Linux drove me to get a Mac

[Kamran Khan]

On 9-Jan-09, at 4:41 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 10:04:33PM -0500, Kamran Khan wrote:
>> Sadly you don't get it.  It would seem that many of your cohorts on
>> the list do not either.  For example the solution to print on
>> Linux(Desktop) is to buy a postscript printer.  The solution to allow
>> me to sync my SE Smart Phone with applications running on the Linux
>> Desktop is?  Yes I know, buy hardware that works with Linux.  Like I
>> said you don't get it.  I fail to see how your operating system
>> empowers you when clearly you are a slave to it.
>
> Unfortunately we live in a world where 99% of people use windows,  
> and of
> the rest a lot use Mac OS X.
>
> We also have a lot of companies that think everything is a trade  
> secret
> even when it has no reason to be.
>

Well the Open Source Community lives in one Universe the rest of the  
world lives in another.  Asking companies to completely open source  
their software and platforms is ridiculous.  There is a lot of  
information to be gleaned from open source and open specs, some of it  
trade secrets, some of it just plain hard work to figure out, some of  
it work figure out and some of it trivial.  Having said that, would  
you go to a Chef and ask him to give you his best recipes for free?   
Some of his recipe will be secret, some will be plain hard workto  
figure out, some just work to figure out and some just trivial.  Put  
it all together and you have a dish that people from miles around will  
come to and pay handsomely for.  The Open Source Community is  
advocating a business model that the rest of world doesn't follow and  
would outright reject.  The problem started when people starting  
politicizing, of all things, computer technology.  Stallman et al have  
brought a philosophy that belongs on a hippie commune into the realm  
of computer technology.  Most people expect to paid for their work and  
technology companies are no different.  They have shareholders, they  
have employees and they have multi-national interests that dictate  
they turn a profit.  You own a car once you pay for it but do you  
actually expect to get the engineering diagrams, technical  
specifications and manufacturing techniques as well?  The bottom line  
is cloud computing and virtualization technology have pretty much made  
this entire discussion pointless.  Microsoft isn't f going away  
anytime soon and neither is Linux.  With cloud computing and  
virtualization technology everyone gets to play and looks like  
Microsoft well get to play a lot.  As for Apple. their future looks  
grey but for now it is the best desktop platform going.

As for my assumptions.  Yes I assume that people view computers as  
tools.  It is a tool to get something done.  If you look at operating  
systems strictly from that assumption, which most people do, clearly  
you must make significant sacrifices to run Linux.  Ultimately you are  
running an operating system that is largely licensed under the GPL  
but   most people can not even understand how the code works and for  
the few that can they can not improve Linux on the desktop since it  
becomes exceedingly difficult to reverse engineer the multitude of  
hardware available for the x86 platform.  Knowing that, clearly you  
are a slave to an operating system for scoio-political reasons and  
nothing else.   You may pay a premium for PC hardware from Apple but  
even in the higher prices there are tangible benefits like a visually  
appealing piece of hardware, decent resale value and in person  
technical support(both hardware and software) for 1-3 years across the  
globe.  In addition your choice of supported hardware and software is  
greatly increased.  Naturally if you argue that I only do such and  
such, this is not what the vast majority of people do with the tool  
and secondly if this is true perhaps you really don't need this kind  
of tool and could probably do fine with a SE Smart Phone.

My original post was merely a related comment on the person switching  
to Vista.  Considering this LUG functions at least sometimes as a  
Linux advocacy group I thought my posting may have been of interest to  
the community.

Anyways, I'm off to the Apple Store to look at gadgets.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists