Windows vs Linux [was: p2exe using wine/cxoffice]

Tim Golden tim.golden at viacom-outdoor.co.uk
Wed Oct 26 10:20:56 EDT 2005


[Tim Golden]
> Just occasionally you read posts from people who say (synthesised)
> "The Windows command line is rubbish",

[Sybren Stuvel]
> It is. Let me give an example. I have the following files:

[.. snip example of finding .somefile when you type som<tab> ..]

Well, fair enough. Although I don't think that on its own
this constitutes "rubbish". However, the rest of your points...

> There is also no proper terminal support in the "DOS" box

Not quite sure what this means. As in ANSI support? (Perfectly
true - definitely lacking there). Or something else?

> You can't resize it horizontally

Well, peculiarly, you can do this (as you're probably aware) from
the Properties menu and it'll work immediately, albeit without
advising the running programs that it's resized, so only new
lines will take advantage of the new width. Now, why they didn't
let you do the same thing by grabbing the border and pulling, I
don't know!

> and the TAB key can only do dubm filename completion 
> (no smart option completion like only completing with
> directory names after a "cd" command)

Ummm. Not quite true, at least not on my XP machine,
which, given:

      python.txt
<DIR> python 

alternates between the two when I do "dir p<tab>" but
only offers me the directory when I do "cd p<tab>".

In addition (and to no real advantage that I can see), Windows
offers two keystrokes, by default Ctrl-F and Ctrl-D if enabled,
to do file (and directory) completion and directory completion
only.

> > "All Windows machines are overrun with adware and generate spam
> > willy-nilly".

> Not all, indeed. There are _lots_ of Windows zombie machines, though.
> Then again, when I was moving, I didn't pay enough attention to my
> Linux box, was too late in patching a leak, and it started spamming
> too.

I'm sure you're right: given moderately naive users, a Windows box
is *extremely* likely to be zombified. It's just that it doesn't
have to be that way with the proper care and attention. And more
recent versions of Windows are a bit better off this way. But I'm
quite sure they're still worse off than Linux. 

TJG

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