Encouraging gamers to switch to Linux will severely limit their availability of games through Steam. I know that Steam's availability of Linux games should improve over time, but for right now it is but a fraction of what's available for Windows.
I don't understand what you mean. 8 has all of the same window management capabilities that 7 has. Unless you're talking about the Metro apps, which nobody is forced to use if they don't want to.
You use the word "usable" pretty strongly there. Having the Metro screen replace the Start menu hardly makes the OS unusable. The full-screen change is a bit of an interruption to my train of thought, but the dozen applications I use with any frequency are pinned to the task bar anyway. It's really not the end of the world.
I've played a bit with Classic Shell, and it doesn't strike me as being clunky at all. It also has the OS boot directly in to desktop mode and has the ability to selectively disable all of the corner gestures, effectively leaving you with a lean Windows 7 desktop.
Well, I was getting more at the fact that Java encourages lazy habits in part because of its garbage collector. That is, just recklessly nulling out or re-referencing a pointer that may have previously referenced some gigantic data structure. That automated GC at runtime will save the day, but man, what a bad habit it is that people rely on it.
That's not to say that garbage collection is bad, especially if you're already writing in your own solutions to destroy objects. The difference is, you're consciously aware of what you're doing, and more in tune with what exactly is going on inside your computer when the code is being executed.
Your code probably could run circles around mine, but I'll only call you a sissy to your face if you call me an 'armature' to mine!
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that a person who cannot properly use C (and understand how memory management works) has no business writing mission-critical software in any language. JVM's garbage collector is for sissies. =P
Furthermore, the longer his parents wait, the worse his situation will become. If they don't do something to make him self-sufficient, what happens to him when they die?
I understand the plight here but it seems so very specific. How many traveling developers out there can't just carry a regular laptop for software development?
Not everybody who uses Linux does it just to say they're running FOSS. I run it on my work PC because it's a great environment for web development. I run it on my home server because it's a reliable server OS. I run it on my laptop because, quite frankly, the hardware support is better than XP. So if I'm building a new gaming PC and see that I could install Linux and still play games, that is an appealing option for two reasons: consistency, and some cash saved by not purchasing a Windows license.
Granted, Steam for Linux has a long way to go before its availability of games would be enough to consider Linux as a gaming OS, but you have to think of it this way: I'm likely going to buy closed-source games regardless of what OS I run.
My point in all of this? Different people use Linux for different reasons and not all of us are caught up in the RMS philosophy of 100% freedom.
I'd recommend going a non-Ubuntu route if you want to try KDE out. Kubuntu's implementation is not without its quirks and you may find that other distros offer a more polished (if not vanilla) KDE 4 experience which is actually quite pleasant.
Megaman was very close to being part of the genre known as Metroidvania
Are you talking about the general franchise, or the classic Megaman series? I know that the Megaman Zero and ZX series started to take on a Metroidvania characteristic, but the classic Megaman series is nowhere close to that.
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Pull yourself together, man.
It's not even that... more of a kludge-fest.
Encouraging gamers to switch to Linux will severely limit their availability of games through Steam. I know that Steam's availability of Linux games should improve over time, but for right now it is but a fraction of what's available for Windows.
Murphy's *
and had a lot of variety
If you consider palette swaps to be variety...
I don't understand what you mean. 8 has all of the same window management capabilities that 7 has. Unless you're talking about the Metro apps, which nobody is forced to use if they don't want to.
There are many reasons why people might choose XFCE over KDE.
You use the word "usable" pretty strongly there. Having the Metro screen replace the Start menu hardly makes the OS unusable. The full-screen change is a bit of an interruption to my train of thought, but the dozen applications I use with any frequency are pinned to the task bar anyway. It's really not the end of the world.
I've played a bit with Classic Shell, and it doesn't strike me as being clunky at all. It also has the OS boot directly in to desktop mode and has the ability to selectively disable all of the corner gestures, effectively leaving you with a lean Windows 7 desktop.
It's frighteningly heavy, too...
Well, I was getting more at the fact that Java encourages lazy habits in part because of its garbage collector. That is, just recklessly nulling out or re-referencing a pointer that may have previously referenced some gigantic data structure. That automated GC at runtime will save the day, but man, what a bad habit it is that people rely on it.
That's not to say that garbage collection is bad, especially if you're already writing in your own solutions to destroy objects. The difference is, you're consciously aware of what you're doing, and more in tune with what exactly is going on inside your computer when the code is being executed.
Your code probably could run circles around mine, but I'll only call you a sissy to your face if you call me an 'armature' to mine!
I have one of those sitting around with a gigantic 21" CRT... I wonder if it's worth anything as a collector's item...
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that a person who cannot properly use C (and understand how memory management works) has no business writing mission-critical software in any language. JVM's garbage collector is for sissies. =P
Laptop, netbook, ultrabook, etc, all the same thing if they run an OS supported by the SDK.
...just save the money and cut off his Internet access.
How many students live at home while in college full time?
Many do. I did. People who go to college in their hometown aren't that uncommon.
Furthermore, the longer his parents wait, the worse his situation will become. If they don't do something to make him self-sufficient, what happens to him when they die?
While we're on the subject of non sequitur remarks about people's signatures, your sentences are all missing a "~" at the end.
I understand the plight here but it seems so very specific. How many traveling developers out there can't just carry a regular laptop for software development?
It impacts people who care about principle the software they use is based upon.
In other words... RMS.
Of course, my first entry was rm -rf /* which only produced a stream of errors.
Try it again as root. =)
Hell, Skyfall just did it as well.
Not everybody who uses Linux does it just to say they're running FOSS. I run it on my work PC because it's a great environment for web development. I run it on my home server because it's a reliable server OS. I run it on my laptop because, quite frankly, the hardware support is better than XP. So if I'm building a new gaming PC and see that I could install Linux and still play games, that is an appealing option for two reasons: consistency, and some cash saved by not purchasing a Windows license.
Granted, Steam for Linux has a long way to go before its availability of games would be enough to consider Linux as a gaming OS, but you have to think of it this way: I'm likely going to buy closed-source games regardless of what OS I run.
My point in all of this? Different people use Linux for different reasons and not all of us are caught up in the RMS philosophy of 100% freedom.
I'd recommend going a non-Ubuntu route if you want to try KDE out. Kubuntu's implementation is not without its quirks and you may find that other distros offer a more polished (if not vanilla) KDE 4 experience which is actually quite pleasant.
Megaman was very close to being part of the genre known as Metroidvania
Are you talking about the general franchise, or the classic Megaman series? I know that the Megaman Zero and ZX series started to take on a Metroidvania characteristic, but the classic Megaman series is nowhere close to that.