Andrew, Thanks for your reply, and for keeping the (totally misplaced) discussion going :) I too for a long time held the position you have stated.
My opinion has changed though. First observe that Macs also have a command-line interface (though one can get away with using it rarely) and that game support for Macs is extremely limited compared to Windows. But mainly, in my professional life I have observed many software developers -- leading-edge users who otherwise know Unix up and down -- simply wonder away from Linux (to Macs) precisely because of issues such as this: that Linux installations feel brittle, untested, held together by hacks and tape. That's why the optics *are* important. The attitude that "oh well it's just a message that flashes by, and hey it doesn't actually affect the system" in my view is so mistaken. Things that make the system seem broken and unstable send the wrong message to end users. I was very excited when Ubuntu kicked off because I thought, at last here's an attempt to bring rigour and polish to Linux packaging. Instead, release after release I see that the old attitudes are still prevalent. The new netbook interface in 10.10 is *just terrible*, how anyone thought to release it without saying, "this is really rough so play with it and file bugs" is beyond me. Compare the language here http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook to the reality here http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9953240&postcount=1 -- Maverick could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/modules.dep https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/642421 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
