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New York Times Staff Editorial Promoting Linux
cotyledon writes "Today's New York Times editorial (Free Blah-Di-Blah) describes Linux as good for consumers and good for programmers. It recommends "Government units abroad and in the United States and individual computer users should look for ways to support Linux and Linux-based products. The competition it offers helps everyone." This is the paper's opinion, btw, and not a guest columnist."
MacOS doesn't run on cheap, available-everywhere, commodity, x86 hardware.
Until it does, Apple will remain a niche. Period. The End.
Hell, even SUN is getting in on the game!
There are 100x the number of Intel-type machines out there than PPC-based. OS X would require a total new hardware investment, Linux does not.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"communitarian spirit"?
This is an extremely odd choice of words. I would have used 'cooperative', wouldn't you? I wonder if their intent was to conjure up another commun- word. We may never know.
The story of my parents... :P
They are definately what could be called "average users"... They don't know exactly how their computer works except for the few programs they needed, and don't want to know more. Even using a "totally user-friendly OS such as MS Windows", they often feel dumb when in front of the computer because it won't do what they want it to do, for most of the time.
They didn't care about windows vs. *nix either, until I told them about Linux, which is what I run. They asked me the obvious question: What is Linux?. I tried to avoid "tech" talk with my parents because I know they hate it and it's really hard to always try to explain everything that seems so obvious to you because you spend so many times in front of your machine... So I just said it was an OS, like Windows, only better in my opinion, and that it's Free. Notice the capital F, instead of going all-tech, I started telling them the story of Open Source, Free Software, how MS is "evil" (they read the newspapers, they already knew that) etc...
Well guess what, a month later they ask me if they would be able to use Linux, and ask me to install it for them.
So what's the moral of that rather long story? I don't know, some folks care more than saving a hundred bucks... :)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
I think you're hopelessly misguided if you believe nobody cares. The Times has one of the largest readerships in the world, and if you look at who is included, you'll see some interesting things, like:
A New York Times reader is about 36% more likely than the average affluent head of household to hold a college or postgraduate degree; 34% more likely to have a household income exceeding $100,000 and is 49% more likely to be a top manager.
These are the people who can actually do something about introducing linux into a company. Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity, so if you even just make them aware that alternatives exist, that's a start. Providing a positive review is just bonus.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
My guess: they don't know about it. Posting entire NYT articles and editorials isn't likely to be seen as fair use, and deprives them of revenue at their site, so they'd have reason to send /. a cease-and-desist letter. That would actually be interesting: Would /. management have to take responsibility for what's published here?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The obvious reason the Times said this today was the Sun announcement about Linux PCs.
As for all the people saying, "yes, Linux used to be unfriendly, but now it's just as good as Mac or Windows," that would have a lot more credibility if the same people hadn't been saying exactly the same thing for the last seven years or so. The fact is, it hadn't caught up then, and it hasn't caught up now.
That your parents love you and could tell that Linux and Open Source ware very important to you, so they decided to give it a try because they knew it would make you happy?