Windows Easier to Configure Than Linux?

Have you ever heard that windows is easier to configure than linux? Chances are you have. This is sadly a misconception. While it is true windows usually just works when it comes to configuring hardware, in linux it's actually a lot easier to troubleshoot and solve problems. With linux, you usually always have to go to a command line and deal with text configuration files. Many are hard to understand and each one has a different syntax, but have you ever tried to configure hardware on windows that didn't just work? Its nearly impossible.

The problem is with windows you configure everything from a gui. Thats all find until something doesn't work. As with most guis, windows configuration guis have limited capabilities. What do you do when the "driver does not have any information about your hardware," but you are sure its the right driver becuase is the one from the installation cd that came with device? In linux, you just open up the command line and take a look at the logs or /etc/modprobe.conf, or for even more detail you can check if the device is properly detected using the lspci command. To some this is difficult, but it's much easier than what windows offers. What exactly does windows offer in this situation? It actually offers a similar method of diagnosis, but the problem is there is relatively no documentation available for it unless you are a windows developer.

After searching the internet for a solution I came across a website which mentioned a certain text file c:\windows\inf\usb.inf. I thouht thats where I would bind the driver to the unknown device, but once I read it I realized I would have to order a windows programming manual just to understand it. No only was there not any documentation about how to edit the file, some entries were in hex like the windows registry. At that point I realized I would rather have to always struggle to get the simplest thing to work in linux than have be absolutely dependent on an inadequate gui and jsut give up if the gui did not have the solution.

I guess thats the difference between usuability in linux and windows: with linux you are required to know what you are doing before you do it and the documentation is usually readily availabe (rtfm) while in windows, you can just blindly point-n-click your way to bliss until something does not work at which point you are expected to pay someone to fix the problem (but the technicians do not know how to edit the text files either). At least in linux if there is not any documentation I can always rtfs.

[SuperNu]

I know that I have found Linux way more easier to configure than Windows ever is. I especially love that after a max of 4 cds with FC2, you have an entire system installed with minimal tweaking afterwards (NTFS, Nvidia drivers, etc). How many cds plus reboots do you have to deal with on a normal Windows install? There's too many for me to count. Also, you won't have a full system installed either. You still need to install office, all apps that are necessary to have a functional computer (no, notepad, wordpad and mspaint don't count ) and install drivers for all of your hardware. Plus, if you don't have a firewall, up to date antivirus software and all released patches applied before you connect to the internet, you will be infected in 20 minutes.

I must say that the more I work with Windows, the more I love working with Linux. If something breaks on Linux, it is because of a change I made. I can then boot into single user mode to correct my mistake, or boot off of knoppix or another rescue cd to fix my mistake. I know that my usual response for Windows problems is to reboot, reformat and reinstall. I have also noticed that with Windows, settings change for no reason. How or why the setting changed, we will never know. Will it change back? The world may never know. I am estatic of the community support and involvement which surrounds Linux. If I ever have a problem, I can find the answer. If I cannot find the answer, then there are plenty of message boards to ask.

Whoever says Windows is simpler than Linux never administered a system or installed a system.

--SN

[Shadow Skill]

What world are you two living in?

What, do you actually thing windows is easier to administrate? Have you ever been on a situation like I described? Have your usb buses all of a sudden stopped recognizing the hardware that worked yesterday? Have you played the swat the 63 popups in a minute game?

What do you mean what world are we living in?

[Shadow Skill]

Hmph just because you really can't use windows doesn't really make it harder to configure than Linux...I have more trouble with Samba for example than anything I do in regards to networking in Windows. [The difficult is about equal frankly.] I actually have never had my usb bus just die although I have had certain USB devices not be recognized from time to time, even when they have worked the day before. This usually means a simple reboot or a driver reinstall. Other than that everything else for me is a hardware issue that is not the fault of Windows. I do wissh that certain networking configuration commands were available outside of the CMD or that those CLI commands were mentioned somewhere readily accessible to the user. I had to rely on my brother's limited experience troubleshooting internet connections to get my router to behave with my modem after a hurricane downed stuff for a short time.

Linux is easier to maintain once it has been configured as it does not break, but windows is easier to configure while being quite annoying and sometimes even difficult to maintain.

For the record I take care of my home network and my desktop is the master computer, so my anecdotes are coming from that perspective.

Originally Posted by Shadow Skill

For the record I take care of my home network and my desktop is the master computer, so my anecdotes are coming from that perspective.

Well that explains it. As I said, most of the time windows just works with hardware, but when it does not...

Why did the usb deveice stop working? Did you throw the computer down a flight of stairs - probably not - so why did you have to reinstall the driver? This is just not acceptable in a production environment! The main problem is that no one knows why this happens, so there is not a way to prevent it. You just have to shake your chicken bones over the pc and pray that it works when you reboot. What do you do when it doesn't? Please, tell me.

You said just reinstall the driver. You can't reinstall the driver when windows just says the device is not detected. There is no way to bund the driver to the undetected device unless you can enlighten us.

[imdeemvp]

let me just re-phrase it like this: windows is more user friendly but not stable as linux

[Shadow Skill]

So the basis for your entirely non-existant point is one particular type of catastrophic failure.....Weak argument the fix will depend on exaclty where the problem lies if you can verify that the ports still work with other devices then it is NOT your usb port hardware. (Live CD's like knoppix would probably come in handy when you are testing if your hardware itself has failed in such a case.) If Possible plug the offending USB device into another computer running windows preferably and see if it behaves in an expected manner. Then reinstall the drivers, you may also have to explore the possibility that you have a driver conflict situation (not entirely unlike "dephell" really only more explosive.) I had some nasty driver conflict that lead to constant Bsod's until I decided to totally remove one of the two devices that were conflicting and now everything works as it should.

As for what exactly happened to my particular usb device my Ipod's HDD became corrupted somehow and became unreadable. In retrospect I think I had been mixing Ipod song managing tools and ended up nuking my database. The second time also was not a windows problem Apple's damn firmware updater killed my player.

Every OS has certain nasty little failures that are all but impossible to fix outside of a rformat or reimage, but that really does not mean that because the ability to maintain a given configuration and the ability to create a configuration with ease are in any way comparable. In reality those our two very different things.

[taylor65]

Well, Windows is easier to configure, but then you have to spend many hours trying to figure out why it didn't work, and then more hours installing patches and patches and patches. And then you have to spend many hours trying to get rid of viruses, adware, spybots. And then you have to spend many hours rebuilding your system because it got destroyed doing a Windows automatic update. But, I will admit that the Windows menus are easier to work with in most cases, and Windows has better hardware support and more software available. So, you have to pick your poison - an OS plus software that costs a ton of money and doesn't work well and is unsafe but it's easy to use and has lots of software and hardware support vs. an OS plus software that's free and works great and is safe but doesn't have the hardware support or as much software. For me, the security problems and high cost has driven me away from the Windows world. I guess Mac's are still around too - very nice machines, very safe, very stable, very easy to work with, software that blows Windows software away, but they are soooo expensive.

[Shadow Skill]

I agree although to be honest no windows update has ever nuked my windows partition. I guess I am lucky.

[taylor65]

As for windows update, all of my neighbors have called me and said that they did a windows update, and then they couldn't boot their PC except into safe mode. Seems that if you do all updates as soon as they come out, you're probably ok, but if you miss a few updates and then do an update, your system has a good chance of being toasted.

I have experienced the "update roulette" and it is not pretty when you're in a production environment and what su pposed to secure you system kills it It make you look like a fool. But I guess you are more secure tat way. Nothing can go wrong Microsoft just has very different definitions for "secure" and "reliable".

Also, one day everything is fine and the next, the network card doesn't work so I have to reinstall the driver. Please explain that to me

[taylor65]

i've had production windows servers at work die for no reason too - i get sooo aggravated when that happens. i've never had that happen to a linux or solaris machine (i had a rh8 server for just over a year that worked fine and I never touched it after initial config). and I've had solaris machines go for 3 years with no work being done to them, and they would have went longer but newer version of the apps required faster machines, so they were upgraded.

[Shadow Skill]

Hell I completely turned off the prtocess that is required windows update [I probably should go ahead and turn it back on to get the new IE patches, but I'm lazy and most of my important files are not even on the primary drive, and of course I have Fedora. ] I rarely even use the thing unless I hear of a ne (usually IE) exploit.

[Finalzone]

Fedora Core is useful to remove virus that cannot be deleted from Windows
I recently updated to Services Pack 2. It removes the useless patches from SP1a thus freeing more space. Like Shadow Skill, I disable almost all MS softwares like IE and Outlook Express.
I must admit that there is very few documentation to fix some issue in Windows XP without GUI and restarting the system just for single patch for instance.