Computer woes

Linux people (and free software people in general) don't have computer woes. That's a lie of course. Linux people are accustomed to a particular kind of computing woe, doing without.

There isn't a free Photoshop, so you use the Gimp. That's fine, but the Gimp doesn't have quite all the polish and features. Free software is about the patience to wait for the features to arrive, and about supporting the community to make it happen. Sometimes the wait is painful and sometimes not. But that's part of free software.

What Linux people are not accustomed to is things "breaking." If it worked yesterday, it works today. But this week, my video driver quit working. No graphics. At least you can boot a Linux computer without graphics (and fix it). If I were using Windows I would be going back to the recovery disks. I got it fixed, but I didn't like it. Linux people don't have to deal with that kind of crap.

As if that were not enough, Linda's computer keeps eating her files. No errors, no complaining. She uses an ancient DOS word processor that she has used for years reliably (called Sprint). Now this week it has eaten her file something like 3 times. I can't figure out why. I don't like it.

Time to give a final or I would keep complaining. Lucky you.