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A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control softwar

A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the machine. I would much rather have a bug in Ubuntu than in Windows. I had no way to fix that DX 10 bug or communicate with the developers. I was just lucky that it got fixed.

slasaus 14y ago
I guess you're right, but not having to say "sorry, you're not on Windows so that's why I can't make this software work for you (software from friends etc.)" saves me a lot of explanations that an end-user isn't really interested in.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it happens with every OS. Even Windows is missing software used by some "creative" types (or so they say). And what I've found is that more and more stuff is on the Web now anyway, so OS doesn't matter as much.
  - TillE 14y ago
    > They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs. It's quite easy to install Windows with Bootcamp, though if you have an SSD, space is an issue. If you're a remotely serious gamer, you're surely enough of a nerd to handle dual booting. The problem is that every [desktop] OS is crap. I've been attempting to use various Linux distros in that role for over a decade, and I've yet to have an experience that wasn't riddled with bugs and annoyances. Windows 7 is generally the least frustrating option, though OS X has cool features to compensate for its own issues.
FireBeyond 14y ago
So, on Linux, how would you have dealt with: - a Chrome crash - memory leaks in your video driver software for two of your examples? "no way ... to communicate with the developers": http://connect.microsoft.com/ http://connect.microsoft.com/

slasaus 14y ago

I guess you're right, but not having to say "sorry, you're not on Windows so that's why I can't make this software work for you (software from friends etc.)" saves me a lot of explanations that an end-user isn't really interested in.

w1ntermute 14y ago
I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it happens with every OS. Even Windows is missing software used by some "creative" types (or so they say). And what I've found is that more and more stuff is on the Web now anyway, so OS doesn't matter as much.
- TillE 14y ago
  > They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs. It's quite easy to install Windows with Bootcamp, though if you have an SSD, space is an issue. If you're a remotely serious gamer, you're surely enough of a nerd to handle dual booting. The problem is that every [desktop] OS is crap. I've been attempting to use various Linux distros in that role for over a decade, and I've yet to have an experience that wasn't riddled with bugs and annoyances. Windows 7 is generally the least frustrating option, though OS X has cool features to compensate for its own issues.

FireBeyond 14y ago

So, on Linux, how would you have dealt with: - a Chrome crash - memory leaks in your video driver software for two of your examples? "no way ... to communicate with the developers": http://connect.microsoft.com/ http://connect.microsoft.com/