My kid hates Linux (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

My kid hates Linux (ZDNet)

Posted Apr 15, 2008 12:06 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891)
In reply to: My kid hates Linux (ZDNet) by Duncan
Parent article: My kid hates Linux (ZDNet)

"What about Amarok and K3B, to name a couple well regarded Linux/FLOSS
apps? "

Um, K3b is an app for CD-burning. It was not the first app of it's kind, nor will it be the
last. Amarok? It wasn't first of it's kind either, there were plenty of music-jukeboxes before
Amarok.

Sure, both of those are good apps (although compared to something like iTunes, Amarok seems so
overtly complex and confusing that I can't understand it when I look at the screenshots), but
they aren't really anything groundbreaking. you might say that they do some things better than
some other app does, but that doesn't make them groundbreaking.

And, FWIW, iTunes does support other music-players besides iPods. But even if it didn't, it
would be irrelevant for me, since I happen to own an iPod.

"The point isn't that Linux/FLOSS, or other OS for that matter, has the
advantage here (tho arguably MS does in pure numbers terms simply by sheer
market share), but that each has its innovatively strong products without
reasonable compare on the other OSs."

What are those innovative apps in Linux? Don't get me wrong, there are loads of good apps on
Linux, I'm talking about _innovative_ apps. Something that makes you think "damn, why hasn't
this been thought of before?". Why didn't Linux get something like Expose before OS X did?
Time Machine? Delicious Library? Scrivener? Hell, even PhotoBooth?

"FWIW, I personally choose freedom."

I would like to do so as well. But if I want to edit and organize the RAW-pictures I take with
my camera, I have yet to find a better app than Aperture for that task. And that's just one
example. Are we really free, if we can't really do anything?

I guess the difference here is that before, computers were my hobby. Nowadays, I want to
actually do something with my computers. I don't use computers for the sake of using them, I
use them to accomplish something. And it just happens that for the things I want to do, I
can't really use Linux. I might get a secondary system that runs Linux, just so I can keep
tabs on it's progress though.

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My kid hates Linux (ZDNet)

Posted Apr 26, 2008 19:04 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Um, K3b is an app for CD-burning. It was not
> the first app of it's kind, nor will it be the
> last. Amarok? It wasn't first of it's kind
> either, there were plenty of music-jukeboxes
> before Amarok.

It would seem you've never (really) used either one or you'd know the 
innovativeness.  Calling k3b an app for CD burning is rather like calling 
Photoshop an image editing program, or to use OSX, ITunes a media player.  
Sure it's true, but that rather misses the point, and DEFINITELY misses 
the reason people actually use either app.  Similarly with amarok.  
There's really no comparison in the proprietary world.

Picking k3b first, as I said, the CD burning really isn't the point.  It's 
more (but not just) the way it integrates format conversion,  say ripping 
from DVD (killing the CSS if the support is on the system) to AVI or XViD 
or VCD, creating the new ISO if desired, and burning it, all from the same 
app.  Similarly with audio altho that's not quite so rare any more AFAIK.  
It can rip CDA and directly transcode it to MP3, OggVorbis, WMA, whatever, 
or to lossless FLAC etc, create the ISO and burn it.  Or the 
reverse, converting MP3 or whatever to CDA and burning a standard CD, 
playable in any standard CD player.  In fact, it can do it on the fly 
even, with a decent system.  (Doing high compression high quality video 
recompression on the fly isn't entirely practical yet due to the CPU 
cycles it takes, but in theory it's possible, if you had the machine to do 
it, but audio is definitely less challenging.)  That sort of flexibility 
and "innovativeness" simply isn't likely and hardly even possible in the 
proprietaryware world because the likes of the RIAA/MPAA would have a fit.

Amarok is equally "innovative" and quite comparable to ITunes in that 
regard altho they take somewhat different directions.  Newer versions 
integrate with not just one online store, but multiple stores and multiple 
online media sites such as last.fm.  Play lists can integrate tracks from 
multiple sources, both online and off, with tune scoring and the like 
similar (I guess) to ITunes, pulling covers from Amazon, tune data from 
CDDB if appropriate, lyrics, browsing the artist entries if available on 
wikipedia, etc.  While proprietary apps may do this to some extent, they 
aren't likely to work with the wide variety of otherwise often competing  
sources amarok is now integrating support for, again, because with 
proprietaryware, commercial realities too often get prioritized above user 
convenience.

As these two examples demonstrate, one strength of FLOSS that 
proprietaryware for the most part can't match is user over commercial 
priorities.  As a result, that's where FLOSS innovation tends to be 
strongest comparatively.  Proprietaryware certainly has its strengths as 
well and it's no surprise they score innovations in these areas, but it's 
certainly not the case that FLOSS has no innovative products at all, any 
more than it would be that proprietaryware has no innovative products at 
all.

Duncan