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If Linux distros were cars . . .
October 11, 2003
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'Sometimes I'm a huge panda, floating lazily down the stream of life, and sometimes I'm just a nasty old leek rotting between the couch cushions.' --John Stott
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I'm sure many of you have read the "If General Motors made cars like Micro$oft makes Operating Systems" jokes. Well, despite being an avid Linux advocate, I found this comment on slashdot.org pretty funny.
Update: I had a link that broke, so here it is copied . . .
If Linux was a car:
1) It would come as a kit along with a copy of CAR HOWTO which would be six months out of date.
2) You would also get three steering wheels and five headlights as part of the standard installation then be expected to pick which ones you wanted to use. There would be constant flame wars between the users of leather steering wheels and the users of the plastic variety.
3) Due to its excessive size the car would not fit into a standard car parking bay and it would be up to the new owner to trim bits off until it could fit.
4) The car would not use a standard radio wiring harness unless you patched the engine compartment using WIRING.TAR.GZ which would only be available by download from the manufacturers website.
5) Support for the linux car would be available from either the car manufacturer (after taking out a maintenance contract and paying a fee) or by logging onto alt.linux.car.problems where every request for assistance would be met with 'RTFM !! V4|\|C3D l3e+$peA| i$ whEn J00 +4lK L1K3 t|-|15. t0 u|\|d3r$+@|\|D jOo |\/|u5+ be lEET. 1f J00 4r3 NO+ lEe+ jOO C@|\|N0T 5p3A| 0r ReAd +|-|I5
6) Adding accessories to the car would be a nightmare. For example you could not add a pair of foglights on the front unless you had the following 'libraries' installed in your car.
bumper.lib.1_6_483865
electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35
controls.lib.14_6_99
If an attempt to run your foglights without these libraries were to be made (or the libraries were a different version) your foglights MIGHT work but if they didn't there would be no support as the maintainer of electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35 can no longer be found.
7) You could only use your car with a trailer if you rebuilt the engine, this time with support for your model of trailer.
8) Your car would be of doubtful heritage. Parts of the design would be claimed by Novell, other sections would be (C) The Open Linux Group and SCO will lay claim to the whole concept and demand $699 for continued use. One guy in Finland would claim that he designed the whole thing and Richard Stallman would claim that your car is really called GNU Car.
9) Your car would take over five minutes to start. Faster starting methods would be available but be more unreliable, for example the brakes might not work after you start.
10) There would be no warning lights on the car dashboard. All warnings concerning oil, water, lighting and general failures would be written to the /var/log/ directory where the driver and passenger can read them when they pull over and park.
11) Additional storage could be achieved by using a roofrack, but the roofrack would be invisible until the driver issued the command 'mount -t /dev/roofrack /roof'. There would be problems unless the driver used the command 'umount /roof' before unscrewing the roofrack. Not all roofracks would work and some would just come back with the message 'roofrack is not a roof device' when issued with the mount command (and still remain invisible).
If Windows were a car:
1) The car would come with no manual of any kind, as the designers expect their fruity wizards to handle all customization. If you don't like what they do, see step 5.
2) The car comes with on steering wheel and one set of headlights, both of which look really great but barely work if they work at all. You can choose different steering wheels and headlights, but if you aren't careful you might wind up at step 5.
3) Due to its excessive size, the car will not fit in any standard garages. However, as the manufactuers have welded the car into a single, integrated piece, it is up to you to buy a garage big enough to house it.
4) The car would not use standard wiring, or, in fact, any standards at all except for those handed down by the manufacturer. Componants are generally available for download, but you aren't allowed to know how they work.
5) Support for your car isn't really available, despite thousands of pages devoted to the subject. If your car stops behaving optimally in any way at all, your only option is to replace the engine and electrical systems entirely. This because the engine is housed in an impenetrable casing with a few connections on the outside to hook it up to the rest of car, making fixing individual componants impossible.
6) Adding accessories to your car is easy as pie, and there are hundreds available. However, adding any accessory period is likely to knock your car out of alignment or cause other forms of unpleasantness causing the invocation of step 5.
7) Support for trailers will come in the next model year of your car, and you aren't allowed or able to jerry rig anything yourself.
8) The heritage of your car isn't in question, though you get the sneaky suspicion that the Apple car owned by your richer friend does everything yours does, looks better, goes faster, doesn't break, and is already 10 years old.
9) Your car will take ten minutes to start. Don't like it? Tough.
10) There are enough warning lights to blind anyone, but you aren't actually able to do anything about any of them. See step 5.
11) Additional storage can be achieved fairly easily, but unless you perform step 5, you may find that all of your existing storage volumes are renamed.
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