I hear it a lot. The people who say they would install Linux, but they want their stuff to “just work”. All the daily posts on Ubuntu Forums (which I lurk) from people saying they tried Linux, but are leaving it because it doesn’t “just work”. You know, that is a perfectly acceptable and understandable answer. But it’s not one I can relate to.
Stuff that just works is boring.
Stuff that just works makes me complacent.
Stuff that just works doesn’t teach me anything.
Stuff that just works doesn’t let me fix it.
I have a little secret to let you guys in on. I am addicted to fixing things. Broken things are enticing and magnetic. If you dropped some sort of ceramic ornament or vase on the floor and it shattered into a million pieces I would be on the floor picking up those million pieces and attempting to piece them back into place like a puzzle and trying to glue it back together. This has actually happened. More than once. Do I succeed? Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t stop me from trying.
I value my sleep– I value my sleep very much. But if my computer is broken I don’t sleep until it is fixed. Period. Abandoning some broken project at home because I have to go to work or something is sheer torture. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished calling in “because something is broken” was as valid an excuse as “calling in sick”, because heaven knows I’m certainly in no mental state to actually do any work when my entire mind is preoccupied with my project.
Fixing things is mind-clearing and you learn from the experience. If you fix something, you come out of it knowing how to recognize and fix that problem in the future. You feel rejuvenated and useful.
…and you’re telling me you want an operating system that you don’t have to rip apart and completely fix every six months?
I would die of boredom.
I respect you, Millions of People With That Opinion. But I don’t understand you. No hard feelings. <3
Yeah, I do understand you, because I used to be like you.
You know what changed me? I was bored.
Ubuntu got kinda boring after a while, because “everything worked”, i went on to archlinux (fantastic distro btw, if only because their packagemanager is called pacman), did the whole gnome unstable building (I love everything beta)
But after a while even that became boring. Then there was Mac OS.
You know Linux is at least designed to run on any PC. So Hackintosh was a bigger challenge. I had fun with 10.4, later with 10.5. However after running 10.5 for over half a year, i found that i got lazy, and you know what i kinda feels good now, if “everything works”
But i miss the good ol’ times a little, i guess.
(Writing that really felt good 🙂
I can understand that completely.
I used to really love that aspect of Linux, and it still adds some enjoyment to the experience. But at the same time, I just don’t have the patience to deal with it as much anymore.
I am a father of two kids under the age of 4. When I get home from work, my time is spent eating and playing with them until bedtime. Then after that I have 2-3 hours to spend with my wife. I prefer to be able to sit down at my computer and fire up a game with it just working. If I’m spending time fixing my PC, then I’m not spending time playing and relaxing. If it’s something small that I can fix in an evening, then I feel accomplished and good, but if something major breaks and I end up spending all night on it and still haven’t finished, then I feel defeated and it really weakens my resolve to use Linux.
I am using Ubuntu 10.4 currently since I’m only playing WoW for PC games, and it’s been great. Just the right amount of fixing (I have some shared printer issue at the moment) and playtime.
@ voidstern – I still think I have much to learn about Linux before I move up on the Distro Ladder, but it’s definitely on my to-do list, haha.
@ Rkik – I definitely understand the time thing. Too many times something has broken on me right in the middle of everything else happening, and it’s immensely frustrating. Still, the high I get afterward for being able to handle it makes up for it.
i accually have linux on my computer, but i cant run it. im saving up for something that will run it. I accualy love fixing stuff, exept the programming stuff. im mean, i can do the basic stuff, but thats it. but if you have something wrong with a gearbox, or a little mechanical thingy, ill be up till 4 fixing it before i have to go to work. but building stuff is better. i built a phone frame out of iron, a tracked crawler with a dump bed, a mini crane. and when i was 12 or so, i got axsess to a machene shop. and i built legos out of alluminum scraps.
It all depends on why you wish to acquire something. If you want to get to work in the morning, a car without problems is an excellent choice. If you don’t really have a lot of desire to get to work, however, a car with a busted rear bearing seal might be just the thing, if fixing busted rear bearing seals is something you like doing.
In fact, I just described my father. Every 18 months or so, he’d buy up a busted hulk of a vehicle and spend the next few months making it into a working, desirable showpiece.
But he bought a WORKING car for Mom.
So yeah, I can see where that comes from. And I was there … I wrote my own software, my own OS enhancements, before Linux even existed, and I loved every minute of it, and would not trade the experience for anything.
I got over it. My computer is a tool for other things now, and if Linux expects to have a seat at my table, it’s gonna have to try just a little harder. Otherwise it’s relegated to those rare moments when I feel like messing around with it.
It isn’t that I don’t find rebuilding engines and cleaning out various bits of Canonical detritus … it’s just there are things more interesting to me now.
Pft. Dive headfirst into build your own kernel, you learn a lot, really fast.
then go for a full build your own distro. Done it, now i dont, but i miss it. Have a box i am working on now, older, trying to build a lean mean distro on it that will outperform my beasts. Slow going, but it is going. I am handpicking every part of the distro… it is a lot of fun
Let’s take it as a given that I think Windows qualifies as an “OS that you have to rip apart and completely fix every six months”. At least that’s been my experience of it… Reasons I don’t use Linux on my primary are boring but true. I work in a Windows environment and have to bring work home far too often. When I do run a Linux distro (I have 2 sandbox systems that I play with) I want to push it, break it, fix it. That’s why they’re sandbox systems. Same reason for the six months I ran OS/X on one of them – I wanted to play but I didn’t want to live there. I run Ubuntu on an old Dell laptop which is my “sit in bed and surf” machine for the nights when old age creeps up on me and I just can’t get to sleep. Also I’m actually quite happy with the way Win 7 is running for me at the moment although knowing MS that could change with a service pack or a bad security patch…
I dualboot Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows on my dell desktop, that’s going to change soon though. I’ll be running the Windows recovery disks this weekend to get arid of the Ubuntu partition.
Why? Because I run 9.10 on my netbook now. I’d run 10.04 but there’s a problem with the way the OS fixes the battery. A problem that I’ve googled and no one knows how to fix.
My point is? I love going into Ubuntu and fixing stuff if I understand the problem or can google it to see what others have done. If it’s a problem that I don’t know how to fix and it’s unintrusive, I’ll just let it go till I find a fix.
But that’s the great thing about linux in general, even if i don’t know how to fix it, someone eventually will and it makes it all better
You are completely and utterly insane, dear Pike. To me, this is like saying you want your car to break down on a regular basis so you can fix it! I suppose if that’s your thing it makes sense, but I would rather get from A to B with a minimum of fuss xD