Zealots of object oriented programming throw a fit, when they realize that no matter how much you force a metaphor, the computer doesn't give a shit. Translating any complex set of tasks into rudimentary instructions is inherently difficult. No magic language feature will change that fact.
That is such crap. Name me any platform without C code at its core. Just because C is relegated to a role of providing a system in which people can run their shitty code, doesn't mean it is obsolete. If you don't know C, then you don't actually know how your computer works. If you don't know how your computer works, then you will write shitty code in any language you choose.
The greatest cowardice a free society can display is the desire to avoid debating ideas. Nazi propaganda must be beaten, not hidden. The best way to discredit an idiot is to hand him a microphone and let him speak.
Because they don't want to develop to a shifting target. By relying on open standards, they force hardware manufactures to support those standards with higher fidelity. Otherwise you end up with software you have to continue to patch to specific drivers.
The only reason linux suffers from sketchy graphic drivers, is that the spec they code to never matches what the hardware ends up producing. The hardware manufacture can simply hack the drivers to deal with each corner case. Video cards which accurately match their specs are well supported on linux.
The day that I can buy a computer, and have a choice on which operating system to have installed. I have bought many versions of Windows only to strip them off as soon as I get the machine (voiding the warranty in some cases). Why do I have to pay a company I never chose to use?
They are fucking criminals at the heart of their revenue stream. If they ever decide to compete with software rather than licensing agreements, I'll reconsider my opinion.
We are geeks. We can get tech stories from a billion places on the web. Actually, we don't really need web browsers, if all we want to do is read tech articles. There are better news readers than browsers. We read these stories here, because we know a bunch of smart people are going to provide context in the comments. Some are programmers. Some work in the industry. Some are hobbyists. Some are fanboys. But the comments let us refine our opinions on a piece further, and god forbid, teach us something. If that is not there, I can just fire up a newsreader and read the same product without ever coming here.
I would say it is more likely to fracture GTK/QT. We all take for granted that we can jump between widget sets right now, because X handles the primitive drawing. Wayland will only draw bitmaps directly to the framebuffer, which means it will rely on the code running on the client. I can see a big problem down the road, when people realize that gtk and qt are duplicating processes, which used to be singular in X. Worse yet, these processes will be implemented differently in each library. That isn't a problem if you don't need to support both qt and gtk, but I can't think of a time in my usage, where I didn't need to run a qt app in gnome or a gtk app in kde.
To understand Wayland, you have to understand X.
An X server is a program(s) running as root, which coordinates all of the aspects of a GUI interface. This includes all of the drawing and updating to the display modules in the kernel. X also managed input devices like the mouse and keyboard.
However, X is not the window manager or the widget set. X simply listens to the client, and draws what it is told to. Thing like Gnome or KDE actually handle what is to be drawn, and then interface with X. If you think about that for a moment, you can see the silliness inherent in this design. The client is doing all the layout, and then having to go through a middleman.
Wayland basically says, if the client is doing the work, then let them handle all of the drawing and such. Wayland only manages the communication between the clients (windows usually) and the kernel modules. This allows programs quicker access to the framebuffer.
I think the best analogy would be the back when linux moved to udev instead of devfs. Instead of having an abstraction layer all clients had to query, a kernel module was added which clients could access directly.
This is it exactly. While I can't speak for all Linux users, I don't think most are die hard anything. The very existence of Linux has more to do with the stagnation Unix was facing for a variety of reasons. When I first used Linux, KDE was superior, but everyone still ran gtk applications. When Gnome took a step forward, a lot of people moved over to it.
At the end of the day, Linux users will move to the set of tools, which provides the best balance between performance, functionality and aesthetic. That balance will vary by user.
Instead of Gnome/KDE asking, "why won't the users accept change?", they should be asking "why didn't most users feel the direction we went represented a step forward?".
Ok, I guess I'll be the one to rant about the doctrine here (where is my soap box). I think you are implying that for an application to be successful it must also be marketable. In my understanding of the whole gnu philosophy that is not the case. It neither matters that the commercial market accepts it or rejects it. The point of the code is to be useful to someone. In this instance I can't be sure if the GPL has been violated, and I believe in these gray areas a company will usually win in a legal case. The GPL is not a much without a good legal team behind it, and the FSF can't blow their resources on every case. Violations will happen. Still think of all the other people using and improving the code that aren't in violation. Some may not have the resources to purchase commercial software, but none the less have the need. To me open sourced software means that a hospital in Africa can keep patient records in a database, because there are applications they can run and improve on themselves. So if some of my code is used in such a manner, I feel it was well worth it. And since I have yet to write a single piece of perfect code, I'm glad someone else can doctor it. Because it is GPL they can't turn around and sell it without releasing that code. I have no problem with them selling it. Nor do they need to provide binaries to anyone. As long as other parts of their application operate independently they can leave that code out. But the code will still have the freedom to evolve, because it is still out there. That is why a coder would give away their code freely (as in free not beer).
I really don't give a shit that apple isn't working with microsoft. Neither company really effects me, however the continued reliance on 32 bit enviorments really pisses me off. We have spent along nursing crap hardware and software for the sake of ease of developement. People act like 64 bit systems are a new thing, despite the fact they are something like 35 years old. This is the same reason we have had cisc processors shoved down our throats. If any company should appreciate 64 bit OS's, apple should. Any company failing to support the obvious reality of technical evolution and then tells their customers to downgrade is bullshit. I believe that all these traditional companies are going to fall hopelessly behind the open source community, as more ideas on computer science are being implemented directly into linux or bsd.
Linux and free software as a whole represent a new business model. It's good to see one of the big players standing with the community. Most people say microsoft is just bluffing, but I'm not one of them. The reality is that open source software is pressuring the entire industry to change the way they do business. Microsoft will not change, and will not hesitate to remove any threat. I think this still comes back to novell saving their company with the community's product, but not being willing to hold their ground with us. So here we are just like in pre 2000, except that we have more than redhat to add legitemacy, we have ubuntu.
An inventor must lisence use of his/her patent. This prevnts one company from using technology not available to any others. A company would only be able to maintain a monopoly, if they implemented non-patented technology. If you are refering to the current state of drug companies (I only ask because that has been well publicized), laws governing them vary from traditional patents. Whether or not this is for the better, I haven't decided. The benifit seems to be they can open up their research to universities which might benifit, while still making exclusive profit off their medicine. The downside is the consumer must bare the cost of research without allowing competitive manufacturing. Still I disagree with your understanding of patents. I agree that the rights of the inventor are also economic in nature, but this only means no one can implement their idea without first paying for it. One could argue a company would simply need to make the lisencing cost out of reach, but their are antitrust laws on the books to prohibit such actions. I can't decide what kind of capitolism you back, if I were to guess I would say a supply side view of things. I tend to believe the market should be run by consumers, and the only government interference would involve protecting that balance. My orignal point is that patents are not a tool of cooperations, but rather a protection of individuals. Patents should be used to protect innovations, else the desire to invest in research would drop. Patents should not be used on pre-existing technologies as an excuse to sue competitors. If MS claims linux violates a patent that they researched without first lisencing, then by all means sue. But if they are implementing silly patents just for the sake of deturring companies from seeing linux as a valid alternative, then I am calling foul. The free market runs on competition, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to subvert the competition is not really benifiting anyone. I know some people think we attack microsoft just because they're the biggest, and for some that is true, but there is also good reasons why their business practices fall in to question. I for one don't have a problem with say walmart, as they are a consumer driven company. If consumers told walmart they would pay higher prices for american made products, they would buy american tomorrow. On the contrary microsoft uses market leverage through exclusive lisencing to push it's products on consumers. Any competitor is hit from all sides with legal actions, vendor intimidation, and a compatabilty issues to kick them from the market place. Now microsoft is going after linux with threat of suit over patents. If we don't believe they are legit, there might be a reason why. We've seen the corpses of ruined companies with good products, and doubt Bill Gates wouldn't throw his mother infront of a truck to be the only player at the table.
Monopoly and the right to decide how your patent should be used are not the same thing. The idea was created to allow people to present their technologies to the public without fear someone else stealing and implementing their idea. Otherwise people would guard any ideas from public understanding. Read the federalist papers' discussions on the 1rst ammendment, and it becomes clear that they feared a society where knowledge was hoarded rather than shared. Patents were actually supposed to drive innovation by protecting the rights of the inventor. Capitalism was never stated as the official religion of the forefathers. The prevailing thought at the time were that government should stay out of economic transactions between private citzens. I see alot of wisdom in this, which is why I don't believe our court system should decide which company should prevail in the free market.
Really the kernel hasn't been getting fat. The modules provided by the kernel team aren't assumed in compiling, that's what make menuconfig is for. However I've noticed poor optimization on the part of distro released kernels. An example I've found in ubuntu is the amount of processor ticks used. For a desktop either 300 or 1000 is recommended by the kernel, for servers either 100 or 250 would be better. They default this at 250, and this is were ubuntu leaves the setting despite the kernel recommendation. If the kernel is fat, blame the distro who thought you needed T3 driver modules or the ability to run 64 processors for your laptop, instead of removing those modules in their release.
The US legal system is not a chess board for business. When the ideas were formed to protect copyright and patents, never was it thought to be used for market leverage. The immoral thing being done is not a matter of open source versus big software companies, but rather an assult on the american tax payer. Companies should not be able to use our judicial system to feud with each other. Between the recording and movie industry's copyright jehad and software patents our laws are being perverted. There is a big difference between protecting someones right to create or invent and a company using the system as a economic weapon. By the way the open source community did build it's own warchest, but in the end the patent appocalypse looming ever closer will cost all of us billions of dollars to sort out. The only real solution I can see at this point is to update laws for the SEC preventing companies from using the federal or state courts as market strategy. Also companies should be penalized for submitting bunk patents. This current behavior has far reaching consequences, which will effect cooperate law beyond the scope of software companies. So I disagree that we can not blame MS for poor behavior. Companies will come and go, but a broken legal system is a serious issue.
I disagree in a practical sense. In order to use gpl code (mind you lgpl is a little different story) you can not link the code to any proprietory libraries. Now in a very practical way, this would mean microsoft could not call their own dll's from inside the gpl source without violating the liscense. This would make it very difficult to use any gpl code even if they did hand back their modifications. Immeadately the project maintainer would complain about any library call that wasn't gpl as well (by the way, this is why the lgpl exists). So if microsoft currently has gpl code in their products they are in violation as they a) never returned the source and b) linked to non gpl libraries, but they still isn't the issue.
SCO was suing for copyright infringement, claiming that linux implemented their literal code into the kernel. This was proven to not only be wrong, but in some ways the reverse was true. Microsoft however is not bitching about windows code existing in linux, rather windows software technologies being in the linux product. Let me first say, software patents are total bullshit. Now that that's out of the way I continue my arguement. Let's say the compiz/beryl people patented the spinning cube desktop, and microsoft implemented their own spinning cube desktop with completely different code behind it. At this point microsoft would have committed no copyright infringement, however they would have violated compiz/beryls patent. Now this does get confusing cause copyright and patents exist under the 'intellectual property' jargon umbrella. Now I say fuck the 'intellectual property' jargon umbrella', cause software patents are just stupid. The GPL is a copyright protection and makes no assertions in regards to patents, and I think that is the way it ought to be. If Doom had patented "first person space marines fighting aliens", Halo would have not been allowed to be made even though the code is completely dissimilar. That sounds like a stupid example, eh, check out some of the software patents out there. But then I'm sure a guy that's been using linux since redhat 1.2 knows the difference between copyright and patent. Don't puff out your e-chest unless your gonna say slackware, redhat is a bitch distro.
Your right, not a troll; just misunderstanding. We are talking about patients and not copyright. Microsoft can not implement code from any GPL source, even if they do have patient deals with companies. A patient is like "drop down menus", not the code that actually implements it. To copy the code would be illegal. Though any bsd code can be copied without open sourcing. I think the previous reply was trying to correct your understanding in a mean spiritted way, but as I am often told about slashdot snobiness "Are you new here?".
I know this is what you want to believe, but it just aint so. Good PC vendors inside a machine are equal to the stability of any mac (mind you I have a couple macs as well as pc's). I will agree with you on one viewpoint, which is that if you don't want to learn about hardware, you have less of a chance of getting screwed by buying a mac. However a mac is silicon and copper just like a pc. An unix kernel is a unix kernel. The point of the article is that mac still keeps opensource software at arms length, which forces owners of macs to purchase software that is freely available to linux and (most of the time) windows users. On my macs I run linux, so the most of these apps are available to me anyway. If I were to put OS X back on them, I would have to install X11 to return functionality. I would also need to download gnu tools and begin compiling everything I wanted to run. Hey apple builds good hardware, but they just don't get the opensource community, and in the end they only hurt themselves and their users for it. The guys at MIT are the ones who built a stable OS, not apple. The only thing apple really did was to build the closed source aqua layer, which prevents opensourced apps from running properly.
Slashdot Mirror
Zealots of object oriented programming throw a fit, when they realize that no matter how much you force a metaphor, the computer doesn't give a shit. Translating any complex set of tasks into rudimentary instructions is inherently difficult. No magic language feature will change that fact.
That is such crap. Name me any platform without C code at its core. Just because C is relegated to a role of providing a system in which people can run their shitty code, doesn't mean it is obsolete. If you don't know C, then you don't actually know how your computer works. If you don't know how your computer works, then you will write shitty code in any language you choose.
The greatest cowardice a free society can display is the desire to avoid debating ideas. Nazi propaganda must be beaten, not hidden. The best way to discredit an idiot is to hand him a microphone and let him speak.
Because they don't want to develop to a shifting target. By relying on open standards, they force hardware manufactures to support those standards with higher fidelity. Otherwise you end up with software you have to continue to patch to specific drivers. The only reason linux suffers from sketchy graphic drivers, is that the spec they code to never matches what the hardware ends up producing. The hardware manufacture can simply hack the drivers to deal with each corner case. Video cards which accurately match their specs are well supported on linux.
I don't use it, never used it, and never plan on using it, not even sure it really exists, but I feel my life would be incomplete without it.
The day that I can buy a computer, and have a choice on which operating system to have installed. I have bought many versions of Windows only to strip them off as soon as I get the machine (voiding the warranty in some cases). Why do I have to pay a company I never chose to use? They are fucking criminals at the heart of their revenue stream. If they ever decide to compete with software rather than licensing agreements, I'll reconsider my opinion.
We are geeks. We can get tech stories from a billion places on the web. Actually, we don't really need web browsers, if all we want to do is read tech articles. There are better news readers than browsers. We read these stories here, because we know a bunch of smart people are going to provide context in the comments. Some are programmers. Some work in the industry. Some are hobbyists. Some are fanboys. But the comments let us refine our opinions on a piece further, and god forbid, teach us something. If that is not there, I can just fire up a newsreader and read the same product without ever coming here.
I would say it is more likely to fracture GTK/QT. We all take for granted that we can jump between widget sets right now, because X handles the primitive drawing. Wayland will only draw bitmaps directly to the framebuffer, which means it will rely on the code running on the client. I can see a big problem down the road, when people realize that gtk and qt are duplicating processes, which used to be singular in X. Worse yet, these processes will be implemented differently in each library. That isn't a problem if you don't need to support both qt and gtk, but I can't think of a time in my usage, where I didn't need to run a qt app in gnome or a gtk app in kde.
To understand Wayland, you have to understand X. An X server is a program(s) running as root, which coordinates all of the aspects of a GUI interface. This includes all of the drawing and updating to the display modules in the kernel. X also managed input devices like the mouse and keyboard. However, X is not the window manager or the widget set. X simply listens to the client, and draws what it is told to. Thing like Gnome or KDE actually handle what is to be drawn, and then interface with X. If you think about that for a moment, you can see the silliness inherent in this design. The client is doing all the layout, and then having to go through a middleman. Wayland basically says, if the client is doing the work, then let them handle all of the drawing and such. Wayland only manages the communication between the clients (windows usually) and the kernel modules. This allows programs quicker access to the framebuffer. I think the best analogy would be the back when linux moved to udev instead of devfs. Instead of having an abstraction layer all clients had to query, a kernel module was added which clients could access directly.
This is it exactly. While I can't speak for all Linux users, I don't think most are die hard anything. The very existence of Linux has more to do with the stagnation Unix was facing for a variety of reasons. When I first used Linux, KDE was superior, but everyone still ran gtk applications. When Gnome took a step forward, a lot of people moved over to it. At the end of the day, Linux users will move to the set of tools, which provides the best balance between performance, functionality and aesthetic. That balance will vary by user. Instead of Gnome/KDE asking, "why won't the users accept change?", they should be asking "why didn't most users feel the direction we went represented a step forward?".
Linus doesn't need someone to pay his light bills.
Ok, I guess I'll be the one to rant about the doctrine here (where is my soap box). I think you are implying that for an application to be successful it must also be marketable. In my understanding of the whole gnu philosophy that is not the case. It neither matters that the commercial market accepts it or rejects it. The point of the code is to be useful to someone. In this instance I can't be sure if the GPL has been violated, and I believe in these gray areas a company will usually win in a legal case. The GPL is not a much without a good legal team behind it, and the FSF can't blow their resources on every case. Violations will happen. Still think of all the other people using and improving the code that aren't in violation. Some may not have the resources to purchase commercial software, but none the less have the need. To me open sourced software means that a hospital in Africa can keep patient records in a database, because there are applications they can run and improve on themselves. So if some of my code is used in such a manner, I feel it was well worth it. And since I have yet to write a single piece of perfect code, I'm glad someone else can doctor it. Because it is GPL they can't turn around and sell it without releasing that code. I have no problem with them selling it. Nor do they need to provide binaries to anyone. As long as other parts of their application operate independently they can leave that code out. But the code will still have the freedom to evolve, because it is still out there. That is why a coder would give away their code freely (as in free not beer).
I really don't give a shit that apple isn't working with microsoft. Neither company really effects me, however the continued reliance on 32 bit enviorments really pisses me off. We have spent along nursing crap hardware and software for the sake of ease of developement. People act like 64 bit systems are a new thing, despite the fact they are something like 35 years old. This is the same reason we have had cisc processors shoved down our throats. If any company should appreciate 64 bit OS's, apple should. Any company failing to support the obvious reality of technical evolution and then tells their customers to downgrade is bullshit. I believe that all these traditional companies are going to fall hopelessly behind the open source community, as more ideas on computer science are being implemented directly into linux or bsd.
Linux and free software as a whole represent a new business model. It's good to see one of the big players standing with the community. Most people say microsoft is just bluffing, but I'm not one of them. The reality is that open source software is pressuring the entire industry to change the way they do business. Microsoft will not change, and will not hesitate to remove any threat. I think this still comes back to novell saving their company with the community's product, but not being willing to hold their ground with us. So here we are just like in pre 2000, except that we have more than redhat to add legitemacy, we have ubuntu.
An inventor must lisence use of his/her patent. This prevnts one company from using technology not available to any others. A company would only be able to maintain a monopoly, if they implemented non-patented technology. If you are refering to the current state of drug companies (I only ask because that has been well publicized), laws governing them vary from traditional patents. Whether or not this is for the better, I haven't decided. The benifit seems to be they can open up their research to universities which might benifit, while still making exclusive profit off their medicine. The downside is the consumer must bare the cost of research without allowing competitive manufacturing. Still I disagree with your understanding of patents. I agree that the rights of the inventor are also economic in nature, but this only means no one can implement their idea without first paying for it. One could argue a company would simply need to make the lisencing cost out of reach, but their are antitrust laws on the books to prohibit such actions. I can't decide what kind of capitolism you back, if I were to guess I would say a supply side view of things. I tend to believe the market should be run by consumers, and the only government interference would involve protecting that balance. My orignal point is that patents are not a tool of cooperations, but rather a protection of individuals. Patents should be used to protect innovations, else the desire to invest in research would drop. Patents should not be used on pre-existing technologies as an excuse to sue competitors. If MS claims linux violates a patent that they researched without first lisencing, then by all means sue. But if they are implementing silly patents just for the sake of deturring companies from seeing linux as a valid alternative, then I am calling foul. The free market runs on competition, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to subvert the competition is not really benifiting anyone. I know some people think we attack microsoft just because they're the biggest, and for some that is true, but there is also good reasons why their business practices fall in to question. I for one don't have a problem with say walmart, as they are a consumer driven company. If consumers told walmart they would pay higher prices for american made products, they would buy american tomorrow. On the contrary microsoft uses market leverage through exclusive lisencing to push it's products on consumers. Any competitor is hit from all sides with legal actions, vendor intimidation, and a compatabilty issues to kick them from the market place. Now microsoft is going after linux with threat of suit over patents. If we don't believe they are legit, there might be a reason why. We've seen the corpses of ruined companies with good products, and doubt Bill Gates wouldn't throw his mother infront of a truck to be the only player at the table.
Monopoly and the right to decide how your patent should be used are not the same thing. The idea was created to allow people to present their technologies to the public without fear someone else stealing and implementing their idea. Otherwise people would guard any ideas from public understanding. Read the federalist papers' discussions on the 1rst ammendment, and it becomes clear that they feared a society where knowledge was hoarded rather than shared. Patents were actually supposed to drive innovation by protecting the rights of the inventor. Capitalism was never stated as the official religion of the forefathers. The prevailing thought at the time were that government should stay out of economic transactions between private citzens. I see alot of wisdom in this, which is why I don't believe our court system should decide which company should prevail in the free market.
Really the kernel hasn't been getting fat. The modules provided by the kernel team aren't assumed in compiling, that's what make menuconfig is for. However I've noticed poor optimization on the part of distro released kernels. An example I've found in ubuntu is the amount of processor ticks used. For a desktop either 300 or 1000 is recommended by the kernel, for servers either 100 or 250 would be better. They default this at 250, and this is were ubuntu leaves the setting despite the kernel recommendation. If the kernel is fat, blame the distro who thought you needed T3 driver modules or the ability to run 64 processors for your laptop, instead of removing those modules in their release.
The US legal system is not a chess board for business. When the ideas were formed to protect copyright and patents, never was it thought to be used for market leverage. The immoral thing being done is not a matter of open source versus big software companies, but rather an assult on the american tax payer. Companies should not be able to use our judicial system to feud with each other. Between the recording and movie industry's copyright jehad and software patents our laws are being perverted. There is a big difference between protecting someones right to create or invent and a company using the system as a economic weapon. By the way the open source community did build it's own warchest, but in the end the patent appocalypse looming ever closer will cost all of us billions of dollars to sort out. The only real solution I can see at this point is to update laws for the SEC preventing companies from using the federal or state courts as market strategy. Also companies should be penalized for submitting bunk patents. This current behavior has far reaching consequences, which will effect cooperate law beyond the scope of software companies. So I disagree that we can not blame MS for poor behavior. Companies will come and go, but a broken legal system is a serious issue.
I disagree in a practical sense. In order to use gpl code (mind you lgpl is a little different story) you can not link the code to any proprietory libraries. Now in a very practical way, this would mean microsoft could not call their own dll's from inside the gpl source without violating the liscense. This would make it very difficult to use any gpl code even if they did hand back their modifications. Immeadately the project maintainer would complain about any library call that wasn't gpl as well (by the way, this is why the lgpl exists). So if microsoft currently has gpl code in their products they are in violation as they a) never returned the source and b) linked to non gpl libraries, but they still isn't the issue.
SCO was suing for copyright infringement, claiming that linux implemented their literal code into the kernel. This was proven to not only be wrong, but in some ways the reverse was true. Microsoft however is not bitching about windows code existing in linux, rather windows software technologies being in the linux product. Let me first say, software patents are total bullshit. Now that that's out of the way I continue my arguement. Let's say the compiz/beryl people patented the spinning cube desktop, and microsoft implemented their own spinning cube desktop with completely different code behind it. At this point microsoft would have committed no copyright infringement, however they would have violated compiz/beryls patent. Now this does get confusing cause copyright and patents exist under the 'intellectual property' jargon umbrella. Now I say fuck the 'intellectual property' jargon umbrella', cause software patents are just stupid. The GPL is a copyright protection and makes no assertions in regards to patents, and I think that is the way it ought to be. If Doom had patented "first person space marines fighting aliens", Halo would have not been allowed to be made even though the code is completely dissimilar. That sounds like a stupid example, eh, check out some of the software patents out there. But then I'm sure a guy that's been using linux since redhat 1.2 knows the difference between copyright and patent. Don't puff out your e-chest unless your gonna say slackware, redhat is a bitch distro.
lol, I did that twice. Sorry, I'm new here :)
Your right, not a troll; just misunderstanding. We are talking about patients and not copyright. Microsoft can not implement code from any GPL source, even if they do have patient deals with companies. A patient is like "drop down menus", not the code that actually implements it. To copy the code would be illegal. Though any bsd code can be copied without open sourcing. I think the previous reply was trying to correct your understanding in a mean spiritted way, but as I am often told about slashdot snobiness "Are you new here?".
And in response to the ceo's statements the linux community responded with "Who the fuck is Xandros? I mean does anyone actually use this distro".
Hobby developers? What do you think is running the intenet your on? The site your on?
I could only watch the video, cause apparently linux pictures aren't part of the collective consciousness. Still that's pretty fucking cool.
I know this is what you want to believe, but it just aint so. Good PC vendors inside a machine are equal to the stability of any mac (mind you I have a couple macs as well as pc's). I will agree with you on one viewpoint, which is that if you don't want to learn about hardware, you have less of a chance of getting screwed by buying a mac. However a mac is silicon and copper just like a pc. An unix kernel is a unix kernel. The point of the article is that mac still keeps opensource software at arms length, which forces owners of macs to purchase software that is freely available to linux and (most of the time) windows users. On my macs I run linux, so the most of these apps are available to me anyway. If I were to put OS X back on them, I would have to install X11 to return functionality. I would also need to download gnu tools and begin compiling everything I wanted to run. Hey apple builds good hardware, but they just don't get the opensource community, and in the end they only hurt themselves and their users for it. The guys at MIT are the ones who built a stable OS, not apple. The only thing apple really did was to build the closed source aqua layer, which prevents opensourced apps from running properly.