Hari's Corner

Humour, comics, tech, law, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and then

A Linux rant from a frustrated newbie

Filed under: Humour and Nonsense by Hari
Posted on Mon, Dec 4, 2006 at 21:14 IST (last updated: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 @ 21:01 IST)

Hi there,

I'm here only to express my opinion regarding Linux. I know that most of you will tell me to go back to Windows and ask me why I'm bothering to post this message. It's quite simple. I think that Linux has a long way to go before it can be considered a "serious" contender to Microsoft Windows. Unfortunately most users of Linux I've met seem to be blind to the simple fact that Windows is a much more user-friendly and works out of the box for almost every computer manufactured out there. There's a reason why Microsoft is #1 and I now understand why they charge money for their Operating System.

Let me explain. I started my journey with Linux four years ago. Every time I tried to install Linux on my machine, I ended up in frustration and failure. To be honest, I tried with different hardware every time as well. Slackware just wouldn't recognize my network card. Red Hat get giving my grub errors all the time and I was unable to boot to my Windows partition after a failed installation. I even tried SUSE and Debian. SUSE had the easiest installer, but it was so slow to boot up and run compared to Windows that I gave it up as a bad job. Also I couldn't get any of my audio files to play under SUSE. As for Debian, every time I ran the installer, I got a file-corrupted error and the installation aborted about halfway through. From time to time I kept trying to install Linux and I kept failing. And the worst part of it was the time I wasted in downloading and writing installations CDs! What a waste! Seriously folks, what are the Linux devs thinking? I'm an above-average IQ guy and I've worked for 10 years in the IT industry, but even I had a tough time figuring out what hda, hdb and hdc stood for. Why couldn't they stick to known standards like C:, D: and E: to represent disk drives. It would all be fine if the damn thing worked! BUT NO... it doesn't and that's the worst part about Linux -- all hype and no substance. And believe me, only I know how much I struggled through all this...

Trust me guys. I know what you'll say. I've really gone ahead and wasted plenty of weeks (maybe even months) on trying out Linux, but it seems that Linux just hates me. I'm always open to trying it out again, but to be frank, I don't really have the faith any more. It seems that Linux needs some kind of uber-geek to tame it. And being in the software industry for 10 years, even I couldn't make head or tail of it. I really don't want to use Windows any more since I am morally against Microsoft's business practices, but what are the Linux developers doing all these years? It seems that the interest in developing Linux into a true alternative to the monopoly that is Windows has waned over the years. The community seems more interested in aggressively asserting the superiority of their Operating System than providing real solutions to all of us.

So, go ahead and flame me all you want. But you know the truth and the truth hurts... I couldn't care less what you want to say about me, but so long as the community keeps up its uppish attitude, Linux is just going to remain a fringe system used by bespectacled, pale geeks in University laboratories.

(And no, before you ask, I didn't copy this from any Linux forum. :P )

7 comment(s)

  1. I'd demand a refund if I were you ;)

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Mon, Dec 4, 2006 @ 21:36 IST #
  2. A refund. That's a nice idea. Now to find a lawyer. :cool:

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Mon, Dec 4, 2006 @ 21:47 IST #
  3. Agreed... agreed with all of that. But I promise that the revolution will come!

    Comment by Sudipta Chatterjee (visitor) on Mon, Dec 4, 2006 @ 22:38 IST #
  4. Which revolution? The green revolution or the white revolution? :P

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Dec 5, 2006 @ 08:26 IST #
  5. The brown one :shock:

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on Fri, Dec 8, 2006 @ 01:33 IST #
  6. I totally, completely agree. I used to buy into the hype of how the free, open source Linux was really superior to Windows, and people just didn't know it yet. But when I tried it, all I got was grief. I was able to install it okay, but I soon discovered that using it is so difficult! Anything non-trivial, like installing a new program or changing some setting, involves hunting through obscurely named directories and typing nonsensical commands in a command-line interface. I've wasted hours googling for answers to my problems that I've almost never encountered in Windows. Unfortunately, my current job requires that I use Linux, so for now I'm stuck.

    Comment by carlo (visitor) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 09:07 IST #
  7. Carlo, I'm not sure what you mean. This is a satirical article and not meant to be serious :mrgreen:On the other hand, if you're being satirical too, ignore me :twisted:

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 09:43 IST #

Comments closed

The blog owner has closed further commenting on this entry.