I was discussing the use of Linux at uni today. One of the main points I
was asked to defend was essentially; "Why does Linux sucks so much?"
This persons experience with Linux had pretty much centred round the
R block, and G basement computers at uni - and I can't say I disagree
with her. As far as I can make out, those computers are running some
ancient version of Slackware (I think?) with GNOME 1.4, and KDE2. Most
of the other WMs seem to be broken.
Fonts are abysmal, and the default browser is Netscape 4. The
CDRom/fstab is only correctly setup on some of the machines.
Frankly, it's embarrassing. While I can understand that the uni staff
don't exactly have time to be reinstalling Linux every six months, and
that stability is very important, this is the same config that I was
using when I attempted second year for the first time back in 2001.
>From a brief poke around the /proc/ fs, it's clear the machines are
easily capable of running something far more up to date. I would really
like to see something along the lines of GNOME 2.X, KDE3, a fairly
recent version of say Mozilla, Galeon, or Konqueror, and for the love of
god, decent fonts.
Given the varsity centric nature of the WLUG, I'm hoping someone can
tell me why the Linux machines are in such as sad state. Do the admins
not care? Or have they simply forgotten what's running there.
Regards
Edward
