Bah! The third official reason and why I constantly switch between windows and Linux is the darn windows software sometimes just won't work on Linux and this is because it's not small but graphic design and such.....so compatibility....even though there have been leaps and bounds in that department lately....

just wondering what the fuss is about).

Because of this, I've heard a lot of excuses why people quit Linux, and return to Windows. I'm happy to say that the excuses are getting far less common nowadays, compared to 2003, when I wrote my first book. But I still hear 'em.





OK here's the deal amigo. I think Linux is great, really. I no longer have any MS product installed. I use Puppy Linux exclusively now. Just the idea of denying money to Microsoft thrills me no end.


Even so I have some bitching to do.


1. Ubuntu, and many others, something over a year ago decided (cavalierly one might suppose) to stop supporting we who are stuck with dialup internet access because we don't live in a city. Since 8.04 wvdial or PPP is typically installed but without a companion GUI. I regard this as insulting and unnecessary. It did not happen by itself. Someone made the decision to drop it. I'd like that person to explain to all us us the WHY of that decision. Numberous attempts to get an answer from an authoritative source have failed though, on the forums, there are always those who say, "Oh that's nothing. Just download....etc etc, and then open the command line and etc....". Horse feathers is what I say to that. Why did they quit dialup? It's just a simple little program but they axed it. I'd like a REAL answer. XP, Vista and Windows 7 all support dialup, easy, out of the box. Puppy Linux does too. The Puppy version is a snap to use (enter three values and hit "probe") and Barry vows to keep it for we poor bastards who need it. The Pup is the best of Linux because of this.

2. Package managers. What a giant mess this is. Each flavor has it's own exclusive repository. If I like some things about one flavor I might have to give something up when changing to another flavor that has yet another good feature that I want. Why should the user have to give anything up just to change to another Linux? We all know that with MS one needs only drag an application to a disc and later drag it off into another OS. Linux forbids this. If we change everything must be downloaded all over again, at 1.5 kbps for us dialuppers! When will Torvolds (or someone else) decide to follow the example of the guys who wrote GRUB and create a "universal package manager" that will do ANYTHING? Yes there have been attempts at "crossing over" in order to import from other places. "Hey now you can get .deb packages!!!". These clearly are the result of a lack of caring to cooperate within the whole of the Linux community. Computer software is man-made and can be written or changed by man just as it was created by man. There is no such thing as, "we can't" with software except to a quitter or a defeatist. The package manager business is stopping a lot of Windows folk from coming over to linux. Boy talk about a PAIN.

Back in '82 when everyone was buying Commodore 64s I got one for my kids and we all did command line stuff every day. This is my way of saying that I don't mind a little command line when there is a reason. I used to do programming then too (in Basic) and had lots of fun.

That was then, this is now.

Do these sound to you like "excuses"? They are not wimpy, picky little things to me. God bless Linux overall and the worldwide community of selfless contributers. I laud and support them. But if Linux is ever to knock down the doors of die hard Windows users it had better address the major issues of INTER-LINUX COMPATIBILITY. It had better become TRULY user friendly. I gain a lot by using Puppy but I give up lots too.

So, amigo, do you have any ideas about what I've crabbed about? Will you tell me that you like all the fractured and isloated Linux flavors as they are or that it must be so? Right now I'll settle for a really juicy answer which will tell me why Ubuntu and the boys don't care about dialup anymore. I was thinking of a registered letter to Canonical. That would probably be a waste of time. Probably the head office guys don't even know what happened. I really do wonder why they did that. And I'm not the only one. I've many questions from others on the Ubuntu forums about it.

Thanks for an informative reply.

JP Simmons

@jpsimm: So, do you have a suggestion as to which distro/package management system/desktop/etc. we should all use? The purpose of Linux-based OS's isn't to "knock down the doors of die hard Windows users", but to serve as useful and powerful OS's in their own right. The definition of that varies considerably, depending on the intended use of the distro and the preferences of the distro developers and users. A result of this is the "giant mess" to which you refer. It's the result of having the freedom inherent in free/open source software.

Agreed, and to add to that, one is only limited in their own mind.

1) You can always contact the distro maintainers and suggest your favorite package- They love receiving feedback from their users.

2) We actually do have some "centralized" repos- Sourceforge is one.

3) If all else fails, one can go to the software dev's website and download the package.

So what that with the last two, one might need to compile from source? It's not that difficult; Most distros include the compiler that will configure the package to work properly with that particular distro, and a little Google-searching will provide the proper commands.

Cheers