amassed lust

I’ve been dual-booting between Linux Mint and Windows Vista on all of my machines for a while now trying to make the adjustment to using Linux full-time.

I still find myself switching between the operating systems often. For somethings Linux works best, for others I still have to come back to Windows.

Linux is a “your mileage may vary” kind of operating system.

Choice is great. I have a great deal of choices in Linux… but sometimes I have so many that it just ruins the experience for me.

A good example is how applications are installed on various distros.

For most you actually have to compile the files before you install them. I’ve actually found myself getting pretty acquainted with the process and it isn’t terribly hard but can my fiancee or my mom do it? Certainly not.

I know that the great part about Linux is that we have choice… however this is part of the problem. With so many choices no one can decide on a standard for installing applications on Linux that the regular average computer user can sit down and do.

RPMs, DEBS, these are things that the average user just doesn’t understand… nor do they want to.

So what can the people pushing Linux truly do?

Honestly I’m not sure. Getting people to agree on anything in the Linux community is going to be about damn near impossible.

My experience with the community is another “milage may vary” sort of topic. Sometimes I’ll ask for some assistance and people are quick to jump up and either give me the answer I need or at the very least point me in the right direction of a tutorial that I couldn’t find even after a great deal of searching.

Othertimes they can all be egotistical assholes. They believe they are better then everyone else because they use an “alternative” operating system. Sure buddy… that makes you so much “cooler”.

I’ve found that someone like my fiancee or my mother won’t have much luck finding help all of the time for issues they may have. If I decided to set either of them up with a Linux system I would myself have to become more familiar with the innerworkings so they have someone that can help them.

Linux has been great in the productivity department for me. I have found a plethora of great programs that keep me productive on Linux and it truly shows that Linux is becoming ready for the business and educational enviroment. As far as entertainment goes I’ve found the choices to be lacking.

A great deal of music and video software exists for Linux but not each program does everything and it often times takes me two programs to do things that one simple program on Windows could do but I’ve noticed that in this area a new program for Linux comes out nearly all of the time and that the developers are dedicated to making software that does everything I want.

Gaming on Linux has also been suprisingly pleasant. I’m playing World of Warcraft on my Linux box through Wine and I must say the experience has been VERY positive for me. I thought the game would run slow, the framerate would be bad or I’d run in to a lot of problems. Everyone makes installing it out to be some huge nightmare but I honestly had ZERO real problems getting it up and running on my Linux box.

As a matter of fact I’ve found that World of Warcraft not only LOOKS better on my Linux box then it does on Windows I get a much higher framerate then what I’ve been getting on Windows Vista.

I can run World of Warcraft at a higher graphics setting in Linux then I could on Windows and it looks better! I still can’t get over that.

With more and more software becoming avaliable each day I find myself pulled more and more to Linux because my system is more secure, seems a whole hell of a lot snappier, and most everything for Linux can be had for no charge.

Once the community learns to be more accepting of the new Linux users, some standards are established, and some more companies like Dell start offering Linux preinstalled you will see more and more people switching over to Linux.

P.S

The Linux Mint community has been the most pleasant community in the Linux world to date. When other distro communities were mean, hateful, and full of themselves the people in the Linux Mint community were understanding, thoughtful, and nice.