Comment 660 for bug 1

Every day I use this distribution I come to love it more.
Some guy tried to mock me because I said that I had been an adept Windows user, but hadn't had it installed for a year. He said "and you're probably using Ubuntu, Mr 'adept' Windows user". Well, yeah, I am using Ubuntu. Something wrong with it? He was just being grumpy cause I caught him lying about his occupation (claimed to program computers in a hundred odd languages, but didn't know what the stuff was called that you eventually compile and run) and mocking OS X users.
(I was an adept Windows user, though. At least by my standards. I could write .bat files, Disable automatic restarts after updates through the management console, Change the MTU in the registry, rename everything, edit the menus.... None of these things are easy for Windows users. See how many your Windows friends can do...)
Verily, even after using Mandrake, Xandros etc on and off for a few years, Ubuntu sounded terrible.. Very popular, with a rapidly increasing market share... Sounds like an interface dumbed down enough for total newbies, but with the same cryptic, intimidating, overwhelming, unstable rubbish under the hood that had required me to try compiling my own drivers for winmodems, etc, etc, etc.....

- I was right. By default it is very simple to use. You can just drop in a CD and immediately surf the net. Turns out that was a good thing
- I was right, it does seem very complicated under the hood when you switch from Windows. It's not though, it's just not trying to hide everything from you. Also a good thing.
- I was wrong about the drivers. Ubuntu has drivers for all my hardware in the repositories I haven't had to lift a finger in that regard, unlike on Windows where I spent a week hunting down drivers (which came with all this horrible management software which you couldn't uninstall and never had a use for)

A Windows user the other day asked for advice cause she thought there was a keylogger on her system. I know that most keyloggers are stealthed now but the antivirus thing picked up nothing so why not start with the obvious? A list of running processes.
the command "ps" was not found on the system.
There's a console-based equivalent which ships with Windows Server. It'd been so long I had had to look it up. She didn't have that.
psList, downloaded through microsoft.com, did not run on her system for some unknown reason.
In the end she gave up. heard nothing from her for a while and she had PrintScreened taskman repeatedly, glued together the screenshots in photoshop, and then uploaded that. This process took about half an hour in all. Way too much effort. What was Windows XP Pro five years ago, four hundred bucks? And Photoshop CS2, eight hundred? Both are great programs, but I don't think someone who has spent $1200 on a drawing program and an operating system should have to spend half an hour gluing together screenshots of their tasklist.
Photoshop is a fantastic program. Windows is great too, sure. And there probably is a built-in command-line tasklist in Windows... But if there was, why did we go to all that effort!?!??

The user had never even heard of Ubuntu. If I mention it again, she probably will have forgotten?
But in any event, it's events like this that make it very clear why Windows retains its market share....

Humans are suckers for punishment.

I'm still just slowly learning to use Linux properly, and rapidly (sadly) forgetting Windows... But I am not JUST surfing the internet or using emails., or using an instant messenger. I LOVE bash (can't script in it yet but love it anyway)... No need to spend an extra 999 years to load a google SERP a browser to try to download software :P when one can just type in three little words: "apt-cache search whatever"
Why wait half an hour for taskman to start on an older system, when I can just bang out a handy "killall whicheverapplication" ??
I can do more in Ubuntu with the ALT, F2 and ENTER keys than what I can do a mouse, a tech support helpdesk, and 10 coworkers standing by for any advice I don't need. Or at least, I can do it faster.

I'm ranting and being a *nix fanboy. I know. I confess.

I don't want to rant about it at work or anything. They will figure it out for themselves. Some of them already have. It's clear there how happy I am with Linux now, when I am trying to use Office and I can't convert a data type in Excel because it mishandles paste special. Or when I'm swearing because cutting and pasting in Excel can produce different output (on paste) to copying and pasting. Or when I'm getting angry because someone in another office thinks it's funny to send me Excel Spreadsheets with "-" hyphens to represent "zero" values. yeah, very funny, when it throws the chart thing off. Some of the values are naturally negative! There is no regular expression find and replace in Excel! There are no VisualBasic programmers at my work!
Everything I try to do something with the software they prescribe at work, I have to go to google and look for some program to do it. Highly frustrating.

Like I said, I think Windows is great. It's a fantastic, profoundly useful and very impressive collection/piece of software. It's just not "Me-Compatible" any more.