
I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin - KeepTalking
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/22/i-hate-computers-confessions-of-a-sysadmin/
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rikthevik
It's frustrating as a computer engineer when I see people much smarter than
myself trying to do simple things with computers and failing horribly. They
understand that there is a learning curve, but can't comprehend the random
behaviour of their computer. It makes me think as engineers we've got to do
better than this.

Conversely, one problem is that people buy the cheapest computer possible, and
then don't understand why the operating system is hard to use and crashes, and
the hardware is badly designed and of poor quality. There's a certain company
that has decided to make excellent hardware, offer good support and a
relatively sane operating system at a higher price than most computer systems.
So sometimes you get what you pay for. :)

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spudlyo
I agree with a lot of this. For me, it's mostly _Windows_ computers that I
hate. Issues like bad capacitors and flaky memory are of course OS agnostic,
but it seems to me a bulk of his complains go away with OSX or Linux.

~~~
jrockway
For me, Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu all suck. They try to do stuff to "help me",
get it wrong, and then make me do more work as a result.

I've fucked over my Debian unstable system more times than I can count over
the last 10 years... but it's never annoyed me much. On the other hand, my
Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu machine annoy the living fuck out of me every time
they say "updates installed, you must restart".

I guess I hate sitting down to use a computer and having it tell me, "sorry, I
did stuff without your asking, now you need to clean up the mess". I still
haven't fixed the nvidia driver on my Thinkpad with Unbuntu. I tried, failed,
and just put the machine in a closet somewhere. It worked a few times, but now
I can't get it to work, and I don't know what steps to take. Everything is so
magical, and all I can do is be helpless.

With Debian, I make the mess myself, so when I have to clean it up, I am
already in the mood. (And of course, the nvidia driver works perfectly. Yeah,
I had to build it with module-assistant. But that _always works_! Every step
in the process exists for a good and logical reason -- there is no magic. And
magic is what makes me mad.)

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delluminatus
It is for this reason that I use Arch Linux. Building a system from the ground
up is, quite honestly, a wonderful experience (it does get tedious after four
or five installs on different computers, but meh). I don't have any Crappy
Crapware, or Auto Updates (sometimes this bites me), or Evil Bloat ... like a
desktop environment. It's a breath of fresh air. As you say, there is no
magic.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think I could ever move away from Debian... but Arch is indeed nice.

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epochwolf
I'm right up there with this guy, the only problem: I'm writing the software
and I can't design an interface anyone would enjoy using.

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kgermino
I'm not I sure I could write an interface I would enjoy using.

~~~
epochwolf
That's what I was getting at, anyone includes myself.

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ghiotion
His issue doesn't seem to be with computers _per se_, but rather the
interaction of all the junk that comes either on a new Windows system or via
the default installation process for new software. Even a well maintained
Windows machine accumulates crapware over time. It's just the cross you have
to bear if you want to run Windows.

While I disagree fundamentally with the heavy-handed approach Apple has taken
with the iPhone, I think part of their motivation is to protect the phone's
ecosystem from threats. Imagine a world where we have malware infection rates
on cell phones equal to, or greater than, the infection rates on personal
computers. It would be ugly indeed.

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Zak
Why isn't there consumer RAID? Consumers seem to be buying a lot of cheap
laptops lately. RAID would increase weight, heat, noise and power consumption
as well as add $1-200 to the price of a $3-600 machine. The only selling point
for that feature is "less likely to lose your data", which tends to imply that
the standard model _is_ likely to lose your data[0]. It's not popular because
nobody would buy it.

[0] Of course, that's true. Still, it's not something the marketing department
can _say_.

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jrockway
Not really. It would add the cost of one disk, which is around $30-$50 these
days.

Now for laptops, space is an issue, and that's why SSDs were invented. Light,
low-power, fast, and much more reliable than rotating disks. Perfect for
laptops.

~~~
astine
"It would add the cost of one disk, which is around $30-$50 these days."

Plus the RAID card, if their working in hardware. Nice one's aren't cheap, and
they're bulky for something being put in a laptop.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=RAID&x=0&y=0)

~~~
jrockway
A RAID card is totally unnecessary. Software RAID is orders of magnitude
faster than any disk it is going to be managing. We aren't talking RAID 0+5
for your credit card processing database. We're talking RAID 1 so that when
your disk dies from all the soda you spill on it, you don't lose your porn
stash.

I use 3-way software RAID 1 for my homedir, and I don't regret it at all. It
automatically fixes bad sectors when they occur (since the other disk has the
correct data), and reads are 3x faster than they otherwise would be. And two
disks can fail (and have), and I don't lose any data. It's great. For the cost
of an extra disk, I would recommend the setup to anyone.

~~~
btilly
Trick I used to use was to have RAID 1 for my homedir, and then try 3
different mounts for /tmp. The first was RAID 0. The second two were trying to
mount the two RAD partitions. It made /tmp larger and faster at the cost of a
reboot if I crashed. Which seemed to be a worthwhile trade-off on a desktop.

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elptacek
There are only two problems with this article. First, of the significant
number of applications I have installed under OS X, I can count on one hand
the number that came with a util for removing them. There are ways around this
(eg, lsbom|xargs rm), but they are messy. Second, writing an operating system
with a UI on top of that has to be a monumental task. Something that only a
really small percentage of people can do (and an even smaller number can do
well). In order to design systems, they have to think a certain way, become
familiar with the systems... and it all looks completely obvious to them.
Otherwise, "Me, too."

Makes me wonder if Microsoft uses "focus groups."

~~~
rbranson
Most OS X (and Mac OS in general) apps can be uninstalled by dragging the
Application from the Applications folder to the Trash.

~~~
tptacek
You mean, except for everything the app leaves under Library, and except for
any application that used an actual installer instead of drag-to-desktop.

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shoover
I can't believe how often I find myself telling my wife I hate computers.
Usually it's when she starts asking me how to do something and I immediately
know it's something that should be easy (if she can't figure it out, how many
millions must be right there with her?) but that is going to be very
difficult.

Just two examples.

Printing to a shared printer on a Windows network. Requires a login once per
reboot. Trying to print (the logical think) won't prompt, it just queues up
the document silently. To get a prompt, you have to know to navigate to the
host in the network neighborhood. Then the queue prints.

Posting edited photos from Picasa to a Blogger blog. There are three ways to
do it, all with various limitations and complexity. And then a Chrome bug puts
double line spacing between her paragraphs.

"Maybe I'll become a plumber," indeed.

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rbranson
I have a problem with this attitude, which is why I think most sysadmin types
suck. Computers are the most complex devices we interact with on a daily
basis. A basic NetBook with Windows running Google Chrome is hundreds of
orders of magnitude more complex than the most complex automobile for
instance. It is amazing to me that they are reliable at all.

Have some respect for these machines, spend lots of time learning why they are
the way they are (read kernel source, learn assembly, take apart a disk drive)
and eventually they'll treat you right.

~~~
raintrees
Or as John C. Dvorak has repeated, "Require a license/permit to use a
computer."

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wazoox
He really hates windows, not computers. I do, too, and stopped using windows
in 2002, all for the better.

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Legion
That's part of it, but he also talks about how fragile hardware is, how
cumbersome RAID is, and other things hardly specific to Windows.

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bmaddy
It seems like the cure to this problem is usability testing.

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alanh
This is why the iPad will win.

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jokerrr
So, what he's really saying is "I hate Windows." Switch to Linux. Dummy.

~~~
potatolicious
Most of his complaints are related to UI and how it communicates errors to
users (read: not well at all). I don't see switching to Linux solving it at
all.

