This article is more than 1 year old

Get real – Linux doesn't cut it

Thomas Greene red-carded for karma-whoring

Mandrake 8.1 easier than Win-XP


Hello Thomas C Green in Washington,

You write -

In other words, it's better at most of what the majority of Windows addicts use their computers for: wasting time on line.

Is that really what you think the majority of PC owners actually use their computers for? Good god. It particularly amused me to read your blase references to things as trivial as office-type applications.

The reference to only using a text editor wasn't that surprising, after all were you to 'relish the distraction' of a word processor, it would have highlighted your spelling and grammatical errors. [Bollocks - Letters Ed.]

Back to my major point.

Apparently Linux is better at wasting time on line right? I'm struggling to think of a way that this can possibly be true. IE 6 is very clearly the most useful browser for the Internet given that it displays all sites correctly and no other browser does.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, it isn't but the simple fact of the matter is that IE 6 is the world's most useful browser for the Internet.

And then there's just more, better (because they're commercially developed in many cases) net applications as well. LOTS of them. One doesn't HAVE to use Outlook on Win32. I don't, I use something fairly obscure called The Bat which, in my experience thus far, has yet to
have anything approaching it on Linux.

How about other Net activities?

How's your WMA video viewer under Linux? How's your Real? How's your QuickTime? How's your Net Meeting? How's your MSN Messenger? Hell, how's your online games even?

No matter which way you care to measure it, Linux ISN'T better at 'wasting time on line'. Unless you mean to suggest that it's better at wasting time while you're technically online, since it can't actually do anywhere near as much as Win32 once you ARE online.

Perhaps that is what you meant. Or are there some other 'everyday chores' which don't involve graphics, using the Internet or those superfluous office applications? I wonder, could it be Tuxracer?

I'm all for intelligent comparisons of Win32 with Linux but this sort of nonsense doesn't help anyone. A hearty cheer for drawing attention to the obviously lame installation issues of the major distributions.
However I think it only reasonable to do the platform justice by being realistic about what a Linux installer could expect from the outset!

Regards,

Mat Bettinson

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like