What did Vista do wrong and made you switch to Linux?
July 3, 2008 by Clair Ching
Filed under General
I could say two things, from observing other people around me who use Vista:
1. The annoying security thing. I saw that in several people’s laptops. There were pop-ups asking for the user password almost every time they tried to save something in their local working directory.
2. The sudden black screen for no apparent reason.
But I don’t know the whole story. I just saw two votes on the sidebar poll and got curious. What happened with your Windows Vista experience? How much better is your Linux experience? How do you compare both experiences?
Can someone humor me by answering my questions?
I went the other way. After using Linux almost exclusively for about 4 years, I loaded an upgrade copy of Vista I got with my laptop when I bought it 1 1/2 years ago. I liked Vista so much, I wiped my Linux distro off the computer, for now. I have found most of the bad mouthing about Vista is bull, much of it coming from people who haven’t even tried it. I have to wonder if it isn’t a matter of insecurity or wishful thinking that has perpetuated this belief. I haven’t given up on Linux, not by a long shot. When the latest version of PCLinuxOS is out, I’ll repartition my harddrive and dual boot again. But I am very happy with Vista.
-bought a vista-burdened toshiba laptop& it took 2hrs[!] to set itself up…sans any updates
-ubuntu took 20min.
–>seems to me anyone who uses vista must be catholic:they enjoy the 3 ‘P’s: prayer&penance&punishment
Hi, Jim
Thanks for sharing your insights. I’ve never tried Vista but my co-workers are. I do know of others who switched to Linux after using Vista as well. In any case, I am glad you’re comfortable with the change you did. Let us know when you go back to Linux and why. 
Hi, dar
That’s one of the things I am not quite happy about when installing Windows. It takes a lot of time. However, others may argue that configuring stuff in Linux takes more patience. What do you think?
Golly,pof Clair,
“configuring stuff in Linux takes more patience” may be true in rare instances [as You know], but for most things linux beats m$ hands down in ease of installation,stability&reliability, freeing up time for wading thru alerts:
100 emails under xp was too much,while 200 using ubuntu is ‘manageable’ cuz there’s no OS tantrums or nagging.
“What did Vista do wrong and made you switch to Linux?”
Absolutely nothing. I switched from the Mac OS.
I’ve used Vista for a while, turned of UAC, did msconfig, reconfigured on services.msc even with 2GB of ram, windows is ok but totally needs to be redesigned, tried out SUSE, Ubuntu now on mandriva, I rather like lots of applications available, relearning has been ok, changed over mainly cause vista is a giant pig, and really just lazy to keep going to download.com to look for applications
I have started experimenting with Linux based distros for the first time in many years because of Vista.
I have been with MS from DOS through Win 3.10 3.11 95 NT 98 ME 2000, to XP. They provided the OS what the user put on it was the user’s business. They may warn you that a driver isn’t signed but they didn’t stop you from using it, or doing anything with any part of the OS.
Any old Joe blow could write drivers for anything they wanted to make for windows. The SDK’s are out there and their is noting stopping you. MS tries to get you to officially sign your drivers with them, but they didn’t force you to.
Some Linux people have complained about prebundling the OS. But at least it was yours to do with as you pleases, as long as the computer was still functioning. It was part of the price of the computer, you paid for it, and it was yours.
I don’t mind paying good money for something, but when I pay for it, it belongs to me!
But Vista is taking a bad turn, They are disabling any use of none signed 64bit drivers. They are starting to restrict other parts of their OS. And in general, with the talk about windows 7 they are leading toward the subscription based OS.
I am sorry, but I don’t rent equipment, I buy it. When I buy it, I will do with it as I dang well please.
I still have my DOS to win XP instalation disk, and there is nothing that MS can do to stop me from using them with the computers they were bought with. For newer computers I guess I will just have to go with Linux or some other OS. I am looking more toward the debian based packages. I have already downloaded some of the mini distributions like DSL to get some hands on experience with it. I have come reacquainted with some of Linux’s quarks that kind of irritate me (why I have stuck with windows), but I guess I can get use to them.
>I am sorry, but I don’t rent equipment, I buy it. When I buy it, I will do with it as I dang well please.
Someone’s apparently never read a EULA.