Turning Away From Linux And Back To The Dark Side?

Slowping asks: "A friend of mine posed me a good question that I think would be best asked on Slashdot: Of all the people who have used Linux or any Unix variant, how many have gone back to Microsoft Windows? I'm not talking about newbies that install it and never run it. I'm talking about people who actually learn the new OS, and can use it competently, but for some reason decide to go back to Windows. If you are one of these people, why did you switch back?" I've always thought that Unix can be configured into an OS for everyone (especially FreeBSD and Linux who are coming out of the server closets in big ways). However, we Aren't Quite There Yet. Where do Unix variants need to improve before they can serve as general desktop machines?

Comments

Mutltiple answers...

[swordgeek]

Well, let's see here:

1) Games. Most still aren't available for linux at all.

2) Apps. Please, let's not talk about StarOffice here. Maybe when 5.2 is released, it'll be stable enough, but it's still too slow to use comfortably.

3) Config. I have too many things that I want to
'eventually' set up under Linux, but until I do, I can't make the complete switch.

4) Maintenance. Like it or don't, Win95/98 neither requires nor allows the same level of maintenance and customisation that Unix in general does. Linux with its thousand different competing desktops is too damned confusing in that respect.

5) Time out! I'm a Unix admin during the day, and I can _ignore_ my OS at home when I'm running '98. Can't do that if I've got Linux. (come to think of it, this might be the same point as 3 and 4 :-)

Personally, not a chance...

[randombit]

I think people who switch back are not looking for Unix. When I installed Linux, that's exactly what I was looking for. The Unix philosophy is obviously not for everyone. I live and work Unix (I administer ~15 Linux and ~40 Solaris boxen), and I would never want anything else (well, at least if new OSes keep in the vein of other recent ones, like Windows, MacOS, and BeOS, none of which I like much).

Personally, for apps, I have what I want. LaTeX (replaces Office and PageMaker), Gimp (replaces every graphics program every created for Windows), XMMS (replaces WinAmp), GCC and/or KAI C++ (replaces Borland C++ & Visual C++). I have a Win98 partion that I keep around for the occasional time when I want to play games [mostly Freespace2], and that's about it.

Linux still isn't there yet

[ptomblin]

I use Linux 90% of the time. One of the three computers I use on a daily basis - one at work, two at home - is dual boot, and I boot in into Windows to:

• play games
  
• watch quicktime movies
  
• visit web sites that were written by morons who think that if it works with IE on Windows, then it doesn't matter if it works anywhere else.
  

Other than that, I use Linux. I prefer the user interface for reading email, Usenet news, and developing programs.

If Quicktime and other browser plugins worked properly under Linux, I'd use the Windows partition even less.

On a somewhat related rant, I fervently wish somebody would develop a web browser that emphasizes performance and stability.
Mozilla had a great opportunity to get rid of the bloat and crap that have made Netscape almost unusable over the years, but instead they concentrated on mind candy like "skins". If Netscape 6 Preview 1 and M14 are any indication, stability and performance are even worse than Netscape 4.72, and that's saying something!
--
A "freaking free-loading Canadian" stealing jobs from good honest hard working Americans since 1997.

Hello. My name is GoRK and I am an addict.

[GoRK]

I use linux. I have manually grok'd a slackware 1.2 install into a RedHat 3 install with SRPMS. I have learned (ba)sh, perl, and tcl. I can make damn near anything thats out there work if it's possible. Do I use Linux on a day-to-day basis? Nope. Why?

No matter how many daemon's are running on top of X to facilitate matters, I cannot always copy and paste between applications. When I can, it's impossible to tell whether it's Ctrl-V or Alt-V or Shift-Ins (If your keys even work). It takes hours to fix all this crap. I dont have the time for that anymore. Sure, say fix it once it's done; yeah until the new .rpm wipes the .conf because someone forgot to change a config file. I should have backed it up? Right. I could go on. A lot of people reading this can probably afford the time it takes to come up with the most 31337 E theme you ever saw, or hack at mesa/glx for a half a day so they can play quake? What if you lost $500 per hour while you tried to figure out why in hell Samba wasn't joining the NT domain? What O/S would you use? I'll take the 95% uptime of windows to the 75% usability time of Linux any day; thanks.

I only wish sometimes that the OSS movement had as many proponents concerned with the SOFTWARE ITSELF rather than the OPERATING SYSTEM it runs on. Let's see some adherence to established functionality standards rather than a lot of this "I know how to make my menu widget better" garbage.

Don't get me wrong. I have a ton of web abd mail servers running Linux. I just designed an entire embedded system around Linux. It's small. It's robust. It's stable, and it burns rubber. But the systems aren't designed to be used interactively by ANYONE. Honestly; if cut and paste between programs barely works, then I'm going to lose hope for Linux on the home desktop.

~GoRK

Re:Hello. My name is GoRK and I am an addict.

[legoboy]

How about highlighting the text you want to copy, middle clicking where you'd like to paste?

This works 100% of the time, to the best of my knowledge. I do get annoyed when I accidently highlight the text I want to replace, therefore unhighlighting what I wanted to copy

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