Considering all the other symptoms that our society is becoming increasingly moronic, I’m not sure why I’m still amazed at all the hype and attention given to Linux. I guess I still expect a few segments of society to have a little more intelligence. Sure, Linux is better than Windows, but that’s like saying Wesley Clark is better than George Bush. I’m still left wondering why people go gaga over a marginally better, but still nauseating, choice when there are real alternatives. I guess it’s mainly laziness; for some reason the media start hyping the lesser choice, starting a cycle of people jumping on the bandwagon just because they hear everybody else is going for it so it must be good, which lets the media hype it even more, etc. Meanwhile, the superior choices get lost in the chaos because nobody likes to think anymore.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Linux has been on my mind this week for a few loosely-related reasons. There are some unsubstantiated but highly-hyped rumors<\/a> that IBM plans to migrate all its desktops to Linux by the end of next year. At the same time, there are more reliable \nThe major reason for my sudden re-iteration that Linux sucks is my own urge, fuelled by the security flaw reports, to upgrade my Yellow Dog Linux PPC system running on a Macintosh G3, in a possibly futile attempt to get ahead of the security issue. (Okay, so you’re asking why anybody with a Mac would put Linux on it? It’s actually a fairly popular combination. I’ve got OS X running on the G4s, and it’s obviously a far superior system, but a 233-MHZ G3 with 96 megabytes of memory just isn’t quite enough machine to run it. And I decided I should probably get some experience with Linux, since I might have to work with it some day, even though I’ve managed to avoid Windows for my entire professional life.)<\/p>\n \nAfter recently upgrading my FreeBSD system (running on an old Pentium system) from 4.8 to 5.1, and recently migrating this site to a FreeBSD Virtual Server as mentioned earlier, I was cockily confident in my ability to upgrade a Unix-like OS blindfolded in the dark with one hand tied behind my back. A Linux upgrade should be a piece of cake; after all, look at all the morons that are using it. If they can do it, surely I can.<\/p>\n \nHA! I won’t go into all the painful details of the upgrade (still not completely finished). I’ll just say that it’s a good thing the Linux system wasn’t performing any essential functions. Aside from giving me a chance to play with Linux to remind myself why I hate it, about all it does is serve as a mirror for the FreeBSD system, which does provide some vital services, such as hosting a lot of the images and high-bandwidth content on this site, and the ultra-important Foxhunters Online<\/a> mailing list. (If you’re geeky enough, you may have noticed some of the internal URLS here point to a host named rivendell.cc.uky.edu; that’s a 600-mhz Pentium III running FreeBSD). I try to keep the two machines looking similar enough that if the FreeBSD system died for any reason, the Linux system could take over the vital functions. I just hope that never happens. Actually, as it turned out, it was a damn good thing that the FreeBSD system looked a lot like the Linux system; it made recovering from the upgrade a little less painful.<\/p>\n \nSure Linux is better than Windows; what isn’t? But it still sucks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Considering all the other symptoms that our society is becoming increasingly moronic, I’m not sure why I’m still amazed at all the hype and attention given to Linux. I guess I still expect a few segments of society to have a little more intelligence. Sure, Linux is better than Windows, but that’s like saying Wesley… Continue reading Linux Sucks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekstuff","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-4e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nreports<\/a> of security flaws in Linux. I suppose the Linux-lovers ignore these flaws just like the Clark fans have no clue where he stands on anything, but they know he’s good.<\/p>\n