I know what you mean, I'm in much the same situation - I read a whole lot less than I used to. My excuse is that I spend lots of time reading for work. But it is mostly just an excuse, truth is that re-watchinig Babylon 5 DVDs is easier. Luckily I got through the Dune series when I was young.
I could talk at great length about books 4-6, and why they're better than books 1-3, but I would hate to spoil anything. All I will say is: don't expect book 4 to be set immediately after book 3, there's a 3500 year gap, and likewise a 1500 year gap between books 4 and 5. If book 4 is difficult, stick with it, it pays off IMHO. Though I have heard that some people despise it. It's a unique book, perhaps a love-it or hate-it affair. Apparently the first draft was written largely in the first person. I'm sure that book 4 was written in the period when Frank Herbert had a big stash of the best LSD ever. But book 5 is awesome and 6 is a worthy sequel to it. Don't mind the cliffhanger, it just gives you something to think about.
I periodically think about joining a book club. This usually culminates in watching more B5.;)
I did manage to get totally sucked into Blindsight by Peter Watts (full text available free online) recently, based on a recommendation here on slashdot. Read it in one mammoth sitting. Hard sci-fi + vampires = win.
I agree with you that there was nothing wrong with the voiceovers of those thoughts in the film. Just because it's seen of as tacky or whatever my many filmmakers doesn't mean it's not effective. Those thoughts are necessary to knowing the characters. And it should be noted that compared with the book, the voiceovers in the film are actually quite minimal - the books spend more time listening to people's inner thoughts than to what they say.
You'll note, however, that I haven't said it was a good adaptation. I wonder if Jorodowsky's adaptation would have been better or worse. The sci-fi channel somehow managed to do both a better and worse job at it.
You're missing out, IMHO books 4-6 are the best ones. My favourite is book 5 (Heretics).
(In case you were wondering, there are only 6 Dune books. It's a pity it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it's probably better than the alternative of somebody screwing it up royally with hack writing and trying to tie it into their own series)
I totally am not an infidel! May his noodly appendage strike down any who think I am!
You do make a good point and I did see it the first time around, I was mostly kinda sorta just playing devils advocate. I do totally agree with you that celebrating the killing of innocents (or, indeed, anyone) is not something that should happen. For example, my first reaction when I heard that Osama Bin Laden was killed was: "No trial huh?", and I found the images of people celebrating sickening. I'm no fan of the man, but I seem to recall hearing somewhere that everybody has a right to trial and due process. Hell, even the Nazis got trials. And now we're firmly in godwin's territory!
I guess it comes down to the good old "what is truth" question really. IMHO my opinion is right, and I do believe that anyone still working at the NSA should quit their job and go do something less morally questionable (like prostitution or selling drugs). But that's just my (correct) opinion, and I wouldn't advocate killing any of those people, or indeed doing anything to them other than dismantling their employer via due process or trying to convince them to quit their jobs. I didn't take philosophy, so I don't know if there is any "universal morality" which really does apply everywhere. It would seem to me that not killing people over beliefs should be a universally-accepted kind of thing. But then I tend to have high expectations. Maybe we can get a philosophy-type person to chime in?
As I said, you do raise a good point and I commend you for wondering such things, if only there were a couple of billion more like you.
Mostly, though, I just wanted to quote clerks, it seemed appropriate;)
Call them and make a reservation. Go to your appointment. Try it on, ask a bunch of questions, wasting as much time as you can. Bonus points for ridiculous questions that don't give the gambit away. When it comes to the crunch time and you can't waste any more of their time, you say "No thanks, it's a piece of crap and way too expensive". Rinse, repeat.
To respond to your soapbox, I refer you to Clerks:
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about? Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi. Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels. Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs. Randal: Like when? Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was. Dante: Whose house was it? Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's. Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster? Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine. Dante: Based on personal politics. Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling. Randal: No way! Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
I'm not trying to say that everyone working for the NSA should be killed, but any NSA employee who hasn't quit their job since Snowden is on morally dubious ground at best, regardless of whether they're part of the elite hacking team, a security guard, a janitor, or a roofer.
How much do Microsoft pay you for each post on here?
it isn't going to carry over in the desktop market
Then I guess you should tell all the netbook makers that they're wasting their time. And you should call google and tell them not to bother with chrome OS. Likewise firefox OS.
The original point is that Linux has "growing share" or "growing gaming share" or "more interest in Linux gaming", etc.
Actually, as I've pointed out elsewhere, the original question was "why would anybody game on Linux?". And I've already addressed that elsewhere.
Which is a bunch of bantha dung.
Bullshit, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The advent of native Linux games will cause a reduction in the number of windows installs out there, which will change the figures. I know more than one person who has deleted the windows partition they used to use solely for gaming since the advent of steam for Linux. These people will not be buying any more windows licenses.
But I guess you're right, the '2%" figure probably won't change, because when these people buy machines without windows installed next time they upgrade it won't show up as a "purchased machine" on Microsoft's balance sheet, so the number they release and which you swallow and regurgitate will be exactly the same.
Another example, windows makes the assumption that I'm too stupid to know about the maximise button and helpfully maximises the window when I drag it to the top of the screen. Because there's no way I could possibly want a small window at the top of the screen.
I adore the configurability of thunar/xfce's context menus - I have a bunch of custom actions available on different types of files, such as a "Play ISO as DVD" option which appears for iso files. All added via thunar's neat 'configure custom actions' GUI, no messing about with the registry or playing with arcane configuration files or hoping that the coder who wrote my DVD playing software chose to create an association for iso files.
None of those are reasons Linux is better on the desktop for the average consumer.
Wow, you're not paying attention at all. See my reply above.
Wow, talk about shifting the goalposts. This started as a discussion of who would game on Linux, and why would they do so. I gave you a bunch of reasons, and rather than respond to them you decided to turn it into a "Linux on the desktop" debate, and what is best for "normal users" and "average people".
I'm not talking about average people, because I couldn't care less what they do on their computers, what operating system they run, or what software they use or what games they play. They can do whatever they want on their computers - they're their computers. The only reason I would like to see more Linux adoption is so that I see more native Linux software.
And there's not even very much software I want: a good, easy video editor, and FL studio (or a replacement for it) are the only 2 that spring to mind that aren't games. Games are the big one. And I'm prefectly happy to not play a game because there's no linux port - there is no game that I'm so interested in to make it worth the hassle of installing, much less using, windows.
One of the reasons there's not very much non-game nonfree software for linux is that they have a hard time competing with the huge library of free stuff which is available - why would I buy sound forge when I can just use audacity? There are only a few niches where there's any chance for a nonfree option to get a foothold. And in many of those cases (e.g your tax software), any linux user can just run it in a VM or using wine, which incidentally is a better desktop experience than using a native windows install, for reasons I've already related and you've already chosen to ignore.
I'm not here to debate what "average people" want or care about, or when the year of the linux desktop is coming, because I really truly don't care one whit. I don't care if you and 99.99999% of the ignorant masses like your terrible interfaces (which you've already admitted you don't, but you're apparently happy to be spoon-fed crap and praise the people who feed it to you). For me, the year of the linux desktop was 2001.
I was going to say "This was submitted by startswithabang, which means it's a link to medium.com, perhaps the most terribly designed site on the net - I'm not clicking it - does anyone have the real link?", but you saved me the trouble.
The original, full-res image is available for download here.
I tried 8 and couldn't stand it, 8.1 doesn't bother me and it is on most of my computers now.
So your solution to hating windows 8 was to wait until MS fixed it for you. Me? I would have expected to be able to fix it myself, and I would have uninstalled it when that wasn't possible.
99% of the consumer market couldn't care less about that list
You didn't specify things that 99% of people care about. Personally I couldn't care less what 99% of people want.
I have found that most of the die hard Linux supports are really Windows haters who can't afford OS X.
I think most of those people are using OS X at this point, though a couple of people I know use Linux on Mac hardware.
I think OS X is even worse than windows - that's a truly terrible UI and it makes the windows UI look almost good by comparison.
Get back to me when Adobe Photoshop, MS Office, TurboTax, Quickbooks, etc. have native Linux versions.
I actually prefer gimp over photoshop, because I'm used to it. I actually prefer openoffice over MS Office, because I'm used to it and it has more features. The other 2? Fair enough. But I don't use them or have any need to. If I did, I'd probably fire up wine or a VM (which I could snapshot and easily backup and do a bunch more than I could with a native windows install).
People do not buy computers and run OSes for their own sake, they do it to run their programs and actually do stuff. Windows does this, Linux does not.
Want an IDE? On windows: go download Visual Studio express. Make sure you virus scan the exe. Run the installer. Click next 50 times while you go through the install wizard. Realise that the free version has no features. Go to microsoft.com and whip out your credit card. Download a full version. Make sure you virus scan the exe. Repeat the 'click next 50 times' rigmarole.
On linux: Open up the software centre, type 'eclipse' (or browse through the 'programming' category until you find one), click 'install', run eclipse. Don't like eclipse? try one of the other 50 IDEs via an almost identical process.
Want pretty much anything else? The process is much the same. I think you need to look at e.g ubuntu's software centre - it wasn't available in redhat 6, so you've probably missed it. You'll fall in love.
GIMP and OpenOffice are not substitutes for Photoshop and MS Office, no matter how much you want them to be.
You've obviously not used openoffice in the last 5+ years. And I've never found anything I couldn't do in gimp, though I will concede that I don't do image stuff all that often.
I'm not actually interested in what "people" buy computers for, I'm interested in what I want to do. No "average person" has ever laid a finger on any of my computers, and if they did they'd lose the finger. I'm not actually interested in what the market share is except insomuch as the higher the market share the more chance that there will be more awesome native proprietary software available, e.g games and your tax software. But there are other ways to encourage this too, which I actively pursue - things like paying way more than the average for humble bundles where all the games support linux, emailling people who do linux ports to say "You're awesome, I just bought it because you ported", and emailling people who you want to do ports and saying "If you port, I'll buy". If "people" want to use windows, then fine, that actually suits me perfectly because I get to say "oh, it's windows, I'm not helping you with that, go pay someone or sort it out yourself".
Then why does it matter what operating systems they support?
Got it, so it is an "Anything but Windows" mindset...
No, actually. I chose Linux over both BSD and Mac OS because I prefer it. I might consider the latest AmigaOS if it didn't require exotic and expensive hardware, but that's because I'm an AmigaOS fanboy - I don't know how practical it would be in real life, and I suspect I'd need linux to get things done.
"Windows Sucks" doesn't translate into "Linux is great"
That's true, but you have things backwards again - "Linux is great" does translate to "Windows sucks".
I've used Linux exclusively for 10+ years, and I've come to rely on those 10,000 little things that make it great. And when those things are not available on windows, I scream in frustration.
The 1.5% Linux desktop marketshare would seem to indicate that is a true statement.
Or it could indicate that 98.5% of people are lazy, ignorant, or both.
my interest is to simply hear why Linux on the desktop is so great
See my other post, where I list a bunch of examples off the top of my head. There are many, many more.
instead I keep hearing "It isn't Windows".
I don't think you're really listening.
Why the hate on Windows?
There are many reasons, but the main one is probably because I find the interface really awful.
Again, everyone keeps saying this stuff without providing any examples. "Linux is better, Windows sucks".
Those aren't reasons, those are opinions and personal tastes.
And you saying that windows is good isn't an opinion or a personal taste?
Personally, my opinion and personal taste is for an interface that is fast and configurable and doesn't hide useful information in the name of being "user friendly". IMHO when an interface makes the assumption that I'm a moron and that I don't want to see what it is doing with my processor is a bad interface. A concrete example of this is the amount of information provided by the windows task manager vs something like top.
Another example, windows makes the assumption that I'm too stupid to know about the maximise button and helpfully maximises the window when I drag it to the top of the screen. Because there's no way I could possibly want a small window at the top of the screen. This infuriates me constantly (well, not constantly, "on the rare occasions I'm forced to do something on a windows machine").
I adore the configurability of thunar/xfce's context menus - I have a bunch of custom actions available on different types of files, such as a "Play ISO as DVD" option which appears for iso files. All added via thunar's neat 'configure custom actions' GUI, no messing about with the registry or playing with arcane configuration files or hoping that the coder who wrote my DVD playing software chose to create an association for iso files.
Then there's the godawful command line interface in windows. It lacks so many features it's not even funny. Tabs - what are they? Hell, you can't even press the 'up' key to get access to commands from your previous session (i.e across reboots).
Or we could talk about configuring a webserver. That's a particularly fun one. For me, setting up an enterprise-grade web server requires me to type something like 'apt-get install apache2', then spending about 1 minute editing configuration to enable the site I want. For you, it involves purchasing the latest version of windows server, ensuring that you spent enough to have not run up against the arbitrary restrictions imposed on you ('number of simultaneous connections/users') and spending an hour and a half clicking through "wizards" which assume that you're too stupid to know what a webserver is (which is an interesting assumption, given that you've chosen to set up an enterprise-grade webserver). It's a similar situation for pretty much any other server software: "apt-get install postgresql" vs "purchase MSSQL, install MSSQL, configure MSSQL for an hour". Hell, the last time I used MSSQL it didn't even allow remote connections by default - "for security". Because apparently the idea of allowing remote connections except from the super user never occurred to anybody at microsoft.
I reiterate that these are all just off the top of my head - I haven't actually sat down and tried to create an exhaustive list, or anything. These are just a couple of big ones which immediately leap to mind. In reality the reasons Linux is better are the ten thousand little things that I just don't even notice anymore until they're not available on some other platform, when I start screaming.
The fanboy in you is showing
chortle.. Pot, kettle!
I said getting stuff to run where it wasn't meant to... Get GTA to run on Linux and get back to me... THAT wasn't meant to, BS:I clearly was...
So, by implication, since windows is so much better, it's easy to run systemd on windows then?
I actually have GTA3 running in Linux quite well, thank you very much. Also San Andreas and Vice City via my PS2 emulator - how does GTA3 run on the latest version of windows? Will it even install? I'd be surprised.
I also have all the SCUMM games, some of which run better than in their native environment (e.g Grim Fandango has mouse support). Not to mention my tens of
or perhaps techheads in general like to have their "special stuff".
When Windows 8 came out, I had 3 very nontechnical friends who found themselves "upgraded" to an interface which was completely foreign and confusing to them. They called me and said that their computers had "gone weird" on them. My solution was to put an xubuntu livecd into their drives and let them play with it for a bit. All 3 of them said that they preferred it because it "made more sense" and was "more like it used to be", all 3 agreed that I should wipe the windows partition and install xubuntu. All 3 are still using it.
(of which I am one)
LOL. A gamer is not a "techhead".
buy anything and it will work on Windows. Linux? I'd have to check first
Go buy a Packard Bell FastMedia Remote control and then come talk to me. You'll find it's simply impossible to use in anything newer than Windows me due to the WinNT line not allowing direct access to serial ports. Mine still works brilliantly in linux.
I literally can't remember the last time I plugged something into a linux machine and it didn't just work. It might have been around 2007, but I suspect it was more like 2003. And I get my hands on weird and wonderfully exotic hardware every now and then.
What does Linux in 2015 do that Windows does not?
Just a couple off the top of my head:
1. Shows you what it's doing when it's busy (assuming you bother to ask) 2. Mounts mounting volumes in virtually every filesystem ever invented 3. Supports loopback mounting (i.e mount an iso [or any disk image] without thirdparty software) 4. Supports more than 25 attached disks. 5. Boots into a live, usable environment from a USB stick or DVD 6. Has a themeable, customisable interface 7. Supports MUCH MUCH more hardware 8. Runs on ARM devices 9. Runs on a Space Station 10. Serves up most of the web's traffic 11. Provides virtually all of the world's supercomputing 12. Has tens of thousands of high-quality applications available for free and about 3 clicks away from being installed 13. Provides free, 1-click updates 14. Doesn't have any arbitrary limitations imposed based on how much you spent on it. 15. Doesn't need a virus scanner 16. Doesn't suck ass
Have you ever even used Linux? If you tried Red Hat 5.0 back in 1998, it's probably time you took another look. In 2015, it's superior to windows in every respect except one: available proprietary software. And that's changing.
If you're serious about playing games, you run Windows... or you should... far fewer headaches and just a better overall experience...
Some people like to play games but aren't "serious about games". Some people find windows to be a far, far, farworse experience with far far more headaches. To such an extent that if a game is only available for windows then playing it is not worth the headache. I'd really like to play the newer GTA games - But do I want to play them enough to endure installing windows? No way. I'll just find other interesting games to play.
Trying to get stuff to run where it wasn't meant to is just a PITA...
Oh, I know! The PITA involved in getting Bioshock Infinite running was just terrible! it was such rigmarole! First, I had to start Steam, then I had to click 'Install', then I had to actually wait while it downloaded (sheesh!), then I had to click "Play", then "New Game". It was such a chore! And don't even get me started on the horror of transferring my Half-Life savegames from windows to Linux - I had to wait until it stopped saying "syncing steam cloud" - such a headache!
1. Because I find the windows user interace utterly abhorrent. Like really really horribly terribly godawful. It makes me want to sacrifice kittens to dark gods. 2. Because I have better things to do with my disk space than waste an entire partition on what is essentially a launcher for games. 2a. Because even if I didn't have better things to do with my disk space than have an entire partition just for games, I would find managing said partition very annoying - I'd be constantly resizing it so that I could fit more games, or maybe even buying an entire disk just for games. 3. Because I find rebooting just to play a game very inconvenient, so much so that when I did have a windows partition for games, I rarely ever bothered playing games. 4. Did I mention that I find the windows user interface to be completely, utterly, totally terribly horrible in every respect? I mean it's really, really awful. Just try using something with a semi-decent, fast, configurable user interface (xfce, for example) for 10 years and then going back to that slow, unconfigurable throwback of a UI... you'll start to understand why people take high-powered rifles up to clock towers. Not to mention the hideously slow start up times and the times it just sits there doing god-knows-what while you're sitting there wondering WTF. And of course there's no way to actually find out what it's doing, because system monitor reports that it's using zero percent of its CPU while the disk spins away crazily and the system is completely unresponsive. 5. Windows doesn't support my gamepad anymore - the latest drivers released by the manufacturer were for windows XP. It "just works" in every linux game I've ever tried (except for the silly ones that only support an xbox controller). 6. Windows is slow. 7. Windows is huge and bloated. 8. Windows costs money.
I hope this has been an enlightening experience.:)
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I know what you mean, I'm in much the same situation - I read a whole lot less than I used to. My excuse is that I spend lots of time reading for work. But it is mostly just an excuse, truth is that re-watchinig Babylon 5 DVDs is easier. Luckily I got through the Dune series when I was young.
I could talk at great length about books 4-6, and why they're better than books 1-3, but I would hate to spoil anything. All I will say is: don't expect book 4 to be set immediately after book 3, there's a 3500 year gap, and likewise a 1500 year gap between books 4 and 5. If book 4 is difficult, stick with it, it pays off IMHO. Though I have heard that some people despise it. It's a unique book, perhaps a love-it or hate-it affair. Apparently the first draft was written largely in the first person. I'm sure that book 4 was written in the period when Frank Herbert had a big stash of the best LSD ever. But book 5 is awesome and 6 is a worthy sequel to it. Don't mind the cliffhanger, it just gives you something to think about.
I periodically think about joining a book club. This usually culminates in watching more B5. ;)
I did manage to get totally sucked into Blindsight by Peter Watts (full text available free online) recently, based on a recommendation here on slashdot. Read it in one mammoth sitting. Hard sci-fi + vampires = win.
I agree with you that there was nothing wrong with the voiceovers of those thoughts in the film. Just because it's seen of as tacky or whatever my many filmmakers doesn't mean it's not effective. Those thoughts are necessary to knowing the characters. And it should be noted that compared with the book, the voiceovers in the film are actually quite minimal - the books spend more time listening to people's inner thoughts than to what they say.
You'll note, however, that I haven't said it was a good adaptation. I wonder if Jorodowsky's adaptation would have been better or worse. The sci-fi channel somehow managed to do both a better and worse job at it.
You're missing out, IMHO books 4-6 are the best ones. My favourite is book 5 (Heretics).
(In case you were wondering, there are only 6 Dune books. It's a pity it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it's probably better than the alternative of somebody screwing it up royally with hack writing and trying to tie it into their own series)
haha, godwins law might indeed need updating. ;)
I totally am not an infidel! May his noodly appendage strike down any who think I am!
You do make a good point and I did see it the first time around, I was mostly kinda sorta just playing devils advocate. I do totally agree with you that celebrating the killing of innocents (or, indeed, anyone) is not something that should happen. For example, my first reaction when I heard that Osama Bin Laden was killed was: "No trial huh?", and I found the images of people celebrating sickening. I'm no fan of the man, but I seem to recall hearing somewhere that everybody has a right to trial and due process. Hell, even the Nazis got trials. And now we're firmly in godwin's territory!
I guess it comes down to the good old "what is truth" question really. IMHO my opinion is right, and I do believe that anyone still working at the NSA should quit their job and go do something less morally questionable (like prostitution or selling drugs). But that's just my (correct) opinion, and I wouldn't advocate killing any of those people, or indeed doing anything to them other than dismantling their employer via due process or trying to convince them to quit their jobs. I didn't take philosophy, so I don't know if there is any "universal morality" which really does apply everywhere. It would seem to me that not killing people over beliefs should be a universally-accepted kind of thing. But then I tend to have high expectations. Maybe we can get a philosophy-type person to chime in?
As I said, you do raise a good point and I commend you for wondering such things, if only there were a couple of billion more like you.
Mostly, though, I just wanted to quote clerks, it seemed appropriate ;)
This sounds like a great way to troll apple:
Call them and make a reservation.
Go to your appointment.
Try it on, ask a bunch of questions, wasting as much time as you can. Bonus points for ridiculous questions that don't give the gambit away.
When it comes to the crunch time and you can't waste any more of their time, you say "No thanks, it's a piece of crap and way too expensive".
Rinse, repeat.
To respond to your soapbox, I refer you to Clerks:
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.
Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
(source)
I'm not trying to say that everyone working for the NSA should be killed, but any NSA employee who hasn't quit their job since Snowden is on morally dubious ground at best, regardless of whether they're part of the elite hacking team, a security guard, a janitor, or a roofer.
How much do Microsoft pay you for each post on here?
it isn't going to carry over in the desktop market
Then I guess you should tell all the netbook makers that they're wasting their time. And you should call google and tell them not to bother with chrome OS. Likewise firefox OS.
see my replies elsewhere, you've said nothing new or interesting here.
The original point is that Linux has "growing share" or "growing gaming share" or "more interest in Linux gaming", etc.
Actually, as I've pointed out elsewhere, the original question was "why would anybody game on Linux?". And I've already addressed that elsewhere.
Which is a bunch of bantha dung.
Bullshit, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The advent of native Linux games will cause a reduction in the number of windows installs out there, which will change the figures. I know more than one person who has deleted the windows partition they used to use solely for gaming since the advent of steam for Linux. These people will not be buying any more windows licenses.
But I guess you're right, the '2%" figure probably won't change, because when these people buy machines without windows installed next time they upgrade it won't show up as a "purchased machine" on Microsoft's balance sheet, so the number they release and which you swallow and regurgitate will be exactly the same.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with gaming, or why I want to play games on Linux
it's usage on the desktop has gone exactly nowhere.
Bullshit.
Another example, windows makes the assumption that I'm too stupid to know about the maximise button and helpfully maximises the window when I drag it to the top of the screen. Because there's no way I could possibly want a small window at the top of the screen.
I adore the configurability of thunar/xfce's context menus - I have a bunch of custom actions available on different types of files, such as a "Play ISO as DVD" option which appears for iso files. All added via thunar's neat 'configure custom actions' GUI, no messing about with the registry or playing with arcane configuration files or hoping that the coder who wrote my DVD playing software chose to create an association for iso files.
None of those are reasons Linux is better on the desktop for the average consumer.
Wow, you're not paying attention at all. See my reply above.
Wow, talk about shifting the goalposts. This started as a discussion of who would game on Linux, and why would they do so. I gave you a bunch of reasons, and rather than respond to them you decided to turn it into a "Linux on the desktop" debate, and what is best for "normal users" and "average people".
I'm not talking about average people, because I couldn't care less what they do on their computers, what operating system they run, or what software they use or what games they play. They can do whatever they want on their computers - they're their computers. The only reason I would like to see more Linux adoption is so that I see more native Linux software.
And there's not even very much software I want: a good, easy video editor, and FL studio (or a replacement for it) are the only 2 that spring to mind that aren't games. Games are the big one. And I'm prefectly happy to not play a game because there's no linux port - there is no game that I'm so interested in to make it worth the hassle of installing, much less using, windows.
One of the reasons there's not very much non-game nonfree software for linux is that they have a hard time competing with the huge library of free stuff which is available - why would I buy sound forge when I can just use audacity? There are only a few niches where there's any chance for a nonfree option to get a foothold. And in many of those cases (e.g your tax software), any linux user can just run it in a VM or using wine, which incidentally is a better desktop experience than using a native windows install, for reasons I've already related and you've already chosen to ignore.
I'm not here to debate what "average people" want or care about, or when the year of the linux desktop is coming, because I really truly don't care one whit. I don't care if you and 99.99999% of the ignorant masses like your terrible interfaces (which you've already admitted you don't, but you're apparently happy to be spoon-fed crap and praise the people who feed it to you). For me, the year of the linux desktop was 2001.
Thanks.
I was going to say "This was submitted by startswithabang, which means it's a link to medium.com, perhaps the most terribly designed site on the net - I'm not clicking it - does anyone have the real link?", but you saved me the trouble.
The original, full-res image is available for download here.
Many people use their computer as nothing more than an Internet and e-mail machine, and in that respect, it largely doesn't matter what OS they run.
Wait, what? I thought windows did everything better?!?
Many of these people are moving to linux-based tablets as they discover they don't really want or need a computer.
Fixed.
I tried 8 and couldn't stand it, 8.1 doesn't bother me and it is on most of my computers now.
So your solution to hating windows 8 was to wait until MS fixed it for you. Me? I would have expected to be able to fix it myself, and I would have uninstalled it when that wasn't possible.
Couldn't agree more.
99% of the consumer market couldn't care less about that list
You didn't specify things that 99% of people care about. Personally I couldn't care less what 99% of people want.
I have found that most of the die hard Linux supports are really Windows haters who can't afford OS X.
I think most of those people are using OS X at this point, though a couple of people I know use Linux on Mac hardware.
I think OS X is even worse than windows - that's a truly terrible UI and it makes the windows UI look almost good by comparison.
Get back to me when Adobe Photoshop, MS Office, TurboTax, Quickbooks, etc. have native Linux versions.
I actually prefer gimp over photoshop, because I'm used to it.
I actually prefer openoffice over MS Office, because I'm used to it and it has more features.
The other 2? Fair enough. But I don't use them or have any need to. If I did, I'd probably fire up wine or a VM (which I could snapshot and easily backup and do a bunch more than I could with a native windows install).
People do not buy computers and run OSes for their own sake, they do it to run their programs and actually do stuff. Windows does this, Linux does not.
Want an IDE?
On windows: go download Visual Studio express. Make sure you virus scan the exe. Run the installer. Click next 50 times while you go through the install wizard. Realise that the free version has no features. Go to microsoft.com and whip out your credit card. Download a full version. Make sure you virus scan the exe. Repeat the 'click next 50 times' rigmarole.
On linux: Open up the software centre, type 'eclipse' (or browse through the 'programming' category until you find one), click 'install', run eclipse. Don't like eclipse? try one of the other 50 IDEs via an almost identical process.
Want pretty much anything else? The process is much the same. I think you need to look at e.g ubuntu's software centre - it wasn't available in redhat 6, so you've probably missed it. You'll fall in love.
GIMP and OpenOffice are not substitutes for Photoshop and MS Office, no matter how much you want them to be.
You've obviously not used openoffice in the last 5+ years. And I've never found anything I couldn't do in gimp, though I will concede that I don't do image stuff all that often.
I'm not actually interested in what "people" buy computers for, I'm interested in what I want to do. No "average person" has ever laid a finger on any of my computers, and if they did they'd lose the finger. I'm not actually interested in what the market share is except insomuch as the higher the market share the more chance that there will be more awesome native proprietary software available, e.g games and your tax software. But there are other ways to encourage this too, which I actively pursue - things like paying way more than the average for humble bundles where all the games support linux, emailling people who do linux ports to say "You're awesome, I just bought it because you ported", and emailling people who you want to do ports and saying "If you port, I'll buy". If "people" want to use windows, then fine, that actually suits me perfectly because I get to say "oh, it's windows, I'm not helping you with that, go pay someone or sort it out yourself".
The majority of those games will never be played
Then why does it matter what operating systems they support?
Got it, so it is an "Anything but Windows" mindset...
No, actually. I chose Linux over both BSD and Mac OS because I prefer it. I might consider the latest AmigaOS if it didn't require exotic and expensive hardware, but that's because I'm an AmigaOS fanboy - I don't know how practical it would be in real life, and I suspect I'd need linux to get things done.
"Windows Sucks" doesn't translate into "Linux is great"
That's true, but you have things backwards again - "Linux is great" does translate to "Windows sucks".
I've used Linux exclusively for 10+ years, and I've come to rely on those 10,000 little things that make it great. And when those things are not available on windows, I scream in frustration.
The 1.5% Linux desktop marketshare would seem to indicate that is a true statement.
Or it could indicate that 98.5% of people are lazy, ignorant, or both.
my interest is to simply hear why Linux on the desktop is so great
See my other post, where I list a bunch of examples off the top of my head. There are many, many more.
instead I keep hearing "It isn't Windows".
I don't think you're really listening.
Why the hate on Windows?
There are many reasons, but the main one is probably because I find the interface really awful.
Again, everyone keeps saying this stuff without providing any examples. "Linux is better, Windows sucks".
Those aren't reasons, those are opinions and personal tastes.
And you saying that windows is good isn't an opinion or a personal taste?
Personally, my opinion and personal taste is for an interface that is fast and configurable and doesn't hide useful information in the name of being "user friendly". IMHO when an interface makes the assumption that I'm a moron and that I don't want to see what it is doing with my processor is a bad interface. A concrete example of this is the amount of information provided by the windows task manager vs something like top.
Another example, windows makes the assumption that I'm too stupid to know about the maximise button and helpfully maximises the window when I drag it to the top of the screen. Because there's no way I could possibly want a small window at the top of the screen. This infuriates me constantly (well, not constantly, "on the rare occasions I'm forced to do something on a windows machine").
I adore the configurability of thunar/xfce's context menus - I have a bunch of custom actions available on different types of files, such as a "Play ISO as DVD" option which appears for iso files. All added via thunar's neat 'configure custom actions' GUI, no messing about with the registry or playing with arcane configuration files or hoping that the coder who wrote my DVD playing software chose to create an association for iso files.
Then there's the godawful command line interface in windows. It lacks so many features it's not even funny. Tabs - what are they? Hell, you can't even press the 'up' key to get access to commands from your previous session (i.e across reboots).
Or we could talk about configuring a webserver. That's a particularly fun one. For me, setting up an enterprise-grade web server requires me to type something like 'apt-get install apache2', then spending about 1 minute editing configuration to enable the site I want. For you, it involves purchasing the latest version of windows server, ensuring that you spent enough to have not run up against the arbitrary restrictions imposed on you ('number of simultaneous connections/users') and spending an hour and a half clicking through "wizards" which assume that you're too stupid to know what a webserver is (which is an interesting assumption, given that you've chosen to set up an enterprise-grade webserver). It's a similar situation for pretty much any other server software: "apt-get install postgresql" vs "purchase MSSQL, install MSSQL, configure MSSQL for an hour". Hell, the last time I used MSSQL it didn't even allow remote connections by default - "for security". Because apparently the idea of allowing remote connections except from the super user never occurred to anybody at microsoft.
I reiterate that these are all just off the top of my head - I haven't actually sat down and tried to create an exhaustive list, or anything. These are just a couple of big ones which immediately leap to mind. In reality the reasons Linux is better are the ten thousand little things that I just don't even notice anymore until they're not available on some other platform, when I start screaming.
The fanboy in you is showing
chortle.. Pot, kettle!
I said getting stuff to run where it wasn't meant to... Get GTA to run on Linux and get back to me... THAT wasn't meant to, BS:I clearly was...
So, by implication, since windows is so much better, it's easy to run systemd on windows then?
I actually have GTA3 running in Linux quite well, thank you very much. Also San Andreas and Vice City via my PS2 emulator - how does GTA3 run on the latest version of windows? Will it even install? I'd be surprised.
I also have all the SCUMM games, some of which run better than in their native environment (e.g Grim Fandango has mouse support). Not to mention my tens of
Clearly if it ran windows if would be a PS5.
or perhaps techheads in general like to have their "special stuff".
When Windows 8 came out, I had 3 very nontechnical friends who found themselves "upgraded" to an interface which was completely foreign and confusing to them. They called me and said that their computers had "gone weird" on them. My solution was to put an xubuntu livecd into their drives and let them play with it for a bit. All 3 of them said that they preferred it because it "made more sense" and was "more like it used to be", all 3 agreed that I should wipe the windows partition and install xubuntu. All 3 are still using it.
(of which I am one)
LOL. A gamer is not a "techhead".
buy anything and it will work on Windows. Linux? I'd have to check first
Go buy a Packard Bell FastMedia Remote control and then come talk to me. You'll find it's simply impossible to use in anything newer than Windows me due to the WinNT line not allowing direct access to serial ports. Mine still works brilliantly in linux.
I literally can't remember the last time I plugged something into a linux machine and it didn't just work. It might have been around 2007, but I suspect it was more like 2003. And I get my hands on weird and wonderfully exotic hardware every now and then.
What does Linux in 2015 do that Windows does not?
Just a couple off the top of my head:
1. Shows you what it's doing when it's busy (assuming you bother to ask)
2. Mounts mounting volumes in virtually every filesystem ever invented
3. Supports loopback mounting (i.e mount an iso [or any disk image] without thirdparty software)
4. Supports more than 25 attached disks.
5. Boots into a live, usable environment from a USB stick or DVD
6. Has a themeable, customisable interface
7. Supports MUCH MUCH more hardware
8. Runs on ARM devices
9. Runs on a Space Station
10. Serves up most of the web's traffic
11. Provides virtually all of the world's supercomputing
12. Has tens of thousands of high-quality applications available for free and about 3 clicks away from being installed
13. Provides free, 1-click updates
14. Doesn't have any arbitrary limitations imposed based on how much you spent on it.
15. Doesn't need a virus scanner
16. Doesn't suck ass
Have you ever even used Linux? If you tried Red Hat 5.0 back in 1998, it's probably time you took another look. In 2015, it's superior to windows in every respect except one: available proprietary software. And that's changing.
I have over 2,000 games on Steam
Not to be judgemental, but it sounds to me like you're wasting your life.
what exactly is the point?
Not installing windows.
If you're serious about playing games, you run Windows... or you should... far fewer headaches and just a better overall experience...
Some people like to play games but aren't "serious about games".
Some people find windows to be a far, far, far worse experience with far far more headaches. To such an extent that if a game is only available for windows then playing it is not worth the headache. I'd really like to play the newer GTA games - But do I want to play them enough to endure installing windows? No way. I'll just find other interesting games to play.
Trying to get stuff to run where it wasn't meant to is just a PITA...
Oh, I know! The PITA involved in getting Bioshock Infinite running was just terrible! it was such rigmarole! First, I had to start Steam, then I had to click 'Install', then I had to actually wait while it downloaded (sheesh!), then I had to click "Play", then "New Game". It was such a chore! And don't even get me started on the horror of transferring my Half-Life savegames from windows to Linux - I had to wait until it stopped saying "syncing steam cloud" - such a headache!
But who games on Linux?
Me, for one.
but why would anyone do so?
1. Because I find the windows user interace utterly abhorrent. Like really really horribly terribly godawful. It makes me want to sacrifice kittens to dark gods.
2. Because I have better things to do with my disk space than waste an entire partition on what is essentially a launcher for games.
2a. Because even if I didn't have better things to do with my disk space than have an entire partition just for games, I would find managing said partition very annoying - I'd be constantly resizing it so that I could fit more games, or maybe even buying an entire disk just for games.
3. Because I find rebooting just to play a game very inconvenient, so much so that when I did have a windows partition for games, I rarely ever bothered playing games.
4. Did I mention that I find the windows user interface to be completely, utterly, totally terribly horrible in every respect? I mean it's really, really awful. Just try using something with a semi-decent, fast, configurable user interface (xfce, for example) for 10 years and then going back to that slow, unconfigurable throwback of a UI... you'll start to understand why people take high-powered rifles up to clock towers. Not to mention the hideously slow start up times and the times it just sits there doing god-knows-what while you're sitting there wondering WTF. And of course there's no way to actually find out what it's doing, because system monitor reports that it's using zero percent of its CPU while the disk spins away crazily and the system is completely unresponsive.
5. Windows doesn't support my gamepad anymore - the latest drivers released by the manufacturer were for windows XP. It "just works" in every linux game I've ever tried (except for the silly ones that only support an xbox controller).
6. Windows is slow.
7. Windows is huge and bloated.
8. Windows costs money.
I hope this has been an enlightening experience. :)
I'd like to see a fair comparison
here you go