CREEPINGNET'S WORLD
MODERN OPERATING SYSTEMS
Keep They *Religion* To Thyself
The modern computer operating system is almost like a religion in geekier factions - and they war just as much as our idiot politicians war over religious beliefs, and just call me "Computer Carlin" when I say, "keep thy religion to thyself"!

I am O/S agnostic. Honestly, I see them for what they are - they have a core function of making a digital device something more than a giant expensive paperweight - but then companies and users at large try to make this essential piece of software out to be some kind of one-stop-shop for every bit of computer functionality - when it never has been, nor ever should be, that way.

First you have the big 3 commercial operating systems (4 if you split the Apple ones in half) - Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Apple likes to overcharge for a largely unchanging piece of system software that they force you to upgrade your device to every five years, rendering a pretty nice piece of hardware uselss. Microsoft likes to change their mind on being evil every 5-10 years and either comes up with a ton of draconian security and anti-piracy measures that screw up productivity, or they create a really good release and then wonder why in the hell everyone keeps using it even though it's no longer recieving updates. Google used to be good, then they decided to buy up open sourced Unix clones and use those on mysterious little supercomputers that fit in our pockets and little cheap laptops, and then obscure the how and the why so we have literally ZERO choice on those devices except the most basic and banal ones.

Then we have the true opensource OSes - ie Linux - which is free, easy to download, but because there's 300 different distributions based off 3-4 major distributions (RedHat, Ubuntu, and Debian being the main three these days - forgetting Slackware and Mandrake apparently, with Ubuntu being the most popular). Linux is great and it's what I personally like to use but it's not without it's annoyances either such as a community that insists you read 900 page usrmans before asking a question on a public facing forum, or be condescendingly attacked by some parent's basement dweller because you were not bestowed with the ability to use the Bash shell at birth. But hey, at least it's not "Exploitation Steve" on the MSFN forums feeding you a seemingly nonsensical script - like "Hey, my computer's on fire" and rather than asking you to call the fire department, some white guy in a business suit is telling him to tell you to try reinstalling Microsoft office while the house burns down around you.