Linux suck.
Posted on September 5, 2005
Yes Linux suck. Why? I just finished small consulting job were I had to setup a secure tunnel from office network to remote server. I checked Redhat Enterprise!!! Server documentation and it looked like I would spend 5 minutes and bill 200$ dollars. Stupid me ;-)
First their documentation tell me to put TYPE=IPsec to config file. And first kaboom! IPsec must be in upper case and their stupid scripts can’t understand IPSec.
Second the version of ipsec that they shipped with RHE3 is not compatible with version from RHE4. And I had to buy a 50$ subscription to download bugfix.
Next, logging details are a different in RHE3 and RHE4. It make it really difficult to compare (and RHE update applet goes to RedHat site every 30 seconds polluting my tcpdump output). Well ok shit happens, but why ipsec drops first valid pocket? I have to ping remote host two times to establish the connection! And no it is not mentioned in documentation. A lot of thing are not mentioned in documentation. I even found “Secret Racoon error message decoder ring” website…
So instead of spending 5 minutes on a relatively simple task, I spent almost 6 hours.
People if you will have a choice to use Linux or something else, choose something else (hint Solaris).
Do you want more? RPM database locked. up2date stopped downloading updates every now and then. Console tools don’t work (so it’s either GUI or vim). Tools produce config files with undocumented parameters that are never used (and for example no documentation about what parameter I should use to set MTU for network interface, let along mention that I need to change MTU in their so called documentation), broken GUI tools (they never thought that somebody may click back bottom or may need a explanation about what exactly I’m expected to enter in that text field and in what format, oh and no input validation).
Did I mentioned that Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES Standard
Edition cost $799 US while Microsoft Windows XP Professional $378 CAN? When did your Windows XP or 2000 crashed last time? RedHat server froze when I opened file in VIM. I could not even ping it and had to reboot it.
Linux must die. Unix rules. Peace.
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Like Ed once said: “It’s 2005, why am I still writing lines into text files?”
I still think Linux is great, but it’s in dire need of evolution.
I use FreeBSD. It rocks.
The answer, in short, is what do you do when Windows pisses you off? Surely it does every now and then? Surely you have a complaint about Solaris every now and then?
The difference is that with Linux you have a choice. You can do something about it. Some would say that the difference is that in Linux you have no right to complain. This is basically to say the same thing.
I don’t like to take a stand on whether Linux “worth the money”, or competes well with other desktop and server platforms (others do, go argue with them), I just have one single opinion about Linux and it is all I can see when it comes to this sort of arguments: Linux has a (/is a) passion.
“Who cares about passion” you would say. Then who cares about your complaints I would answer.
Nafle, you have very good point. But you also have to understand me. I was once a Linux geek. I built Linux from scratch without LFS (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) instruction. And that tells something about me. But when someone starts charging money I expect some service. Especially when it’s big money.
Nafle please compare http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4554/6maoq020k?q=ipsec&a=view
and http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/security-guide/ch-vpn.html
also search for ipsec on msdn.
What do I do when Windows pisses me off? Well all my servers are UNIX based. When I do consulting jobs I recommend to use UNIX like OSes. But when I have to use Windows, I do my research on how to accomplish my task. And usually it is documented in the documentation or in the book. (I saw a blog few month ago were author was telling that windows suck because there is no uptime command. He did not now about systeminfo command. I on the other hand try not to be ignorant).
> The difference is that with Linux you have a choice.
Yes you do, but I don’t have time to read the source, browse mailing lists, google it.
Do you understand that because of bad documentation, because of bad configuration tools the company had to pay me extra money? If I were an owner of that company I would format the disk and install something _cheaper_ even if I had to pay for it.
Some would say linux is as good as it costs. But it does does cost quite a lot and is not good enough.
I understand why someone may like Linux, I do myself. My rant was mostly about Redhat, not about Slackware or Debian.