[Gllug] Controversial Joel Spolsky article

[Christopher Currie]

In message <20031216133135.D3639E6A8C at mail.ukfsn.org> gllug-request at gllug.org.uk writes:
> Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org> wrote inter alia

> I wouldn't recommend either a Windows box or a Linux box for a
> complete newbie if they had to support it themselves (adding new
> hardware, software).  But if the system was going to be set up for
> them and would remain stable (no additional hardware or software
> added), then the Linux machine would have a marginal advantage over
> the Windows machine.  That's just because the Windows machines I've
> used have all suffered from inexplicable "bit rot", even when I've not
> changed their configuration in any way (and this includes my current
> Win2K machine, which has got slower and flakier ever since I installed
> it, and I only turn it on a couple of times a week to do very light
> service).

A take from an oldbie who is so old as to be a newbie. 

I found the Spolsky article fascinating because it didn't touch the issue of
reliability at all. What follows is really about that, and about 'bit
rot' and the home user on both Windoze and Linux desktop systems. 

I know that my office colleagues, who are very un-computer-minded, are sick
of M$ software unreliability, but believe Linux to be too 'nerdy'to use.

I'm a fairly experienced home & office computer user (well, 23 years)
but certainly not a professional or a sysadmin! So my perspective
is quite different from the professionals' on this list. Cultural
differences, you'll see.

I had wanted to try Linux for years, out of a feeling that I ought to
know about it, and because my Unix experience was rusty. But I had
a PC with a Winmodem, which Linux didn't support, so no good. When I
shifted from Win95 to a new box with WinME I was *forced* to get an
external modem because I was running a DOS-based SMTP server for a many-
to-many mailing list system and my port-faking software no longer
worked. So I could try Linux. Started in March 2002 with a toe-in-the-water
Winlinux system.

Meanwhile I was getting more and more and more fed up with Windows ME.
I have fairly complex requirements (several userids for family, need
to keep various 'legacy' systems including 8-bit running on emulators,
etc.) and had *paid* a professional friend to set up the winME system
for me. He put in far more hours getting it right than I'd paid for.
But it got more and more unreliable, hanging after every 2 hours'
work, and requiring numerous Scandisk crashes (which also wore out the
hard drive after 1 year). 

It has got progressively worse, often failing to boot or shut down properly; it 
adds banshee 'devices' (e.g. it now thinks I have about 7 motherboards) for 
no apparent reason; I have spent a lot of money and time on 
diagnostic programs and procedures but cannot cure the trouble. 
Windows buffs recommend reformatting and reinstalling the entire system, 
but reinstalling my specialist stuff is two months' spare-time work &
I am quite sure the rot would soon begin again.

Even Winlinux, though disparaged and limited, was easy to use and massively
more reliable than Windoze. Basic installation was easier than Windoze;
installing anything beyond a standard office system was difficult, but 
the Aunt Madges would have no problem with such a system.

In March this year I upgraded to SuSE Linux 8.1 personal, with a proper dual-
boot system; obviously it could do more than WinLinux and I got it to
do most of the things I needed to do; it was very stable for months; 
seldom use Windoze; run my DOS server from a floppy.

But the bad news is that since about October the SuSe Linux has 
developed a randomly freezing mouse cursor; 
the problem seems to be with the Xserver rather than the
desktop (I've tried several, all of which display it); and reformatting
the Linux partitions and reinstalling a bare-bones Suse 8.1 system 
in November failed to cure it, so it's not due to any new software 
installation.  I have tried all the config changes suggested by the help
system without effect.

My children, who'd become quite pro Linux, are now very hostile to it -
they see it, rightly in this case, as just as unreliable as Windows.

Although I suspect that the cause is some hardware fault new in
October, I have no idea which board or chip might be responsible. 
The logs give me no obvious clue. And Windows doesn't display this 
particular fault, despite its others. If I call in a techie friend he'll
be a Windoze buff with no interest in solving the Linux problem.

[The mouse is a Microsoft Intellimouse with 2 buttons & hamster wheel, and
the graphics card is an Nvidia Geoforce that Suse don't support,
so I use Suse's dummy driver ( using the correct Nvidia driver did not
solve the fault and eventually disabled the Xwindows system completely)].

I was interested in Rich's comments on rot in Win2K, since I had found
Windows NT 4 workstation (at work, last employer) much more stable than
95/98/ME (I gather that's notorious).

To my knowledge, M***ft were knowingly issuing unreliable software 
in the early 1980s.

Christopher
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Christopher Currie	
ccurrie at bloxwich.demon.co.uk	
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