[geeks] The best things in the world

[Micah R Ledbetter]

On Sep 11 (wait I mean PATRIOT DAY), 2008, at 3:01 PM, Jonathan C.  
Patschke wrote:
> Isn't that a bit like imagining a world without herpes?  Of all the  
> Unix
> and Unix-like OSes I've run into, the ones based around the Linux  
> kernel
> tend to be the <...> least user-friendly[0] <...>, and most bloated.

I wonder if you were using the wrong Linux-based system. I have found  
Ubuntu and even Gentoo to be at worst no more difficult to deal with  
than Solaris 10 (those three plus Mac OS X and Red Hat are the Unix(y)  
systems I have any experience with worth mentioning).

Upgrading kernel, OS-provided userland, and third party applications  
are much easier with those Linux systems than, say, Solaris. In fact,  
Solaris is worse than even Red Hat in those regards - both have slow  
patch and package systems with little microwave-ready third-party  
software and crappy search, but Solaris takes it a step further. You  
have to create a license file to use smpatch to its fullest, even  
though the license is free for anyone to use. If you want the same C  
compiler that built all of the system binaries, you'll have to  
download, install, and license that separately as well. In fact, even  
obtaining Solaris in the first place is painful because of the onerous  
click, click, accept, click, java <facepalm> that is entailed to  
download it.

Let me say that this is by no means all we have to talk about to  
decide the awesomeness or suckiness of operating systems. I'm only  
talked about "user-friendly", which is only one of the points you  
mentioned. Not trying to start a "My OS is better than yours" flamewar  
- I don't WANT to have that conversation, and it would be silly to do  
so anyway if all we were talking about was user friendliness :).

(And... well, right now I'm biased, because I can't get Solaris to  
install for the fucking life of me right now: <http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10107667 
 > (not my post, but my problem, and those fixes aren't fixes for me).)

> Everything I loved about Linux started to die around the year 2000.   
> It
> stopped trying to be a decent free workstation/server operating  
> system and
> started trying to be a Windows rip-off (and, in the process, tend to
> consume more memory and perform less fluidly for equivalent desktop
> tasks).  If I want Windows, I know where to find it.

What do you mean by this? Solaris installs GNOME by default as well,  
and all the other stuff - GNU stuff, kernel stuff, Debian (for  
example) stuff, package manager - isn't very Windowsy at all.

  - Micah

PS: And I agree with another poster... that guy is an idiot. Almost  
nothing had anything to do with Linux (the kernel or the systems based  
on it) and everything to do with Unix or open source in general  
(seriously, SourceForge?).