Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer Suggests Linux Distros Will Soon Have to Pay Up
An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"
And if this is the same article I just read elsewhere (I don't have the time to read TFA now) MS didn't threaten anyone. All they said was basically "if you sue us for patent infringment, why don't you sue open source gang also?" So no threats, they are just asking that others should also suffer because of stupid patents.
You don't know what you don't know.
This is not trolling/copypasta/flame against linux.This is sad reality.(though offtopic) ,i decided to use a LIveCD instead.A few hours lotter i burned it in "ImgBurn"(way better alternative to Nero) switched to another drive and rebooted after
In the past few months,i have given in the hype about linux and how user friendly it has become
(like any monkey can install linux) so i decided to try it.Given an prior expirience with old mandrake distro
changing BIOS boot orders.
Surprisingly fast(in matter of seconds) an Ubuntu logo pops up and gives me a handful of options: Install,Install in safe graphics,test CD and memory and just skip to boot from hardrive mode(?useless) plus function keys at the bottom.
First time i decided to run the Memory test,since i heard Linux is picky on memory and would not work with less then pristine sticks of RAM.After a half hour when obviously nothing came up,i decided to stop the test and reboot(the test would probably takes 2 hours to end).And then:
after choosing first option it shows roughly
a dialog in the middle of the screen "Loading Linux Kernel" after a healthy chunk of time
(linux kernel either is extremely bloated or its just a curety dialog) a blank screen blinks in and after another blink i'm greeted with a message from my own monitor:
Input: Out of range. Having rebooted three times(with same result) and once in safe graphics mode,it have occured to me the problem might be in the
VGA option at the bottom of the screen:Setting it at 800x600 fixed it.
A few minutes pass and Gnome/GUi things pop up.A sound is working judging by the welcome sound(an annoyance from the windows default install).
The GUI doesn't look any faster then XP and feels twice slower then my win98 installation.
However after changing the theme and background it became snappier enough to be on par with win98 menus(with 0ms delay).
I decided to play Chess,just for the sake of it and started the app:Its all automated and
userfriendly,but i didn't get how you change the time of computer thinking or any advanced settings.After taking back a move i was baffled as there was no option to force the program to move on its turn.Perhaps i'm too noob for running this for the first time.
I launched firefox,and was greeted by the ubuntu help page.I definitely had to test internet on that thing.
Not quite the task.I tried to use Network from Administration and checked the connection:
There was no sign of it beyond some generic dchp line with a checkbox.Properties seemed just fine.There was just nothing to configure:
the modem line wasn't useful for me since e i'm on cable and reading help on the subject,just told me to open the same network app,again.
Not place to enter my password/server address or IP or any other settings windows demands.I get frustrated and launched network tools(at the point i'm not going to use linux ping,since i'm not sure about the syntax) entering google.com and pinging doesn't get anywhere.No internet.
well that breaks the deal:No internet -Not for me.I removed the CD and booted back to my win98 install.Its configured
very well and runs everything i ever need.and will probably serve for another 5 years.
In retrospect Ubuntu is looking better on the GUi side then mandrake,more user-friendly and windows-like,but still sucks.I'll doubt i try another Ubuntu or Mandrake in the future.
This LiveCD goes to garbage bin.