Let's piss off the radical Linux guys - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2019, 10:10:44 pm
content: Microsoft ... what would you like to assassinate today ?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 01:18:46 am
content: I'm not sure how this pisses off Linux users? Many of us dumped Windows for a better alternative.Microsoft admits that Linux does things better, so are trying to make Windows more like it? Too little, too late in my opinion.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 02:11:18 am
content: As a Linux user of many years I am perfect for this job.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 02:16:37 am
content: Also:Linking to Gnome 3 bug reports might be a step too far, no sane humans should be subjected to those.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 02:17:48 am
content: Quote from: Whales on October 19, 2019, 02:16:37 amNo sane human should be exposed to GNOME 3.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 02:20:12 am
content: I've heard things are now better than they were years ago, but I'm still burnt by it all, and the parts of gtk3 I'm slowly forced to start using (as people "update" their gtk2 apps) are still horribly broken UIs.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 11:26:13 am
content: Strange, I do not feel pissed off. I moved from MS Windows to Linux about twenty years ago and apart from two pieces of test equipment that insist on an MS Windows front end I have been windows free since then.The spyware and the total lack of quality control from Redmond when it comes to MS Windows 10 have just confirmed my decision. Last night I was up until 22:45 trying to get my girlfriend's new W10 notebook to print and it needed an obscure TCP/IP hack before it worked, this should not happen in 2019.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 06:09:08 pm
content: Time for the classic.You will be assimilated.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 06:32:18 pm
content: Nothing radical about it, just practical.The used company laptop that I bought (cheap) from my employer was born with Vista and downgraded to XP. As it was sold to me without Win, I tried to resurrect it to no avail. Impossible.A Ubuntu installation brought back a 100% working machine that was faster than before.I also have a PC running Win 10. I use both, each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I do prefer the Linux machine.

author: TheHolyHorse
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 06:38:09 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on October 19, 2019, 06:32:18 pmExactly, radical would be to believe that one platform is superior the other in all instances. It all comes to down to what you need/want and personal preference.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 07:57:20 pm
content: Ahah, nice trolling thread.So, why not give in.Windows users don't need this kind of thread, because they perfectly manage to piss themselves off without any help.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 09:47:27 pm
content: What, that's not what it's like when I play that game. I didn't even realise it was 3D. How did you go compiling a 64 bit version of Wine and getting dotnet45 installed?

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2019, 11:40:17 pm
content: I'm a pretty hardcore Linux guy and that doesn't piss me off, or irritate me!What makes a radical?

author: Jr460
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2019, 12:21:04 am
content: I make most of living right now on *NIX, several different flavors of it. I used to us a different OS and at that time people knew me as UNIX hater. I never hated it, just 25 years ago it was not ready for prime-time in many fields. I never was a Windows lover, I really dislike it, but I hate to use it.My moto is : All hardware sucks, all OSes suck. It just a matter of how much and on what function.In other words, nothing is perfect, pick and choose based on the requirements. OSes are like rubber you can push and pull them in ways. Some are already shaped in one direction or another, others might be heavy and stiff in areas.That picture doesn't piss me off. I find it sad. From what I can tell MS is just giving Linux lip service. Most of the "radical" Linux or MS guys I know do not understand the difference between an App, a GUI, Shell/CLI, Library/OS calls and the Kernel. They are so confused. MS is playing on this confusion.pre-Y2K had a windows guy that stumbled on Linux and became a zealot. Told all of the UNIX guys we were wrong. He kept saying Linux was better in so many ways. So I asked to show me what is better. I don't remember exactly what it was but it had something to do with Gnome desktop, and most of our UNIX machines had CDE as the desktop. So I said "Hang on a second" Switched my desktop to Gnome on UNIX and did the same thing he just said I couldn't do. But but..... Linux is better.,,,, Ahhh, you will see.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2019, 12:28:43 am
content: Quote from: dr.diesel on October 19, 2019, 11:40:17 pmALT 251 will do it

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2019, 12:33:31 am
content: I’ve fiddled with Linux on and off since 1996.Dived in full time (no dual boot) six years ago this November.I *like* using Linux. That’s why I use it.No one can contradict me on that.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 05:27:39 pm
content: Quote from: Circlotron on October 20, 2019, 12:33:31 amWe are almost exactly in sync. I started playing with it in '95 or so, worked on a VMWare Workstation at university, tried an install (and messed up a line on my laptop lcd!) of Red Hat in '99, played with various distros on old hardware through the 2000s, then jumped to full time use on my primary computers six years ago when my work aligned with my computing goals.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 07:37:22 pm
content: Linux has come of age. Thanks in part to the Busybox distro, the Linux Kernel is everywhere. Log onto your router, Linux does that. Flick through Netflix on a PVR, Linux. Store your photos on a NAS, Linux. Change the colour of your smart light bulb, Linux. Take a selfie on an android smart phone, Linux. Swear at Alexa because you don't want more push ads from the quantum supremacy, Linux.Just about every device from a fatbit watch to a self driving lorry is running a build of the Linux Kernel, or many. I suggest one reason is that Linux is open source, so manufacturers don't have to pay for costly development cycles and licenses. Even if their Linux based products need user licenses to use them, isn't that right Cisco? As the GNU states:The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely-usedabused free software license which guaranteesend userscorporations the freedom torun, study, share, and modify theignore the radical guys who wrote the software.This said, yesterday my local supermarket's self-service tills were all rebooting, in Microsoft XP! You can't kill a good OS.Lest said though about Microsoft Linux Kernel...

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 08:22:07 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on October 23, 2019, 07:37:22 pmI agree. It was estimated at least 5 years ago that to build a new OS would cost in the order of a Billion dollars. Because Linux is free and has everything anyone needs across all the popular architectures, no one in their right mind is going to try and create a new OS now. All the manufacturers just design around Linux.These days it's easier to explain what Linux doesn't own, because Linux owns everything else.Linux doesn't own the PC Desktop, and never has because of Microsofts aggressive lawbreaking, but who cares?The "desktop" is a shrinking market and has been for the last decade.Those who need one, build one. Grab the parts, download a Linux Distro and make your own. Easy-peasy. I haven't had Windows on a Workstation since 1997. Unix all the way ...Linux doesn't own the "laptop" market for exactly the same reasons as above.Linux owns everything else.Apologies if I piss of the radical Microsoft guys with the facts because it must be hard for them to watch their expensive software, their expensive Microsoft training and their Microsoft shares become more and more useless every year as they are consigned to the dustbin of history.Ask any kid these days "What's Microsoft?" and you're likely to hear "I dunno" (while they're doing social media on their Android or iPhone).

author: notsob
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 08:56:11 pm
content: I heard that the primary reason for windows is to download a Linux installer

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 08:56:31 pm
content: @techman-001, jeez man... you really don't like MS.Linux is ok for many things, but I wouldn't go as far as implying that it's a perfectly decent desktop OS, and the only reason it's not widely adopted is because MS breaks the law.Windows is an amazing operating system, that worked better, was better marketed and better supported since the beginning. The reason Linux didn't manage to capture enough of the desktop market, even tho it was also heavily promoted, is because it wasn't good. Out of the many kids that found Linux to be cool, how many do you think thought to themselves: "hmm... grandma' will love this!" - close to none, right? why?Edit: If kids these days don't know what MS is, they surely never heard of Linux.

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 09:16:50 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 08:56:31 pmAnd here is our first radical Microsoft guy!I don't know why you think I don't like Microsoft, honestly I couldn't care less about them. They've been irrelevant to my needs since 1997. Microsoft is a has-been, a wanabee OS giant etc, etc.Even Bill Gates fled Microsoft, he was smart enough to see the writing on the wall and is now pedaling drugs to the world instead. He's traded the BSOD for the BPOD.Hahaha, whatever ... you just keep loving your two bit, MS white goods OS for kids all you like.I bet kids have heard of Linux, but they've certainly heard of Android and Google haven't they ? Just in case you don't know, all Apple products run Unix (OSX) as well.Now tell me, what's Microsoft done lately ? Oh yeah, Microsoft have co-opted Linux into Windows and released a "Windows" phone running ... Android.It must be hard for you Windows radicals to see the future while your view is blocked by the backs of all the Linux people in front of you.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 09:31:42 pm
content: Quote from: techman-001 on October 23, 2019, 08:22:07 pmWhen did you last time check MSFT?

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 09:37:36 pm
content: @techman-001, are you trolling?You say you couldn't care less about MS, and that they've been irrelevant to your needs, but you're spewing so much hatred towards them, it's silly. Why is that? Why do you hate them so much, if they're irrelevant to you?Again... not entirely sure if you're trolling or not.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 09:51:23 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 08:56:31 pmThat does not match with history, though, except for marketing. Support is a more complicated issue (and has different facets, like comparing maintenance agreements and paid support, to freely available documentation and the veracity of said documentaton), so I'll leave that out.Microsoft did awful shenanigans with their OS to try and shield both Office and Internet Exploder from competition. They were convicted for monopoly position abuse against WordPerfect, for example. It is less discussed, but they also made a lot of possibly illegal marketing deals, where offering competing products, especially computers with Linux preinstalled, would mean huge cost increases for resellers. In 2000-2010, when the first Linux-based minilaptops (netbooks) were first introduced, some larger resellers faced a lot of pressure from Microsoft, and it is not at all clear how much that impacted the market.Even today, it is very hard to buy a computer without an OS preinstalled: this is often called the Microsoft tax, as they were behind that push.Point is, MS has never "played fair", using the quality of their products as the key point. Quite the contrary, many of their products have crashed in the first big reveals, and have been instrumental in the emergence of the"have you tried turning it off and then back on?"culture, so that users now accept products that crash and lose data as par for the course.Linux developers made some really bad choices as well. The main one was allowing out-of-tree graphics drivers. In theory, it should have been a good idea, as manufacturers (AMD and NVIDIA) do have the resources to produce good drivers; but for business and logistics reasons, they never could. ALSA/PulseAudio over OSS was another, and made audio tricky for quite some time; ALSA-"internal" library-kernel interface changes still cause occasional issues today. SystemD is yet another; we'll find in a decade or so how bad idea such centralization is, compared to the old Unix philosophy. In particular, there is a reason why systemd is not used on any embedded devices.Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 08:56:31 pmThere are lots of grandmas using Linux. Heck, my mom refused to touch computers until she was 65 years old, but when she found all her grandchildren were on Facebook, and got an Android tablet (which is based on the Linux kernel, just uses a different Desktop Environment), she took to it like a duck to water.I guess I should count myself as "radical" too, having used Linux since 1995, maintained a LOT of Linux servers and even a few clusters since 1998, and using Linux exclusively on my own machines since 2005 or so. However, I find nothing offensive in this thread. I don't care what others use, or what they think about using Linux. It is only arguments like "Linux won't be X until Y", or "Nobody should use Linux, because Z" that piss me off -- and not because they're about Linux, but because it is horrible advice. I don't care how popular Linux is, because why should I; it makes no difference to me. Not having to deal with casual users who want stuff without contributing back is actually preferable to me, compared to everyone using Linux.You want to play games? Run Windows. You edit video? Use a Mac, or perhaps a Windows machine (I'm not up to date on the video editing software anymore, however). Write portable code? Run Linux, with lots of RAM and storage, and run other OSes in virtual machines. Use the tool that suits the job, instead of trying to convince others everything is really just nails, and your preferred hammer is the only tool anyone ever needs.We could talk about how user interfaces haven't really advanced at all in the last 20 years, only adding "bling"; and that if you tried using say Mac OS 7.5.5 and its contemporary software like MS Word 5, you might start seriously wondering why current Windows and Mac OS (and most desktop Linux distributions) spend all that memory and CPU power, as it sure does not look like it goes into making humans more productive, and the tool more responsive.Me, I'm pretty sure people are just too stupid to demand better products. They want bread and circuses instead; bling, not robustness.

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 10:05:07 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 23, 2019, 09:51:23 pmA couple of months ago I assisted a Great Grandmother aged 67 years of age install LinuxMX from a usb drive onto her laptopvia the telephonefrom 6000km away.She's a non techie, a writer in fact and that laptop is still going fine today.She couldn't install her printer on CUPS (what a piece of crap it is) so I remoted in once Linux was up and running and installed it for her.She's been a ex Windows user for the last 18 years.

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 10:08:16 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 09:37:36 pmI'm not but your sure are. Unlike you, I have actually read the TOPIC here "Topic: Let's piss off the radical Linux guys"You're a radical Windows guy reading this thread, I wonder why ?

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 10:18:40 pm
content: Quote from: techman-001 on October 23, 2019, 10:08:16 pmYou keep insisting that I'm a "radical Windows guy" - what does that even mean? is it because I don't fully agree with you?Also, you didn't answer the last question: why are you so aggressive and you spew so much hatred against MS if you don't care about them and what they do is irrelevant to you?

author: techman-001
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 11:33:59 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 10:18:40 pmGee jadew, for a Windows guy, you're sounding more and more pissed off ?

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 11:49:47 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on October 23, 2019, 09:37:36 pmI'm not techman-001, but...Perhaps because as a business, they have done so much harm to the entire field with their anticompetitive and monopolistic practices, that in some ways it is hard to tell them apart from a racketeering operation?I do not need to be a defenseless old lady to be angry at thugs who rob defenseless old ladies.That said, I have heard from those who do interact with MS that in the last decade or so, their corporate culture has changed. I do not know, and I am still suspicious, because it was never just about how MS dealt with competitors; they never had a healthy internal corporate culture either. I do not think you can change that deeply ingrained operational sickness and warts, unless you replace your entire management and most of the production line staff too.

author: Tony_G
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2019, 08:25:30 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 23, 2019, 11:49:47 pmI worked on and off for Microsoft for 25 years since Jan of 1990 (mostly VS but some Windows IoT, name on the glass in 33 and a number of the Fortress of Solitude crystals - better than my 5 year clock and 10 year stock cert anyway - left in Jan of 2019) and this quote was absolutely true - Back in the mid 90s to mid 00s if a team put up an honest slide indicating their top 10 competitors then at least 7 of them would be other teams at MS. Please don't even get me started on the employee side of things like stack ranking and policies.That said, from my perspective inside the beast things really did start to change in the early 10s - YMMV and of course there will be competition over divergent technical directions but the adoption of a more open culture centered around cooperation with other players was a reality.This is just my personal opinion, as I said YMMV and I'm sure there is any number of counterpoints or experiences but I just thought I'd share.Also one last observation, MS was never a monolithic company. For almost every public position the "behemoth" took, the actual team by team support for that position ranged from 100% to actively undermining. Oh, the stories....Back to your regularly scheduled thread war.TonyG