A rant

Rants are not really the point of this blog. They are not what I had in mind when I started it. But every once in awhile, something really irks me, and I want to rant. This is one of those times.

To start with, I am having problems with voice mail. The number that I am supposed to call to check my voice mail has not been working. So I called the company that provides it, and I have not been able to get it working on the phone yet. I can, however, check the voice mail on-line, which I had not known. Great. Only one problem, I cannot listen to the voice mail on my computer because their system is not compatible with Linux. So the web site is useless to me when I am on my own machine.

It is not just voice mail. Some of the web sites that I use for school do not like Linux either. I occasionally have trouble logging into the systems on which my classes are hosted. And every college class anymore has an on-line component. If I was using that other operating system, things like this would never happen.

When I call my ISP about an issue with their modem or other equipment, they always ask what operating system I am using, except they do not ask it that way. They ask "Is it this one or that one?" Some of the agents there do not understand that it is neither of the ones they named, but something entirely different. If they do understand that it is not one of the big two, most of them have no idea what to do or where to go from there.

I think it is obnoxious that so many large companies in the United States (and probably elsewhere) make their systems compatible with only the big two operating systems. It sometimes seems like few companies are geared to work with Linux (even though the vast majority of companies have a Linux operating system on their servers).

Please do not let the contents of this rant dissuade you from using Linux. And if you are thinking about switching to Linux, do not let this rant change your mind. USE LINUX! I run into problems like this very seldom. And besides, the more people switch to Linux, or even BSD or Solaris, the louder and stronger will be the voices demanding that all companies make their programs work with Linux and other Unix-like systems.