As a web developer I need to test websites on multiple web browsers and since Safari was made available for Windows, this meant that I could run every web browser within Windows.  My current practice is to fire up Windows in a virtual machine to test IE and Safari but there was a chance this inconvenience could be over, I just needed to see if I could work with Windows as my main platform.

My current laptop came with an OEM disc of Windows 7 and 6 months ago I decided to install it.  I thought that I could force myself to be happy with Windows, after all most of the software I use is cross platform so all I require Windows to do is be an operating system.  I was wrong as I have found Windows to be a pain and very primitive in some cases.  I could have forced myself to continue using it but I have decided to move back to using Linux (Ubuntu), not because I am a Linux geek/fan boy or a MS hater, just because generally I feel that its a better system, especially when using Gnome window manager.

There are many good and bad points about all systems, even though you will not hear OSX users admit to this.  My writing here is not to be completely negative against Windows 7, just to point out the reasons why I decided to stop using it.  This is not intended to be a Windows/Ubuntu comparison as that would be unfair. It’s just the issued I am raising with Windows are problems solved with Ubuntu.  For the record, I was impressed by many aspects of Windows 7, and for use as a pleasure machine then this is the OS I would choose, but for business and productivity Ubuntu with Gnome wins in my opinion.

To start with installing the Operating System, installing Windows 7 was very easy, that was until it was installed and you wanted to use it.  Not much hardware seemed to work out of the box and I had a CD from Dell with tons of drivers to install.  This was not very easy as I couldn’t see an easy way to tell which drivers I needed to install as there many options depending on what hardware was actually in the machine.  Windows did try to find drivers by Windows Update but that did not work.  This point is not a major one as you could argue that this only has to be done once but it does lead me on to one of the most annoying aspects of Windows, which is consistency and uniformity.

For example on the uniformity point, I install the bluetooth driver which comes with the bluetooth management software.  This software looks crap next to the polished look and feel of Aero and the Windows 7 theme.  Not only does it look out of place but the whole interface to managing bluetooth devices is absolutely horrible and difficult to work and understand. Why is there no built in software that manages bluetooth devices, so regardless what bluetooth device I have, Windows will use the same integrated interface for it?
My latop has built in mobile broadband, so I have to install the Sony Ericcsson driver and software.  This looks different again to the windows interface and has a big connect button, which once pressed connects and minimises to the notification area.  Now in the notification area I have the Windows Network software and the Sony Ericcsson software running, and in principle they are doing the same job, connecting me to the Internet.  Surely the mobile broadband connections could be managed by the Windows Network tools.
Gnome desktop is great at providing software for a task and then using the Linux Kernel to talk to the devices.  For example the Gnome Network Manger controls Ethernet, Wireless, Mobile Broadband, Bluetooth Internet and VPN’s all from the same place and it doesn’t care what brand of Bluetooth or Broadband Dongle you have got.
I had to install Dell Quickset to enable all the multimedia keys to work.  When you press one of the volume keys I get an ugly notification in the centre of the screen.  When I receive a new email, I get a notification pop up in the notification area.  In fact all software that use notifications, seem to do it in their own way.  Surely something as important as notifications should be presented by the Operating System in a uniform manor so not to confuse the user?  DBus or NotifyOSD from the Linux world solves this problem.

There appears to be no unified software update for Windows.  We have Windows update which updates Windows itself and possibly some drivers as well as some Microsoft software such as Internet Explorer, but wouldn’t it be nice if other software vendors could plug into this instead of having their own update mechanisms.  I notice every time Windows 7 is started, Java will run an update check and if an update is found it will launch Java’s own update tool.  Mozilla Firefox checks for its own updates and so does countless other software.  It seems I cannot escape software always performing update checks and throwing the results in my face if action is needed.  This is really annoying, prime example if the Apple Software Updater that tries to convince me I need Quicktime whenever there is a Safari update.  Even more annoying is the Adobe Flash updater that launches the Adobe Download manager and then completely fails to install the update, instead takes me to manual instructions.
I do not expect Microsoft to release a tool like the Fantastic Synaptic found on Debian systems, but surely they could let plugins to Windows Update that will allow non Microsoft software to be updated from this tool from the vendors repository.

Windows also only seems to like to work with FAT or NTFS file systems.  I believe the whole world does not run Windows so wouldn’t it be nice to include out of the box support for HFS, Ext2+ and some other file systems.  It can be done but only with add on software which isn’t transparent and does not work completely natively within Windows.
How about remote file systems? Windows explorer can mount an FTP drive but its pretty lame.  How about something like GVFS which will enable Windows Explorer to mount all sorts of remote file systems so that you can browse as if you were on your local hard drive.  There are tools like SFTP Drive, but that still requires assigning drive letters manually and its not quite native.
Even for SMB networking, Windows seems to make this far harder than it has to be.  I actually gave up trying to create a share with virtual users.  Its made worse by different rules for Home, Public and Work networks.  I assume this is to help with security but if you have half a brain this is actually a hindrance.

The desktop interface misses some much needed functionality.  We have some good ideas such as side-by-side view but Microsoft has also wasted effort by putting in useless ideas such as shake to minimize and Aero Peek (seriously what good is this?).  How about adding multiple workspaces and an easy way to make any window stay on top, things Gnome does well.  There is software to enable Windows to perform these actions but its not where near the experience you get on Gnome.

And finally, something that really annoys me is that applications do not seem to be added to the system path.  I can install PHP for example and if I want to evoke it to run a simple CLI script I will need to type the full path to PHP, which becomes a complete waste of time. I tried to be clever and put a link to it in the System32 folder but running that link makes Windows try to run the link not the binary the link is to.  Really not helpful!

This issue is also there when using Windows Explorer to view the music files.  Its seems that some MP3′s and M4a’s (AAC) do not show any ID3 information.  I know this information is there as its works perfectly with Rhythmbox on Ubuntu, or even Songbird on Windows but its seems that Windows has an issue with some files.

It turns out the answer to this problem is rather unsurpirising, Windows 7 does not support nativley ID3 v2.4.  The solution is to either use a different media player such as Songbird or to convert your ID3 v2.4 to ID3 v2.3.

I don’t care much for Songbird, Media Monkey, iTunes or any other media player I have found available for Windows and hope one day either Banshee or Rhythmbox will be available for the Windows platform, so until then I have chosen to convert my ID3 tags.  There is a great application for completing this task called Kid3 which you can download from Sourceforge here kid3.sourceforge.net/#download

Installing MySQL seemed to be a headache.  The installer would stop responding at Instance Configuration Wizard, however the solution to this problem is easy.

You need to punch a hole in Windows firewall for MySQL before you install.  Open up TCP ports 3306 for both incoming and outgoing and the installation will complete fully.

If you get stuck with a problem that I did where it installed MySQL without a root password even though you selected one, run:

$ mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD

Replacing NEWPASSWORD with your password.

If the command above does not work for you, you will need to use a full path to the command which may be in C:\Program Files\MySQL or C:\Program Files (x86)\MySQL or another location depending on where you installed it.