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Free is too expensive (Economist)

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Mar 30, 2012 23:17 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by robert_s
Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)

cyberax@cybnb:~$ sudo apt-get install photoshop
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package photoshop
Personally, I'm willing to sacrifice some usability of 'apt-get install' to get commercial applications and games on Linux.


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Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Mar 31, 2012 0:39 UTC (Sat) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

To what end? If you want the experience of running Windows or MacOS, and you're happy with proprietary software, then there a a couple of perfectly decent ways of getting those experiences. I run Linux because of the things it does differently - we don't need another Mac OS, we have one already.

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Mar 31, 2012 7:19 UTC (Sat) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

To what end? To have new KDE4 release in Debian at the same moment I have them in Windows, not 6 months later for example (this argument I've already given at least once in LWN).

I don't take notes, but I've seen it in other places too: source and Windows releases of software are at version x.2 while .deb file is at x.0. Also, beta builds are many times only available for Windows and OSX. Being able to run multiple versions is useful at times, but let's skip this argument as it's more complex.

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Mar 31, 2012 9:29 UTC (Sat) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Strange. I usually have new KDE releases installed before the Windows packages are even ready. Just had to add the repository which is just a click on a Website with openSUSE's 1-click-install.

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Mar 31, 2012 19:19 UTC (Sat) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

It's true that OpenSUSE has much earlier (better?) KDE support than Debian, but turning the discussion into a Debian vs. OpenSUSE would be bikeshedding*. My grief is not that that OpenSUSE has KDE earlier, but that _Windows_ has it earlier.

*but I'm pretty convinced OpenSUSE is lacking stuff that Debian has; after all, I left OpenSUSE and got Debian some years ago precisely because it was missing some packages Debian had.

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Apr 1, 2012 19:40 UTC (Sun) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"Personally, I'm willing to sacrifice some usability of 'apt-get install' to get commercial applications and games on Linux."

Not interested thanks.

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Apr 2, 2012 11:33 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

Personally, I'm willing to include a stable platform and software installation mechanism that third party developers (including commercial ones) would be able to support and willing to use if it means that the market share of Linux, and thus the aggregate freedom of all people, goes up by an order of magnitude.

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