Sam Varghese
Monday, 19 November 2007 21:09
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Stan says the final straw - being unable to boot the box - happened soon after some updates had taken place.
I was doubly sad about his having to stop using Linux because from the language he used alone, I could see that he was already becoming one of us - who else would use words like "fsck manually"? Here was a 10-day old Linux user who was already following the time hallowed advice of RTFM!!!
But then I've used Ubuntu even less than he has - and when one is running a business, stability is number one. My only stability problems with Linux have been due to bad memory on two machines while I was in the stage of experimenting with the operating system in 1999.
Tracking down the cause of Stan's problems has been easy. A few days after Ubuntu was installed, Stan wanted to play an encrypted DVD. He found that this was not possible on Ubuntu. Hence, like any budding Linux user, he searched in that great wasteland, the world wide web.
That's how he landed at the Automatix website where one of the claims made is: "Our list of supported applications include a whole range of multimedia codecs, burning and ripping software, file sharing software, email clients, VoIP enabled chat clients, browsers, encryption software and a lot more!"
Yeah, baby. No mention that Automatix could seriously screw with your system.
One can't blame Stan for looking for a means to play a DVD - we all watch DVDs on our Linux PCs. One can't blame the people who develop Ubuntu either - they have their own philosophy and stick to it. One begins to use Ubuntu only on the basis which it is provided.
