Quest For Linux (Spurred By Microsoft Mediocrity)

Warning - This post is a bit of a rant.

I have to say, in the past, I've been somewhat of an apologist for Microsoft. Being a developer, I understand how hard it is to maintain a very large code base and roll out changes while staying bug free.

Lately though, I just can't justify their mediocre software. (The first draft of this said "crappy software". But, I'm trying to remain objective.) The more I push the edges of their tools, the more I see the cracks. Obviously, lots of you have known for some time that IE 6 could have been much better. I guess I just hadn't tried to do much in it beyond the basics until the last couple of years. In the last year, I've really been working on using CSS and JS to make my code sexy and exciting. I'll be darned if IE doesn't disappoint me daily.

I got to see what great strides a company could make, if they tried, when Macromedia updated the Flash AVM for AS3. Macr wanted developers to seriously consider the Flash platform for building enterprise level applications. Well, there were concerns among us developers about performance and the inconsistency of the AS language. Macromedia addressed those concerns by writing a new AVM from scratch with a much improved language and HUGE performance improvements. I think that Macromedia did a stellar job with this. Flex 2 with AS3 is now a solid platform with a lot of buzz around it.

The level of competence Macromedia displayed must have raised the bar in my mind for software companies. Because, when I heard that MS had IE 7 in beta, I thought, "They've waited for so long to update IE, surely they'll make a better performing more compliant browser". I know, I know. In my defence, I'm an eternal optimist. I really do expect the best of people.

Well, of course I was dissapointed. My best guess is, Microsoft thought, "People sure seem to like that tabbed-browsing thing Firefox has." So, they slapped tabs onto IE 6, applied a graphical coat of paint, and, finally, made it impossible to configure the toolbars to your liking. Then they pushed that sucker out. Ugh!

SQL Server 2005 came out a while back. That was pretty pathetic too. I mean, until the first Service Pack, I couldn't run SQL Server Management Studio without it crashing EVERY day. Then we started to find the little stuff. Like, when using a sub-query, if it has a syntax error, it will simply evaluate it as null and then give you results based off of that. That's a big change in behavior from SQL Server 2000.

There's plenty of other things, but, this post is getting pretty long. Needless to say, I'm a little disenchanted with Microsoft these days.

So what is an intrepid developer to do. I thought that I would try out Linux. I keep hearing about these modern distros that you can just boot into and try out. First I tried Ubuntu, but it had no support for the built-in wifi on my HP DV6000 laptop. So, in reading about how to remedy that, I came across Sabayon Linux. It's actually a pretty cool distro and it did boot up with my wifi card seeming to work. But, it never could quite connect to any access points. A couple times it did, but, the connection was worthless.

I spent almost this entire weekend trying to get my laptop running on Linux with support for my wifi card. I'm sad to say that I never did get it working. Furthermore, I managed to lock up Sabayon multiple times. I guess Linux support for my laptop is just not there yet.

Don't worry. I haven't given up yet. When I'm done posting this, I'm going to go read up on the other popular distros and get a couple more of them started downloading. I'm even open to the idea of getting an add-on wifi expresscard.

So, in summary:
I think that truly great software companies are rare. Microsoft isn't one of them. But, I'm posting this from XP MCE. :-(

And my search for a sanctuary from the exemplary mediocrity of Microsoft goes on.