A diatribe against my beloved Linux…

These thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for quite some time now, it is time that they are unleashed. In my recent machinations with Linux and all of the associated crap that goes along with it, I have had to sit and think about what it is exactly that I really want from an operating system.

There is a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing how to negotiate a Linux operating system. It is a long, hard path, fraught with frustration, arcane scripting and terminal commands, and applications that you and three others in the world know of. It is truly the thesis of revolutionary thinking in computing: a language spoken by the hardcore, friendless militants of the computing era.

And there is Windows. The default. The leviathan. The beast. It’s lure is like that of the Dark Side: it is powerful and easy to master. Simply let go and you can find your way. Nevermind that your wallet is empty and your information locked up in proprietary formats and bully tactics. I like Windows for what it is: it brought computing to the masses. I do not like the things that Microsoft stands for. Bucking of standards, ignoring the very consortiums that they created in the first place. They believe that because they arrived first, they are afforded the entire pie.

I have harbored a long standing resentment toward the other remaining option: Apple’s MacOS. You see, during the years that I started learning how to manipulate a computer, the Mac was in rough times. Their ease of use has always been there, but their feature list was maligned as a result. Lately, they’ve been surprising me. Especially since they moved to a flavor of Unix underneath. Over the last five years they have become the true middle ground: beautiful interfaces, ease of use, a good list of supported apps, and a nice form factor. Since they switched over to Intel based processors, the draw is getting stronger and stronger. I don’t think I will ever share the dirty hippy zeal of most of the Mac community, but I’m slowly getting accustomed to the idea of possibly owning one at least once in my life. I think that same die-hard user base is both what differentiates the Mac genre and hamstrings it at the same time. From the outside, both it and Linux appear like cults that stand on streetcorners handing out pamphlets and declaring the End Is Near. But the End never comes.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love Linux. Those that are striving hard to make a place for Linux in the desktop market had really better start innovating in the same areas as the Mac people though. Tools like apt and yum are starting to pave the way for an easy to use interface to install software, but until they make the underlying parts transparent and the visible parts simple, elegant, and beautiful they will always play third fiddle in the desktop OS wars. That being said, I’m not going to reach for a Mac when I need an awesome web server yesterday. I’m also not going to reach for a Linux machine when I want to put together my “Steve Jobs: Silicon Valley Messiah” pamplets.

If Microsoft keeps up its tactics and innovation by sewing together three existing ideas into one bloated new supersoldier of an idea, I’m going elsewhere. You shouldn’t need a 128MB video card just to hope to run the newest version of an OS.

This is where everyone that likes telling me “I told you so” can place their bookmarks. In five years, that last statement is going to seem extremely short-sighted, but in five years we may all be running desktop Linux too for all I know.