Re: Ubuntu (Linux); my first experience of...

Hi Jan,

"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonStpealmtje@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:es22m9$84j$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Linux programmer (me in this case) does not give a *** about what
anybody wants,

I don't think that's true in general. There are plenty of Linux supporters
who *very much want* to get people to switch from Microsoft and the Mac OS to
Linux. Some of them feel MS and Apple are evil, others just figure there is a
greater good to be had by getting everyone onto an "open" standard. Most
people are probably somewhere inbetween...

*I* write programs that do what *I* need, and you can use these, improve
these,
learn from these, or delete these, I do not give a f*ck.
This is _ N O T _ a commercial 'must sell' policy.

Many people would *like* to be Linux programmers *and support their families
by doing it.* That's possible today, certainly, but for everyone who can
support a family by doing "something Linux-related," there are probably 100 if
not 1000 people who support a family doing "something Windows-related." So,
again -- there are plenty of people (myself included) who would like Linux to
gain in popularity/usability by Joe Average, and to foster that one shouldn't
alienate all the would-be converts.

Ah, you do not even get an answer from MS support, even if you try, if you
can reach them,
and then they tell you to re-install.

Actually I was referring to the ubiquitous "IT guys" found in all large
companies today. I'm willing to wager a fair amount that even if you look at
a "technology" company such as HP, a lot of the issues their IT guys deal with
on a daily basis are just "stupid user" questions.

Linux is _not_ for dummies.

Then it's never going to gain a significant user base, which is unfortunate
for *everyone*, Linux super-hackers included.

See, _Linux_ or at least the applications available for Unix (there are many
Unices)
for such a vast field, scientific, that involves so many fields of
expertise, and
all that good stuff freely available as open source, at _LEAST_ take the
time to
learn, else keep buying broken feature limited MS crap without source.

There's plenty of crapware in the *NIX world, just as there is in the Windows
world. In fact, there might even be more so, simply because of the emphasis
on the "viral" nature of open-source *NIX software.

I have a book on Macs that -- in all serious -- claims that having only a few
choices for any particular type of software on the Mac is actually "a good
thing" relative to the PC world where you can find tons of programs all trying
to do the same thing with varying degrees of success: The author claims
that -- supposedly -- the reason there are only a few offerings is that the
ones out there tend to be done "quite well" and therefore it's an advantage to
consumers that they don't have to wade through a dozen different programs
before finding one they like. I don't completely agree with him, but I would
say he has a bit of a point: Having a dozen different text editors included
with a standard OS install (the typical Linux scenario) is *not* always
serving the end-user's best interests.

For ever their slave, your PC finally taken away from you and made a black
box
where every little thing has a big DRM lock on it, and nothing is changed,
nothing evolves, everything ever takes more resources... the darkness of
Redmond falling
on the world.

Those are good points, although I'm sure you're well aware that you seldom
hear people telling you to "just use your old beat-up 386 to run Linux --
it'll be fine!" anymore. Those looking to run those "bloatware" desktops, as
you call them, such as KDE and Gnome are running an OS that has grown just as
fast in resource utilization as what the folks in Redmond and Cupertino have
come up with.

---Joel


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