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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it.""Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it."Posted Aug 28, 2012 19:16 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)In reply to: "Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." by pboddie Parent article: Look and feel lawsuits, the second time around
The reason there hasn't been a "year of the Linux desktop" and also that the by far most popular Linux systems aren't Unixy enough for the average geek were aptly explained by Joel Spolsky (a.k.a. "Joel on Software") quite a while back already.
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"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 19:23 UTC (Tue) by JEFFREY (subscriber, #79095) [Link]
Just out of curiosity, why does there need to be a "Year of the Linux Desktop?" Will there *ever* be such a year?
When was the "Year of the Microsoft Desktop?"
When was the "Year of the Apple Desktop?"
No desktop system is perfected within a year to the point it receives widespread adoption.
Is it when a desktop surpasses another? There are still more people on MS Windows than OS X, but some would argue that OS X has already won the desktop wars and that market-share is a lagging indicator of supremacy.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 19:50 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> When was the "Year of the Microsoft Desktop?"
1995, pretty much.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 19:53 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
1995 was the Year of the Microsoft Desktop I would say. Before Windows 95 there was the possibility to run something else. There wasn't a lot of OS/2 around but there was some. Some people were still running DOS.
But after Windows 95, with its pretty good desktop and integrated TCP/IP, it seemed to be all Windows all the time.
By Windows 98 I didn't personally see anything but Windows on PCs.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 20:40 UTC (Tue) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]
I was using Linux and X11/TWM before Windows 95, and it rocked. The Linux desktop failed because of hardware compatibility. Same then, same now. Windows 95 didn't succeed because of built-in TCP/IP, it succeeded because of the built-in modem and SLIP/PPP setup. For the same reason, with the advent of "Win modems" Linux lost any chance it had of securing a foothold on the desktop.
I use a Macbook (after running Linux desktops till ~2002) because it has awesome hardware, and you don't have to spend countless hours researching which model of which vendor to buy. Apple is a one-stop-shop for best available features.
And no way in heck am I going to bother fiddling around with device drivers and all that junk to get Linux running on a brand new laptop, especially since I mostly use my Macbook as a glorified terminal, web browser, and TV (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon). I still use mutt for e-mail and tin for usenet, but I never want to go back to the days where I had to waste time trying to get a graphics card or network card to work properly. Linux support is about where it was in 1995/1996--because back then hardware was simple enough that it was easy to write drivers which Just Worked.
FWIW, Apple is POSIX compliant. I've submitted a few bug reports for POSIX compliance, with fixes, and so far Apple has had a solid track record of fixing the issues. Considering that low-level APIs like POSIX, and high-level APIs like HTML5, are still the most important interfaces for the vast majority of code, I really couldn't care less about the desktop wars.
That said, I have my mom using a Chromebook and she loves it. The Chromebook is one Linux desktop product I can sincerely recommend.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 20:51 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Come on. I remember (with horror) my attempts to set up modelines in XFree86Config on a perfectly SVGA-compatible graphics card (S3 Trio, IIRC). While Windows just worked.
Then there was font configuration setup, localization (бНОПНЯ strikes again!), then figuring out why LILO stopped booting Windows, etc.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:26 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Maybe in 1995 you had to fool around with modelines, etc. But now Linux tends to Just Work after installation the same as Windows, especially if you use something like Ubuntu. (I use Debian, not Ubuntu, but I can't recall having to tweak anything in the last 50+ desktop or laptop installs I've done.)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:51 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
But it's no longer _enough_ to JustWork(tm). That's a requirement now, not an optional feature.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 22:08 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] So what's your point? Linux meets the requirements. And it has features [Tons of free software; sane upgrade mechanisms; robustness; nice development environment] that are lacking in the alternatives, which is why I select it as my OS.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 7:14 UTC (Wed) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
Just works? Considering how broken the 6month upgrade cycle is for users, i doubt it.
'Oh you need spanky new webcam support?' Well you have to a) wait 3 months b) force upgrading everything else. Nice :)
But it's harsh, the model has other advantages but some really crappy downsides for 3rd party developers and hardware makers.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:46 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Considering how broken the 6month upgrade cycle is for users, i doubt it. What 6-month upgrade cycle are you referring to? Debian certainly does not have such a cycle. Maybe Ubuntu does, but even Ubuntu has LTS releases. 'Oh you need spanky new webcam support?' Well you have to a) wait 3 months b) force upgrading everything else. Nice :) That's never been an issue for me. It's true that one time I did buy a webcam that needed a newer kernel than what I was running, but it was pretty easy to make a Debian kernel package and upgrading the kernel affected absolutely nothing else on my system. (I'm typing this on a Squeeze box running kernel 3.4.4.)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 5:50 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Perhaps amusingly, a 2007 IBM Thinkpad I have, equipped with an ATI 1300, only just got support for hardware GL acceleration in linux v3.4.2. I'm not sure what argument this fact might support.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 22:05 UTC (Fri) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
The X1300 (a R500 card) has been supported by Mesa for years, since at least 2008, I think.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 14:38 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Unless it's a (Microsoft-Only-vendor)-specific version of the card. Not that that's ever bit me with my Dell i8600 which had a broken vbios that I had to install Windows XP back on to apply the fix for. Aside from IIRC having slightly different PCI information and a different vbios, I don't know what the various vendor-specific "flavors" of the cards do.
The long-term solution is to stop buying hardware that's designed to only run Windows and tested *just* enough to pass WHQL and instead buy from a Linux vendor so that they can begin to get the ODMs to explicitly support Linux or at least stop producing hardware that breaks so badly.
Yes, your selection is going to be more limited. Does even Apple have the selection of Dell, Lenovo, Sony, HP, etc. put together? No. Instead, help the Linux vendors get a solid support base to begin to push back on the ODMs. You know, like how Apple can get their suppliers to produce hardware that Only Works with Apple. If the Linux vendors have enough customers, they begin to have the power to fix the Linux hardware situation. Until then, they or you have to pick and choose your hardware carefully and try to see if they can fix its brokenness (or work around its brokenness in software, s.a. System76's drivers).
The short-term bonus of buying from a Linux vendor is that they do the picking, choosing, and working around for you instead. So you win long and short-term at the cost of some selection.
I swear, the smartest thing Apple ever did was make OSX only run on Apple hardware. Otherwise, we’d be hearing about how OSX is crap on random Windows consumer hardware because sound is flaky and it can’t suspend and resume right (and sometimes it can’t even turn itself off!) while Apple tries to source hardware from the ODMs with a market share in the single thousands of customers. You know, like e.g. ZaReason and System76 are trying to do it.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 15:30 UTC (Wed) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]
in parallel linux ( actually mostly KDE ) has aquired some unpleasant bigbrotherknows best -isms.
The number of Don Quixotish windmill fights increases with each interation.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 20:08 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
How come? I am not aware of those.
> in parallel linux ( actually mostly KDE ) has aquired some unpleasant bigbrotherknows best -isms.
Off-topic Posted Aug 29, 2012 23:39 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Aw, come on. Top posting on LWN? What's next, OMG LOLisms?Sorry, couldn't resist :)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 1:46 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Me neither. The nastiest affront to human dignity and the Unix philosophy on KDE is NetworkManager and that isn't a KDE thing, it's a Redhat abomination.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 2:20 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Sure, I fondly remember the WiFi and the endless Ethernet reconfiguring on the VAX-11 that was the first machine I admined back in '85... This whole "Unix philosophy" whining is total nonsense. What was (barely) good enough for bolted-to-the-floor machines, for which any hardware change meant powering down, probably reconfiguring hardware by diving into the inards of the machine and even compiling a new kernel, just isn't enough for today's mobile laptops with hot-plugged hardware. BTW, I did do my fair share of cursing at NetworkManager in its beginnings, a few iterations (and bugreports) later it Just Works (TM). Try it again some time.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 6:22 UTC (Thu) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
Try innocently editing an ifcfg-ethX file while Network Manager is running. As soon as you save the file, Network Manager thinks you have deleted it and shuts down the interface. Unusually effective if it is the sole network interface on a colocated server somewhere.
Network Manager isn't just a bad idea on servers, it is hazardous to your health.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 6:58 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I do that all the time (working with embedded devices that boot over Ethernet from my laptop). Works perfectly OK - NetworkManager doesn't touch manually managed interfaces.
Besides, why are you running it on server?
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:14 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Try innocently editing an ifcfg-ethX file while Network Manager is running.
Why would you do such a thing? You didn't know network-manager was running?
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 17:04 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Because if you're working remotely you quite possibly have no other choice. Your ssh connection comes over that interface, and that's that.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 11:48 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
How exactly do you expect NetworkManager to interact with a distro-specific configuration mechanism? If you insist on usign NM on a server, you should remove the distro-specific stuff entirely. I wouldn't expect this to work any more than I'd expect configuring eth0 in both ifupdown and NM to work; or installing ifupdown on a RedHat machine and configuring eth0 in both ifcfg-eth0 and /etc/network/interfaces!
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 15:13 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
NetworkManager works -- most of the time.
But when it doesn't work, it's next to impossible to fix.
Sure, if I wanted to spend at least six hours on it, I could get into its C code and bend it to my will. But what a waste of time.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 9:53 UTC (Thu) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]
Things that pulled my tether recently:
network manager kdewallet interaction with network manager/ wifi connection and where to store the credentials. switching between dual and single screens. okular and its handling of forms ( you can check a ckeckbox but this is a oneway street ) . acroread dies unpleasantly when acessing an okular "formfilled" pdf. ( OK, acro* is shit anyway, but the people that get the formfilled pdf use acrobat )
essentially the karmawheel like activities that made me run away from win3.1 to linux have made their way over too.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:20 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> network manager
What happened with network manager?
> kdewallet interaction with network manager/ wifi connection and where to store the credentials.
> switching between dual and single screens.
> okular and its handling of forms ( you can check a ckeckbox but this is a oneway street ) . acroread dies unpleasantly when acessing an okular "formfilled" pdf. ( OK, acro* is shit anyway, but the people that get the formfilled pdf use acrobat )
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:56 UTC (Tue) by skx (subscriber, #14652) [Link] I did that too - but I remember the dark days of winmodems well. I'd run a desktop on Linux since Redhat 4.2 (or so) and while I hated the pain of the early setup the worst thing was that I couldn't help others. I had to choose hardware based on whether it would work. Friends? They might have liked real multitasking, real multi-user systems, but they couldn't switch to Linux unless or until they bought a new modem, a new sound-card, and etc. These days we're lucky that most middle of the road stuff "just works". I loved installing Squeeze last year on a generic box from a no-name manufacturer without even considering that it would fail, and without having to do any magical setup voodoo.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:28 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Apple is a one-stop-shop for best available features. By buying Apple products, you are financially supporting a corporation that abuses the US legal system to crush competitors. You're also promoting a vision of computing that would take away our freedom. Maybe you don't see it that way, or maybe you don't care, but that's what you're doing.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 8:37 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
And the choice is what? Buying a pre-installed Windows PC? Is MS any better than Apple?
I don't see how I have a choice :-(
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 23:21 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Is MS any better than Apple? Oh yeah. Microsoft is trying to be evil, but it does not really knows how. Apple is the original "evil company™", most underhanded tricks Microsoft have learned from Apple. In the end Microsoft is just a cheap imitator which in this case is good. Ok, maybe not good (incompetent evil is still evil), but at least it's better. Much better.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 18:22 UTC (Thu) by ThinkRob (subscriber, #64513) [Link]
Well you could build your own or purchase from a vendor that sells systems without Windows (they do exist). Or you could get a refund for your Windows license. Or you could purchase one generation behind the curve and get used hardware.
There are options.
But even if you do purchase something with Windows on it, you're still providing less money to a company that (as of 2012) many would argue is less "evil" than Apple. Maybe not historically, but IMHO in the last couple years Apple's been a lot more hostile in ways that harm more users than Microsoft has.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 14:42 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
There are Linux vendors, e.g. ZaReason, System76, R Squared. They're small and don't have nearly the influence with ODMs that Apple does, let alone Dell, HP, Lenovo, and the rest of the usual MS Windows vendors.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 9:55 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] By buying Apple products, you are financially supporting a corporation that abuses the US legal system to crush competitors. You're also promoting a vision of computing that would take away our freedom. Any for-profit corporation will try to maximize the profit, and of course they will use all legal means at their disposal to do so. It keeps amazing me that people seem offended by this. Samsung is one of those corporations, by the way, just like the evil empires of IBM, Dell and any other vendor out there. Of course, they won't all act the same way to reach the same goal. In this instance, Apple clearly must have thought they had a good case by enforcing their patents. It would however be silly to think that Samsung collects patents for any other reason than to prove ownership of some intellectual property, so they could do exactly the same. It seems so obvious that this is not about the behaviour of the players, but the rules of the game.
Personally, I don't care about the freedom that would allow me to go inside an iPhone or Galaxy S and change a perfectly fine tool for making phone calls into some half-broken word processor. I do care about the freedom that allowed Apple to take Free Software and put it in its operating system, so that I could do the things I want to do. That's the other thing that keeps amazing me: the narrow definitions of "freedom" that people entertain to describe what they think is "right".
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 10:13 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
> Any for-profit corporation will try to maximize the profit, and of course they will use all legal means at their disposal to do so. It keeps amazing me that people seem offended by this.
That isn't true. Or at least doesn't have to be. Regardless of what you may have been told, corporations are made up of people who follow their own agendas and codes of ethics. The corporate form may be somewhat grotesque in the USA at the moment, but expecting companies and their employees to rise no higher than "whatever gives the highest return on investment" is ridiculous (not to mention depressing.) We can and should expect much more.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 10:41 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Of course it doesn't have to be. But it seems that that's the way it is.As a side note, you may find this interesting.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 12:48 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
The way it goes is that everyone can point the finger at everyone else. So, if a corporation does bad things, they can blame their shareholders who apparently demand big dividends and a continuously rising share price because to do the right thing would supposedly cost the company money and disappoint the shareholders. They can also blame the "consumer" for wanting products that are cheap.
Meanwhile, the shareholders - frequently institutions investing on behalf of others - can insist that they're merely demanding a "fair return" for their clients. I'm sure some of these people actually don't care that bad things are done in their name (for example, I once read once about shareholders shouting down critics of corporate policy at Nestlé shareholder meetings), but others would probably rather just not know. Some of these institutions operate pension funds and thus blame the average person for wanting a nice pension.
What we should be doing is denying these people the opportunity to do things in our name, whether as a customer or as a member of a pension scheme or other fund. That might mean that compromises have to be made, but it also means that the people playing the above games also have to clean up their act.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 18:24 UTC (Wed) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link] Some of these institutions operate pension funds and thus blame the average person for wanting a nice pension. Close, but not quite. The "average person" in the US doesn't have a pension. A small minority of the population in the form of state and local government employees demand pension and health benefits which require mathematically-impossible rates of return to fund. The vocal shareholders which demand growth at any cost and force companies to focus exclusively on the next quarter's earnings report instead of long term viability are entities like CalPERS.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 13:08 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]
Very well said. There is far too much making of excuses for unethical behaviour by corporations (which are in fact made up of people, who are responsible for that behaviour. Call them on it when you get the chance.) 'The law says we have to amoral scumbags' is both wrong, and unacceptable as an excuse.
People here might like Apple hardware (and software integration), but I can't believe any of us is denying that their current behaviour on look and feel is unethical. I'd like to think that most of us understand that their attempts to make all non-apple-approved modification of hardware or software impossible is also unethical.
Mind you, Microsoft's current attempt to make it impossible to boot an alternative OS on any Windows-running ARM-based device are just as bad. They had been looking a lot less evil recently.
I too am saddened by the number of geeks and Free Software hackers who make very little effort to dogfood in software or avoid the most egregious suppliers of hardware. I know it's annoying sometimes, but everyone who could have done something about it using Adobe's flash and PDF readers is one thing that has caused 10 years of damage to the open Web. We largely have ourselves to blame on that front. That's just one example. Take the same attitude with locked-down computing from Apple (and MS) and computing is likely to look correspondingly bleaker in another 10 years.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 13:51 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Any for-profit corporation will try to maximize the profit, and of course they will use all legal means at their disposal to do so. That's correct. Now let's move to your next sentence: It keeps amazing me that people seem offended by this. Getting offended by unethical behaviour and punishing corporations that use it is the only way to keep corporations even modestly ethical. If the only thing they try to do is to maximize their profit, then it is an absolute necessity to punish them financially when they do something unethical. That is, after all and by your own admission, the only leverage we have over them. Samsung is one of those corporations, by the way, just like the evil empires of IBM, Dell and any other vendor out there. Certainly. But specific situations demand specific action and in this specific situation, if consumers don't punish Apple then Apple will punish consumers. I don't care about the freedom that would allow me to go inside an iPhone or Galaxy S and change a perfectly fine tool for making phone calls into some half-broken word processor. Just because you don't care about a specific freedom doesn't mean you have the right to take it away from those who do care. I do care about the freedom that allowed Apple to take Free Software and put it in its operating system, so that I could do the things I want to do. If Apple follows the rules, then I'm perfectly fine with its using free software in its systems... that's not the issue.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 12:01 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Getting offended by unethical behaviour and punishing corporations that use it is the only way to keep corporations even modestly ethical. My point was that the system needs to be reformed. Whether the kind of punishment you propose is going to accomplish that remains to be seen, but I think the point that Samsung would fill the void left by Apple is a valid one. The other point I was making, which I feel you didn't fully understand, is that both producers and consumers have freedoms, and that claiming that any of these outweighs another is not as obvious as some people make it seem. Ultimately, the rules we have come up with decide these matters, whether we like it or not. If what you say is right, and Apple violated these rules, then surely you can point me to a source that goes beyond "the rules are stupid so Apple is wrong". The rules ARE stupid, and that's why we need to change them.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 1:52 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] Samsung is one of those corporations, by the wayIs it? All my interactions with Samsung have been pleasant and all my interactions with Apple have been unpleasant, going right back to 1984 (auspicious date, that). Maybe your experience is different.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 11:30 UTC (Thu) by regala (subscriber, #15745) [Link]
clearly, you have no clue
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 11:43 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Please, educate me!
Freedom and the rabbit in the hat Posted Aug 30, 2012 13:45 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Personally, I don't care about the freedom that would allow me to go inside an iPhone or Galaxy S and change a perfectly fine tool for making phone calls into some half-broken word processor. I do care about the freedom that allowed Apple to take Free Software and put it in its operating system, so that I could do the things I want to do.Perhaps you will miss your freedom when the next Apple OS update supports only installing apps via the Apple store. It is perfectly legal to do such a thing (until proven otherwise), and Apple will not hesitate to abuse the legal system to prove it. Getting 30% off all Mac software purchases will make Apple shareholders happy, and most people will not care anyway, just as you; Apple will sell it to customers as an improvement in security, family safety and system cleanliness. Hey, we all win!
Freedom and the rabbit in the hat Posted Aug 30, 2012 19:22 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Why would you think that I don't care about being able to freely install software on OS X? Because I make the distinction between a phone and an operating system?Perhaps I misunderstood, or perhaps I didn't explain properly what I meant. Or maybe you are simply jumping to conclusions. In any case, I think I have made my point and will politely bow out of this discussion.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 8:34 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> Any for-profit corporation will try to maximize the profit, and of course they will use all legal means at their disposal to do so. It keeps amazing me that people seem offended by this.
It's the current state of affairs, yes, but it's a very recent development, it seems.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/04/the_shareholder_fallacy/
"Historically, corporations were understood to be responsible to a complex web of constituencies, including employees, communities, society at large, suppliers and shareholders. But in the era of deregulation, the interests of shareholders began to trump all the others."
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 16:39 UTC (Thu) by aaron (subscriber, #282) [Link] By buying Apple products, you are financially supporting a corporation that abuses the US legal system to crush competitors. You're also promoting a vision of computing that would take away our freedom. So buy used hardware and run Linux. If you must, cover up the logo with a Tux sticker. Honestly, I haven't bought a new electronic gizmo in I don't know how many years. Which makes me wonder: is it morally better to buy stolen ideas from Apple and Microsoft than to buy stolen laptops from CraigsList?
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 16:45 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
It can be argued that doing so props up the market for second-hand Apple hardware. If I know I can sell my Apple laptop at the end of its life for a reasonable price then I am more likely to put up with paying a higher price when I buy it new.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 22:08 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Apple is a one-stop-shop for best available features.
This would only be true if everyone could agree on what "best features" are. For instance, I would not trade my ThinkPad keyboard for my daughter's MacBook Pro keyboard. Ever. I would also not trade my matte screen for her glossy one. Sure, her machine has a feature she likes a lot - it looks great - something I do not give a toss about. Etc.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 15:57 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
I recently got a used one from a coworker to test OS X compatibility. It seems as though there is NO way to get a macbook pro to not be suspended when the lid is closed if you don't have power (understandable), keyboard, mouse, *and* monitor plugged in. As if computers are useless without a display or input (an ethernet cable can satisfy all of those requirements). It's been sitting off to the side because I just don't have the desk space for it to be open all the time because of that. The plan is now to hoist it in a cradle under the desk and plug the peripherals in and just SSH into it.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 17:27 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Sure there is. You can either do it manually using pmset utility or install a nice GUI app like http://code.google.com/p/macosx-nosleep-extension/
(yeah, I've just switched to Mac OS X and that was one of the things I've installed first)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 17:35 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Heh, leave it to the Linux community to give better answers than the Mac community about stuff like this.
All Apple has is: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3131]
Thanks!
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 29, 2012 20:10 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
There is a nicely packaged free program called caffeine that does that job, too, IIRC. http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 9:30 UTC (Thu) by regala (subscriber, #15745) [Link]
"but I never want to go back to the days where I had to waste time trying to get a graphics card or network card to work properly. Linux support is about where it was in 1995/1996--because back then hardware was simple enough that it was easy to write drivers which Just Worked."
Trolling Bullshit. Whatever. Stay on your Macbook. (By the way, when first so-called Macbooks were released, this era of "configure-your-graphical-or-sound-card-on-linux' was finished since long)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 12:38 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Whatever the value of the 1995 comment, surely you can't deny that there are still problems? The last Windows PC laptop I bought could not do the following when I loaded Linux on it:
1) show 3D without closed source driver, which of course ceased supporting the chipset in about 1 year period, causing significant loss of 3D functionality.
2) use wireless without closed-source driver (Broadcom wireless. Has open source driver, crashes machine in about 1 minute if used.)
3) battery doesn't last even half as long when running linux compared to windows because of some endless power-saving issues.
4) suspend/resume doesn't work. Maybe comes back half the time correctly, the rest of the time shows every indication of having crashed.
5) could not boot ubuntu 12.04 at all. Simply crashed on kernel load. I did not investigate, because I no longer care.
And it's a nice 14" HP Envy otherwise. It runs Windows because of the power-saving and suspend/resume problems which are most critical for me. The 5) is worrying, but it's not even the first time that new version of ubuntu doesn't boot on PC hardware where it used to work. *shrug*
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 18:33 UTC (Thu) by ThinkRob (subscriber, #64513) [Link]
So pick better hardware? That's a bit snide, true, but if you're planning on running Linux it's quite easy to select a box that uses hardware from manufacturers that support the community (e.g. Intel) rather than those that can't seem to figure out how to play nicely (e.g. Broadcom.)
The last laptop I bought was a ThinkPad T420. Under a then-current distro: 3D worked out of the box. Wireless worked out of the box. Battery life sucked until I enabled the various power-saving features that the hardware supports (takes about 2 minutes with laptop-mode-tools). Suspend/resume works flawlessly, although I don't use it for security reasons. The only trouble areas I found were from using distros that significantly predated the hardware -- which doesn't really strike me as a failure on anybody's part as much as what I'd expect to happen.
Just as if you plan on running OS X on a non-Apple laptop or a version of Windows other than the one preloaded by the vendor on some box: I'd say it's a pretty good idea to research your hardware before you buy it.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 20:40 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"Apple is a one-stop-shop for cognitive dissonance."
There, fixed that for you.
"FWIW, Apple is POSIX compliant."
Well, "WIW" is "not much". Those that espouse things like this generally don't get the point of why you might want something to behave like unix.
The Macintosh desktop, and, well, the entire system is almost totally divorced from the unix side of things. There is barely anything useful you can do with your day-to-day desktop environment from unix.
Macintoshes may as well just have a "unix emulator" strapped onto the side of them for all the good it does.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 21:33 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
WIW is enough. Macs run almost all of the POSIX-y software just fine. The biggest difference is in init system.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 13:03 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"Macs run almost all of the POSIX-y software just fine."
So that means it's about as useful as cygwin or even a linux virtual machine on windows.
You're ignoring my actual point that the two environments on a Mac barely interact in any useful way.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 15:14 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Or maybe GNOME in Linux? After all, it's not really connected with POSIX-y stuff.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 7, 2012 12:12 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
False - it absolutely is.
(I'm not a gnome user, so I'll talk about kde) Configuration can be managed through text files, many tools can be controlled very effectively through the commandline and generally where possible things are done the "unix way".
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 7, 2012 22:03 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] […] and generally where possible things are done the "unix way". Except the developers have apparently never heard about man pages. Even the official documentation often leaves a lot to be desired. Much of it confines itself to recapitulating the menu items of a program as in »Open file: This lets you open a file. Save file: This lets you save a file. Save file as …: …«. This is not what I would consider documentation. I have felt for a long time that the single most productive thing the KDE project could do to improve their offering is to stop writing code for 3 months and to use that time to actually document the thing properly ;^)
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 31, 2012 21:59 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
The sea of Macs at Unixy Linux/JS/Ruby/etc dev conferences indicate that you're quite mistaken.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 13:06 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
Yes, essentially server stuff which barely interacts with the desktop. You have also ignored my actual point there, see my above reply.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 15:28 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> the two environments on a Mac barely interact in any useful way.
This is your point? You really need to try developing on a Mac. The terminal experience is second to none (painful to admit). And POSIX is an integral part of it.
The stock terminal is beautiful and rock solid, even better than gnome-term. The finger feel is basically indistinguishable from other BSDs, and far better than Solaris-without-Gnu. I love that there's no control-key ambiguity. True, MacPorts/HomeBrew can be a PITA, but no more than xBSD ports or Gentoo. And XQuartz sux but I only need it for GnuBG. It really is a full Unix workstation.
I've only been using a Mac for a few months (thanks gnome+fedora), but I'm using POSIX, GCC, VIM, and all my favorite Unix tools every day. And it was trivial to set up. It's a great, tightly integrated experience that lets me work with zero drama.
There's a reason damn near every developer I know (and I know hundreds) uses a Mac.
You're ignoring the enemy. Better to recognize him, acknowledge his strengths and weaknesses, and then use that knowledge to crush him.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 1, 2012 18:48 UTC (Sat) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
I've used a mac from 2007 to 2009, in addition, of course, since only an idiot would limit himself to just one system, to linux and windows. I didn't find the OS X terminal to be anything special, compared to konsole. But then, I don't give a damn about the "finger-feel of the other BSD's".
It's kind of a full unix work station, but there's nothing at all in the OS X gui that makes me more productive than KDE; both are, of course, miles ahead of Windows. But the one thing I hated about OSX was the drama. The broken upgrades from one version to another. The vacillation between the preferred way of creating application installers. The ghastly developer documentation for both gui toolkits it shipped with. The drama from other mac users in my company who simply _had_ to tell me that I shouldn't be using four terminals at the same time, it wasn't the mac way. The horror that is x-code. Time machine disappearing my backups. The screen that broke after two years of usage.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Sep 4, 2012 20:32 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> The stock terminal is beautiful and rock solid, even better than gnome-term.
While I agree with that (gnome-term stealing the Fx keys sucks until I get it to not do that), I still like my urxvt256cd with tmux much better. I ended up installing iTerm2, but since I'm now using it over SSH only (the desktop is foreign to my XMonad muscle memory and the Ctrl/Fn keys are in the wrong place), so that's a moot point now too.
> The finger feel is basically indistinguishable from other BSDs, and far better than Solaris-without-Gnu.
I've never really used Solaris too much, but the BSD tools are missing lots of nice things the GNU toolset has (find -name complaining about unsupported options when the directory is missing). Plus, for physical finger feel, the keyboards are not my style.
> I've only been using a Mac for a few months (thanks gnome+fedora), but I'm using POSIX, GCC, VIM, and all my favorite Unix tools every day.
Same here, but I used it for about 3 hours and wanted to throw it under my desk and use it via SSH because I just couldn't stand the software (window management or, rather, lack thereof and more) and hardware (keyboard, trackpad).
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 10:53 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
When Windows 95 came out, I decided that this was the same trash as windows 3.11 (mainly: DOS beneath), and switched to Linux.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 28, 2012 22:55 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
That Spolsky article just parrots the tired assertions that "Unix is for programmers" and that "programmers can't design user interfaces".
Strip away observations like "nobody has ever quite been able to agree on all the details of how the desktop UI should work" which more or less ignores the consensus you get within projects like GNOME and KDE that even developed frameworks for making consistent applications - I'd argue the latter was more successful than the former at this - and "for Aunt Marge it is very much not OK to have to use a different UI to cut and paste in one program than she uses in another" which was largely an old, solved problem already back in 2003, there's no real insight other than to believe mythological tales about a culture that arguably doesn't apply by someone who probably thinks hammers are the tool for every job.
The fact is that you have to develop something, believe in it, and then mercilessly refine and iterate until people stop complaining about it. That's what's missing, and it has nothing to do people liking text files for their settings and trivial distractions of that nature.
"Indeed, we enthusiastically buy their hardware and port our systems to it." Posted Aug 30, 2012 1:55 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Agreed, it's just fluff from a Microsoft retread.
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