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[runequester]

Software is a tool, it's not a religion. I put companies that promote Linux alongside Television Evangelists.
 

IBM and Google are television evangelists? I think we can end this conversation here. We don't have any frames of reference that are in the same realm of sanity.

[runequester]

I always think that Linux desktop domination is ALWAYS 10 years away. Though ChromeOS netbooks for $250 is pretty interesting. I wonder if you can take that horrid POS off and install some Linux Distro on it. If so it'd be useful.

It's as far away as Mac domination, and always will be. But the desktop is only one part of computing nowadays.

[runequester]

You can't even read English, so we may as well end the conversation here.
 
I didn't say they were TV evangelists, I said that I put them alongside.
 
They are saying the things that you eat up, but they are just trying to find a way to screw money out of you. Google have nailed it.

Again with the they. You seem to be missing something pretty important:
 
There is no monolithic entity pushing linux. There's tons of individual companies and individual people who use it for their specific purposes.
 
The reason they can do this is exactly because it is open source. What else would linksys, google, canonical, the French government, IBM, the KDE developers and a basement coder from Uzbekistan have in common ?
 
 
You keep coming back to money, and sure, companies want money in return for something, whether advertisement (google), hardware (IBM, intel) or support (red hat, canonical). You can make money from open source software, and people have for years and years.
That does not invalidate the basic concept of software freedom. In fact, software freedom has specifically enabled this to occur in a world that is otherwise locked down between two corporate giants. It has lowered the barrier of entry to all manner of gadgets that would otherwise have been far more expensive to develop.
 
And it manages that while letting every day guys do whatever they want on their hardware. Pretty neat huh?

[runequester]

This. As they say, "Linux is free, as long as your time has no value..."

My counterpart from personal experience with windows over the years would be "Don't get too attached to your data"


Personal anecdotes of "this didn't work" aren't monster helpfull though, on either side. I have never had hardware on my machines not work out of the box on a linux install, whereas I don't think I've ever had a windows install where everything worked.
As a consequence, I refuse to use it anymore. Too much time wasted, too many bridges burnt, too many things going on without any way of figuring out why something broke. (and on software that I paid good money for too)

Other's will have the complete opposite experience. But we used different machines at different times, under different circumstances. So comparing it won't really be a lot of help to either.



What is absolutely the truth though is that anything that doesn't work according to "OS the speaker is familiar with" is crap, and the annoyances that "OS the speaker is familiar with" has are no big deal.

I can't stand lacking multiple desktops at windows 7 at work, but other's wouldn't care, because they never got used to that feature f.x. Ditto for whatever is your particular favourite thing.

[runequester]

 
So no, there is not one company that is doing the dirty. It's a load of them.
At least Microsoft writes the software they sell, Ubuntu & Google have taken the hard work of others to make money from.

Yes, corporations are ****. Without exception.
This is silly though:

That's how open source works. Everyone can use it. That's the entire damn point.

With patent warfare becoming the default operation of the corporate environment, we desperately need alternatives if innovation is going to actually happen.

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2012/stakes-for-patent-infringement.jhtml

Fancy your start up company risking a billion dollars in damages for violating a patent?

[runequester]

 
You say you're not limited to one and only desktop environment as if that is a good thing. You must have loved it when Bluray and HD-DVD were getting exclusive movies so you had to buy two players, so much choice. Its a pity that everyone grew up and spoiled it for you.

The desktop environment won't really affect what apps will run. Worst case, an app may look a bit like it doesn't fit in, if it's written for say KDE, but running on Gnome instead. Kinda like running some old windows apps in a newer version.

[runequester]

Sony is in big trouble in the console world. Plus their controllers suck compared to perfection of the 360. If MS changes the controller I will rage harder than when Honey Boo Boo runs out of Redbull.:furious:

Apple will probably eventually be #3 in the phone and #2 in the tablet world after a few years. The amount of apps that will be in the Windows App store compared to the competition will be astounding due to the much much greater installed user base.

It's hard to believe how badly Sony bungled the console market after the domination of the PS2.

As far as Apple and phones, I don't know. So far, they seem to hold on to it pretty tight. Not sure I'd get hopes up for windows mobile though. I work for one of the major US carriers and I don't remember ever hearing a call where a customer asked for a windows phone. It's android or apple, nothing else.

In the tablet market though, things might get interesting over the next few years, which would be good.

[runequester]

The market has consistently rejected open operating systems.  Linux, BSD, etc have failed to gather more than a small fraction of desktops.  People like closed systems, end of story.  Even Android, which is a Unix distro and open source has locked down the OS.

There's no such thing as free markets. People use what came on the computer, and that's whatever is sold at Best Buy

How do you explain the failure of AmigaOS, BEOS and OS2 then? They were all closed and I don't see any embedded devices, super computers or cellphones running either of those.

As far as android being closed, how do you figure? Android.source.com and download sources to your hearts content. The android bits have even been in the linux kernel at times.

[runequester]

You know what? You're right. Better to spend 40 bucks on a product that you will never get a look at the source code for without an NDA. Better to support a company who threatens hardware vendors who install anything but OEM windows on it. Better to support a company who has proven itself for more than twenty years to be a vicious monopoly who will buy, litigate or outright steal its way to market saturation.

This would be the same company that lied to Congress in order to get more immigrant visa's, for low-paid Indian programmers by the way.

[runequester]

Only feature I've ever used on my feature phone is the alarm clock. I don't even have text-messaging. Suits me fine.

You're a bad consumer. Please turn on your TV for re-education.

[runequester]

Since what version does windows support mounting an ISO ? Without downloading an external app like demontools

[runequester]

Windows doesn't claim that it supports mounting of images, Linux does.  

But it didn't, for me.

With Windows I download whatever CD mounting software I want, click install, it works.  Under 2 minutes.

In Ubuntu, it was download this library because synaptic didn't have it, go to some obscure author's site, COMPILE it, but wait, my OS is too new, so the old library the mount software needs conflicts with something else in my OS.

The fact that there is STILL this level of "robust" discussion about Linux's short comings says it all really.

I get that it works for people out there, and good luck to them.

Me? I'll pay the MS tax, because my time is worth something.

Linux sucks because you failed to do something that you can't do in windows either?

Sure, pay your tax. You're the kind of person who needs to pay it.
The rest of us spent 2 minutes installing acetone from synaptic and mounting ISO's using a simple GUI.

This is like me bitching that windows is ****, because it doesn't toast bread, and thus, I am buying a Mac.

[runequester]

People are ranting against linux in a microsoft thread on an Amiga forum.  Obviously there must be some emotion behind these sentiments.

So how 'bout them atari's ?

[runequester]

Besides, everyone is going to end up with windows 8 anyways.

The real question is whether anyone will /pay/ for it

[runequester]

The GIMP is an extreme example, but in my experience that kind of problem seems to be epidemic among the Linux developer community - in an open development environment, programmers want to work on the stuff that interests programmers, and without some kind of additional driving force, they really have no interest in boring stuff like usability except in that it gets the program into a state where others can appreciate the cool backend stuff they put all the real work into.

This is very true. Creating a good program and creating a good user interface are two entirely different skill sets, just like writing a killer book and editing it to be readable is.
To sort of try and bring this back to our beloved amiga's, that's something that was very evident there too. With so much of the software people used being PD stuff, it wasn't uncommon to find some very rudimentary interfaces (or a command line only thing, which is garbage IMO).

For bigger programs (like openoffice or whatnot) it's usually not a big deal, since there's enough people working on it that someone will have the skill set required.

I guess I don't have much experience with GIMP specifically since Deluxe Paint is about as far as I ever made it in drawing tits on my computer. For photo editing I used some app that came with Kubuntu already, and worked decently for chopping down images. Couldn't tell you what it was called though.


edit: Let's not lose track of the fact that photoshop is 700 friggen dollars, if you don't get a discount. People never like to discuss this because /everyone/ I know that uses photoshop pirated that ****, but it's still a factor.

[runequester]

Windows 8, right click iso & select mount.
 

So the OS that is only just now coming out has the ability you bitch about?

I still maintain that windows is ****, because it can't cook toast, so I'm going to buy a mac instead.