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Kevin Carmony Responds to Criticism
sharkscott writes to tell us that LXer's Don Parris took a few minutes to get Kevin Carmony's response to the large amount of criticism he has been taking over offering non-free software in Linspire. From the article: "Essentially, Carmony's position is that, in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, in terms of convincing vendors to release libre codecs and drivers. In other words, the strategy doesn't seem to be working. Additionally, while some will be patient, most users would prefer to have something - anything - that works in the meanwhile."
First, don't post anonymously if you want a thoughtful critique to be taken seriously. Anonymous posting of anything in favor of a commercial product just screams "astroturfer", here and on Groklaw.
Second, if your non-anonymous comments get deleted, do what I do: repost them on your own web site, with explanatory commentary on the censorship. And then don't waste any more time using the site in question.
Freedom of speech is basically reserved for those who own their own publications; the sooner people realize that, the better.
As you seem to realize, you're never going to force a site like FARK or (you allege) Groklaw to stop engaging in invisible arbitrary censorship, so it's not worth trying. To continue to use the site is to bolster their credibility. So quit, and write your comments elsewhere.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
On a clean machine, Ubuntu is probably easier to install than Windows. I don't think that that is the issue at all.
The problem is that almost no "ordinary user" has to install Windows, since it's already there when they buy it. The only "installation" of the operating system that they do is reloading it from a rescue disc when they are overwhelmed by disk fragmentation, viruses or such problems.