From: James Clark <jimwclark@ntlworld.com>
Reply-To: jimwclark@ntlworld.com
To: root@chaos.analogic.com
Subject: Re: Driver Model 2 Proposal - Linux Kernel Performance v Usability
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 21:01:35 +0100
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My original thread was called 'Linux Kernel Performance v Usability'. This has 
nothing to do with Windows. 

James


On Friday 05 Sep 2003 8:59 pm, you wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, James Clark wrote:
> > Valdis Kletnieks wrote:
> > > So if 500 million people are productive 60% of the time and hosed 40%
> > > of the time, and 5 million people are productive 95% of the time, the
> > > 60/40 model is better because 60% of 500M is more than 95% of 5M?
> >
> > This is a good example of the kind of rubbish that is sometimes talked
> > around here. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the
> > 'Windows is SO unstable argument' it almost seems like a religion. I
> > would agree with what you have said if Windows was actually unusable 40%
> > of the time. Do you really believe this figure? In reality it is much
> > better than that as plainly the majority of the WORLD are using it. I
> > love Linux but I also use Windows. Sorry to break your delusion, it ain't
> > that bad.
>
> I sure wish it was rubbish. In my other life I write
> music. So, I bought Cakewalk Software so I could record
> and edit music I play on my MIDI Grand Piano. Unfortunately
> this only worked with Windows.
>
> I wanted to have the most reliable machine possible so I
> installed windows in a machine that I had been running Linux
> on for about two years. It was (is) a dual Pentium 400 MHz machine
> with a 100 MHz front-side bus. This is a Tyan "Thunder" board.
> This is not the latest-and-greatest. Just a good "old" reliable
> machine. The machine had two SCSI disks with an Adaptec controller.
>
> Windows installed fine. It even seemed to work. I recorded and
> edited many compositions. I also backed up my files to a SCSI
> tape using the Windows backup utility.
>
> After several months of use, the machine would not boot anymore.
> I had to reinstall windows from scratch since the partition was
> corrupt and the distribution CD would not fix or install anything
> over it. Since I didn't want to lose everything on the disk, I
> bought another one, thinking I could always copy my stuff from
> the original. Guess again. The original disk was so destroyed
> that Linux wouldn't even recognize it. Even as a raw device I was
> unable to recover any of my composition data.
>
> Not to worry. I still have the backups. Guess again, Windows
> would not read the backup data. I had just lost several months
> of my life and, incidentally, some piano playing by another
> pianist who will become famous someday. All lost. All gone.
>
> I eventually replaced all my compositions, except those played
> by the other pianist. This means that I had to practice over
> 40 compositions over and over again, then record them again.
> This is a lot of "hurt" over many months.
>
> Then the same thing happened again! The machine would no longer
> boot and the file-systems were totally trashed. Also, I had bought
> an external Fire-wire drive to which I wrote the backup files.
> Again, after completely installing everything again, I was unable
> to recover any of my data from the backup files.
>
> To make an long-story short, the "solution", proposed by Microsoft
> was to remove one of the CPUs. They said; "Windows is too powerful.
> With that extra CPU, you are over-powering the machine."
>
> This is not an isolated incident. Every Engineer I have ever worked
> with (or even talked to) has similar horror stories. Every Writer
> that I know of who has attempted to use Windows to keep their
> life-long dreams alive, has similar horror stories. Every Artist
> that I know, who used Windows has similar stories. They have all
> migrated to Apple. They were not of the "Apple Generation" either.
> They all started out using Windows because that's what "everybody"
> used.  They went to Apple because it doesn't destroy their work.
>
> Most persons who use Linux have similar horror stories about
> Windows. The difference, here, being that they thought that
> no widely-used Operating System could be as bad as they found
> it to be. Instead, they for the most part, though that their
> problems were isolated incidents. Once they started communicating,
> it became obvious that practically everybody has problems with
> Windows. In the days where VAXen were the "Engineering" computers,
> we had 200 Engineers, two computers, and one System Manager.
> Now, those 200 Engineers require 30 "Windows Administrators"
> for support, just to be able to share project directories.
>
> They spend their time reinstalling Windows Software.
>
> Cakewalk recently released an Apple version of "Home Studio". I'm
> going to buy and Apple and convert the Windows machine back to
> Linux. I wish they had ported their stuff to Linux. I would still
> have some hair left.
>
> So, if you think Windows "works", you just haven't any experience.
> In a year or two, maximum, if you are trying to use a Windows
> machine for any serious work, you will probably be planning a trip
> to Redmond, carrying an axe.
>
> When you talk about 40% or even 10% failure rate, you are talking
> nonsense. A computing machine must never have any failures that
> an end-user could detect. It's not quite six-sigma, but to the
> end-user it should seem like that. Any real operating system
> will not fail as long as the hardware doesn't fail. No version
> of Windows qualifies.
>
> Cheers,
> Dick Johnson
> Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (794.73 BogoMips).
>             Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

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