Well, I checked out two or three linux-centric laptop shops before buying and both had a list for each laptop of known problems with linux on them. Some of the issues were "works, sometimes" to "doesn't work at all".
Will most laptops work with linux? Certainly. But many (maybe a majority from what I've seen) have problems like.. oh... power management... oh... wireless cars working... oh.. firewire or bluetooth not working... sometimes sound not working...
I don't want to buy a $2,500 laptop and not have everything supported by the OS I put on it. The point is that if a user has to go through hoops just to make sure their OS will work fully on a given piece of hardware, linux is not going to make it big. Even those of us who live in a mostly linux world have to admit that it's often just an incredible hassle. We don't mind it, because we now what linux has to offer. But these users that you supposedly want to convert to linux are not going to spend weeks finding the right hardware for their OS and then two days configuring their sound and video cards properly.
The point is that in one operating system, you turn it on and it automatically handles the LCD without problems (the same Rob is claiming doesn't, in fact). Meanwhile, the other doesn't pick it up at all. Even if it has the monitor and card listed in it's graphical installer. Even if you manually configure it.
Maybe ubuntu works with it now or something. I wouldn't know. I just know that Debian (my distro of choice for all my servers), Gentoo and Mandrake all failed to work with it.
Some people might have days and days to spendon each part of their box, but others just want to slap them together and get to work. Until Linux can do that more predictably, it won't be ready for the desktop.
The difference is, I don't think it took four years and $2,500,000.00 for Descarte to poke a stick in the ground, watch the shadow and say "it appears that the earth is spherical!".
Thankfully, in this market, the employee should not have a problem finding job satisfaction. There is no reason you can't take a few months or years off to find that perfect job. And considering how there are so many unfilled high-paying, enjoyable jobs in this industry, any employer will be thrilled to have your interest.
Most fortunate of all, the employee has all the power as they do not have any necessary expenses and there is always an employer willing to pay more than the current offer. Employers care about your satisfaction, too. The last thing they would ever want to do is upset your job satisfaction by outsourcing your entire team, division or city to an offsore center for cheaper wages and expenses.
Yes, my friends, glory in the simplicity of overwhelming demand for technical expetise and the underwhelming presence of employables.
Maybe this doesn't count, but just look at how impossible it is to get linux running on a laptop. Even if you go to a vendor that sells OSless laptops and qualifies them on a couple linux distrobutions, you'll still find that most of them have caveats... like "wireless does not work yet" and "firewire is not recognized" and a number of other things.
I really wanted a linux laptop, but I couldn't find anything affordable, powerful and complete (meaning it has drivers to support everything the laptop has).
Don't get me wrong - I'm all about linux. But a bunch of linux guys even tongue-in-cheek suggesting that windows isn't ready for the desktop is like Emanuel Lewis trying to tell Dennis Rodman he isn't ready for the NBA. Sure, Rodman is no Jordan, but he knows a hell of a lot more about the game than Emanuel Lewis.
I hate windows, but guess what? Windows detects my Apple Cinedisplay immediately and let's me set it to full resolution in a couple mouse clicks. And it has worked for the last three years.
Using three different distros, I had to manually edit the config files and screw around with LineMode's till my brain fell out and the best I could manage was to get the Cinedisplay to work. Mind you, not at full resolution. It just "worked". The problem was that on these linux desktops, the desktop was bigger than the resolution it was running at. This meant that while the screen was running in 1024x768, the desktop was at the full 1920x1600 - and you had to scroll your mouse all over the place to get to the icons or menu bas or anything.
After four days of messing around, I just quit and turned that box back into a Windows box. I really would have liked that snazzy monitor for my linux desktop system, but... meh... I prefered being able to get it work in three clicks of the mouse over four days surfing the web and configuring things in vi only to have them not work at _all_.
Um... Click the little "popup" icon in your firefox status bar that appears when a popup has been blocked. It will let you add that site to your popup whitelist.
I use multiple platforms. Linux, Solaris, JDS, WindowsXP - and using Firefox on all of them, I get popups/popunders on NONE of them. I find no problems at any site, including the advertisingly-annoying DrudgeReport.com.
The only thing I have installed is the adblock extension. I never get popups. Period. Maybe you get popups if you don't use adblock, but I don't recall seeing that, either.
I'd really love to see a list of links somewhere in this thread that have absolutely unavoidable popup/popunder ads that would demonstrate what everyone is complaining about. I suspect that most of us wouldn't suffer from them.
Where the hell are you people surfing that you keep getting popups in firefox? I've heard people on Slashdot whining about "popups in firefox" for a couple months now and yet I still NEVER get a popup. I go to game sites, porn sites, business sites and everything in between and I *NEVER* get a popup. And I spend twelve hours a day (or more) online.
No. Sorry. Some of us work for a living and actually feel obligated to perform and don't feel "right" when we're not working. Being away from work and technology stresses me out.
Yes, because a user who doesn't know how to copy the contents from their iPod is somehow savvy enough to ditch Windows Media Player in favor of Winamp.
I honestly don't think anyone cares about the booth babes. Getting a good looking chick with no self-esteem and a major attention-whore problem is easy enough for just about anyone. You don't need to go to a game convention just for that.
I think most people who run across them tend to feel more embarassed for them than anything else.
Whatever. You guys are just being uptight assholes.
Next, you're going to tell me it's wrong to coat your entire home inch by inch in vaseline and roll around naked in it.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to bombard me with all sorts of microwaves and shit, the least you can do is leave me to my vaseline coated, tinfoil abode.
Yeah, property value is important. But you know what? So is having a life. They're HOMES. They aren't rareartifacts or museums. If you're buying a house in a particular neighborhood just for investment purposes, you should quit while you're ahead, because you're not bringing anything to your neighborhood. I mean, great, you want me to buy your house... and it looks pretty.. and so does your neighborhood... but you all are so uptight and picky and honory to each other - no thanks!
What your neighbor does is their business. As long as it isn't encouraging rats to populate the are and spreading diseases from all the garbage on your lawn. What, are they afraid someone's going todie from all the heat reflected off the tinfoil?
Really, all of this "it depreciates my property value!" stuff is retarded. People like that are probably the same kind of people who don't want "them coloreds" moving onto their block for the same reason and talk in hushed tones to other old-bitty grey-haired bitches about how it used to be *cough* "such a nice neighborhood".
And why not? They have every right to do what they want with their house. Nobody is dying or being hospitalized because of their oh-so-dangerous tin-foil.
Seriously... It should not be anyone's business what they're doing to their house or property as long as it isn't a serious health risk.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. You don't see the word "shitty" on the frontpage of slashdot a lot.
Well, I checked out two or three linux-centric laptop shops before buying and both had a list for each laptop of known problems with linux on them. Some of the issues were "works, sometimes" to "doesn't work at all".
Will most laptops work with linux? Certainly. But many (maybe a majority from what I've seen) have problems like.. oh... power management... oh... wireless cars working... oh.. firewire or bluetooth not working... sometimes sound not working...
I don't want to buy a $2,500 laptop and not have everything supported by the OS I put on it. The point is that if a user has to go through hoops just to make sure their OS will work fully on a given piece of hardware, linux is not going to make it big. Even those of us who live in a mostly linux world have to admit that it's often just an incredible hassle. We don't mind it, because we now what linux has to offer. But these users that you supposedly want to convert to linux are not going to spend weeks finding the right hardware for their OS and then two days configuring their sound and video cards properly.
Well, as much as I don't care for G4, I have to say that their coverage of E3 was in-depth and quite decent.
This guy is like the punk kid who starts trash-talking his underground band as soon as they catch a break and become popular.
Oh no! Schooled by an (anonymous) math nerd! My life sucks now! Poor me!
The point is that in one operating system, you turn it on and it automatically handles the LCD without problems (the same Rob is claiming doesn't, in fact). Meanwhile, the other doesn't pick it up at all. Even if it has the monitor and card listed in it's graphical installer. Even if you manually configure it.
Maybe ubuntu works with it now or something. I wouldn't know. I just know that Debian (my distro of choice for all my servers), Gentoo and Mandrake all failed to work with it.
Some people might have days and days to spendon each part of their box, but others just want to slap them together and get to work. Until Linux can do that more predictably, it won't be ready for the desktop.
Who was complaining?
The difference is, I don't think it took four years and $2,500,000.00 for Descarte to poke a stick in the ground, watch the shadow and say "it appears that the earth is spherical!".
Thankfully, in this market, the employee should not have a problem finding job satisfaction. There is no reason you can't take a few months or years off to find that perfect job. And considering how there are so many unfilled high-paying, enjoyable jobs in this industry, any employer will be thrilled to have your interest.
Most fortunate of all, the employee has all the power as they do not have any necessary expenses and there is always an employer willing to pay more than the current offer. Employers care about your satisfaction, too. The last thing they would ever want to do is upset your job satisfaction by outsourcing your entire team, division or city to an offsore center for cheaper wages and expenses.
Yes, my friends, glory in the simplicity of overwhelming demand for technical expetise and the underwhelming presence of employables.
Maybe this doesn't count, but just look at how impossible it is to get linux running on a laptop. Even if you go to a vendor that sells OSless laptops and qualifies them on a couple linux distrobutions, you'll still find that most of them have caveats... like "wireless does not work yet" and "firewire is not recognized" and a number of other things.
I really wanted a linux laptop, but I couldn't find anything affordable, powerful and complete (meaning it has drivers to support everything the laptop has).
Don't get me wrong - I'm all about linux. But a bunch of linux guys even tongue-in-cheek suggesting that windows isn't ready for the desktop is like Emanuel Lewis trying to tell Dennis Rodman he isn't ready for the NBA. Sure, Rodman is no Jordan, but he knows a hell of a lot more about the game than Emanuel Lewis.
Wow. What dumbass moddedthat flamebait? Touchy, aren't we? I think anyone with a positive integer for an IQ score saw that it was funny.
I hate windows, but guess what? Windows detects my Apple Cinedisplay immediately and let's me set it to full resolution in a couple mouse clicks. And it has worked for the last three years.
Using three different distros, I had to manually edit the config files and screw around with LineMode's till my brain fell out and the best I could manage was to get the Cinedisplay to work. Mind you, not at full resolution. It just "worked". The problem was that on these linux desktops, the desktop was bigger than the resolution it was running at. This meant that while the screen was running in 1024x768, the desktop was at the full 1920x1600 - and you had to scroll your mouse all over the place to get to the icons or menu bas or anything.
After four days of messing around, I just quit and turned that box back into a Windows box. I really would have liked that snazzy monitor for my linux desktop system, but... meh... I prefered being able to get it work in three clicks of the mouse over four days surfing the web and configuring things in vi only to have them not work at _all_.
Um... Click the little "popup" icon in your firefox status bar that appears when a popup has been blocked. It will let you add that site to your popup whitelist.
Weird. I just clicked on your snopes link and I didn't get any popups, popunders, interstitials, regular ads or anything else.
Are you using adblock?
I use multiple platforms. Linux, Solaris, JDS, WindowsXP - and using Firefox on all of them, I get popups/popunders on NONE of them. I find no problems at any site, including the advertisingly-annoying DrudgeReport.com.
The only thing I have installed is the adblock extension. I never get popups. Period. Maybe you get popups if you don't use adblock, but I don't recall seeing that, either.
I'd really love to see a list of links somewhere in this thread that have absolutely unavoidable popup/popunder ads that would demonstrate what everyone is complaining about. I suspect that most of us wouldn't suffer from them.
Where the hell are you people surfing that you keep getting popups in firefox? I've heard people on Slashdot whining about "popups in firefox" for a couple months now and yet I still NEVER get a popup. I go to game sites, porn sites, business sites and everything in between and I *NEVER* get a popup. And I spend twelve hours a day (or more) online.
No. Sorry. Some of us work for a living and actually feel obligated to perform and don't feel "right" when we're not working. Being away from work and technology stresses me out.
Oh, you bastards.
You know not what danger you reap with your actions. The force is strong in me and I shall have my revenge.
Yeah, same here - only I kept getting marked as flamebait!
Originary?!
Yes, because a user who doesn't know how to copy the contents from their iPod is somehow savvy enough to ditch Windows Media Player in favor of Winamp.
I honestly don't think anyone cares about the booth babes. Getting a good looking chick with no self-esteem and a major attention-whore problem is easy enough for just about anyone. You don't need to go to a game convention just for that.
I think most people who run across them tend to feel more embarassed for them than anything else.
Whatever. You guys are just being uptight assholes.
Next, you're going to tell me it's wrong to coat your entire home inch by inch in vaseline and roll around naked in it.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to bombard me with all sorts of microwaves and shit, the least you can do is leave me to my vaseline coated, tinfoil abode.
Yeah, property value is important. But you know what? So is having a life. They're HOMES. They aren't rareartifacts or museums. If you're buying a house in a particular neighborhood just for investment purposes, you should quit while you're ahead, because you're not bringing anything to your neighborhood. I mean, great, you want me to buy your house... and it looks pretty.. and so does your neighborhood... but you all are so uptight and picky and honory to each other - no thanks!
So?
What your neighbor does is their business. As long as it isn't encouraging rats to populate the are and spreading diseases from all the garbage on your lawn. What, are they afraid someone's going todie from all the heat reflected off the tinfoil?
Really, all of this "it depreciates my property value!" stuff is retarded. People like that are probably the same kind of people who don't want "them coloreds" moving onto their block for the same reason and talk in hushed tones to other old-bitty grey-haired bitches about how it used to be *cough* "such a nice neighborhood".
And why not? They have every right to do what they want with their house. Nobody is dying or being hospitalized because of their oh-so-dangerous tin-foil.
Seriously... It should not be anyone's business what they're doing to their house or property as long as it isn't a serious health risk.