the state of linux as i see it 13299

Skeets

That was the bonehead Tooten wrongly accusing me. If I had wanted to attack your spelling you would have known it.

I was genuinely interested in what you mean by 'get Linux setup'. (c)rapskat says the same thing: once Linux is properly setup and configured it's awesome.

Where I'm going with this is, I've bought or downloaded and successfully installed at least 8 different distros to the hard drive.

RedHat 4.2 Suse 7.1 Pro Suse 9.1 Personal Mandrake 9.2 and 10.0 Mandriva LE 2005 Fedora Core 2 Knoppix 3.2 (or 3.4) - from LiveCD to hard drive Ubuntu 5.0.4 also ran various Live CDs

Except for the first two (which were some years ago), I pretty much got them all working well: sound, video, web surfing. I only tried printing on a couple, and that CUPS stuff was a mess. I have simple printing needs, and printing did work on at least one so I don't consider it a big problem. USB devices were a little hit and miss, but overall not an issue either.

Unlike you, I usually take the time to do parbreastioning. My current Ubuntu setup has around 8 parbreastions, including a few gigs each devoted to JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, and FAT32. In case I wanted to do some benchmark and NTFS comparisons.

So I shuffled distros a bit, just to get a feel for different ones, and the different install programs. I guess my point is, by the standards you laid out in your post, I got Linux setup. But unlike you and (c)rapskat, I didn't find it ROCKS! or is awesome. It had a bunch of bullpoo bugs, app lockups, poor documentation, clunky apps, strange behaviors, etc. And it wasn't snappy to run like Windows. It doesn't have a good database tool like MS Access.

And how is this different from Linux distro vendors pushing their stuff?

Absolutely.

You'll have aged 20 years by then.

True, that's a good goal. MS achieved it, I think, a long time ago. Except for security issues, nearly all cola complaints about Windows are unreasonable or flat out lies. (I note that doesn't stop you all from basing a whole newsgroup on hating and insulting MS and Windows.)

Maybe someone will when Linux users start buying en mbutte.

You're just wrong. MS is handily outselling Linux in the server area.

Well, I see you're getting a good start as a cola bozo; MS insults and lies are always welcome here.

I have to agree. It's not a solid compebreastor yet, but Linux is improving very fast. Problem is - how do you supplant a very entrenched monopoly like MS, who has a huge universe of great apps, and incredible hardware support, all at reasonable prices? Not easily - and not likely.