Users Push Merits of Linux on the Desktop 16757

wrote on Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:41:15 -0700

Argh. I *hate* it when the popular press does things like this.

Either they should follow Richard Stallman's suggestion and call it GNU-Linux, or they should identify the concept as "Many Linux distributions".

Linux per se is very difficult to use without a proper compiler, or at least an buttembler, some knowledge of how to write INT $80 calls (or libc calls in lieu thereof), etc. Most distros, however, lovingly ensconce the kernel in a variety of tools, setting managers, GUI environments (KDE, Gnome), utilities, games, yada yada yada, ...

Call me extremely picky, if you like. Of course Windows has a similar problem, though turned around: the actual Windows kernel is something like NTOSKRNL.EXE, buried deep in the muck, and it is also lovingly ensconced in a variety of tools, setting managers, ..., all called Windows.

Beginning? :-) Heh. I've been using it on my desktop for almost a decade. In fact, it may have been more than a decade as I remember using 0.99pl12 Slackware kernels, which according to the Web were built back in 1993 -- and I was fighting with SLS prior to that.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

The desktop is not a frontier. It's hostile (or at least antipathic) territory, mapped out by a prior owner thereof -- or at least someone who thinks he owns everything on the desktop. We'll have to shoo him off. :-) (Shouldn't be too hard as he's getting greedy. Anyone remember King George III? We fought over a 2% *stamp tax*, of all things; that's what started the Revolution. Microsoft had better be careful.)

Most Linux distros do that reasonably well; it's a matter of IT getting their act together and ensuring they mirror the stuff properly.

-- It's still legal to go .sigless.