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I think it is. But such a floating habitat on Venus might also be called a Zhitomirsky habitat, after Sergei Zhitomirsky. http://archivsf.narod.ru/1929/...

I'd suggest reading some David Lewis and Saul Kripke. This topic of who is the real "you" has been elaborated upon in fantastic detail :)

It has also been laid out in dramatic and exciting detail by John Varley in The Phantom of Kansas [Galaxy Feb 1976].

The old tube tape recorder I mentioned is a low quality device, probably even for its time. And yes, the Beatles and similar (essentially, the music that was produced and originally released as mono) sound better for me with the added distortion and limited frequency range. Maybe because it was mastered with a device like mine in mind (since it is similar to what people would have used to play their brand new records and tapes) maybe it's because I like the "different" sound for some music.

On the other hand, the tube heaphone amp I built sound more like a transistor amp and does not have that much distortion or limited frequency range.

This one, specifically:

http://www.sivatherium.narod.r...

Far from hard sci-fi but an entertaining read for sure.

Would you like citations? Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. How about no browser acceleration for Linux (but yes to Windows) because X is too fucking buggy? Not good enough? How about the head of OSNews having Ubuntu shit itself because..gasp..he tried to do TWO things at once! Still not famous enough? How about one of the fathers of the FOSS movement having to spend hours on what takes seconds in Windows?

At the end of the day if EVERY SINGLE RETAILER ON THE PLANET avoids your product like an STD even though it would allegedly save them piles of money? Then the problem isn't a conspiracy, its the simple fact that YOUR PRODUCT SUCKS. Want more links? How about over 200 current show stopping bugs with all major hardware from realtek to Nvidia? And I've found the "much vaunted" hardware "support" ends up being a bunch of bullshit and half baked crap so yet again point for Windows.

At the end of the day there is a REALLY easy way to prove this one way or the other, put your money where your mouth is and take the Hairyfeet challenge and post the video of you taking the challenge to YouTube. But of course you won't because you'd find out the truth, that even with only having HALF the Windows support cycle Linux FAILS. Linux...good for servers and embedded, deep fried ass on the desktop.

Sounds like something out of a Dougal Dixon book.

Tried it, Mint FAILED, the wireless and the sound were completely trashed by the end. It was a bog standard dell inspiron BTW.

In the end you simply can't change one simple fact: Linux is like the shifting sand, everything from the kernel up is in a constant state of flux so drivers and subsystems get shat on all the time. Look at what DE, sound subsystem, and what kernel Mint was using in Jan 07 and what they are using now, we are probably looking at a good dozen plus revs in between jan 07 and today. How many kernels did Vista go through? Sound subsystems? DEs?

But you go right ahead and try it, because I already have tried it with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora (I knew that one was hopeless but I had a FOSSie that insisted I use it because he thought anything by RH was God), Sabayon, PCLOS, and Mandriva. Not a SINGLE ONE, not one, came out the other end with 100% working software and drivers, not one.

And I don't know what you are smoking but you haven't need any CLI for setup or install of Windows since Windows 9x, in fact Win 7 will even download and install all the drivers through WU for you during install if you like. Meanwhile here is a list of all the major showstoppers currently in Linux, please not the date at the top of the page. Also not the blue words which are links to the proof by Linux sites such as Phrononix, not some random guy's blogs. These are respectable Linux sites pointing out serious issues with drivers and software yet if you check out the original list from 3 years ago you'll see that not only is more than half of the issues from 3 years ago STILL there, but they have simply added new bugs and new issues on top of the old.

I'm sorry but there is a REASON why Linux can't break out past 1%, that is because it simply fails at such trivial tasks like updates so badly due to its fragmented nature of design.

Tried it, Mint FAILED, the wireless and the sound were completely trashed by the end. It was a bog standard dell inspiron BTW.

In the end you simply can't change one simple fact: Linux is like the shifting sand, everything from the kernel up is in a constant state of flux so drivers and subsystems get shat on all the time. Look at what DE, sound subsystem, and what kernel Mint was using in Jan 07 and what they are using now, we are probably looking at a good dozen plus revs in between jan 07 and today. How many kernels did Vista go through? Sound subsystems? DEs?

But you go right ahead and try it, because I already have tried it with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora (I knew that one was hopeless but I had a FOSSie that insisted I use it because he thought anything by RH was God), Sabayon, PCLOS, and Mandriva. Not a SINGLE ONE, not one, came out the other end with 100% working software and drivers, not one.

And I don't know what you are smoking but you haven't need any CLI for setup or install of Windows since Windows 9x, in fact Win 7 will even download and install all the drivers through WU for you during install if you like. Meanwhile here is a list of all the major showstoppers currently in Linux, please not the date at the top of the page. Also not the blue words which are links to the proof by Linux sites such as Phrononix, not some random guy's blogs. These are respectable Linux sites pointing out serious issues with drivers and software yet if you check out the original list from 3 years ago you'll see that not only is more than half of the issues from 3 years ago STILL there, but they have simply added new bugs and new issues on top of the old.

I'm sorry but there is a REASON why Linux can't break out past 1%, that is because it simply fails at such trivial tasks like updates so badly due to its fragmented nature of design.

How about dozens of show stoppers, would that work? Well here ya go and here is the page from 3 years ago so you can compare. Hell even one of the developers of Red Hat says trhe current "let the devs do it" is made of fail and the problems he list are damned near identical to mine, too many drivers and too few devs equal no QA and QC so buggy shit gets shoved out the door, so I really don't know how much more proof one needs besides the fact that every major OEM and BB retailer has tried your product and now treats Linux like a pox upon their houses, never to be mentioned again, why? because unlike Internet sellers they actually have to support the products they sell, and the mess that is Linux makes that a losing proposition.

How about dozens of show stoppers, would that work? Well here ya go and here is the page from 3 years ago so you can compare. Hell even one of the developers of Red Hat says trhe current "let the devs do it" is made of fail and the problems he list are damned near identical to mine, too many drivers and too few devs equal no QA and QC so buggy shit gets shoved out the door, so I really don't know how much more proof one needs besides the fact that every major OEM and BB retailer has tried your product and now treats Linux like a pox upon their houses, never to be mentioned again, why? because unlike Internet sellers they actually have to support the products they sell, and the mess that is Linux makes that a losing proposition.

Waste your mod points guys, it won't change reality and reality is this...In Linux you just changed the registry for...dum dum dum...INI files shat all over the place! Yes that is SO much better, lets just shit INI files all over the place, THAT'S the ticket!

Riddle me this..is there an EASY way to restore one of those INI files if it gets fucked? like maybe a simple keypress that would...oh i don't know...restore the last known good config perhaps? There isn't? How about a way to just send someone an INI file that will fix a particular problem they are having just by going "clicky clicky" and not having to put in an assload of CLI, like say how I can reset the windows sound server with a 14Kb reg file? There isn't?

Sorry but going back to the days of Win 3.x is NOT progress, its regress. Of course as long as Torvalds is running the show frankly nothing will change hell the man even says "let the devs do it" when it comes to drivers which THE MATH DON'T WORK because you have x number of devs and X+YYYYYYY number of drivers, but suuure, you call that progress all you want. that's why all the B&Ms carry...oh wait a tick, nobody sells Linux systems but online..I wonder why that is? perhaps because they don't have to support the creaky mess once it goes out the door?

But at the end of the day nobody cares about "freedom! (TM)" when it comes to OSes, they really really don't. if they did Apple wouldn't have lines around the block for their latest iDevice and MSFT wouldn't be able to sell millions of a turkey like Win 8. at the end of the day you either make a good product or STFU, Linux has tons of show stoppers but rather than ADMIT those problems and fix them instead you expect the world to do things YOUR way, to embrace CLI (Protip: It ain't 1979 anymore, let go of the fucking command line you damned nerd, its a desktop NOT a server) and deal with everything being like the shifting sand. Instead now that the antitrust is over MSFT can just lock that shit down and since you never made a compelling product nobody will care that you are locked out.

But what to me is fucking sad is you have had OVER HALF A DECADE to pull your collective heads out your asses and compete, Ballmer is a pathetic CEO and if you would have made even a halfway decent product the OEMs would have been happy to get away from iSteve 2.0, instead it was the same nerdish circle jerking and elitist bullshit and surprise! The OEMs will put up with iBallmer rather than deal with you. If the fact that Ballmer keeps raising the prices and fucking over the OEMs trying to ape Apple and they'd STILL rather deal with that instead of you don't smack you with a cluebat nothing will. this is why I've blocked Linux articles, go tired of the bullshit and the batshit crazy...you can keep your "freedom", I'd rather have a product that works, thanks anyway.

Ohhh, did the poor wittle FOSSie get his panties in a wad this morning? And its kind of sad that FOSS attracts total fucking retards like yourself (Protip: Don't go full retard) or else you would have known I've been BASHING THE FUCK OUT OF WIN 8 YOU DIPSHIT which kind of makes it pretty hard to be a fanboi (like you so obviously are) or shill when I'M BASHING THE LATEST PRODUCT AS GARBAGE

And hey dipshit, you no able to read? how about You read the specs and compare because by the pathetic thing you call logic why then a G3 from 1997 is cutting edge, why it has a PPC chip too...right?

so go back to jerking over a Bash script FOSSie, nobody wants your shitty OS nor cares, BTW how is the marketshare? oh that is right..its been flatline for years. could it be the fact that even a Red hat dev says its a disaster or the fact that full of show stopping bugs that go back years? Nahh, that couldn't be it, why it has the blessing of the great and always classy RMS!

Ohhh, did the poor wittle FOSSie get his panties in a wad this morning? And its kind of sad that FOSS attracts total fucking retards like yourself (Protip: Don't go full retard) or else you would have known I've been BASHING THE FUCK OUT OF WIN 8 YOU DIPSHIT which kind of makes it pretty hard to be a fanboi (like you so obviously are) or shill when I'M BASHING THE LATEST PRODUCT AS GARBAGE

And hey dipshit, you no able to read? how about You read the specs and compare because by the pathetic thing you call logic why then a G3 from 1997 is cutting edge, why it has a PPC chip too...right?

so go back to jerking over a Bash script FOSSie, nobody wants your shitty OS nor cares, BTW how is the marketshare? oh that is right..its been flatline for years. could it be the fact that even a Red hat dev says its a disaster or the fact that full of show stopping bugs that go back years? Nahh, that couldn't be it, why it has the blessing of the great and always classy RMS!

Please enjoy this list of show stopping bugs

You cannot access the following Web address:
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html

The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Personal Pages

Firewalled off here, but if all you can link to is a personal page, your argument is pretty damned weak. I'll have a look at it when I get home, but I've run across no "show stoppers".

Meanwhile the rest of us can run brand new and decade old software, hell you can even run Vista drivers on 7,and it all "just works". Can YOU do that?

Not only can, but do. By superior I mean more hardware-fault tolerant; flacky hardware makes Windows flaky, Linux purrs along until the hardware breaks completely. I mean having more features -- when I decide to shut my Linux box down, it comes up with all the open apps and documents reopened. You can't do that in Windows, and with its necessity of being rebooted with every patch (unlike Linux) it really needs this missing feature.

Linux can use movies and animation for wallpaper. Windows can't.

Linux can "remember" a default log-in password. Windows can't without a registry hack.

Linux is compatible with Unix, Mac, BSD. Windows is compatible with nothing -- I'd call that defective by design, because MS doesn't want it to be compatible; they want to hold on to their desktop monopoly and Windows monoculture.

XP gets EOL this year. Meanwhile, the old Mandrake is still secure.

Your FUD is bullshit, but I understand why Linux threatens you: you earn your money from Windows' poor designs and ease of infection. I might, too, if I was in your place, but I earn no money when I fix Windows woes for folks.

If by "superior" you mean BROKEN then we are in agreement. Please enjoy this list of show stopping bugs and then compare it to the same list from THREE YEARS AGO... notice how many are still on there? And your own "fix it" does NOT work, as the previous version requires kernel foo 3.2 and the distros are now on bar 4.2...thanks again to the totally fucked up way Linus and the devs tied every damned thing to the kernel...great job guys.

Meanwhile the rest of us can run brand new and decade old software, hell you can even run Vista drivers on 7,and it all "just works". Can YOU do that? Nope because the fundamental design is BROKEN, and Linus knows it and really doesn't care. He is making money off it, he can do whatever he wants, so he really doesn't care. The mistake Canonical made was using Linux at all, they should have went BSD like Apple did to where they could maintain some control. Instead they dove into the monkey house and got poo flung on them...yeah, can't say I'm surprised they will join Corel, and Xandros, and Linspire, Linus built an OS that is now devoted to servers and as a desktop? Sorry but it sucks, it really does.

If by "superior" you mean BROKEN then we are in agreement. Please enjoy this list of show stopping bugs and then compare it to the same list from THREE YEARS AGO... notice how many are still on there? And your own "fix it" does NOT work, as the previous version requires kernel foo 3.2 and the distros are now on bar 4.2...thanks again to the totally fucked up way Linus and the devs tied every damned thing to the kernel...great job guys.

Meanwhile the rest of us can run brand new and decade old software, hell you can even run Vista drivers on 7,and it all "just works". Can YOU do that? Nope because the fundamental design is BROKEN, and Linus knows it and really doesn't care. He is making money off it, he can do whatever he wants, so he really doesn't care. The mistake Canonical made was using Linux at all, they should have went BSD like Apple did to where they could maintain some control. Instead they dove into the monkey house and got poo flung on them...yeah, can't say I'm surprised they will join Corel, and Xandros, and Linspire, Linus built an OS that is now devoted to servers and as a desktop? Sorry but it sucks, it really does.

Back in the eighties I spent 6 years in Udachny (see the nick?) What are and were near 20,000 people doing so far north? Why was there an underground nuclear explosion there? Diamonds. For the longest time that place supplied 80% of Soviet and then Russian diamonds. Udachny is the deepest open diamond mine at 610 meters. The largest diamond in Russia was found there on the 23 of December 1980. It was 48x36x25 mm, at 342.5ct, it was very clear, yellow stone.

  Some pictures.

Russia is full of diamonds, but mostly they are small, used to make drill bits, parts of machines.

No one is gonna call the article a troll or shill for pointing out a serious problem? I'm shocked! In the end the problem with Linux is NOT the UIs, or any of the pretty on top, in fact in many ways they have surpassed Windows and OSX in those areas.

Nope, the same damned problem that plagued Linux 10 years ago STILL plagues it to this very day, and it all comes down to drivers and kernel devs constantly futzing with low level internals with nary a thought to QA, QC, or backwards compatibility. Whether anyone likes it or not SOME backwards compatibility IS required, because most software companies and ODMs aren't gonna pay a team of devs to constantly rebuild their products because some kernel dev got an itch.

For proof I direct you to this page of over 100 show stopping bugs which just FYI but every. single. bug. has links showing that yes this IS a problem and its not just one person's opinion or experience and damned near every. single. problem. on that list can be traced by to devs fucking with internals and breaking shit. Now compare that page to the same page from 3 years ago and see how much has NOT been fixed in over 3 years.

All the DE wars, Gnome 2 VS Gnome Shell and KDE 3 VS KDE 4? That's all turd polishing because if the guts are constantly breaking nobody will care about the pretty and as long as the devs are given carte blanche to fiddle with anything without a thought about what its doing to the stability of the overall ecosystem things just won't get better.

That is why I had such high hopes for Ubuntu, I had hope that Shuttleworth would do like Google did with Android and just fork the thing away from the devs so that real stability and central management could be brought to bare instead of the cat herding we have now, but it was not to be.

Linux has beautiful UIs, and tons of software, but retailers like myself won't ever touch your product if we install it on a system and 6 months later its broken its own drivers because some dev got a bee in his butt to futz with some low level system files and trashed my customer's WiFi or sound...ohh God sound, WTF were they thinking with Pulse?

No one is gonna call the article a troll or shill for pointing out a serious problem? I'm shocked! In the end the problem with Linux is NOT the UIs, or any of the pretty on top, in fact in many ways they have surpassed Windows and OSX in those areas.

Nope, the same damned problem that plagued Linux 10 years ago STILL plagues it to this very day, and it all comes down to drivers and kernel devs constantly futzing with low level internals with nary a thought to QA, QC, or backwards compatibility. Whether anyone likes it or not SOME backwards compatibility IS required, because most software companies and ODMs aren't gonna pay a team of devs to constantly rebuild their products because some kernel dev got an itch.

For proof I direct you to this page of over 100 show stopping bugs which just FYI but every. single. bug. has links showing that yes this IS a problem and its not just one person's opinion or experience and damned near every. single. problem. on that list can be traced by to devs fucking with internals and breaking shit. Now compare that page to the same page from 3 years ago and see how much has NOT been fixed in over 3 years.

All the DE wars, Gnome 2 VS Gnome Shell and KDE 3 VS KDE 4? That's all turd polishing because if the guts are constantly breaking nobody will care about the pretty and as long as the devs are given carte blanche to fiddle with anything without a thought about what its doing to the stability of the overall ecosystem things just won't get better.

That is why I had such high hopes for Ubuntu, I had hope that Shuttleworth would do like Google did with Android and just fork the thing away from the devs so that real stability and central management could be brought to bare instead of the cat herding we have now, but it was not to be.

Linux has beautiful UIs, and tons of software, but retailers like myself won't ever touch your product if we install it on a system and 6 months later its broken its own drivers because some dev got a bee in his butt to futz with some low level system files and trashed my customer's WiFi or sound...ohh God sound, WTF were they thinking with Pulse?

If your work gave you an XP laptop frankly you are working at a shitty place and I'd tell them to take it back, especially after that guy spent nearly 3 years trying to clear his name thanks to a badly configured XP laptop handed him at work that turned out to have a backdoor that some scumbags were using to run CP through the thing.

But again you wanna compare to a 12 year old OS then dig out a 12 year old Linux distro, because otherwise you are purposely trying to rig any comparison. You are talking about an OS that has been legacy for over 5 years, that no longer gets ANY updates but security, and which hasn't been sold for half a decade so fair is fair, compare it to a 7 year old Linux.

At the end of the day that doesn't change the fact that Linux internals are deep fried ass and I'd be happy to take the pepsi challenge to prove it. funny that I have yet to see a single person try to take up the challenge either, probably because they know Linux will die hard.

The challenge is incredibly simple, we will take ANY distro that was released the same quarter as Vista, and I will give Linux the advantage by taking not only one of the most hated OSes but by giving them only HALF the amount of updates XP has had, we'll install it on two identical systems, make sure all the drivers are working, and update BOTH systems to current.

And I can tell you because I have done it that the Linux unit will be totally fucked by the end of the updates. The sound won't work, the DE is more than likely to be glitching if the graphics drivers are even functional, and the WiFi won't have a snowball's chance in hell, I don't care which chip you choose. that is just FIVE years mind you, barely half the time you get with Windows.

I'm sorry but as a wise man said "Linux is free..if your time is worthless" and no truer words have been spoken. Take a modern version of Windows like 7 and you can slap it on ANY laptop made in the last half a decade and upgrade from RTM to the last patches from patch Tuesday and it will ALL work, every. single. driver. will be functional, including wireless and printers. Try that with Linux? You get a broken mess, why? because Torvalds and the other devs frankly don't give a damned if YOU have problems, all they care about is scratching THEIR itches.

Since the FOSS koolaid drinkers modded it down you might not have seen it so I urge you to take a look at this list filled with show stopping bugs (with links) and compare it to to the same list from three years ago and see how many haven't been fixed after THREE years. Hell go to the Ubuntu bug tracker, they have bugs SIX years old. Maybe you'd like a Linux dev's thoughts on the subject so here is a RH dev and he says the desktop is "suckage" and while his take is different than a retailer it all comes down to basically the same thing, devs biting off more than they can chew and designs that worked 20 years ago but don't work now being hung on to.

So we retailers have a DAMNED GOOD reason why we won't touch Linux with a 50 foot pole, and I have a reason to be kinda pissy about it, because I'm tired of being lied right to my face with total bullshit about how "Linux is ready for the desktop!" yet when I point out obvious problems, documented up the ass I might add, I get the same parroted "use distro X!" "Works for me!" and "You must be an M$ Shill" retarded garbage. Frankly if Linux wasn't free it would be deader than BeOS right now, and rightly so. The devs engage in Mickey Mouse Amateur hour shit when it comes to the internals, NO stability, NO ABIs, NO QA or QC, yet because its "Free as in freedum!" the community will happily take their crap and bitch at anyone who points out emperor RMS is running around bare assed. Well if it actually worked why is ALL the B

If your work gave you an XP laptop frankly you are working at a shitty place and I'd tell them to take it back, especially after that guy spent nearly 3 years trying to clear his name thanks to a badly configured XP laptop handed him at work that turned out to have a backdoor that some scumbags were using to run CP through the thing.

But again you wanna compare to a 12 year old OS then dig out a 12 year old Linux distro, because otherwise you are purposely trying to rig any comparison. You are talking about an OS that has been legacy for over 5 years, that no longer gets ANY updates but security, and which hasn't been sold for half a decade so fair is fair, compare it to a 7 year old Linux.

At the end of the day that doesn't change the fact that Linux internals are deep fried ass and I'd be happy to take the pepsi challenge to prove it. funny that I have yet to see a single person try to take up the challenge either, probably because they know Linux will die hard.

The challenge is incredibly simple, we will take ANY distro that was released the same quarter as Vista, and I will give Linux the advantage by taking not only one of the most hated OSes but by giving them only HALF the amount of updates XP has had, we'll install it on two identical systems, make sure all the drivers are working, and update BOTH systems to current.

And I can tell you because I have done it that the Linux unit will be totally fucked by the end of the updates. The sound won't work, the DE is more than likely to be glitching if the graphics drivers are even functional, and the WiFi won't have a snowball's chance in hell, I don't care which chip you choose. that is just FIVE years mind you, barely half the time you get with Windows.

I'm sorry but as a wise man said "Linux is free..if your time is worthless" and no truer words have been spoken. Take a modern version of Windows like 7 and you can slap it on ANY laptop made in the last half a decade and upgrade from RTM to the last patches from patch Tuesday and it will ALL work, every. single. driver. will be functional, including wireless and printers. Try that with Linux? You get a broken mess, why? because Torvalds and the other devs frankly don't give a damned if YOU have problems, all they care about is scratching THEIR itches.

Since the FOSS koolaid drinkers modded it down you might not have seen it so I urge you to take a look at this list filled with show stopping bugs (with links) and compare it to to the same list from three years ago and see how many haven't been fixed after THREE years. Hell go to the Ubuntu bug tracker, they have bugs SIX years old. Maybe you'd like a Linux dev's thoughts on the subject so here is a RH dev and he says the desktop is "suckage" and while his take is different than a retailer it all comes down to basically the same thing, devs biting off more than they can chew and designs that worked 20 years ago but don't work now being hung on to.

So we retailers have a DAMNED GOOD reason why we won't touch Linux with a 50 foot pole, and I have a reason to be kinda pissy about it, because I'm tired of being lied right to my face with total bullshit about how "Linux is ready for the desktop!" yet when I point out obvious problems, documented up the ass I might add, I get the same parroted "use distro X!" "Works for me!" and "You must be an M$ Shill" retarded garbage. Frankly if Linux wasn't free it would be deader than BeOS right now, and rightly so. The devs engage in Mickey Mouse Amateur hour shit when it comes to the internals, NO stability, NO ABIs, NO QA or QC, yet because its "Free as in freedum!" the community will happily take their crap and bitch at anyone who points out emperor RMS is running around bare assed. Well if it actually worked why is ALL the B

You want an example? Would over 200 examples of broken guts, nearly all of which can be tied directly or indirectly to devs futzing with the internals be good enough? Would you like to compare it to the page from 3 years ago so you can see how much of it hasn't been fixed in three God damned years?

But of course you won't respond to this, nor the fact that the ONLY way Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the God damned planet BTW, can get Linux to fucking run even when dealing with a severely limited subselection of their offerings is to hire a team to run their own damned repo because otherwise the devs constantly shitting on internals leaves you with a device with NON WORKING DRIVERS...gee, where did I hear that? Why I believe it was me, pointing out that very same thing!

And frankly I have every right to be pissed, the community lies its fucking ass off and when caught in those lies what do we get? An apology maybe, or even some pressure brought to bare on the devs constantly breaking shit? Nope we get the standard "Works for me!" followed by a "U must be teh M$ Shill! U no suck teh koolaid!" horseshit. Quick what does MSI, Asus, Walmart, Best Buy, and me ALL have in common? Every one has offered your OS only to find its a broken mess with shit constantly breaking and now won't put your OS on shit for all the money in the world. Gee, wonder why that is? Could it be the after sales support thanks to devs crapping on the internals constantly makes it a money sucking pit? Nope, must be that invisible money truck Ballmer backs up to our door. yep, that's the ticket...dumbasses.

You want an example? Would over 200 examples of broken guts, nearly all of which can be tied directly or indirectly to devs futzing with the internals be good enough? Would you like to compare it to the page from 3 years ago so you can see how much of it hasn't been fixed in three God damned years?

But of course you won't respond to this, nor the fact that the ONLY way Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the God damned planet BTW, can get Linux to fucking run even when dealing with a severely limited subselection of their offerings is to hire a team to run their own damned repo because otherwise the devs constantly shitting on internals leaves you with a device with NON WORKING DRIVERS...gee, where did I hear that? Why I believe it was me, pointing out that very same thing!

And frankly I have every right to be pissed, the community lies its fucking ass off and when caught in those lies what do we get? An apology maybe, or even some pressure brought to bare on the devs constantly breaking shit? Nope we get the standard "Works for me!" followed by a "U must be teh M$ Shill! U no suck teh koolaid!" horseshit. Quick what does MSI, Asus, Walmart, Best Buy, and me ALL have in common? Every one has offered your OS only to find its a broken mess with shit constantly breaking and now won't put your OS on shit for all the money in the world. Gee, wonder why that is? Could it be the after sales support thanks to devs crapping on the internals constantly makes it a money sucking pit? Nope, must be that invisible money truck Ballmer backs up to our door. yep, that's the ticket...dumbasses.

Putting together a PC - or even a laptop - where all the chipsets and everything are known to work w/ Linux by itself is not a big deal. With some verification of the AVL, one can put that together, and it should work fine, which is what he seems to be describing.

But as humanrev mentioned, w/ Linux, it's either an all-or-nothing - it either works beautifully, or it simply doesn't work @ all. The worst problem in the past has been NIC and Wi-Fi, and if that doesn't work, one can't even go on forum hunts. Note that it's not just the PC - there is a question of which other hardware supports it OOTB. Printers, All-in-ones, webcams, and so on. With Windows, whenever you buy any hardware, you can be sure that it works w/ it (they are very specific about whether they work w/ XP, Vista, Windows 7 and so on). With Linux, one has to start w/ an assumption that it doesn't, unless the Linux AVL shows otherwise.

But what he is describing is the after-sale support. Installing Linux is not the big deal - the big deals are the facts that too often, one has to go to the CLI to fix issues. There is no telling which updates will break what else in the system. Linux doesn't have a rollback feature, similar to XP's System Restore. In fact, there is a whole slew of issues in Linux, pretty well described & summarized here. Essentially, it's these issues that are showstoppers for desktop Linux.

And isn't it funny how every single post other than yours is simply a "works for me!" followed by "U must be a shill!" Wow, really?

Linux drivers sucking balls is God damned legendary, even long time Linux admins admit the wireless is deep fried ass and didn't De Icaza have an article here not even a damned week ago talking about how he had fucking gave up on sound because of Pulse? Is the community THAT filled with religious zealotry that even pointing out the damned obvious is impossible?

Do all those that bitched want a list? How about a list of over 200 show stoppers damned near all of them in part or whole dealing with shitty drivers and updates crapping on said drivers? Here is the same list from three years ago so they can all see how many HAVE NOT BEEN FIXED IN THREE YEARS...but of course that can't be true! Why it works perfectly because RMS waves his magic pixie wand! Why having devs constantly crapping all over internals can't be a BAD thing, because they are just being free!

So its a hell of a lot more than "If it works OOTB then you're okay" because what works OOTB this week may be completely wiped out next week because some dev decided he thought some critical system file would be better if he changed some crucial element, fuck it if they can't take a joke.

The ONLY reason that Linux works in servers is companies spend millions of dollars on full time admins and fixes dealing with the broken shit and that is as completely opposite from the desktop market as one could possibly get! Because whether they like it or not we will NOT hire a team of full time devs to sit around maintaining our own repos because the devs can't quit breaking shit, which just FYI is the only way Dell can get Linux to work and we will NOT give away free lifetime support contracts or give away days of our time every 6 damned months when the devs have their annual crapping on the system.

If you think its perfectly fine to waste your time fixing what they break every 6 months, or are one of the VERY few who are using some system old enough nobody is futzing up the drivers? Well I'm glad, some people collect stamps, everyone needs a hobby. We do this FOR A LIVING and every time you crap all over the system it COSTS US MONEY, money that frankly works out to MORE than WIndows costs.

Quit taking crap sandwiches from the devs, bring some real stability and at least 7 years of ACTUAL support, not that crap like Ubuntu LTS which stands for "don't backport shit" (which just FYI but having software so damned tied to the system that it won't fucking run unless you have kernel foo is totally shitty coding, okay?) and we'll be happy to sell and support your product. But quit living on fantasy island where we have nothing better to do with our weekends than fix fucked up drivers and deal with angry users because some of us? Actually have lives.

And isn't it funny how every single post other than yours is simply a "works for me!" followed by "U must be a shill!" Wow, really?

Linux drivers sucking balls is God damned legendary, even long time Linux admins admit the wireless is deep fried ass and didn't De Icaza have an article here not even a damned week ago talking about how he had fucking gave up on sound because of Pulse? Is the community THAT filled with religious zealotry that even pointing out the damned obvious is impossible?

Do all those that bitched want a list? How about a list of over 200 show stoppers damned near all of them in part or whole dealing with shitty drivers and updates crapping on said drivers? Here is the same list from three years ago so they can all see how many HAVE NOT BEEN FIXED IN THREE YEARS...but of course that can't be true! Why it works perfectly because RMS waves his magic pixie wand! Why having devs constantly crapping all over internals can't be a BAD thing, because they are just being free!

So its a hell of a lot more than "If it works OOTB then you're okay" because what works OOTB this week may be completely wiped out next week because some dev decided he thought some critical system file would be better if he changed some crucial element, fuck it if they can't take a joke.

The ONLY reason that Linux works in servers is companies spend millions of dollars on full time admins and fixes dealing with the broken shit and that is as completely opposite from the desktop market as one could possibly get! Because whether they like it or not we will NOT hire a team of full time devs to sit around maintaining our own repos because the devs can't quit breaking shit, which just FYI is the only way Dell can get Linux to work and we will NOT give away free lifetime support contracts or give away days of our time every 6 damned months when the devs have their annual crapping on the system.

If you think its perfectly fine to waste your time fixing what they break every 6 months, or are one of the VERY few who are using some system old enough nobody is futzing up the drivers? Well I'm glad, some people collect stamps, everyone needs a hobby. We do this FOR A LIVING and every time you crap all over the system it COSTS US MONEY, money that frankly works out to MORE than WIndows costs.

Quit taking crap sandwiches from the devs, bring some real stability and at least 7 years of ACTUAL support, not that crap like Ubuntu LTS which stands for "don't backport shit" (which just FYI but having software so damned tied to the system that it won't fucking run unless you have kernel foo is totally shitty coding, okay?) and we'll be happy to sell and support your product. But quit living on fantasy island where we have nothing better to do with our weekends than fix fucked up drivers and deal with angry users because some of us? Actually have lives.

Ahhh the ever classic and ever useless "Works for me!" and it gets modded insightful, surprise. Well I have an old G3 running OSX and an AMD 6 core that runs Win 7, both "work for me!" so all operating systems must be perfect huh?

The sad part is Linux could be fixed easily, but not as long as Torvalds and his gang of old schoolers are at the helm. Fire Torvalds, lock down a solid API and ABI where breakage is not allowed for...lets say 7 years, that gives you a nice middle ground between OSX's 5 and Windows 10, get rid of X-Server for....frankly anything because its fine for enterprise but a client/server model on a single user desktop is just retarded, and lock down all system required code, DEs, sound, wireless, for a period of 6 years so that devs can't just keep cranking foo+1 without fixing foo, basically bring some stability and a set timetable to Linux. Oh and don't bring up LTS because as we've seen with Ubuntu LTS is a code word for "won't port shit" which simply the fact that you have to port fricking programs to make them work is a failwhale right there.

But hell if you won't listen to me how about one of the RH devs that has plenty of not nice things to say about the Linux desktop, or how about fixing this list of major Linux problems which if I were to put the original list up here and let you compare them you'd see about half of these are 3+ year old bugs...gentleman that is not acceptable.

If anyone wants Linux to give us a "third way" its me, MSFT gouging on licenses costs me around 40% of each sale and makes me keep prices higher than I'd like to cover the licenses. Hell I'd be happy to pay $25 a pop for Linux licenses to a desktop OS that actually worked and continued to work for a decade like Windows, but it just doesn't exist. You update and things break, they break because Torvalds and Co. treat the entire guts of Linux as their personal pet project. Well it ain't 1992 anymore Linus, time for you to quit screwing shit up because you feel like it. You have people depending on Linux now, its not supposed to be your hobby toy, time to grow up.

Seriously, what's the problem?

Here is a nice and detailed List of Major Linux Problems.

List had gems like this:
"(like core Win32 API - most Windows 95 applications still run fine in Windows 8 - that's 17 years of binary compatibility)" ...and then I knew the list was full of FUD

You do realize you just used the classic "works for me" completely worthless answer, yes? Well I have a B&W G3 and an AMD 6 core running Win 7 so OSX and Windows "works for me" so that means that ALL OSes must be just great, yes?

The problem is, and Torvalds can get pissy if he wants but it doesn't change reality, that with everything from the kernel on up constantly in a state of flux maintaining software and drivers for Linux costs waaay more money than it does for Windows and OSX so many simply won't bother. I mean how many drivers does Nvidia have to put up just to keep their GPUs running in Linux? Yet a WinXP driver written by them in 04 will run on XP now, their RTM Win 7 driver runs on 7 now, no need for Nvidia to futz with it.

If you would like some further reading I'd suggest this article by one of the RH devs that says the desktop is "suckage" and that Linux is paying for "mistakes made 10-20 years ago"...kinda like...well kinda exactly like what de Icaza said. Oh and if you'd like to see what is broken here is a list of over 200 problems with both software and drivers. Please note that this is the 2012 edition, I can provide a link to the original list and you can compare and see how many of those problems are over 3 years old now.

Seriously, what's the problem?

Here is a nice and detailed List of Major Linux Problems.

Really? My 8 year old PC runs just fine on Win 7, as does my nearly 5 year old desktop and now 2 year old laptop. Whether you wish to accept it or not thing HAVE gotten better, more power efficiency , less waste heat, but you trot out some CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that wasn't supported by the actual manufacturer and think that proves...what? that Linux devs really looove their dumpster diving?

Since you won't listen to me, how about listening to an actual Linux developer at Red hat no less, who says the desktop is "suckage" and in its death throes? Here you go friend or how about a list of over 200 serious breakages in Linux, complete with links to every. single. one. will that be enough? Here it is help thyself.

But keep right on deluding yourself into believing that supporting some old rare POS hardware that nobody owns nor cares about (including the OEM who has long abandoned it) makes your platform worthwhile, manwhile your OS is STILL stuck at 0.97 after 20 damned years of being given away. 20 years of being 100% free and that's the BEST you can do? If that doesn't smack you with a cluebat that Linux is going down the wrong path then frankly nothing short of Jesus descending from a cloud to smite Linus Torvalds will.

Sure they don't...until you update the thing and Linus takes a steaming dump all over your drivers! But don't take MY word for it, how about one of the Red Hat Developers who says the desktop is "suckage" and the entire system is broken? Are you claiming HE has a "bias" too? How about a list of things horribly broken in Linux and please note the date of the list is 2012 AND it has links to every. single. example. so you can check them for yourself.

I repeat if you are willing to put up with a broken driver model (and don't give us the "If they'll only open their specs!" excuse because the other two work just fine without specs which makes it YOUR problem not ours) and updates breaking shit like its Win9X all over again, or have a reason such as server management or programming to run Linux? Enjoy, wish you nothing but luck. But expecting the average user to deal with that shit is like telling them "Hey want a free TV?" and when they say yes you hand them a pile of transistors andsome breadboards and say "Good luck LOL!". Because while there are plenty of "friendly" distros frankly they don't STAY friendly, that is unless you are willing to disable ALL updates and risk the machine ending up a broken mess or a zombie because it isn't patched. And oh yes Linux DOES have malware, I'll be happy to wallpaper the page with links to it if you'd like.

Ubuntu 11 new enough for you? I ended up with two half ass working devices (as in "it works right now, cough and it won't") and one that supposedly was 'working" in the it would connect...as long as security wasn't anything you actually cared about on your wireless network.

Frankly I'm so God damned sick of FOSS zealots going "La la la no problems exist, its all candy and RMS in a dress passing flowers la la la" if I ever run into one on the street I'm just gonna bitchslap them, i swear to fricking God.

It is YOU and your type that continue to take the shit shoveled by the devs that make sure Linux doesn't go anywhere. if Linus "ego come and it won't go away" was working on a proprietary OS his ass would have been pink slipped so fast it'd make his head spin, but because the OS he works on is "free" that means he can crap in a box and nobody will say boo. if I hand you a sandwich that is 95% shit and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?

Hell even one of the Red Hat devs says Linux is in its death cries because of one bad move after another that has made the entire system a fucking mess, but will anybody listen? Nope, they'll just go "La la la" and then mod down anybody who points out emperor RMS is walking bare assed. If you'd like a list of fucked up shit here is a small one, only about two hundred major problems that just FYI many of which have been there for YEARS.

In the end I'll happily take the pepsi challenge with ANY user of Linux and LMAO when it falls down and goes Boom! Take any "normal" distro, don't give me that LTS bullshit because as we've seen with Ubuntu LTS means "see this list of things we fixed? Well fuck off, you can't have it unless you upgrade biotch" that was released at the same time as Win 7, install it clean, NO forum hunts or googling fixes allowed, and IF, which is a big fucking if, if you have the drivers working OOTB upgrade it to current and see what you are left with at the end. I can tell you because I've done it with over a dozen Linux distros and what you get is a pile of broken garbage, drivers fucked, programs gone to shit, its a mess. And don't try to pull that "Windows has to be installed clean too!" horseshit because you get TEN YEARS of updates minimum with windows, with Linux if you get a year and a half before doing the upgrade shuffle its a fucking miracle.

So far the ONLY one that has come close to passing the Hairyfeet challenge is RHEL which surprise! Costs $400 a year. Windows? $40 if you want Win 8, $80 if you want Win 7...kinda a BIG fricking difference there huh?

if you wanna push "free as in freedom!" or the whole "Linux works on dumpster dived hardware!" that's cool, but don't fucking lie. it makes the whole Linux community look like a bunch of FOSSies, with little RMS altars and pictures of Linus with hearts around it. Hell even Dell, one of the biggest OEMs on the fricking planet has to run their own repos because the drivers shit themselves....great QC you got there. Meanwhile the XP machine I'm typing on with an OS install from 2004 is running just fine with original drivers and the whole system is updated to current. And don't give me the "U must have teh viruz!" horseshit because any one of a dozen free AVs and 10 minutes of instruction from me and there ain't no fucking viruses getting on my builds. Yeah....no fricking contest, WinVista on its worse day is 1000 times better.

Win 8 actually 'cheatboots' in that a reboot merely dumps userland while keeping the kernel and drivers which frankly will just make it flakier as it goes along, just another dumb idea brought to you by Ballmer's MSFT.

If you are not a programmer Linux sucks big hairy balls crutchy, sorry but its true. Hell even one of the Red hat Developers says the desktop is suckage and will only continue to get worse, why? because the whole system was designed when the kernel and drivers could fit on a floppy and all the available software could fit on a mini-CD. Now you are looking at billions of lines of code just for the base OS and tens of thousands of packages and drivers...its a mess dude.

Things that work in foo get broken in foo+1 and may not get fixed until Foo+5 if it gets fixed at all, drivers shitting themselves when the system is updated, something windows hasn't done since Win9X, hell I could list all the fail but this page with over a hundred links to obviously show stopping broken bullshit should be proof enough for those that are honest.

In the end MSFT could put out "The Steve Ballmer Goatse Edition" of Windows and it'd sell more than Linux would ever gain. Not because of OEMs, but simply because Linux is a fucking mess and Linus and the other ubernerds LIKE IT that way. Hell did you know that Dell has to run their own damned highly outdated repo, just because they couldn't get enough QA from Canonical to keep ubuntu from shitting itself on update even though they only had less than a dozen units and all with bog standard hardware? Normal folks aren't gonna put up with horseshit like that crutchy, they'll stick with Win 7 or get an Apple before they'll mess with the forum hunts, CLI fixes, and assorted horseshit that it takes just to keep Linux running.

You get plenty of security by simply breaking the machine crutchy, something Torvalds and co are pretty damned good at. Heck if anything starts getting stable Linux devs rip it out and start over, see the DEs or PukeAudio, I used to think that Linux would be ready within 3 years, its now obvious they will ALWAYS be 5 or more years behind, simply because nobody will fix the messes. Makes sense, easier to get programmers to put out new buggy shit than it is to get them to work on buxfixes for free, its the classic "busted shitter" problem in a nutshell. Ask someone to paint you a picture or write you a song for free? Plenty of takers. Ask them to come fix your busted shitter for free? yeah good luck with that. The guts of Linux are the busted shitter, with the only money being spent on the server parts and the desktop just stinking up the joint.

I was/am sureMSI also offered it for awhile with the 10 inch Wind, not a bad little unit. it sure as fuck wasn't SUSE as I've used SUSE and whatever they had on the thing was NOT SUSE. It looked like a rip of the EEE UI mixed with a little gOS and that sure as fuck ain't SUSE.

But in the end it don't matter, given the choice people took Windows and so nobody cares. I mean if you think there is a market, why did Walmart pull it? Surely you don't think the company that prides itself on undercutting everybody would just walk away from selling laptops cheaper than anybody? they walked away because just as Canonical found out if it don't run the software they don't want it. Oh and just FYI but even one of the RH devs says the Linux desktop model is broken and getting worse and if he don't know the truth then who in the fuck does?

Frankly I wish Linux had a usable product, I really do. I probably went through $300 in bandwidth cap overages trying every. damned. distro. just to find one that would consistently update without shitting itself, know what i found? It don't exist, and frankly probably won't exist as long as Linus Torvalds is controlling the kernel.

I could give you a long list of what is broken but why bother? The community won't listen and things will never get better so who cares. In the end Linux was a beautiful IDEA that was wasted because in the end the community became a bunch of elitist programmer pricks that think regular people shouldn't touch their "precious" OS. The only time that Linux has ever sold shit was when Google took it away from the community and made Android, which mark my words will be locked down as bad as iOS by 2015. Nobody listens, nobody learns, they just keep doing the same old shit, bleeding edge software, kernel fucking, leaning on the CLI, and the shocked when nothing changes and nobody will take Linux. Hell when people would rather steal the other guy's product by like a 30 to 1 margin rather than take yours for 100% free, what does that tell you?

It tells me that nobody in the Linux community will actually bother to make a product people will take, that's what.

Sorry friend but for a good 90%+ of the population Linux is not an option, because 1.-It wears obtuse and fiddly as badges of honor, 2.-Torvalds will never allow an API as long as he has a pulse, so drivers WILL break with every update, 3.-Too many treat FOSS as a religion and WANT the drivers to break because they are "Teh evil binary blobs ZOMG!" when the FOSS drivers break just as much, and 4.-The entire system is doomed because a small group will NEVER be able to properly QA and QC the amount of code in your average distro, much less the repos which are a mess of half baked crap.

You might want to read these articles, the first of which is actually written by one of the devs at Red Hat, which shows frankly why Linux hasn't gone anywhere on the desktop and frankly won't. the current design just doesn't work and the egos involved simply won't allow change, nor will the religious zealotry, so things simply stagnate. Its sad, but MSFT could put out lousy OSes for the next 3 versions and people will just stick with the last good one, no matter how creaky it gets, rather than deal with Linux. See how many are running XP rather than take Linux for free as a good example.

And then I might as well use Win98 because the amount of resources required to make it functional and still keep security patches would cost millions....or i can just sell and support an OS that is a guaranteed 10 years of support and ignore your fiddly bullshit. Maybe NOW you see why people would rather steal the other guy's than have yours for free? hell you get longer support with a Hackentosh than with your average distro, thanks to Linus and his fellow fiddlers.

Not that you will bother, because I have a feeling i'm talking to a "follower of the one true way' which is about as likely to listen to reason as showing carbon dating to those that believe Adam rode a dino, but for everyone else there is this nice list with over 100 links published THIS YEAR so you can't claim "it's old, not like that anymore' showing just what I said which is YOUR SHIT BE BROKE BRO and pretending your shit be NOT broke is just that, pretending.

Now you can stick your head in the sand, pretend that Linus is smarter than the dev teams for BSD, OSX, Windows, and even OS/2 who ALL HAVE AN ABI but that don't make it reality, anymore than you pointing at a chicken and saying "its a cow!" will make it go moo. The reason your OS doesn't go anywhere unless a corp locks it down and puts it in embedded hardware (like Android) is precisely because Linux is a fiddly PITA without an ABI. Like it or lump it, really don't care at this point.

Ubuntu 12 and the PCLOS and Mepis version from the same period new enough for you? The same problems exist, if you'd like a list then here you go, please note this article is the 2012 Edition and he has provided over a hundred links to exactly the same problems i have talked about at length so no need for me to rehash them.

You can stick your head in the sand and go "la la la" all you want but when people would rather risk stealing the other guy's product than taking yours for free? Well i'm sorry but that should be a giant cluebat to the side of the head that you have problems, problems that just don't exist on headless clusters.

I take it you've never been south of the Mason/Dixon line friend? That's just how we talk and unless i take the time to concentrate over it, which why the fuck would i care on a forum, I WILL be slipping the occasional Y'all, ain't, and folks because that is simply common speech here, just as its common to have a checkout girl tell you to have a blessed day or everyone in line talking it up about the weather, that's just the way we do thing here.

And surely the BEST argument you can come up with isn't 30 damned years old, yes? the 640K lasted so many years because frankly RAM cost more than a fricking car and every damned thing went bare metal. it didn't have a damned thing to do with Windows or DOS, early OS/2 didn't play nicely with large memory and most programs would positively freak, even on DR DOS or GEM if you tried to go above 640k.

Finally when did I say anything about it being a video driver? I have an older USB capture card and I prefer the older version of the video software that came with it over the newer one, but the older one doesn't like the new driver. luckily since I'm on Windows and not Linux I actually have that choice, whereas you DO NOT. You can either spend days futzing, live with an old kernel, or stay bleeding edge, that's the only "choice" the broken linux driver model gives you. Look at how the forums were filled last week with those that couldn't use their Radeon HD3200 IGPs in Linux because AMD doesn't support hardware that old, look at how Nvidia STILL has to put out drivers for the 6200 series, even though that hasn't been sold in years.

So don't blame anyone but yourselves for the lousy support, the lousy adoption numbers, the broken driver model, or the frankly piss poor upgrade system, because the community won't call Torvalds to the carpet so he gets away with giving you crap. remember a free shit sandwich is still shit, and you will NEVER get the majority, or even a decent sized minority, to accept CLI fixes and forum hunts as par for the course. i could wallpaper this post with page after page of craptastic QA and QC simply because there aren't enough devs to do the work, but read the post by the Red hat dev i linked to or this post with over 100 links of broken shit in Linux.

So don't blame anyone else when your numbers don't get any better, don't blame anyone else when MSFT locks down the bootloader and nobody cares, it'll be the lack of action of the community and their willingness to accept half assed as status quo that will doom any chance Linux had on the desktop.

They can't give away what they don't own, both HDMI and protected path video aren't owned by AMD so they have no choice but remove any traces from the specs.

Sigh...look in the damned mirror people! Its been 20 fricking years already, the damned drivers STILL don't work, they have NEVER worked great, the thing is a mess. Even one of the Red Hat devs says the current system isn't working and isn't sustainable, so its time folks. Time to take a good look in the mirror, cut through the dogma and bullshit, tell Torvalds he's had 20 years and couldn't fix the problems so STFU and give Linux a stable driver ABI already, and start working your way down the list of problems and making Linux a true third way.

Look as a retailer I WANT Linux to succeed, i really do. I do NOT like cutting a check to MSFT with every new build but right now things are a total clusterfuck. Companies having to continue to write drivers for stuff they don't even sell anymore because Linus' kernel fiddling breaks the old drivers, everything from the kernel to the DEs are in a giant state of constant flux and chaos, things that work in foo not working in foo+1, as it is now the driver situation alone would cost me more than a copy of Win HP simply because of all the time I'd have to spend on forum hunts and CLI fiddling and fixes just to get everything back to functional after an update.

Its a mess folks, and the sooner you accept there is a problem the sooner you can start to work to change it. Remember folks CLI fixes and forum hunts should NEVER be par for the course, you should and do deserve better!

Know what is sad? i won't do it, since you seem to be trying to answer honestly but every. single. answer. you put is actually a TM on TMRepo. that means its the same lines that have been used so damned often they actually wrote them down with a cute title so you could just paste the numbers. yet linux is STILL less than 3%, the numbers say more than i ever could, as will this link that in turn has over 100 links pointing out exactly what i was just saying complete with makes and models.

So either you are magical, able to sprinkle fairy dust onto the machine, or your memory helpfully forgets bullshit. because frankly the ONLY machine I've EVER seen pass the hairyfeet challenge was a 733MHz Intel box which i promptly threw away because it was too damned old to even get a dollar for. Everything with hardware anybody would want? Or with a decent GPU? or sound? Crapped all over itself.

In the end "Linux is a replacement for Windows!" is a damned lie, its a replacement for a Hackentosh which is a MUCH MUCH smaller niche, and like a Hackentosh you damned well better be picky as fuck with the hardware and no damned well about each brand and be ready to do some hacking, something windows users haven't needed to do in over a decade. In fact if i were to compare Linux to Windows I'd say its right now barely at Win98 but of course that isn't what you want to hear, but think about it. What was Win98? it was a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which was a second class citizen that wasn't even required, it was buggy and flaky and CLI was often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems. what is Linux? it is a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which is a second class citizen that isn't even required, it is buggy and flaky and CLI is often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems.

Oh and I don't know what magical place you live at friend but most B&M stores don't like to take open merch, often charge a restocking fee, and have a set number of returns per year. So using your logic frankly it wouldn't take but 1 or 2 stuck with devices to make Linux equal MORE than the cost of Windows. that is why i personally won't have a Linux machine in my shop, a single broken driver will cost more of my time that a Windows 7 HP OEM. BTW Best Buy, Asus, Walmart, what do these 3 have in common? ALL USED to carry linux and NONE carry it now, why? Because just as i said the support costs ate any savings by not paying for Windows. I'm sure you haven't used Windows since XP but frankly since Vista the only bugs I've seen have been PEBKAC which Linux doesn't give you a degree in CompSci by running it friend. Oh and if you think Linux is immune from bugs? There was an infected Quake 3 in the repos for a year and a half with NOBODY catching it, KDELook handed out infected screensavers for ages with nobody catching on, these are just two off the top of my head. look at how simple it is to write a Linux bug. as we saw with Android if anybody gave a crap or if Linux had any real numbers there would be just as many Linux bugs as there would be Windows ones, sorry.

And whose fault would that be? Time for a dose of cold hard truth boys and girls, if the community would have had a living shitfit at the half baked crap coming from the devs, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, crap like companies having to release new drivers even for old stuff because Linus and the kernel fiddlers kept breaking shit, the DE wars, Pulseaudio, repos full of half baked software with zero QC or QA, well then maybe you'd have enough marketshare that MSFT wouldn't dare!

When Shuttleworth flushes millions down the toilet and Linux never breaks single digits and most places have it close to the same 2% its been in years, when you are offering your product for free with no strings attached and people would STILL rather steal the other guy's product, when forum hunts and CLI copypasta is treated as par for the course on update, when your forums are filled with "Ur a M$ Shill!" and "Works4me" because a vocal segment of your users treat your product as a cult instead of an OS? Well folks its time to suck it up and take a good long hard look in the mirror.

I would STRONGLY suggest you read these two informative articles, the first by one of the RH devs, and then you will know why FLOSS is so easily blocked with so few giving a shit. The second one has over a hundred links pointing out serious long term problems that are either 1.-swept under the rug, 2.-Ignored, or 3.-Treated as hearasay if you even bring them up. I'm sure this post will be buried by those that treated FLOSS as a religion, aka the FOSSies as I've often called them, because their answer to everything that isn't "Gee Biff, isn't FLOSS Swell, it sure is Skip, RMS is a God among men and M$ burns babies!" is treated like crapping on the Baby Jesus, but in the end the numbers don't lie. if there hadn't been so much infighting, reinventing the wheel, NIH, ignoring of obvious issues, and using the fact that it was free as an excuse to settle for half ass? Well then frankly the numbers would be such that MSFT wouldn't dare block it. the fact that they can and most of the planet couldn't care less just shows a failing in FLOSS to give the people what they want and to offer a better product as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe you should read this article where one of the RH devs points out having the kernel devs take care of drivers is a FAILURE and why linux on the desktop is in "its death throes" because a single team can't control 20,000 packages and a couple of hundred thousand drivers and end up with anything other than what we have now, a broken mess.

Its no coincidence that the ONLY places that Linux has gained ANY traction is places where the hardware is extremely limited and controlled, servers (many servers still using Rage II for graphics, parts rarely change) embedded (parts carefully controlled and never change) and cell phones (ditto) because frankly that is the ONLY way to have a Linux system functional for any length of time and logically you should obviously be able to see it. A handful of guys simply cannot control and deliver QA and QC to the amount of code you are talking about, dozens if not hundreds of millions of LOC, which is why you have a buggy mess that doesn't upgrade worth a shit. here is another article with over 100 links of examples but I have a feeling from your tone you'll ignore it, as I have a feeling I'm talking to a FOSSie, aka one who treats Linux as a religion and not an OS since you blame everything on those that will not beg for the devs to bless their code. BTW AMD GAVE YOU THE SPECS, how's that working out?. Since the vast majority of the planet couldn't give less of a crap about the 4 freedoms as evidenced by the lines around the block camping when the latest iDevice is gonna come online, you really have to have something more than dogma, aka a fully functional modern OS that doesn't require forum hunts and bullshit just to keep running. Sadly your OS is pretty damned far from that goal and if anything getting farther away by the day.

Actually if you'd have read the comments (as opposed to the tiny summary which is written by a guy that got hit by "Voldemort syndrome" one time too many and snapped) you'd see just what you are complaining isn't there, a nice long discussion of CLI VS API VS GUI for a job. Personally i have to agree with many of them that the current fad of using CLI in place of an API is just dumb, you have tons of programs in Linux that literally scrape CLI, now WTF is the point of that? But if you want something meatier here. Final verdict? if you're not writing scripts its kinda pointless as that is the big selling point of CLI, how scriptable it is. As one of the guys put in the comments of the first link "Its like building a robot to type on a keyboard, sure it'll work but its kinda pointless".

Sadly that pretty much sums of FLOSS desktop OSes at the moment, kinda pointless. See this overview or see this article. But in the end if you aren't scripting you simply are taking more time to do less, if that floats your boat fine but I can do the same trick with a simple link launcher program that takes arguments.

here is a nice article I found several years ago and I hope that you read it. it is a perfect explanation, better than i could EVER write, of why Linux isn't going anywhere. But instead of addressing the problems outlined the "community" will just fling insults like monkeys flinging poo and proclaim their superiority. well I suppose being the biggest failure is still being the biggest at SOMETHING, not sure if I'd brag about it though.

Reading that list, I particularly agreed with #3.1 of their software support

3.Problems stemming from the vast number of Linux distributions: 1.No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A sets up networking using these utilities, outputting certain settings residing in certain file system locations, distro B sets up everything differently. This drives most users mad.

I've had precisely this problem. I had learned RHEL's way of configuring networking, which was to edit /etc/resolve.conf, use an utility called system-config-netwok to set up the IP addresses, then edit /etc/sysctl (I'm forgetting the exact filename) and then do a service network restart. I recently tried a GNUSTEP distro, and problem there was that none of the above files or commands were recognized. So getting connected was out of the question.

All distros ought to during installation prompt one for one's network settings, so that it can be configured right out of the box. During that installation, it would be helpful to say which files one needs to tinker with for that particular distro, since they are by no means standard

Well let us say, just for the sake of argument (and remember these were provided by OEMs trying to get lower prices and refuse upgrades of 7 from XP on netbooks, not to mention I can get pro and will be getting 2 copies for Xmas at $39 student discount and I kinda doubt students buying a single copy get a better deal than someone buying 100,000 copies, don't you?) that you data is correct. Now that is talking about Home Premium for $50, which would make starter at around $25. Now considering on last count the average netbooks has nearly FOURTY pieces of trialware installed (just look how many programs are listed under DeCrappifier if you wish for a citation since the OEMs refuse to publish numbers) you are looking at MOST windows costing $15-$30 after the trialware payback is figured in.

Now lets look at just ONE OEM has to pay for Ubuntu. they have to run their own servers, not cheap, they have to hire a team of developers to roll their own version of Ubuntu, what do a developer with experience in rolling their own distros and writing drivers go for? $100,000 a piece? probably need a dozen to run a distro at minimum, and then you have the returns which of course can't be sold as new and as HP admitted when they were looking to sell at an average of $8 profit per unit it really doesn't take but a handful of returns to equal a giant loss. And when we are talking 400% return rates it isn't hard to figure out which OS isn't worth the effort.

This is why ASUS, the ones who created the whole Linux netbook idea, quit carrying Linux, why Windows slaughtered Linux on netbooks where if Windows pricing made a difference anywhere THAT would be the market, yet the ALL abandoned Linux completely.

It is just simple common sense. Ask yourself just ONE single question...If Linux is so great and could save OEMs money then why aren't ANY of them using it? dell hides a handful of Ubuntu machines in the back, basically to get one more checkbox on their bulletpoint list, and the rest don't do even that, why? do you HONESTLY think it is some fast conspiracy to keep your miracle free OS away from the masses? Why isn't any of the little shops like mine using it to undercut competitors?

Because the sad and nasty truth that NO amount of mod points can EVER erase, nor can that one FOSSie going around claiming everyone that doesn't kiss Linus' booty MUST be APK ever change, is this simple truth, which is Linux is free only if your time is worthless and for the OEM frankly MSFT could double their prices and they STILL won't take your OS, because in the end it would cost MORE money. more money to fix broken drivers, more money to deal with the complaints, more money to run their own repos because the default one breaks more than it fixes.

here is a nice article I found several years ago and I hope that you read it. it is a perfect explanation, better than i could EVER write, of why Linux isn't going anywhere. But instead of addressing the problems outlined the "community" will just fling insults like monkeys flinging poo and proclaim their superiority. well I suppose being the biggest failure is still being the biggest at SOMETHING, not sure if I'd brag about it though.

> How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one?

Probably not so many.

If you really want an iPhone, you can just switch carriers. It's not really that big of a deal. The market simply isn't that limited.

There are more countries on this planet than the US of A. Some of those countries are in fact bigger than the US of A, especially if you combine them. Some of these countries don't have iPhones at all. For an almost accurate map of these countries, please view http://hateusa.narod.ru/ammap.gif After viewing that, remember that only one in thirteen people on this planet is actually living in the US of A. Now tell me again how many people can get an iPhone if they want one and can actually afford it, at over twice the price of an entry level Android phone?

Hi, Mr Coward, or may I call you cow? You see Cow, some of us are willing to stand by our words instead of being little trolls hiding behind AC, and I'll even be happy to retort.

What your little "We have no choice! Waaah!" speech seems to forget is over and over the public has been GIVEN the Linux choice and thanks to decisions by the Linux devs that makes the AI in an EA game look like Stephen Hawking it has been rejected by the masses by a long shot. Walmart, Best Buy, MSI, all have sold Linux machines to the public at one time, and what did they get? An 80%+ return rate. Now I don't know if you have ever sold machines at retail like I have (doubtful) but allow me to point out that those figures mean that they lost money on 8 out of every 10 sales since those units will now have to be sold as used or refurb by state law.

But what do you expect from an OS whose leader says Linux isn't designed but instead "evolves like a virus" LOL, while sites are happy to point out what needs to be fixed, as well as guys like me, but instead will be responded to with "shill! MSFT lackey! All must love teh goodness!" like a typical nutter. Hell the fanboi bullshit is so thick in Linux land they actually have a site dedicated to listing all the different ways Linux fans spout total bullshit, instead of...ohh I don't know....actually listening to users?

Finally think about this...your old pal hairyfeet is gonna give you an example of why your OS is so low on the totem pole you brag when you reach 1% like it is an actual achievement. But of course I'm sure after a really big swig of FOSSie koolaid you'll find a way to label it a shill, or not reality, or some other BS. Be sure to pick the right TM from TM repo so we can know which BS you intend to use, okay? Here goes:

Here we have two OSes, the latest Ubuntu and Windows 7: Here is the installation of Windows 7...stick in DVD, answer three questions, the hardest of which is "are you at home or at work?" (for the network settings) and at first boot the OS will check if there is anything without drivers and pop up a little box that says "Hey, I don't have a driver for this, can I go and fetch one for you?" and if you say yes and the device is less than 5 years old (the majority of consumer gear) it WILL find a driver, install it, and off you go. It will even point out you don't have an AV and give you a page with several free ones to choose from. Hell my 67 year old dad installed Windows 7 by himself, and he still can't figure out how to work his cell phone.

Now let us compare Ubuntu, the flagship for "Linux for humans" and the supposedly easy (to the point fanbois call it dumbed down) Linux, ready? Install OS, get asked a half a dozen questions, although to be fair it is getting better in that regard. Upon first startup OS will NOT tell you if anything doesn't work because of drivers, you have to figure that out yourself. Is there a "find drivers" button, like Windows has had since 2000? Nope, because lack of a hardware ABI means that shit that worked in Ubuntu 9 will NOT work in Ubuntu 10, lovely. So AFTER you find where the fuck the version of device manager is you have to go trawl some forum (which NO user is likely to find easily since nobody puts a fucking button to it anywhere) looking for "fixes" which require you to know which firmware/hardware rev you had (yeah, good fucking luck on a user knowing THAT) and then "tweak said fix" because it was written for firmware A rev b and you have firmware d rev f (again good fucking luck). Follow that by using an interface called Bash that looks like a 1979 reject without autocomplete or spellc

First of all, WTF is it with the jack off font? You think you're hip making the thing look like a bad bash prompt? Second of all my money is not "tied into MSFT" as I give customers what they want instead of trying to force them to do things my way which is what Linux does. Here is my last conversation with a FLOSSie: "My customers do NOT WANT bash prompts and trawling forums! This is a problem!" /FLOSSie/"but CLI is powerful!/ "My customers DO NOT WANT and don't care! Make it simple and easy to fix problems!" /FLOSSie/"If they would only embrace the power of bash/ walks off in disgust at brainwashed FLOSSie

And here I am talking about desktops and the magic bullet problem, and you bring up...servers? Who gives a fuck? Symbian is number 1 on mobile phones! Yay! Doesn't have a damned thing to do with what we are talking about, which is why Linux is sucking on the desktop, how even machines built with Linux strengths in mind still won't sell with Linux, and how OEMs found out the hard way that Linux on the desktop is a deathtrap. I'm not the the only one saying these things by a long shot, yet we get ignored or ridiculed by a group that brags they got 1% while companies walk away in disgust.

It is a good thing the community "supports" Linux, because if it were a company it would be in chapter 11 right now. And don't waste your breath bringing up server companies because we are talking desktops, so stay on topic. You would think that after sitting in dead lasts for years someone would wake up and ask "what are we doing wrong?" but instead of finding out what the problems are and working to correct it we just see the same tired memes about Linux Security and how Linux is more usable and even you yourself trotted out the just use Wine and Linux supports more hardware along with hurling insults! You know why the call them trademarks? Because it is the same tired old shit we hear year after year AFTER YEAR. Nothing gets better, nothing ever changes, Linux still sits in the basement.

I am a businessman, I WANT to sell your product! I want and believe in free market competition! But instead of working to make a better product, we get instead 6 month release schedule (you HONESTLY think any real QA can get done in less than 6 months? Because I got some swamp land in Florida to sell you buddy!) and insults thrown whenever anyone points out the emperor has no clothes. But don't worry, you can keep your elitist attitude and insult throwing. Myself and every other business that has tried selling your product at retail have realized Linux is a dead end and walked away. Walmart, ASUS, Best Buy, Staples, nobody will carry your product. When no American retailers will touch your product, even for free, it is time to take a hard look and see what you are doing wrong. Will anyone do that? Nope they will delude themselves into thinking CLI is bet

A copy of his original article, has been archived here: http://svetlana14s.narod.ru/Simon_Singhs_silenced_paper.html