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Five Reasons Not to Use Linux
UltimaGuy writes "Linux-watch has a humorous article about the top 5 reasons for not using Linux. It does provoke some thought aside from bringing a smile to our lips :)"
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Seeing as the linked article is grinding to a crawl, here's the mirrordote 7ca3f011299d755/index.html
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/384802a7fdfeda4a
One thing the article steps around is the fact that many people like to use their computer for games. In that respect, the availability of Windows titles DOES dwarf Linux availability. So this, a sarcastic and biased rant about Linux being better than Windows, is headline news, whereas a story involving Opera turning 10 years old today and giving away its desktop browser licenses (happening NOW) is rejected by the /. mods.
Something Witty Goes Here
I'm confused:
I have a problem with this (apart from the obvious -- that Windows hasn't been around for the past 15-20 years)
This is 2005. From what I remember Windows 1.0 was released 11/85. Would you have been more satisfied if I had said 15-19.5 years?
Coralized link so you might actually be able to read TFA.
.nyud.net:8090 to the first part of your URLs when submitting.
1 24627492.html
It's not that hard folks, just append
e.g: http://www.linux-watch.com.nyud.net:8090/news/NS8
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
I once had a Dell laptop that came with some version of Norton Antivirus... but the antivirus software was never really functional, and it just couldn't be uninstalled by normal measures. In addition, newer versions of NAV wouldn't install until this version was uninstalled, which was... just not possible without removing *every single key* from the registry referencing Norton, Symantec, or antivirus software. Once this was done, however, the newer antivirus software installed just fine.
psst. I dont want you to look like an idiot.
but
Maya requires one of the following operating systems:
Windows® XP Professional or Windows ® 2000 Professional (service pack 2 or higher)
Red Hat Linux 9.0 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 WS
SUSE Linux 9.1
Apple® Mac® OS X 10. 3 or higher
ATTENTION Users of the IRIX Operating System
Maya requires one of the following browsers:
Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
Netscape® 6 or higher
Safari(TM)
The rest can be found as easy as that one ways. A quick google. In fact most CAD software does have a unix/linux version.
you need to get out of the 90's.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Sounds like you haven't tried anytime recently. Dependancy nightmare? I haven't seen that in ages. Painfull install? Even Debain is quite easy now.
I mean you literally open the CD drive put in cd and hit return. How freakinghard is that? Yeah you might have to check enter your monitor if it is not a common brand...but not likely.
Sheesh. I think people are just lazy. Plain lazy. It takes a litte effort ot get used to something new. Yeah gamers have real gripes. Can't fault them but for the averge user..sheesh.
From here on out I will help a windows user fix their computer one time. If they switch to linux I will help them learn. However a refusal to make an effort to learn will be met with a refusal to help out.
Bleh no all you windows users.
Flaim on I am AC and don't really care what your thoughts and opinions are.
Oh noes.
getfacl doesn't start with ls or isn't a flag for ls. What is someone to do?
Your whole point about ACLs in windows and not in Linux boils down to having to use getfacl instead of ls in order to view the acls.
Well guess what? last time i looked dir in windows didn't show you the acls either...
would it be nice it was a compiled flag in ls like the Z option for selinux? yeah.(oh yeah no selinux for windows btw)But I fail to see how the command line options are different between windows and linux.
where's the Maya/3DS/LW/Softimage alternative? It doesn't exist (dont be a bone head and suggest Blender here, its like comaring a 79' VW to a Ferrai).
Are you nuts? Maya, Softimage and Lightwave are all available for Linux and the major studios are using mostly Linux clients and render farms.
Apple is famed for its attention to usability and stylistic issues, and for concentrating on producing a system that is cohesive and coherent.
Linux, isn't.
And that's fine, because Linux and OS X are aimed at entirely different sets of people. OS X is aimed at style-conscious people who don't want to have to know or care about the computer, just about the tasks they want to perform with it. Linux is aimed mainly at its developers, who by their very nature (ie they're developers!) actually know and care about the technical aspects of computer use.
That's not to say that Linux is some arcane system that only the elite can use, far from it; but it is *not* developed with the same exacting attention to being accessible to the average guy and gal on the street that OS X is.
That is why OS X is "so freakin' easy" for people to use, because it's been designed to be from the start.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Funny you should mention that. My main box at home is a dual PII 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. Bought it in 1997/98. Here's a short list of what it does:
1. Internal DNS
2. DHCP
3. NFS
4. Samba
5. Internal Web Server
6. VoIP Server (Asterisk PBX)
7. Stateful (ie, always where you left off on the desktop) GNOME Desktop Application Server for four users simultaneously via VNC with all the needed apps (web, mail, office, im)
8. NTP server
9. Various emulators for playing DOS and Windows games and VMWare for more serious work stuff.
All I needed to do was a little tweaking to some kernel settings for better desktop performance.
Thanks for asking.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
"You know how many times I've had to edit a configuration file on Linux? I just did it 12 times yesterday alone for two different programs. Will editing a .conf file on Linux crash your system? Maybe, maybe not, depends on what you're doing. But the likelihood that someone would have to do that editing is higher on Linux."
.conf files trying to get a USB sound card working, with no success. You know what it took to get it working in Windows? I plugged it in.
.conf files. Take it from me; I'm one of them.
Thank you! Thank you!! THANK YOU!! You and I don't always agree, but you're right on the money this time!
This is the ONLY reason why I haven't pursued a switch to Linux (dabbling with Ubuntu a little...) with more enthusiasm. I spent 3 hours modifying
Somehow, Windows knows to use the USB sound card when I have it plugged in, and the on-board sound when it's not. Trying several suggested solutions from various Linux forums produced nothing.
Until Linux comes up with some form of Plug-n-Play, the average user is going to stay away. People don't want to risk hosing their systems screwing around with
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You are so wrong on so many points that I don't even know where to begin.
I have to search through several configuration files with 100s of lines to find the one that specifies the default
Ever heard of grep, awk, sed, or vi? You realize no one actually hand searches conf files for specific lines, except for you, right?
I've studied the Windows API enough to know you can twist and bend Windows to do almost anything, through binary means.
Binary means? Spoken like a true "web programmer". Jesus christ, you should be embarassed to post drivel like this.
If you think Linux is more flexible because you have access to its source code, you'd be right, but 98% of the users out there don't care. They won't recompile a thing on their own. They just want a friendly, adjustable OS. Linux doesn't provide that. Windows does.
I love your made up numbers, that you just randomly pull out of thin air. Linux isn't a friendly, adjustable OS? According to whom exactly? Well well. I think OpenOffice 2.0 is a huge improvement in the GUI over 1.1.3, and guess what! It looks much more like MS Office than it ever did.
Thats because you're used to it you idiot. Its famaliar. Look that one up. And frankly, applying patches in Windows is easier than in Linux. Really, so, you can go to windowsupdate, install patches, reboot, and be back online, faster than I can ssh in and type "yum update" ?
You are totally clueless. You have no business even trying to argue these points.
Linux is only now getting the power management capability to Hibernate, which Windows has had for 5+ years. Plug-n-Play has been around for 10+ years, and Microsoft has worked out so many bugs in it that it works almost all the time. Linux: just getting support for it, and it's very spotty.
HUH? Ok now you're just making up facts. Linux is "just getting support" for plug-n-play? You think linux just got power management? You realize apm has been around for years, right?
I'll say it one more time, since I can't pick apart all the tired bullshit in your blog:
YOU. ARE. CLUELESS.
You simply have no idea what you're talking about. I can't believe I'm even responding to this. Christ. GO READ A BOOK.
``Take a look at Apache. A server widely acclaimed for its up-time, and yet you can't even change a single setting without restarting the server!'' /etc/init.d/apache reload
Reloads the configuration without taking the server down. Many Unix daemons do this when you send them a SIGHUP.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just to pick one out-and-out lie from the general confusion of your posting:
Well, lets see, Apache was based on NCSA httpd, which was a rewrite of the original www consortium httpd, which was written originally by Tim Berners-Lee. (all of which were open source). Now lets look at the original HTTP protocol standard -- what do you know, the authors are Tim Berners-Lee, and R. Fielding, from UC Uvine. And look at the Apache core team -- Roy Fielding!So, in fact, the open source folks who wrote Apache and its predecesors are the folks who wrote the standards.
So as I posted on your site, the above statment is downright slanderous, and you should retract it.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
"I decided to try out Linux, so I downloaded Ubuntu and ran the boot disk. Unfortunately, both my hard drives are NTFS, and Ubuntu doesn't know how to partition them. After half an hour looking around the net for a way to partition an NTFS drive without endangering the data on that drive, I gave up. No Linux for me, because I'm not willing to endanger all my system files or buy a new hard drive just to play around with another OS. "Insert disk and press Enter" my ass" you ever heard of a LiveCD? you don't have to install shit. it runs right off of your CD drive. if all you want to is "play around with another OS" like you state, that's all you'll ever need.
He claims that you "occasionally" need to edit a configuration file in Linux, and implies that this is no more frequent than doing so in Windows.
Bullshit. Since I've installed XP, I've never had to edit a configuration file OR registry data. Ever. I can install pretty much any PC-compatible hardware on the market and have it running quickly. Why? Because parts vendors make damn sure their stuff works in Windows.
Since installing Ubuntu on my girlfriend's laptop (which I use as an example since, unlike my home system, it is a typical desktop), I have had to edit exactly one configuration file (the WPA configuration to get it on her secured wireless network at home). Everything else worked great out of the box.
Of course, I'm completely ignoring the fact that for power users like myself, it's usually easier to edit a config file in Linux than it is to figure out how the hell to get the clumsy Windows GUI to do what I want.
When it comes to drivers and hardware, I've had far more trouble in Windows than in Linux. Whenever I install new hardware on a Windows box, it opens up some dialog box, tries to find drivers, fails, asks me for a disk, fails to find the drivers on the disk, makes me find the drivers manually, warns me that they're not XP certified, then installs them and asks me to restart! And that's the best-case scenario! Often it won't even tell me what it's trying to find drivers for. It just says "multimedia device," which when you've installed a motherboard with onboard sound, video, game controller, etc. is not very helpful at all. When I installed a new SATA card in my Linux server last month it just worked as soon as I put it in. I hotplugged in a drive and mounted it with no trouble. No finding and loading drivers and no rebooting.
I decided to try out Linux, so I downloaded Ubuntu and ran the boot disk. Unfortunately, both my hard drives are NTFS, and Ubuntu doesn't know how to partition them. After half an hour looking around the net for a way to partition an NTFS drive without endangering the data on that drive, I gave up. No Linux for me, because I'm not willing to endanger all my system files or buy a new hard drive just to play around with another OS. "Insert disk and press Enter" my ass.
What? This paragraph is just lies. Or ignorance. I've done many Ubuntu installs, and most of them included resizing NTFS partitions. They all worked flawlessly. No problems at all. I have yet to even *hear* of data loss with the Ubuntu installer. If you already have Windows setup and you install Ubuntu, it sets up the dual-booting automagically. As soon as you reboot, you are presented with a choice of what OS to use.
Compare this to Windows. The Windows installer doesn't even recognize filesystems other than FAT and NTFS, and it won't even resize those. Now, suppose that you have another OS installed and have left room for Windows. You install Windows just fine, but when you reboot - shits! - you can only get into Windows. Unless you have a boot disk for your other system, you're fucked.
The author points out that there are a bunch of freeware programs for Linux. Of course, almost all the ones he lists have equal or better counterparts freely available for Windows. Is the argument that those Windows programs aren't packaged with the OS? Guess what, quite a few of them are, when you buy from a big vendor like Dell. And since you're gonna have to download or purchase your Linux distro anyway, it's not like you're saving install time by running Linux.
The first thing that I always seem to need to do when I get a new Dell/eMachines/Toshiba/HP here at the office is uninstall all the absolute garbage that comes pre-installed on it. Then I go about installing things like the all-vital anti-virus and going through the arduous Windows Update process (made even more arduous recently by Windows Genuine Advantage, which I usually just bypass even on legit machines because it's a pain in the ass).
You need not purchase
Where's the CAD/CAM software?
Well, aside from the 43 CAD packages (some free, some open source, some commercial) trivially accessible through freshmeat.net, there is also BRL-CAD, the recently open-sourced CAD software used by the Army Research Laboratory to model and upgrade the Abrams battletank, and other systems.
There is also CAM software available, CNCsr being one example, used for control of CNC (Computer Numeric Control) devices (lathes, mills, routers, plasma cutters, etc).
There are other, highly valid criticisms of this author's thesis, but the lack of engineering tools isn't one of them. The main source of Linux's strength, IMO, is that it is used by professionals (mainly engineers) to get real work done, and this use drives the direction of its development, and the development of the software running on the platform. In many cases, it is the same engineers using the software that develop the software. This naturally results in software which is highly suited to practical everyday (albeit specialized) use.
-- TTK
And whoever said it has obviously never had a newborn. They learn the nipple--like everything else--and it's damn frustrating for an exhausted parent.
It does provoke some thought aside from bringing a smile to our lips :)"
And THAT, my boys, is PRECISELY the problem. You smile at these issues as if they weren't really issues (cause you're so smart). You attribute Linux's lack of popularity with the masses to some MS conspiracy when the conspiracy, if there is any at all, is right at home with you. You imagine problems with Windows that don't exist; and you ignore problems with Linux that stare you in the face every day. You are so happy with yourselves for being so so clever to make Linux work and decry others who seem to have issues.
The first issue is: I don't want to "make" Linux work. I just want it to work. Understand the difference? I don't live for Linux; I live for the end product. I, and millions of people, do not give a rat's ass about Linux as an OS. It's a command-line interface that's a lot harder to use than MS-DOS. So what if you can stick an autoexec.bat in there to run up some copy-cat Windows-like, but not quite interface. And you want me to replace Windows with THAT?!? You have GOT to be kidding! I don't have time to learn Linux and all the cute little "verstaile" things you can do with it. I just want to use a word processor, a photo editor, and a spreadsheet. I just want to get on the Net and surf around, get my email and send it out. I want to share some files, buy some stuff online, and basically create product. That's all. End of story.
Second issue: Security. Oh, woe is me! Windows is so full of holes! Bad, bad, bad! Oh, really? Norton has zapped every virus which attempted to show up here. Spyware is down to a near zero--all with two easily-installed (I mean, like, Click->Done) programs. And Linux? Well, first there was this cool bomb that gave the idiot root, then the password file was cracked, then the box was used in a DDoS attack, and on, and on, and on, and on--even with guys (not me!) who had so much experience with Linux that their first distro was on a 5-1/4" floppy. To claim Windows is full of holes may very well be true, but to claim Linux is the alternative? You must be kidding!
Oh, and MS has inferior products--just so sucky as to be unbelievable. Right! You compare Office with what? Open Office? (SNORT!) You ever do tables in Open Office? You ever do an index? You ever do a full-length book? No wonder. I wouldn't trust it with something valuable either. Hey, I still like Lotus better than Excel (Well, I've got it memorized is the only reason), but the fact is that I can trust MS products to do more or less what they say they will do. No config files. Boot and shoot. I'm done. It works. If it won't do some 3D rendering weirdo application, fine. I don't care. My millions of co-workers don't care either. Pixar can do what they want. I watch their movies, not make them.
And Linux is "faster," right? Then why do I boot up and wait ten minutes for a $ when it has to load innumerable drivers (that I had to specify), read innumerable batch files from host.conf to whatever (that I had to edit), and then wind up with what?? A "$"? You must be kidding! (Oh, yeah. I forgot: Autoexec.bat: "Run a Windows-like copy-cat interface." How innovative!
Linux is "less expensive," right? It's a good thing you guys aren't in charge of real-world budgets. Let's just say: It ain't the cost of the distro, folks. It's keeping it running. That's expensive, and you guys all seem to think you deserve top dollar. You seem to think "If you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." You know what? You're right. You keep the more esoteric parts of Linux close to your chest, just obscure enough so no one else QUITE knows what's going on, then you're "needed." That's exactly right, and that's why you are going away. And my goal is to get rid of the last couple of Linux boxes I've got left so I don't have to deal with you any more. Then you can go collect unemployment for awhile and tell everyone else how smart you are. Two more to go, and one of them gets replaced next week
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Whoever it was has never had children. Some babies require quite a bit of coxing (sp?) before they understand what going on with that thing being shoved in their faces.
Just a counterpoint.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
its been slashdotted.
1 24627492.html
Here is a link coral cache link:
http://www.linux-watch.com.nyud.net:8090/news/NS8
And if the mother has trouble with the coaxing, there are consultants who will help. Yes, breastfeeding consultants. My co-worker's wife's health plan explicitly provides coverage for that.
I wonder how someone gets into that line of work...
Fact is that this article was obviously meant to be somewhat comical, some things within Linux definitely limit its adoption by mainstream computer users. BTW - I'm a Windows Admin @ work, and a Debian fan/user @ home, So please don't bash me for having an opinion of why the average everyday wal-mart/kmart/sears shopper doesn't rush right out and buy Suse/RedHat/Xandros/Madriva, when Windows works "out of the box", not to mention they've already paid for windows, why pay for another OS.
./install.pl then answer questions about my kernel-headers, and where my C compiler is installed, then make sure I have ... yea. Try installing VMWare from the tgz. My wife can figure that out. With me sitting there "maybe". * Thank you whomever came up with apt. I love you guys.
/etc is not the same as /var which definitely does not hold the same stuff as /usr. Oh and don't forget that not all applications will be in /usr/bin, but some are in /root and others are in /usr/sbin. Let's not forget that you need to put the plugins in the programs /usr/bin/xxxx/plugins directory... or wait is that in /home/bill/xxxx/plugins? Do you want /fries/french or /fries/curly or maybe you want /home/fries/plugins/var/french. ./go/get/a/consortium/and/standardize/then/you/wil l/have/more/users.sh -install -directory /usr/bin/thanks/for/listening.
First off, let's talk about those wonderful programs that Linux has (thankfully).
Windows uses Media Player. No plugins (generally required) for DVD's or most-not-all media. Linux uses Xmms, Kaffeine, or a myriad of others, all of which require plugins for some thing as simple as playing a DVD. Yea. I want to go through plugin hell just to play Blackhawk Down. No thanks. Insert Disc, press play works just fine for me.
More to the point of this though is that many of the programs that are available for Linux either are named in such a way that you would never guess what it does (D&D characters is not a naming convention for computer apps), or they are so poorly marketed that you can't tell what they are for. People respond to nice shiny websites ( http://ww2.nero.com/ that show precisely what the product does, complete with screenshots, and descriptions. SourceForge is a godsend, but let's be honest, that website wasn't designed to showcase your product. If I can't google it, and get a quality webpage showing your software and what it does, I generally won't bother trying to figure it out. I don't have the time to fiddle with crap. I need to see it, determine if it meets my needs and either download it or move on. If the download points me to sourceforge, thats cool, but your mainpage shouldn't be sourceforge.
Linux does not suffer from a lack of applications. If anything it suffers from too many applications that all do the same thing only someone wanted a purple button instead of a grey one and wrote a whole new interface/application to get it.
Application installation. Sure. Let me tar -xjvf that, then switch directories, and
Moving on. Setup. Yes Xandros is a breeze to install. It also costs money of you want to do anything with Active Directory. Many distro's are free but at what cost? Let's see, I have to recompile the kernel (yea, my wife will do that), if I want to suspend my laptop. I have to download kernel-headers (yea my wife knows what those are) to install mad-wifi to get my wireless to work. Let's not mention all the hoops you have to go through to get the configuration working properly. Oh and don't forget you need to modprobe some items before and after you suspend or else the machine simply won't resume properly. Along with all this though... try installing VMWare on Xandros (OC 3.02). It's almost funny. (BTW - Xandros People. Nice job guys. Seriously, keep up the good work.)
All in All, everyone should be capable of using Linux. Its all very simple. Assuming you know that
Considering Digg is for retards I think I'll pass.
Digg is one of the worst websites on the Internet so I don't see the point in mentioning it here. Practically every story on Digg is a link to some clueless retards blog.... The comments also make me question if most of the people that read that site have ever touched a computer let alone worked with one.
Man, you are SO right!
/S. I've been using MS-DOS for more than 15 years, moving to Linux is restarting everything from scratch. Is that really NECESSARY?
.rc and that .conf, but I tell you : DELETE YOUR PARTITIONS AND INSTALL WINDOWS.
For starters, why isn't there a shell that emulates the windows CMD? As useful greps / finds / pipe chains are, they can't match the simplicity of a DIR
As with nearly EVERY piece of code on linux, I feel the programmers are constantly trying to do "better" than what exists on Windows. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but the HUGE user base of Microsoft's OS can't be anything else than a very powerful indicator of it's user-friendliness.
I can't believe how cryptic some things are on Linux. Try to setup a software RAID array. Now, remove a disk, let it become critical, then put another disk (bigger one, different maker). Watch as you'll be greated by the big emptyness of options. Some fools will tell you "RTFM" or edit this
When you manage a hundred workstations with the latest technology in them, you DON'T want to have to deal with thousands of precious configuration files that were hacked for this and that.
On Windows, I have my Group Policies. All computers, be them laptops, workstations or servers, adhere to these policies and I can change some high-level decisions without having to figure out how to implement it in KDE, Gnome and all those dirty piece of crap.
Don't get me wrong, I also maintain many BSD servers, but that's what they are : servers and BSD. I'd NEVER put any Linux/BSD crap in the face of the user unless they need an application that is ABSOLUTELY not available for Windows.
Parent, thanks for the GREAT comment.
You did know you can ctrl-click the one mouse button you have to emulate a right click?
Here is an anecdote. From this past weekend, in fact.
I have been a MS programmer for 15 years. I have been using Linux consistantly during the last several years - I have a whole stack of distro CDs dating all the way back to redhat 5.2. So I am no n00b, but I am still a Windows guy by my day job.
My small team of developers has been in need some issue tracking software, so I decided to get Bugzilla up and running on a fresh Linux install for the team to look at on Monday. I gave myself the whole weekend to get it done. I chose Slackware 10.1 as my distro. I went though the usual partition, choose packages, etc. with no problem. I chose to install mysql and apache (for Bugzilla) as part of the initial OS install.
First boot, the mysql daemon dies immediately and unexplainedly. Hmmm. Ok, I decided to get X running and then I would deal with that later.
GNOME comes up, CRASH, the configuration manager is puking. I dig through some logs, tweak, reapeat. I do this a dozen times over with no luck fixing the problem.
XFCE is my favorite "small footprint" window manager anyway, so I give up on GNOME and copy the XFCE startup script file over. XFCE comes up fine. Phew!
Ok, back to mysql. Nothing really indicative in the logs, but I find some "post install" instructions on the web so lets try those. Modify some config files, run some scripts, still dies with the same error. Tweak, try, fail, repeat. Then I dig with Google some more help info in the newsgroups. I modify more config settings, run the scripts again, repeat, finally the daemon is up and running.
Now, I want to get the graphical admin app running on the new server so that I can prep the users and permissions it for the bugzilla install. So I download the rpms from mysql.org and install them. Hmm, lots of dependancy errors. I dig through the docs and find a mention to use --nodeps and --force. This makes no sense to me, why have dependancies if you are going to blow past them? But I go ahead and it appears to install just fine.
I run the graphical admin app and it comes up. Then I try to add a user and the admin app dies when I try save the user. Hmmm. I look at the error message. I look at the logs. I search online for help. Tweak, run, die, repeat.
At this point I have wasted most of my free weekend futzing around. I decide to install onto Windows Server 2003 just to "git 'r done" before Monday. The mysql graphical install goes without a hitch, enter my port and root password info in to the nice dialogs, and the service starts right up. Same with the apache install. Same with the Perl install.
The Bugzilla install takes a little more time. There is one config file to modify, some Perl modules to install, some scripts to run. 2 hours later I am looking at Bugzilla in my browser. That was after 10 hours on Linux and I didn't finish step one - the mysql install.
The Point: In the Linux vs MS argument, it aint just about being willing to edit config files with an editor, read man pages, dig aroung online, and get your fingers a little dirty. I gave this little project my whole weekend in order to give Linux a chance. How many more hours should I have given it? 10 hours? 20 hours? This was my own time, but had I been on company time our that of Windows 2003 would have just paid for itself.
This was one anecdote, but I have been through this type of things before with Linux. Sometimes things work on Linux "out of the box", and sometimes they dont. Getting my video card drivers to work was a chore. Getting Open Office to create a document with trashing the formatting unexplainedly was a chore. Sigh.
At which point a copy of World of Warcraft is purchased, along with a copy of Cedega (Formally TransGaming WineX). It is installed for them in the same manner the OS was and life goes on
All modern distros have a good update system.
Anyway, if you want a recommendation, try the latest SUSE.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
You can also left-click on the icon and just drag it off the dock to remove it. When I first switched, this kind of behaviour (so simple!) felt strange but it's quite common throughout OSX. e.g. Dragging a picture from Safari to the desktop to save it...or dragging an application to the Trash to delete it.