Just to save time and nip the inevitable anti-climate-change nonsense in the bud...
Nobody is disputing that the oceans are heating up. This is an argument over the details.
By comparison, it's like saying that the earth isn't spherical, which is correct. But the reason this is correct is not because the flat-earthers are right. The reason is that the earth is slightly egg-shaped. It is still for all intents and purposes, spherical. It's just a question of how specific you need to be.
So wait... if I'm reading this correctly, he configured his Videos directory to be his project cache directory?
So he had no backups, and made a very boneheaded misconfiguration of his settings. I'm honestly surprised he hadn't suffered a catastrophic issue before now.
TFA doesn't mention what platform he's running on, but if he was on a Mac, then that's an order of magnitude even more stupid, cause in order to back up you literally just have to buy a USB hard drive and plug it in. The first the OSX will do when it sees the drive is ask if you want to use it with Time Machine. Then you click "Yes". It's literally THAT easy.
No, I'm not saying that. And at this point I just have to say that you are either being intentionally thick, or you are utterly incapable of putting yourself into the shoes of the average person who probably has kids, a day job, and a mortgage to worry about.
The fact of the matter is that they are not going to make the kind of choice you are thinking. Their choice is going to be, "Does it do what I need it to do, yes or no?" It is NOT going to be "how can I make it do what I want?". They are NOT going to take the time to evaluate all the myriad options. They are going to, at best, ask for a recommendation, and then either go with it or abandon Linux entirely and stick with what they already know.
For good or ill, the average person looks at a computer as an appliance. What you put in front of them is what they get. It's not a matter of if they can. It's a matter of if they are arsed to do so because they have more important things to worry about. This is why Apple is doing so well. Because they put out a product that the average non-computer-savvy user can use.
"Windows as a service" sounded like a good idea in 2015, when Microsoft released Windows 10.
No, it fucking didn't. At no point has having an OS as a service EVER made sense. The whole concept is idiotic and nothing more than what it has panned to be: A cash grab that dramatically increases the costs of owning the OS with zero benefit in exchange.
The only reason they even got away with it is because they have a captive monopoly.
This is why Apple's computer business is booming even though they can't make a keyboard to save their lives. Suddenly there is renewed interest in making Linux a viable desktop. More and more people are jumping the Windows ship cause they are finally fed up.
Turning Windows into a service-when-not-a-service is Windows finally jumping the shark.
Is it really that hard for you to understand/accept that not everyone has the same level of technical expertise that you do?
Being a dick doesn't help your argument at all. You clearly have zero understanding of how people actually make choices. Here's a hint: it's the reason why marketing is so effective, and why shitty products easily outsell clearly superior ones.
That little snippet is missing a LOT of details. First of all, it assumes that they even know what GUI they want. KDE? XFCE? FVWM? Cinnamon? Enlightenment?
The average user is not going to have any idea. They will have to spend time learning the pros and cons between each one, possibly experiment to see what they like most.
I can tell you right now that the average user is going to throw their hands up in the air and say "Screw that" before you've managed to finish saying the letter K D.
It's not an MS mindframe. It's a "I'm just a computer user who just wants it to work without bullshit" mindframe. Maybe you and I have no qualms about ripping out a GUI we hate and putting in a different one, but it wouldn't even occur to the average user to do that, let alone know HOW to do that.
This is the problem when technologies reach popular fad status. Every idiot thinks that it is somehow a magic bullet that will fix all your woes, even the non-technical ones.
It happens over and over and over again without fail. Considering that this happens every few years, it now blows my mind that we keep falling for it considering that the last episode couldn't possibly have been so long ago that it faded from memory. And yet here we are.
Blockchain is a great technology. But FFS learn how it actually works and what it's limits are before flapping your gums about how it can cure cancer, homelessness, all while slicing veggies effortlessly.
How unpopular it is, is irrelevant. There are tons of things that are unpopular but still necessary, like taxes (Sorry US, but it's true).
The real question is whether there is a benefit to doing it. I have yet to read about one single actual tangible benefit to it. And no, the perception that you have "more daylight" doesn't count, because it's not true.
Meanwhile, the negatives are VERY large: Increased number of accidents due to fatigue. Health problems such as heart attacks caused by the shifts. Etc.
The whole concept of DST is idiotic, based on nothing resembling good reasoning, and should be eliminated.
At one point (the IE4 days I believe), Internet Explorer actually *was* available for unix. Then when Microsoft won the browser wars they dropped it like rotting fish.
The entire explorer shell, however, I think is a different animal and I don't know how well that could be isolated enough from the rest of Windows to make it open-sourceable. Assuming that it was, I don't see Microsoft ever doing that. One of the single biggest reasons people don't move to Linux is cause "It's not Windows". If suddenly you could make Linux behave very similar to Windows, that would be a roadblock removed, and Microsoft would never allow that.
In that case, you can use either VirtualBox, or (and this is IMO the better option) use KVM. KVM is a native hypervisor to linux and is orders of magnitude more performant than VirtualBox is. The only downside is that it doesn't have a lot of the integration frills that other virtualization tools have. The simplest way to get around that is to pretend that the Windows VM is a remote machine and just RDP into it. That will give you things like shared folders, shared clipboard, etc.
That will take care of your work needs. As far as games go, there are a lot of games available for Linux now, and with SteamPlay that catalogue is growing substantially. That being said, don't expect to play triple-A games on release day. I suggest you research if the games you want to play are available for Linux. If so, then you're all set.
If not, you will want to consider other options including getting a console instead, dual-booting to Windows, having a second Windows machine just for gaming, etc. IMO the requirements for a gaming machine and a work machine are substantially different (eg: I don't need a gtx1060 to write email or manage servers), so I just bought a separate gaming machine. Live is much simpler that way. If Windows trashes my gaming machine, it's annoying. If it trashes my work machine, it's catastrophic.
You know what? That would be bloody awesome. I *loved* workplace shell when it was around. It completely blew the crap out of Program Manager on Windows.
Compared to 1995, yes. Compared to a lot of the machines they make today? Expandability is now a feature. Almost the entire Apple lineup is a write-off, and as usual (unfortunateyl), other manufacturers are copying what Apple, to the point where you can no longer assume that any machine you look at is easily expandable.
If you don't already know Linux, it depends on if you have the time and desire to learn the differences. A Windows machine is the default "easy" choice.
A Linux machine is going to require relearning some things, and you will probably run into hiccups along the way as you try to do stuff. This is true for any system you are unfamiliar with. There are other restrictions as well. If you *need* to be able to use specific software that isn't available for Linux, then your choice is basically made for you.
But I would first plan out your priorities. I personally have one machine for work, and one for games, and recommend others do the same. If you have no machine at all, then prioritize the work machine, for obvious reasons. You may not be able to play the newest triple-A games with it, but there is plenty of stuff that you can play.
Maybe you shouldn't be throwing insults around when you yourself are incorrect.
If you didn't get Applecare, your warranty is only 1 year. Something dies after one year? You're paying out of pocket unless Apple has a specific program that address that particular issue out of warranty. Even if you're still in warranty, if Apple deems the issue is caused by the user, you're *still* out of pocket. I don't know if the keyboard dust issue falls under this category.... I don't care enough to research that much.
And until last week, all these new keyboards were on their Macbook Pros. Those machines *start* at over 2 grand. And they are assembled using a lot of glue and other idiotic things so that the keyboard is fixed to the case, along with other components, effectively making the keyboard not replacable. You have to replace the entire upper assembly of a Macbook Pro.
The price tag for that replacement is several hundred dollars, based on reports I have read elsewhere.
That means you have a machine that is almost guaranteed to require a very costly post-warranty repair, all because they designed the keyboard very badly. Which is why they've put a program in place specifically for this repair.
That is a fair point. However, all the USB connectors are made the same way, and I've found lightning to be infinitely more reliable a connector than any of the USB ones, so again I question why you you are singling out lightning.
For example, USB-C is virtually the same as the lightning connector except that it has a shield around it. https://www.anandtech.com/show...
Oh! I'm SO sorry.... I didn't know that Apple was finally forced to implement a special keyboard replacement program. Which I had to google myself because you were too lazy to provide a reference yourself.
And I'm sure helped all the people that had to pay several hundred dollars out of pocket before Apple finally coughed and admitted that the keyboard was bad enough to need a special program.
This of course ignores the fact that you need to have your machine shipped out and unavailable to you for however long it takes them to completely replace the entire top of the laptop because of how moronically they designed everything.
I don't know why you say that. IMO the lightning connector was a brilliant design. Fully reversible and very hard to ruin. It was, in every aspect, vastly superior to the existing USB connectors.
The only problem is that Apple kept it to themselves. If they had offered it to the USB standards group it could have become the next USB connector.
Maybe a lower monetary cost, but you've already pointed out the other factor: you're time and stress. How much is that worth to you?
For me, if I wanted to be afraid that my whole computer would be bricked because of an update, I may as well just use Windows 10. Then I'd at least be able to play the latest games on it too.
I'm going to continue using my 2015 at work until it either dies, or until software no longer supports whatever maximum version of MacOS I can get on it.
And if by then Apple hasn't pulled their head out of their ass, I may well end up switching to a Linux laptop.
My home machine is a Macbook Pro 2010 for the same reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to save time and nip the inevitable anti-climate-change nonsense in the bud...
Nobody is disputing that the oceans are heating up. This is an argument over the details.
By comparison, it's like saying that the earth isn't spherical, which is correct. But the reason this is correct is not because the flat-earthers are right. The reason is that the earth is slightly egg-shaped. It is still for all intents and purposes, spherical. It's just a question of how specific you need to be.
So wait... if I'm reading this correctly, he configured his Videos directory to be his project cache directory?
So he had no backups, and made a very boneheaded misconfiguration of his settings. I'm honestly surprised he hadn't suffered a catastrophic issue before now.
TFA doesn't mention what platform he's running on, but if he was on a Mac, then that's an order of magnitude even more stupid, cause in order to back up you literally just have to buy a USB hard drive and plug it in. The first the OSX will do when it sees the drive is ask if you want to use it with Time Machine. Then you click "Yes". It's literally THAT easy.
No, I'm not saying that. And at this point I just have to say that you are either being intentionally thick, or you are utterly incapable of putting yourself into the shoes of the average person who probably has kids, a day job, and a mortgage to worry about.
The fact of the matter is that they are not going to make the kind of choice you are thinking. Their choice is going to be, "Does it do what I need it to do, yes or no?" It is NOT going to be "how can I make it do what I want?". They are NOT going to take the time to evaluate all the myriad options. They are going to, at best, ask for a recommendation, and then either go with it or abandon Linux entirely and stick with what they already know.
For good or ill, the average person looks at a computer as an appliance. What you put in front of them is what they get. It's not a matter of if they can. It's a matter of if they are arsed to do so because they have more important things to worry about. This is why Apple is doing so well. Because they put out a product that the average non-computer-savvy user can use.
"Windows as a service" sounded like a good idea in 2015, when Microsoft released Windows 10.
No, it fucking didn't. At no point has having an OS as a service EVER made sense. The whole concept is idiotic and nothing more than what it has panned to be: A cash grab that dramatically increases the costs of owning the OS with zero benefit in exchange.
The only reason they even got away with it is because they have a captive monopoly.
This is why Apple's computer business is booming even though they can't make a keyboard to save their lives. Suddenly there is renewed interest in making Linux a viable desktop. More and more people are jumping the Windows ship cause they are finally fed up.
Turning Windows into a service-when-not-a-service is Windows finally jumping the shark.
Is it really that hard for you to understand/accept that not everyone has the same level of technical expertise that you do?
Being a dick doesn't help your argument at all. You clearly have zero understanding of how people actually make choices. Here's a hint: it's the reason why marketing is so effective, and why shitty products easily outsell clearly superior ones.
Wow, this must be a down right terrible quandry from Trump.
He has to choose between China, or an Obama-era agreement that works in his favour.
just install the wanted GUI
That little snippet is missing a LOT of details. First of all, it assumes that they even know what GUI they want. KDE? XFCE? FVWM? Cinnamon? Enlightenment?
The average user is not going to have any idea. They will have to spend time learning the pros and cons between each one, possibly experiment to see what they like most.
I can tell you right now that the average user is going to throw their hands up in the air and say "Screw that" before you've managed to finish saying the letter K D.
It's not an MS mindframe. It's a "I'm just a computer user who just wants it to work without bullshit" mindframe. Maybe you and I have no qualms about ripping out a GUI we hate and putting in a different one, but it wouldn't even occur to the average user to do that, let alone know HOW to do that.
This is the problem when technologies reach popular fad status. Every idiot thinks that it is somehow a magic bullet that will fix all your woes, even the non-technical ones.
It happens over and over and over again without fail. Considering that this happens every few years, it now blows my mind that we keep falling for it considering that the last episode couldn't possibly have been so long ago that it faded from memory. And yet here we are.
Blockchain is a great technology. But FFS learn how it actually works and what it's limits are before flapping your gums about how it can cure cancer, homelessness, all while slicing veggies effortlessly.
You're right. I keep forgetting that we now live in a post-truth world. :\
How unpopular it is, is irrelevant. There are tons of things that are unpopular but still necessary, like taxes (Sorry US, but it's true).
The real question is whether there is a benefit to doing it. I have yet to read about one single actual tangible benefit to it. And no, the perception that you have "more daylight" doesn't count, because it's not true.
Meanwhile, the negatives are VERY large: Increased number of accidents due to fatigue. Health problems such as heart attacks caused by the shifts. Etc.
The whole concept of DST is idiotic, based on nothing resembling good reasoning, and should be eliminated.
At one point (the IE4 days I believe), Internet Explorer actually *was* available for unix. Then when Microsoft won the browser wars they dropped it like rotting fish.
The entire explorer shell, however, I think is a different animal and I don't know how well that could be isolated enough from the rest of Windows to make it open-sourceable. Assuming that it was, I don't see Microsoft ever doing that. One of the single biggest reasons people don't move to Linux is cause "It's not Windows". If suddenly you could make Linux behave very similar to Windows, that would be a roadblock removed, and Microsoft would never allow that.
In that case, you can use either VirtualBox, or (and this is IMO the better option) use KVM. KVM is a native hypervisor to linux and is orders of magnitude more performant than VirtualBox is. The only downside is that it doesn't have a lot of the integration frills that other virtualization tools have. The simplest way to get around that is to pretend that the Windows VM is a remote machine and just RDP into it. That will give you things like shared folders, shared clipboard, etc.
That will take care of your work needs. As far as games go, there are a lot of games available for Linux now, and with SteamPlay that catalogue is growing substantially. That being said, don't expect to play triple-A games on release day. I suggest you research if the games you want to play are available for Linux. If so, then you're all set.
If not, you will want to consider other options including getting a console instead, dual-booting to Windows, having a second Windows machine just for gaming, etc. IMO the requirements for a gaming machine and a work machine are substantially different (eg: I don't need a gtx1060 to write email or manage servers), so I just bought a separate gaming machine. Live is much simpler that way. If Windows trashes my gaming machine, it's annoying. If it trashes my work machine, it's catastrophic.
As much as I hate to say it, compared to Gnome, I'll take Explorer. The Gnome developers should be ashamed of themselves for what they're doing.
Nah, it'll be replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You know what? That would be bloody awesome. I *loved* workplace shell when it was around. It completely blew the crap out of Program Manager on Windows.
Compared to 1995, yes. Compared to a lot of the machines they make today? Expandability is now a feature. Almost the entire Apple lineup is a write-off, and as usual (unfortunateyl), other manufacturers are copying what Apple, to the point where you can no longer assume that any machine you look at is easily expandable.
If you don't already know Linux, it depends on if you have the time and desire to learn the differences. A Windows machine is the default "easy" choice.
A Linux machine is going to require relearning some things, and you will probably run into hiccups along the way as you try to do stuff. This is true for any system you are unfamiliar with. There are other restrictions as well. If you *need* to be able to use specific software that isn't available for Linux, then your choice is basically made for you.
But I would first plan out your priorities. I personally have one machine for work, and one for games, and recommend others do the same. If you have no machine at all, then prioritize the work machine, for obvious reasons. You may not be able to play the newest triple-A games with it, but there is plenty of stuff that you can play.
https://sadtrombone.com/?play=...
Literally any situation where you need to share data from one device to another and a network is unavailable?
Must be nice living in a perfect environment where nothing ever fails and you are never under time pressure to get something done no matter what.
.....*facepalm*
Maybe you shouldn't be throwing insults around when you yourself are incorrect.
If you didn't get Applecare, your warranty is only 1 year. Something dies after one year? You're paying out of pocket unless Apple has a specific program that address that particular issue out of warranty. Even if you're still in warranty, if Apple deems the issue is caused by the user, you're *still* out of pocket. I don't know if the keyboard dust issue falls under this category.... I don't care enough to research that much.
And until last week, all these new keyboards were on their Macbook Pros. Those machines *start* at over 2 grand. And they are assembled using a lot of glue and other idiotic things so that the keyboard is fixed to the case, along with other components, effectively making the keyboard not replacable. You have to replace the entire upper assembly of a Macbook Pro.
The price tag for that replacement is several hundred dollars, based on reports I have read elsewhere.
That means you have a machine that is almost guaranteed to require a very costly post-warranty repair, all because they designed the keyboard very badly. Which is why they've put a program in place specifically for this repair.
That is a fair point. However, all the USB connectors are made the same way, and I've found lightning to be infinitely more reliable a connector than any of the USB ones, so again I question why you you are singling out lightning.
For example, USB-C is virtually the same as the lightning connector except that it has a shield around it.
https://www.anandtech.com/show...
Oh! I'm SO sorry.... I didn't know that Apple was finally forced to implement a special keyboard replacement program. Which I had to google myself because you were too lazy to provide a reference yourself.
And I'm sure helped all the people that had to pay several hundred dollars out of pocket before Apple finally coughed and admitted that the keyboard was bad enough to need a special program.
This of course ignores the fact that you need to have your machine shipped out and unavailable to you for however long it takes them to completely replace the entire top of the laptop because of how moronically they designed everything.
But sure, *I'm* the idiot.
I don't know why you say that. IMO the lightning connector was a brilliant design. Fully reversible and very hard to ruin. It was, in every aspect, vastly superior to the existing USB connectors.
The only problem is that Apple kept it to themselves. If they had offered it to the USB standards group it could have become the next USB connector.
Maybe a lower monetary cost, but you've already pointed out the other factor: you're time and stress. How much is that worth to you?
For me, if I wanted to be afraid that my whole computer would be bricked because of an update, I may as well just use Windows 10. Then I'd at least be able to play the latest games on it too.
IMO you did.
I'm going to continue using my 2015 at work until it either dies, or until software no longer supports whatever maximum version of MacOS I can get on it.
And if by then Apple hasn't pulled their head out of their ass, I may well end up switching to a Linux laptop.
My home machine is a Macbook Pro 2010 for the same reasons.