On 07/22/2010 11:00 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:<,snip>
<snip>
You may not have been around during the wars of religion between Gnome and
KDE? Gnome were the purists on OSS, and issued fatwas on KDE because KDE
were using Trolltech development environment, QT, which Gnome considered to
be not authentically open.
And here's another load of 'old poo' where people get all hairy-chested
because something isn't
"truly open source" as determined by "Sri Sri Sri 108 Richard Stallman
may his socks be forever scented with roses".
The fact of the matter is that 'perfect' operating systems DON'T and
WON'T exist, and people who think
they DO or WILL are stuck in a delayed adolescent idealistic haze.
I went to a talk by Richard Stallman in Sofia about 5 years ago; he
spoke about things that anybody who bothers
to think already knows; he delivered his whole speech in an incredibly
irritating harsh, high-pitched whine
just like all other fanatics and dictatorial types; and 95% of the
audience clapped ecstatically at each half-truth
he mouthed.
what he did say that stuck in my mind was that the origianl idea of a
'hacker' had got lost.
A hacker is somebody who tailors available resources to his or her own
ends . . . surely that (and not
a slavish adherence to some fairly vacuous 'Open Source' vision, or
uncritical adoration of one type of
OS or software) is what we all should be?
What each of us has to do is find a computer(s) we feel comfortable
using, for our individual
needs, with an OS, a GIU (if we want one) and ancillary software
packages that we like.
We have ALL been brainwashed by the vertical route to upgrade-heaven,
and the idea that
we are either 'Mac people' or 'Windows people'.
For your information:
My family runs:
G4 MDD dual proc. on Mac Leopard with 95% Open Source software. Use
ancient Virtual PC running WinXP for
occasional testing.
G4 MacMini on Debian Lenny PPC
HP x686 on Ubuntu 10.04 mucked around to suit my needs; use WINE for the
odd Windowsy thing I might need to test.
G4 iBook on Mac Tiger with 95% Open Source software.
4 'Combination' PCs running anything from FreeDOS to Linux Mint.
BBC Master running MOS, has BBC BASIC on a chip.
and in my school:
G3 iMac on Mac Tiger with 95% Open Source software.
4 scrubby old Pentium IIIs running Ubuntu 5.10 (or something like that)
As you can see it is a 'wierd menagerie of strange beasts'; and why
should it not be; it suits our
needs; some of these machines are only used rarely for something that is
rather more difficult
on other machines; many of these machines are not permanently connected
up to keyboards,
pointing devices and VDUs because they would take up far too much space
which is not justified
if they are used 5-6 times a year.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last night I sat in a restaurant with a man who runs a small electronics
factory here in Plovdiv;
at present all of his computers run on Windows. He wants to change over
to Linux because
various people have told him it will be cheaper.
He uses extremely specialist software written for Windows to program his
electronic "thingies"
(that was where both my electronics and my Bulgarian failed me). He has
heard about WINE.
I told him that the answer was multi-facetted and depended on all sorts
of variables which I was
completely unable to answer until I had tried runnung all these special
programs with WINE; seeing if
running under WINE they would connect with the thingies, and so on, and
so on . . . .
And I told him that, ultimately the 'aggro' of such a change over might
just be more trouble than it is worth.
He was shocked and surprised at what I told him as somebody told him
that I was a real Luddite
as far as Windows was concerned.
What I told him, however anti-Windows I may be (quite a lot), was my
honest, informed opinion;
wihtout more that a modicum of my personal prejudices.
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