Thursday, September 28, 2006

Why Windows Sucks

I am no more fan of Windows (any windows) because of many reasons. The first reason is it is resource-hungry operating system. My office laptop (it is IBM Thinkpad T42p with 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD) is not as fast as at the first time I got it from IT department. After I installed many softwares, it became slower. I did try to shutdown some uncessary services, but not much help. Blame the growing registry! Many applications still leave artifacts in the registry, although you have uninstalled. Unlike Windows, Linux is still based on old fashioned plaintext of configuration files (but works perfectly!).

Another reason is that there is many copies of DLL files in my computer (either at home or at work). There are some common DLL files located in different folder. There is no concept of creating symbolic link in Windows. If you move the duplicate DLL from one folder to another file, the application from the folder where the DLL missing may not be working. In Linux (or Unix in general), you could just create a symbolic link, then the application will just treat the symbolic file as it is a real file.

Another reason is, it is not designed for automation. It is not common for people to write a script to do automation. Although Win2000 and up have this what so called "command shell, manytimes the Windows command shell is useless).

But, I still cannot get rid of my Windows (sigh). Many applications on my computer are windows-only. From tax reporting tool, games, to development software are still under Windows. Besides, Linux is still immature in its GUI (it is far to be a desktop GUI). I admit, from GUI perspective, Windows is much faster than Linux. This is because Windows is developed with GUI in mind from ground up, while Linux is actually a text based OS with GUI running just as another application in user level environment.

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