Thanks for the book recommend. I've read about half of it since I saw your post yesterday, and it's amazing how much the experiences detailed in the parallel my own. I just graduated with a CS degree, though I nearly didn't (dropped out for a couple semesters). I think it might have been easier if I had known that other women went through the same things in CS that I was. Thanks again for linking to it.
I don't know how many women fit into this mold you've described and how many don't, but if you know that there are women who find it frustrating and limiting, then why do you keep pushing out your stereotype?
My problem with your comments is that you paint with a too broad of a brush. You'll say something about women, and then if someone disagrees with you, we're execptions, we're different, we're not like most women. Then, because I guess you like putting people into boxes, you decide that all of us who are "different" fit in the same different category. "SlashChick and Elley and others girls of the same mindset..." SlashChick and I aren't of the same mindset. We share the idea that women should be able to do things besides be a housewife, but that's not a mindset. From what I can tell, she's a ambitious business owner, while I like the stability of working for someone else. I'm sure there's other differences (and simularities) between us, but it's hard to tell on a message board.
Even if your molds did fit me, I would still take offense to you categorizing women as a whole like you do. For an example, I'm sure you can guess that I like cats based on my screen name. If it was my birthday and you bought me a stuffed cat because of that, I would be happy. However, if you ignored my screenname and gave me a cat because "girls like cats" then I would be confused and offended. Why? Because you gave the cat to a stereotype, ignoring me as an individual. I want people to take me for who I am, not what people think I should be.
I've never disrepected women who want to be housewives or said anything about what they should teach their children. I'm not sure how you got that from my previous posts. I've repeatedly said that if women want to be housewives that's great as long as they aren't forced to be. I guess you've suddenly confused me for some feminist stereotype you have, or maybe you're confusing me with SlashChick or someone. Kill your stereotypes about feminists and women, seperate out what other posters have said, and then reread my posts thinking of me as an individual and not some feminist archetype, because we can't debate if you're speaking to a stereotype or another poster instead of me.
Have you ever wondered why you never ever hear of men complaining about how they hate that the male gender is stereotyped as "preferring to lead" or "better at hard physical labor" or "insensitive" or "more likely to commit crime" or "not as good with kids" or "better at technical things"? The list of male stereotypes is 5 times as long as the one for women. But why don't we complain?
Many of the stereotypes about men are positive. They're stronger, better leaders, smarter, better with technology, and they don't have to change dirty diapers. The positive stereotypes well outweigh the few negative ones.
Stereotypes about women are terrible. We need men to take care of us, manage our finances, move heavy things, fix our computers, fix our houses, and fix just about everything else in our lives. We're incomprehensible, flighty, irresponsible, and stupid. Our good qualities? We're nice. And pretty. Unless we're not nice and pretty, then we're worthless.
You really wonder why women are the ones who complain about stereotypes?
We do not try to change the world's mind to realize that each man is unique. Men ignore and work around these stereotypes. Maybe women should give that a try. Talking and discussing and educating hasn't gotten women where they want to be.
You're missing the point. I don't want you to just just say women are unique. I want women to be able to whatever they uniquely want to do, whether it's be a CEO, programmer, artist, or yes, even a stay-at-home mom, but only if she chooses it, not if she lands in it by default. I'd say that "talking and discussing and educating" and everything else we've done has gotten us pretty damn far.
"Things haven't really changed where it counts." Time for a fresh approach. Don't ya think?
Things have changed where it counts. Women have made huge strides since the '50s or even the '70s or any other time you'd like to measure from. In the '50s (and many periods before that) women were expected to surpress themselves and live through their husband and children. My grandmother was a housewife in the '50s, and she nearly killed herself because her personality was too strong to repress. Even housewives today don't have it that bad, because their work is finally viewed as *important* because of the work of the feminists of the '50s and '60s. Before then, it was just viewed as women's work, and vastely underrated.
Feminism hasn't been the perfect path to utopia. It changed the social structure and many people, raised with the idea of society in a certain way, had no idea how to exist with the new norms. My mother screwed up her career and her finances into a complete mess because she was raised thinking she'd have a man to take care of everything and didn't know what to do when she didn't. Other women burned themselves out, thinking they could have the perfect career and be perfect supermoms. Many men have had problems adjusting to doing more housework, or their wives making more than them or circumstances requiring him to be the stay-at-home parent while she's the breadwinner. However, my generation has less of those problems and the generation after us will have less. We've seen the mistakes of our parents, and will learn from them as we recreate societal rules based on equality, not tradition.
So no, I don't think it's time for a fresh approach. I think this approach is working just fine.:)
According to Webster's, a stereotype is "to repeat without variation".
The FreeDictionary is a little more specific: 1)A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image. B
2. One that is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.
Stereotypes are more rigid than generalities, and don't come from actual facts. It's logical that workers who always do their work at their desktop do not need laptops. It's not logical, however, to randomly decide that 50% of the world's population have certain specific personality traits. The stereotype that women want to be led will be entirely unhelpful to a manager as soon as he hires a women who doesn't want her boss to micromanage and make her todo list for her (I'ld fine that annoying real fast) or hires a man who prefers step-by-step instructions. It would be much more helpful for a manager to go into it with the idea that different people prefer different management styles, and ask his/her employees what they like, rather than treat people based solely on their genders.
No. Actual statistics can be useful, for instance a study showing that 90% of stay-at-home parents are female or that 80% of computer science students are male would be useful for showing societal trends. However, without facts, you're just coughing up bullshit. And no, no matter how much your wife and your sister and your mom and every other women you know like being stay-at-home moms, it does not mean that every women wants to be a stay-at-home mom and be led around by some guy.
A stereotype isn't something you say about an individual, based on specific information from that person's blogs or whatever. A stereotype is a broad generalization about a group of people. While it may be helpful to know specific things about an individual when meeting them, it would *not* be helpful to think of general stereotypes of women when meeting a woman. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be around people who think of me as a stereotype and assume stupid things about me, like I like babies or don't like computers, that are totally false. I *hate* it when I go into computer stores with my husband, and the salespeople all talk to him, even though he has no idea what they're talking about. That is *not* helpful.
Stereotypes wind up being self-fulfilling prophecies. If a women hears her whole life that all she'll ever want is to be a mother, is it any surprise when she becomes a stay-at-home mom? Of course, in that situation, is it *her* choice, or is it society's? If we want people to have freedom of choice, we need to get rid of the stereotypes.
Sure, you can make generalities about people, but individuals are not generalities. I do not want to be a housewife. Many women do, and I'm glad they have the option to be, but I'm also glad that me and all the other women who don't want to don't have to.
I never said that everyone needs to climb the corporate ladder. What I'm saying is that people shouldn't be limited to rigid, gender-defined roles. I would be terrible at being a housewife, and I have no interest in being one, so I'm glad that I have the opportunity to not be one. My husband is good with children, and when we have children of our own we might decide that he should be a stay-at-home parent. I'm glad he'll have that opportunity.
I'm not against men or women being stay-at-home parents, or corporate-climbers, or artists, or whatever they want to be. What I'm for is the choice of everyone to do what they want.
Some women just don't like being housewives, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity to be what I want to be, not a predefined role based on my gender. My best friend's dad is a stay-at-home parent, and I'm glad their family had the opportunity to choose what they do based on what was best for their family instead of following rigid gender roles.
Limiting women solely to the housewife role also shortchanges children. My mother was raised to believe that housewife was the only role for her, but life didn't let her have that role, and she's had a terrible time with finances and everything else she was told that she'd have a husband to take care of. Some girls want to be housewives when they grow up, but some have greater interests in science or technology or other things besides the home. Telling them that their only option is to be a housewife stifles them. It also stifles boys who like children and who are good at cooking and cleaning to tell them they can't. Children should be taught that they can do anything they want.
Here's a radical concept: all women are *not* the same. Not all women like to be led. Some like to lead. Some enjoy their jobs. Some don't like children. Some like children, but would be terrible stay-at-home moms. Some husbands are better at being stay-at-home parents than their wives. Sometimes both husband and wife work, not because they have to, but because they both like working.
>>Writing another report for the CFO is not important. Having and raising children is. Plus it's more fun and fulfilling.
So I imagine you're a stay-at-home dad then (assuming you're male by your screenname)? Or is "fun and fulfilling" work not good enough for men?
Women can still easily choose to be a housewife. When a (hetero) couple has a child, it's still expected that she that she'll quit her job and stay home with the child. Working mothers are still frowned upon.
As a woman I have never, ever, doubted that I could be a housewife if I wanted to be. Facing discrimination in school and in the workplace is much more of a concern.
I totally agree that girls need to learn technology when they're young if they're ever going to get insto it. A person pushed into IT in their high school or college years can learn the basics, but she's never going to have the passion for it that will really make her successful and happy in that career. I got my first computer when I was 6 years old, and I love technology. Most girls aren't exposed to technology that young (or worse, their brothers are and they aren't - grrr) but it would get a lot more of them into IT later on if they were.
I wouldn't be surprised if more people used Linux than Mac. I only know one person who owns a Mac, yet I know tons of people who use Linux (and not all of them are geeks, either).
What about printers? Do the cheap color printers you can buy at any electronics store for windows machines work with Linux yet? How about scanners?
I can't speak for all printers and scanners, but the cheap printer that came for free with my "made for XP" computer works fine with Linux, and so does the scanner my husband found on a bus. It doesn't take as much effort to find Linux compatible printers and scanners as you're making it out to be.
One benefit to.pdf is that it will look the same in anyone's viewer, whether Evince or Foxit or Acrobat. A.doc will look different viewed in OOo or Abi or even in different versions of MS Word.
Anyways, if you don't care about that benefit, and would likely only use.pdf if it's in MS Office, then you're not a customer of Adobe and they really don't care. There's enough.pdfs floating around without MS Office support that Adobe doesn't have to worry about demand. What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make.pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their.pdf maker? You wouldn't buy it anyways, so you don't count, but what about the people who would?
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use.pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft. It's obvious why they're doing it, and if they're successful I hope it helps OOo, but I think it's shitty.
Have to agree with the parent. Until Linux can get these to "just work" as well as Microsoft Linux ain't happening on the desktop:
- Printing
- Audio
- Movie players
I've never had a problem with any of the above on Linux. Linspire, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, and plenty of other "n00b" distros come with all the proprietary codecs for those who don't want to mess with installing them. In fact, even though my main distro of choice (Ubuntu) doesn't come with proprietary codecs, I spent less time and hassle installing codecs on my Ubuntu box than my husband has one his Windows box. For me, I downloaded EasyUbuntu and clicked some checkboxes, and all media works on my computer. For my husband, he's had to download several players (Quicktime, Realplayer, Divx) - indiviually, no one-stop checkboxing - and now he still gets the occasional error "missing codec" and then has to go and search the net and manually install it.
- Device drivers for every device
Linux has made great strides in this department. My computers had all their hardware recognized immediately. Not all hardware is auto-recognized, but anymore it's likely that any random desktop will have most, if not all, it's hardware automatically recognized, in my experience, anyways.
- Games, Games, Games - Application, Applications, Applications
These are really up to opinion. My mom is jealous of all the puzzle games I have for free on my Linux box that she paid $20 to put on Windows. A lot of people I know play more games on game consoles then their computers (other than simple puzzle games like Linux has) so they wouldn't be affected at all by the lack of games. As for applications, personally I'm happier with the Linux applications I have on my home computer than with the Windows applications on my work computer. I had to copy some CDs recently at work and I couldn't find a half decent free burner for Windows, so I wound up taking them home and burning them. I really miss Bluefish for HTML editing when I'm at work. Sure, there's programs for Windows that aren't for Linux (my husband won't switch because of AutoCad) but there's also a number of programs that aren't available on Mac and no one says "Mac ain't happening on the desktop".
This is why, even though I'm liberal, I never call myself democrat. Sometimes they sound sane, but that's only because they are being compared to the republicans.
I hate seeing movies in theaters. Sticky floors, cramped seats, people talking, people standing up in front of you, stupid "please don't pirate this movie" ads (uh, obviously I didn't prirate this movie since I'm here). I have air conditioning at home, I don't need to go to the theater for that.
Downloaded movies usually have pretty decent quality, and I've got a nice monitor and a computer chair more comfortable than any chairs I've seen in theaters (I also have a computer by my bed if I want to stretch out while watching) so I really prefer watching from home rather than go out.
It's not that I'm a cheapskate, it's just that downloading is just so much more convienent. In fact, most of what I download I could legally watch for free, because it's broadcast TV shows (Veronica Mars, Lost, etc), I just find it easier to find it on Pirate Bay or IsoHunt than remember to set the VCR. ABC appearently has it's shows online, but they use Flash 8 which isn't available for Linux so I can't watch on their site. iTunes is another option for watching legit movies/tv shows, but they're not for Linux either. So, until I find legit options for watching videos (that doesn't involve waiting a year for the DVD to come out - which technically isn't legit anyways since I don't have liscensed DVD players on my computers) I'll be sticking to the illegal options.
i read the review posted under vista yesterday. it appears easy if you know all the commands. (like on windows and finding icons) my eyes glazed over when i read a bunch of small text, sudo apt-get... it feels like i just have to *know* the name of an app when i want to upgrade something. at least with icons i can search around until i find what i need.
Some people prefer apt-get, but there's graphical programs to do the same things. To add programs, just go to Applications->System Tools->Add Programs. It's a simple gui with categories on the right, programs on the left, and a search box. If you want a less simple gui with a better search, click the Advanced button and it opens up Synaptic. When programs want to update/upgrade themselves, a little orange icon appears in the panel (kinda like Windows Update) and you click it and they update (you can turn off notifications if they annoy you, and you can just open Synaptic and click the Update button to update).
Most things in Ubuntu have a graphical way to do them, though occasionally there are things that do require the command line, but you can usually find a web site that will tell you what to do and then it's just copy and paste. If you're really command-line adverse, however, I recommend Mepis. The new version is supposed to come out June 18th. It's got good hardware support, comes enabled with mp3, dvd, etc support so you don't have to mess with that, and it's based off Ubuntu. Try the live cd and see if you like it.
Which games are holding you back? A lot of games are either made for Linux or will run with Wine or Cedega. Here's Cedega's game database, you should see if your games are supported.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the book recommend. I've read about half of it since I saw your post yesterday, and it's amazing how much the experiences detailed in the parallel my own. I just graduated with a CS degree, though I nearly didn't (dropped out for a couple semesters). I think it might have been easier if I had known that other women went through the same things in CS that I was. Thanks again for linking to it.
I don't know how many women fit into this mold you've described and how many don't, but if you know that there are women who find it frustrating and limiting, then why do you keep pushing out your stereotype?
My problem with your comments is that you paint with a too broad of a brush. You'll say something about women, and then if someone disagrees with you, we're execptions, we're different, we're not like most women. Then, because I guess you like putting people into boxes, you decide that all of us who are "different" fit in the same different category. "SlashChick and Elley and others girls of the same mindset..." SlashChick and I aren't of the same mindset. We share the idea that women should be able to do things besides be a housewife, but that's not a mindset. From what I can tell, she's a ambitious business owner, while I like the stability of working for someone else. I'm sure there's other differences (and simularities) between us, but it's hard to tell on a message board.
Even if your molds did fit me, I would still take offense to you categorizing women as a whole like you do. For an example, I'm sure you can guess that I like cats based on my screen name. If it was my birthday and you bought me a stuffed cat because of that, I would be happy. However, if you ignored my screenname and gave me a cat because "girls like cats" then I would be confused and offended. Why? Because you gave the cat to a stereotype, ignoring me as an individual. I want people to take me for who I am, not what people think I should be.
I've never disrepected women who want to be housewives or said anything about what they should teach their children. I'm not sure how you got that from my previous posts. I've repeatedly said that if women want to be housewives that's great as long as they aren't forced to be. I guess you've suddenly confused me for some feminist stereotype you have, or maybe you're confusing me with SlashChick or someone. Kill your stereotypes about feminists and women, seperate out what other posters have said, and then reread my posts thinking of me as an individual and not some feminist archetype, because we can't debate if you're speaking to a stereotype or another poster instead of me.
Have you ever wondered why you never ever hear of men complaining about how they hate that the male gender is stereotyped as "preferring to lead" or "better at hard physical labor" or "insensitive" or "more likely to commit crime" or "not as good with kids" or "better at technical things"? The list of male stereotypes is 5 times as long as the one for women. But why don't we complain?
:)
Many of the stereotypes about men are positive. They're stronger, better leaders, smarter, better with technology, and they don't have to change dirty diapers. The positive stereotypes well outweigh the few negative ones.
Stereotypes about women are terrible. We need men to take care of us, manage our finances, move heavy things, fix our computers, fix our houses, and fix just about everything else in our lives. We're incomprehensible, flighty, irresponsible, and stupid. Our good qualities? We're nice. And pretty. Unless we're not nice and pretty, then we're worthless.
You really wonder why women are the ones who complain about stereotypes?
We do not try to change the world's mind to realize that each man is unique. Men ignore and work around these stereotypes. Maybe women should give that a try. Talking and discussing and educating hasn't gotten women where they want to be.
You're missing the point. I don't want you to just just say women are unique. I want women to be able to whatever they uniquely want to do, whether it's be a CEO, programmer, artist, or yes, even a stay-at-home mom, but only if she chooses it, not if she lands in it by default. I'd say that "talking and discussing and educating" and everything else we've done has gotten us pretty damn far.
"Things haven't really changed where it counts." Time for a fresh approach. Don't ya think?
Things have changed where it counts. Women have made huge strides since the '50s or even the '70s or any other time you'd like to measure from. In the '50s (and many periods before that) women were expected to surpress themselves and live through their husband and children. My grandmother was a housewife in the '50s, and she nearly killed herself because her personality was too strong to repress. Even housewives today don't have it that bad, because their work is finally viewed as *important* because of the work of the feminists of the '50s and '60s. Before then, it was just viewed as women's work, and vastely underrated.
Feminism hasn't been the perfect path to utopia. It changed the social structure and many people, raised with the idea of society in a certain way, had no idea how to exist with the new norms. My mother screwed up her career and her finances into a complete mess because she was raised thinking she'd have a man to take care of everything and didn't know what to do when she didn't. Other women burned themselves out, thinking they could have the perfect career and be perfect supermoms. Many men have had problems adjusting to doing more housework, or their wives making more than them or circumstances requiring him to be the stay-at-home parent while she's the breadwinner. However, my generation has less of those problems and the generation after us will have less. We've seen the mistakes of our parents, and will learn from them as we recreate societal rules based on equality, not tradition.
So no, I don't think it's time for a fresh approach. I think this approach is working just fine.
Most of those are generalities, not stereotypes.
According to Webster's, a stereotype is "to repeat without variation".
The FreeDictionary is a little more specific:
1)A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.
B 2. One that is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.
Stereotypes are more rigid than generalities, and don't come from actual facts. It's logical that workers who always do their work at their desktop do not need laptops. It's not logical, however, to randomly decide that 50% of the world's population have certain specific personality traits. The stereotype that women want to be led will be entirely unhelpful to a manager as soon as he hires a women who doesn't want her boss to micromanage and make her todo list for her (I'ld fine that annoying real fast) or hires a man who prefers step-by-step instructions. It would be much more helpful for a manager to go into it with the idea that different people prefer different management styles, and ask his/her employees what they like, rather than treat people based solely on their genders.
No. Actual statistics can be useful, for instance a study showing that 90% of stay-at-home parents are female or that 80% of computer science students are male would be useful for showing societal trends. However, without facts, you're just coughing up bullshit. And no, no matter how much your wife and your sister and your mom and every other women you know like being stay-at-home moms, it does not mean that every women wants to be a stay-at-home mom and be led around by some guy.
There's always adoption, too.
A stereotype isn't something you say about an individual, based on specific information from that person's blogs or whatever. A stereotype is a broad generalization about a group of people. While it may be helpful to know specific things about an individual when meeting them, it would *not* be helpful to think of general stereotypes of women when meeting a woman. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be around people who think of me as a stereotype and assume stupid things about me, like I like babies or don't like computers, that are totally false. I *hate* it when I go into computer stores with my husband, and the salespeople all talk to him, even though he has no idea what they're talking about. That is *not* helpful.
Stereotypes wind up being self-fulfilling prophecies. If a women hears her whole life that all she'll ever want is to be a mother, is it any surprise when she becomes a stay-at-home mom? Of course, in that situation, is it *her* choice, or is it society's? If we want people to have freedom of choice, we need to get rid of the stereotypes.
That's one of the best arguments I've heard for diversity (at least for a geek audience). Kudos.
Sure, you can make generalities about people, but individuals are not generalities. I do not want to be a housewife. Many women do, and I'm glad they have the option to be, but I'm also glad that me and all the other women who don't want to don't have to.
I never said that everyone needs to climb the corporate ladder. What I'm saying is that people shouldn't be limited to rigid, gender-defined roles. I would be terrible at being a housewife, and I have no interest in being one, so I'm glad that I have the opportunity to not be one. My husband is good with children, and when we have children of our own we might decide that he should be a stay-at-home parent. I'm glad he'll have that opportunity.
I'm not against men or women being stay-at-home parents, or corporate-climbers, or artists, or whatever they want to be. What I'm for is the choice of everyone to do what they want.
So murder is "safe" but we must be protected from cumshots?
Yeah, it's hard to even feign surprise, but dammit, things are fucked up.
Some women just don't like being housewives, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity to be what I want to be, not a predefined role based on my gender. My best friend's dad is a stay-at-home parent, and I'm glad their family had the opportunity to choose what they do based on what was best for their family instead of following rigid gender roles.
Limiting women solely to the housewife role also shortchanges children. My mother was raised to believe that housewife was the only role for her, but life didn't let her have that role, and she's had a terrible time with finances and everything else she was told that she'd have a husband to take care of. Some girls want to be housewives when they grow up, but some have greater interests in science or technology or other things besides the home. Telling them that their only option is to be a housewife stifles them. It also stifles boys who like children and who are good at cooking and cleaning to tell them they can't. Children should be taught that they can do anything they want.
*cough*
Here's a radical concept: all women are *not* the same. Not all women like to be led. Some like to lead. Some enjoy their jobs. Some don't like children. Some like children, but would be terrible stay-at-home moms. Some husbands are better at being stay-at-home parents than their wives. Sometimes both husband and wife work, not because they have to, but because they both like working.
>>Writing another report for the CFO is not important. Having and raising children is. Plus it's more fun and fulfilling.
So I imagine you're a stay-at-home dad then (assuming you're male by your screenname)? Or is "fun and fulfilling" work not good enough for men?
Women can still easily choose to be a housewife. When a (hetero) couple has a child, it's still expected that she that she'll quit her job and stay home with the child. Working mothers are still frowned upon.
As a woman I have never, ever, doubted that I could be a housewife if I wanted to be. Facing discrimination in school and in the workplace is much more of a concern.
I totally agree that girls need to learn technology when they're young if they're ever going to get insto it. A person pushed into IT in their high school or college years can learn the basics, but she's never going to have the passion for it that will really make her successful and happy in that career. I got my first computer when I was 6 years old, and I love technology. Most girls aren't exposed to technology that young (or worse, their brothers are and they aren't - grrr) but it would get a lot more of them into IT later on if they were.
I wouldn't be surprised if more people used Linux than Mac. I only know one person who owns a Mac, yet I know tons of people who use Linux (and not all of them are geeks, either).
What about printers? Do the cheap color printers you can buy at any electronics store for windows machines work with Linux yet? How about scanners?
I can't speak for all printers and scanners, but the cheap printer that came for free with my "made for XP" computer works fine with Linux, and so does the scanner my husband found on a bus. It doesn't take as much effort to find Linux compatible printers and scanners as you're making it out to be.
One benefit to .pdf is that it will look the same in anyone's viewer, whether Evince or Foxit or Acrobat. A .doc will look different viewed in OOo or Abi or even in different versions of MS Word.
.pdf if it's in MS Office, then you're not a customer of Adobe and they really don't care. There's enough .pdfs floating around without MS Office support that Adobe doesn't have to worry about demand. What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make .pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their .pdf maker? You wouldn't buy it anyways, so you don't count, but what about the people who would?
.pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft. It's obvious why they're doing it, and if they're successful I hope it helps OOo, but I think it's shitty.
Anyways, if you don't care about that benefit, and would likely only use
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use
Have to agree with the parent. Until Linux can get these to "just work" as well as Microsoft Linux ain't happening on the desktop:
- Printing
- Audio
- Movie players
I've never had a problem with any of the above on Linux. Linspire, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, and plenty of other "n00b" distros come with all the proprietary codecs for those who don't want to mess with installing them. In fact, even though my main distro of choice (Ubuntu) doesn't come with proprietary codecs, I spent less time and hassle installing codecs on my Ubuntu box than my husband has one his Windows box. For me, I downloaded EasyUbuntu and clicked some checkboxes, and all media works on my computer. For my husband, he's had to download several players (Quicktime, Realplayer, Divx) - indiviually, no one-stop checkboxing - and now he still gets the occasional error "missing codec" and then has to go and search the net and manually install it.
- Device drivers for every device
Linux has made great strides in this department. My computers had all their hardware recognized immediately. Not all hardware is auto-recognized, but anymore it's likely that any random desktop will have most, if not all, it's hardware automatically recognized, in my experience, anyways.
- Games, Games, Games
- Application, Applications, Applications
These are really up to opinion. My mom is jealous of all the puzzle games I have for free on my Linux box that she paid $20 to put on Windows. A lot of people I know play more games on game consoles then their computers (other than simple puzzle games like Linux has) so they wouldn't be affected at all by the lack of games. As for applications, personally I'm happier with the Linux applications I have on my home computer than with the Windows applications on my work computer. I had to copy some CDs recently at work and I couldn't find a half decent free burner for Windows, so I wound up taking them home and burning them. I really miss Bluefish for HTML editing when I'm at work. Sure, there's programs for Windows that aren't for Linux (my husband won't switch because of AutoCad) but there's also a number of programs that aren't available on Mac and no one says "Mac ain't happening on the desktop".
Five of them are sponsored by Democrats.
This is why, even though I'm liberal, I never call myself democrat. Sometimes they sound sane, but that's only because they are being compared to the republicans.
I hate seeing movies in theaters. Sticky floors, cramped seats, people talking, people standing up in front of you, stupid "please don't pirate this movie" ads (uh, obviously I didn't prirate this movie since I'm here). I have air conditioning at home, I don't need to go to the theater for that.
Downloaded movies usually have pretty decent quality, and I've got a nice monitor and a computer chair more comfortable than any chairs I've seen in theaters (I also have a computer by my bed if I want to stretch out while watching) so I really prefer watching from home rather than go out.
It's not that I'm a cheapskate, it's just that downloading is just so much more convienent. In fact, most of what I download I could legally watch for free, because it's broadcast TV shows (Veronica Mars, Lost, etc), I just find it easier to find it on Pirate Bay or IsoHunt than remember to set the VCR. ABC appearently has it's shows online, but they use Flash 8 which isn't available for Linux so I can't watch on their site. iTunes is another option for watching legit movies/tv shows, but they're not for Linux either. So, until I find legit options for watching videos (that doesn't involve waiting a year for the DVD to come out - which technically isn't legit anyways since I don't have liscensed DVD players on my computers) I'll be sticking to the illegal options.
i read the review posted under vista yesterday. it appears easy if you know all the commands. (like on windows and finding icons) my eyes glazed over when i read a bunch of small text, sudo apt-get... it feels like i just have to *know* the name of an app when i want to upgrade something. at least with icons i can search around until i find what i need.
Some people prefer apt-get, but there's graphical programs to do the same things. To add programs, just go to Applications->System Tools->Add Programs. It's a simple gui with categories on the right, programs on the left, and a search box. If you want a less simple gui with a better search, click the Advanced button and it opens up Synaptic. When programs want to update/upgrade themselves, a little orange icon appears in the panel (kinda like Windows Update) and you click it and they update (you can turn off notifications if they annoy you, and you can just open Synaptic and click the Update button to update).
Most things in Ubuntu have a graphical way to do them, though occasionally there are things that do require the command line, but you can usually find a web site that will tell you what to do and then it's just copy and paste. If you're really command-line adverse, however, I recommend Mepis. The new version is supposed to come out June 18th. It's got good hardware support, comes enabled with mp3, dvd, etc support so you don't have to mess with that, and it's based off Ubuntu. Try the live cd and see if you like it.
GNU/Linux needs closed software like it needs an NT kernel and a web browser called Internet Explorer.
Exactly. I want free and open software to go with my free and open OS.
Which games are holding you back? A lot of games are either made for Linux or will run with Wine or Cedega. Here's Cedega's game database, you should see if your games are supported.