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Negroponte says Linux too 'Fat'

Cadef writes "According to a story on CNet News.com, Nicholas Negroponte says that Linux has gotten too fat, and will have to be slimmed down before it will be practical for the $100 laptop project. From the article: 'Suddenly it's like a very fat person [who] uses most of the energy to move the fat. And Linux is no exception. Linux has gotten fat, too.'"

10 of 839 comments (clear)

  1. Striking by monoqlith · · Score: 0, Troll

    From TFA: "I was the longest holdout for the crank being on the laptop. I was wrong," he said, adding, "If you're a 10-year-old, maybe you can get your four-year-old to pedal for you."

    The kids are having intercourse younger and younger these days! I waited until at least 12 years old before I procreated.

  2. Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? by caffeination · · Score: 0, Troll
    You came across as ignorant on two counts:
    1. The project isn't aimed at starving kids in Africa.
    2. DSL means Damn Small Linux.
  3. Re:Linux is Fat! Yes by know1 · · Score: 0, Troll

    dude, you're an idiot
    "It takes forever to start Linux on a PC compared to Windows98. And after giving the command to shut down, it scrolls dozens of lines of incomprehensible text showing its 'shut down process'. And all the distributions that I've tried work like this. I feels like I'm shutting down the entire Pentagon. Jeez, guys, this is supposed to be an appliance. It doesn't take three to five minutes to shut of a color TV set. Linux isn't going to be taken seriously until you'all fix this shit. A PC should be ready to work with within five seconds of power on and should shut off within three seconds."

    you're comparing modern day linux to a windows from 8 years ago. of course it will run fucking faster. if you run xp it has the same problem. And as for this switching it on and off within three seconds, windows hasn't achieved that yet either. I know some users think it's "ok" to do that though, then become puzzled when they lose all their files. sigh, anyway what was your username again? *clickety click*

  4. Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? by acidblood · · Score: 0, Troll
    The project isn't aimed at starving kids in Africa.

    Really? Please prove it. I couldn't find definitive prove for or against it, but here's from the FAQ in the official site: Initial discussions have been held with China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand. (emphasis mine on two African nations, although what I meant by Africa in my post was miserable places in general, but I was expecting pedantry just the same).

    DSL means Damn Small Linux.

    Outside of you 31337 sphere of influence, 99.9% of people will think of DSL as Digital Subscriber Line, if anything. I'll gladly assume that I take pride in being`ignorant' on this case, as opposed to a mindless Linux fanboy who hijacks popular acronyms for their obscure stuff and expects everyone to follow.
    --

    Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/

  5. Re:What??? never heard of DSL then? by dekemoose · · Score: 1, Troll

    Yeah, apparently these clowns have never heard of the idea of a custom install. KDE too big? Use FVWM, Enlightenment, or one of the others that claim to be lighter weight. Too many options in the kernel? Compile your own. You can get a Linux install on just about anything, for christ sakes they use Linux in embedded devices.
    BEGIN rant
    And is anyone else sick an tired of hearing about these mythical $100 laptops? First off, they're not even going to be $100, so stop calling them the $100 laptop. Second, how stupid is it to believe that someone without electricity is going to sit there with a frickin' foot pedal, hand crank (or any other half assed contraption for generatinf power that they can come up with) and surf the web? I like their idea of how the users will get Internet access, "Don't worry, it'll work itself out". It just seems like there are sooooooo many gaps in this plan, and they still figure that it'll roll in 2007? I call major bullshit.
    END rant
    I feel better now.

  6. Damn Small has no Damn GUI by BobPaul · · Score: 0, Troll

    They want a full gui. This is supposed to be easy to use for school children, not command line based.

    The article wasn't even about him calling linux fat, it's just a comment he happened to make. All it means is they can't use any of the major GUI distros as is right now, they'll have to customize it. (Note: They had to do that anyway. The hardware specs aren't very average.)

  7. There is no WAY he believes this .... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 0, Troll
    Somebody has to have clued him in to these three words by now:

    Linux ... From ... Scratch ...

    There are a number of things that suggest that he is a schill for Micro$oft:
    1) Gates knows his garbage literally can't compete with linux on that hardware 2) Linux fits on a floppy. GNU/Linux doesn't have a size ... it is undefined . 3) You can build your own distribution following step by step guides from the LFS project 4) Even a relatively bloated GNU/Linux distribution blows the doors off of Gates' Garbage

    Given the exposure he has had in the press, 100's of people must have already told him all of this. He is either the world's biggest moron, or the public criticism by Gates is a staged show. Ultimately, Negroponte will ignore all of this and announce that he was going to go with Linux, but it has gotten just as 'Fat as - nay, even fatter than - Windows, and it makes more sense to go with Windows CE ... Mark my words .

    Gates: You spread some FUD around; I'll fund another round ....
    Negroponte: Your a wonderfully magnanimous philanthropist, Bill ... Everybody thinks so ...
    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  8. Re:Linux is NOT Fat by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 0, Troll

    You know what? I don't like him either, for completely ridculous reasons. Here's the deal:

    I haven't heard of him before this whole laptop thing, so I Googled him. Ah, fuck it, I'll be honest. I wanted to see if he's black. I'm not racist... but that would be God damn funny. Don't look at me like that, picture a black dude named Negroponte, and try not to laugh. I thought so. Anyway, he's not, but in every picture of him with glasses on... well, see for yourself:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte
    http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/nn bio.htm

    He's a douche. I know you shouldn't judge people based on appearance, but nobody but a giant douche would pose with their glasses like that. Even when he's not wearing glasses, he's a douche. He either tans, or somebody tried to get rid of the bags under his eyes and edited the photo way too hard. Since you can clearly see the acne or whatever it is in his 300dpi publicity photo, and since the white is above his eyes as well as below, I'm gonna say he tans. Maybe whoever did his makeup had no idea what they were doing, but trust me, it's not that, he tans.

    So, to sum up, I don't really trust anything that comes out of this guy. They're crappy reasons. I'm a bad person for disliking this guy based on a couple of pictures, and maybe someday when he feeds all the starving children of Africa I'll eat my words. But I make crap knee-jerk reactions like this all the time, and 95% of the time they're right. Mark my words, this guy's a douche.

    --
    <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
  9. Re:Versatile != FAT [Who are these damn moderators by neonmagic · · Score: 0, Troll

    Oh dear, you're definitely a Linux zealot. Do yourself a favour, get out and smell some fresh air. Really. My example is treating Linux as a whole, even though I was trying to be fair to it and used the Kernel as an example. Note that the article says "Linux". It does NOT say the Linux kernel. It says Linux. Read it again.

    As I said to another pro Linux zealot, find me a Linux distribution that lets you customer a Linux kernel at install time. You're being very unrealistic, I'm being very realistic. Sure, post install you can trim a kernel down, I'm not arguing there. The question is, how many Linux users do so? I spent the past 3 and a bit years helping out on some Linux distribution forums (the Linux distribution shall remain anonymous), and you wouldn't believe how many of the users didn't either want to compile a kernel, or were scared shitless of doing so (and thus never attempted it).

    Quote: "Note to moderators: The parent post is truly nothing more than flamebait at best. Shame on you for modding otherwise"

    Read up :-)

    Have a nice day!

    Dave

    --
    Slashdot can go and get fucked.
  10. Re:Versatile != FAT [Who are these damn moderators by neonmagic · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes, you are technically correct, but look at it this way - the vast majority of people would look at Linux being an "Operating System". They don't know what a kernel is, and couldn't give a damn what a kernel is, nor the fact that it's customisable on a GNU/Linux system. 4% (if you're lucky) of the worlds population use Linux. Ask the other 96% what a kernel is, and what an operating system is. Most will know what an operating system is, most won't know what a kernel is. Most will call Linux an operating system (at least those that have even heard of it, which is no more than 20% of the population I'd hazard a guess at).

    Now - how far do those distributions that you've named allow you to modify the kernel? Do they just allow you to maybe choose low mem and hi mem, and cpu architecture type? Or do they let you basically run a ./configure on a kernel tree fully? My recollection of Slackware from years and years ago was that it didn't let you adjust the kernel. Gentoo I've never used, but Gentoo was always overkill and a means to show yourself off as being an "uber g33k" as far as I was concerned.

    Dave

    --
    Slashdot can go and get fucked.