I am a PC gamer, too. I only keep a Windows partition around to play games. The kind of games that I like to play either rarely come out on consoles, or come out in forms that are crippled somehow. FPSes, for example, play far better with a keyboard and mouse than with any console controller combination that I've ever used. Another example are strategy games from indie publishers. I find that they are rarely developed for consoles.
The good news for me is that gaming on Linux keeps getting better. Support for games on wine continues to improve. The number of vendors who are adding Linux versions continues to grow as well (albeit very slowly).
Except he's a zoomie. The USAF tends to have much higher retention rates than the other branches of service so negative marks in a service jacket can cost you. I think that if he'd pulled this kind of thing in the USN (my own branch of service) he never would have made the jump from PO1 (Petty Officer First Class) to CPO (Chief Petty Officer). In the USAF? He may never get promoted again.
Where on earth did you get the impression that rendering dialect correctly had anything at all to do with skin color? Rendering dialect can be done to put someone down, it's true. However, writers with that kind of agenda typically don't have anything worthwhile to say anyhow.
The truth is that people living in all kinds of places at all economic levels of society develop their own dialect. For example, did you ever read Kipling's "Captains Courageous?" Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn?" Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones?" Read any of Falstaff's scenes from Shakespeare's plays? See any 'people of color' being put down in any of those examples?
To ignore dialect when writing or hide it is to ignore the rich and complex diversity that is the human race. It is to turn the orchestra of language into a single section of brass. It takes away the spice from written or spoken dialog. Don't hide from dialect, treat it as those great writers did. Celebrate it!
Sorry, I thought we were talking about meeting a user's requirements at the lowest possible price point. I simply responded to the requirements that you listed. Now, if you want to insist that only Microsoft can provide such a solution for a typical user, you've added a requirement.
If instead you had said that for someone on a Windows platform, this is a good deal, I think I still would have countered that I already get update notifications with Firefox, OpenOffice, and the OS itself. So again, what's the value proposition? Frankly, I just don't see it.
So with this one setup you can feasibly replace Office, Email, and security software with one $70 package. That's not a bad deal at all. There aren't many other programs that the typical user has, uses on a regular basis, and receive monthly or weekly updates.
Strange. I get all of that functionality and a lot more updated for free whenever I log in to my Kubuntu box. What's the value proposition again? Oh, yes. Vendor lock-in. Well, I know what that's worth to me!:)
My personal favorite type of moron is the idiot on a bicycle on a major feeder road. Moderate to heavy traffic. Speed limit 50 mph with traffic actually running at 55 to 60. Riding along on the shoulder and occasionally moving into traffic to avoid debris. Right next to a bike trail on the safe side of a guard rail that parallels the road!
Mind you, I'm not talking about casual bikers or even commuters. I'm talking about the jokers who take biking so seriously that they wouldn't be caught dead in public in nothing less than the height of biking fashion; spandex pants, garishly decorated shirts, and aerodynamically designed styrofoam helmets with those little dental mirrors attached. Whatever happened to just strapping your right pant leg down so it didn't get caught in the chain? lol
Time and again I've been very tempted to stop and explain just how stupid they're being. I console myself with the knowledge that, like motorcyclists riding without helmets, they simply represent Darwinism in action. Too bad someone's insurance will have to go up to remove these defects from the gene pool.:(
Wait. You shared your/customer list/ with a competitor as part of due diligence? I've never heard of doing that. Due diligence requires that they look at your books in some detail, yes, but it doesn't mean that you have to show them everything.
Nope, Lattice was angling for your customer list, pure and simple. My guess is that the offer on the table wasn't all that serious in the first place.
I think you're missing the point of FOSS. The whole point is to allow people to scratch their own itch. Naturally, that's going to take them in different directions. Naturally, that also means that UI designers are going to go down different roads. Maybe an analogy will help explain what I mean.
There's an old carpenter's saying that has been adopted by us geeks that you may have heard: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well, I don't want just a hammer. I want a full toolbox, the pegboard full of specialized tools behind the workbench, all the power tools in the cabinet to the left, and the floor full of standalone workstation tools (lathes, bandsaws, table saws, etc.) for when I want to do some really heavy work. I don't expect my woodworking tools to all look and act alike. Why should I expect my computer tools to do so when they do such different jobs?
I should probably note here that I seem to be a rarity in that I really don't like OS/X's UI. It is missing features that I regard as basic requirements after years of using Linux. While not exhaustive, my list of things that I think it's missing include true maximized windows, multiple workspaces, the ability to having more than one app displaying by default, etc. OS/X showcased 'features' that I REALLY hate are things like the single menu bar at the top of the screen instead of letting each app display its own menu as part of the window, that incredibly annoying app dock at the bottom, and the very thing that you like most about it; the lack of flexibility in UI.
That's not to say either of us is right or wrong about UI choices, btw. What works for you doesn't work for me and vice versa. It's just that in my view, OS/X's major fault is that it assumes that everyone wants to work the way that their UI designers have laid things out. It thinks all anyone wants is a hammer and not a full toolbox.
In actuality, the incredible flexibility of the FOSS development model and therefore Linux is a strength, not a weakness. It is why you see Linux used for everything from the smallest embedded device all the way up to the largest supercomputers and everything in between. No other OS out there combines that flexibility (the *BSDs can actually exceed it depending on how you measure) with its level of popularity. At this point in time, no other OS out there has the breadth and depth of available applications. Again, you can argue case by case that specific Linux apps or classes of apps don't measure up to counterparts available on other platforms. Taken as a whole, however, it's clear that no other OS can boast as broad a range of successful applications.
In sum, my contention is that the very thing that you decry, the broad range of UI tools and interfaces, is what will benefit Linux on the desktop the most. The truly successful UI stuff will continue gain popularity and see more widespread use as time goes by. The less successful ones will collect a smaller number of adherents. Some will only see use in niches. Others will simply fade away over time.
In all of this, who loses? Certainly not the developer community at large, although some number of them will inevitably see their personal favorites wither and die. The developer community will be much larger than it would be if you forced everyone to follow a single model. (assuming you could force a bunch of FOSS developers down a single path. Talk about herding cats!)
Contrary to what you seem to believe, I don't think the users will be negatively affected, either. We are by nature an extremely adaptable species. You may find this hard to believe, but people have been adapting to new UIs ever since Ogg first tied a rock to a stick that Mog had been using to hit Gog over the head. It probably took Mog at most two tries to figure out which end was the UI and which was the business end of his new club.:)
"While Linux likewise has the fanatical user base... they just have no way of monetizing it. Linux users like being locked into that platform, but not enough to actually pay for anything. They are happy to use hardware two generations out of date, happy with being completely locked into FOSS (since extremely few companies will write for Linux), etc, but not happy enough to actually spend any money supporting what they supposedly believe in. Look at Red Hat- they've been doing poorly for years now, and that's not going to change (although their dropping the failed "Linux on the Desktop" project will undoubtedly help them a great deal).
While Apple has been gaining market share (up to 4-5%)... Linux's has remained flat for the past ten years (always around 0.65%, even as the size of the market has virtually exploded). Meaning... every Apple sold is coming from Linux's share of the market (either actual or potential). Which is good, since Linux has no chance of succeeding in competition with Microsoft, while Apple can do quite well with a tiny market share."
Sigh. You're wrong on so many points that I don't know where to start. The Linux vendors in the server OS and application space have been making money hand over fist for that same ten years, you know.
We just needed to see the desktop environment catch up, that's all. We needed the OS itself to get responsive enough in the face of no vendor support (and sometimes downright hostile responses to queries about drivers), we needed the applications to get good enough, and we needed some market force to get people to look at Linux as a desktop appliance. That'll settle the lack of vendor support all by itself.
We've seen the OS get very responsive indeed, to the point that running some games under wine are actually faster than running them in Windows XP on the same hardware. Applications are out there to meet the basic needs of most consumers, while other options are becoming at least tolerable. Driver problems are largely resolved with only a few holdouts refusing to either release binary drivers (not ideal) or provide any help at all to the people writing FOSS drivers.
Finally, the fact is that your information about marketshare is a bit out of date. Every Website tracking company that publishes its global stats, from Hitslink to W3 Counter to Xiti to TheCounter, all show that Linux began increasing its market share a while back. Depending on how far back a given site lets you see, you can argue that it started in early 2006. Certainly, every tracking site that goes back to December 2006 shows that when Vista was released, Linux began growing. That's market force number one.
The second is the release of the eee. All of a sudden, the hardware vendors realized that they could make a pot full of money selling a device without having to include Microsoft Windows or OS/X and people would buy it. Not just buy it, stand in line all night to get one!
Micrsoft's response? A warmed over, extremely limited version of Windows XP Home with a drop dead date that's only 2 years out, and even then they want the hardware restricted. It has the hardware vendors so unimpressed that they seem to be flat out ignoring it.
Asus stated that they expected to sell 40% of their eee line as Linux. Asus has also decided to include a small Linux distribution in the BIOS of every motherboard that they manufacture.
MSI figures 50% of the Winds that they sell will be Linux. Acer has publicly stated that they're moving their entire laptop line over to Linux. Dell is still adding desktops and laptops to the pool of preinstalled Linux boxes (including the mini-Inspiron). HP is offering the Mini-Note with Linux side by side with the Vista versions.
2008/2009 is the start of Linux moving into the mainstream. It's going to be fun to see how far it gets!:)
Note that the subject of the OP was _offroading_, not commuting. In that instance in the upper Midwest, you want all the ground clearance you can get.:)
"Just look at all of the studies showing that SUV's have obscenely high center's of gravity. If you are ever offroading you never want a high center of gravity unless you have several roll bars installed."
I take it you live in mountain country where it never snows. Try living in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan's Upper Peninsula some time. Our biggest concerns are having enough clearance to deal with lots of fresh snow during the winter and potholes large enough to swallow Priuses during the summer.:)
Even after reading several responses, I still don't see how this technique is any different than what Google and others have done already. Many posters seem to be saying, "It's really different! (Except how it's exactly the same.)" Care to enlighten me?
Well, it depends. I would argue that it's still easier in many cases to include a new repository that happens to include the app that you want (thereby gaining all the upgrade management of the package manager) than it is to manually deal with the update cycles for most Windows apps.
Then you're doing something wrong. Installing and configuring a modern Linux distribution for standard desktop use is far easier than it is in Windows. Pop in a xbuntu LiveCD (or Mepis, Knoppix, or what have you), boot your PC, and accept the defaults. You really, Really, REALLY have to try hard to find modern hardware that isn't covered any longer.
That's not just me saying that, that is what I see over and over and over by every trade journalist whose boss has told them to check out "this Linux thing." Yeah, they bitch about apps not working the way that they want. OK, valid point. Different OS, different pool of apps. Some better, some worse. Mostly they just bitch about different until someone points out an easier way of doing things than what they found on their own.
And yeah, there are still problem areas when it comes to hardware support. But you know what? Those problem areas are shrinking by the week. Wireless? Used to be undoable 5 years ago except by gurus. Now? Ubuntu handles things flawlessly. Video cards? FAR better situation now than even a couple of years ago.
Tell you what: You want to check out Linux and are tired of not being able to do a simple install? Don't install. Buy yourself an Asus motherboard next time! (And that means, ladies and gentlemen, that we're back on topic! lol)
OK. However, if the subject is users, they generally will be looking to you to explain how to install something when they can't figure it out, right? So, once you know, spread the word. No big deal.:)
Look, we're not talking about the vast majority here, right? We're talking about that small handful of people who can be the bane of our existence or an incredible boon. All we need to do is steer them in the right direction. The rest of the staff will use whatever you put in front of them.
Besides, you continue to insist that this differentiation of package management methods and software is some sort of huge problem. Frankly, you don't know what you're talking about.
I've installed Red Hat, Mandrake, Mandriva, Suse, Gentoo, Debian, Knoppix, and Ubuntu over the past 15 years. Package management has steadily improved over that time to the point where I no longer worry about whether or not I'll find the package that I want in the "official" repository. If it's a popular package, it'll already have the appropriate.rpm,.deb, and.tar.gz downloads available. A little configuration work, and boom! Not only do I get a simple, easy to install package managed for me, I automatically get updates! Try THAT with most Windows apps!
Ummm, by doing the bare minimum of online research? Like, I don't know, Googling "Linux repository"? Maybe adding a distro name or two that he may have heard? Like say, Red Hat or Ubuntu?
Seriously, no geek can afford to become so specialized that he doesn't know how to find the answers to such basic questions. No geek can afford to become so complacent that he thinks his work world will never change. Any geek who's been in the workforce for more than 10 years should have been exposed to a very wide variety of stuff. Any geek with that much experience who only knows about one system is a geek destined to eventually be out of a job.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's far more likely that a news service sold the story to both trade rags. Happens all the time.
I am a PC gamer, too. I only keep a Windows partition around to play games. The kind of games that I like to play either rarely come out on consoles, or come out in forms that are crippled somehow. FPSes, for example, play far better with a keyboard and mouse than with any console controller combination that I've ever used. Another example are strategy games from indie publishers. I find that they are rarely developed for consoles.
The good news for me is that gaming on Linux keeps getting better. Support for games on wine continues to improve. The number of vendors who are adding Linux versions continues to grow as well (albeit very slowly).
Except he's a zoomie. The USAF tends to have much higher retention rates than the other branches of service so negative marks in a service jacket can cost you. I think that if he'd pulled this kind of thing in the USN (my own branch of service) he never would have made the jump from PO1 (Petty Officer First Class) to CPO (Chief Petty Officer). In the USAF? He may never get promoted again.
Where on earth did you get the impression that rendering dialect correctly had anything at all to do with skin color? Rendering dialect can be done to put someone down, it's true. However, writers with that kind of agenda typically don't have anything worthwhile to say anyhow.
The truth is that people living in all kinds of places at all economic levels of society develop their own dialect. For example, did you ever read Kipling's "Captains Courageous?" Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn?" Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones?" Read any of Falstaff's scenes from Shakespeare's plays? See any 'people of color' being put down in any of those examples?
To ignore dialect when writing or hide it is to ignore the rich and complex diversity that is the human race. It is to turn the orchestra of language into a single section of brass. It takes away the spice from written or spoken dialog. Don't hide from dialect, treat it as those great writers did. Celebrate it!
Sorry, I thought we were talking about meeting a user's requirements at the lowest possible price point. I simply responded to the requirements that you listed. Now, if you want to insist that only Microsoft can provide such a solution for a typical user, you've added a requirement.
If instead you had said that for someone on a Windows platform, this is a good deal, I think I still would have countered that I already get update notifications with Firefox, OpenOffice, and the OS itself. So again, what's the value proposition? Frankly, I just don't see it.
So with this one setup you can feasibly replace Office, Email, and security software with one $70 package. That's not a bad deal at all. There aren't many other programs that the typical user has, uses on a regular basis, and receive monthly or weekly updates.
Strange. I get all of that functionality and a lot more updated for free whenever I log in to my Kubuntu box. What's the value proposition again? Oh, yes. Vendor lock-in. Well, I know what that's worth to me! :)
rofl
I can tell you never had to support EDI or X.25. :)
My personal favorite type of moron is the idiot on a bicycle on a major feeder road. Moderate to heavy traffic. Speed limit 50 mph with traffic actually running at 55 to 60. Riding along on the shoulder and occasionally moving into traffic to avoid debris. Right next to a bike trail on the safe side of a guard rail that parallels the road!
:(
Mind you, I'm not talking about casual bikers or even commuters. I'm talking about the jokers who take biking so seriously that they wouldn't be caught dead in public in nothing less than the height of biking fashion; spandex pants, garishly decorated shirts, and aerodynamically designed styrofoam helmets with those little dental mirrors attached. Whatever happened to just strapping your right pant leg down so it didn't get caught in the chain? lol
Time and again I've been very tempted to stop and explain just how stupid they're being. I console myself with the knowledge that, like motorcyclists riding without helmets, they simply represent Darwinism in action. Too bad someone's insurance will have to go up to remove these defects from the gene pool.
Wait. You shared your /customer list/ with a competitor as part of due diligence? I've never heard of doing that. Due diligence requires that they look at your books in some detail, yes, but it doesn't mean that you have to show them everything.
Nope, Lattice was angling for your customer list, pure and simple. My guess is that the offer on the table wasn't all that serious in the first place.
Won't help without first taking out the lich that is their common boss that went along with such a nonsensical demand...
I think you're missing the point of FOSS. The whole point is to allow people to scratch their own itch. Naturally, that's going to take them in different directions. Naturally, that also means that UI designers are going to go down different roads. Maybe an analogy will help explain what I mean.
:)
There's an old carpenter's saying that has been adopted by us geeks that you may have heard: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well, I don't want just a hammer. I want a full toolbox, the pegboard full of specialized tools behind the workbench, all the power tools in the cabinet to the left, and the floor full of standalone workstation tools (lathes, bandsaws, table saws, etc.) for when I want to do some really heavy work. I don't expect my woodworking tools to all look and act alike. Why should I expect my computer tools to do so when they do such different jobs?
I should probably note here that I seem to be a rarity in that I really don't like OS/X's UI. It is missing features that I regard as basic requirements after years of using Linux. While not exhaustive, my list of things that I think it's missing include true maximized windows, multiple workspaces, the ability to having more than one app displaying by default, etc. OS/X showcased 'features' that I REALLY hate are things like the single menu bar at the top of the screen instead of letting each app display its own menu as part of the window, that incredibly annoying app dock at the bottom, and the very thing that you like most about it; the lack of flexibility in UI.
That's not to say either of us is right or wrong about UI choices, btw. What works for you doesn't work for me and vice versa. It's just that in my view, OS/X's major fault is that it assumes that everyone wants to work the way that their UI designers have laid things out. It thinks all anyone wants is a hammer and not a full toolbox.
In actuality, the incredible flexibility of the FOSS development model and therefore Linux is a strength, not a weakness. It is why you see Linux used for everything from the smallest embedded device all the way up to the largest supercomputers and everything in between. No other OS out there combines that flexibility (the *BSDs can actually exceed it depending on how you measure) with its level of popularity. At this point in time, no other OS out there has the breadth and depth of available applications. Again, you can argue case by case that specific Linux apps or classes of apps don't measure up to counterparts available on other platforms. Taken as a whole, however, it's clear that no other OS can boast as broad a range of successful applications.
In sum, my contention is that the very thing that you decry, the broad range of UI tools and interfaces, is what will benefit Linux on the desktop the most. The truly successful UI stuff will continue gain popularity and see more widespread use as time goes by. The less successful ones will collect a smaller number of adherents. Some will only see use in niches. Others will simply fade away over time.
In all of this, who loses? Certainly not the developer community at large, although some number of them will inevitably see their personal favorites wither and die. The developer community will be much larger than it would be if you forced everyone to follow a single model. (assuming you could force a bunch of FOSS developers down a single path. Talk about herding cats!)
Contrary to what you seem to believe, I don't think the users will be negatively affected, either. We are by nature an extremely adaptable species. You may find this hard to believe, but people have been adapting to new UIs ever since Ogg first tied a rock to a stick that Mog had been using to hit Gog over the head. It probably took Mog at most two tries to figure out which end was the UI and which was the business end of his new club.
"While Linux likewise has the fanatical user base... they just have no way of monetizing it. Linux users like being locked into that platform, but not enough to actually pay for anything. They are happy to use hardware two generations out of date, happy with being completely locked into FOSS (since extremely few companies will write for Linux), etc, but not happy enough to actually spend any money supporting what they supposedly believe in. Look at Red Hat- they've been doing poorly for years now, and that's not going to change (although their dropping the failed "Linux on the Desktop" project will undoubtedly help them a great deal).
:)
While Apple has been gaining market share (up to 4-5%)... Linux's has remained flat for the past ten years (always around 0.65%, even as the size of the market has virtually exploded). Meaning... every Apple sold is coming from Linux's share of the market (either actual or potential). Which is good, since Linux has no chance of succeeding in competition with Microsoft, while Apple can do quite well with a tiny market share."
Sigh. You're wrong on so many points that I don't know where to start. The Linux vendors in the server OS and application space have been making money hand over fist for that same ten years, you know.
We just needed to see the desktop environment catch up, that's all. We needed the OS itself to get responsive enough in the face of no vendor support (and sometimes downright hostile responses to queries about drivers), we needed the applications to get good enough, and we needed some market force to get people to look at Linux as a desktop appliance. That'll settle the lack of vendor support all by itself.
We've seen the OS get very responsive indeed, to the point that running some games under wine are actually faster than running them in Windows XP on the same hardware. Applications are out there to meet the basic needs of most consumers, while other options are becoming at least tolerable. Driver problems are largely resolved with only a few holdouts refusing to either release binary drivers (not ideal) or provide any help at all to the people writing FOSS drivers.
Finally, the fact is that your information about marketshare is a bit out of date. Every Website tracking company that publishes its global stats, from Hitslink to W3 Counter to Xiti to TheCounter, all show that Linux began increasing its market share a while back. Depending on how far back a given site lets you see, you can argue that it started in early 2006. Certainly, every tracking site that goes back to December 2006 shows that when Vista was released, Linux began growing. That's market force number one.
The second is the release of the eee. All of a sudden, the hardware vendors realized that they could make a pot full of money selling a device without having to include Microsoft Windows or OS/X and people would buy it. Not just buy it, stand in line all night to get one!
Micrsoft's response? A warmed over, extremely limited version of Windows XP Home with a drop dead date that's only 2 years out, and even then they want the hardware restricted. It has the hardware vendors so unimpressed that they seem to be flat out ignoring it.
Asus stated that they expected to sell 40% of their eee line as Linux. Asus has also decided to include a small Linux distribution in the BIOS of every motherboard that they manufacture.
MSI figures 50% of the Winds that they sell will be Linux. Acer has publicly stated that they're moving their entire laptop line over to Linux. Dell is still adding desktops and laptops to the pool of preinstalled Linux boxes (including the mini-Inspiron). HP is offering the Mini-Note with Linux side by side with the Vista versions.
2008/2009 is the start of Linux moving into the mainstream. It's going to be fun to see how far it gets!
Or Hitler. Timur the Lame. Pol Pot. Ghengiz Khan. and on and on and on and on and on and on... Bush is a wannabe.
Note that the subject of the OP was _offroading_, not commuting. In that instance in the upper Midwest, you want all the ground clearance you can get. :)
"Just look at all of the studies showing that SUV's have obscenely high center's of gravity. If you are ever offroading you never want a high center of gravity unless you have several roll bars installed."
:)
I take it you live in mountain country where it never snows. Try living in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan's Upper Peninsula some time. Our biggest concerns are having enough clearance to deal with lots of fresh snow during the winter and potholes large enough to swallow Priuses during the summer.
Even after reading several responses, I still don't see how this technique is any different than what Google and others have done already. Many posters seem to be saying, "It's really different! (Except how it's exactly the same.)" Care to enlighten me?
Well, it depends. I would argue that it's still easier in many cases to include a new repository that happens to include the app that you want (thereby gaining all the upgrade management of the package manager) than it is to manually deal with the update cycles for most Windows apps.
You did NOT deserve the Troll flag for simply pointing out the truth.
Then you're doing something wrong. Installing and configuring a modern Linux distribution for standard desktop use is far easier than it is in Windows. Pop in a xbuntu LiveCD (or Mepis, Knoppix, or what have you), boot your PC, and accept the defaults. You really, Really, REALLY have to try hard to find modern hardware that isn't covered any longer.
That's not just me saying that, that is what I see over and over and over by every trade journalist whose boss has told them to check out "this Linux thing." Yeah, they bitch about apps not working the way that they want. OK, valid point. Different OS, different pool of apps. Some better, some worse. Mostly they just bitch about different until someone points out an easier way of doing things than what they found on their own.
And yeah, there are still problem areas when it comes to hardware support. But you know what? Those problem areas are shrinking by the week. Wireless? Used to be undoable 5 years ago except by gurus. Now? Ubuntu handles things flawlessly. Video cards? FAR better situation now than even a couple of years ago.
Tell you what: You want to check out Linux and are tired of not being able to do a simple install? Don't install. Buy yourself an Asus motherboard next time! (And that means, ladies and gentlemen, that we're back on topic! lol)
OK. However, if the subject is users, they generally will be looking to you to explain how to install something when they can't figure it out, right? So, once you know, spread the word. No big deal. :)
Look, we're not talking about the vast majority here, right? We're talking about that small handful of people who can be the bane of our existence or an incredible boon. All we need to do is steer them in the right direction. The rest of the staff will use whatever you put in front of them.
Because it's a _useful_ generalization.
.rpm, .deb, and .tar.gz downloads available. A little configuration work, and boom! Not only do I get a simple, easy to install package managed for me, I automatically get updates! Try THAT with most Windows apps!
Besides, you continue to insist that this differentiation of package management methods and software is some sort of huge problem. Frankly, you don't know what you're talking about.
I've installed Red Hat, Mandrake, Mandriva, Suse, Gentoo, Debian, Knoppix, and Ubuntu over the past 15 years. Package management has steadily improved over that time to the point where I no longer worry about whether or not I'll find the package that I want in the "official" repository. If it's a popular package, it'll already have the appropriate
It's. Just. Not. A. Problem.
Ummm, by doing the bare minimum of online research? Like, I don't know, Googling "Linux repository"? Maybe adding a distro name or two that he may have heard? Like say, Red Hat or Ubuntu?
Seriously, no geek can afford to become so specialized that he doesn't know how to find the answers to such basic questions. No geek can afford to become so complacent that he thinks his work world will never change. Any geek who's been in the workforce for more than 10 years should have been exposed to a very wide variety of stuff. Any geek with that much experience who only knows about one system is a geek destined to eventually be out of a job.
The man do have a clue! :)
Isn't that what the Compaq execs did to HP? :)