Reply to Message

Reading through all the comments made since my last post, I can see that only a couple of posters here really understood what I was getting at.

The original article is about "mistakes" that new DESKTOP Linux users make, not administers of backbones or enterprises. Focus, people.

First of all, I did not use the analogy of a OS as a "car," or a "helicopter." That's silly, because one system is designed for land transportation and the other for aerial transportation. Neither are boats, for that matter. I have driven various configurations of all three, so don't lecture me about that. An OS is a system for making things happen on a computer - in this case, a PC or "desktop" computer. Many years ago I used DOS. I also sucked my thumb as a toddler. I no longer do either of these things, because I have matured just as operating systems and software have matured.

HOWEVER.

NOBODY is selling this OS as a command-line OS, in fact, the opposite is true. My point is that Linux has in fact been touted for the last few years as an alternate *GUI* system to Windows, and similar to Apple. "Simpler" "more powerful" "more customizable," and it does in fact have *some* of those attributes - depending on the flavor, and I'm not talking RedHat. *Ubuntu* is the #1 Linux flavor being held up as the way to go for an alternate, inexpensive OS, for "anyone," not just "newbies," but the usual arrogance and refusal to listen to cries for help surfaces when this is pointed out, and then the conversation lurches over into admin techtalk about logging issues with Apache, or who gets to be root.

Follow the Prime Directive and do no harm. Stop saying, "the customer is making mistakes."

I am no fan of Windows, but due to economic constraints in the waybackwhen I could not afford Apple machines. That has changed over the last thirty years but my expertise and purchases in platforms and OS's was driven by that original issue. Today I can and do use Apples because that's what a lot of my clients use, and I have no issues with that OS. That said, I have my own stock of horror stories about Window's driver problems, wifi that wouldn't work, networks clogging up or disappearing, corrupt registries, BSDs, Windows "legit copy issues," virii and root kits, third-party security vendors peddling worthless firewalls, et cetera ad infinitum, and I have spend countless hours educating myself about how to fix them. I am not lazy or stupid and I expect a few horror stories when I approach ANY new software, and a learning curve. In case you folks haven't noticed, photography and video have been revolutionized. In my case, the switch from film to digital was a very steep learning curve that happened simultaneously with OS/cpu/CMOS/software development which I was required to keep up with (not to mention the photographic equipment itself, a whole other bag of worms), which educational requirements makes the added burden of obsolete command line tech worries a non-starter. What do *you* know about 16-bit colorspaces or ICC profiles? Precisely how many learning curves can *you* juggle?

The product - Debian flavored Linux - is being falsely advertised - see above. The Lynx configuration presently on offer is an vast improvement over Heron, for instance (I installed an Nvidia card and it actually downloaded the correct driver from online, hooray) but even it still relies much too heavily on the command line, viz, the icon package installation problem I cited. Linux as a hobby is one thing, and more power to you, but as a very busy design professional, I do not have the time to wade through a copy of Linux for Dummies. Also, the last time I had a driver issue, I spent about fours hours of wasted time on the Ubuntu Help forum and still didn't resolve the issue.

One of the more irritating things about Linux iterations it that almost every variation of the default theme packages are extremely crude by industrial design standards - see Apple out of the box for a benchmark (Windows isn't much better, but it is a snap to customize because of a two-click mouse action). I spend a lot of time in front of my computer and I refuse to look at crude icons, hideous orange colored folders and whatnot. That should have been taken care of twenty years ago, but it wasn't.

I have no actual use for Linux. Originally I was drawn to it because I understood that it was not the resource hog that Windows was (in 2000, to be precise) and still is. Also I wanted to see if the hype was true, and it is not. I've also built a Hackintosh, which was interesting, but only because I had some spare time and was curious. I am curious about Linux, and sympathetic, in fact. But the continued rudeness of the Linux community is off-putting, and with the price of multi-core cpu's dropping like crazy, combined with Redmond's latest, almost stable Win 7, why go to the bother of learning a new operating system, particularly one that has a community with such a superior attitude and a closed mindset?

The development community has had thirty years to build a whiz-bang, sleek and EFFICIENT Linux, and they haven't done it.

I'll keep checking back in, but I'm not holding my breath.