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I bought Red Hat at the same time, for around the same price, probably the same release, though I don’t recall which one it was specifically. I bought it becaus

I bought Red Hat at the same time, for around the same price, probably the same release, though I don’t recall which one it was specifically. I bought it because I wanted to start learning a Unix-like OS (OSS was not a driving principle for me in those days, though I have always respected and appreciated the movement) and, most crucially for me, I wanted paid support. The first time I called with a question, the support agent suggested that I maybe check the man pages? At this point, I’m an unreformed Windows user and I’m just trying to set up my system, I have no idea what a man page is! As I recall, I was just trying to get into the GUI - not sure why they couldn’t have just said “startx”. Second time I called with a question (by this point, I had learned enough to know to ask the question “how do I create a non-root user account?”), they suggested I hop onto their IRC channel and ask the community. I logged on to IRC and … promptly got booted for being logged into my local system as root. Strike 2, I was out. A few years after that, OS X because semi-usable (10.2?) and I didn’t have much use for Linux for the next decade and a half. Now I run a couple server-ish boxes on Debian and quite like it - there’s not a whole lot I know how to do, but in those narrow domains that I semi-understand, it works very well for me. But even with as much progress as it has actually made in the last few years, I’m not sure the year of Linux on the desktop is imminent for me any time soon.

nathan_douglas 3y ago
>Second time I called with a question (by this point, I had learned enough to know to ask the question “how do I create a non-root user account?”), they suggested I hop onto their IRC channel and ask the community. I logged on to IRC and … promptly got booted for being logged into my local system as root. I laughed _hard_ at this. Classic Linux community response. I struggled a lot too. After RedHat I tried Gentoo, and they had a forum where I got in a lot of arguments, got banned a few times, got other people angry enough that they got themselves banned, etc. But I think its bottom-up approach and the absolute lack of filter on the part of some of the users was good, in a weird way. I did start using a Mac at, I think, 10.3, and I've stuck with that for desktop use. So yeah, completely with you about the desktop vs. server experience. A couple years back I tried a couple distros out on a work x64 laptop, and still didn't care for the experience. "How do I get my touchpad to work how I want?" I beseeched the internet, for seemingly hours on end. Far away in the distance, a wolf howled.
- nocoiner 3y ago
  The must frustrating experience I’ve had in the last six months was trying to get non-free wireless drivers to function in Debian. It wasn’t even a crazy chipset, it was just one of the non-exalted ones. Head meet desk, repeatedly.

nathan_douglas 3y ago

>Second time I called with a question (by this point, I had learned enough to know to ask the question “how do I create a non-root user account?”), they suggested I hop onto their IRC channel and ask the community. I logged on to IRC and … promptly got booted for being logged into my local system as root. I laughed _hard_ at this. Classic Linux community response. I struggled a lot too. After RedHat I tried Gentoo, and they had a forum where I got in a lot of arguments, got banned a few times, got other people angry enough that they got themselves banned, etc. But I think its bottom-up approach and the absolute lack of filter on the part of some of the users was good, in a weird way. I did start using a Mac at, I think, 10.3, and I've stuck with that for desktop use. So yeah, completely with you about the desktop vs. server experience. A couple years back I tried a couple distros out on a work x64 laptop, and still didn't care for the experience. "How do I get my touchpad to work how I want?" I beseeched the internet, for seemingly hours on end. Far away in the distance, a wolf howled.

nocoiner 3y ago
The must frustrating experience I’ve had in the last six months was trying to get non-free wireless drivers to function in Debian. It wasn’t even a crazy chipset, it was just one of the non-exalted ones. Head meet desk, repeatedly.