Problems Linux Enthusiasts Refuse to Address

[Michael Haney]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 1:16 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 April 2011 17:50, Samuel Thurston <sam.thurston at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  I think
>> in 2011 it's time to stop holding Linux to a standard that doesn't
>> exist anywhere outside the sealed-box hardware monoculture of Apple.
>
>
> While this does seem unfair, we need to consider the model for
> disruption from below: the disruptor is (a) cheap (b) does some
> important thing *better* than the incumbent.
>
> This is why Linux has taken over *everything* outside the desktop.
> Your phone, your *television* run Linux.
>
> So to take over the desktop, it does in fact need to succeed in some
> respect that is sufficient to push it forward.
>
> The year of the Linux desktop was 2007. I say this because that was
> the year when it was finally price competition for Windows - with
> reports of Microsoft charging $0 to $5 for XP on netbooks, just to
> keep Linux the hell off them. Before that, OEMs were at their mercy.
> This was bad enough for it to show up in Microsoft's financial
> statements of the time.
>
> So, price was actually enough at that time - we didn't win the
> desktop, but we gave it a damn good shake. What other thing could
> Linux do ridiculously better to beat Windows?
>
> Ubuntu is taking a plausible approach: the Mac has the slickest design
> and Microsoft has proven utterly unable to compete, so apply design
> skills to the problem. This has variable results, e.g. Unity doesn't
> work properly, and even if it did it's deliberately missing far too
> much actual functionality. But this is why we have many distros.
>
>
>> "I'm not talking about dumbing anything down, mind you. No, I simply
>> want to see all of us decide that we either are going to start taking
>> our platform seriously or opt to forgo the usual long-winded speech
>> about how superior it is in comparison to the alternatives."
>
>
> This is an example of what I meant by the tech press and ad-banner
> trolling for clicks. These are the words of a professional troll.
>
>
>>  If Uncle Steve absolutely needs peachtree
>> to handle his existing accounting files, ask: Do you feel like
>> tinkering with a compatibility layer in order to make a required app
>> work?  If the answer is not a relatively emphatic "yes",
>> fuhgettaboutit.
>
>
> People don't seem to realise just how good Wine is these days. The
> apps that don't Just Work tend to be (a) large (b) recent. But the
> thing keeping someone on Windows is more often that Just One App that
> they can't do without - and that app will usually work flawlessly in
> Wine. YMMV, of course, but it's *always* worth a try.
>

There's a channel on Youtube dedicated to Linux gaming and it often
has videos of Windows games running Wine.  The most recent were Dead
Space, Starcraft 2 and Call of Duty 4.  I used to play Guild Wars via
Wine on my current Linux box.  But, the machine is getting old, the
video card is an 8xAGP Nvidia Geforce FX 5600, and the processor is a
single-core 32-bit 1.2GHz Athlon XP.  It doesn't have the hardware to
run any of the modern games.  If I had the money I'd build a new
gaming system using Linux and Wine.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan

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