X
Tech

Why I still hate Windows

I've posted many times over that I used to be an avid Windows and Microsoft supporter, mainly around the Windows 95/98 days. However, after being introduced to Linux, I soon realized that Linux surpasses Windows in many ways, especially system reliability.
Written by Chris Clay Clay, Contributor

I've posted many times over that I used to be an avid Windows and Microsoft supporter, mainly around the Windows 95/98 days. However, after being introduced to Linux, I soon realized that Linux surpasses Windows in many ways, especially system reliability.

I am a partial owner of a business that solely uses Linux, except for one machine that still has Windows 2000 Server, whose only purpose is to run Quickbooks Pro. That machine has provided a plethora of problems over the years, although somehow it has managed to stay alive. Meanwhile, our Linux servers have provided us years of reliable service, allowing us to focus on promoting the business. A few of the main (repeating) problems I've experienced with the Windows 2000 server (running Service Pack 3 and all of the latest Microsoft patches):

- Sometimes when logging on, the Windows blue background will come up, but explorer.exe will not load completely and the taskbar and desktop never show up. The fix: to reboot the server and everything will work like magic after the reboot.

- When using VNC server to access the server remotely, the WinVNC service will sometimes completely locks up and cause the whole system to become unresponsive. The first response is to restart the WinVNC service. Ahh, but there is a caveat to that. I tried restarting the service but it would hang on "stopping" the service, and it would never really restart the service completely. So, the next step would be to end the process for "winvnc4.exe" (the WinVNC service), however that cannot be done either, because it runs as "System" and trying to end the process even as the Administrator account, provides the error "access denied". So, the fix: to reboot the server with a hard power off/on (system will hang and never restart if we try to do a soft reboot under the start menu).

- And finally, today I came across yet another anomaly. When trying to access the server remotely (with PCAnywhere -- I gave up on VNC as no version of VNC would work reliably), the keyboard was stuck with caps lock on, and I could not get the password typed in to log in. The fix: reboot the server and it worked fine after that.

These basic problems just should not happen. This is not the only server that I've seen them happen, either. I've never ever had these sort of problems in Linux. I've been using VNC server for years, most recently using x11vnc (which I would like to add is rock solid and 100% reliable). Never have I had so many problems as I've had with the Windows systems. I'm planning on (soon) to replace this old and dying Windows 2000 machine with a Fedora 13 or CentOS 5.5 system running Quickbooks Pro in Wine. I know that will be a reliable system for many years to come.

Editorial standards