I'd guess non-negligable damage to economic interests, or more likely physical damage to material assets... like say using a virus to cause physical damage to a nuclear weapons production facil...oh shit.
No it's not offical. this is just a reporter's opinion sourced from conversations with people whose names he won't reveal at times he won't reveal, who know things that nobody should know. for instance, he details the exact contents of a meeting that consisted of 3 people, president Obama, vice president Biden, and (At the time) CIA director Leon Panetta. For him to have this conversation, it means he has interviewed either the president, the vice president, or Panetta on this. Fat fucking chance.
It's probably true, but no it's no way in hell close to "offical".
look, i'm writing this from a machine running a canonical OS, but if you think people are going to view windows 8 as a reason to go to linux, i think you're in a pipe dream. they're going to view windows 8 as a reason to stick with windows 7.
the only reason I switched to vista at all was the whole "we won't put directx 10 on xp" bullshit that microsoft did, and even then i dual booted into linux for a year and a half for everything non-game related until windows 7 came out.
until microsoft pulls a stunt like that again, long live windows 7.
17.4 seconds a day. you could use that magical connection for seventeen seconds a day.
sounds like the worst superpower on earth. can you imagine if the flash could run really fast for 17 seconds per day? superman could fly for seventeen seconds per day? it's like the megalixer you never use in a video game cause "what if i need it for the next fight?!"
half the titles I play aren't on consoles, and those that are are uglier (we're talking something like 4 to 6 generations behind current nvidia/amd graphics cards, depending on how you count) and have a shitty control scheme. console controllers are good for fighting games, sports games, action rpgs, and action-adventure games. PC mouse and keyboads are better at just about everything else.
There's half a dozen genres that play better on mouse and keyboard, but the one that really gets me is how people can stand playing FPS games on consoles. I tried playing mass effect on my xbox, so much better on my pc. Tried playing modern warfare 2 AND black ops on my ps3, both were far better on my pc (didn't even bother trying ME2, ME3, or MW3 on console). I played bioshock for about 5 hours on ps3 before I quit in large part because the control scheme is horrible. I've still got dead space 1 and 2 waiting for me and I won't even bother with them because of, again, horribad control scheme.
I couldn't get certain apps that I use working under wine, including my D&D character generator and netflix. they work perfectly fine under a virtualbox win7 install, so yeah I do kinda "need" windows for that. linux will handle just about anything else I want to do natively, sure. That's just on my laptop though.
On my desktop? windows 7 native install is pretty much a given, because I'm a gamer. I'm sure you've seen the state of video card drivers under linux, not to mention the distinct lack of AAA game titles. Steam is coming to linux, to be sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bringing Skyrim, portal 2, civ 5, etc with it. That's not even to mention the ice cube's chance in hell linux is likely to see native versions of non-steam titles like mass effect or diablo (for various reasons). Yes a few of these can be made to work through wine, but take it from somebody who did just that for a year and a half... stepping back into windows for gaming is like a breath of fresh air after standing in a tent full of beer farts.
and before someone mentions it... no, "get a console for gaming" is not a valid solution.
"18 in comliness! woot! my character is really really good looking" "wait, wasn't that part of the charisma stat?" "yeah, but being beautiful is important enough that it needs it's own stat." "ok, so what's that do for you then?" "fuck all if I know."
I learned on 2e (although I did play some 1e later on), and while I'll concur that 1e had the best AD&D flavor, as well as the best campaign worlds (fuck yeah spelljammer and planescape. planescape was AWESOME), the actual ruleset is a tremendous pain in the ass. We were forever looking shit up, and finally I just made up rules on the fly for anything we weren't going to have to do over and over again.
I like 4e. it's a lot easier to get friends who have never played tabletop games into it by describing it as "World of Warcraft on a table", which is of course somewhat inaccurate, but not wholely inappropriate. who wants to do "generic sword swing" when they can do "holy strike" instead? Also low level characters are hell of a lot more interesting now, especially mages/wizards, "what? I can cast magic missile EVERY TURN instead of 3 times and then stabbing shit with a dagger and a horribad THAC0? sign me up!" That's someing that D&D should have fixed ages ago, and I'm glad they finally did. The entire rest of the rpg world had moved on from that spell point bullshit in one way or another, and it seemed like D&D was only keeping it around for nostalgia value.
I feel ya. That said, get ready to get downmodded to hell and insulted, called a moron, told you don't know computers at all, and told to get off slashdot, for pointing out valid failings in the golden OS.
IT HAS NO PROBLEMS. IT IS THE SOLUTION FOR ALL. IT IS PERFECT. DRINK THE KOOL AID.
then what do you call someone who posts here with a stunning lack of reading comprehension?
I've -got- ubuntu 12.04 working "satisfactorily" in as much as it is possible to work around some pretty glaring basic problems.
I gave up on Mint because the problems were so bad that they weren't worth trying to work around. embarassingly bad. stuff that should have been caught in alpha release levels of bad.
again, this was Mint 12, maybe mint 13 fixed these problems. I'm on vacation and I'm more than willing to give 13 a try when I get home... however considering this was a fully patched version of Mint 12 I was using all of 3 or 4 weeks ago. That means that either they haven't fixed the bugs, or major bugfixes don't get backported to previous releases. either way, it doesn't inspire confidence.
I've still got my windows install ghosted onto an external HD to restore whenever I like, so it's not a big deal to be on linux for the time being. I'm using it now purely for amusement value. I'm seeing what the current state of linux GUI development is like.
I keep trying linux because, despite all my bad experiences with it, I still want to like it. I like the philosophy behind linux, the idea of a 3rd major OS aside from Company M's "you do what you want to do our way and we'll change it when we feel like it" and Company A's "you don't even do what you want to do, you do what we tell you that we'll let you do" designed by the people using it. I really really want to like Linux. I want to be part of the kool-aid drinking faithful... but it is totally one of those grass-is-greener things. Every time I step into the green glowing field of linux, I keep stepping into cow pies.
I want to leave microsoft, and in certain circumstances (the year-and-a-half on ubuntu 9.04 for instance), I've been able to get away, but my fanboyism died away well over a decade ago and now I use what works best. Thus, so far I've always been pulled back for one reason or another and it's not microsoft marketing.
Since anybody with unresolved problems is incompetent by your book, please explain why haven't you fixed the bug with ubuntu where running programs don't always show up on the unity launcher or in alt-tab?
Because it happens.
It's documented.
get off your high horse and admit that your golden OS has flaws.
I did make the mistake once of complaining about my experiences with ubuntu 9.04 (which I used for a year and a half) and my nvidia card. I then proceeded to have several back-and-forth posts with a brick wall of a linux fanboy who insisted that each and every single problem I encountered was nvidia's fault and not linux's, despite my repeated attempts to explain that I didn't -care- whose fault it was that the flagship (at least by # of users) distro couldn't work properly with the #1 (at the time) video card line on the market, because as an end user that shouldn't be something I had to worry about... having to reinstall driver from command prompt every time my kernal updated (note I didn't point out that was the problem, he did. he knew what my problem was without me even mentioning it, it was -that- common). He didn't seem to think that mattered. He was arguing from some philosophical point of view where I was trying to point out that as an actual user, who knew what he was doing and -could- fix the problem (or at least work around it), I just didn't want the hassle of having to do so when I had other options that weren't such a pain in the ass.
his end recommendation, and I'm not kidding, was to avoid using my $300 video card and use onboard intel graphics instead.
you're not allowed to have a negative opinion of something unless you work for the competition?
you must work for red hat? see how silly that sounds?
I'm not sure what kind of OS you are trying to classify as an operating system for a moron, because I've had to support users who can't use any operating system, no matter how simple. they break everything they use. you wouldn't think they'd be able to screw up something like iOS, etc, but they do. you can't design an idiot-proof OS because the world will make a better idiot.
If all you want out of Linux is an OS that will launch firefox and thunderbird, maybe print or open a flash drive, then there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of distros that can do that without a problem. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actual computer enthusiasts. People whom I assume you count yourself among, those who are spending several hours in front of their computer per day by choice, and not spending it all on facebook. People who are installing emulators, installing programs that aren't in the default repositories, customizing the interface to any degree beyond changing the wallpaper. adding a piece of hardware that doesn't have an apple logo on it. These things are very often broken in linux distros, and while you can often get them working, at least well enough to get by, it requires knowing the operating system very well already, or meticuliously following instructions that found on google and hoping that it is the correct fix for your problem, and not knowing why it worked if it did or didn't work if it didn't.
That's why there is no linux for novices. Eventually if you do anything other than web browsing, you're going to find yourself at a terminal prompt typing in sudo and hoping the line you're cutting and pasting after it won't hose your system.
Also your description of windows sounds suspiciously like XP, not 7.
I like Mint. Just like I like Ubuntu, I like Debian, and a lot of other distros. I just find that major releases of them often have some pretty substiantial problems, and like any fanboy war, linux distro fanboys all tend to defend their distro of choice while ravaging others, and the only thing that makes them band together is somebody wandering into the room and saying "why don't you all just switch to OSX and be done with it" or something like that. Often even that doesn't do it.
I'd like to think that maybe I've just been unlucky, but I've installed a ton of different releases of different distros and they've -all- had something wrong with them. The best out-of-the-box experience I've ever had is ubuntu 12.04 and I've even documented the issues I ran into with it elsewhere in these comments. If any distro of linux had ever "just worked" for me, I'd be using it this second. I know people want to blame -me- for it, but as I've pointed out, the problems I'm having usually have documented tracker entries when I google them. It's -not- just me. The only linux distro I've ever had do exactly what it says on the tin with no tinkering, finagling, and headache-based-acceptance was Tails, and that's a fairly limited and focused distro.
I really wanted to like Mint. the stated design goals, an ubuntu-based OS (with all the benefits of a large-ish installed base of users) that focused on stability and user experience? sign me up! I just didn't find the experience to be anything like the advertising. It didn't even stand up directly out of the box before I started trying to customize it.
you'd think so, but it's pretty hard to dismiss the problem as somehow being cause by me when: A. I list the exact workflow, and at no time am I doing anything out of the ordinary B. The bugs are confirmed in offical tracker logs.
That's the thing that gets me. I'm listing known and documented problems with the operating systems, and I'm getting downmodded like I'm making shit up.
Also, I'm curious to know which headaches you're running into with Windows 7, because I can't think of any offhand. XP? sure. Vista? Of course. 7? nothing comes to mind.
I'm honest enough with myself to admit that you're telling the truth. I -should- be using windows 7. But I kind of like to tinker, and have enough computers to do so. It's boring running windows 7 on every single one.
Although, how do you guys ever plan to have "the year of linux on the desktop" if you are directly trying to chase away even other computer nerds, let alone the average user?
then why did you downmod it? put your fanboyism away. I'm describing the modern linux experience the way it actually is, not the way you want to pretend it is. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Slashdot Mirror
I like that line of thinking.
We're still undefeated!
well, I guess that whole war of 1812 thing is still debatable...
Exactly, that's why the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War in the Gulf, the War in Iraq, and the War in Afghanistan all never happened.
they were "police actions" goddamit.
I'd guess non-negligable damage to economic interests, or more likely physical damage to material assets... like say using a virus to cause physical damage to a nuclear weapons production facil...oh shit.
No it's not offical. this is just a reporter's opinion sourced from conversations with people whose names he won't reveal at times he won't reveal, who know things that nobody should know. for instance, he details the exact contents of a meeting that consisted of 3 people, president Obama, vice president Biden, and (At the time) CIA director Leon Panetta. For him to have this conversation, it means he has interviewed either the president, the vice president, or Panetta on this. Fat fucking chance.
It's probably true, but no it's no way in hell close to "offical".
look, i'm writing this from a machine running a canonical OS, but if you think people are going to view windows 8 as a reason to go to linux, i think you're in a pipe dream. they're going to view windows 8 as a reason to stick with windows 7.
you can still buy vista. 7 is going nowhere for several years.
in fact, i forsee an "xp still on sale a decade after release, due to demand" deal going on with windows 7 unless windows 9 is excellent.
Why would you stop using windows 7?
the only reason I switched to vista at all was the whole "we won't put directx 10 on xp" bullshit that microsoft did, and even then i dual booted into linux for a year and a half for everything non-game related until windows 7 came out.
until microsoft pulls a stunt like that again, long live windows 7.
4700mbps = 587.5MBps
10GB = 10240MB
10240MB / 587.5MBps = 17.4s
17.4 seconds a day. you could use that magical connection for seventeen seconds a day.
sounds like the worst superpower on earth. can you imagine if the flash could run really fast for 17 seconds per day? superman could fly for seventeen seconds per day? it's like the megalixer you never use in a video game cause "what if i need it for the next fight?!"
half the titles I play aren't on consoles, and those that are are uglier (we're talking something like 4 to 6 generations behind current nvidia/amd graphics cards, depending on how you count) and have a shitty control scheme. console controllers are good for fighting games, sports games, action rpgs, and action-adventure games. PC mouse and keyboads are better at just about everything else.
There's half a dozen genres that play better on mouse and keyboard, but the one that really gets me is how people can stand playing FPS games on consoles. I tried playing mass effect on my xbox, so much better on my pc. Tried playing modern warfare 2 AND black ops on my ps3, both were far better on my pc (didn't even bother trying ME2, ME3, or MW3 on console). I played bioshock for about 5 hours on ps3 before I quit in large part because the control scheme is horrible. I've still got dead space 1 and 2 waiting for me and I won't even bother with them because of, again, horribad control scheme.
mouse and keyboard is just better. it just IS.
depends.
I couldn't get certain apps that I use working under wine, including my D&D character generator and netflix.
they work perfectly fine under a virtualbox win7 install, so yeah I do kinda "need" windows for that. linux will handle just about anything else I want to do natively, sure. That's just on my laptop though.
On my desktop? windows 7 native install is pretty much a given, because I'm a gamer. I'm sure you've seen the state of video card drivers under linux, not to mention the distinct lack of AAA game titles. Steam is coming to linux, to be sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bringing Skyrim, portal 2, civ 5, etc with it. That's not even to mention the ice cube's chance in hell linux is likely to see native versions of non-steam titles like mass effect or diablo (for various reasons). Yes a few of these can be made to work through wine, but take it from somebody who did just that for a year and a half... stepping back into windows for gaming is like a breath of fresh air after standing in a tent full of beer farts.
and before someone mentions it... no, "get a console for gaming" is not a valid solution.
fucking comliness.
"18 in comliness! woot! my character is really really good looking"
"wait, wasn't that part of the charisma stat?"
"yeah, but being beautiful is important enough that it needs it's own stat."
"ok, so what's that do for you then?"
"fuck all if I know."
shit that should have read "2e had the best ad&d flavor and campaign worlds." editing fail.
I learned on 2e (although I did play some 1e later on), and while I'll concur that 1e had the best AD&D flavor, as well as the best campaign worlds (fuck yeah spelljammer and planescape. planescape was AWESOME), the actual ruleset is a tremendous pain in the ass. We were forever looking shit up, and finally I just made up rules on the fly for anything we weren't going to have to do over and over again.
I like 4e. it's a lot easier to get friends who have never played tabletop games into it by describing it as "World of Warcraft on a table", which is of course somewhat inaccurate, but not wholely inappropriate. who wants to do "generic sword swing" when they can do "holy strike" instead? Also low level characters are hell of a lot more interesting now, especially mages/wizards, "what? I can cast magic missile EVERY TURN instead of 3 times and then stabbing shit with a dagger and a horribad THAC0? sign me up!" That's someing that D&D should have fixed ages ago, and I'm glad they finally did. The entire rest of the rpg world had moved on from that spell point bullshit in one way or another, and it seemed like D&D was only keeping it around for nostalgia value.
firefox does. It is a godsend for web browsing smoothly over a remote desktop connection.
I feel ya. That said, get ready to get downmodded to hell and insulted, called a moron, told you don't know computers at all, and told to get off slashdot, for pointing out valid failings in the golden OS.
IT HAS NO PROBLEMS. IT IS THE SOLUTION FOR ALL. IT IS PERFECT. DRINK THE KOOL AID.
sheesh.
then what do you call someone who posts here with a stunning lack of reading comprehension?
I've -got- ubuntu 12.04 working "satisfactorily" in as much as it is possible to work around some pretty glaring basic problems.
I gave up on Mint because the problems were so bad that they weren't worth trying to work around. embarassingly bad. stuff that should have been caught in alpha release levels of bad.
again, this was Mint 12, maybe mint 13 fixed these problems. I'm on vacation and I'm more than willing to give 13 a try when I get home... however considering this was a fully patched version of Mint 12 I was using all of 3 or 4 weeks ago. That means that either they haven't fixed the bugs, or major bugfixes don't get backported to previous releases. either way, it doesn't inspire confidence.
I've still got my windows install ghosted onto an external HD to restore whenever I like, so it's not a big deal to be on linux for the time being. I'm using it now purely for amusement value. I'm seeing what the current state of linux GUI development is like.
I keep trying linux because, despite all my bad experiences with it, I still want to like it. I like the philosophy behind linux, the idea of a 3rd major OS aside from Company M's "you do what you want to do our way and we'll change it when we feel like it" and Company A's "you don't even do what you want to do, you do what we tell you that we'll let you do" designed by the people using it. I really really want to like Linux. I want to be part of the kool-aid drinking faithful... but it is totally one of those grass-is-greener things. Every time I step into the green glowing field of linux, I keep stepping into cow pies.
I want to leave microsoft, and in certain circumstances (the year-and-a-half on ubuntu 9.04 for instance), I've been able to get away, but my fanboyism died away well over a decade ago and now I use what works best. Thus, so far I've always been pulled back for one reason or another and it's not microsoft marketing.
on vacation actually. at in-laws house. plenty of time for posting.
Since anybody with unresolved problems is incompetent by your book, please explain why haven't you fixed the bug with ubuntu where running programs don't always show up on the unity launcher or in alt-tab?
Because it happens.
It's documented.
get off your high horse and admit that your golden OS has flaws.
I did make the mistake once of complaining about my experiences with ubuntu 9.04 (which I used for a year and a half) and my nvidia card. I then proceeded to have several back-and-forth posts with a brick wall of a linux fanboy who insisted that each and every single problem I encountered was nvidia's fault and not linux's, despite my repeated attempts to explain that I didn't -care- whose fault it was that the flagship (at least by # of users) distro couldn't work properly with the #1 (at the time) video card line on the market, because as an end user that shouldn't be something I had to worry about... having to reinstall driver from command prompt every time my kernal updated (note I didn't point out that was the problem, he did. he knew what my problem was without me even mentioning it, it was -that- common). He didn't seem to think that mattered. He was arguing from some philosophical point of view where I was trying to point out that as an actual user, who knew what he was doing and -could- fix the problem (or at least work around it), I just didn't want the hassle of having to do so when I had other options that weren't such a pain in the ass.
his end recommendation, and I'm not kidding, was to avoid using my $300 video card and use onboard intel graphics instead.
you're not allowed to have a negative opinion of something unless you work for the competition?
you must work for red hat? see how silly that sounds?
I'm not sure what kind of OS you are trying to classify as an operating system for a moron, because I've had to support users who can't use any operating system, no matter how simple. they break everything they use. you wouldn't think they'd be able to screw up something like iOS, etc, but they do. you can't design an idiot-proof OS because the world will make a better idiot.
If all you want out of Linux is an OS that will launch firefox and thunderbird, maybe print or open a flash drive, then there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of distros that can do that without a problem. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actual computer enthusiasts. People whom I assume you count yourself among, those who are spending several hours in front of their computer per day by choice, and not spending it all on facebook. People who are installing emulators, installing programs that aren't in the default repositories, customizing the interface to any degree beyond changing the wallpaper. adding a piece of hardware that doesn't have an apple logo on it. These things are very often broken in linux distros, and while you can often get them working, at least well enough to get by, it requires knowing the operating system very well already, or meticuliously following instructions that found on google and hoping that it is the correct fix for your problem, and not knowing why it worked if it did or didn't work if it didn't.
That's why there is no linux for novices. Eventually if you do anything other than web browsing, you're going to find yourself at a terminal prompt typing in sudo and hoping the line you're cutting and pasting after it won't hose your system.
Also your description of windows sounds suspiciously like XP, not 7.
Don't get me wrong.
I like Mint. Just like I like Ubuntu, I like Debian, and a lot of other distros. I just find that major releases of them often have some pretty substiantial problems, and like any fanboy war, linux distro fanboys all tend to defend their distro of choice while ravaging others, and the only thing that makes them band together is somebody wandering into the room and saying "why don't you all just switch to OSX and be done with it" or something like that. Often even that doesn't do it.
I'd like to think that maybe I've just been unlucky, but I've installed a ton of different releases of different distros and they've -all- had something wrong with them. The best out-of-the-box experience I've ever had is ubuntu 12.04 and I've even documented the issues I ran into with it elsewhere in these comments. If any distro of linux had ever "just worked" for me, I'd be using it this second. I know people want to blame -me- for it, but as I've pointed out, the problems I'm having usually have documented tracker entries when I google them. It's -not- just me. The only linux distro I've ever had do exactly what it says on the tin with no tinkering, finagling, and headache-based-acceptance was Tails, and that's a fairly limited and focused distro.
I really wanted to like Mint. the stated design goals, an ubuntu-based OS (with all the benefits of a large-ish installed base of users) that focused on stability and user experience? sign me up! I just didn't find the experience to be anything like the advertising. It didn't even stand up directly out of the box before I started trying to customize it.
you'd think so, but it's pretty hard to dismiss the problem as somehow being cause by me when:
A. I list the exact workflow, and at no time am I doing anything out of the ordinary
B. The bugs are confirmed in offical tracker logs.
That's the thing that gets me. I'm listing known and documented problems with the operating systems, and I'm getting downmodded like I'm making shit up.
Also, I'm curious to know which headaches you're running into with Windows 7, because I can't think of any offhand. XP? sure. Vista? Of course. 7? nothing comes to mind.
I'm honest enough with myself to admit that you're telling the truth. I -should- be using windows 7. But I kind of like to tinker, and have enough computers to do so. It's boring running windows 7 on every single one.
Although, how do you guys ever plan to have "the year of linux on the desktop" if you are directly trying to chase away even other computer nerds, let alone the average user?
then why did you downmod it?
put your fanboyism away.
I'm describing the modern linux experience the way it actually is, not the way you want to pretend it is.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.