Although there’s an incredible number of symptoms of Linux’s lack of popularity, I think it mostly comes down to a single main cause; it’s very hard to take Linux seriously.  Self-appointed spokepersons that wear robes, act like the world’s largest emo and have an incredible God complex, companies that mock more than promote Linux(use this if you don’t want to use Windows???  Really?) and rabid fans that ostracise the whole community in the process of telling the world how great their OS are all things that combine to make one big pot of laughing stock.

To be honest, I don’t have a very good relationship with Linux myself, in part because of the community tasked with promoting it.  I grow tired of the blind allegiance that many harbour and I find it very hard to ignore the actions of people like Richard Stallman.  I just want an operating system that works and while Linux is a pretty great operating system, to act like it doesn’t have any shortcomings is akin to acting like Mr. Stallman is a sane person. Just like any other operating system in the world, it has plenty it can improve upon.

As for Mr. Stallman, if he gets any more emo, then we won’t have to worry about him at all.

A growing number of people are getting locked into an endless reboot loop during upgrade, destroying their Vista installs and leaving them with no OS.

Woops.

Microsoft must be working day and night to try to resolve this issue, right? From TFA:

According to Microsoft’s head of support, however, the endless reboot problem isn’t on the company’s top list of concerns. “It’s very early in the process,” said Ben Bennett, the director of Microsoft’s Windows consumer global support group, in an interview Monday afternoon. “In terms of the top issues of customers who choose to upgrade, the XP-to-Windows 7 [upgrade] is up there on the list for lots of reasons. The netbook upgrade scenario — how do I upgrade my netbook to Windows 7 — is also a big one. And another is, ‘Where are my applications?’ after people have upgraded. They wonder what happened to e-mail and photo editing, for example. Those are the top issues so far.”

So, they’re more concerned with those upgrading from XP to 7.  Well, that makes sense.  I’m sure that was their plan all along.

At least I got to keep the paper hats and confetti.

After his attention grabbing headline, used to ensure that he’s gotten you all riled up, he completely dismisses his proposal and waters it down to “patch your OS before being allowed on the web”.

Regardless, his points concerning the inferiority of Windows made me smile.  People being completely wrong tend to elicit that reaction from me.

You see, there’s nothing wrong with Windows. The problem lies with the user.  It’s why he had to completely backtrack on his post.  Even he knows it.  Patched and being used by a person with a minimum of common sense, Windows is quite safe from attacks.  I’ve run Windows on at least two of my computers for over 15 years and have yet to take part in a botnet.  This is not because my Windows is safer than others’ installs.  It’s because I’m not a retard.

My second issue is his assumption that switching to linux and Mac would be a better move because they are so much safer. I have to patch my  linux servers at least weekly because of vulnerabilities found in the OS.  I patch apache/mysql/etc more often because of course it’s the most common gateway for entrance.  Desktop installations are no better.  Remember the thousands of flavors that make linux so great?  Well, guess what?  Some of those flavors are customized for user convenience and go to trouble to remove some of the safeguards that are supposed to protect the user.  My current Dreamlinux install doesn’t ask for a password once when I run something as administrator via sudo.  I am more vulnerable on it than I am on my Windows install.

Linux is safer because nobody in their right mind would spend the time required to write a bot script for an OS that enjoys less than 1% of the desktop landscape.  The return on investment predicts that the dividends would be a little lacking.  If linux enjoyed 95% of the market share, we would have botnets consisting of linux computers.  We would have that because the OS is not what dictates security, it’s the user.  Users don’t patch.  Users will run flavors with lax security standards.  Users will visit and download content that they shouldn’t.

Users can fuck up any operating system you hand them, linux included.

From Datamation: Google Chrome OS: Desktop linux’ last chance

A dichotomy, you presume? Well, not really.  What can be gained by combining the two posts is very simple:  Before linux becomes extinct, it will trounce Windows 7.

I guess there’s some comfort to be had in that.

The implications are huge!

Well, if it weren’t really about Office becoming web based, allowing anything with a popular browser to use it, it would be big news.  When you know what’s actually happening here, it seems they might have stretched the artistic license a little too thin.

You guys know me.  I could give two shits less what you use as an operating system, however I never cease to get a kick out of the linux zealot that can’t figure out why linux isn’t the global OS of choice.

His first example:

“I put a DVD in my player and it won’t play.”

He begins his helpful tutorial by telling them that they’re ignorant because they don’t know the true meaning of the terms mp3 and dvd, flippantly tossing the terms around with nary a care in the world.

Windows user #1: “Hey Bob, you want to throw the DVD with me tomorrow down on the beach?”

Windows user #2: “Sorry John, I’ve got to take my car into the shop tomorrow to get the mp3′s rotated.”

Windows user #1: “Oh, ok.  I guess I’ll just hang out at the house and watch the moving picture rectangle.”

Now, in Ryan’s world, this is not only possible, it’s almost definitely happening right now as we speak.

He then tackles the Windows users’ complaints that their hardware doesn’t work.  It’s Microsoft’s fault, because their dominance prevents us linux users from having drivers that work.  Never mind that your wireless card won’t work, that’s irrelevant. As long as we have someone to blame other than linux developers, it doesn’t seem to matter if your hardware works or not.  We have an explanation as to why, so just quit your bitching.

His rebuttal for “Linux is not good for gaming.”?  Yes it is.  Linux is great for gaming.  There’s just no games for linux.

There’s a difference.  Again, never mind that you can’t play Bioshock on your linux machine.  It would run just fine if they would write the game to run on linux. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you Winwhiner.

It goes on from there, but to be frank, I grabbed the gems from the post.

My point is merely this; Ryan is not an anomaly.  He’s not the exception to the rule.  There are linux zealots everywhere that try to help Windows users understand linux by explaining to them that they’re ignorant dolts and their arguments are nullified by the simple fact that everything that doesn’t work in linux is another entity’s fault. MP3′s don’t work on your Fedora install?  It’s because of licensing restrictions man.  Never mind that they work in Windows.  Your hardware doesn’t get recognized?  It’s the man in Redomond, he won’t let hardware comapnies develop drivers for us, man.  Buy hardware that linux can recognize.  You can’t game in linux?  Sure you can, I just posted a top score on tux racer.  If you don’t like it, you need to complain to the game developers.

I could expound even further, but there’s something good on the moving picture rectangle.

XP was released on Oct 25, 2001 and Vista was released on Jan 30, 2007.  If 7′s released doesn’t get pushed back, that gives Vista’s life a duration of a little under two years. Development began on Vista in May of 2001, which gives us a span of almost 5 years.  They’ve touted Vista as the best selling, most secure and most successful operating sytem in Microsoft’s history.  Until they began pushing the adoption of 7.  Then they called Vista a necessary mistake; something they had to do to give the users what will be the best selling, most secure and most popular operating system they’ve ever developed.

Vista was XP’s ME.  Something they released as an interim release due to pressures from other OS manufacturer’s.  Just like ME, it was a stillborn and something that will go down in the annals of history as a screwup of epic proportions.

Which leads me to the following query; If Vista mimics the life of ME, will 7 follow the path of XP?  Say what you want, XP is usable.  Out of 7 computers in my house, 5 run XP.  I’ve bought extra copies of the OS for any future computers that end up here. Vista, which came on my gaming computer and on my wife’s work rig is slow and awkward.  I can’t imagine purposefully installing Vista.

Initially, it would seem that 7 will be what Vista should have been.  After all, 7 was being developed alongside of Vista(remember that Vista was an interim release).  When you take into account however that Steve Ballmer stated that 7 is a “revised” Vista, it tends to dampen your hopes that the most used operating system in the world is going to have a suck factor equal to Vista.

All of this suspense almost makes me install one of the thousands of linux flavors to begin hand editing samba config files throu vi in hopes that I can get to my networked files.

Nah, I’m just kidding, but I am concerned.

Last week, I began upgrading my work computer.  Still using Fedora 7, I was longing for app upgrades that were no longer coming.  I had tried F9, but found it such a step backwards, I kept the F7 install for another dev cycle.  I figured F10 was going to be my saving grace.

After over a week and over 50 support posts, I’ve got a working computer again.  Unfortunately, it’s running XP.  My head is still spinning from the whole process, but in the end, my desire to feed my family won out over open source zealotry.  Grub’s inability to work with my mainboard, X’s inability to create two independent desktops, PulseAudio’s crackling every time a window was minimized or maximized, and my continued 4 year attempt to get Samba to mount my network drives finally pissed me off enough to take such a drastic measure.

I have to admit, I’m fairly pissed about the whole affair, but comparing the two OS installs, I can’t really fault myself:

I’m so bummed about this, as there’s so many things I dislike about Windows XP. Linux had to work very hard to do it, but they finally succeeded in making the experience less pleasurable than Windows.

That’s no easy feat.