On 01/15/2009 Harry C. Johnson wrote: > Yeah, I am a linux guy as well. Mainly because Micro$oft and Apple > both have questionable business practices.
Yeah, business practices are a good reason to use Linux, but my primary reason is freedom of choice. With Open Source, I have tons of interoperable choices. I wish a PDA manufacturer would release a model that I can customize the way I can customize the Linux desktop. This week, I experienced another reason. Tuesday was MS' Security Patch Tuesday. It happens once a month unless there is a really highly publicized vulnerability that public relations dictates MS can't ignore. Otherwise security patches wait at least another cycle. Coincidentally, on Tuesday, the developers of my (Palm compatible) desktop PIM released a security patch as well. The patch broke exchange connectivity. Around 9:30 AM I applied the patch. By 10 AM I realized that the patch had caused the problem and reported the same on the Evolution list. Within a half hour, there were responses on the list that a bug report had already been lodged on the official bug reporting site for the list. By 10:45, a developer wrote to me asking me to perform certain diagnostics. By 1:40, the bug was diagnosed and squashed. On Wednesday the corrected binaries were in the software repositories, and my computer was automatically updated and fixed. There is no way that is going to happen with Outlook or the Palm Desktop.
