Heidi Bond bemoans the fact that because of ExamSoft, she has to reboot her computer and lose her precious uptime. Now, I'm no fan of Examsoft, but I can't say I'm that worried about the loss of uptime. In general, I shut down my machine every time I move it, so it doesn't matter that much anyway.

But uptime is mostly important for servers, and for what it's worth, the server back in my dorm room (Windows) hasn't been rebooted since... eh, since I took back my apartment over the summer, if I recall correctly. (I installed a new card when I came back, and I assume even Linux boxes have to be shut down before you attach electronics to the motherboard.) It chugs on just fine, although I admit it does nothing more than act as a webserver and occasional file storage. The only thing that's even asked me to reboot was, oddly, an Adobe Acrobat update, and I just ignored that.

In any event, I suppose I've pretty much tired of the OS Wars, and the various debates about which operating system is most wonderful. LINUX has its uses, but to date no one has been able to convince me it's worth switching for my PC. I'll consider it when I meet the casual LINUX user.

What do I mean by that? Simply put, every LINUX user I know is a computer specialist. Command prompts hold no fear for them. Mentally mapping a directory structure, and keeping track of locations without a visual interface doesn't terrify them. Rebuild their whole system from scratch? Not a problem.

Now while none of these things hold any fear for me--I remember IBM DOS 2.0, when the command "gwbasic" was actually useful--they're also not something I'm passionate about. Further, they're not things that any of the people I help with technology are passionate about, either. Usually, if I use a term like "uptime" around anyone with a computer that I'm fixing, my next words are something like, "That's how long your computer has been on for." To which eyes will roll, lips will mumble, and hopes that I can actually get their term papers recovered will be expressed.

I can't imagine these users installing or operating LINUX. Maybe Macintosh, a system probably more focused towards task-based users than even Windows, but not anything that requires--or even encourages--them to know what "grep" means. The need and the urgency isn't there, nor even the care for the computer itself. Many of the users I have worked with, personally or professionally, have brought me machines in states that can't hardly be blamed on the OS. This would include hinges falling off due to having been squashed in overful cases, corners damaged from frequent bumps and clangs, monitors with keyboard impressions... you get the point. These are not people who are going to dote over their hardware, much less their OS.

Which is why, at the end of the day, I can't get into the hate-Microsoft mentality. LINUX, to me, will be a great operating system when people are teaching their grandmothers to store recipes on it, and most of its "stability" advantages seem to me to consist of having much more educated users. Yes, Microsoft does its annoying thing occasionally, but it's not particularly bad if you know what you're doing. And if you don't know what you're doing... well, let's put it this way: I felt it a great leap forward for computing when terms like "Shut Down" started being replaced by "Turn Off." However much I may sometimes like a command line, I don't really want to see us go back to the age of Grep.

(For what it's worth, this blog runs off a LINUX server, and all of my blog maintenance involves Telneting back to England. As I said, it has its place and its uses. But whatever its other faults, Microsoft's proven quite good at moving computers from the fringes of usefulness to ubiquity. I'm not sure LINUX is helping that progress.)