I get it now! Thank you. RIAA and MPAA are using Microsoft to erect a toll booth (more accurately, a concrete barrier) on the way to consumer satisfaction unless we pay up. Big time pay up. Microsoft is OK with this? The justifications to use Windows at all are getting very thin, especially since I see several of my co-workers who are relatively new Mac users having NONE of these issues. They absolutely love their machines. This week, I'm joining them. Moving from XP to Mac. Nearly right. I think Microsoft want the RIAA/MPAA and their international counterparts, the media producers, and the media retailers to think that Microsoft is looking out for their content. When they are just handing out another Microsoft lock in.
Something that wasn't mentioned is the number of people who re download the browser when they reinstall a system. On Windows, I have the downloads for all my most used apps and drivers in a directory on the D: drive, but for Linux I'm using FC6 right now, and download FF2 each time, as it isn't in the FC6 repository. Which adds about a dozen downloads of FF since 2 came out at least.
No. "Giving it time" could be misconstrued as a lack of interest, either unwittingly or wilfully. Continued (polite) harrassment from the public will make it evident to all that there is strong public interest.
Consumer "pester power" has been shown to be possibly the most powerful tool in influencing large corporate decision-making.
So far I have seen very little polite harassment, (referring to those involved in the topic in general, not any post or forum in particular)and a lot of demands to nobody in particular, or predictions of doom from both the Windows and Linux camps. By give it time, I mean wait a few days or so, and as I said in my following post, the UK site at least is updated with the Dell Ubuntu offerings now.
I've been an exclusively Linux home user since 1999. Haven't bought a new preassembled PC....well, ever! Have fixed & maintained many friends' boxes, and don't like the poor quality and heavy bottlenecking I've seen result from specifications designed purely around a feature list.
I think we agree a lot more than disagree. I had to try and figure out a problem with an old Dell machine a few months ago. It turned out to be impossible for me to do so, and the owner wasn't interested in buying several new parts to try and perhaps get it going again. I don't think I have come across a domestic off the shelf system that was built to any kind of quality. I'll keep building my own, and referring friends to a place I know that does some good work for a reasonable price.
> But turn down the paranoia a bit
Not paranoia, just much (too much?) prior experience.
Sometimes people expect the worst out of habit more than logic. I've seen complaints about the way Dell is handling the issue that are mostly extreme or ill informed. A few even insisted the machines should be the price of a retail version of Windows cheaper, or were annoyed by Dell not switching their whole range to Linux worldwide overnight. By paranoia, I refer to the people who have consigned the whole operation to the status of a PR exercise from the moment that the news broke that Dell were considering the Linux lines. And as soon as one disaster was seen to be already accounted for and dodged, they got to work on the next excuse why it is going to fail.
Here in the UK corporate and government FLOSS overtures have almost always proved to be, at best, just a bargaining tool. Invariably Microsoft then does a "special deal" to secure market share: those who were previously trumpeting Linux' virtues then about-turn and regurgitate the typical Microsoft FUD - "too immature", "higher TCO", etc. The result is that the UK is the most ingrained Microsoft shop in Europe.
I know. I'm in the UK too. Although a little ray of hope is that the department that approves the educational purchases of software has come out with a more positive view, and I think a few privately funded schools have switched. Government projects tend to be a shambles anyway, look at the NHS computer system fiasco, and the various others that always seem to go to the same group of companies no matter how bad the previous systems were. I think the move will come from the small business and private sector before Government. The time projects take to get out of the planning stage is just too long. I did read that Specsavers have recently switched their POS and perhaps some of their internal systems to Linux, and someone on some forum mentioned that Maplin were using it too. There must be many less visible companies doing the same thing.
Although I can see the Microsoft sales ninjas having their strategy backfiring on them at some point.
Not to mention the global FUD war that Microsoft has been waging recently (SCO, Novell IP clauses, etc).
Its debatable how much this really works. We see it a lot more because we read the computer media much more than many. There are a lot of companies around the world who are using non MS systems, and the c
Is Joe user any better off with Windows? Be honest. We all come across people who would be barred for life if they drove like they use a computer. At least the most common problems of never defragging and not using a virus scanner are not issues with Linux. As to playing DVDs.. I know a few who have installed third party DVD playing software and expected their CD drive to magically be transformed.
And the exact same thing has been happening with the American Ubuntu/Dell offering. People have got all excited and upset about the sale of Linux machines. Everything from Dell not pushing the advertising to not converting every Dell model to Linux overnight. It took a few days for the web site to be updated, and another few days for the wrinkles like extended guarantees hiccup to be ironed out. Give it time.
I'm not a Dell customer or supporter, and as I don't need a laptop I am very unlikely to be. I even hate working on off the shelf PCs that friends bring me to fix. I build my own computers and have done for the past ten years or so. I am a Linux user, and I like many have been following this with great interest. Not exactly a Dell customer in the making.
But turn down the paranoia a bit. Dell are selling a new line, and new lines take a while to get working properly. The only time I see more whining on a Linux forum is when a noob comes in and complains loudly about the way Linux doesn't make things as easy to do as Windows.
Dell have been quite sensible about the whole Linux on consumer Dell PCs thing. I'm sure that the deal was already made way before they did the website survey, and that this was only a PR stunt. They have avoided things like subcontracting OS support to Canonical, and neatly sidestepped the cost of training a whole lot of people to offer Linux support. They chose an easy distro to ship, instead of going for something like Slackware or Gentoo, or going the opposite direction and putting Linspire on. They chose a free distro, instead of putting a paid versions on. They have in short done everything that they could to increase the possibility of this working. Sabotage would have been incredibly easy at any stage of the game, so I really think Dell are at least taking this seriously. If they were just doing this as a publicity stunt, then why take it further than they need to?
Dell have been selling Linux to business for years, so its not as if they are going to be anti Linux on that score. Deciding on one distro makes sense, as some distros have quirks that others don't. Its also easier from a stock control angle to reduce the options when possible.
Dell announced that they were going to be selling these computers in selected markets outside the US. If they made a very public announcement, would they be stupid enough to turn the good publicity into bad publicity by then changing their minds and not selling them? They could just keep saying soon, and never deliver.
Dell may, like many other computer companies, be very tied to Microsoft financially. But the "everyone who sells Windows hates Linux" mentality is sometimes counter productive. Dell wants to sell computers. They don't care if there is Linux, Windows or freedos on them. In the end, a computer is a unit of stock to them, and a sale is a sale. They still end up not paying the Microsoft license fee, so that offsets the crapplet loss due to not adding lots of junk to the install. And if they do still have to pay Microsoft for every computer shipped, this gives them bargaining power to get that changed. Microsoft could do without the hassle of an OEM bringing this little matter to court right now I'm sure. Especially as their monopoly status trade barriers are running out soon, and they have already had their wrists slapped over unfair contract obligations.
My personal take on this is that Dell are cautiously probing the market to see just how well these machines sell. Perfectly sensible. Its uncharted territory. Something that they don't need is a bunch of people buying Linux by mistake, and then howling at every opportunity to the assembled masses on the net about the rubbish system they got from Dell. Every Linux user I have come across on the net seems to be very pleased with their Dell/Ubuntu system, and that is the kind of result they want. This also explains them not promoting the Linux computers the way they do Microsoft systems. A big rush on Linux PCs followed by a big surge in returns would not be good business. The current Linux users will however already know about the Dell computers, and if they are gong to buy them, they will track them down like they do all the hardware to run Linux.
There shouldn't be a problem ordering from the UK site, or depending on the guarantee options, the German site might be cheaper. And you don't even have to convert from Euros to sterling. Although import duty and VAT payments might reduce any savings.
I checked both the UK and German dell websites and even if I specifically search for Ubuntu, the only thing I can find is the US Dell Ubuntu site. And that is all you will see until they start selling them. They only announced that they were going to be selling Linux loaded Dells this side of the pond a few days ago. And if you phone the Dell order line, they will not sell you a system with Ubuntu installed until they start officially selling them either.
Actually, the only thing holding me back from switching to Linux completely is the horrible and useless installation of new apps. Why can't Linux work like Windows - download a setup file, run it and it's there.... if you don't like it, you choose "Uninstall". The last time i tried to install a new game on a Linux box, I descended into dependency hell and it took hours to get it running. The same game was a one file download on Windows, and took 15 minutes - including download time. Windows is a horrible mess. but for installation and unistallation, it's far better than Linux is right now. Perhaps you should try again. It gets easier all the time. Assuming you want to exclude the games in the repositories, Most of the games I have come across tend to be downloaded as pre compiled binaries.
Download a tarball,
Extract the tarbball to a directory of your choice,
change to that directory,
Run the executable file.
Play
And to remove the game, delete the directory. No chance of registry entries or files scattered all over the system like Windows has. I've even had a game demo hose my Windows install when I tried to remove it.
When was the last time you installed a Linux game? A bad port of a Windows game to Linux, or a source code download will be more difficult obviously, but those are diminishing as time goes by.
There was a time when to play a game you needed to know your hardware and had to be able to edit config files by hand in DOS too. But those days are long gone, and the people who are making games are aware that if they want to get people playing, they have to meet them half way. Earlier Windows games also needed some knowledge to set things up too. Not to mention the vast numbers of people who have bought a game and found out too late that their system wasn't powerful enough to run it. Unless they had the technical expertise to upgrade, which many don't, they were stuck with a game they couldn't play until it was time for a new computer. Linux is changing and the influx of new users who have found the technical bar has dropped with distros like Ubuntu have helped make things easier. It will get better too as Linux becomes more widespread. Hopefully, never as dumbed down as Windows is now, but a bit more user friendliness in places wouldn't hurt.
Nvidia seem to manage ok. 1 driver for x86, 1 driver for x64, Distro agnostic, and often packaged by the people who maintain third party repositories for compatibility and user convenience. And video cards are not particularly simple devices.
From the Nvidia Linux advantage PDF available on the Nvidia website. "95% of all code base is shared between all operating systems" Must be a nightmare getting that 5% needed to run on other OSs. Although I imagine the Vista drivers break that a bit.
Packaged drivers may need to be specifically tweaked for a given distro, but that doesn't mean that the manufacturer of the driver is going to be the one doing the tweaking. If they can provide a generic driver for any given hardware, it is down to the distro's community to make it easier or not.
I may be dense but why should I care about what OS a company is putting on their machines? Leaving the ideological reasons out, an OS is no more thatn a tool and only I should care about it. I will never understand people that get an orgasm because Linuzzz OSX, Solaris or whatever object of their desire is getting more exposure. Just use it and if you dont like it, uninstall it and istall whatever does it for yoy. Well.. by posting on a topic that specifically references Linux being put on Lenovo computers but makes no reference to any other OS, you must have some interest. For purely selfish reasons, you should care. It directly influences your day to day computer use.
All ideology aside. More big name companies selling pre installed Linux computers is a direct benefit for Linux users as a whole, because it makes it much more inviting for hardware manufacturers to either supply Linux drivers for their hardware or take advantage of the offer to have drivers developed free under the protection of an NDA by some of the kernel developers.
People buy a Linux PC, they are going to need printers, scanners, webcams etc. A Linux user's money is worth the same amount as a Windows user's money, so why not sell to both? The current Linux users are also more likely to buy the right hardware for their purpose, so fewer returns, and less tech support.
Previously, there has been no way to figure out how many people are using Linux. Any figures you have seen are just educated guesses at best. At least with computer sales, there is some vague indication of the kind of market that exists for the hardware vendors.
Its no different to the broader adoption of Firefox causing website designers want to support both browsers. With the early versions of Firefox, it was common to come across sites that didn't display right, or that would not allow Firefox to be used with their checkout system, but now that is a thing of the past. And Windows users got IE7, but you can't win them all. Perhaps IE8 will be better.
A larger visible user base also has the advantage of attracting more money for funding development of Linux software. Some is done by hobbyists, but a large amount is also done by large corporations. They benefit, and we benefit from their investment.
The second reason, which is one that Windows users should welcome is competition. Without competition, there is no real incentive to make a better OS. No incentive to keep the price at a reasonable level, and the Windows using world is stuck on an upgrade cycle of Microsoft's choosing with very little real benefit to the user. The only winners in this scenario are the Microsoft shareholders. Not the ordinary users.
For all but a few loud fanboys, Linux users in general don't really care if you choose to use Linux, Windows, or anything else. We don't have any interest in taking over the world, and don't particularly care who uses what OS. If you enjoy learning and have fun finding out how to tweak your computer, then welcome. If not, that's ok too. But any time the OS we chose to use gets a bit more visibility, it means that there is a step closer to being able to both use our chosen OS, and pick up hardware without having to do so much research every time.
No. Increase the rate of piracy, you increase the severity of the WGA and whatever the Vista equivalent is. You also increase the price, because businesses don't want to be audited and have illegal copies found on their systems, and switching to another OS is more expensive than sticking with Windows.
Increase the competition however, and you not only reduce the cost of Windows very significantly, but you also increase the quality of Microsoft products. Download Linux, make your next PC a Mac, either will do. Even better, stop buying off the shelf computers, and go to local small scale makers, or build your own. No bundled OEM copy included.
Microsoft can charge the price they want because they know that most of their users are not going to go elsewhere. Change that and you have a different Microsoft.
In China and other developing markets, the market isn't all Microsoft yet. And a computer that is running Windows is less likely to be running Linux.
No. you paid for the license to use the work contained on your media of choice in the manner set down by the owner(not you). You have no rights, only permissions.
And its not as if the computer industry is gong to cooperate with the music/movie industry is it... After all, a media PC used as an entertainment hub would never be DRMd to the gills, and allow for a rolling upgrade of the DRM mechanism every time its cracked... Would it??
Playing this media file in your bedroom computer requires an additional charge to your music rental.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft were trying to stick a specific digit up at the Open source community, and Apple if they can get away with it. Obviously they are trying to pull a fast one. Microsoft always does. But I can see a hole in this strategy.
Provided the license for this format doesn't specify which OS it is allowed to be used with, it doesn't have to be incompatible with an OS using the GPL3 license. None of the GPL licenses exclude the use of non GPL code in a given OS any more than it makes everything it touches GPL3, they just enforce the right for GPL licensed code to remain GPL as the original author intended.
So a self contained converter could be made that would take the Microsoft file as an input and spit out a different uncompressed format with all the data intact. Ideal for a load/save plug-in for almost anything. Specific uses could be something like photo importers which could do the translation on the fly like they do now with RAW, graphics packages like Gimp, or specific one function programs that convert formats from closed to lossless open. And providing the specifications are published without the hook of having to be only used on a Microsoft OS, its not that big a deal. Even browsers should be able to decompress and convert the images on a web page on the fly, and not have to bother with reverse engineering the format. The plug-in isn't GPL3, but it doesn't have to be.
Samba(GPL3) works fine with the Linux kernel(GPL2) and Apache(non GPL as far as I remember) and Nvidia graphics card drivers(closed source binary). There may be some conditions that make it impossible to pack it as part of a distribution, but that's what third party repositories are for, and there is nothing stopping the author distributing the program themselves, thus not distributing a single line of GPL3 code, so not infringing on anybodies patents, licenses, or idealism.
How good this is for Microsoft as an attack on GPL, other than the FUD that already seems to be flying here, remains to be seen. Assuming that is, that it makes it as a major file format..
But isn't this exactly the point? The RIAA and their international counterparts are using the criminal court system to pursue misdeeds that attract disproportionate punishment under criminal law. To take it a bit further, why not prosecute patent infringement under criminal law too? Both involve the infringement of someone's IP, and both are based on estimated losses calculated by the person or group claiming the loss.
Can you imagine a bunch of police officers breaking down Microsoft's gates and storming in to arrest the media player team for using unlicensed IP of Alcatel/Lucient? Then in court Microsoft having to pay a comically inflated price for every copy of Windows with the offending codec included.
So we don't just whine about how commercialized Microsoft is. They know how to play to win. If open source wants to get ahead, it has to pick up on good ideas and make them better. You don't by any chance work in an advertising related business?
The only good idea in this case is getting a free Office suite, even if it is not very good, and finding a crack that will cut out the ads. Otherwise it will be a good incentive to find a different app to do the same job.
I agree the open source world needs to pick up on good ideas. And a great idea is to never touch adware with a very long barge pole.
The thing is that out of the box, Word comes with tracking turned off and markup viewing turned on. The user has to do two non-obvious things right to reverse this and thus create the negligent disclosure problem. Someone with "a limited knowledge of the software" is unlikely to figure out how to do it. True enough. But that is what the IT department is for. Set up the system, assign working folders etc. and turn on and off certain features.
It's a shame that the save/print/send warning isn't on by default. But would that actually stop anybody. I've come across a lot of autoclickers. Even if the box was full screen and had red flashing lights, they would stiull click ok and nevr read the text. Strangely, people seem much more inclined to obey company policy than use a little common sense where computer use is concerned.
We shouldn't lose track of the fact that change tracking is an important feature where collaboration is part of document creation and that it's widely used by pretty much the same organizations that are sensitive about what gets sent out in the end. A few anecdotes don't change the likelihood that the people who use these features know how they work and how to turn them off. True. Its a useful feature, I don't think anybody can disagree with that (this is not an invitation), but given the number of pitfalls, it is perhaps more sensible to do say a print to PDF instead of making a fully editable document available, assuming that the act of printing instead of just converting the original document would strip off the unwanted data.
But didn't this exact scenario happen a few years ago to the British Government?
On one occasion, there was a dispute over the origin or the author of a certain document, and the government gave the excuse that they must have formatted the floppy disk the document was stored on in a different computer, and in another case, some conflicting edits were discovered to be embedded in the distributed document.
Problem is.. these features should be turned off, but in reality, when you are dealing with people who have a limited knowledge of the software and a basic knowledge of the security concerns, often they are not. You are asking for trouble distributing anything that could potentially have this information still included with the document.
Make it a standard procedure that all documents for external use be printed as PDF documents and the problem is eliminated. As a happy side effect, the PDF can be read on just about any computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Something that wasn't mentioned is the number of people who re download the browser when they reinstall a system. On Windows, I have the downloads for all my most used apps and drivers in a directory on the D: drive, but for Linux I'm using FC6 right now, and download FF2 each time, as it isn't in the FC6 repository. Which adds about a dozen downloads of FF since 2 came out at least.
The ability to say you are running on a 64 bit platform..
No. "Giving it time" could be misconstrued as a lack of interest, either unwittingly or wilfully. Continued (polite) harrassment from the public will make it evident to all that there is strong public interest. Consumer "pester power" has been shown to be possibly the most powerful tool in influencing large corporate decision-making.
So far I have seen very little polite harassment, (referring to those involved in the topic in general, not any post or forum in particular)and a lot of demands to nobody in particular, or predictions of doom from both the Windows and Linux camps. By give it time, I mean wait a few days or so, and as I said in my following post, the UK site at least is updated with the Dell Ubuntu offerings now.
I've been an exclusively Linux home user since 1999. Haven't bought a new preassembled PC....well, ever! Have fixed & maintained many friends' boxes, and don't like the poor quality and heavy bottlenecking I've seen result from specifications designed purely around a feature list.
I think we agree a lot more than disagree. I had to try and figure out a problem with an old Dell machine a few months ago. It turned out to be impossible for me to do so, and the owner wasn't interested in buying several new parts to try and perhaps get it going again. I don't think I have come across a domestic off the shelf system that was built to any kind of quality. I'll keep building my own, and referring friends to a place I know that does some good work for a reasonable price.
> But turn down the paranoia a bit Not paranoia, just much (too much?) prior experience.
Sometimes people expect the worst out of habit more than logic. I've seen complaints about the way Dell is handling the issue that are mostly extreme or ill informed. A few even insisted the machines should be the price of a retail version of Windows cheaper, or were annoyed by Dell not switching their whole range to Linux worldwide overnight. By paranoia, I refer to the people who have consigned the whole operation to the status of a PR exercise from the moment that the news broke that Dell were considering the Linux lines. And as soon as one disaster was seen to be already accounted for and dodged, they got to work on the next excuse why it is going to fail.
Here in the UK corporate and government FLOSS overtures have almost always proved to be, at best, just a bargaining tool. Invariably Microsoft then does a "special deal" to secure market share: those who were previously trumpeting Linux' virtues then about-turn and regurgitate the typical Microsoft FUD - "too immature", "higher TCO", etc. The result is that the UK is the most ingrained Microsoft shop in Europe.
I know. I'm in the UK too. Although a little ray of hope is that the department that approves the educational purchases of software has come out with a more positive view, and I think a few privately funded schools have switched. Government projects tend to be a shambles anyway, look at the NHS computer system fiasco, and the various others that always seem to go to the same group of companies no matter how bad the previous systems were. I think the move will come from the small business and private sector before Government. The time projects take to get out of the planning stage is just too long. I did read that Specsavers have recently switched their POS and perhaps some of their internal systems to Linux, and someone on some forum mentioned that Maplin were using it too. There must be many less visible companies doing the same thing.
Although I can see the Microsoft sales ninjas having their strategy backfiring on them at some point.
Not to mention the global FUD war that Microsoft has been waging recently (SCO, Novell IP clauses, etc).
Its debatable how much this really works. We see it a lot more because we read the computer media much more than many. There are a lot of companies around the world who are using non MS systems, and the c
Is Joe user any better off with Windows? Be honest. We all come across people who would be barred for life if they drove like they use a computer. At least the most common problems of never defragging and not using a virus scanner are not issues with Linux. As to playing DVDs.. I know a few who have installed third party DVD playing software and expected their CD drive to magically be transformed.
Seems that they are now offering the Linux laptops for sale. didn't check the desktops. http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.asp x/emea/segments/gen/client/en/ubuntu_landing?c=uk& cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml
And the exact same thing has been happening with the American Ubuntu/Dell offering. People have got all excited and upset about the sale of Linux machines. Everything from Dell not pushing the advertising to not converting every Dell model to Linux overnight. It took a few days for the web site to be updated, and another few days for the wrinkles like extended guarantees hiccup to be ironed out. Give it time.
I'm not a Dell customer or supporter, and as I don't need a laptop I am very unlikely to be. I even hate working on off the shelf PCs that friends bring me to fix. I build my own computers and have done for the past ten years or so. I am a Linux user, and I like many have been following this with great interest. Not exactly a Dell customer in the making.
But turn down the paranoia a bit. Dell are selling a new line, and new lines take a while to get working properly. The only time I see more whining on a Linux forum is when a noob comes in and complains loudly about the way Linux doesn't make things as easy to do as Windows.
Dell have been quite sensible about the whole Linux on consumer Dell PCs thing. I'm sure that the deal was already made way before they did the website survey, and that this was only a PR stunt. They have avoided things like subcontracting OS support to Canonical, and neatly sidestepped the cost of training a whole lot of people to offer Linux support. They chose an easy distro to ship, instead of going for something like Slackware or Gentoo, or going the opposite direction and putting Linspire on. They chose a free distro, instead of putting a paid versions on. They have in short done everything that they could to increase the possibility of this working. Sabotage would have been incredibly easy at any stage of the game, so I really think Dell are at least taking this seriously. If they were just doing this as a publicity stunt, then why take it further than they need to?
Dell have been selling Linux to business for years, so its not as if they are going to be anti Linux on that score. Deciding on one distro makes sense, as some distros have quirks that others don't. Its also easier from a stock control angle to reduce the options when possible.
Dell announced that they were going to be selling these computers in selected markets outside the US. If they made a very public announcement, would they be stupid enough to turn the good publicity into bad publicity by then changing their minds and not selling them? They could just keep saying soon, and never deliver.
Dell may, like many other computer companies, be very tied to Microsoft financially. But the "everyone who sells Windows hates Linux" mentality is sometimes counter productive. Dell wants to sell computers. They don't care if there is Linux, Windows or freedos on them. In the end, a computer is a unit of stock to them, and a sale is a sale. They still end up not paying the Microsoft license fee, so that offsets the crapplet loss due to not adding lots of junk to the install. And if they do still have to pay Microsoft for every computer shipped, this gives them bargaining power to get that changed. Microsoft could do without the hassle of an OEM bringing this little matter to court right now I'm sure. Especially as their monopoly status trade barriers are running out soon, and they have already had their wrists slapped over unfair contract obligations.
My personal take on this is that Dell are cautiously probing the market to see just how well these machines sell. Perfectly sensible. Its uncharted territory. Something that they don't need is a bunch of people buying Linux by mistake, and then howling at every opportunity to the assembled masses on the net about the rubbish system they got from Dell. Every Linux user I have come across on the net seems to be very pleased with their Dell/Ubuntu system, and that is the kind of result they want. This also explains them not promoting the Linux computers the way they do Microsoft systems. A big rush on Linux PCs followed by a big surge in returns would not be good business. The current Linux users will however already know about the Dell computers, and if they are gong to buy them, they will track them down like they do all the hardware to run Linux.
There shouldn't be a problem ordering from the UK site, or depending on the guarantee options, the German site might be cheaper. And you don't even have to convert from Euros to sterling. Although import duty and VAT payments might reduce any savings.
Download a tarball,
Extract the tarbball to a directory of your choice,
change to that directory,
Run the executable file.
Play
And to remove the game, delete the directory. No chance of registry entries or files scattered all over the system like Windows has. I've even had a game demo hose my Windows install when I tried to remove it.
When was the last time you installed a Linux game? A bad port of a Windows game to Linux, or a source code download will be more difficult obviously, but those are diminishing as time goes by.
There was a time when to play a game you needed to know your hardware and had to be able to edit config files by hand in DOS too. But those days are long gone, and the people who are making games are aware that if they want to get people playing, they have to meet them half way. Earlier Windows games also needed some knowledge to set things up too. Not to mention the vast numbers of people who have bought a game and found out too late that their system wasn't powerful enough to run it. Unless they had the technical expertise to upgrade, which many don't, they were stuck with a game they couldn't play until it was time for a new computer. Linux is changing and the influx of new users who have found the technical bar has dropped with distros like Ubuntu have helped make things easier. It will get better too as Linux becomes more widespread. Hopefully, never as dumbed down as Windows is now, but a bit more user friendliness in places wouldn't hurt.
Nvidia seem to manage ok. 1 driver for x86, 1 driver for x64, Distro agnostic, and often packaged by the people who maintain third party repositories for compatibility and user convenience. And video cards are not particularly simple devices.
From the Nvidia Linux advantage PDF available on the Nvidia website. "95% of all code base is shared between all operating systems" Must be a nightmare getting that 5% needed to run on other OSs. Although I imagine the Vista drivers break that a bit.
Packaged drivers may need to be specifically tweaked for a given distro, but that doesn't mean that the manufacturer of the driver is going to be the one doing the tweaking. If they can provide a generic driver for any given hardware, it is down to the distro's community to make it easier or not.
All ideology aside. More big name companies selling pre installed Linux computers is a direct benefit for Linux users as a whole, because it makes it much more inviting for hardware manufacturers to either supply Linux drivers for their hardware or take advantage of the offer to have drivers developed free under the protection of an NDA by some of the kernel developers.
People buy a Linux PC, they are going to need printers, scanners, webcams etc. A Linux user's money is worth the same amount as a Windows user's money, so why not sell to both? The current Linux users are also more likely to buy the right hardware for their purpose, so fewer returns, and less tech support.
Previously, there has been no way to figure out how many people are using Linux. Any figures you have seen are just educated guesses at best. At least with computer sales, there is some vague indication of the kind of market that exists for the hardware vendors.
Its no different to the broader adoption of Firefox causing website designers want to support both browsers. With the early versions of Firefox, it was common to come across sites that didn't display right, or that would not allow Firefox to be used with their checkout system, but now that is a thing of the past. And Windows users got IE7, but you can't win them all. Perhaps IE8 will be better.
A larger visible user base also has the advantage of attracting more money for funding development of Linux software. Some is done by hobbyists, but a large amount is also done by large corporations. They benefit, and we benefit from their investment.
The second reason, which is one that Windows users should welcome is competition. Without competition, there is no real incentive to make a better OS. No incentive to keep the price at a reasonable level, and the Windows using world is stuck on an upgrade cycle of Microsoft's choosing with very little real benefit to the user. The only winners in this scenario are the Microsoft shareholders. Not the ordinary users.
For all but a few loud fanboys, Linux users in general don't really care if you choose to use Linux, Windows, or anything else. We don't have any interest in taking over the world, and don't particularly care who uses what OS. If you enjoy learning and have fun finding out how to tweak your computer, then welcome. If not, that's ok too. But any time the OS we chose to use gets a bit more visibility, it means that there is a step closer to being able to both use our chosen OS, and pick up hardware without having to do so much research every time.
Well.. it would explain all the viruses..
No. Increase the rate of piracy, you increase the severity of the WGA and whatever the Vista equivalent is. You also increase the price, because businesses don't want to be audited and have illegal copies found on their systems, and switching to another OS is more expensive than sticking with Windows.
Increase the competition however, and you not only reduce the cost of Windows very significantly, but you also increase the quality of Microsoft products. Download Linux, make your next PC a Mac, either will do. Even better, stop buying off the shelf computers, and go to local small scale makers, or build your own. No bundled OEM copy included.
Microsoft can charge the price they want because they know that most of their users are not going to go elsewhere. Change that and you have a different Microsoft.
In China and other developing markets, the market isn't all Microsoft yet. And a computer that is running Windows is less likely to be running Linux.
No. you paid for the license to use the work contained on your media of choice in the manner set down by the owner(not you). You have no rights, only permissions.
And its not as if the computer industry is gong to cooperate with the music/movie industry is it... After all, a media PC used as an entertainment hub would never be DRMd to the gills, and allow for a rolling upgrade of the DRM mechanism every time its cracked... Would it??
Playing this media file in your bedroom computer requires an additional charge to your music rental.
Cancel or allow.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft were trying to stick a specific digit up at the Open source community, and Apple if they can get away with it. Obviously they are trying to pull a fast one. Microsoft always does. But I can see a hole in this strategy.
Provided the license for this format doesn't specify which OS it is allowed to be used with, it doesn't have to be incompatible with an OS using the GPL3 license. None of the GPL licenses exclude the use of non GPL code in a given OS any more than it makes everything it touches GPL3, they just enforce the right for GPL licensed code to remain GPL as the original author intended.
So a self contained converter could be made that would take the Microsoft file as an input and spit out a different uncompressed format with all the data intact. Ideal for a load/save plug-in for almost anything. Specific uses could be something like photo importers which could do the translation on the fly like they do now with RAW, graphics packages like Gimp, or specific one function programs that convert formats from closed to lossless open. And providing the specifications are published without the hook of having to be only used on a Microsoft OS, its not that big a deal. Even browsers should be able to decompress and convert the images on a web page on the fly, and not have to bother with reverse engineering the format. The plug-in isn't GPL3, but it doesn't have to be.
Samba(GPL3) works fine with the Linux kernel(GPL2) and Apache(non GPL as far as I remember) and Nvidia graphics card drivers(closed source binary). There may be some conditions that make it impossible to pack it as part of a distribution, but that's what third party repositories are for, and there is nothing stopping the author distributing the program themselves, thus not distributing a single line of GPL3 code, so not infringing on anybodies patents, licenses, or idealism.
How good this is for Microsoft as an attack on GPL, other than the FUD that already seems to be flying here, remains to be seen. Assuming that is, that it makes it as a major file format..
But isn't this exactly the point? The RIAA and their international counterparts are using the criminal court system to pursue misdeeds that attract disproportionate punishment under criminal law. To take it a bit further, why not prosecute patent infringement under criminal law too? Both involve the infringement of someone's IP, and both are based on estimated losses calculated by the person or group claiming the loss.
Can you imagine a bunch of police officers breaking down Microsoft's gates and storming in to arrest the media player team for using unlicensed IP of Alcatel/Lucient? Then in court Microsoft having to pay a comically inflated price for every copy of Windows with the offending codec included.
The only good idea in this case is getting a free Office suite, even if it is not very good, and finding a crack that will cut out the ads. Otherwise it will be a good incentive to find a different app to do the same job.
I agree the open source world needs to pick up on good ideas. And a great idea is to never touch adware with a very long barge pole.
Aww.. Just like Beryl then..
Speaking as the other only Linux user in the UK, I do want Asus. Been using their motherboards for years. Couldn't care less about Acer though.
As he used the net to find out how to do things and succeded, I would assume he was familiar enough to realise that Linux has a choice of desktops.
As far as it went, it was a fair account of using Ubuntu. Certainly better than some of the hack jobs I've seen.
But didn't this exact scenario happen a few years ago to the British Government?
On one occasion, there was a dispute over the origin or the author of a certain document, and the government gave the excuse that they must have formatted the floppy disk the document was stored on in a different computer, and in another case, some conflicting edits were discovered to be embedded in the distributed document.
Problem is.. these features should be turned off, but in reality, when you are dealing with people who have a limited knowledge of the software and a basic knowledge of the security concerns, often they are not. You are asking for trouble distributing anything that could potentially have this information still included with the document.
Make it a standard procedure that all documents for external use be printed as PDF documents and the problem is eliminated. As a happy side effect, the PDF can be read on just about any computer.
You might find this interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_too l