Installing & Configuring CentOS 5.4 (Day 2)

Oké. Day 2. After the successful installation and configuration of CentOS with Adobe Coldfusion, I needed to install MySQL as a database. So, I started the virtual machine, and found out why Linux will (probably) never cut it as a common desktop environment.

X11 - No DesktopYesterday I (properly) shutdown the system (which had the GNOME Desktop), and today it started with some back to the 60's desktop. Every icon gone. All that I'm left with was a terminal window, clock, and a FireFox window. This environment is the basic X11 desktop.

The following command shows which Gnome Desktop version is installed;

 # rpm -q gdm
gdm-2.16.0-46.el5.centos

So, it actually is still on the system, but for some weird reason, it won't start (or whatever). Finally, thanks to Google, I got it back up and running after issuing the following commands:

# yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
# reboot

After this I got my 'old' desktop back. Even with the icons and files I had left on it.

This leaves me with several questions;

1. Why the hell did the GNOME Desktop automagically disappear?
   The last thing I did yesterday was (TRY) to install the MySQL Workbench tools (which won't work on CentOS......). So how can it be that trying to install something leaves you without a decent Desktop Manager?
2. If there was something I did, why wasn't I warned that the desktop (as I knew it) might be in harms way?
3. Why does Linux actually suck?

Thankfully, the first two questions are directly related to the last one (and I know the answer to that one); Linux sucks because the average user will never understand/comprehend this operating system. The options and possibilities in getting this OS to work are way too numerous. We don't need a gazillion choices in desktop environments, highly tunable configfiles etc. We want an OS that simply works (like Apple OS X, or even Windows....)

I consider myself reasonably (no pun intended) resourceful in getting software etc. to work. But the average user will probably ritually burn the Linux installation CD/DVD.

In the mean time, I'll be screwing around with it a bit more. Just for the fun of it.