Linux OS Anyone?

I'm constantly amazed at how arrogant Microsoft software users are. That includes inside my own family, but more, the men I work with, who have to use Linux whenever they are on a customer system.

You see, the company I work for, who is one of the largest employers around at over 55,000 employees worldwide, uses Microsoft on the desktop, but most of their products are built over Linux. Now to me, that just doesn't make much sense, until I consider the topic of my thoughts here. I've only used Linux on the desktop for the past 15+ years. It's superior, period.

We always hear how much Microsoft works to protect their brand; to prevent pirates from stealing their OS and proprietary tools they build to run on that OS. [okay. for anyone who is a computer neophyte, OS is short for Operating System; that part of a computer that actually lets you use the computer, and for short, I call it "Windows" like everyone else, but even that is dumb, because all OSes now use what anyone would call a window to run things in. But enough.]

My point is this: If Microsoft were serious about their anti-pirating rants, they could easily build into their OS the capability to block any unauthorized use. It's not rocket science. Game designers have done it, to some extent, but fail at it for the same reasons.

If someone can get their hands on some operating system, and a game, then use them without paying for them, they are crooks. Yes, dishonest slugs. But, the company they are stealing from wins anyway.

Why? Because that crook is still using them, which gives the providing companies a little boost in their user base, plus another lackey who is learning, and therefore, pushing their products.

So there you are, a reason why there isn't a lot of criminal prosecution among the pirating ranks.

Now with that said, I know that Microsoft has a large team of employees whose sole job it is to call and offer on-site consulting to help companies learn how to better use their products. What for? 2 purposes.

1. Actually point out where the victims can spend more money getting more Microsoft-centricity inside their walls.
2. Find out how much pirated software is running behind the firewalls of that company.

When I was an I.T. Director, I had a couple calls from Microsoft offering me their help. I declined the first call because I was the new I.T. Director and I had been hired by a bunch of crooks who had, on 25+ desktops, 2 legal copies of Windows. They had pirated those 2 copies on all the other desktops, which they had bought at cut-rate prices without an OS installed, then installed those same 2 copies; one Windows 98, and the other 2000 Professional.

The second call came after I learned why they had called the first time, and though I had brought the company into compliance, didn't want to have my time wasted in a sales call when our inside servers were all Linux and Unix (IBM AIX). [A postscript to that is they let me go after over 6 years there, and within a few years had been bought and are now gone away as a part of a much larger company. That company does their business above-board, so once again, dishonesty pays only the owners who made off (literally) like bandits. Why did they let me go? Control. They hired one of our consultants who was late finishing a project that had already cost over $45,000 so they could force him to complete the job... They paid me more than my annual salary the first year in consulting fees. then kept paying me for another 14 or 15 months, but needing me less and less.]

Now to Linux.

I read an article tonight by an author telling me what I already knew. Linux is neither archaic, nor hard to learn. The ones who believe that are just ignorant.

I think it's been about 7 or 8, I started the process of moving my sweetheart off Windows. The first thing I did was move her off Outlook Express by installing the Windows version of Thunderbird. Then I weaned her of using WordPerfect, which was easy enough because by that time Microsoft, with the help of Novell, had destroyed WordPerfect's place in the word processing world. That's another story, however, so not more than this: It's documented in court cases and WordPerfect won, but by then it was too late.

I had already gotten her off Internet Explorer, which is a very weak browser, so she never missed it. Firefox, and now more so, Chromium Browser, are far superior.

So, once she was off those products that required Windows, she didn't care about the underlying OS. It just needed to work.

So, what distributions did we switch to? PCLinuxOS, then after that distribution fell on tough times, Linux Mint. I've used many more than those, such as DSL, Fedora, Redhat, InSert, BackTrack, Knoppix, JoliCloud(defunct) and some others, but I use Linux Mint now, as does Betty. It just plain works out of the box.

Why isn't Ubuntu there? I just don't like it. That's all. Nothing personal. I don't like Canonical, the company that owns Ubuntu, nor do I like their business model. It's free, yes, but when you download it, they ask for money in a manner that looks like you are insulting them by using it free. Every distribution asks for donations, but not that way. So you see, it's me personally. Oh,  and I don't like that Ubuntu doesn't support everything out of the box like both PCLinuxOS and Mint do.

So, if you want to learn anything about Linux, ask. I'll tell you how to find out, because that's how you learn. You do it, and learn to ask the right questions, and where and how to ask.

I learned by doing. You can too. But you have to want to, and I was sick of how poorly Windows worked. Just too many inconsistencies in too many places. Would I ever go back? No. I don't have to worry about viruses. I just don't. Cool, huh? Yes very. I can ignore those deceitful ads from companies like "MyCleanPC.com"...

Okay, enough, and I'm not going back to read this again.

I'm Karl... to the annoyance of more, and the ignoring-ness of more.