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Oh my CHRIST! You're right, I didn't even believe it.

The text, when you visit http://linux.org/ reads:

Incorrect Site

For comprehensive information about Linux please visit our proper site, www.linux.org.

Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site.

What it should read is something along the lines of:

Duuuh

Despite Linux's popularity, this site is run by people who aren't smart enough to point linux.org and www.linux.org to the same page. (It apparently worked in the past, but we broke it.)

Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site, because we pointlessly and broke all our own links when we broke our own site and probably slaughtered our own pagerank in the process.

I agree wholeheartedly with the parent. It's amazing that a site like this still exists in 2009... heck I'd much rather see http://linux.org/ just 404 or time-out then give you this crap. "Proper site!" Unbelievable.

Oh my CHRIST! You're right, I didn't even believe it.

The text, when you visit http://linux.org/ reads:

Incorrect Site

For comprehensive information about Linux please visit our proper site, www.linux.org.

Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site.

What it should read is something along the lines of:

Duuuh

Despite Linux's popularity, this site is run by people who aren't smart enough to point linux.org and www.linux.org to the same page. (It apparently worked in the past, but we broke it.)

Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site, because we pointlessly and broke all our own links when we broke our own site and probably slaughtered our own pagerank in the process.

I agree wholeheartedly with the parent. It's amazing that a site like this still exists in 2009... heck I'd much rather see http://linux.org/ just 404 or time-out then give you this crap. "Proper site!" Unbelievable.

What do you think should be on Linux.com?

One thing I would like is for it to be a clear and professional page that invites and excites people to learn more about Linux.

What I mean is this: Right now if you google "Linux", the first hit is linux.org. That site has some good info, and even has an explanatory paragraph about what Linux is... but (how to put this nicely?) it doesn't look professional. It doesn't scream "this is a sophisticated and powerful (yet user-friendly) system supported by (and supporting) billion-dollar industries." Instead the impression a first-time visitor will get is that Linux is arcane, old-fashioned, and disorganized.

The fact is that when any of us talk to others about Linux (whether as a home desktop or for business-use), the person will go and search "Linux" and end up being confused. So I would like "linux.com" to have a really carefully designed frontpage, that explains what Linux is, looks very professional (maybe with tie-ins to big-name companies to make the suits feel more comfortable), and helps people get what they need (links to downloads, FAQ, community sites, all that good stuff...).

The Ubuntu homepage is pretty good in this regard. I'm sure I'm not alone in having switched over the last few years from telling people to "read more about Linux" to telling them to "read up on Ubuntu". It's just easier to pick a distro for them (they can always change when they learn more), and Ubuntu has put a nice "face" on the Linux ecosystem. Their homepage doesn't overload you with info, and provides clear links to downloads, community, etc.

So while I hope linux.com becomes many things to many people (and has all the news and content that we geeks want), I hope they take this opportunity to make the mainpage a useful portal for people who want to learn more about Linux. (Since it will be an obvious place for a newbie to first look.)

I bet they'll have better results than the last time I asked them for a refund for the copy of Windows I wasn't using with my last PC...

Apples, meet oranges.

(And last time I checked, no one forced you to buy a computer that had the Windows OS installed. There are plenty of companies that sell computers without Windows installed.)

I've think I've hit upon a very simple thing holding back consumer excitement over Linux - it's the naming.

In the dot-com days, Linux was getting public attention - I've no doubt that many here got on board due to that furor. (Not everyone, not me either, 'em kay? I go back to the early or mid 90s, I honestly can't remember - pre-CD at any rate - so no flames please.)

It was easy - it was in the news.

Now for those that really remember the dot-com crash there was a name associated with it by analysts and it was in the news - VA Linux, whose initial stated price was to be at $30/share (on par with other IPOs) but really didn't trade the first day until it was at an order of magnitude above that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsForge

At that point, the word "Linux" was in the mainstream televised news in a very negative way. IPO fever, AFAIR, died the day of the VALinux IPO.

I no longer follow Linux as religiously as I once did and as a result, today, reading this thread, I've heard of more installations by name than I could imagine.

This is simple marketing - name goes from unknown to known, whateveritis is in the news in a positive way, then it's back in a negative way. The stage is set for consumer confusion.

Consumers as a pack may be reasonable enough to ignore stock issues when choosing a product - every surviving company in the tech sector is proof (MS and Apple are sufficient to illustrate the point).

But consumers as individuals need clarity. Google for Linux - my top hit was linux.org where one is treated to a non-consumer page. The best they do is a link to "Distributions" and from there, a bit more of technology-oriented stuff.

All well and good in and of itself and necessary for the community.

But I submit that consumers want to consume an OS - one doesn't look for an MS Win distribution or an Apple distribution - they go to get an OS. Go to http://www.linux.org/dist - enter some choices - I did English, Mainstream, Intel - and look at the list you get.

Go to Linux.com and it's a blog page to many initiates. The google factoid for ubuntu.com is:
Official site; Commercially sponsored Debian-derived Linux distribution that focuses on usability, a regular 6-month release cycle, and a commitment to at ...
I want to be clear - I am in no way, shape or form ragging on Linux.org or any of the other orgs- I am trying to point out a marketing reality.

If we want any year to become the year of the Linux desktop, then my opinion is to get away from the "distribution" mem entirely.

For me, today's issue isn't whether or not the reporting in TFA was immature or not (I didn't RTFA, I picked that up from other posts) - but to ask how anyone expects the mainstream news to get anything right about Linux?

And please don't Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu me to death - today it's Ubuntu, yesterday it was Mandrake, the day before it was RedHat.

There's no appearance of stability to the outside world and there's no easy way to know how to enter Linuxdom.

Until those things are solved, we get news as interesting as distribution breakouts with references to Facebook (of all things!).

Ya, I'd rather slashdot focus on improving comment rating than ipv6.

Consider PJ's comment from groklaw:

"My thought then was to try to explain legal news stories as they came along. I was forever reading /. [Slashdot] comments about legal news and most of the comments would be way off...and any time I tried to comment, it mostly ended up moderated a zero, meaning nobody read it, including probably the moderators, so I gave up on that..."

I wish they'd stop rewarding first posts more than insightfullness (they do just fine ignoring spelling & grammer).

PJ said in the first interview (31 July 2003):

"I was forever reading Slashdot comments about legal news and most of the comments would be way off..."

I'm shocked!

Hmmm... You've made it clear you're not expecting free hardcopy, so you must be wanting links.

Of course to have found that you probably would have needed some uber-l337 mad google skillz.

• Linux free
• IBM Linux
• Sun Linux
• HP Linux

OEM licenses are tied to the machine they're installed upon, so they should remain valid through donations. As far Windows goes, it's difficult to buy a machine without a Windows OEM license, so any machine still worth using will probably be licensed for Windows 2000 or up. I suppose XP Home isn't quite as much fun if you're trying to use Active Directory with it, but it's certainly not useless, and eligible for the upgrade pricing if it's really so much trouble.

Retail licenses are transferable by simply giving all of the stuff that came with the retail pack. Volume licenses are tied to the company they were purchased for, and I dare say that make a fair bit of sense. Wipe it and load up the version that the COA sticker says the machine is licensed for.

And on Slashdot of all places to be calling a donated computer a cost! Windows isn't the only operating system available, and some of them are up for a pretty good price.

The first result for 'getfirefox' is http://www.getfirefox.net/ which seems to be correct to me.
The first result for 'Linux' is http://www.linux.org/ not some Microsoft website.
The first result for 'Open Office' is http://www.openoffice.org/ and not some Microsoft website.

You lie?

Not sure what religion has to do with this economics question.

Then you didn't read my post. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument, where you said that Imaginary Property was something that we made up, and so it did not need to be "believed in" in order to be considered real. In case I didn't make myself clear:

I disagree.

As for your questions...

Do you have an alternate proposal for incentivizing content creators?

If not, do you believe that software/books/movies/songs/etc. will be created by individuals for no compensation? Or by companies for no compensation?

When I was growing up, artists and musicians did what they did for the love of the music/art. Metallica went on MTV and said they would never make a music video because they "weren't in it for the money." Now they've alienated their fanbase by suing them for giving away their music, and they're pissed off about the lack of money in the equation. Nevermind that they went on TV in front of millions of people and lied. Seems to me that the artists need to figure out which way they're trying to be, and stick to it once they've chosen. This, of course, is just anecdotal evidence and meandering ranting, and is also totally off topic. Get off my lawn!

Back to the issue at hand.

Yes, I have an "alternate proposal" for "incentivizing content creators". I like to call it "cut out the middlemen who do no work, maximize your profits without raking your customers over the coals, and stop pinching everyone's wallets while whining about how you don't make any money because you only get 1% of the profit of each CD sold". It involves content creators posting their content for the world to enjoy, and asking for (non-specific amounts of) money.
(As an aside, I'm typically insulted when people tell me I have to donate a specific amount of money. If I want to give you 50 cents for a single song, I should be able to. Don't tell me I have to give you $5 and take the whole disk!)

If this "economic model" seems surprising to you, then it would seem I need to point out to you that several big names are already doing it, as you can see with a little googling on the subject. To get you started, allow me to offer the following as potential search terms:
"Nine Inch Nails", "Radiohead", "donation", "free music"
It may interest you to learn that the results from these attempts have been successful (or at least, that's what I read). You may also be interested in Jonathan Coulton, who seems to be making quite a decent living by giving his stuff away for free.

Despite answering in the affirmative (and with proof!) and thus excusing myself from the "bonus questions", I will continue in this monologue, answering your second and third questions, too. Please note that the emphasis is mine.

The answers are simple and undeniable. Yes, I believe that software, books, movies, songs, etc. are being created by individuals for no direct financial compensation. Yes, I believe that software, books, movies, songs, etc. are being created by companies for no direct financial compensation. As proof, I offer up open source software (Linux, for example; The Apache Software Foundation, for another), free books (check out the Baen Free Library, or Project Gutenberg), free movies, free music, and the beginnings of an economic model that depends on having products and services that have more than just a financial value to the consumers and producers... which raises the questio

Distrowatch is tracking 566 distributions now, 353 of them active.

Linux.org shows 455.

There's a rather long list on Wikipedia

None of these lists is anywhere near complete or definitive. One of the challenges these days is picking a good distro. Usually people develop a fondness to one family of distributions and stick with it for a single purpose. The thing is that each distribution has its merits and fans. Each one has support forums and repositories and developers. It's a whole ecosystem of operating systems competing for the attention of users. I like the Debian based Ubuntu and its derivative for the desktop but PCLinuxOS spawned from Mandrake seems to have legs these days. It's hard to beat the Knoppix based bootables for recovery, diagnostics and utilities too.

I so much prefer that to an entire ecosystem of malware developers competing to hose my Windows box, and the antithetical software vendors selling cures (mostly snake-oil).

The cool thing about people being free to roll their own distro is that even a little guy can have grand ideas and if he implements them well, kaching! He's got a seller. A few months of good marketing and he can sell services for the rest of his days. If it's good but he loses interest or it doesn't rise to that level, someone will just fold his great ideas into their own distro until it gets absorbed by them all. That's called "progress", and you don't get it from a Windows Distro family like Vista.

Confirmed. Now connecting...

... but I am as confident as I am that the Sun will rise tomorrow that it will be safe from terrorists. After all, we have the children to think about.

July 12, 2005

Copyright © 2005 Michael David Crawford.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

It seems that David Clark, who led the development of the Internet way back in the '70's - did you know there even was a '70's? - wants to create a whole new Internet that will fix many of the problems the current Internet is plagued with. The New Internet's engineers will be much more careful this time around to make sure it works better than the first one did.

I'm afraid, though, that the engineers are not the only ones who will be deciding how our New Internet will work.

If one is able to find any privacy or anonymity in this New Internet, it will be because of some undiscovered security hole, which will be quickly repaired, rather than any kind of conscious design decision. Probably one reason they are accepting proposals before rolling it out is to avoid the sort of accidental security holes that enable pr0n, peer-to-peer filesharing and left-wing political activism.

Microsoft, a leading contributor both to this nation's technology base and to the campaign coffers of its leaders, will embrace this new technology and extend it in such a way that the development and dissemination of Open Source software will be, if not mathematically and physically impossible, at least as intractible as factoring a 2048-bit public key.

Imagine, if you will, Trusted Computing implemented at the router level, in such a way that any packets that go farther than one hop are certified not only to support protocols whose patent licenses are fully paid-up and on file with the legal department in Redmond, but whose content is compliant with the Windows standard. The faintest whisp of a Public License, GNU or otherwise, will result in the dropping not only of the individual packet, not only in the cancellation of the entire file transmission, but, within microseconds, the reporting of the physical location of the offending server to responsible law enforcement personnel. The identities of its rogue administrators will be fetched instantly from the database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. (You will have to submit fingerprints and DNA samples to obtain a Windows server license, as after all, Internet servers can be used to disseminate explosives r

Do you think MS will go down without a fight? Do you think that a company with almost limitless cash is going to be threatened by anything less than all-out war from the FOSS community?

I defy anyone to disprove any of my facts.

- No one is going to do anything about MS's monopoly.

- The monopoly will get worse.

- The only people who have a chance to break it are the geeks.

- Even then it would take a united effort from all of us.

Hehe... I know, apparently, some even ask if Pamela is a boy or a girl. I am thinking of setting up a web page with, say, ten pictures where people can vote on what they think Pamela looks like. Could be funny... I just found out now that PJ was a kind of anonymous way to publish stuff. Apparently she gives interviews. although !
Cheers,

I read the comments and can't believe nobody linked to the patch!

Of course, maybve somebody will by the time this comment actually gets posted, I'm not logged on so I'm getting the slowdown cowboys REAL BAD, it takes a fucking HOUR before I can post. I guess I should hunt down my password or just make a new account...

=(

-mcgrew

On a lighter (and completely off-topic) note, this is Springfield, stranger than the cartoon Springfield. Pawnee is a couple of miles south, the first exit on I-55. Enjoy!)

"In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that Linux and the open source movement is "good competition" because it will "force [Microsoft] to be innovative," but calls Linux "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." He also says that the inclusion of IE in Windows has been "great ... for innovation in the software industry" (except for Netscape) and that MS's new copy protections are just "bumps in the road" to "help customers understand when they are crossing the line . . . so they can't do the wrong thing." And he says a few more amusing things, also."

I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

Too much choice is counterproductive, and hurts your product?

Who knew?

As a proud member of the OSS/Linux community I would like to counter Microsoft's offer to you and offer you an environment that is free as well. As an added benefit, ours will always be free, you won't have to hope that we offer you another free upgrade down the road:
Linux

My previous OS upgrade solved that problem once and for all.

Amen! The first popular browser was Mosaic which ran in x windows on Unix. One of the first web servers was NCSA's HTTPd which also ran under Unix and for a long time was a direct competitor without Apache. Also, Google uses Linux. All of these technologies were developed with the need or use of Microsoft or Windows.

http://www.apple.com/

http://www.linux.org/

Problem solved.

The problem here is that a lot of those distributions are obscure and aimed at very specific markets. The average user looking for Linux really doesn't have to search long to find a generic Linux/BSD distro that will suit their needs. I'd expect someone to do a little research anyway before they jump in to any significant software change.

http://www.linux.org/dist/

If someone doesn't want to take 30 minutes to do some research, they should just go to their local computer store, hand over a bundle of cash and let the salesman pick things off the shelf for them until the cash is gone. I don't use Linux, I prefer the BSDs, but it took me less than 5 minutes to narrow it down to 3 choices.

I would have to argue with you about how difficult it is to find distros that are compatible with older hardware, as I used an old Tandy 286 laptop back in high school - bought it at a yard sale with a busted hard drive and 3.5" floppy drive. It took one night on Google to find a fitting distro - and this was about 6 years ago. I also had a slightly more up-to-date laptop after that, still relatively old though and sporting a Pentium and a whopping 32MB of RAM - 2 or 4MB of which were given to the display hardware - and I found a distro on linux.org that was wonderful - X, FVWM and a handfull of utilities. It networked fine and I was able to easily download floppy images to add more software. Kind of cumbersome as it was all installed from floppy, but it worked.

tl;dr - The distros are out there, somewhere, that can likely do what you need. Don't expect the big name, always up-to-date distros to work - do you expect Vista to run on your 386?

• The Year of the Linux Desktop! (2007)
• 2006: The year of desktop Linux?
• 2005 will be the year of the Linux Desktop
• Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds
• I am convinced that 2003 is going to be the breakout year for Desktop Linux.

"Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
  interest in the program `Gnomovision'
  (which makes passes at compilers) written
  by James Hacker.

  signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
  Ty Coon, President of Vice"

http://www.linux.org/info/gnu.html

130. Eric S. Raymond. Yes, Microsoft, the guy who's been harshing your mellow since I wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997. Linux user since 1993, so I've been violating your nonexistent patents for fourteen years. Sue me first. Please, oh please! Because I don't think I've kicked your sorry asses enough yet, and I'd love another round with you chumps.

1458. Patrick Berry, Linux User #65,411, since 1997, I have been converting thousands of businesses, schools, charities, and users, to FOSS. Microsoft is a small pathetic multiple convicted felon pirate, whereas I am a voting retired disabled veteran, and I welcome the opportunity to expose more of Microsoft's greedy insanity! I am Patrick Berry, TSgt., USAF (Retired) technician, and I run ALL the FOSS at http://livecdlist.com/ http://distrowatch/ http://linux.org/ http://yolinux.com/ I am curious, do you also intend to sue your VP Hilf, who runs 200 Linux machines, in a lab, and Akamai, who run all your websites behind their 15,000 Linux servers? Don't worry, I will name them in my countersuit. Microsoft is the DOOMED multiple convicted felon pirate!

I was also mildly interested when Dell initially talked about selling Gnu/Linux pre-installed. But I had to admit that my interest was not based entirely on logic. It interested me because it seemed like Dells interest somehow validated the ascendance of the Linux desktop into the mainstream. (I do sometimes ask myself, though, is that necessarily such a great thing?) However, why reward some half-hearted newcomer, Dell, when there are vendors, such as System76 (http://system76.com) that sell excellent quality highly configurable systems with guarenteed harware compatability right out of the box, and with not only tech support, but robust knowedge base and forum support? Why reward the inferior? My next purchase will not be some newbee like Dell, but rather from one of the vendors who were there from the start, like companies from this list: http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/laptop.html.

let's say I'm Joe PC User, and I decide I want to ditch Windows and go with Linux. I do a Google search on "how to install linux", and the first hit is http://www.linux.org/docs/beginner/install.html. Cool. The first link is the Linux Pre-Installation Check List. Cool again; I'm on my way. The checklist is actually kinda verbose, but about halfway down, the actual checklist starts. First thing under assumptions: "You are interested in installing Linux on a PC (386 upwards)." Joe PC User says, what does 386 upwards mean? Well, I'll ignore it and move on. Assumption #3: "You have at least one 3½" floppy diskette drive on your system." Joe PC User says WTF? Do I really need that? Haven't seen one in years. Then there are several "You have downloaded, printed and read the latest version of...", and Joe PC User is beginning to think ugh, is this worth it?

...the money on videogames has always been made on game sales and licensing. I am by no means saying "Game makers shouldnt make a profit!" Im saying "They dont need to make more of a profit. They dont need to be making a profit coming and going."

Nintendo has always sold their hardware at a profit. This is nothing new. If they can profit both coming and going, and still sell every single console they can push out of the factory, why not? Nintendo is a business, not a charity. They exist to make money.

Frankly, I'm glad to see them so profitable. I want to see them stick around. I like their approach to gaming these days.

If Nintendo is making profit on console sales now, then why do they still need to completely control all licensing for the system?

Maybe... because that's how things are done in the console business? If you want a platform for games development that doesn't charge licensing fees, you know where to find it.

Yes, there are *some* people who will not produce information-products (including software, music, images, or what-have-you) if they cannot globally enforce copy restrictions. Agreed. Such people should, IMO, go in to a different line of work. That is perfectly acceptable for a very simple reason: there will be more than enough people who find good reasons to produce such works in the absence of copyright restrictions. Some people will find an alternative means of making money off freely-duplicated works, and others just because they are altruistic.

Remember that people pay good money for their hardware, and copyright restrictions mean they cannot make full use of it. Copyright isn't actually a "freedom" for the person producing a work....people will still be completely free to produce works without copyright restrictions. Copright may be a "benefit" to the producers of a work (though in practice it is not; it is only a benefit to the distributors of the work, but I won't get into that here), but to call it a "freedom" is incorrect. Copyright law is a restriction on freedom to everyone in the world, and if such a freedom is going to be globally sacrificed, there had better be a damn good reason for it.

The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products. Not only is this false in theory (since some people will produce stuff for free, and since some people will find ways of making money off knowledge-products in the absence of copyright restrictions), but there are lots of examples of businesses that make money off a free end-product, and of profoundly useful products made without any profit motive. And there are more where those came from.

That last set of links is pretty important. Google gives all of its services away for free, and yet has a market cap of over 100 billion. Not only are there business models built around free products, but they are very profitable and fiercely competitive.

Also check out this and this. Copyright is still there, but it is unenforced upon the consumer. It will be interesting to see how this selective approach to enforcement will pan out.

It is true that a farmer who gives away his crops for free would go broke, and if farmers could not legally force people to pay for their products then there would be no farmers. However, this observation not apply to information products. Information is fundamentally different from physical products, and business models surrounding it wind up taking a different form than traditional business models (a form which includes a free and/or freely redistributable product).

What we are dealing with is a new kind of abundance. Oxygen is an abundant resource, (anyone can get it for free because it just never runs out). Traditional capitalistic wisdom says that it is not possible to build a business around such resources, and further that no one will produce them because of that. Information is also abundant, once it exists (since it can be duplicated at zero cost by anyone). But it is also strangely non-abundant, since it's initial production requires an expenditure of resources. Traditional capitalistic models have a very hard time categorizing it...is it abundant or isn't it? Copyright law is an attempt at forcing it in to the "limited" category so that the traditional models wil

Sure, it takes money to produce it. Once it is produced, however, it can be duplicated ad infinitum at zero cost.

The fact that it takes money to produce does not justify limiting the freedoms of all computer-owners on the planet. They paid good money for their hardware, and they should be free to make full use of its features. This includes duplicating the data to which they have been given access.

Having expended your resources to produce some bit of information does not give you a *moral* right to control what everyone else in the world does with that information. Just because it was expensive doesn't mean you can then use it to justify robbing billions of people of their freedoms. Morally speaking, data duplication is in the clear.

The economic justification is that this unrealistic level of control over all the hardware in the world is necessary in order to ensure that such works are still created in the future. That is bunk, it has been proven so both in theory and in practice (Here are some examples).

So, the notion that data duplication is morally wrong and economically harmful just doesn't stand up to criticism. Like it or not, the bottom line is simple: you simply cannot give people access to information and yet control what they do with it. The misguided laws that try to do just that harm the many for the needless benefit of the few, and hence they are unjust. The world must adapt to the abundance that new technology has brought.

Yeah, we should totally let these people die just because they can't afford the overpriced medicine. It's their own fault for being poor! You make a good point, if this keeps happening there won't be any more drug companies to make drugs.

As we all know, NO ONE does anything unless they are paid to do it.

The idea was that he just had a bunch of herring, not sex. Then again, feel free to think that... :P

I was under the impression that China was moving away from Windows...

:-/

An angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph maybe?

Microsoft will continue getting a free pass as long as OSX won't run on machines sold by Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, etc...

Unless another OS manages to displace it in that market, that is.

2006: The year of desktop Linux?
2007: The year of desktop Linux?
2008: The year of desktop Linux?
2009: The year of desktop Linux?
2010: The year of desktop Linux?

The key, as several posters have noted already, is the number of different Linux distros in use. Of course this creates a higher support burden.

Some people have suggested a place like HSBC should standardize on one distro. Fine. But it'd really, really help if the Linux community could get its act together and decide to push just one distro as a substitute for Windows on the corporate desktop. Because when someone wants to "try Linux", goes looking for a distro, and finds pages like this, it does us no favors at all.

More fundamentally, nothing is preventing you from going out and starting a preconfigured Linux business. Don't just sit there publicly whining that nobody has dropped a preconfigured desktop in your lap.

Widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop isn't going to happen. Here's why.

In 2004, it looked close. You could buy Linux desktop machines, and even laptops, at WalMart. Dell and HP had offerings. Today, the Linux laptops are gone from mainstream vendors.

What happened?

First, the laptop has replaced the desktop. Laptops used to be niche machines, expensive, fragile, and less powerful than desktops. That's changed. Today, for many users, a laptop is their primary machine. Laptops have less-standard hardware, and getting Linux to run reliably on a laptop without manufacturer cooperation remains iffy. Take a look at the laptop support instructions on Linux.org. Almost all the machines listed are out of production. (Many of the companies listed no longer even make laptops.)

Second, the ability to handle content in proprietary formats has become much more important to consumers. Want to play a DVD, or talk to the iTunes store? Tough. There's been talk of a "legal DVD player" for Linux since 2000, and although two companies came close to shipping such a player, neither still does. Linspire does have one, but only for their version of Linux, and there are some players licensable by OEMs for embedded devices. Seven years after the first claims of "real soon now" in Wired, it didn't happen.

Linux missed the window. Microsoft won. Deal with it, fanboys.

Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.

The biggest improvement made to Windows can be found here. Once you try it, you'll know what I mean.

In that interview she gives the complete history of Groklaw (she started it "just before the SCO case was filed.") The interview is a very interesting read.

All of these groups didn't stick with MS: http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html

Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies

It's too late for "Linux on the desktop". Now it has to be "Linux on the Laptop". With WiFi. And that just doesn't work very well.

Yes, there are resources for running Linux on laptops. And they're very funny.

• Linux-Laptop.net This is a collection of links to blogs of people who were able to get Linux to run on a laptop. Really.
• Tuxmobil.org A collection of links to other sites about Linux. With ads.
• Linux.org's laptop page. Most of the listings are for machines that are no longer manufactured, or even for defunct manufacturers. Compaq and DEC are listed, but Leonovo isn't.
• Ubuntu's support wiki for laptops. Big table of laptops, what doesn't work, and what hacks might make them work. Dell's current laptop line, the Inspiron 1501/1505/1705, isn't listed. Even for ones that work, there are instructions like this: This is installation instructions for Hoary. I was unable to complete a successful install with Warty, and I looked, but was unable to find anyone else who had completed an install of Warty. You must first upgrade to BIOS version A32. .... For information on doing this without a windows partition, go here: ... Type in at boot: linux pci=noacpi noapic to prevent it from freezing partway through install (this seems to be a recurring problem with Dell laptops). ... Debian will detect the screen resolution incorrectly. ... To fix this once everything has installed, boot to the Root Terminal or use Applications-System Tools-Root Terminal. Once logged in, type (without quotes) "sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf" and edit...

This is no better than it was four years ago. Maybe worse. You can't even get the WalMart Linux laptop any more.

Linux on the server, sure. Linux on the desktop, maybe. Linux on the laptop, not ready for prime time.