OSNews

Do cars have wizards? What do you think an automatic transmission is. It is something designed to make driving simpler because people are lazy. They become content, they don't want to change. Why do you think the supercar makers of Europe have finally caved and started making automatic versions of their vehicles. I never thought I would see the day where a big rig came with an automatic transmission but guess what.

Linux is great, I started with Slackware 3.0 and the 1.2.13 kernel. I was younger then and I didn't mind the command line as DOS wasn't officially dead yet and it just made sense. Years later, I have seen progress in Linux but I have seen more in Windows. I am not happy with Windows, the OS I would like to try is not yet ready and I refuse to buy a Mac. I have too much invested in this 'crappy' CISC technology. But my question is...is not OS X a fancy wrapper for *BSD? OS X does everything in a consistent and straightforward manner. It just works. I wish I could say the same for linux. I don't know the exact cause but installing Mandrake 9.1 was painfully slow and I even lost my mouse halfway through the process. I have an Intellimouse Explorer, I choose Intellimouse Explorer and several screens later...nothing. Red Hat 9.0 installed with no problems. Everything looked fine until I tried to access the network. Setting were correct. I set them up using the wizard-like app and then the command line. Installing Gentoo did wonders for forcing me to learn the command line but still no go. I unplug the caple, plug it back in and I can ping local machines on the network but Mozilla, Galeon, anything other than ping refuse to work. Even when only trying to access my router. How is this helping me to get work done? It isn't. My solution, fix the hal.dll not found error with windows and try again.

Windows has its problems, linux has more IMO. No matter how willing you are to hang in there. Is there an easy solution, probably not but at times it is easier to go with the more traveled path. Especially when the least traveled one forks off into 3000 sub-paths. And another thing I still can't figure out. Years ago I had a fully functional linux system in less that 640 megs. XP, with a moderate selection of software sans pagefile can be had in less than a gig. Why does every linux distro insist on installing two gigs plus? Even with gutting options. And where are all these apps? That is another thing that has always annoyed me. I like keeping tabs of what is on my system and with linux, I always feel like I am getting 'crap' that I will never use and no matter how hard I try, I have to install it all because installing that app has 20 dependicies with 20 other dependicies and so on and so on. That, I think, will be the major obstacle stopping widespread linux adoption in the US. Like it or not, americans(like my self) are lazy and take too many things for granted because it is what we have come to expect.

If someone where to take a stance and trim some of the options and just tell the user what they are going to get, it might be better in the long run. Everyone else tells us what we are going to get. Gnome, KDE? Who cares, pic one and I will cope. Make it look as good and responsive as other desktop OSes and no one will complain...much. Besides, if they want KDE or Enlightenment or whatever, they can always apt-get or emerge it...right?