Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu ... just one!

[Bart Silverstrim]

Steven Davies-Morris wrote:

> I have a friend who is a WD engineer.  A brilliant guy, but he too has 
> had enormous problems emigrating from Windows XP to Ubuntu. Ironically 
> it was his awful experiences with Vista that finally drove him to ask 
> me for help in geting him liberated from the MS world.  Even so, 
> during the transition process, almost every day when we dealt with 
> issues (like making Java work and USB work inside vBox for the few 
> Windows things he still had to have) he would bitch and whine about 
> how hard this was and why didn't things just work properly like in XP 
> -- patience not being one of his many virtues!
> 
> Inevitably we would fix things and discover that the reason things 
> didn't work was because he (a) hadn't followed instructions properly 
> and/or (b) presumed he knew what he was doing and then dynamited the 
> bridge under his feet in frustration, or (c) was trying to do 'step 
> 10" when hadn't yet made "step 7" work...making it harder for me to 
> help him fix things.
> 
> Anyway, the point is that is this thread all the information you need 
> to know to clean up your 8.04 back to gdm without any kdm has been 
> provided.  Shame that you've gone back to Windows, but if and when 
> you're ready to try again, if you can be a little less hasty in your 
> actions, and a little more specific in detail, there's plenty of help 
> here on this list that will get you to the promised land.

No, it's not really a shame. It's a lesson that if you are impatient, 
you're not willing to pay the price for moving to a new platform and the 
learning curve it brings. That's what the paying-for world on Windows is 
paying for. You pay for the right to bitch and moan when things don't 
work because you have paid engineers and programmers supporting the product.

Linux isn't an end-user product. It grew, and grows, from a fertile 
patch of geeks with their own individual itches to scratch, and if it 
works for a particular perceived need then you luck out! Conversely if 
you can't find your own niche in that environment, you're out of luck. 
And if you're impatient, or the type of person that blows half the 
install and configuration by typing every command you run across hoping 
to "fix" something while having no basic clue what the command does or 
what the outcome would be, then complain about it...well, it's not a 
shame because it really isn't a very safe environment for you to use.

In general, the rule of thumb I've found with Windows and paid products, 
you pay for support and you pay to not have to think so much about what 
you're doing. With Linux you pay a price on learning curves and 
understanding more of what you're doing yourself.