Vista Launch Good for Desktop Linux? 535
Sensible Clod writes "XYZ Computing has an article hypothesizing that the arrival of Windows Vista may be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop. Massive feature cutbacks for Vista as well as huge hardware requirements are cited as major factors. From the article: 'As the time gets closer and closer to the public debut of Vista the operating system seems to be constantly losing the luster which was associated with Longhorn...Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the Monad scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye'. The article then shows the need for action to be taken to get Linux onto the computers in stores (display models!), and pinpoints a few important improvements Linux distros in general need to make. Very interesting read, and timely."
negligible (Score:5, Insightful)
The same people who bought windows XP at full retail will probably go ahead and buy Vista at full retail while most of us that use linux now will just keep using linux whether or not some new version of windows comes along.
I think the whole impact will be negligible.
This is what amazes me (Score:5, Insightful)
What's funny is that every one of those features is available today in a Linux distro near you. Yet still nobody listens and switches to linux in droves, but many wait for vista
I think sometimes everyone is a sheep
People don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
As for hardware requirements - most people will get vista with their shiny new hardware from dell or whatever. It will meet the requirements and look great with lots of eye-candy.
Linux doesn't just need to be better than Vista - it needs to be MUCH better to get an average user to switch.
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
A decade ago it was Windows 95 that was going to be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop, then it was Windows 98, 2000, XP, the DRM in Media Player, Internet Explorer, the license of MS SQL Server, the flaws in ASP security model, the nonsense of
Lack of features won't make a difference... (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux will find a way to people's desktops eventually, when it's more ready and the market in general is more ready to support it. Linux won't make inroads because of anything Microsoft does, for better or worse.
-N
*hmpf* if only that was true (Score:4, Insightful)
i agree, some of the more sophisticated desktop users might be willing to switch, but much more powerful forces for not switching are: a lot of people don't like serious changes. they know windows (though it might suck), not necessarily the OS, but the brand, so they stick with it.
a lot of companies are either bound by contracts or - more importantly - by internal applications that are broken enough only to work with windows (in that case, to be more specific, mostly word, excel and access).
these are, i think, compelling reasons why a large percentage - mark, percentage, not single individuals - will not want to switch to linux because of what the article states.
Both ways anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with MS being ambitious in aiming to get new features into Vista, and even if some don't make it - there have been 4 1/2 years since the last release that should improve the usability of the widest deployed desktop OS in the world today.
You can't sledge MS for taking longer than expected to release Vista, then in the next comment complain about the lack of features.
__Funny videos, pics, flash & flesh [laughdaily.com]
Uses today's hardwre. Linux, not anytime soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like the year before that and the year before that, hang on.. i'm noticing a trend.. next year is always the year of desktop linux..
Terrible article (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to see how vista, even if it weren't very convincing, will help linux getting on the desktop. All a bad windows release will lead to in the short tearm is not many people buying Vist, but staying with their curren OS, which is some kind of Windows in most cases.
And people who really care about monad not being included are people who would consider running linux anyway, but they only make a small percentage of the market.
Further, I'm convinced that Linux will not make large inroads into the private desktop in the near future, not because Linux isn't good enough, but simply because Windows is much to entrenched in this market.
Corporate and gouvernment desktops are an other story though and we'll see a lot of things happening there in the future, I'm sure.
Not trolling, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Year of the Linux desktop" or whatever. Isn't that a dupe and troll in itself? It's been repeated over and over again, and yet never happened.
Honestly, I don't think Linux (as it is now anyway) is ready for the desktop. Why? Sure, you got aptitude and lot of neat stuff. Gnome may be bloated as hell, but it looks good, and that's what most consumers want.
You got lots of good stuff, but when your average linux-distro starts to break down, when stuff doesn't work automagicly, when hardware detetction fails and so on... Most users (and by most users I also mean powerusers) will have a really hard time fixing stuff, if they even manage to fix it at all. Not all of us are geeks who grew up with a keyboard.
Plus, I don't really care if linux hits the mainstream or not. I use what works for me, I'll let others use what works for them. To me, open standards are a lot more important than whatever OS people are running to get their work done.
Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a few people see the OS as ineluctably linked with the hardware.
I think using a seemingly less polished, cheaper (or free) operating system will take much of the enjoyment out of a new computer purchase - after all, most copies of Windows are bundled with the latest hardware, and the high specifications required for Vista aren't going to bother the majority of users who will overhaul their whole system when confronted by the marketing blitz.
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using linux as a way to learn how the command line works, I didn't enjoy the days or even weeks it took me to get my peripherals/hardware to work. I'd honestly rather go for a walk then get my cd's to burn.
I want to be a programmer, so I'm learning about things I think/have been told they do. I don't want to just re-iterate all of the old arguments of why linux wont make it to the desktop just yet. But here is what I know from reading posts here (in short form):
1) Driver support. No support => few users => no support
2) Lack of games
3) Office. Everyone wants you to send documents in word. Even when I'd never used linux, I always sent ascii or pdf files aswell.
My personal experiences.
1) I love the ideology behind GNU. I'd never even really thought about such ideas existing (outside of Star Trek). I hate the fact that closed source is so..well closed. MS can steer the IT word any way THEY want. Now that can't be inthe interests of the user.
Re:Linux' big chance (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't XP already ahead of the Linux desktop options anyway? You have to surpass the previous iteration of MS offerings before you snatch an "opportunity" with their successor.
And since when did more than 0.5% of the PC-using population ever really pay much attention to the left-out features (filesystem changes, etc).
People who were considering Vista for their current underpowered machine would go with XP or 2000 before trying Linux, I suspect.
Any benefit for corporations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost negligible (Score:5, Insightful)
Legally downloaded audio/video file disclaimer - "Needs DRM compatible PC"
Windows Vista box sticker - "Fully DRM compatible!"
To an average non-technical user who just wants their music and video files to play, isn't this going to make the DRM look like an additional feature that Windows has and Linux lacks? Sadly lacking DRM might end up turning people away from Linux rather than towards it
Re:I guess I just don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
What "starter" version of Linux are you talking about? I've been a RedHat and now Fedora user and have only paid for maybe two boxes... I wanted to get the stickers and stuff. I have only made ONE support call (mostly to see what it was like) only to be told they only support one NIC installation on a machine. Disappointing to say the least... it was years ago so maybe support has gotten better since then, I don't know, but I see almost no advantage to buying a support agreement. You're simply better off having a support PERSON on site or available on short notice and that goes for Linux or Windows or any OS.
Mozilla incorporating has nothing to do with making a version to be paid for. This is ALL open-source. The moment someone even thinks they will take it closed-source for profit, a fork will happen and someone else will drive the project as open source. There are many examples of this to cite... do I really need to?
"Good busines woman" or not, you don't know what you're talking about -- you're just unaccustomed to the way things work in the OS world. Salesmen are out to make money and I don't blame you for being suspicious of their intentions. But the OS community as a whole are more likely to do it for free just for the fun and challenge involved.
Open Source has too long a history to be a gimmick or a bait-n-switch. I still can't decide if you're a troll or not. If not, then I wonder what an experienced business woman would be doing here on Slashdot in the first place.
And finally, you need to re-think what computing does for your business. It's a tool, not a religion. Determine what tools you need to run your business and I heartily recommend you start with the applications you need to run and base your choice of OS secondarily. To make the choice of OS first would be a decision not on the OS as a tool, but for other reasons such as a bas experience with a BSA audit, or some reason that involves emotional drive of some sort. Think business tools and test a lot of stuff before settling on something. And if you select something that runs well under Linux, then consider your support options. (1) learn how to do it yourself (2) find someone who knows this stuff. I don't think it's any different under Windows really -- I have rarely had a support experience with Windows that was helpful.
P.S. Closed-minds and Open-source do not work well together.
Desktop Linux needs the following: (Score:5, Insightful)
The other thing Desktop Linux needs is good fonts. I am yet to find a desktop Linux installation that is beautiful out of the box. Often times, one has to download M$ fonts or could use the script found here: http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh [unimi.it] to get good fonts for the web.
Next thing is multimedia and multimedia applications. Totem in the GNOME world and Amarok in the KDE world will not play mp3s out of the box, yet there are no licensing restrictions on these formats! These are so many other examples in the multimedia field.
There is a bug/feature I found in Linux that needs attention in relation to how devices are mounted. Remember that we in the Linux world are aiming at domination. So we should attract as many users as we can. The bug is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111173 [kde.org]. I was surprised that there was a wontfix mentioned. So how are we to attract users if there will always be confusion in how devices are mounted?
Last but not least, we need publicity - good publicity. Right now, Linux is being touted as very good or good enough for the average user. What happens is that folks then have to understand that Linux is just a KERNEL and that there are many implementations associated with this kernel. To many, understanding this is a challenge. So one says "I use Linux at home, it's freely available on the net...try it out..." (and they leave it at that)! What follows is confusion as newbies find tons of distros and incompatible packages. Folks what do you think?
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:5, Insightful)
When software developers sell multi-platform licenses for each title, then we can switch. Until then, it's Windows or whatever OS you are locked into due to the expense of moving to another platform, which would require buying a full version instead of an upgrade. Why spend that kind of money to switch when the software/hardware combo you are using now will work just fine?
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:negligible (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to wonder computers are really "good enough" Except for the people that toss their computers when they get too infected with spy/adware who really needs a new computer?
People that always need the latest and greatest are the people that do CAD, Rendering, high end photo shop, video editing, and Gamers.
Everyone else is really fine with even the low end we have now.
The place that Windows may loose big is the Government/Corporate Desktop. Vista offers them very little. A lot of them are still on 2000 even now.
Re:Lack of features won't make a difference... (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from the deep level programming stuff, which I don't know much about to be honest, there are some things in XP that I think do make it worthwhile to switch from 2000. Most of them are little things, but they are there.
*simple SMB file sharing. Right-click, sharing..., "just share this folder". Bang. Everyone in the workgroup can now read your files.
*network location awareness. A lot of the SMB stuff in XP is just done better than 2000, it seems to "just work" where as windows 2000 had problems with people seeing each other, especially networking 98--2000.
*When you open a folder with a bunch of directories under it (say, for instance, my mp3 collection), and then you go into a sub-directory (say, darkest hour), and then back out of the directory, the display is still at "D". Windows 2000 reset at "A". Small, but annoying.
*Remote desktop / Terminal Server. Obviously, this has been in linux/xwindows/openwindows/xfree86/your mom's wm since 17th century, but the windows TS client is hot; it works as well if not better than any of the 3rd party alternatives, including pcanywhere and VNC.
*Security. Well, mostly. Well, ok, it took until SP2. But, windows now has protected memory and stack overflow protections (to an extent), and a built in firewall, and yada yada yada.
*Driver support. Have you worked with windows 2000 lately, with modern hardware? If you're not installing onto a Celeron-333 440BX motherboard, windows thinks you've installed it on a delorian. Not to mention - in 2000, it seemed to be the theme of "We'll put the most common drivers in the OS", so it's got an HP LaserJet II driver and a Realtek 8139 driver, but not a whole lot else. Windows XP took the path of "We'll put everything that exists and has a driver in the OS".
*64-bit computing. For those of you with Athlon 64's and FX's. Lucky sods.
*Gaming support. DirectX built into XP, and just a lot better gaming support in general.
*Run-In-Compatibility-Mode. Right click, Properties, Compatability tab, "Run this program in compatability mode for Windows95". Lets you play those games you really want to play, or that application your company has to use.
*Start, Run, "msconfig". Thank freaking god. Where have you been since WinME, and why did you leave?
That's just off the top of my head. I mean, people say Windows XP has nothing on 2000, but there are enough compelling reasons to switch. Plus, as a ground-pounder tech support / consultant, I can tell you that I'd rather troubleshoot a WinXP/2003 server domain environment than a win2000/2000 server environment anyday.
~Will
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of features won't make a difference... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft announced today that it will cease all support for [fill in the name of MS OS in question] as of ['way too soon date]"...
That's how. It always works, too.
Re:For example (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, right. (Score:1, Insightful)
(And this is off topic, but what the hell is up with the login system? I can't get it to e-mail me my password because apparently my account doesn't exist, but I can't recreate my account because apparently it does exist. WTF?)
Re:A sloppy comparison... (Score:1, Insightful)
That will cut out almost all "office" type PCs currently deployed with their Intel integrated graphics as well as a vast majority of the lower end of the PC market where integrated graphics sharing main system RAM are the norm for price reasons.
Dell may ship Vista with all their systems but unless you pay a real price rather than a £299 special offer box you'll see nothing different in Vista.
Guess you never heard of duke nuke'em forever? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cario is coming pretty soon, gnome 2.12 will include it even though it will just be to up 2D quality the first time around. Hardware accelleration isn't, ready yet.
XGL and luminocity is just testbeds, also they wont be done anytime soon (which was why one of the two main developers recently dropped out of the project, he felt it was too far from release). I saym, 3-4 years. We'll be where OSX is today, OSX (and windows) will ofcource have evolved then.
This stuff is prettycomplex, and like all type of complex development the OS model seem to have a hardtime competing against the commercial offerings(simply because they have more qualified people working full time that, for example XGL has it. Currently ONE guy does the bulk of the development. one!).
Breathe out, and realize if you want the "latest and greatest" desktop you shouldn't run linux.
Re:Lack of features won't make a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I've used Linux on Alphas, x86, x86-64, ia64, and mips processors.
I've used Linux from 1997 to 2004 as my primary desktop environment.
I see nothing special about Linux' desktop environment over what is available for FreeBSD, Solaris, etc, simply because they are all the same.
So how am I being a troll to say that the next version of Windows, that at worst will be no different than the current version of Windows will drive people to Linux which has no compelling end-user features over Windows?
Re:Almost negligible (Score:1, Insightful)
People will whore themselves out and sell off basic freedoms for the craziest shit. Your happy gas cylinder needs a recharge, time for another visit to the RIAA station.
Re:Not trolling, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
My mom and dad do not know what they're doing, neither do many of my friends.
At work, people who don't know what they are doing get infected and experience random breakage. Those who know what they are doing don't get infected, at least. (See below for environment)
For someone with a decent knowledge of the platform a complete reinstall simply isn't needed
Family's/friends' friends that pretend to know what they are doing in Win usually don't either. Usually they break more things when they try to fix, so in fact a reinstall is the better path to take anyway.
At work, it is just easier and faster to just automatically back up, reimage, and restore, than to spend hours debugging things.
if you by random breakage mean that the machine has gotten infected
No, I mean simply bit rot or something. I know many people claim otherwise, but in my experience regular reimages are needed. In my department at work we have 40 XP PCs, basically only running Office, Notes, IE, and not locked down, so people can basically install what they want.
Plus, I get to know many things about the 1600 PCs overall that we have in use in the company in this country (of ca. 15000 worldwide, mostly laptops that are also plugged into non-internal networks).
And fact here is, of the 40 PCs in my department, every 2 weeks we need to reimage one. Either something randomly breaks like WMI (which we need to install some stuff), or shutdowns start to last 5 minutes, or PowerPoint starts to crash when you copy a textbox. Etc. The infections come on top of that.
Our IT department is not particularly clueless, and I don't think they can do anything about an Office install suddenly breaking after a few months or a year of heavy use anyway.
Re:Almost negligible (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is the killer app that made the PC king, and brought broadband to the masses.
So, if piracy is ever made impossible under windows, millions of people will flock to Linux in order to continue to enjoy software free of charge, with the additional advantage that it will also give them freedom. Watch, then, as some of those millions take an interest in the people who kindly provide them with free, legal software, and become active open source contributors.
It's happening already. The other day some rich bastard was accusing me of being an evil pirate when I told him I never pay for software. I started looking at my software and lo - its practically all open source, even under windows. Gaim, OO.o, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Ur-Quan Masters, heck, even my mp3s are mostly legal, indie stuff. I wish I could have seen the look on his face
Re:negligible (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they do so primarily because the stock market expects them to. If MS didn't at least pretend to be working on new products, their stock would plummet.
Vista is a MAJOR upgrade (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of you complaining about feature cut-backs don't realize that MS was aiming for the moon. Even after the cut-backs, it'll have more new DESKTOP features than what Linux has gained in the last 5 years.
I personally don't see linux overtaking Windows on the desktop side until the operating system market matures and MS stops innovating or releasing any new major versions (maybe 15 to 20 years from now). Linux has potential on the server (its market share growth over the last 5 years shows that) but the desktop side will be tough for Linux. As a desktop, linux just doesn't have enough applications, and isn't easy to use--two key features desktop users care about.
Even the server side will become more tough for Linux. For regular server use (eg. file server, web server, etc for a small to mid-sized company) Windows 2003 is pretty solid. Its market share growth (along with its first incarnation, Windows NT) from almost none to something large is worth nothing. Linux will faced a big challenge on the server side from the next version of Windows server. Linux's server market share has mostly been increasing due to it taking over Unix servers. But when it goes head to head against the next version of Windows server, it will be a tough battle...
Overall, I expect Windows Vista to grow at double digits on the desktop side for the next 5 years, while Linux likely won't exceed 5 percent for the desktop side.
Re:Spelling Tip ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost negligible (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the EU, and we slept our chance away while the "anti-circumvention" directive was passed. You might note that the same happened in the US. To make America live up to the noblest connotation of the name takes active citizens. (The same goes for the EU and the respective nation states except that "EU" has much fewer positive connotations to live up to.)
Re:negligible (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly this is true. People don't choose Windows, they choose a computer and Windows happens to come with it. Windows is "thrust upon them" as it were. At least this is the case for the majority. I'm sure some people choose Windows. Sad, pathetic people.
Me, I chose Linux years ago (Mandrake, then SuSE, now Mandrake/Mandriva again), and use it as my day to day OS. I never have been able to understand these folks who say it "isn't ready for the desktop" simply because it doesn't have some specific brand name application, when it does have valid replacement apps of it's own. I don't understand the people who harpo about ease of install and compiling, when installing applications is pretty simple to me, just going to "Install software" and clicking on the apps I want...or using urpmi on the command line, which is just urpmi and the name of the application. I don't know what people are talking about when they say there are no games either. Maybe some fewer, but plenty of commercial games...lots that don't even need WINE or Cedega. And lots of decent Open Source games.
I think the people who say these thing are just afraid of going outside of what's comfortable for them, what they are used to and trying something new. I mean hell, if my grandfather can use Linux as his day to day OS (and he does), then surely anyone can.
Re:Almost negligible (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I think you'll find that the vast majority of computer users live in rich countries. The vast majority of *people* live in poor countries, but very very few of them have computers.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't use OpenOffice in a business environment where you have to send and receive correctly formatted documents. OpenOffice always retains the text, but usually mangles some little details here and there. In a large document, with pictures and other embedded objects, you can't afford to hunt for such defects each time you get a file. Even worse, you can't ask your customers to do the same when they open your files. $500 paid for his MS Office was a good business decision.
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:1, Insightful)
2) Visual Studio.NET -> never heard of gcc or gdb? (which not only works flawlessly on x86 but support zillion different architectures as well as cross compiling.. can your Visual Studio.NET do that?! Tell me!..)
Your argument is exactly why emacs and gcc/gdb are not good enough.
Just having a feature doesn't matter as much as how that feature is executed. I could never get emacs to work for me. It's too clumsy, too lacking in discoverability and workflow. And I have my sincere doubts about its merits as a programmer's editor.
First of all, it doesn't do GUI design, so if you're building GUI apps, it will make it a pain to build your forms and associate code with them. Secondly, I wonder how good it is at basic stuff I expect from editors, like allowing you to place the cursor on a variable or function and immediately go to where it was declared/defined. Or setting conditional breakpoints in your app, then stopping at them, looking at the code in your editor, and quickly seeing the value of every variable there without variable panes cluttering up your screen (most IDE's let you see variable values with a simple mouse hover). Or how about while you're at that breakpoint, selecting a function call, pressing a key combo and seeing its result appear in a new window?
Maybe emacs does all those things, I don't know, but those are the things I expect from a decent programming environment, and I have my honest doubts about emacs' capability on that level.
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:3, Insightful)
How upgrading WINE suddenly broke DVDShrink (yea yea, I know, whatever you say though doesn't change the fact that this is something I had to deal with...would be nice if there were a DVDShrink equiv in Linux).
As far as Gentoo goes though, I was fully prepared to do all the extra work for that system. Portage itself was worth it for me. I had that part of the system under control very well with no complaints there.
My post wasn't even a complaint about Linux really though, more of a reason why a lot of people don't use it. I mean, I really wanted to make it my desktop...it was for a year...but when I switched back to Windows it was very obvious that there was less overhead involved with using that OS.
I mean, even if Linux was BETTER for a regular user out-of-the-box in every way than Windows you'd STILL have a problem getting people to switch. As it is right now, Linux doesn't even have THAT going for it. Not for home users anyways. Corp. environments are a whole different story.
Re:Almost negligible (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never seen a pirate distribute WMAs. So, for those who are into pirating stuff, they will just get the MP3 version I would guess.
Unless Vista plans on disabling bittorrent, HTTP downloads, FTP, and scores of other P2P methods + not allowing you to install say WinAmp to play MP3s while making WMP not play MP3s...
I'd guess there would be some notice from even the mass media if you can't play MP3s on Vista...
I'd also expect there to be some outcry if Opera and FF (two browsers that can support bittorrent in the browser) won't run also.
I mean, to prevent media piracy, MS would have to prevent you from installing software...
And if in either case you had to buy all new software that is MS approved, I'm guessing that could drive business use away. Or, they will come up with a coporate version, that will be out like XP was for all the pirates...
I get how via Trusted Computing they could prevent you from pirating software, what I don't see is how that would work for media - some pirates will just run 2K or XP or Linux and release MP3 or Divx or XviD files that don't have any software identifiable copyright info, so Vista won't know that they are a DVDRip or whatever...
Re:I'm not sure why you would think that (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that a Windows virus that completely trashed every Windows box on the planet every 24 hours might do the trick. Virus writers are way too wussy.
Answer: No. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the Monad scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye." One second--you think customers care one fucking bit about innovation in an OS? What planet is this guy on that he thinks people care about a fucking FILESYSTEM or SHELL?!?!?* I'm gonna say this once really loud for the cheap seats: WINDOWS IS POPULAR BECAUSE IT'S THE OS ON THE CHEAPEST COMPUTERS OUT THERE!!!!!!!111oneoneone. The 5% of customers that do care about innovation already have a home: they're at the Apple store.
* note: Windows does ship with a shell. But no one needs it. (Because Windows also ships with a GUI, natch.) Before writing another article like this, do this simple test: walk up to 50 people and ask them about the shell in Windows.
- 46 will go "huh?"
- 2 will say "cmd.exe but I have no use for it." (You just stumbled across two people who work in IT or a computer store.)
- 1 will say "cmd.exe and I use it once in a while because I've been using PCs for 20 years and I still do things there 'cause I'm used to it."
- And exactly one will say "cmd.exe but I don't use it 'cause it's teh sux0rz! When I get a new comp the first thing I do is use IE to download Firefox and then I use Firefox to download Cygwin!" [diveintomark.org] (Read that page, it's really funny. I love that story.)
Monad is very cool [newbox.org] but even if MS would have shipped it in Vista, did you really think you were going to spend next thanksgiving teaching your mom how to use it? "Look, mom, here--I just pipe this through that, and what makes Monad even cooler than bash is that it isn't just text coming out, these are actual objects, so I can take these results and..." Uh-huh. Right.
Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I'll bite. If I buy anything online, be it music, videos or whatever, I buy it, it's mine. Mine as in mine to do whatever damned I please with it. As in making low-bitrate AACs out of high-bitrate WMAs for fitting more of them on my cellphone.
See, this is legal. Noone nowhere has any business telling me "you can't do that". That's equivalent to saying "So... we wont be seeing you purchasing our products ever again?"
Now, if I tried to pass these files on to others, now that would be copyright infringement, and thus illegal.
I don't want my computer, restricting me from doing stuff with my data because some executives somewhere are afraid I might violate their copyright. No way. No way in hell.
Re:This is what amazes me (Score:3, Insightful)
So when somebody like me can roll in, with a ton of free-tool experience, and roll a cross-platform solution (Windows, MacOS X, Linux, BSD) with guaranteed uptime, remote maintainence from the developer, secure remote access features, and interactive documentation, and all for less than a proprietary solution would cost, what do you think my clients tell me?
The best thing is, since I'm not writing applications for redistribution, I can make all kinds of changes to existing applications, still be legal by the GPL by making those patches available, and save myself months of development time.
It's not, "Oh, I'm sorry, but that has to run on Windows," it's "Wait, you can give us *how much* for *how little*?"
Re:Sad (Score:2, Insightful)
The primary and only use of computers is to run applications, that's what they're there for. An operating system is a means to an end, nothing else.
If Open Office doesn't meet someone's needs, and they need MS Office, then preaching Linux all day is a waste of everyone's time. You can spend all day talking about how well Open Office opens Ms Office files, it doesn't change anything, it doesn't make it a better product. There's a reason people pay thousands of pounds for professional software: because it fits their needs in a way that free software doesn't. Do you think people who pay for Photoshop wouldn't rather use something that's free?
You don't pick your food depending on what cutlery you need to eat it, you pick your cutlery depending on what you're eating. If you're eating soup you don't use a fork, no matter how much you like forks and hate spoons.
* Of all the things to be religious about, a computer operating system seems the most insignificant and irrelevent. But then I think the same thing about car enthusiasts, they're just a means to an end for 99%, but the 1% can't understand that.