Disclaimer Regarding My Rants
Introduction:
Although I thought I did a pretty decent job of posting disclaimers around my site, apparently most folks don't visit the site through the main pages, but rather pick up on individual rants through RSS feeds. This has resulted in some misunderstandings and a healthy bit of hate mail. Please, if you're new to my site, take a moment to read this page before you get your hackles up.
Purpose:
As I have mentioned here and here, this is my personal website where I post my opinions and experiences installing various operating systems. Let me say that again: these are my opinions. I am not a review site. I have been linked on several otherwise reputable news sites under the subject of "Reviews," but I do not pretend or strive to be a fair, balanced or reputable journalist. I'm not a journalist at all. I do not make a living off this site. (Actually, I barely break even for the hosting costs with my ads.) I'm a programmer with some free time on my hands. If it helps, you can think of this site as one giant Op-Ed piece.
Criteria:
I've probably not been clear enough in the past about what specifically I look for and judge operating systems by. All rants on my site follow a specific rating system detailed here. The hardware I use is listed here. My criteria are personal. I base my opinions of an OS on whether or not I think that I could personally use it at home. Your home situation is very likely different than mine, so your conclusions may vary.
Bias:
My rants (note I don't call them reviews) are by their very nature biased. I am a regular person and I have opinions on things. Some may be different than yours and almost all of them are strong. I respect your right to have a different opinion than mine. Let's agree to disagree. If I make a factual mistake in a rant (such as saying XXX package is missing when it's just in a spot I didn't look) then please, by all means, send me an email and I'll fix it. I'm not above revisiting a rant if I get something outright wrong. I will not however change a rant because you simply didn't like my opinion.
Disagree?
I am a strong supporter of choice in operating systems. I believe quite firmly that everyone has a slightly different idea of what they need and want out of a computer and that no one OS, be it Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX, will satisfy everyone in the world all of the time. You are more than likely going to find at least one of my rants to be very different from your view of things. That's fine. Use whatever OS works best for you! Simply because I disliked something doesn't mean you won't absolutely love it. I encourage everyone to try as many different systems as I have; it gives you a very clear perspective on what you need from your computer.
Slackware:
I've received more feedback (positive and negative) regarding my rants on the Slackware distribution of Linux than any other OS combined. The fans of this operating system are many and varied, and when they perceive that I've slighted them in some way there are those of them that choose to attack. Let me put this to rest right here: I do not hate Patrick Volkerding, nor do I wish him any harm. I've made jabs at him in the past, and when I felt they went too far I removed them. My bias against Slackware has always simply been that it is designed for a specific crowd of people, and at this point in my life I am not one of them.
Why?
I've often been asked why it is that I continue to try out new versions of distributions which I've not liked in the past (see: Slackware). There are those out there who believe that I should just cut my losses and admit that a particular OS is not for me. I agree, to an extent. Some versions of some Linux distributions simply aren't designed with me in mind. However I've seen great progress made over the years by several distributions that I originally didn't like at all (see: Ubuntu). Therefore I like to keep trying. Believe it or not, I really enjoy the process of downloading an ISO, burning it, testing it, and posting my experiences.