Slightly OT: Piers Anthony and Open Source

[Ken Burtch]

Science fiction / fantasy author Piers Anthony occasionally writes about
his experiences as a user trying to use open source and Linux.  He
mentions them again this month:

"Several readers sent suggestions about fixing my capitalization problem
in my last column, but none were on target. I finally managed to fix it
myself by finding the "May I?" button. That's the one that's there
solely to torpedo you when all you want to do is handle your project. I
believe I have remarked before on my theory that Open Source is
populated to an extent by refugees from Microsoft, who bring their bad
habits with them. Such as contempt for clarity, simplicity, and user
friendliness. In this case the May-I button is hidden in Formatting—
AutoFormat—While Typing. Mine had gotten unchecked, and that cut out all
of the AutoCorrect function. Why they don't have the AutoCorrect turnon
with the AutoCorrect address—well, as I said, they don't seem to be
interested in making it easy.

In that vein: Ed Howdershelt, who came up and got me online a couple
years ago, came up again to install the current version of Ubuntu, as he
had a spare disk. I used Kubuntu for a year or so, preferring the KDE
environment, but was willing to try this for the sake of OpenOffice 3.
Ubuntu installed, but couldn't handle my modem. So we had to put the old
Xandros back on, and it worked but all my defaults had been wiped,
including my customized keyboard, and it was a hassle restoring them.
Another week Ed came up again to try installing OpenOffice 3 directly on
Xandros, but it wouldn't. It turns out that you can't get there from
here; Xandros doesn't recognize the current OpenOffice. Apparently the
Xandros folk don't much care about staying current with other open
source software. This spells the likely conclusion of my association
with Xandros. For too long it has teased me with its occasional
shutdowns when I try to back up material, its refusal to recognize my
printer directly, its turnoff of my keyboard when doing automatic
backups so that I wind up with letters missing from words or commands,
and its refusal to save my session setup for next time. It can do that
last, as once every so often it does, but normally it doesn't, so that I
have to take ten minutes each morning setting things up "by hand."
Programs can do these things regularly, because prior programs did. I
may try Ubuntu again and see if we can find a modem that will work with
it. Or Kubuntu, the KDE environment variant I prefer, though when I used
Kubuntu before it was incomplete in three sources we tried, as if they
had never bothered to check it before distributing it. Another time he
brought PCLinuxOS, that claims to be easy to install and full featured.
But it wouldn't install. No error messages, no cautions; it recognized
my system, it said it was installing, but then the screen went blank and
activity stopped. That's par for this course. Another time we got a
virus, so sought to install an online virus program; it said it was a 13
hour download, and it did tie up our phone line overnight. Then it said
it was missing a file and wouldn't work. They couldn't have warned us
before wasting all that time? That, too is par; it's why we don't much
like online updating. It generally is complicated, ties up our phone for
hours, and then doesn't work. So we bought Norton at a store, and it
slows down our Windows system almost as much as the virus did; we have
to turn it off to get things done. Don't get me started on why I don't
much like Norton. And yes, I feel the whole hassle should be
unnecessary. An open source operating system should address an open
source modem and open source word processor without hassle. I guess I am
still looking for the perfect Linux distribution that actually behaves
the way it should: straightforward, full featured, reliable. But as I
said above, about open source programmers, who seem determined to drive
users back to Microsoft...Years ago in the local Linux users group
someone said he wanted a system that worked out of the box, and two
others bawled him out for even wanting it. Thereafter I tuned out of
that organization, as it obviously did not represent folk like me who do
want hassle-free performance. Are we that rare? So it seems I won't be
able to upgrade unless I get a geek here to do it. How we miss Tim, who
set up my present system years ago, before he died. If there's a geek
within range of the Citrus County area who knows how to tame the balky
tiger of my system on Linux, get in touch; we might be able to do some
business. And no, they don't even offer broadband here in the
hinterland; dial-up is us."

His full December article is here:

http://www.hipiers.com/newsletter.html

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Ken O. Burtch                                    Phone/Fax: 905-562-0848
  "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"              Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
  "Perl Phrasebook"              Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
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