Imagine linux back in an age before it was possible to search the web for answers to problems you run into. In an age when some of the most popular linux distros not only didn't have advanced install-on-demand internet based package management (e.g. debian) but may not have had any package management at all. Also in an age when plug-and-play was still more a theory than a reality and when hardware support in linux was a cruel joke.

Add to that a dizzying array of competing distros and hardware so slow it usually took hours to do a kernel compile. It was a frustrating time for computing in general and deciding to try using linux was a fairly daring venture certain to result in hours upon hours of frustration.

Imagine a time when during the install you needed to know all the details about your hardware intimately. For example by making a wrong choice during the install you could destroy your monitor.

User groups had install parties so users would have a positive experience with Linux and not give up.

Mercurial is awesome. I never use GitHub, except when I want to download a zip of some code to review. Mercurial I use on any project not in TFS.

I've tried to revisit GitHub many times, but I just don't get it - it's not as good as Mercurial or TFS, and I have no desire to 'follow' anyone or watch a project. I'm just too damn busy building apps and projects to pay any attention to anything I'm not actively working on.

I'm still waiting for the 'ah ha' moment on why so many people are talking up GitHub, but it hasn't happened yet.

The obvious counter is that Git is like a dvcs designed for maintainers and only incidentally for developers. I started out using bzr and eventually switched to git, partly to try out github, and things like rewriting history have become a major part of my workflow (I'm picking that one because it seems to surprise people coming from other vcs systems how easy it is to rewrite history in git).

I'm sure mercurial is nice, and given its users passion for it I might recommend it to people starting version control for the first time (I'm in academia, version control is surprisingly rare), BUT... I'd use the term "very sharp edges" and not "rough edges." My impression is that they're meant to be there.