Bay 12 Games Forum

Blacken all and everything in your post is plain wrong : I may as well argue with a tea-party member.

"All and everything" is wrong, huh? Well, that's substantiative.

That kind of attitude might fly on Slashdot, where it's always the Year of the Linux Desktop and has been for the last ten years or so, but when critical thinking comes along, your brand of herpaderp seems to fail pretty badly. Substantiate or admit you're full of it, I don't really care which.

Linux distro work fine for private usage and ubuntu is ridiculously easy to use, even if it's not as stable as the other.

Compared to OSX or Windows, it is not. Neither is maintaining it. Hell, you admitted as much when you claimed that "you'll learn about operating systems". Yeah, you will--because you can't avoid being elbow-deep in the muck to do anything notable on the platform. Ubuntu's come a long way, despite your sneering at it (not command-liney enough for you?), and might even get there in three or four years (if it starts making money so Shuttleworth doesn't abandon it, anyway), but it is not there yet. Stop conflating "it sucks right now" with "it will always suck." The former is true of Linux, and why I say that people who are recommending it are doing the person taking their recommendation a disservice. The latter does not always need to be true, but if developers listen to "oh everything's just great" all the time, it certainly will be true.

And... well I quit.   mean look at you, the two blog you're linking to are "linux hater" and "Munich Linux Watch
Watching the city of Munich fail to convert to Linux". The post you use to call it a failure is one that said that an extention of the project have been approved. You're just a troll and I shouldn't feed you.

Dude. You are so very, very lacking in actually understanding the Linux community. Do you even know who Linux Hater is? He's a former KDE developer. He "hates" Linux, and posts as he does because it could be better but people like you insist on keeping it substandard because nothing can ever be wrong in Linuxland! You are bound and determined to insist that everything's great and people should use it, rah rah rah, when anybody who's actually spent a decent whack of time at it can see that it could be good, and could take steps to get there, but isn't there.

If you actually read his blog instead of crying about the name, you will notice that his posts include a shitload of valuable advice that would make Linux a vastly better product. But, unfortunately, while there are some folks like Miguel (oh, wait, he runs Mono, so you have to hate him because RMS says it's evil, right?) who recognize that LH is very, very right about nearly everything he says, most of the community would rather do what you're doing and stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LINUX IS GREAT I DON'T HEEEEEEEEEEAR YOU!".

If you're actually serious about Linux, you should be reading that blog. But you seem to just want to hear how awesome your pet OS is, so maybe you belong in comp.os.linux.advocacy with the rest of them. They all agree with you there and nobody will ever ask you to think critically about something that you have taken to be the truth.

(It's like Phmcw honestly doesn't realize that I actually use and work on Linux, and wants to just try to snow me... Oh, and you still haven't demonstrated all this open-source software that "might" be substantiative. Where are your commits? )


EDIT: Okay, look. I can sympathize with your viewpoint, because, like I said, I was like you when I was younger. I even thought RMS made sense. And you might get pissy with me for saying this, because I hated hearing it then too (but it was true): you'll grow up. You will one day wake up and realize that, yes, there are actually real problems in that thing you love so much. And you won't get upset at people who are pointing out these flaws, and you might even understand that that thing you love just isn't a good fit for everyone. (After all, you don't see me telling you not to use Linux, do you?)

Bookmark this conversation, dude. Come back to it in two or three years. I can guarantee you that what I'm saying will make a lot more sense with a little more perspective.

Quote from: Phmcw on August 12, 2010, 06:59:09 pm

I've heard a lot of widows seven, that I have yet to try, but I'm experiencing it with vista. A lot.
Also, I mentioned that Ubuntu tend to be buggy too, and that the biggest difference is in the simplicity of maintaining a efficient system. Easy with debian (stable) hard with vista (or Ubuntu for that matter, the upgrade tend to be a bit buggy.)

I can't say much about Vista, but I've hardly ever experienced that on XP or in my limited experience with Windows 7. In XP, the worst that's generally ever happened is that my shitty Intel onboard graphics chipset driver likes to keel over and die if I decide to try running one or two old-as-hell VESA graphics modes, but that's hardly the fault of the OS.

Yep. And, hell, under Vista or Win7 your drivers will detect a failure mode and restart DWM to prevent a BSOD/restart of the machine. (X does something similar, but not as well due to poorer drivers.)

You're outright inslting toward any gnu project member

Really? I have nothing but the utmost respect for Miguel de Icaza (GNOME member, founder of GNOME), or David Schlesinger (GNOME advisory board), or the entire Mono team (not GNU, but affiliated fairly closely with GNOME).

(seriously, an attack on body odor? All crazies?)

It stops being an attack when you've been in the same room as them. Seriously, I've seen RMS do his foot-picking thing...

You're assuming you've written more free software than me,

No, I'm assuming I've written more open-source code than you have. These days, I specifically license stuff like Sharplike to be 100% incompatible with the GPL, so it's certainly not free software. But through Summer of Code I've still probably written more "free software" than you have--so, what have you worked on? My open-source code has been linked around before. My bona fides are established. What are yours?

or that I ever will (you don't know me).

Sure, you might write more than me someday, but I kinda doubt it. Mostly because the people beating the "GO USE LINUX" drum never do. You could be the exception, but you gotta do the work to be the exception. Better get started, huh?

"the desktop software is a screaming bloody aborted fetus on its best day ".

I'm so sorry you are upset by description, but that's a pretty decent metaphor for it when you stop and think about it. If you're getting offended over the characterization of some source code, don't you think you should probably evaluate your priorities a bit?

(And to forestall the inevitable: I am not offended. I enjoy these conversations, because it's rather personally rewarding when somebody goes "shit, I get it now!".)

You're calling me and obsessive loon, a fanboy, and you still don't see what's wrong?

Well, yes, I have called you a fanboy. Your behavior is indicative of it. I haven't called you obsessive, though if you really think the FSF and GNU are all that you just might be one of them. I have indicated that people who have work to do don't really want to fight with a Linux box

I won't loose my temper you know?
But I actually curious : what are you trying to achieve?

Not much at all. Once in a while a fanboy wakes up, but it's pretty rare. I've said my piece, and defended it when other people tried to attack it. And, without tooting my own horn too much, I'm not seeing much in the way of effective counterarguments.

It's not like he is very interested, and a blind guys could see you're being overly partisan.

He's clearly not interested. My concern (and it's really a mild one at best) is that somebody else might go "hmm, those Linux guys are persuasive" when they're blowing smoke up the reader's ass. Because they may not have the technical acumen to know when you lot are in over your heads, too. Which you very much seem to be.

It's not like you can acually believe what you say : more than a few organization use linux on their desktop, including the european commission, the French and Belgian police, google favor Linux too, my university use it as it's main os,...

Google actually favors OS X internally; you can get a Linux machine if you really want, but I saw a hell of a lot more iMacs and Mac Pros than I did anything else the last time I was in Mountain View.

And, yes, in a large-scale organization where the use case is extremely limited and regimented, you can implement a mediocre (and thus probably acceptable) desktop via Linux. Great. Awesome. Mediocre. But here's the thing: that doesn't scale downward, and it doesn't scale in features. Sure, the cost savings in a large organization might sometimes be desirable (not so for an end user: you already bought the OS with the machine), but these are home users we're talking about. It's unsuitable for a general-purpose machine. Games. Office productivity. Line-of-business (line-of-education, in this case) applications. You can point to the EC and the rest as "oh, look, they use it!", but they are not people buying a computer to use while sitting on their couch.

(BTW, to build on your point: you know that Munich in particular has been a total fail train, right? They've basically admitted at this point it would have been cheaper to stay with Windows. The EC's use of it has been anti-US more than anything else (not wanting to patronize Apple or Microsoft--in their position, a politically expedient act, can't blame them). Oh, and the Gendarmerie's numbers as far as "money saved" are really interesting seeing as how it worked out to something like a $12,800 "savings" per computer.)

There is a lot to add there but it's not the point :  you're not even trying to be objective, Why?

Because I've already been to this rodeo. I was one of the people who cheerled for Linux desktops, rah rah rah--I even took a (stupid) financial hit, charging people who were using Linux machines less because I "enjoyed working on them." And eventually, like most teenagers do, I grew up a little bit and went "man, I'm being totally stupid." And it was stupid of me. If you want to actually take anything remotely close to an "objective" look (not like you do--"you'll get a lot fewer crashes!" is FUD of the first degree), you can't not come to the conclusion that damn, this is going to be a waste of time for people who don't already want to be using it in the first place. (In other words, if you're not somebody who wants to be using it--and Joe Schmoe end-users aren't those people--Linux is unlikely to be of value to you.)

The quality of different systems is irrelevant to my need of a laptop. Linux might be great, but I am not used to it, and as I previously stated I really don't feel like screwing around with something I need in 3-4 weeks. If this was a laptop for fun and to experiment with Linux, I would love to check out Linux. But right now, it isn't conducive to my plans, and quite possibly could be counter intuitive.

You have your priorities in order. Well done. If your Inspiron 15r can't ship, check out the Studio 15 (not XPS) I mentioned above--the Studio and Inspiron models sport the best build quality I've seen outside of Lenovo.

Oh and on the topic of OO.org, I have tried both OO.org and Microsoft office 2000 or later, and while I love that OO.org is free and is not a bad product, Microsoft seems to have a superior spell check and grammar check. I used OO.org for my high school papers and it was ok, but I caught a good amount of errors after spell check and grammar compared to office. I might use OO.org, but I am more likely to use Office.

Also a good idea. Office is pretty cheap with a student discount, will work with everything your professors are likely to throw at you, and has a lot of features you'll need (if you ever write a formal paper, the referencing support in Office is absolutely top-notch). You can make OO.o do this stuff (poorly and awkwardly), but your time is probably worth more.

Note: From what I have been looking at, windows is generally already on the laptop and you are unable to get a laptop without windows for a discount. Then again, I wasn't really looking for a laptop without an OS.

Also true. Some manufacturers let you get a bare drive for like $15 less (basically their OEM Windows cost). Not many.

EDIT: A friend I linked to this thread (who is still in stitches) reminded me that for most OEMs, if you call up their tech support and harrass them, you can send back your Windows license tag and media for that piddly $15 refund.

Quote from: Blacken on August 10, 2010, 02:45:18 pm

Recommending Linux to people who aren't already hooked into the silly little cult is irresponsible.

That's Trolling.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define:cult

fad: an interest followed with exaggerated zeal; "he always follows the latest fads"; "it was all the rage that season"

You can apologize now.

I was going to answer with a chain of quotes showing your trolling history, but I realized that it's pointless. After all, people only have to check the post you have made, the previous one in page #1, and then check your history if they are really curious. I give you that it's kind of funny, yeah, because it's somewhat amusing to see you deny that you are trolling and then end your post in a troll afterwards.

Honestly, at this point I dont know if Linus Torvalds stole your wife or if you periodically run out of preparation H, but the fact is that you go into a feces-flinging-chimp rage everytime these threads pop up.

If you consider calling people who are recommending their pet favorite toy in defiance of actually evaluating what would be best for the person who's asking them "fanboys" to be trolling, then I'm certainly not the one with a problem here. Linux is good at some things. Desktop work is not one. Recommending it to somebody who doesn't know exactly what they're getting into is irresponsible. "Rage"? No such thing. I point out that Linux is, generally, utter shit on the desktop and not at all suited to normal-people use (as opposed to techie use), and people like you get offended because hearing such terrible things about your pet project upsets you. Guess what? Deal with it.

Apparently, expecting that people be responsible when giving advice to people who don't know any better is "trolling" among the easily bruised contingent. Damn, though. I love when the kiddies with no real-world experience try to lecture me.

Whoa, 2 months? Don't they have finished models?

Customization tends to be a bit of a bitch. Companies like Dell don't always just-in-time produce systems, and customized builds often require parts that aren't always in stock. Two months is weird, though - if I were to see that, I'd call the company and see if I could change the parts causing the holdup.

(Also, re: your earlier post--no offense intended, but it's pretty clear you have little to no OS X experience. Claiming that Linux is "10x better" when it comes to the desktop is just so clearly facile as to be a claim out of ignorance. I prefer Windows, too, but OS X is actually developed by people who understand how normal people--again, as distinct from techies/"power users"--use computers. Nobody, except the most hardcore of fanboys, could claim the same of either GNOME or KDE with a straight face.)

I don't intend on buying a netbook, and while I am pretty experienced with computers, I have no desire to have to screw around with a laptop too much. I wouldn't mind with screwing around with linux on a computer that I didn't need for school, or on my desktop, but I intend to stick with windows as that is what I am comfortable with. I found a dell Inspiron 15r with an intel I5 450m processor (at 2.66ghz), an ati card with 1gb video memory( can't remember model), 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. It seems like a good deal (got an online coupon for it) and I ordered it, but Dell is telling me that it is going to take over 2 months to get to me. I am talking with customer service right now and they say they can fix that, but if not, I am definitely going to buy a different laptop. There is NO way that it takes 2 months to build a laptop, I built my mid to high range desktop in a couple of weeks (starting from researching and ordering parts to finished product).

The Inspiron 15 series is alright, but tends to suffer from some build quality issues. I would price out as similar a Dell Studio 15 as close to your 15r build as I could, and see if they're in the same ballpark; the Studio series is, for my money, the best PC laptop construction other than a Thinkpad.

Or just buy a computer with Windows installed for the same price.

Recommending Linux to people who aren't already hooked into the silly little cult is irresponsible.

I am sure you found a link to Google, yes. Google mastery assures you find the right one.

Signed,
Apparently A Goddamn Google Master