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Just recently, I came to a realisation. I'm never going to be a proper geek. This flash of self knowledge came to me when, after spending an evening trying to find out about how to get my wireless card working under Linux, I just gave up in despair. Every website I came to engendered a fresh set of Google queries as I tried to find out exactly how you could perform each of the steps. I had to get Archie to install Linux on the laptop in the first place because I couldn't get the display to work. He set up the network card and if I physically plug in I can use it for email and so on but I never physically plug in any more and a computer is practically useless if it's not connected.
In the end, I don't have the time or the patience to struggle up from being a new user to being a power user again, particularly as even to get into the user position I need my wireless card to work, which means that I need to be a power user and be able to install it. In the end, Debian is too difficult for me. I'm sure that Windows is a much inferior operating system, but I've been using it for years and I quite like it these days. Most problems that come up in Windows (except that of getting my home computers to talk to each other) I can solve or find a livable workaround. To proper geeks, I probably sound like a prisoner who's forgotton what it feels like to be free and so doesn't miss it but there you are. Sure there are things about it that bug me, but that's par for the course with computers - there are no systems which don't have their irritating quirks. They're all designed by people, that's what you get.
I still consider the idea of buying a Mac one of these days, but I'm shy of that too. What if I find MacOS as difficult to come to grips with? It would have the advantage I suppose of being widely supported at the non-geek level, which Debian, in my opinion, isn't but still. What I really want is to be able to have a trial period on a Mac to see if I could get used to it but I don't think that's exactly feasible. I like the idea of moving but only if I don't have to re-learn. I just don't have time.
Yikes! That gave me a shock! I just ran Windows update and got a new display driver. Which reset my screen res to 800 * 600 from 1600 * 1200. Still, once switched back, all seems fine.
In the end, I don't have the time or the patience to struggle up from being a new user to being a power user again, particularly as even to get into the user position I need my wireless card to work, which means that I need to be a power user and be able to install it. In the end, Debian is too difficult for me. I'm sure that Windows is a much inferior operating system, but I've been using it for years and I quite like it these days. Most problems that come up in Windows (except that of getting my home computers to talk to each other) I can solve or find a livable workaround. To proper geeks, I probably sound like a prisoner who's forgotton what it feels like to be free and so doesn't miss it but there you are. Sure there are things about it that bug me, but that's par for the course with computers - there are no systems which don't have their irritating quirks. They're all designed by people, that's what you get.
I still consider the idea of buying a Mac one of these days, but I'm shy of that too. What if I find MacOS as difficult to come to grips with? It would have the advantage I suppose of being widely supported at the non-geek level, which Debian, in my opinion, isn't but still. What I really want is to be able to have a trial period on a Mac to see if I could get used to it but I don't think that's exactly feasible. I like the idea of moving but only if I don't have to re-learn. I just don't have time.
Yikes! That gave me a shock! I just ran Windows update and got a new display driver. Which reset my screen res to 800 * 600 from 1600 * 1200. Still, once switched back, all seems fine.
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Date: July 30th, 2004 11:26 am (UTC)From:Funnily enough I was thinking about this on a long drive yesterday. On the way back I was more sensible and bought a 'best of Pet Shop Boys' CD and played selected tracks over and over again very loudly which took my mind off the 'what draws people to awful bizarre technologies?' question.
I have reached the stage where I do not really think very much of Windows or Linux and I have an irrational hatred of Macs (though the rational hatred that underlies the irrational is more than adequate).
My position is essentially 'I hate the 3 /4 main things (depending on whether you count Linux and BSD as two choices!) and I am not a big enough masochist to try anything more obscure'. I think that this position is a perfectly defensible one, I have always felt that hatred of all available alternatives without supporting or presenting any rational alternative is perfectly valid.
I did actually get Linux running on a spare PC, I think I ended up with Suse, and for email, web-browsing, watching downloaded stuff and DVDs, downloading pictures from digital cameras etc. It was fine in its way and actually better than I was expecting - my main exposure to Unix was in the early to mid 90s, the last time it was fashionable in other words. The OS and applications reminded me a lot of MacOS and MacOS shareware circa 1992 in terms of both utility and feel. Once the novelty wore off I found it was taking up valuable lounge space and so it was junked.
I saw MacOS X at the same time as t__m__i and I thought that the kit looked fairly pretty but I got the sense of a seething morass bubbling away under the surface. I recommend you spend the money on cheese and hats instead (you are not a vegan IIRC otherwise I would have to suggest something other than cheese, possibly chocolate).
(2nd attempt at posting with bizarre word substitution removed)