And excellent example of the enigma of Linux. It should by all accounts, be powerful and easy to use (and free), but then you try to customize it and, in my opinion, too often becomes a fight.

Again, I do find Ubuntu to be well supported and I believe it has momentum going forward. All OSes have their negatives, but that version of Linux seems to be getting close to user friendliness.

I found a music editor called Lilypond. It is available in a stable debian package, which is what Xandros likes. Xandros Networks installed it with a few warnings. (XN is a fancy front end for apt-get, or so I have read.)

Now, said program is not accessed on my menu. It is not accessed via a desktop icon. It must be accessed via the console. Downloading the documentation (note how that must be done separately), the directions say to invoke Lilypond by typing “lilypond” at the command line. Result: nothing. Nada. It’s in there somewhere, but what does it want? Why is it so f-ing complicated? I just want to start the application. Another probable waste of time.

Now, I know there is a difference between application developers and the operating system developers (or whatever they call themselves.) Lilypond happens to be part of the GNU project, which I guess is a good pedigree. So where is it? Could they not make it easy for KDE? Do they simply not care about a GUI? Just how much time to I have to spend decoding whatever they had in mind to run this thing? Maybe they don’t care about expanding the Linux user base, but it plays into MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT ABOUT LINUX!

One of the nice things about linux is that you can try different distributions (on different partitions or drives if you want) at no cost (except your time).

I must sat that Ubuntu is pretty straight forward for the average person. Maybe you should give it a shot. I like it, and have used it as a server for several years and been quite happy with it.

I’m sure other people will chime in with their favs.

For instance, Xandros (I know, it’s just one of many distros) warns that ANY software not offered by them or through Xandros Networks may bring down the system. I have no idea if that result is probable, but that is what they state. So a person wants to get it right.

(I’m most familiar with Xandros. Red Hat a few years ago was no better and probably worse.)

What package (rpm, deb, tarball, etc.) will work best? What has to be present on my system for a successful install? Where are these secondary products (or libraries or whatever they are?) How are they installed? Which are the right ones?

I’ve used Xandros for basic cookie-cutter computing, and have no serious complaint about that. (Though I wish it would run my Canon scanner.) On the other hand, I subscribed to Linux Journal for a few years and found it utterly opaque. (Windows-related magazines, on the other hand, are usually glorified sales brochures.)

When Microsoft is writing code for kitchen appliances and is no longer a threat to the World population then something like what you’ve written here might be funny. Until then, there’s a lot of work to do to make the World safe from Microsoft.