Personally I don't care about these The Monkees copies a bit - why would I? Big labels can keep them for what I care, but *if* substantial number of real artists went from them to modern alternatives, like this could be, and most new artists would not even sign with big labels - well, that would be a truly great thing for people into real music:)
It'll happen sooner or later, the destruction of dinosaur business model the big labels depend on to remain big... I still hope there will be some market for obtaining physical records (I'm one of those who likes to own such things, silly as it might be), but unlike now the companies producing the physical copies for sale would be employed by artists and the artist would pay a cut of his profit to them for the job - reasonably and fairly, though that kind of thing will probably end up being small niche market:)
The US certainly needs reform, as evidenced by the sheer number of people who lack health insurance, but the UK's model isn't all that much more cost-efficient, and each country's health care model has numerous problems of their own (some more significant than others, of course), which are unheard of in the US.
You don't understand taxes. Taxes are not your payment for service used. They are the mutual obligation of everybody to help their society as far as they are able.
That sacrifice has enabled the society they live in to flourish and take care of its poor and its sick, and provide government and justice and education and police and roads and airports and hospitals and electricity and water for the good of everyone.
While I applaud you I really don't think these childish fools who spam around shouting "I don't want to pay for your X" will understand the point of taxes any better no matter how explained...
They think their right to ownership in the first place is something god given for them, and it's only one step where they fail. In the end they have very little understanding of humanity in general and they tend to uphold a kind of perverted view of "individuality" among their highest principles...
I think it's very poor, sad and decadent way of thinking - also seems to make people rather bitter and miserable (perhaps because of their anti-social views).
I doubt the rest would care, but you're probably right about Israel - and I'd like to see that, maybe they would actually need to consider acting up... Israel isn't that praised outside the USA, even if their enemies aren't really liked any better.
MS (and others) always mimic the wrong parts of Apple. Apple products are successful for two reasons (in this order): (1) They provide social status
This has got to be the most oft-repeated lie, I mean fantasy delusion, concerning Apple. Yes, they have an eye on design. But it is simply ludicrous to claim their success over the last 12+ years is entirely due to fashion/social conscious hipsters seeking approval from one another or total strangers for that matter.
It's not a lie really, the only thing to discuss is how huge part of Apple sales/marketing is result of trends - to claim that it's not a HUGE part of Apple's success and strategy (yes, Jobs especially was genius on exactly this: creating trends!) only makes you sound like brand worshiper, one who is likely to choose Apple not just based on the device HW/SW quality.
All I can figure is this delusion allows people to ascribe failure of others to something outside their control, something not easily replicable. However the bottom line is Apple makes stuff that is easy and functional for actual customers. This meets success in the market, something various businesses have been slow to catch on to.
Thus there was this: "(2) they provide a good user experience." Good user experience is not universal, but it's not unique to Apple either. People buying devices without having the faintest idea of differences between their OS features (or even that there are such) choosing iPhone has little to do with how good user experience it provides. People buying iPhone despite of their knowledge is a pure case of No. 1.
I think the key is creating/using a brand that isn't "Linux."
"Linux" is great but isn't a great name for a commercial product.
As nomadic suggested, Android is already widely accepted by consumers (and developers) and has fantastic brand awareness. That may be the key route to ending the Microsoft monopoly with an open source replacement.
And it's still Linux on the desktop!:)
I saw an amazing Android/Linux OS solution on Youtube video - I believe it used Ubuntu for the "Linux OS" side but not sure... Anyway, it ran android environment when used like regular tablet, but when docked to station it transformed to desktop Linux environment automatically...
Don't remember the name, can't provide link (won't waste time to search), maybe someone will... I'm sure it's not hard to find, anyway I think it would do much better than running android environment on desktop use, as long as the application compatibility can be provided (maybe it can run android applications on Linux desktop? It's certainly possible to make it...).
I like Debian - had enough experience with Ubuntu before switching to Debian (although I had some experience of older debian release over 5 years ago) from Fedora, and I rather staid with Fedora than switched to Ubuntu - that's sad in my opinion, though part of the reason certainly is that I had been using Red Hat/Fedora Core/Fedora since I switched from Windows in '02 so I was used to it...
I really like the stability of Debian, and more up to date software is available from backports/multimedia and other 3rd party repositories... The thing Ubuntu really messed was upgrades - while debian has rolling upgrades where I don't necessarily even notice upgrading from one release to next, Ubuntu not only broke that but I has seen Ubuntu upgrade installs breaking where it previously worked far too often for it to be funny:( Ubuntu does some things fantastically, but they really need to get their act together on working upgrades that won't break things if the previous install worked fine. Stuff like wi-fi breaking after upgrade install is not acceptable!
Personally I love debian, and I've even installed it to one "Avg. Joe" as for his needs it was just perfect (provided that I helped setting it up with video drivers, media codecs and stuff...). For most, especially if I'm not there to help them, I recommend Ubuntu and tell them that Mint is widely recommended but I have no experience on it, because with them they are likely to succeed on install - then cross my fingers and hope their Ubuntu won't break on upgrade;p
Many PC users will not tolerate the astronomical prices of Apple hardware.
Old myth. Spec out a *decent* OEM-built PC sometime... the prices are damned close, and the Apple product usually wins when they release their updated models.
A slightly newer old myth - the prices are close only when "decent" means paying extra for a brand for no real extra in hardware features, support, guarantee or anything else, and not always even then.
(written on a MS keyboard. their hw has been pretty good - but not a good business for them.)
I used to say so, but after buying my first own computer at age of 17 with Logitech mouse and after some time finally investing in network cards to play DooM and other LAN games on my and family computer I sometimes played on the family computer (with MS mouse) and boy did the mouse suck in comparison!
My mouce was bought two years later but it was pretty standard old-school rubber ball mouse with the biggest advancement over the older MS mouse being the third (middle) button... I don't think the two year difference explains it, and the logitech mouse might well have been sold already back then too anyway:p
The world is awash with evil fuckers who, rather than trying to win you over with solid products and services, will expend their effort and money on bribes, advertising, patent warchests, takeovers and suchlike with the sole goal of manipulating, extorting, deceiving and straitjacketing you, not just to get the money you have now, but an ever increasing tithe, in perpetuity.
Welcome to Capitalism, if you don't like it you're welcome to move to North Korea.
Thanks, but I'd rather stay in Europe... We're not perfect but at least we see a middle ground between being either communist extremists or free market extremists and while far from perfect we do have regulations controlling what business do, and even our right wing nuts are (mostly) not whackjobs enough to suggest that unregulated market would do us better - hell, we just need to look across the pond to see it's not the way to go, yet you yanks just push towards that goal...
Against this backdrop, a small organisation starts a modest initiative to help lift the veil from these practices to help you, and you... mock them for it.
... Because they hate freedom, idiot. You and the irrelevant FSF can take your Communism, get out and git to North Korea, China, Cuba or some other Socialist hellhole.
We mock the FSF because we respect private property, they're against the spirit of copyright ("copyleft" lol, never heard so much Orwellian Communist double-speak in all my life) and they're against software patents, which reward innovators and punish freeloaders (like the loonie-leftist hippies denizens of this Web site).
Yeah, you just keep babbling... there are very few places I'd not choose to live in over USA, but North Korea is one of them, so is China, but Cuba I would choose over USA... Still I'd choose my home country over any of the above any day.
As for your software patents claim... Well, I should have read your whole post before starting my reply and I'd have noticed you are actually making fun of free market extremists;)
Glad it works for you, but for me it was justified still around 6-12 months ago, not a single positive aspect for me with it and I kept having problems with one or another software up until I disabled starting it when I log in to X desktop, though some programs did work fine with it. I really didn't have any positive to say about it, and before I dropped it for good I had to make little launcher scripts like this for swiftfox/me-tv/etc...: #!/bin/sh ALSA_CARD=AudioPCI swiftfox & ...to make them use ALSA for audio.
Gnome 3 does not have a hard dependency on PulseAudio, in the sense that it needs to have the server running.
It has a dependency on the PulseAudio libraries, true, but if you do not install the sound server, or deactivate it, Gnome 3 runs perfectly fine on bare ALSA; I am posting this from a Debian Unstable laptop running Gnome 3, and no PulseAudio.
...sheesh... It's not as bad as unnecessarily needing PulseAudio, which I haven't yet heard a single good non-fringe reason for defaulting for it, to work when ALSA works just fine for normal use. Heard claims that ALSA (read: w/o PA) doesn't work too well on some chipset, but PA doesn't do the hardware stuff, so what? Someone said that ALSA has trouble with multiple channels, in some cases just one but PA has software mixer - ZOMG, When Red Hat/Fedora (not sure if the latter was released yet) upgraded to 2.6 kernel, OSS didn't support my Sound Blaster 128 but most importantly ALSA supports software mixing and provides also OSS emulation which can be mixed with in too... PulseAudio then again caused me problems - some programs didn't work right when it was running, and sometimes there was notisable delay in sound (some years ago I tested several sound daemons from ESD to Jack Audio System, even the latter never had this kind of problems...), and the mixer, that I've heard claimed to be better than ALSA has, but I found it lacking and confusing, though very simplified.
And the only reason I do not run the PA sound server is because I use Skype occasionally, and that does not play nice with anything but ALSA. Otherwise PulseAudio is, just like Gnome 3, perfectly serviceable, and the whining on the Internet is mostly people who last tried it 2 years ago.
I tried it 1 year ago, at most, and experienced problems. However, unnecessarily needing any of it installed and software that is written badly on ALSA part and needs extra audio daemon for something you expect any and every program to do just fine. Supporting PA is fine, requiring it, especially if there are no features that are available only with PA - which is usually the case. And software like Skype, which anyone would assume to be written to work as well as possible on the OS it targets, not just OS+SpecificDE, is just badly done if it has no technical reason why it should not work fine with ALSA. But from what I've read Skype is, according to some people, piece of crap, at least on Linux...
One of the aggravating factors in switching away from Linux was that it not only had the worst desktop multitasking at the time, but couldn't even multitask as well as my old Amiga performing the same tasks (copying lots of files should not cripple mouse responsiveness or the playing of a network audio stream). That debacle was down to the cliquishness and recalcitrance of the Linux kernel devs.
What? May I ask what kind of CPU/Memory/GPU setup did you have, and what kind of multitasking were you doing exactly? Because I've used Linux from 2002, and most of the time I've ran it on below average computer - I've have actually ran VMWare session with WinXP inside running FruityLoops (without any issues with mouse, FL's UI or sound performance) and had kernel compilation running background on my Linux desktop (back then I still ran GNOME - later I moved to lighter solutions) - and I've had apache httpd + mysqld + PHP set up running in background since one or two years from when I moved to linux in '02.
I have always praised how Linux performs on machine that ProprietaryOSMostLike would choke if trying to run exactly same software, or equivalents when not available... and back when MS tried to prove their OS is better on server and had Linux+Samba put them in shame running shares on file server using Microsoft proprietary variation of SMB protocol - that didn't happen with OS that has issues with multitasking.
Unless you had really low level hardware (in relation to needs of what you were running) I don't see how your description could be true unless you had somehow the OS set up in some god awful mess:O
XMMS runs fine on my Debian Squeeze, and it ran fine on my last Fedora (not sure but I think it was 11), no need to go back using some early 2000's distro with 2.4.x kernel:p I also remember there was a post couple years ago on blog I follow mentioning that ancient binary released Mosaic browser still worked on modern Linux and a link for downloading it;p
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay. I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
Incorrect. Proprietary software is not synonymous with being paid for it, and Free Software (in the GNU/FSF sense) is not synonymous with not being paid for it. Some proprietary software gets provided without financial compensation, some with. Some Free Software is written without financial compensation, some with. And in the long run, Free Software is better for society as a whole than proprietary software is. Unlike Stallman, I do accept that there are exceptions to be made, mostly where networked games are concerned, but hardware drivers should absolutely be Free Software.
Nevertheless, nobody has to give their software away as free. The fact that I do think that especially hardware drivers should be free, I have no right to deny anyone releasing them as proprietary.
Neither has it being proprietary - you can say that it's not ethical or whatever, but you can't force people to give their source to anyone, and if they make the source available you still can't force them to license it as FOSS (example: minix, freely available, with source, but not free).
Personally I try to steer away from proprietary software when possible and won't cause too much discomfort, I release any pieces of software I make under GPL or some other F/OSS license, etc. but take away my freedom to choose to release my software under FOSS license and I'd be mad.
There is no way you could ethically ban proprietary software... in fact I had, on my server, a PHP app other people could and did use to place content on their webpages (or some other way, I wasn't monitoring how exactly it was used) and you are basically saying that it was not OK for me to provide that online application. I never wrote any mention of license in it, just a copyright notice (though nobody saw that either) so it was indeed proprietary.
ABIs are for retards: I don't think this was targeted for end users but rather for designers who prefer bad solutions right now than good ones later.
Grandma doesn't know s*it about ABI's and whatnot, but she does know that she can't fix any existing OS if it breaks and thus one that breaks easier or has breakages regularly messing her solitaire or web bank session is worse than one that keeps things together - and while she don't know how to install that kitten screensaver her friend emailed she also doesn't miss those viagra ad's popping constantly and the system slowing down which she has to suck in until her nephew comes to fix it again. But we weren't talking of grandma - I just know from experience that people who stare you blankly if you ask for their opinion on ABI's have appreciated that after I "fixed" their system with new one they haven't noticed any slowly increasing problems - and it has been over year! True story, except now it's been several years... However this has nothing to do with people who understand what ABI's are and choose to support them even after all arguments of both side have been laid to the table. Retards.
Really it's just issue with vmware providing recompilation with one single command but not providing (what would be childishly easy) automated execution of said command after kernel upgrade.
Still, this is a bit too much crying for very small issue. It's an issue, yes, and should be fixed, but to call it even 'hassle' is a bit steep - boohoo... If this is driving someone away from Linux, so be it.
There were standards. If manufacturers were interested they could have followed others who showed the way to provide drivers in binary blob, such as NVIDIA, ATI and Matrox (to name few) - they had no problem writing a wrapper around their binary driver, just needed to compile that against latest kernel when upgraded and as their wrapper had to code to communicate with kernels internals that part was not a problem ("breaking" internal interfaces was not a problem, the drivers worked fine when compiled for same kernel release) and now the wrapper know how to load their binary blob and provided binary compatible interface for their actual driver. Certainly nobody is claiming that their wrapper was a problem - that would be saying they didn't have skills to create binary compatible code for their own driver, assuming then that they would have skills to create working drivers at all would be absurd...
And NVIDIA, as it is, is a good example of getting lazy after creating binary drivers - they had stability issues, yet they were slow to release new versions, and lazy to do that for other reason than supporting their newer models - and even then they still had most of already known issues left. Some people have said since forever that if Linux would have driver ABI like Windows it would have more and more issues with drivers... This is a fine example of such thing. And as it is, I'm still using nVidia drivers that have stalled, that will never get fixed - they are the older Legacy drivers, as following version dropped support of several cards, and I have such card. There is also newer legacy driver which won't ever get bugfixes either... and then there is the supported version - and it still has issues. Linux own drivers have always done better - of course they have had bugs, sometimes even critical ones (I remember my first attempt to install Linux, I was happy when Red Hat 7.1 installer asked me to select video card from list and my card, Hercules Stingray 128 3D - Vodoo Rush card, first one with 2D & 3D in one card, was supported - but I never got it to work, just didn't work), but they have been quickly fixed too. Also, even with drivers that nobody was working on anymore got fixed if someone found a flaw.
But we were talking about getting hardware manufacturers onboard - I don't really believe that if a manufacturer would be ready to work on drivers for Linux but would think that the (relatively tiny) wrapper part that would be needed were too much work. Also, what Linux developers really want is not hardware manufacturers that have just barely taken a step to do Linux drivers creating half-assed drivers which may not have a third of the features their Windows drivers have and are provided as binary blob with install system that may or may not work and documentation which most find not to work (at one point ATI drivers were really lousy this way - there were literally dozens of guides for different distro and kernel versions that you had to google for and try. Most did not work even if you had same distro and kernel - but with luck you sometimes got it compiled. It didn't pay to expect that it would work again with next kernel release. nVidia drivers then again were simple and they never failed to compile - all you needed was kernel headers, and if compiling for different version than what was running or if the sources were on unusual location you needed to provide path to them as parameter - then you just ran a script and that was all.
Nevertheless, there were problems with these binary blob drivers - but they were not fault of kernel design.
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Personally I don't care about these The Monkees copies a bit - why would I? Big labels can keep them for what I care, but *if* substantial number of real artists went from them to modern alternatives, like this could be, and most new artists would not even sign with big labels - well, that would be a truly great thing for people into real music :)
It'll happen sooner or later, the destruction of dinosaur business model the big labels depend on to remain big... I still hope there will be some market for obtaining physical records (I'm one of those who likes to own such things, silly as it might be), but unlike now the companies producing the physical copies for sale would be employed by artists and the artist would pay a cut of his profit to them for the job - reasonably and fairly, though that kind of thing will probably end up being small niche market :)
The US certainly needs reform, as evidenced by the sheer number of people who lack health insurance, but the UK's model isn't all that much more cost-efficient, and each country's health care model has numerous problems of their own (some more significant than others, of course), which are unheard of in the US.
Yeah, you are the greatest, go go go!!
I call bullshit. From Finland.
I'd mod parent up if I could...
You don't understand taxes. Taxes are not your payment for service used. They are the mutual obligation of everybody to help their society as far as they are able.
That sacrifice has enabled the society they live in to flourish and take care of its poor and its sick, and provide government and justice and education and police and roads and airports and hospitals and electricity and water for the good of everyone.
While I applaud you I really don't think these childish fools who spam around shouting "I don't want to pay for your X" will understand the point of taxes any better no matter how explained...
They think their right to ownership in the first place is something god given for them, and it's only one step where they fail. In the end they have very little understanding of humanity in general and they tend to uphold a kind of perverted view of "individuality" among their highest principles...
I think it's very poor, sad and decadent way of thinking - also seems to make people rather bitter and miserable (perhaps because of their anti-social views).
I doubt the rest would care, but you're probably right about Israel - and I'd like to see that, maybe they would actually need to consider acting up... Israel isn't that praised outside the USA, even if their enemies aren't really liked any better.
To USA: Please stop - I don't think any of the "allies" have asked for this kind of "help" - and let's see how it goes?
MS (and others) always mimic the wrong parts of Apple. Apple products are successful for two reasons (in this order): (1) They provide social status
This has got to be the most oft-repeated lie, I mean fantasy delusion, concerning Apple. Yes, they have an eye on design. But it is simply ludicrous to claim their success over the last 12+ years is entirely due to fashion/social conscious hipsters seeking approval from one another or total strangers for that matter.
It's not a lie really, the only thing to discuss is how huge part of Apple sales/marketing is result of trends - to claim that it's not a HUGE part of Apple's success and strategy (yes, Jobs especially was genius on exactly this: creating trends!) only makes you sound like brand worshiper, one who is likely to choose Apple not just based on the device HW/SW quality.
All I can figure is this delusion allows people to ascribe failure of others to something outside their control, something not easily replicable. However the bottom line is Apple makes stuff that is easy and functional for actual customers. This meets success in the market, something various businesses have been slow to catch on to.
Thus there was this: "(2) they provide a good user experience."
Good user experience is not universal, but it's not unique to Apple either. People buying devices without having the faintest idea of differences between their OS features (or even that there are such) choosing iPhone has little to do with how good user experience it provides. People buying iPhone despite of their knowledge is a pure case of No. 1.
I think the key is creating/using a brand that isn't "Linux."
"Linux" is great but isn't a great name for a commercial product.
As nomadic suggested, Android is already widely accepted by consumers (and developers) and has fantastic brand awareness. That may be the key route to ending the Microsoft monopoly with an open source replacement.
And it's still Linux on the desktop! :)
I saw an amazing Android/Linux OS solution on Youtube video - I believe it used Ubuntu for the "Linux OS" side but not sure... Anyway, it ran android environment when used like regular tablet, but when docked to station it transformed to desktop Linux environment automatically...
Don't remember the name, can't provide link (won't waste time to search), maybe someone will... I'm sure it's not hard to find, anyway I think it would do much better than running android environment on desktop use, as long as the application compatibility can be provided (maybe it can run android applications on Linux desktop? It's certainly possible to make it...).
I like Debian - had enough experience with Ubuntu before switching to Debian (although I had some experience of older debian release over 5 years ago) from Fedora, and I rather staid with Fedora than switched to Ubuntu - that's sad in my opinion, though part of the reason certainly is that I had been using Red Hat/Fedora Core/Fedora since I switched from Windows in '02 so I was used to it...
I really like the stability of Debian, and more up to date software is available from backports/multimedia and other 3rd party repositories... The thing Ubuntu really messed was upgrades - while debian has rolling upgrades where I don't necessarily even notice upgrading from one release to next, Ubuntu not only broke that but I has seen Ubuntu upgrade installs breaking where it previously worked far too often for it to be funny :(
Ubuntu does some things fantastically, but they really need to get their act together on working upgrades that won't break things if the previous install worked fine. Stuff like wi-fi breaking after upgrade install is not acceptable!
Personally I love debian, and I've even installed it to one "Avg. Joe" as for his needs it was just perfect (provided that I helped setting it up with video drivers, media codecs and stuff...). For most, especially if I'm not there to help them, I recommend Ubuntu and tell them that Mint is widely recommended but I have no experience on it, because with them they are likely to succeed on install - then cross my fingers and hope their Ubuntu won't break on upgrade ;p
Many PC users will not tolerate the astronomical prices of Apple hardware.
Old myth. Spec out a *decent* OEM-built PC sometime... the prices are damned close, and the Apple product usually wins when they release their updated models.
A slightly newer old myth - the prices are close only when "decent" means paying extra for a brand for no real extra in hardware features, support, guarantee or anything else, and not always even then.
(written on a MS keyboard. their hw has been pretty good - but not a good business for them.)
I used to say so, but after buying my first own computer at age of 17 with Logitech mouse and after some time finally investing in network cards to play DooM and other LAN games on my and family computer I sometimes played on the family computer (with MS mouse) and boy did the mouse suck in comparison!
My mouce was bought two years later but it was pretty standard old-school rubber ball mouse with the biggest advancement over the older MS mouse being the third (middle) button... I don't think the two year difference explains it, and the logitech mouse might well have been sold already back then too anyway :p
Welcome to Capitalism, if you don't like it you're welcome to move to North Korea.
Thanks, but I'd rather stay in Europe... We're not perfect but at least we see a middle ground between being either communist extremists or free market extremists and while far from perfect we do have regulations controlling what business do, and even our right wing nuts are (mostly) not whackjobs enough to suggest that unregulated market would do us better - hell, we just need to look across the pond to see it's not the way to go, yet you yanks just push towards that goal...
We mock the FSF because we respect private property, they're against the spirit of copyright ("copyleft" lol, never heard so much Orwellian Communist double-speak in all my life) and they're against software patents, which reward innovators and punish freeloaders (like the loonie-leftist hippies denizens of this Web site).
Yeah, you just keep babbling... there are very few places I'd not choose to live in over USA, but North Korea is one of them, so is China, but Cuba I would choose over USA... Still I'd choose my home country over any of the above any day.
As for your software patents claim... Well, I should have read your whole post before starting my reply and I'd have noticed you are actually making fun of free market extremists ;)
Me: But then how would we get schools, teachers, roads, fire stations...?
Free marked dickwad: The Free Market would take care of it?
Me: The Free Market would take care of various stuff that nobody would pay anyone to do in The Free Market?
FMD: ...well, there are charities... umm... gov't... gun... threat of violence...
Glad it works for you, but for me it was justified still around 6-12 months ago, not a single positive aspect for me with it and I kept having problems with one or another software up until I disabled starting it when I log in to X desktop, though some programs did work fine with it. I really didn't have any positive to say about it, and before I dropped it for good I had to make little launcher scripts like this for swiftfox/me-tv/etc...:
...to make them use ALSA for audio.
#!/bin/sh
ALSA_CARD=AudioPCI swiftfox &
Gnome 3 does not have a hard dependency on PulseAudio, in the sense that it needs to have the server running.
It has a dependency on the PulseAudio libraries, true, but if you do not install the sound server, or deactivate it, Gnome 3 runs perfectly fine on bare ALSA; I am posting this from a Debian Unstable laptop running Gnome 3, and no PulseAudio.
...sheesh...
It's not as bad as unnecessarily needing PulseAudio, which I haven't yet heard a single good non-fringe reason for defaulting for it, to work when ALSA works just fine for normal use. Heard claims that ALSA (read: w/o PA) doesn't work too well on some chipset, but PA doesn't do the hardware stuff, so what? Someone said that ALSA has trouble with multiple channels, in some cases just one but PA has software mixer - ZOMG, When Red Hat/Fedora (not sure if the latter was released yet) upgraded to 2.6 kernel, OSS didn't support my Sound Blaster 128 but most importantly ALSA supports software mixing and provides also OSS emulation which can be mixed with in too...
PulseAudio then again caused me problems - some programs didn't work right when it was running, and sometimes there was notisable delay in sound (some years ago I tested several sound daemons from ESD to Jack Audio System, even the latter never had this kind of problems...), and the mixer, that I've heard claimed to be better than ALSA has, but I found it lacking and confusing, though very simplified.
And the only reason I do not run the PA sound server is because I use Skype occasionally, and that does not play nice with anything but ALSA. Otherwise PulseAudio is, just like Gnome 3, perfectly serviceable, and the whining on the Internet is mostly people who last tried it 2 years ago.
I tried it 1 year ago, at most, and experienced problems. However, unnecessarily needing any of it installed and software that is written badly on ALSA part and needs extra audio daemon for something you expect any and every program to do just fine. Supporting PA is fine, requiring it, especially if there are no features that are available only with PA - which is usually the case.
And software like Skype, which anyone would assume to be written to work as well as possible on the OS it targets, not just OS+SpecificDE, is just badly done if it has no technical reason why it should not work fine with ALSA. But from what I've read Skype is, according to some people, piece of crap, at least on Linux...
One of the aggravating factors in switching away from Linux was that it not only had the worst desktop multitasking at the time, but couldn't even multitask as well as my old Amiga performing the same tasks (copying lots of files should not cripple mouse responsiveness or the playing of a network audio stream). That debacle was down to the cliquishness and recalcitrance of the Linux kernel devs.
What? May I ask what kind of CPU/Memory/GPU setup did you have, and what kind of multitasking were you doing exactly? Because I've used Linux from 2002, and most of the time I've ran it on below average computer - I've have actually ran VMWare session with WinXP inside running FruityLoops (without any issues with mouse, FL's UI or sound performance) and had kernel compilation running background on my Linux desktop (back then I still ran GNOME - later I moved to lighter solutions) - and I've had apache httpd + mysqld + PHP set up running in background since one or two years from when I moved to linux in '02.
I have always praised how Linux performs on machine that ProprietaryOSMostLike would choke if trying to run exactly same software, or equivalents when not available... and back when MS tried to prove their OS is better on server and had Linux+Samba put them in shame running shares on file server using Microsoft proprietary variation of SMB protocol - that didn't happen with OS that has issues with multitasking.
Unless you had really low level hardware (in relation to needs of what you were running) I don't see how your description could be true unless you had somehow the OS set up in some god awful mess :O
XMMS runs fine on my Debian Squeeze, and it ran fine on my last Fedora (not sure but I think it was 11), no need to go back using some early 2000's distro with 2.4.x kernel :p I also remember there was a post couple years ago on blog I follow mentioning that ancient binary released Mosaic browser still worked on modern Linux and a link for downloading it ;p
Writing proprietary software is perfectly okay. I don't have to give away my work for free, although sometimes I do.
Incorrect. Proprietary software is not synonymous with being paid for it, and Free Software (in the GNU/FSF sense) is not synonymous with not being paid for it. Some proprietary software gets provided without financial compensation, some with. Some Free Software is written without financial compensation, some with. And in the long run, Free Software is better for society as a whole than proprietary software is. Unlike Stallman, I do accept that there are exceptions to be made, mostly where networked games are concerned, but hardware drivers should absolutely be Free Software.
Nevertheless, nobody has to give their software away as free. The fact that I do think that especially hardware drivers should be free, I have no right to deny anyone releasing them as proprietary.
GPL has repeatedly held at court.
Neither has it being proprietary - you can say that it's not ethical or whatever, but you can't force people to give their source to anyone, and if they make the source available you still can't force them to license it as FOSS (example: minix, freely available, with source, but not free).
Personally I try to steer away from proprietary software when possible and won't cause too much discomfort, I release any pieces of software I make under GPL or some other F/OSS license, etc. but take away my freedom to choose to release my software under FOSS license and I'd be mad.
There is no way you could ethically ban proprietary software... in fact I had, on my server, a PHP app other people could and did use to place content on their webpages (or some other way, I wasn't monitoring how exactly it was used) and you are basically saying that it was not OK for me to provide that online application. I never wrote any mention of license in it, just a copyright notice (though nobody saw that either) so it was indeed proprietary.
There are right and wrong places for backwards compatibility. Linus got it right from the beginning, Redmond didn't.
ABIs are for retards: I don't think this was targeted for end users but rather for designers who prefer bad solutions right now than good ones later.
Grandma doesn't know s*it about ABI's and whatnot, but she does know that she can't fix any existing OS if it breaks and thus one that breaks easier or has breakages regularly messing her solitaire or web bank session is worse than one that keeps things together - and while she don't know how to install that kitten screensaver her friend emailed she also doesn't miss those viagra ad's popping constantly and the system slowing down which she has to suck in until her nephew comes to fix it again.
But we weren't talking of grandma - I just know from experience that people who stare you blankly if you ask for their opinion on ABI's have appreciated that after I "fixed" their system with new one they haven't noticed any slowly increasing problems - and it has been over year! True story, except now it's been several years... However this has nothing to do with people who understand what ABI's are and choose to support them even after all arguments of both side have been laid to the table. Retards.
Really it's just issue with vmware providing recompilation with one single command but not providing (what would be childishly easy) automated execution of said command after kernel upgrade.
Still, this is a bit too much crying for very small issue. It's an issue, yes, and should be fixed, but to call it even 'hassle' is a bit steep - boohoo... If this is driving someone away from Linux, so be it.
Better than information, I have experience... Not sure if it was 2002 or 2003 when I first time installed VMWare - back then I ran Red Hat 7.1.
There were standards. If manufacturers were interested they could have followed others who showed the way to provide drivers in binary blob, such as NVIDIA, ATI and Matrox (to name few) - they had no problem writing a wrapper around their binary driver, just needed to compile that against latest kernel when upgraded and as their wrapper had to code to communicate with kernels internals that part was not a problem ("breaking" internal interfaces was not a problem, the drivers worked fine when compiled for same kernel release) and now the wrapper know how to load their binary blob and provided binary compatible interface for their actual driver.
Certainly nobody is claiming that their wrapper was a problem - that would be saying they didn't have skills to create binary compatible code for their own driver, assuming then that they would have skills to create working drivers at all would be absurd...
And NVIDIA, as it is, is a good example of getting lazy after creating binary drivers - they had stability issues, yet they were slow to release new versions, and lazy to do that for other reason than supporting their newer models - and even then they still had most of already known issues left. Some people have said since forever that if Linux would have driver ABI like Windows it would have more and more issues with drivers... This is a fine example of such thing. And as it is, I'm still using nVidia drivers that have stalled, that will never get fixed - they are the older Legacy drivers, as following version dropped support of several cards, and I have such card.
There is also newer legacy driver which won't ever get bugfixes either... and then there is the supported version - and it still has issues.
Linux own drivers have always done better - of course they have had bugs, sometimes even critical ones (I remember my first attempt to install Linux, I was happy when Red Hat 7.1 installer asked me to select video card from list and my card, Hercules Stingray 128 3D - Vodoo Rush card, first one with 2D & 3D in one card, was supported - but I never got it to work, just didn't work), but they have been quickly fixed too. Also, even with drivers that nobody was working on anymore got fixed if someone found a flaw.
But we were talking about getting hardware manufacturers onboard - I don't really believe that if a manufacturer would be ready to work on drivers for Linux but would think that the (relatively tiny) wrapper part that would be needed were too much work. Also, what Linux developers really want is not hardware manufacturers that have just barely taken a step to do Linux drivers creating half-assed drivers which may not have a third of the features their Windows drivers have and are provided as binary blob with install system that may or may not work and documentation which most find not to work (at one point ATI drivers were really lousy this way - there were literally dozens of guides for different distro and kernel versions that you had to google for and try. Most did not work even if you had same distro and kernel - but with luck you sometimes got it compiled. It didn't pay to expect that it would work again with next kernel release. nVidia drivers then again were simple and they never failed to compile - all you needed was kernel headers, and if compiling for different version than what was running or if the sources were on unusual location you needed to provide path to them as parameter - then you just ran a script and that was all.
Nevertheless, there were problems with these binary blob drivers - but they were not fault of kernel design.