From at least 3 years ago by your own admission. In 'Gentoo Years', thats a lifetime...:)
Combined with semi-permanent Portage breakage,
I use paludis, so I wouldn't know.
multi-hour compile times for many large packages on every minor update (KDE, OO.org etc),
Actually, those 2 you mentioned, plus likely GNOME, are the *only* multi-hour compiles really left anymore, at least on modern desktops, and in any event, you can still use your computer to do almost anything else now too, thanks to that same modern hardware & a low-latency 2.6.xx kernel. Compiles on Gentoo are not nearly the big deal they were 6-8 years ago.
Finally, you don't even have to update just for minor version ticks, I sometimes mask the minor ones on big packages if I don't want to be bothered...
And if a compile fails, there is no rule that says you have to do *anything*. Just ignore it. Your current system still works, so give it a few days, or a week, or a *month*, and then see if the devs have fixed the problem in the new version. I've never really understood this particular complaint...
and the fact that much-touted USE flags can (and do) easily break package dependencies,
Portage has 'revdep-rebuild', and paludis has 'reconcilio' for this. Just run the tool after a major update to make sure nothing is broken (I automatically run reconcilio after a world update). Doesn't seem to actually occur much anymore for me, but when it does, its automatically fixed.
I've had enough aggregated annoyances to switch to Debian as a primary system for some time
Aggregated annoyances are an inevitable consequence of size and complexity.
Ironically, it was Debian that I switched from, all those many moons ago, because of accumulated annoyances involving broken dependencies (I'm sure things are better now though).
The one nice thing about a source-based distro is that its harder for something to have broken, hard dependencies, because generally if you can build it, then you know it found all its deps (otherwise it wouldn't have built).
Not completely foolproof, of course, won't catch some optional deps that are only conditionally dlopened (however the tools mentioned above will find all of these), but then again, the last time I ever had a seriously hosed system due to broken deps was on Debian, not Gentoo...
Actually, Gentoo is a fabulous habit to get yourself to walk away from your computer for a while and do something else.
I haven't needed to do that in years.
Hell, I can still listen to music (amarok - no stuttering) & browse the web (firefox), read email/newsgroups, work on something in an IDE, or even play some game (don't have any heavy OpenGL ones though), even while recompiling *KDE* fer heaven's sake.
This particular Gentoo joke annoys me much, because it was rendered obsolete by modern hardware & the modern Linux 2.6.xx kernel (outstanding low latency), oh, 5-8 years ago, at least for desktops.
Note to any offended by this or the parent post: Fucking relax
I'll relax when idiotic posts like the GP are modded down or just ignored instead of modded funny/insightful. How many jokes about other distros *routinely* get the same kind of insightful/funny treatment?
Gentoo jokes on/. is an obsessive-compulsive meme, where most of the people who make these posts and/or think they are funny/insightful haven't actually run Gentoo in years, if ever.
Actually, the subsequent waves (starting ~30min after the first) fared no better in most places. It all depended on *where* you landed, whether between the German strongpoints (it was from these in-between points where the breakouts off the beach initially occurred), or directly in front of them (you were in for a very bad several hours - if you lived at all).
AMD/ATI just choose a more effective solution, by releasing specs they don't have to bother with supporting every OS on the planet, While it might take a bit more time for good drivers for all cards to appear
Except releasing specs isn't the only thing they're doing. They've also got at least 3 of their own devs (AMD employees) working on the new driver stack. Once that new stack hits the mainstream, people's perceptions of AMD support for Linux are going to change dramatically (I'm using that new stack now).
Give them a little more time to get the open driver they're working on now ready for the mainstream.
I'm one of the an early adopters who is using that new driver stack (right from their source repos on kernel.org and x.org). Overall, its already better than either the old radeon driver or fglrx, except in terms of raw OpenGL performance (and that will come once the new infrastructure is in place), so I've seen the evidence, but anyone who hasn't tried the in-development stuff can understandably think that very little is happening.
About a year ago, no ATI driver supported my IGP (I had to use the vesa driver!), now I've got hardware accelerated 2D & 3D as well as other things (like a high-res accelerated console mode available at boot), so I've seen the rapid improvements, but you'll need to wait for a distro using 2.6.33 (or.34) and the next major release of Xorg (or possibly the one after that) to see all of what I'm seeing (some of this, e.g, KMS, is already in 2.6.32 & will be seen in the next Xorg).
Well, the FSF philosophy of "Software wants to be Free" is a blanket which applies to all software
But this is exactly my point: It is not a blanket. AFAIK, RMS has never claimed his philosophy should apply to all software. The FSF's concern has always been focused on consumer-grade software.
After all, the kind of software from your examples is software which is not ever going to be openly redistributed, and the GPL only concerns itself with redistribution.
There *was* more to it than that, but not anymore. llgaz's reply has the details (except for the dates) so I'll just give the cliff notes version: Qt has been available under the GPL since about forever, and was additionally dual-licensed under the LGPL in March, so its been LGPL'd as well for almost a year now.
Licensing is now utterly a non-issue for Qt usage, which ultimately spells trouble for GTK, because as soon as everyone goes back to the normal way comparing two similar products just by comparing their feature sets and capabilities, GTK suddenly doesn't look quite so attractive (unless you have an aversion to, or some other problem with, anything written in C++ of course - GTK still 'wins' there).
Now it is owned by a giant (Nokia), it is LGPL too.
And this is a giant who isn't afraid to share in an open, cooperative, development environment, with public source repos & a bug tracker. The last release of Qt, 4.6, included ~250 code contributions from non-Nokia Qt devs, even though Nokia has only 'owned' it for less than a year.
Nokia seems to grok that to convince devs who are considering targeting their phones, they need to be as transparent and open with the underlying technology as they can possibly be. They, at least, 'get' it.
It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X
What? MS is playing favorites with their own OS? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!
LOL, I just got through saying upthread that Silverlight on OSX would be nothing more than a second-class citizen in MS's world, so I'm *utterly* unsurprised by this.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up."
Alas, given the content of Miguel's gushing press-release-cum-blog-post about it, someone obviously forgot to pass this note on to him. He thinks its a 'Universal GUI Toolkit' thats just chock full of goodness. Why, according to him, its even going to replace GTK# in Mono and GNOME (because its sooo obviously superior, of course!).:)
No reason to fight...
The only people still 'fighting' are the Mono/Moonlight/Miguel apologists, who are now desperate to rationalize their Glorious Leader's consumption of MS's Coolaid, everyone else is too busy laughing to actually fight...
Hmm, on second reading I think your interpretation is fairly accurate
No, your original interpretation was the more accurate one.
How Timothy gets:
so we can run the upcoming flood of apps that use these features but don't specifically worry about being cross-platform.
from Miguel's description of MS's latest move as:
Microsoft's decision to turn Silverlight into the universal platform for building cross platform applications.
is just beyond the sane and accepted bounds of logic.
Hell, just look at the title Miguel gave to this press release:
Silverlight: Universal GUI toolkit
All I know is that MS's definition of 'universal' has never come close to my understanding of what that word means.
And did anyone else notice how Miguel ended this lovely little lovefest?:
Droolingly yours, Miguel de Icaza.
Wow. Just... wow.
I still feel the emphasis really is on Silverlight, not Moonlight (the free implementation)
Except that the problem is that Moonlight is not free for anyone using it on a non-Novell Linux distro (MS's 'Covenant' covering Moonlight *only* applies to Novell customers - thats explicit in the text). This one is not even close. Unlike the uncertainty over the patent issues with the core.NET stuff in Mono, the situation with Moonlight is utterly crystal: for anyone outside of Novell, its just plain radioactive .
Now look at makomk's reply to you (who quotes Miguel from a response to his Silverlight press release): Miguel wants to replace GTK# with Moonlight!?!?
*BOOGLE*
So, to all the Mono and Miguel apologists out there: Miguel has now crossed the line in a way that simply can't be explained away as some kind of 'innocent misunderstanding', so please STFU now. Mono+Moonlight is a steaming pile of radioactive waste for the FOSS world, and to depend on it is to be owned by MS. That is all.
The only thing wrong with KDE was that, uhh, 'mismanaged' release of 4.0. Its been the favorite whipping dog of Slashdot trolls ever since. As is usual for trolls, aside from many of them ranting about things they don't actually use or know, once they find a meme they like, they tend to stick with it, even long after its become irrelevant or obsolete.
Now for me, the 'KDE4 Sux!' meme became irrational with KDE 4.3, which I'm comfortably using now, but obviously, YMMV.
As for the 'KDE Sux!' meme espoused by the AC you responded too, well, thats why I've got the/. controls set to mod ACs into oblivion. Given the increasing traffic on slashdot, the SNR is just too poor with them to make them worth bothering with.
Ah, looks like KDE4 which I'm waiting until some distro gets that really polished. Can't say much about it.
I'm using KDE4.3 right now, and I can't say much about it either... because I simply don't use that feature. Its not something that you're forced to use, rather, as is usual for KDE, its just an option there for those who want it.
Some people don't like being given options, but for me, thats precisely why I use and prefer KDE. Rather than accept someone else's 'The One True Way', I'd prefer to define my own. Not that I have some exotic definition for TOTW, mind you, my current KDE4 desktop looks and acts suspiciously just like my previous KDE3 desktop, but with KDE, at least I have that choice.
but unfortunately the reality is that the older proprietary drivers that haven't been supported in half a dozen years still often perform better than the up-to-date open source alternatives
Hmmm, it sounds like RMS isn't the only one wanting to have his 'own reality', but that's OK, you can have your reality, as long as I get to keep mine...
So should the authors of Wine, Samba and OpenOffice go work for Microsoft as well? They're all _obviously_ trojan horses... right?
Since they were not created or sanctioned by MS (MS actually tried to use their lawyers to get Samba development shut down), and their existence is actually *detrimental* to the continuing market dominance/monopoly of Windows, then no, its *not* obvious that they are trojan horses...
I mean, _nothing_ good comes from Microsoft. Ever.
'Good' is not the issue here, its all about control. All the technical goodness in C# doesn't change the fact that.NET is merely MS's latest attempt to kill Java (and it must be killed because its fairly important/popular/widespread on their own OS, but they don't *control* it). MS's goal is not to bring you technical goodness, thats the carrot, their goal is to tie you to Windows.
All of their engineers are pure evil incarnate, right?
No, their engineers are just working stiffs who are paid to work on what they're told to work on. Its their chair-throwing upper management folks who are the pure-evil-incarnate-complete-with-Darth-Vader-voice type.
Wow, the Hyperbole Game really is fun to play, isn't it?:)
This is like "arguing" with a Glenn Beck fan....
or with people who really think tying themselves to.NET+Silverlight doesn't also tie them to Windows, and *only* Windows - everyone else will, at best, just be second class citizens (OSX), and at some later point (once they've achieved their goal), any of them could then be branded as 'outlaws' at MS's whim. Silverlight on OSX is solely at the mercy of MS, and/or they could go after anyone using Mono+Moonlight on a non-Novell Linux distro (MS's 'We'll-be-nice' promise about parts of the Silverlight spec that Miguel points to as proof that everything is all roses actually only applies to Novell's customers, not any other Linux user - and note that this means anyone using a Mono-ified GNOME on a non-Novell Linux is fair game for MS's lawyers), or even go after Mono/Moonlight itself for its suspected/likely patent violations of the non-ECMA parts of.NET/Silverlight.
Yeah, hard to believe I know, but there are some truly nutty people out there...
Then what sort of punishment is the head of the Free Software Foundation talking about in the following quote?
As long as there is a (usable) FOSS alternative, then the only 'punishment' would simply be that few would use your proprietary app. The problem, of course, is that there are companies that see software as a means to leverage or maintain market monopolies who are not at all interested in allowing people such a controversial and evil thing like "freedom of choice".
RMS isn't interested in controlling what software you use, just what software he has to use, and besides, even if he *wanted* to control what you use, he's too late, MS already beat him to that idea.
You, the end user, may not be the owner of the software in question. In that case, I have every right to stop you from fiddling with the naviagtion software for my nukes, or the avionics software in my aircraft, or the transactional software in my payment settlement system.
In all of your examples, the software is not what is being sold, the software is an internal component of a larger hardware 'product'. I'm not really sure how your point applies to the current discussion...
Actually, if I can't run the software on my PC, then I don't even give a damn, and I doubt that RMS cares either - since if he can't run it on *his* PC, then he'd never have the urge/desire/need to tinker with it. After all, RMS was started on his crusade because of a simple, lowly (and broken, closed) printer driver, it wasn't the avionic controls of an F-22 that got him so pissed off...
But my real reason for posting was to say that I can't imagine anyone buying a nuclear missile, and *not* wanting the ability to be absolutely certain of where it will go when they push that Big Red Button. Maybe I'm just a paranoid control-freak, but for anything involving explosions in the KT/MT yield ranges, then sorry, but no, your 'word' will just not be good enough. As Ronnie said: "Trust, but Verify".:)
All tyrants are polite - before they come to power. Stallman is clearly a...
LOL, when has RMS *ever* been 'polite'?
Love him or hate him, RMS says exactly what he believes, always, and he applies his beliefs with *brutal* consistency (and I admire that last bit even when I don't agree with him).
No, RMS could never 'come to power' simply because he doesn't know how to lie like a politician.
The good trolls are often pretty funny, or at least clever in construction in my experiance. Generally I consider unintelligent trolls to be more flamebait.
I agree, the clever ones are actually very entertaining. Unfortunately, for every intelligent troll, there seems to be at least 50 moronic ones, hence my post.
As for the 'troll' & 'flamebait' monikers, alas there is no common standard definition for them. Besides, from what I've seen here, intelligent trolls are rarely moderated down anyway (I guess everyone is so tired of the dumb ones that we 'reward' the smart ones), so 'troll' & 'flamebait' are largely being used interchangeably (even though they shouldn't).
Personal anecdotes can not *prove* a general statement, they can only be used (sometimes) to disprove a general statement.
I've used NV cards in the past (2 of them before switching to a mobo with an AMD-ATI IGP), however, my personal anecdotes do not match the GP's post (hence my 'lucky' reference).
The fact that things worked great for the GP does not change the fact that they did not work great for others - thus his personal anecdote proves nothing.
If you're against closed drivers, all I will say is good luck.
If the GP is against closed drivers, then they should do as the other poster suggested and get a slightly older R500 based AMD-ATI card, use the fglrx driver for now, then switch to AMD's open radeon driver when it goes mainstream in a year or so. Then they'll have all the hardware-accelerated goodness, without any of the binary-blob badness.
Slashdot Mirror
they righted the wrongs of Debian
Debian wasn't doing anything *wrong*, merely different, because Debian was never focused on being a noob-friendly desktop Linux.
My "condescension" stems from my experience.
From at least 3 years ago by your own admission. In 'Gentoo Years', thats a lifetime... :)
Combined with semi-permanent Portage breakage,
I use paludis, so I wouldn't know.
multi-hour compile times for many large packages on every minor update (KDE, OO.org etc),
Actually, those 2 you mentioned, plus likely GNOME, are the *only* multi-hour compiles really left anymore, at least on modern desktops, and in any event, you can still use your computer to do almost anything else now too, thanks to that same modern hardware & a low-latency 2.6.xx kernel. Compiles on Gentoo are not nearly the big deal they were 6-8 years ago.
Finally, you don't even have to update just for minor version ticks, I sometimes mask the minor ones on big packages if I don't want to be bothered...
And if a compile fails, there is no rule that says you have to do *anything*. Just ignore it. Your current system still works, so give it a few days, or a week, or a *month*, and then see if the devs have fixed the problem in the new version. I've never really understood this particular complaint...
and the fact that much-touted USE flags can (and do) easily break package dependencies,
Portage has 'revdep-rebuild', and paludis has 'reconcilio' for this. Just run the tool after a major update to make sure nothing is broken (I automatically run reconcilio after a world update). Doesn't seem to actually occur much anymore for me, but when it does, its automatically fixed.
I've had enough aggregated annoyances to switch to Debian as a primary system for some time
Aggregated annoyances are an inevitable consequence of size and complexity.
Ironically, it was Debian that I switched from, all those many moons ago, because of accumulated annoyances involving broken dependencies (I'm sure things are better now though).
The one nice thing about a source-based distro is that its harder for something to have broken, hard dependencies, because generally if you can build it, then you know it found all its deps (otherwise it wouldn't have built).
Not completely foolproof, of course, won't catch some optional deps that are only conditionally dlopened (however the tools mentioned above will find all of these), but then again, the last time I ever had a seriously hosed system due to broken deps was on Debian, not Gentoo...
I've never looked back since.
Same here...
Actually, Gentoo is a fabulous habit to get yourself to walk away from your computer for a while and do something else.
I haven't needed to do that in years.
Hell, I can still listen to music (amarok - no stuttering) & browse the web (firefox), read email/newsgroups, work on something in an IDE, or even play some game (don't have any heavy OpenGL ones though), even while recompiling *KDE* fer heaven's sake.
This particular Gentoo joke annoys me much, because it was rendered obsolete by modern hardware & the modern Linux 2.6.xx kernel (outstanding low latency), oh, 5-8 years ago, at least for desktops.
Note to any offended by this or the parent post: Fucking relax
I'll relax when idiotic posts like the GP are modded down or just ignored instead of modded funny/insightful. How many jokes about other distros *routinely* get the same kind of insightful/funny treatment?
Gentoo jokes on /. is an obsessive-compulsive meme, where most of the people who make these posts and/or think they are funny/insightful haven't actually run Gentoo in years, if ever.
Now get the hell off my lawn...
the ones who had sons were in the second wave.
Actually, the subsequent waves (starting ~30min after the first) fared no better in most places. It all depended on *where* you landed, whether between the German strongpoints (it was from these in-between points where the breakouts off the beach initially occurred), or directly in front of them (you were in for a very bad several hours - if you lived at all).
I thought the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago was on a similar scale to a Yellowstone eruption.
It was (VEI~=8), and there was actually another one (also VEI~=8) even more 'recent', at ~25,000 years ago, than Toba:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oruanui_eruption
AMD/ATI just choose a more effective solution, by releasing specs they don't have to bother with supporting every OS on the planet, While it might take a bit more time for good drivers for all cards to appear
Except releasing specs isn't the only thing they're doing. They've also got at least 3 of their own devs (AMD employees) working on the new driver stack. Once that new stack hits the mainstream, people's perceptions of AMD support for Linux are going to change dramatically (I'm using that new stack now).
I am not convinced AMD/ATI cares that much.
That's fair enough.
Give them a little more time to get the open driver they're working on now ready for the mainstream.
I'm one of the an early adopters who is using that new driver stack (right from their source repos on kernel.org and x.org). Overall, its already better than either the old radeon driver or fglrx, except in terms of raw OpenGL performance (and that will come once the new infrastructure is in place), so I've seen the evidence, but anyone who hasn't tried the in-development stuff can understandably think that very little is happening.
About a year ago, no ATI driver supported my IGP (I had to use the vesa driver!), now I've got hardware accelerated 2D & 3D as well as other things (like a high-res accelerated console mode available at boot), so I've seen the rapid improvements, but you'll need to wait for a distro using 2.6.33 (or .34) and the next major release of Xorg (or possibly the one after that) to see all of what I'm seeing (some of this, e.g, KMS, is already in 2.6.32 & will be seen in the next Xorg).
Well, the FSF philosophy of "Software wants to be Free" is a blanket which applies to all software
But this is exactly my point: It is not a blanket. AFAIK, RMS has never claimed his philosophy should apply to all software. The FSF's concern has always been focused on consumer-grade software.
After all, the kind of software from your examples is software which is not ever going to be openly redistributed, and the GPL only concerns itself with redistribution.
There's more to it than that.
There *was* more to it than that, but not anymore. llgaz's reply has the details (except for the dates) so I'll just give the cliff notes version: Qt has been available under the GPL since about forever, and was additionally dual-licensed under the LGPL in March, so its been LGPL'd as well for almost a year now.
Licensing is now utterly a non-issue for Qt usage, which ultimately spells trouble for GTK, because as soon as everyone goes back to the normal way comparing two similar products just by comparing their feature sets and capabilities, GTK suddenly doesn't look quite so attractive (unless you have an aversion to, or some other problem with, anything written in C++ of course - GTK still 'wins' there).
Now it is owned by a giant (Nokia), it is LGPL too.
And this is a giant who isn't afraid to share in an open, cooperative, development environment, with public source repos & a bug tracker. The last release of Qt, 4.6, included ~250 code contributions from non-Nokia Qt devs, even though Nokia has only 'owned' it for less than a year.
Nokia seems to grok that to convince devs who are considering targeting their phones, they need to be as transparent and open with the underlying technology as they can possibly be. They, at least, 'get' it.
It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X
What? MS is playing favorites with their own OS? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!
LOL, I just got through saying upthread that Silverlight on OSX would be nothing more than a second-class citizen in MS's world, so I'm *utterly* unsurprised by this.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up."
Alas, given the content of Miguel's gushing press-release-cum-blog-post about it, someone obviously forgot to pass this note on to him. He thinks its a 'Universal GUI Toolkit' thats just chock full of goodness. Why, according to him, its even going to replace GTK# in Mono and GNOME (because its sooo obviously superior, of course!). :)
No reason to fight ...
The only people still 'fighting' are the Mono/Moonlight/Miguel apologists, who are now desperate to rationalize their Glorious Leader's consumption of MS's Coolaid, everyone else is too busy laughing to actually fight...
Now look at makomk's reply to you
Oops, makomk's reply (below) was to Timothy, not you.
Hmm, on second reading I think your interpretation is fairly accurate
No, your original interpretation was the more accurate one.
How Timothy gets:
so we can run the upcoming flood of apps that use these features but don't specifically worry about being cross-platform .
from Miguel's description of MS's latest move as:
Microsoft's decision to turn Silverlight into the universal platform for building cross platform applications .
is just beyond the sane and accepted bounds of logic.
Hell, just look at the title Miguel gave to this press release:
Silverlight: Universal GUI toolkit
All I know is that MS's definition of 'universal' has never come close to my understanding of what that word means.
And did anyone else notice how Miguel ended this lovely little lovefest?:
Droolingly yours,
Miguel de Icaza.
Wow. Just... wow.
I still feel the emphasis really is on Silverlight, not Moonlight (the free implementation)
Except that the problem is that Moonlight is not free for anyone using it on a non-Novell Linux distro (MS's 'Covenant' covering Moonlight *only* applies to Novell customers - thats explicit in the text). This one is not even close. Unlike the uncertainty over the patent issues with the core .NET stuff in Mono, the situation with Moonlight is utterly crystal: for anyone outside of Novell, its just plain radioactive .
Now look at makomk's reply to you (who quotes Miguel from a response to his Silverlight press release): Miguel wants to replace GTK# with Moonlight!?!?
*BOOGLE*
So, to all the Mono and Miguel apologists out there: Miguel has now crossed the line in a way that simply can't be explained away as some kind of 'innocent misunderstanding', so please STFU now. Mono+Moonlight is a steaming pile of radioactive waste for the FOSS world, and to depend on it is to be owned by MS. That is all.
What's wrong with KDE?
The only thing wrong with KDE was that, uhh, 'mismanaged' release of 4.0. Its been the favorite whipping dog of Slashdot trolls ever since. As is usual for trolls, aside from many of them ranting about things they don't actually use or know, once they find a meme they like, they tend to stick with it, even long after its become irrelevant or obsolete.
Now for me, the 'KDE4 Sux!' meme became irrational with KDE 4.3, which I'm comfortably using now, but obviously, YMMV.
As for the 'KDE Sux!' meme espoused by the AC you responded too, well, thats why I've got the /. controls set to mod ACs into oblivion. Given the increasing traffic on slashdot, the SNR is just too poor with them to make them worth bothering with.
Ah, looks like KDE4 which I'm waiting until some distro gets that really polished. Can't say much about it.
I'm using KDE4.3 right now, and I can't say much about it either... because I simply don't use that feature. Its not something that you're forced to use, rather, as is usual for KDE, its just an option there for those who want it.
Some people don't like being given options, but for me, thats precisely why I use and prefer KDE. Rather than accept someone else's 'The One True Way', I'd prefer to define my own. Not that I have some exotic definition for TOTW, mind you, my current KDE4 desktop looks and acts suspiciously just like my previous KDE3 desktop, but with KDE, at least I have that choice.
I suggest DOTNETDesktop or Icaza can come up with a stylish name like Mono/Stereo/Dolby Digital whatever.
I would suggest "MS MONOME", since once they let Mono+Moonlight in, MS is going to own them anyway...
but unfortunately the reality is that the older proprietary drivers that haven't been supported in half a dozen years still often perform better than the up-to-date open source alternatives
Hmmm, it sounds like RMS isn't the only one wanting to have his 'own reality', but that's OK, you can have your reality, as long as I get to keep mine...
So should the authors of Wine, Samba and OpenOffice go work for Microsoft as well? They're all _obviously_ trojan horses... right?
Since they were not created or sanctioned by MS (MS actually tried to use their lawyers to get Samba development shut down), and their existence is actually *detrimental* to the continuing market dominance/monopoly of Windows, then no, its *not* obvious that they are trojan horses...
I mean, _nothing_ good comes from Microsoft. Ever.
'Good' is not the issue here, its all about control. All the technical goodness in C# doesn't change the fact that .NET is merely MS's latest attempt to kill Java (and it must be killed because its fairly important/popular/widespread on their own OS, but they don't *control* it). MS's goal is not to bring you technical goodness, thats the carrot, their goal is to tie you to Windows.
All of their engineers are pure evil incarnate, right?
No, their engineers are just working stiffs who are paid to work on what they're told to work on. Its their chair-throwing upper management folks who are the pure-evil-incarnate-complete-with-Darth-Vader-voice type.
Wow, the Hyperbole Game really is fun to play, isn't it? :)
This is like "arguing" with a Glenn Beck fan....
or with people who really think tying themselves to .NET+Silverlight doesn't also tie them to Windows, and *only* Windows - everyone else will, at best, just be second class citizens (OSX), and at some later point (once they've achieved their goal), any of them could then be branded as 'outlaws' at MS's whim. Silverlight on OSX is solely at the mercy of MS, and/or they could go after anyone using Mono+Moonlight on a non-Novell Linux distro (MS's .NET/Silverlight.
'We'll-be-nice' promise about parts of the Silverlight spec that Miguel points to as proof that everything is all roses actually only applies to Novell's customers, not any other Linux user - and note that this means anyone using a Mono-ified GNOME on a non-Novell Linux is fair game for MS's lawyers), or even go after Mono/Moonlight itself for its suspected/likely patent violations of the non-ECMA parts of
Yeah, hard to believe I know, but there are some truly nutty people out there...
Then what sort of punishment is the head of the Free Software Foundation talking about in the following quote?
As long as there is a (usable) FOSS alternative, then the only 'punishment' would simply be that few would use your proprietary app. The problem, of course, is that there are companies that see software as a means to leverage or maintain market monopolies who are not at all interested in allowing people such a controversial and evil thing like "freedom of choice".
RMS isn't interested in controlling what software you use, just what software he has to use, and besides, even if he *wanted* to control what you use, he's too late, MS already beat him to that idea.
You, the end user, may not be the owner of the software in question. In that case, I have every right to stop you from fiddling with the naviagtion software for my nukes, or the avionics software in my aircraft, or the transactional software in my payment settlement system.
In all of your examples, the software is not what is being sold, the software is an internal component of a larger hardware 'product'. I'm not really sure how your point applies to the current discussion...
Actually, if I can't run the software on my PC, then I don't even give a damn, and I doubt that RMS cares either - since if he can't run it on *his* PC, then he'd never have the urge/desire/need to tinker with it. After all, RMS was started on his crusade because of a simple, lowly (and broken, closed) printer driver, it wasn't the avionic controls of an F-22 that got him so pissed off...
But my real reason for posting was to say that I can't imagine anyone buying a nuclear missile, and *not* wanting the ability to be absolutely certain of where it will go when they push that Big Red Button. Maybe I'm just a paranoid control-freak, but for anything involving explosions in the KT/MT yield ranges, then sorry, but no, your 'word' will just not be good enough. As Ronnie said: "Trust, but Verify". :)
All tyrants are polite - before they come to power. ...
Stallman is clearly a
LOL, when has RMS *ever* been 'polite'?
Love him or hate him, RMS says exactly what he believes, always, and he applies his beliefs with *brutal* consistency (and I admire that last bit even when I don't agree with him).
No, RMS could never 'come to power' simply because he doesn't know how to lie like a politician.
The good trolls are often pretty funny, or at least clever in construction in my experiance. Generally I consider unintelligent trolls to be more flamebait.
I agree, the clever ones are actually very entertaining. Unfortunately, for every intelligent troll, there seems to be at least 50 moronic ones, hence my post.
As for the 'troll' & 'flamebait' monikers, alas there is no common standard definition for them. Besides, from what I've seen here, intelligent trolls are rarely moderated down anyway (I guess everyone is so tired of the dumb ones that we 'reward' the smart ones), so 'troll' & 'flamebait' are largely being used interchangeably (even though they shouldn't).
Otherwise, your point is?
Personal anecdotes can not *prove* a general statement, they can only be used (sometimes) to disprove a general statement.
I've used NV cards in the past (2 of them before switching to a mobo with an AMD-ATI IGP), however, my personal anecdotes do not match the GP's post (hence my 'lucky' reference).
The fact that things worked great for the GP does not change the fact that they did not work great for others - thus his personal anecdote proves nothing.
But thanks for playing anyway, Mr. AC.
If you're against closed drivers, all I will say is good luck.
If the GP is against closed drivers, then they should do as the other poster suggested and get a slightly older R500 based AMD-ATI card, use the fglrx driver for now, then switch to AMD's open radeon driver when it goes mainstream in a year or so. Then they'll have all the hardware-accelerated goodness, without any of the binary-blob badness.
I know anecdotes are not evidence
So why bother?
I certainly hope you are trolling because if not, this is a new level of ignorance that I was not aware existed.
Oh I don't know, I usually find ignorance and trolling actually go hand-in-hand...