I want to be a small part of this long running thread -- its 20th birthday was last month.
Now on to the topic "at hand". Last year, our son replaced the Tektro Oryx cantilever brakes on his (older) Surly Long Haul Trucker with V brakes. He says the V brakes are far easier to adjust and work better than the stock Tektros. So there's that.
On the other hand . . . maybe cantis aren't that hard to adjust. Yes, for years, I had heard that adjusting cantilever brakes was difficult, so I avoided the job. Recently, the cantilever brakes on my old Trek 720 were squealing (they weren't toed in enough), and I was going to bring the bike in for adjustment, until my son pointed me to this Park Tool video (described by one commenter as the "Citizen Kane of
cantilever smooth post videos"):
After watching the video, I was able to fix the toe-in problem with my cantis! Thanks, Park Tool! Maybe it's just a question of good instruction.
Maybe somebody else can celebrate this thread's 21st birthday next April.