A Linux User Goes Back

An anonymous reader says "A friend of mine recently switched to using Windows XP after three and a half years of Linux. I thought the community might benefit from reading his story. Even as a dedicated Linux user, I agree with many of his points. 'Unix on the desktop" has come along way in recent years, yet could still stand much improvement. It is no longer an issue of having a fancy GUI (KDE can't get much better), but rather the real problems lie in the foundation.' Some of his points are wrong, but it's a reasonable article.

That should keep you guys..

[djsable]

Ha!

that should keep you guys posting for days!

Stupid users

[Reality Master 101]

I had to laugh at this...

Stupid users don't doggedly stick at something for three and a half years, trying distribution after distribution in the hope of finding the holy grail of Linux desktops.

Hmmmm.... I don't know about that...

No no no no no

[daeley]

Tell your friend that if you want to switch, you're supposed to go here:

http://www.apple.com/switch/ [apple.com]

not here:

http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/ [microsoft.com]

Friends don't let friends use XP.

Re:Denial?

[daeley]

I'm impressed by the maturity of the staff to do so.

Come on, Josh. We all know maturity = agreesWithMe.

Joking, joking. ;)

YOU'RE CORRECT SIR

[k0osh.CEOofCLIT]

LiNuX is teh r0X0rZ! M$ suX0rZ!

Holy bat-Loonix-troll, Batman!

[Robinn]

Golly, it looks as though there's trouble once again in Gotham! Someone appears to have assembled a variation on the tried-and-true Lunix troll and gotten it posted to the front page of Slashdot!

He remembers to point out that X is slow, that Windows problems can be fixed with "a point and a click," and even throws in some prime bait about driver support and stability in Windows XP.

Re:the other direction?

[billnapier]

From the fortune file:
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.

Re:Holy bat-Loonix-troll, Batman!

[Batmann]

Good sighting, Robin. Lunix trolls have long been a problem in this area, and we can't take this too seriously.

If we build up a collection of pro-Linux rants, find some anecdotal (and likely apocryphal) evidence of Linux's superiority on the desktop, and manage to execute a few well-timed jabs at "Micro$oft," we might yet be victorious.

This is cute...

[NanoGator]

"on the desktop" has come along way in recent years, yet could still stand much improvement."

Amusing. Every time I say this I get modded down.

/dev/null on windows

[fraxinus]

kNIGits: "I expect that the Linux community will have something to say about this article; I welcome comments and constructive criticism. Flames will be automatically sent to the Windows equivalent of /dev/null, once I find where that actually is."

Try to pipe it to the NUL: device (an old DOS trick)

Re:Best Point

[grammar nazi]

That reminds me of the Limerick that I sent into the BBSpot Geek limerick contest. The title is Mainstream:

Best OS? Linux is the one.
Help is online by the ton.
"Can't detect network?
RTFM Jerk!"
Why hasn't Linux caught on?

I think that this is very applicable to the *nix community. Hopefully it will change in the future. I've always gone out of my way to help people with their problems.

Re:Best Point

[pi radians]

Ha ha ha, check out this guy! He uses REDHAT!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha. Get a real distro! Sucka dj!

But with all seriousness (is that even a word?) it is quite true. There is far too much "civil war" between users and their differring distros. People need to grow up and realize that everyone is right, with the exception of all of those Mandrake users. It's just so stupid. Oh, and I can't stand the arrogant Slackwarers. Oh and Mac OS X isn't Unix. So quit pretending you hippie freaks!

Re:the other direction?

[drightler]

And let me just comment on how eye pleasing CDE is...

Re:Why I use Linux

[epsalon]

Never heard of Windows Scripting Host? It supports a number of scripting languages.

No, Stupid! That's only for writing worms!

Re:the other direction?

[koryn]

How do you fix a corrupted boot function in the old Mac OS (anything before X)... well you have to "zap the pram." Doing so requires some wicked keyboard kung-fu and some great timing to pull this off... definitely NOT userfriendly. The average user knows shit about it.

Mmmm, especially when Apple include instructions on how to do this in the trouble shooting section of the printed manual that comes with Macs, the last place an "average user" looks.

And dude, if you think it requires "great timing" to hold down two buttons on the keyboard while a computer boots up, then I'm definitely not letting you anywhere near my drum kit.

But where else can you get ...

[njdj]

From the article:
I was getting tired of the 'stable' Debian release being so out of date

But it lets you be out-of-date on 11 different architectures!

Holy Crap, x86 hardware is cool?

[Sloppy]

I'm reminded of the words of Abe Simpson: "I used to be with it, but they changed what 'it' is. Now what I'm with, isn't 'it' anymore, and what's 'it', seems weird and scary to me."

MAC's are cool, but so is x86 hardware.

x86 hardware is cool?! Cheap. Ubiquitous. Brutal and Medieval. Hot as an oven with an overclocked Athlon microcontroller in Hell's at 3:00 PM on a sunny August afternoon and sixty miles from the nearest beer cooler. Less hip than your parents telling your girlfriend about your potty training. But cool?! x86 hardware is cool?!??? x86 hardware is about as cool as training wheels on your Edsel, as Pat Boone blairs out of the speakers, with a Latter Day Saints bumpersticker.

If you think x86 hardware is cool, your brain is infected. Have you been watching "Dude, you're getting a Dell" commercials?