In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Hadron
<hadronquark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:43:28 +0100
<fmlc7h$fgg$2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Kier <vallon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:21:18 -0500, Jerry McBride wrote:
>>
>>> Kier wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:23:24 +0000, Mark Kent wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The point remains that Microsoft have never had any intention of making
>>>>> Silverlight/iPlayer functional on anything other than Windows. After
>>>>> spending £100 million of licence-fee payer's cash, even the BBC DG was
>>>>> lying to MPs about this, although later claimed an "error".
>>>>>
>>>>> Kier is here to troll, as is Shelton. They're best ignored, Roy.
>>>>
>>>> Stop lying, Mark. I'm not a troll, and Tom Shellton is one of the most
>>>> balanced Windows-using posters here.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hmmm.... why is a windows using poster, here in COLA?
>>
>> Because he also uses Linux. The two are not always mutually exclusive.
>
> Thank you! Some common sense.
>
> A Windows user SHOULD come here to be convinced of Linux. Instead they
> get killfiled by the "advocates".
>
> Ridiculous.
There's a difference between being convinced -- which
might be done easily enough by lurking, all other things
being equal -- and trying to throw a monkey wrench in
communications by disparaging Linux and/or appealing
to prejudice.
Some of these prejudices are fairly obvious.
[1] Arcanity. Linux is characterized by some as being abstruse,
arcane, requiring typing in of very odd command sequences that
look like chicken scratchings.
[2] Slow. For various reasons some think other solutions are faster.
[3] Lacking in applications.
[4] Cannot support devices.
[5] Cannot support users.
[6] Is not as good as that other solution.
I'll attempt to address these one at a time.
[1] Arcanity. Sure, Linux qua Linux the kernel is arcane.
Does everyone know int $0x80? I doubt it. However,
given what most mean by "Linux" around here (really,
Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Fedora, or in my case Gentoo), the
arcanity is put in its place, largely hidden unless
one wants to dig for it. It's not perfect, but then
what is?
[2] Slow. By all accounts Linux is by and large *faster*
than that other solution, especially when that other
solution gobbles up all of one's RAM and asks for more.
(Bear in mind memory access is a million times faster
than disk access. Once a machine starts to swap, one's
going to slow down regardless of OS.)
[3] Lacking in applications. This is probably Linux's
most difficult point but there's a fair number of
competition now in, among other places, spreadsheets,
of which there are at least three: MS's Excel,
Gnumeric, and OpenOffice's oocalc). Games might be
tougher to crack but a high-end gamester has strange
needs anyway, mostly at the hardware level. For its
part, however, Linux does have excellent OpenGL
support, and some games have made it over here --
Quake 4, DOOM 3, and Unreal Tournament come to mind.
And of course Linux is almost completely immune to
packet-attacking worms and classical MBR and executable
infection viruses. One still has to look out for
trojans, though these are also partly eviscerated
as well; trojans can't infect the system though they
can trash the user's account. There's also scripting
interpreters that Badbunny can attempt to leverage.
(Personally, I think scripts in a spreadsheet are
akin to attaching roller skates to the space shuttle;
it doesn't quite fit.)
[4] Cannot support devices. The only devices Linux can't
support are the more esoteric ones nowadays. I have
a Winmodem that Linux can't support for some reason,
for example. Such considerations are becoming
increasingly irrelevant. Of course if one is purchasing
a new unit, one will want to exercise some care so
as to maximally utilize its devices.
[5] Cannot support users. Well, it's a communications
exercise, after all; a user adapts to an OS no
matter what, really. I type 'ls' without thinking,
for example. Admittedly, I'm not sure how Linux would
support users using e.g. a phone call (and Linux wouldn't
anyway; one has to call Ubuntu, SuSE (Novell), Red Hat,
or Gentoo and open a support ticket -- and there's no
guarantees in the case of Gentoo although one can file a
bug report, and someone might look at it; one can also
submit a fix, though I'd have to look up the details.)
[6] Goodness is in the eye of the beholder. OSX in
particular is very attractive visually, and has some
interesting capabilities that Linux distros might
do well to borrow. Windows is of course ubiquitous,
and Linux applications might borrow some of Windows'
file formats. (More likely, Linux apps will be
able to read them, but write standard formats.)
Old Unix scripts are still out there; Linux might
run some of them (depending on how many proprietary
commands are in those scripts). Internet Explorer
is demostrably inferior to Mozilla in many areas,
and might be superior in a few.
Make of all this what one will, but Wintrools come by often.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Error 16: Not enough space on file system to delete file(s)
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