Given fairly well made mainstream distros like Ubuntu basically just work nowadays, I think it is a bit rich to shit on Linux with snarky remarks. Nobody is denying that there is certain lack of cohesiveness, niggling issues that annoy us but most of the time they are not dealbreakers. There used to be a thousand papercuts but not anymore - sure its not zero. Afterall it is made by volunteers for free because they have an itch to scratch or they like programming or want to give back something to the world etc.
You didn't pay a dime for it, except with your time on things that annoy you, which is indeed not free. But if your time is that precious and you are that exacting, maybe Linux isn't a good fit for you. Maybe you should try paying for the perfectly crafted commercial alternatives. Except in the real world, those alternatives are far from perfect and have tons of issues like spyware, bloat, ads being shoved down the users throat and so on - on top of the papercuts/annoyances that sometimes take years to fix.
I’ve been using Linux daily since people were saying the same about Mandrake to people complaining about Gentoo requiring part-time job levels of effort to make it capable of basic functionality. Don’t mistake the recognition of very real hurdles to widespread adoption (brought on by fragmentation) with some sort of lack of experience on my part. I love Linux, except for when the simplest little things become nightmarish time-sucks and you find out it has nothing to do with technical complexity but because of some ideological argument a couple of guys had on a mailing list in 1999.
> Don’t mistake the recognition of very real hurdles to widespread adoption (brought on by fragmentation) with some sort of lack of experience on my part.
Everybody recognizes the hurdles. But they are there because of the nature of the ecosystem. Unpaid skilled maintainers are hard to get and it takes specific kind of people to maintain a driver or a subsystem, for sometimes decades. Those personalities sometimes come with strong opinions and prejudices and such. Does that delay fixing of end user issues? Yes. If there was an easy solution, it would be implemented by now.
Funny you bring up Mandrake because I paid a good chunk of my salary to buy a box that came with the CD and a small printed book. I have been using Linux through thick and thin everyday since then.
> I love Linux
Me too! Let's not be too harsh on our loved one :)
You didn't pay a dime for it, except with your time on things that annoy you, which is indeed not free. But if your time is that precious and you are that exacting, maybe Linux isn't a good fit for you. Maybe you should try paying for the perfectly crafted commercial alternatives. Except in the real world, those alternatives are far from perfect and have tons of issues like spyware, bloat, ads being shoved down the users throat and so on - on top of the papercuts/annoyances that sometimes take years to fix.