Salon: Linux Does Windows

“Sam Hiser, a technologist who spends much of his time promoting
open-source alternatives to proprietary software, has an
interesting way of describing the main difference between
Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Linux, its open-source
competitor. ‘It’s something I call the ‘Windows pucker,” Hiser
says. ‘That’s the feeling Windows users get when they’re about to
open a fifth program and they’re so worried, they’re clenching up
their butt cheeks because they just don’t want the system to
lock.’

“Even if you haven’t thought about it in such graphic terms,
Windows pucker, or a sense of dread very much like it, is probably
something you’ve come to expect from life. Computers–whether PCs
or Macs–aren’t perfect. Sometimes applications blow up. You’ll try
to do something complicated, like play an MP3 while you’re opening
a PDF document, and you’ll inadvertently awaken some demon deep
inside the machine, and you’re screwed. The anxiety, Hiser says, is
constant, a background stress that most of us don’t ever quite
notice and might think of as a necessary evil of the modern world,
like a two-hour daily commute or PCBs in the drinking water.

“But life doesn’t have to be that way. ‘You don’t have Windows
pucker with Linux,’ Hiser says, echoing one of the main arguments
of people who prefer Linux to Windows–that the open-source system
is more stable than the proprietary one, and that people who use it
forget about such routine Windows occurrences as ‘crashing’ and
‘rebooting.’ Linux is, very simply, built to be solid…”

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