I had bookmarked a page for reading later that had a thought-provoking title: "Why Bill Gates is still rich". Now I freely admit on many things I am very highly opinionated. But I really, really don't think I'm so opinionated (as some other people I know) that I can't step back and admit there are deficiencies, in some cases very major deficiencies, in my famous and favorite OS, Linux. As a matter of fact, one of the cited references, Eric S. Raymond, has written about the deficiencies of Linux and the open source community, and I agree with a lot of them.
Although I could do a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of Joseph Betz's admitted screed, it's hardly worth the time. There are a lot of problems with the statements made, but what it boils down to is the following:
This guy is an ingrate of one of the highest orders. He gets all this software for no more than the cost of his Internet connection (and maybe a CD-R or DVD-R or two), and then swears up and down when it doesn't work exactly like his XP environment. This seems to me to be one clear application of the saying if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. To quote the middle of "Ignoreland," I know that this is vitriol, no solution, spleen venting. But I guess this guy is the sort that just feels better complaining rather than actually helping to further the cause. If one is going to complain one doesn't have the skills to rescue one's files using a Linux rescue environment, (s)he has no business using said rescue environment, and should hire a consultant to help in recovering these files.
The freedom afforded you by all this sofware is its power. If this user wants to roll his own rescue CD with the tools available, he may, and for extremely little cost. To do the same with the only environment he is apparently capable of understanding, he will have to make up his own Bart's PE™ or similar, and he can dutifully pay for that or pirate it as he wishes, and again, hire someone to make up for his shortcomings (ineptitude? no, that seems overly harsh, although that's the first word that came to mind while writing this). Heck, I have shortcomings all the time, and I pay for people with more expertise to do what I'm unwilling to learn to do. A good example would be not bothering to become a real estate attorney for the property I recently acquired. The major difference there is I don't complain that "lawyering" is too difficult and that it should be easier.