Misc. Ramblings

EWeek did a review of Novell's SuSE 9.3 Pro recently:

Nat Friedman, vice president of Linux desktop engineering at Novell, said, "We are getting ahead of Windows for the first time."

After kicking SLP 9.3's tires, I agree. This is one impressive desktop distribution. It has every Linux application that anyone is ever likely to want and it's all tied together with either a slick and up-to-date KDE or GNOME interface.

It is not, however, for everyone and it also has its fair share of teething problems in its most advanced programs.

Rather colorful prose to agree, on one hand, that this distribution is ahead of Windows but then say in the next paragraph that "it has its fair share of teething problems." While Windows may have lots of other problems, teething is not, in my opinion, one of them.

I've ordered a copy of SuSE 9.3 Pro from Novell so I'll let you folks know what I think once I receive and install it. But I get the feeling that this distribution, as with all the others I've tried over the years (from Caldera 2.x to Xandros 3.x) will fall somewhat short of Windows when it comes to application stability and upgrade ability.

Yes, there are thousands of utilities and a few applications for Linux but many, if not most, seem to be barely above alphaware [feverishly pulling on flame-proof overalls and Apple Reality Distortion Field(tm)]. By that I mean many Linux programs routinely crash or cause file corruption. In addition, many Linux programs seem to routinely lack the mature feature set that most Windows programs have by now.

Then we come to the fetid, dead horse called dependencies hell [talk about colorful prose -ed.] that makes updating many Linux applications, even in apt-get type systems, problematic. Sometimes, you just can't get there from here. Conversely, woe be unto the person who uninstalls a library and helplessly watches as apt-get merrily uninstalls every program that uses the library without so much as single confirmation. Then, to add insult to injury, taunts you when it lists the broken packages [Not that I've ever been in this situation...].

To use an automotive industry metaphor, cars became much more popular when, among other things, they became sophisticated and reliable enough that you no longer needed to understand how they ran to efficiently use one. That is, all you need to do is start the car and drive. You don't need to know how the automatic transmission operates nor how the engine translates up and down motion to forward movement. With a replacement interval of up to 100,000 miles, you don't even need to know how to change the spark plugs. It just runs.

When Linux get's to a point in which it just runs, without having to know arcane Unix-era commands to install, upgrade, or maintain, that will be the day that Linux finally gets ahead of Windows. I can't wait.