Linuckz.
I guess it doesn't need an introduction anymore. Linux kids praise it, Windows kids dispise it and MacOS kids ridicule it. Unix kids... well, I guess they usually are a mixture of those three :-P
Nightmare on Gnome street
Many years back, I'm kinda fed up with the umptieth crash of Windows 98. That's First Edition, mind you - an official copy! You wouldn't believe it if I made it up. I vaguely remember reading something about linux, so I hit the local book/cd store, and order me a nice box of RedHat Linux 6.0.
Ten days later, I have the box. Nice heavy thing, with a handful of cd's, a big fat manual and - weeeeee - a RedHat sticker. Bootup the P3/450 at home, and I'm off for a wonderful journey.
Wonderful, or was it? The install seems to work fine, until it loads the X11 interface. Everything is big. And I mean... really, really big. The "taskbar" takes up 25% of the monitor's height, and the few icons I can see are the size of a small post-it note. In the corner sits a big Gnome foot icon.
Fine. Problems were somewhat expected - lessee the manual. Nothing in there. Okay, let's call tech support. After all, I bought it. Tech Support Europe turns out to be a telephone number in Florida, USA. Yes, the european tech support was located in the United States of America. You wouldn't believe it if I made it up.
The dude at the phone doesn't speak dutch or french. My english isn't too good yet - but I manage to explain the problem. Oh, sorry. Your videocard is not yet supported. You'll have to wait for the next release.
I think that's where I got my trauma. Sitting in front of a borked desktop, talking long-distance to get support, and getting doomsday advice from someone who obviously didn't understand much more of linux than myself at that time. And in the corner sits that big, evil Gnome foot icon. Laughing diabolically.
Damn you, Gnome. You scared me back to Windows 98, and some day I'll get revenge for that. One way or another.