Writings
My Linux Woes » Wed, Sep 13th 2006 2:48 pm
I’ve fallen into an annual ritual of downloading and installing any random flavour of the Linux operating system. After this morning’s little ceremony, I think I’ve figured out why I’ve always gleefully annihilated the data its installation procedure placed on my hard drive: Because Linux isn’t practical for me, or computer users like me. Specifically, users who like to get shit done in a reasonable amount of time without having to first earn a degree in computer science at MIT.
I was drawn in, once more, by the screenshots of a sleek user interface. RedHat’s Fedora Core 5 looked like it might just be the answer to my OS needs. I was further excited upon discovering MythTV, a sweet-ass PVR application for use with my TV tuner card. Here in Windows and, I’m using a trial version of BeyondTV, which is pretty cool, but they want $70 US dollars for it and after having seen what I could be getting for free, it’s now somewhat disappointing.
I’d caught a glimpse of what my Linux life could be like if I made the switch, and dove right in. I downloaded the full three-point-whatever gigabytes of data for the Fedora Core 5 installation DVD, burned it, popped it in, rebooted, followed the screens, waited a bit, rebooted, and BAM: I was looking at Gnome’s surprisingly-pretty “Clearlooks” theme.
The first thing I did was load up Firefox and head to the MythTV web site. It, and every other site I tried afterwards, came up as a 404. I didn’t panic. I loaded up the Network Configuration Panel, checked that my Ethernet card was installed, working, and activated, and tried again. No luck. After a few minutes of messing around, I discovered that while the Fedora developers did a fine job of detecting and initializing Ethernet cards, they didn’t bother to automatically connect them to the Internet. Who is this helping, exactly? I shrugged the question off, added the connection, and off I went to get MythTV.
Once downloaded, I clicked the README document inside the archive and scanned for installation instructions, to no avail. Google was more helpful, and returned this site devoted to describing the MythTV installation procedure on Fedora. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I wasn’t immediately put-off by the fact that the installation instructions were written by a third-party and hosted on an external web site devoted solely to the purpose of detailing the procedure, but I wasn’t. I clicked the HOWTO link in the left menu and felt the cold floor under my dropped jaw as I beheld the sheer tremendousness of its contents. Either there was a huge introduction detailing the full history of the electron, the human, the computer, and the television, or prospective MythTV users were required to book vacation time prior to attempting its installation.
I believe my words were “fuck” and “this”, followed by an endless parade of exclamation marks, and then one small question mark. Why the question mark? Because I was, and still am, utterly confused as to how any advocate of Linux can argue its ability to compete with Windows or Apple on the usability front after seeing something like this. Newsflash, fellas: it takes a little more than the implementation of a “Start”-like menu and graphical form elements to call your operating system “user-friendly”.
In its defence, I guess it’s not necessarily user-unfriendly either. All the applications needed by the stereotypical office drone were right there on my taskbar. I could create a document, spreadsheet, or e-mail right out of the box. Except, wait, scratch the e-mails; I forgot about the whole Ethernet thing.
I’ll admit I’m probably more than a little overreacting here. I see that the good people at Linspire (who’ve cleverly commercialized Linux, with a price tag and everything) offer MythTV in their Click ‘n’ Run warehouse, which means that they’ve figured out a way to install it in considerably less than a lifetime. I see that Fedora has an “Add/Remove Software” button at the bottom of its “Start” menu thing, but it failed to open the last time I tried that route. Perhaps MythTV is in there too, and once I’ve gotten that damned software browser working, I can install it by clicking a single button.
Regardless of whether or not I end up watching TV from Linux, I think any Linux user can agree that the operating system is in dire need of a re-think in the ease-of-use department. Gnome, KDE, and the other environments are all (mostly) looking really great these days, but software/driver installation and configuration is still a ways behind Windows and Apple.
Perhaps Linux doesn’t actually aspire to be on everyone’s desktop, which would definitely account for my experiences with it these last few years, but whether they wish to or not, I don’t think they’re really that far off from being able to make a respectable run for the top of the hill. It’s stable; there are bushels of software packages for just about everything you’d ever think to do with a computer, and probably even more for things you wouldn’t; it’s kept up to date; it’s pretty; and it’s free. All it lacks are a few additions to make it a little less overwhelming to the newcomers such as more interfaces to handle common terminal functions and some attention from the entertainment industry (hey game developers: Linux users are bored and have money to spend on games, too!)
I’m hoping that one day I can sit down to my Linux-running computer and feel like nothing’s missing from it. I can’t even say that for Windows, but a few thousand dollars put towards software might get me closer. Or I could spend it on an Apple. I haven’t yet deleted this morning’s Linux installation because I’m still sort of excited about playing with it. Maybe I’ll finally get things working and manage to stay with it for more than a day or two this time. And maybe someone out there is already working to make Linux the perfect blend of ease-of-use and stability that I wish it could be. Or maybe it’ll always just be an excuse for me to put off work for one day a year.
