Page 2 - What Bothers You Most About the Remondites?

La la la... tweedle deedle

I'm just ahh... going to meander over here before the flames get too high

Fact: You don't have to use Linux.
Fact: You don't have to use Windows.

Fact: Windows and Linux have strengths and weaknesses.

I've simply found Linux a good professional tool and Windows a nice "toy". If you feel otherwise... go start your own damn thread! We're whining about Windows here!

[VenomSpittingRant]
*EXPLETIVE!!* Just to inform everyone of how helpful Microsoft's "productivity" software is... Frontpage just deleted ALL of my HTML template files from the server without asking me! !&^#&*(!^!
If I spent HALF the time working as I do fixing the problems these various apps cause....
[/rant]

why the heck are you using frontpage in the first place. its an accepted fact that its a crappy application and turns out even more crappy pages.

One word: management.

I had to fight and scratch for months just to get perl installed, and I still have to clear every single module I want with IT (despite the fact that the guy that checks them knows niether perl nor C).... everything in that place is Microsoft this, Microsoft that...

The worst part is, that by the time I finally convinced them to try Dreamweaver, FP had mangled the code and inserted so much proprietary BSh*t that Dreamweaver couldn't convert the web to normal HTML without utterly destroying the pages (or, rather, I suppose DW was fixing what FP had destroyed technically speaking), and there are only two of us, so there was no way we could have waded through over 2000 HTML pages to try and fix each one by hand and still kept up with regular maintenance...

I use DW 4 for my personal work at home. I will NEVER tough FP with a 10 foot pole when working on my own pages.

Can you get dreamweaver and photoshop to run under linux?

There the only two reason's I use XP and for the fact that its easy, smooth and stable.

[edit]

/me pulls on his flameproof pants and socks

There are only two things I've ever found in favor of Frontpage, and I doubt they apply to anybody here.

1) Its similarity to Word makes it easier for department secretaries to work on pages themselves, freeing me to do more interesting things.

2) Combined with IIS and NTFS permissions, it does a very good job at site management. You have a fairly fine level of control over who has rights to do what to which sections of your site.

These things only apply when you have a large number of semi-technical people who will be working on your site.

For everything else, Frontpage is complete crap. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

Only when it's not deleting your site


Only if you can get them to run under an emulator like wine... but even then, they probably won't run very well.

Update on the Windoze saga:

Well, I tried to send an email which crashed outlook. This brought up the Dr. Watson app which caused Access to fritz and use up all of the clock time. Access eventually crashed and took IE with it... oddly, the only thing that survived the massacre was Frontpage (lucky me...).. even notepad crashed (multi-edit sort of survived, but when the app was focused, I got that "jumpy cursor" effect from my mouse, so I had to restart it).

Check out the wine package in linux for running windoze apps. I have seen photoshop run under linux, but haven't (as of yet) seen dreamweaver run but it should be possible.

why do you even use dreamweaver or FP? personally i like my editplus (yes for windows!) cause usually i can write cleaner code than any of the above programs and i can get the results i want.

as for why i dont like ms, its all of the above too, especially their eula, so tight ***'d just cause they want to make a few extra dollars, bleh..

rendy, no need for the flamesuit, i too use xp for my dev box heh

but not for long..

Because hitting a few icons and selecting some parameters saves a lot of time over typing the whole markup one tag at a time.


Dreameaver's output is EXTREMELY clean if you aren't tyring to do dumb things with it (by contrast.. FP only LETS you do dumb things.. hense the disgusting excuse for markup that thing pulls out of its a**.. Half the time I think I'd be better off using StarOffice to make HTML documents that that piece of garbage). Rarely do I find the need to tweak it's markup.

Although, Ted makes a good point. Linux is NOT a fun system to work with when you need it to do something and don't have the time to fight with it. I find that setting up a linux box really isn't worth the extreme time investment in getting everything working unless you intend to do MAINLY development and / or administration tasks with it. If you're only coding HTML or setting up a dev area for a personal web site, it's just not worth it. Once you get the damn thing set up though, Windows is just simply no match for it in the development / administration areas... but boy, getting over the hurdle of actually getting it working can sometimes be a massive headache...

Actually, I find that with FreeBSD (and with Slackware Linux), the hurdle of getting up and running usually has a much lower impact on my time than Windows--especially Windows 2000, and especially on low-end hardware.

And I don't say this as someone who rarely uses Windows. In my work I must constantly use both Unix and Windows, although Windows is mainly as a client/desktop.

For example: just this past couple of days, I have been setting up a test Win2K workstation, just to test out some prototypes. This was on an AMD 550 with 256 MB RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. It still took the better part of one and a half days to get it right. This included countless reboots, as each piece of hardware was configured, and service packs installed, etc.... And, it still doesn't detect my network cards as quickly as Unix or Linux. I had to go to a separate workstation and search out the NIC drivers for a very standard Linksys card. And only then can I start installing the software, half of which also requres a reboot. So on a typical Windows install, I spend at least 60-75% of my time waiting for reboots.

On FreeBSD, I can do an FTP install over the net and be done in less time than it takes to do the base (non-configured) install of Win2K. I can use the FreeBSD ports section to install all my standard utilities, etc... and I could even have a complete install of Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL right from the ports also, although I tend to prefer compiling manually.

Slackware as a workstation is simply awesome, because my time does matter. I hate mucking around with X configurations, video card drivers, etc... but if I just choose the standard framebuffer driver that comes with Slack, I never even have to worry about this. It hasn't failed yet to work with any graphics card I use, even on laptops. (Yes, it's performance isn't quite as good as a native driver, but I am not playing video games here. I need to be up and producing).

So, that diatribe having been said. I have to agree a little with Ted Striker, as far as businesses in general. When Windows works as advertised, it's not half bad. Since most businesses simply receive a shipment of pre-installed computers with Win-whatever, they don't have the headache of installing, configuring, etc... The stuff works, well... most of the time. Also, Microsoft does present a more integrated desktop than X. (such a simple thing as cut-n-paste is still a pain in X). It is possible for a company to migrate completely to *nix, with a desktop such as KDE, but they will have to make a big commitment to re-training, and they will have to sacrifice certain software, etc... To most businesses, the question is simply "why mess with what works?", even if it doesn't really work well.

The real way I sell Unix to the business world is as a server for web-based software, where I can guarantee almost 100% uptime, lower costs, security, etc...

I think one very possible way to get companies out of Microsoft dependency is to provoke them to migrate toward Mac. If, as the rumors have it, Mac is developing an x86 port, this will be a very real possibility. They would have a complete integrated graphical environment, they would still have Microsoft Office, and these workstations would be perfect for communicating with Unix as a server.

As for the question of why I would want businesses to stop using Microsoft, it's for my own personal privacy: never mind Microsoft's horrible record in privacy/security already. TCPA/Palladium is only scarier.

Let's not forget that little slip awhile ago about mediaplayer cataloging and uploading information to Microsoft and/or thier buddies about what you were watching or listening to.

Isn't this another classic debate, where the opinions are less than objective - myself definately included

Rycamor and Ted have good points about what works, yes for desktops Windows is more integrated than Linux. We certainly don't have time to switch our desktops to Linux, I need Flash MX. At the server-side we certainly *don't* have time to reset NT servers everyweek, we use either linux or even better BSD.

Sorry but I can't resist. My general problem with Microsoft is a political one, their business practices are a little dodgy to say the least. Example, taking over the browser market through existing market share in operating systems. This violates US laws, what has been done about it? Well as Ted says :


Next in NZ (not sure about the rest of the world) all M$ products are soon to be licensed rather than sold. This means we will all be paying *heaps* more for upgrades. What to do? Stick with Windows 2000 for the next X years? I think open office is a viable alternative. Would you rather have your documents in ugly DOC format or XHTML?

Of course I don't like large corporates in general. In an unrelated example Niel Young's record company (sometime ago) sued him for "not sounding enough like myself" and won. Lol Money = lots of lawyers = power to do what you want.

I could so go on, but nobody wants that

Z.