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Desktop Linux on x86 - Adapt or Die

Posted by Zonk on from the shift-the-paradigm dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The recent announcement of Apple's upcoming x86 systems has gotten a lot of people thinking. Among the conjecture, there has been much thought given to how Linux will be affected by this move. The author of this article does not believe that Linux as a whole is threatened harmed by the 'Mactel' alliance, but does point out that his could mean major trouble for distros like Xandros and Linspire which are reliant on the desktop audience. These distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, which will soon be the primary x86 alternative to Windows XP not only because of OS X's dedicated and outspoken user base but because of its slick looks and ease of use."

3 of 924 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I still don't get it.. by caluml · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Maybe I'm just really stupid

    No, you're not that stupid - you got the +5 Insightful you were after :)

    --
    Get your own free personal location tracker
  2. Re:Not dumbing down at all by eric76 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Say one of them writes 200 lines of intricate technical detail, taking advantage of advanced features offered by the programming language, while the other writes 20 lines using nothing but the most basic language constructs. Which of these is the smart programmer?

    That depends. Does the 200 lines of code take care of all the possible errors that can occur and the 20 lines handle no errors or maybe only the most common?

    I've long felt that you can really tell how good a programmer someone really is by how they handle potential errors in their production code.

    The really bad programmers don't really handle any errors. If there is a problem, the whole program comes crashing down.

    The average programmers handle the most likely errors. When the program encounters an error, they may or may not print a rather cryptic error message, but in either case, it is meaningless to the everyone but themselves.

    The really great programmers handle just about every possible error. When their program encounters something that can't be handled, it shuts down gracefully and provides useful error messages that provides the user with information that is succinct but useful and guides in the right direction to help fix the program or notify the programmer.

    As far as I'm concerned, just about any other measure of quality of code is decidedly secondary to this.

    Of course, for a quick personal hack, one would normally just handle the probable errors.

  3. I am tired of fearmongering fukwits with access by Marrow · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    to the front page of slashdot!