[LINK] Microsoft is dead

[Craig Sanders]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 09:44:12AM +0200, Kim Holburn wrote:
> Microsoft is dead:
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

i've been saying for a long time that the only people who really need MS
Windows are home computer users and gamers.  Office users are actually
better off with Linux (or with Mac). quantity and quality of games is
the only thing that Windows has over these platforms, and games aren't
exactly relevant to most office work.

until yesterday, i assumed that the same held true for multimedia stuff
too, at least compared to linux (Apple has *always* been the best
desktop OS for multimedia stuff). getting everything working smoothly
under linux can be difficult, or has been difficult until recently. i
just kind of assumed that it would be easy under windows.

yesterday, i found out it isn't. i spent most of yesterday afternoon
and evening fighting with a friend's Windows XP box to get it to play
their music files properly (ended up downloading a new ogg/flac codec
so it would play flac files at normal speed rather than chipmunk
double-speed). that was only part of it, i also wasted hours trying
to get windows media player (latest version from Windows Update, v7 i
believe) to actually index all their mp3 etc files and not randomly
forget about songs or whole albums. i gave up in the end and concluded
that WMP7 is extremely buggy.

next was to get their ipod working properly under windows. i'd
previously had it working for them on their old computer under linux
with gtkpod, but it was flaky and unreliable (gtkpod is pre-beta quality
software). i figured iTunes under windows would be a breeze. itunes
downloaded and installed OK, then it spent almost an hour converting
all their WMA-encoded files to AAC for no discernible good reason. then
it spent another hour analysing each music file to eliminate the gap
between playing each song (at least that's what it said it was doing).
it actually played the music files perfectly, so that was good.

it would NOT, however, recognise the ipod when it was plugged in.
Windows detected the ipod and installed the USB driver for it. but
iTunes wouldn't see it. so, i looked in "My Computer" and saw that
Windows detected the IPOD as drive F: - so far, so good. double-click on
that, and Windows says "please insert a disk for drive F:". huh?  WTF?
examine properties of drive F:, and it reckons the IPOD is a zero sized
disk drive.

at this point, i give up and reboot, this time selecting Linux from the
GRUB boot menu (the new machine is also set up for dual-boot). i install
the KDE music player/manager 'amarok'[1] with apt-get. i spend 5 minutes
editing udev and fstab config files to auto-detect the ipod and allow
non-root users to mount it as /media/ipod. i write two trivial shell
scripts (a 1 line script to mount /media/ipod, and a 2 line script to
unmount it, and then logically eject it - required to get past the "do
not unplug" warning flashing on the ipod when it is plugged in).

i then configure amarok to use these two scripts. the first when it
"connects" to the ipod, the second when it "disconnects".

i could have configured the function of these two scripts directly into
amarok rather than make it run external scripts, but i wanted a script
so that it could also be done easily from the command line (or from an
icon/menu-entry on the panel) - in case they want to try other music
programs in future.

it just works. perfectly. it indexes all their music, and makes it
trivially easy to copy music files back and forth between the ipod and
the computer. it plays all of the files perfectly - all formats, not
just aac, mp3, and wma. the user interface for amarok is infinitely
better than that of either Windows Media Player or iTunes, both of which
seem clumsy and limited by comparison. editing metadata/tags for songs
or groups of songs is a breeze, and you can have it show your collection
grouped and sorted by Artist, Album, Genre, Year or any combination of
those that you choose. making playlists is trivially easy, and those
playlists are easily copied to the ipod (including all songs listed in
the playlist that aren't already on the ipod).



total time to get it working under Linux: < 10 minutes. plus an hour
or so transferring music from the ipod to the computer (and from the
computer to the ipod) and organising it, and editing the metadata/tags
to get rid of spelling mistakes etc.

total time spent attempting to get it working in windows and failing:
over 5 hours.


previously, my recommendation to them had been to use Windows for games
and music and similar stuff. and for MS Word if they have a file that
wont load perfectly into Open Office.  Use Linux for everything else,
especially internet stuff ("and, whatever you do, don't do internet
banking on Windows").  Use Windows for internet ONLY on sites that wont
work on Linux, and even then ONLY if you really need to use that site
(you're better off avoiding sites that *require* Active X).

now, my recommendation is to use Windows ONLY for games, and Linux for
everything else.


so there you have it.  Windows is a gaming platform.


[1] http://amarok.kde.org/


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.
	[If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.]
		-- Voltaire