The purpose of this flame-baiting post is to restore some balance of
argument to this normally windows-bashing milieu.
3 months ago, I signed up for a long-awaited DSL connection.
Of the modems available on the market, the Alcatel Speed Touch USB attracted
me, especially since at the time I was fast running out of PCI slots, and
couldn't justify the price of a router.
In windows, installation took about 189 seconds, from unpacking the modem to
surfing my first site at high speed.
In linux, I've been battling on and off for 5 weeks.
The 4 or 5 available howto's on the web are inconsistent with each other,
all require the compilation of several pieces of 3rd party software (of
which at least half are broken), and 2 or more kernel patches.
I've tried installing the modem on Debian Potato, Mandrake 7.2, Mandrake
8.0, Red Hat 7.1 and WinLinux.
With every possible combination of available modules, kernels, distros and
packages, something breaks in a way that stops the whole process. Either a
patch won't take, or a prog won't compile for lack of headers, or a module
won't install due to unresolved symbols, or a rebuilt kernel won't launch,
or won't fire up modules etc etc.
While Bill Gate$'s corporate ethics may totally stink (I certainly won't be
shedding tears when cracked versions of XP turn up on the underground
sites), the one thing he has done right with windows is limit the number of
cooks tending the broth, thus creating a simple and reasonably robust
platform fit for the other 90% of PC users.
Granted, Windows 95,98 and ME are total shit, unstable as hell. But compared
to Linux, even with cushy window managers like KDE, Windows 2000 is Desktop
Heaven. Easy on the eye, easy on the mouse, and no hundreds of wasted hours
fucking around with scripts, patches, recompilations, reinstallations etc
etc. Unless one is a specialist engineer, who's got time for all that?
The fragmentation of development efforts and multiplicity of distros, along
with the abysmal support of most hardware devices, may well keep Linux
forever trapped in single-digit percentage market share.
Fortunately Freenet, even though open-source, has not yet fallen prey to the
havoc of multiple distributions and configurations.
While Linux has its strengths in backroom server situations, trying to push
it onto desktops in its still early evolution is nothing short of
technocratic masturbation.
David
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