<story><title>On the state of Windows on the desktop</title><url>http://www.brankovukelic.com/2013/01/on-state-of-windows-on-desktop.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>meaty</author><text>Surprisingly short on facts, even if it is a parody. Very slashdot circa 1999. Some notes:&lt;p&gt;Windows is free to download and try. You don&apos;t have to enter a product key - just hit next and add it if you decide to buy it. You get it for 30 days. Here is the URL if you want to try it (windows 7 x64 professional):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a live CD but it&apos;s only used for recovery. There isn&apos;t much of a market for &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; Windows.&lt;p&gt;Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven&apos;t had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I&apos;ve worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.&lt;p&gt;Package manager. Yes there is - there is just no pick and place repository like Debian. You can get packages from Windows Update though. The package manager is called Windows Installer and the packages are MSI packages.&lt;p&gt;Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install. Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.&lt;p&gt;Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lmm</author><text>&amp;#62;Windows is free to download and try&lt;p&gt;Lots of ways in which windows isn&apos;t quite as expensive or has better things available seem to exist but be hidden. I believe you when you say a trial exists, but it&apos;s not easy to find - not only is that not on microsoft&apos;s homepage, it&apos;s on some random other domain (digitalrivercontent.net? Really). It&apos;s the same with bizspark/dreamspark/etc. - there&apos;s a lot of ways to get microsoft stuff cheap or free &lt;i&gt;if you know them&lt;/i&gt;, but they&apos;re not easy to find if you don&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven&apos;t had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I&apos;ve worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.&lt;p&gt;Only last week I had to track down some realtek drivers for the microphone on my parents&apos; laptop. Not only had they been unable to find them themselves, they&apos;d &lt;i&gt;paid a guy to install drivers on that computer&lt;/i&gt; and he&apos;d missed the microphone. I&apos;ll agree that usually it&apos;s easy to get drivers once you have an internet connection - but quite a lot of wireless chipsets won&apos;t work out of the box without a driver. I haven&apos;t bothered with driver fiddling for years either, but that&apos;s because I&apos;ve stopped building my own systems and been using ones that come with windows (and drivers) preinstalled; try installing retail windows on a computer and you might be surprised.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install.&lt;p&gt;Sure, &quot;everyone&quot; knows about twenty different things you download and install as soon as you get a new windows machine. I see another post pointing to nlite as a solution to all this. But you only know this because you&apos;re familiar with windows. Many of the problems windows users trying linux for the first time complain of are of the same nature, and easier to solve.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.&lt;p&gt;That hasn&apos;t been necessary for years.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.&lt;p&gt;Seriously? That&apos;s supposed to be a user-friendly solution?</text></comment>
<story><title>On the state of Windows on the desktop</title><url>http://www.brankovukelic.com/2013/01/on-state-of-windows-on-desktop.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>meaty</author><text>Surprisingly short on facts, even if it is a parody. Very slashdot circa 1999. Some notes:&lt;p&gt;Windows is free to download and try. You don&apos;t have to enter a product key - just hit next and add it if you decide to buy it. You get it for 30 days. Here is the URL if you want to try it (windows 7 x64 professional):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a live CD but it&apos;s only used for recovery. There isn&apos;t much of a market for &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; Windows.&lt;p&gt;Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven&apos;t had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I&apos;ve worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.&lt;p&gt;Package manager. Yes there is - there is just no pick and place repository like Debian. You can get packages from Windows Update though. The package manager is called Windows Installer and the packages are MSI packages.&lt;p&gt;Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install. Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.&lt;p&gt;Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Justsignedup</author><text>Dude. Dude. Listen to yourself...&lt;p&gt;a) &quot;Everyone installs K-lite&quot; Wow yeah. Everyone who torrents. All the other poor fellas have no idea. And I personally know those other poor fellas and they could not tell you want a codec is if you put a gun to their heads. Hell, my wife is one.&lt;p&gt;b) I WISH there was a Windows 8 live CD. MS does not want you to &quot;try windows&quot; they want you committed.&lt;p&gt;c) Drivers. Ok I give you this one. For the most part windows 7 is ok. Gone are the windows XP days where if you didn&apos;t have a disk on you, you didn&apos;t have your network card drivers.&lt;p&gt;d) There is NO PACKAGE MANAGER! None, ZERO. Windows Installer as a package manager is like saying my Garage is a parking lot + valet. Windows installer (this atrocity that is...) is used to... INSTALL software. It&apos;s a glorified unzip. There is no way to say &quot;oh hey windows installer, I&apos;d really like to install ruby 1.9.3 with sources&quot; and it would say &quot;give me an hour&quot;. Instead you say &quot;windows installer? hello? ok to google!&quot;... &quot;to google&quot; can often lead an unexperience used like my grandfather to download spyware.&lt;p&gt;e) Well. At least windows can be downloaded now as a free unactivated copy. Gone are the days where I purchase a copy of windows only to find out I can&apos;t get a legal disk image of windows 7 stand-alone. Only some upgrade, which is not upgradable from windows xp 32 bit.</text></comment>