For most people, linux is not the way to go. I've said this for awhile, but now I hold it a bit more strongly now that I've stopped dabbling and actually gotten my hands dirty. Well, mildly soiled. I discovered today the joy of the -ax flags for PS. But anyway, I think of it like this. Linux and MacOs form two opposing ends of a spectrum.
Mac's = functionality is sacrificed for ease of use, resulting in a system that a monkey can operate and limited acsess to the neat bits.
Linux = Functionality is god. Linux will do exactly what you tell it to. Like an evil Djinn... exactly what you tell it to, not what you mean. It also speaks a funky dialect. In otherwords, useablitiy is low while the wealth of functions are phreakin' awesome.
Windows happens to be an unhappy melding of the two.
Honestly, after toying with an extremely stripped down linux kernel, and hacking at it for a semester last year, I lost alot of respect for it, simply because the code design sucks. Monolithic kernel = good performace but horrid customizability. It takes weeks to sort through miles of spagetti code to get at what you want.
So, that's why I'm waiting for Debian Hurd. Microkernel achitecture is good. Instead of putting EVERYTHING about your O/S into one BIG program, put only the minimal componenets into the kernel- ie. your kernel can load and unload modules. Then you can have a single module controlling individual kinds of block device.
Still waiting on the Hurd.
And while I'm ranting on O/Ses, does anyone have any extra info on JaNos? It's a java o/s that piqued my interest awhile back, but I lost track of it.
