Win2K is by far the best business-class OS to have come out of Redmond, except for the rebooting after changing network settings. That is the only gripe I ever had with that OS. It had Active Directory, great scalability, and a nice, clean, efficient GUI.
I'm beginning to get fed up with the disjointed nature of open-source OSes, to tell the truth. For example, under Windows, to use my iPod, all I have to do is plug it in. Windows recognizes the device as a USB mass storage device and mounts the data partition. The iPod daemon then launches iTunes, which syncs automatically. When done, I click the Eject button (or if iTunes is no longer open, right-click the Remove Hardware icon and remove the iPod that way).
Under FreeBSD, I had to modify the kernel's USB implementation to get the direct disk access module to recognize the iPod (spent a good month tearing my hair out as the USB mass storage driver saw the iPod fine). Then I had to create a directory for which to mount the iPod, then add an entry to /etc/fstab specifying the name of the device node, where it should be mounted, and with what options. I had already added myself to the 'wheel' group in order to elevate myself to root privileges when necessary. And since normal users cannot mount devices in FreeBSD, I have to open up a terminal and mount the device manually after plugging in my iPod. Then I run gtkpod which seems to be very good at screwing up the iPod's files. When I'm done, I have to bring up the terminal again, unmount the drive, and eject the device. Only then is it safe to remove the iPod.
Replace iPod with "USB Memory Stick" and you can see the mounting (no pun intended
) frustration.
