Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Frustrations of supporting Windows

Filed under
Linux
Microsoft

Being in the IT world, I'm frequently contacted by family members for help with their computers. And unfortunately, their computers are running Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Why is it unfortunate? Because I am contacted like clockwork, every few months or so, with the same issues time and time again. The top issues that are brought up repeatedly are: a) The computer has a virus or spyware that has hosed the system completely, or Cool The computer is running slower than ever. And neither of these problems are fixed in a couple of minutes. It can take hours to clean viruses and spyware or re-install the entire system (if it's damaged badly enough), let alone try and clean up all of the temporary files that Windows leaves all over the C: partition.

As a test, I migrated one of my relatives to Fedora 10, 2 years ago with a new laptop. She only uses the laptop for web browsing, email, basic office documents, and the like. To date, I've only had one call from her, about the computer going into standby mode and couldn't be waken.

Rest Here




re: Frustrations

I love reading blog posts that basically say "I'm a dumbass, yet for some reason I call myself a IT Guy".

If you can't figure out how to correctly setup Windows to run safely and simply in a home environment - hang up your Geek Hat and get out of the freaking IT business.

As to doing fresh windows installs - bwahahahahahahaha. What a noob. Real IT people have been using system images for decades. Linux even makes a open source version for those too cheap to actually spend a buck or two on IT tools.

The big mystery in this story is why his family keeps calling such an inept person to help them out?

and your solution?

vonskippy:

Your reply was basically a bunch of meaningless text, and you provide nothing of any value. If you can't back up your statements then I would only have to assume you don't know of a solution yourself for the scenario I described. My point was basically that XP is limited in its ability to allow easy system administration without a lot of hassle to a non technical user. In my opinion, Linux (Gnome) steps in and allows for easy administration. It operates similar to UAC in Windows, which allows the user to run as a non-admin, and escalates to do system tasks fairly seamlessly. My other point was that the users could migrate to Windows 7, but why would they want to re-buy Windows.

You are telling me that you would back up their PC to an image. So, once a new piece of software or significant system changes are done, you would have to capture another image. I have better things to do than waste away hours and capture people's PCs and be the keeper of images. Oops, you forgot that capturing an image will also back up the malware and everything else on the PC.

I've used Windows/Linux in enterprise and home environments for over 12 years. I know both operating systems inside and out, and in my opinion Linux is easier to manage and maintain. I'd love to hear feedback and some actual useful info, IF you have any. I am guessing I won't hear back.

LOL, this article stirred up a hornet's nest!

LOL, the windoze gestapo wants this guy arrested immediately for interrogation!

Seriously, you seem terribly offended that this guy isn't comfortable with the microsoft world and you jump on him with both feet to show him how much better is your knowledge of all things microsoft.

I have some news for you gentlemen - not doing microsoft windows is not a crime - there are people living full and rewarding lives, who never use microsoft windows.

I'm an IT professional, a well paid one in fact, and I know little, if anything, about microsoft products. It's certainly not any part of my job, and I have no desire whatsoever to fiddle around with microsoft windows on my own time.

I'm thinking it's probably about time you turn off your windoze peecee, and go see that big blue room!

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.