When I was in high school, we once had a debate about the future of warfare. This was way back when they called it "arpanet" and people like me couldn't use it. "Alternative" music was the Pixies, MTV still showed music videos, and the idea of somebody like me actually getting my hands on a Unix system was pretty much nil.

Anyhow, I argued that the quickest way to bring your opponent's country to its proverbial knees was to somehow disable his power grid. In this day and age, we're all so ridiculously dependent on electricity, that without it, we don't even know how to function. Witness the inevitable confusion that always follows a power outage during a thunderstorm. Without electric lights, televisions, computers, hair dryers and microwave ovens, twenty-first century man is pretty much helpless. We turn into cavemen, but worse, becuase at least Mr. Cro J. Magnon knew how to make fire by hand.

Well, something like twelve years have passed since then. Arpanet opened up and became the world wide web, R.E.M are multi-billionaires, and I have my hands on a Unix system. Not one in a mainframe two towns away, but one that runs on the cheap Intel hardware in my den, costs nothing, and is not only hackable, but inherently designed to be that way. I can get my computer to do pretty much whatever I want it to, the only limits being my own expertise.

Until the power goes out.

Last night, the power supply on my main box, a sparkly new Athlon system, died. I'm left for the moment with two alternatives. The first is my old 486 system with a 420M hard drive and 14.4 modem running Redhat 6.2. It works like a champ, but hey, it's still a 486 with a 420M hard drive and 14.4 modem. The other is the Windows box upstairs.

So here I am, a caveman fumbling away in Windows ME. The last time I had to deal with this was when Windows 95 was new, and Microsoft was running commercials for it featuring the Rolling Stones (I'm still don't know how that was supposed to be interpreted, but it sold software). When I heard about Linux, I was apprenhensive, but I was also sick of reinstalling Windows every damn time something went wrong. That, and the idea of running a Unix system AT HOME just made my fingers tingle with anticipation.

My first Linux distrobution was Slackware. I got it from a friend who gave it to me in the form of a shoeboebox full of floppy disks, with an early version of the GPL stapled to the outside. There was no GUI, it took two weeks to get it up and running, and PPP was a nightmare to configure, but once I got it running, I didn't care. I now had things that were either unattainable or ludicrously expensive in the Microsoft world, like a C compiler and a webserver, and I could use them however I wanted. That box of floppies made the rounds among my circle of friends several times, each of us adding small tweaks and giving out to others. If it was Windows, we'd be commiting a federal offense by doing this. But with Linux, such behavior is actually encouraged. The whole experience was strangely exhilarating and liberating.

I still kept Windows running for awhile, becuase parts of Linux just weren't ready, or to paraphrase Neil Stephenson, sometimes I still wanted to be an Eloi, but as Linux progressed, I found myself using it less and less. As of 1997, the only thing that I kept it around for was opening the occasional .doc file, but when Abiword was released, I realized that I didn't even need Windows for that, and I converted the old box to a mailserver.

As of 2001, Linux does everything I could conceivably need. It has not one, but tens of cool GUIs, all of which are tremendously configurable. Heck, most of this site is devoted to one. Netscape and Opera are available in current versions, and if I don't like those, I can use Konqueror, which has come along beautifully. Word processors and mail programs abound. Another virus comes along to wreak havoc on Windows systems and I yawn.

In short, I'm spoiled.

Sitting here typing this on a little box seemingly designed to discourage hacking of any sort, I've come to realize just how much I take for granted. Windows swears that my e2fs-formatted discs don't exist, yet Linux can read and write DOS-formatted disks without a hitch. PPP on a Winmodem drags the system to a crawl. (I wonder if we really want these things supported in Linux now that I've been using one) I miss terminals, pasting with the middle mouse button, and my dear sweet grep (let's never fight again…).

And then there's the Gimp.

This box has CorelDraw installed on it. CorelDraw is a commercial graphics program that people pay several hundreds of dollars for, so I expected it to be able sing and dance worth its price, or at least perform many of the same functions as the Gimp (which is free, monetarily and intellectually). No such luck. In the Gimp, I can do nifty renderings of planets by mapping pictures of their terrain onto spheres. In CorelDraw, the only remotely similar feature is "map object," which only does a "pinch/punch" sort of thing to the image. Layer management is something akin to pulling teeth, and the keyboard shortcuts often make so little sense as to make me wonder for the sanity of the programmers. Many features, like the script-fu logo tools, are just absent.

On the subject of usability, Windows appears not to have improved one iota since Windows 95. The filesystem still mangles the hard drive, the concept of multiple desktops is nowhere to be found, and of course, that damnable start menu is still, always was, and apparetly always shall be in the LOWER LEFT-HAND corner. I know of no culture or language that starts at the lower left-hand corner of the page, but then again, I'm sure some focus group out there likes it that way, and as we all know, the opinions of focus groups matter more than those of real users. Any sort of configuration beyond basic colors and the desktop background is impossible. I'd understand if these deficiencies were just the initial mis-steps in an early version, but this OS has been through, what, three or four upgrades (all of which cost their users an arm and a leg)?

I've seen numerous studies and surveys on tech sites in which longtime Windows users try Linux for a few hours and come away complaining that it's counterintuitive, obscure, and lacks certain features that they've come to expect from an OS. Of course it is! So is the Mac, or Beos, or anything else if you're not given time to live in it. I have to wonder, though, what they would think if they used KDE or Gnome or Windowmaker for a month, and then were forced to go back to Windows. My guess is that they wouldn't find Windows very usable at all.

The knee-jerk reaction is, of course, not to use it and save myself the trouble. But I'm a Morlock in a world of Eloi. It's easy for me to say and do these things. I have the time and energy to expend getting a Linux system up and running. Most folks don't. They bought their computer as an appliance at a store. They want the (debatable, yes, I know) ease of use that appliances offer, and they take all the problems of Windows in stride because they assume that Windows IS the computer, and when it bursts into flames, well, that's just what computers do, right? You in the back: stop snickering!

After all, it just takes one dead power supply to drive this Morlock kicking and screaming back into the cave.

This isn't a screed on the evils of Microsoft. That's been done. And done. If anything, this experience has taught me just how much I appreciate Linux, and just how dependent I am on it. Thing is, most people don't even know what they're missing with Windows. They won't know unless we show them. Don't lecture Joe Average about device drivers or firewalls or journalling filesystems. Show him a menu that doesn't have to live in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and chances are, you've already got a convert.