A Quick Comparison of Operating Systems

From the "This Made Me Late for My Show" Department:

*I plug an ethernet cable into the computer:*

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Linux:

Computer: Ah! An ethernet cable! *Prints a message in a log somewhere*

Me: *Fires up a shell and executes a command to start the ethernet interface.*

Computer: Roight-O! *Starts up ethernet adapter and connects to the network as configured, falling back on DHCP if there's no configuration*

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Mac:

Computer: Ah! Ethernet cable! *Sets up connection the same way the Linux box does, but without requiring any user input whatsoever.*

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Windows:

Computer: Dum de dum...

Me: Uhh... could you connect to the network I just plugged in? Please?

Computer: Hwuh? Wha? Oh, that. Well, you don't have the ethernet cable plugged in.

Me: What the hell are you talking about? I just plugged it in! Hell, your light's even blinking on the switch! Don't tell me there's no cable plugged in!

Computer: Nope. No cable. *Goes back to thrashing the hard drive*

Me: AAAAARRRRRGH! *I go through the entire Windows control panel, looking for any way possible to get this thing to recognize that yes, I did indeed plug in a network cable. When this fails, I fall back on the old Windows standby of rebooting the entire machine and hoping that knocks some sense into it.* Now can you connect to the network?

Computer: Huh? Oh, I've disabled that network interface.

Me: What? How the hell did the interface get disabled?

Computer: Well, you didn't have a cable plugged in the last time, so...

Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGH! *I once again go through every single network configuration option on the system, all the while cursing Bill Gates and wishing that I had sprung for the Powerbook instead.*

After about 25 minutes of this, I finally got it to recognize that yes, there is indeed a network there, and I managed to get my files transferred by 3:55. That left me a grand total of five minutes to pack my stuff into the car and make the seven-mile drive to the station.

Note that this was after I had already spent a half hour trying to get Windows to connect to the wireless network for longer than thirty seconds at a time. Also note that I end up having problems like this every single time I'm in a hurry and have to deal with Windows. And people wonder why I always seem so stressed out.