Here's my promised follow up post for anyone wondering "why Linux"?
Here's what I want in an operating system:
Real security. My web host can set me up with a shared account,
letting me run any scripts I want to. He's not worried that I'll
hack the system or other people's web sites on the same server,
because the server is secure - protected even from it's own users.
Why can't my desktop PC be just as secure - where even if I let
hackers run their tools it won't matter?
No forced updates. Microsoft says they are ending support for their
most popular system, XP, so you're pretty much forced to "upgrade"
to new problems.
Stop the bloat. Just a few years ago a 512Mhz CPU and 256MB of RAM
was a pretty fast machine. Why isn't a dual core 2Ghz machine with
1024GB of RAM blazingly fast? The word processor should launch in
two seconds, not two minutes! Stop the bloat with cute animated
icons and crap and I'll be be able to get shit done twice as fast.
Don't charge me $$$$ to fix your mistakes. MS tells me I should buy
Windows 7 because it fixes some of the security holes in XP. Hello!
Those security holes mean you sold me a DEFECTIVE product! Why should
I pay you hundreds of dollars to fix your own mistakes?
No more crashes. My web server hasn't crashed in the five years I've
had it. Why should my desktop ever crash?
Compatible documents. Why the FUCK can't one version of Microsoft
Word open a document written in another version of the same program,
Microsoft Word? Why can't a video recorded by Microsoft's cam software
be played back by Microsoft's player? No, you have to use just the
right version of Apple Quicktime to play back the video recorded in
MS's software. The web page I wrote in 1997 still works in every
browser 12 years later, why can't my word processor docs and spreadsheets
work?
No more bait and switch. So I go out and spend hundreds on Windows.
Then I find out that to have a usable system which does what I need,
I have to spend a few hundred more on Office, a couple hundred on
Photoshop, a couple hundred on ...
When the system install completes, a want a complete system installed!
No more license hassles. I have several PCs around the house, some
older, some newer. One is my DVR, for recording and watching TV.
Another old computer runs my phone system. Then I have my regular
desktop, and my laptop. I've lost the license keys for at least half
of them, and the all of my Windows disks have at least one scratch on
them, so they no longer work reliably. Fuck all that. When I get
software, I want to be able to make a backup copy of the install disk
and use it whenever I need it without any bullshit.
Fuck the registry and registry corruption. My PHP scripts are easily
configured using a simple text file. Why can't my desktop software be
that simple?
200 days is too long for a critical security fix, give me Firefox style
36 hour fixes. Six months after launching it's "Trustworthy Computing"
initiative, Microsoft released a patch for a security hole that allowed
crackers to compromise Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows
Server 2003. The same flaw allowed a worm to be spread around automatically
infecting systems. this fix was released exactly 200 days after the problem
became known. On the other hand, when my friend requested an improvement
in Firefox, I posted on the Firefox site and the improvement was done 36
hours later. If the Firefox team can release enhancements 36 hours after
it's requested, why should it take 200 days to fix a critical security
issue in my OS?
I want mods. The PHP and CGI scripts running on my site can be modified
by any programmer to work exactly how I need them to work. Why can't my
operating system? It's MY computer, let me make it work they way I want
it to work.
This all may sound like a rant, like a guy who's pissed off, but I'm not
pissed off. I'm happy as can be. Everything I listed that I WANT in my
operating system are all things that I HAVE in my operating system - I use
Linux, and it gives me everything I listed above and about 100 other
things that make it better than Winblows. If the list above includes
some things you want for you system, you can have it, all free of charge
and free of BS licensing requirements:
http://fedoraproject.org/