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Old March 9th 19, 02:34 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Reason *TO* pick on Windows 10

"T" wrote

| You could always use iptables. That is what I use on
| mine and my customer's servers. No GUI though
|

That's a good one. You've managed to not fulfill
both of my minimum Linux requirements with one
program. But of course that's not hard. And
naturally, once I got a version of Linux with a well
designed firewall, where I didn't need console
windows, I'd want software selection and long
term support. The two requirements that still can't
be fulfilled -- firewall and fixing the rough edges --
are just my requirements for minimum functionality
before I'd spend my time actually trying out the
rest of it.

The lack of a usable Linux desktop just keeps going
on, year after year. The fan base keep saying, "It's
great! Try it again. You'll be impressed." But over 2
decades the fan base have never actually listened.
If someone says they don't want to be forced to
command line, the fan base says, "Oh? I like command
line." If someone says, "But there's no software.",
the fan base says, "What? There's Firefox and GIMP
and Libre Office. How much do you need?"

The people using Linux are not using a desktop to
do work. Most are using Linux as servers, for special
purpose scientific uses, as kiosk systems, or they're
geeks who use Linux as a combination hobby, clubhouse
and social circle.

WINE is a good example in microcosm. It's been
going for over 20 years... 20 years!... Yet it's mainly
young geeks who want support for Windows games.
And the whole thing is backward. They're not providing
an API for Windows programmers. They're redirecting
every single function or combination of functions in
a Windows program to the Linux API. One program at
a time and one call at a time. They specifically don't
want to work with Windows programmers. So it's an
endless, one-fix-at-a-time approach. And typical of
Linux, there are virtually no docs. I once downloaded
the pitiful excuse for docs that WINE did have. It was
supposed to be compiled! I had to write a script to
turn the docs into readable files. You couldn't make up
this idiocy.

Why are they so resistant to docs? Because most
of the people writing the software and managing the
system are geeks with minimal English literacy. They
often say that themselves, explaining that they have
no docs because they hate writing docs. But they also
hate making things understandable. They want to be
able to talk in secret code with their friends, with no
one else understanding. In other words, they live in
a world of adolescent geek jargon, used to render their
social circle exclusive.

Problems like that are deep and systemic. Someone
making a sensible, usable firewall would help, but it's
unlikely that anything can ever turn Linux into a user-
friendly tool for any but the most extreme geeks. Which
is a sad, lost opportunity. DotNet was adapted to Linux,
despite having very little relevance there. If Linux people
could just take the trouble to create
crossover docs and tools for Windows programmers,
so that most Windows software could be ported easily,
that would go a long way toward making Linux usable.
But the core problem is that Linux people actually don't
want it to be usable. That would spoil the fun and the
imagined cachet.

On of the nicest things about Windows, to my mind, is
the lack of an emotional, biased fan base. Apple fans are
fiercely loyal suckers who turned Jobs into a guru. Jobs,
in turn, told them what they wanted to hear: That the
whole lemming school of overpaying Apple fans are people
who "think different". It was brilliant marketing. "You
want to do what I tell you to because you're an
independent thinker." Once they've swalllowed that kind
of pretzel logic they're hooked.

Linux fans are equally fanatic in other ways. It's
religious. Windows isn't religion. That's a critical
difference that Linux and Apple fans often miss.
Windows just gets the job done. It's not especially
pretty or quirky. It just works. People don't use it
because they think Gates or Nadella are genius gurus.
They just use it because it works and it's a standard
they can depend on. We don't go into Apple or Linux
groups to tell people they should switch. We couldn't
care less. (And anyway, people in the Linux groups
are too uncivilzed to talk to.


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