As much as I would like to switch away from Windows and go to Linux, is it just far from being ready. Of course there is Macs, and I would yet like to try one more thoroughly, but that’s a different story. I am not saying that Windows is completely “bad”, it’s more like of being tired of Microsoft’s crap. Maybe things will get better with them, but in the meantime who knows what is going to happen.

Most of those that know about Linux know that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution out there today. They try to make everything easy, but most of the time that isn’t even the case. In order to get some things done, you have to use a Shell or Terminal, which is no problem for me as I am quite used to UNIX commands for managing my server, but this is no good for those who are used to GUIs (Graphical User Interface) or pointing and clicking. It is understandable not everyone is going to remember a series of commands.

Today, while I was using Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64, I was attempting to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 manually since it will probably never be in the official Ubuntu repos (I am aware that the code-named 3.5 beta is in the repos), I used something called Ubuntuzilla to install it and create a shortcut diversion for the already Firefox 3.0 shortcuts made by the default install. After that was done, Firefox itself had issues of bringing “Server not found” errors when I know for a fact the servers do exist. After about 15 minutes of Googling the problem, I found a solution, which was to run this:

sudo apt-get install lib32nss-mdns

Now since that was solved, it was on to install Flash. Since I manually upgraded to Firefox 3.5, I didn’t get the luxury of having Ubuntu do all the dirty work for me. So I go to Adobe’s website to download Flash, and like always they never have a 64-bit version, those damn slackers. Fortunately there is something called nspluginwrapper which is to solve this problem. I am pretty much to put all plugins into /opt/firefox/plugins/ since I manually upgraded Firefox. Hooray, now Flash is installed after messing around with this for about an hour or two (lost track of time, heh).

Now it was sound that was the issue. No it wasn’t my speakers or sound card (which would be my integrated sound of the motherboard), it was actually my Logitech USB Headset. Usually with Windows, I could just plug it in, and bam, it would instantly set it to my default sound device. Unfortunately, it is much more complicated on Linux, to an extent that I just decided to say, screw it. Since, like always, every Linux setup is always different, maybe my problem could of been solved by wiping everything and starting over as I noticed with Wine everytime I used it, although that is a pain in the ass. Anyways, when I plug my device in, I go to Sound under the System menu of GNOME, set everything to my USB Headset, although of course ALSA doesn’t work, so I have to use OSS. Now I go to what I want to listen to, what so happens to be YouTube on Firefox 3.5. However, the sound always goes to my speakers. I Google this problem, none of the solutions work for me, it just won’t work. Bummer, my headset just won’t work with this >_<.

Everyone knows there are barely any programs for Linux, although this wasn’t a major downer for me, except for gaming, as much of the content is on the web now, and I am mostly on the web anyways. There are reasons for the lack of programs, (a) Windows is a monopoly, (b) It is “easy and simple” to write programs for Windows because of .NET, and (c) Software companies do not find it worth programming in Linux nor do they think they will gain enough profits from it.

Linux is just not ready for the desktop environment, and hasn’t been for a really long time. Maybe Google Chrome OS will change that, since that will be based off of Linux.