DLL hell is pretty much a thing of the past. Given a random piece of software that's not part of a normal Linux distro, and a random piece of Windows software, I know which of the two is going to be far easier to install. I haven't had an install fail on a Windows system in damn near a decade, but have given up one more than one Linux app install due to strange make errors or weird configuration scripts. Package managers have helped with this immensely, and there are few Linux programs that aren't part of the Ubunto/debian repos, but it's still far from perfect.
(Of course, MacOS has both platforms beat. Dragging and dropping apps into the 'Applications' folder -- and dragging them to the trash to uninstall -- is much easier.)
Because some people don't want to deal with the hassle of configuring Wine, perhaps? I know I'd much rather have a 'download and play' option that simply works, rather than spend all day modifying config files and crossing my fingers (which I guess is kind of a game in itself).
The comments in this story (not yours so much, but many of the others) confirm the reason why very few commercial companies support Linux - no matter what they do, it isn't enough for the community.
This console definitely isn't meant to be a replacement for one of the 'major' consoles, but would serve as a good way to fire up a casual game on a large screen for a few minutes (especially if the device is low-power and is always on like a Roku). Sure, I could do this in front of my computer, but sometimes I just like sitting in a comfy chair in front of my much larger TV screen.
Also, I'm not sure that the device would be limited to *only* $1/$2 games. As long as the game offers some sort of free mode (extended demo, microtransactions, etc.) then it will fit in with the development model just fine. A bigger problem will be lack of storage, but some sort of external storage option (like a MicroSD card slot) would help with that.
Just because people can make crap doesn't mean that everyone needs to be forced to see it.
In order to filter out the shitty apps, they're going to need some kind of 'Editor's Choice' game channel, and the 'Everything' game channel. That way, the good stuff is what the average player sees when they turn the console on, but everything else is available without much additional effort. Adding a way for users to vote apps into the main channel would make sure a wide variety of higher quality games make it to the larger audience.
Having used a number of AMD/ATI and Nvidia cards on Windows, Nvidia wins hands down. I've never had a good experience with AMD devices -- more than half the games I own required me to disable the second card of a Crossfire setup (dual 6870s) because AMD had never released a proper compatibility profile. This includes games like Skyrim! There's no excuse for poor Crossfire support in big name, AAA titles, especially when your competitor consistently manages to get it right.
I've been burned by shitty AMD drivers more than once in the past. Never again.
Why would I want to dual boot to play games when I can stay in one OS (Windows) that does all the useful stuff that Linux can do *and* do things that Linux can't? I'm long past the point where I want to tinker with an OS just for geek cred. I want my computer to work and to do everything I want it to do without having to waste time rebooting between two operating systems.
It's not always as easy as 'release the specs'. Many devices have licensed code and components, and IP agreements prevent information about such code from being released. A good example of this is hardware support for video codec acceleration. Good luck getting Nvidia or AMD to break their contracts just to meet the needs of a small niche of computer users.
Windows and MacOS are defunct and living in niches? The amount of delusion here is stunning. Linux is the niche OS, and it's ideological stands like this that are directly to blame.
Bitch all you want about how proprietary vendors aren't being fair, but understand that the Open Source community has taken a stance, and that stance is largely incompatible with the stance of every major hardware developer in the market. It's not their job to cater to the 2 or 3 percent of PC users that have chosen to use Linux for one reason for another.
Because every other OS vendor does it. Maybe you like broken, half-baked operating systems, but some of us like to get real work done, not tinker with drivers and be forced to use outdated hardware.
No, he need not cripple himself and developers, but he shouldn't expect vendors to support him, either.
It's shit like this that guarantees that Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS. All of you get too hung up on ideology and purity of beliefs, and then wonder why nobody wants to support you.
You might as well start your relatives on Arch, or with an assembler and instructions to write all their own code.
There's a reason that Linux hasn't taken hold on the desktop, and it's because the developers and users are all out of touch with the needs of the average end user. Your relatives want something easy to use, not some purist's idea of the 'Perfect Linux'.
I use Gimp and I'm a fan, but to claim that even version 2.8 is in the same league as Photoshop is willful ignorance.
Plus, they need to come up with a better name. Few people I know want to use software called Gimp, and rightly so. It's a retarded name (literally and figuratively).
But are we really? As the minority position, that implies that we're the insane ones. Of course, I'd rather be insane than hopelessly delusional and willfully ignorant.
If the government wanted to take the rest of your rights away, there's nothing you could do to stop it. You're massively outarmed, and you're nuts for thinking otherwise.
BUT... BUT... 0BUMMER's COMING TO TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY! THEN HE'S GONNA PUT US IN MUSLIM FEMA DEATH CAMPS!
Seriously, nobody is going to come and take the Second Amendment (or your precious guns) away, and it's not because gun nuts like you are going to fend off the armies that would be tasked with taking your guns and ammo. Comments like that of the GP just reinforce the fact that too many gun owners have too much faith in their guns and too little faith in the Constitution and rule of law.
Sorry, your pistols and rifles are no match for the government's tanks, missiles, nukes, and whatever the fuck else they have and want to use on you. You'd fire off a piddling shot or two, then be turned into a pile of liquidy, bloody, gut-filled mush.
But whatever helps you sleep at night...
DISCLAIMER: I generally support the Second Amendment. However, all the gun nuts going around and sucking the barrels of their guns like giant metal cocks hurts the movement as a whole.
Now if AMD could just get their processors to be competitive with Intel at normal speeds. By the time AMD gets to Ivy Bridge level performance, Intel will be 2 or 3 generations further ahead.
Correct. I work for a company with tens of thousands of employees, and software license 'compliance' takes the (almost) full time resources of exactly one person. Between centrally administered systems and locked down PCs (when necessary), staying compliant is really simple.
They'd have to improve compatibility with Office file formats too (especially Excel, and any of the XML-based.{foo}x formats), but other than that, I'd agree.
LibreOffice works for a lot of things, but it's the things that it *doesn't* work for that keeps it from being a viable choice for corporate desktops.
It doesn't matter whether the product is a 'necessity of life'. If they're using bundling or similar behavior to gain a market advantage, then their activity is illegal. Sure, we're not going to drop dead as a result of Comcast's behavior, but 'consumer activism' as a solution isn't enough. We need regulation with actual teeth, and (IMHO) a corporate death penalty that will actually force companies to do the right thing. They've proven time and time again that they sure as hell won't do it themselves.
And I heard she pals around with GEORGE SOROS and SAUL ALINSKY too! And she even heard somebody mention JEREMIAH WRIGHT one time! Oh, Lord! She's gonna take your guns and religion, and help Obama turn our country into a Muslim theocracy!
Note to Republicans and Rushbots: slut-shaming women for exercising their right to weigh in on issues that directly affect them is *not* a winning election strategy.
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DLL hell is pretty much a thing of the past. Given a random piece of software that's not part of a normal Linux distro, and a random piece of Windows software, I know which of the two is going to be far easier to install. I haven't had an install fail on a Windows system in damn near a decade, but have given up one more than one Linux app install due to strange make errors or weird configuration scripts. Package managers have helped with this immensely, and there are few Linux programs that aren't part of the Ubunto/debian repos, but it's still far from perfect.
(Of course, MacOS has both platforms beat. Dragging and dropping apps into the 'Applications' folder -- and dragging them to the trash to uninstall -- is much easier.)
And obviously most of those few million have overinflated egos and no humility whatsoever ('generally above average intelligence'? Please...)
Because some people don't want to deal with the hassle of configuring Wine, perhaps? I know I'd much rather have a 'download and play' option that simply works, rather than spend all day modifying config files and crossing my fingers (which I guess is kind of a game in itself).
The comments in this story (not yours so much, but many of the others) confirm the reason why very few commercial companies support Linux - no matter what they do, it isn't enough for the community.
This console definitely isn't meant to be a replacement for one of the 'major' consoles, but would serve as a good way to fire up a casual game on a large screen for a few minutes (especially if the device is low-power and is always on like a Roku). Sure, I could do this in front of my computer, but sometimes I just like sitting in a comfy chair in front of my much larger TV screen.
Also, I'm not sure that the device would be limited to *only* $1/$2 games. As long as the game offers some sort of free mode (extended demo, microtransactions, etc.) then it will fit in with the development model just fine. A bigger problem will be lack of storage, but some sort of external storage option (like a MicroSD card slot) would help with that.
Just because people can make crap doesn't mean that everyone needs to be forced to see it.
In order to filter out the shitty apps, they're going to need some kind of 'Editor's Choice' game channel, and the 'Everything' game channel. That way, the good stuff is what the average player sees when they turn the console on, but everything else is available without much additional effort. Adding a way for users to vote apps into the main channel would make sure a wide variety of higher quality games make it to the larger audience.
And when you realize just how shitty these cheap-ass Chinese media player boxes are, you'll end up regretting your purchase.
If it comes from DealExtreme, it's not even worth the pittance they're asking.
Having used a number of AMD/ATI and Nvidia cards on Windows, Nvidia wins hands down. I've never had a good experience with AMD devices -- more than half the games I own required me to disable the second card of a Crossfire setup (dual 6870s) because AMD had never released a proper compatibility profile. This includes games like Skyrim! There's no excuse for poor Crossfire support in big name, AAA titles, especially when your competitor consistently manages to get it right.
I've been burned by shitty AMD drivers more than once in the past. Never again.
Why would I want to dual boot to play games when I can stay in one OS (Windows) that does all the useful stuff that Linux can do *and* do things that Linux can't? I'm long past the point where I want to tinker with an OS just for geek cred. I want my computer to work and to do everything I want it to do without having to waste time rebooting between two operating systems.
It's not always as easy as 'release the specs'. Many devices have licensed code and components, and IP agreements prevent information about such code from being released. A good example of this is hardware support for video codec acceleration. Good luck getting Nvidia or AMD to break their contracts just to meet the needs of a small niche of computer users.
Windows and MacOS are defunct and living in niches? The amount of delusion here is stunning. Linux is the niche OS, and it's ideological stands like this that are directly to blame.
Bitch all you want about how proprietary vendors aren't being fair, but understand that the Open Source community has taken a stance, and that stance is largely incompatible with the stance of every major hardware developer in the market. It's not their job to cater to the 2 or 3 percent of PC users that have chosen to use Linux for one reason for another.
Because every other OS vendor does it. Maybe you like broken, half-baked operating systems, but some of us like to get real work done, not tinker with drivers and be forced to use outdated hardware.
No, he need not cripple himself and developers, but he shouldn't expect vendors to support him, either.
It's shit like this that guarantees that Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS. All of you get too hung up on ideology and purity of beliefs, and then wonder why nobody wants to support you.
You might as well start your relatives on Arch, or with an assembler and instructions to write all their own code.
There's a reason that Linux hasn't taken hold on the desktop, and it's because the developers and users are all out of touch with the needs of the average end user. Your relatives want something easy to use, not some purist's idea of the 'Perfect Linux'.
Sorry - in this case I have to hate the player and the game.
Design patents have their place, but obtaining one on an entire, broad class of shape? There's no way that this should have ever been granted.
I use Gimp and I'm a fan, but to claim that even version 2.8 is in the same league as Photoshop is willful ignorance.
Plus, they need to come up with a better name. Few people I know want to use software called Gimp, and rightly so. It's a retarded name (literally and figuratively).
Because they're fucking sleeping, perhaps?
But are we really? As the minority position, that implies that we're the insane ones. Of course, I'd rather be insane than hopelessly delusional and willfully ignorant.
If the government wanted to take the rest of your rights away, there's nothing you could do to stop it. You're massively outarmed, and you're nuts for thinking otherwise.
BUT... BUT... 0BUMMER's COMING TO TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY! THEN HE'S GONNA PUT US IN MUSLIM FEMA DEATH CAMPS!
Seriously, nobody is going to come and take the Second Amendment (or your precious guns) away, and it's not because gun nuts like you are going to fend off the armies that would be tasked with taking your guns and ammo. Comments like that of the GP just reinforce the fact that too many gun owners have too much faith in their guns and too little faith in the Constitution and rule of law.
Sorry, your pistols and rifles are no match for the government's tanks, missiles, nukes, and whatever the fuck else they have and want to use on you. You'd fire off a piddling shot or two, then be turned into a pile of liquidy, bloody, gut-filled mush.
But whatever helps you sleep at night...
DISCLAIMER: I generally support the Second Amendment. However, all the gun nuts going around and sucking the barrels of their guns like giant metal cocks hurts the movement as a whole.
Now if AMD could just get their processors to be competitive with Intel at normal speeds. By the time AMD gets to Ivy Bridge level performance, Intel will be 2 or 3 generations further ahead.
Correct. I work for a company with tens of thousands of employees, and software license 'compliance' takes the (almost) full time resources of exactly one person. Between centrally administered systems and locked down PCs (when necessary), staying compliant is really simple.
They'd have to improve compatibility with Office file formats too (especially Excel, and any of the XML-based .{foo}x formats), but other than that, I'd agree.
LibreOffice works for a lot of things, but it's the things that it *doesn't* work for that keeps it from being a viable choice for corporate desktops.
It doesn't matter whether the product is a 'necessity of life'. If they're using bundling or similar behavior to gain a market advantage, then their activity is illegal. Sure, we're not going to drop dead as a result of Comcast's behavior, but 'consumer activism' as a solution isn't enough. We need regulation with actual teeth, and (IMHO) a corporate death penalty that will actually force companies to do the right thing. They've proven time and time again that they sure as hell won't do it themselves.
And I heard she pals around with GEORGE SOROS and SAUL ALINSKY too! And she even heard somebody mention JEREMIAH WRIGHT one time! Oh, Lord! She's gonna take your guns and religion, and help Obama turn our country into a Muslim theocracy! Note to Republicans and Rushbots: slut-shaming women for exercising their right to weigh in on issues that directly affect them is *not* a winning election strategy.