What can Windows do that Linux can't?

ive been wondering what the other linux users have not been able to do since they started using a linux distro (i use ubuntu), so far after two years of using it, i have only noticed that i cant play the games made for windows and some online videos dont work

also, if you would add what makes one system better than the other, i like the virus freeness of linux (never had one on here before in two years, but if i were on windows i woulda had like a thousand probably) plus, i like the look to it alot better

feel free to add anything you want, even if its already been said.

 

Sync my Windows Mobile smartphone and PPC. I tried using SyncCE but I just can't get it to work.

Besides the use of Programs I like or need that don't work in Wine, I really can't think of much Linux can't do compared to Windows.

 

Circuit EDA world still prefer Windows rather than Linux. Although silicon design is dominated by Linux, PCB is still in Windows.

 

Run AutoCAD and Solid Works.

 

Nop, circuit schematic and PCB design. Eagle is capable to do that, but can't import existing designs.

 

Windows can have most of the world's OS viruses and problems, while Linux can't. That isn't to say it can't change in the future...

 

Windows can crash and burn with ease. Awwwweeesome!!!!

 

I disagree. I found that this is not necessarily true.You are saying that as if all Linux distro will not crash, but Windows will. Linux can be unstable too, depending on the hardware and distro.

I've WinXP Home and SimplyMEPIS 6.5 on my Latitude D620, MEPIS crashed 3 times, all when trying to play with ACPI. The XP home hasn't crash on me yet. Infact I feel like XP home is more stable, MEPIS feels like 'heavy', or sluggish, that it will crash anytime soon.

I haven't customize (I'm thinking of slimming it down even more) MEPIS yet, but it's not like I have to customize XP to feel it's stableness.

 

You shouldn't have to customise a Linux distro either to get that feeling. Even with Gentoo, a distro I am still yet to figure out, I don't get the feeling I'm treading in a minefield. Both Linux and Windows can be stable, or unstable, depending on hardware setup and the user involved.

 

I'm just pulling some legs, I'm using XP and it's been pretty stable for the past few years.

I've tried Ubuntu, it was neat, but I don't have the time to fully customize everything(I like change....just not complete change and starting anew )

 

But I do with MEPIS. What can I say, that's the way I feel. It's not that I want to feel that way, but that's the way I feel. Sometimes the mouse won't move to a certain place until after a second, whereas other times it's instantaneous, just like in XP. Sometimes it feels like the CPU is being hogged down by process overload. That's why I feel like MEPIS is not stable enough, although it has never crash yet besides when playing with ACPI.

On the other hand, I might try DesktopBSD and see how it goes first before I try to optimize MEPIS. Supposedly, BSD (FreeBSD) is a very stable OS.

MEPIS is great though, WiFi out of the box, sound out of the box, Intel graphics out of the box. Everything is configured out for me.

 

Have you ever tried to edit your ACPI in Windows XP? I'm not trying to say that Linux can't crash, or that it never does, because that simply isn't true. But the fact is, most of the time Linux crashes, it's something the user did. I've done it, and I'm not judging you. But when you go in and do stuff like start tinkering around with the ACPI or tweaking your xorg.conf or changing system files, you're going to make your system more unstable. Linux inherently gives you more freedom to do these things than Windows, and if you do them, then you're sort of playing with fire, and blaming this on Linux or even the distribution is a little misleading. But yes, like anything else, it will experience its crashes and its instabilities, and these are advanced by hardware and its lack of support.

I have personally had to reinstall Windows several times because I found it to be too unstable to continue. Once, I even reinstalled because it had become too slow and too bloated for me. After the reinstall, it booted up twice as quickly. My Ubuntu install still boots up just as quickly as it did the first day I installed it by contrast. But hey, different strokes for different folks.

 

Better driver support. Play newest and greatest games immediately. Access WPA easily. It seems to load pages on websites faster as well.

 

Linux networking supports the WPA/WPA2 standards. Any issues you have with that falls under driver support or network configuration.

And, I'd say Linux needs more widespread driver support. The stuff that is supported properly works awesome.

 

Agreed. (10 char)

 

I have only been using Linux for 2 months, and these are some things I miss.

TAXES!!!

There is no Tax Software available for Linux. I am not talking about doing your taxes on line. Linux Needs a TurboTax or a TaxCut or TaxAct.

Linux needs a Download.com, or tucows.com - This is one thing I really miss about Windows (or the mac). I suspect Linspires CNR might be able to live up to this. I realize Linux distros have there suppositories but it is not the same.

I still believe there are more positives then negatives with linux.

 

I know that MYOB works under WINE. I installed it for a friend for her accounting course at university.

For Linux download sites, try freshmeat.net or sourceforge. I wouldn't know about the quality though, as I never stray too far from the repos.

 

Well, specialty software is always harder to come by on Linux, especially software like that. Software like that tends to take a lot of time and money to make, and most Linux programs try to be free.

Softpedia ( www.softpedia.org) has a Linux section for software, and it is similar to download.com. But honestly, you'll be better off sticking to repositories seeing as software from the repos is going to be easier to get community support for. Add to that the fact that it is easier to install, and it really is your best bet.

 

sourceforge.net? freshmeat.net?

sure, you have to compile from source unless the project creates packages for your distro... but 3 commands in a terminal aren't the end of the world.

 

Actually, almost all the time (playing with ACPI on XP). And XP never crash on ACPI. Infact, I've never had XP crashed on me on anything, as far as I can remember, maybe once or twice if I actually tried, like really delete something from the registry. And that's since I've started using XP for about 5 years now. I seriously am skeptical when people say that XP crashed on them a few times, not that I'm doubting them, or you, but I seriously can't imagine how. Maybe it's my luck, but I have never come close on seeing XP crashes on my machine. I have done stuff to my XP machine too. But nope, never have to reinstall Windows because it crashes on me.

Now, to be fair, ACPI on linux is well known to be broken. So yes it is my fault, I did tinker with it when I know it is not fully working. Nope, I have no problem with linux, I am rooting for it to be as perfect as possible. But what I said is the truth, that is what I experience.

My problem with Windows system, if any at all, is at worst virus and trojan. Infact, I haven't use any anti-virus on Windows for a few years now. Not even on this Latitude. I'm not fond of subscription service for AV. I once clicked on a file that causes the extension on all the files on my machine to become .jpeg, once, in 2003 - I had to reinstall everything, and lost a few pics. I think my machine have been hacked once, but considering I don't use anti-virus, and only uses the router firewall, I think that is not that bad. All from 2002 until now.

If there is any reason why I want to switch to something else, it's because I am looking for something cheaper. I'm poor, what can I say. That and besides the fact that I want a superior OS too. There is no doubt BSD and Linux are superior than Windows, in terms of stability, efficiency, and so on. But they also have to be usable. And seriously I feel like MEPIS isn't stable enough. I have seen and used (not my machine) Linux system as stable as Windows. So there is no doubt that Linux can be as stable as Windows.

 

Windows have Blue screen death... linux have only black screen..

 

I read a post the other a guy said he uses Mc Afee virus software and has never had a virus. Well he should say one that Mc Afee knows about.

 

Mcafee... read the Norton ones.. i cant believe ppl still use them.. cheezzz

 

I find that the hardware support for linux gets to me sometimes. My built-in webcam doesn't work, wireless mouse is configured as a regular scroll mouse, no suspend/hibernate, etc. Although all the aforementioned issues are quite trivial for me, and for software, I either go through wine or do a virtual windows session.

 

I can't even install Norton in Linux, god knows how many viruses I have roaming my system...

 

^^ i asume that was a joke

 

Much as I like Linux overall, in answer to the original question, one thing Windows can do that Linux can't completely is run .NET 2 framework programs, and use Visual 2005 Express Editions to write the programs. I think .NET 2.0 is a pretty elegant way to develop and run things on a computer. I still have a soft spot for Visual BASIC, among other things.

 

lol, yeah im hoping thats a joke

 

DirectX 3D Games.
Allow average people to avoid the command line.

 

You can use wine for the tax software, and if wine doesn't work, maybe run in in VMware, or run it with Crossover. Windows can play the latest and greatest games, and Linux can't, but I still prefer Linux over Windoze!!

 

As much as I love Linux, there are a lot of things I can't do that I can do in Windows. Examples:

1) My Logitech mouse only works as a two button scroll mouse. The back and forward buttons work, but only as special buttons and Firefox can't actually use them to move backward and forward. On the other hand, Ubuntu will tell me the remaining battery life while Windows doesn't. The tilt wheel (i.e. the scroll wheel tilts left and right) doesn't work in Windows either without resource-hungry drivers, so I don't miss that.

2) Run games.

3) Run AutoCAD or any of my other engineering applications besides MATLAB, of which my university is too narrow-minded to supply us with a free Linux version as they do for Windows.

4) Run Ruckus. Not a huge deal breaker, but I like to use it to check out new music for free.

5) I can't use a lot of web-based applets, as they usually run in ActiveX or some other stupid junk. Again, not a big deal, but it could be better.

6) While I hate to say it, and I know many will argue with me, I just don't find Linux to be as robust or coherent in some senses. The fact that nearly every part of the system is done by a different person/team shows, and there is a lot of inconsistencies in UI elements. Some applications work with others correctly, and some don't. Setting system settings sometimes don't really do what they're supposed to do (i.e. setting "open in a new tab" from Preferences in GNOME doesn't have any affect on Firefox opening sites in a new window), and stuff seems to be just generally glitchy in a lot of applications. Stuff like OpenOffice and Rythmbox work well, but the media players always seem a little jittery when opening files, some players work with some codecs and others don't, and when web browsing, a lot of the time I just get the feeling that it's a Windows environment and I'm just visiting in Linux. Web pages don't always render properly, some videos don't work, a lot of more technical stuff like flash and java applets are pretty much hit or miss if they'll work, and flash 9 is so obviously a port of the Windows version it's not funny. It also makes Firefox crash all the time.

Of course, there are some things I can do in Windows that I don't miss at all:

7) I can be accused of pirating even though I'm a perfectly legitimate user.

8) I can get random driver crashes in the middle of something important sending me a BSOD and a beautiful little f**k you. Thanks for letting me save first btw.

9) I can get tons of malware of even viruses just by reading email or checking myspace/facebook.

10) I can slow down my computer just by using my printer the first time or installing drivers for my mouse.

11) I can look at it wrong and it will crash some part of the OS.

It really is a love/hate relationship with both Windows and Linux for me. I guess that's why I still dual-boot.

 

i really dont need the command line (although sometimes i prefer it), and i like to tinker with things, have you tried ubuntu?

 

Ubuntu was hideously slow. Iceweasel took ages to load a webpage and I couldn't install Steam.

 

"Ubuntu was hideously slow. Iceweasel took ages to load a webpage and I couldn't install Steam."

Too bad. Would you be willing to try it again with help from the Linux forum at NBR? I'm sure the problems can be fixed if you told us more about them.

 

I believe Iceweasel is exclusive of Debian (in Ubuntu it is called Firefox), but since I have not tried all Ubuntu versions can not tell for sure. Of course it could be installed but it is not included by default.

Chances are that you tried an old version of Ubuntu and, same as others here, I suggest you to try the latest. This 'Feisty' is quite good.

 

yeah man, i found ubuntu to be much faster than xp, and especially vista. Its probably just some problem that someone here can help you with.

 

Here's the section from my xorg.conf that deals with my mouse on my desktop. I've got a single "back" button on this machine, but a very similar config works on my laptop with my Logitech G5, which has both. Lets me use back and forward buttons under Firefox. I can send you the full file if you'd like:

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "DumbMouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "CorePointer"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
        Driver          "evdev"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"
        Option          "AlwaysCore"
        Option          "Device" "/dev/input/pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-event-mouse"
        Option          "Protocol"              "USB"
        Option          "ButtonMapping"         "1 2 3 4 5 8 9 6 7"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"

Depends on the game Doom3 is freakin' scary on my rig, and I can run StarCraft under Wine. There are actually quite a few games that work very well under Linux, especially older ones, and ones based on OpenGL.

Whee politics!! No way those would run under Wine? I've found that unfortunately, many "high-end" applications use ugly, ugly hacks that access parts of the system they really shouldn't access. That's why things take so long to move to Vista and the like, the developers got "clever" to add some kind of functionality that's rarely actually needed, and it just makes the app more fragile.

ActiveX was designed as vendor lock-in. It works quite well at that. What it doesn't work for is secure web applications

Interesting... Java applets even work well under 64bit Linux for me. I think you may be seeing bugs in Gnome. Give xfce or KDE a try, see if their apps work any better. I've been much happier with KDE's native apps than with Gnome's... I can't wait until KDE4.

Can I get an "amen" brothers? I love how my system is still accessible and functional even if something goes wrong. I can fix a problem because the error logs and such tell me what went wrong, rather than having to try to divine what the issue was from aberrant behavior, what I did to the config last Tuesday, and just guessing what piece of hardware may or may not have flaky drivers.

 

I can't imagine java applets on webpages being a problem, but I do remember having issues running some java applets off a CD before.

The reason I had those problems was because the filenames on the CD were all lowercase, but in the code, the names were mixed case. Since Windows is case insensitive, there was no problem, but I imagine I would have had to rename the files if I wanted them to work under any *nix system.

Of course, since URLs are case sensitive, that problem wouldn't happen with applets online.

 

That's just a moronic developer using a system "feature" that he wasn't aware of. Makes you wonder about how good the rest of his code is if he didn't even realize that case is important on other systems, eh?

 

As far as I know, only a few parts of an URL are actually required to be case sensitive. (I know the domain part is, but the path part is allowed to be case-insensitive, as far as I can remember. In that case, it just depends on the application reading the url how it should be treated. )
(windows-based webservers are allowed to treat the path as case-insensitive for example)

Gotta love vague underspecified standards...

I've stopped wondering about that sort of thing. It only leads to depression and an urge to kill yourself.
The more code I see, the more I'm convinced programmers in general should just be shot on sight...

 

Thanks, Pita, for the heads up on xorg. I will try that later when I have more time.

I also play Quake 4 on my laptop, so I know some games will run. And to be honest, I just don't really try a lot anymore cause PC gaming just isn't that important to me anymore.

 

Quite frankly, the programmer might have been fine. The person who writes the code doesn't necessarily have the final say on what the final product looks like. That is to say, the programmer might have written it, with proper casing in the files, then someone downstream of him didn't like the way that looked and had it changed for the final product.

As for the quality of those applets? Well, the CD came with a math textbook, and they were used to for specific exercises or demonstrations.

EDIT:
Oh, and Jalf, good call on the case-sensitivity in URLs issue. I was just remembering what it's like when we use our student webspace on the UNIX cluster here at our university. I hadn't thought about the case when it's a Windows-based webserver.

 

I love the Ubuntu, i have been running it for a day now, and so far i am impressed, i love the lack of secuity tools that bog down my xp. I had a few wee teething problems with downloading and making a bootable cd. But, that was my lack of knoledge, rather than the computer.
the ubuntu was easier to install than than i had imagined and getting used to the lay out is very easy, everything is extremely ergonomic and friendly to novices... i am not only a novice to ubuntu, but have only owned a computer for a few months now, and managed to install without having to phone a friend. LOL
i have not yet found anything that either xp or ubuntu cannot do.
i love both OS's . i just wish that my xp didnt have to be continually protected by the software equivalent of fort knox
..i will continue to use both OS's making the most of their pros and cons
i see no sense in becoming a windows only man, too frightened to try any thing different. nor do i see the sense in becoming a linux soldier marching into battle with microsoft.

 

I just found something that my ubuntu cannot do! Write onto my external HDD!
i think it has something to do with it being NTFS rather than FAT, I'm not sure what the difference is but i can read but not write. Is it possable to format the disk as FAT inatead of NTFS??

 

You can enable ntfs write support, there's a package for it, haven't used it myself, but now that you know it exists, I'll leave you to do the research to find out how (I'm sure there are guides out there).

And, yes, you can reformat it as a FAT32, BUT, you'll lose all the data on the drive in the process. If you don't care about Windows machines reading it, you can format it to something like ext3 if you like. Again, now that you know it can be done, so you can figure out how to do it yourself (gparted is probably the easiest way).

 

Just make sure you have ntfs3g installed. It should be by default, but in case it's not, install it, and you will have read and write support.

Of course, try reading your Linux partition in Windows, and see how far that goes. You can't even get ext read support out of the box with Windows.

 

On my recent Ubuntu installation, ntfs-3g was not installed by default. (I checked my logs and saw that I had to install it myself.)

If your Ubuntu installation was already configured to automatically mount NTFS partitions, you need to change your /etc/fstab to use ntfs-3g instead of ntfs. For instance, if you have a line that says:

Code:

UUID=whatever /media/sda1     ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007       1

You want to change ntfs to ntfs-3g, as follows:

Code:

UUID=whatever /media/sda1     ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007       1

Then you unmount and remount the partition and now you can write to it.

 

thank you very much guys. I am now armed with the knowledge i need to sort out my external HDD niggle.

 

I am loosing the will to live!

it still cant get the F*~^ing thing to work

i am begining to think that we should be informing those of us who want to try a linux based OS, that a degree in computing is a highly recommended pre-requisite.

I am finding what should be a simple straight forward task to be a fiddly, laborious , time consuming waste of time and energy.
at the moment im so confused i don't even know what questions to be asking.

I'll probably figure it out eventually, but i just wanted to say : AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!!

i could just use the other machine to copy my cd to the HDD but that would defeat the purpose of downloading and installing an alternate operating system, in the same way thay some one who has lost the TV remote will spend an hour looking for it rather than get up and push the button on the front of the telly.

 

Neil... I understand you're frustrated, I can understand that well, as I fall into that myself if I can't figure something out. However, if you want help, I suggest that you tell us what you've tried, and what the result was (in terms of maybe an error message?) If you don't tell us what you've done, there's not way we can effectively help you. If you've tried to follow some online help or something, it may be helpful to point us to what documentation you're trying to use.

Now, blindly stabbing at something... last I checked, I believe there's an "ntfs-config" package in the Ubuntu repositories, which gives you a nice GUI tool to mount/unmount ntfs partitions.