Saturday, February 5th, 2022

Am I one of those lazy idiots?
==============================

More than twenty years ago, when I switched my main operating system
from Windows to Linux, there was quite a lot of people, who said, that
they would like to the same, but ... insert any reason you can 
think of.

It was in the era when Windows still were split between the "pro" 
NT-based line represented by Windows 2000 and "consumer" line with
Windows ME being the latest. I used both systems. I kind of liked
the stability and predictability of NT, but hated that it didn't
allow the direct access to hardware needed by many emulators and
data retrieving utilities. Windows ME allowed that, but on the other
hand they were far from being stable or predictable in their behavior.
It was obvious that the NT-line will prevail in the long term, so all
the DOS- or Win9x-based stuff I used in my retrocomputing endeavours
will not be usable anymore. So I decided to go the Linux way, because
if you have to abandon old habits and learn some new, why not to do it
with a free and open system?

But mentioned people did it the other way. Instead of finding reasons
why to try something new, they focused on finding reasons why to stick
with Windows, no matter what Windows right now are or will be in
the future. So they struggled when Windows XP merged both lines into
one product, but based on the NT kernel, so without direct hardware
access, making many old DOS applications unusable. They struggled when
Vista came and needed hardware two or three times faster than XP did
to be usable. They struggled when Windows 8 came with completely new
user interface, abandoning the whole Start menu + Desktop concept.
And still - while struggling their way through history - these very
same people were telling me the very same stuff: they would like
to switch to Linux, but ... well as I already said - insert any reason
you can think of.

As more than twenty years ago I was still young and didn't go far for
strong words, I called these people lazy idiots. Using Linux isn't
hard. When my father lost his job after more than 30 years in 2010 and
went to state-funded re-education course to use the computer for
the first time in his life, he was almost sixty. He learnt there 
in few weeks the basic concepts (files, folders, icons,...),
how to use a word processor to write a CV and how to use a web browser
to get online. Then I got him an old Lenovo laptop with Linux Mint and
KDE4 desktop, shown him where he can find applications similar 
to these he knew from the course and he didn't even notice any 
difference. Because he didn't have any old habbits from previous
experience, that would make him to stick with any particular operating
system or application software, no matter what, even though 
the software is gradually changing.

So being a lazy idiot is not about Linux being hard, but about 
"oh, I'm doing this for years the same way, so now I change my habit
just a little bit, because Windows changed a little bit and it will
be fine". No, it won't. Because you are not the one to decide, it's
Microsoft -  it's their proprietary intelectual property and not any
of your business. If they decide they change the way you use your
computer with every new version of the system, you can't do much about
it. Back then I sworn that I will never be this stupid and lazy.

But it seems that maybe I am. I did the change back then, but I did't
have to do any change since. Both Slackware Linux and IceWM are still
developed in almost he same way as they were back then and where they
changed, I can revert by configuration - everything is open source
and nobody can stop me. So by doing the big change once, I really
shielded myself from gradual changes and became lazy to accept changes
at all.

I bought myself an used Lenovo T410. Even though I previously said 
that I won't buy another laptop until there are any fully open-sourced
ones on the market (like RISC-V or POWER), it was cheap and I wanted
to feel the good old solid IBM-like keyboard under my fingertips
for the last time, because nobody does them anymore. And I decided
to install FreeBSD on it.

Oh my, how the FreeBSD is different from Linux! Every single day 
there are two or three occassions when I simply want to erase
the whole SSD and put Slackware on it. I didn't do it yet, I'm trying
to force myself to get out of the old habbits, but it's hard. I have
much better understanding of those so called lazy idiots twenty years
ago. But I'm still trying, it's been almost a month and I still didn't
give up. I hope that is what makes me different from then.
.