And why does Joe Sixpack need any of the products you mention? They want something simple, easy to maintain, secure, plays all their media and works with youtube. Around 1% of the population uses the tools you mention to create media, the other 99% consume it.
I've tried "desktop Linuces" and found them all pretty clunky for the stuff I wanted to do. You could have just said that you're a PC gamer and Wine is more effort than it's worth for that application...;)
> 1) It was unable to use my RAID controller to install onto the existing RAID-1 array. It insisted on
being installed on a single drive. To get it to boot at all, I had to completely break the RAID volume.
Raid on a desktop is for the masses? You should be backing up your data, not ensuring that your computer will have better uptime. Also can the masses rebuild a raid array once it fails?
> 2) It was unable to use my wireless card. It didn't see it at all, so it wasn't in the "connections" menu.
That sucks. You should contact your hardware vendor and let them know that you wanted to use Linux but since they're hiding the specs for the card (in all likelihood) Linux hackers need to spend their time reverse engineering them and not actually making productive software.
>3) It failed to notice that I have a dual-head video card with two screens attached. The second screen was a mirror of the first during boot, but after boot it turned into a fantastic mosaic of random-colored 80x25 random-ASCII.
Please see my above counterpoint. However, Nvidia and ATI are finally starting to open up the specs for their cards. If things keep going this way in the near term open source drivers should be more featureful and stable than the crappy closed source drivers that ATI and Nvidia make available.
To resolve the above two points, however, you likely just need to get a decent sysadmin to spend a couple minutes on your box. Working around these kinds of problems is difficult due to the fact that they are arcane, not because they take a long time to fix.
I don't care if Linux ever becomes a widespread desktop OS. It works for me better than any other OS available. If it does for you, install it, use it and love it. If you end up not liking it you can fix (or pay someone to fix) whatever problems you encounter.
If Windows or OS X work better for you, use them instead.
Things don't just magically work; You have to test hardware and software configurations and make sure the software works correctly. When it doesn't work you need to have programmers fix the bugs that will happen. In the meantime you pay systems administrators to work around the problems.
Software typically works very well on the computer of the programmer that made an application (or OS, or hardware driver, etc.). The trick to making things "just work" is to either convince everyone in the world to use one hardware and software platform, or to bundle preconfigured software with tested hardware.
If you want the latter, get a Mac (or get a company to sell you a Linux box and all the hardware you'll use it with, with an HP printer/scanner in the mix). If you want the flexibility of using whatever software and hardware you want and the ability to change whatever code as you see fit (or pay a programmer to do so for you) use Linux.
For an experienced technician fixing xorg to work on a new monitor is easy (it usually just works out of the box, otherwise you look up the refresh settings and replace the incorrect settings of the monitor). Can you change the oil in your car? I don't know how to, I pay a professional around $30 to do so.
hahaha, let the users have admin rights?
does the author have **any** experience of the commercial environment? I support programmers and QA staff at my job. They know how to install software (heck, part of their job is to break the machines).
If they didn't have (local) admin rights they couldn't do their jobs.
Motley Crue didn't make a generation of white kids who were unable to program, and Dr. Dre didn't make a generation of black kids who were illiterate. Sometimes music is just music.
...we break up all the music labels, throw their executives in the slammer for racketeering, shut down every corporate radio station that takes payola, then have the government sponsor a nationwide renaissance in audio artwork. Just imagine the music that artists could make if they weren't trying to copy some artist that just hit it big copying another artist that is copying the Beatles. Why, we might even hear taleted artists when we sponsor their training from a young age into college.
Fortunately, this will never happen because people must have their new Nickelback album.
I'm not Christian, but I don't see much reason to attack Christianity as a whole.
Here are your two options with Christianity:
1. Eat the body and blood of (or be saved by faith in) a man that died and came back from the dead, and was born from a virgin, and the dad was some almighty creator who is also his son will bring you an eternal happy afterlife?
2. Spend eternity in hell suffering.
I'd say that such a world view is worth mocking just as much as the CoS.
I love it so much that I think we should use it to support other troubled industries. For example, we could start taxing people to support the ailing horse & buggy industry. After all, there hasn't been much demand for them since those darned automopirates stared taking over the roads last century.
The DoD isn't the common man, they have tens of thousands of hackers that want to pwn them. They have to have better security than your average SMB that uses Windows SBS.
Hiring qualified IT staff that can patch their boxes is a good first start. Locking down your workstations so that malware has a harder time of spreading is important. Monitoring your network for irregular activity is also helpful.
After that, evaluating alternate OSs that have more security than what you have (Linux, *BSD, etc.) can be worthwhile. Once you get to a certain point security will always be in inverse proportion to convenience. If you are the DoD, this can make sense.
Everything I do at home that could be done with MS Office can be done with google docs or openoffice. At some point people will figure out that if you use the 20% of the features that MS Office (or photoshop, or indesign, or new killer app of the week), you should purchase the product.
If you don't need the features, why pay for them on every computer in your enterprise?
I really like the look of my black 4G EEE PC (as does my boss). With a little tweaking I got the desktop to look like it's not for little kids. With a little restraint on colors you can make many things look professional.
Slashdot Mirror
And why does Joe Sixpack need any of the products you mention? They want something simple, easy to maintain, secure, plays all their media and works with youtube. Around 1% of the population uses the tools you mention to create media, the other 99% consume it.
So... then you're saying... that Windows isn't ready for the desktop because it doesn't have Time Machine.
> 1) It was unable to use my RAID controller to install onto the existing RAID-1 array. It insisted on being installed on a single drive. To get it to boot at all, I had to completely break the RAID volume.
Raid on a desktop is for the masses? You should be backing up your data, not ensuring that your computer will have better uptime. Also can the masses rebuild a raid array once it fails?
> 2) It was unable to use my wireless card. It didn't see it at all, so it wasn't in the "connections" menu.
That sucks. You should contact your hardware vendor and let them know that you wanted to use Linux but since they're hiding the specs for the card (in all likelihood) Linux hackers need to spend their time reverse engineering them and not actually making productive software.
>3) It failed to notice that I have a dual-head video card with two screens attached. The second screen was a mirror of the first during boot, but after boot it turned into a fantastic mosaic of random-colored 80x25 random-ASCII.
Please see my above counterpoint. However, Nvidia and ATI are finally starting to open up the specs for their cards. If things keep going this way in the near term open source drivers should be more featureful and stable than the crappy closed source drivers that ATI and Nvidia make available.
To resolve the above two points, however, you likely just need to get a decent sysadmin to spend a couple minutes on your box. Working around these kinds of problems is difficult due to the fact that they are arcane, not because they take a long time to fix.
I don't care if Linux ever becomes a widespread desktop OS. It works for me better than any other OS available. If it does for you, install it, use it and love it. If you end up not liking it you can fix (or pay someone to fix) whatever problems you encounter.
If Windows or OS X work better for you, use them instead.
Things don't just magically work; You have to test hardware and software configurations and make sure the software works correctly. When it doesn't work you need to have programmers fix the bugs that will happen. In the meantime you pay systems administrators to work around the problems.
Software typically works very well on the computer of the programmer that made an application (or OS, or hardware driver, etc.). The trick to making things "just work" is to either convince everyone in the world to use one hardware and software platform, or to bundle preconfigured software with tested hardware.
If you want the latter, get a Mac (or get a company to sell you a Linux box and all the hardware you'll use it with, with an HP printer/scanner in the mix). If you want the flexibility of using whatever software and hardware you want and the ability to change whatever code as you see fit (or pay a programmer to do so for you) use Linux.
For an experienced technician fixing xorg to work on a new monitor is easy (it usually just works out of the box, otherwise you look up the refresh settings and replace the incorrect settings of the monitor). Can you change the oil in your car? I don't know how to, I pay a professional around $30 to do so.
Damn straight. If it's not an American flag, it's a bomb.
If they didn't have (local) admin rights they couldn't do their jobs.
Motley Crue didn't make a generation of white kids who were unable to program, and Dr. Dre didn't make a generation of black kids who were illiterate. Sometimes music is just music.
A standard that only one company can fully implement is not a standard, it is a monopoly.
I think that P2P Warp will be far superior to P3.11P for Workgroups as well as NTP4P.
The only radio I listen to anymore is NPR, everything else sucks. If I want music I have a PMP (nokia n800 specifically).
Because 80% of everything is crap, including people.
...we break up all the music labels, throw their executives in the slammer for racketeering, shut down every corporate radio station that takes payola, then have the government sponsor a nationwide renaissance in audio artwork. Just imagine the music that artists could make if they weren't trying to copy some artist that just hit it big copying another artist that is copying the Beatles. Why, we might even hear taleted artists when we sponsor their training from a young age into college.
Fortunately, this will never happen because people must have their new Nickelback album.
I think I recognize your nick, you were sending me viagra spam the other day! ;)
Here are your two options with Christianity:
1. Eat the body and blood of (or be saved by faith in) a man that died and came back from the dead, and was born from a virgin, and the dad was some almighty creator who is also his son will bring you an eternal happy afterlife?
2. Spend eternity in hell suffering.
I'd say that such a world view is worth mocking just as much as the CoS.
I love it so much that I think we should use it to support other troubled industries. For example, we could start taxing people to support the ailing horse & buggy industry. After all, there hasn't been much demand for them since those darned automopirates stared taking over the roads last century.
The DoD isn't the common man, they have tens of thousands of hackers that want to pwn them. They have to have better security than your average SMB that uses Windows SBS.
Hiring qualified IT staff that can patch their boxes is a good first start. Locking down your workstations so that malware has a harder time of spreading is important. Monitoring your network for irregular activity is also helpful.
After that, evaluating alternate OSs that have more security than what you have (Linux, *BSD, etc.) can be worthwhile. Once you get to a certain point security will always be in inverse proportion to convenience. If you are the DoD, this can make sense.
I for one welcome our new editorially controlled user moderated unimportant news story overlords.
Why would we want to limit the actions of the fatherland's patriotic heroes? You must be a collaborator with the enemy. ;)
Everything I do at home that could be done with MS Office can be done with google docs or openoffice. At some point people will figure out that if you use the 20% of the features that MS Office (or photoshop, or indesign, or new killer app of the week), you should purchase the product.
If you don't need the features, why pay for them on every computer in your enterprise?
I use Linux at work (among other OSs), at home, and encourage my friends and neighbors to either look at OS X or Linux when they start swearing at MS.
This having been said, when I want to play new games (I get the itch every month or so), I have an xbox 360.
If you like playing emulated games Linux is great. You can run old dos games, NES, SNES, arcade, DS and other games.
I really like the look of my black 4G EEE PC (as does my boss). With a little tweaking I got the desktop to look like it's not for little kids. With a little restraint on colors you can make many things look professional.
But can they run Linux on their lack of humor?