Jayce
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I have been running vista for a year now and the only bsods I have gotten were caused by me pushing an overclock to far so they aren't Vista's fault.
Ubuntu may have a release every 6 months but I fail to see the advantage in releasing a new os in short arbitrary intervals. Inf act you could make a case for some of the Ubuntu releases amounting to little more than service packs.
I installed Ubuntu 7.10 o my previous laptop back when it was first released. After dodging one bullet by deliberately buying an Atheros wifi card that worked out of the box I still had to spend an hour or two getting the aTI video card drivers working. Initially I used Ubuntu a lot but after a while I found myself using it less and less since it didn't offer me anything I couldn't do in windows.
When I recently decided to replace xp on my MSI Wind I considered using ubuntu netbook remix but ended up using Windows 7. I mounted the 7 iso with daemon tool in xp, started the installation process and then rebooted to finish installing. Once it was installed all I had to do was connect to Windows update which downloaded the wifi drivers, everything else worked right out of the box including Aero. The whole installation process took an hour at most and this is for a beta os.
I don't think Windows is perfect, it's far from it. However I think people are far to quick to bash Windows , particularly Vista, while at the same time they are willing to ignore or dismiss any issues Linux has.
Recently I tried PC-BSD based of Saxons recommendation and i have to say I was impressed. I agree with Zmatt, they just seem to get it. While I don't think it is perfect either I do think they are heading in the right direction.
Well, there's several things here that caught my eye. For one, you're speaking in reference to 7.10... an older distro that while was half decent, wasn't the booming landmark that 8.04 was. To this I could type 7 pages about why Windows Millennium was bad, but it's an old OS not used anymore so... why bother?
Secondly, you're bringing up ATI. Not that ATI is bad by any means, but ATI was exceptionally lagged when it came to pumping out proper drivers in comparison to Nvidia. That, coupled with the fact we're talking about 2007 here, makes perfect sense that you had issues. 2007 may seem like a short time ago, but in Linux terminology - it's a longass time, considering that exceptional upgrades are made on a 6 month basis, whereas Windows users are used to the 3-5 year regime. However, ATI has since caught up to speed a good bit, despite the fact I still prefer Nvidia and find them to be more compatible with Linux.
Nobody here is denying that Linux has issues, nor am I trying to paint the picture that Windows is awful. I run Vista and XP on more machines than I run Ubuntu, and I'm surrounded by over a thousand Windows machines at work that I have to keep up on. But at the end of the day, I'm not the head-honcho that picks and chooses what computers and software we get. I do the best I have with what I have to work with. At home though, now that's a different story.
I'm a hard working guy just like countless other people in the world. So when it comes to allocating time and money into something, I have some choices to make... and when I set my criteria down on the table, examples being:
Price
Stability
Support
Customization
Ease of use
Advanced end features
Compatibility
To me, it just screams Linux. To you, it may say Mac, or Windows, or BSD, or whatever else out there exists.
I'm not denying Linux has issues, nor am I saying Windows absolutely sucks. But as I've said, Linux of years ago is not the Linux it is today... the same way Windows of years ago isn't the same as today. Things change over time. They evolve. Sometimes you take a step back, other times you take a giant leap forward. That's what has happened to both Microsoft and the Linux community. It's the reality of anything even remotely related to technology in general. But at the end of the day, I'm left with 3 main choices - Linux, Mac, Windows, and I choose quite wisely.