If it had a 17" display (QHD at minimum, 4K preferable), user-swappable drives and RAM, and a decent GPU, and it would be infinitely superior to everything else on the market.
Keep in mind that Chromebooks are basically regular laptops, $100 cheaper because of the lack of Microsoft tax. Google could break even on the 5% using Crouton and profit off of the 95% that would use ChromeOS.
Let's just briefly review why BBRY's stock is at 6.75 a share and plummeting.
1. Lost sight of their market. Very similar to Microsoft in this regard, although lacking the nigh-trillion dollars of off-shore reserves to recover from dumb mistakes. Both companies make all their profit from enterprises, which are usually run by older folks more comfortable with the tried and true rather than the hot new fashions. But both BlackBerry and Microsoft wanted the juicy cut of Apple's revenues that come from teenagers and young adults using sexy devices. Unfortunately they both failed to create anything sexy, so their advertisements featuring people in fedoras and summer dresses dancing to pop music on a table in joy when a new MSFT/BBRY product comes out missed the mark quite a bit, failing to bring in new audiences and alienating their current customers.
2. Compromised security. They might have won a few government contracts by bragging about backdooring their devices in order to assist law enforcement, but they lost just about everybody else interested in security and privacy (for business or state reasons).
3. The Priv. My gosh, what a shitty device the Priv is. More expensive than the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6s on release, but with a cheap plastic slide-out keyboard that makes an uncomfortable grinding sound and abysmal camera. Pass.
4. Slow transition to Android. Developers want to push their stuff onto the Apple Store and Google Play Store because that's where the money is; BB10 is an afterthought *at best*. BlackBerry was really, really late to the party on this one; they got Android apps in 2014, but through a compatibility layer through the Amazon Appstore, so with a shitty selection and axed performance. And their first Android device was shite (see #3).
5. Internet shills. Nothing wrecks your credibility faster than paying people to astroturf for you.
It's a shame because BlackBerry had a lot of good things going for them. The physical keyboard and social communications hub are still unmatched. It's unfortunate that they had such crummy executive management.
Your conspiracy theory is false. But just to clarify, I don't defend systemd, I'm neutral about it. I'm defending FOSS against the insane trolling of people like you that say that systemd invaded your house and force-installed on your computers and there's no running away from it.
Darwin is the open source OS that is the Unix core of macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. So that is to say, when you say "iOS", you're talking about some closed source additions to Darwin which is particular to iPhones and iPads.
I suspect that it's the same AC every single time because of the posting style (paragraph break every two sentences, constant use of the plural first-person nouns, the exact same arguments repeated over and over again), but I'm not 100% sure.
I tinkered with Linux a bit back in the late 90's and haven't used it since. I remember often fighting with installations but I was always able to conquer them eventually. I've used Windows ever since though, just because I'm lazy.
When Microsoft decided to make the upkeep of my Windows 7 installs a pain I decided to look into Linux again. I thought that SURELY it was polished as a marble by this point. I've had much more difficulty this time than I did the LAST time that I took an interest. I just assumed that I had become dumber in my old age. But I see so many people like you citing the exact problems that I'm having and then blaming them on systemd that it makes me wonder if I came back just in time to see Linux broken by bad decision making?:|
If you'd enlighten me as to the exact error you're having, I can try to help. But in literally every installation I've done or assisted with, it's as easy as "Burn Linux ISO to USB drive, reboot, change boot order to USB drive #1," and then everything thereafter can be done with hitting enter repeatedly. This has been true both before and after systemd was adopted.
Having just purchased a Dell laptop with Linux already installed, I can tell you you're wrong. It took me all of 20 seconds.
Products->Laptops->For Work
Select Linux for your OS
Done
You knew exactly where to go, so that doesn't count. Put yourself in the shoes of a regular pleb just searching for a nice laptop to edit some office docs and light web browsing. They're not going to hunt for "Operating System" and specifically choose "FreeDOS and Linux" (yes, that's exactly what it says on Dell's website). If you just go to "Products -> Laptops -> For Work", the page displays almost entirely Windows laptops, with Chromebooks at the very bottom.
.... Then there are all of the people who are angry but don't express it online. I bet a lot of them just say "fuck it" to Linux. They just use FreeBSD, or OS X, or even Windows without saying a thing. This is probably why Linux's share of the desktop market is at most 2%, and that's being generous....
I don't deny that some people give up because they are angry about X, Y, or Z. But I think, pure and simple, the reason Linux's desktop share is so low is that nearly every computer you buy comes with either Windows or Mac OS pre-installed, and people simply aren't going to change the operating system (and in most cases wouldn't quite know how to do that either).
HP and Dell both offer no-OS options, HP offers preinstalled Ubuntu LTS on their machines, both options are at a discount to Windows installations. I haven't looked at other vendors lately.
Do me a favor. Go to Dell's and HP's websites and find me those laptops without Windows pre-installed within 2 minutes. No search engines allowed, you have to start at their home page and click to get there.
Unless you have their websites memorized, it'll probably take you a little longer than 2 minutes. Which goes to show that Linux desktops are really a "behind the counter" product of PC vendors, for the most part. They get no exposure because the vendors fear the wrath of Microsoft, despite being vastly better products.
How exactly does one infest a pool where anybody in the world is free to take the parts they want and leave the rest, like a bazaar? Again, if you don't like GNOME or systemd or Pulse Audio or Fedora, don't use them.
Because we don't have the time and inclination to create our own Linux distros. If we have to do that, we might as well just use FreeBSD, Windows, macOS or some other non-Linux OS that doesn't waste our time. The whole point of using a Linux distro is to save us time and save us effort.
We used to be able to switch distros to get a different environment, but those days are long gone now that the major distros all include systemd, and many force GNOME 3 by default, too. Debian and Fedora, which once gave very different experiences, have converged. The other major distros have followed them.
Having to remove systemd, GNOME 3 and other crapware that comes bundled with Linux distros is just as annoying as having to remove crapware that comes bundled with Windows. Having to install replacements for all of this software is even more of a hassle.
We surely aren't going to waste our time with some no-name obscure distro like Devuan, or even oddball distros like Slackware and Gentoo. We don't want to use a Linux distro that may not be around next month, and we don't want to use a Linux distro that's remained in the 1990s, and we don't want to use a Linux distro that requires us to wait hours or days for it to compile software.
Linux used to offer us a lot of benefits. Now it's nothing but a hassle.
So let me get this straight. Maintaining a distro to serve your niche preferences is too much work for you, but you have all the hours in the world to make anonymous shit posts within minutes every time a Linux-related article is posted on Slashdot?
Redhat is crapping in the open source pool, and the sewage has spread
How exactly does one infest a pool where anybody in the world is free to take the parts they want and leave the rest, like a bazaar? Again, if you don't like GNOME or systemd or Pulse Audio or Fedora, don't use them.
Somebody mod this guy up, he's right. Its the main reason why I switched away from the RH ecosystem. And before anybody tries to throw the "hipster" slur, I'm probably old enough to be your Dad. I've been at this for awhile, and there are good reasons to think the more traditional UNIX way was better.
That's great! If you're comfortable with the way you're accustomed to doing things, I have nothing against you. I'm just trying to figure out why so many people shit on the hard work done by FOSS developers, who spend time and money to give stuff to the world entirely for free (as in beer AND speech) and don't force you in any way to use it. I don't like GNOME Shell, but I don't anonymous shit-post every article about Linux. I just don't use it, and I don't suffer from apoplectic fits knowing that some peoples' opinions differ from mine.
I would've been very, very happy if my Debian system had gotten to a login prompt, never mind a non-rescue shell, after a system update installed systemd! But it wouldn't even get that far.
If you're running a bleeding-edge distro where the init system will change during a regular system update, you should expect things to break. Do you also seethe with rage when you install an alpha-release kernel and it doesn't boot?
We're moving on. We see that the Linux we once knew and loved is long dead. We're moving to FreeBSD. We're moving to OS X. Some of us are even moving back to Windows! Linux is a lost cause to us, and an inferior product.
That's nice. Just please stop infesting every article with your nonsensical commentary, thanks.
I'm not sure why you Anonymous Cowards think you're inciting any change when your troll of every single Linux-related news story has been exactly the same for the past five years, but I'll bite again.
Fedora has nothing to do with GNOME, systemd, or PulseAudio. Firstly, Fedora is developed by the Fedora Project. Secondly, GNOME is developed by the GNOME Foundation. Thirdly, systemd and PulseAudio are developed mostly by employees of Red Hat, but lots of others contribute to them, and they are distributed by freedesktop.org. You can say "oh well they're all funded by Red Hat so they're all really from the same source," but that's dubious logic. You could say the Linux kernel is Red Hat's project by the same logic.
If you hate GNOME Shell, use a different DE. I also hate it and I don't use it. If you hate PulseAudio, uninstall it and use something else to your like. If you don't like systemd, many distros still maintain SysVinit-core, or you could use Slackware or Devuan or Gentoo or CRUX because they don't ship systemd as the default init system.
Again and again you Anonymous Cowards proclaim a great upheaval over the above issues, but in real life, this doesn't seem to be the case; the user base, developer base, support base, and most clearly of all the *financials* of all the major Linux companies that ship distros with GNOME and PulseAudio and systemd (Canonical, SUSE, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle) are all doing just great.
Then there are all of the people who are angry but don't express it online. I bet a lot of them just say "fuck it" to Linux. They just use FreeBSD, or OS X, or even Windows without saying a thing. This is probably why Linux's share of the desktop market is at most 2%, and that's being generous.
The Linux desktop market share is higher than it was before systemd and GNOME 3 were widely adopted.
I'm sure this comment will sound monstrously dated before the end of the decade, but in my opinion 4G LTE is fast enough. I'd rather have better network coverage (I'd be truly festive for my cellular data to not cut out when I'm on the subway) and larger/cheaper data caps than better speed.
I'm not exactly sure how you can specifically protect against a backdoor besides auditing the code, but in regards to Stingray detection, I believe that's still in the research stage.
I was curious what OS it runs. TOP500 says "Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5". Googling "Sunway" is just giving me some Malaysian resort town, and "RaiseOS" yields nothing at all. Does anyone know anything about this OS? Is it Linux?
Slashdot Mirror
Nexus phones get 2+ years of monthly security updates, with zero bloatware.
Chromebooks are just laptops without the Microsoft tax. Booting Linux via Crouton is trivial.
If it had a 17" display (QHD at minimum, 4K preferable), user-swappable drives and RAM, and a decent GPU, and it would be infinitely superior to everything else on the market.
Keep in mind that Chromebooks are basically regular laptops, $100 cheaper because of the lack of Microsoft tax. Google could break even on the 5% using Crouton and profit off of the 95% that would use ChromeOS.
Let's just briefly review why BBRY's stock is at 6.75 a share and plummeting.
1. Lost sight of their market. Very similar to Microsoft in this regard, although lacking the nigh-trillion dollars of off-shore reserves to recover from dumb mistakes. Both companies make all their profit from enterprises, which are usually run by older folks more comfortable with the tried and true rather than the hot new fashions. But both BlackBerry and Microsoft wanted the juicy cut of Apple's revenues that come from teenagers and young adults using sexy devices. Unfortunately they both failed to create anything sexy, so their advertisements featuring people in fedoras and summer dresses dancing to pop music on a table in joy when a new MSFT/BBRY product comes out missed the mark quite a bit, failing to bring in new audiences and alienating their current customers.
2. Compromised security. They might have won a few government contracts by bragging about backdooring their devices in order to assist law enforcement, but they lost just about everybody else interested in security and privacy (for business or state reasons).
3. The Priv. My gosh, what a shitty device the Priv is. More expensive than the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6s on release, but with a cheap plastic slide-out keyboard that makes an uncomfortable grinding sound and abysmal camera. Pass.
4. Slow transition to Android. Developers want to push their stuff onto the Apple Store and Google Play Store because that's where the money is; BB10 is an afterthought *at best*. BlackBerry was really, really late to the party on this one; they got Android apps in 2014, but through a compatibility layer through the Amazon Appstore, so with a shitty selection and axed performance. And their first Android device was shite (see #3).
5. Internet shills. Nothing wrecks your credibility faster than paying people to astroturf for you.
It's a shame because BlackBerry had a lot of good things going for them. The physical keyboard and social communications hub are still unmatched. It's unfortunate that they had such crummy executive management.
Your conspiracy theory is false. But just to clarify, I don't defend systemd, I'm neutral about it. I'm defending FOSS against the insane trolling of people like you that say that systemd invaded your house and force-installed on your computers and there's no running away from it.
Why don't you read TFA and see why people are mad at Sony?
The kernel is XNU which is open source: http://opensource.apple.com/so...
Darwin is the open source OS that is the Unix core of macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. So that is to say, when you say "iOS", you're talking about some closed source additions to Darwin which is particular to iPhones and iPads.
iOS shipped unencrypted by default until v.8. The source code is freely available to view online: http://opensource.apple.com/so...
I suspect that it's the same AC every single time because of the posting style (paragraph break every two sentences, constant use of the plural first-person nouns, the exact same arguments repeated over and over again), but I'm not 100% sure.
I tinkered with Linux a bit back in the late 90's and haven't used it since. I remember often fighting with installations but I was always able to conquer them eventually. I've used Windows ever since though, just because I'm lazy.
When Microsoft decided to make the upkeep of my Windows 7 installs a pain I decided to look into Linux again. I thought that SURELY it was polished as a marble by this point. I've had much more difficulty this time than I did the LAST time that I took an interest. I just assumed that I had become dumber in my old age. But I see so many people like you citing the exact problems that I'm having and then blaming them on systemd that it makes me wonder if I came back just in time to see Linux broken by bad decision making? :|
If you'd enlighten me as to the exact error you're having, I can try to help. But in literally every installation I've done or assisted with, it's as easy as "Burn Linux ISO to USB drive, reboot, change boot order to USB drive #1," and then everything thereafter can be done with hitting enter repeatedly. This has been true both before and after systemd was adopted.
Having just purchased a Dell laptop with Linux already installed, I can tell you you're wrong. It took me all of 20 seconds.
Products->Laptops->For Work Select Linux for your OS Done
You knew exactly where to go, so that doesn't count. Put yourself in the shoes of a regular pleb just searching for a nice laptop to edit some office docs and light web browsing. They're not going to hunt for "Operating System" and specifically choose "FreeDOS and Linux" (yes, that's exactly what it says on Dell's website). If you just go to "Products -> Laptops -> For Work", the page displays almost entirely Windows laptops, with Chromebooks at the very bottom.
I don't deny that some people give up because they are angry about X, Y, or Z. But I think, pure and simple, the reason Linux's desktop share is so low is that nearly every computer you buy comes with either Windows or Mac OS pre-installed, and people simply aren't going to change the operating system (and in most cases wouldn't quite know how to do that either).
HP and Dell both offer no-OS options, HP offers preinstalled Ubuntu LTS on their machines, both options are at a discount to Windows installations. I haven't looked at other vendors lately.
Do me a favor. Go to Dell's and HP's websites and find me those laptops without Windows pre-installed within 2 minutes. No search engines allowed, you have to start at their home page and click to get there.
Unless you have their websites memorized, it'll probably take you a little longer than 2 minutes. Which goes to show that Linux desktops are really a "behind the counter" product of PC vendors, for the most part. They get no exposure because the vendors fear the wrath of Microsoft, despite being vastly better products.
If only Dr. Freud were alive today to study this specimen. He would shit his pants.
Because we don't have the time and inclination to create our own Linux distros. If we have to do that, we might as well just use FreeBSD, Windows, macOS or some other non-Linux OS that doesn't waste our time. The whole point of using a Linux distro is to save us time and save us effort.
We used to be able to switch distros to get a different environment, but those days are long gone now that the major distros all include systemd, and many force GNOME 3 by default, too. Debian and Fedora, which once gave very different experiences, have converged. The other major distros have followed them.
Having to remove systemd, GNOME 3 and other crapware that comes bundled with Linux distros is just as annoying as having to remove crapware that comes bundled with Windows. Having to install replacements for all of this software is even more of a hassle.
We surely aren't going to waste our time with some no-name obscure distro like Devuan, or even oddball distros like Slackware and Gentoo. We don't want to use a Linux distro that may not be around next month, and we don't want to use a Linux distro that's remained in the 1990s, and we don't want to use a Linux distro that requires us to wait hours or days for it to compile software.
Linux used to offer us a lot of benefits. Now it's nothing but a hassle.
So let me get this straight. Maintaining a distro to serve your niche preferences is too much work for you, but you have all the hours in the world to make anonymous shit posts within minutes every time a Linux-related article is posted on Slashdot?
Cry me a river.
Redhat is crapping in the open source pool, and the sewage has spread
How exactly does one infest a pool where anybody in the world is free to take the parts they want and leave the rest, like a bazaar? Again, if you don't like GNOME or systemd or Pulse Audio or Fedora, don't use them.
Somebody mod this guy up, he's right. Its the main reason why I switched away from the RH ecosystem. And before anybody tries to throw the "hipster" slur, I'm probably old enough to be your Dad. I've been at this for awhile, and there are good reasons to think the more traditional UNIX way was better.
That's great! If you're comfortable with the way you're accustomed to doing things, I have nothing against you. I'm just trying to figure out why so many people shit on the hard work done by FOSS developers, who spend time and money to give stuff to the world entirely for free (as in beer AND speech) and don't force you in any way to use it. I don't like GNOME Shell, but I don't anonymous shit-post every article about Linux. I just don't use it, and I don't suffer from apoplectic fits knowing that some peoples' opinions differ from mine.
I would've been very, very happy if my Debian system had gotten to a login prompt, never mind a non-rescue shell, after a system update installed systemd! But it wouldn't even get that far.
If you're running a bleeding-edge distro where the init system will change during a regular system update, you should expect things to break. Do you also seethe with rage when you install an alpha-release kernel and it doesn't boot?
We're moving on. We see that the Linux we once knew and loved is long dead. We're moving to FreeBSD. We're moving to OS X. Some of us are even moving back to Windows! Linux is a lost cause to us, and an inferior product.
That's nice. Just please stop infesting every article with your nonsensical commentary, thanks.
Gnome blows. Have they replaced systemd yet? No? I'm sticking with FreeBSD.
You must be fun at parties. "What? Salt & vinegar chips??? Fuck that, I only eat sour cream & onion! I'm sticking with that, thanks."
cut the bullshit.
Redhat sponsors Fedora.
Redhat pushes badly engineered garage like systemd and GNOME, including in Fedora.
Fedora is where RedHat tries its random brain farts out on the redhat guinea pigs, aka Fedora users.
Okay? And what's your point?
You're aware that Fedora officially supports other DEs, right? : https://spins.fedoraproject.or...
Fedora has nothing to do with GNOME, systemd, or PulseAudio. Firstly, Fedora is developed by the Fedora Project. Secondly, GNOME is developed by the GNOME Foundation. Thirdly, systemd and PulseAudio are developed mostly by employees of Red Hat, but lots of others contribute to them, and they are distributed by freedesktop.org. You can say "oh well they're all funded by Red Hat so they're all really from the same source," but that's dubious logic. You could say the Linux kernel is Red Hat's project by the same logic.
If you hate GNOME Shell, use a different DE. I also hate it and I don't use it. If you hate PulseAudio, uninstall it and use something else to your like. If you don't like systemd, many distros still maintain SysVinit-core, or you could use Slackware or Devuan or Gentoo or CRUX because they don't ship systemd as the default init system.
Again and again you Anonymous Cowards proclaim a great upheaval over the above issues, but in real life, this doesn't seem to be the case; the user base, developer base, support base, and most clearly of all the *financials* of all the major Linux companies that ship distros with GNOME and PulseAudio and systemd (Canonical, SUSE, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle) are all doing just great.
Then there are all of the people who are angry but don't express it online. I bet a lot of them just say "fuck it" to Linux. They just use FreeBSD, or OS X, or even Windows without saying a thing. This is probably why Linux's share of the desktop market is at most 2%, and that's being generous.
The Linux desktop market share is higher than it was before systemd and GNOME 3 were widely adopted.
I'm sure this comment will sound monstrously dated before the end of the decade, but in my opinion 4G LTE is fast enough. I'd rather have better network coverage (I'd be truly festive for my cellular data to not cut out when I'm on the subway) and larger/cheaper data caps than better speed.
I'm not exactly sure how you can specifically protect against a backdoor besides auditing the code, but in regards to Stingray detection, I believe that's still in the research stage.
I was curious what OS it runs. TOP500 says "Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5". Googling "Sunway" is just giving me some Malaysian resort town, and "RaiseOS" yields nothing at all. Does anyone know anything about this OS? Is it Linux?
a machine that can play Crysis on medium settings. The world waited with abated breath.