Knew it :)

Fully understand your choose, and wish you good luck on Windows.

Been using BSD/Linux for about 12 years myself, both at work and home, and I can't count how many times Linux has frustrated me (these last years almost every day). I'm probably more forgiving than you are, or just plain stupid/insane :) (maintaining a distro while disliking Linux would probably put me in the insane category)

Will miss your Linux rants/news ...

Welcome to the reality of common sense. OS's and APP's are merely tools, nothing more, nothing less - and therefore you should ALWAYS choose the tool that works best (and not cloud your judgment by some fanboy religion-esque bullshit). In the long run, the money you spend on GOOD tools is a drop in the bucket compared to your time and productivity. Microsoft and Apple gets this, Linux unfortunately is completely clueless. Good choice - don't kick yourself toooo hard for taking so long to get there.

You'll come back, just as you did after the BSD experiment.

Well, if you are gonna be happy, that's great. If you come back, no one's gonna bite you.

Nice post, though. I agree with most of the things; including retarded Arch installer (I'm an Arch user now), including stupid fixed time-based releases, including Compiz & co, including the poor state and direction of Xorg's development; whatever you say, I most probably can't prove you wrong.

But for me, the positive things (being mostly FOSS, easier to use, bigger control over the system, UI which I got used to quite a lot) are still more important than the hassle I'd have under Windows.

See you in a month with your next Linux rant :P

While I agree with some of what you've said, I strongly believe Linux is way better than anything else (at least for me).

However, after reading your article I would like to ask you a question: What's the problem with pc-bsd (or other BSDs)

jcp

P.S: by january you'll be back to good old linux :P

Good luck with your first virus or malware infection.

Enjoy

RedHat dosn't believe in the Linux desktop because it makes money from servers and knows there is no money in Linux desktops. Why would you run a server OS (CentOS) on a laptop?

Goodbye, you did provide some interesting reads over the years
.

I boxed my linux computer several months ago, and I have not really missed it all that much. I have to wonder if I were to buy a computer right now if it would be a Mac (what I am currently using).

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

> The “rolling-release” model is not a solution to the broken “megafreeze” distro model, not only because it's followed by a minority of the distros (think of Arch, the distro with the dumbest installer in the whole Universe), but mostly because it forces the user to use the latest-and-only-latest build of each and every package! This forces the user to live with the latest bugs

I think the dumbest installer award goes to OpenBSD ;)

I'm liking SliTaz Cooking for now, but I too may move away from Linux soon. DragonFlyBSD has matured to the point that I can consider using it on my desktop. The only thing it's lacking right now is Flash. Maybe Adobe will finally open up...

Windows XP is a reasonably good OS. It has flaws, but most can be overcome by a competent user. Just don't install any antimalware apps., AKA the final evolution of electronic scams. Firefox + NoScript (or Opera w/equivalent userjs) is the only way to go!

Interesting read and quite the exhaustive list of software.

Although I disagree with some of your points, I do feel that being tied to a specific kernel/distro/software release "Megafreeze" is one of the worst points about Desktop Linux.

Good luck and enjoy your walled garden ;)

p.s. maybe its time to remove the Linux adverts, eh?

Regarding your switch from linux to windows xp, I would suggest you to keep a linux live with you (pick your poison) because even if antivirus apps can keep viruses from running, sometimes they fail to remove them. I "caught" a nasty virus at work that installs a folder called recycler, another one called restore and an autorun.inf file in usb tumb drives. the only way I got to remove them was by running the live cd of a distribution that I will not name and enter the appropiate commands for the job.

* COLLECTIVE ANSWER: *

------------------------------
@olear:
> "maintaining a distro while disliking Linux"

I once considered that idea too, but I was too lazy.
------------------------------
@VonSkippy:

But I thought you were pro-Linux!
------------------------------
@Roy:

The BSDs were worse: they're even less ready for the desktop than Linux.
------------------------------
@PeterKraus:

I use open-source apps under Windows too, most often GIMP and Inkscape, but other apps too.
------------------------------
@jcp:

PC-BSD was never too reliable, and now it's KDE4. The other BSDs don't offer UPDATED BINARY PACKAGES in a timely manner (and OpenBSD even forces you to upgrade too often and painfully, or to use -current, the only branch with maintained packages).
------------------------------
@GregE:

> "Good luck with your first virus or malware infection."

I'm using Windows since 1993. I'm using Linux at work since 1994. I HAVE NEVER BEEN INFECTED IN 15 YEARS!

Yes, I have dowloaded virused files, but I never caught any infection. I have even sent a couple of viruses to Panda: in the first case, they come with updated signatures within hours.

> "Why would you run a server OS (CentOS) on a laptop?"

CentOS is *not* a server distro! It's considered to be one because it's a good choice for servers, as a binary rebuilt of *all* the RHEL packages, both Server and Desktop.

Otherwise, Red Hat has an enterprise desktop distro, it's called RHEL5 Desktop, starting at $80/yr: http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2642

But it has so few applications that no one would use it.
------------------------------
@patrick:

I guess there are fewer free applications for Mac than they are for Win32, but I might be wrong.
------------------------------
@toast:

DragonFly BSD is very interesting, but it doesn't target the desktop.

> "Just don't install any antimalware apps."

I don't (although I listed some).
------------------------------
@lefty.crupps:

> "maybe its time to remove the Linux adverts, eh?"

Should you have read me carefully, you would have noticed that I said I'll remove them on, or after Dec. 31.
------------------------------
@un type du Guatémala:

I still keep some LiveCDs, just for an emergency (Wolvix, CentOS5 LiveCD, GoblinX).

@GregE: please, cut the bullshit. I'm using XP since it's been released and virus infections have probably occurred twice or thrice "on my shift".

But then, I was probably drunk or stoned when my PC got infected. Any reasonable PC user, especially one who can install and configure some Linux distribution on his computer has more than enough necessary knowledge to stay away from viruses and other malware.

XP has its flaws, but it's light years ahead of Linux in terms of virtually everything.

Remember the Sega Dreamcast / Sony Playstation 2 war? Remember how Dreamcast was the better system, with superior graphics? Remember how 6 years after the PS2 release, PS2 was the only console worth having? People were more interested in the PS2's exclusives and ethernet connectivity and Dreamcast was a major failure for Sega. Years down the road, PS2 is the best selling home console ever created, with the largest game library to have ever existed. Shiny graphics are worth shit if you can't properly enjoy them.

Same with Linux. Who the fuck cares it's used in servers, supercomputers and rendering farms at Pixar, if it can't provide a reasonable desktop experience?

My latin teacher at university once said: there's no best latin grammar. The best latin grammar is the one you are comfortable with. I'd say the same applies to Linux distributions. Every distro more or less has its quirks and requires more or less effort to circumvent these. I'm running a (modest) Linux-business here in South France, and I know quite some folks working (professionally) with 100% GNU/Linux and open source. We're all part of a regional Linux User Group, so we meet once a month to fla^^^ discuss things :oD Everyone has his (or her) preferences. Some folks run openSUSE, some Debian, some Slackware, some Ubuntu. I'm running my personal mix of CentOS and Fedora (but I know all the other mentioned distros quite well).

I think the key to happiness with Linux is: try out a bunch of distros (I think in this regard you've done your share, Béranger :oD), then choose one of the better ones and stick with it. Learn the ins and outs and the quirks, and how to deal with them. One of my colleagues works for a local radio station, and he's running Gentoo (!) on all their production desktops. Everything is running just perfect there. Another colleague works for a university in Marseilles, and their desktops are running Debian unstable (!) with the latest Enlightenment (!!!).

You know, it's a bit like choosing a motorbike for a race. When it comes down to it, you see that in the end, it's the driver that makes the difference. Much more than the bike. (I know what I'm talking of, I'm famous here for driving reputedly undrivable wrecks :oD)

Of course you are right about most of your points. But I'll quote the great french neurologist Charcot: "La théorie, c'est bon, mais ça n'empêche pas d'exister".

Cheers from France,

Niki (actually busy writing "Linux Aux Petits Oignons")

C'est bien pour votre cœur que vous fassiez une pause Béranger.

It was great reading you every day. I too got frustrated many times with Linux and switched back to XP. It has been going back and forth for some years now. At the end of the day, there is almost nothing I cannot do with Windows. Shame I cannot tell the same for Linux; I really wanted to!

Take care and I hope you don't dissappear from the web!

I agree with your list of reasons why linux is not ready for the desktop almost completely, it's a useful reading (I hope this is not just a coupe de théâtre, though).
On the other hand, I can't understand why Windows is better.
Sorry for the rough analogy, but it's like saying "Women are stupid" and then dating a guy (or the opposite, if you're female).
I face everyday your same bugs, the same idiocy by many developers and distro mantainers, the RTFM answers when there are no serious manuals, the incontrovertible and weird fact that Firefox runs better under windows, whatever, but I never thought for a single minute to come back to win, but it's sure my expectations are smaller than yours.
Bye!

Finally you made the move!

See you back in a few months, when you grow tired of booting your Knoppix to try to fix your irreparably broken Windows setup, only to format and reinstall.

I mostly agree with your diagnosis, but i still think that the world is better with flawed desktop Linuxes around than with only Windows/MacOS. The future might be bright for cute pre-installed Linux laptop like the eees.
And BTW the .doc format is EVIL, i hope it will die slowly and painfully.
About your selection: i would add XnView and the (amazing! free!) Autostitch in your image section.
Cheers.

@Satchmo:

You must be idiot. At work, my desktop PC has Windows XP, installed in November 2004. Since then, I've installed and removed *hundreds* and hundred of applications, and I've never managed to screw the system! I currently have on this Windows box (and they all work): Visual Studio, Dev-Cpp, MinGW, QDevelop, Monkey Studio, Edyuk, Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, etc., plus Apache, MySQL, PHP. I never needed to reinstall the system, nor to use the "repair" option!

@I.D.:

I didn't say Linux should die! I only said: "Not on my laptop!"

I never liked XnView. And I never cared about Autostitch.

I hope I'll still have a chance to read some rants from you. Best wishes in a new year :-).

It's hard to disagree with much of your analysis or criticisms (though their importance to different people will certainly vary a huge amount) so good luck with your foray into full time XP use. I think you might run into some blockers there as well and then you'll have to weigh it all up, which set of idiocies/enduring frustrations are least objectionable to you? I have some doubts that this will look the same in 6 months as it does now.

I have two Windows licences, XP Pro for a laptop and Vista Home Premium for a desktop. Both machines retain the Microsoft installs in reduced partitions but in fact run Debian Lenny so I have the choice legally and practically to use whatever I like and I have thought about making Windows the primary system on my laptop, to the extent that I've done the research and installed the applications that should let me do all the same things as in Debian (broadly speaking). I 100% agree that one of the biggest frustrations in free software is the system of not-bug-fixing i.e. releasing new version with new bugs instead of fixing original, despite the new version essentially being unavailable to anyone who doesn't use (because they cannot!) the latest kernel/gtk/libwhatever version. I have to say that Debian is quite conscientious about patches and that this mitigates some of the least satisfactory practices of some software authors/projects, but doesn't help with new features, only security flaws and other gross problems.

On the other hand I have enormous flexibility and choice. I find it incredibly useful to be able to *easily* run SSH servers and clients, and to run a dictionary server on my lan. Of course Windows has Putty and WinSCP makes a good substitute for sshfs but like many Windows applications these seem to be horribly confusing and complex compared to their command line equivalents. How easy is it to run an SSH server in Windows XP? (Maybe it is easy, I don't know).

I'm always interested when people say that they have never suffered a malware infection in Windows. How would they know? Signature based detection will deal with over 90% (but less than 100%) of known malware but heuristics driven detection will detect maybe 70% of unrecognised malware. And this is in laboratory tests...who knows what really exists out there? And why should there be obvious symptoms/evidence of a problem? It's perfectly possible to gather data silently (in effect) and to use the infected host's resources discreetly. Only the crudest infections should arouse any kind of suspicion from the user or any reaction by the system's defenses. As someone who doesn't run warez, always runs unprivileged account, uses strong passwords on all accounts, disables all unused services, disables guest account, keeps the OS and applications patched, browses with Firefox, noscript, privoxy I can say that the XP install on my laptop was compromised, with all DNS requests being manipulated and certain of them redirected, and if I hadn't navigated to an https site then I may not have noticed for a long time. (This was an infected client problem, not name server, as rebooting into Debian showed). Running AV/"security" tools from read only media revealed precisely nothing untoward. Hello restore media.... You have all this kind of fun ahead of you, and even if you can say your XP install is clean you will never be able to feel absolutely confident about it, nor will you necessarily be able to say the same thing tomorrow :-)

Anyway I've never made the move from Debian to XP because the grass isn't greener the other side of the fence, it just occasionally seems that way. A trick of the light?

But on a more positive note I have a couple of suggestions;

1st a very good free CD/DVD burning tool: InfraRecorder. It's been around for a while but finally is extremely capable and reliable. Being free software it doesn't have silly limitations and a monetized upgrade path like CDBurnerXP and it looks nice too.

2nd: Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector). You are entering a bizarre world of being responsible for discovering and applying patches and updates for each and every application on your OS independently, except for the ones with their own updaters which will consume your RAM and bandwidth, mess with your boot process, do a variety of dubious and unwanted things and generally bug the shit out of you :-) Secunia is yet another annoying scanning and updating tool but at least it lets you switch off all the other pieces of crap (if that's permitted) and it should keep you aware of application updates and particularly patches with no effort on your part.

Good luck :-)

Thx for the informative post.

I've never tried InfraRecorder before, because its website is ugly. (Yes, beauty counts sometimes.)

As for Secunia PSI... you know, even Kaspersky AV will tell you if your installed version of OpenOffice.org is superseded by a security fix upgrade!

I did the exact same thing almost 1 year ago, for mostly the same reasons. But what really sealed the case for me was when I realized that with the advent of cheap dual core cpus and 1GB RAM sticks, and the tremendous progress of visualization software, I would get precisely the setup that I wanted with XP + a virtual machine running Linux on top for dev work.

I guess this is the best decision for you.

I'm a Linux user simply because Linux happens to work much better than Windows on my hardware and for my needs. My computer came with Windows XP installed and has a sticker saying "Designed for MS Windows XP", yet it works like shit with Windows. And wonderfully with Linux: everything has worked out of the box for years and nothing has ever broke. This is the kind of experience that everyone looks for. If one OS doesn't give it to you, find another one that does.

My Arch installation is 3 years old and so the whole system has been upgraded hundreds of times without any important breakage. I know, I'm in the <1% lucky bastards, don't blame me for it.

Reading your blog it was obvious that Linux doesn't work for you, no matter how hard you've tried. If Windows does, then so be it.

But since nothing's perfect, I'll enjoy reading your Windows' rants from now on ;-)

"those who killed it are precisely Red Hat Inc., Canonical Ltd., the stupidity of the project management of the major desktop environments "

Red Hat just noticed that it was impossible to have a reliable desktop with too many "up"grades/bugs (re)introductions.

Canonical just copied (copying is their greatest UBUskill) RH, with a 4 yrs delay.... Both cannot be seen a responsible (esp. UBU-Cononical) for a murder....

"2009 is the year of \“No Linux on my desktop\”. Return to reason, yep."

Do you really think "a year" (which is not even bissextile!) is a long time enough for getting reasonable again?
Wish you a long life with many XP laptops.

Nice post, with a good list of programs to try. I've got a question, which CD/DVD burning program do you use? I am looking for one, but I am still undecided on which to try. I think Nero 9 is bloatware, it's got too many things. So any good one?

CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder, or Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 FREE.

I take it that Beranger just wanted to count his active readers :P

*** OFFLINE CROPPED VERSION *** for the links only:
http://beranger.org/img/Defecting_offline_links.rar

.rar? .rar!!!???? This is serious, he took the blue pill.....

The other choice was tgz, but I thought of the other Windows users unaware of what that means ;-)

OK, maybe I should have made it RPM :-) Still extractable under Windows by http://legroom.net/software/uniextract :-p

I actually enjoyed that post, nice one. I use linux full time, although I have nothing but good things to say about Xp, I have an Xp partition on one box for my daughter's games. It has never been infected with a virus/trojan/worm. Infections are caused 99% of the time by PEBCAK. So that little gem used by Linux zealots is bollocks.

I recently tried Vista on a new laptop and I liked it for a week or so, now it's slowdown-time, (and yes, I know every windows system tweak known to man), so Vista will go. I don't use Xp because I can genuinely do everything I have to do with (Dream)linux, but I do agree with the Linux problems which you commented on. These last two years have been shitty. Xorg has been my main qualm, along with Debian politics which sent me to Arch. Now I use Dreamlinux and Xubuntu (I like Xfce desktops).

So this is one Linux user who will stay with Linux, agreeing with most of what you have said. Good luck with your new Xp future, i'm sure it will serve you well.

I have been reading your comments everyday for quite a while. I will miss them.

Your post is convincing; mostly all the good reasons to use XP are there and it is difficult to argue with them, but...

I will not use MS products because of ethical considerations. I try hard not to touch products related to Monsanto either, for the same reasons.

Besides, I have been happily running sidux on all my machines for more than a year now without a single glitch.

Muaaaaaaaaah!

Yes, you can, Béranger :P

Thanks for the answer.
Btw, i think this post is going to break a record of most comments in your blog! (if it hasn't already).

Nay...

-- "How Linux Mint proved to be unacceptable for a reliable usage"
http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/10/27/08/45/36
...has 100 comments.

-- "KDE vs. GNOME: What I Will Miss And Where"
http://beranger.org/index.php?page=3k&article=2484
...has 50 comments.

I use every day OpenBSD on my laptop, and it works very well: I have a better Wifi experience than I could ever have on Windows, I have a graphical environment which fits my needs, and I use the tools I want. Actually, the only thing I miss is playing video games. :-)

Anyway, everyone is free to make his own choices, and I do not care if you use BSD, Linux, Windows or OS X.

And yes, BSD is definitely ready for desktop.

I've just completed 2 fresh machine installations of XP.Just plain BS, a lot off shitty 3rd party full off s... soft and things are not going better there too!Oh nooo.
But yes, there is the standard, and every fscking shit will run ont that piece off crap, indeed, but with what cost???
Oh...and I'm not talking about money, because with so much money(2 machines with XP and M$_office!!) I've already bought myself a shiny new core 2 processor and be 20 times more productive on the other bsd/loonix BS.

> Plus, the Linux community of aficionados is not
> reasonable, and it's not even polite — they through
> the accusation of “FUD” and “trolling” to anyone, in a
> very medieval religious intolerance style

oh, the irony!

anyway, good riddance...

@Béranger
I agree with most of your statements, but I don't understand some:

"think of Arch, the distro with the dumbest installer in the whole Universe"

It might be true, but you say this as install would be daily task. In case of Arch you have to do it once per hard disk lifespan. This is far better than the really boring and repetitive win task: upgrading (reinstalling) the installed apps. Upgrading the win itself being forced to restart it is nerve-racking.

"forces the user to use the latest-and-only-latest build of each and every package! This forces the user to live with the latest bugs"

Bug-free packages are only an illusion. Due to this if I have to choose I prefer living with the latest bugs than with the old ones. Besides the new bugs there might be some new features, too. What is good in being sticked to old bugs, old features?

In my win era I had very few problems, but all of them were critical and ended with a new install. These problems weren't concerned to infections.

By the way, I hated that at least half (sometimes 100%) of CPU and mem resources were busy only because several security apps were running in the background. Then add the increased boot time plus intensive hard disk usage during scans and you can imagine that I'm happy that my win era ended and I never wish it back.

At my workplace win works fine (but is slow - eh, no registry cleaner tool, and no time to defrag). The rules are severe: don't install, don't browse, don't set up, if possible don't touch (and the best if don't even boot). Is like jumping and swimming in a dry pool.

If you will miss Terminal see this book: http://www.sybex.com/WileyCDA/SybexTitle/Windows-Administration-at-the-Command-Line-for-Windows-Vista-Windows-2003-Windows-XP-and-Windows-2000.productCd-0470046163.html ;o)

Cool book, thx! (But most of the CLI tools are dumb, try find and findstr.)

Bien, je me demande combien de temps je vais résister moi-même à l'enfer et la non-usabilité de Linux (depuis 1998)... et vous rejoindre sous XP.
Il y avait tant d'espoir !

That DC vs PS2 analogy i didnt quite understood it, but anyway, a pretty good burning program in my opinion is imgburn
http://www.imgburn.com/ a lot of people are using it in linux too, via wine

A lot of this is true. But I use XP and Vista every day as well as Ubuntu. For every drawback of Linux there are at least as many in each of these OS's. Compare the monolithic nature of the Linux kernel to the sheer idiocy of the registry. Pick your poison. For me, it just comes down to which sets my teeth to grinding the least. It's always a distinct relief to be able to sit down at my Ubuntu machine, and I look forward to the day when the handful of apps I use that are MS only aren't necessary anymore.

Probably the most annoying thing to me about Windows is

> DragonFly BSD is very interesting, but it doesn't target the desktop.

I don't care about "the desktop", just MY desktop.

An understandable move.
You mostly can't beat the productivity on XP machine
In another note, my wifi USB adapter only runs smoothly on Linux (TP-LINK TL-WN322G) compared to constant on-and-off on any Windows machine.

I breaks my heart though to see MS tries kill XP over and over again. Even PS2 has better treatment from its manufacturer.

@JJSS: ImgBurn is pretty cool. Nero Micro is also nice, it's the most lightweight Nero ever. It's actually a hack of Nero Burning ROM, but it does not include the shitty Nero bloatware.

The Nero Encoder in Burning ROM is probably the best audio encoder ever created, along with the Nero AAC codec (freeware command line stuff). Burning ROM also supports plugins for virtually anything audio, so you can convert anything into anything with minimum effort. Ideal for FLAC conversions.

@asasega:

Thanks a lot for letting me know of ImgBurn! (I'm afraid I never heard of it before.)

I tried it and it's a small gem! At least for common usage patterns, it's FANTASTIC!

Well of course the ads will be changing - now there is money to be made - when does your "evaluation" laptop arrive with windows 7,
Officialy you cannot buy XP anymore - erm so your copy is from where? - how many hardware changes did you make? how many pc's can the same copy run on? etc etc in case you had forgotten.....

Officially you can still very much buy Windows XP Professional with SP3, even in my country:
http://www.emag.ro/sisteme_operare2/microsoft-windows-xp-professional-sp3-english-oem--pE8505683
http://www.dol.ro/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product-FN5008----11487-51636

The CD+license is in OEM regime, but this merely means you don't have any support and you have to install it by yourself.

Of course, US$175 is not cheap (but XP Home is cheaper).

Also, I noticed here a number of Lenovo notebooks that come with Vista preinstalled *and* with a "Windows XP Professional downgrade DVD".

Also an official, authorized source for buying MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL ENG CD OEI SP3 1/ PACK:
http://www.dc-shop.ro/prod-16041-MICROSOFT%20WINDOWS%20XP%20PROFESSIONAL%20ENG%20CD%20OEI%20SP3%201%20PACK.htm

(I skipped the SP2 versions, as well as the Home edition.)

Sorry, VLC media player is NOT freeware, it is a complete open source multimedia framework.
All the drivers included are free too.

Best

"Officialy you cannot buy XP anymore - erm so your copy is from where? -"

But, in my small (and poor) province town, you can pay (ca 100E$, ie 130US$) to have XP replacing Vista... and be sure the HW you bring be recognized...

As far as GNUlinux is concerned, it seems that nobody wants it to replace Vista (and most of the W$$$$ installers have been tought under GNUlinux, and are rather positively biased about this holy OS : M$ is going to pay schools to be sure people will be tought under W$$$$$ : exit the positive bias about GNUlinux....)
I am very surprised to read that Bochs (I never tried, prefer qemu) exists under XP...

@jb:

There were two "miscolored" bullets, now fixed. Thx.

Well, I've to agree with a lot of your arguments. But the fact is that you don't need to use Linux the same way as a lot of beginner use it.

If you use the enlightenment (e17) desktop environment with well chosen applications, you may avoid a lot of problems you described.

Of course, it's not the "most intuitive" thing to do. But if you compare to MS windows, there is at least two non-intuitive things at all to do:
* defragment your drives regularly (and do some clean-up in some places)
* edit the registry to avoid autorun from USB devices (and proceed with care when browsing them): this is one of the way to get easilly viruses.

Although it is possible to use MS Windows XP instead of Vista, it seems quite clear that Microsoft offers this choice because they're quite obliged to do so (who wants Vista?), not by a willing to provide the best for their users. In case you would have to buy a new computer in 4 years (for example because of hardware failures), you don't have any warranty to be able to run your current software, and I doubt that MS futures OS would be less polluted with DRM management, genuine software verification and other stupid things.

In fact to use MS Windows one should have a really high confidence in Microsoft, whereas using GNU/LInux does not mean trusting all the Linux community. "The power of open-source software" is not something like wind.

So... I'll continue to run [GNU/]Linux and to be happy with it !

e17 is UUUUUUUUGLY!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:E17_screenshot.jpg

Nice post, summarizes my feelings with Linux lately (last 2-3 years).

Don't worry, you'll be back. You've just forgot how bad Windows is, everything looks better when viewed through nostalgia. I fired up a ZX Spectrum emulator a few days ago and had great fun with it for several hours, but then the nostalgia wore off and I went back to my lovely Kubuntu 8.04 (yep, I'm waiting for KDE4 to mature).

You'll soon want to be back in the efficient and smooth Linux world again.

Btw, small nitpick: KDE didn't rip off Vista, Vista ripped off KDE and Compiz/Beryl, although it did it badly.

I can't believe that a sane person can dump Linux for the old hag XP.
Wish you luck with all the viruses, security flaws and perils of Windows. I am sure that you will spend more time installing anti-everything and defraying your system than you would ever spend fine tuning a Linux desktop. not to mention burning your dollars to keep XP warm.
Anyway we will be ready to welcome you back by the time KDE 4.2 is released ;)

95% of the sane persons are likely to "dump linux for the old hag XP" bacause :
* most of the GNU apps work better under the "old hag XP" than under the Holy gnuLinux:
did you tryto install a *recent* version of glade under Linux (of couse, you can drop your installing your work and install newer , untested applications under the Holy gnuLinux: it works under XP)
R (http://cran.at.r-project.org) is very easy to install, update and profile under XP: under gnuLinux, even profiling (as some people think gnuLinux is at least good for developping/testing) is not documented, as nobody uses it.
VMplayer is easier to install...

You might perhaps object with valgrind, which is likely to appeal the masses....
As far as viruses (the ritual, worn-out argument : it is so worn-out it smells pathetical) :
* I got one worm, in 2006, under XP: it came from an Australian gnuLinux "advocate".....(as Mint freely shipped a worm named tenya, and waited till the users detected it in August 2008....
* at work, my XP is 5 yrs old, and never got malware..

And I do not think dollars are the Romanian currency ("burning your dollars")

> e17 is UUUUUUUUGLY!
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:E17_screenshot.jpg

that makes just as much sense as saying vista is ugly based on this: http://www.themexp.org/preview.php?mid=183034&type=vs&view=date&page=&cat=&name=ForestGreen.zip&proddesc=Visual Styles&catdesc=Designer&namedesc=ForestGreen

you obviously meant the the bling theme is ugly...

Nay. I took THE FIRST E17 SCREENSHOT that most people would find -- the first one from Wikipedia's page!

Enlightenment's site sucks too, and in a few clicks you can find NO screenshot at all -- how could people expect for more relevant and possibly less ugly ones?

E17 is like saying "I don't want you to use me, this is why I have a non-usable website, and the screenshot on Wikipedia is just fine".

Wow. This came as a shock...:|

As a long time user of Linux (since 93)
including multi-screen audio and video
editing and such...

I really think that Linux will only 'get there'
on the desktop IF tools, desktops and such work across all installations of the same CPU type... (i.e. 32 bit Intel, 64 bit Intel, Other).

It seems that every new install (I'm using Mandriva 2009 right now) there's something
that breaks, or is missing.... the old
3 screen capable xorg.conf doesn't work...
KDE4, compared to KDE3, is not ready for prime time.

Sure I can handle it but I've been programming since '84...
Recently, trying to do video editing, I
burned up serious time trying to find
something that worked decently...
In the end I had to purchase a tool
and run it in VMWare'd Windows for
part of the animation and then finish up
utilizing cinelerra. Before I did that
I tried just about every Linux tool available.

Many tools didn't work because of dependency issues ('dependency hell')...

Much of this may be because of the
lack of consistency in the API
OR Kernel API across releases...

I think that applications need to
utilize an OS entry point that allows
the application to state or ask for
the 'Linux Personality' that it wishes
to see... so that some generic layer
can translate between what the
application wants and what can
be provided for with the Linux kernel
or loaded on demand.


I *LOVE* Linux... and it has been my
major desktop since 1997 but
someone has to address long term
consistency...

I agree totally and am writing this from a Vista notebook. I have had Ubuntu on this notebook, but boy, is that crappy...
Absolutely no suspend / hibernate when using nvidia drivers and poor suspend/hibernate when it's turned off.
Every program in Ubuntu is set up not to interact with other programs, which sucks.

In Windows, suspend/hibernate works like a charm and it stays out of my way generally speaking. Vista SP1 is not so bad and SP 2 will probably be a lot better (although there is no way to be sure about that)

I have ranted at work and in some comments on the net about Gnome and KDE, which are furthest from the UNIX mindset.

I believe that a program should:
- do what it does the best way possible
- be configured through text files and not by daemons or other crap...
(After all, they are not called daemons for nothing ;) )

I have to say that using a desktop with Debian is not so bad. I usually stick with the most basic tools not to get annoyed (e.g xli to view images) and a window manager to handle multiple windows (fluxbox at the moment, but checking out others...)

Nobody believes me, but once you're ahead of the (learning) curve, nothing beats using the CLI!

Thanks for the article, it brought a smile to my face :D

May you live in uninteresting times from now on.
Hope that your experience with Windows(OS) is dull, thus enabling you to enjoy the things that matter in life.
It's been a one-of-a-kind ride reading your blog.

Free tip collected from elsewhere (or, why X.Org is now screwed):

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "False"
EndSection

No comment.

Wow....I've been using Linux on the desktop of almost 2 years now and haven't experienced this "megafreeze". Most pieces of software are updated when the upstream project updates. And for the ones that don't (mostly on the server) I haven't had much problem finding the packages to upgrade it myself. But since we're talking desktop this seems to be a pretty moot point.

As for the rest of your points I could definitely see why they would drive you back. But I simply haven't seen the majority of them arise on my systems. Maybe its the distro you're using which seems to be Debian from this article. Maybe you should try one of the downstream distros that more interested in the end user and not the core system.

As for Windows....I doubt I'll ever go back. Maybe its the opposite for me but the problems that people claim they NEVER have on Windows happen quite often for me and the many people around me. Too much installing and uninstalling causes the system to become unstable. I used to keep a box in the house that was for bare essentials only and no software trials of any kind to make sure we had a stable machine. And even that one would require a refresh every so often. My work PC needs a refresh right now and I really haven't installed much of anything.

I also saw someone mention Firefox working better on Windows. Firefox stays open of extreme periods of time on my Linux boxes without a problem. I still need to restart it periodically on Windows because it causes the box to grind when left open too long.

"Linux on the desktop is dead"

Maybe I'm wrong, but what I hear in your post are lots of good point but an exaggerated conclusion based on angry emotions you have toward RedHat/Gnome/KDE, and that fact that Linux's own popularity is now steering UNIX instead of the original equation.

BTW, I think Ubuntu is where "Linux on the Desktop" actually is at (not RedHat), if the downloads means anything. And I do say: I wish Windows had something as powerful as Synaptic, I might use it if it had. And I certainly wish Windows had never conjured anything as convoluted as it's registry.

But I respect Windows. It at least has more integrity than Mac, for one; M$ took a stand early for backward compatibility, and incredibly, stuck with it to the point where even a DOS program from the 80s can still run in a command terminal. Furthermore, as a Windows and Mac programmer, I always felt M$ did a fantastic job documenting their API; lots of my work was done by their very clear example code, and I miss that in Linux (where you never know if the examples you find actually function).

Mac? They took the opposite stand - change fundamentals -- hardware, software -- every 2-3 years so that everyone must start over and buy everything again. I think they really cultivated this obsolescence in to their strategy, in fact - subtle things, like even at the style leve. Like, maybe they chose "white" for their laptops (everything, really) so users, influenced by the iStatus/iCult, feel pressured to upgrade to a clean-looking new one. I mean, it won't be any dirtier than my 1998 black Dell laptop, but it'd looks a lot worse!

Ya, and if that sounds conspiratorial, well, who knows. But I laugh the other day at seeing their new "all recyclable laptop" - fit right in with my theory: now they're making users even feel *wholesome* about discarding their laptop to get a new one!

Don't get me wrong: they're geniuses; I'm in awe of the degree to which they understood how to milk a niche market.

But in comparison with that, Microsoft isn't "evil" so much as just a monopoly acting perhaps just a shade better than any other monopolies have throughout history when scared for their existence... And what are they scared of?

The one thing they can't control: Opensource Software.

The very first thing I noticed about Vista, btw, was that M$ had made dual-booting with Linux astoundingly hard. Accident or intention? One thing is for sure: I stopped plopping the backup Linux partition on everybody's new computers. I think it is obvious from their history (with WordPerfect, secret-spec agreements with hardware manufacturers, etc.) that this was intentional.

Interestingly, Mac (strategizing for niche instead of monopoly continuance) had their own tactic: Forget M$ and join/parasitize M$' only real threat: OpenSource. Their choice of BSD in particular was a stunningly insightful move - it gave them a perfect place to start obfuscating the opensource underpinnings they'd parasitized in order to (with least amount of effort) presented something both wholly proprietary AND still close enough to the GNU/BSD/Linux evolution that most of their work would be done by the opensource movement.

Leaving me basically feeling that MacOS is mostly just another Gnome/KDE - raising the question whether MacOS isn't just another “Linux on the desktop.” Unless we're going to be all, uh, "religious" as you say about the difference between Linux and BSD.

Anyway, I've enjoyed your rant, you do have many very insightful points, so thanks for sharing. And good luck with windows. And I'll leave you with one last philosophical point:

"The idiotic “we must release every 6 months” idea of the GNOME project. They have unfixed bugs in Gedit for years (that's kinda Notepad, right?), yet they focus on the constant change of everything that works."

"They, they, they." that's Microsoft-think. OpenSource: "You, me, we."

I mean, sure, it sounds fruitily "commie" or "hippy" or "touchy-feely" even even to me... but it's just true! OpenSource is almost inexplicable from a business model; remove the profit incentive and it becomes very nebulous to explain how exactly it is that we have a there is a Linux environment having the legitimacy that we can actually *rant* about it, and watch it have M$ shaking in it's boots.

And I'll use your Gedit/Notepad thing to put my feelings in perspective: While you may think Notepad and Gedit are the same thing, there is a fundamental difference. And it's not Gedit's Highlight Mode or plug-in functionality. No, it's that we've GOT the source code for Gedit.

Now, I've personally filed angry bug reports with "them" in years past, feeling frustrated that "they" wouldn't do anything, as if there was a "they."

But it was the wrong attitude. I was demanding that someone do something for me, as if I'd paid for a service and someone wasn't providing it.

What makes things like Gedit (and all of Gnome) possible is almost inexplicable. It has more to do with vague notions of the "satisfaction of coding", "satisfaction of volunteerism." Sure, there is some ego in here too, just as in the profit model, but what is more interesting is how most of the kind of actual progress over time that actually results in an entire Gnome, for instance, seems to happen at a nearly anonymous level of toil (bug-fixes, code cleanups, etc.)

In the business model, how to motivate is clear: money. And ranting doesn’t really have a negative effect there. But when a love of coding and volunteerism are what fuels it, ranting is definitely a negative incentive. Criticism is welcome, but only when contributing, not venting.

Frankly, a friendly email/forum-post/blog-comment emphasizing what’s RIGHT in what a project/programmer is doing along with what’s WRONG – that’s incentive in this model.

I know, because once every week or two I get one of those, and even though it is in the minority to the angry gripes (that my software is was crap but is getting worse), it is enough (given human psychology) to counter them.

The irony to all this? I only found your post because I routinely do daily searches for mention of my software, to find problems, to find praise, to find how it’s maybe made a difference in people’s lives - and indeed: my software’s on your “recommended list” or whatever above!

So the funny thing is that while the negative rants probably got me to write, it was the fact that ultimately you affirmed my reasons for making software (by recommending my app) that literally leaves me “feeling like coding today” (not to mention keeping my app available for Mac and PC too – which really is triple the work).

So thanks!

Your opinion is exactly that - yours. While some of your reasons are valid, many of your intended factual statements are incorrect. There's too many to go through however I'm not here to slam your anti-Linux stance. I am here to give you the view of someone who looks after many client-based servers and desktops, and one thing keeps on coming to the fore - it takes a lot less support on the Linux stuff than Windows. I believe in functional and productive systems, and my customers have come to as well. Less time sorting out the vicious cycle of virus and patch, poor hardware support and rebuilds; more time actually using the machine. And before you mince it, I'm a qualified MCSE and LPIC engineer ( 15 years now ). That gives me a qualified view of both worlds.

"They" are the selected/elected/self-appointed/meritorious GNOME developers -- those with accounts at gnome.org, those who can commit changes there, and THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT!

A sane project manager would *never* say: "uh, let's change the underlying filesystem technology, who the fuck cares about the gazillions of small bugs?"

The GNOME project is *not* anarchy, it's still a managed project, right? They should have a leader. Well, a manager's task is to manage resources, so that if there is someone available and willing to "change the world", that someone should be asked to fix some poignant existing bugs instead of reinventing the squared wheel.

How could anyone believe in such shitty projects, when "THEY" are like a bunch of kindergarten kids who always want new toys, yet they don't care to fix the broken ones?

Dear qualified MCSE and LPIC engineer,

I'm glad you believe in Linux ON THE DESKTOP/LAPTOP.

Red Hat doesn't (and Ubuntu never heard of QA).

That's the short version of everything.

Dammit! Who am I supposed to share my KDE4 rants with now? ;)

Oh well... I do feel more lonely now that I know one less person in a love/hate relationship with Linux.

Best of luck to you.

So what if Red Hat doesn't the desktop - the desktop has never been their intended market. Surely one of the other myriad of desktop-orientated distros will do. I'm not sure I understand your fixation on Red Hat. And who is to say Ubuntu are the be all and end all of the desktop - personally I've never understood the fascination. There are a no. of other desktop-orientated distro's out there that are functional, reliable and provide easy-to-use desktops for even beginners to use. That's the long of it all .... simple. But then your obvious dislike for non-Windows systems can not be overcome. As I said in my first post - it's your opinion.

You don't seem to understand, not even after 15 years of serious business experience.

Let's try again.

1. Most people use Windows on their desktops and laptops.

2. There is a "free as in paranoia" stuff called Linux, and a gazillion of Linux distributions.

3. The very vocal FLOSS community complains that people don't use Linux: they *should* use Linux, but they're stupid captive users of M$, boo!

4. Is the #1 Linux company, Red Hat, offering a viable desktop and laptop replacement for Windows? NO, and it publicly states that they don't believe in Linux on the desktop as a business.

5. Are any of Novell, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, Fedora (nope, this is alpha software, sorry), etc. etc. fulfilling all the *quality* and reliability, *hardware compatibility*, maintainability and user convenience, backwards binary compatibility, etc. etc. that the captive Windows users would require in order to make the big switch to Linux? NO.

6. Therefore, for most people there is no other reasonable choice but to use Windows (XP or Vista, usually OEM-style anyway, which makes it somewhat cheaper).

The Linux community should understand:
-- how real life really is;
-- how the business mindset is like;
-- how the desktop *and* the laptop are *not* like servers;
-- how stuff that worked yesterday *should* work tommorow too;
-- how idiot is to release new "features" nobody asked for, whereas sometimes simple bugs are not fixed in years;
-- how idiot is to make huge disruptive changes in a more aggressive manner than the criticized monopolist (Vista vs. XP is less disruptive than KDE4 vs. KDE3, for one example).

The Linux community should also learn TO SHUT UP when they're caught with the pants down!

Yes, the pants are Red Hat (#1 in the business perception) and Canonical (#1 in the mass perception), and the untidy "jewels" you can see is called GNU/Linux.

Hmm, not sure how to respond to that tirade - not even sure if it's worth it. Nevertheless, you still push a number of inaccuracies:

1. your point?

2. again, your point?

3. I think a very small portion of the FLOSS community complains about this; and if you want to be captive to MS, then so be it - it's your choice; that is what FLOSS is about, choice. If you choose not to use FLOSS, then fine.

4. RH has never stated this - please provide proof; however they have said that it's not their core market

5. Most of these are well served by Linux already ( yes we know your position ) - backwards compatibility is not all it's cracked up to be. The dev tools in the FLOSS world make it a fairly easy task to port all but the most complex of apps, and web-based versions are often the best solution for cross-platform requirements

6. There are reasonable alternatives to Windows ( even though I hold a good view of XP ) but for a number or reasons:

- Microsoft's constant FUD makes it difficult for non-informed users to make the decision to change
- Microsoft is undoubtedly the leader in the desktop although for a number of not very savoury reasons
- the hardware manufacturers' constant pandering to Microsoft results in very little visibility of FOSS from the top tier manu's in the consumer market, which makes up a fair portion of the current 90% market share of Windows
- businesses have over the past 15 years learnt a certain methodology of software purchase and use; it takes time to change

And now ...

- recent code reviews mark FOSS software in general as code with the least amount of bugs - fact
- Linus, the driver behind the kernel, almost completely ignores the server; his commitment to the desktop has and still is producing a quality desktop kernel

Lastly, Linux as a desktop OS is still relatively new and hasn't had the large market use that Windows has. There are flaws and new things to learn. Certainly it will improve as time goes by. But to say it's unusable is disingenuous at the least. RH and Canonical, although both popular in the market, are not all that Linux is.

And there is not reason to SHUT UP as you put it. There is every reason to learn and improve. Knowledge is gained by change, the will to learn and pushing the envelope. These are ideals that transcend software and surround us as humans. Every piece of improvement and technology has come about as a result of these ideals. To do otherwise is to stagnate, something Microsoft has been good at for most of its existence.

I agree with most of the author's sentiments, especially those related to irrational religion. I do my best to be platform agnostic, believing that there is the right tool for every job, sometimes even multiple, equally acceptable tools. However, I will admit to a soft spot in my heart towards Linux and its philosophy of open source, and at times have probably advocated its use on a server that would have been just as well suited to Windows 2003. I admit I have a bias against Microsoft and greatly dislike their business tactics. And don't get me started on Windows Vista or Microsoft's crappy 64 bit implementation. However, I would never entertain using a Linux distro as my desktop because it just doesn't suit my business environment. I also wouldn't dream of using Linux on a laptop that I needed to be able to use wireless or a Winmodem. MadWiFi, et. al is simply an unrealiable kludge that you have to monkey with with each new wifi chipset. It's just not worth it. Use XP, and be done with it. Takes less work, better suited for a business environment, better hardware support. Period. If I needed Linux on a laptop, I'd be inclined to run it under VMware sitting on XP Pro.

Hi,

Linux is the best technically, that's clear.

And for the prettiness and easiness, it's also coming close to the very good level.

Try the puppylinux live CD distribution.

Latest version is at :
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-4.1.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso

Download the iso, burn it to CD and boot from it.

Play with it and then after come to the forum to discuss it at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/

Cheers

Your post lists some good points that frustrate me as well. Still I find the driver/application/upgradation much better in linux as compared to XP. But that could be just me. After all, what matters is what suits u best. And I hope that we can remove the problems that plague linux soon(many of which are put fwd by u very aptly).
If you call out the FLOSS community for berating MS users and "demanding" that they switch to linux, aren't you doing the same (maybe not in your post, but your comments do the same).
Anyways, we should not judge anyone by the OS one chooses to use, and lets just close it with saying that the best OS is the one that _just works_ for oneself.

Arf, arf, arf !!! all behaviors are in nature, even the animals and most absurd! but in general there was an explanation ... For you, what is it? pub? end of inspiration? something else?
I think I can reasonably give an opinion, having practiced since the beginning Windows (DOS and unfortunately before), while having followed first Minix (I've used before Linus ...) and of course, Linux ... What we liked at the time was that it was a mini unix like, but then over the years, the invention of X11 and graphical interfaces, Linux has become increasingly simple to install and use, it ended up being as much as windows, for things are normal.
Now, as regards bugs, BSOD and so on, then there is no picture, no common position, although with time-and XP-things are arranged much! And I do not speak of the problems of viruses, so anti virus updates, etc ... And if by chance something you do not like, you are bound hand and foot, depending totally on the program's authors, unable even to know whether it was placed back doors or things like that (this which made the fortune of "Windows revealed" and other ...); no chance to control or change anything!
And last but not least, you'll be happy to encourage and fatten companies for whom compliance with the users is far behind that of shareholders, you are really in the trend! Welcome to the world where one sheet more often checkbook its documentation welcome to the world or the client is considered the cash cow!

@Robby:
> 4. RH has never stated this - please provide proof; however they have said that it's not their core market

------------------------------------------------------------
"What’s Going On With Red Hat Desktop Systems? An Update" (2008-04-16)
http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/04/16/whats-going-on-with-red-hat-desktop-systems-an-update/

«The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative.»

Then they start to lie, failing to admit that they abandoned the Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD): «Plans for this product were originally announced at the 2007 Summit Conference. [...] We originally hoped to deliver RHGD within a few months, and indeed the technology side of the product is complete. There have, however, been a number of business issues that have conspired to delay the product for almost a year.»
------------------------------------------------------------
"Red Hat Skips Consumer Linux Desktop" (2008-04-17)
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144749/red_hat_skips_consumer_linux_desktop.html

«Red Hat has no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market, but will continue to place its bets on a desktop for commercial markets.

NO PLANS FOR A CONSUMER DESKTOP!!!!

"We are focused on infrastructure software for the enterprise market, and to that market we are offering the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop," said Michael Chen, vice-president of corporate marketing at Red Hat.

"You need a different support ecosystem and applications for the *consumer* desktop," Chen added.»
------------------------------------------------------------

So far, THEY ARE NOT READY WITH ANYTHING FOR THE CONSUMER DESKTOP! (RHEL DESKTOP is practically having so few applications that it doesn't count for real life users.)

And RHGD is *dead*.

Red Hat is now, at the end of 2008, alomost in the same position they were in 2003, when Matthew Szulik said: «I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line.» ("Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers", http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39117575,00.htm)

From the same article: «However, Szulik expects Linux to be ready in a couple of years after it has had time to mature. [...] "Consumers want USB drivers and digital camera support; but for the enterprise desktop, that is a little bit different -- that area is ripe," he said.»

THEY. DON'T. HAVE. A. LINUX. CONSUMER. DESKTOP. END-2008. LAME.

(And no, Novell's SLED is no good. Lack of apps too. Building your own apps would screw the existing dependencies and probably break your SLED eventually.)

------------------------------------------------------------

I AM TIRED TO SCREW WITH THE TOO MANY VARIATIONS OF SHITTY LINUX DISTROS. PERIOD. IN 15 YEARS, THEY WEREN'T ABLE TO COME WITH 1 (ONE) VALID CONSUMER DISTRO!

I gave up Linux long ago. I am very disappointed by almost all distros. NONE suits me, and I've tried some in my time. I remember the good old days when I'd screw the system then happily pulling out the CD to reinstall Mandrake 8, but I was a kid back then and I was doing it for fun. Nowadays, when this are more complex, and I don't want to reinstall my system every week, things are not looking very good. In the past months, I tried Mandriva, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, with the hope that *maybe* I could find something I can really use. But no, that's not possible. Not now.

Sure, you have the source code. But will you, yourself, dig through thousands of lines of code just to fix an annoying bug? Will you? Of course not.

Linux is relatively new? IIRC, it's older than Windows 95, am I right (Linus's announcement was either in '91 or '93 - I don't remember exactly)? So here we are, 15 years later, with tons of bugs noone is fixing, instead focusing on developing useless features and infecting the desktop with Mono.

I was once a proud Linux user. Now I'm getting sick downloading distro ISOs.

Linux killed itself.

The only reasons i still use linux at home are:
1) i am command line junkie. I dont know if you consider a pc that the only graphical application installed is firefox, a desktop. Well its my desktop for the last 2 years.
2) I am used to it more than windows. I tried to use windows again when i got my latest laptop. Came preloaded with Vista. Didnt end well.

I agree with the 99.9% of what you say. Except with "but mostly because it forces the user to use the latest-and-only-latest build of each and every package! This forces the user to live with the latest bugs"
If application developers do a decent job that is not as bad as it may sound.
The primary thing i consider learning from Slackware is: do not use applications you dont trust the decelopers of. At least as much as possible.
I intend to follow that for the rest of my life.

Somehow i get the feeling that if Pat hadnt removed Gnome, you would still be using Slack.

Les récentes discussions sur la fedora dev mailing list, elles me donnent envie de gerber.
Ils tournent tous autour du pot, mais ils veulent pas comprendre.

Some point worth considering.

Some not even true if you prefer Windows.

All in all just another Béranger rant.

As a result, if the approach is honest, we'll see some pretty harsh Windows rants very soon.

Deprecated rants in view of the switch: Béranger's "provide-the-source-and-honour-the-GPL"

Yes, Linux has it's faults. I don't bother trying to get anyone to try Linux because I don't have time to answer every little question like "Why can't I install MyspaceIM or Weatherbug, or whatever".

I have complained about the lack of a unified package system for a long time. While dependency hell is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, I still have a huge issue with the need to have a version of a program not just for every distro, but for every version of every distro. That's a huge PITA.

KDE4 is a huge disappointment. It's supposed to be smaller and faster than KDE3, but it's not. It doesn't have most of the KDE3 options, altough it is getting better, it's not on my list. I have yet to find a compelling reason to bother with it. I was one of the few who pushed to get KDE3 in the openSUSE 11.1 coming out Thursday. Of course, it's now in the "other desktop" options, but at least it's there. The KDE4 devs seem to feel they have to explain to me and that I have to learn how to use their new toy. What a joke. While KDE3 may not have had what THEY wanted for a desktop, it's been on mine since SuSE 5.3 circa 1999.

I use openSUSE and have for a long time. I have found that it comes with most everything I need, and my needs are few. Firefox, Midnight Commander, MPlayer, YaST. It does they job,

As for Windows, I work for a computer shop, and every day I see some new idiocy that some unsuspecting WinDoZe user installed and I have to charge them to fix it. With Linux, I don't have to even think of those issues.

As for the 64/32 bit nonsense, I have found no difference in speed on my Celeron DC running 32bit or 64bit Linux as a Desktop(a server running virtualization is obviously different). You only need more than 4GB if you have 30 programs running doing nothing(which is what happens with XP and the taskbar - every friggin program thinks that it's the most important program you will every use and you rarely use them like Quicktime and Java. Most people have no idea how to stop these parasites from running at startup).

Anyway, like I tell everyone - "Good luck with that"

@Greg:

> The primary thing i consider learning from Slackware is: do not use applications you dont trust the decelopers of. At least as much as possible.

> Somehow i get the feeling that if Pat hadnt removed Gnome, you [Béranger] would still be using Slack.

Think about those two things for a minute, and you'll probably see just why Pat Volkerding stopped packaging GNOME.

notepad2 is open source.

http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD) is not exactly dead. It depends on something called freeipa.org.

No point having a business desktop if you don't have security.

Issues you are dealing with is something I am trying to get sorted out in LSB packaging.

Distributions are not a solution to the Linux problem. Proper installation systems are.

One big annoyance with the standard Windows window management is that you can only move and resize windows from borders. The tool at < http://corz.org/windows/software/accessories/KDE-resizing-moving-for-XP-or-Vista.php > adds Alt+Button move/resize typical in many *nix window managers, making life in Windows a lot less painful. (The kids call it "KDE window-sizer", but of course this idea has been around long before KDE was invented.)

"The only reasons i still use linux at home are:
1) i am command line junkie. I dont know if you consider a pc that the only graphical application installed is firefox, a desktop. Well its my desktop for the last 2 years."

For reason 1, you could try Cygwin (one of RH great useful ideas) and Msys/mingw (30% faster, but more ... frugal).
I had them installed under XP 3 years ago (and they have common sense maintenance/"up"grade cycles) because I thought, at this time , tha GNU/linux was better and to prepear softs to be ported...
Now, I have noticed that many GPL apps (one century ago, the GNU was respected) work better under the ugly, virus full W$$$$$ than under the Holy gnuLinux....

@ciol:

Oh, yeah, succulent threads:
-- "More PATH fallout. Who decided this was a good idea?"
-- "What Fedora makes sucking for me - or why I am NOT Fedora" (HUUUUUGE!)
-- "arial narrow is broken since Fedora 8"
-- "Fedora Com System ? (was: Package updating problem and solutions)"
-- "Where do we go from here DBus problem?"


@craigo:

Thx. Fixed the bullet color for Notepad2 too, and recreated
http://beranger.org/img/Defecting_offline_links.rar


@tuomov:

I don't need to resize a window from any other place than its borders.

félicitation beranger, vous avez fait des émules !

http://forums.archlinux.fr/topic2838.html

Merci quand même de m'avoir fait découvrir pytraffic, qui est un jeu sympatique, et que j'ai mis moins de temps à installer sur mon ordinateur équipé de archlinux que vous n'en avez eu pour l'installer sous windows (et pourtant, chacun sait qu'archlinux a le gestionnaire de paquets le plus idiot de l'univers).

@dbrion4: I only meant that using the command line as much as possible, even exclusively, is IMO the only way to have a working and easily maintainable linux desktop.If you start messing with desktop environments youre more or less screwed.

Also, my laptop is one of those Lenovo's Beranger mentioned above that comes with Rescue & Recovery (3 CDs) to revert back to XP.
Those CDs are the most horrible piece of software i have ever used. Mainly cause theyre not customizable at all. You get all the crap Lenovo has created for you. That includes, a Recovery partition, some trial versions of programs, most notable of which being norton internet security.
I fail to see the point of laptop manufacturers providing trial versions of programs. It would be prefered not to provide them at all.
The R&R version of XP starts with 1gb RAM usage.
A Vista installation with Avira Free Antivirus and all the Lenovo stuff, starts with 500mb RAM usage!
I only started using Vista after SP1, but i think that if you leave eyecandy out(im a classic theme kind of person too), its far superior than XP.
The most annoying feature is of course User Access Control. I expect to see much work regarding that in next widnows version of even with SP2.

Well, anyway yestarday was far away to the record, but now it seems that it is going to pass it.

@zugu:
Thx for the suggestions, I will try them too. I just need something that burns and will *always* manage to burn my cds/dvds.

"moins de temps à installer sur mon ordinateur équipé de archlinux que vous n'en avez eu pour l'installer sous windows"

Vous avez
"oublié"
de donner le temps consacré à l'installation...
Peut-être pourriez vous faire l'acquisition d'une montre....
Ca serait plus convaicant (pour un logiciel libre parmi ....> 50, qui fonctionnent au moins aussi bien sous W$$$$$ (endroit où des yeux peuvent trouver des pannes, après une _utilisation_ approfondie) que sous gnuLinux (au moins à la sauce actuelle)....

Hey!

That's the perfect move for the fascist you are!

Congratulations!

Why do I call you fascist? Well... for obvious reasons. But you also called recently the murdered greek guy "anarcho":

----
Genèse d'une révolte de la jeunesse grecque désenchantée. Jeunesse désenchantée mon cul. Des anarchos.
---------

You also proably think he deserved it, too.

Linux sucks, but claiming that you are working with windows just reveals the kind of "work" you do.

Heil, Beranger!

You are right to accuse popular projects of bullet-point engineering, but it's only natural for Windows migrants to make Windows-like suggestions to those devs. Saying that you're giving up on Desktop Linux is fair and reasonable given this, but I find it odd that you complain about it straying from the Unix philosophy without talking about Slackware or Zenwalk. I do not consider myself a power-user at all, but I've been running an install Slackware 12.1 since it's release, and I'm thinking of freshly installing the newer 12.2. It's not painless to configure, but it is very rewarding to have a system work exactly the way I want it to.

Maybe someday in the future someone will develop a programming language easy enough for anyone to code; then the real genius of Free Software would be recognized, and everyone will see the true benefits of it. But for now, I guess it'll just be for us hackers and masochistic fanboys, eh? (Not that the two groups are mutually exclusive, but oh well).

I find your criticisms of the community harsh and somewhat rude, but I do hope you find a system that works well for you; something that every computer user deserves. If that is a Windows interface, so be it.

Cheers

You seem to be a sophisticated WinXP user, as (you claim) that your system was never infected by malware nor corrupted by software installs.

I guess it takes that advanced sophistication to condemn Linux away from your desktop. :)

Otherwise, it will be the 90-10 situation: 90% of users are unsophisticated enough and would enjoy whatever is working and installed in their PC. The problem is that this 90% is likely to be infected by malware and suffer system corruption sooner or later with WinXP.

OTOH, in Linux, you suffer bugs with constant updates.

There is no easy way out. Maybe separate data and OS, and use the OS that matches your needs at any time - at least that's how I survived close to 10 years with plenty of minimalist Linux and an occasional use of Windows (mainly to check readability of what I compose in Linux).

What shall I say. I have been meditating about this for quite some time, but basically it remains what my first gut-reaction was:

"Ha-ha!" (in the Simpsons' Nelson style)

For years you've pestered the more excitable part of the Linux fanboys with nitpicking about minor flaws of various distributions.

You have dropped distros for their version of OpenOffice not being able to load some obscure Antivirus-plugin or a specific spellchecker. You have shunned one of the best Linux-distributions out there (one you otherwise preferred) for having formed ties with Microsoft.

Now you are switching to Microsoft's deprecated and problematic Windows XP operating-system, where you know you have to invest some hours to configure it to a usable, half-secure state in the first place, and be extremely watchful to keep up with Microsofts's security-fixes in order to keep it like that. And when a security-fix doesn't only fail to fix the vulnerability but causes the system to be unusable, well, bad luck, reinstall everything on your system and start all over again...

Should I feel sorry for you for the shit you get yourself in out of your own accord? No, I'm looking forward to your XP-hater blog. ;)

"I fail to see the point of laptop manufacturers providing trial versions of programs. It would be prefered not to provide them at all."
This is relevant even in the bright gnuLinux word:
my MSI has a recovery portition, and, from the first few lines of GRUB, one has the choice betw :
* booting normally
* going back to factory settings (which means, erasing ones work -the "software" provider considers the users work as pure BS, I suppose.....).
Compiz is not useless, it is often antiergonomic (at least with people more than 40years old: I often hear very weird , obcene oaths from normally very calm friends when compiz sloooooowly hides their work/subject of interest)

Among the strongest things I found in this gnuLinx crap, where everything useful has to be compiled (thanks Beranger for giving some ideas of useful free applications)
was the absence of X headers (Xm.h, etc: I had to pickupu Cygwin's ones...)

and the top one :

top's percentage of CPU time is often above 100% (and it is a monoproc) under qemu or make. I would be rather surprised if the blesssings of the Holy gnuLix could upgrade the processor.
Would you trust a car manufacturer selling the speed indicator/the fuel gauge if they were obviously wrong???
And , for the M$ tax : the installation of gnuLinux on laptops is prepayed; why does nobody speak about buggy linuxes taxes?

i have been using linux as a desktop now since 2007 and i have neever looked back. sure it has some quirks .. nothing in life is perfect. but for evey problem u talked about there is a work around. and even then majority of desktop users dont have a problem with pusle audio or the new xorg. i am a system administrator for a university in my country and we use strictly linux. we have over 70 desktips running ubuntu including the two computer labs.and all the administrative staffs add that to 70 laptops which we give to our students. we were able to configure ubuntu to our taste. installing thousands of free softwares for science and education. scilabs,octave,kile,maxima,sage,openfoam, to say the least. sure some of this programs can be found on windows but what make linux thick is the ecosystem. u cant get that with windows. if we used windows we would need an enterprise grade anti virus to run on our network and a standalone for the laptops. we would need to buy most of the essential things we currently take for granted in linux like cd a simple cd burner for the laptops. or an antivirus
and the huge amount we would have been paying for support. things are smooth but not perfect. last time i had some issues with nfs mount causing the system to freeze . i headed to the nfs irc and it was resolved in less than 5min. such is the nature of the linux ecosystem and the huge community of users willing to help. even most of the issues u highlightes have workaround. for example even though pulse audio work for many people . u are not forced to use it. u can easily remove and use alsa. i did that on hardy with ubuntu.. and if u dont like 6month release u can use ubuntu LTS debian which are more stable. frequent releases help create a target and generate momentun .. in ubuntu the target.for ibex a was focus on connectivity. wireless and 3g . for does who dont like that frequent changes then stick to LTS. u may not like linux.. maybe it doesn't work for u. but the linux desktop is here to stay. linux has made huge inroad to the desktop. i use a dell xps m1330 preinstalled with ubuntu and it just work. even the finger print reader and webcam, hp ships linux and toshiba is to follow. not to talk of the wide spread use of linux in netbooks 5 years ago who would have imagined linux been sold in best buy or shipped preinstalled on one for the best notebooks in the market.. am not saying linux would replace windows or that its better than windows. all am saying is .. linux the linux desktop is here to stay. u not liking it wont change that

> Years later, I know that it was a total waste of time.

what exactly do you mean by "waste of time"? i've been 100% debian since '04, and it just plain gets the job done, is ridiculously reliable, has an insane number of tools available for my work. oh, and it is free.

that's not religion - that's getting stuff done.

now, you say you don't want "religion", but what do you want to do with your computer (beside rant about it's operating system?

the equation is pretty simple:
if you want to play games: windows.
if you want to get stuff done: linux

> 've been 100% debian since '04, and it just plain gets the job done, is ridiculously reliable

Debian doesn't support everything in the Acer laptop I've bought mid-2007 (the mike, for once). Debian has a few ridiculous bugs no one cares about. Debian has a history of messing with tzdata updates. Debian is a mess.

> the equation is pretty simple:

Your equation is 100% wrong: I never play "games" -- with the current meaning of "games", which is "idiotic stuff that requires ridiculously high GPU resources to make the user more and more brainwashed by playing violent scenarios or wrong models of the human society". You can see from my list of small games what I mean by games, and this kind of stuff was available in Linux too, so this was not a reason for the switch.

Do you find it ironic that all of the "Privacy and Encryption" tools are FOSS?

Yes.

First time I've been to your site. I might come back once.

Kubuntu and Ubuntu work for me without frustration and things are pretty specialized.

Well, ok!
You made your point. What about the changes that Linux an the OpenSource community brought to the IT world, and for those that were able to get a computer, an old computer, working in their homes and community centers? Resourceless people that gained access to knowledge and information?
And this goes for science, education, information, fun... you name it!
I definitly have to think about this.
The world changed, and this as a lot to do with Linux.

You are probably right about most of the Linux criticism in your article. It is a good article because it is based on facts and written by someone who actually knows what he speaks about.
However, the saying that "the greatest lies are those that are 99% true" is especially valid in this case. (Not that I call this article a lie, on the contrary). The 1% "lie" is the message that one should rather use Windows instead of Linux.

-I don't think that anybody wearing a head on their shoulders would claim that Linux is flawless. It has problems at all levels. From tiny feature-like bugs to failing high-level development strategies.
-I disagree with those fundamentalists who say that "it doesn't matter what you use as long as it is not MS". The OS I use should be easy to install and upgrade, stable, secure, friendly to use with lots of software available for it, preferably free.
I use Ubuntu and all these requirements are met. -Most or all the problems I have are a direct consequence of the aggressive marketing strategies of MS, e.g. less support for hardware and not all commercial applications available on Linux.
-This is indirectly the users fault who because of extreme laziness prefer to serve the objectives of MS. Good MS-free software is available at the click of the mouse.
-The world has spent hundreds, maybe thousands of billions of dollars just to get Vista, a proprietary .doc format and other uncomfortable and expensive handcuffs. How much did Linux, OpenOffice, etc. has cost the world?
-So this is not religion and not ethic. This is software ecology. Maybe relying on a fossil based energy industry seems simpler at first but the consequences and the real costs can be tremendous. I would myself discard my waste into the neighboring river if I had absolutely no other options. But using the river because the bin might be a step further would be insane.
-If Linux is unusable don't use it. But is it?
-This article says that Windows is better. But is it hundreds of billions dollars better? What about investing this money into OpenSource?
-Not too many years ago MS was laughing at OpenSource. It doesn't anymore. It is everywhere. There are much more MS-free PC-s then OpenSource-free PCs.
-General purpose software is the best target for OpenSource. So OS-es, office tools and alike, will surely be dominated by OpenSource in a few years.

Conclusion: well intentioned criticism is very-very much needed in OpenSource. That's the way to improve it. But claiming that one should drop it and invest into doom's day because here and now it feels better would be anything but a "rational act".

---------------------------
P.S: I am convinced that the "Criticism of Windows" that would cover also the bugfixing, upgrading (service packs, XP->Vista->...) etc. strategy of MS could be twice as long. I never managed to keep Windows safe for more than 6 months. OK, that's probably my fault just as it's Linux newbies fault that "sudo apt-get install " is such a nightmare to type.

If it wasn't clear enough, the major problem with Linux is the QA: some features never get to work properly or, as soon as they reach that stage, they're considered "obsolete" and they're replaced by something totally new and tremendously buggy.

"The industry" is running XP on the desktop not because they're dinosaurs, but because it works acceptably well, and because Service Packs actually patch things.

A conservative Linux system can be very well used as a server, but a "modern Linux desktop" is a hodgepodge of too many messed-up technologies, constantly changing and mostly only fixing bugs in new versions, not in the "obsolete"/stable ones.

This being said, Windows is far from being perfect, but it's still the best choice for a productive desktop/laptop IMHO. At least you know what to expect -- most situation/issues/bugs and workarounds are usually known to the professionals.

Of course, I hate the way Microsoft is pushing some technologies, especially .NET, but I have no disposition to mess around with the Linux pêle-mêle.

Most Linux projects lack a strong leadership, vision, and... a proper quality assurance.

There is no single company behind GNOME, and you can see what a fucked-up mess it is.

There is no single company behind KDE, and you can see what a fucked-up mess it is.

There is Sun behind OpenOffice.org, and you can what a clumsy OO.o we have -- Sun and the desktop... give me a break!

Instead of becoming a "desktop-oriented Unix" Linux is trying to mimic Windows anyway. Proofs?
1. The idiotic UDEV and HAL.
2. The mere fact that OpenOffice.org MIMICS Microsoft Office, regardless of the different file format. Better of worse than Microsoft's, Oo.o's file formats are still the wrong choice, and still an unnecessary invention. They should have used TeX/LaTeX, and they should have started from something like LyX.

Oh, and you said: "I never managed to keep Windows safe for more than 6 months."

You know, anyone can break Windows in the first 24 hours after the initial install -- and they blame Microsoft for that.

When they break Linux... they blame themselves instead, because "Linux can't be broken, or else it's the user's fault".

Gimme a break, will ya?

Well,

I administer 100+ Linux desktops on a daily basis (in a research/academic environment)... and must unfortunately agree with most of what is being said against Linux in this post.

Now, if your use of a desktop is that of a Windows user, then go for Windows (or Mac). One cannot reasonably argue against that.

But, if your use of a desktop is that of a Linux user, using GUI applications when unavoidable, but sticking to command-line whenever possible and enjoying the network integration it allows to achieve (like controlling your entire house/audio/video/data from any client through a Linux-based server), then go for Linux.

I kinda have the feeling that all that currently brakes under Linux comes from it trying to become like Windows. Command-line tools have never broken on me. GUI tools surely did.

But then, maybe a desktop computer IS about looking like Windows... So I'm just a hopeless nerd :-D

Enjoy what ever fits you best!

I have temporarily re-enabled the comments for this post.

A redneck (I can't say "piece of shit", because he would "take legal action" against me) noted here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6375401&postcount=48
that Paint.NET is actually open source.

He was right, but the problem is with the inconsistency of the Paint.NET websites.

The main download page only hosts the binary (setup), albeit having a #src anchor:
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html#src

The license page also sends to the previous link:
http://www.getpaint.net/license.html

I had to use Google to find the sources:
http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdnsrc.html

I've also added a few more apps to the list(s), and I've also updated http://beranger.org/img/Defecting_offline_links.rar

Hopefully the less shitty individuals will notify me about the wrong license bullets instead of screaming on forums.

I've quit Linux development for the same reasons you've listed in your post. I'm still using my eponymous product, for practical reasons -- it's familiar, and has most of the features I need pre-configured -- but I just can't keep developing a product that gets slower and more broken each release, and where it takes over a year to support a "designed for Linux" machine (Eee PC) on anything more than the primitive and useless Xandros install.

What finally did it for me was running a few quick calculations in Excel: http://www.ultimalinux.com/marketshare/
Hopefully it won't be quite as bad in 2009; maybe if we're lucky, the retards will stop releasing new shit long enough for the distro count to go down to a mere 311.

In the Internet and related section for e-mail you can also consider The Bat! (http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat)

And why not also FileZilla?

I've just got home from Italy and saw this post...
It's not a big surprise for me but I thought that you will keep using Linux (changing distro after distro) in spite of it's flaws. It seems that you got tired and I know the feeling. You're right in all what you said above, I have experienced/seen those things happening even if I'm not using Linux for so long time (~3 years) as you. I wish I had used it in the good days but on the other hand if I had started using it then I would have suffered much more now! Currently I'm thinking what to do next when newer releases will appear. The main problem is what DE should I choose instead of the crappy KDE4... But I'm still hoping in my soul although rationally I see no light at the end of the tunnel...

@HAL:

Because I do *not* like each and every software in the world! (Certainly not the two you mentioned; and the last time I used The Bat! was in Eudora's times...)

@N3o:

Unfortunately, I am indeed too tired to tolerate the unpredictable crap on *my* desktop...

Eek! Sorry, Martin, for the delay, you comment was “forgotten”.

I guess I'll make a poster out of your PDF!
http://www.ultimalinux.com/marketshare/

I may just follow you, Beranger.
Everything you say makes sense, and after 3 years of only GNU/Linux, I am finally leaning toward XP pro for many of the same reasons you cite.
While I have always found you to be a bit abrasive, you do make too many valid points in this entry for me to deny very much of it.
Good luck.

Beranger,

I too found you abrasive at times, lacking tact and patience, and usually disagreed with you.
That said, and as a nix user, I can't blame you for leaving. The GNU/Linux camp is full of zealots and fanboys with blinders on, that refuse to acknowledge the many simple yet profoundly frustrating issues that GNU/Linux end-users are faced with.
Perpetual and necessary kernel upgrades, as well as the complete lack of a 'version 1.0' in any distro, have kept all GNU/Linux distributions as beta quality software. (Some, like SuSE, I would even rate as Alpha-quality).
The simple, yet insanely effective Windows XP model of 'install once and upgrade by patches' has eluded the pig-headed FLOSS development community since its inception, and causes me no end of frustration.
GNU/Linux distributions, all of them, are a hodge-podge of ill-fitting pieces that come together into a rough whole, requiring constant user intervention to keep them running- like sailing downstream in a boat which constantly springs new leaks.
The 'frozen' package model of Debian is no better. Installing the infamous 'Debian Stable' (etch) on my Thinkpad t23 was a real pain in the ass due to a broken DRM issue (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=393266) a KNOWN BUG WHICH REMAINED OPEN FOR 1.5 years.
One can't even get Debian 'Stable' to be stable, without unwanted pita hacking and googling.....sad, really. I also run Windows XP pro on my machines, and with good housekeeping and computing habits, have been trouble-free and virus-free since 2001.
I also continue to use GNU/Linux on one of my machines.
Anyway, I wish you the best.

Ask you self what is really required to end the mess on Linux.

Distributions is not the solution. They are one of the major causes of the problems.

Solution is far simpler than most would dream. There is a List of requirements.

1) Distribution independent packaging with Distribution independent runtime support. It is funny how many times I hear users yelling at application being broken and I install the same application on there machine with 0install and it works perfectly. Reason for failure Distribution alteration to its dependencies.
2) Single configuration system for all Distributions
3) Means to run multi-able X11 servers if required.
4) Working Visualization in form of containers so user changing distributions can do it simply. Or user can run many distributions.
5) Common user space driver system
6) Kernel updating on fly.

At this stage in Linux kernel development I do back kernel space ABI being kept unstable. Spinlocks and other parts need to be removed.

Yes the basic idea of Spinlocks used in OS design is flawed. CPU sitting there waiting for a lock to free. Its far wiser to have a que. So cpu time is not wasted waiting for a lock.

Idea of constant user intervention not true. This does come down a lot to your hardware. Badly matched hardware with Windows or Linux major head aches.

System I am is running Linux because of all things Windows XP and 2000 hates the motherboard sound. Part way threw playing a video or music it can disable the driver requiring a reboot to fix. Yes I have the most current driver for the motherboard.and have tried older versions no differences. Works perfect if I want to run Windows 98 or Vista. Just hates XP. and 2000.

Gnome and KDE were at war with each other. Yes how to create a mess.

KDE 4 long process. Goals what are required.

Udev hate something had to replace unix device system look at solaris equal. Just a virtual. Most systems people call unix's have replaced the /dev directory with something not Unix.

HAL dispute the reason http://www.ometer.com/hardware.html

If you cannot pull that apart live with it. You were not there at the disputes over it.

If the old unix models are so good explain how they could have been made work dependable and user friendly. This is where you hit the wall with /dev all Makers of Unix Like OS's are giving up on the old way there due to its problems. How does the right user get assigned to locally connected devices with Unix style /dev cleanly basically they don't.

I tend to think that all operating systems pretty much suck but definitely it's Debian which sucks less for me. It has been more reliable than anything I have used. They don't break things. They can't support the newest hardware with stable releases, that's obviously true, but personally I'm not interested in the latest hardware anyway.

But I guess you are right in that wider adoption of Linux on desktop is nowhere in the vicinity. Ubuntu raised people's hopes very much but it dropped the ball because of their stubborn commitment to time-based releasing. Ubuntu just flopped: too buggy to be seriously usable. Nice distro for downloading an ISO image and try it a couple of times in a virtual machine, though. But that's pretty much all in my opinion.

Anyway, I need stability and an open hackable system, and Debian does that extremely well. So I'm happy. All I hope is that Linux and Mac OS stay relevant enough to prevent computer culture from falling into total Microsoft monopoly. Other systems need to be at least somewhat relevant in desktop setting too.