Surprised and Disappointed

[Chuck Allison]

Hello pluglist,

  I did a custom install of RedHat 8.0 last week and things went very
  well, I thought. (I've posted some queries about Samba and Sound
  Cards, issues I expected to have problems with). Last night when
  trying to use Mozilla I got all kinds of strange graphics garbage
  and had to reboot (shades of Windows here). This morning I came to
  my Linux box and saw a frozen screen saver - I had to cold boot! As
  a Windows guy, this is just deja vu all over again. Isn't Linux
  supposed to be more stable than Windows? I usually don't have such
  problems with Windows installations this early in their life cycle!
  Should I turn off the screen saver (and how is that done)?

  So far, I don't see the great appeal of Linux, unless one is the
  type of person who lives for tweaking systems. I use systems as
  development, teaching, and productivity tools, and would be happy if
  they would just "work". As a data point, I have a Windows XP box
  that's been running for 18 months now without a problem (I have
  never had to reboot because of any error - just to install system
  updates on occasion), and of course when I add other Windows boxes
  to my LAN workgroup, they're immediately visible and usable. I'm
  getting the feeling that the appeal of Linux is mainly just as a
  server, and not as a development machine or office workstation.
  These past few days of trying to setup Linux have been mostly
  frustration. I had a much easier time setting up Solaris networks
  last time I did UNIX (just a few years ago).

  So why do you like Linux? Just because it's not a Microsoft product?
  I still can't print to my Windows printer correctly with all the
  advice I've received from this list and the online Samba guide, and
  also by reading the RedHat 8.0 Bible.

  Please don't be offended. I'm really just curious about all this.
  I'm thinking that since I'm not in the business of maintaining
  servers, then Linux is probably not worth my time. Productivity is
  very important to me and I don't want to spend so much time battling
  against a hard-to-configure system. Does that make sense?

  If on the other hand there is some great benefit on the other side
  of all this complexity (other than stability, which my XP box already
  has), please take a moment and convince me. Thanks.
  

-- 
Best regards,
 Chuck Allison (The Harmonious CodeSmith)
 Senior Editor, C/C++ Users Journal
 cda at freshsources.com