This is a humorous piece written by William J. Rogers, Jr. and hosted here with his permission.

Installing Linux is a pain.

I remember a joke about operating systems. The gist of it was that if Windows were an airline everything would be beautiful and comfortable, although expensive. But ten minutes after take-off the airplane would explode for no known reason.

Meanwhile, over at Linux Air, your ticket is free but you have to install your own seat. They do give you all the tools and instructions needed to do the job. After this easy task everything is wonderful, but when you tell your friends about your flight they make a big thing about how you had to install your seat.

It's really more like this:

They hand you the seat, a whole toolbox of tools, and a rack of anonymously written manuals big enough to fill a U-Haul. Most all the tools and manuals are utterly irrelevant, but nobody tells you which. Depending on which color upholstery your seat has, the tools and instructions needed to install it are slightly different. Nobody will help you straighten this out, but they will argue vociferously about which color upholstery is best.

In spite of all this, you go ahead. You find out very quickly that installing your seat would be trivially simple if your wristwatch were a 1963 Timex, your "PDA" were a wirebound notebook, your glasses were horn-rimmed and your pen were a ballpoint; but if any of the hardware you carry is less than ten years old, you can't install your seat at all. The tools to install it don't exist yet.

Having thrown away your watch, pen, PDA, and contact lenses, and dressed yourself in your finest white polyester leisure suit, you finally manage to install the seat. With a sigh of relief you sit down therein; but as they push the plane back from the gate the wheels fall off. Based on vague comments from your fellow passengers, you conclude this happened because the white polyester in your leisure suit is nonstandard; but it's the only leisure suit you have (thank God) so you're stuck with it.

The fellow traveler who seems most knowledgeable says you have to remove the standard seat Linux Air gave you and build a custom one from dozens of pieces which don't seem to fit together; furthermore, you have to make sure to fit this new seat with an umbrella bracket even though you don't have an umbrella and never plan to get one.

But all your fellow passengers swear Linux Air is the best airline in the sky. They keep telling you how lucky you are to be here and not stuck on Brand W.

Back

Background created by Tephra from images of circuit boards found here: PIC LCD VT-52 Emulator for Linux.