In December 2002, I tried to install some software on my computer. The experience was, shall we say, less than pleasant. On many levels. I wrote about my experience, as I so often do.

Then in January, the jackasses over at Slashdot posted a link to it, calling it a "review" of Linux video software. I guess you could consider it a review, if you were to squint at it just right. But really what it is is a rant about how I had an evening stolen from me by crap software design. It is a flame about the pathetic state of Linux usability in general, and the handful of video players I tried out in particular. It makes no attempt to be balanced or objective or exhaustive. It is a description of my experience. Perhaps your experience was different. Good for you.

So of course that day I got hundreds of emails about it. Every Linux apologist in the world wanted to make sure I was fully informed of their opinion. The replies were roughly in the following groups:

• "Right on! I had exactly the same experience! Thank you for putting it into words." (This was about 1/3 of the replies.)
• "You're clearly an idiot, Linux is too sophisticated for you, you clearly are incapable of understanding anything, you should go back to kindergarten and/or use a Mac." (Oddly, all of these messages used the word `clearly' repeatedly.)
• "If you don't like it, fix it yourself."
• "Netscape sucks! XEmacs sucks! You suck! I never liked you anyway! And you swear too much!"
• "How dare you criticize someone else's work! You got it for free! You should be on your knees thanking them for wasting your time!"
• "While you have some valid complaints, I'm going to focus on this one inconsequential error you made in your characterization of one of the many roadblocks you encountered. You suck!"
• "It's your fault for using Red Hat! You should be using Debian/Mandrake/Gentoo instead!"
• "Red Hat 7.2 is totally obsolete! It's almost 14 months old! What were you expecting!"

While I am flattered that so many logorrheic Linux fanboys are sufficiently interested in my opinions and experiences to share their deeply heartfelt views with me, you can all rest assured that:

• I've heard it before; and
• I didn't care the first time.

So please. Don't bother sending me any more mail about this. It's a near certainty that I will just delete it unread, so you might as well not waste your time. Feel free to call me names on your own web page if you feel the need to get it out of your system. But kindly stay out of my inbox.