microsoft software for long, if their practices have never bitten you?


Just for one example, documents you created in your perfectly working and paid-for Office 95 won't show up properly with other people's Office 97. This is essentially forcing you to upgrade.

Due to their lock-in, you can't even switch to a competitor, since WordPerfect won't open your existing documents perfectly either. The formats are secret and nobody has completely reverse-engineered them.

Do you not see this as bad?

[Sonadow]

It's not wrong to like Microsoft software, but you have to understand why people have a hard time believing it. Several decades of evil business practises and lock-in are just the start of it.

I must admit that I come from a place where the culture is that if a product delivers the goods and promotes standardization by ensuring that everybody uses it, lock-in is something that should not be seen in a negative light. And generally Microsoft software does deliver the goods where it's needed for the most part. But this is just my take on it, feel free to disagree.

As for the risk, keeping your eggs in one basket is never good, no matter what the basket is. If I were you, I would also learn alternatives to not completely keep myself in the Microsoft universe.

Very true, and Archibald has also pointed this out. I should, and will put some attention into looking out for suitable alternatives to complement what I'm learning in the Microsoft universe. QtCreator and learning the basics of Linux administration seems like as good a place to start as any.

[curaga]

It's not wrong to like Microsoft software, but you have to understand why people have a hard time believing it. Several decades of evil business practises and lock-in are just the start of it.

As for the risk, keeping your eggs in one basket is never good, no matter what the basket is. If I were you, I would also learn alternatives to not completely keep myself in the Microsoft universe.

[brosis]

Microsoft from its appearance up to recent events has done a lot of damage to IT ecosystems to say the least. It took a lot of free will effort to fix that and their behavioural policy it did not change even to slightest degree.

Someone who associates himself with or even likes microsoft, is someone who is greedy or ignorant, but all way egoistic.

Microsoft is an antonym to openness, choice, fairness and honor. These polices affect the core nature of ecosystem, with money only following those who are considered to be the authority.

The quality of tools is bound only to money amount, and microsoft has made a lot of damage and collected enough money on ignorants to secure its technical side.

But these tools are not adantage, they stink from source.

I stand behind my values and I will never ever tolerate anything so slimy and intolerant as microsoft. Their pointless destiny does not interest me, its their choice.

You have been a huge help. Thank you very much for helping me to sort out my thoughts, I'm really grateful.

A little bird was flying south for the winter.

It got so cold it froze up and fell to the ground in a large field.

While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it.

As it lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was.

The dung was actually thawing him out!

He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.

A passing cat heard the little bird singing, and came to investigate.

Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out-and then ate him.


The morals of the story are:

1. Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3.When you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut!

[source]