On Sat, 18 Aug 2018 09:12:09 +0200
Edward Bartolo <edbarx@???> wrote:

> [RANT; if you hate rants, don't read it]
>
> Linux is getting exaspirating... It is not definitely the Linux I knew
> when I started using it back in 2006-2007.

Yeah, I remember Linux 2006-2007. You could spend days getting your
wifi working. Kmail was getting worse and worse, to the point where I
had to create a daemon to zap any dbus-daemon instances that stayed
above 95% CPU for 5 seconds. You controlled processes
with /etc/rc.d/rc3.d no waitaminute upstart no /etc/rc.d/rc3.d ...

Very soon after, the completely unuseable Kmail2 replaced Kmail, and
the ridiculous Gnome3 replaced Gnome2.

Perhaps instead you're longing for Linux circa 1999. Half the time you
couldn't see your monitor, and ethernet devices could be iffy. Even the
Intel EEpro100 required wizardly incantations to run. And when you
clicked something in a GUI program, the mouse pointer didn't change, so
you didn't know whether the computer heard your last click and was
thinking, didn't hear your last click, or was just hung.

Today's Linux works remarkably well. And if you install the right
wm/de, forego a display manager, and strongarm your wired Internet
static IP addresses with a shellscript, it can be as DIY as it was in
2006 or 1999, but unlike those times, it can come to your rescue when
you need.


> Like Windows, Linux is now
> allowing advertising to pass through, with the disadvantage of a
> nightmare whenever a package fails to install.

I'm not sure what the preceding two points have to each other. I don't
get any advertising unless I'm Internet browsing. I'm not sure what one
would need to do to his Linux to allow advertising to come to his
command line or wordprocessor.

Yeah, packages fail on all distros. That's why you have Qemu and
Docker. When I switched to Void, for 9 months I couldn't compile my
books to make a living. No sweat, I ran a Ubuntu VM just to compile my
books and nothing else. VMs and containers give you that last bit of
power you need when things don't compile.


> The uneasy feeling that the time to go back to my old days of using MS
> Windows is getting more frequent.

So go. No sweat off my petunias.

You know, Ed, you're a nice guy, but your lack of emotional control
makes you a pain in the ass on the mailing list. So for the second
time, I set procmail to send messages I receive from you to /dev/null.

SteveT