Slashdot Mirror

(That was the first name that showed up in a google result for "Kenja". For all I know the user could be Jan Hamilton, instead. :)

As an aside, I just did a google search for my own username to see what would happen. I (predictably) found a bunch of slashdot comments and stuff from the other site and straight-up content-theft dumps of slashdot and, oh yeah, dozens of actual news articles quoting me by username as if I was an authority on anything.

Now, I stand by all of my comments that are not purely shitposting, which I really try to limit these days. But what the actual fuck Pharr Technologies from 2011? I am literally some random nobody with a fake name online. I could be actually making shit up completely. The comment is old enough that I don't recall typing it, though the story does describe something that did happen to me, and so is likely true.

And Katherine Noyes of Linux Insider, just posting a bunch of dumb comments from slashdot as a news article? I thought I was lazy.

This really isn't about Open Source, it's about money and Spain is running out. Spain is one of the PIG nations with run away national debt ( Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Munich went the other direction and after a decade of attempting to run Linux on Government desktops, threw up their goose stepping hands and reverted to something that works - Windows.
https://www.linuxinsider.com/s...
Overall adoption of Linux desktop is only 1.5% (2017 numbers). Considering hackers, network admins, and die hard fanboys, that's abysmal.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/n...
It's been 20 years - time enough to realize that corporate and Government - where it matters - wide scale adoption of Linux desktop is failure. move on.

While I normally don't respond to deeply biased trolling morons (most ACs), you've made some incredibly bad assertions. While I won't disagree with the desktop workload statement as almost any normal desktop workstation workload can be handled by a phone these days, the extra capability in the desktop merely increases the available headspace and has 0 effect on the tasks at hand. MS systems (desktop or otherwise) running MS SQL are inherently worse at anything SQL. Well, at least if you want to scale for business purposes. They may be on par for a single SQL query, or a personal DB, and perhaps even a little better in the last case as a replacement for Excel. In this case I speak from multiple personal experiences. MS SQL is wholly unsuitable as a DB for anything requiring load.

Heck, you're aware of course that windows has horrible context shifting costs? That alone dooms it in high performance high concurrency scenarios of the types running in servers? You can start reading here. It's really fascinating how MS worked so hard at cutting corners to create something that ran single threaded semi well at the cost of running the types of loads servers run really badly that it should come as no shock at all that *nix servers, which made the opposite architectural decision, run server type loads far more efficiently than windows ever will.

AD is a laughable POS. In fact, it is so terrible, I can barely even describe it. I recall when AD came out, and Exchange was hamstrung to that turd. Something that used to take 5 minutes wound up taking 6 hours. The only difference? AD. It hasn't gotten better.

SCCM (formerly SMS) sucks rocks too, it just sucks a little less than most other GUI packages out there. That's not an endorsement. You can put as much lipstick as you like on that turd, it won't change the stink. The best system I ever saw in this space was a variation of *nix long ago. Anywhere you went, the desktop, as it was, was there. In fact, this was far enough back that "desktop" wasn't even part of the lexicon. It was merely known as your home directory. But no matter what machine you were on, it was like you were "home". SGI's GUI version was also pretty darn decent, at least where I was at the time. Too bad it cost an arm and a leg even in today's dollars. The mid-level graphics card alone was $25K.

Microsoft could have owned mobile space way back in the 1980s if they had promoted the TRON real-time operating system, instead of joiing the TRON consortium and then acting to have it suppressed through the use of legislation in Washington.

"Microsoft's decision to join the T-Engine Forum is not without irony. The company was the main beneficiary of U.S. government actions against the TRON project in 1989" ref

Microsoft vs. Historical Fact

>> Find job in IT tech without Microsoft knowledge / support required.

Done.
http://nofeeofw.blogspot.ch/20...
http://www.linuxinsider.com/st...
http://www.careerbuilder.com/j... .....

Just google it.
Also, my job is MS free ( at leaset 98%)

"If anything, Microsoft is embracing Android & iOS more these days", cybrthng

Yea, that's why they are extorting patent licenses from Android hardware manufacturers and polluting the Internet with fake Android security FUD ..

OS Flaw Leaves Android Wide Open for App Hack Attacks, Richard Adhikari

As in years ago.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/st...

> IMO the "right" thing to do is either release the source or provide full API and file format specs.

Microsoft has a very poor history of providing API's. Examine the history of the "OOXML" API, which was broken from its publication and has never been actually followed by Microsoft Office products. Or look into the Samba and EU lawsuits against Microsoft, mentioned at http://www.linuxinsider.com/st.... The original specifications that Microsoft provided were _horrible_, and quite useless. And they're still patent burdened, which can block third party developers from being able to safely update such products.

Some suggestions:-

• NAG Fortran FFT library.
• Renderman.
• Code in some USB device like a mouse.
• Code is some appliance like a microwave oven.
• Code used in cheap digital watches.
• ITRON (described as the most popular operating system in the world).

I bring citations, you bring bullshit so step up or STFU. as for Torvalds, you mean the same guy that acts like a spoiled 14 year old halo player and who has kept a 40+ year old driver model because of politics?

Yeah i know EXACTLY who he is, he is the guy that has been holding Linux back this past decade. I'll say of Linus what RMS said of Jobs "I won't be glad he's dead but I'll be glad he's gone" and in my case DAMN glad he's gone, maybe some actual innovation and progress will happen at the kernel level instead of a bunch of old farts holding everything back and running everyone not their age off.

Wonder if Power Strip's a Penetration Testing Tool in Disguise http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/75706.html might have been left with a view to future use?

Drupal OpenAtrium is more like a forum, (that can be subscribed to, with push-email notifications). In other words the source document/content stays securely archived on the Drupal discussion forum, with email notifications and links to source for stakeholders' direct access. This also helps security and access to the actual information.

Also, any document in a library might have its own discussion and commentary thread, (with subscriptions, etc.)

Here's links to the White House Github, and some more details:

http://github.com/whitehouse

http://www.whitehouse.gov/developers

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/11/20/open-source-and-power-community

http://techpresident.com/news/23233/why-its-worth-noticing-white-houses-big-wet-kiss-drupal-and-github

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/69839.html

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/white-house-drupal-community-here-we-made-these

http://fedscoop.com/white-house-we-believe-in-using-and-contributing-back-to-open-source-software/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/11/whitehousegov-releases-second-set-open-source-code

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/72012.html

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, which was released last November, packs a hidden punch: The latest version of the operating system pre-bundles patches with the kernel.

The disguised fixes have shaken up some controversy, but Red Hat contends that the move is aimed at making it more difficult for rivals like CentOS, Oracle and Novell to gobble up Red Hat's customers.

Now I'll probably get hate for this, which will be ironic and sad since /. is supposed to be libertarian, but WTF I don't care.

The following is not hate. Just a sincere and considered response.

Slashdot is not "supposed" to be libertarian, except perhaps in the fantasies of Slashdotters who are libertarians. The philosophies of open-source software and libertarianism do have a non-empty intersection. But that doesn't mean that open-source advocates (or Slashdotters) are necessarily libertarians in the majority.

We ALL know why GPL is going down, its because TINSTAAFL and with GPL V3 RMS has gone so damned anti business he's scared away too many folks. [...] Now ironically if FOSS truly WAS a community and collective effort then right about now a large group of devs, users, and businesses would get together and hash out what the problems are and fix them, basically cooperate for the betterment of all, and if RMS didn't want to participate they'd just fork which is the standard way that FOSS routes around damage.

In fact, this has happened already, many times, and will continue to happen.

But sadly RMS doesn't want a democracy, he wants a dictatorship.

Opinions of RMS's ego aside, in the end who cares what he wants? The FOSS movement can route around RMS just like it routes around damage. (See above.)

But if there is zero ways for businesses to get a ROI then they simply will stay away and surprise! That's not good for anybody. look on the desktop scene where Mandriva is DOA and Canonical won't be far behind.

So what? Companies come and go, including open-source ones. Those that survive are the ones that figure out how to make money. And plenty of open-source companies are thriving.

The simple fact is you NEED companies to pay for all the work that needs doing, without that pay you end up with the "busted shitter" problem where nobody wants to do the lousy jobs like bug fixing, QA, regression testing, writing decent docs, so they just don't get done.

Companies can certainly make important contributions to some of the things on your list. But you ignore the powerful contributions of the user communities. Companies can do what users don't want to do themselves. But the reverse is also true.

Maybe its time for a new license, one that respects your freedom to tinker while accepting that those that pay for something have a right to get paid for their labor? Something like "You are free to look at and modify the code, but if you distribute you have to pay for it"?

You want a new license? Write your own. But first, check the list of existing open-source licenses in my link above.

Now I'll probably get hate for this, which will be ironic and sad since /. is supposed to be libertarian, but WTF I don't care.

The following is not hate. Just a sincere and considered response.

Slashdot is not "supposed" to be libertarian, except perhaps in the fantasies of Slashdotters who are libertarians. The philosophies of open-source software and libertarianism do have a non-empty intersection. But that doesn't mean that open-source advocates (or Slashdotters) are necessarily libertarians in the majority.

We ALL know why GPL is going down, its because TINSTAAFL and with GPL V3 RMS has gone so damned anti business he's scared away too many folks. [...] Now ironically if FOSS truly WAS a community and collective effort then right about now a large group of devs, users, and businesses would get together and hash out what the problems are and fix them, basically cooperate for the betterment of all, and if RMS didn't want to participate they'd just fork which is the standard way that FOSS routes around damage.

In fact, this has happened already, many times, and will continue to happen.

But sadly RMS doesn't want a democracy, he wants a dictatorship.

Opinions of RMS's ego aside, in the end who cares what he wants? The FOSS movement can route around RMS just like it routes around damage. (See above.)

But if there is zero ways for businesses to get a ROI then they simply will stay away and surprise! That's not good for anybody. look on the desktop scene where Mandriva is DOA and Canonical won't be far behind.

So what? Companies come and go, including open-source ones. Those that survive are the ones that figure out how to make money. And plenty of open-source companies are thriving.

The simple fact is you NEED companies to pay for all the work that needs doing, without that pay you end up with the "busted shitter" problem where nobody wants to do the lousy jobs like bug fixing, QA, regression testing, writing decent docs, so they just don't get done.

Companies can certainly make important contributions to some of the things on your list. But you ignore the powerful contributions of the user communities. Companies can do what users don't want to do themselves. But the reverse is also true.

Maybe its time for a new license, one that respects your freedom to tinker while accepting that those that pay for something have a right to get paid for their labor? Something like "You are free to look at and modify the code, but if you distribute you have to pay for it"?

You want a new license? Write your own. But first, check the list of existing open-source licenses in my link above.

Not to mention he is counting packages which last time i checked some applications can have literally dozens of packages connected to them. That would be like counting every little piece required to make Libre Office (what is it with FOSS and shitty names? is it like a rule or something?) and counting it as a separate app.

Now I'll probably get hate for this, which will be ironic and sad since /. is supposed to be libertarian, but WTF I don't care. We ALL know why GPL is going down, its because TINSTAAFL and with GPL V3 RMS has gone so damned anti business he's scared away too many folks. I actually kinda feel sorry for RMS in this, i really do. What happened is the all to human and all too often response to trolling and that's overreaction. the TiVo guys basically went "LOL Goatse" to RMS and he went "I'll get you bastards!" and promptly shot himself in the foot in the process. Now ironically if FOSS truly WAS a community and collective effort then right about now a large group of devs, users, and businesses would get together and hash out what the problems are and fix them, basically cooperate for the betterment of all, and if RMS didn't want to participate they'd just fork which is the standard way that FOSS routes around damage.

But sadly RMS doesn't want a democracy, he wants a dictatorship. he believe this is some mythical battle of god VS evil, that he is a neckbearded Luke Skywalker. Problem is IRL communist utopias simply don't exist and most of the major projects have been actually paid for by businesses. Now RMS has made the terms of GPL so nasty companies are afraid to touch it, hell even Torvalds won't use V3 for the kernel. if that don't smack you with a cluebat i don't know what will.

No personally i hope things change, that the community routes around the damage and gets better, although I'm not holding my breath with so many "RMS is God" true believers out there. But if there is zero ways for businesses to get a ROI then they simply will stay away and surprise! That's not good for anybody. look on the desktop scene where Mandriva is DOA and Canonical won't be far behind. The simple fact is you NEED companies to pay for all the work that needs doing, without that pay you end up with the "busted shitter" problem where nobody wants to do the lousy jobs like bug fixing, QA, regression testing, writing decent docs, so they just don't get done.

As a retailer I really hope things change, i really do. You have less than a year and a half before XP is DOA and Win 8 is released in just 7 months. But its obvious that GPL V3 simply isn't the way to go from looking at the numbers. Maybe its time for a new license, one that respects your freedom to tinker while accepting that those that pay for something have a right to get paid for their labor? Something like "You are free to look at and modify the code, but if you distribute you have to pay for it"?

Not to mention he is counting packages which last time i checked some applications can have literally dozens of packages connected to them. That would be like counting every little piece required to make Libre Office (what is it with FOSS and shitty names? is it like a rule or something?) and counting it as a separate app.

Now I'll probably get hate for this, which will be ironic and sad since /. is supposed to be libertarian, but WTF I don't care. We ALL know why GPL is going down, its because TINSTAAFL and with GPL V3 RMS has gone so damned anti business he's scared away too many folks. I actually kinda feel sorry for RMS in this, i really do. What happened is the all to human and all too often response to trolling and that's overreaction. the TiVo guys basically went "LOL Goatse" to RMS and he went "I'll get you bastards!" and promptly shot himself in the foot in the process. Now ironically if FOSS truly WAS a community and collective effort then right about now a large group of devs, users, and businesses would get together and hash out what the problems are and fix them, basically cooperate for the betterment of all, and if RMS didn't want to participate they'd just fork which is the standard way that FOSS routes around damage.

But sadly RMS doesn't want a democracy, he wants a dictatorship. he believe this is some mythical battle of god VS evil, that he is a neckbearded Luke Skywalker. Problem is IRL communist utopias simply don't exist and most of the major projects have been actually paid for by businesses. Now RMS has made the terms of GPL so nasty companies are afraid to touch it, hell even Torvalds won't use V3 for the kernel. if that don't smack you with a cluebat i don't know what will.

No personally i hope things change, that the community routes around the damage and gets better, although I'm not holding my breath with so many "RMS is God" true believers out there. But if there is zero ways for businesses to get a ROI then they simply will stay away and surprise! That's not good for anybody. look on the desktop scene where Mandriva is DOA and Canonical won't be far behind. The simple fact is you NEED companies to pay for all the work that needs doing, without that pay you end up with the "busted shitter" problem where nobody wants to do the lousy jobs like bug fixing, QA, regression testing, writing decent docs, so they just don't get done.

As a retailer I really hope things change, i really do. You have less than a year and a half before XP is DOA and Win 8 is released in just 7 months. But its obvious that GPL V3 simply isn't the way to go from looking at the numbers. Maybe its time for a new license, one that respects your freedom to tinker while accepting that those that pay for something have a right to get paid for their labor? Something like "You are free to look at and modify the code, but if you distribute you have to pay for it"?

I'm not sure I'd trust opinion articles from LinuxInsider to be anything other than anti-linux trolling. Weren't they constantly talking up SCO during that whole debacle years ago?

You mean like this article from 2004 that basically said that SCO was losing ground to linux, and that SCOs legal team agreed to cap the fees because the alternative was that SCO would go bankrupt from the legal costs? That's certainly not pro-SCO.

Or February 2004 - OSDL - Ignore SCO's Linux Legal Threats? Or March 2004 - IBM Throws Knockout Punch at SCO Or CA Blasts CSO for License Claim - also from March 2004?

Does any of that sound pro-SCO to you?

I think you're confusing LinuxInsider with Maureen O'Gara and sys-con.com. Also, realistically, Shuttleworth has been doing his share of trolling - UbuntuTV is just code they grabbed from samygo.tv to replace the custom linux on Samsung tvs with Ubuntu, and "Ubuntu on Android" is just them using last year's Debian hack to change the default linux distro on the Atrix when docked.

I'm not sure I'd trust opinion articles from LinuxInsider to be anything other than anti-linux trolling. Weren't they constantly talking up SCO during that whole debacle years ago?

You mean like this article from 2004 that basically said that SCO was losing ground to linux, and that SCOs legal team agreed to cap the fees because the alternative was that SCO would go bankrupt from the legal costs? That's certainly not pro-SCO.

Or February 2004 - OSDL - Ignore SCO's Linux Legal Threats? Or March 2004 - IBM Throws Knockout Punch at SCO Or CA Blasts CSO for License Claim - also from March 2004?

Does any of that sound pro-SCO to you?

I think you're confusing LinuxInsider with Maureen O'Gara and sys-con.com. Also, realistically, Shuttleworth has been doing his share of trolling - UbuntuTV is just code they grabbed from samygo.tv to replace the custom linux on Samsung tvs with Ubuntu, and "Ubuntu on Android" is just them using last year's Debian hack to change the default linux distro on the Atrix when docked.

I'm not sure I'd trust opinion articles from LinuxInsider to be anything other than anti-linux trolling. Weren't they constantly talking up SCO during that whole debacle years ago?

You mean like this article from 2004 that basically said that SCO was losing ground to linux, and that SCOs legal team agreed to cap the fees because the alternative was that SCO would go bankrupt from the legal costs? That's certainly not pro-SCO.

Or February 2004 - OSDL - Ignore SCO's Linux Legal Threats? Or March 2004 - IBM Throws Knockout Punch at SCO Or CA Blasts CSO for License Claim - also from March 2004?

Does any of that sound pro-SCO to you?

I think you're confusing LinuxInsider with Maureen O'Gara and sys-con.com. Also, realistically, Shuttleworth has been doing his share of trolling - UbuntuTV is just code they grabbed from samygo.tv to replace the custom linux on Samsung tvs with Ubuntu, and "Ubuntu on Android" is just them using last year's Debian hack to change the default linux distro on the Atrix when docked.

I'm not sure I'd trust opinion articles from LinuxInsider to be anything other than anti-linux trolling. Weren't they constantly talking up SCO during that whole debacle years ago?

You mean like this article from 2004 that basically said that SCO was losing ground to linux, and that SCOs legal team agreed to cap the fees because the alternative was that SCO would go bankrupt from the legal costs? That's certainly not pro-SCO.

Or February 2004 - OSDL - Ignore SCO's Linux Legal Threats? Or March 2004 - IBM Throws Knockout Punch at SCO Or CA Blasts CSO for License Claim - also from March 2004?

Does any of that sound pro-SCO to you?

I think you're confusing LinuxInsider with Maureen O'Gara and sys-con.com. Also, realistically, Shuttleworth has been doing his share of trolling - UbuntuTV is just code they grabbed from samygo.tv to replace the custom linux on Samsung tvs with Ubuntu, and "Ubuntu on Android" is just them using last year's Debian hack to change the default linux distro on the Atrix when docked.

Don't you mean Canonical and Unity bashing? Gnome is OK - it's Ubuntu that's the problem.

Probably not for much longer ... both the Internet and open surce have ways of routing around the damage.

Is 6 months ago new enough for you? i tried going LTS to LTS just to shut up a "If you use LTS that won't happen!" irritant on LinuxInsider and watched as PulseAudio puked on the sound and the graphics wouldn't go native resolution without needing....drumroll...CLI to fix!

I need to write down a list sometime of all the different versions i've tried, last count I was into double digits and frankly Linux just don't upgrade worth a crap. personally i blame Linus who is so damned arrogant he thinks he's smarter than the devs of BSD, Solaris, eComstation, OSX, and Windows because he seems to think he don't need a stable ABI for drivers...WRONG. Sure if you know the make/model/rev of EVERY piece of hardware you own AND have the ability to tweak some "fix" because it was written for Rev B firmware C and you have Rev F firmware H then you can fix it, but again you've just eliminated a good 99% of the planet. if you'd like I can give you the link to LinuxInsider where an actual Linux server admin with many years of administration has given up on Linux and is going BSD because when she upgraded OpenSUSE it puked and left her without a working machine at home for a week and wasted two years worth of emails. Sure she had backups but the point is if even SHE can't make Linux do an in place upgrade without borkage, what chance does Suzy the checkout girl who barely knows how to turn on a PC gonna have?

The answer is none and THAT is the problem. Perhaps you'd like to read an article I wrote back in 2009 pointing out what I needed to sell Linux to consumers and SMBs. Also note that not a single idea, all of which were basic common sense stuff, has been implemented in any Linux distro that i know of. Now I'm just a humble retailer I don't have several million to throw at the problem like Shuttleworth, all I can do is point out on forums what is wrong and hope somebody listens. instead i either get accused of being an M$ ninja or get told "Go back to winblowz Winfag". so don't be surprised when Linux goes exactly nowhere on the desktop. we retailers have done everything short of handing you a map and a GPS unit and all we've gotten for our troubles is insulted or ignored. But when people would rather risk pirating the other guy's OS than take your 100% free one its time to ask yourself a fundamental question: "What is the other guy doing right that I'm doing wrong?" and I've laid out in that article several examples which sadly nobody will heed.

Hell why didn't you bring up toasters while you were at it? See its THIS kind of total flag waving horseshit you ALWAYS get from FOSSies. I said it QUITE clearly we were talking about DESKTOPS, not what your cell phone or TV for that matter runs. Newsflash: Nobody gives a shit, hell unless its Apple nobody even knows what the fuck is on their damned cell phone! Its a screen with buttons and THAT IS ALL. Linux is used there because its FREE and with a locked down cell phone nobody gives a flying wet fart what is behind the buttons, just that the buttons work. Supercomputers? Are nothing BUT CLI, that's it. They are trying to squeeze every little drip drop of horsepower they can so no shit they are using a CLI OS. It also again is the fact its FREE and MSFT frankly has always charged assraping prices on their server products.

Now back to the subject at hand, desktops. if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos? If it is sooo good then why does a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or why has ASUS has given up on your bullshit or why did Walmart run away from linux as fast as it can?

I'll tell you why, its because its too fiddly, too unintuitive, the kernel on up is as solid and stable as the shifting sands, its a geek programmer's toy and NOTHING more ATM. Funny how all the things you mentioned are controlled by......drumroll....geek programmers! who programs cell phone OSes and writes drivers for them? Who sets up Webservers and supercomputers? Why that would be geeky ass nerd programmers! Meanwhile you can't even give the damned thing away for free to normal folks NOR to retailers NOR to OEMs. Doesn't that slap you with the cluebat? or are you too gonna give me a treaty on how "CLI is leet" like this guy?

See i'm the community's worst nightmare, i'm a retailer. i have better things to do than play 'find the fix' on weekends and i don't think staring at your beloved bash prompt is a solution for ANY problem much less EVERY problem. Frankly Windows 98 and System 9 were more polished than the current Linux distros are, and when i have people on this very forum tell me "Well just don't update it" like Linux magically is immune to ALL software exploits? Well i have to think the whole damned bunch has gone stark raving loonie.

Now you be sure to call me a "nigger faggot cocksucker" aka shill troll astroturfer because I dared to point out that after TWENTY YEARS Linux is STILL lower than JavaME. Oh BTW every single lame excuse you used? There is a whole website dedicated to those excuses such as your excuse about supercomputers? Its been there since Dec 2009 so at least try to come up with some new BS, mmmkay?

Coverity, for example. And note they're doing these studies with the aim of selling Coverity to proprietary software houses.

While anyone can pick counterexamples to a measured tendency, only someone with terrible reasoning skills would think they constitute a disproof.

I appreciate the desire for links, but it's really hard to believe you've followed open source at all in the past five years without being even slightly aware of this stuff; it shows sufficient intellectual laziness that you can do other Google searches yourself. You make me realise that leading a horse to clues isn't necessarily going to make him think. It's like arguing with a creationist and having to compress a degree in biology into a few sentences on the spot.

I do not believe that his anything to do with users' IQ.

I believe it has everything to do with this.

Get ready, here they come! Kinda makes that koolaid just a little bitter now, don't it? I believe in using the best tool for the job, but to say Linux is secure or better than any other complex OS is frankly bullshit. Hell I was talking to a 15 year Linux admin on one of the other sites that had gotten so sick of Linux fuckups they were going to BSD and if THAT didn't "just work" they were gonna wash their hands of FLOSS on the desktop and just go Mac.

BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had bad configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

As for an application? How about the fucking OS? If that shits itself and dies, like what happened here (read the final straw by a 15 year plus Linux admin who just dumped your OS) I'd call THAT a problem, wouldn't you?

But it doesn't matter what I say, it doesn't matter if I wallpaper this page with links backing everything i say up 100%, because you are a FOSSie. A FOSSie refuses to believe reality and instead screams "Nigger faggot jew!" or "FUD shill astroturfer!" to all that do not bow before the bullshit effigy made in the likeness of RMS. I'm sure now instead of answering all this evidence and citations you'll just call me some names, like a frightened child who just got told Santa wasn't real. Sorry friend but i happen to live in the real world and out here? Linux works about as reliably as Windows 95.

Not until they fix some of the fundamental flaws they won't. For example who in the hell thought making the bar go up and down on the left side with no easy peasy way to change it was a good idea? Even tablets are widescreen ratio, yes? There for you will have the LEAST room vertically and the MOST room horizontally. or do they think that nobody will want to have more than 3 or 4 apps ready to go? As someone that has been using docks since 2002 I find that it doesn't take long before you get hooked on them and they start growing, I'm currently up to 15 apps and folders i have in my dock.

And why isn't there a "fix drivers" button? Or a roll back drivers button? something that will help an average user if an upgrade bones a critical driver so they can fix it WITHOUT doing the Google dance, because if that critical driver is wireless or Ethernet how will they Google? this is one area where taking a page from the MSFT playbook would be a GOOD idea. Hell with everything coming from a single source it shouldn't be THAT hard to do right?

And finally why is there no "help me!" button? something that would connect a noob to a volunteer something like what was suggested here by me two years ago? With Windows 7 you can take control of a PC via an invitation in under 3 minutes if someone is in trouble as long as they have functional net access, and something similar should be implemented so LUGs and other volunteers can have a "help me!" button on the desktop for new users to help them get up and running.

Linux has some good goals and ideas but their idea of helping new users is throwing them off a bridge into rapids and calling it a swimming lesson! Despite the "we're user friendly" facade there is a LOT of geekiness under the hood that unless one is familiar with the Unix way of doing things they can easily get frustrated and give up. If you want to gain share you are gonna have to do a LOT more hand holding and help the new users get up to speed, which I believe with a little thought and a few changes COULD be done, the only question is if you can run off the "Go back to windblowz LOL Noobs!" trolls that seem to infect forums today like the clap.

I've read a lot of forums, not just computer related ones but other things where someone starts a "Linux" thread.
I'd say the opinions run about 90% against unity, and 10% for.

The thing is, Canonical may not give a damn about posters to the "Linux" forums.

What it has is maybe 1/3 of Linux users. Which is still nothing but a ripple in a vey big pond.

The traditional community oriented Linux desktop distribution is not attracting converts from OSX or Windows. It threatens to be eclipsed in global market share by the walled garden of the iOS mobile device. That has implications for developer support. Retail support. The politcal effectiveness of the EFF and others.

'Doesn't Make a Jot of Difference'

Finally, for Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site, Ubuntu has bigger problems to worry about than just Unity.

Namely, Unity aside, "this latest Ubuntu doesn't make a jot of difference to the world because it doesn't add to the list of programs that Windows or OSX users can now use in Linux," Hudson told Linux Girl.

In fact, "this same mis-directed effort is also why the year of the Linux desktop won't happen," Hudson asserted. "None of the distros, including Ubuntu, are trying to meet the No. 1 demand of the majority of users: to run their existing programs."

'You're Not Growing the User Base'

Most users have at least one application that doesn't have a decent equivalent under Linux, "either open or proprietary," she explained. "Until that changes, 'fixing' the user interface or adding a music store will remain as useful as adding more cowbell. You're not growing the user base, just competing for more scraps from a tiny, stagnant market.

"Free software? For more than 99 percent of the world, Ubuntu is just another word for, 'I can't run your program,'" Hudson added. "The latest Ubuntu doesn't fix that, and neither will the next one, nor the one after it."

So, "until this fundamental weakness is addressed, you won't be able to sell most users on Ubuntu," she predicted. "Heck, you already pretty much can't even give it away to them for free.

"It's a shame that the future of linux in the consumer space is to toil away in obscurity, with products like Android getting all the credit," Hudson concluded. "It's also telling that when Novell took the first small steps to correcting this, they were roundly pilloried by the community."

Ubuntu 11.10 and the Oddly Oneiric 'Countdown' [Oct 20]

Also,

He has never acted in any interest other than that of the computer-using public

So, it's in the interest of the computer-using public for the FSF, of which he is president, to spread FUD about Linux and Android licensing because the GPLv3 is not getting any love? Or for him to get his jollies by publicly demeaning women? Or by telling people that their time would be better spent working on patching emacs (his baby) than with their baby?

I'm not buying it. The man's actions speak very loudly - he is self-centered in the extreme - to the point where he is not able to consider any point of view other than his own as having any validity. A paranoid narcissist. In other words, a whack-pack who did NOT invent the "free software movement", contrary to his shameless self-promotion - Bill Joy was compiling and distributing BSD alsmost a decade before he even started. Bill Joy - the guy who wrote ex and vi. So it really is a vi vs emacs thing.

Stop trying to defend the indefensible - it shows the same lack of class and inability to acknowledge new information that Stallman has.

For personal reasons, he generally does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox, claiming to limit direct access via browsers to a few sites such as his own or those related to his work with GNU and the FSF.

After all, a smartphone uses the closed cell phone networks, and forget Android, because the Linux kernel's GPLv-only licensing is (according to the FSF) a risk.

Nope - the GNU/HURD.phone would be as big as a fridge (not counting the 60-foot antenna), because it would have to combine the abilities of a phone with the ability to act as it's own cell tower, so you can talk to the 2 others who use GNU/HURDphones. And its command interface would be EMACS.

You know if there are any trolls here it is you and your fellow zealots, lying your asses off that "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and then when it is pointed out YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG the ONLY thing you can do is stick your fingers in your ears and go "You are not leet! You are a M$ Ninja! You must be troll or shill, you no drink koolaid and believe our lies!"

You know what you and your fellow zealots remind me of? moonies, that's what. Just like a Moonie you could bring 100 scholars to say "That is completely wrong, not even close" and they just stick their fingers in their ears and say "You were sent to destroy us by the enemy!" while ignoring the fact that the "enemy" doesn't give a shit about you because they have seen the writing on the wall and Linux is going nowhere. that is why MSFT changed their Linux "threat level" from red to green because just as I said you won't listen, you won't accept that users won't do things your way, so you'll rot in last place.

And you DO realize your ENTIRE post is a classic example of "moving the goal posts" yes? What have we seen here repeatedly? Why "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and what do you and the other zealots trot out when I point out that is a lie? "Why why why...we don't want common people anyway! They are not leet! Doing things the stupid way makes you a hacker! makes your neckbeard full! You are a M$ Ninja!"

Lies, bullshit, and excuses. that is ALL the Linux community has to offer anymore. Frankly I'm gonna LMAO when Google just takes the whole thing away from you. See they have seen the word is consumers, and they will just lock down the droid and tell you to fuck right off. Oh but you'll line up to kiss their ass anyway, because at least SOMEONE is using linux, right? you've been below the margin for error for 20 damned years now, right down there with haiku and OS/2 and all the other hobby bullshit. NO real growth, NO real gains, and I'd be happy to give you the link showing Linux is LOSING share on the server, but why bother? Like a Moonie you'll just stick your fingers in your ears and go "We are leet! U r shill, or M$ Ninja!" . Enjoy last place loser, you certainly have earned it.

In general, companies want to be able to enforce the copyright of the entire product. It is possible that a company could be convinced to join the scheme as you propose it, but the risk and legal load for the company are appreciably higher than what I have proposed, so the company would have to be expecting to get a lot from the community in order to justify that. I'm not sure the balance would work for the company.

??? The Novell vs SCO trial should have ended that. You don't need ownership of ALL the copyrights to enforce your own rights. Of course they would still be able to enforce the copyright on the parts of their product to which they have copyright under such a scheme.

And of course, if they don't like it. let them write their own version. If they see dual-licensing something as valid, they should respect that authors have the same right to dual-license their code, instead of outright assignment.

The real motive is code capture. Once they get copyright assignment, they can dual-license it, but nobody else can approach the original author for the same right - their competition is limited to open-source licensing only. Your license proposal, like many code copyright assignments, goes directly against the interests of both the author and the general public, since other businesses won't be as willing to invest in improving code they can't themselves dual-license.

After the last round of FUD from the FSF: FSF Uses Android FUD To Push GPLv3, (debunked here) anyone who asks for copyright assignment and says "trust me" is on my "do not trust further than I can throw/smell/sic my dogs on them" list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project#cite_note-1

"The Most Popular Operating System in the World"
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/31855.html

Umm, that article is from 2003!

Uhhh...maybe because its true? I own and run a little PC shop, it is guys like me that Linux really needs to grow. We get ZERO price breaks from MSFT so there is no loyalty there, and we certainly aren't doing it to get rich, we do it because we love computers and helping folks.

But with all the fragmentation nothing in Linux, not any of the real important stuff, ever seems to get fixed! Take drivers, everyone else has an ABI, Linux don't. You don't want an ABI? Fine and dandy then fix it so the drivers don't break when you upgrade the thing! Maybe if everyone wasn't spread so thin with a bazillion distros then you wouldn't NEED an ABI because there would be enough guys working on drivers to keep them from breaking constantly! I tried Ubuntu/Mint, Mepis, and PCLOS, these are the ones usually listed as "friendly" Linux distros. In every single case the 6 month upgrades broke something. Do you think I can afford to give away lifetime free support?

And please don't say LTS, I've been down that road and found that LTS is a codeword for "really old software" thanks to the totally messed up some software requires certain kernels. That is totally nuts! And the ONLY way LTS might be even kinda sorta viable is if you catch it right at release because last I checked XP has more time left than the current Ubuntu LTS.

Look I'm old enough to remember when we actually HAD choices in OSes, we had Commodore, we had GEM, we had DOS, we had Mac System. With the XP EOL countdown I would really like to have a "third way" as I have a feeling a LOT of former XP machines will end up on my doorstep. but as it is now with every Linux I try its the same: Install and fiddle until everything works perfect, Oh look, there's an update or upgrade. Install updates or upgrades Linux falls down with broken drivers, lather rinse repeat.

If you are a server admin, addicted to CLI and getting paid to deal with that? Linux is cool beans daddy-o. if you are a geek that thinks fiddling with OS guts is fun, and learning Bash commands is a good way to spend the weekend? Linux is for you. programmers? Ditto.

But if you are gonna gain REAL share you NEED guys like me, who can market and service your product, but right now the service and support costs would bankrupt me. My time is a minimum $35 an hour, at that rate a single borked driver forum hunt can cost me MORE than a copy of Windows 7 HP. If there wasn't 50 bazillion choices, if everyone settled on some standard and everyone worked on it? maybe things like this wouldn't happen and guys like me could get on board.

Time is ticking fellas, the XP EOL is less than 3 years now. That is gonna be hundreds of millions of boxes with NO Windows licenses. Will they end up in the dump like the last ones I got, because the cost of a Win license is worth more than the box, and I can't keep the drivers working 100% in Linux? Or will guys like me be happily installing "Linux Home Edition" and putting them in the window? That is up to you, the community. All guys like me can do is write articles and point out in forums like this what we need to sell your product. Of course all that will most likely happen for our trouble is a bunch of labels of shill and troll, and the community can go back to enjoying their 1% share and arguing for Vi VS Emacs.

Is Ubuntu 11.04 new enough for you? Sadly I can replace every single response to this thread with a meme from Linux TM repository because it is nothing but the same old shit. Ur doin it wrong, use distro X, stable kernel ABI nonsense, I can go on all day.

You want proof, proof like a bitchslap in the face that is impossible to deny? riddle me this: Why does Dell, the third largest OEM on the planet, have to waste serious money and resources maintaining a badly out of date repo of their own? Because if they don't, even though they only offer Linux on a teeny tiny subset of their hardware Linux will take a big shit on the drivers that's why!

Accept it or not but if the third largest OEM can't even make the God damned drivers work without having their own fucking development team what chance does a little guy like me have? The answer, not a snowball's chance in hell. and I just love how the SAME GUYS that say "Linux is a drop in replacement for Windows" and post all those articles that say 'have an older PC? put Linux on it and save money" will in the very next breath say "Oh well you need to only buy hardware X that is certified by whom it is supposedly certified I have NO fucking idea, but it drives a stake in that "Linux can replace Windows" bullshit doesn't it? If I have to replace more than half the parts to use your OS why would I bother?

Accept it or not, frankly I don't care. After writing articles pointing out what I needed to sell your product, practically begging on forums to get treated worse than a nigger at a Klan convention, and be modded to oblivion for daring to point out your OS has serious issues? Frankly I give up, I wouldn't take your OS if you tied $50 bills and hookers to the thing.

But be man enough to admit it is BY geeks and FOR geeks and for the average folk it is a nightmare from hell. You have a SERIOUS OPPORTUNITY coming up, WinXP gets its plugged pulled in Apr 2014. That is literally hundreds of millions of machines out there that COULD be converted if you get the shops like mine onboard. But instead you'll spout the same "ur doin it wrong, use distro x, ur a Winshill" bullshit and then be shocked! shocked I tell you! When guys like me simply add more RAM or throw out the guts of all those PCs and put boards capable of running Windows 8 in them.

You want to know the sad part, the part that will have me modded to hell for daring to speak against their "chosen one" even though it is his own words I'm gonna link to? Linus Torvalds thinks its a big fucking joke and his attitude is Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!

Now of course this attitude was fine in 1993, when Linux was a hobby project being passed around on IRC, but it ain't 1993 anymore. If you want Linux on the literally hundred of millions of PCs that are gonna be EOLed by MSFT in Apr 2014 the driver problem needs fixed NOW and it needs done ASAP.

Because in the end there is gonna be literally tons of hardware sitting in front of fixit guys like me, hardware which COULD easily run Linux for years thus saving it from the dump, cutting down on eWaste, and making thrid and fourth PCs easily and cheaply available for all those grandmas out there. But as I said with these 4 1.6Ghz I'm looking at the Windows CAL will cost more than the box is worth and Linux simply won't continue running past the first 6 month update without taking a big steaming dump on the drivers. Does the community REALLY believe grandma is gonna learn how to do the forum dance, or how to tweak Bash (because you ALWAYS have to tweak, the commands listed are always for hardware c rev b and you have hardware f rev h) commands so the forum CLI gunk will work? Really?

Windows doesn't stomp Linux in adoption because of some secret sauce, nor killer app, it is because it is trivial for guys like me to setup with a good AV and basic software like Firefox or Dragon browser and just hand it to grandma and 3 years from now it is still surfing the web and letting her print her recipes. That's all. Most of what grandma does could easily be done on Linux if the driver sitch wasn't such a giant mess. Fix this and I'll be happy to carry your product. Hell I even wrote an article for Linux Insider pointing out what I needed to help sell Linux. If I didn't care or wanted MSFT to win would I have gone to the trouble to write it?

Sadly as you can read what I wrote for Linux Insider I truly believe the answer is NO, not unless the community get behind a fundamental change in the GPL, from a "free for everyone" to "free for non commercial use'.

The reason why is simple: despite RMS and his desire for a completely free utopia the simple fact of the matter is that history has shown us the FOSS design model works on what I call the "grep pipe" principle. that is a bunch of small programs that when linked together do a bigger job. where it does NOT seem to work is in huge monolithic codebases, which is what you are talking about when you are dealing with office software.

Just to attempt to maintain (not make it better mind you, just keep up) with changes in MS Office Word you are probably gonna need a dozen guys who are intimately familiar with the Writer codebase and all its calls. If you want to improve compatibility? Add another dozen. And that is JUST for Writer. Now multiple that times the other components.

You see MSFT and Apple probably have a good 200 guys minimum working on their office suites, guys who know that code like the back of their hands, years of experience in each team. And THAT is what FOSS has to compete against. The "tin cup" model as I call it, where you survive by donations or support, simply won't work at the scale we are talking about for an individual program. Red hat can pull it off because companies hate not having someone to call when their servers go down because the servers make them money. If LO don't work? they'll just write it off as a failure and pick up a site license for MS Office.

If there was a "free for non commercial use only" clause then, even if it were only $2 a copy, those businesses that found use in LO could help pay the cost of development so that it can keep up and get better. But mark my words without IBM or Oracle or another big corp to pay those experienced developers they'll move on to where the grass is greener and volunteers are gonna take one look at the huge sprawling mess of code and run away screaming. it is simply too complex for a weekend coder to play with.

Sadly I believe in less than 5 years it will be as though Star Office never existed. The Document Foundation will try their little hearts out, they'll beg and plead for funds, but in the end they will just not get the resources to keep up. Each year their support for MS Office formats will get worse until there will be simply no way anyone can use it. The forums will be filled with "Install Wine and use MS Office" because to use LO will be like trying to work in Word 95 and deal with DocX.

I hate to see it happen, but happen it will, just mark my words. Why is it so hard for the community to understand that for huge projects like this you simply have to have a steady stream of good money to survive?

As for TFA this is part of a discussion we've been having at Linux Insider (Just FYI I'm quoted in part of the article) on FOSS and the freeloader problem. I personally believe the GPL and other FOSS licenses need a "free for non commercial use ONLY" clause to allow FOSS developers the funds required to maintain and grow the code. In great economic times one can get by with the "tin cup donation or support" model but as the economy sinks you will see more and more that used to pay simply becoming freeloaders. If a corp is making money off FOSS then they should have to kick back a few bucks, it is only fair. After all if it wasn't for FOSS they wouldn't be making the massive profits like they do, so kicking a small amount of the profits to those that did the work is only fair and just IMHO. This would make it better for everyone, including the corps whom I'm sure would find a way to take it off their taxes and would benefit from more bug fixing and more developers writing FOSS code, which in turn benefits us all.

From my experience "free for non commercial use" usually means "free" to most companies. Open Source means no licensing cost.

Actually I believe this is why the current trading labor for money system will simply have to end if we are to go forward as a race. Look up "MIT wants to eliminate cooks" to see some of the tech on the drawing board, for they have a "food machine" that "prints" the food like a 3D printer, cooks it, slices it, and spits it out the end, kinda like a slower version of a replicator.

It seems pretty obvious to most of us that we are currently playing musical chairs based on IQ and each year there are simply less chairs. Is there any job at your average fast food joint that couldn't easily be replaced by an automated assembly line? not really but the government lets them pay shit wages and makes it up with benefits to the poor, a classic "make work" scenario and things will only get worse. if they had to pay a living wage I'm sure every fast food joint would be automated within 3 years.

So we really do need to change the system, unless we are gonna smash the machines or pay people to put card A in slot B or some other pointless make work.

As for TFA this is part of a discussion we've been having at Linux Insider (Just FYI I'm quoted in part of the article) on FOSS and the freeloader problem. I personally believe the GPL and other FOSS licenses need a "free for non commercial use ONLY" clause to allow FOSS developers the funds required to maintain and grow the code. In great economic times one can get by with the "tin cup donation or support" model but as the economy sinks you will see more and more that used to pay simply becoming freeloaders. If a corp is making money off FOSS then they should have to kick back a few bucks, it is only fair. After all if it wasn't for FOSS they wouldn't be making the massive profits like they do, so kicking a small amount of the profits to those that did the work is only fair and just IMHO. This would make it better for everyone, including the corps whom I'm sure would find a way to take it off their taxes and would benefit from more bug fixing and more developers writing FOSS code, which in turn benefits us all.

Can you tell us why that is, tomhudson? For your reference:

Pain and Suffering in Germany, or How Linux Lost to XP

http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/71983.html?wlc=1302989298

"Previous studies showed the GNU/Linux desktops were economical and effective. Suddenly, with only hand-waving as evidence, a contrary conclusion results."

Same thing here on slashdot

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/02/22/0244242/German-Foreign-Office-Going-Back-To-Windows

or

How linux is screwing up so badly at the London Stock Exchange after it replaced a working system on Windows there

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/02/19/0147232/London-Stock-Exchange-Price-Errors-Emerged-At-Linux-Launch

and even was found serving up malware and malicious adbanners from said stock exchange, even running on Linux

http://slashdot.org/submission/1484548/London-Stock-Exchange-Web-Site-Serving-Malware

?

tomhudson != barbarahudson tom, in case you didn't realize it. If you had any balls, you wouldn't post your momma's software company, but instead, one of your own (and, you can't). Hilarious! apk

My mother has been dead for more than a decade, you insensitive clod. Seriously. And she never had anything to do with computers.

If you had checked my profile, you would have noticed what t.o.m. stands for. Oh wait, you can't - you can't log in. Oh well, guess you'll never know. In the meantime, why not google for barbara hudson open source linux - here's the first link. Read the story lead. Now scroll down and read the paragraph that begins "'I Just Hope OraKill Doesn't Buy Novell'.

Okay, how about I give everyone a nice new topic to get PO'ed over and argue about? My Theory: While these 1 second boots are a cute trick and all, Embedded Linux is gonna quickly end up the Useful Idiot of the megacorps, where a community works their collective asses off and at the end of the day have nothing for all their hard work except the fattening of some megacorp's bottom line.

Why is that? This sentence: GPL V2 and TiVoization. Hell even the most basic rules of the GPL like providing source is apparently too much bother for many of the Android pad manufacturers, but in the end it will be for naught thanks to things like signing kernels and hardware DRM.

I mean everyone here rushed to trip over themselves to say how wonderful Google was for Android, yet nobody seemed to notice or care that all of Android is GPL V2 and it didn't occur to anyone to ask why? Or is it because we all know why, it is because Google only cares about Google and not about FOSS.

Lets be honest folks: The ONLY reason why everyone is using embedded Linux and not BSD is thanks to TiVo showing the corporate world the GPL V2 loophole, that magically lets them turn all the hard work the embedded Linux guys have done (which is frankly pretty far ahead of BSD in embedded tools and design) and with a wave of the wand poof! Its suddenly BSD for all the good the GPL did. I mean who gives a crap if they give you the source if the machine won't let you run it without the corp's permission?

So while I'm glad that all the hard work those guys put in have paid off with 1 second booting, if they are releasing under GPL V2 they may as well have not bothered. If they want to release under BSD then do so, but if they want the protections that GPL offers they damned well better be under GPL V3, because otherwise this is just a license for the megacorps to shamelessly rip away. So let the arguing commence!

Tom:

Tell your woman to get her own damned Slashdot account.

That is all.

Please read my slashdot profile.

Or you could read this article from linuxinsider:

On the other hand: "The holiday season is coming, so I suspect I'll be giving a couple of blu-ray players as presents," offered Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site.

That is all;--p

-- Barbie

You want specifics? Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it...Out of the 4 machines I set up, here is what was broken either on first install or broken upon update, ready? ATI Nvidia GPUs, Realtek sound (1 AC97 the other the new HD) 1 Realtek and 2 SiS networking slots, and the Broadcom, which is the most popular by far on laptops? Never did get that fucking thing to work right. Oh and the Sigma sound took nearly 2 days worth of after hours bullshit to get working, only to be completely FUBARed when it updated. Yeah, thanks Ubuntu. Linux for humans my ass.

As for "Embrace the power of CLI"? I can't remember which forum I got THAT brilliant piece of advice from, but here is something similar. And I quote ""CLI is frankly too strange and complex to the users Linux must attract in order to gain market share." What do you call using Start, Run in the windows environment? This premise the Linux need to be dumb down to get expansion is unfounded. Prior to the Windows GUI we had Dos and a lot of non Techie types ( like myself) found their way. A GUI makes things easy no disagreement here but lets stop with the dumbing down effect. It was this dumbing down effect that lead to virus and spyware that has infested the windows world. Please we need to be creating smarter users not more Techies "

Now do you know what a NORMAL person, one that doesn't find spending all day staring at a terminal "fun" is gonna say to that bullshit? "How much is Windows Home again?". Look don't blame me if your community is bound and determined to keep Linux at last place, I have NO control over you people. I was asked to write an article about what it would take to get Linux out of last place, and I did only to get the same BS responses we have been seeing from the Linux community for the last DECADE.

So if it is all just a troll, oh wise one, answer me these questions: Why will NO retailer in USA touch your product with a 100 foot pole huh? They could make more profit without the MSFT tax, I personally pay on average $100 more per PC simply in fees. so why won't we touch your product? Why are you in DEAD LAST, hell even Win2K which is EOL is beating you, on the desktop, even when you give it away? Why? Give you a hint, it is NOT a "massive conspiracy" involving money trucks from Redmond. It is because your user experience sucks ass, that's why! God forbid you making ANYTHING easy for the user, oh fuck no! God forbid there should be simple fucking GUIs or a stable ABI so every update don't make the thing fall down like a house of cards!

But don't worry, after seeing all the complete delusional behavior, the total denial of the situation, and the venomous hatred spewed towards anyone whose says there is a problem (notice that even though I have been nothing but honest EVERY post in this thread is automatically modded down? Gotta love that Linux groupthink!) I have decided to simply avoid your product like an STD and have blocked the Linux section from my RSS. You can stay here and go "Gee isn't Linux swell, and Ubuntu is the bestest!" all day long, and pat yourself on the back for the 400th text editor, meanwhile the rest of the planet will ignore you like the Amiga guys. It has been 15 YEARS and you are STILL DEAD LAST. Wake the fuck up and find out what you need to do to sell your product!!!!!

You want specifics? Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it...Out of the 4 machines I set up, here is what was broken either on first install or broken upon update, ready? ATI Nvidia GPUs, Realtek sound (1 AC97 the other the new HD) 1 Realtek and 2 SiS networking slots, and the Broadcom, which is the most popular by far on laptops? Never did get that fucking thing to work right. Oh and the Sigma sound took nearly 2 days worth of after hours bullshit to get working, only to be completely FUBARed when it updated. Yeah, thanks Ubuntu. Linux for humans my ass.

As for "Embrace the power of CLI"? I can't remember which forum I got THAT brilliant piece of advice from, but here is something similar. And I quote ""CLI is frankly too strange and complex to the users Linux must attract in order to gain market share." What do you call using Start, Run in the windows environment? This premise the Linux need to be dumb down to get expansion is unfounded. Prior to the Windows GUI we had Dos and a lot of non Techie types ( like myself) found their way. A GUI makes things easy no disagreement here but lets stop with the dumbing down effect. It was this dumbing down effect that lead to virus and spyware that has infested the windows world. Please we need to be creating smarter users not more Techies "

Now do you know what a NORMAL person, one that doesn't find spending all day staring at a terminal "fun" is gonna say to that bullshit? "How much is Windows Home again?". Look don't blame me if your community is bound and determined to keep Linux at last place, I have NO control over you people. I was asked to write an article about what it would take to get Linux out of last place, and I did only to get the same BS responses we have been seeing from the Linux community for the last DECADE.

So if it is all just a troll, oh wise one, answer me these questions: Why will NO retailer in USA touch your product with a 100 foot pole huh? They could make more profit without the MSFT tax, I personally pay on average $100 more per PC simply in fees. so why won't we touch your product? Why are you in DEAD LAST, hell even Win2K which is EOL is beating you, on the desktop, even when you give it away? Why? Give you a hint, it is NOT a "massive conspiracy" involving money trucks from Redmond. It is because your user experience sucks ass, that's why! God forbid you making ANYTHING easy for the user, oh fuck no! God forbid there should be simple fucking GUIs or a stable ABI so every update don't make the thing fall down like a house of cards!

But don't worry, after seeing all the complete delusional behavior, the total denial of the situation, and the venomous hatred spewed towards anyone whose says there is a problem (notice that even though I have been nothing but honest EVERY post in this thread is automatically modded down? Gotta love that Linux groupthink!) I have decided to simply avoid your product like an STD and have blocked the Linux section from my RSS. You can stay here and go "Gee isn't Linux swell, and Ubuntu is the bestest!" all day long, and pat yourself on the back for the 400th text editor, meanwhile the rest of the planet will ignore you like the Amiga guys. It has been 15 YEARS and you are STILL DEAD LAST. Wake the fuck up and find out what you need to do to sell your product!!!!!

I'm being a troll and Ubuntu works perfectly, really? Answer me this and answer TRUTHFULLY: when you upgraded from Ubuntu 9 to 10, did ALL the hardware continue to work, with NO errors? Because I'm betting that answer is hell no. FACT: The lifecycle in most distros, including Ubuntu, is incredibly short. Bug fixes are usually only ported to the latest and greatest, so staying on an older release is a PITA and potentially dangerous security wise. FACT: Thanks to EXTREMELY poor QA and relying on volunteers for shit you should NEVER rely on volunteers for, like drivers, the odds of you going from say Ubuntu 8 to Ubuntu 9.04 and not having hardware get fucked is practically ZERO. FACT: thanks to lack of a real hardware ABI (something Apple and MSFT have had for practically forever) drivers can, do, and often will bite it hard hard on upgrades. Meanwhile thanks to the 10 year lifecycle average on windows the odds are the hardware will be in the dumpster before it goes out of support, same with OSX and how they supported the old G4s for quite awhile.

I'm sorry, but if I was a troll I'd be posting links to RMS eating toe cheese, not practically holding up signs saying "Please fix this!" and hoping that sometime someone will actually listen. Hell I even wrote an article for LinuxInsider pointing out what as a retailer I'd need to sell your product. What I got was "Those are great ideas, you should go do that". Right, like I'm gonna close up my shop, spend 5 years and God knows how much getting a CS degree so that I can completely program my own distro and set up a giant web based business for...what exactly? when I can just sell windows and OSX and save myself about 6 years of classes and countless headaches?

Maybe one day someone will listen, maybe one day someone will come along and do for Linux what Jobs did for BSD and NeXT. But considering the Linux community's answer to everything is "La la la, I can't hear you, you must be a troll or a shill for teh man!" I seriously doubt it. enjoy your non existent desktop numbers, but don't say those of us in retail never tried to point out the problems that needed addressed, you simply refused to listen and instead spent your time on bling and yet another text editor. Sad.

Oh and your big anecdote is you bought something built for the Asian market and it didn't work in the USA? Then you might be shocked to learn you can't buy DVDs there either. Its called region lockout and has nothing to do with windows, and everything to do with companies charging different prices for different markets. Sheesh.

I'm afraid you are falling for the "Why don't you bundle" trap, and while it might sound logical at first glance, unless your last name is Dell it is doomed to failure. The shop down the street tried it, I have a nice selection of parts I got at their going out of business sale. You see the average Joe don't know jack shit about economies of scale, and frankly they don't care. They want to know why they have printers for $35 at Walmart and why yours costs $80. Not to mention thanks to the breakneck pace of tech anything you buy for X today is worth X-y in a couple of weeks, so you quickly find keeping large inventories is a losing game.

And while I have no doubt your hardware story is true, believe me it is NOT typical. And how much CLI do you use when a new release comes out? In fact when was the last time you used Bash? This week? Today? If the answer is "at all" then I'm afraid it is a fail, since every instance of you using bash would equal the machine coming to me, and my having to fix it on my own time or burn the customer, since as I said home users don't buy support contracts. that also doesn't count all the times they go buy something at Walmart and then YOU have to tell them "Sorry, you just lost your money. Have a nice day!" Believe me, that doesn't go over well with customers. Just try looking up say...the top 20 peripherals on Walmart.com on Ubuntu forums. You'll find that MAYBE 30% have support, if you count "support" as "Put in this three pages of CLI, tweak the hell out of it, and maybe it'll work. But probably not"

The problem with Linux is this: it is great for geeks and DIY types, but how many of the general pop is that? Not very many, which is why Linux numbers are so low. If you want to get the numbers (which you do, because even 10% would mean that companies would have to support you and things would be better for everyone) that OSX has these problems will have to be addressed, but instead of the OS adapting to the customers you either get nicely (like you) or rudely (Like RTFM Winfag!) that instead YOU should adapt to the OS. I'm sorry but that won't happen in a million years. As I said I figured up the hours I spent in bash on a single machine and it quickly added up to more than a copy of Windows Home. That made Linux a losing money proposition for me. But Linux needs retailers if it is gonna succeed, and it simply won't get them staying on its current course. It is too CLI and server centric for a desktop.

If you would like to read it I wrote an article expanding on the subject, but even then the only answers I got was "DIY" like I am gonna shut down my business, build a distro, and set up my own websites promoting Linux...for what? The goodwill of the community? I'm sure that would pay my rent. And that is the problem, most folks don't care about "free as in freedom" and only care about having their PC work consistently. And despite the FUD for a good 90% of the population Windows works. To get those folks to switch you're gonna have to do better than "it's free" because Windows is free to them too so you need to be easier, faster, and better. Right now IMHO Linux just isn't. Sorry. And you watch, even though we are both being civil and stating our convictions I'll probably be modded for daring to say anything other than "Gee isn't Linux swell? It sure is!". But how are the problems ever gonna get fixed if nobody talks about them?

So the phone OS with the biggest worldwide marketshare (and by quite a margin) is a "goner"? Because you said so?

Well, technically Nokia says so, but what would they know about phones?

How was I "quoting facts"? I said that compared to Linux desktops the adoption rate of BSD desktops must be tiny. You can buy Linux based desktops from Dell, HP, pretty much all the major OEMs have at least SOME kind of Linux desktop that you can buy. Do these major OEMs sell BSD desktops? No, they do not. Since OEMs do not sell machines that they know nobody will buy one can reasonably assume there is a market for those.

And how is any of the problems associated with having a tiny niche not a basic fact? One does not need a peer reviewed journal to have some basic common sense. Less popular = less exposure, Less Exposure = fewer people contributing code, Fewer people working on a project when faced with competition means more likely to fall behind said competition. How is ANY of that not the most basic of common sense?

Look, I have nothing at all against BSD. I wish them all the luck and fortune in the world. But perhaps more so than at any point in computer history the technology is exploding all around us. In just the past few years we have gone from single to dual to quad cores becoming cheap and affordable to the masses (I have a new 925 quad AMD being delivered on Monday. Cost a whole $140), The GPU has frankly become so powerful it is scary, with stream processing, GPGPU capabilities, and now from the AMD/ATI roadmap it looks like multiple GPUs will soon be the norm, We have gone from ATA to SATA to SATA II to SSD, frankly it is an incredible time to be alive.

But one would have to be frankly insane to not realize that trying to support this exploding technological landscape will be difficult even for companies with billions in R&D. Just read this on Linuxinsider of all places where developers of Windows 7 admit that many of the problems they had with Vista was due to their not being prepared for the rapid adoption of multiple cores and the problems with scaling. Now add to that the fact that nearly all *BSD adoption I have ever seen, or as ever been written about here on Slashdot has NOT been desktops but in devices such as PBXs, routers, etc, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that most companies that are contributing to BSD are most likely doing so in very niche areas.

So I stand by my questions. Does BSD have enough resources coming in to adapt to the changing landscape? Can they build enough buzz with their much smaller marketshare to keep developers interested in the platform? With the incredible advances in hardware do they have enough manpower to keep up, or are they falling behind the tech curve? These are legitimate questions that I would like to see asked to the heads of the various BSDs. And since Slashdot has many of those same people that come here to lurk, why not ask these questions here?