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More on LoTR Special Effects
sushi writes: "Another LoTR article: this one focusing on the technology used at Weta Digital (the CG shop). Interesting that they are undertaking "major" R&D into running more Linux, and that Linux "delivers about two times the price performance compared to systems running proprietary operating systems". I've been lucky enough to have seen inside this place, and it's cool to see a render-wall of linux boxen. Full story
from a New Zealand newspaper." We linked to another good article about WETA a month ago.
And what have YOU, personally, done to help remedy this perceived problem, other than bring up this (oft repeated, and spurriously argued) point of view?
Opening a Word document is difficult, because it requires lots of reverse engineering, and many people do play Quake at roughly equal performance under Linux or Windows. XFree is popular because it is FREE, the others you mentioned are commercial (and with other advantages and disadvantages).
So, no, it really isn't all that interesting. It is a banal view point; if things aren't improving in your specific area quick enough for you, then do something about it (coding, guidance, money, bug fixing, bug reporting, whatever) It seems to me that YOU have the ego problem, expecting that everything should do exactly what you want.
Besides, you are WAY off topic.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Fine, I'll bite. That's not slightest provocation. You offer one paragraph of barely on-topicness immediately sequeing into three paragraphs of rehashed rant.
Linux falls on its face for mundane day-to-day productivity work.
That depends on what you use it for doesn't it?
it can't even open a simple Word document without formatting errors.
StarOffice (you did say "simple" Word documents..)
Linux stills falls short of Windows when playing Quake.
Client benchmarks that I have seen are dominated by graphics card/driver combinations and as such are dependent on the card vendor. Indeed in the case of the matrox g200 I could actually *play* qIII linux while matrox sat on their asses and refused to release a working windows opengl driver for the longest time. People generally favor linux for quake servers.
If all the man-hours poured into KDE and GNOME were combined into a common vision, we would have one perfect end-user desktop, instead of two poor imitations of Windows.
My guess is we'd just have one "poor imitation of Windows" as you call it. The practical weakness in your argument is deciding whose vision should be followed.
Don't give me the old "competition" argument either. There is only one Linux kernel, which seems to progress just fine without another competing project nipping at its feet and instigating flamewars.
*BSD. To a lesser extent, Windows itself. And to a still-lesser extent, GNU/Hurd, which if everybody had swallowed their ego (and worked on it instead of that upstart Linux) probably still wouldn't be ready for prime time.
The endless KDE vs. GNOME, Applix vs. StarOffice, and other feuds have wasted more productivity than would be gained by and competitive drive.
These feuds are generally propagated by users such as yourself rather than the actual developers. As such, little productivity is lost.
I, for one, am somewhat miffed that while my operating system powers Hollywood blockbusters and NASA supercomputers, it still can't fully replace Windows on my office desktop.
Show me one instance where you have properly submitted a bug report/feature request for any of these office programs you need and I'll reconsider dismissing you as an opinionated parasite.
Sincerely, a fellow opinionated parasite