Any other Linux geeks out there?

I've been running linux for the past ten years. I compile source like it's my job. I use Linux at work, at home, and in my sleep. Open source FTW

We've come a long way since vintage 1996 slackware. That's for sure!

LMAO at that comic.

Up until relatively recently I would have agreed but lately I'm wondering. My wife does not get along well with computers but has been using Ubuntu quite happily for about a year now. I feel like I get less "help desk" calls than when she ran WinXP. But what really got me was rebuilding a computer.

I recently replaced the hd in my older laptop and in addition to Linux I put WinXP as a dual boot. I had to install the OS, fail the registration as my LEGAL off the shelf copy had been installed too many times, call MS, spend ~15 minutes on the phone reading off digits for a new activation code, swear that I was not installing on multiple machines, finally finish install. Restart. Now I have no wired or wireless LAN working, download drivers on another machine, USB drive them over, install, restart. Then start updating hell. Luckily I'm behind a NAS so I can actually go online to update without getting owned before the security patches install. Wait while IE updates so that it can use the update site, restart, now update the updater, restart, now update the "Windows Genuine Advantage", OMG no restart needed! Now go through a seemingly unending cycle of update, reboot, lather, rinse, repeat. Download Firefox and install. Now download drivers for the gpu (been running at 800x600 up to now), then chipset drivers. Then AVG. Finally, I have a functional system with no apps installed.

Compare to when our home computer recently gave up the ghost, I don't know if it was the cpu or motherboard, the whole guts were pretty obsolete so it didn't make sense to start buying and swapping out parts so rebuilt, AMD X2, new motherboard w/ integ. graphics, new DDR2, new psu and clean OS install. Pop in Ubuntu 8.10 64bit, shortish install. Boom, working desktop, full resolution, full networking. One cycle of updating, restart for updated kernel, click to install the binary blob for the gpu. Ready to go, bunch of apps already installed, thousands more a few clicks or an apt-get away, then just copy over old home folder, all my old settings and bookmarks are there.

I realize it hasn't always been this easy, I think my first install was Red Hat 6.2 and it took a day just to get X working properly. But as far as ease of use goes a "point and click" distro like Ubuntu is pretty good in day to day use. There is a learning curve as someone has to "unlearn" the Win way of doing things, but I don't think its inherently more difficult. That being said, I don't think we'll see a mass switch to Linux by people, there's too much inertia. You also need a better way to allow people to run their Win apps, in my experience Wine fails more than succeeds and running Win in a virtual machine is just going to be a non-starter for most people.

its def come a LONG way on the desktop and in many ways is even the best. there are a few things that keep holding it back though. it always seems to work great except for that one little tiny essential thing that takes forever to fix, or everything works great, until the new version updates and the now the nvidia drivers wont load or there are random irrecoverable freezes. there's always gonna be hardware makers that dont bother making linux drivers, and switch out chips in their parts without changing the model # and no matter how good the software gets this will be an issue at least in the near term.

/rant


all in all i love it though, its nice knowing (somewhat) that your computer isn't doing anything you don't want it to be doing, and modern package managers are imo THE killer app. and i can have 60 things opened at the same time without crashing.