I started writing a quick little comment in response to the one left by KD regarding Linux, and found myself writing a novel. So I decided to post it in full.
Mmm, Linux.
I keep meaning to jump MS Ship and do that great Linux thing. I've tried it before (had problems getting my DSL to work) before abandoning it.
But I am consistently tempted by Linux. I would like to try Red Hat or Mandrake again.
My reservations are the following:
a) I am a comfortable dos user, when something goes wrong, I know where I am in dos. In Linux, the structure of the Unix background messes me up. I feel lost, and that makes me uncomfortable, and I don't like that feeling. Although I know if I have to, I can learn it without problem. It's just been a long time indoctrinated in dos.
b) I like gaming, and it used to be at least that gaming in Linux was a difficult proposition. What with DirectX requirements, etc.
c) While I like the concept of rebuilding the kernel, I seem to remember that a great deal of tweaking Linux to make it work with non-Linux stuff, etc, required too much of it. Reminding me very much of a pyramid, in that if you want to change something about it, you have to rebuild it from the inside out. It just seemed a little too intensive for what I would want to do.
And yet still I am tempted. Why? Because MS is often rather dumb. And the direction they are taking with their OS and licensing is further proof of it. When they are in a situation in which they need more support from users, due to the potential consequences of the anti-trust situation, they are alienating companies and individuals with their pain in the butt licensing. That kind of thinking is just top notch idiocy. Plus the holes and problems and errors that they have with their software and the time it takes to fix is plain scary.
So it comes down to working with something that breaks occasionally but that I can usually fix or using an OS which I would prefer to use, but don't know how to use most of it (I remember looking at the vast array of stuff that came with Mandrake 6 and being totally lost as to what 70% of it did!) and when it breaks being totally flummoxed!
So far dealing with the comfort zone is working. But I know there will come a point when it won't make sense to continue in that way. I am already using Windows 2000 Pro as opposed to looking at XP, and the way things are going I doubt I will switch to whatever their next incarnation closer to looking like a MacOS...
But what it means is that at some point I will switch. I prefer open source conceptually. It is a very ideal way of working, and should be supported so that it will remain successful and so more companies will have to take it into consideration when they produce software.
Change will happen. I just wonder how my Microsoft Intellimouse will react to being used in Linux...
Posted by hugin at June 14, 2002 12:20 PM