http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp?msg=1143941#xx1143941xx
Yesterday I tried the new Debian stable Sarge linux distro... But wait, first my two prior Linux experiences:
The first Linux system I tried was a Suse distro a few years ago (v7 or so?). I was impressed by the graphical installer, but later more and more problems came up. I wanted to change the crappy black mouse cursor to a white one, like Windows has. But think of what? I couldn't find any dialog in KDE where you could configure the mouse cursor. I searched around in the internet a bit and found a detailed tutorial on how to set new mouse cursors. I downloaded a mouse cursor package having a neat white one and followed all steps in the tutorial. Guess what? Exactly nothing happened, it just ignored what I did. A bit later, I thought about installing a graphics card driver for my card. I downloaded the Linux driver from the NVidia page and started the installer. Unfortunately, it couldn't install the driver, since it didn't have the kernel sources (I know, such drivers are compiled into the kernel on Linux somehow)... So I went to the Suse package wizard and tried to install the kernel sources, which of course, failed... So, live without smooth videos and even forget about any 3D games. Yet a bit later I found a nice program I wanted to try. I downloaded the package and tried to install it. It failed because of some other missing libraries (not many, just 4 or so). I downloaded those 4 and tried to install them, they are based on some other ones... A bit nervous, I downloaded those others too and tried to install those. Guess what? Version conflict.
Some time after this, I tried a new distribution: Debian testing. As I've read, the testing edition shouldn't be that unstable and should have a nice package management system (APT), so I downloaded it and tried it. Its installer wasn't that nice like the Suse ones, but I don't care much about this anyway. After having installed KDE and Gnome by hand using apt-get (I like this package management system of Debian!), I first tried Gnome. Actually Gnome seems to be just a limited KDE... Of course, it was pretty fast, but just about everything was missing or not there, where it should be (for example, almost no configuration options??). I just didn't like it. So, tried KDE again. Unfortunately, the whole new KDE was pretty unstable. When you tried the "quick directory browser" in the KDE start menu, it just hangs when you don't connect to the internet. I don't always want to be online, just to have that crappy directory browser working... Related to this, I could only connect to the internet using DSL using the pon/poff commands, which were only executable as root user. Now we all know you shouldn't work with admin rights all the time, but hell, how can I connect to the internet then? So, all the day the same: log on as normal user, su root, pon, and start working. Compared to how it works on WinXP, this is just stupid. Some other things didn't go that well either. I wasn't able to configure the KDE explorer to look like the Windows explorer, so left a tree, right a list. Seemed to be impossible. The media player (Noatun?) didn't work that nicely, some MP3s it just didn't play, sometimes it hanged and crashed without any obvious reason.
Now, yesterday I tried the latest Debian stable release, Sarge. Since Debian Stable is known to be a very stable Linux system, I thought I give it a chance again. Downloaded it, installed it, no problems so far. Now it asked me for my network connection. Since I'm behind a proxy, I happily choose the manual configuration option. Entered the IP, DNS servers, domain name and wondered: why doesn't it ask me for my proxy server? Things came as they must have come: later the installation program tried to look for security updates, which of course failed because it doesn't know the proxy server. You couldn't stop the process (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, Escape, etc. nothing worked), so I waited a few minutes just to see it fail. Later I looked in the internet (using WinXP) how to set the proxy server manually in the apt-conf files... Why didn't this crappy installation program ask me?
A bit later, I decided to install KDE. KDE got installed nicely and think what? They've finally implemented a configuration dialog for the mouse cursor! Scrolled down the mouse cursors list and found it! A neat white mouse cursor (whiteglass)! Happily, already thinking "wow, finally it seems to get usable...", I selected this one and restarted KDE (it told me to do so). Guess what? There was a white mouse cursor, but it's too small! Hell, it's just half of a normal mouse cursors size! Also, it just replaced the main mouse cursor (pointer), all other mouse cursor styles (hand, text inserter, etc.) didn't get updated, they just looked the same as before... Such a small mouse cursor is just unusable, so I have to live with the crappy black one...
Somewhat later I was shocked: the root user can't start a KDE environment anymore! WTF is this? Shouldn't the root also be able to start a graphical interface in order to configure the screen or other hardware for example? Must I, as a normal PC user, learn how to mess around with these crappy configuration text files?
Debian shipped with the Mozilla browser. I prefer Firefox. So I installed it with apt-get (worked nicely), but when I started it I was't impressed again. It didn't use the current KDE theme, the options dialog is hidden in the "Edit" menu like in old times (they've fixed it in the Windows version a long time ago, here it sits in the "Tools", and yes it was the latest 1.0.4 version).
I don't know, but everytime I try a Linux system I am being disappointed. Unstable programs (though Linux is "known" as being soooo stable...) and no way to get around messing with text configuration files and the console. Am I doing anything wrong? Anyway, I will give the new Debian a few more chances...
The more I try Linux, the more I like Windows...