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

[darkemeralds]

I was dual-boot for a couple of weeks on my brand-spankin' new Dell Studio whoop-ass laptop with everything. Vista got buggy and insecure really fast, so I thought I'd try Ubuntu. Loved it. Two weeks later, Vista died altogether ("NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND!!! DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!") and the only thing I could do was stick my shiny new Ubuntu boot disk in and follow instructions, because I'd be damned if I was going to pay money to upgrade to Windows 7 when Vista was such a piece of crap.

*deep breath* Okay, rant over.

So anyway, I'm now Linux-exclusive at home, but...

But there appear to be no solutions for three items that I really loved and paid money for and now miss:

• Audible.com audiobooks (them wot loves DRM does not love opensource)
• BluRay player support (ditto)
• My ATI Radeon Mobility HD3650 graphics accelerator - sad! Ubuntu does not seem to know it's there.

Mostly, though, the transition has been smooth. I'm getting used to GIMP, I don't game, I'm not an iTunes aficionado, and I do most everything else in the cloud.

[blnchflr]

Getting a computer with Vista on it was the reason I got serious about trying out Linux (had run a couple of livecds prior, but my old computer was ooold, with not much hd space or RAM, and having never installed an OS/partitioned before, I was too chicken to try it) - it would crash for realz every 1-2 days, and it took me forever to figure out and download the fix. And even with 2GB RAM, Vista was slow, gahhh. Yeah, don't miss it.

Audible.com audiobooks (them wot loves DRM does not love opensource)
In Denmark it's legal to break encryption if you have no other way of reading/playing a file - they specifically mention Linux systems \o/ ! This doesn't help you one bit, of course :o/

From Googling it, it looks like there is trouble with the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3650 - you can dl a driver from ATI, but again, people don't seem to have had luck with it. Ubuntu documention and installation guide, if you haven't already checked it.

[dragonwolf]

In Denmark it's legal to break encryption if you have no other way of reading/playing a file - they specifically mention Linux systems \o/ !

That is awesome. Here in America, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is along the lines of "it's legal to make a copy for archival purposes, as long as you don't break the DRM on it"... the programs are done in such a way that in order to make said copy, you have to break the DRM... *facepalm*

As for the ATI cards, it seems to me that the HD series in general is having problems with the available drivers. The OSS community doesn't seem to have made a lot of progress with it, and the ATI drivers, from what I've seen, suck.

I know a lot of people who rail against nVidia for not going open source, but frankly, their drivers have worked for me. I'd rather a company provide closed Linux drivers than open them up and basically say "go for it, but we're not going to help you and our own drivers for you will be garbage," and watch as the community flounders to get around the parts that aren't open (ATI's drivers aren't fully opened, only parts of them are, for "trade secret" reasons).

[blnchflr]

That is awesome. Here in America, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is along the lines of "it's legal to make a copy for archival purposes, as long as you don't break the DRM on it"... the programs are done in such a way that in order to make said copy, you have to break the DRM... *facepalm*
Yeah, we've been lucky in this respect!

[dragonwolf]

Yeah. I have a theory that one of the requirements to accepting a high-level government job in this country is getting a lobotomy...

[darkemeralds]

I'm actually not very troubled by the prospect of breaking encryption on audiobook files that I've paid for, but I have yet to find an audiobook player as good as the one that Audible provides. I'd use it to play all my podfic, too, if I could. Playing long audiobooks as MP3s is really unsatisfactory because you can't set bookmarks.

Thanks for the links--the second one doesn't seem to be valid, but I drilled through and found some good stuff. Looks like I might be able rig up something.

[blnchflr]

Best of luck - if you get it to work, you should post the solution.