Quality, easy of use, availability of (commercial) software etc are the better selling points.
That is true, but what's not true is that Windows is higher quality or easier to use. Windows is a pain in the ass to use. It's poorly documented (but so is most FOSS unfortunately), buggy, insecure, and maddening. Everything that takes two clicks in Linux takes ten in Windows.
You mentioned commercial software, why would you want to pay for commercial software when there is a free alternative that's just as good? Granted, if you're an ad agency and need Photoshop, Gimp won't do, but those are edge cases.
The time you need to waste with Linux costs a lot more than something that just works.
No, the time you need to waste with WINDOWS costs a lot more than something that just works. Two examples: OS installation and BlueTooth. In most Linux distros, boot it with the install CD, answer a few questions (where are you? What kind of keyboard, etc) and walk away doing something else while Linux installs. When it's done, reboot once and you have a functional computer with most if not all the software you'll need. With Windows (the last MS OS I installed was XP so it may be different now) you have a question every two minutes for a half hour to an hour (including that maddening DRM string you have to enter), so you have to sit there. Then when it's done, its drivers are installed, one at a time, with a reboot required for each. Then you have to install applications, with each one of them requiring a reboot.
To install Linux and apps on an OSless PC takes ten minutes of your time with Linux, all damned afternoon with Windows.
I got a bluetooth dongle to shoot pictures into my Linux PC and Win 7 notebook from my phone. It worried me that there was an installation dick for Windows, but not for Linux. IIRC it took fifteen minutes to half hour before I had the dongle working on the notebook, but when I plugged it into the Linux box it JUST WORKED. No installation needed.
Anybody who thinks Windows is easier or more useable than Linux has either tried a very shitty distro, or has never tried it at all and just parrots MS marketers.
And then there's the problem of distros breaking on upgrades
Luckily I haven't run across that problem in Linux, and Windows breaking on updates was one of the things that pushed me towards Linux. I paid $125 for XP, installed it, got everything working, the next morning I had no internet access. Windows update had replaced a perfectly good network driver with one that was completely nonfunctional.
The last kubuntu upgrade introduced some annoying quirks to its file manager, but they seemed to have worked themselves out after the next bugfix upgrade.
and the prevalent WORKS_FOR_ME && WONT_FIX responses towards bugs
Oh, come on, you're able to get MS to fix bugs? How do you go about doing that?
Then there's the lack of social skills among the "self-anointed."
Well, to be fair, I'm sure the programmers at MS are just as much a bunch of ass burgers as Linux programmers, but Microsoft has a marketing department and hires socially skilled but technologically unskilled people for the marketing. Personally, I have no problem with the "self annointed".
Pointing out the problems invariably gets you labeled as a shill, an astroturfer, or worse.
You'll find this with any product, but it isn't the criticism but the way one criticizes. If you spell open source "open sores" you're going to be modded flamebait. Likewise, M$ can get you modded down. Hell, I've been modded down for bashing Sony, of all companies!
If a comment looks like it's been written by a marketer, it's pretty safe to assume that it's either a shill or an idiot fanboy.
Cut him some slack, the a is only two keys away from the e and it didn't change the meaning of the sentence or make it hard to parse, like loose/lose or their/they're/there do.
How I am even supposed to begin to recommend Linux for the average user when there are 100 different distros, each with its own quirks and issues?
Ignore the distros you're unfamiliar with and recommend ones you are familiar with that you think would match the person you're talking to.
Although I really see no reason why anyone worries about why Linux hasn't taken off. That's easy -- Windows comes preinstalled on all but Apple machines, and if it ain't broke, why fix it?
I can see why IT wouldn't, in many cases, want Linux. In the home, however, Linux is far superior to Windows. But Joe Blow has never even heard of Linux, or if he's heard anything at all about it it's a piece of crap hobbled together by a bunch of hippie nerds and you have to use a command line and you can't do half of what you can in Windows, plus you have to be a genius to use it and most hardware has driver issues. False, of course, but that's what Joe's heard, if he has heard of Linux at all.
When I talk to normal people about Linux, they're incredulous. Don't have to enter a password when you turn it on? And it comes back on with all your programs and apps open just like they were when yoou shut it off? You can leave it running without reboots? Impossible! Everybody knows that when you patch a program you have to reboot the computer!
Well, you do with Windows. These are only a few Windows annoyances that Linux lacks. Good luck even explaining what an OS is or what Windows does to Joe Blow.
More profits flow to share holders, who pay taxes on their earnings at half the rate they'd pay if they earned an honest living like those of us who actually work.
You're obviously not the only one who likes those shows of Discovery would go out of business, but personally, with the exception of MythBusters, my opinion of all those shows is that they're worthless dreck. The Discover channel used to be about astronomy and physics and chemistry and other real scientific disciplines. One used to be able to actually learn something watching Discovery. Now it's no better than FOX.
The History channel has been going downhill for years, too.
The rich pay more in total dollars, but far less as a percentage of income. They have more deductions possible, those earning capital gains pay half the rate of the middle class, and their SS and Medicare taxes are a far lower percentage of their income since those are capped at a given amount.
There's no excuse for Warren Buffet to pay a lower percentage of his income in taxes than me. None whatever. It's just wrong.
It does seem that this was a design flaw. I'm no pilot, but remember the first car I drove with power steering was hard for me to master, as there was no feedback. Happily, newer cars' power steering does give one feedback.
How about we change our regressive tax codes? This morning's news said Apple paid slightly less than 10% and they earned billions. Why am I required to pay so much more than Apple? The loopholes need to be removed. I'd like to see ALL deductions eliminated.
No, I'm religious because God revealed himself to me. Once you've been to the zoo you can no longer disbelieve the existance of elephants, and people telling you elephants are impossible or unlikely just sound silly.
It's siting at -1 now. Sad, there used to be a few nerds at slashdot who would appreciate a joke like that. But you know there are 10 kinds of people, those who know binary and those who don't.
Saltpeter and sugar will do the job more safely and just as effectively. It'll burn damned near anything, you can even burn a hole in a cinderblock with it.
I assume you mean "analytic," but hey, that's okay. The whole "suffer not a witch to live thing" probably hampers you when it comes to proper spelling.
I assume you've never misspelled "the" as "teh"? You weakened your argumant before even making one. And in fact you made no arguments at all, simply insults.
Maybe it was a typo because the e and a are close together, but I cringed at your "in vein". It's "in vain" as in "vanity", as in "everything you do is in vain" (all is vanity).
Surely though, to me it seems a little more rational than the idea of a loving, all powerful patriarchal father figure who drowned all his children
Does a programmer love the programs he writes? Of course he does. When they're so buggy that they need to be rewritten, does he delete them? Of course he does.
He's against the EPA, which means he's for Monsanto to have the freedom to ruin MY air. No thanks; as the libbies say, your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins -- and the same goes for your freedom to spoil my air. The feds need to be involved because pollution doesn't respect state lines and all pollution is a result of commerce.
There are things you should not be free to do, including polluting the air and water. I grew up near a Monsanto before the Clean Air Act, and you literally could not drive past with the windows down, the air burned your lungs. As long as Paul is aganst the EPA I'm against Paul. To be against the EPA is close to proof that one is in corporate industry's pockets, which is why I suspect was the real reason he didn't vote on this bill.
The way money collections and 'mandatory donations' are integrated into the religion is quite frankly disgusting, not only the selective morality and bigotry I hear preach towards members of other religions that is wrapped up in the things they say.
"We should trust everyone.... so long as the believe in Jesus our lord"
A lesson to children: *holding a stick* "What happens to people's morals if they don't have faith in our lord" *Snaps the stick* It breaks!!
God, if that was the only church I'd known I'd probably be an athiest, too. People looking for God in a place like that are like looking for life on the moon.
Pat Robertson has converted so many Christians to athiesm that Richard Dawkins should be jealous.
A fellow I know had the opposite experience. He was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and an athiest. He became homeless and wound up in the Salvation Army's homelss shelter. To stay there you must attend church on Sundays.
On his second church visit he had a religious experience (it's impossible to describe to one who has never experienced it) and started going not because it was required, but because he wanted to.
If God touches you, you;ll never be the same again. But you won't find God in a church like you described. And it's no more likely you'll find God when you're not looking for him than it is to find anything else you're not looking for.
I hear that this corporation now makes soft drinks which are sold in uniquely shaped bottles and sells well among the polar bear population.
Nope, they were a me-too also-ran.
In 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold cocaine in various forms, including cigarettes, powder, and even a cocaine mixture that could be injected directly into the user's veins with the included needle. The company promised that its cocaine products would "supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and render the sufferer insensitive to pain."
Not Coca Cola, Parke-Davis. Prior to Coka-Cola there was cocaine wine.
The people who spend money buying Democrats and Republicans control the media, who have convinced everyone that a vote for anyone not R or D is somehow "wasted". I guess all those people who voted for McCain wasted their votes just like those voting C, L, or G.
And what the rich (who own the government and the media) aren't going to let you know is that someone you love smokes the plant that's illegality helps keep those rich fuckers rich, and a vote for the Rs and Ds is a vote for a person who wants to jail your loved ones -- or even YOU.
We are a nation of morons. We have the government we deserve.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, cutting my beard into a goatee did get the ladies more interested in me. I don't think most women care too much for the RMS look.
Quality, easy of use, availability of (commercial) software etc are the better selling points.
That is true, but what's not true is that Windows is higher quality or easier to use. Windows is a pain in the ass to use. It's poorly documented (but so is most FOSS unfortunately), buggy, insecure, and maddening. Everything that takes two clicks in Linux takes ten in Windows.
You mentioned commercial software, why would you want to pay for commercial software when there is a free alternative that's just as good? Granted, if you're an ad agency and need Photoshop, Gimp won't do, but those are edge cases.
The time you need to waste with Linux costs a lot more than something that just works.
No, the time you need to waste with WINDOWS costs a lot more than something that just works. Two examples: OS installation and BlueTooth. In most Linux distros, boot it with the install CD, answer a few questions (where are you? What kind of keyboard, etc) and walk away doing something else while Linux installs. When it's done, reboot once and you have a functional computer with most if not all the software you'll need. With Windows (the last MS OS I installed was XP so it may be different now) you have a question every two minutes for a half hour to an hour (including that maddening DRM string you have to enter), so you have to sit there. Then when it's done, its drivers are installed, one at a time, with a reboot required for each. Then you have to install applications, with each one of them requiring a reboot.
To install Linux and apps on an OSless PC takes ten minutes of your time with Linux, all damned afternoon with Windows.
I got a bluetooth dongle to shoot pictures into my Linux PC and Win 7 notebook from my phone. It worried me that there was an installation dick for Windows, but not for Linux. IIRC it took fifteen minutes to half hour before I had the dongle working on the notebook, but when I plugged it into the Linux box it JUST WORKED. No installation needed.
Anybody who thinks Windows is easier or more useable than Linux has either tried a very shitty distro, or has never tried it at all and just parrots MS marketers.
And then there's the problem of distros breaking on upgrades
Luckily I haven't run across that problem in Linux, and Windows breaking on updates was one of the things that pushed me towards Linux. I paid $125 for XP, installed it, got everything working, the next morning I had no internet access. Windows update had replaced a perfectly good network driver with one that was completely nonfunctional.
The last kubuntu upgrade introduced some annoying quirks to its file manager, but they seemed to have worked themselves out after the next bugfix upgrade.
and the prevalent WORKS_FOR_ME && WONT_FIX responses towards bugs
Oh, come on, you're able to get MS to fix bugs? How do you go about doing that?
Then there's the lack of social skills among the "self-anointed."
Well, to be fair, I'm sure the programmers at MS are just as much a bunch of ass burgers as Linux programmers, but Microsoft has a marketing department and hires socially skilled but technologically unskilled people for the marketing. Personally, I have no problem with the "self annointed".
Pointing out the problems invariably gets you labeled as a shill, an astroturfer, or worse.
You'll find this with any product, but it isn't the criticism but the way one criticizes. If you spell open source "open sores" you're going to be modded flamebait. Likewise, M$ can get you modded down. Hell, I've been modded down for bashing Sony, of all companies!
If a comment looks like it's been written by a marketer, it's pretty safe to assume that it's either a shill or an idiot fanboy.
Cut him some slack, the a is only two keys away from the e and it didn't change the meaning of the sentence or make it hard to parse, like loose/lose or their/they're/there do.
How I am even supposed to begin to recommend Linux for the average user when there are 100 different distros, each with its own quirks and issues?
Ignore the distros you're unfamiliar with and recommend ones you are familiar with that you think would match the person you're talking to.
Although I really see no reason why anyone worries about why Linux hasn't taken off. That's easy -- Windows comes preinstalled on all but Apple machines, and if it ain't broke, why fix it?
I can see why IT wouldn't, in many cases, want Linux. In the home, however, Linux is far superior to Windows. But Joe Blow has never even heard of Linux, or if he's heard anything at all about it it's a piece of crap hobbled together by a bunch of hippie nerds and you have to use a command line and you can't do half of what you can in Windows, plus you have to be a genius to use it and most hardware has driver issues. False, of course, but that's what Joe's heard, if he has heard of Linux at all.
When I talk to normal people about Linux, they're incredulous. Don't have to enter a password when you turn it on? And it comes back on with all your programs and apps open just like they were when yoou shut it off? You can leave it running without reboots? Impossible! Everybody knows that when you patch a program you have to reboot the computer!
Well, you do with Windows. These are only a few Windows annoyances that Linux lacks. Good luck even explaining what an OS is or what Windows does to Joe Blow.
Well, didn't a wise man once say that there were "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns"?
Only a fool would call the man who said that "wise". He was cunning and evil, not wise. If he were wise we'd have never invaded Iraq.
More profits flow to share holders, who pay taxes on their earnings at half the rate they'd pay if they earned an honest living like those of us who actually work.
You're obviously not the only one who likes those shows of Discovery would go out of business, but personally, with the exception of MythBusters, my opinion of all those shows is that they're worthless dreck. The Discover channel used to be about astronomy and physics and chemistry and other real scientific disciplines. One used to be able to actually learn something watching Discovery. Now it's no better than FOX.
The History channel has been going downhill for years, too.
The rich pay more in total dollars, but far less as a percentage of income. They have more deductions possible, those earning capital gains pay half the rate of the middle class, and their SS and Medicare taxes are a far lower percentage of their income since those are capped at a given amount.
There's no excuse for Warren Buffet to pay a lower percentage of his income in taxes than me. None whatever. It's just wrong.
Tax management isn't wrong, the laws that allow it are.
It does seem that this was a design flaw. I'm no pilot, but remember the first car I drove with power steering was hard for me to master, as there was no feedback. Happily, newer cars' power steering does give one feedback.
How about we change our regressive tax codes? This morning's news said Apple paid slightly less than 10% and they earned billions. Why am I required to pay so much more than Apple? The loopholes need to be removed. I'd like to see ALL deductions eliminated.
No, I'm religious because God revealed himself to me. Once you've been to the zoo you can no longer disbelieve the existance of elephants, and people telling you elephants are impossible or unlikely just sound silly.
...just a drop of water in an endless sea.
All we do
Crumbles to the ground but we refuse to see.
Dust in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind.
What a useless existance dust in the wind has.
It's siting at -1 now. Sad, there used to be a few nerds at slashdot who would appreciate a joke like that. But you know there are 10 kinds of people, those who know binary and those who don't.
Saltpeter and sugar will do the job more safely and just as effectively. It'll burn damned near anything, you can even burn a hole in a cinderblock with it.
I assume you mean "analytic," but hey, that's okay. The whole "suffer not a witch to live thing" probably hampers you when it comes to proper spelling.
I assume you've never misspelled "the" as "teh"? You weakened your argumant before even making one. And in fact you made no arguments at all, simply insults.
What are you so afraid of, brother?
Maybe it was a typo because the e and a are close together, but I cringed at your "in vein". It's "in vain" as in "vanity", as in "everything you do is in vain" (all is vanity).
Surely though, to me it seems a little more rational than the idea of a loving, all powerful patriarchal father figure who drowned all his children
Does a programmer love the programs he writes? Of course he does. When they're so buggy that they need to be rewritten, does he delete them? Of course he does.
You know what would feed more people? Wasting less food and spending less energy growing meat
Humans are omnivores. We need meat. Feeding humans nothing but vegetables is as unhealthy and antievolutionary as feeding corn to cows.
The fact is, there is no food shortage. The only "food problem" is political. The problem is artificial.
He's against the EPA, which means he's for Monsanto to have the freedom to ruin MY air. No thanks; as the libbies say, your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins -- and the same goes for your freedom to spoil my air. The feds need to be involved because pollution doesn't respect state lines and all pollution is a result of commerce.
There are things you should not be free to do, including polluting the air and water. I grew up near a Monsanto before the Clean Air Act, and you literally could not drive past with the windows down, the air burned your lungs. As long as Paul is aganst the EPA I'm against Paul. To be against the EPA is close to proof that one is in corporate industry's pockets, which is why I suspect was the real reason he didn't vote on this bill.
The way money collections and 'mandatory donations' are integrated into the religion is quite frankly disgusting, not only the selective morality and bigotry I hear preach towards members of other religions that is wrapped up in the things they say.
"We should trust everyone.... so long as the believe in Jesus our lord"
A lesson to children: *holding a stick* "What happens to people's morals if they don't have faith in our lord" *Snaps the stick* It breaks!!
God, if that was the only church I'd known I'd probably be an athiest, too. People looking for God in a place like that are like looking for life on the moon.
Pat Robertson has converted so many Christians to athiesm that Richard Dawkins should be jealous.
A fellow I know had the opposite experience. He was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and an athiest. He became homeless and wound up in the Salvation Army's homelss shelter. To stay there you must attend church on Sundays.
On his second church visit he had a religious experience (it's impossible to describe to one who has never experienced it) and started going not because it was required, but because he wanted to.
If God touches you, you;ll never be the same again. But you won't find God in a church like you described. And it's no more likely you'll find God when you're not looking for him than it is to find anything else you're not looking for.
I hear that this corporation now makes soft drinks which are sold in uniquely shaped bottles and sells well among the polar bear population.
Nope, they were a me-too also-ran.
In 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold cocaine in various forms, including cigarettes, powder, and even a cocaine mixture that could be injected directly into the user's veins with the included needle. The company promised that its cocaine products would "supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and render the sufferer insensitive to pain."
Not Coca Cola, Parke-Davis. Prior to Coka-Cola there was cocaine wine.
An 1885 poster for cocaine toothache drops
Organic beef is where a lot of the bovine diseases come from.
Citation? What diseases? And can I have a toke of whatever it is you're smoking?
The people who spend money buying Democrats and Republicans control the media, who have convinced everyone that a vote for anyone not R or D is somehow "wasted". I guess all those people who voted for McCain wasted their votes just like those voting C, L, or G.
And what the rich (who own the government and the media) aren't going to let you know is that someone you love smokes the plant that's illegality helps keep those rich fuckers rich, and a vote for the Rs and Ds is a vote for a person who wants to jail your loved ones -- or even YOU.
We are a nation of morons. We have the government we deserve.