Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Linux Isn't Ready for Prime Time

Filed under
Linux

Before I go into all the badness of my most recent experience, I'd like to give a little background info on myself, so that you know where I'm coming from. I like open source. I like it a lot. I use open source whenever possible, as not only is it usually the superior product, but I can rest easy knowing that my software isn't filled with nasty DRM. When I buy a new pc, I generally install Ubuntu on the old one and give it away. I constantly tell my friends about the benefits of open source. One thing I've been known to say is "If you're not a gamer, you have no excuse for not using Linux or BSD."

I've been living a lie!

You see, I don't actually use Linux. I've tried, but to no avail. Back in 2003 I had a spare PC running Mandrake (now Mandriva) it was decent, but it still caused a lot of headaches for the typical Windows user. I tried Fedora core and had a little more success, but eventually gave up.

More Here (first and only post)




Same crap, different day.

I wonder what number is this for an article saying "Linux isn't ready".

This is what I see when I see such headlines. :dead:

And the answer is because?

=> It isn't Windows! :eek:

Its really simple, you can't just use "blind fire" Windows habits on Linux. It doesn't work. You must be able to have patence and have an open mind about learning new things.

If you continue with the "Windows habits", it'll result in failure every single time. (as demonstrated by this blogger in the link, and many others before them!)

Why? Here's the obvious answer:

=> Windows isn't Linux. :eek: So stop treating like it is!

I don't know how many times it needs to be said just to hammer in that fact. You will keep failing if YOU don't understand that YOU need to change! Unless you really enjoy feeling like this. :beat:

Treating Linux like Windows is analogus to treating a sweet girl like a pornstar, and then blogging about wondering why she is upset with you!

If you don't treat all women the same, why would you treat all operating systems the same? OS does NOT mean Windows! :nono:

Once you realise this, then maybe there will be some hope for you with Linux! Like the rest of us Linux users! Happy Dance

re: same crap

"Windows isn't Linux - So stop treating (sic) like it is!"

That excuse - touted by oh so many fanboys is exactly what's killing the adoption of Linux (on the desktop) by mainstream users.

My computer is a business tool - just like my car is a transportation tool. I drive a BMW SUV and a NISSAN sports car. But I can also jump in a Friends TOYOTA and my Mom's BUICK and guess what - I don't have to adapt my driving skills or knowledge to a "different" car - it just works. I can also take my music CD's from my car - and run them in a friends car - once again, I don't have to change ANY of my habits. My lucky fuzzy dice - works just as well on my rearview mirror and yes, I could remove them and put them in ANY other make of car/truck/suv/riding lawnmower (and they'd still be lucky).

Thinking that a Business will force all their users to change THEIR computing habits is ridiculous. Where (EXACTLY) would be the payback for all that lost productivity (time)?

Linux flunkies love to shout "but linux is free, while windows/office cost money". What they need to do is take Business 101 and learn that the license fees for commercial software is a drop in the bucket (that's right, a tiny little spec of money) when compared to the cost of their employers time. Employee Time is the big expense, a huge expense, an overwhelming seemingly always expanding ginormeous money suck.

So unless a Linux Desktop can be slipped into the workforce with little to no changes to everyones daily routine, it just will not happen.

Adopting the old saying: "you can be the rock that disrupts the stream, or you can be the leaf that goes with the flow". Right now, Linux Desktops (and their lack of mainstream applications and minimal AD support) is one big rock.

Given that you are so

Given that you are so focused on how bad Linux developers / advocates / users are at proselytising their OS to users of other OSes, why do you bother coming here at all?

If Linux is so bad, why are you wasting your time with it and those of us ridiculous enough to waste our time doing so. You spew the same rhetoric everytime you comment here and yes, it's a free world and you are entitled to your opinion, but people who disagree with you aren't necessarily wrong.

BTW, I think you must have meant that Linux Desktops ARE one big rock. Use perfect grammar and spelling if you are going to point out the mistakes of others!

re: re: same crap

So basically you're saying, you prefer to live on a pile of crap because you refuse to change. You come up with any and every excuse not to change. Then you accuse people who don't agree with you as being a fanboy. Well done! What amazing logic!

Guess what? I'm stating a FACT based on the blogger in question. They used Windows habits on Linux, and they FAILED as a result of it. Its the same thing over and over again. They simply refuse (or haven't noticed) that they should see and approach things differently. IF they don't see this, they will continue butting heads with Linux.

Your counter argument is nonsensical chit-chat about your business and how YOU and your family/friends refuse to change. What the heck does your life/business have to do with this home user's experience of trying out Linux? Absolutely NOTHING! Heck, the blogger, nor I for that matter, didn't mentioned anything about businesses to begin with! You brought that in.

Quote:
Thinking that a Business will force all their users to change THEIR computing habits is ridiculous. Where (EXACTLY) would be the payback for all that lost productivity (time)?

If you run your business this way, you should seriously reconsider a change in career. Ever heard of conducting a trial to determine the feasibility of a transition? Or what is called "Feasibility study"? Clearly not.

The goal is to find out if its possible to make a transition to another platform, to see if savings are made, and what compromises or problems may arise. To blindly jump into anything in the business world is just asking for a kick up the ass. (Believe me, there are still idiots like these working in management positions around the world...I used to work for one before I, and many others, quit our jobs and decided to do things ourselves).

You know what's really funny? My computer(s) are my business as well. The difference between you and me is that Linux (and BSD), actually work for me on MY desktops, servers, etc, and hence, my/friends business (yes, we're actually making money using opensource solutions).

What does that say? It says we assessed both MS and opensource solutions when we began our business. We knew BEFOREHAND what was going on and what we're gonna save. Both on short and long term.

But hey, if you wanna keep paying license fees indefinitely, instead of budgeting or re-allocating that money for something else (increase wages or benefits for employees or increase infrastructure, etc), you go right ahead, its your business.

Your blindness, uncreative and generalistic attitude to new and unconventional things is what's creating the "rock" here. The technology is there. Its about how you get real familiar with it such that you can exploit its potential to benefit you.

Here's a life lesson: For one to achieve something better, they must take the time to better themselves before moving forward.

The effort and time you put in today will benefit you in the long run. To put it in laymen's terms: "Two steps forward, one step back".

The "lost productivity" (as you put it) is converted to less problems in the long run. Training is a short term investment, and costs FAR less than indefinite licensing fees. But hey? Licensing is one of three MS's biggest cash cows! (alongside Windows and MS Office!)

And you know what's really ironic? You claim that you won't change for technology, and yet, its the very same people like you who have no problems changing to MS Office 2007's new ribbon interface!

Summary?

* Unwilling to change when given the choice to. (opensource solutions).

* But more than willing to change when cornered into it. (Everytime MS changes something major. ie: Ribbon, Vista's changes, DirectX 10, IE7's GUI, etc).

Ehrmm... Cars?

Hold on a second there, bubba. Somewhere along the way, you had to learn how to drive a car... and moving from one car to another is not as simple as you make it out to be. I drive a Nissan pickup truck with a five-speed manual transmission. The last time I got into my automatic Cavalier, I shifted the car into neutral while going down the freeway, because I was used to driving a stick.

On my truck, there is a lever on the left side of the steering wheel which works the lights and turn signals. To switch to the high beams, you push the lever forward. To switch to low beams, you pull backward. And to "flash to pass" (turning on both beams at the same time), you pull all the way back. Contrast this with the Cavalier, where you pull the lever back and release to activate the high beams, do the same to activate the low beams, and pull back and hold to activate both beams. In my grandpa's old Ford, there is a switch on the floor you push with your toes to switch to or from high beams. I've seen older trucks with a pull-knob on the dash board, with three positions (low beams, high beams, no beams).

Those who have only driven an automatic have a heck of a time even starting my truck, as you have to push the clutch in to start it. If you're on a hill, you dance on the pedals, switching quickly from the brake to the gas, since I don't have a working parking brake.

Every car needs routine maintenance. My truck is a dream in that regard... everything is easily accessible. My fuel filter is located next to the engine, unlike some vehicles where it is located next to or in the gas tank.

A year and a half ago, you could not have played your cds in my truck... I had a tape deck! Likewise, I likely couldn't listen to a good portion of my music in your vehicle... I use an iPod or a USB drive, rather than have to mess with cds.

Oh, and did I mention that I don't have power steering?

I've served as the IT guy for a small company for years, and, were I not at college, I would be implementing a plan to move our entire network to Linux. The reality is that there are very few tasks which are Windows-dependent (Quickbooks comes to mind), and all other tasks can be handled not only as well by Linux, but in many cases, better. Yes, my time investment would be high to begin with... but I have lost thousands of hours over the past 6 years due to Windows stability issues, driver conflicts, virii, worms, trojans, spyware, and proprietary software that required us to adapt to it, rather than it addressing our needs. As we speak, if a critical system goes down, I am at least two hours away. With a Linux system, I could log in from this machine, grep through the system logs to determine what happened, and likely fix the problem. I just can't do that through Windows. Not a chance.
__________________________________________________________________
Ubuntu is lame as a duck- not the metaphorical lame duck, but more like a real duck that hurt its leg, maybe by stepping on a land mine.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.