Is it safe to remove it? What would be affected?
I frankly doesn't need Vista to index the file systems for me as I SELDOM search all disks.....

Quite safe. The only effect would be that you would not be able to index files in the future if you were so inclined.

You can remove and di$able window$ $earch. You can al$o get rid of indexing.
Mo$t people ju$t $et indexing for $mall folder$ like $hortcut$ and document$ to $top it from hogging re$ource$ and $till be kind of u$eful.

why use a $? it just looks childish

Micro$oft stuff is never free... so S becomes $... very reasonable.

they're a business..

also your comment is flawed, they have tons of free software

you won't be able to index your start menu, which will slow down the start menu search item

Have you searched their website?

Free documentation, free tools, and sometimes free applications. Ever heard of an app called Microsoft Robotics Studio? Its no longer for sale, because its freeware. They even give 180 day trials of their operating systems, and ridiculously discounted versions of current-gen suites like Vista and Office if you know where to search.

I am shocked by the sheer ignorance and your attitude as a result.

Micro$oft is still way different from Linux. Anyway, I still bought Micro$oft $tuff. But I continue to address "S" as "$" for all USEFUL stuff from this company.
You were quoting junk software ....

I was quoting an example to show possibility. There are many useful pieces of software on the Microsoft website.

You stated that:


You have been proven wrong. Get over it.


FYI. Linux is not completely free. Someone pays for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Indeed: Microsoft makes good & useful software that actually works -- quite a difference!


There's LOTS of it. Visual Studio Express Eds, the .NET framework (has compilers in it), various SDKs, TONS of useful dev stuff (the enterprise library, ASP.NET AJAX, etc), Sysinternals Suite, VPC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V, windbg, various powertoys, ...

But somehow he seems to misunderstand Microsoft is a company, and their goal is to make money for their shareholders (amazing concept, I know!), and like 99.999% of companies with a business model that actually works, they make money by selling products (yeah, god forbid someone makes money! next thing you know, people will expect to get paid to work! sheesh)


There was nothing to prove in the first place, it was already an established fact: 15 year olds like to use the $, heh. Nothing much you can do about people with childish attitudes.


But they don't wanna know that. Yep, some companies spend serious $ to pay devs, and yes, that money actually comes out of your pockets when you buy those companies' products (just indirectly). That money comes from somewhere, and ultimately, it's your pockets too.

Linux\UNIX\Etc. is also good, and better than MS software depending on the application. For embedded, server and distributed UNIX & variants can't be beat.



Yup. Linux is mostly developed by corporations. IBM, Intel, and the rest too long to mention make contributions to the Linux code base all the time.



What the OP fails to take into account is that the 'system' is much larger than him and his computer screen.

I was talking mostly about the desktop (where it's pretty much worthless).

But even in that other context, it's not so much the case:
Embedded? Win CE is pretty big there, so is Windows Mobile -- they're very worthwhile alternatives. And there's also FAR better RTOS'es for "lighter" devices too IMO (I work in this field)
Server? Nah, Windows pwns linux at a LOT of it (just not, say, as the cheapest way to serve ghetto LAMP hosting for blogs and forums)
Distributed? Windows HPC is quicky getting there too...

Yeah, Linux can be run on anything. Great for embedded.

I read Linux has lower overhead for distributed computing vs Windows.

Again, there's better alternatives in most cases (Win CE, Win Mobile, Symbian, VxWorks, etc), unless up-front price is the big issue (free wins here of course). So what is cheaper between paying $$$ for a better dev platform, or having to write a lot of stuff yourself (costs $$$ too), mostly depends on which kind volume you'll sell (and to some extent your profit margin). We don't use Linux in any of our embedded products, it's just not worth it. Linux works "best" in a small subset of embedded devices with high-volume (like routers or tivo's). Notice how even new shiny devices like the iPhone don't use it? Yep, it was better for them to write their own OS for it (based on another product -- a desktop OS, not quite from scratch, but still).


Well, of course a box with just a Linux kernel running (no X or anything) is lighter than say, a full blown install of Win XP. But now with server core and Win HPC, it's not so much the case anymore. Then again, we're talking about something that perhaps less than a person in a million does... Win HPC is a brand new product, and it's already making its way into the top 500 list.

It's just not quite the "best thing since sliced bread" a lot of people make it out to be. Yep, you can use it to offer dirt-cheap LAMP hosting for all these blogs full of stuff no one wants to read, and cheap DNS/Squid/whatever boxes, but other than that... Most of the time there's a better solution (unless your main criteria is licensing price).

Isn't the iPhone Linux based?

iPhone OS = OS9 = FreeBSD ~ Linux

Or is it just OSX that is FreeBSD.



It sounds good. Microsoft is great at interoperability, but performance is also important. I guess it depends on the size of the organization. With enough developers and technicians to take care of Linux it might be cheaper than licensing from Microsoft after a certain volume. I guess this is why the large corporations prefer Linux.

Nope. The only Linux-based phones I'm aware of are those based on Google's Android platform, but even then, there aren't any of those out yet, and I'm not so sure it'll be that great either (haven't been impressed by prior reviews)


Not at all. OS 9 is the old classic Mac OS that has NOTHING in common with Mac OS X. Mac OS X has a Mach kernel, which is BSD-based (it's not BSD, just based on it). It also has a lot of heritage from the NeXT platform. And FreeBSD isn't Linux at all, just like OS X or Solaris or Windows aren't.

My bad. I don't know much about OS9.

While I do realize that FreeBSD and Linux are not the same, the similarities are striking enough to group them, especially since they evolved from UNIX.