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Reflections About Migrating to GNU/Linux© Copyright Darrell Anderson. (April 2007) I thought I’d try the “window manager only” route. I did a lot of surfing to help decide which window managers might be worthy of trying. I decided to look at Fluxbox. After several hours of reading man pages and readme files, and surfing the web for clues about syntax for various commands, I decided that I did not want to be labeled crazy. For the life of me I do not understand how so many people find this kind of environment thrilling. Fluxbox comes with no front-end configuration tools. Configuring my mouse for left-handed use requires creating and editing text files. Configuring the clock display was a half-hour journey and although the strftime syntax is easy to understand, having no front-end was a miserable time. I never figured out how to run without any damned themes — I just want a simple background color. I never figured out how to configure for a white mouse pointer. Yeah, before you contact me and holler down my throat that a window manager is not supposed to provide all those tools, let me say that this why many people will never migrate to GNU/Linux. Fluxbox has the speed, but without front-end tools no typical user is going to waste time with the product. None. Capiche? I am more than familiar with editing text files, but I tire of that process. KDE, GNOME, and Xfce provide front-end tools to help the typical user get the basics done, although Xfce still lacks many necessary tools. Nonetheless, no typical computer user is going to waste time with the “window manager only” approach. I then didn’t fiddle with my Slackware box for several days. I used only my NT4 box daily. With this absence of GNU/Linux I noticed a strange calming effect. For the past five years I have tried to migrate. Some arm-chair psychologists will argue that “mere” trying is why I have not migrated — that I need to fully commit and just move forward. That’s nonsense. I’ve used GNU/Linux more than enough to know that I can’t work and be productive the way I am with my NT4 box. Ain’t gonna happen today or any time soon either. I still use Windows NT4 and for conversation’s sake I still maintain a 512 MB hard drive partition containing my original Windows 3.11/Norton Desktop system. I use a Socket 7 motherboard, which originally came with a 233 MHz Pentium MMX but now hosts a 400 MHz K6-III+. I have “only” 256 MB of RAM. I have a “puny” 40 GB hard drive that I never have come close to filling. By any current snobbish hardware standards, my box is “junk.” By current snobbish standards, my box is good only for simple file serving or gateway tasks, not as a desktop. Yet both of these “obsolete” Windows operating systems are incredibly snappy and responsive on this hardware. The older Windows simply flies — and to think I thought the same thing running that system on a 486 with — get this — a whopping 16 MB of RAM. I used that system fully into 1997 as I slowly transitioned and migrated to NT4. I probably used that system up to 1999 although I was using NT4 as my primary box. NT4 was the last of the benign Microsoft operating systems in which the software just worked and there were no attempts to control or manipulate a person’s box or lifestyle. There were no notorious phone-home shenanigans, no crippling of anything. IE was not deeply embedded into the system and many years ago I easily removed IE from my box. I won’t comment on the warped thinking of people who embrace parasitical fallacies such as “intellectual property,” but I will add that at one time the Microsoft people were moving in the proper direction — they were creating tools. These “obsolete” operating systems just worked. There was room for improvement, but they worked as advertised and with little fuss or interference. Perhaps I am skilled or perhaps just fortunate, but I never have experienced the excess of General Protection Faults or BSODs that seemed to have affected so many people. I have seen BSODs no more or less than I saw Guru Mediation errors on my Amiga 1000 and 3000 back in the 80s and early 90s. I have witnessed just as many seg fault errors in GNU/Linux as I have seen BSODs. Dr. Konki has appeared just as often as Dr. Watson. Crashes are something more or less expected with computers, but more importantly, in between are they nonetheless helping people be productive? I am productive with NT4 just as I was with WFWG 3.11. Except as a hobby, I am not productive with GNU/Linux. A typical modern Windows or GNU/Linux system functions poorly with less than 256 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz or faster CPU. (Notice I wrote typical.) Yet WFWG 3.11 ran fast on a 486 with 16 MB? My original installation of NT4 ran on 64 MB on a 233 MHz CPU? Why doesn’t a typical modern GNU/Linux system fly on a 486 and 16 MB of RAM when Windows 3.11 did this 15 years ago? Even considering the extra overhead of a 32-bit system versus a 16-bit system, the modern GNU/Linux system should not only fly but scream on any box with 64 to 128 MB of RAM and a Pentium MMX CPU. And that system’s GUI should provide all the configuration tools that WFWG 3.11 provided 15 years ago. There is no excuse for all of this software bloat and slowness. I have yet to find a GNU/Linux system that can run as fast as my NT4 system. I seriously doubt I ever will. Or conversely, to gain speed, if I travel the bare-bones “window manager” route I then lack almost all the basic GUI configuration tools that were standard 15 years ago with WFWG 3.11. There is no excuse for this. In other words, as much as I tinker with GNU/Linux, I refuse to provide any fan-boy accolades for the environment. Something just isn’t right with all of this modern software and bloat. Some people argue that a window manager is not supposed to do all the things a desktop environment does. So what? Create the necessary applets to provide those functions. I have tried to get my mind right using a window manager like Fluxbox. The speed improvement is there, but there is way too much manual configuring. Point-and-click, folks. That is what most end-users want. That is why KDE, GNOME, and Xfce are popular. Some people argue that I can’t compare apples and oranges with respect to speed. Ptooey. NT4 is not a simple-minded window manager, nor was WFWG 3.11. Both were and are full desktop environments. So what is the excuse that GNU/Linux cannot provide the same speed and configuration environment? Please do not tell me to use Xfce. Been there done that. Xfce does not satisfy my standards for a GUI. And this “window manager only” approach raises serious usability issues that I have addressed elsewhere. To think at one time I had all I needed in a computer operating system with WFWG 3.11 on less than 512 MB of storage. That’s right, 512 MB. That included a web browser, email client, the full Microsoft Office 4.3, Adobe Reader 3.0, FrameMaker 3.0, and numerous disk and file utilities. And the base operating system. The point is that after five years I realize why I have not migrated. Outside the realm of hobbyist, I am not, cannot, and will not any time soon ever be as productive in GNU/Linux as I am now with NT4. Nor will I find a system as responsive — without buying newer hardware. In reality, except for a handful of improvements that a 32-bit operating system provides me over a 16-bit system, I was quite content with WFWG 3.11/Norton Desktop. All on 16 MB of RAM and 512 MB of storage. Most of that software remains useful. So what happened to the promise of GNU/Linux? I’m just a basic office software user. Any operating system I install should fly. So why the bloat? Why so slow? Why so much RAM? If the Microsoft people had continued their original philosophy, and actually had improved their operating system software rather than trying to manipulate and control people with vendor lock-in, had they focused on simply producing the best damned operating system possible without the nonsense and overhead, I am convinced that GNU/Linux (or Mac OSX) would not exist in any form seen today and that almost everybody but geeks and eccentrics would be using Windows. And doing so happily. The point being is that the Microsoft people easily could have dominated the desktop computer world and could have been adored in the process. The Microsoft people had something going until they took the wrong philosophical direction. And since then the GNU/Linux code monkeys have failed to seize the day. If WFWG 3.11/Norton Desktop provided a fast operating desktop 15 years ago, on 16 MB of RAM and 512 MB of storage, why can’t the GNU/Linux developers provide something just as fast and just as usable on low-end Pentium hardware? Why is there so much manual tweaking involved just to get a fast desktop running? My reprieve away from tinkering with GNU/Linux the past few days has caused me to reflect on the time I spend on something that so far has amounted to little more than a hobbyist’s toy. Yes, I have learned much. Yes, I know many people are productive with GNU/Linux. I’m happy for them all. The point here is that I am not productive outside the realm of playing hobbyist and tinker. I am not stopping anybody else. I am only commenting that I am not going to play the blind fan-boy game with GNU/Linux. There are serious configuration, usability, and performance issues at stake here. There is something inherently wrong when a modern operating system cannot run fast on hardware that is less than 10 years old. Especially when the feat was already accomplished on older and less capable hardware more than 15 years ago. All within a crazy, idiotic memory map too. Speed and user interface usability are not the only stumbling blocks. Nothing exists in GNU/Linux to replace the years of usage and tweaking that I have applied to Word 97. OpenOffice, KWord, and Abiword cannot replace my productive Word 97 writing environment. WINE is a clunky solution and is not 100% effective — too many bugs and quirks. The status of web browsers is pathetic, in Windows as well as in GNU/Linux. Minor bugs or not, I like the way Eudora 5.1 works and there is no replacement in GNU/Linux that does exactly what I want. Now that the Eudora source code is open I fully expect the Mozilla people to slap their nonsense XUL interface on the code and truly ruin Eudora in order to save their darling Thunderbird. There are only one or two tools I use in GNU/Linux not available in Windows, but only because I have chosen not to install similar software in Windows. The bottom line is that I am productive and effective in my “obsolete” NT4 environment and “junk” hardware. Nothing in Windows compares to the power of shell programming, but that is about the only significant advantage I notice. The philosophy of free software fits my personal philosophy like a well-tailored glove on my hand, but the usability of free software leaves me cold. I realize this is not the case for many people, that my needs and wants are perhaps unique, but the simple distinction is that their needs and wants are not my needs and wants. And therein lies the entire story. Perhaps the answer is simply to stop trying to migrate and pursue a different hobby or rekindle old hobbies. I only get so many ticks of the clock, so many beats of the heart and then I’m out of here forever. That calming effect I mentioned is the result of not trying to fit a size 9 foot into a size 8 shoe, and realizing that the shoes I am wearing fit well and do not need replacing. Finis. |
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