osViews: An Informed Rant About Desktop UNIXes

[ Thanks to Kelly McNeill for this link. ]

"Yesterday I was reminded of why I hate UNIX-based desktop OSes. I downloaded the latest Knoppix 'live CD,' which means you boot the PC right off the CD without having to install anything to the hard drive. It detected most of my hardware and booted right into the desktop without any tinkering on my part. At least that was a good improvement over my last Linux adventure two or three years ago. Then I made the mistake of trying to actually use Knoppix. Since the first thing I wanted to know was which hardware had been successfully detected and which hadn't, I tried to find something equivalent to 'Device Manager' in the KDE start menu. As it turns out, nothing like that exists.

"There's a somewhat limited little KDE app you can run to get a read-only view on the hardware. This would show what hardware Knoppix sees on your computer, but the app isn't named anything helpful. It's called KConfig (or something similar), rather than having a helpful name like 'Device Manager.' Making matters worse is the fact that its buried in a huge menu of other little 'KSomething' and 'KSomethingConfig' icons that have equally unhelpful names..."

Complete Story

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