firstly;

“I dont care that much about OS’s I do care about accuracy and how the zealots of Linux are damaging the community”

PLEASE go back to school and learn how to NOT contradict yourself in the same sentence.

lastly;

“It better to shut up and have people think you’re a fool, than to open you’re mouth and confirm it.”

Coming from the man who has now tried to post 14 comments, to one article against my now 3 replies, you are a troll, a spammer and I genuinely do not believe you would get the security clearance required for Military work, because you can’t shut your mouth long enough, and you’d likely argue with the generals. Now you post another 10 in reply to this one comment, while I go get on a plane.

a) there are 7 of them,
b) you’ve become such a huge troll in them (Clearly without even realising it) that you wouldn’t fit under the harbour bridge in Auckland,
c) I can’t be arsed to deal with you properly, I’m headed home to the UK today from NZ,
d) I notice you’re australian, which explains a lot (Kidding I love aussies, but had to get one more NZ > AU jibe in before I leave),
e) none of your points make much sense at all
f) If you really are a 46 year old, retired IT engineer with military experience, then something has happened to your brain, because you’re OBSESSED with having an argument with me, about something you CLAIM not to care about.
g) I’ve done a little more than put pieces of PC’s together, one of the companies I used to support was Chrisco, now if you’re in Australia as your hostname suggests, you’ll know who that is, their IT is in Sydney, but they require a multi million dollar server room here in Auckland, I maintained it, all of it, not just servers, but the networking side and the on-floor side of it too, I don’t solder chips to PCB boards, but the person I know who did do that in the 70’s currently has knowledge up to a Pentium II and that’s about it, so why would I be bothered?
h) I’m sat at home writing blogs and not working full time in IT because I’m going back to the UK, so I gave up work a little while ago to help my partner and children re-arrange our lives, ready for the flight.
i) You haven’t actually addressed anything to do with what I posted, at ANY point in ANY of your comments, you’re just flaming, not what I expect from a 46 year old IT Engineer.
j) The reboot example you sited, was a one off bug, with an RC release of an OS, which majorly affected the functioning of the OS, so of course a reboot was required, because it was a work around, typically to install that driver, you can just click “install” in Ubuntu’s built in installer, in this case, you couldn’t, you also couldn’t drop to a virtual terminal to stop the X Server, so a reboot was in deed required, BECAUSE to perform the operation at all you were booting the system to the equivalent of Windows Safe Mode.
k) Finally, you have absolutely no interest in debating anything, or talking about salient points, you’re only goal, is to discredit me, and insult Linux, and disrupt this threads progress, which because I have replied to you, you have done, now bugger off and go do some fishing for crying out loud!

He is allegedly both an engineer and IT, whatever that meant, he IS IT? I find that unlikely. In addition to being both an engineer and IT, he is allegedly a professional, and apparently, according to Darryl, it is imperative that after patching/updating a system, or installing new software, that you reboot, in order to “test it”, now I personally have never heard anything so un-professional, rebooting as a test? Are you kidding me Darryl? Rebooting is NOT a fundamental part of IT and NOT doing it should NOT get you fired, and rebooting is NOT a test, testing it is a test, rebooting is a requirement with Windows for installing something that plays no part in running the actual system (A new game), and kernel upgrades and the like on Unix OS’s! Testing, yes, that is a fundamental part of being an IT engineer, btw just in case you’re wondering, I have been building computers, writing software and fixing them for over 15 years now, I AM a professional IT engineer and Software Developer, if you are too, I’d like to meet the man who trained you and point him to “Windows for Dummies”.

According to Darryl all I said in my article was that Windows was full of BSODs and that Windows was crap. I don’t think I actually said Windows was crap once, I didn’t mention memory leaks either, although I should have, and I mentioned a BSOD because the day I wrote the article, my mother in laws computer did exactly that, all because a USB based Internal Card Reader was buggered, worth pointing out too, that when I booted with a Linux Live CD to check if the problem was hard drive related, not only did it boot fully without complaining about the Card Reader, but it was actually able to make use of the damn thing too, Win XP just did BSOD after BSOD, but apparently Darryl hasn’t seen one for years. An I.T. engineer, that hasn’t seen a BSOD for years, have you been working with Linux Darryl? I was working with Macs for the last year and stable as they are supposed to be, I’ve seen plenty of Mac Equivalent BSODs there this year too, the only kernel panic I’ve seen this year on a Linux box, was when I deliberately built a very very very risky one, just for fun to see if it worked!

One last thing, “using the GPL to publish software means that software becomes un-maintained, bug fixes slow down, users don’t want to program”, blah blah blah, typical WinZealot rant there, the GPL allows lots and lots of people to deal with the code, so in your scenario, if Adobe breaks, you need to ring Adobe support, have you ever rung adobe support? It’s not fun, believe me, if however GIMP breaks, not only can you go straight to the DEVELOPER (As in not an idiot in india, manning a phone, but the actual programmer) for help, but you can go to other developers in the community, you can go to beta testers in the community, you can get help on a mountain of forums, compared to just ringing adobe, waiting for hours, then days, then getting no where in the end at all anyway, because they can’t change the code after it’s released, so you’ll have to wait for CS5 and hope they did a better job, or should your problem be Windows based, then you won’t get past the first idiot in India.

Here’s my investigation of trolls on Slashdot. It comes with quotes from people like Bruce Perens who heard of this kind of work going on while he was at HP. Things have gotten a lot worse since then with companies like Visible Technologies.