5 reasons why I don’t do Linux

…or FreeBSD or MacX Leopard or Solaris, and stick to plain old windows.

1. Too much effort
True, Windows is not the most straightforward operating system in the world, but at least it’s the most familiar one in the world. Click a file to select. Double click to open. Right-click to modify. How much simpler can it get?
Compare this with everything else. You need to mount drives before you can use them (and dismount them afterwards), manually install applications, change settings for pretty much everything and in short, have an idea of how the whole thing actually works before you can do something on it.

2. Too much geek talk
Normally, you don’t hear too many people talking about modifying binary keys on the Windows Registry…and that’s about as geeky as it gets.
For Linux users, the day routinely involves tweaking the Kernel, swapping drives, compiling programs, or simply doing itsy-bitsy things to make your machine a tad bit leaner and faster.

3. Too many versions
For 7yrs, Windows xp was just one thing. And now you have Vista. And even though they do come in lots of flavors, the basic package is pretty much the same thing; give or take a few additional features. Nothing more, nothing less.

Linux, on the other hand, comes in so many distributions, its easy to get lost in there. You have popular commercial versions such as SUSE and Red Hat, you have ‘community’ versions like Ubuntu and Fedora; and then you have those little versions someone decided to make for themselves…like Arch Linux. To top things, with a little know-how, you can make your own distro…sometimes small enough to fit on a USB stick. Why would anyone wanna do that is beyond me. I prefer to take my entire notebook along, not just the operating system.

4. Apply the Applications
I’m sorry to say this, but when you take the list of applications in the world available for windows, and compare it with everything else; things just don’t add up. Now you can scream all you want on how popular software is always available for Mac and Linux, but its usually more difficult to find unless its in your job to do so.
The rest of us happy-go-lucky computer users prefer to walk into a store and walk out with the DVD, without having to ask too many questions on compatibility and whatever.

5. Getting the job done.
For people like me, at the end of the day it’s all about how much I get done “on” my computer and not “for” my computer.

Tweaking system settings for the hell of it is fun when that’s all you have to do. But when you’re at work and running multiple server-side production environments, an interface monitor and an Email client, the last thing you'd care about is how much processing your workstation is using and how you can tweak the whatever to speed it up. Nor do you care to compile and manually install that tiny little file-zip application.

You need something that’s easy, and doesn’t demand learning the operating core to get your job done. And that’s what windows gives me.

After all, it’s the applications that run on it that I’m interested in.

p.s.
Boy, I know I made some enemies up there…to all the penguin fans reading this; sorry you guys. But I couldn’t help myself :)