Pointer: blog post, "RANT: Is the Linux dream a myth?"

[blnchflr]

I came across this blog post in the openSUSE forums: RANT: Is the Linux dream a myth?

I've met a few characters that are living the Linux dream or at least claiming to. But here's the rub... is there anyone who's exclusively using it? I don't mean "I've got Linux installed on my USB stick" or "I dual boot". Is there anyone who is actually using Linux as there sole operating system. Booting into everyday to check their email, write their documents, develop their code, surf the web and yes.. play their games. I fear there is not.

Having used Linux exclusively for almost a year, and knowing people who've been Linux-exclusive for longer than that, not to mention MAC USERS, the author seems naive or sheltered. Which surprises me, as he's a coder - apparently I'm prejudiced about coders :o)

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

I use Linux at work and on my netbook, though I admit to being a Mac user at home. But I've been Windows-free at least for the past three years and have not regretted it at all.

[blnchflr]

I don't know how Windows 7 is working out for people, but my Ubuntu installation is tons better than the Vista horror was - don't miss it one bit!

[dragonwolf]

As far as Windows OSes go, 7 is probably one of the best they've come out with, and it's certainly heads and shoulders above ME Vista. They've finally learned to trim down the resource usage of the new Longhorn-family stuff (Aero, desktop window manager, etc), and made the user account control stuff not so annoying (not as good as Ubuntu/Linux's access control, but not as horrendous as Vista's). They're also starting to put their foot down on native support of ancient stuff (IE6 and other ancient programs don't work on 7 unless you know about/can enable "XP mode" or whatever it's called, which is kind of like MS's version of WINE exclusively for stuff that's only compatible as far up as XP), which is like the light at the end of the tunnel for those of us in web design.

While the OS itself isn't too bad, I guess they added a thing to their "Windows Genuine Advantage" software that requires the computer to report to the servers every 90 days or so to make sure it's "still genuine" I guess. How a previously "genuine" copy of an OS can suddenly become "not genuine" and still maintain all the exact information is beyond me, so the point of this other than another draconian DRM move is also beyond me.

[blnchflr]

it's certainly heads and shoulders above ME Vista
Don't knock ME! Sure it sucked in some respects, and there was so much software that didn't work on it, especially after XP. But I would have preferred ME on my new computer compared to Vista; I bet it would have been super-fast! Not to mention: I ran ME for 7-8 years without reinstalling - ok, so mostly because I didn't know about reinstalling. But while a reinstalling surely would have tightened things up, it really didn't run half-bad on 122 MB RAM!

Tangent, in case you like such things: <del> is the new valid html for deleted text <3

[dragonwolf]

Tangent, in case you like such things: <del> is the new valid html for deleted text <3

Hah, good to know. I don't generally use it, so it's one tag I don't keep up with. Seems rather arbitrary to change that, but *shrug*.

[blnchflr]

I use it a lot for humorous purposes online :o) ! It is my understanding it is meant to be used in conjunction with <ins>, in which case I'm still using it wrong, as I never bother with <ins>. At any rate, also in my understanding, <s>/<strike> was always pure formatting, like <i> and <b>, whereas <del> is recognized by screenreaders? So it's an accessibility thing, which I'm all for.

[dragonwolf]

That makes sense.

<3 your icon, by the way. :)

[blnchflr]

Thanks, I'm fond of it, even though the font type (and slightly too high positioning) bothers me now. It was made on the horrenduous image manipping software that came with ME - for one thing, it could only add text to high-res images; no matter what you started out with (say, a nicely cropped 100x100 icon, which just needed the finishing touch of text), the software would scale the image to 2048x[at least 2048]. Scaling back down, text often looked crap.

I think I need a "Awww, ME, you don't deserve your bad rep. Except you totally do. But still, *pets*" icon :o)

[dragonwolf]

Ew at the software thing, but then, that was circa 2000 and crappy software.

ROFL at the icon idea.