In the beginning of this month, two prominent Operating System distributions released their Release Candidates – Popular Microsoft Windows and Linux Mint. I had a chance to try both of them out in my Dell 6400 Laptop. Here is how the things appeared to me:
Windows 7 RC1
Microsoft released first Release Candidate of their brand new Operating System Windows 7, in the beginning of this month. The RC1 will not expire for an entire year! Yes, Microsoft is in Damage Control Mode after bad reviews it got for Windows Vista! Even my laptop came with Windows Vista pre-installed. I used it for one year, till the warranty expired and then switched to Linux. This time around, I heard very good reviews of Windows 7 and decided to give it a try.
Anyone can download a copy of Windows 7 RC1 from Microsoft website for free and use it for one full year. You will get all the updates. The download is a DVD image of size 2.35G. It did not take my much time to download but I had to burn the image on a DVD to give it a try. The install screen looks very nice and completes without much problem. The install was completed in 15 minutes approximately. The computer restarted three times during the install.
The first thing you notice in the new Windows is the Startup Screen. It looks awesome. The artwork of Windows has made considerable progress in the last few years. The system booted to new desktop with very thick taskbar and large icons. Since Vista, Microsoft made so many changes in the menu appearance and positioning of the menu items – which to me is very perplexing at first. You need to get adjusted to find the things out and may spend a lot of time initially to get the things right. There are a couple of good themes also. Overall the looks seems to be attractive at first.
The I tried to play some songs and videos. MP3 songs played without any problem. But the problem started when I played a video in some other format. It failed to play. I heard that Windows 7 will support most of the codes native. I was out of luck this time. I checked the memory usage – it was 544 MB. My laptop comes with Intel 945 Express Chipset. So the graphic performance was not that good. I think you need a separate video card to make the best use of Windows 7. Another issue – I don’t know if I can call this an issue – is that I was unable to open any office document. I am not asking Microsoft to include Office Suite in Windows 7, but they could have included at least Word, Excel and PowerPint and Visio viewers in this. One need to either buy Office or download Open Office to view documents.
In general, I could not see any drastic improvement in the performance of my machine with 1G of RAM. It may work perfectly for people who have got separate video card and more memory, but not for me. One thing Microsoft has done good is the installation size of the OS. It was using less than 7G of hard disk space compared to 10G used by Windows Vista. There may be some services which can be turned off and you can increase the performance. But I did not have the patience to do those things. I shut down the PC and started installing linux – Windows 7 disappointed me. I gave the installation disk to my friend also, who tried it on is AMD machine. He was not at all impressed with Windows and he too removed the Windows installation within an hour. His graphics card was not properly detected – something which you never expect with Windows. I will give it a score of 6/10. It is not for me, at least.
Linux Mint 7 RC
When Linux Mint 7 Gloria (Release Candidate) was announced, I downloaded it immediately. After I installed Windows 7, I decided to remove it and installed Linux Mint 7 RC. The download size of ISO is 686M. I made a boot able USB with UNetBootin. I restarted the system and bootted from USB disk. The Live CD (rather USB), was very quick and I was presented with a very smooth looking desktop in minutes. I started the installer, which asked me a few questions. I selected custom disk partitioning and ext4 is the default file system in this release. The installation completed in 3-4 minutes and I restarted the PC.
The initial boot took around 2 minutes, but the subsequent boots took very little time. There is an improvement in the boot response. The new theme which comes with Gloria looks awesome and the Login Manager also looks impressive. Above all, the system was very fast. The memory usage was 190M and the processor usage was around 7% on both the cores on the default GNOME desktop. The new Mint Menu is also very impressive. I however, chose the classical one as I was accustomed to the old one. The bigger test came when I started playing media files. Every file format in my notebook was played correctly. I did not have to install any codec. Also, most of the applications you need comes pre-installed, including OpenOffice 3.0. The only changes I did was adjusting the icon zoom size to 66% and adjusting the font size to 9px. Font size of 10px looked too big for me. The distro is very stable and is ready for everyday use. It comes with Python 2.6 which disappoints may people because of some backward incompatible changes made in the language. I would give Gloria a score of 9.5/10.
I have one complaint about major linux distributions. The directory structure is very confusing for the normal user. If someone new to the linux comes and see file structure he will not understand any thing. The folder names need to be more descriptive. Folder names like bin, root, home, dev, etc, sbin etc. confuses many users and does not make a very good impression. Apple has done a great thing by changing the folder names in Mac OS. Although Mac OS is built on top of BSD, it does not carry the folder naming convention used by BSD or Unix. That has, in my opinion, contributed a lot to the success of Mac.
Now I am using Linux Mint 7 RC at my home and Windows XP at work. For me Linux Mint is the linux distro which can be a brand ambassador for linux. It has got everything to satisfy a new user coming to the linux world! Welcome to the world of Choice and Freedom!
A normal user shouldn’t know more than their home folder (on linux).
The package manager is enough for installing applications.
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@CoolGoose,
True. Only if you install some applications manually, then only you need to be aware of the whereabouts of other folders. But for a normal user, only documents and media files are important.
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I am a long time Windows user having used it since its conception. Prior to that it was DOS and at one time OS/2. It tried Win 7 RC1 and LinuxMint 7 RC1. I didn’t notice that much of a speed difference except in boot up, but I’m running 64-bit Windows and Mint hasn’t released that version yet.
As a newbee in Linux I have some observations. Linux has made some giant strides since its early days. Mint is very impressive and, as you mentioned, it is much more complete out of the box. Overall, however, it doesn’t feel as polished and usable as Windows to me. I also find constantly having to locate the correct config file to edit to make simple changes to be quite annoying. For instance, I wanted to change the workgroup name the other day… a simple task in Windows. I Googled it and thought I had the answer, but the soluction was to get and install an app. I did that and my system would no longer boot. I found later that it was merely an easy edit of a config file yet the damage had been done. So all I could see to do was delete the partition and start over.
I believe this type of experience is what is blocking a more widespread adoption of Linux. Yes the various distros have grabbged market share from MS (not a bad thing!), but I believe much deeper inroads could be made if these areas were addressed. Nonetheless, those who have dedicated themselves to bettering Linux deserve cudos for a job well done!
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@Ron,
You are right. People are very scared when they hear the name linux. One of the major issue is that what you have mentioned – you need to search for a lot of things. Although many distros are trying to change this scenario. Some of the changes can be done only by editing files.
I wish someone who is actually developing linux GUI see this
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Derick,
More than the need to search of a lot things, I would say that the biggest issue is the huge time it takes to solve your install/config change/drivers issue problems.
Ppl would probably be ok if a 2 min. google search + 1 min. menu or command line would fix their issue …
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Mint 7 is a brilliant piece of work indeed, but Linux just isn’t there yet. I’m a Linux fan and when Windows 7 RC and Mint linux 7 cane out I tri-booted them with kubunt 9.04. I’m usually a kubuntu fan but to be honest 9.04 has caused me nothing but problems so on to the other two.
I was impressed with Windows 7. I liked the looks and most of the problems can be put down to it being in RC stages. Things like 3rd party software not working for example. It failed to detect my sound card but again I think the few problems I had can be sorted.
Since installation though my time has been on the excellent mint 7. Its easy to use and fast, but its still not there. I’m not great at some terminal tasks and have had to google a few times to sort things out, I have had a few problems with my screen resolution (it still wont rise as high as it will on windows. I can fix it in the terminal but takes too long to do every time I turn the computer on) and theres the obvious differences in linux like the organization of the file system.
Overall I much prefer mint to windows, but when my technophobic friend the other day asked if he should try ‘this linux thing’ I had to advise him not to. not yet.
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I am a long time Windows user having used it since its conception. Prior to that it was DOS and at one time OS/2. It tried Win 7 RC1 and LinuxMint 7 RC1. I didn't notice that much of a speed difference except in boot up, but I'm running 64-bit Windows and Mint hasn't released that version yet.
As a newbee in Linux I have some observations. Linux has made some giant strides since its early days. Mint is very impressive and, as you mentioned, it is much more complete out of the box. Overall, however, it doesn't feel as polished and usable as Windows to me. I also find constantly having to locate the correct config file to edit to make simple changes to be quite annoying. For instance, I wanted to change the workgroup name the other day… a simple task in Windows. I Googled it and thought I had the answer, but the soluction was to get and install an app. I did that and my system would no longer boot. I found later that it was merely an easy edit of a config file yet the damage had been done. So all I could see to do was delete the partition and start over.
I believe this type of experience is what is blocking a more widespread adoption of Linux. Yes the various distros have grabbged market share from MS (not a bad thing!), but I believe much deeper inroads could be made if these areas were addressed. Nonetheless, those who have dedicated themselves to bettering Linux deserve cudos for a job well done!
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I’ve been aware of linux since the early days and I’ve played around with it a little bit here and there over the years. It’s definitely come along way but as everyone has pointed out it’s not there yet. 1) We live in a point and click world now. In order to attract users to make the switch from Mac/Windows over to the “freedom” side there needs to be a more seamless transition. Everything should be done within the GUI without having to resort to the command line interface (unless you really really want to). 2) Installation has made a gigantic leap from years ago (I remember multiple days running between penguin friends and my pc trying to get answers on how to compile this or that etc. It just got annoying. Most users just want to insert the disk load it answer a few questions and let the installer do it’s magic. It’s a vast improvement but still not quite there yet for the completely computer illiterate. But it’s very close and I look forward to more progress. 3) Choices…I’m all for choices…..but come on….it’s enough to make your head spin. I’ll put it this way, if you have 100 people trying to reinvent the automobile..eventually you’re going to come up with some fantastic new technology. Now think of how effective it would be if 5 teams of 20 people were doing the same thing. The linux community should look at the cream of the crop, the top few distros and focus the energy and innovation on those. As an open source you will always have some on the peripheral tweaking and making it their own but until the community becomes more cohesive and targeted it will continue to take time (look at how longs it’s taken to get this far). Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking the brilliant programmers who’ve worked hard and brought linux to the point of making Apple and MS worry with good reason. 4) And finally support. Until there’s wider support for linux as a whole, gaming, 3rd party software, linux is going to be relegated to 3rd place (remember that gaming is a major force for pc innovation).
As for Windows 7, I’ve been using it since the beta version and I think MS might have finally started to remove their head from their nether region. It’s faster, lighter and DEFINATELY much more stable than vista or I would argue than XP itself. They’ve finally taken the hint from linux and started to untangle the core from the gui. As for your comments about adding word and full codec support, I think they’re a little gun shy after all the litigation and anti-trust suits. And really it’s not that hard to go online after install and download and install openoffice and needed but not mainly used codecs. Overall I’m happier with Windows 7 than I have been with any other MS operating system I’ve used (and I’ve been around since the DOS days). With that being said, I’ll continue to watch linux grow and look forward to the day when I’ll be able to just download and install the newest version of operating system for my pc without having to shell out 100 plus dollars for an upgrade and not have to worry about whether or not it’s going to perform like it should.
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Just set up Linux Mint 8 and decided to try it out. First, I ripped a few CDs to MP3 and played them back with Rythmbox – no problem. Decided to try to copy a video that I rented from BlockBuster. Spent two days trying to find and install something like AnyDVD and DVDShrink to reauthor the DVD. The task is impossible for a novice user. Went over to my Windows7 machine and did a google search for both programs and installed each in less than 5 minutes – reauthored and burned a new DVD in 22 minutes. When it comes to ease of use Windows7 wins hands down.
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I have been using Windows RC since the beta versions. Yes indeed microsoft got a bad run with vista. I really hope that Microsoft can take back the market. In any case I have to say that Windows 7 is a very very up imporvement from Vista. It runs with little effort and doesn’t crash or freeze nearly as often. I have no tried the 64bit version yet but I hear its just as good.
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