Why Linux Sucks

When I read threads about "Why Linux won't succeed?", I feel that they are lacking something. They speak about the same things always, developers doing what they want, device support, gaming, and omit some fundamental things, at least for us, the vast majority of this planet, who don't speak "Universal English" as our first language.

Here are my own reasons that make Linux suck for us, and, please, think about them a little.

1. "Universal" English. To be able to use Windows, in Spanish, you have to know... Spanish. Even the BSODs are translated to Spanish. You definitely can't understand why did your computer freeze in the worst moment, but, at least, you see some words in Spanish that you understand.

To be able to use Linux, you HAVE TO KNOW ENGLISH. And don't tell me that Ubuntu has a perfect internationalization, localization, or whatever. The root of the problem lies in the beautiful, hated by some, loved by most, command line.

Think a little. What would happen if a beautiful day, you awake in the morning, and to be able to make a little tweaking, to configure your X Server, or to do whatever you please, you fire up a terminal, and begin to write some commands like these?

# listado
# apt instalar editor-texto
# conectar --tipo ISO9660 /disps/disco_compacto /discos/disco_compacto

Do you see something strange? This isn't the command line you are used to, isn't it? This is how a Spanish speaker user feels everyday about the command line. To be able to use it, you have to write it in a foreign language. What would happen if we don't understand English? Easy: we'll use pirated Windows! And configuration and .rc files are impossible for us, unless we are programmers, or unless we... know English!

This can be overcame by using graphic utilities to configure Linux. But the state of all these utilities is sad in every distro, except, maybe, Ubuntu. Fedora 9, a common distro, does not have an universal language switch, and all system-config utilities are displayed here in beautiful, "Universal", ENGLISH. I have to thank God it isn't Polish, or Chinese.

2. Help files suck. You may dislike Windows Vista, but there's an area where Windows Vista is IMMENSELY SUPERIOR to Linux: documentation. You open a help file in Windows Vista and it is actually useful. It explains you how to do things, complicated technical concepts, and the like. You can actually learn about Windows, and it's easy. Compare that reality, to this.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/780-The-Awful-KHelpCenter.html

Read. Cry. The second most popular desktop, KDE, is shipping with a completely outdated piece of crap called "help". The help browser and the help contents haven't been updated since 2002 (KHelpCenter is a direct port), unlike the rest of KDE. GNOME is better here, but is far behind of Windows. I haven't tested MacOS, but, knowing about Apple's attention to detail, I expect their documentation to be even better than Microsoft's.

And, the second part. That piece of crap called KDE help files, isn't translated to Spanish, the third language, in number of native speakers, of the world, surpassing English ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speak... ). What would a Vietnamese expect? A Dutchmen? Universal English!

3. Documentation part 2. Linux has made enormous leaps in ease to use in the last 5 years. 5 years ago, we had to be lobotomised to accept that writing in a console, as root, "mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom" to read a CD was actually easier than putting the damn CD in the damned drive, and expect the OS to read it. Now, every distro I know of can do something as simple as read a CD, or an USB drive, when you pop it in.

But... ¡¿why the hell are all those pages that you STILL can find in the Internet STILL claiming that "the right way to mount a CD is firing a console and writing some magic incantation"?! They must be wrong! Are they wrong? For us, seasoned Linux users, yes. For somebody who's coming here, trying his first distro... no.

Combine outdated (and I mean it, you can still find an old collection of HOWTOs I used to configure SuSE Linux 5.2 (yes, when it was written SuSE, not SUSE, when it had kernel 2.0, when you had the choice between FVWM95 with TkDesk and KDE 1.0) in the Internet) docs, with some FUD, and you'll have an OS that will look 5x as difficult as it really is. Add crappy and incomplete translations of those docs to the mix, and you'll have an impossible-to-use Linux.

There are other rants that I think of. But they are not Latino specific. They would be addressed through other posts, by other people.

I don't know how to program, I'm a law student, not a programmer, but, if you want to translate a program, or if you want my help for translating a help file, you've got me. You have my mail, in my account, but I don't know how to start. So, thanks, think in some of these issues, and do something about them, please.