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[TheBilgeRat]

The irony is that you are saying those things on a message board dedicated to a machine made by commodore, who were way worse than Microsoft when it came to dodgy business practises.
 
I'm not that bothered about seeing the source code.

The irony is not lost.

[TheBilgeRat]

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.

But hey, If Shuttleworth integrates amazon into local searches then responds to the outcry by allowing it to be disabled, he is a lying manipulative sack of s***.  If android has to restrict some source code to be released to protect their hardware vendors IP, then they are also a bunch of lying manipulative sacks as well.  If Google (and linux) allow some binary blobs to allow hardware to be used properly, they are a bunch of misrepresenting jerkwads.  I really don't understand this mindset.  When they respond with "I don't care that I can't see the source code" and then somewhere bitch somewhere else about why their identity was stolen or find out that their hardware manufacturer had a rootkit installed from the factory (Sony anyone?), or even worse, decide that that sort of behavior is not a DEAL BREAKER, I have no hope for the future.  Enjoy the Soma.

[TheBilgeRat]

The market has rejected open systems because the current open systems suck for anybody who A. doesn't like to make a hobby out of OS maintenance, or B. needs more than the default install and a few packages out of the tidiest corner of x distro's repository. Once open-source manages to come up with something that's as usable out-of-the-box as the commercial alternatives and doesn't require a correspondence course to maintain, then we'll find out what the market thinks about it.

A.  not true.
B.  not true either.

I'm guessing that the last time you tried installing a linux, it was more than 5 years ago and was a distro like gentoo or slax or LFS.

[TheBilgeRat]

Did someone say "install gentoo" ?

http://i.imgur.com/oy4JJ.png

Freedom, bros, freedom.

[TheBilgeRat]

As I said in the two-part rant I wrote when I finally gave up this past November, I've been trying for the last...oh, seven or eight years to get into Linux, and with multiple distros, none of which have been tech-head stuff like Slackware. If you want to insist that what I'm saying is false, that's your business, but I am speaking from personal experience here - Linux is just plain not suitable for people who want to install and use more than a web browser, LibreOffice, and a handful of whatever games come in the repository that don't require mutually exclusive sound libraries unless you build them from source.

I've tried moderately technical distros like Fedora and run up against the fact that Linux, as an operating system (so let's not get bogged down in "it's just a kernel,") has as its underpinnings a writhing, labyrinthine mess of intricately inter-dependent toolkits, libraries, and scripts, any one of which can fail without warning or explanation the moment you change anything in any part of the system. I've tried "friendly" distros like Ubuntu (ugh) or Debian (yay,) and all they do is sweep that mess under the rug of a very nice package manager and pretend it's not there, until something goes wrong, somewhere in the works, and failure symptoms start crawling out of the walls and you realize, like a Lovecraft protagonist, that the madness was here the whole time.

Unix is forty years of cruft accumulated in turning an operating system for time-sharing mainframes with VT-100s into an operating system that can do modern desktop kind of stuff. Linux is those forty years of Unix cruft painstakingly ported to PC, and apparently at no point in the process did anybody stop and say "hey, guys, maybe some of this stuff is more complicated than it needs to be?" Except: oh wait, lots of people said that the whole time and nobody listened to them. Because the people behind Linux (and yes, I know there is no central agency - that's the problem, it's a whole culture of this disease) don't care about simplifying the needlessly complex. They thrive on needless complexity. They codify it, canonize it, worship it, appoint themselves its high priests and make their living handing down bits of its functionality to the unwashed masses, and call you a heretic if you question it.

It's too damn complicated and it's never going to get fixed until the people who steer it finally own up to that. Google had the sense to do it, but that only helps people on Android systems. As for Linux at large, the biggest change it's looking at at any time in the near future is Wayland - and don't get me wrong, XWindows is a ripe candidate for an overhaul, but that does nothing to address all of the other insane complexity.

I get it commodorejohn.  You use Photoshop and XP.  You KNOW photoshop and XP.  That's what you use.  You could not make whatever linux flavors you tried do what you could do productively with your normal setup.  You tried it and didn't like it.  It sounds like linux is NOT the right OS for you.

However, that does not change the underlying fact that your conclusions on linux are nowhere in the realm of accurate or factual to the state of the linux world.  You rant and rave about a few apps in userland.  I specifically mentioned earlier the reason people don't switch to linux is due to specific sandboxed userland programs.  Photoshop happens to be a huge one.  Of course the Gimp is a crappy program compared to Photoshop.  A quick google would have brought that to light.  There is no Photoshop for linux, and the solutions to get it working under linux would have taken a little light reading, some downloads of compatibility software (wine, etc) and some tweaking.  Why bother if that is so soul crushing?  Stick with what is easy and what works.

I was responding specifically to your assertion that you have to spend considerable time and effort to maintain a linux installation or that it requires "correspondence course" level awareness.  That is false.  I want the stupid assumptions and FUD to stop.  I give two sh**s what you run.

Now, on topic.  Evidently first shallow impressions count a lot.  Windows 8 sucks because there is no startmenu widget and the metro equivalent is so in your face.  It shows me everything I may want to start, including my old non "app" ified programs.  I don't know where anything is because I do not have the patience to learn something new.  I can't operate google so I don't know how to set anything up.  Also I refuse to follow the helpful hints because...what does it think I am, stupid?  This is obviously Microsofts fault because they made this so damn complicated to work and install.  I had to click almost 8 times before it would install!  EIGHT!  Many of my odd OS specific programs don't work properly, therefore I predict a total collapse of Microsoft and a huge spike in Windows 8 certifications just so that normal users can operate it.  I mean, come on!  This is such a bloated piece of crap - windows is just tons of kludge built onto a crap disk operating system that barely ran on 1 mhz processors.  I want it to JUST WORK, and my definition of broken is not conforming to my narrow worldview of what constitutes a real operating system.

[TheBilgeRat]

I'm afraid I never bought an HDTV converter box...I may have to report to the Ministry of Consumer Re-Education directly... :eek:

Oh my.  Please tell me you at least watch the Hulu Plus and let them know which ads are applicable to you!

[TheBilgeRat]

Why would any one ever install windows with anything other than the most current install disc?

If you aren't pirating it, you get the one that came on your purchase disk?  That may not be current or service packed.

EDIT: Iggy beat me to it

[TheBilgeRat]

GIMP's functionality is aces, but its interface sucks.

I love linux, but I have to agree here.  I dislike gimp as well.

[TheBilgeRat]

How does Linux have any relationship at all to the Amiga?

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/03/17/why-linux-is-the-new-amiga/

[TheBilgeRat]

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

Windows 8 finally has it.

Also, how hard is:

mkdir /media/myISO

(sudo) mount -t iso9660 myISO.iso -o loop

[TheBilgeRat]

Personally I install Windows XP on pc's by using a XP CD with SP3 included, and even though I downloaded it from a torrent site, I don't consider this to be piracy since I still need genuine license keys for installing.

I have done that as well, however I worry that those isos are rootkitted.

[TheBilgeRat]

Harder than installing Daemon Tools, that's for certain.

Edit: or was that sarcasm?

Maybe a little.  I happen to love the command line.  Some people hate it.  I also happen to love windows powershell, although it is a crap imitation of zsh.... unless you know how to access all the dotnet goodies.

[TheBilgeRat]

LOL.  Typical Linux zealot attitude.

Aww, cmon.  If the shoe fits... Who cares?  You run windows.  Pay the tax.  If you run mac, you are getting the benefit of vetted hardware the same as if you bought a Dell laptop made for Ubuntu.  If you manage to F*** up an install where the hardware is all supported, it certainly isn't the software's fault.  I have had machines that I could not get linux running satisfactory on before, or rather I should say that certain chipsets did not work right or were not supported at all.  Granted, that was in the late 90s and pre-kernel 2.4.  Truth is I haven't had to compile a kernel by hand since my 400Mhz AMD was my brand new badass machine.  All of you windows lovers forget there was a learning curve for it as well, you just put the time in ages ago and are not being honest with how long it took you to get up to speed.

Yep, its ALWAYS someone else's fault that Linux sucks, never the system itself..

Yes, sometimes that is exactly true.  Othertimes it is not.  This is why in big person land we don't work in tautologies unless we are doing truth tables.

And what sort exactly do you think I am?

Bubble sort?  Quicksort?  Selection sort?  I give up.

r didn't I give it enough time ?  Was FIVE YEARS not long enough?

Yes.  Five years was long enough.  Although I find this sort of comment hard to believe.  Does this mean that you stuck with the same computer and linux OS for Five years and were completely unable to get it running?  That nowhere in that five year span did you learn to use a terminal shell?  That you couldn't bother to read a man file?  That sounds like an awful time.

I think more realistically that every once in a while, lets say every 6 months or so (or every release cycle of a new flavor) you burned a live ISO, slapped it on an available partition, spent the time getting dual boot going, booted into it once or twice to mess about, got frustrated with the fact that there is a learning curve involved and wiped it off again.

Oh I tried acetone.  DID NO WORK, get it?

And no this wasn't the only reason..

Well, thank goodness virtualclonedrive works great under windows!  Variety is the spice of life as they say.

No, not at all, but hey I've seen enough Linux zealots to see one here..

Really?  Come on, now.  A zealot?

[TheBilgeRat]

Wow. Way to ask for clarification and then impugn someone's honesty without even letting them answer in the same post...

Goodness sake, was it really that harsh?  That's what lots of people do.

Not liking linux or not getting it to install has nothing to do with your geek cred, or penis size, or IQ.

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

[TheBilgeRat]

Ordinary users are mouthbreating idiots.  Have you not read BOFH?
 
But seriously.  When Windows pisses me off with its own labrynthine absurdities, its DLL hells, its craptastic insistence on some specific library or .Net version, its poor 64 bit support, or its inability to get at what is wrong to fix it, I don't get pissed at all the windows people who behave like zealots and call me TDO.  Windows 7 and 8 are the VERY FIRST that have run stable for me, and by stable I mean not BSODing after any length of uptime.  XP was marginally tolerable once I spent days tweaking registry entries.  I have had to twiddle every operating system I've used in some way or another.  The difference is I recognize that all operating systems suck, its just where they suck and what bull**** you have to do to get them running right.
 
Don't even get me started on that pile of crap known as AmigaOS.

[TheBilgeRat]

For acknowledging that all systems suck, you've spent a fair bit of this sub-discussion responding to Linux critics with "you're not really having the problems that you say you're having, and furthermore you probably haven't tried enough and aren't up to date, and also everything you're saying is FUD."

That's because you aren't having any of the problems you say you are having and you haven't tried enough and you aren't up to date and you are spreading FUD.
 
Its one thing to not like Linux or windows due to some bad experience. Its another to say that Linux or windows is inherently flawed, unable to be successful because it is massively flawed, that the many groups who work on aspects of the Linux kernel based operating systems have no knowledge or clue about useable design, or many of the other completely absurd things said by several different people just because it did not work for them.  That IS fud.