[nzlug] Linux Tax

[David McNab]

Hi all,

After slagging away at Windows for the last little while, I feel the
need to strike a *little* balance.

After defining Windows Tax, now it's time to turn to Linux Tax, and
strike some comparison.

Linux Tax is occasional, sudden and unexpected leakages of possibly
large amounts of time and energy.

Windows Tax is money, insecurity and loss of freedom

Linux Tax is knowing that at any time, even to do something fairly
trivial, you might unexpectedly have to spend hours googling, asking for
help on irc and mailing lists, hunting down dependencies, grabbing newer
code off cvs/svn/mercurial/etc, struggling through often very inadequate
documentation, building apps/libs/utils, adding kernel patches, googling
through web forums, grepping through source code, hacking config
scripts, googling for bug reports and howtos, battling to get drivers to
work for the new hardware,...

Windows Tax is getting your browser jacked, your desktop icons turning
into porn links, your internet connection getting swallowed up by a
trojan doing the day's penis growth pills mail-out, having to beg a new
activation code off MS because your OS doesn't like you changing your
mobo, having to wear out your knuckle joints on mouse-clicks because a
repetitive action can't be scripted, possibility of getting a massive
credit card bill cos your card details leaked out of IE, getting
inundated with nag screens,...

Both can be pretty bad. But IMHO Linux is the lesser evil.

Cheers
David