noiseredux wrote:Mod_Man_Extreme wrote:
This is my exact point. The compatibility was spotty and it never ran a smooth as everyone ranted on and on about. I like to feel that I know a decent bit about computers, but last year when I tried Ubuntu for the first time I went through hell to finally get it working and in the end it was lackluster and had zero compatibility. It was nice and easy to use once all the crap was finished, but man was it redundant and stupidly designed in an interface point of view. You have to menu dive for EVERYTHING, it makes it feel overtly complex and like amateur hour.
Plus, I don't like compiling lines and lines of code or working in freaking terminal all day. As a person who grew up in the GUI generation code and terminals are retro chic, but suck ass to use.
Also, I'm lazy a lot of the time when it comes to computer programs. with windows everything just works for me, and fast. Linux probably would have worked well had it some sort of really easy (AKA I'm a retard and just started using this) support structure built into the OS, but it doesn't and relies on online support and forums. All of which I've always found to be loaded with people who talk too much about increasingly complex things and assume the beginner to a completely new operating system can just fumble their way into a deceptively simple solution after wasting a large amount of time.
My biggest problem is the whole open source aspect off it, I get that it's important to have a free option. It's just that 90% of the flavors it comes in are crap.
Also, server UNIX and home distro LINUX are two different things. I respect UNIX and all it's important reasons for existing; LINUX on the other hand is a very tough to swallow OS to get into and involves loosing a lot of easy access to 99% of everything in the computing world.
y'know it's funny, I actually think saxophones suck for the same reason. I picked one up one time, and blew into it -- but I sounded nothing like Coltrane. I hopped on the internet to see what I was doing wrong, but people were just blabbing about "notes" and "scales" and all this other complicated shit. Stupid saxophone.
I actually use Ubuntu, have for months and months now (since about august last year), I installed it on my sister's laptop early last year and the family computer also dual boots XP Pro and ubuntu with wine on it. My problem is things break far more often and take far longer to fix. Ubuntu for all it's stability and other junk is far more prone to having simple things that shouldn't break down break down anyway.
Everything from my audio controls and wi-fi drivers to the video card's operation itself have broken down and booted me into terminal instead of a gui. It's been frustrating, annoying and all around unintuitive.
What makes any other commercial OS better is that it just works and keeps working. I grew up on Windows 98SE and beat the shit out of that operating system daily as I learned all the nooks and crannies; but, it never had simple shit like this backfire or destroy itself once. Whenever there was a crash or breakdown I knew it was my fault and I had to fix whatever I screwed up.
Windows is like a dump truck, you can load it up and crawl along at 25 miles an hour or loose all the junk you've dumped in it and fly down the highway like a madman doing 90.
Now I'm not completely anti-linux. As I've already said I use it on several of my machines, but the learning curve and overall structure of the operating system isn't ready for prime time and probably won't for a good while. You can rant and rave about how much it's better than thing x or y but people actually will start flocking to it if they really think it's that much better. A healthy dose of KISS method is needed to really get it to where it should be and the latest versions have been getting there. But it's still very overtly complex for reasons it shouldn't be, problems should only have solution (and make it the simplest), terminals should only be used by an enthusiast or in an emergency not in daily operation, etc... etc...
When it gets dumb as nails easy to learn and slowly ramps up the curve as you get in I'll probably spend a lot more time with it, but it needs to feel natural and intuitve to use. As of right now it's like Mac & Windows got slammed together in the interface and things are oddly placed and badly labeled/named.
AppleQueso wrote:You can argue against Linux's viability as a Desktop OS (though a lot of people out there seem to be perfectly happy using it as such), but Linux is pretty much objectively awesome for servers.
Agreed, I don't dispute linux as server software (after all that's what UNIX was originally intended and designed for). It's the home desktop realm I feel it hasn't quite stepped up to the plate on yet.
