Michael J. Mahon wrote:
The Wizard of Oz wrote:Michael J. Mahon wrote:The Wizard of Oz wrote:Man they were lucky. When Word crashed my system the disks wouldn't even mount/read. The only thing to do was reformat and reinstall. Normally you'd expect the problems of this nature to happen to the C: drive. It took out the D: drive too.While I don't doubt that you were running Word when this happened, it sounds much more likely that a hardware error caused your system to run amok. A problem in communication between the CPU, the IDE controller, and the drive chain (with both drives) can do almost anything.Possible, but after I changed configurations it never happened again.Something as simple as re-plugging a disk data cable could have fixed the problem.
I did that after I bought a used CD burner. Switched to Linux before that and the daily crashes were gone long before I opened up the box.
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No doubt. For that person I would say they shouldn't run Linux. They need to go with what works for them. Maybe they should run a Mac, Windows, or not run a computer at all.O they should accept the fact that all complex systems have flaws and recover from the problem and go on.
True. Then again it would be a choice of which flaws can the person live with. My choice was to trade eye-candy and a huge software base for stability and functionality.
Of course, a journaled file system, as all modern systems have now, is a wonderful thing--as long as something doesn't turn on all the write heads and start seeking! ;-)I know journalling is installed by default but I'm not sure what it is beyond something good to have. Perhaps it may be a complement to the people who came up with the idea, that I don't know it's running.That's as it should be! A journaled file system logs all updates before making them, so that if a problem occurs, the log can be replayed to restore a consistent file state. It means that random failures, including power failures, don't leave your file system inconsistent.
Now I know. ;-)
I won't argue Windows has a large software base. However if you take a measure of the quality of the software available you'll find there are a lot of terrible programs out there produced by guys who just want to make a fast buck.That is true of everything--see Sturgeon's Law.The thing is I suspect the percentage of terrible programs is much higher under Windows than under any other operating system. I'm willing to cut some slack to authors who say their programs are works in progress. How many times do you go into a store and see on a box "this is a work in progress"? As a sample, in front of me I see 18 inches of Windows games. Fully one third are so terrible I would say to save your money and avoid them. Another third are just badly implemented. These should be "a work in progress". The rest range from OK, but not my cup of tea to excellent.Aside from some argument that only the elite write apps for OSs other than Windows, I can't see any other justification for that assessment, but that may be true.
I've seen non-elite people writing apps for Linux. I consider myself to be pre-elite (ie. the potential is there in enough quantity elites occasionally take me seriously). It's more likely someone will slap something together for Windows and release it while it's only partially functional while not telling people. It's the not telling people which bothers me.
BTW, I used the games as a representative sample of the entire software base because more games are produced than any other kind of software and most people aren't in a rush to go out and get the latest and greatest spreadsheet program.
Since "almost everyone" who writes code seems to develop for Windows, there are bound to be lots of "kittens on the keys".
True enough. However it would be very difficult to come up with programs to compete with gnumeric, gnucash, Open Office, GIMP, MPlayer, and MySQL. As one person I overheard said... "How many really good word processors do you need installed on your computer?"
-michael
Later Mike