-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Juan Alberto Cirez wrote: > Ok, > > Before I am stoned to death let me explain the above tagline: I love > GNU/Linux; and I've been using it since 1995. Not only do I love > GNU/Linux; but I am one of the few that refuses to run any other distro > than Slackware. There is no other OS that can come close to GNU/Linux in > terms of reliability, scalability, security (and believe or not, ease of > use). That of course, holds true as long as one is running GNU/Linux as > a server (preferably from a shell prompt). > > As a desktop (or even a netbook), on the other hand, GNU/Linux simply > BLOWS...and SUCKS. It is incompatible with most (new) hardware (i.e, > out-of-the-box, plug & play). For anyone without a good working > knowledge of computer science, GNU/Linux present a myriad of problems; > least of which is the lack of support for the applications and
I beg to differ. I have a Liberal arts education and I have had no problem moving to Linux as my primary OS. I have even gone one step further and moved my audio production to GNU/Linux as well. Messing with real time kernels (well technically really low latency, not hard real time), jack, limited hardware support (though the hardware that does work often works better than with other OS offerings), and a myriad number of other issues. Basically to do low latency audio work properly is complex regardless of the OS, using Linux just increases the complexity. What I am getting at, is that if I can figure it out, anyone can. At the end of the day, FLOSS basically makes us responsible for our own experience. If we have a bad experience we need to look no further than ourselves if we need to blame someone. Taking personal responsibility is not something that we are taught to do. A bigger issue as I see it is that as a society, we are not mature enough to handle Open Source. As a whole, it seems like we are small children who simply want things provided to us with no concern with how it gets done or the consequences. This is not limited to computers, our food chain is equally effed up. > peripherals the average user is accustomed to using. To them, let's face > it, GNU/Linux is just plain different. > Honestly, most people do not know the difference. My Dad's laptop dual boots, and I switched the default one day. Because the wallpaper was the same, he did not even notice (he was able to find Firefox and Thunderbird and did not notice that menu was a little different). While anecdotal, I have seen this happen a couple of times with people using my laptop. > Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC, a market research company stated: > "...Many users found that the universe of applications compatible with > Windows was much larger than those with [GNU/Linux].”. This statement Ahh, the IDC. I love this quote, "many users found...", no numbers or percentages, just a vague, unqualified statement. Smoke and mirrors, there is nothing to fear here. > (again, for the average user not familiar with apt-get; Slackware's > swaret and the rest) is surprisingly true. If the idea behind the > GNU/Linux Desktop was to capture the average user; then it has failed. This should not be a goal. Again as I see it, non contributing users are a drain. It may seem harsh, but the only people who matter are contributers. I say this as one who contributes very little. I feel very fortunate that I am able to accomplish what I can with all this free software given how little I have personally put in. Contributing is not just coding, but participating in all aspects of development. It could be testing (I mean proper, boring, rigorous testing, not simply dumping ignorant and uninformed frustrations on to some mailing list or forum), documentation, financial support, and of course coding. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but you should get the point. If tomorrow Linux was suddenly the dominant player on the desktop, nothing of value would actually occur until more people contribute. Passive end users gain us nothing, only active participants with a healthy sense of personal responsibility actually mean anything. I believe this also explains why there are certain weaknesses in the Open Source ecology. The age old lack of CMYK support in GIMP. I don't care about it, and no one I know cares about it. Having said that, I do care about high quality, professional grade audio production. I go so far as to donate hundreds of dollars per year to various projects (like Ardour) because I care so much about these tools. Until enough people care enough to get certain projects done, they will not get done. If there is something missing, only you are to blame for it not getting done (having no coding experience is no excuse, if it matters to you, you will find ways of getting it done, either you convince others that it is important or you pay them to get it done, the choice is yours). > Miserably. Take the Netbook Market for example: GNU/Linux’s market share > on these devices has dramatically declined. In 2008, about 24.5 percent > of netbooks shipped with an GNU/Linux operating system, estimates IDC. > This year, it’s expected to plunge to 4.5 percent, and in 2010 only 3 > percent of all netbooks will run a GNU/Linux-based OS. > The first couple of months this was closer to 100%. The numbers are based on Microsoft's marketing strategies and not really reflective of technical limitations. If anything, Microsoft was forced to delay the end of life for XP since Vista could not even run on a Netbook. I have tried Windows 7, but especially on the SSD based notebooks, even it is unusable. I still prefer my Ununtu netbook remix, which is incidentally what I am using right at this moment. The netbook market would not have been possible without Linux. The people I know with 1st gen netbooks did not know anything about Linux. Some did not even know that there were different browsers. Almost all loved their netbooks, especially for travel. Also, that statistic above does not take us/me into account. I really can't imagine running anything but Linux on any machine that I own. It does not matter what the device ships with, chances are I am going to format it and put something useful on it. That never gets taken into account for these stats. Of course the above is merely my opinion, no matter how strongly I believe it to be accurate. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkpWYOcACgkQwRXgH3rKGfMcvwCffwKaF/XUMynpPYiBBdDqFLod 9WMAn2FCXm7kc6VEwviKdu5O4yqv9oGX =cz8+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
