I would think the biggest difference between Linux and Windows is the community behind them. The community behind Linux tends to make quite a lot of assumptions, sometimes some of these assumptions do not seem to be quite reasonable. 1. Everybody has good network connection. If you see any Linux os, you can see almost all of them rely on network heavily. The worst point is that very often without the network, you find Linux is not complete at all. The most typical is the software management. Why cannot we download the installer and then put it in my own harddrive as in Windows? I mean not all software require this, but at least it is not obvious as in Windows. 2. Everybody knows their computer and os. If you ask any question in a Linux forum, you will encounter a sentence so often: "You need to study". Why do I need to study if I just want to change a couple of settings in the os? If you ask in a Windows forum, more often the people who know the answer will give you the steps to do it quite directly. 3. Everybody thinks command line instead of GUI to do many things. I know the Linux communities are doing work on this. But my feeling is that this is their highest priority work at the moment. Big pity!! :^) The bad point about the assumptions is that they do not just affect the users of the os, but also the programmers. So the final result is that the more effort linux developers put into their codes, the further away they are from most average users. If we divide users into three types, beginners (know nothing about computer, and afraid to change anything in a os), mid-level users (have little knowledge about computer, but have some needs to change os to make it convenient to use) and high-level users (have knowledge about computer, and knows how to change os to make it convenient to use). My opinion is that Linux might be more suitable for beginners and high-level users. But anybody thinks that these two parts of the users are the big parts of all computer users? By the way, another very annoying thing about Linux is that I cannot login as root. If I am the only user of the computer, and I have no network, why cannot I simply login as root?

Thanks for the suggestions. In fact I am a Master graduate last summer from Birmingham Uni. Until now I haven't got a job yet, that's why I try starting my own business. At least I can do something related to my degree. Meeting more people is important! NxtGenUG seems to have some events around Manchester in May. Maybe I should try it. Thanx

Hi Everyone, I am a new programmer in the business to build websites for small companies. Now, I have a big question. How do I price an ASP.NET website? Depending on the number of pages, or anything else? Especially, when the website is dynamic and requires database, it is more difficult to estimate the price. Now my customer (to be honest, this is my first one), wants me to build a site like http://www.letslive.co.uk/default.aspx[^]. They are also a property agency with a few stuff. Oh, by the way, I am in Manchester, UK. It seems the price in the city is not too low. Also, does anyone know any websites where I can get more contracts of website and software development? It would be good if it's for UK. Thanks in advance

modified on Sunday, April 12, 2009 2:05 PM