A bit of a pointless story. You can come up with anecdotes all day long of famous guru/wizard/hacker X giving up on software/OS/language Y and still it won’t mean a thing.
It comes down to spending time to find the right tool for the job and knowing when to try a different approach.
This seems to have completely devolved into the usual windows vs linux arguments.
I had to stop myself from contributing more. 
Its a shame everyone defends everything so rigorously instead of realising and analysing the problems. Everyone who has said things to the effect of “it would be easier with Windows” or “Linux is stable” is just winging it imo. Have you actually done it yet? Do you have data to back it up? Is it anything more than a passionate love for /your/ OS of choice?
There… I contributed anyway. 
Jeff… turn on the lights!
Is this some odd object-lesson on how to turn a navigable, legible site into a hard-to-read eye-straining text-collision? If so, I appreciate the education offered… now can you switch the scheme back so that I can enjoy your posts again?
Here’s the real deal: none of the OS options are good! They all suck. It’s just some people have a tolerance for certain types of suckiness over others.
We’ve all had similar problems. I’ve been struggling to come up with a stable install of Vista for over a year. My new laptop crashes repeatedly if i use certain software due to (get this) a bug with cursor rendering in the NVidia drivers. Given the right (wrong) hardware and the right (wrong) OS release, you’re gonna have issues no matter how good you are with this stuff. Unless you actually do sit down and write it all from scratch… and then you have two problems.
I have to wonder about the hardware he’s installing the Linux on. Sounds to me like something’s strange about the kiosks. As far as the audio goes, I got nothing.
Giving up on a technical problem isn’t always due solely to technical difficulties…
Sometimes you have better things to do with your time.
Shog9: Major problems exist in the Vista drivers from nVidia – in fact, I believe there’s a lawsuit out there now.
This Jamie guy seems like a world class prick. Bugzilla comments…
Comment #4 From Jamie Zawinski on 2006-03-31 23:26 EST
I hope it was the last change in FC4.
Yeah, I hoped so too, but it wasn’t; you fucked it up again in alsa-lib-1.0.10-3.FC4 / alsa-
utils-1.0.10-1.FC4:
alsactl: set_control:886: warning: numid mismatch (15/18) for control #15
alsactl: set_control:888: warning: iface mismatch (2/2) for control #15
alsactl: set_control:890: warning: device mismatch (0/0) for control #15
alsactl: set_control:892: warning: subdevice mismatch (0/0) for control #15
alsactl: set_control:894: warning: name mismatch (AC97 Playback Volume/AC97 Playback Volume) for
control #15
alsactl: set_control:896: warning: index mismatch (0/0) for control #15
alsactl: set_control:894: warning: name mismatch (AC97 Capture Volume/Front Capture Volume) for
control #16
alsactl: set_control:896: warning: index mismatch (0/0) for control #16
alsactl: set_control:898: failed to obtain info for control #16 (Operation not permitted)
So out of curiosity – do you think my complaint and recommendation are silly, or do you just not
care about the inconvenience this causes for people who are actually trying to get work done? This
costs me like half a day of fucking around every time I upgrade this machine.
It’s really, really getting tiresome.
Comment #5 From Martin Stransky on 2006-04-14 05:30 EST
These changes come from kernel, not from alsa-lib nor alsa-utils so don’t update
your (fucking :-)) kernel…
Come on! I run Linux as my desktop PC. I love it and I would NEVER go back to windows, even if I got paid. Sure, the learning curve is really something, but once you get there, everything else is just myths. And I have my system up to date.
Linux is the OS that best fits my needs. I use windows and I program for windows at work, but I would never go back to it for my personal use. I hear Vista users cursing against their OS everyday. I have ZERO of the problems they talk about on my home PC.
And, by the way, I know some guys who are not precisely “WORLD CLASS SOFTWARE ENGINEERS” who ARE actually able to keep their Linux machines, working perfectly and up to date in a total painless way. It’s still not as easy as windows, but it’s not that hard either. Besides, face it, it doesn’t have MANY of the problems windows has.
Anyway, all this argument makes little sense… Everyone has to pick the OS that best fits their needs and that’s all.
And, Jeff, you DO seem to like MS a bit too much sometimes…
Wait, wait, this is not a Linux argument. This guy is running Linux, not MS software. Jamie is one of the good guys.
There is a business lesson in this post. Don’t upgrade. It is a pointless waste of time to stay on the cutting edge. Do an update when you start a new project. Once it works, leave it alone!
I worked with a good boss who was an asshole about this. Our tool of choice was the MS x86 C compiler the company bought in 1992. It worked, we know where the bugs were and how to find and work around them. An upgrade cost money. In the end, if all goes well, you are right back where you started with a working system. Far better to spend time adding to the product than chasing the bleeding edge.
Another lesson from the same company. We spent gobs of $$ chasing a contract with Wallmart. Why? If they install our system in all the stores we will be rich. The lesson is that they do not upgrade. No real company will pull out and replace working equipment. The best case is they will install your stuff in new stores.
Anytime someone says “they will replace the old with our new stuff” they are full of it. Also, people who do real work do NOT want the automatic update feature. It is the automatic break feature.
jwz is my hero. All you haters just don’t understand.
Egoboo to the guy who figured out the colour scheme was an homage to jwz’s home page.
lol at “some guy and his ‘lounge’”
Jeff: why can I never select text on your page? So. Annoying.
To the poster who pointed out it was really about choice. Thanks. You’ve changed my perspective.
What color scheme are you talking about??? I see the same as usual. Except in some images like the captcha.
A clean install of an operating system on a new hard drive – for kiosks running controlled hardware, no less – that’s as good as it gets.
It escapes me how new hard drives help. In my experience, hard disk technology has always been one of the most stable, trouble-free parts of any computing system. And if they’re going bad, you can tell. And if you are tired of their contents, you format them. Works pretty much the same in all operating systems. Jamie didn’t say anything about having trouble with his hard drives.
I do wonder what you mean by “controlled hardware”. Presumably, these kiosks are on Jamie’s premises and indeed fully under control. Perhaps you meant “commodity”? That would stray a bit from the facts - kiosk systems are generally specialized, and contain components not commonly seen in, say, your average desktop system. They are engineered with compromises to reduce their size and power consumption, and fewer of them are produced. You would, in fact, expect more difficulty with such hardware.
You said a lot about Linux in this post. How about a corresponding article, such as:
It does pain me to hear of the unfortunates spent on the “leading age” operating SYSTEMS of our age (Gate, Jobs, et al) Open you mind to the possibilities of true interactivity based on custom designed operating system F.L.O.W.
Based on the one true math of the hexagon, F.L.O.W. runs on bare metal using only those opcodes compatible with natural geometry. Designed from the ground up to enable improvement of the human nature environment surrounding us all (SOCIETY OF INFORMATION.)
Reviewed in SIGCHI and New York Times, etc
At least Windows Update never gave me any headaches. Well, except for that crappy Genuine Advantage, but you know, that is supose to give you headches.
ohh, firefox was caching the css…
@Jheriko on April 1, 2008 08:38 AM
Yes. I run it in production environments and Linux is far more stable than anything else we run. We regularly see year long or more uptimes unless we have kernel updates that we have to apply. I also use it every day for my personal and professional desktop. The only problem I have is with Firefox sometimes locking up when I open 30+ tabs.
No biggie… IE can’t handle any more either. I have used the latest build of Firefox 3 beta and it does not have this problem.
Again, JWZ does a lot of customizations that don’t come out of the box. Those aren’t going to transfer easily from one distro to the next as they were a pain to bring into being in the first place. Read his own material on the subject (and that’s because his use case, a public night club, is a rarified environment for almost any Linux distro I would argue).
JWZ is also the guy that left Mozilla because he thought it was taking too long and was totally against a rewrite of the software. Mozilla’s decision to go with a rewrite turned out to be the correct one.
So, he’s great, but he’s not God.
I suppose this is an april fools theme
Has anyone mentioned already that this “color scheme” is a homage to JWZ’s home page?