Tired of Fighting P2

Ok, Now that my pressure for other activities has past I want to follow up.

Some year or so ago I used SUSE, and back then, (as I assume now) there was the big argument about MP3 players. Well, I got tired of the argument then too. Here's the rant I never sent to the mailing list:

'<'terribly irritated person beginning useless rant'>'
To be honest I'm getting tired of fighting all this crap. I'm tired of fighting the Linux drivers to keep my network up because I can't use the native drivers without locking my system up. I'm tired of seeing black menus and having to reverse engineer packages to make them look proper, and reverse engineer the icon directories and index files because some extra package decided to blow them away. I'm tired of lame license / legal excuses for not having basic MP3 and DVD playing support. Its not just SUSE its all of them. Linux isn't any better than windows for one simple reason: PROBLEMS are problems even if they are different!
I may not have any viruses in Linux, but God knows I have had a multitude of other stupid problems to fight that I could have avoided altogether on windows. Windows Crashes, but so far I'm not seeing any better on Linux. EVERYTIME I shutdown KDE I get the old crash window that I also have to close. Uptime? Whenever I mention it in a local user group I get excuses (usually related to security and patches) as to why their boxes haven't been up for more than 2 months! Which is no better than the Windows servers I support. Patches? I'm constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, getting notices from Novell and SUSE about patches, no better than windows there. Cost? My time trying to get Linux running at all is equal to or greater than the time I spend fixing a windows problem.
Someone tell me PLEASE that there is a version and/or distro of linux that just runs! WHY, pray tell, do I have to add a special repository to keep Gnucash up to date on SUSE 10 and cannot rather just download the stupid thing from gnucash?? Why do I have to spend so freaking much time resolving hardware and software dependencies? Last of all, WHY can't I run "setup" to install an application, ANY application? You want to know why people don't flock to Linux? Because its just as time consuming, just as costly, and just as big a pain in the butt as every other operating system!! Just because it don't have problem x doesn't mean it doesn't have problem y!
The real problem here is that I can't stand MS crap, and would LOVE to see Linux do great! I think linux has the potential to make every other OS bite the dust, and is great simply because it gives you choice and freedom. I love it because I can make it what I want, not what some vendor wants for me. Also because I know that many of the hardware (and software) issues aren't
Linux's problem. I know that Hardware vendors will not support Linux fully, if at all, and I know that MS writes crap just so that no one else can work with it. What I don't understand, and what I know is inherent in Linux is the lack of a simple setup executable that prompts me for information and copies the files where I want it. NO I will not accept the HORRIBLY long rpm
commandline to relocate files as an excuse, or "work around" for this lack. I downloaded the citrix client just the other day, and ran install.sh, and guess what? It installed, (ie copied) all the files to the location I specified, and ran. It was a completely distro agnostic install routine! figure that! Why continue to propogate these "package managers" as "cool" or useful? They are neither if you are a software developer!
here's how to fix this:
1. Create a software products repository of some kind (similar to the registry in windows but only for a list of what's installed).
2. Create a software installer that checks that list for things that it needs, asks the user basic questions about where and for who, etc., and copies the files and modifies configs appropriately.
3. Create a central (single) icon directory and icon format that doesn't require a complicated index, and forty subdirectories and voodoo to make work!
4. Create a driver interface api (or whatever the equivalent is these days) so vendors DON'T have to GPL their trade secrets (if its not already there) and a driver install routine that doesn't require making sacrifices on a full moon.
There you have it. The four things I KNOW, absolutely KNOW, will make linux the 21st Century operating system of choice! If someone were to do this Linux would become the OS you could go to Wal-Mart and buy applications for off-the-shelf!!!! Yes I said buy, I don't think its of the devil to get paid for your work. I'm just glad there are highly skilled volunteers who do such
good work for nothing.

'<''/'END terribly irritated person's useless rant'>'

Well, that was in November of 2005. Guess what? Little has changed. KDE has become more stable, and I understand the DVD issues a little better, but little else is any different. Firefox on Edgy in Kubuntu, constantly locks up. OpenOffice.org crashes on occasion just because I logged in! I can't get VNC to work, Wireless is useless on the Thinkpad because the hacked broadcom drivers don't support WPA or LEAP. Some of this is NOT the fault of Linux, or any of ITS programmers. I also know, please don't write ranting on me, that these guys do what the do for free on some occasions. I know too that Sun, Novell, IBM, RedHat, and others pay Open Source developers, so there not all volunteers.
I also want to tip my hat to all those guys who work hard, and aren't whiners. I have read and heard about several of them, and I say may God bless them! However, those who think we should bow to their feet and just live with whatever they put out because they're putting it out for free need a good dose of reality! I don't like using crappy software, even if it is free.

Anyway, enough ranting. My irritation subsided, I'll go back and figure out how to fix my problems.

Oh, I was going to mention Alien.
Here's the deal. Back in OpenOffice.org 1.x there was this GREAT setup routine, that would work no matter what distribution you tried it on. (I used it on Debian, SUSE, and Mandrake). Then Some LOSER at Sun dictated going to package management, and dumping the installer. There was no explanation given, there was no rationale behind it, as I asked several times on the OOo lists. So, now users are required to know how to install with RPM. If you don't use RPM sorry about your luck! The problem with using Alien on something like OOo is that there are several things that just don't get done. Like, Mime type updates, icons for the desktop etc. Not only that but if you use a debian based distro you lose the ability to stay up to date on other dependencies. And, Finally, you have to jump through a hundred hoops read pages of howtos to do something that should be as easy as starting "setup"!!!! WHY DO WE MAKE THINGS HARD ON PEOPLE and then turn around and get mad at them for complaining that we've made it hard on them!?!?! The best justification for this on the OOo list I could ever get was, "its free so you should just be glad you have it." Whoop-de-freakin'-do! I'm sure that'll cause a lot of MS Office users to convert, don't you?