2) Some hardware that is supported is so badly supported it might as well not be. ATI cards are like this, I hear Nvidea are easier to setup but are still suck-tackular.
Nvidia cards actually run very well on Linux. Performance is on par with Windows drivers. ATI is definitely behind in their driver performance on Linux.
3) Not everyone builds there own computer, joe average goes to PC World and buys the nice black with with lots of mega-giga-hurtz. He doesn't know whats in it. Granted thats more towards the desktop market and not so much for servers.
Joe Average isn't ever going to install an OS either, whether it is Windows or Linux. If Joe Average wanted Linux he would buy it preinstalled.
4) And why, by choosing linux, should I cut myself off from whatever percent of hardware out there just to use Linux? I agree with Linux's ideals, compared to Microsofts, but Microsofts solution works for me (Well, re-install every 6 months, but my hardware works:P). Only Linuc use I have is a server on an old computer, thankfully everything worked out of the box with DSL.
Why would anyone choose a Mac and cut themselves off from a percentage of hardware? Because no one needs every piece of hardare ever made. If it works for your stuff then I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't support some low end piece of crap soundcard that you have never owned and never will.
I doubt customers are going to buy "Hey, it's perfectly fine for us to lie about what we wrote. I mean, it's legal; it's public domain! You can't hate us for that!"
Isn't that what PR departments and the government do all the time? Hell the governement even lies to us about what is legal or illegal and people still buy it.
Flash is a piece of shitty shitting shit on Linux and is completely unfit for purpose. This, by the way, is nothing to do with it being closed source, it's more to do with Macrodobe being cunts.
You are missing the point of open source software. Flash sucks on Linux exactly because it is closed source. If it was open source we would have flash 9 already and it would probably work better on Linux than Windows. Instead we are stuck with flash 7, which is starting to go away quickly now.
...my only remaining Win98 machine is a 5+ year old IBM Thinkpad (A21M IIRC). With only a 20G HD, 192M memory, and a PIII at 800MHz... It can't effectively run later Win versions.
You can run Windows 2000 on a machine like that. In fact a machine like that from IBM most likely came with Windows 2000, or was at least an option. You would be better off with a distribution of Linux though. I have a similar spec laptop that came with 2000, but was promptly replaced with Linux.
I do run a nightly backup but that's not always the easiest thing to do with a laptop when you're on the road. I also don't ever want to worry about not having access to my files a few years down the road because they are binary black boxes. I NEVER have to worry about that on an open platform.
it basically highlighted to me the fact that the reliability of a lot of applications on linux simply sucks.
Reliability on other platforms isn't so hot either. iTunes and iPhoto are perfect examples on the Mac. When they crap out, which they do, you can lose everything. Windows is no better. The update to SP2 broke a lot of stuff. No software is perfect and no one with a clue is going to believe otherwise. My personal experiences have shown Linux to be more reliable, but this of course is not only situational, but subjective. The biggest win for me on Linux is not having to deal with binary black boxes. If something goes wrong, it is generally recoverable. With proprietary platforms, most of the time nothing can be done.
Intel isn't getting leapfrogged anytime soon, as AMD is a full 1 year behind Intel in the 65nm race. Intel, on the otherhand will be leapfrogging AMD even firther as their 45nm ramp appears to be happening sooner than later
Too bad for Intel that AMD is going to start producing 45nm chips 18 months after they ship 65nm chips, which is only months away now. AMD will claim the price/performance crown back when they go to 65nm. Then they will catch up with Intel on smaller processes when they move to 45nm. Even worse for Intel are the advances in HT and Direct Connect that will come through at about the same time, making AMD's chips even more attractive.
I am impressed with Intel's technology of late but at this point I still think AMD's future looks brighter. Intel was just too late to the party at a crucial moment in history. Netburst and Itanium was a turning point. Intel invested too much money on technology that ended up having no future.
Not defending the charges in this case (which do seem 100% bogus), but I have found that if you respect the police, they will respect you. If you treat the cops like assholes, they'll probably do the same to you.
You must live in suburbia. I used to think the same thing when I lived in a nice quiet suburb. Now that I live in the city, amongst a predominatly minority population, I can see that that isn't the case. Being hassled by cops is a part of life now. For example I was accused of stealing a car by a cop while I was walking home from work one day. On another occasion a friend of mine was pulled over while driving home from my apartment at 2AM for having something hanging in his rearview mirror. The cops attempted to search his car, but being an intelligent citizen he refused because they had no probable cause, and the cop was rude as hell telling my friend that he must have something to hide if he was unwilling to have his car searched.
I have never had to deal with harrassment like that when I lived in the suburbs. The cops practically camp out in my apartment complex. One night I was walking home and there were five cops with their guns drawn patrolling my neighborhood on foot. It was a little frightening. One time I was a victim of fraud and I went to the police station to make a complaint and I was treated like the criminal. Let me just say that living in the city is an eye-opening experience (and I'm not talking Manhatten).
Now something definitely seems wrong with this police department since the charges are nonsense and it seems like, at that point, they are harassing the citizen. But they do mention the guy's kid is being investigated for some crimes, the guy hasn't been cooperative in the past, and has been verbally abusive. And my completely inappropriate "judge a book by its cover" sensors tell me that by looking at the guy's picture in the article, he rather looks like an uncooperative, verbally abusive redneck. So I suspect that while these charges against him are completely wrong and inappropriate, I get the distinct feeling this isn't some average Joe that's being randomly victimized for no reason by the police. I think there's more to the story here than we know.
That shouldn't matter. It's your right as an American to be a prick. There isn't a law against being an asshole, even though I don't like dealing with people like that either. Any customer facing job requires that you deal with pains in the ass, but as a professional you deal with it. Cops are supposed to be professionals. If it was a case of being uncooperative with the police during an investigation then you can be charged for that.
Unless you count the new start menu, the "sleep" mode (suspend to hibernate),
To be honest I'm not sure what that is. Enlighten me.
the 3d-based Aero Glass,
XGL is here first and it is also more useful.
the "everybody's a user" security model,
So what? Microsoft is finally doing what every other sane operating system does.
the sidebar,
Gdesklets, Konfabulator, SuperKaramba, etc.
the new XPS print system,
Postscript/Ghostscript is just fine for me but I don't really remember all of the features of XPS so can you tell me what is so great about it?
the bundle of included apps,
Anything useful? I get many more apps with a Linux distribution than I could EVER get from Microsoft.
the new WiFi networking model that can remember which security settings for which network,
I can already do this in Linux
the new "Performance Statistcits" page on the computer management,
This is accomplished many different ways in Linux.
and few hundred changes I haven't noticed yet.
If you haven't noticed them I don't think they can be that spectacular.
(Oh, and there's 64-bit support, to boot.)
Windows has had that for years now with XP-64.
Vista is easily the biggest change in Windows since the 3.11 / Win95 upgrade. To say that it's "just more CPU and RAM usage" is just FUD. (In fact, if you trim down Vista to match a trimmed down XP, I think Vista actually runs faster.)
Just like then Windows is playing catch up. That is the only reason this upgrade is so big. In the amount of time between the release of XP and the release of Vista, these upgrades are really minimal. I'm not saying that they aren't improvements but they are necessary improvements. Vista couldn't even compete without them. The problem I see is that Vista doesn't give anyone a reason to choose it over other non-Microsoft options.
Oh, and while you can probably say that most, if not all, of the new features are taken from OS X or Linux or what-have-you -- just because somebody else had it first doesn't mean that it's not an improvement.
I believe I already answered that. The fact that some features of Vista are improvements over XP have no bearing on the discussion. Vista is an overhyped, underdevelped necessary upgrade that offers nothing over its competitors. Just the fact that Microsoft is playing catch up with companies that are magnitudes smaller than them and volunteers who don't even spend their working time developing the software has to be pretty disheartening to them. It should also be pretty eye-opening to everyone else.
The "loser-pays rule" is not a very good idea. It makes it very difficult for anyone but the rich to start a lawsuit. Take a Walmart employee for example. If you were making minimum wage and Walmart violated your rights would you take the chance to sue them? Walmart can afford high powered lawyers to make problems go away, their employees cannot.
Courts are ususally pretty good at throwing crap lawsuits out. You just never hear about those suits. The suits that make the headlines are the ones that have big payouts, and those are usually exaggerated by the press to sound worse than they are. The "hot coffee" lawsuit is a good example of exaggeration at the expense of the victim. Most people agree that it was a crap lawsuit, but they don't really know the specifics of it. If you are one of those people that think it was a crap lawsuit you should look up the details of the case and your opinion may change.
Ah. And there is some place where I think we can agree. For your purposes, Linux is often better, but for the pusposes of the guy who just wants to be able to buy a new game every so often, and know that it will take a minimal amount of skill on his or her part (and I use the word "skill" as a way of conceding that these are people who often blame Linux because they are incompetent; Microsoft's biggest selling point is that it is "software for the incompetent"). My point was that there are some people, such as these people, for whom Windows is simply a better solution.
I guess the only issue I have with this statement is that there are a lot of people who cannot even install software on Windows. These people freak out whenever they get a prompt. Windows is not a better solution for these people. In fact it is probably a worse solution because they have admin rights and have no idea how to wield them.
As for gamers, buy a console, really. If you are a gamer that cannot do anymore than install a game then maybe computers are not for you. It's not like the gaming market is as big as slashdotters make it out to be anyway. For some reason people here think that 95% of computer users cannot do without Windows games. I can tell you from experience that it is the other way around. 95% of users don't play games on their computers. Why do you think retailers sell so many machines with integrated graphics cards?
As for the comment about who is to blame for an ATI card not working on Linux, I acknowledge that the blame should be placed with ATI, and not the free source community, but, the point is that hardware support is hardware support, and regardless of who is to blame, a practical and casual user will consider support for a larger amount of hardware and software to be an advantage.
Linux does support more hardware. More than that, Linux actually supports hardware better in most cases. Like I said before though, it's all about your equipment. Perhaps there are users out there who want to install on their current hardware but it is unsupported. I can understand why they would shy away from Linux but I cannot understand why they would then go out and buy their next computer with unsupported hardare. People buy new machines all the time now, especially with prices dropping like rocks.
Also, for those of you who interpreted my original post as "Linux sucks" (if you're still reading these comments), I do wish to apologize. That was never my intention. My intention was to state that microsoft has it's strengths. I feel that if both OSes compete in areas where Linux is strong (shell scripting, customizability, and stability being a few of them), then Linux would win, hands down, but if they competed in the areas where Microsoft is strong (hardware and software support, and wizards), then microsoft would win.
I guess that's where we differ. I don't think Microsoft is strong in hardware and software support as much as vendors only release their wares for Microsoft's platform. There is no reason other than the near monopoly status that they currently have. It is in no way because of MS's superiority. Personally I think that if you sat down a new user with Linux he/she would probably be better off than with Windows. There is no need to install additional codecs, or software with Linux. For the home user, Linux comes with everything you need. Now if we could only convince ISVs to provide Linux versions of their wares, Linux might actually take off.
Granted, you can make quite a bit work on Linux, but you have to admit, Linux is a great deal more work than Windows.
That's subjective. Coming from the other direction (a Linux user that has to interact with Windows) there are a lot of things that I cannot do on Windows without serious work. There are plenty of times when I have to use Windows that I think, "Damn this is easy as hell on Linux but I have no idea how to do it on Windows". Take for example shell scripting. It sucks on Windows. Even small ~50 line scripts turn into 150 lines when I try to implement the same thing on Windows. It's also a pain in the ass when I want to install a free appication that I use on Linux on a Windows machine when there is no binary available. Sometimes the only alternative is hundreds of dollars. Then you have special software like Kismet that will NEVER have an equal for Windows.
Granted, you can make quite a bit work on Linux, but you have to admit, Linux is a great deal more work than Windows. Even if you take into account that Windows isn't always stable, and you have to reboot or uninstall and reinstall software to make it work, how many messageboards are there out there with people saying "why won't this work on my system?"
There are more confused Windows users than Linux users in the world. Things don't Just Work on Windows like people tend to claim. The worst problem is that when things do fail on Windows, most of the time there aren't proper error messages to reveal the problem and you are stuck guessing. NAV is a good example. It's one of the most, if not the most, used AV on the market and it is one of the biggest pains in the ass. The only reason you don't see as many forum posts by confused Windows users is because the majority of Windows users with problems don't have enough of a clue to actually post to a forum.
Linux has it's place, but, expecting it do everything Windows does is often a great deal of work, with excentricities (like features missing from a gnu app), hassles (work-arounds needed to make a specific app work), and the occasional beating-one's-head-against-a-wall session (having ta much needed app give a crazy error message, and having to spend hours digging through message board posts looking for a solution).
Like I said before, as a Linux user your description fits Windows to a "T" for me, and I am not exactly a clueless noob when it comes to Windows, although I am not very fond of it.
To use CS terminology, Linux as a mainstream desktop solution is a kludge. It can be done, but simply using Windows is sometimes a far more elegant solution.
I'll just ignore the fact that you mentioned Windows and elegant in the same sentence for now. Getting a Linux machine up and running can be some work depending on the distribution but Windows can be a hassle on some machines too, most people don't have to worry about that though because Windows comes with their computers. I would argue that a fully functioning Linux system with GNOME/KDE is much more elegant than Windows. GNOME and KDE are much more consistent than a Windows desktop.
As for your specific needs, well that can easily be taken care of by buying the right equipment. That's not really a fault of Linux as much as it is that your hardare is just not compatible with Linux. Claiming that a setup like that is a "need" is disingenuous. You can easily have the same options with Linux if the proper hardware is selected. That may turn some people off to Linux but it is hardly a "kludge". The same thing can happen to Windows. I have a scanner that only works with 98/ME. It will not install on 2000/XP. I'm not blaming Windows for the fact that it cannot install. Clearly it is the fault of the manufacturer. Most people recognize this when it happens with Windows but they fail to make the same connection when they are trying to install unsupported hardware on Linux.
you will not find Quake 4 or World of Warcraft on Linux. Gimp is no paintshop killer, and WINE is nowhere near as robust as a real Windows system
I find your remarks a little odd considering:
As a previous poster mentioned, Quake 4 runs on Linux natively.
World of Warcraft runs on Cedega.
Photoshop not only runs on Wine but is actually used with Wine by none other than Disney, who actually contributed to Wine to get that to happen.
If those are actually representative of your needs as a Windows user than you wouldn't have a problem moving over to Linux. If they aren't representative of your needs then get better examples and ask yourself why you chose those examples in the first place.
That check you wrote is verified by one of maybe four possible companies before it gets put into the cash drawer. There is no trust, you tool.
Actually that's not how it works in most stores. In fact there are very few stores that actually have good check verifications systems. The best ones are usually at large chain grocery stores. Tons of department stores and small shops have their own verfication systems that only check against a database for their own stores. I held two retail jobs in college and both of them were for large corporations. One had a check verification system that only checked against previous requests at the same location, and the other one didn't even have that much. You simply had to have a manager sign off on it and it was accepted. We had a hand written list of people that we wouldn't accept checks from. Remember both of these stores are a part of large corporations with easily recognizable names, and hundreds of stores nationwide.
Optical has advantages(and disadvantages) over tape, sure. Just saying, if you have a legitimate need to back-up that amount of data, you already have a way to do so.
Yeah you can do it, for extraordinarily high prices for home users. With all the media content people have on their computers these days it would be nice to have more storage capacity on optical disks. Tape drives are not very useful for home users.
Another interesting question: is it possible to design artificial intelegence smarter then yourself? If so, said intelegence could then create an intelegence greater then themselves ad infintium, meaning that relitive intelegence of the original species is irrelivent.
Yeah. So, your point is that you can take someone else's idea, rip it off, rewrite it changing some details here and there to convince yourself it's not the same thing, and then be happy because all your software is free and happy and GNU?
Oh you mean like what openssh did to ssh, except they made it a BSD license?
And by pointing out the absurd supposition that we cannot ban cars and doctors, can I assume that your intent is to say that we should do nothing to prevent terrorism until it kills more people than one of these?
I think the point the GP was trying to make was that we shouldn't be so afraid of terrorist attacks considering the small possibility. We have laws and procedures in place to prevent attacks just as we have laws and procedures in place to prevent car accidents. Nothing is perfect though and the only way to ensure that we don't get into car accidents is to ban cars just as the only way to ensure we don't get attacked by terrorists is to have total information awareness. In the end though the tradeoffs are not worth it and we have to deal with the fact that shit happens sometimes. We cannot control everything. With freedom comes uncertainty.
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Nvidia cards actually run very well on Linux. Performance is on par with Windows drivers. ATI is definitely behind in their driver performance on Linux.
Joe Average isn't ever going to install an OS either, whether it is Windows or Linux. If Joe Average wanted Linux he would buy it preinstalled.
Why would anyone choose a Mac and cut themselves off from a percentage of hardware? Because no one needs every piece of hardare ever made. If it works for your stuff then I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't support some low end piece of crap soundcard that you have never owned and never will.
Isn't that what PR departments and the government do all the time? Hell the governement even lies to us about what is legal or illegal and people still buy it.
Flash is a piece of shitty shitting shit on Linux and is completely unfit for purpose. This, by the way, is nothing to do with it being closed source, it's more to do with Macrodobe being cunts.
You are missing the point of open source software. Flash sucks on Linux exactly because it is closed source. If it was open source we would have flash 9 already and it would probably work better on Linux than Windows. Instead we are stuck with flash 7, which is starting to go away quickly now.
You can run Windows 2000 on a machine like that. In fact a machine like that from IBM most likely came with Windows 2000, or was at least an option. You would be better off with a distribution of Linux though. I have a similar spec laptop that came with 2000, but was promptly replaced with Linux.
I do run a nightly backup but that's not always the easiest thing to do with a laptop when you're on the road. I also don't ever want to worry about not having access to my files a few years down the road because they are binary black boxes. I NEVER have to worry about that on an open platform.
Reliability on other platforms isn't so hot either. iTunes and iPhoto are perfect examples on the Mac. When they crap out, which they do, you can lose everything. Windows is no better. The update to SP2 broke a lot of stuff. No software is perfect and no one with a clue is going to believe otherwise. My personal experiences have shown Linux to be more reliable, but this of course is not only situational, but subjective. The biggest win for me on Linux is not having to deal with binary black boxes. If something goes wrong, it is generally recoverable. With proprietary platforms, most of the time nothing can be done.
Source code isn't capital. That's the big problem with proprietary software comapnies these days, they think it is capital.
Too bad for Intel that AMD is going to start producing 45nm chips 18 months after they ship 65nm chips, which is only months away now. AMD will claim the price/performance crown back when they go to 65nm. Then they will catch up with Intel on smaller processes when they move to 45nm. Even worse for Intel are the advances in HT and Direct Connect that will come through at about the same time, making AMD's chips even more attractive.
AMD sets a course for 2008
I am impressed with Intel's technology of late but at this point I still think AMD's future looks brighter. Intel was just too late to the party at a crucial moment in history. Netburst and Itanium was a turning point. Intel invested too much money on technology that ended up having no future.
You must live in suburbia. I used to think the same thing when I lived in a nice quiet suburb. Now that I live in the city, amongst a predominatly minority population, I can see that that isn't the case. Being hassled by cops is a part of life now. For example I was accused of stealing a car by a cop while I was walking home from work one day. On another occasion a friend of mine was pulled over while driving home from my apartment at 2AM for having something hanging in his rearview mirror. The cops attempted to search his car, but being an intelligent citizen he refused because they had no probable cause, and the cop was rude as hell telling my friend that he must have something to hide if he was unwilling to have his car searched.
I have never had to deal with harrassment like that when I lived in the suburbs. The cops practically camp out in my apartment complex. One night I was walking home and there were five cops with their guns drawn patrolling my neighborhood on foot. It was a little frightening. One time I was a victim of fraud and I went to the police station to make a complaint and I was treated like the criminal. Let me just say that living in the city is an eye-opening experience (and I'm not talking Manhatten).
That shouldn't matter. It's your right as an American to be a prick. There isn't a law against being an asshole, even though I don't like dealing with people like that either. Any customer facing job requires that you deal with pains in the ass, but as a professional you deal with it. Cops are supposed to be professionals. If it was a case of being uncooperative with the police during an investigation then you can be charged for that.
To be honest I'm not sure what that is. Enlighten me.
the 3d-based Aero Glass,
XGL is here first and it is also more useful.
the "everybody's a user" security model,
So what? Microsoft is finally doing what every other sane operating system does.
the sidebar,
Gdesklets, Konfabulator, SuperKaramba, etc.
the new XPS print system,
Postscript/Ghostscript is just fine for me but I don't really remember all of the features of XPS so can you tell me what is so great about it?
the bundle of included apps,
Anything useful? I get many more apps with a Linux distribution than I could EVER get from Microsoft.
the new WiFi networking model that can remember which security settings for which network,
I can already do this in Linux
the new "Performance Statistcits" page on the computer management,
This is accomplished many different ways in Linux.
and few hundred changes I haven't noticed yet.
If you haven't noticed them I don't think they can be that spectacular.
(Oh, and there's 64-bit support, to boot.)
Windows has had that for years now with XP-64.
Vista is easily the biggest change in Windows since the 3.11 / Win95 upgrade. To say that it's "just more CPU and RAM usage" is just FUD. (In fact, if you trim down Vista to match a trimmed down XP, I think Vista actually runs faster.)
Just like then Windows is playing catch up. That is the only reason this upgrade is so big. In the amount of time between the release of XP and the release of Vista, these upgrades are really minimal. I'm not saying that they aren't improvements but they are necessary improvements. Vista couldn't even compete without them. The problem I see is that Vista doesn't give anyone a reason to choose it over other non-Microsoft options.
Oh, and while you can probably say that most, if not all, of the new features are taken from OS X or Linux or what-have-you -- just because somebody else had it first doesn't mean that it's not an improvement.
I believe I already answered that. The fact that some features of Vista are improvements over XP have no bearing on the discussion. Vista is an overhyped, underdevelped necessary upgrade that offers nothing over its competitors. Just the fact that Microsoft is playing catch up with companies that are magnitudes smaller than them and volunteers who don't even spend their working time developing the software has to be pretty disheartening to them. It should also be pretty eye-opening to everyone else.
Courts are ususally pretty good at throwing crap lawsuits out. You just never hear about those suits. The suits that make the headlines are the ones that have big payouts, and those are usually exaggerated by the press to sound worse than they are. The "hot coffee" lawsuit is a good example of exaggeration at the expense of the victim. Most people agree that it was a crap lawsuit, but they don't really know the specifics of it. If you are one of those people that think it was a crap lawsuit you should look up the details of the case and your opinion may change.
I guess the only issue I have with this statement is that there are a lot of people who cannot even install software on Windows. These people freak out whenever they get a prompt. Windows is not a better solution for these people. In fact it is probably a worse solution because they have admin rights and have no idea how to wield them.
As for gamers, buy a console, really. If you are a gamer that cannot do anymore than install a game then maybe computers are not for you. It's not like the gaming market is as big as slashdotters make it out to be anyway. For some reason people here think that 95% of computer users cannot do without Windows games. I can tell you from experience that it is the other way around. 95% of users don't play games on their computers. Why do you think retailers sell so many machines with integrated graphics cards?
Linux does support more hardware. More than that, Linux actually supports hardware better in most cases. Like I said before though, it's all about your equipment. Perhaps there are users out there who want to install on their current hardware but it is unsupported. I can understand why they would shy away from Linux but I cannot understand why they would then go out and buy their next computer with unsupported hardare. People buy new machines all the time now, especially with prices dropping like rocks.
I guess that's where we differ. I don't think Microsoft is strong in hardware and software support as much as vendors only release their wares for Microsoft's platform. There is no reason other than the near monopoly status that they currently have. It is in no way because of MS's superiority. Personally I think that if you sat down a new user with Linux he/she would probably be better off than with Windows. There is no need to install additional codecs, or software with Linux. For the home user, Linux comes with everything you need. Now if we could only convince ISVs to provide Linux versions of their wares, Linux might actually take off.
That's subjective. Coming from the other direction (a Linux user that has to interact with Windows) there are a lot of things that I cannot do on Windows without serious work. There are plenty of times when I have to use Windows that I think, "Damn this is easy as hell on Linux but I have no idea how to do it on Windows". Take for example shell scripting. It sucks on Windows. Even small ~50 line scripts turn into 150 lines when I try to implement the same thing on Windows. It's also a pain in the ass when I want to install a free appication that I use on Linux on a Windows machine when there is no binary available. Sometimes the only alternative is hundreds of dollars. Then you have special software like Kismet that will NEVER have an equal for Windows.
There are more confused Windows users than Linux users in the world. Things don't Just Work on Windows like people tend to claim. The worst problem is that when things do fail on Windows, most of the time there aren't proper error messages to reveal the problem and you are stuck guessing. NAV is a good example. It's one of the most, if not the most, used AV on the market and it is one of the biggest pains in the ass. The only reason you don't see as many forum posts by confused Windows users is because the majority of Windows users with problems don't have enough of a clue to actually post to a forum.
Like I said before, as a Linux user your description fits Windows to a "T" for me, and I am not exactly a clueless noob when it comes to Windows, although I am not very fond of it.
I'll just ignore the fact that you mentioned Windows and elegant in the same sentence for now. Getting a Linux machine up and running can be some work depending on the distribution but Windows can be a hassle on some machines too, most people don't have to worry about that though because Windows comes with their computers. I would argue that a fully functioning Linux system with GNOME/KDE is much more elegant than Windows. GNOME and KDE are much more consistent than a Windows desktop.
As for your specific needs, well that can easily be taken care of by buying the right equipment. That's not really a fault of Linux as much as it is that your hardare is just not compatible with Linux. Claiming that a setup like that is a "need" is disingenuous. You can easily have the same options with Linux if the proper hardware is selected. That may turn some people off to Linux but it is hardly a "kludge". The same thing can happen to Windows. I have a scanner that only works with 98/ME. It will not install on 2000/XP. I'm not blaming Windows for the fact that it cannot install. Clearly it is the fault of the manufacturer. Most people recognize this when it happens with Windows but they fail to make the same connection when they are trying to install unsupported hardware on Linux.
I find your remarks a little odd considering:
If those are actually representative of your needs as a Windows user than you wouldn't have a problem moving over to Linux. If they aren't representative of your needs then get better examples and ask yourself why you chose those examples in the first place.
That's not the worst of it. The United States is the only country other than Nigeria to execute minors.
Amen. The 90 Minute IPA is my favorite beer ever and at 9% alcohol it kicks you on your ass too.
Yeah U3 sucks. Just get the uninstaller.
Actually that's not how it works in most stores. In fact there are very few stores that actually have good check verifications systems. The best ones are usually at large chain grocery stores. Tons of department stores and small shops have their own verfication systems that only check against a database for their own stores. I held two retail jobs in college and both of them were for large corporations. One had a check verification system that only checked against previous requests at the same location, and the other one didn't even have that much. You simply had to have a manager sign off on it and it was accepted. We had a hand written list of people that we wouldn't accept checks from. Remember both of these stores are a part of large corporations with easily recognizable names, and hundreds of stores nationwide.
Same here. I mean, who wants a low power, high performance, 64-bit processor in their notebook anyway?
I'm not so sure what problems you are having with text based browsers. Links works fine for both the current design and the new design.
Yeah you can do it, for extraordinarily high prices for home users. With all the media content people have on their computers these days it would be nice to have more storage capacity on optical disks. Tape drives are not very useful for home users.
Do you mean the index.dat file?
That's what we call singularity my friend.
Oh you mean like what openssh did to ssh, except they made it a BSD license?
I think the point the GP was trying to make was that we shouldn't be so afraid of terrorist attacks considering the small possibility. We have laws and procedures in place to prevent attacks just as we have laws and procedures in place to prevent car accidents. Nothing is perfect though and the only way to ensure that we don't get into car accidents is to ban cars just as the only way to ensure we don't get attacked by terrorists is to have total information awareness. In the end though the tradeoffs are not worth it and we have to deal with the fact that shit happens sometimes. We cannot control everything. With freedom comes uncertainty.