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 :)
