People of low moral fibre? Thats a whole other thread Mr.Judgemental.

Have you ever read the EULA for windows, thats the thing i dislike the most about it. Constraints on stupid things like how many people can connect to your pc???, how many cpu's you can have etc. It makes my blood boil, and people just click "accept" without even reading it, grrr.

much better of with the

Does any GNU/Linux user really care about all this "lets rule the world" Eric Raymond crap?

I just want a free unix-like system with a usefull desktop, ...and I already have that.

Distro's that aim to be a Windows replacements are IMHO worthless (Novell's MS friendly enterprise SuSE, Ubuntu/Linspire with CNR, ...).

A bigger market share would help for hardware support, but that has never been a problem for me either(just think twice before you buy something).

This thread is just 65 pages of meaningless junk.

I bet you are not marketing guys. Without a marketing strategy from the community you won't get your Linux Desktop working. Probably you won't able to know what is Linux too.

So, the Windows Replacement is a marketing strategy a all Linux community should care it. It is a strategy to make Linux more user friendly, more attractive and more people going to use it.

I hope you can change your mind set and appreciate it.

Ks

Indeed.

Did you actually read my previous post?
My desktop already works (plain GNOME and Flux) and I simply don't care about your business model (OSS was invented by a lunatic who never understood free software in the first place).
I did my first Linux installation when you still had to install it using Minix.
I don't pretend to be a guru in any way, but I highly doubt you're that more skilled in UNIX administration than I am (this is mu job for about 15 years, I'm not that noobish).

Not everyone agrees that "user-friendly" aka "stupid-proof" is worth giving up all our original goals.

No thanks, I'll stay with my original believes.

I think part of the point of having "user friendly" distributions is to allow non-experts the freedom to choose. I also think that different people have different preferences - you probably would not like my preferred setup, just as I don't think I would want to use yours. I think having a larger user base could help encourage vendors to offer documentation/drivers/software for multiple platforms.

I really don't mind your "user friendly" stuff(notice almost everyone in this thread mentioned commercial software) as long as this is done in user space (as it was always intendent to be).

Adding an installer for commercial software(ignoring superior Free Software solutions) and accepting all commercial IP claims is IMHO just a fast fix leading to a horrible result.

I think you really need to think twice before you post. Without large user base are you going to get so many application/package from internet? Are going to find so many distro world wide? Are you able to use open office? Without user friendly and productivity than computer is nothing but a piece of 'hardware'.

You have so much experience than myself, more than 15 years to handle all this kind of staff, but it mean nothing if you don't accept the IT Trend. If you like to mention OLD kind of technology, I can tell you my FATHER use much longer time than you, he use CALCULATOR quite long time (Didn't you agree this is computer too?)

The increase of user will increase the quality of open source products. The more user friendly product will increase their user quantity. And the better marketting method will increase user quantity too. I can believe you don't know it?

Sorry for my rude word because my english won't be so good at this momment.
Regards,
Ks

By "user friendly", I mean sensible and understandable system design decisions (including UI). Autodetection of various things is big plus - and a good reason, imho, to pick one piece of hardware over another. I have dealt with crappy ethernet, video, audio, etc... expansion cards that require a lot of work before they do anything, and I have dealt with the ones that are well supported in the mainstream kernel. In most cases, the support is worth a 100% increase in price over the poorly (or not at all) supported hardware.

For software and general upkeep - I have found debian to be very easy to use. Why do large OS vendors not have anything as easy to use for keeping the software up to date?


As far as your comment about commercial software integration - it seems that you have something specific you are talking about. Would you mind providing a bit more background about the specifics?

I can offer a specific for the software installer, the installer Loki used for most of their games. click.. it has everything it needs to run click... its installed, it has told you where it is installed, and best of all, it was all installed in one directory and didn't interfere with any system settings.
Another good example would be klic, using an image of a file system for the application and all its dependencies, so if anything went belly up just delete a single file.
As for pain in the neck hardware, if you paid double for hardware with linux support then good for you. Fighting with badly designed hardware that doesn't stick to standards and needs its own software just to get around the bugs only encourages manufacturers to market more of this crap.
Double the price sounds excessive though, unless its for something like a modem instead of a winmodem.
Cheers,
Stan

I don't think I paid 2x in cash, so it was a deal. But generally, I try to stay away from crap like 'losemodems' and that kind of stuff tends to be "cheaper" than nice hardware. I have helped too many people who got something shiny and proprietary before thinking about compatibility.

Comparing Linux to Windows like comparing cats to dogs, so don't even try to do it.

Yes for back bone, the GUI for Linux and Windows should compare each other.

OS is something for increase productivity, GUI should be acceptable by most people. And Windows GUI is most acceptable GUI in the world(Have highest market share).

Anyway, the back bone, like kernel, server application normally transparent to end users, and user won't care it. Then we don't compare it.


Regards,
Ks

Comparable in what way?

The point of computers is to make things easier for people, but I call BS as far as market share meaning much of anything with respect to quality.

But it matters. Though I find the microsoft UI horrible in general, part of the problem is poor design for the internals leaks out and results in problems with the externals.

If there is no Consensus on every issue in linux that everyone follows you can pretty much brush Linux off the desktop. This is happening right now. If people can put away their pride and do some things "the Windows way" to cater to users, Windows on 99.999999999999% of desktops (Hello!), Linux would bust, that child that IBM talks about would be on the track team at harvard!!!! Instead of its current orphan status.

Who cares Open Source this open source that, and whiffle ball bat!!

I've never met a user who knew source code even existed. This focus has to go.

If you told a user that soucrce code was available they would probably be scared to death. Some people do not publish source code for security reasons.

Who cares, let the corps take your free source code, make a new product, and seal it off. Who cares. You don't have the talent to combat that? There is nothing to fear from making power available to people; no matter how.

Instead the souftware is off limits to many interests, the same interests that have propagated and initiated the process of cheap technology. Many corp try to limit people but it never works in the end. Were talkin now arent we?

Open Source has served its purpose and run its course with Linux. Let it Go. The source is already everywhere no one could ever cut anyone off from the technology! Let it go. The kid needs to leave the house. He wants to go to Harvard.

Sean

What on earth are you on about?

If Linux (and GNU software) actually were set out to make
a market share I might appreciate those statements above.

But the things I use and love are from geeks for geeks. And
it won't change until such time as all those geeks get paid
for what they're doing. No one will sit down and code some-
thing that someone else wants in their free time. They code
stuff they want to use, and use it in the way they like it.

That's all there's to it, and no ramble about Harvard and kid
will change that. That said: Linux was mature at conception
time, unlike the popular OS you chose to compare it with.


Cheers,
Tink