After messing with linux for maybe 3 hours, I’m back with windows.
I wanted to get some mp3’s playing so I could listen to music while I set up my new computer. Fat chance of getting mp3 support in a standard linux distro. You have to enabled some ‘other repositories’ or something. After spending a half hour reading ubuntu support forums and becoming more irritated with my lack of knowledge I decided to go back to Winodws. I’ll be using cygwin a lot more than I was before, but I already know how to get everything working just the way i like with windows. Even if it took me a week to get to that level of comfort with unix, i don’t think it’s worth at this point. I plan to buy a mac anyways, at which point I’ll turn this machine into a linux server and it won’t matter if i can’t listen to music or do whatever on that box, because I’ll be doing all of that on my mac anyhow.
The whole process of trying to get linux working reinforces my belief that linux on the desktop is going nowhere fast. I’m a computer savy guy. I really know my way around a windows system, and I’m somewhat familiar with UNIX based systems. Nevertheless, I’ve neither the time nor the patience to learn to work linux and get it set up. I understand the merits of open source software, and I really like using the command line to get my way around. I really like the idea of geting a linux system set up, but every time I’ve tried, I’ve found the whole process one big frustrating pain in the ass. If they can’t get me to switch over, how the heck are they gonna convince joe schmoe computer user?
When you spend a half hour and can’t get something as simple as mp3 playback working, you know there’s something wrong with the system. Could I stand to be more patient? Of course. I just don’t have a week to spend fiddling with my computer, getting it ‘just right’, when I’ve already got it that way in Windows.