There are several software packages the Canadian government recommends for personal filers that are free and emit the standard file needed for electronic filing.
I guess it depends on where you live. Is there any counterpart for the United States, both federal and the 50 states? All the "free file" options I've seen are SaaSS, free only as in beer. I can see no way a single free software project (as defined by FSF) could stay up to date with every amendment to every individual or small business income tax law in every city, county, state/province/region, and sovereign country on the planet.
Linux Advocate Suggests Using More Closed-Source Software
I've had no problem getting Linux installed and ruuning on recent computers. Just have to enable "legacy boot". Most recent was a Acer Touch screen laptop that had W8.1 on it.
Perhaps it depends on how big the laptops are. Laptops and convertibles with an Atom Bay Trail processor tend to fare poorly, such as the T100TA on which sleep, backlight brightness, camera, and Bluetooth are broken. Furthermore, you have to plan ahead and download firmware-brcm80211before you wipe the drive so that you can set up Wi-Fi and audio.
A 2-hour setup is fine if you have no projects to restore or if their primary working copies are stored on a NAS box. Restoring a multi-hundred-gigabyte/home from offline backup might take longer.
Many people bought computers before they decided to try Linux.
And what do I do at my home? Make damn sure it will print out from my home Linux computer, be it a printer or a lawn mower, or I'm not gonna buy it.
Where does this leave people who are switching from Windows to Linux but already own a printer? They'd either have to replace the printer before it stops working or wait to switch from Windows to Linux until the printer breaks.
All the coolest movies you've watched had CGI done on open source.
Unless they're machinima, in which case all the CGI is done on closed source.
Besides, after the CGI is rendered, closed-source software called "DRM" is used to stream it to the end user's computer in order to prevent the user from teeing the video into an unencrypted file to keep the stream past the agreed rental period.
unless you want to share printers and files in network
Your Linux box can share files through FTP, NFS, CIFS (via Samba), BitTorrent, or any of several other free services. If you're willing to run proprietary apps on a free OS, you can also use Dropbox. As for printers, a Mac or Linux box running CUPS can share them with any other Mac or Linux box running CUPS.
unless you want to open a docx file someone sent you
LibreOffice Writer has opened every.docx I've thrown at it, but I admit that my work flows have not included mailing a file back and forth several round trips for revisions.
unless you want to fill PDF forms
In this comment, another user reported success using recent versions of the free Evince or Okular to fill in PDF forms in a manner that Adobe Reader can read.
unless you want to use samsung / brother / canon / not HP printers
Any PostScript printer should work fine.
unless you want to scan images
As you pointed out, HP printers work wonderfully. And so do HP scanners. This is why I've made a point of recommending HP to friends and family members: if someone's printer is an HP network printer, I can print from Xubuntu on my laptop.
unless you want to extract images from smart phones unless you want to transfer files to smart phones
Say what? I've connected my aunt's iPhone to my Xubuntu laptop and was able to see the files. As for Android, modern versions of gvfs can mount MTP over USB, but I usually use the FTP server in Cheetah Mobile's file manager to move files on and off my tablet's internal storage.
I've downloaded and burned Ubuntu cds for two people who don't know how to do that themselves not too long ago, because they for some reason decided to try Linux and asked me how to do it. Both installed Ubuntu without anyone present to hold their hands
How long ago was this? Were the PCs made before the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, when Microsoft started requiring manufacturers of new PCs and desktop PC motherboards to default to Secure Boot with Microsoft's keys?
and got their email and printers to work without needing to ask me more than two or three simple questions over the phone.
True, setting up a mail user agent is similar no matter the OS. Some printers and scanners do work out of the box, but those are more hit-or-miss, especially if the printer isn't PostScript and/or the manufacturer isn't as cooperative as HP.
Wikipedia's article about Plan 9 claims that Alcatel-Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) has released the Plan 9 operating system under GPLv2 and Lucent Public License. Both are free software licenses, though FSF believes that the LPL's choice of law clause is problematic.
If games cannot be made free software, some people would prefer to keep the development and production environments and the games environment completely segregated. The former environments would run all free software, while the games environment would be a PlayStation 4 console.
We want freedom to enjoy our apps as per the freedoms of open source software. Sure, we COULD have MOARE apps. If they're closed-source or blobs we don't want them.
Free software is distinguished by the end user having the right and ability to make and share improvement to the software. It works well for libraries and for applications used by businesses, which can afford to hire someone to improve the software and contribute improvements back upstream. But there still exist several categories of software for which a viable free software business model has not yet been demonstrated. How would high-production-value video games, software for playing rented (as opposed to purchased) movies, and annual updates to tax return preparation software to reflect amended tax codes be developed under a free software model?
there were a lot of people who would not seriously seek or accept work at lower wages, work multiple part-time jobs
And many did. For a lot of people, two 20 hour per week jobs at $7.25 per hour would not pay the household's recurring costs. This is where the "raise minimum wage" stuff came from: people who settled for a lower wage job found that a lower wage job was not enough to support a household.
Local storage requires JavaScript. Users can block JavaScript from running, and proxies running on corporate networks can block JavaScript files from being retrieved.
I'm not sure what 'non-free' script means
The Free Software Foundation has released a browser extension called LibreJS that causes JavaScript not to run at all unless it can be identified as having been released under a free software license. But because you weren't aware of it, I'll try again with a related question:
How does the page save the state if the user or the user's network is blocking JavaScript as a security measure?
Though laptop PCs rarely have three-button trackpads, Ctrl+click usually opens a link's target in a new tab. But either way, that's still unrelated to the problem of an accidental left-click removing the focus from a textarea.
With all the fervor over Windows 10, there's still Windows options to reduce or turn off telemetry off (in some versions).
Only Windows 10 Enterprise, which most users are unlikely to have, includes anything resembling an "off" setting. The minimum setting on Home and Pro is "basic", which lets Microsoft see all installed applications, all installed device drivers, and the IMEI of your laptop's aircard if any. It may sound innocuous, but in some cases, the presence of a particular application or driver on a computer may incriminate a user if some big company decides to go on a fishing expedition and subpoena Microsoft for this data. An example of such an application is a video game console emulator. An example of such a driver is the driver for a video game cartridge reader (such as Kazzo) or for a capture card that happens not to enforce all of HDCP. These have noninfringing and infringing uses, but good luck affording to prove your noninfringement in a court of law.
Google's been doing this forever, making billions for it, and there's no escaping it.
One can block all Google-owned domains in a DNS resolver on localhost. (A hosts file alone can't do it because the hosts file format doesn't support wildcards.) Windows 10, on the other hand, includes a separate DNS resolver used just for updates and telemetry.
AddThis ostensibly exists to make it convenient for a website's viewers who are also members of social media sites to share URLs of HTML documents with their followers. Unless a particular social media site offers a keyless intent API, such as Twitter's Web Intents, the alternative is for each website publisher to maintain contractual relationships with a dozen or more different sites to get API keys and add their individual button codes, and not every publisher wants to spend time on that.
if you don't own a domain, you can't track people on it, unless it's something like an OAuth login.
Loophole: Google could encourage website operators to add "[G+] Sign in with Google" and "[+1] Share on Google" buttons in order to claim that the tracking is to more strongly authenticate users of the OAuth-based OpenID Connect protocol.
The very premise of the Internet is that it is a network of PEERS
In practice, three factors killed this premise:
Dial-up networking
The characteristics of Internet access over POTS and ISDN encouraged users to connect only when viewing documents or when posting them to a better-connected server.
Asymmetric home connections
ADSL is generally always on, unlike POTS and ISDN. But it offers upstream throughput unsuitable for serving documents to the same extent that one views documents, again encouraging people to post them to a better-connected server. And some DSL ISPs, too accustomed to the old POTS model and too cash-strapped to make their subscribers true peers, used PPPoE to replicate the old circuit-switched model of the POTS and ISDN data link layers.
Carrier-grade network address translation
IPv4 address exhaustion caused some ISPs to put home subscribers behind CGNAT, making their computers unable to accept incoming connections. The workaround is to bounce documents off a "supernode" run on a better-connected server.
All three of these factors encouraged users to lease servers, a practice that would later come to be called "the cloud" to disguise it.
Slashdot Mirror
There are several software packages the Canadian government recommends for personal filers that are free and emit the standard file needed for electronic filing.
I guess it depends on where you live. Is there any counterpart for the United States, both federal and the 50 states? All the "free file" options I've seen are SaaSS, free only as in beer. I can see no way a single free software project (as defined by FSF) could stay up to date with every amendment to every individual or small business income tax law in every city, county, state/province/region, and sovereign country on the planet.
Linux Advocate Suggests Using More Closed-Source Software
Closed source though free for most normal people.
Point proved.
I've had no problem getting Linux installed and ruuning on recent computers. Just have to enable "legacy boot". Most recent was a Acer Touch screen laptop that had W8.1 on it.
Perhaps it depends on how big the laptops are. Laptops and convertibles with an Atom Bay Trail processor tend to fare poorly, such as the T100TA on which sleep, backlight brightness, camera, and Bluetooth are broken. Furthermore, you have to plan ahead and download firmware-brcm80211 before you wipe the drive so that you can set up Wi-Fi and audio.
A 2-hour setup is fine if you have no projects to restore or if their primary working copies are stored on a NAS box. Restoring a multi-hundred-gigabyte /home from offline backup might take longer.
Your point is?
Many people bought computers before they decided to try Linux.
And what do I do at my home? Make damn sure it will print out from my home Linux computer, be it a printer or a lawn mower, or I'm not gonna buy it.
Where does this leave people who are switching from Windows to Linux but already own a printer? They'd either have to replace the printer before it stops working or wait to switch from Windows to Linux until the printer breaks.
take the bus
Buses are subsidized by property tax. That's not very "free market".
the remaining use cases for proprietrary software are becoming increasingly scarce.
Is the video game industry's $81 billion per year "scarce"?
All the coolest movies you've watched had CGI done on open source.
Unless they're machinima, in which case all the CGI is done on closed source.
Besides, after the CGI is rendered, closed-source software called "DRM" is used to stream it to the end user's computer in order to prevent the user from teeing the video into an unencrypted file to keep the stream past the agreed rental period.
unless you want to share printers and files in network
Your Linux box can share files through FTP, NFS, CIFS (via Samba), BitTorrent, or any of several other free services. If you're willing to run proprietary apps on a free OS, you can also use Dropbox. As for printers, a Mac or Linux box running CUPS can share them with any other Mac or Linux box running CUPS.
unless you want to open a docx file someone sent you
LibreOffice Writer has opened every .docx I've thrown at it, but I admit that my work flows have not included mailing a file back and forth several round trips for revisions.
unless you want to fill PDF forms
In this comment, another user reported success using recent versions of the free Evince or Okular to fill in PDF forms in a manner that Adobe Reader can read.
unless you want to use samsung / brother / canon / not HP printers
Any PostScript printer should work fine.
unless you want to scan images
As you pointed out, HP printers work wonderfully. And so do HP scanners. This is why I've made a point of recommending HP to friends and family members: if someone's printer is an HP network printer, I can print from Xubuntu on my laptop.
unless you want to extract images from smart phones
unless you want to transfer files to smart phones
Say what? I've connected my aunt's iPhone to my Xubuntu laptop and was able to see the files. As for Android, modern versions of gvfs can mount MTP over USB, but I usually use the FTP server in Cheetah Mobile's file manager to move files on and off my tablet's internal storage.
Hundreds of Millions of computer users around the world can barely or not at all afford to pay $100 for a piece of software.
How much did they pay for the hardware on which to run it?
Once you get a taste of libre software, there is simply no going back to the proprietary crap. Period. End of discussion.
To what extent do end users who have tried both SuperTuxKart and Mario Kart 8 prefer the former?
I've downloaded and burned Ubuntu cds for two people who don't know how to do that themselves not too long ago, because they for some reason decided to try Linux and asked me how to do it. Both installed Ubuntu without anyone present to hold their hands
How long ago was this? Were the PCs made before the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, when Microsoft started requiring manufacturers of new PCs and desktop PC motherboards to default to Secure Boot with Microsoft's keys?
and got their email and printers to work without needing to ask me more than two or three simple questions over the phone.
True, setting up a mail user agent is similar no matter the OS. Some printers and scanners do work out of the box, but those are more hit-or-miss, especially if the printer isn't PostScript and/or the manufacturer isn't as cooperative as HP.
Wikipedia's article about Plan 9 claims that Alcatel-Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) has released the Plan 9 operating system under GPLv2 and Lucent Public License. Both are free software licenses, though FSF believes that the LPL's choice of law clause is problematic.
If games cannot be made free software, some people would prefer to keep the development and production environments and the games environment completely segregated. The former environments would run all free software, while the games environment would be a PlayStation 4 console.
We want freedom to enjoy our apps as per the freedoms of open source software.
Sure, we COULD have MOARE apps. If they're closed-source or blobs we don't
want them.
Free software is distinguished by the end user having the right and ability to make and share improvement to the software. It works well for libraries and for applications used by businesses, which can afford to hire someone to improve the software and contribute improvements back upstream. But there still exist several categories of software for which a viable free software business model has not yet been demonstrated. How would high-production-value video games, software for playing rented (as opposed to purchased) movies, and annual updates to tax return preparation software to reflect amended tax codes be developed under a free software model?
there were a lot of people who would not seriously seek or accept work at lower wages, work multiple part-time jobs
And many did. For a lot of people, two 20 hour per week jobs at $7.25 per hour would not pay the household's recurring costs. This is where the "raise minimum wage" stuff came from: people who settled for a lower wage job found that a lower wage job was not enough to support a household.
Someone who wants to, say, block all Google-owned hostnames can't block *.blogspot.com.
Fox does not own Family Guy if Family Guy contains Konami's work used without permission and without a valid fair use defense.
Fair use applies only if the alleged infringer can afford to make a fair use defense in a court of law.
A company operating a website whose code is otherwise proprietary is unlikely to be willing to release the form data saving code as free software.
And this still leaves open the question of how to handle users who do not use JavaScript at all.
How does the page save the state
HTML5 local storage?
Local storage requires JavaScript. Users can block JavaScript from running, and proxies running on corporate networks can block JavaScript files from being retrieved.
I'm not sure what 'non-free' script means
The Free Software Foundation has released a browser extension called LibreJS that causes JavaScript not to run at all unless it can be identified as having been released under a free software license. But because you weren't aware of it, I'll try again with a related question:
How does the page save the state if the user or the user's network is blocking JavaScript as a security measure?
Though laptop PCs rarely have three-button trackpads, Ctrl+click usually opens a link's target in a new tab. But either way, that's still unrelated to the problem of an accidental left-click removing the focus from a textarea.
With all the fervor over Windows 10, there's still Windows options to reduce or turn off telemetry off (in some versions).
Only Windows 10 Enterprise, which most users are unlikely to have, includes anything resembling an "off" setting. The minimum setting on Home and Pro is "basic", which lets Microsoft see all installed applications, all installed device drivers, and the IMEI of your laptop's aircard if any. It may sound innocuous, but in some cases, the presence of a particular application or driver on a computer may incriminate a user if some big company decides to go on a fishing expedition and subpoena Microsoft for this data. An example of such an application is a video game console emulator. An example of such a driver is the driver for a video game cartridge reader (such as Kazzo) or for a capture card that happens not to enforce all of HDCP. These have noninfringing and infringing uses, but good luck affording to prove your noninfringement in a court of law.
Google's been doing this forever, making billions for it, and there's no escaping it.
One can block all Google-owned domains in a DNS resolver on localhost. (A hosts file alone can't do it because the hosts file format doesn't support wildcards.) Windows 10, on the other hand, includes a separate DNS resolver used just for updates and telemetry.
AddThis ostensibly exists to make it convenient for a website's viewers who are also members of social media sites to share URLs of HTML documents with their followers. Unless a particular social media site offers a keyless intent API, such as Twitter's Web Intents, the alternative is for each website publisher to maintain contractual relationships with a dozen or more different sites to get API keys and add their individual button codes, and not every publisher wants to spend time on that.
if you don't own a domain, you can't track people on it, unless it's something like an OAuth login.
Loophole: Google could encourage website operators to add "[G+] Sign in with Google" and "[+1] Share on Google" buttons in order to claim that the tracking is to more strongly authenticate users of the OAuth-based OpenID Connect protocol.
The very premise of the Internet is that it is a network of PEERS
In practice, three factors killed this premise:
Dial-up networking The characteristics of Internet access over POTS and ISDN encouraged users to connect only when viewing documents or when posting them to a better-connected server. Asymmetric home connections ADSL is generally always on, unlike POTS and ISDN. But it offers upstream throughput unsuitable for serving documents to the same extent that one views documents, again encouraging people to post them to a better-connected server. And some DSL ISPs, too accustomed to the old POTS model and too cash-strapped to make their subscribers true peers, used PPPoE to replicate the old circuit-switched model of the POTS and ISDN data link layers. Carrier-grade network address translation IPv4 address exhaustion caused some ISPs to put home subscribers behind CGNAT, making their computers unable to accept incoming connections. The workaround is to bounce documents off a "supernode" run on a better-connected server.All three of these factors encouraged users to lease servers, a practice that would later come to be called "the cloud" to disguise it.