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Search - "best os by far"
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Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.1 -
I was messing with my Ubuntu setup, and somehow, I broke it
Since I didn't have a recent backup, I decided to switch to Manjaro
I'm in love16 -
[See image]
This guy is wrong in so many ways.
"Windows/macOS is the best choice for the average user. Prove me wrong."
There are actually many Gnu/Linux based operating systems that's really easy to install and use. For example Debian/any Debian based OS.
There are avarage users that use a Gnu/Linux based operating system because guess what. They think its better and it is.
Lets do a little comparision shall we.
- - - - - Windows 10 - - Debian
Cost $139 Free
Spyware Yes. No
Freedom Limited. A lot
"[Windows] It's easy to set up, easy to use and has all the software you could possibly want. And it gets the job done. What more do you need? I don't see any reason for the average joe to use it. [Linux]"
Well as I said earlier, there are Gnu/Linux based operating systems thats easy to set up too.
And by "[Windows] has all the software you could possibly want." I guess you mean that you can download all software you could possibly want because having every single piece of software (even the ones you dont need or use) on your computer is extremely space inefficient.
"Linux is far from being mainstream, I doubt it's ever gonna happen, in fact"
Yes, Linux isn't mainstream but by the increasing number of people getting to know about Linux it eventually will be mainstream.
"[Linux is] Unusable for non-developers, non-geeks.
Depends heavily on what Gnu/Linux based operating system youre on. If youre on Ubuntu, no. If youre on Arch, yes. Just dont blame Linux for it.
"Lots of usability problems, lots of elitism, lots of deniers ("works for me", "you just don't use it right", "Just git-pull the -latest branch, recompile, mess with 12 conf files and it should work")"
That depends totally on what you're trying to. As the many in the Linux community is open source contributors, the support around open source software is huge and if you have a problem then you can get a genuine answer from someone.
"Linux is a hobby OS because you literally need to make it your 'hobby' to just to figure out how the damn thing works."
First of all, Linux isnt a OS, its a kernel. Second, no you dont. You dont have to know how it works. If you do, yes it can take a while but you dont have to.
"Linux sucks and will never break into the computer market because Linux still struggles with very basic tasks."
Ever heard of System76? What basic tasks does Linux struggle with? I call bullshit.
"It should be possible to configure pretty much everything via GUI (in the end Windows and macOS allow this) which is still not a case for some situations and operations."
Most things is possible to configure via a GUI and if it isnt, use the terminal. Its not so hard
https://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/...21 -
You can make your software as good as you want, if its core functionality has one major flaw that cripples its usefulness, users will switch to an alternative.
For example, an imaginary file manager that is otherwise the best in the world becomes far less useful if it imposes an arbitrary fifty-character limit for naming files and folders.
If you developed a file manager better than ES File Explorer was in the golden age of smartphones (before Google excercised their so-called "iron grip" on Android OS by crippling storage access, presumably for some unknown economic incentive such as selling cloud storage, and before ES File Explorer became adware), and if your file manager had all the useful functionality like range selection and tabbed browsing and navigation history, but it limits file names to 50 characters even though the file system supports far longer names, the user will have to rely on a different application for the sole purpose of giving files longer names, since renaming, as a file action, is one of the few core features of a file management software.
Why do I mention a 50-character limit? The pre-installed "My Files" app by Samsung actually did once have a fifty-character limit for renaming files and folders. When entering a longer name, it would show the message "up to 50 characters available". My thought: "Yeah, thank you for being so damn useful (sarcasm). I already use you reluctantly because Google locked out superior third-party file managers likely for some stupid economic incentives, and now you make managing files even more of a headache than it already is, by imposing this pointless limitation on file names' length."
Some one at Samsung's developer department had a brain fart some day that it would be a smart idea to impose an arbitrary limit on file name lengths. It isn't.
The user needs to move files to a directory accessible to a superior third-party file manager just to give it a name longer than fifty characters. Even file management on desktop computers two decades ago was better than this crap!
All of this because Google apparently wants us to pay them instead of SanDisk or some other memory card vendor. This again shows that one only truly owns a device if one has root access. Then these crippling restrictions that were made "for security reasons" (which, in case it isn't clear, is an obvious pretext) can be defeated for selected apps.2