It’s Christmas day, and we have my wife’s siblings and their children at our house. We’re doing a Google Hangouts call with their parents, who are on an LDS mission in Vanuatu.
Microsoft Windows asks when to schedule an update. I try to select 2 am, but whoever designed the software decided, in their wisdom, that I shouldn’t have that kind of control. Let’s see what else I can do.
It’s 1 pm, so I select 4 pm, and Windows seems to accept that choice. I go back to the Google Hangouts conversation.
And then Windows decides to update immediately, against my wishes. It’d be fine if it only took 5 minutes, but it goes on for hours. I am angry. I feel like purging Windows from our lives.
Microsoft, I hate the poor timing that you force on me. I hate not being in control of updates. This sucks. It stinks. You should do better.
So I grab our older, slower Windows computer, and power it up. Guess what? It’s completing an update as well. Inconvenient!
Fortunately, I have a Ubuntu Linux laptop that I use for work. I load Google Chrome, and thanks to WebRTC standards and Google Hangouts, I am able to get the video chat going again.
Ubuntu Linux and web standards save the day.
Windows: The OS you can’t rely on when you need to get important things done.
Linux: The OS that I can rely on when I need to get important things done.
Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. I write software, with Linux as my desktop environment. I’m used to it, and it doesn’t do stupid things to me like Microsoft does… it just does different stupid things.
Thanks: I wish to express thanks to those individuals and organizations who gave us open standards including WebRTC, and those who gave us cross platform software, especially browsers like Chrome and Firefox.