See you again soon!

[Avraham Hanadari]

Well, thanks to those of you who have taken the trouble to relate to my 
questions. The time has once again come for me to throw in the towel. I 
have been giving Linux a try once a year since SuSE 4.2 (which I had to 
buy!) in order to see if the functions I need had at last been 
incorporated. Ubuntu has been my distribution of choice for that last 
few years and the latest version has come rather close to meeting the 
requirements. Unfortunately "rather close" is not close enough to allow 
me to replace Windows. Running a dual boot with XP, and switching every 
time I need a function or a piece of hardware that Linux doesn't play 
with is time consuming and frustrating. I find I am spending far too 
much time tweaking Linux to perform elementary but essential tasks and 
not actually doing productive work. I had to buy a driver for my 
printer. The scanner and a variety of other electronic gizmos are 
incommunicado. Convenient relatively sophisticated human language 
translation (like Babylon) is still unavailable. Hebrew nikud is still 
unavailable. These two functions can be achieved, I am told, via an 
incredible series of command line instructions. I started doing that, 
then stopped when I realized that once again my Linux "hobby" was 
preventing me from completing significant projects. Some of you have 
been most eager to help, but, in truth, you have been guessing. How is 
it possible that no one knows how to change the date renderings in Linux 
to European style? I refuse to believe that you are all happily using 
the Yank sequence. How is it possible that not one other user has need 
of more than four keyboards? The list goes on. This list is entitled 
"Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions". Although I 
am grateful to those of you who have rendered help and made suggestions, 
my general impression is that this is a "general discussion". Ubuntu 
stays on board in my dual boot, unless another distro shows more 
promise, but I am withdrawing from the list for the time being. Thanks 
again. I  respect you for your perseverance with Linux. It does you honour.
Avraham