Linked by Kristofer Jarl on Fri 23rd Jul 2004 05:38 UTC
The smell of newly purchased stuff... So, there I was, Hauppauge WinTV board in hand, Mandrake 10 installed and ready to rock! Little did I expect that it would come to this. But first things first. 
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First off let me say I use Linux exclusively (FreeBSD on my Soekris box) and I hate Microsoft with a passion. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
From the article: Okay, let's just change that in the nice Display Properties Settings Menu. Nope, no go! I have to install new drivers and reboot first. What drivers?
I thought you said "I know computers, and quite frankly I know them pretty well." If you know them well, then how could you possibly be surprised that you would need drivers to go with the hardware that you just purchased from the store on an O/S that is 4+ years old. Go grab a 4 year old Linux distro and see how much of today's off the shelf hardware you can run.
From the article: Let's explore my old OS and see if there is any nostalgia to be discovered. But alas, to my surprise, there is nothing to be discovered. We have... let's see... er... Notepad and WordPad, nice for writing stuff like this, and then there is... uhm... Paint and Mediaplayer. Let's face it, Windows comes with nothing!
Depends what you like I guess. I hate distros that include so many (mostly useless) apps that when you bring up your (K menu / Gnome Menu / whatever menu) that you need a 48" monitor to see everything. I would much rather have a barren default Desktop that I could then populate with stuff that I'll actually use as opposed to 12 versions of vi and emacs, database tools, games that are so dumb they don't even deserve mentioning, 18 command line based mail readers, etc... Oh - and another 20 or 30 links to programs that aren't even installed on your system. Always fun to spend several hours cleaning and rewriting your menus before you can use them.
From the article: Sure, there is Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, so if I had an Internet connection I could browse the web and fetch some mails and viruses, since there is not even a proper firewall installed. Where's the stuff I need to get my work done? Where is my Office suite? Where is my application for creating awesome graphics for my website? Where is my compiler? Where is my Instant Messenger?
Are you sure you've used a computer before? Seriously? Without an Internet connection I don't really think Evolution or Mozilla would be of any more use to you on Linux than OE or IE would be on Windows. And as far as "Where's the stuff?" ... well - if you took the time to download OpenOffice for Linux so that you would have it available at a time when you needed it when you didn't have an Internet connection, then why couldn't you have downloaded OpenOffice for Windows at the same time? Or FileZilla, putty, thunderbird, etc... I guess the Linux faery just magically delivered all your Linux downloads to you?
bah... this article is completely ignorant. I'm not even going to waste my time finishing it. You're a clueless zealot. Get over yourself.