Setting up in windows
Windows lacks a package manager. If you want to work in windows, you have to find and install all your software yourself. Each program has a different installer, and there is no batch mode. Search, find, download, double-click, run, click boxes, click-click-click, accept licenses, click, and finally you have the first program of 18 you actually need. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Sometime tomorrow you’ll be doing some actual work if you still have the energy for it.
Holy cow, this sucks.
Debian/Ubuntu Linux have a really good package manager. For just about any software, you ask for the program you want and it pulls down the most recent versions it knows about and installs all the bits your software depends upon. You can install with any number of gui or command-line clients. It’s really trivial by comparison. And quick. Did I mention that it’s very fast? With the command line, I can write a script or a line of text and you have software ready to go.
And in Debian/Ubuntu, the software all is updated through the same mechanism. Not through one mechanism per source. It is so effortless for the user/consumer.
I don’t know how people think that windows is easy and linux is hard. I think the opposite.
“Sometime tomorrow you’ll be doing some actual work…” My eye! It takes two days just to load Windows. After you have loaded it, you have to run updates for hours and hours before you dare load any software…
At the beginning of the month my work notebook was hit with a nasty virus. My Symantec anti-virus definitions were less than a week old, but this viral bug slipped in and did its level best to turn my computer into a zombie-bot. (It turns out that Symantec “discovered” this particular virus the day AFTER it hit my system…) This same virus shut down the city courts in Houston Texas by the way, so I wasn’t the only one hit.
Anyway, back on subject, Symantec’s attempt to remove the virus turned my computer into a brick. (Thanks guys…) It took over a week to get my computer back to where it was when I started. It takes a full day, sometimes two, just to load all of the Rockwell software. (Which is conveniently compatible with BOTH operating systems. You know, XP and Vista!)
Sorry to steal you angst. The thread struck a raw nerve…
Comment by Walter Moore — 2009-February-19 @ 11:49
No real work today. Testing remote desktop sharing programs, getting the machine set up for the app, config config config. But tomorrow is looking better. This really is a little worse than it seems like it should be.
Comment by Tim — 2009-February-20 @ 05:09