John has launched this blog with mainly positive posts, depending on how you interpret "Bear With Me" where bear is actually *a bear*. My post has more to do with despair (as opposed to dat bear). I'm referencing this NY Times article that talks about troubles Microsoft executives had with Windows Vista as users of the operating system themselves, in regards to things like getting it to work with their own printers and scanners and computer hardware.
I can't embrace Vista because it's clunkier and slower than Windows XP, I can't embrace Mac OS X because it's locked to expensive hardware and sacrifices fine control for ease of use (and makes you do things like pay 30 bucks for an extra program to resize images, and upgrade all your hardware and software every twelve months, and doesn't want you to know that your files exist), and I can't embrace Linux because using a command-line interface doesn't contribute in any way to my brain pride. As XP dies a slow and steady death, I'm left to contemplate a life with no operating system to call home, and I don't know what that looks like. I guess it'll just be me and the ether, and apparently there's a bear.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Nowhere To Turn
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3 comments:
My initial response turned into a new post, but I will add here my extreme disappointment in the state and direction of operating systems, which is what is leading me to give up on the whole idea. It would have been so much easier for Microsoft to make something simpler, faster, and therefore actually better than XP. No one who uses a computer regularly wants flashy, which gets old after about two days.
Ha, what's "brain pride"? I'm learning to enjoy linux. It can be as big or small as you want. True, it could use a better interface, but the core is solid. Plus there are people in the linux "community" who are interested in a minimalist approach to operating systems and that appeals to me.
My least favorite thing about the Linux community is that anytime someone asks "how can I do this without having to use the command-line interface to type 'sudo'" (the Linux way to run things as an administrator), people attack them and warn them that their computer would explode if they ever tried such a thing, and generally avoid answering the question. Then they attack Vista for having those allow/deny dialogs you have to click on. I hate thise Vista dialogs too, but if it's a showdown between clicking once on one of those or having to open the command-line interface, type "sudo" and then figure out the command-line way to do whatever you're trying to do, I'll take the one click.
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