I smell a kool aid drinking Microsoft fanboy.

This is a joke.

im not Fanboi but this is sad but very true.

Ya lost me when you posted Ballmer spelling out his “thoughts”. Gates, okay, but Ballmer - please…

That said, as a full time Linux user, you are right in a number of areas. What is wild is that most of them are not that difficult to fix, either. And your point about open or closed source - spot-on. OS for the job getting done, not its license. I could care less how Linux is licensed, as long as I can maintain certain freedoms with it. Good write up.

Oh, one other thing. They thing to remember is that purists are losing ground everyday. So you will and are already seeing instances of people looking for closed source apps working on the Linux desktop. Our numbers are growing, so be patient with us as we shovel through the FreeTards and prove that some of us to in fact wish to have REAL CHOICES that are not limited to a GPL-only mindset.

Typo above:

“…some of us do,/i> in fact wish to have REAL CHOICES that are not limited to a GPL-only mindset.”

“when your efforts will be shunned by a community who will assert that GIMP Image Editor is much better than the $799 Linux version of Photoshop?”

OK Linux users. Everybody start being nice to Adobe and stop saying The GIMP is better. Maybe then they’ll port it over. I always thought money would have had something to do with it…

“Even when a large company like NVIDIA invests time and money in developing quality drivers for Linux”

I think you meant Intel. They’re the ones developing quality drivers. Many people are complaining at NVIDIA because they refuse to fix certain known bugs. Its also one of the reasons the Nouveau project was started.

“and that better, free alternatives remained the only sensible choice.”

So even if there are better/free alternatives out there (i.e. Brasero, K3B) we’re not allowed to say so because Nero released a version of their software on Linux. The older version of Nero were great applications but the recent ones are just bloat. Oops, there’s me not being nice to a commercial developer.

You seen to have a strange grasp of the Linux community. From what I can tell, you’re saying that once a commercial developer releases on Linux, we should back them in favour of open source projects just because they released on Linux.

Hang on, that is exactly what you’re saying:

“As an individual developer, am I going to build my application for Windows, MacOS or Linux? On Windows or MacOS I know there’s a sizable number of people who believe that paying for good software is a fair way to compensate a developer(s) for his/their investment on time. This is good and helps put food on the table. Develop for Linux and you will go hungry and bankrupt if you’re relying on selling software to make ends meet.”

“Most of it is the same software I saw when I tried Red Hat 7.2 back in 2002. There’s no real innovation going on at all..”

Utter rubbish.

You’ve made an increasingly common typing error, I notice. You’ve typed “I could care less”, which of course doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, in comparison with the correct phrase “I couldn’t care less”. Quite why people keep mis-typing this phrase, rendering the meaning the opposite of the intended, is beginning to become a mystery.

[...] Steve Ballmer explained why Linux is going to stay in the minority for users. Some people feel that the main reason for this is that Developers aren’t really [...]

Oh yes, we need more pretty. Please!!!!!
I almost abandoned linux entirely when I found out it wasn’t as pretty as Vista.
[ /sarcasm]

I think Shuttleworth did a great job of making a functional, stable linux distro. I have no idea where you came by the idea that `command line geeks’ will shun it.

People who require pretty deserve Vista.

Do I want to use an Adobe product? Not on your life. They’re bloated, annoying, and privacy intrusive.

Nero? Not after the problems I had with it on XP.

Killer apps? They *work*. You have your choice of many. What exactly are you looking for?

I’m not sure I’d use Ballmer as a reliable source for anything at all, no less a better OS.

As a jazz musician, I gave up the idea of my art putting my food on the table a long time ago. If I wanted to make music that would sell, my whole paradigm would’ve had to change and I wasn’t willing to do it.

Some things just don’t fit well with a capitalist model.

But, if there were some real incentive and support for companies to deliver top-flight, enterprise ready, no-geek-required solutions for end users I believe they’d be quite successful.

I now work as a sysadmin in a windows shop. I run Ubuntu Hardy 64-bit on my computer because it is more reliable than Vista, runs faster, and XP 64 drivers are not available. My Windows work is done in a VM, or via remote desktop.

I’m constantly wishing for apps like Photoshop to be available on Linux. Gimp is nice, but my camera isn’t supported, etc, etc, etc… And every time I need to get a new piece of hardware working in Linux (air card, voip phone switch, camera, etc…) I typically spend hours of research and trial and error to find a way to make it work. This is great for a hobbyist, not so great for an end user to adopt new technology.

It just comes down to money. We live in a world that is about money - despite your philosophy… everything from the water you drink, food you eat, transportation you use is about someone, somewhere, making money.

So when Linux becomes a profitable platform - and the idea of commercial software is accepted in our community - we will see “killer” apps.

Are you aware that the number of linux users is climbing? It’s in the millions and it keeps rising every year, but by a lot.

[...] Steve Ballmer explained why Linux is going to stay in the minority for users. Some people feel that the main reason for this is that Developers aren’t really [...]

[...] top reason really goes back to my most recent post on this subject: Why Linux will always be stuck in the minority. He also complains about poor wireless support for his machine, and that he doesn’t want to [...]

I fully agree with this and I’m a pretty hardcore linux/UNIX guy. It is all about the developers but the developers are just responding to the Open Source community’s boycott of commercial companies.

Why does linux need a killer application if windows doesn’t?

Photoshop for 1000€? It’s far too expensive and complicated to be a killer application. The vast majority of windows users do not use photoshop, so your hardly killing anyone with that application.

Dreamweaver? You’ll have to ask a geek to find out what it’s about.

MS Office? Well yeah, that’s a joke! If that’s a killer application, then linux has one. Get open office.

Developers? Vista is MS most recent development and by all accounts it sucks!

Regards

kikl

“Why bother? They won’t sell.”
You’re comparing apples and oranges. The Linux community is about OPEN source. Two completely different belief systems.

Flawed logic.