The problem with apple in this case remains their refusal to build boxes with PCIe slots unless you pay then 2 grand. I can build a machine that will work with that guys audio card cheaper than Apple seems to care about.
While some of this is discretionary with performance, we are talking about something that works perfectly fine, and has PCIe slots etc. I could up the specs on most of this to equal and probably come in right under Mac Pro, but the point is i can also come in FAR less and still be able to use the PCIe cards, something Apple refuses to let anyone do.
Motherboard - 100$ max Processor - 1 T5600 @ 240$ Hard Drive - 250GB 100$ max Case 100$ Video card ~ 200$ Ram ~ 200$ for ~ 2GB
I see around $1,000 how about you? This box can use that guys audio card just fine.
Apple has a more complete monopoly than MS could ever hope for, and that's somehow OK because they have reduced support problems? If Microsoft tried to pull this shit they would be sued.
Apple completely controls the entire hardware system, Apple completely controls the software, Apple goes after anyone who tries to change the OS, even when it is functionality that users DEMAND. That includes themes.
It's either a cult or a monopoly, pick one. Doesn't matter how vertically integrated they are.
I've used OS X, XP, Vista, and Opensuse extensively, so i am familiar with all of them. I seriously question anyone who can multitask and do serious work in OS X, I gave it a few months time on a friends machine and got past all the learning curve problems and have now identified that the remaining problems are all things that Apple refuses to fix OR let anyone change (which is a more serious problem).
I frequently resize and maximize windows, which is difficult in OS X because there is only one small corner you can use to grab it, and there is no maximize functionality at all without scripting it yourself and assigning it to a key string. Apple refuses to let anyone add this ability because they think I should be using drag and drop for everything, I dont want to and in many situations this is useless.
Next, I use the 2nd mouse button constantly on my laptop, and I did the same in OS X on my friends iMac using a Mighty Mouse. If my laptop was a macbook I would be spending wasted time ctrl-clicking things or using obscure trackpad combinations. Again, because thats what apple thinks I should do, never mind the fact that they make 2 button mice, they just refuse to use 2 buttons on their laptops, even the pro.
Then you have the odd behavior of the OS, it feels like the mouse pointer is at the end of a 10 foot stick, and I've talked to a number of people who have owned Macs for a long time who agree. I find myself constantly having to zero in on things to click them, including those micro sized window buttons at the upper left. 2 of the 4 window buttons are worthless, including the button in the upper right that would otherwise be the maximize i need so badly. That would be much more useful than making the toolbar of a program disappear, which is what that button does now in OS X.
The dock is another problem, I shouldn't have to spend time determining which icon on the dock represents various identical open documents or program windows. In OS X you can either guess or hover over each icon, or you can use expose in which it's still impossible to differentiate between 5 open text documents. In every other operating system i can simply read the first few letters on the task bar and know which is which, and they don't randomly change places when I open or minimize them.
I agree, I'm currently on my way to getting a CCSP at the moment, and there are people in the college classes i take who barely understand how a windows domain works, let alone network systems and authentication.
Recently one of them was trying to connect to the VPN at his job, which is part of a windows domain, and it wouldn't work because he hadn't authenticated against the schools wireless login yet and obviously wouldn't be able to connect to anything. The wireless auth system basically just grabs users from the mail server, and inserts a access list rule in the router behind it allowing traffic from your MAC address to get out.
So he entered in his user and such, and was able to connect to the VPN at his job. He then went on to say that he forgot to login to the wireless page and that they had to login to the domain at work to use the servers. I explained to him that the wireless login didn't have anything to do with the windows domain where he works, but he pulled out one of those "i don't actually know anything" lines and said "All I know is we have to login to the wireless system at work to use the network, you can use the internet but not the servers", which is completely different and reverse situation. The result being that now he thinks the wireless login authenticated his laptop against the windows domain at his job, never mind the fact that they are completely distinct and unrelated networks, not even using the same authentication system or user database.
"Would you stop contributing to the Linux kernel because you know there are a bazillion vendors out there using that code to make money on their product?"
No, because those companies are required to release the improvements. Do you really not get the difference here?
"People who don't give back in that context don't get the full benefits, because they aren't working to improve the very code they're using."
Yes they are, they are improving it themselves, internally, and then watching you make improvements, and continually taking them and using them with no obligation to you, because you used a BSD license. With GPL that wouldn't happen.
As before, the scope of who gets the source exactly matches the scope of who uses the program. Redistribution from there is another problem. If they use GPL code, modifications would remain GPL. But if someone leaks the code, is it then legal to distribute? Or would that be a massive breach of some other classified status not specified by the GPL?
I would hope that a situation could be worked out so that the code can be protected as classified in certain cases, and I would say there is a partial conflict at the moment. Regardless of my support of the GPL, this is a situation where I would say protecting government systems is more important.
"I don't understand why Tivo should be required to help you do so, however."
Because Tivo uses the Linux kernel, which they knew when they developed around it that user rights were guaranteed. If they don't like that they shouldn't have used the Linux kernel.
Despite all the media streaming protocols we have, they will keep trying to use obscure methods to prevent the majority of people from even capturing the video. But again, anything you can see you can record unless your hardware is working against you. BAD ROBOT!
I agree, Linux users tend to not put up with ridiculous annoyances and thus the realplayer and helix player on linux are very nice. I recently installed a version of both on my laptop in linux because VLC cant seem to skip to an exact location, and mplayer is just........bleh. RP/Helix is the closest i have found to Media Player Classic in windows, which is very minimalistic and i love it.
They don't "Get" the Mac? It's a platform, with a well thought out OS stack, a good interface, and various smart features....what is it that developers are missing?
If you demand that developers do things significantly different on the Mac from every other platform, they will get tired of it. There seem to be a large number of people who want the Mac to remain a minority.
I think people are going to have to get passed the idea that systems are or aren't secure based on their source code. The source code for apache is freely available, as is the Linux kernel, BIND, Firefox and such.
Of more concern is the fact that all public binary copies of Windows were built by Microsoft. Just having the source doesn't mean it is identical to the release version or even buildable.
I think part of the value in making sure there are lots of open source apps on Windows is the tie in factor, that is, it makes it a bit harder to segment Microsoft and Windows from open source programs. This has some advantages, if core Windows customers rely on certain open source apps it becomes much harder to attack the concept of open source itself. While it might be easy to say that certain apps or functions should be Linux only, this is a sure way to retard growth and won't actually help anything.
It does help to ensure that the applications people use are consistent and cross platform, because Firefox has already become so common and desirable that a very large percentage of non technical people prefer to use it. The same will become true for other applications, all thats needed is time and exposure. At some point the strengths of a better back end operating system will also become apparent, but first we need to ensure that the front end interface and applications are both usable and familiar.
Sounds to me like the honor system works better than RFC 3514:D
It would be more effective to have all packets signed by a certificate, then packets could be verified and tied to the real source, or dropped if unsigned. If a packet comes from your system attacking someone, you are warned. Yes I realize infected boxes would cause pseudo false positives, but it would notify users that they were infected, which would help clean up the network.
That system, however ingenious, would be ripe for abuse by morality warriors and censorship junkies.
Really, the aspect of broadband that concerns me the most is data transfer limits. Statistical multiplexing should mean that at any given time I have a reasonable chance of getting full line speed or close to it, and I have yet to be limited by the speed of the local loop itself, but obviously even at low speeds I might be limited by the transfer limit over a period of time.
Presumably line speed will increase in large steps with new equipment, i can't say the same for transfer limits.
People seem to come at situations with a mindset decided not on facts but on point of view. You seem to have come at this situation with the idea that your preconceived ideas about the value of encryption and its relation to security apply to everyone and every situation.
Outlawing encryption because anyone using it must be trying to evade security measures or the government...pure ignorance, that makes no sense whatsoever and in fact is one of the more dangerous suggestions I've heard lately, not to mention the fact that making laws against something guarantees it will not go away.
Torrent program encryption accounts for a very small portion of the total applications of the technology, and any laws you push for will end up impacting legitimate business models.
In Ohio we have Time-Warner digital cable service, but the on-demand videos don't even compare to analog cable, they look worse than flash in some cases. This is the best example I have seen of telecommunications companies using substandard video quality to counter for a relative lack of bandwidth to their tier 1/2/3 provider.
If I were managing the IT side of a cable company I would install at least one content server in the local node of a cable system, this way requests can be cached and obtained as needed. If the content is local, serve it, if not grab it at extremely high speed from the central server, store it, and begin streaming as soon as capable.
Obviously IPTV is totally different from the tiered "LAN" cable distribution model, but the same holds true, these companies need to start distributing content so that it can be delivered from a closer point to the customer, it really shouldn't be that hard and would save the ISP quite a bit of bandwidth in a large market. Akamai does this in a somewhat unrelated manner and companies already utilize this advantage to a great degree for web services.
"Unfortunately, KDE/Qt could theoretically become hijacked by hostile corporate interests and make the commercial-use end of the equation unworkable."
There is an agreement in place with trolltech (with a foundation or such entity), such that if anything ever happens, Qt will always be available for use under the GPL license.
At one time there was no such guarantee which is why gnome was started, but had Qt been GPL the entire time, dare I say gnome would not exist. Gnome was started purely out of concern that freedom would not be preserved in the future with KDE dependant on Qt, and that concern is no longer a problem. If gnome worked very well none of this would matter but as it stands now KDE has significant advantages, mostly because of the config panels and applications they have developed as well as their insistence that things be configurable. Gnome on the other hand moves more and more toward being a thin client.
The first step to solving that is to stop promoting Gnome as a desktop replacement, because it is in fact the closest you can come to a thin client, it lacks MAJOR parts of a functional desktop system. As it stands now the majority of problems people have in Linux because of lack of control and configuration are directly caused by Gnome. KDE for all its faults is much more usable and fairly consistent, and is in fact capable of performing as a standalone desktop, it merely needs some finishing touches and organization. Yes that discussion ends as a flame war but its 100% true, Gnome is not capable of being a finished desktop without major help, like the Yast system in SuSE.
The second major problem is the fact that we have 2 package formats for one job. Choice works well in other areas, but this is one area where there needs to be one single system, otherwise you have to start packaging libraries and making executable installers. Both package formats do the job well but developers need to choose one. The only other way to solve this is to invent a new one.
You know, I bet less than 1% of people here could tell me what the path to a CD drive is under Windows XP.... Hint: It has nothing to do with the drive letter. There isn't actually a C: or D: drive, they are abstracted mount points. The real path is part of the object tree, but you never see it in practice because EVERYTHING is abstracted.
My point is that it is not important what the mount point is in Linux, as long as the system provides an access point visible to the user, and it does. Windows does the exact same thing.
I found this gem in the opensuse faq about the deal
"Novell has also created or is among the top sponsors of projects such as the Linux Kernel, GCC, OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, Tomboy, F-Spot, Banshee, Beagle, (K)NetworkManager, Kickoff, Evolution, XEN, Xgl, and Compiz etc. Are you refusing to use any of those as well? Since they all have substantial amounts of Novell code."
I've seen a few people in this thread and others ask "Why use Novell software?". I assume in this case you mean SuSE linux, and OpenSuSE, so i'll start there. This is long, but true, I have used OpenSuSE long enough to recognize how useful it is compared to other systems available and these things are why I will not just abandon SuSE or Novell.
I have used Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, and Fedora both in the past and quite recently, and at this time OpenSuSE remains the most usable Linux system available, for a variety of reasons, but in particular the Yast system. Yast fills in a lot of the gaps in Linux system and hardware management. Some of the Yast functions are not presently available anywhere else, and if you decide to use Gnome this is even more important because Yast fills in many of the massive holes in Gnome for these areas. And I don't mean just basic stuff, but more advanced things, like a GUI for inserting PCI IDs into a driver if your card doesn't match perfectly or at all, or a well made Xorg configuration panel, or very well designed network card configuration. It also has GUI configuration for almost every common network service daemon, such as ldap, apache, NIS, kerberos, bind, nfs, sendmail, samba and so on. Pehaps the single most important useful aspect of yast is that all of these functions can be completed over SSH, in a console, or without Xorg at all, because there are totally identical yast systems for both GUI and ncurses, this alone makes yast fairly unique.
OpenSuSE also has one of the best installers I have ever seen, and it beats just about everything. By everything I mean Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X, and without a doubt every other Linux dist installer out there. Why you ask? Some very important reasons include its nearly perfect package selection, intelligent partitioning (that can create LVM and encrypted volumes for you), hardware preconfiguration, system cloning, and lots of other useful things that actually work. It also gave me a choice between Gnome and KDE within one disc, which gained it lots of points. It also has very nice system recovery that will check all essential files and replace them if you think something is broken. It will also repair grub easily and quickly, something you would otherwise need a livecd for anyway, that novice users could not do otherwise.
So you can see after that long rant, that there are things in SuSE that are custom and unique to it, many of them not present anywhere else. None of these things are proprietary and could be done by others, even Yast could be used by others as it was released as GPL by Novell.
So, I will not just abandon one of the best Linux systems available, nor will I immediately blacklist Novell for what is basically speculation at this point. Novell positioned the company as being highly dependent on Linux, Novell has more reason to stand by the community than it has to assist Microsoft, even with their agreement. And every day it seems Novell is looking more like the goodguy, particularly if they knew what would happen with those coupons, and now this EFF news makes me think they know more and have more planned than previously thought.
You are describing a system designed to the least common denominator, this post concerns Windows, not Linux mind you.
There is a reason we don't let idiot users actually decide what the system does, they are not the only people using the system. It would be desirable for the computer to just work when you need it, but thats not how it is right now even in Windows, and the solution is not to dumb the system down until you don't need to learn anything to use it.
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The problem with apple in this case remains their refusal to build boxes with PCIe slots unless you pay then 2 grand. I can build a machine that will work with that guys audio card cheaper than Apple seems to care about.
While some of this is discretionary with performance, we are talking about something that works perfectly fine, and has PCIe slots etc. I could up the specs on most of this to equal and probably come in right under Mac Pro, but the point is i can also come in FAR less and still be able to use the PCIe cards, something Apple refuses to let anyone do.
Motherboard - 100$ max
Processor - 1 T5600 @ 240$
Hard Drive - 250GB 100$ max
Case 100$
Video card ~ 200$
Ram ~ 200$ for ~ 2GB
I see around $1,000 how about you? This box can use that guys audio card just fine.
Apple has a more complete monopoly than MS could ever hope for, and that's somehow OK because they have reduced support problems? If Microsoft tried to pull this shit they would be sued.
Apple completely controls the entire hardware system, Apple completely controls the software, Apple goes after anyone who tries to change the OS, even when it is functionality that users DEMAND. That includes themes.
It's either a cult or a monopoly, pick one. Doesn't matter how vertically integrated they are.
I've used OS X, XP, Vista, and Opensuse extensively, so i am familiar with all of them. I seriously question anyone who can multitask and do serious work in OS X, I gave it a few months time on a friends machine and got past all the learning curve problems and have now identified that the remaining problems are all things that Apple refuses to fix OR let anyone change (which is a more serious problem).
I frequently resize and maximize windows, which is difficult in OS X because there is only one small corner you can use to grab it, and there is no maximize functionality at all without scripting it yourself and assigning it to a key string. Apple refuses to let anyone add this ability because they think I should be using drag and drop for everything, I dont want to and in many situations this is useless.
Next, I use the 2nd mouse button constantly on my laptop, and I did the same in OS X on my friends iMac using a Mighty Mouse. If my laptop was a macbook I would be spending wasted time ctrl-clicking things or using obscure trackpad combinations. Again, because thats what apple thinks I should do, never mind the fact that they make 2 button mice, they just refuse to use 2 buttons on their laptops, even the pro.
Then you have the odd behavior of the OS, it feels like the mouse pointer is at the end of a 10 foot stick, and I've talked to a number of people who have owned Macs for a long time who agree. I find myself constantly having to zero in on things to click them, including those micro sized window buttons at the upper left. 2 of the 4 window buttons are worthless, including the button in the upper right that would otherwise be the maximize i need so badly. That would be much more useful than making the toolbar of a program disappear, which is what that button does now in OS X.
The dock is another problem, I shouldn't have to spend time determining which icon on the dock represents various identical open documents or program windows. In OS X you can either guess or hover over each icon, or you can use expose in which it's still impossible to differentiate between 5 open text documents. In every other operating system i can simply read the first few letters on the task bar and know which is which, and they don't randomly change places when I open or minimize them.
I agree, I'm currently on my way to getting a CCSP at the moment, and there are people in the college classes i take who barely understand how a windows domain works, let alone network systems and authentication.
Recently one of them was trying to connect to the VPN at his job, which is part of a windows domain, and it wouldn't work because he hadn't authenticated against the schools wireless login yet and obviously wouldn't be able to connect to anything. The wireless auth system basically just grabs users from the mail server, and inserts a access list rule in the router behind it allowing traffic from your MAC address to get out.
So he entered in his user and such, and was able to connect to the VPN at his job. He then went on to say that he forgot to login to the wireless page and that they had to login to the domain at work to use the servers. I explained to him that the wireless login didn't have anything to do with the windows domain where he works, but he pulled out one of those "i don't actually know anything" lines and said "All I know is we have to login to the wireless system at work to use the network, you can use the internet but not the servers", which is completely different and reverse situation. The result being that now he thinks the wireless login authenticated his laptop against the windows domain at his job, never mind the fact that they are completely distinct and unrelated networks, not even using the same authentication system or user database.
"Would you stop contributing to the Linux kernel because you know there are a bazillion vendors out there using that code to make money on their product?"
No, because those companies are required to release the improvements. Do you really not get the difference here?
"People who don't give back in that context don't get the full benefits, because they aren't working to improve the very code they're using."
Yes they are, they are improving it themselves, internally, and then watching you make improvements, and continually taking them and using them with no obligation to you, because you used a BSD license. With GPL that wouldn't happen.
As before, the scope of who gets the source exactly matches the scope of who uses the program. Redistribution from there is another problem. If they use GPL code, modifications would remain GPL. But if someone leaks the code, is it then legal to distribute? Or would that be a massive breach of some other classified status not specified by the GPL?
I would hope that a situation could be worked out so that the code can be protected as classified in certain cases, and I would say there is a partial conflict at the moment. Regardless of my support of the GPL, this is a situation where I would say protecting government systems is more important.
"I don't understand why Tivo should be required to help you do so, however."
Because Tivo uses the Linux kernel, which they knew when they developed around it that user rights were guaranteed. If they don't like that they shouldn't have used the Linux kernel.
Despite all the media streaming protocols we have, they will keep trying to use obscure methods to prevent the majority of people from even capturing the video. But again, anything you can see you can record unless your hardware is working against you. BAD ROBOT!
I agree, Linux users tend to not put up with ridiculous annoyances and thus the realplayer and helix player on linux are very nice. I recently installed a version of both on my laptop in linux because VLC cant seem to skip to an exact location, and mplayer is just........bleh. RP/Helix is the closest i have found to Media Player Classic in windows, which is very minimalistic and i love it.
But anyway.....
Number of cores never seems to equal the same multiplication of performance......so yea. It's still better but not multiple.
They don't "Get" the Mac? It's a platform, with a well thought out OS stack, a good interface, and various smart features....what is it that developers are missing?
If you demand that developers do things significantly different on the Mac from every other platform, they will get tired of it. There seem to be a large number of people who want the Mac to remain a minority.
I'm not sure you have any idea what you're talking about, and you can't even spell small words.
I think people are going to have to get passed the idea that systems are or aren't secure based on their source code. The source code for apache is freely available, as is the Linux kernel, BIND, Firefox and such.
Of more concern is the fact that all public binary copies of Windows were built by Microsoft. Just having the source doesn't mean it is identical to the release version or even buildable.
I think part of the value in making sure there are lots of open source apps on Windows is the tie in factor, that is, it makes it a bit harder to segment Microsoft and Windows from open source programs. This has some advantages, if core Windows customers rely on certain open source apps it becomes much harder to attack the concept of open source itself. While it might be easy to say that certain apps or functions should be Linux only, this is a sure way to retard growth and won't actually help anything.
It does help to ensure that the applications people use are consistent and cross platform, because Firefox has already become so common and desirable that a very large percentage of non technical people prefer to use it. The same will become true for other applications, all thats needed is time and exposure. At some point the strengths of a better back end operating system will also become apparent, but first we need to ensure that the front end interface and applications are both usable and familiar.
Sounds to me like the honor system works better than RFC 3514 :D
It would be more effective to have all packets signed by a certificate, then packets could be verified and tied to the real source, or dropped if unsigned. If a packet comes from your system attacking someone, you are warned. Yes I realize infected boxes would cause pseudo false positives, but it would notify users that they were infected, which would help clean up the network.
That system, however ingenious, would be ripe for abuse by morality warriors and censorship junkies.
Really, the aspect of broadband that concerns me the most is data transfer limits. Statistical multiplexing should mean that at any given time I have a reasonable chance of getting full line speed or close to it, and I have yet to be limited by the speed of the local loop itself, but obviously even at low speeds I might be limited by the transfer limit over a period of time.
Presumably line speed will increase in large steps with new equipment, i can't say the same for transfer limits.
People seem to come at situations with a mindset decided not on facts but on point of view. You seem to have come at this situation with the idea that your preconceived ideas about the value of encryption and its relation to security apply to everyone and every situation.
Outlawing encryption because anyone using it must be trying to evade security measures or the government...pure ignorance, that makes no sense whatsoever and in fact is one of the more dangerous suggestions I've heard lately, not to mention the fact that making laws against something guarantees it will not go away.
Torrent program encryption accounts for a very small portion of the total applications of the technology, and any laws you push for will end up impacting legitimate business models.
In Ohio we have Time-Warner digital cable service, but the on-demand videos don't even compare to analog cable, they look worse than flash in some cases. This is the best example I have seen of telecommunications companies using substandard video quality to counter for a relative lack of bandwidth to their tier 1/2/3 provider.
If I were managing the IT side of a cable company I would install at least one content server in the local node of a cable system, this way requests can be cached and obtained as needed. If the content is local, serve it, if not grab it at extremely high speed from the central server, store it, and begin streaming as soon as capable.
Obviously IPTV is totally different from the tiered "LAN" cable distribution model, but the same holds true, these companies need to start distributing content so that it can be delivered from a closer point to the customer, it really shouldn't be that hard and would save the ISP quite a bit of bandwidth in a large market. Akamai does this in a somewhat unrelated manner and companies already utilize this advantage to a great degree for web services.
"Unfortunately, KDE/Qt could theoretically become hijacked by hostile corporate interests and make the commercial-use end of the equation unworkable."
There is an agreement in place with trolltech (with a foundation or such entity), such that if anything ever happens, Qt will always be available for use under the GPL license.
At one time there was no such guarantee which is why gnome was started, but had Qt been GPL the entire time, dare I say gnome would not exist. Gnome was started purely out of concern that freedom would not be preserved in the future with KDE dependant on Qt, and that concern is no longer a problem. If gnome worked very well none of this would matter but as it stands now KDE has significant advantages, mostly because of the config panels and applications they have developed as well as their insistence that things be configurable. Gnome on the other hand moves more and more toward being a thin client.
The first step to solving that is to stop promoting Gnome as a desktop replacement, because it is in fact the closest you can come to a thin client, it lacks MAJOR parts of a functional desktop system. As it stands now the majority of problems people have in Linux because of lack of control and configuration are directly caused by Gnome. KDE for all its faults is much more usable and fairly consistent, and is in fact capable of performing as a standalone desktop, it merely needs some finishing touches and organization. Yes that discussion ends as a flame war but its 100% true, Gnome is not capable of being a finished desktop without major help, like the Yast system in SuSE.
The second major problem is the fact that we have 2 package formats for one job. Choice works well in other areas, but this is one area where there needs to be one single system, otherwise you have to start packaging libraries and making executable installers. Both package formats do the job well but developers need to choose one. The only other way to solve this is to invent a new one.
You know, I bet less than 1% of people here could tell me what the path to a CD drive is under Windows XP.... Hint: It has nothing to do with the drive letter. There isn't actually a C: or D: drive, they are abstracted mount points. The real path is part of the object tree, but you never see it in practice because EVERYTHING is abstracted.
My point is that it is not important what the mount point is in Linux, as long as the system provides an access point visible to the user, and it does. Windows does the exact same thing.
I found this gem in the opensuse faq about the deal
"Novell has also created or is among the top sponsors of projects such as the Linux Kernel, GCC, OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, Tomboy, F-Spot, Banshee, Beagle, (K)NetworkManager, Kickoff, Evolution, XEN, Xgl, and Compiz etc. Are you refusing to use any of those as well? Since they all have substantial amounts of Novell code."
Thank you for posting that link, it seems to be easier to just refer people to basic information than to argue at this point.
Too many people are complaining about things they either don't understand or refuse to believe.
If you don't want to use OpenSuSE or other products, don't, but stop pretending like Novell products are evil without any valid reasons.
I've seen a few people in this thread and others ask "Why use Novell software?". I assume in this case you mean SuSE linux, and OpenSuSE, so i'll start there. This is long, but true, I have used OpenSuSE long enough to recognize how useful it is compared to other systems available and these things are why I will not just abandon SuSE or Novell.
I have used Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, and Fedora both in the past and quite recently, and at this time OpenSuSE remains the most usable Linux system available, for a variety of reasons, but in particular the Yast system. Yast fills in a lot of the gaps in Linux system and hardware management. Some of the Yast functions are not presently available anywhere else, and if you decide to use Gnome this is even more important because Yast fills in many of the massive holes in Gnome for these areas. And I don't mean just basic stuff, but more advanced things, like a GUI for inserting PCI IDs into a driver if your card doesn't match perfectly or at all, or a well made Xorg configuration panel, or very well designed network card configuration. It also has GUI configuration for almost every common network service daemon, such as ldap, apache, NIS, kerberos, bind, nfs, sendmail, samba and so on. Pehaps the single most important useful aspect of yast is that all of these functions can be completed over SSH, in a console, or without Xorg at all, because there are totally identical yast systems for both GUI and ncurses, this alone makes yast fairly unique.
OpenSuSE also has one of the best installers I have ever seen, and it beats just about everything. By everything I mean Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X, and without a doubt every other Linux dist installer out there. Why you ask? Some very important reasons include its nearly perfect package selection, intelligent partitioning (that can create LVM and encrypted volumes for you), hardware preconfiguration, system cloning, and lots of other useful things that actually work. It also gave me a choice between Gnome and KDE within one disc, which gained it lots of points. It also has very nice system recovery that will check all essential files and replace them if you think something is broken. It will also repair grub easily and quickly, something you would otherwise need a livecd for anyway, that novice users could not do otherwise.
So you can see after that long rant, that there are things in SuSE that are custom and unique to it, many of them not present anywhere else. None of these things are proprietary and could be done by others, even Yast could be used by others as it was released as GPL by Novell.
So, I will not just abandon one of the best Linux systems available, nor will I immediately blacklist Novell for what is basically speculation at this point. Novell positioned the company as being highly dependent on Linux, Novell has more reason to stand by the community than it has to assist Microsoft, even with their agreement. And every day it seems Novell is looking more like the goodguy, particularly if they knew what would happen with those coupons, and now this EFF news makes me think they know more and have more planned than previously thought.
You are describing a system designed to the least common denominator, this post concerns Windows, not Linux mind you.
There is a reason we don't let idiot users actually decide what the system does, they are not the only people using the system. It would be desirable for the computer to just work when you need it, but thats not how it is right now even in Windows, and the solution is not to dumb the system down until you don't need to learn anything to use it.