“It seems that someone writes at least once a week to tell
me why Linux can never succeed on the desktop. Invariably, the
proof they offer is in the form of a list of the problems they had
installing and running Linux or Linux applications….”
“Rather, I’m talking about those folks who are not interested in
making Linux work, but instead are trying to evaluate Linux based
on their single data point. Nine times out of 10 the author relates
a horror story about installing Linux or trying to get Linux to
print to this or that printer. I’ve no doubt that these stories are
true. Most of them involve notebook computers, an unusual bit of
hardware, or an old version of Linux. But make no mistake: Some of
the problems involve the best Linux distributions and the most
common hardware.”
“But allow me to balance your data points with a few of my own.
I’ve been using Linux for several years. It has been my primary
desktop operating system for almost two years, meaning that I do
all of my work, but only some of my play, using Linux. Although
Netscape has crashed countless times (as it does under Windows),
none of the Linux distributions I use have ever crashed in the past
two years. I have had to reboot to solve a problem only once — and
that problem was self-inflicted. I forced Linux to load an outdated
sound-card driver in the false hope that it might work. Everything
worked fine, even with the bad driver loaded, but I had to reboot
for the system to unload it.”