But Hulu and Pandora aren't used to download illegal things (never mind MediaFire, Rapidshare, surfthechannel and their brethren handling illegal multicast quite well.)
Oh wait - that's how everyone pirates stuff since they started cracking down on p2p.
Well, I don't know about you, but those of us who know what we're doing tend to use irc xdcc bots and fservs over file hosting sites.
Neither Linux on the desktop nor OS X is perfect when it comes to software installation and both should borrow from the other. Right now Ubuntu, probably the front runner for usability in desktop Linux, still has multiple programs used to manage packages
I go through the process of deciding what software I want to use by looking at Web pages, then I open my package manager and copy and paste the name into the package manager. Then I sometimes find it and install from there with only on wasted step, but often I don't find it so I go back to my browser and install by hand using whatever method is necessary.
Hold on, sonny! Don't blame Linux in general for Ubuntu's failings! As an Archer, I use one application (well, actually like four, but they're just wrappers around each other (yaourt -> powerpill -> pacman-color -> pacman)) to install applications, and only *once* have I wanted to install an application that was not in either the official repositories or the AUR. And guess what? It took me about 5 minutes to make a PKGBUILD for it, and now it's up on the AUR, so that anyone else who wants to install it can do so directly from yaourt. Yay!
Open source projects can charge reasonable fees for distribution of source code. Why are these any different?
They generally offer a free download, and cheap shipped cds, so when they say that you can get it "for free", you can (if you don't count time+bandwidth as cost).
Microsoft, otoh, doesn't allow digital download, so it seems misleading when they say that you obtain Win7 for free.
Jungledisk/Amazon S3 beats the hell out of Mozy/MozyPro/Carbonite, neither of which can run on Linux (Jungledisk *can*).
That's why I've decided that, sometime very soon, I'll be signing up for an account at CrashPlan; not only does it support Linux, but you can have them ship a terabyte drive to you for seeding your initial backup, and I can get "unlimited" storage for 4.50$US/month, which is far more economical than S3-type solutions, with my 1.2 TB of data.:)
In fact, I find *NIX with almost any window manager to be the most efficient computer OS I have ever used. Linux is the best of them, despite being a clone of the UNIX userland.
KDE/Gnome to be bloated to XP.
Neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager. They are both Desktop Environments, of which one component is a window manager (usually KWin for KDE and Metacity for Gnome, or Compiz if you want fancy-pants effects). I believe you can actually run said WMs by themselves, without the full DE, although I'm not sure. The point, though, is that many of us don't *use* a DE, and just use a WM, as the OP stated he does. You, apparently, have never done so, so do not compare your experience with his, because they are of different things.
I can tell you this: Vista (!!!) appears to run smoother and with a more-responsive UI on my laptop than when I try a default ubuntu install on the thing (for example, flash just crawls when I am viewing it thru firefox in ubuntu).
Flash is nowhere as nice on Linux as it is on Windows. We have Adobe's proprietary player, which is full of bugs, and the Gnash project, which just doesn't support a lot of things yet. If we were allowed to hack on Adobe's code, then it would likely be much better, but we can't.
You are installing Ubuntu. It comes with lots of crap turned on by default, so that it a) looks pretty and b) has the appropriate services started when you want to do something like print, even if you never even attach a printer to your computer.
The advantage of Ubuntu is not speed. It is that it is much easier for newbies to Linux to digest, and all of the other inherent advantages of being a Linux distro (no cost, updates relatively often, better default security, etc.).
Not only is what you said false (there have only been two LTS releases, and there have been two non-LTS since the last one),
You're correct. Upon checking, it's every 2 years, which is every 4 releases.
even if it were true, it has less information than what I contained in my question.
I don't see what else there is to it. There's nothing inherently different about the LTS releases (they aren't tested any more ahead of time or treated any differently than normal releases in any other way, to my knowledge), except for the fact that Canonical will continue supporting them longer. Your original post posed a question (they don't seem to be that different; what is different about them?), which I answered (what you've found is all that differs). I fail to see what the issue is.
Every other Ubuntu release is LTS, which means Long-Term Support. As it sounds, it is supported for a longer period of time (I don't know offhand how much longer, but I'm sure you can find out if you look hard enough).
I'm not being overly technical. A desktop app can be just as seemless is a web app in this manner. It is trivial to create a shortcut to a URL and double click it. If that URL refers to a web page, it opens in a browser.
Meaning that it's a web app.
If that URL refers to an application (and your computer's security policies allow it), it runs the application. No explicit downloading or executing necessary.
...except for the downloading and installing of that program to be run. I sure hope you don't let programs download and install other programs automatically.
2) there's no "downloading" and "executing". this is seamless to the end-user.
This is an illusion. There certainly is "downloading", the only difference is that the app is downloaded incrementally. Most modern websites use a lot of javascript, so there is a lot of "executing".
Way to be technical about things, and miss the point entirely. The OP was stating that users don't have to click a "download now" button, wait several minutes, open the executable, install, etc., which should have been obvious from the phrase "seemless to the end-user".
You use Linux because you prefer choice over integration. Many of the things that make apps not all look the same are the things that allow us to make our computers not all look the same, for instance, the separation of X.org, desktop environments, window managers, and graphics toolkits.
KDE 4 is much more slick-looking than anything else I've seen on Linux, but it's still a work in progress (whether they admit it or not). It's what all the eyecandy folks *should* be using, instead of gnome.
Kubuntu's the worst KDE distro I've ever experienced, btw. Not that I like how KDE is right now (still waiting for right-click on desktop to produce applications menu, and transparent bar without having to retheme), but 4.2's pretty polished in the distros that don't crap it up.
As some others have said elsewhere, the ads are not the point - we're not going to be getting any *more* ads, just more "relevant" ones.
The thing that's to dislike is the fact that there is no way to opt-out of them selling my browsing information to advertising companies.
Not really. The point is not that the ads I'm seeing are targeted towards me, based on my browsing habits (which doesn't matter since I block them anyways); the disturbing thing is that there is no way for me to stop Charter from selling my browsing habits to the advertising companies (aside from encrypted traffic and such). And yes, I'm a Charter customer who got the letter today.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't know about you, but those of us who know what we're doing tend to use irc xdcc bots and fservs over file hosting sites.
tl;dr. You seem to be suffering from block-of-text syndrome.
Hold on, sonny! Don't blame Linux in general for Ubuntu's failings! As an Archer, I use one application (well, actually like four, but they're just wrappers around each other (yaourt -> powerpill -> pacman-color -> pacman)) to install applications, and only *once* have I wanted to install an application that was not in either the official repositories or the AUR. And guess what? It took me about 5 minutes to make a PKGBUILD for it, and now it's up on the AUR, so that anyone else who wants to install it can do so directly from yaourt. Yay!
They generally offer a free download, and cheap shipped cds, so when they say that you can get it "for free", you can (if you don't count time+bandwidth as cost). Microsoft, otoh, doesn't allow digital download, so it seems misleading when they say that you obtain Win7 for free.
That's why I've decided that, sometime very soon, I'll be signing up for an account at CrashPlan; not only does it support Linux, but you can have them ship a terabyte drive to you for seeding your initial backup, and I can get "unlimited" storage for 4.50$US/month, which is far more economical than S3-type solutions, with my 1.2 TB of data. :)
FreeBSD for Linux Users. It's the clearest explanation I've ever found.
Neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager. They are both Desktop Environments, of which one component is a window manager (usually KWin for KDE and Metacity for Gnome, or Compiz if you want fancy-pants effects). I believe you can actually run said WMs by themselves, without the full DE, although I'm not sure. The point, though, is that many of us don't *use* a DE, and just use a WM, as the OP stated he does. You, apparently, have never done so, so do not compare your experience with his, because they are of different things.
The advantage of Ubuntu is not speed. It is that it is much easier for newbies to Linux to digest, and all of the other inherent advantages of being a Linux distro (no cost, updates relatively often, better default security, etc.).
Not only is what you said false (there have only been two LTS releases, and there have been two non-LTS since the last one),
You're correct. Upon checking, it's every 2 years, which is every 4 releases.
even if it were true, it has less information than what I contained in my question.
I don't see what else there is to it. There's nothing inherently different about the LTS releases (they aren't tested any more ahead of time or treated any differently than normal releases in any other way, to my knowledge), except for the fact that Canonical will continue supporting them longer. Your original post posed a question (they don't seem to be that different; what is different about them?), which I answered (what you've found is all that differs). I fail to see what the issue is.
For Arch: it's Arch. :)
Every other Ubuntu release is LTS, which means Long-Term Support. As it sounds, it is supported for a longer period of time (I don't know offhand how much longer, but I'm sure you can find out if you look hard enough).
That's why we have IRC, for the quick "I need someone to tell me things right now so I know where to look" type of problems.
Meaning that it's a web app.
Even more so, a CLI browser (such as elinks) is an easy way to see how things look to a screen-reader.
Would American cars actually *sell* in Japan?
You use Linux because you prefer choice over integration. Many of the things that make apps not all look the same are the things that allow us to make our computers not all look the same, for instance, the separation of X.org, desktop environments, window managers, and graphics toolkits.
KDE 4 is much more slick-looking than anything else I've seen on Linux, but it's still a work in progress (whether they admit it or not). It's what all the eyecandy folks *should* be using, instead of gnome.
Which is why you really *should* use full paths for important administrative applications like sudo.
Kubuntu's the worst KDE distro I've ever experienced, btw. Not that I like how KDE is right now (still waiting for right-click on desktop to produce applications menu, and transparent bar without having to retheme), but 4.2's pretty polished in the distros that don't crap it up.
Fedora is *not* bleeding-edge. Arch Linux *is*.
Next time you try linux, try Arch or Gentoo, as they're probably the closest to FreeBSD in many ways.
You don't have to enable remote ssh access to manage your router, unless you really need to administrate it remotely.
As some others have said elsewhere, the ads are not the point - we're not going to be getting any *more* ads, just more "relevant" ones. The thing that's to dislike is the fact that there is no way to opt-out of them selling my browsing information to advertising companies.
Not really. The point is not that the ads I'm seeing are targeted towards me, based on my browsing habits (which doesn't matter since I block them anyways); the disturbing thing is that there is no way for me to stop Charter from selling my browsing habits to the advertising companies (aside from encrypted traffic and such). And yes, I'm a Charter customer who got the letter today.