2. It's available on to a huge population. Everybody with a windows box has it installed and staring them in the face. Any system is powerful enough to run it.
Actually open source does encourage rushing software out of the door. Look at how often fixes are released, frequently. Of course many OS projects make it easy to install patches but they are still released with bugs.
And if you look at a lot of them they are alpha/beta releases and not the 1.0 that you come to expect with proprietary software though. With propriatary software you pay money usually to get a solid release, with open source you don't.
There's space for both proprietary and FOOS software. Photoshop is a good example of proprietary software, despite being worked on for more than 10 years GIMP is no where near having the capabilities of Photoshop. While CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP, is closer I don't know if it has all the capabilities of PS. While I haven't used PS I did use GIMP and Paint Shop Pro, and PSP beat GIMP handily.
But there is a difference, the GIMP is not backed by any major corporation, while Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro are, (and some F/OSS projects are also, such as Linux, RPM, and Ubuntu). So you would expect them to be a little less on features, another thing is, the GIMP developers focus on what means the most to them, so some Photoshop things may be a lot further down the list for them, while to other people they are the must-have features.
every vendor on the planet has been rushing software out the door with major bugs in it.
Many times though, some software with bugs is better then no software at all. Think of Linux for example, it really wasn't any better then GNU Hurd, but it came out first and it was adopted. In fact, some called the Hurd much better then Linux, but because it was out first it was adopted. Today, Linux is very stable and Hurd is not even a beta yet. Now granted, there are some times not to rush out software particularly if it is proprietary, (just look at Vista) and there is a replacement for it. But if it is open-source and needed, then release early, release often.
What's your solution though? There's no way universites are going to raise the barrier in their CS programs. I actually came into IT from the science field, so I'm not really well versed in what they teach. However, people like you have been complaining a lot lately that there's a lack of fundamentals. How do we improve the quality of CS graduates?
Make software with clean code. Make software free. When writing proprietary software it is easy to give in to temptations to write something that will compile and run but doesn't have the cleanest of code. And as no one is going to see the code, its no big deal right? With open source code both the program has to run and the code to be clean for it to be adopted well, (now, of course those working on the project will clean up source code, but if it is a mess to begin with, who will work on it?). Proprietary software encourages rushed-out-the-door projects, open-source doesn't.
25 years old is not experienced enough to do it because it's not experienced enough to realise its a bad idea.
Youth is sometimes very good in technology. Think of it this way, while someone with experience usually does a better job with cleaner code, younger people tend to go more for speed. If you can accomplish the same job in either 10K lines of COBOL or say 3K lines in Python, which is better? For most older tech people they would say the one in COBOL because COBOL is faster then Python, however if the Python code can be written quicker, it might be better to go with Python. While it is true that most younger technology people produce sloppier code, many older ones don't adapt to more modern coding styles.
No the reason is hardware has improved enough to take over bad programming. Just look at Vista, it is one of the main highlights of this, it eats up RAM very quickly, wastes time in CPU cycles and inherits all the stupidities that MS did on DOS and previous versions of Windows. However, Vista, when computers with 4 gigs of RAM are common and even laptops have 2-3 GHZ multi-core CPUs, Vista will be classified as usable.
But if you can't use a Linux live-CD how are you going to format or reinstall? As both the Windows install CD and a Linux live-CD have just about the exact same method to boot. If one doesn't work the other one won't either (unless it is a case of the Linux CD doesn't have enough RAM but with DSL any computer made in the last like 10 years should work perfectly fine).
But honestly, it seems like this isn't a real case. Because apparently you can't boot from a Linux Live-CD, which would make the most obvious answer of "reformat your drives with Windows" also obsolete. As for hardware keyloggers, most seem to be rather obvious if you just look at the back of your computer where the either USB or PS2 connectors for plugging in your keyboard are and if there is extra hardware there remove it. This situation is kinda like saying BASH/ZSH/CSH/Every other shell in the system has been rooted so you can't trust them but you also can't just create a new user, reinstall your *NIX OS or replace the binaries.
Because in the UK people are used to freedom. They are used to being able to vote in multi-party elections, to choose goods and services, to make a profit. In China people aren't used to these things, chances are there will be very little protests because most simply don't know whats going on is bad. It is comparable to if all you ever knew was dial-up you wouldn't think that dial up was really that slow, however if you had a really really fast connection and all of a sudden you were on dial-up you would think that dial-up was really really slow. Same thing with freedoms, if you have freedom and then it is gone you are more likely to notice and do something about it then if you had little freedoms and just get less freedom.
Citation needed that the Free games in GNU/Linux distributions' package repositories have "just about the same level of quality" and production values as proprietary commercial games such as Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft.
I am not talking about all those games, but the games most casual gamers play, games such as solitaire, Tetris and others. Most of the games that you are talking about will run happily in WINE with a bit of tweaking and most of the people who play those type of games are PC gamers. They aren't your clueless Windows noobs who don't know Firefox from firewall. Most of the people who play online games or other major games are gamers who will build their own PC and understand how it works, most even know about Linux.
But how will you find a legit copy of Windows XP to load into VirtualBox? At the end of June, Microsoft will put the Windows XP operating system under a sales moratorium until the year 2097.
Oh I don't know, perhaps with all the Windows XP install CDs that have come with computers since 2001 or so? Considering that just about every computer comes with either Vista or XP, it shouldn't be to hard to virtualize any of them as the ones with Vista on them are powerful enough to virtualize Vista for an application or so without taking a huge hit in how well they run. And just about every computer that doesn't come with these CDs either runs Linux (which means they already know how to use Linux) or Mac (on which installing Linux is a large pain and OS X doesn't suffer the same major faults as Windows as it is BSD based)
Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop? I mean many Windows users struggle using Paint, and most people who use Photoshop are at least technology literate enough to understand how to adapt to a different GUI and therefore don't fit the definition of the dumb Windows users who don't understand the difference between an icon and a program. OpenOffice is nearly as good as MS Office for most tasks, while Office will usually be as familiar to long time Office users, OpenOffice is just as good so long as you are willing to actually learn and even Office 2007's UI is so radically different that OpenOffice will feel even more familiar to Office users then 2007. As for games, many, many, Windows games either have a decent Linux counterpart or will run via WINE, and with Direct-X 10 being Vista-only if the WINE team can get Direct-X 10 implemented, Linux will become an almost better gaming system then XP. And most of the more popular games are already able to run very well in WINE such as WoW and others. The only problem would be is if some Linux person went out and bought some random game and tried to make it run, now chances are with a bit of hacking it would run, but as for the "pop in the CD and play" that won't work quite yet. But when they realize that they can get just about the same level of quality for free, they will just pop open Add/Remove Programs and find a game they think might be good. As for business admin software, again, most can be emulated via WINE and because most of it doesn't need immediate response you could always use VirtualBox and virtualize XP and use that. Granted, right now there are tons of Linux applications the problem is, most people think they have to buy software or go to some unknown freeware site to download who-knows-what, whereas with Linux it is just as simple as point, click, apply (or for you CLI folks, sudo apt-get install whatever)
No, you are forgetting that some of the money comes from MS, so the conversation would go like this...
Human: I'm bleeding from my arm!
Robot: Someone is beating you with harm? Deploying pepper spray now!
Human: My eyes!
Robot: You want fries? Now calling McDonalds.
Many things big businesses do are illegal, just look at MS, both the EU and US found them engaging in anti-competitive practices, MS just said what are you going to do about it and still continues to. Most ISPs can do the same thing, if you want high-speed internet, who else are you going to turn to other then those who offer it regardless if they throttle, overcharge and inject ads into your internet.
I trust that more open-source authors would be less likely to add in malware and I trust that the Mozilla Team for Ubuntu will read enough of the source code to check for anything malicious. I don't trust that proprietary companies will have a browser free of bad code or that my data isn't being sold to advertisers/the government.
I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser. Now, I'm not RMS and I do use some proprietary software, for example Flash is installed on all my Linux boxes and I have a few proprietary games I play via WINE and some non-free Linux software such as Google Earth too. But when you think of all the information you enter on a web browser (credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc.) I just can't bring myself to use a non-free browser. It also doesn't help that Opera used to be Adware and that also makes me hesitant to use Opera as a full time browser. I don't hate Opera (in fact I use it on non-personal sites on the Wii all the time) but I just don't trust a proprietary browser when there are several good free alternatives around (Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Etc.). If Opera ever comes out with a free version of their browser (As in open-source free) I will be one of the first to download it, but until then Opera is mostly restricted to browser-testing and the Wii.
Chances are, Flash. Adobe's support for Linux has been pathetic at best, with newer versions eating up tons of CPU just viewing a banner ad. I even downgraded mine so YouTube would be at least somewhat usable. And with Flash being closed-source I highly doubt that we will see improvements made quickly and Gnash the free flash player is barely usable though it is improving.
Konqueror is great if you are running KDE, if you are running GNOME, XFCE or some other non-QT based DE, Konqueror takes ages to load and is almost unusable compared to Firefox. Epiphany is nice, but it still seems to lag behind Firefox in development. As for Opera, it is proprietary, and I for one don't trust a proprietary browser when I think about all the personal info I enter in websites, if Opera ever gets open-sourced I would gladly use it as my main browser, but I just can't trust a proprietary browser, and I can't trust it if it used to be adware too (like Opera used to be). So really, Firefox is about the only usable browser on Linux if you use a non KDE DE. (Granted, this is coming from the experience of me on my desktop made in 2002 so on more modern hardware I am sure that the speed differences would be minimal).
In the marketing world it's called a loss leader...
No, its not a loss leader. With a loss leader you lose money or don't make any, MS isn't doing that. A copy of XP costs exactly $0 for MS to produce. Granted, XP did have some costs related to development but now, we are around 6 years into XP and we can assume those have been paid off. With a physical product each copy costs money, in parts, in time, in shipping. With software each copy can be recopied an infinate amount of times without any loss in quality or any increase in cost, compare this to a gallon of milk where each cow can only produce so much milk. Whereas a gallon of milk has costs related to packaging, software doesn't have this problem with downloads where the price of bandwidth is tiny to almost unnoticeable and using more modern P2P technology makes even those costs go away, likewise shipping is free.
This is not a loss leader for MS, a copy of XP costs them exactly $0 to make, and they get $3 for each copy so that is a direct $3 profit for each system with XP sold.
But in 3 years WINE will have matured enough to run most Windows applications under Linux. Unless you need hardware drivers that aren't supported in Linux (unlike the XO) what reason is there to run ReactOS? The Windows framework isn't exactly the most stable, nor the most secure of all the OSes, and the GUI of ReactOS is nothing you can't get on Linux. So unless you want to run Windows apps (which would be needless if WINE improves) or hardware drivers (needless for the XO) I don't see a real need for ReactOS for the OLPC project.
Look, even if the Gates Foundation did donate money, there is no need to train kids to use MS products. Throughout your life when has ever a MS product really helped you? Sure DOS was Ok, but wait, you have to learn Windows now, thats not too hard, then Windows 95 comes out and changes everything, you go out and buy a faster computer and relearn Windows, then Windows 98 comes out, you figure its time for another computer and go buy one and spend a bit more time relearning Windows. Then ME comes out, and if you are lucky you skip it and then buy a new computer relearn everything and get XP. Notice a pattern here? The same could be said about Office, and all those skills you learned using all the Office programs prior to 2007 are now useless as Office 2007 totally changed the UI without an option to use the old one. All the while paying for the "privilege" of using MS's software.
MS's software may be a quick way to get things done, but in the long run, you are just a number, and that number is how much money you are willing to spend on MS's products.
Are you aware, that hacking root password and hacking user password is basically, in most home-user cases the same complexity, or, the user password is even lighter?
Yes, but what I was meaning was they attacker would have to guess 2 things, the user account and the user password. Rather then just one (the root password).
Honestly, most laptops are lucky to last 2-3 years with daily use. Though the XO might be more durable then most, MS probably doesn't have to support it for 10 years as by 5 years most laptops will have already broken (either the battery dies, power cord dies, HD fails, RAM gets corrupted, or the motherboard fries). And also, knowing MS, they will release Windows 7 Lite edition that will just barely run on them and stop supporting XP in 3 years and charge them around $25 for each upgrade as is the way of MS.
Well, an attacker only knows there to be one account that is on almost every Linux box, root. If an attacker can try to login as root, they only have the password to guess. With a user account they have both the user account and the password. Now granted this doesn't protect from trojans or other malware, only from local or remote login attempts, but they are at least of some use.
Strictly speaking, no, it doesn't. The official Free Software Foundation is gNewSense, stripped-off version of Debian, which is already huge FOSS-nazi:P
Well, the FSF would have us not even have the option of downloading proprietary software on our Linux boxes (or rather our GNU/Linux/X/GNOME/SSH boxes) even for things such as Flash.
But then you wouldn't have the problem of expecting your machine to behave like Windows because it previously had Windows on it now would you. And I was referring to the many people who wiped their Windows machines for Linux
Anyway, if you run a KDE environment and use ONLY KDE applications (or Gnome and used ONLY Gnome applications), things look, feel, react very consistently and pretty seamlessly and with a modern look and feel.
Exactly, I don't see how this is so major in Linux. In Windows just about every app has a different look and feel to it, some resembling Windows 9X, others XP, others Vista some others even seem to be more at home on the Mac while yet others seem to be totally original. With Linux, most anything starting with a "g" will look just fine on Gnome and just about that starts with a "k" will be good on KDE. About the only OS that everything seems to flow together like how everyone thinks Linux should would be Mac OS X and that is mostly because most of the applications people use are written by Apple themselves.
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And to sorta nitpick, most Linux distros include some version of solitaire too. Its even on Emacs! http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/games/elisp/solitaire.el
And if you look at a lot of them they are alpha/beta releases and not the 1.0 that you come to expect with proprietary software though. With propriatary software you pay money usually to get a solid release, with open source you don't.
There's space for both proprietary and FOOS software. Photoshop is a good example of proprietary software, despite being worked on for more than 10 years GIMP is no where near having the capabilities of Photoshop. While CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP, is closer I don't know if it has all the capabilities of PS. While I haven't used PS I did use GIMP and Paint Shop Pro, and PSP beat GIMP handily.
But there is a difference, the GIMP is not backed by any major corporation, while Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro are, (and some F/OSS projects are also, such as Linux, RPM, and Ubuntu). So you would expect them to be a little less on features, another thing is, the GIMP developers focus on what means the most to them, so some Photoshop things may be a lot further down the list for them, while to other people they are the must-have features.
Many times though, some software with bugs is better then no software at all. Think of Linux for example, it really wasn't any better then GNU Hurd, but it came out first and it was adopted. In fact, some called the Hurd much better then Linux, but because it was out first it was adopted. Today, Linux is very stable and Hurd is not even a beta yet. Now granted, there are some times not to rush out software particularly if it is proprietary, (just look at Vista) and there is a replacement for it. But if it is open-source and needed, then release early, release often.
What's your solution though? There's no way universites are going to raise the barrier in their CS programs. I actually came into IT from the science field, so I'm not really well versed in what they teach. However, people like you have been complaining a lot lately that there's a lack of fundamentals. How do we improve the quality of CS graduates?
Make software with clean code. Make software free. When writing proprietary software it is easy to give in to temptations to write something that will compile and run but doesn't have the cleanest of code. And as no one is going to see the code, its no big deal right? With open source code both the program has to run and the code to be clean for it to be adopted well, (now, of course those working on the project will clean up source code, but if it is a mess to begin with, who will work on it?). Proprietary software encourages rushed-out-the-door projects, open-source doesn't.
Youth is sometimes very good in technology. Think of it this way, while someone with experience usually does a better job with cleaner code, younger people tend to go more for speed. If you can accomplish the same job in either 10K lines of COBOL or say 3K lines in Python, which is better? For most older tech people they would say the one in COBOL because COBOL is faster then Python, however if the Python code can be written quicker, it might be better to go with Python. While it is true that most younger technology people produce sloppier code, many older ones don't adapt to more modern coding styles.
No the reason is hardware has improved enough to take over bad programming. Just look at Vista, it is one of the main highlights of this, it eats up RAM very quickly, wastes time in CPU cycles and inherits all the stupidities that MS did on DOS and previous versions of Windows. However, Vista, when computers with 4 gigs of RAM are common and even laptops have 2-3 GHZ multi-core CPUs, Vista will be classified as usable.
But if you can't use a Linux live-CD how are you going to format or reinstall? As both the Windows install CD and a Linux live-CD have just about the exact same method to boot. If one doesn't work the other one won't either (unless it is a case of the Linux CD doesn't have enough RAM but with DSL any computer made in the last like 10 years should work perfectly fine).
But honestly, it seems like this isn't a real case. Because apparently you can't boot from a Linux Live-CD, which would make the most obvious answer of "reformat your drives with Windows" also obsolete. As for hardware keyloggers, most seem to be rather obvious if you just look at the back of your computer where the either USB or PS2 connectors for plugging in your keyboard are and if there is extra hardware there remove it. This situation is kinda like saying BASH/ZSH/CSH/Every other shell in the system has been rooted so you can't trust them but you also can't just create a new user, reinstall your *NIX OS or replace the binaries.
Because in the UK people are used to freedom. They are used to being able to vote in multi-party elections, to choose goods and services, to make a profit. In China people aren't used to these things, chances are there will be very little protests because most simply don't know whats going on is bad. It is comparable to if all you ever knew was dial-up you wouldn't think that dial up was really that slow, however if you had a really really fast connection and all of a sudden you were on dial-up you would think that dial-up was really really slow. Same thing with freedoms, if you have freedom and then it is gone you are more likely to notice and do something about it then if you had little freedoms and just get less freedom.
I am not talking about all those games, but the games most casual gamers play, games such as solitaire, Tetris and others. Most of the games that you are talking about will run happily in WINE with a bit of tweaking and most of the people who play those type of games are PC gamers. They aren't your clueless Windows noobs who don't know Firefox from firewall. Most of the people who play online games or other major games are gamers who will build their own PC and understand how it works, most even know about Linux.
But how will you find a legit copy of Windows XP to load into VirtualBox? At the end of June, Microsoft will put the Windows XP operating system under a sales moratorium until the year 2097.
Oh I don't know, perhaps with all the Windows XP install CDs that have come with computers since 2001 or so? Considering that just about every computer comes with either Vista or XP, it shouldn't be to hard to virtualize any of them as the ones with Vista on them are powerful enough to virtualize Vista for an application or so without taking a huge hit in how well they run. And just about every computer that doesn't come with these CDs either runs Linux (which means they already know how to use Linux) or Mac (on which installing Linux is a large pain and OS X doesn't suffer the same major faults as Windows as it is BSD based)
Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop? I mean many Windows users struggle using Paint, and most people who use Photoshop are at least technology literate enough to understand how to adapt to a different GUI and therefore don't fit the definition of the dumb Windows users who don't understand the difference between an icon and a program. OpenOffice is nearly as good as MS Office for most tasks, while Office will usually be as familiar to long time Office users, OpenOffice is just as good so long as you are willing to actually learn and even Office 2007's UI is so radically different that OpenOffice will feel even more familiar to Office users then 2007. As for games, many, many, Windows games either have a decent Linux counterpart or will run via WINE, and with Direct-X 10 being Vista-only if the WINE team can get Direct-X 10 implemented, Linux will become an almost better gaming system then XP. And most of the more popular games are already able to run very well in WINE such as WoW and others. The only problem would be is if some Linux person went out and bought some random game and tried to make it run, now chances are with a bit of hacking it would run, but as for the "pop in the CD and play" that won't work quite yet. But when they realize that they can get just about the same level of quality for free, they will just pop open Add/Remove Programs and find a game they think might be good. As for business admin software, again, most can be emulated via WINE and because most of it doesn't need immediate response you could always use VirtualBox and virtualize XP and use that. Granted, right now there are tons of Linux applications the problem is, most people think they have to buy software or go to some unknown freeware site to download who-knows-what, whereas with Linux it is just as simple as point, click, apply (or for you CLI folks, sudo apt-get install whatever)
No, you are forgetting that some of the money comes from MS, so the conversation would go like this...
Human: I'm bleeding from my arm!
Robot: Someone is beating you with harm? Deploying pepper spray now!
Human: My eyes!
Robot: You want fries? Now calling McDonalds.
It looks like are screaming for your mom, would you like some help?
Get help screaming for your mom
Just scream like a little girl without help
Many things big businesses do are illegal, just look at MS, both the EU and US found them engaging in anti-competitive practices, MS just said what are you going to do about it and still continues to. Most ISPs can do the same thing, if you want high-speed internet, who else are you going to turn to other then those who offer it regardless if they throttle, overcharge and inject ads into your internet.
I trust that more open-source authors would be less likely to add in malware and I trust that the Mozilla Team for Ubuntu will read enough of the source code to check for anything malicious. I don't trust that proprietary companies will have a browser free of bad code or that my data isn't being sold to advertisers/the government.
I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser. Now, I'm not RMS and I do use some proprietary software, for example Flash is installed on all my Linux boxes and I have a few proprietary games I play via WINE and some non-free Linux software such as Google Earth too. But when you think of all the information you enter on a web browser (credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc.) I just can't bring myself to use a non-free browser. It also doesn't help that Opera used to be Adware and that also makes me hesitant to use Opera as a full time browser. I don't hate Opera (in fact I use it on non-personal sites on the Wii all the time) but I just don't trust a proprietary browser when there are several good free alternatives around (Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Etc.). If Opera ever comes out with a free version of their browser (As in open-source free) I will be one of the first to download it, but until then Opera is mostly restricted to browser-testing and the Wii.
Chances are, Flash. Adobe's support for Linux has been pathetic at best, with newer versions eating up tons of CPU just viewing a banner ad. I even downgraded mine so YouTube would be at least somewhat usable. And with Flash being closed-source I highly doubt that we will see improvements made quickly and Gnash the free flash player is barely usable though it is improving.
Konqueror is great if you are running KDE, if you are running GNOME, XFCE or some other non-QT based DE, Konqueror takes ages to load and is almost unusable compared to Firefox. Epiphany is nice, but it still seems to lag behind Firefox in development. As for Opera, it is proprietary, and I for one don't trust a proprietary browser when I think about all the personal info I enter in websites, if Opera ever gets open-sourced I would gladly use it as my main browser, but I just can't trust a proprietary browser, and I can't trust it if it used to be adware too (like Opera used to be). So really, Firefox is about the only usable browser on Linux if you use a non KDE DE. (Granted, this is coming from the experience of me on my desktop made in 2002 so on more modern hardware I am sure that the speed differences would be minimal).
No, its not a loss leader. With a loss leader you lose money or don't make any, MS isn't doing that. A copy of XP costs exactly $0 for MS to produce. Granted, XP did have some costs related to development but now, we are around 6 years into XP and we can assume those have been paid off. With a physical product each copy costs money, in parts, in time, in shipping. With software each copy can be recopied an infinate amount of times without any loss in quality or any increase in cost, compare this to a gallon of milk where each cow can only produce so much milk. Whereas a gallon of milk has costs related to packaging, software doesn't have this problem with downloads where the price of bandwidth is tiny to almost unnoticeable and using more modern P2P technology makes even those costs go away, likewise shipping is free.
This is not a loss leader for MS, a copy of XP costs them exactly $0 to make, and they get $3 for each copy so that is a direct $3 profit for each system with XP sold.
But in 3 years WINE will have matured enough to run most Windows applications under Linux. Unless you need hardware drivers that aren't supported in Linux (unlike the XO) what reason is there to run ReactOS? The Windows framework isn't exactly the most stable, nor the most secure of all the OSes, and the GUI of ReactOS is nothing you can't get on Linux. So unless you want to run Windows apps (which would be needless if WINE improves) or hardware drivers (needless for the XO) I don't see a real need for ReactOS for the OLPC project.
Look, even if the Gates Foundation did donate money, there is no need to train kids to use MS products. Throughout your life when has ever a MS product really helped you? Sure DOS was Ok, but wait, you have to learn Windows now, thats not too hard, then Windows 95 comes out and changes everything, you go out and buy a faster computer and relearn Windows, then Windows 98 comes out, you figure its time for another computer and go buy one and spend a bit more time relearning Windows. Then ME comes out, and if you are lucky you skip it and then buy a new computer relearn everything and get XP. Notice a pattern here? The same could be said about Office, and all those skills you learned using all the Office programs prior to 2007 are now useless as Office 2007 totally changed the UI without an option to use the old one. All the while paying for the "privilege" of using MS's software.
MS's software may be a quick way to get things done, but in the long run, you are just a number, and that number is how much money you are willing to spend on MS's products.
Yes, but what I was meaning was they attacker would have to guess 2 things, the user account and the user password. Rather then just one (the root password).
Honestly, most laptops are lucky to last 2-3 years with daily use. Though the XO might be more durable then most, MS probably doesn't have to support it for 10 years as by 5 years most laptops will have already broken (either the battery dies, power cord dies, HD fails, RAM gets corrupted, or the motherboard fries). And also, knowing MS, they will release Windows 7 Lite edition that will just barely run on them and stop supporting XP in 3 years and charge them around $25 for each upgrade as is the way of MS.
Well, an attacker only knows there to be one account that is on almost every Linux box, root. If an attacker can try to login as root, they only have the password to guess. With a user account they have both the user account and the password. Now granted this doesn't protect from trojans or other malware, only from local or remote login attempts, but they are at least of some use.
Strictly speaking, no, it doesn't. The official Free Software Foundation is gNewSense, stripped-off version of Debian, which is already huge FOSS-nazi
Well, the FSF would have us not even have the option of downloading proprietary software on our Linux boxes (or rather our GNU/Linux/X/GNOME/SSH boxes) even for things such as Flash.
But then you wouldn't have the problem of expecting your machine to behave like Windows because it previously had Windows on it now would you. And I was referring to the many people who wiped their Windows machines for Linux
Exactly, I don't see how this is so major in Linux. In Windows just about every app has a different look and feel to it, some resembling Windows 9X, others XP, others Vista some others even seem to be more at home on the Mac while yet others seem to be totally original. With Linux, most anything starting with a "g" will look just fine on Gnome and just about that starts with a "k" will be good on KDE. About the only OS that everything seems to flow together like how everyone thinks Linux should would be Mac OS X and that is mostly because most of the applications people use are written by Apple themselves.