I read Slashdot quite a lot, and after 13 years of using Linux there has really never been an issue that can't be fixed or worked around with a little work. Reading the comments here and there, there and there about Linux I keep seeing posts from folks that seem to think Linux doesn't work. It works too well really. The real issue is that people are lazy and don't want to do work involved in setting up a system that works well.
It works well at some very precise points, and then breaks down.
- When you get an iso of any distro, you can reasonably expect that it will work on any computer assembled before the release date. If it's reasonably good hardware, because the support for cheap shit tends to only begin to exist long after it stops being sold.
- Reference designs like Sandy Bridge and other chips that go in $200+ boards, those are supported really well. But AMD chipsets? VIA? Well, if they're compatible enough with the PIIX3, sure, they'll work. As fast and well as an overclocked Pentium II, but they'll work.
- Installing a distro that's not the latest, then trying to upgrade it, will fail. The probability rises with the age of the distro.
- Like when you have a package that's, say, 0.9.2 and the current version is 1.2.x and it was supposed to upgrade from 0.9.x to 1.0.x then 1.1 then 1.2, and it breaks if you try to go from 0.9 to 1.1, let alone 1.2. This happens all the time in all non-trivial packages, like KDE and Portage, and also in little softs that glue other softs to cooperate, and begin to rot every time one of those glued softs get upgraded.
The main rub to me is neither OSX or WIndows works any better, and in fact Windows is still a steaming pile of junk suitable only for idiots. At least with Linux there isn't a compelling need to purchase anti-virus software, although you can install one if you'd like. I'm just not that paranoid. A lot folks try to install Linux on a machine that has DRM chips or other nasty stuff and then they try to blame the GNU side saying we all suck, the software sucks, and we're all a bunch of zealots that can't see how inferior our software is.
OSX doesn't... Did you ever use OSX?
It's as if someone took a UNIX, then made it work. Just Work. Do you realize that Hackintoshes now work better as desktop machines than any Linux? Apple has simply made UNIX usable.
With OSX, I NEVER have to even think to install a program. "Yeah but package managers" all suck. There is NO package manager on Linux that's quite serious enough to get its job done.
They'd have to track everything. EVERY FILE. With checksums. They'd need a database full of metadata about the files they track. They'd have to include a parser for every last file in /etc, to track user-made changes and include those in the newer format or location. And stop searching for the same setting in three different locations. (Hi, Gentoo's Portage! Remember where is make.conf today?)
OSX : you get a folder that looks like a file an plop it in your /Applications. It's simpler than repositories full of programs that won't install, won't work or won't upgrade, on this precise configuration. Maybe Apple's AppStore gets that right, but I wouldn't know.
Just getting tired of seeing of those posts, because in all honesty it's hard to argue with a concept that delivers high quality, secure, and free (as in freedom), Operating systems whereby really all one has to do is a bit of work to get going full speed should any issues arise. I had one of those machines one time and it was a pain at times, however with the help of our friend Google, was able to work around the issue and get it stable. I guess it's just disturbing when people expect ZOMG awesome stuff for free and then also expect to not have to do any work... That's not the bargain. That's not the deal, and it never has been. I kind of hope it never becomes the deal either, because Linux is fun just like it is. :)
High quality, unless you need "up-to-date" as a criterion for that designation.
Secure, yeah, not by default. All those stories of hacking always come down to one of three ways: 1. social engineering, 2. hardware theft, or 3. "but there was that setting, referenced in all Best Practices, that was stupidly forgotten amidst the trillion of others". Unsalted password databases? All the time. Misconfigured SSL? All of them. Is it really that hard? Apparently. So, Linux, secure? Yeah, the kernel is. The platform... not really more than others. (More than Windows, but joking about Windows Security is beating a dead horse with another dead horse. There is no security on Windows. There is no Windows Box that stays unpwned more than five minutes with a fast-enough pipe and a Metasploit more up-to-date than the box is. Or just one user on the Web and no adblock.)
Free, yeah, as in "the freedom to fix this stupid bug", that you don't actually get. Ever tried to fix a bug in the source of a Gentoo package? I did, and gave up. No fucking way to inject my fix in the pipeline from the download from the repository to the binary install in the filesystem. I could have done it with enough time and effort - and it wasn't worth it. The only package where that's actually easy is the fucking kernel. Apparently, the easy way is to submit my fix to the upstream devs (wasting an hour setting up my box to hack on that, if I don't have the full toolchain to do so) and THEN wait for it to trickle back to me down the normal distro channel. Or just install the fixed version manually, just to confuse the package manager even more.
Because it's so fun to fix.
Canonical is trying to get it right. And failing. Has been for years. Losing millions every year and forever. They're trying to re-code enough of the system to basically make it their OSX, but then they're still duplicating a ton of effort... Maybe they'll end up doing it right. Who knows, not me, I refuse to use Ubuntu since they stopped trying to make what exists work and went on to reinvent the wheel, poorly, twice, instead.