Disclaimer: I'm married to a Linux nerd, God bless him, and I must say that he's (finally) given in and said that Linux would not be, with the comparative amount of effort (will touch on that) good for me. So this is very little directed at him except for the fact that he still goes off on his freeware rulez kicks and stuff. Also, this rant isn't about how Linux is good for NOONE it's about leaving US who are HAPPY with what we have A L O N E.

Damn the man! Ah the cry that millions of youth every year take up without knowing who the man is nor often even caring, let's just damn him for the heck of it. Whatever. Lately "the man" is the great coporation Microsoft. And I mean great as in immense I make no implications about ethics or quality. Well, not yet anyway....

Ahem. For all you little noncomformist sheep I've decided to once and for all detail WHY exactly I'm NOT switching to that holy symbol of all that's alternative: LINUX.

It happened at it's peak several times a month, some rose glassed idealist would tell me the joys and freedom of switching to America's new #2 operating system. It still happens occasionally, leading me to get into conversations like this:

Yeah I've been working on playing _____ insert game name.
Ah I don't play games so much anymore since I switched to Linux.
Ah, that's too bad.
YOU should switch to Linux!
The hell? I like playing games, Linux can't do that as well
Yes it can!
Uh huh...but you just said...
You don't want to be supporting Microsoft!
The hell?

And so on and so forth.

Reason #1 Linux WON'T play my games.

It won't. You know that. The first step in my husband's guide to installing Debian Linux is to dig through your machine and make sure all your chipsets are being used by some other Linux slob. Another classic conversation goes something like me saying that Linux won't do what I want, and then some other poor sap saying "Yeah it does everything!" and then two linux brats getting in some conversation about finding, for example, a Zmudian mud client for Linux. ... And saying how they can't, or the ones they find I can't get working. Then when I mention being justified the prior mentioned blind idealist sets into a lovely pout. (Okay that one time it was my great friend and clan leader, but what happened was true, and she did go into a pout, and she demoted me.)

To run a game on Windows, I pop in the CD, run the validations. I can find on the game site what issues are known and see if any of them affect me. If it doesn't run I've got forums and many other things that can help me. Open source has WINE but apparently the free wine isn't good enough for a lot of things...including warcraft 3 which required my husband to borrow my computer for a month of evenings to finish.

Okay well his machine actually is probably barely fast enough to run it. Okay? Look just so we got the proper disclaimers on her.

Reason #2 I am a Windows Power User

Let's first define power user with a stress on USER. I can download and install software, I can tweak my own drivers. I can troubleshoot, I can not panic, I can refdisk, format, and reinstall windows. I knew DOS, I can look at the registry. I am not a haxor, hacker, programmer, or anything like that and I DON'T WANT TO BE THANK YOU! I want to be a casual enduser. ENDUSER, as in using it is THE END. I want to be able to make the machine do what I want to do, I just happen to know how to make that happen.

Linux is not friendly for a windows power enduser. You cannot download programs and run the the same way you can in Windows. The graphical interfaces, as installed by my Linux Power Luser husband are somehow crippled (as in Debian gives you the links to all these programs and neglects to install them, something the worst of Windows installations also might do. Except this seems to be the freakin' norm.) As far as I can tell, the basic intuitive windows features are either hard to find or broken, as in search for all files with a certain name. Sure you can grep them great in the command line, but the point is with Windows, you only go to DOS if there's something terribly wrong (okay or in my case if you got a game that's too old.) in Linux the equivalent power user is ALWAYS poking in command line.

And they aren't even DOS commands. So not only do I have to learn a new graphical interface (that doesn't work) I gotta learn new command line commands. Sorry, no. I only got a B in C++ and that wasn't for lack of trying. In fact all those funny cryptic commands I'm sure are already out of my system. No interest. at all. in learning new ones.

The big issue with this point is I USED to be quite a guruette of computers. My father owned a store and I had to whore myself out for tech support to keep from getting yelled at. I hated tech support. If you know anything in the tech world you are automatically STILL recruited, I'm working my ASS off to forget half of what I learned just so I can be a superior enduser instead of someone who freakin' knows computers. I don't want to KNOW computers anymore but I can't stop being a superior enduser who expects a certain degree of ease of use from her operating system. And linux CAN NOT give me my expected expertise level without guru level effort. I'm sorry, it can't. It's been admitted to me by a couple different Linux Nerds that this just isn't happening. And so it's not.

Reason #3 Linux software (and the lack thereof) sucks.

For me. Let's start with Linux's goldenchild the browser Mozilla. Now I know this isn't Linux's fault per se, but it is part of the entire mess of the open source industry that I'm talking about. And linux nerds like mozilla as almost a whole.

Point #1: Mozilla is a hog. I'm talking about the regular mozilla, not firebird or firefox or whatever the hell it's named at the moment. Anyway, while I had it, it hogged my resources to such a degree that it was obscene. Did you know an email client could take up as many resources as Diablo 2? No, I didn't think that sounded right either. Replacing it with the more streamlined (and browser free!) Thunderbird has helped some....(still is a hog)...

Point #2: But it's also stupid. This program still has some of the most retarded junk mail filters I've ever seen (disclaimer, I need to upgrade, you know if this was decent software it would have told me this itself instead of needing someone else to tell me.) it keeps diligently tossing everything from ASU into the junk bin (despite me diligently telling it off and putting them back where they belong.) and carefully delivering all sorts of spam to my inbox. Yeah I don't get it either.

Another "great" linux piece of software is the Gimp. Besides having a name that seems perhaps slightly offensive and ironic (gimp is a slur for disabled) it also has an interface that I don't like. The Gimp has free floating menu bars and I happen to like my programs to keep to themselves. If I want to edit images, I want to edit images without worrying what's in the background. I happen to like my start menu. I happen to LIKE PSP 5 which I favor over the bloated expense that is photoshop. (which I'm sure many linux brats before they went to Linux were downloading illegally.)

And besides that? Well, they have open office, which is apparently striving for the greatness that is "good enough for free." Joy. I'll also make a point that Linux nerds whine about the expense of Windows, but you know a lot of them before they switched were probably warezmongers or they'd realize that Windows is actually comparatively CHEAP for it's office suite (which interestingly enough my husband after I've pointed this out says is another of their evils, that they undercut the prices and drive competitors off. Which is it people? Or can Microsoft just not win because it's "The Man" and must be Damned?)

Reason #4The Linux Crowd is not one that I generally want to associate with

Or Linux is full of perverts, copyright infringers, blind idealists, yuppies, yuppie blind idealists, damn the man (for no reason) brats wearing mass market designer clothes, and indie freaks.

Perverts: Did you know that for no good reason Mozilla obscures your cache for you? There are two reasons I can think of that this would be good for on a home computer.
1: To hide stuff you shouldn't be doing
2: Security (i.e. To hide stuff you shouldn't be doing)
And let it be known that I _DO_ know that you can read the stuff in Mozilla's cache relatively easily (drag and drop into a mozilla window baby!) so it's for the LAZY to hide stuff they shouldn't be doing from people they think are stupid.

Also for those who are even MORE into doing what they shouldn't you can also encrypt the cache. Yeah, great for a family machine where you're actually supposed to, you know, pay attention to what the kids are doing.

And you know, for those of us who DON'T happen to be spending our idle time in suspect ways they don't have a way to remove the obstruction? I actually happen to occasionally need for some reason to SEE the names of the files in my cache. They don't have, at least any easy way, to get around this.

Copyright Infringers: Windows surely has it's share and I have no sympathy for them either, but a lot of them run to Linux in droves for the promise of it being free and unimpaired, unlike Windows is for those who illegally acquire it.

A lot of Linux users spout the message that software should be free, and if it isn't already they're going to do their darn best to make it so! So on their other drive that doesn't run Linux, they have it filled with warez and an illegal copy of windows running illegal copies of photoshop and office.

This goes quickly into all media should be free. The damn the man attitude that leads many to Linux also leads them to rage against the RIAA and other groups that, while admittedly evil, are working to protect copyright laws. Look, I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for you people. Why don't you just turn to shoplifting? Oh wait, that's stealing and you could get in trouble. So you're just going to steal in a way that's less likely to get you caught and then whine when they try to get ways to catch you huh? Brats.

Blind Idealists and the rest: The PLUG group, which was fun to go to while it was meeting at the gritty, masculine and quirky Bandersnatch has moved to a severely yuppie coffee house complete with candles, and velvet chairs. Total. ick. Can you say pretension at it's finest? Also they were whining vocally about how horrible Mill avenue is since it has become home to many chain stores so they wouldn't go to this other bar to avoid crossing it. SO WHAT? It's a freakin' STREET who C A R E S what's on it? And chain stores? It's not like a bad neighborhood full of strip clubs, we're whining that it's going to hell over the GAP for the love of pete. (yeah well yes I know that the Linux nerds would probably mind the strip clubs less, well whatever.) A better reason to not cross mill would be: in it's effort to be a quirky downtown street it's nearly impossible to navigate on the college end (once you get past the college end Mill avenue is nothing special at all and home to such independent masterpieces as "Dairy Queen" and "Fry's Marketplace." Lamers.)

And what's WITH you guys persisting in telling me that Linux will do what I want when it won't do what YOU want? Come ON already!

The big point is, I don't go out of my way to not conform. If the brand name is comfortable, I use it. If "the man" gives me what I want, I'm not going to curse him. I'll use the best tool for the job, and I'm not going out of my way for any karmic indie brownie points. I'm a freakin' lazy bum!

But you know what irks me the most? I don't CARE if these people use Linux if it does it for them, but why do they have to whine that it doesn't do what they want and then tell me I should switch and imply I'm morally inferior for buying the #1 operating system. Yes I KNOW that they only make mass market software for Windows at the moment, Apple had that problem too but you don't see me using a mac to damn the man do you? No! Nor do I care if other people use macs as long as they SHUT UP and let me live my life, because you know, Linux would steal some of my life, not only with it's learning curve but with the comparative effort that goes into finding the right program and making it work, especially games. A large part of my computing time goes into playing games. And I'm sorry but that's just not changing for the joy of nonconformity.

You can be a slave to noncomformity as much as you can be to Windows, something I refuse to do for you. At least allow me the courtesy to do it.

Link of the Whatever: Virtual Cities Internet Cookbook The Manchester Highland Inn's Almond Poppyseed Cake is a real favorite around here. There's also a great applesauce muffin on here.