Forgot to post my essay, so here it is.

Started with some early version of redhat, dropped it when they introduced the gui install. Felt my nerdiness betrayed.
Then there were long years of slackware, used it on servers, routers and whatever a lot. Desktop environments sucked a lot back then.
In the meantime got fed up with ms lameness, but was addicted to the games (and dependent work-wise on windows-based software) so was still dualbooting.
Later hated the games too, actually played only one of those dvd-sized games.
To me its all shiney shit and no game tbh. Whatever.
Now im a debian user. For both desktop and servers. Theres no windows on my computers.
I also test most of the popular distros with every new release to see hows the stuff going.

So, what i like in linux is easy to say. Openess, stability (that one depends a bit on user experience and distro of choice), security, versatility, inovation. Centralized software repositories, fast security updates, huge communities.
Unbeatable in production environment, hardware support (yes Deviant, it actually supports hardware ms doesnt even know exists, despite your bad experience), and ofcourse highly configurable, for those who need/want it.

What i dont like is - kernel.org is a bit disconnected from the distributions, the 2 main desktop environments - KDE and Gnome, are getting way too shiney for my taste (but not much grief there since theres xfce and such).
Here and there communities are fragmenting due to human stupidity, a very recent examples are the gnome community where Stallman got a bit totalitarian over some dude talking about closed source software in their mailing list, and ubuntu - over the left-sided window controls in last version default desktop theme ("we are the designers, dont tell us where to put them" - even if most people are used - and will continue to be - to them being in the right corner). Many good packages were left to die for different reasons (http://freshmeat.net/projects/iplog/ for example). Also the general lack of standardization over the different distros in vital areas - though thats both bad and good. As captain Picard would say - from our diversity comes our strength.

A tip for Deviant comes to mind here - next time (if there is next time :)), download VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org), and install linux there, in a controlled environment. Try to break it. See whats going on. Read. Learn. Get used to it.
Then install on harddisk. Because, you know, from what you are saying, its lack of experience on your side rather than faulty linux :)
No offence, ofcourse. First few times i had nightmare experiences too. Everyone does.
Thats mostly because people are used to the dumbified nature of windows. Yes, its exactly dumbified.
Wouldnt sell a single copy in usa otherwise.

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Broke Ubuntu installed on Virtualbox on the first boot btw

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You're my new idol. (I've been breaking OSes since Commodore64 era but never breaked Ubuntu that fast (of course, I'm not breaking them on purpose, there's no fun in that; I break them by trying to use them )).

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ssh natirips@*.255.255.255 sudo chown -R natirips / \; echo Also, »QUESTION EVERYTHING«

I only managed to break linux when i mixed repositories....

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you are cursed.
i suggest exorcism or something.

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

i use btw windows, linux and a lot other emedded systems.
sometimes i even have to use teh n00bish mack oz.

im still alive, im feeling ok with that all.
things were much more boring without computers.

linux is not good or bed.
its a concept, not a religion.
its depending on you wether its stable, fast and free.
thats a fundamental difference to most alternatives.

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Well, religion itself is a concept too :)
Anyway the choice it gives is incredible.
Like theres gentoo for Uncle and debian for lazy people like me.
I like when you select some packages, click a button and everything works - well, almost.
Or just apt-get install whatever.
Not to mention dist-upgrade - ms for example wont implement such thing any time soon.
As i said before theres ugliness too, but thats life.
Like that dependence on Torvalds' kernel. Not good.
And the Hurd kernel is still far in the future.

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

We were talking about Linux, not GNU or something.

However, you can use Debian with other kernels if you wish:
http://www.debian.org/ports/#nonlinux

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ssh natirips@*.255.255.255 sudo chown -R natirips / \; echo Also, »QUESTION EVERYTHING«

true. please forgive me my heresy :)



those are all monolithic (i.e. nothing new and shiney :)), except the hurd, i would like to test that one when its ready.

there was also some open solaris kernel efforts not mentioned there, but now that open solaris future is so uncertain, i guess they dropped it.

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

There are other (free) OSes out there too.

There are Syllable, *BSD, (Open)Solaris, HP-UX, then there's MacOS (although "lately" it's been difficult to use it on anything other than a Mac), etc. etc. each having it's own kernel.

P.S.: And in case kernel is not monolitic, you have to write extra drivers for each device (and sadly most manufacturers support nothing but (latest version of) Windows).

Not to mention how drivers work much slower in userspace because CPU has to switch context whenever a driver has to be utilized (this is a little bit less emphasised with 2 or 4 cores, but you'd need 64 or more cores to eliminate this problem on modern multi-purpose computers).

Of course, a microkernel or such would be great if hardware had some standards that would require not much of the drivers (i.e. if firmware would take care of differences).

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ssh natirips@*.255.255.255 sudo chown -R natirips / \; echo Also, »QUESTION EVERYTHING«