Dan Olsen’s Weblog

I am one of those guys who likes Windows, Linux and Mac OS. I currently use my work computer, which is a Mac, to do most of my work. I have my Windows box at home that I enjoy using and I usually have another partition on it which houses Linux. Since I have had my Mac I have not bothered to put Linux back on my home machine. Many people may gasp at the fact that I like all the operating systems.

I had an ethics class last spring where we had a student in the class that had to voice his opinion on everything. I’m sure we all know people like that. This guy is a Linux die hard! All his comments focused on how evil and horrible Windows is and how heavenly and perfect Linux is. What was his main point behind this? “Windows has to many holes and is constantly hit by viruses and Linux is not.” I have to agree with him on the surface of that thought. Anyone who denies that Windows is constantly being pounded and exploited is only fooling themselves. The part that gets me is that I think people think the cause of all the exploits is due to poor code on the part of Microsoft.

Now, I’m not saying that Microsoft writes near perfect code, is what I am trying to say is that I don’t think Linux code is a million times better than Windows code. I have talked to other students around campus and some of my previous employers and we would like to see people think a little more realistically. A majority of the people I talk to agree with me when I state that I feel that Linux would be exploited just as much if it were the dominate operating system for the average user. Some people say that’s not true because people writing viruses for Windows are a lot of times Linux lovers. If they are LInux lovers and they hate Windows so much, why do they bother to write a virus in Windows when they could spend their time hacking with Linux?

I understand that people have their preferences on operating systems but do people really need to go to the extreme of mud-slinging? At BYU there is a feeling around the CS department that if you like Windows you are considered odd and to some people unacceptable. Who cares if someone prefers Windows over Linux, that shouldn’t be a crime. It’s like looking at someone who drives a Kia and thinking they are a sinner for even thinking about driving such a car. No offense intended to people who drive a Kia.

All in all, I think things are getting a little out of hand. It’s one thing to have a preference and it’s another to start judging people’s competency on that preference. In all honesty, is it really that bad to like Windows? I don’t think so. I can’t play Madden 2005 on Linux or on a Mac. They all have the pros and cons so why can’t we all just get along?

Slashdot has added a Politics section titled “Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters.”

I guess they felt politics is important and that “nerds” need a place to talk about them.

At the moment there hasn’t been a whole lot of progress. One problem at the moment is that I am having problems with mod_python and I am trying to get some answers on the mod_python mailing list. I am also researching other databases that we may be able to use to resolve the current database problems.

UPDATE:

We have found that the sem_wait error we have been getting when installing mod_python is caused by libpython2.3.a. To fix this problem we are going to reinstall Python.