Eating My Words

Pardon me while I walk my talk.
I have to eat my words. The previous post in this space was about the joys of Cygwin, a POSIX emulator which made it possible to run something like Linux on your Windows machine. Except it suffers the same limitations of all Open Source projects.
That is, it’s developer centered. You see, most commercial software development pretends to meet the customer’s needs. It often does, because people tend to buy the software that keeps these companies running, and not buy the stuff they don’t like too well. But at least the customer does get some of what they seek, even if there’s a near monopoly which so colors their thinking on the matter, they tend to avoid getting too wild in their demands. In the process, the developer has to do what the managers tell them, regardless what developers may think is best. In Open Source, no one tells the developer what to do.
Not even the user. There is seldom even the slightest pretense of meeting user’s needs, and too often open hostility to even hearing from users. That’s the way of Open Source, though you still get the same lying sales pitch by way of the fanboys that you would from paid advertising executives who work for the commercial software firms.
A couple of months ago I was quite happy with CentOS 6 on my laptop, but then there came an error in the file system. It was fixed easily enough, but my research indicated this was a well known flaw in the Linux kernel at the time Red Hat selected their sources, and which CentOS has no choice but to use, as a derivative. The flaw has to do with hibernate mode on laptops.
Given that and some other stuff in the background of my life, I simply restored my Win7 installation from backup. Well, things in the background have changed again, as well as losing my interest in the graphical Internet. Windows does text mode poorly at best. Even when the tools are ported (if they are) it’s not the same. I need that text mode stuff now, and I can’t get it from Cygwin or other porting mechanisms.
So I’m fixing to try Xubuntu 12.04. Not the best of all worlds, but probably tolerable. If that fails, I’ll find something else. Or maybe I’ll just post a goodbye message tomorrow and leave it at that.
Seriously. I’m not a happy camper, and I’m getting really tired of what I can do with what I can afford when it comes to computers and the Internet. All OSes suck.
Update: As of this update six weeks later, I’ve been using Xubuntu 12.04 and it’s okay. It required a bit of doing to chase down a decent theme and the old Trench window decorations, but it’s all tolerable.