Apologies to those who get easily insulted, but
is the article in question. Perhaps this
should not be posted.
-W.T.
April 20 1997 SOUNDING OFF [Image][Down] [Image]
[Line]
[Image] Your news
selection in
the Personal
It is the craze of the month among geeks who Times
love complexity. Avoid it at all costs
Key coverage
Linux, the PC program from hell in Election
'97
[Image]
WAS I the only one who broke into a scream
of terror when I looked at this month's copy
of Personal Computer World? There, staring COMDEX UK
out from a free CD-Rom on the cover was the 97: Guide to
program from hell, and all you needed to do the show
to let it take over your PC was double click
a couple of times and kiss goodbye to your Chip retains
sanity. information
when
The nasty piece of digital scurf in question computer
is known as Linux and there are plenty of crashes
sad types who will tell you it is the future
of personal computing. Do not fall for this Webwatch
bizarre line in geek thinking.
Internet
Even Personal Computer World, after making lets
it so easy to enter the twilight zone shoppers
without a return ticket, saw fit to enter a browse at
few caveats in the fine print. Linux, it leisure
said, came with a serious health warning.
Don't even think about it, the magazine Health:
said, unless you are technically proficient Video
and have backed up all your PC files equipped
beforehand. ambulance
puts
Yes, but we know what the average PC user is casualty
like. He never reads the words, he just doctors in
slings in the CD-Rom, clicks on the install the picture
icon, and hopes for the best. And if you are
now looking at a blank screen with a few [Contact Us]
impenetrable commands where you once had a
working PC, then all I can say is: "You have
only yourself to blame."
Linux, for the uninitiated, is a version of
that old computer donkey known as Unix. If
you need to run big computer Unix tasks then
it is, I am told, not a bad solution at all.
Equally, if you believe there is no point in
doing easily something you can achieve the
long way round, it is doubtless the way to
go.
Imagine a tougher version of MS-Dos where
the commands are even harder to memorise and
less forgiving of errors and you are
starting to get there. And if you want to
cheat a little, you can put on a
pseudo-graphical front end and bingo you
might just manage to turn a modern Windows
NT-capable PC into a passable imitation of
Windows 3.1 circa 1992.
However, to read some publications, you
might think that Microsoft's Bill Gates is
quivering in his boots at the idea that
Linux will do what IBM and Apple never
managed to achieve kick Windows off the
everyday desktop. Really? Well, no. Linux is
flavour of the month with the geek community
for two reasons it's free, and it's not
from Microsoft.
For a certain breed of bug-eyed computer
user, that really is all you need. Trivial
details such as usability, the lack of
decent everyday software, and the plain fact
that, when things go wrong, you are on your
own are not setbacks to Linux addicts. These
are the very reasons why they like the
wretched thing because it sets them apart
from the mainstream of tedious, ordinary
users who just use PCs to get on with the
job.
Personal computers seem to have attracted
some strange and obsessive people along the
way to becoming common or garden information
tools. If Linux hadn't been invented by a
Finnish student a few years back, something
equally strange and esoteric would have
appeared to take its place.
Computer geeks despise simple, common
standards. Gates is the object of their hate
simply because he won the operating-system
war. If Apple or IBM had come out on top,
the people now buzzing so excitedly around
Linux would have treated them to the hate
mail they reserve for Gates today.
Fads like Linux are diversionary characters
in a digital freak show on the sidelines of
modern information technology. Finding them
on the cover disks of mainstream magazines
says more about the novelty value of
computer journalism than the real issues
facing those trying to make tomorrow's PCs a
sight better than the ones we use today.
The idea that great developments in personal
computing will be invented in some dismal
student bedroom in Helsinki might make nice
bedtime reading for people who dream in
hexa-decimal. But if all you want is a
computer that you can aspire to understand,
chuck that blasted CD-Rom in the bin right
now.
David Hewson
Health: Video equipped ambulance puts
casualty doctors in the picture
[Line]
Copyright 1997 Times Newspapers Limited
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