As a former jock (for ten years), I'd like to say that one of the most important things is to stop putting all the emphasis, attention, reward and prmotion on sports. You can be a dumb jock with inflated grades and get school-wide assemblies with every student in school attending and a couple dozen cheerleaders leading chears on your behalf and screaming when you give a "speech". I never once saw any sort of academic get that sort of response in school. At best they were completely ignored by everyone. At the worst, they were harassed for being incredibly smart and excelling at all things scholastic.
Additionally, we need to stop focusing on "keeping seats filled so we can get our funding". From personal experience, I know that it's more important to a school district that you fill up a chair for enough days per year for them to get full funding for you and for you to do that for as many years as possible. I was actually denied extra credits in highschool because of this practice. That and "it wouldn't be fair to the other students you DID NOT do the extra work that you did". Complete fucking bullshit.
And, finally, we need to have academic heroes in the world again. Take NASA. We haven't been on the moon in almost 40 years. Astronauts used to be the go-to dream for a young boy. You saw them doing amazing things on television and the newspaper. You wanted to be an astronaut. You knew you'd have to do extremely well in school and work hard and be skilled in reading, math, chemistry, astronomy, physics and a number of other areas. We have nothing to promote this today. Today's heros are Eminem and Allen Iverson.
Most importantly, STOP DUMBING DOWN CLASSES. Even fifteen years ago, I felt like I was being ripped off because the classes were so incredibly easy. I'm talking so easy that I would complete the entire period's study and work in ten minutes, turn it in and go hang out in the library or lobby for the remaining 40 minutes. I'm talking so easy that we were using science textbooks in highschool that I'd already used in fourth grade. I'm talking so easy and so ridiculously dumbed-down that most students find themselves having to take remedial courses in a community college just to catch up to where they SHOULD be to compete with other college students, because their own school district failed to make them competitive.
Children love to learn. Children love to excel. Children love to have a future and have something to aspire to. Adults have failed to give them hope and give them an ambition to cling to. They're too busy at work and watching television to get involved and nourish their own childrens' dreams. Without involved, supportive adults around you, most children will fail to ever be more than mediocre.
I don't even get the submitter's point. Because the publisher wants you to wait until midnight instead of 11:00PM to buy their book, it's some sort of orwellian intellectual property digital rights holocaust?!
Does that mean that if an author makes you wait until their book is published, rather than giving out copies of their first rough draft, they're somehow "evil coporate slogs"?!
Is the submitter angry when he has to wait until the first showing of a movie at midnight or 12:20 in the afternoon rather than being able to watch it the day before? After all, they probably have the reel somewhere in the building on a thursday - so why should you have to wait until FRIDAY to see it?! OMGWTF!!!!one!!!11levenone!!!!11!
Considering that it shows about 500,000 jobs in the Denver area right now (which would mean something like 25% of the population - man woman and child - are working in IT departments), I would say very few.
Anyway, who the hell actually uses any sort of service or website to find a tech job above anything but entry level? That's what contacts and networking are for. You find yourself unemployed or looking for a new job and you put your feelers out to all your friends and colleagues who have moved to other companies over the years and they get you an interview.
It'll suck for webserver administrators who will have their servers pegged-out by a single user with a fast connection. I wonder if the prices for colocation will scale appropriately. Why should I pay $100/mo for 1.5mbit bandwidth at a colo when I can get 100mbit at home? The only difference, of course, being reliability and the prohibitive contracts forbidding servers.
I wonder what the upstream bandwidth will be? Probalby 100mbits down and 1mbit up? No doubt.
People who work outside for a living as a carpenter, flagger, ditch-digger, lineman or mailman certainly cover up. The amount of UV rays they're exposed to when you're wearing a light shirt, slacks and a hat that shields the face properly is a lot less than some teenager baking out in the sun face down in the sand with her top unstrapped.
No. I'm commenting on DEVELOPERS whining about why linux isn't as widely adopted on the desktop as they want. But go ahead and be a fucking baby, if you want. Typical response expected from the crowd. Let's whine about people not adopting linux across the desktop board. Then when they tell us why they're not, let's insult them and tell them that they should take what they get for free or code it themselves.
You are seriously fucking delusional in your response. It DOES NOT MATTER if your operating system is $5,000, $50 or FREE. If you aren't given users what they want and being responsive to them, they're not going to choose your "solution".
But hey, continue to stick your head in the sand. I don't care.
That's actually a good point. On the other hand, while this might be okay for forum type accounts, would you really want to employ it on a site that goes beyond that? Say, an auction site where you want someone to go through more hoops than just punching in some global username? And what about "BugMeNot" style account sharing where people create an account and share it among 500 individuals and each suddenly has access to everything in the world as that "user"?
But you're comparing the physical with the "etherial" (for lack of a better word) here.
If you're broadcasting wifi access onto my property, why shouldn't I be free to use it? Especially if you haven't bothered to protect it in any way?
I've done nothing wrong if you're blasting your radio and I can listen to it from my front yard or if I can overhear a loud conversation you're having. You can't force me to "give you your water back" if your water sprinkler throws over into my yard all day long.
So when my neighbors crank their stereo up so high that it wakes me up or keeps me up all night, do I have to wear ear plugs since I don't have their permission to listen to their music?
Not as far as I know (and not according to those silly online tests). And I find every skin tone incredibly sexy on the right girl. African, asian, middle eastern. It's all good. But they're natural skin tones. Taking pasty white irish/german/english/whatever chicks and broiling their white skin just makes them look... well... I usually get images of a scrawny baked-potato.
No, see - that's just the thing. I'm a curious intellectual who spends his time writing software for his auction website (almost 40,000 members) and would rather spend his time dealing with that time-sucking catastrophe than spending a bazillion hours just getting my system operational and maintaining it so that I can hopefully have a couple hours left over after that to debug the new code I wrote last week for my website.
LInux isn't everyone's hobby or business, though. So they just want a system that will let them work on what IS their hobby or business. It's like driving. I don't need to spend 40 hours every week tricking out my crappy little import car and be a hardcore member of some tuner circuit. I just need somethign with some wheels and a steering wheel that moves me affordably and efficiently from one place to another. Why? Because what I want to spend my time on are the things I'm going to do AT MY DESTINATION.
Flaming? You call making valid points about the downfalls of linux on the desktop "flaming"?
That just further illustrates the problems with linux. Criticisms are never valid. Problems are never anyone's fault but Microsoft's and Compaq's. Users are stupid. You don't want to do what you think you want to do. Take your gruel and like it.
The biggest reason I switched was that I simply got tired of making excuses for why linux isn't perfect on the desktop and why it doesn't measure up. I got tired of pretending that I could do everything I wanted to do just as easily as I wanted to do it. In short, I got tired of the delusions that I bought into.
The simple fact is that linux is not ready for mass deployment on the desktop. To use linux on the desktop requires a great deal of patience, time, troubleshooting and tolerating a lot of impositions that you wouldn't have to tolerate elsewhere. But not everyone is willing to be that involved. Some of us no longer can be that involved. We don't have the spare time to dick around with it like we did when we were 19 and had nothing better to do than fuck with door games and semaphores on our BBSes all day and night for a week.
As I've explained ten times already, linux has its places. In the server market, it's powerful and you couldn't make me use anything else even if you paid me. And for some people in some places, saving $129 is worth more to them than saving 258 hours. For me, my time is worth more and the last thing I want to do after spending 60 or 80 hours in the office debugging core dumps and source code and fixing things and patching things is spend the other 88 hours of the week writing patches or software for linux or debugging things that I expect to "just work".
Again, nobody said linux was unfit for the desktop, period. But for the average person (which is what you have to shoot for if you want linux to compete with all the other desktops and achieve a large market-share), they would rather spend $129 for Windows or OSX if they can save themselves a lot of grief. As I've grown up and my life has become more complex and I've acquired other responsibilities and committments, I've had to make the choice that something that "just works" and does everything I want it to for a price is more important than saving a few bucks and spending more time getting something free to work.
I'm glad there are people who will continue to dick around with linux. I'm glad people will still continue to develop for it. And I'm glad there are people who will continue to run it as their main desktop system. But that will always remain a very small minority as long as those people continue making excuses for why linux doesn't just work with their new camera or scanner or videocard or monitor or whatever else. Or keep explaining away why users don't want what they think they want in a system. Short and sweet - you have to listen to the users you want to use your stuff. We've been bad about that in the linux - indeed the open source world - in general. And most of us don't have the design or user interface knowledge and experience to capitalize on input from users even if we wanted to.
Anyway - again - pointing out how linux fails to satisfy the desktop needs of the masses is not making "derogatory remarks". Then again, that's the kind of reactionary sensitivity we've come to expect. We've always joked about Apple guys drinking the kool-aid. Well, we've been drinking the linux kool-aid for at least a decade now.
And you know what? What makes you think that your comments on slashdot are any different, in principle, from a blog post?
Because I am posting my comment in response to an article on a semi-news site related to geeks and tech, in which I am interested, just like thousands of other people are doing here. What I am not doing is building a livejournal/blog shrine to myself to glorify my every passing of gas, post pictures of my big toe, share my crappy angsty poetry and indulging in petty on-line livejournal tiffs.
And "free speech" is more than just running your mouth off about random crap and 400 posted "quizes" in a livejournal. "Free speech" is more than just spending your time trying to make yourself seem incredibly cool in a blog so that you can make friends and get people to like you because you don't know how to do it in person.
Are you serious about this? I have never had problems with Linux drivers since I discovered you can configure your kernel
So linux is ready for the desktop as long as the average desktop user (say, my mom or my grandmother) compile and configure their own kernel? Wow. You're right - linux is totally ready for priime time!
That's fine for geeks like us. But geeks like us aren't the rest of the world and until we stop saying shit like "all you have to do is.... configure your kernel" or "all you have to do is... write your own device driver" or "if you don't like it, write it yourself"... nobody is going ot take us seriously.
If people want Linux to be better, they need to stop whining about how linux doesn't have the popularity of other operating systems and them make excuse after excuse to justify why it doesn't measure up in many respects to those other operating systems they're trying to switch people away from.
Why isn't linux as popular as it could be? Because linux zealots want people to switch to linux. They want every joe-average to use it. But they don't want to listen to joe-average's input. They don't want to give any weight to joe-average's desires and his explanations for why he doesn't use it.
If I install linux for someone and they can't figure out how to do simple things or their snazzy new scanner doesn't work for them without me coming over and spending all weekend to get it running, they don't care that "but it's a free operating system!". When their expensive new toy or game won't work on linux or they can't figure out the strangeness of some packaging systems or the incongruity of a lot of things that should be simple (or at least based on common sense), giving them all the political and business reasons of why there aren't drivers for their stuff on linux is pointless. They just want their shit to work. They don't care what the political force behind their favorite card not having drivers and not being simple to install are. It just doesn't fucking matter.
Until we, the linux crowd, get over ourselves and start understanding that "free" and "open source" and "but we've been persecuted politically" doesn't mean shit to the rest of the world, we're just going to continue to design software for ourselves that doesn't meet the needs of the larger computer population and until we start aiming for them, they're never going to use it. And we can't just "aim" for them. We need to consider their complaints and their viewpoints. And - more than anything - LINUX NEEDS TO STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
Typical linux-zealot attitude. Cry like a little baby because the entire world isn't using your operating system and then make a thousand excuses justifying why it doesn't measure up to what the rest of the world uses. Either stop bitching about the lack of linux popularity or DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
If you want people to use your operating system, you need to provide an incentive. You need to make it desirable. You need to give them reasons to prefer it. Excuses are not reasons. Excuses don't make devices work. Excuses don't simplify complex system configurations or package management. When current operating systems are so cheap, you need to provide something more than everyone else. If I can have a gourmet steak dinner for $1.50 or a pile of dog shit for free, I'm still going to opt for the steak dinner, even though it isn't free.
This is exactly the reason I've burned out on the whole linux thing after most of a decade. I'm tired of trying to convince people to use linux and then, afte they switch, spending all of that energy trying to make excuses for the failings of linux on the desktop. When the average user asks me "why can't I do..." or "how do I configure this..." or "why doesn't this JUST WORK like it did on my last operating system?", they're not impressed.
Point, the first: I don't want anything developed by anyone that also brought us any kind of lame ass "social networking" or "blog" type of site. Fuck them. Fuck them long and fuck them hard for ruining the internet.
Point, the second: Having to create an account at every site you use sets up a minimal cost of entry to show that your true interest in participating. I *WANT* someone ot have to create a new account to use my sites. It shows that they are willing to take the minimal steps to be involved. If every douchebag can automatically comment or participate in every site instantly because they no longer have to spend the time or energy filling out a small form and checking their email, the number of inane, useless, spammy, trolling and completely annoying comments and input we're going to have to deal with at a level never before imagined.
Rob Malda - EDITOR EXROARDINAIRE!!!
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Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 1, Troll
"PC World has previewed Longhorn. Not the first one out, I guess. Among the few noted features is that Windows now offers translucent UI. Finally catching up with Apple."
Christ, Taco. My smegma is a more qualified editor than you.
Apple Cinedisplay is an LCD monitor. Are you suggesting that no LCD monitors should or would work with linux? If so, that's just plain inaccurate. You can use a Cinedisplay on linux (although in my case, it simply refused to work on my two desired distros, even though it was a selectable option). In fact, you can use two Apple Cinedisplays and twinhead them on the same linux box if you configure it properly (well, I've seen it done... your mileage will most absolutely vary).
I guess in respect to your quip, NVIDIA cards shouldn't work with Apple, even though Apple uses NVIDIA cards (in fact, that's the card you need in your G5 to pump out enough pixels ot fuel the 2560xwhatever 30" Cinema Display). And by that logic, you shouldn't be able to use IDE drives, because they also work in non OSX systems. And my god, you certainly shouldn't be able to use anythign except a Mac brand mouse and wireless keyboard, huh?
The only thing sadder than the comment is the douches who marked it "informative".
I'm sorry, but it just is NOT the same. Not at ALL.
Again, I'm a very recent OSX convert. I've been a linux user for at least seven years (along with a high-end Windows box for gaming, of course). I've used it both on the desktop and as a production server (which I've operated on Debian for the last five years straight).
But there is absolutely nothing linux can offer that can even remotely approach the surprising simplicity of installing applications on OSX. It is the most astonishing thing I have dealt with in twenty years of experience.
I decided that I wanted to use Camino as my browser for awhile. Here is the process I went through to install it:
1) Drag Camino.app to/Applications.
Then I decided that I wanted to use the Camino nightly build instead. Here was the process I went through to install that:
1) Drag new Camino.app to/Applications. 2) Click "OK" on "do you want to replace older version with newer version?" dialogue box.
Then I decided I didn't want to use Camino at all. Here was the process I went through to remove it:
1) Drag Camino.app to the Trash icon.
No stupid dependancies. No registry bullshit. No *.ini files. No string of install-wizard boxes. No compiling. No downloading support libs...
And if I happened to have a need for a more exotic app that wasn't readily available with Fink or Darwin ports, I'd just compile it myself. Not that I'd be forced to do that so often.
I don't care if OSX only has one desktop environment. If I were on linux or solaris or any other system, I'd still only be using one desktop environment. I may have the choice to use others, but I'd settle on one and use it. Well, guess what? I settled on OSX so it doesn't matter if there are alternatives to it or not. Plus, it's pretty damn configurable (functionality-wise).
As for linux on the desktop not being the focus of developers . . . that doesn't matter. If I need a truck to haul things in, don't bother trying to sell me a mini-cooper. Telling me that the manufacturer's focus was on little sporty roadsters and not hauling vehicals is not relevant, if I'm looking for a hauler and not a roadster. My needs are my needs and the developer's justifications for why it doesn't meet them does nothing to... well... meet them.
LIkewise, I don't care if linux is free. My time isn't free. This is precisely why, after seven years of heavy linux use, I finally decided to move away from it this year. Great - I saved $129 on the operating system. But how many hours have I spent troubleshooting, maintaining, fixing and configuring it? $129 is only a few hours worth of work at the office and I couldn't even begin to calculate the value of my time that I've put into getting linux to work properly over the years.
In short, don't make excuses for why linux isn't ready for the desktop. Don't try and justify why I shouldnt' need the things I need or why I should put up with inconveniences. If you want linux to spread and be more popular, do things that make people want to use it. I've been using linux for seven years. I've been using computers since my VIC-20 in 1984, when I was seven years old. I'm a software engineer that works almost exclusively on solaris at work and have used a dozen distros (preference to Debian - which is what I run on my production server and Slackware which I haven't used in years). I've also used Windows a fair deal. A little 3x, a bit of 95, a bunch of 98 and onward.
If a hardcore techie and geek and long-time linux user is tired of dealing with linux and moving away from it, what do you think you have to battle against to get your average-joe to move to linux?
"What's that grandma? No, I'm sorry but I'm not coming over to help you with your linux apps tonight unless you're going to gimme a little some'n some'n, know what I'm sayin' grandma?"
Slashdot Mirror
As a former jock (for ten years), I'd like to say that one of the most important things is to stop putting all the emphasis, attention, reward and prmotion on sports. You can be a dumb jock with inflated grades and get school-wide assemblies with every student in school attending and a couple dozen cheerleaders leading chears on your behalf and screaming when you give a "speech". I never once saw any sort of academic get that sort of response in school. At best they were completely ignored by everyone. At the worst, they were harassed for being incredibly smart and excelling at all things scholastic.
Additionally, we need to stop focusing on "keeping seats filled so we can get our funding". From personal experience, I know that it's more important to a school district that you fill up a chair for enough days per year for them to get full funding for you and for you to do that for as many years as possible. I was actually denied extra credits in highschool because of this practice. That and "it wouldn't be fair to the other students you DID NOT do the extra work that you did". Complete fucking bullshit.
And, finally, we need to have academic heroes in the world again. Take NASA. We haven't been on the moon in almost 40 years. Astronauts used to be the go-to dream for a young boy. You saw them doing amazing things on television and the newspaper. You wanted to be an astronaut. You knew you'd have to do extremely well in school and work hard and be skilled in reading, math, chemistry, astronomy, physics and a number of other areas. We have nothing to promote this today. Today's heros are Eminem and Allen Iverson.
Most importantly, STOP DUMBING DOWN CLASSES. Even fifteen years ago, I felt like I was being ripped off because the classes were so incredibly easy. I'm talking so easy that I would complete the entire period's study and work in ten minutes, turn it in and go hang out in the library or lobby for the remaining 40 minutes. I'm talking so easy that we were using science textbooks in highschool that I'd already used in fourth grade. I'm talking so easy and so ridiculously dumbed-down that most students find themselves having to take remedial courses in a community college just to catch up to where they SHOULD be to compete with other college students, because their own school district failed to make them competitive.
Children love to learn. Children love to excel. Children love to have a future and have something to aspire to. Adults have failed to give them hope and give them an ambition to cling to. They're too busy at work and watching television to get involved and nourish their own childrens' dreams. Without involved, supportive adults around you, most children will fail to ever be more than mediocre.
So what 90% of Sturgeon's Law is crud?
I don't even get the submitter's point. Because the publisher wants you to wait until midnight instead of 11:00PM to buy their book, it's some sort of orwellian intellectual property digital rights holocaust?!
Does that mean that if an author makes you wait until their book is published, rather than giving out copies of their first rough draft, they're somehow "evil coporate slogs"?!
Is the submitter angry when he has to wait until the first showing of a movie at midnight or 12:20 in the afternoon rather than being able to watch it the day before? After all, they probably have the reel somewhere in the building on a thursday - so why should you have to wait until FRIDAY to see it?! OMGWTF!!!!one!!!11levenone!!!!11!
Considering that it shows about 500,000 jobs in the Denver area right now (which would mean something like 25% of the population - man woman and child - are working in IT departments), I would say very few.
Anyway, who the hell actually uses any sort of service or website to find a tech job above anything but entry level? That's what contacts and networking are for. You find yourself unemployed or looking for a new job and you put your feelers out to all your friends and colleagues who have moved to other companies over the years and they get you an interview.
*shrug*
It'll suck for webserver administrators who will have their servers pegged-out by a single user with a fast connection. I wonder if the prices for colocation will scale appropriately. Why should I pay $100/mo for 1.5mbit bandwidth at a colo when I can get 100mbit at home? The only difference, of course, being reliability and the prohibitive contracts forbidding servers.
I wonder what the upstream bandwidth will be? Probalby 100mbits down and 1mbit up? No doubt.
Yeah, but do you work outside naked?
People who work outside for a living as a carpenter, flagger, ditch-digger, lineman or mailman certainly cover up. The amount of UV rays they're exposed to when you're wearing a light shirt, slacks and a hat that shields the face properly is a lot less than some teenager baking out in the sun face down in the sand with her top unstrapped.
Wow. Nice spin there. "If you don't like chicks who tan themselves into a crusty potato skin, you're a misogynist".
Moron.
No. I'm commenting on DEVELOPERS whining about why linux isn't as widely adopted on the desktop as they want. But go ahead and be a fucking baby, if you want. Typical response expected from the crowd. Let's whine about people not adopting linux across the desktop board. Then when they tell us why they're not, let's insult them and tell them that they should take what they get for free or code it themselves.
You are seriously fucking delusional in your response. It DOES NOT MATTER if your operating system is $5,000, $50 or FREE. If you aren't given users what they want and being responsive to them, they're not going to choose your "solution".
But hey, continue to stick your head in the sand. I don't care.
That's actually a good point. On the other hand, while this might be okay for forum type accounts, would you really want to employ it on a site that goes beyond that? Say, an auction site where you want someone to go through more hoops than just punching in some global username? And what about "BugMeNot" style account sharing where people create an account and share it among 500 individuals and each suddenly has access to everything in the world as that "user"?
But you're comparing the physical with the "etherial" (for lack of a better word) here.
If you're broadcasting wifi access onto my property, why shouldn't I be free to use it? Especially if you haven't bothered to protect it in any way?
I've done nothing wrong if you're blasting your radio and I can listen to it from my front yard or if I can overhear a loud conversation you're having. You can't force me to "give you your water back" if your water sprinkler throws over into my yard all day long.
So when my neighbors crank their stereo up so high that it wakes me up or keeps me up all night, do I have to wear ear plugs since I don't have their permission to listen to their music?
Not as far as I know (and not according to those silly online tests). And I find every skin tone incredibly sexy on the right girl. African, asian, middle eastern. It's all good. But they're natural skin tones. Taking pasty white irish/german/english/whatever chicks and broiling their white skin just makes them look... well... I usually get images of a scrawny baked-potato.
No, see - that's just the thing. I'm a curious intellectual who spends his time writing software for his auction website (almost 40,000 members) and would rather spend his time dealing with that time-sucking catastrophe than spending a bazillion hours just getting my system operational and maintaining it so that I can hopefully have a couple hours left over after that to debug the new code I wrote last week for my website.
LInux isn't everyone's hobby or business, though. So they just want a system that will let them work on what IS their hobby or business. It's like driving. I don't need to spend 40 hours every week tricking out my crappy little import car and be a hardcore member of some tuner circuit. I just need somethign with some wheels and a steering wheel that moves me affordably and efficiently from one place to another. Why? Because what I want to spend my time on are the things I'm going to do AT MY DESTINATION.
Flaming? You call making valid points about the downfalls of linux on the desktop "flaming"?
That just further illustrates the problems with linux. Criticisms are never valid. Problems are never anyone's fault but Microsoft's and Compaq's. Users are stupid. You don't want to do what you think you want to do. Take your gruel and like it.
The biggest reason I switched was that I simply got tired of making excuses for why linux isn't perfect on the desktop and why it doesn't measure up. I got tired of pretending that I could do everything I wanted to do just as easily as I wanted to do it. In short, I got tired of the delusions that I bought into.
The simple fact is that linux is not ready for mass deployment on the desktop. To use linux on the desktop requires a great deal of patience, time, troubleshooting and tolerating a lot of impositions that you wouldn't have to tolerate elsewhere. But not everyone is willing to be that involved. Some of us no longer can be that involved. We don't have the spare time to dick around with it like we did when we were 19 and had nothing better to do than fuck with door games and semaphores on our BBSes all day and night for a week.
As I've explained ten times already, linux has its places. In the server market, it's powerful and you couldn't make me use anything else even if you paid me. And for some people in some places, saving $129 is worth more to them than saving 258 hours. For me, my time is worth more and the last thing I want to do after spending 60 or 80 hours in the office debugging core dumps and source code and fixing things and patching things is spend the other 88 hours of the week writing patches or software for linux or debugging things that I expect to "just work".
Again, nobody said linux was unfit for the desktop, period. But for the average person (which is what you have to shoot for if you want linux to compete with all the other desktops and achieve a large market-share), they would rather spend $129 for Windows or OSX if they can save themselves a lot of grief. As I've grown up and my life has become more complex and I've acquired other responsibilities and committments, I've had to make the choice that something that "just works" and does everything I want it to for a price is more important than saving a few bucks and spending more time getting something free to work.
I'm glad there are people who will continue to dick around with linux. I'm glad people will still continue to develop for it. And I'm glad there are people who will continue to run it as their main desktop system. But that will always remain a very small minority as long as those people continue making excuses for why linux doesn't just work with their new camera or scanner or videocard or monitor or whatever else. Or keep explaining away why users don't want what they think they want in a system. Short and sweet - you have to listen to the users you want to use your stuff. We've been bad about that in the linux - indeed the open source world - in general. And most of us don't have the design or user interface knowledge and experience to capitalize on input from users even if we wanted to.
Anyway - again - pointing out how linux fails to satisfy the desktop needs of the masses is not making "derogatory remarks". Then again, that's the kind of reactionary sensitivity we've come to expect. We've always joked about Apple guys drinking the kool-aid. Well, we've been drinking the linux kool-aid for at least a decade now.
And you know what? What makes you think that your comments on slashdot are any different, in principle, from a blog post?
Because I am posting my comment in response to an article on a semi-news site related to geeks and tech, in which I am interested, just like thousands of other people are doing here. What I am not doing is building a livejournal/blog shrine to myself to glorify my every passing of gas, post pictures of my big toe, share my crappy angsty poetry and indulging in petty on-line livejournal tiffs.
And "free speech" is more than just running your mouth off about random crap and 400 posted "quizes" in a livejournal. "Free speech" is more than just spending your time trying to make yourself seem incredibly cool in a blog so that you can make friends and get people to like you because you don't know how to do it in person.
Are you serious about this? I have never had problems with Linux drivers since I discovered you can configure your kernel
So linux is ready for the desktop as long as the average desktop user (say, my mom or my grandmother) compile and configure their own kernel? Wow. You're right - linux is totally ready for priime time!
That's fine for geeks like us. But geeks like us aren't the rest of the world and until we stop saying shit like "all you have to do is.... configure your kernel" or "all you have to do is... write your own device driver" or "if you don't like it, write it yourself"... nobody is going ot take us seriously.
If people want Linux to be better, they need to stop whining about how linux doesn't have the popularity of other operating systems and them make excuse after excuse to justify why it doesn't measure up in many respects to those other operating systems they're trying to switch people away from.
Why isn't linux as popular as it could be? Because linux zealots want people to switch to linux. They want every joe-average to use it. But they don't want to listen to joe-average's input. They don't want to give any weight to joe-average's desires and his explanations for why he doesn't use it.
If I install linux for someone and they can't figure out how to do simple things or their snazzy new scanner doesn't work for them without me coming over and spending all weekend to get it running, they don't care that "but it's a free operating system!". When their expensive new toy or game won't work on linux or they can't figure out the strangeness of some packaging systems or the incongruity of a lot of things that should be simple (or at least based on common sense), giving them all the political and business reasons of why there aren't drivers for their stuff on linux is pointless. They just want their shit to work. They don't care what the political force behind their favorite card not having drivers and not being simple to install are. It just doesn't fucking matter.
Until we, the linux crowd, get over ourselves and start understanding that "free" and "open source" and "but we've been persecuted politically" doesn't mean shit to the rest of the world, we're just going to continue to design software for ourselves that doesn't meet the needs of the larger computer population and until we start aiming for them, they're never going to use it. And we can't just "aim" for them. We need to consider their complaints and their viewpoints. And - more than anything - LINUX NEEDS TO STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
Typical linux-zealot attitude. Cry like a little baby because the entire world isn't using your operating system and then make a thousand excuses justifying why it doesn't measure up to what the rest of the world uses. Either stop bitching about the lack of linux popularity or DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
If you want people to use your operating system, you need to provide an incentive. You need to make it desirable. You need to give them reasons to prefer it. Excuses are not reasons. Excuses don't make devices work. Excuses don't simplify complex system configurations or package management. When current operating systems are so cheap, you need to provide something more than everyone else. If I can have a gourmet steak dinner for $1.50 or a pile of dog shit for free, I'm still going to opt for the steak dinner, even though it isn't free.
This is exactly the reason I've burned out on the whole linux thing after most of a decade. I'm tired of trying to convince people to use linux and then, afte they switch, spending all of that energy trying to make excuses for the failings of linux on the desktop. When the average user asks me "why can't I do..." or "how do I configure this..." or "why doesn't this JUST WORK like it did on my last operating system?", they're not impressed.
Point, the first: I don't want anything developed by anyone that also brought us any kind of lame ass "social networking" or "blog" type of site. Fuck them. Fuck them long and fuck them hard for ruining the internet.
Point, the second: Having to create an account at every site you use sets up a minimal cost of entry to show that your true interest in participating. I *WANT* someone ot have to create a new account to use my sites. It shows that they are willing to take the minimal steps to be involved. If every douchebag can automatically comment or participate in every site instantly because they no longer have to spend the time or energy filling out a small form and checking their email, the number of inane, useless, spammy, trolling and completely annoying comments and input we're going to have to deal with at a level never before imagined.
"PC World has previewed Longhorn. Not the first one out, I guess. Among the few noted features is that Windows now offers translucent UI. Finally catching up with Apple."
Christ, Taco. My smegma is a more qualified editor than you.
Oh well. At least it isn't another fucking dupe.
Your post doesn't even make sense.
Apple Cinedisplay is an LCD monitor. Are you suggesting that no LCD monitors should or would work with linux? If so, that's just plain inaccurate. You can use a Cinedisplay on linux (although in my case, it simply refused to work on my two desired distros, even though it was a selectable option). In fact, you can use two Apple Cinedisplays and twinhead them on the same linux box if you configure it properly (well, I've seen it done... your mileage will most absolutely vary).
I guess in respect to your quip, NVIDIA cards shouldn't work with Apple, even though Apple uses NVIDIA cards (in fact, that's the card you need in your G5 to pump out enough pixels ot fuel the 2560xwhatever 30" Cinema Display). And by that logic, you shouldn't be able to use IDE drives, because they also work in non OSX systems. And my god, you certainly shouldn't be able to use anythign except a Mac brand mouse and wireless keyboard, huh?
The only thing sadder than the comment is the douches who marked it "informative".
I'm sorry, but it just is NOT the same. Not at ALL.
/Applications.
/Applications.
Again, I'm a very recent OSX convert. I've been a linux user for at least seven years (along with a high-end Windows box for gaming, of course). I've used it both on the desktop and as a production server (which I've operated on Debian for the last five years straight).
But there is absolutely nothing linux can offer that can even remotely approach the surprising simplicity of installing applications on OSX. It is the most astonishing thing I have dealt with in twenty years of experience.
I decided that I wanted to use Camino as my browser for awhile. Here is the process I went through to install it:
1) Drag Camino.app to
Then I decided that I wanted to use the Camino nightly build instead. Here was the process I went through to install that:
1) Drag new Camino.app to
2) Click "OK" on "do you want to replace older version with newer version?" dialogue box.
Then I decided I didn't want to use Camino at all. Here was the process I went through to remove it:
1) Drag Camino.app to the Trash icon.
No stupid dependancies. No registry bullshit. No *.ini files. No string of install-wizard boxes. No compiling. No downloading support libs...
And if I happened to have a need for a more exotic app that wasn't readily available with Fink or Darwin ports, I'd just compile it myself. Not that I'd be forced to do that so often.
I don't care if OSX only has one desktop environment. If I were on linux or solaris or any other system, I'd still only be using one desktop environment. I may have the choice to use others, but I'd settle on one and use it. Well, guess what? I settled on OSX so it doesn't matter if there are alternatives to it or not. Plus, it's pretty damn configurable (functionality-wise).
As for linux on the desktop not being the focus of developers . . . that doesn't matter. If I need a truck to haul things in, don't bother trying to sell me a mini-cooper. Telling me that the manufacturer's focus was on little sporty roadsters and not hauling vehicals is not relevant, if I'm looking for a hauler and not a roadster. My needs are my needs and the developer's justifications for why it doesn't meet them does nothing to... well... meet them.
LIkewise, I don't care if linux is free. My time isn't free. This is precisely why, after seven years of heavy linux use, I finally decided to move away from it this year. Great - I saved $129 on the operating system. But how many hours have I spent troubleshooting, maintaining, fixing and configuring it? $129 is only a few hours worth of work at the office and I couldn't even begin to calculate the value of my time that I've put into getting linux to work properly over the years.
In short, don't make excuses for why linux isn't ready for the desktop. Don't try and justify why I shouldnt' need the things I need or why I should put up with inconveniences. If you want linux to spread and be more popular, do things that make people want to use it. I've been using linux for seven years. I've been using computers since my VIC-20 in 1984, when I was seven years old. I'm a software engineer that works almost exclusively on solaris at work and have used a dozen distros (preference to Debian - which is what I run on my production server and Slackware which I haven't used in years). I've also used Windows a fair deal. A little 3x, a bit of 95, a bunch of 98 and onward.
If a hardcore techie and geek and long-time linux user is tired of dealing with linux and moving away from it, what do you think you have to battle against to get your average-joe to move to linux?
"What's that grandma? No, I'm sorry but I'm not coming over to help you with your linux apps tonight unless you're going to gimme a little some'n some'n, know what I'm sayin' grandma?"
XNU is a Mach/FreeBSD based kernel. But guess what? Most people wouldn't have a fucking clue what I was talking about if said "XNU", instead.