On Mar 18, 10:39 am, Rex Ballard <
rex.ball...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, March 15, 2012 7:01:20 PM UTC-4, -hh wrote:
> > On Mar 15, 3:39 pm, Mark S Bilk <
m...@cosmicpenguin.com> wrote:
> > > ...
> > > Try it -- you'll love it!
>
> I've been using Linux for 19 years, and as a primary operating
> system for at least one of my computers for the last 10.
>
> The evolution from SLS to Slackware and Yddragsil and then
> Mandrake, Red Hat, and Suse has taken us from systems that
> struggled to work on Monochrome monitors with
Thanks, but I'd be more interested in hearing what the other OSs are
that you just revealed you're using on those "non primary" systems,
and why that is.
Wow, something on your system is broken in your quoting software. By
any chance, were you posting from your 'primary' system?
> I've been using Linux for 19 years. We've come a long way
> from TAMU and SLS Linux to Mandrake, Red Hat, SUSE, then Ubuntu,
> and Android.
>
> In those early days, it took a lot of shell scripting to get
> it working on a monochrome monitor, where you could push the
> resolution almost to a Sun, but if you pushed it too far,
> the monitor would catch fire.
IIRC, I ditched monochrome 29 years ago. Perhaps we could discuss
something that's a quarter century closer to topical?
> And to think it took almost 18 years for the combination
> of Apple and Google and other Linux/Unix advocates to finally
> break into a "niche" market that Microsoft couldn't block.
On the desktop, the break into MS's dominance was entirely due to
Apple...and half of the reasons why it took so long probably have to
do with how severely Apple stumbled after Jobs left.
> And now the OEMs are seeing far more profit from Android devices
> than for laptops that have been discounted into oblivion,
> because Windows 7 seems to just keep slowing down more and
> more from when you buy it, while Android devices just keep
> getting more and more applications, and iPads are going out
> the door as fast as Apple can make them.
"Post PC Era" transition would be one set of tea leaves. That MS
hasn't been able to transform themselves into this segment - - despite
billions spent trying - - is one factor; another is just how netbooks
got run over like an armadillo in Texas.
> Now we are seeing the "convertable" tablets, tablets with
> keyboards that look and act like Laptops when you want them
> to, and look and act like tablets when that's what you want.
A throwback to ten years ago; time will tell if these tablet hybrids
get any traction, but I'd not make any wager on that saggy horse: I'd
personally suspect that the 2012 & 13 market leader by at least a 3:1
margin will be as an accessory to the iPad.
> > Already did. And again. I don't see any rational reason to ever
> > consider Linux for my main desktop ever again.
>
> How does that go? Never say never?
It goes "Fool me once ... fool me twice". Linux hasn't really
changed.
> Have you considered an iPad? or an Android Tablet?
For some productivity tasks, some of these have been adopted.
However, Android simply is not Linux: it is a trademarked product of
Google...who has simply hidden how they make people pay for that
product.
> What if it came with a 15 or 17 inch monitor or a Full HD
> output to a 1080p monitor? And what if you could attach a
> keyboard or use a bluetooth keyboard, and what if that tablet
> had all that power in either a 7 inch or 10 inch display of it's own?
What if we stopped making speculations about what other peoples' use
cases are?
> Android tablet customers choose between 16 and 32 gigabyte
> SSD storage because 16 Gigabytes is plenty, especially when
> you have external devices for back-up storage, SDHC removable
> storage up to 64 gb, and you can upload/download your information
> with Windows using the tablet as a hard drive.
A claim that utterly ignores what the diversity in customer use case
needs can be. For example, when I head out on the road with my
camera gear, I'm often carrying over 100GB worth of CF memory cards.
Feel free to humor me by explaining to me how I'd plug a CF into an SD
slot...just as the first step in an intellectual exercise that will
then have to next figure out how 100GB is going to fit into the 16GB
internal memory.
> And you are probably using Linux even if your core operating
> system is Windows.
> If you are running FireFox, Chrome, or Eclipse based application,
> Symphony, Lotus Notes, or most Java applications, then it's a pretty
> good chance that the application was originally created and tested
> on a Linux machine, which assures developers that it will run
> equally well on Linux, Windows, and Mac, without needing custom
> code for each system.
I can personally recall running Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony back in
the 1980s, before Linux even existed. I can also recall that Java
started at SUN, and those workstations ran on Unix...not Linux.
Insofar as Firefox & Chrome, they're just "Johnny Come Lately"
applications .. I can recall running NCSA Mosaic ... hey, I still have
version 2.0.1, including its documentation file:
"NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh 2.0.0 Beta 12 NCSA Mosaic for the
Macintosh Beta 12 for the 68K Macintosh was released Wednesday, May
31, 1995. for the Power Macintosh was released Wednesday, May 31,
1995. Please read the following information regarding this release,
before downloading the software using the links on this page. Since
this is a BETA release, there are many new features or bugs that you
will need to be aware of to make your use of the new release a
pleasant experience. For best results, please remove the preferences
file and allow the latest Beta to create its own preference file. We
will continue to keep the comprehensive Known Bugs page as up-to-date
as possible. To help us do this, please email us with any problems you
find that are not related to those listed on the known bugs page. Use
the Mail Developers feature from the Balloon Help menu, or email to
mosai...@ncsa.uiuc.edu. If you are seeing huge characters here....
Please go to the styles dialog and reset the style for BLOCKQUOTE and
TYPEWRITER to the default. This is the result of a leftover bug from
version 1.0.3..."
Which of course was followed by Netscape Navigator.
> Microsoft has had to give up it's proprietary hooks just to
> stay in the game, and many corporate customers are STILL
> installing Windows XP rather than Windows 7 because there
> is no significant productivity gain on Windows 7 ...
Agreed; perhaps you can take a moment to explain to poor "Kari Laine"
how things like productivity factor into Life Cycle Cost Management
analysis and the like :-)
> ... and Windows 7 machines in default configuration get slower
> and slower over time, and disk I/O is horrible because Windows
> users have to check everything with Antivirus AND Microsoft Indexing
> - even if it's just a web page being loaded into the local cache.
Of course, in an Enterprise environment, there's also sluggish
performance that's a necessary evil which is coming from the Linux-
based Firewall that's also doing malware checking.
> MS-Office 2010 had to have ODF support, and had to comply with
> the standards set and now controlled by Oracle and IBM, who
> hold a lot more clout in corporate IT shops than Microsoft has
> ever held - especially in server and enterprise environments.
Merely examples of competing interests ... and I do note the
conspicuous absence of crediting Linux with creating any of this use
of open standards.
> Many corporations are now requiring that ANY upgrades to
> Windows 7 or Office 2010, and even MS-Project or Visio - be
> justified and funded by the organization requesting the MS
> Software rather than being standard items provided by the
> corporate umbrella at the cost of jobs in divisions that
> neither want nor need the newer software.
>
> Today, if you want to do have the latest upgrades for 10 people,
> you have to cut one employee from your OWN staff to get it.
Given that the fully burdened cost for one good white collar knowledge
worker is easily around $200K/year, you're suggesting that those ten
(10) sets of upgrades are costing you $20K per seat. While that's
possible with some products, it doesn't sound particularly credible
for general "Office" applications.
> Meanwhile, these companies have formally adopted Linux and
> Open Source for the desktop. Even Windows users are encouraged
> to select items from the free catalog of 100 to 200 applications
> available for Linux AND Windows, and are given the names of
> comparable commercial products. Employees can earn incentives,
> such as memory upgrades and hard drive upgrades in exchange
> for switching from the high priced software to the Open Source software.
Those hard drives must still cost $10,000 each too ;-)
It is impossible to generalize to a generic "companies". For example,
my local employer's policy is that free software is explicitly
prohibited on any device on their network. This includes your desktop
PC if you want to attach it to the network for any service: email,
servers, printers, internet, etc.
> Switch to 64 bit Linux and the company will offer you
> upgrades to 8GB and 500 gigabyte hybrid drives, which
> will be loaded with Linux as the main OS, and if you
> still need Windows XP to communicate with a client,
> you can use a VMWare image, or the client has to pay
> for their own laptop, and pay the extra expenses
> of maintaining the second laptop
Haven't seen that at all where I'm at, although based on other
posters' comments, I suspect that what you're describing is the
workgroup that is where all of the software programmers are kept
locked up, and generally not expected (or allowed) to interact with
the living.
There's a lot more professions out there in the big wide world other
than just programming, and it is dangerous to try to generalize to
'all' based upon the status in any one niche ... no matter how much
one may be personally invested in that particular one:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalizability_theory
-hh