OSNews

Almost every day for the past several months I have asked myself why I'm even bothering with Linux on the Desktop any more. I love it as a server, but as a Desktop - I don't think it's improving in the areas that matter most. KDE and Gnome get a little better with each new release, but they are still dog slow compared to Windows. (I can hear it now. "You're crazy. *My* system runs circles around Windows! You Microsoft troll") uhh... yeah, sure it does. Just keep telling yourself that sparky.

It's definitely true that Linux is virtually free of viruses and spyware. (Largely due to the fact that it's install base is too insignificant for bad guys to bother with.) But that really isn't a compelling reason to keep me away from Windows. I've got a router/firewall to protect me from worms, I know better than to open e-mail attachments, I know to check for security updates, etc...

In my own experience, *Desktop* Linux (servers are a totally different issue), but *Desktop* Linux isn't any more stable than Windows XP. In fact, I think it's pathetically unstable. X hangs regularly. If I'm lucky I can ssh into my machine, kill X, and restart it. If I'm not lucky, I have to reset my computer. The UI feels like it has been doused with mollasis. Everything is laggy/slow. (This is the part where people blame KDE/Gnome bloat. Well - I switched to OpenBox for over a month. Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow. Face it ... X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)

(Oh - I'm running Gentoo by the way. Stage 1 install. And I've spent HOURS tweaking everything for performance. So there goes the argument about running an unoptimized distro.)

Every time I boot my computer, I wait and watch, and then breathe a sigh of relief when X actually comes up. At least 20% of the time, I just get a black screen. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does nothing. CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing.

Likewise, every time I come to my computer in the morning, the screens are black because the power management has kicked on. That's good. But I tap my mouse and wait to see if I get X back or not. Linux likes to "hard lock" while sitting here doing absolutely nothing over night. When that happens, I can't even ssh into my machine to shut it down gracefully.

Totem/gxine/other mpg players ... laughable. When they work, they are sorta OK. But just as often as not, they don't work. (Windows Media Player blows, but it always works.)

ALSA, OSS, OSS emulation, gstreamer, etc... it's hard enough understanding what that junk even is, let alone how to properly manage it.

So where was I? Oh yeah. Linux rules. w00t. In your face Bill Gates. boo-ya, boo-ya to the all mighty penguin. Hail Linus! (sarcasm)